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May 7, 2010
• Vol.32 Issue 10
Page(s) 39 in print issue
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Align IT & Business Goals
Get Both Teams On The Same Page
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Aligning data center and IT goals with business goals can sometimes remind you of two different politicians: They just can’t see eye to eye. There are many reasons for this, but here we take a look at a few tips that IT can use to adjust to the business side of the fence, and vice versa. Because, after all, IT supports the business side. Or is it the other way around?
 Use Data Center Assessments
According to Ron Bednar, manager of marketing and customer insight for Emerson Network Power (www.emerson.com), enterprises—even SMEs—are becoming increasingly dependent on the data center. He says, “A good way to align goals and skillfully plan future investments is to start with a data center assessment. These assessments are designed to identify, evaluate, and resolve cooling and power vulnerabilities that could threaten data center performance and efficiency. The best assessments use industry benchmarks and best practices to identify opportunities to increase availability, reduce costs, and unlock capacity and then provide prioritized and actionable recommendations.”
Taking a proactive approach also helps to prevent costly downtime of business-critical equipment, Bednar says. According to a 2006 Emerson Network Power business continuity survey, 38% of large enterprises estimate that a full business day of downtime could cost them more than $500,000 in revenue.
Bednar suggests a comprehensive assessment before undergoing strategic projects, such as virtualization, consolidation, or blade implementation, and for those that are capacity constrained, have experienced unplanned downtime, or are experiencing IT equipment degradation due to excessive heat. He adds, “The assessment gets IT, facilities, and business managers speaking a common language with recommendations to increase systems and data availability, decrease energy costs, and unlock hidden capacity.”
Anticipate Infrastructure’s Impact On Business Services
According to Vikas Aggarwal, CEO of Zyrion (www.zyrion.com), the decisions an organization makes on where to prioritize effort or investment in IT infrastructure should be based on the business services that a piece of IT infrastructure affects, rather than on the siloed performance or “localized” health of a specific device or IT component. “It is important to remember that not all the constituent elements of the IT infrastructure are equal in terms of their importance to ensuring performance of key business services,” Aggarwal says.
Aggarwal says investments in IT infrastructure must be justified in business terms. He says when management is demanding increased accountability, they want to ensure that IT infrastructure investments are being made to ensure optimal performance of key business services and processes. “Management does not care whether a set of devices are down or not,” he says. “What they care about is the effective functioning of business services. The IT team has to ensure that the information gap is bridged and that investment recommendations are made based on the impacted business services.”
Use Infrastructure Management Solutions
In Bednar’s opinion, addressing specific IT infrastructure needs used to mean making adjustments to individual systems until desired results were achieved, whether they were increased efficiency, reduced downtime, or an optimized human capital investment. Unfortunately, he says, this approach resulted in many IT managers experiencing a degree of “tunnel vision” with regard to their infrastructure strategies, ultimately leading to higher costs of ownership over the life of a data center. He says, “In recent years, however, many IT managers have learned that the implementation of an integrated infrastructure management solution enables them to simultaneously optimize their data center performance, improve energy efficiency, and maximize use of resources via a centralized user interface.”
Bednar says the installation of integrated management and monitoring software provides immediate visibility into infrastructure, streamlines data center operations with comprehensive management controls, and can lower long-term operational costs via proactive maintenance programs. “For example,” he explains, “when used as part of an integrated critical infrastructure, these solutions can be deployed quickly to evaluate IT, rack, row, and room sensor networks to provide real-time performance data needed to optimize a data center’s power and cooling utilization.”
Aggarwal says using BSM (business service management) solutions can also help bridge the IT-business gap by connecting business and IT objectives. “Ensuring the optimal performance of IT infrastructure is done within the context of how critical business services and processes are impacted,” he says. “BSM systems link the underlying IT infrastructure to the supported business services and processes and provide a correlated and business-oriented view of the performance and health of the IT infrastructure.”
Focus On The Big Picture
Aggarwal says that within most IT organizations, infrastructure and operations investments are driven by independent performance indicators that are gathered and analyzed in a piecemeal manner, rather than holistically viewing and understanding the impact of the given IT infrastructure on the overall business. “With this approach,” he explains, “when a given component within the distributed or complex IT mesh performs poorly, it automatically becomes a candidate for replacement or remediation, even if the impact on the supported business services and business processes is nominal. This approach also distorts where IT team members and management should focus their attention.” 
by Chris A. MacKinnon
BONUS TIPS
Take time to meet. IT and the business managers must sit down once a month and review the results of the past 30 days, review any incidents and their resolutions, chart time to repair, and compare results to the documented goals or SLAs, says Todd Merrill, spokesperson for Network System Architects (www.nsai.net). The motive for these meetings is not punishment or rationalization, but rather constant improvement.
Work out the points of contention. IT must remember that they exist to support and enable the business, Merrill says. Sometimes IT can be enamored with elegant architectures and solutions, while the business wants consistency, flexibility, and reliability. Although the two departments may never see eye to eye, it’s important to provide training (for the constant stream of new and changing technology) and keep your environment current by testing and installing patches and new releases on a monthly basis at minimum. |
Best Tip: Define Your Goals
According to Todd Merrill, spokesperson for Network System Architects (www.nsai.net), IT must have a good set of goals to work toward. He says that many times IT will have to work with the business side to define the goals in such a way that IT understands its responsibilities. “Good goal definition may result in service-level agreements between IT and business as a way of demonstrating that goals are, or aren’t, being met.” |
Easiest To Implement: Create Savings To Fund Major Changes
Getting new money can be difficult, according to Andy Woyzbun, lead analyst with Info-Tech Research Group. He says it’s very difficult to get approval for unbudgeted funds or significant budget increases for infrastructure. “Find ways to divert expenses to major initiatives,” Woyzbun says. “For example, bringing disaster recovery in-house, and saving on fees, might provide funds for data center upgrades.” |
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