it strategy - Doug Theis

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01
May 14

Arthur Cole – Rise of the Mega Data Center?

It seems the more the enterprise becomes steeped in cloud computing, the more we hear of the end of local infrastructure in favor of utility-style “mega-data centers.” This would constitute a very dramatic change to a long-standing industry that, despite its ups and downs, has functioned primarily as an owned-and-operated resource for many decades.

So naturally, this begs the question: Is this real? And if so, how should the enterprise prepare for the migration?

Earlier this week, I highlighted a recent post from Wikibon CTO David Floyer touting the need for software-defined infrastructure in the development of these mega centers. Floyer’s contention is that “megaDs” are not merely an option for the enterprise, but the inevitable future, in that they will take over virtually all processing, storage and other data functions across the entire data ecosystem.

SwitchScribe – The Biggest Impact on IT Firefighting & Business Agility – Data Centers

Protection & Value

Is it reasonable to assume that if you’re buying a safe for all our valuables that you’d buy the one that is the best combination of security and cost. This combination of security and cost would be driven by your budget and the value (intrinsic or sentimental) of your precious items. I would guess that the same principle of budget vs. value would apply to protecting your IT environments.

So many places to look, so many holes to patch

The normal enterprise IT environment is filled with hundreds of applications. In most cases each of these applications is supported by unique design at the hardware and software level, if not also at the network layer. The fact that there is so much uniqueness about our IT environments means we expend inordinate amounts of time dealing with common problems in 100 unique ways. Maintaining these environments has become the bane of enterprise IT groups. By now, we’ve all heard the story of how keeping the lights on comprises 70-80% of the IT budget leaving only a small amount for much needed innovation.

Keeping the lights on has several meanings, including the mundane but critical “general maintenance and support” of each environment. However, keeping the lights on could also mean avoiding outages. Generically speaking, all of us in IT attempt to build and maintain environments with the highest possible availability (within budget and available resources). The problem is that we’re often spending too much time fighting fires of “maintenance & support” and not enough time solving the underlying issues that cause many of the fires or in this case cause many of the outages (same as a fire only worse). Where should IT focus its attention relative to avoiding outages and or reducing the number of fires?

SearchDataCenter – Converged solutions are simply not simple

I’ve been thinking a lot about two areas of IT: complexity and convergence, which have a lot to do with each other.

Collectively, we operate some very complicated infrastructures, which make many aspects of IT difficult. With a massive funding round for Nutanix, the integration of Whiptail into Cisco as UCS Invicta, and VMware’s release of VSAN, we are seeing a lot of convergence happening. Normally siloed areas of IT are being forcibly integrated.
Our data centers are piles of kludges

We don’t start out with complicated systems. The first system designs we do to solve a problem are concise, simple and easy to implement.

Problems tend to arise during the implementation process. Sometimes it’s a missed requirement–somebody didn’t talk to everyone or the right people. Sometimes it’s an assumption, perhaps that the management interface on your Fibre Channel switch could do gigabit speeds, but it’s actually only 10/100. At any rate, you need a fix, and that fix makes a mess of your clean design.

Gradually we add things to a nice design to handle new business requirements. We replace aging or failed components with new parts, but those new parts are never the same as the old ones. We come up with numerous “easy fixes” for problems and they stack up, kludge upon kludge upon kludge, until all that’s left of the original, simple system design is the Visio diagram from years before.

CIO.com – CIOs Need to Focus on Competitive Threats

Nothing delivers a rush of business adrenaline like the appearance of a new competitor. When Google bought Nest a few months ago, for example, every CEO with a stake in “smart home” products or the residential energy business took immediate notice.

When FedEx CEO Fred Smith was quizzed about the possibility of Amazon.com competing with his enormous transportation network by using drones to deliver packages, he dismissed the idea as “almost amusing.”

Yet as Managing Editor Kim S. Nash points out in her cover story (” Battle of the Archrivals”), some of the most effective competitive moves happening today in social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies weren’t on anyone’s threat horizon until recently.

Given that reality, we wondered how and where IT was making a difference in three of the fiercest corporate rivalries: Home Depot vs. Lowe’s, Ford vs. General Motors, FedEx vs. UPS. “Technology boasts permeate the marketing and investment strategies for these companies,” Nash writes.

More of the CIO.com article

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14
Apr 14

Data Center Knowledge – Abstracting the Data Center: A look at the DCOS Platform

It’s time to take a step back and look at the data center model that’s impacting today’s business, . It’s time to see just how far this platform has come and exactly where it’s going. It’s time to say hello to the truly agnostic data center. Almost every new technology is being pushed through some type of data center model.

Inside of your current data center model – what do you have under the hood?

Storage, Networking, Compute
Power, Cooling, Environmental Controls
Rack and Cable Management
Building and Infrastructure Security

Although some of these underlying components have stayed the same. Requirements from the workloads that live on top have drastically evolved. Through it all, we’ve also seen an evolution of the physical aspect of the data center. We’re creating powerful multi-tenant, high-density platforms capable of handling users and the new data-on-demand generation. With all of these new technologies and demands, the modern data center has truly become a distributed node infrastructure.

More of the Data Center Knowledge article

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07
Apr 14

CIO.com – Dissatisfaction with IT grows

Businesses want to spend less on IT operations and infrastructure and shift resources to revenue-producing areas, according to two new studies. But businesses leaders and IT executives are also registering higher levels of dissatisfaction with IT as more demands are placed on technology.

The reports, by the Hackett Group and McKinsey & Co., both agree that business executives want IT to do more to improve the bottom line while companies spend less on infrastructure in the process.

The bad news for people who work in IT operations is that large businesses expect to cut IT staff positions by about 2 per cent this year, thanks to automation and outsourcing, according the Hackett’s survey of 160 businesses with revenues above $US1 billion.

One path to improved automation will likely be through adoption of software-defined infrastructures, something Bank of America plans to do.

IT budgets will grow by 1.7 per cent this year as IT pivots, increasingly, from a service-providing operation to a revenue-generating one, the Hackett Group said in its study.

More of the CIO.com Australia article

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02
Apr 14

Information Age – 5 tips for getting out of the server room and into the boardroom

‘That sounds like a big ask of the humble IT manager, but the majority of them already feel up to the task’

It’s not just sitcoms like The IT Crowd that put technology experts in a world of their own: IT managers need to break out of the perception that their place is in the server room but not the board room.

To do so, they’ll need to translate their deep knowledge of technical systems and processes into insights that business people can understand. They’ll also have the power (and responsibility) to defuse technology hype and define targets for their co-workers that are most relevant to business success.

That sounds like a big ask of the humble IT manager, but the majority of them already feel up to the task. In SolarWinds’ New IT Survey released just last week, 97% of IT professionals surveyed said they feel at least quite confident in providing advice on critical business decisions – and almost half said they were completely confident that they could do so. Yet although it found that almost every IT professional has delivered this guidance and counsel at one time or another, 6 in 10 only get the chance to do so occasionally or rarely.

This suggests that businesses have yet to fully tap into the diverse technical expertise that their IT managers can bring to the boardroom table. IT professionals, however, can quite easily make their potential decision-making value known – all they have to do is align what they know with what the business wants and needs.

HBR – Strategy in a World of Constant Change

Am I the only person to be getting a bit weary of hearing it repeatedly asserted that we’re living in a world of constant, accelerating change? That competitive advantages are becoming ever more transient and that the secret to survival will be to the ability to transform on a dime? Otherwise, what happened to Tom Tom will happen to you. Please!

Let me share a fun clip with you, sent to me the other day my former colleague Jonathan Rotenberg, founder of the Boston Computer Society. It chronicles Steve Jobs’ first public introduction of the brand new Macintosh, which happened in January 1984 at Jonathan’s Society in Boston. The whole event was was a cool trip down memory lane.

The moment I loved most was during the Q&A when an older gentleman asked Jobs a challenging question about the mouse as user interface technology: did it really compare favorably to the traditional keystroke approach? It was fun to watch a younger, mellower Jobs give a patient, reassuring response and not insinuate that the questioner was a moron. Jobs turned out to be quite right in his answer, which was that once people gave the mouse a try, they would see that it was far superior to keystrokes.

TechCrunch – Data As A Company’s Secret Weapon

This year, we’re going to see data go from an opaque, untapped, and mystifying asset to a hyper competitive, I-can’t-believe-you-don’t-use-it weapon for businesses. I don’t mean big data; I mean data of any size: big, medium, and small. In fact, it’s not about the amount of data, it’s about the kind of data you have (and, of course, being smart enough to use it). This is all starting to happen because software is being built specifically to analyze lots of data – and it’s no longer cost-prohibitive to use this software, and the insights can fundamentally change the trajectory of your business.

Think of it this way: If you’re chasing after a $10-billion market and your competitor has a way to leverage the data generated by their customers – and you don’t – the odds aren’t in your favor. Chances are, you’re going to fall behind.

The taxi industry is being upended internationally due to the emergence of high-tech companies such as Uber and Lyft. These companies are rapidly taking over the market, and not just because they’re mobile-first. Uber and Lyft are successful because they approach a classic problem – getting from point A to point B – as a mathematical equation with hundreds of potential variables. All of these variables can be tested and improved upon to create the best possible user experience. And the only way they improve that result is by having better data and smarter software. Smarter software begets more customers which begets better data which begets smarter software.

More of the TechCrunch post by Suhail Doshi

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02
Jan 14

InformationWeek – IT’s Reputation: Broken Bad

If Coca-Cola had a brand that was the equivalent of IT today, they would kill it and start again, says Blackstone Group CTO. He shares 4 processes IT leaders can use to change IT’s bad rep.

William Murphy, CTO of the investment firm Blackstone Group, seemed like a pleasant enough fellow when he came onto the Interop New York tech conference stage this week. He even promised to kick things off on a high note.

Then he proceeded to describe the perception of IT departments as at best adequate — a cost center and a back-office necessity at many companies. Worst case, “we’re categorized as people who say ‘No’ first and ask questions later,” Murphy said. IT’s too often considered defensive, late, overprice, uninformed and unhelpful.

“If Coca-Cola had a brand that was the equivalent of IT today, they would just kill it and start again,” said Murphy. At Blackstone, Murphy changed the name of IT to Innovations & Infrastructure, and took some meatier steps (more below on that) to reshape the perception of IT.

More of the InformationWeek article by Chris Murphy

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