Welcome to B & M Bulletin, produced specifically for users of IT technical services. In this issue:
• Integrating IT and Business Strategies
• Tech View: Rise of the mainframe
• Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2012
• B & M Permanent - specialist recruitment service
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Integrating IT and Business Strategies
Jerry Smart explains why it is essential for IT and business strategy to be integrated, with the IT Director/CIO taking the lead
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“Challenge established strategic thinking”
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It is widely accepted that successful businesses today must be totally customer-focused. And because the customer’s interface to the organisation is increasing through technology, IT strategy must be integral with business strategy.
Technology has never moved forward at a faster rate, with customers having more power at their fingertips than ever.
Traditionally, IT has reacted to business demand. This approach no longer delivers solutions that are fast or technologically sophisticated enough for the customer-led business. It is for this reason that the IT Director (preferably engaged at board level) must now take the lead and do three things:
- Explain how technology can differentiate the business in terms of customer service
- Challenge established strategic thinking and move it towards a more flexible approach
- Influence the creation of systems that are responsive to increasingly mobile customers
This strategy must take into account the ever-widening nature of the customer’s interface, whether it is through social networks in the coffee house or apps on hand-held devices. Moreover, the power at the fingertips will become the power of the voice.
This is a strategy that is gaining traction globally. Speaking at Gartner’s Symposium in October, Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Research said, “This is the era of mass collaboration driven by the consumerization of IT. For an IT leader to thrive in this environment, they must re-imagine their role, and they must lead from the front.”
In the UK, we have long promoted business transformation – now is the time for IT transformation. This approach involves risks that may not be in the mindset of IT professionals but are certainly within the remit of business.
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Tech View: Rise of the mainframe
B & M MD Jerry Smart looks at the benefits to be gained from IBM’s zEnterprise systems
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In July 2011, IBM announced the zEnterprise 114 mainframe aimed at mid-sized businesses. This server is aggressively priced to offer performance and products to businesses that are looking to consolidate their existing servers (especially those who have x86 proliferation) by hosting Linux on System z, and to virtualise and optimise their applications.
The arguments in favour of this consolidation include reducing staff support costs, reducing footprint, lower energy consumption, achieving better utilisation rates, reducing licence costs and increasing reliability. But perhaps more important are the benefits to the business of superior transaction throughput and a much higher level of security compliance.
The arguments against considering this move are largely based on platform prejudice, which tends to be a cultural issue within organisations. True, this type of change can be challenging to manage; and businesses will need to take retraining of staff into consideration.
The z114 is scalable up to 10 configurable engines and 3100 MIPS and IBM claims that the adoption of Linux on System z is growing at a compound rate of 42% per annum (18% year-on-year).
For those companies suffering from server proliferation, the question is not what are you doing about server consolidation but when are you doing it?
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Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2012
At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in October, its analysts identified the Top 10 technologies and trends that are strategic for most organisations in 2012.
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- Media Tablets and Beyond. No single platform, form factor or technology will dominate and companies should expect to manage a diverse environment with two to four intelligent clients through 2015. IT leaders need a managed diversity program to address multiple form factors, as well as employees bringing their own smartphones and tablet devices into the workplace.
- Mobile-Centric Applications and Interfaces. The user interface (IU) paradigm in place for more than 20 years is changing. UIs with windows, icons, menus, and pointers will be replaced by mobile-centric interfaces emphasizing touch, gesture, search, voice and video. Applications themselves are likely to shift to more focused and simple apps that can be assembled into more complex solutions. These changes will drive the need for new user interface design skills.
- Contextual and Social User Experience. Context-aware computing uses information about an end-user or objects environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve the quality of interaction with that end-user or object. A contextually aware system anticipates the user’s needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate and customized content, product or service. Through 2013, context aware applications will appear in targeted areas such as location-based services, augmented reality on mobile devices, and mobile commerce.
- Internet of Things. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept that describes how the Internet will expand as sensors and intelligence are added to physical items such as consumer devices or physical assets and these objects are connected to the Internet.
- App Stores and Marketplaces. Application stores by Apple and Android provide marketplaces where hundreds of thousands of applications are available to mobile users. Gartner forecasts that by 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile application downloads from app stores every year. This will grow from a consumer-only phenomenon to an enterprise focus. With enterprise app stores, the role of IT shifts from that of a centralized planner to a market manager providing governance and brokerage services to users and potentially an ecosystem to support entrepreneurs. Enterprises should use a managed diversity approach to focus on app store efforts and segment apps by risk and value.
- Next-Generation Analytics. Analytics is also beginning to shift to the cloud and exploit cloud resources for high performance and grid computing. In 2011 and 2012, analytics will increasingly focus on decisions and collaboration. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action.
- Big Data. The size, complexity of formats and speed of delivery exceeds the capabilities of traditional data management technologies; it requires the use of new or exotic technologies simply to manage the volume alone. Many new technologies are emerging, with the potential to be disruptive (e.g., in-memory DBMS). Analytics has become a major driving application for data warehousing, with the use of MapReduce outside and inside the DBMS, and the use of self-service data marts. One major implication of big data is that in the future users will not be able to put all useful information into a single data warehouse. Logical data warehouses bringing together information from multiple sources as needed will replace the single data warehouse model.
- In-Memory Computing. Gartner sees huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the memory hierarchy in servers that has key advantages — space, heat, performance and ruggedness among them. Besides delivering a new storage tier, the availability of large amounts of memory is driving new application models. In-memory applications platforms include in-memory analytics, event processing platforms, in-memory application servers, in-memory data management and in-memory messaging.
- Extreme Low-Energy Servers. The adoption of low-energy servers — the radical new systems being proposed, announced and marketed by mostly new entrants to the server business —will take the buyer on a trip backward in time. These systems are built on low-power processors typically used in mobile devices. The potential advantage is delivering 30 times or more processors in a particular server unit with lower power consumption vs. current server approaches. The new approach is well suited for certain non-compute intensive tasks such as map/reduce workloads or delivery of static objects to a website. However, most applications will require more processing power, and the low-energy server model potentially increases management costs, undercutting broader use of the approach.
- Cloud Computing. Cloud is a disruptive force and has the potential for broad long-term impact in most industries. While the market remains in its early stages in 2011 and 2012, it will see the full range of large enterprise providers fully engaged in delivering a range of offerings to build cloud environments and deliver cloud services. Oracle, IBM and SAP all have major initiatives to deliver a broader range of cloud services over the next two years. As Microsoft continues to expand its cloud offering, and these traditional enterprise players expand offerings, users will see competition heat up as enterprise-level cloud services increase.
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B & M Permanent
specialist recruitment service
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B & M Permanent is a specialist search and placement service which delivers high-quality candidates for permanent technical positions in organisations with complex enterprise IT infrastructures.
B & M’s Account Directors are experienced in IT recruitment and have the technical understanding necessary to source a wide range of technical specialists including systems programmers, network consultants, database administrators and storage specialists for organisations with complex enterprise IT infrastructures.
B & M takes the time to thoroughly qualify each role and to understand the needs of both customer and candidates.
For information about how B & M Permanent could benefit your organisation, please contact sales@bmeurope.com.
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B & M Europe Limited
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B & M has specialised in delivering skilled ICT specialists to meet the needs of leading organisations throughout Europe since 1992. We focus exclusively on providing technical services, consultancy and support for z/OS, UNIX and Linux enterprise systems, including third-party systems software, open systems and networking connectivity. We add real value for HR and IT professionals by taking the time to understand their needs and applying best practice methods to deliver results. To find out more about our approach to providing the best skills for each business, go to B & M Services.
The views, opinions, positions or strategies expressed by the authors are theirs alone and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, positions or strategies of B & M Europe Limited or any employee thereof.
B & M Europe Limited
Whitehouse Farm, Silchester Road, Tadley, RG26 3PY, United Kingdom
Tel +44 (0) 118 981 1880
Fax +44 (0) 118 981 1881
Registered in England and Wales
Company No. 02696668
VAT No. GB 591718218 Expert Technical Resourcing for Enterprise Systems
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