Because NightHawk maintains offices in multiple countries, "the level of complexity goes beyond that of offices distributed in one country," Karaman says. For example, NightHawk IT must account for broad time-zone differences, various employment rules, global recruiting, and challenges in acquiring and supporting network bandwidth and equipment.

Collaboration is also being affected by globalization and how organizations assess supportive technologies, architectures and applications. It is also affected by investments in group decision-support systems, in Web 2.0 technologies and Web-based groupware, and in shared virtual environments.

On leadership, a majority of respondents to the Smart Enterprise survey say globalization has affected the way IT executives manage their staffs, handle supplier and partner relationships and handle customer relationships. It also changes the way IT executives are sought out for their knowledge and expertise by their CEOs and boards of directors, and it even affects the way IT leaders manage laterally.