Executive Advisory Program

Economic Stimulus for the IT Architect

Posted by: Jack

I am at the European Burton Group Catalyst conference this week in Prague; speaking, talking, observing -- the usual stuff that I do.

"Catalyst" is a good term for this conference; it is a "stimulus to change" (using Encarta's definition).   Seems like "stimulus" is all the rage these days, whether it's economic, or technological.

The people I talk to find the sessions thought provoking and entertaining.  It certainly challenges their thinking.  With a 10-20% vendor attendance, it also becomes a forum where IT challenges vendor thinking and causes behavior changes in what vendors deliver.

Evidence the panel led by Chris Wolf on virtualization.  Through thoughtful discussion, and client pressure (with Burton Group analysis acting as the catalyst) we saw two vendors commit toward a strategy of making the hypervisor more of a commodity through interoperability of device driver models (Chris blogs about it here).

That's what it's all about.  A thinking stimulus - not only for IT shops, architects, geeks, but for their suppliers as well.  We need more of that, because in the long run we will all win.

Fortunately, it helps the economy, too (albeit indirectly).

Canary Wharf, Fat Twins, and 2012

Posted by Chris Howard

I've been spending a lot of time in the UK recently, and usually get to visit clients at Canary Wharf when I'm there. So when my friends at Eskenzi PR forwarded an article on London's looming data crisis, it piqued my interest.

When I first visited London in the early 1980's, Canary Wharf was just beginning the transition from the heavily industrial West India Docks to a gentrified (and tax incentive-driven) location for growing businesses.In the past 25 years, the area has come to symbolize wealth and power with London's highest skyscrapers (e.g., One Canada Square) occupied by leading global companies (esp. financial services). It rivals the traditional banks area of the City, where the famous Gherkin is rooted next to the Lloyds exoskeleton . It serves as a private sector antipole to the bronze glow of Westminster upriver.

With the growth of Canary Wharf has come increased demand for power and data center facilities. Canary Wharf serves as poster child for those issues, which plague London in general. From Heathrow to the East End, London is dense with data centers running critical transactions and storing exabytes of data for many of the world's companies. As government clamps down on carbon dioxide emissions, available space decreases, and power consumption maxes out, those companies need to get creative about data center consolidation. London's powerhouses of business and government must get leaner, because right now, they look like the famous fat twins of the 1970's Guinness World Records: there's only so much more weight those motorcycles can hold.

Getting leaner has multiple dimensions. Like physical fitness, the right way to tone up and lose weight is to mix strength training with aerobics, working different muscles and building stamina. If all we do in the data center is consolidate through server and storage virtualization, we've just made more room for "fat" to collect. We haven't solved the root problem.Certainly, virtualization is a natural first step: the technologies are stable, and they provide quick return. We must get more serious about data management, though, if we're going to solve the issue of bloated data centers. Why does data proliferate? Some of it is driven by regulatory demands. Much of it is superfluous, however. We recreate content, for example, without knowing it already exists. Why? We couldn't find it. We create copy after copy of data because it wasn't meeting our needs in its original form or location. Without deduplication, that data expands geometrically to fill all available space...at least until we buy more storage. Perhaps we store too much, but we are afraid to delete anything.

Data management issues aside, Canary Wharf and the City are (excuse the pun) in a pickle. They must consider external hosting alternatives for at least part of their primary data centers because they are running out of local options. Cloud computing seems to offer a potential solution, especially if cloud-based hosting can be transparently combined with company-managed hosting. Even better, resources should be allocated dynamically as needed. The truth is that most companies haven't tiptoed into the dynamic allocation stream yet: they've spent their time and resources attacking the consolidation (i.e. space) issue first. To move fully into the cloud will require a shift in thinking for most organizations, especially banks, who feel the need to be close to their data for risk management purposes. And, as we've written before on this blog and elsewhere, the cloud may not be ready to fully address those risky propositions.

In 2012, London hosts the Olympics. What does this have to do with Canary Wharf? The Games, which will take place primarily in and around the Docklands(where venue construction has commenced), are putting increased pressure on power consumption. As David Glaton-Fenzi indicates in the Eskenzi article, "in the run-up to 2012, it is expected that the power demand in the Docklands area alone will rise by around 90 per cent".

So, some of the intelligent minds housed in the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf must be hard at work architecting options to get them out of the power and space squeeze. Burton Group can help. Our Data Center, Data Management, Content and Collaboration, Security and Risk Management, and Enterprise Architecture teams offer practical advice on  data center consolidation, the effective streamlining of data, and approaches to content management. Furthermore,  we provide strategic direction on advanced virtualization and cloud computing architectures, including dynamic resource allocation. Our Executive Advisory team is working with technology leaders around the world as they grapple with London-like issues, helping them understand industry trends and bottom line impact.

Keep your eyes on the Data Center blog, the Content and Collaboration blog, the Security and Risk Management blog, and the Data Management blog for additional coverage of these issues.
 

Gaining Momentum

I was pleased to see a recent post by Lighthouse that commented on Burton Group's strategy and philosophy. Here are a few key points:

"[Burton Group] is well-known for the cautious long-view that's needed when balancing architectural strategies with business drivers."

You see, product and market analysis are only part of a bigger picture. What's right in one environment may be wrong in another: it all depends on a given enterprise context, which includes business drivers. Assessing the long view enables a "steadier hand on the wheel", allowing decision makers to steer through near-term obstacles in pursuit of a long-term strategic goal. In the best case, architectural strategies are a manifestation of business goals. More often than not, however, they work in opposition to one another and on different timescales. Especially in this year of economic constriction, ensuring that architectural strategies are not tossed out in favor of immediate tactical "fixes" is one of the CIO's primary responsibilities. The combination of Burton Group advice, trend projection, and hands-on consulting is designed to enable the enterprise to move forward with tactical deliveries that align with architectural plans. It's just not enough to put a point on a graph and use it as a star chart for strategic choices.

"[Burton Group] needs to develop a less technology-driven, more business-based, approach towards IT infrastructure as part of the broad management of technology risks, costs, services and processes."

We couldn't agree more. All of us who come from industry backgrounds have lived this requirement. As an analyst firm, we do you a disservice if we omit the analysis of business context. Fortunately, Burton Group has always presented business context as part of its analysis. What's different now is that we have introduced new channels and content types that focus primarily on business drivers. Within the Executive Advisory Program, our modus operandi is to identify business implications that arise from our technical research and pull those out for closer inspection. In many cases, we roll up those implications to the CxO level where business decisions require concise explanations and infrastructure value discussions. Furthermore, infrastructure choices like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Unified Communications (UC) must be assessed for their business impact and driven by actual need, lest they remain obscure technical discussions that never get off the ground. Or more ominously, they are chosen as solutions without careful analysis of future business and architectural risk.

"[Burton Group] has made some interesting moves forward over the last year. I'm especially interested in its Executive Advisory Program, which provides some free content to senior business managers outside Burton Group's geeky client-base. ... The early signs look good, especially since Burton Group is focusing on making its current insight easier rather than by developing totally new practices."

Thanks for noticing! (And, by the way, we still love our geeky client-base.) By creating the Executive Advisory Program (EAP), we were responding to a need expressed by our clients. This included a growing dissatisfaction with Gartner and others (as noted in the Lighthouse report). Rather than try to replicate what others were doing, we decided to build upon what we do best: well-reasoned, focused research that helps move our clients forward. With our executive audience, we honor their time constraints and recognize that a different "lens" is required on our content. At the same time, we acknowledge the executive as part of the enterprise ecosystem...connected with their staff in the pursuit of IT success in their organization. As a result, we make it easy to connect our executive research with underlying technical content and vice versa. The goal is to foster a productive exchange within that ecosystem.

Watch in the next several months as Burton Group continues to reinforce its capabilities and offer compelling value to both technologists and executives. This will include new business-focused sessions at our June Catalyst Conference that provide context for our continuing in-depth technical research.

-Chris