Run Like a Business

IT infrastructure today is often overbuilt, underutilized, ill-secured and
unaligned with business goals; with inflexible computer architectures and with
an overabundance of custom software. CIOs are being asked by senior management
to use IT more strategically across their organizations. Some of the challenges
that CIOs face today are:

• Drive cost reduction while increasing levels of quality and service in the
  enterprise
• Maximize utilization in the enterprise while freeing existing resources
• Manage the increasing complexities of the IT infrastructure while
  responding to pressing business concerns (government regulation, global
  outsourcing, etc)
• Transition to the future and select the right technologies that will make
  a real and lasting positive impact on the enterprise

In order to manage increasingly complex IT environments and
tightly align IT with overarching business goals, CIOs are relying on integrated
management software now more than ever. The Infrastructure management software
market is growing faster than the applications sector: CIOs purchased 56% more
management licenses than application licenses in 2003, according to IDC. New
license revenue for management software is 45% higher than new license revenue
for applications.

CIOs need to look at integrated software that will enable
them to optimize assets, increase infrastructure performance, ensure enterprise
security and business continuity, and help run IT like a business. This would be
a prerequisite to tackle the toughest challenges in 2005 and beyond.

Today, very few vendors have consolidated and integrated all
key disciplines of management software. To achieve full value and promise of
management software, CIOs will demand integrated management software which
encompasses storage, security, infrastructure management and lifecycle
management across the IT stack.

The good news is that industry innovation across management
software and services is driving toward a closer alignment between the IT
function and business dynamics. This enables a more agile IT infrastructure that
can respond efficiently to rapidly changing demands on business. Moreover,
enhanced management capabilities can deliver higher levels of automation for
operational tasks, leaving greater flexibility to concentrate on business
impact, instead of wasting precious technical resources on
"firefighting".

With contribution from editorial advisor -Dr Santanu
Paul General Manager, Hyderabad Advanced Technology Center and other
industry people

The Configuration Cornerstone

From the IT perspective, configuration management is defined
as "the process of identifying and defining configuration items in a
system, recording and reporting the status of configuration items and requests
for change, and verifying the completeness and correctness of configuration
items." It also focuses on the relationships between configuration items,
which helps IT managers understand how change in configuration may affect a
critical function such as application performance.

Today, without an understanding of configuration management,
companies cannot even answer the most fundamental questions:

• What is deployed in my environment?

• Where is it located?

• How is it configured?

• How are the many components and applications
  interrelated?

• How are my applications and the environments changing
  over time?

The most effective technology solutions are those that include automatic
inventory and tracking of components and their dependencies, automated change
detection and management, the ability to create policies and rules that serve to
"harden" the infrastructure.