Perhaps I’m just a nerd, but wouldn’t today be a good day for a wedding? 10.01.10 just has a nice ring to it. On that note, the marriage between IT and business looks like it’s on the rocks, at least according to Forrester’s James Staten. James says that while we’ve been focused on ITIL, data center consolidation and standardization, businesses have gone looking for better technology solutions. James’ bottom line: The IT to business relationship that works today will not work 5-10 years from now.
“Now, thanks to a wide variety of self-service technologies (iPads, cloud computing and consumer web services) and a much more tech savvy workforce (Generation Y thinks its home technology trumps what you can offer), new unauthorized technologies are showing up everywhere. The mantra from the business is changing from, “manage it and do so ever-cheaper,” to “deliver it faster” or, increasingly, “get out of the way.” The more IT raises concerns about the security, availability and supportability of these technologies the more it is seen as the department of “no.” That’s assuming IT knows it’s happening.”
The government cloud keeps growing bigger.Last year, the CTO of Server Access and Virtualization Business unit at Cisco said,
"Complex, process-driven environments like government have been used to inflexible IT infrastructures. The cloud’s flexibility is so appealing that it will drive the creation of a private government cloud."
Today, government is certainly leading the charge to the cloud (along with service providers).
Think that the tools don’t matter for a successful virtualization strategy? Think again. According to Arthur Cole, virtualization produces a more dynamic infrastructure that can drive efficiencies by rapidly scaling usable resources to match changing data requirements. BUT, only if you have the right infrastructure-management tools.