Moving an Organization to Instant-On
As organizations think about becoming more agile and having an instant-on approach to bringing up new services and capabilities they need to take a long hard look at how they operate.
If you want to make a shift from your current approach to the new, high-value world of IT, the people inside your company have to see it, believe it, and have a passion for it – maybe even view it as their idea. Sure, you can bring in outside consultants to tell you where the future is headed, but if the people inside your company don’t live it and internalize it, you won’t get there. “The one irrefutable truth is that in any large organization, any transformation that is to ‘stick’ must emerge from within,” Ray Ozzie writes in his exit note to Microsoft about where business is headed. “Those on the outside can strongly influence, particularly with their wallets. Those above are responsible for developing and articulating a compelling vision, eliminating obstacles, prioritizing resources, and generally setting the stage with a principled approach. But the power and responsibility to truly effect transformation exists in no small part at the edge. Within those who, led or inspired, feel personally and collectively motivated to make; to act; to do.”
There are many things that stand in the way of IT organizations today:
- Aging applications – the consume more and more of the annual budget
- Unknown threads – the more connected we are the more entrances there are to protect
- Delivery models – in-house, off-shore, everything as a service… it can be hard to make a choice
- Rigid infrastructure and sprawl – it may seem easier to just keep adding on but eventually it can collapse like a house of cards
- The information explosion – there is just more and more from more places in more formats being delivered to more devices every day
Understanding how and why these constrain an organizations thinking can be important. With that knowledge in had a plan of attack can be developed that:
- Replaces, transforms and modernizes that applications portfolio enabling the organization to be more agile
- Makes the environment more secure enabling it to be even more open and connected
- Is goal based, delivering the right information, at the right time, in the right place, in the right format, to the right person –...
- Increases control, visibility and transparency for the enterprise as a whole
There are some core characteristics for the environment, it must be:
- Automated
- Resilient
- Seamless
- Secure
- Open
Tomorrow's post will be more specific about how HP's offerings are coming together to address this shift.
