DEEP DIVE
service) can be executed
quickly. Perhaps the
biggest obstacle today is
old and slow procurement
processes that delay the
execution of business
initiatives by months.
We have to change the way
we procure the technology
that enables the business units.
To overcome this, many
large organisations are
going to public cloud (where
procurement/payment happens
after the business service is
already running) and are paying
a high premium to do so, as
their IT already has the economy
of scale to make it more cost
effective than the cloud.
What they lack is the ability to
gain the agility of a public cloud
within their private cloud. To do
that you have to revolutionise the
cost of data infrastructure and its
procurement models.
Customers able to achieve both
are able to ask the critical question:
‘What should be the demarcation
line between my private and public
cloud instances?’ instead of just
putting everything that needs to be
deployed quickly into the public cloud
at a premium.
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
What are the region-specific
challenges you encounter in
your role?
Unlike the US, where the single language/
single culture makes business easier,
the EU is clearly federated into separate
states. In many cases, organisations in
one country will not accept a customer
reference from another country despite
the fact that the companies might be in
the same vertical.
A theoretical customer in Strasbourg,
France, will often prefer a Paris-based
reference from a customer in another
vertical that is 400km away, rather than
a customer in the same vertical 50km
across the German border.
That makes spreading innovation harder in
the EU and slows down adoption of tools
that enable the business to move faster.
EVERYBODY IS
TALKING ABOUT
AGILITY, FROM
THE BUSINESS
LEVEL DOWN TO
THE ENABLING IT
TECHNOLOGIES.
What changes to your job role
have you seen in the last year and
how do you see these developing
in the next 12 months?
Most IT organisations are focusing more
on automation. This is reflected in RFPs as
well as in the demonstrations customers
ask for. I think this is becoming a huge
differentiator for companies who really
invested in developing automation tools.
IT departments don’t often have in-house
developers, so they need their vendors to
provide enterprise-grade off-the-shelf tools
that enable them to automate without the
need to get an advanced computer science
degree. I think this trend will accelerate
and we will see infrastructure specialists
developing an ‘automate from day one’
approach more often.
What advice would you offer
somebody aspiring to obtain a
senior position in the industry?
I think the need to automate and become
more agile dictates that we move away
from thinking about each part of IT
separately and start looking at business
processes with a holistic approach. That
means people can’t focus on one area
only (network/storage/virtualisation) –
we all need a wider understanding of our
working environment that allows us to
serve our business units better. People
failing to develop this wider perspective
will have a lower value for their
organisations over time. ◊
Issue 09
0
67