The BU folks typically have a “some love, mostly hate” relationship with IT. Wherever they go they see what the competition’s IT does that they can’t. They discount the good in what their IT delivers and exaggerate the bad. They look at every online experience they have and compare it to what their IT group delivers. When the gap gets too great, they start buying their own technology to close it.

So what gaps are BU execs seeing today? How about the speed with with which numerous small companies are rolling out web-based applications that come out of nowhere and scoop up millions of users in months, sometimes even days.

Read the rest at Storagemojo.com.

“Should vendor lock in be a concern?”
To be realistic; you are always locked in to a vendor one way or the other. I would claim if you have multiple vendors for the same discipline you are locked into multiple vendors rather than just one. It is all about assessing the risk and having a contingency plan. So to answer the question directly it is a concern and it is an issue than can’t be avoided therefore it needs to be managed carefully.

“Would your company share their IT vision with vendors to get better alignment from them?”
Being an internal IT services provider of a storage solution company our position is somewhat special. We of course deploy our own solutions and we provide feed-back to our product and solution development groups, so we are aligned at the storage solutions side of the house. We do share our IT vision with the other vendors because we know how important it is for them to understand the direction we are taking so they can prepare for it. This is true for Hardware as well as Software vendors.

“Is virtualization a key enabler for the new IT?”
Virtualization is absolutely key to the new IT in many different ways. The main challenge we have in IT is to drive cost down while improving the responsiveness to new and changing business needs. In our case this also means that we see an increased level of integration between all the applications we have deployed internally and with the applications of our business partners including our parent and sister companies. We have already seen the a very large portion of the implementation time of new systems and infra-structure is dedicated to regression testing. As you can imagine it is very expensive to have the server and storage infrastructure available at all times to facilitate that . Virtualization is the answer to this. It will not only reduce the cost by improving resource utilization, but will also simplify the environment and, in addition, create a great deal of flexibility.

Regards,

Frans van Rijn,
Senior Vice President and CIO
Hitachi Data Systems

More of our customers are inviting their vendors in to give them guidance on their strategic IT initiatives. Some will invite all their vendors in at the same time and hold different breakout sessions for network, Storage, and applications. As a vendor we find that very helpful to align with our customers. Our CIO, Frans van Rijn, holds similar sessions with his vendors. Not only does it help to build better alignment, it provides transparancy in the procurement process.

Dave

“Major Changes for IT in 2006″

I like the comment “Technology matters but the application of technology to business is what really matters.” One challenge will be to know how much is being spent on technology in support of the company’s different business initiatives. How many IT departments can trace IT spending to the company’s strategic business objectives?

“It Budgets for 2006″

If IT budgets are flat and at the same time general business conditions improve, will this cause an upward pressure on IT salaries, increased IT job hopping, or both?

“Outsourcing”

One question is, “Outsourcing of what?” Development? Application or Infrastructure Support? Will there be a lessening of dependence on proprietary applications and an increase in dependence of remotely sourced applications?

“Product involvement”

This assumes availability of IT staff who are (a) attuned to and trusted by the business and (b) who are able to move rapidly without overpowering bureacracy or justification hoops. Are IT departments set up to do this?

“Vendor Management”

You call this “ankle biting.” Vendors call this “standard sales method applied to selling to the real decisionmakers.” Businesses have to see an advantage of involving IT if only to help businesses avoid the problems that IT understands all too well.

“Consolidation and Vendor Lock in”

I don’t know about this one. What I’ve seen in cases of single large vendors is that the single large vendor ends up driving the dependent customer’s business strategy. I’d be wary.

“Software Licensing”

One question here is — has everyone reviewed their current application portfolio to see if they are paying for unused licenses or overlapping licenses bought by different subsidiaries that might be consolidated?

“Virtualization”

Very cool ideas, but will old fashioned software licensing agreements going to cause problems with implementing on the fly virtual environments?

“Security”

I think of security more in process terms than in technology terms, so the extent to which IT departments can support process changes (like, keeping laptops from walking out the door) the better.