Should flexibility be a primary IT strategy?
I define the strategy of IT flexibility as the consideration of future changes in business and the technologies that support it. A company’s ability to change is a keystone of success in today’s business environment.
The advent of virtualization in storage, servers, and other technologies has increased flexibility for the companies that choose to implement it. Companies can provision servers and storage in record time. Adding lines of business or migrating old applications to new platforms is easier than ever. The ability to spin up a new line of business quickly when an opportunity presents itself can be the difference between profitability and failure. When markets and technologies change, reprovisioning existing servers, network equipment and data centers can increase return on investment. Virtualization has in many ways changed Information Technology and helped savvy organizations better align IT with business needs.
Virtualization is just one way that organizations can achieve IT flexibility. Using cloud-based resources and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications to augment or replace existing hard infrastructure can reduce overhead and solve scalability problems. The flexibility to manage explosive growth can mean the difference between failure and success.
Outsource data centers can improve IT flexibility. In-house data centers have natural limits on power, cooling, floor space and connectivity. The use of wholesale colocation facilities and outsource data centers can eliminate the barriers for growth and change, while at the same time improving customer service by improving uptime and systems reliability.
Is your organization IT flexible? Do you consider the ability to change and reprovision resources as part of your IT decision making process ? I challenge your IT organization to adopt flexibility as a primary Information Technology strategy. Be light on your feet. Be agile. Be successful.
