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ComputerWorld

Computerworld – ORLANDO — The top trends affecting technology infrastructure over the next five years can be summed up as largely a list representing where IT and users are battling for control over technology.

The ability for users to be mavericks and bypass IT systems by using social networks, developing applications with mashups and conducting business on their mobile devices, is rapidly increasing, according to industry research firm Gartner Inc.’s forecast.

However, IT is poised to strike back with technologies such as client virtualization. Centrally managed virtualized clients bring a new approach of “let’s give them what they actually need, not what they want,” said David Cappuccio, chief of research for the Infrastructure teams at Gartner.

An interesting article, it’s not so much IT fighting for control over technology, it’s more a realignment of our business strategy with IT, the realization that we need to establish what revenue and investment value we place upon our different IT services, and with that evaluating which we want to keep core to our IT teams, and which we want to outsource either using cloud, outsourcing or software as a service type scenarios. Crucially we need to change the mindset (like we did with the facilities) of we need to do everything, to commoditize the service derived part of IT and therefore which we want to focus on, which could be provided at lower cost by a partner or cloud service. That doesn’t mean we have to remove business value or necessarily place the organization at risk, it might be combining a service improvement plan with a fixed cost business model – rather than IT deliver desktops, can we not have the support and the procurement managed by the likes of ComputaCenter? To have a fixed support cost per user and from that have the pc replaced every 18 months? To fix the cost, to have hardware refreshed more regularly and bring an end to the keeping commodity elements forever to gain maximum value and recognize the hidden cost savings:

• Lower support costs
• Lower calls logged – the pcs never get old enough to develop major software or hardware issues
• More energy efficient computers, or even thin cient
• A focus away from today desktop support for our IT teams towards strategy, design and best practice

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