Dear IT Leader

As we enter 2010, I thought it important to reach out to you directly.

I know, you get bombarded by IT vendors all the time, so I understand your natural skepticism.

My message is simple: the industry is in the process of trying to offer you a substantially better way of doing your job.  That age-old phrase of "IT as a service" is going to mean something very different very quickly.

And I wanted to make sure that this important development didn't get lost in all the industry noise.

As I meet people in your role, it's often the case that you can get consumed by the overwhelming demands of day-to-day priorities.  I know I do.

As a result, I feel it's my responsibility to share the important trends that are in the process of changing how you do your job -- and your relationship to the organization you serve.

Things Change

So much of what you do as an IT leader depends on IT infrastructure: hardware, software, people and process.  And so much of what your organization spends on IT is spent directly on IT infrastructure -- the plumbing that supports the applications and information that your business needs to be effective.

Two important things are starting to happen right now that are changing the fundamental equation of how IT is delivered to an organization.

First, the "all-in" costs associated with delivering a unit of IT infrastructure (capex and opex)  -- internally or externally -- can now be delivered for a very small fraction of what you're probably paying now. 

Depending on the size of your IT budget, this can mean hundreds of thousands (or hundreds of millions!) of dollars freed up to spend on something other than IT plumbing.  For those of us close to this, the numbers can appear unbelievable. 

And it's not magic -- any IT organization of sufficient scale can do this themselves.  And, over time, smaller organizations will be able to work with service providers who can do the same thing.

Second, new abilities to deliver that unit of IT infrastructure quickly -- when and where it's needed -- means you can now react to new business requirements in hours and days, rather than weeks and months.

And we all want to live in a world where IT isn't the gating factor to a new business need.

For those of us who've been in the industry a long time, it's nothing short than a re-making of how we do our jobs.  And this new approach is starting to be put into practice -- albeit in limited fashion -- as we speak.

The change has begun.

What's Going On Here?

I hate to invoke the overused term "cloud", but IT organizations are taking cloud principles, and applying them to their own IT environments to achieve these new results.  You may have heard the term "private cloud" being used to describe these inside-the-data-center efforts.

The IT groups that are doing this successfully aren't talking much about it, unfortunately.  They're in extremely competitive industries, and consider this development important enough that it's considered "company confidential" in many cases.

That's understandable -- if you could cut IT infrastucture costs by, say, 90% and deliver IT infrastructure, say, 10x faster -- that'd be a pretty powerful development for the business, wouldn't it? 

And if we could do it in such a way that you still had a broad range of strategic choices on applications, user devices, vendors, service providers, etc. -- that'd be even better, wouldn't it?

There are some in the industry who envision a world where most organizations don't own any IT infrastructure at all, and everything is external.  That's an interesting goal, but those of us who are more pragmatic realize that most of us will probably be using a combination of internal and external infrastructure for the forseeable future.

Now, as a vendor, I wish I could wave a magic wand, and immediately transport you to this dramatically more-efficient and more-responsive IT infrastructure world. 

But getting there is going to take some heavy lifting -- not only from us as vendors, but from you as IT leaders as well.

The Vendor Side Of The Equation

We, as infrastructure vendors, are starting to deliver fully-virtualized IT infrastructure that operates more as a cloud service and less like the physical stuff that has to be managed in a traditional way. 

Because it's fully virtualized, it's far more efficient in using hardware resources, saving money on capital expenditures.  Because it can be managed very differently, it can also save eye-opening costs on operational expenses as well.

In addition to the underlying technology, we're also investing in integrating the various pieces so they operate as one, as well as qualifying and characterizing many of the workloads and applications you're using today.

Since I work for EMC, our flavor of this is known as Vblocks (partnering with Cisco and VMware in a coalition referred to as "VCE"), but -- make no mistake -- HP and IBM are starting to head down the same path.  At EMC, we call this new model a "private cloud".  I apologize, I'm not quite sure what the other guys are calling their versions these days.

As we've done this with our coalition partners, we've put a lot of focus on the "everything else" that makes enterprise IT unique: all the disciplines around management, security, availability, backup, business continuity, metering, etc. 

Yes, your people will find a gap here or there in what's available today, but I'd offer that (a) there's far more there than most people realize, and (b) the gaps are well understood and will likely be filled before too long.

However, when we show what we've done to the people in your organization, they generally react unfavorably -- and that's where we're going to need your help.

The Enterprise Side Of The Equation

Here's the problem in a nutshell: to achieve these order-of-magnitude benefits, we've had to change how we build IT infrastructure (fully virtualized pools of dynamic resources), how we operate IT infrastructure (low-touch and zero-touch models), and how we consume IT infrastructure (just-in-time models that are convenient for users).

That's a lot of change to manage -- all at once.

Yes, the technology needs to prove itself.  That goes without saying, and it's well underway.  However, we're beginning to realize that -- going forward -- our major challenge will be with people, process and politics -- and not so much products and technologies.

Most traditional IT organizations look at these new models and justifiably claim "that's not how we do things today!!".  They tend to reject this new stuff because it's unfamiliar, and can be scary on multiple levels.

And, you know, they're absolutely right.  That's the point.

By way of comparison, if you were to fully automate a traditional manufacturing plant, the people who've worked in that plant and done work the exact same way for 20 years might not fully embrace the change. 

The analogy isn't that far off.

In general, the larger the IT organization, the more this is becoming a problem.  I've noticed that the smaller IT organizations are doing a much better job of moving forward quickly towards this newer model. 

Business literature is full of historical industry examples where smaller players were able to adopt a newer model before the bigger guys and gain a competitive advantage.  I think we're seeing the same thing again when it comes to IT infrastructure.

Moving Forward

I've had the pleasure of meeting a number of progressive IT leaders in larger organizations who've come up with a way to break the logjam, and start to move things forward.  I thought I'd share their approach with you.

The first thing they've realized is that it's probably not worthwhile to directly attack the legacy of technology, people and process that's already in place and working.  No, they're turning their focus on creating an environment for all the new IT projects coming down the road.

At a very high level, they've hand-picked a few smart and adaptable people to go do the new thing -- to create an internal private cloud -- technology model, operational model and consumption model -- and point it at an "unmet need" within the organization.

The idea is simple: get comfortable in doing things the new way in an environment that won't put the business at risk.  As confidence increases, expand the scope of workloads that run in the new environment, without compromising the efficiencies of the new operational model.

Some organizations are targeting application development and test for these new internal private clouds.  Or self-service business analytics.  Or perhaps a virtual desktop pilot.  Everyone has a different starting point.  Show me a bunch of important knowledge workers, I'll show you an unmet need suitable for a private cloud in 60 seconds or less.

The rationale of these projects are two-fold: solve an immediate business problem that hopefully has some funding attached, and (more importantly) gain internal confidence and skills with these new technologies and operational models.  The knowledge workers are generally delighted with having these new on-demand services without having to engage with traditional IT processes.

If the first project is successful, there's a foundation for the second, third and so on. Not surprisingly, legacy applications come up for a refresh over time, and decisions can be made as to whether they're candidates for the new environment, or not, as the case may be.

Final Thoughts

Many of us are attracted to this IT stuff because we're fascinated by what it can do for our organizations. It's an extremely powerful set of tools that are virtually limitless in their ability to transform the nature of work.

Occasionally, certain developments occur in our industry that "change the game" for everyone who uses the stuff.  Many of us believe that the "cloud-ification" of internal (and external) IT infrastructure is one of those game changers in a big way.

By making IT infrastructure far cheaper and far more frictionless, we're changing the equation of how IT money should be spent to deliver value.

And if you're an IT leader, it's fair to say this is a pretty important development.

Since I work for a vendor, it's no surprise that we want to sell you stuff.  But, as a colleague in this industry, I think it's my duty to alert you when something big is happening.  And, lest you think that this is several years away, several of your colleagues would disagree, and are investing considerable resources in doing sizable projects this year.

Hopefully, you'll be pretty clear communicating to us vendors as to what you need from us to make this change happen in your own environment.  We're getting plenty of good feedback already, but we need to hear from you as well.

Who said IT was boring?

Comments

[Tony Pearson]

"...and IBM are starting to head down the same path."

Chuck,
IBM has offered complete IT solutions for decades. The HP/Microsoft announcement is new, but no need to imply that IBM is late to the cloud game.

-- Tony Pearson (IBM)