Model (I)T
From IT manufacturer to a factory for virtual infrastructure services
Those responsible for IT infrastructure had only just started to rave about the immediate benefits of technical virtualization when the risk of losing operational control reared its ugly head. Proven production concepts provide orientation: fordism and toyotism can help ensure that the operation of virtual IT infrastructures stays in line with the organization’s business requirements.
Those responsible for IT infrastructure are all too aware of the subject of virtualization – it promises cost reduction along with increased effectivity and availability of the service platforms. Vendors and providers are currently trumping each other with technical innovations aimed at performance improvement and better integration into management systems. When the analysts’ forecasts are added to this, the trend turns into a hype which may change the entire value chain for corporate IT as well as the supply chain for customers and suppliers1.
Even when seen conservatively, there does seem to be a massive change taking place in business models related to IT infrastructure services. A metamorphosis is taking place in data centers, network operation centers and server rooms, transforming them from IT workshops into fully automated infrastructure service factories. The pressure to change seems to come from both customers and partners, both demanding provision of services rather than infrastructure. This process is further being accelerated by new innovative models of packaging and billing these services such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and grid-computing, which ensure that the input effort is kept under control.
The billing of such services is no longer based on the operative costs for maintenance, rack capacity, kilowatts for electricity, and air conditioning, but on service characteristics and service level agreements (SLAs). An example of such an SLA would be the provision of email services for 1,000 users with a guaranteed annual availability of 99.99 percent (52.56 minutes statistical downtime).
Figure 1 shows this evolution using capacity optimization for physical servers as an example.
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This makes the requirement for holistic operational concepts, which are in line with these changes and support customer-oriented provision of IT infrastructure services at minimal internal cost, even more urgent. A glance at history can provide us with a similar development which can inspire us to face today’s challenges.
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