When technology needs to take a back seat

As technologists, the last things you probably want to deal with are people and processes. But if you’re trying to optimize application delivery, then an organizational overhaul most likely will be required. Michael Morris, a network architect and frequent Network World blogger recently described the issue for me:

“A lot of IT shops are set up in the old silo model -- here’s the application piece, here’s the infrastructure team and underneath the infrastructure team I’ve got the server team, the network team, the security team and they’re all in silos under different managers. It’s very hard right now to say, ‘OK, I’ve got a new application coming in. What do we need to do to deliver this application so it’s optimized on the network, has the right security, the right server resources, and all of that goes in harmony?’ IT organizations aren’t built that way.

“You get a new application, like SAP, and it’s not until six months into an eight-month project that the developers come to the network guys and say, ‘Oh by the way, we’re going to run SAP over your network. Is that OK?’”

The application delivery story, Morris says, is really a non-technical one. It’s about how enterprise IT needs to organize for proper service delivery optimization and what processes need to be put in place to make sure that happens.

That might not get you super excited, but it’s the right move – and your users will love you for it.

For more on this topic, read:

Dear IT: Forget the technology

Four ways to improve IT and get better application performance

• Data Center