Managing these pressures is relevant since IT systems have become highly distributed across data center locations and public clouds — hybrid cloud IT is a reality for most organizations. In addition, a myriad of new development technologies in cloud-native and other areas open up huge new opportunities to make development teams more productive. This guide is designed as a strategy primer for enterprise architects and IT leaders to map out how to tackle modern IT strategy. It is focused on the convergence of three trends:

1. The importance of IT systems to modern organizational success.
2. Hybrid cloud and the shift to multiple datacenters, platforms, and cloud locations.
3. Cloud-native application development technologies and how they can be combined with existing approaches to create a robust, productive IT system.