Changing Dynamics

Our collective inability to resolve this problem results in inflexible IT systems that force the business to bend to the applications, rather than having applications that bend easily to changes in business processes.

It will be many years before these issues are fully resolved, but some progress is being made, especially in the areas of systems, network and application management.

The challenge facing IT for more years than anyone cares to remember is that IT assets are notoriously rigid. They typically cannot be dynamically reapplied to handle changes in business requirements without massive amounts of human intervention and the resulting costs associated with that.

Fortunately, companies such as IBM, BMC, Veritas, Opsware, Hewlett-Packard and Computer Associates are all making headway in terms of creating integrated sets of utilities that will make it easier for solution providers to dynamically manage their customers' IT assets.

It will take these companies several more years to completely fill out their next generation of management toolsets, by either acquiring additional companies or building new product offerings. But today they have some promising new technologies that will allow solution providers to begin offering a much higher level of IT management service at a lower cost to the solution provider.

In effect, this means that changes to an IT system that must take place to support a new or changed business process can happen a lot faster. As a result, we can substantially narrow the divide between businesspeople who are demanding the impossible from IT executives that have limited resources and are managing inflexible systems.

There are many other issues that will continue to separate businesspeople from their IT colleagues. But increasingly, the problems associated with system management will become less of a factor. And the solution provider that masters these new tools first is going to have a significant business edge over its rivals.

How do you manage? I can be reached at (516) 562-7477 or via e-mail at [email protected].