Starting an IT Consolidation Modernization Journey

[#1]

By Carl Chick, Product Marketing Sales Readiness Manager, Mainframe Management & Data Center Modernization Services

I was recently re-reading the Forrester report The Forrester Wave™: IT Consolidation Consultancies,Q4 2010. As I had had a hand in responding to this analyst survey, the report continues to strike a chord with me. It has helped clarify and shape what I’ve been thinking about in terms of finding the true value of IT to a business.  

 IT departments, regardless of market or industry, strive for technical and operational excellence. However, this alone will not guarantee success.  The most well-run, technologically advanced data center, in the absence of governance and strategy for coordinated management of IT assets, cannot improve and sustain service delivery, security and cost effectiveness. Successful outcomes depend on approaches taken at a strategic level where consideration of the underlying technologies only represents the means to an end.  The focus shifts to strategies that make an enterprise more responsive in nature and able to manage change efficiently.

 Agile enterprises understand these issues and develop plans to transform how they build, maintain and support value on an ongoing basis. They look for new ways to make infrastructure, applications and processes do more to support their business objectives.  Without a solid governance and process framework to guide transformation investments and activities, attempts to modernize, or transform IT services will remain expensive, fragmented and will not deliver the desired value. To assist in IT modernization, many enterprises turn to IT service providers, like HP, to assist in the effort.

 While a vast majority of service providers claim to possess the experience and knowledge required for IT transformation and modernization, many simply cannot “walk the walk”.  Case in point is the area of IT consolidation. As one of the critical pieces of an overall modernization plan, IT consolidation is paramount when looking to rationalize and transform infrastructure, or application assets. To this end, Forrester, one of the leading market analyst firms in the world, conducts a review from time to time on provider abilities for IT consolidation consultancy. Their last report for Q4 of 2010 found that HP, along with Accenture, topped the list at providing clients with this important value-add.

 Read more about HP’s ranking as a leader in IT consolidation consultancy

To understand more about what HP can do to help you in your consolidation, read through our materials about Data Center Modernization.