New normal requires new thinking

In this first Industry Insight, I will define the concepts of IT as a service - in the new normal.

IT is:

* Big - As many bits in the digital universe as stars in the physical universe.
* Risky - Two-thirds of IT projects are at risk, and unprotected data is growing at a 90+ factor.
* Mobile - By 2014, mobile Internet usage will exceed desktop Internet usage.
* Always on - Work-related e-mail, posting or Tweeting ... in bed: 29% ... on vacation: 49% ... on the phone: 40% ... in a car: 47% ... driving a car: +/- 20% (even though it is dangerous).
* Changing - 71% agree - by 2020, most people will do their work in the cloud, versus PC software.
* Social - 500 billion impressions a year about products/services.

Organisations, government, and service providers are all increasingly dependent on IT. As this dependency grows, so does the pressure to deliver services that are aligned to what the business and the end-user require. This task, however, comes with increasingly more complexities in the form of a convergence of technology such as: the Internet; virtualisation; and consumerisation.

To further exacerbate this, there is the persistence of the global economic downturn, negatively impacting IT's ability to meet demand. This is the “new normal” - the transformation in IT and business that is being driven by the confluence of key trends, technologies and a rising set of expectations for an experience that is fast, secure and accessible 24x7 on any device from anywhere with no interruptions.

As with any transformation, it's evolutionary, not revolutionary. It starts with rationalising and optimising existing environments. As operations become more efficient and more agile, more attention can be devoted to innovation, to growth, to speed, and to competitive advantage - all of which need to be managed and secured.

The tasks of the IT infrastructure and operations departments have become increasingly complex and susceptible to human error. This is a direct consequence of the sheer volume and diversity of business services and their underlying application and infrastructure components. Due to reduced or flat budgets and increased costs, as well as complexity challenges, IT organisations are increasingly turning to automation to offer high quality services more quickly and at a reduced cost.

Most organisations' approach to automation today is to utilise custom scripting or run books, and they operate their processes around a people-centric model. This might support their traditional organisational structures, but it does not map to an operational model of efficiency and innovation.

The use of 'old thinking' on this new journey will not save money - it could even end up costing more.

Hannes Lategan is solution strategist at CA Southern Africa.

This 'old thinking' will limit the potential for smart SLAs (service level agreements) in support of potential QOS (quality of service) improvement to the end-user - the customer. What is needed is 'new thinking' that enables agility, plus the ability to respond dynamically to the needs of customers and the business.

This holds true for both internally focused service delivery by an IT department, or externally focused, in the case of service providers. On the journey to cloud computing through server consolidation and virtualisation, infrastructure optimisation and automation, service automation and orchestration, to the dynamic data centre - the use of 'old thinking' on this new journey will not save money - it could even end up costing more.

Adoption of virtualisation technologies is expanding at an incredible rate, because they offer flexibility and productivity benefits. However, as the complexity of virtualisation is becoming obvious, the continued expansion threatens to hamper productivity and service reliability, resulting in virtual stall. As with every technology that has come before it, the route to success on the journey to cloud computing lies in solid, standardised processes and management tools to automate and govern the execution of these processes. With the reality of cloud emerging, the need for unified automation across the processes and procedures, along with their respective applications plus underlying support infrastructure, has become a necessity.

Unified automation serves to leverage the capabilities of next-generation technologies and the inherent benefits of virtualisation and automation. It also aims to help infrastructure and operations to quickly meet the demands of business through rapidly enabling process automation; configuration automation and compliance; workload automation and capacity management; along with infrastructure automation.

Moreover, it assists in delivering scalable private cloud solutions that can scale up and out into public and hybrid formats, while integrating application development structures. Most enterprises with large data centres plus infrastructure from multiple vendors, are experimenting with applications delivered from the cloud and are increasingly developing applications on a platform that doesn't reside in their own data centre. No matter where they are in their journey, enterprises need to manage and secure a multi-vendor, multi-platform, cloud-enabled environment.

The unified automation portfolio provides solutions to provision, control, assure, secure and optimise complex environments. These solutions provide comprehensive, business-aligned management of complex heterogeneous, physical and virtual environments - across multiple vendors, platforms and technologies of choice, both on and off premises.

In the next Industry Insight, I will detail the capabilities of unified automation, what it consists of, how it works, and how it is applicable to an end-to-end service life cycle in the competitive world of the new normal.