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12.12.07
Virtualizing Data To Close The Gap Between IT And Business
 By
Steve Duplessie
The Issue: Business units are making decisions outside of IT in regards to Information Access applications and tools - and then expecting IT to quickly provision and support those applications.
Information Access applications include every business facing application - from Word to a trading system to CRM to e-Discovery. Priority one mandates - such as regulatory compliance and legal, are especially "hot" currently. Business critical applications - those designed to extract incremental value from existing information, are taking a backseat.
The Result: IT is becoming further marginalized in the eyes of the business. IT is forced to say "no" to business requests, as it simply cannot bring new applications online in any short term window due to legacy issues. As "hot" applications are brought on-line, they further stress IT resources as they tend to be implemented in a stovepipe fashion - where the business unit only cares about that application but not in context to the impact it may have on other back-end IT operations. The Business Unit is therefore acquiring these tools/services, and handing them off to IT to support AFTER the decisions have been made.
The situation today is becoming flammable. The business wants to be able to react to requirements quickly, without having to be overly concerned for IT and their ability to deliver. The BU wants known costs for known services in a known timeframe - and the ability to add or delete service levels based on costs and requirements. The BU believes it is mandated to act, so as IT pushes back, the BU moves ahead regardless.
IT wants to be able to fulfill all the requirements of the BU, but must attempt to do so within the encumbrances IT has - from people to power and cooling to space. IT has been addressing the independence of the business unit in one of a few basic ways;
1. IT attempts to support the timeline demands of the business by creating yet another stovepipe operation - intentionally keeping the infrastructure, data, and operations separate from the mainstream. While all recognize this is the most expensive, least efficient, and worst case scenario from the ability to create common data value, protection, usage, and management, it is more often than not the solution IT is getting "jammed" with from the business unit.
2. IT attempts to support the demands of the business but requires the new Information Access application adhere to existing IT standards operationally, and preferably with better utilized, shared infrastructure assets and people. This will always take longer, require greater planning, testing, and implementation, and require downstream regression testing on what cause and effects the new application will have on existing processes, people, and infrastructure. This takes much greater time, resources, planning, and money typically.
3. The business bypasses IT altogether and either sets up the application as an external service offering, or worse, brings the solution in house with no IT involvement at all.
EXAMPLE:
Archive/E-Discovery: According to ESG Research (E-Discovery Requirements Escalate, November 2007), only 7% of the time does IT make the decision to use funds to build out infrastructure, tools, applications and processes to support E-Discovery mandates, whereas 37% of the time the Legal Department makes those decisions by themselves - with no involvement up front from IT at all.
Examples such as this are becoming more common as unknown business unit requirements continue to appear - causing an increased rift between an already tenuous relationship involving the core business and internal IT.
The True Result:
Situations as described previously are bad for business - but in order to facilitate change we must acknowledge and understand the realities within the cycle. There is a common flow that tends to occur regardless of when IT is brought into the loop.
1. The business unit has a requirement.
Continue reading this article.
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