Key challenge for IT infrastructure
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Managing the business of technology is an emerging niche
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SOMETIMES IT is not just change that matters, but the rate of change. India's rapid emergence as a global hub of the information technology services business has created a unique challenge — and a huge opportunity at the same time.
Masala mix
The challenge is how to contain complexity as enterprises grapple with a masala mix of legacy systems and futuristic tools to hold their competitive edge.
A study recently completed by industry watcher Hydrasight, reveals that with its young demographics, India has a decade's head start on the rest of the world in tackling the complexity of IT infrastructure, says Principal Analyst Michael Warrilow.
The mantra
He was speaking last week at a day-long conference on Service Management hosted by IBM in Goa. Tomorrow's IT infrastructure will be based on `converged' networks and `virtualized' storage and servers. It will have to adapt to the emerging Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) — the mantra that is increasingly heard across the entire IT enabled services arena.
`proof of process'
"It is not enough to look for a `proof of concept' ... what you need to succeed, is `proof of process' — this is the way to contain the complexity," Mr Warrilow feels.
Alfred W. Zoller, General Manager of IBM's Tivoli software group, sees corporates headed for a networked nirvana where people, process, information and technology dovetail with each other.
It may give a feeling of deja vu, but it is good to learn lessons from the way Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) — a favourite buzzword a decade ago, did just this.
Autonomic computing
Services Management too will inevitably move in the direction of Autonomic Computing — a term IBM has coined to characterise systems that manage themselves when they become too complex for timely human intervention.
Interestingly, many of the tools in the Tivoli arsenal are being crafted by IBM's Indian engineers. R. Dhamodaran, Director of IBM's India-based Software Group revealed that the Directory Services software utility that is used across multiple IBM applications to provide reliable identity information, has been conceived, created and supported from India, for a global clientele.
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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