Infrastructure Management: Driving Increased Business Value Through the Strategic Use of IT

The demand for increased flexibility from an organisation’s IT capability is creating new challenges for IT infrastructure management. Much of this new demand is coming from the changing nature of operating in an increasingly interconnected global market, where an organisation’s performance is influenced by events that are mostly outside its direct control. The consequence of this new business environment is that organisational success is now a factor of the speed with which it responds to market conditions; and therefore, by implication, the speed with which it can adapt to any new environment. The role of technology is adding to these challenges by creating tensions between the structures that exist with organisations today, as well as creating tensions within the IT departmental structure. These forces are demonstrating the need for IT to reconsider its role in the organisation, and just as importantly, for the organisation to consider how it wants to embrace technology, and what role technology has in its core activities. In other words is IT a strategic capability or a merely a support function?

Report Highlights
KEY FINDINGS
*Understanding the role of IT and its strategic significance to the organisation represents the single biggest hurdle the CIO must overcome.
*The explosion in end-user responsibility, and in the associated increased business use of technology, demonstrates that the role of IT is changing fast.
*The question of how the use of computing resources is funded and deployed across an organisation’s many different operational business units represents one highly contentious issue that using chargeback can resolve.
*A new Run The Business (RTB) cost model that demonstrates IT’s value contribution is needed as technology makes the concept of asset ownership obsolete.
*Butler Group believes that a new Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed (RACI) model for IT process and procedures is needed to ensure new technology does not create new problems for the management of any IT infrastructure.
*The transformational impact of virtualisation extends beyond the IT department, and requires structural and process change supported by a comprehensive infrastructure management capability.
*One of the main functions of an infrastructure management capability is to mitigate the risks of deploying new technologies like virtualisation.
*The language used by IT must be aligned and converged with the language of business.
*New technologies add complexity and often promise to increase business flexibility; therefore it is important to ensure that any increased IT cost is offset by a greater reduction in business cost.
*Holistic management capabilities are required while organisations are in transition between old and new technology stacks.
*Being able to manage remote operations securely is fast becoming a necessity as the separation between end users and the data centre increases.
*Recognising the barriers to data centre automation is the first step that many organisations must take before they can embark on an automation journey.
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Contents – December 2009
1.1 Management Summary 11
Section 2: The Changing Role of Infrastructure Management 17
2.1 Report Objectives and Structure 19
2.2 Moving From Cost Control to Value Creation 20
2.3 The Impact of Virtualisation on Organisational Structure 25
Section 3: Managing Virtual Environments 31
3.1 Managing Server Performance and Availability 33
3.2 Client-side Virtualisation Offers Many Different Options 36
3.3 Application Virtualisation is Changing the Role of IT 41
Section 4: The Impact of New Technologies on IT Operations 45
4.1 Transforming IT Process and Procedures 47
4.2 The Benefits of Taking a Business Perspective on Managing IT Service Delivery 54
4.3 Determining the Success Factors of Managing New Technologies 60
Section 5: Next Generation Infrastructure Management Challenges 67
5.1 The Growing Significance of the Network 69
5.2 Preparing for the Automated Data Centre 72
5.3 Addressing the Management Challenges of Cloud Computing 75
5.4 Preparing for Environmental Management 78
Section 6: Market Analysis 81
6.1 Butler Group Infrastructure Management Features Matrix 83
6.2 Butler Group Infrastructure Management Decision Matrix 115
6.3 Infrastructure Management Market Analysis 130
Section 7: Technology Audits 139
BMC Software, Inc. – Business Service Management 141
CA, Inc. – CA Infrastructure Management 151
EMC – EMC Ionix 163
Fujitsu – ServerView Resource Coordinator VE 171
HP – Business Service Automation v2 181
IBM – IBM Tivoli 191
Microsoft – Microsoft System Center 203
Novell – Service Driven Data Centre 213
Symantec – Symantec Altiris Total Management Suite 223
Section 8: Vendor Profiles 233
8.1 Virtualisation Management 235
Citrix 235
Veeam 236
vKernel 237
VMware 238
8.2 Network Management 240
Blue Coat 240
Brocade 241
Cisco Systems 242
Entuity 243
Juniper Networks 244
NetQoS 246
NetScout 247
NetworkD 248
Secure Passage 249
SolarWinds 249
Zeus 250
Section 8: Vendor Profiles (Continued)
8.3 General Infrastructure Management 252
ASG 252
FrontRange 253
iET Solutions 254
LANDesk 255
ManageEngine 256
Quest Software, Inc. 257
Tripwire 258
Section 9: Glossary 261
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