I have gotten some responses to the first two blogs, and the most compelling so far has been “What if your conscious (the top manager) doesn’t understand, is lazy, thinks it is too costly or too much work, etc? This is a good article but, I think, it takes for granted that someone wants really manage the change and sees the benefits”. This person is absolutely correct. What is a beleaguered visionary, with no high level decision-making powers to do?
Senior IT executives are plagued by requests and constant firefighting, and are often forced to choose between immediate accommodation of direct business related requests and a longer term investment in infrastructure. As I said in my previous post http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/28060 if you think of the network as a human body, then sometimes it will suffer an illness, especially if it abused. Let's call this one insanity (doing the same thing each time and expecting different results). What is - “The $100 million dollar blade”? How could a $2,500 dollar blade cost that much? Easy, when the only place to put it is in a new datacenter, because there is no room, or power, or too much heat exists in the current one.
Let's look at how this kind of insanity occurs. The senior IT executive isn't motivated to change. Why? Because when you combine the typical silos and fiefdoms found in any large scale enterprise, getting anything done in a reasonable and effective timeframe is daunting, disheartening and seems like a no-win situation. Senior IT executives rarely have the power of eminent domain that state government has in dictating infrastructure projects. So IT projects tightly aligned with the business will often make their own decisions about technology, avoiding perceived “Ivory Tower” corporate standards. Many senior IT executives will not stop large deviations from being installed for fear of being labeled as an impediment to the business. Of course eminent domain doesn’t guarantee success, just grudging compliance (look at Boston’s Big Dig).
It is fair to say that such high profile IT projects as infrastructure upgrades are often career and or bonus killers, due to the complexity, political wars and the vendor headaches. The time to show ROI is usually greater than a year, and senior business managers’ patience in the face of market pressures is often less than that. So many senior IT executives loathe undertaking that bet without a compelling reason.
Meanwhile, the task of handling aging and inadequate infrastructure is left in the hands of overworked professionals, who through the old adage “necessity is the mother of invention”, see products as potential solutions that can even identify the root causes of chronic problems. Some of these solutions will solve the problems completely. These folks, much like the person who gave me feedback persuade often to no avail, even as their weekends, life and sanity are tested to the limit.
So what is a beleaguered visionary, with no high-level decision-making power to do? Think back to the biological entity analogy: when do those who abuse their bodies finally wake up? When the doctor tells them they have an imminent life threatening condition. No need to get further depressed and make a list, it is all too prevalent in the news.
While this is the extreme example, it is much like the old fable, “for the want of a horseshoe nail, a kingdom falls”. Business and IT fiefdoms are designed to take care of the business at a localized level, but there are IT concerns that transcend any individual revenue line: telecom, printing, email and voice mail, and the infrastructure that supports it and ALL business functions that are interconnected by the network to perform business as usual.
Unconscious growth without constraints is not sustainable. Only through deliberate instrumentation and trending can a picture of that growth be viewed holistically. The decisions that are made to solve business needs must be put in context of what we call Quality of Experience or QoE. QoE would be performing all work according to SLAs, while preventing unnecessary processor sprawl and power/cooling waste due to resource over provisioning to meet peak need. This requires a conscious effort to balance Quality of Service with costs and efficiency.
Traditional approaches to this problem fail QoE because there is no holistic view of how this can be achieved, which gets back to the IT executive who says NO. That person might react differently if told that in a year (based on very clear evidence) you will submit a request for a $100 million blade.
Sheppard Narkier
Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Adaptivity
Sheppard.narkier@adaptivity.com
Tony Bishop is CEO, Adaptivity. He'd previously served as SVP and chief architect of Wachovia's Corporate Investment Banking Technology Group, where his team earned numerous awards for its SOA and utility computing infrastructure. Tony has 19 years' experience and is the recipient of 40 under 40 Most Innovative IT Leaders, Premier 100 IT Leaders as selected (by ComputerWorld in 2007) and a member of Wall Street Gold Book 2007.
Sheppard Narkier is chief scientist and co-founder of Adaptivity. Prior to that, he was head of software portfolio management and IT governance for the Wachovia Corporate Investment Banking Technology Group. Sheppard has more than 29 years of experience in the IT industry. He focuses on cost-effective IT systems and is an acknowleged expert at reusable components (frameworks, programs, architecture), the realtime enterprise, SOAs, messaging and legacy system integration.
Jim Houghton is the Chief Technology Officer and co-Founder of Adaptivity. Jim was the SVP of Architecture & Strategy for the infrastructure organization at Bank of America, where he drove legacy infrastructure transformation initiatives across 40+ data centers. Prior to that he was the Head of Wachovia’s Utility Product Management, where he drove the design, services, and offerings for SOA and Utility Computing for the technology division of Wachovia’s Corporate & Investment Bank. Jim has also led leading-edge consulting practices at IBM Global Technology Services and Deloitte Consulting.
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