IT Governance

An organization finds itself in a constantly changing environment. Thus, the importance of information and dependency of Information Technology is growing. In times of increasing information density, and due to the worldwide web, organizations seem to act without any time limitations or trading borders. With strong competition on buyers markets and decreasing price margins, the effective and efficient utilization of IT is a necessity to strengthen business performance, to achieve corporate goals and to realize competitive advantages. Therefore IT has to be adjusted to corporate goals and strategies. Business and IT have to move in the same direction. A relatively new topic in this area is "IT Governance", which provides a set of tools and guidelines to build up a framework to manage information and IT to support and boost business performance and goals. This book is based on the question: Is IT Governance an innovative solution for Information Management and as such another step in its evolution; or is IT Governance a new topic alongside the development of Information Management? This book addresses students, as well as practitioners, who are interested in getting an overview of the origin, scope and impact of IT Governance.