Bimodal IT: Business-IT alignment in the age of digital transformation

Today, companies face a challenge, which has been coined as “digitalization” or “digital transformation”. As a reaction to this challenge, many companies see the need of establishing a new “digital IT” unit or of shifting responsibility for IT systems to the business units. These changes should allow the business to be better informed, more flexible and faster in adapting its IT as well as its IT-enabled services and products to market opportunities and customer needs. The coexistence of digital IT and traditional IT has been coined as “bimodal IT” or “two-speed IT”. By employing a literature review and a qualitative document analysis, this article clarifies the concept of bimodal IT and identifies implications for the business-IT alignment in organizations. We further describe and contrast the characteristics of “traditional IT” and “digital IT”. In addition, we summarize various approaches for implementing bimodal IT on the architecture, process and organizational level. Finally, we address critical observations raised in respect of the bimodal IT concept.