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One of the conversations I have been having with colleagues and CIOs is a question that’s been on my mind for some time. What I am about to say is in no way negative and is not to be taken as criticism of the way ahead. There are exciting times ahead for the end user community, for vendors and investors alike. The question is as follows.

As we virtualize and commoditize the infrastructure, the individual components become less significant in a way, whether it’s a server from vendor1 or vendor 11, does the actual underlying tin matter?

1. Absolutely – I have a specific price point that I seek to achieve, that can only be done through our purchasing agreement with vendor8, or absolutely because we want the management software, the extra bits which you just don’t get from any other vendor (real or perceived).
2. No – it will be replaced every few years and besides my servers, my applications are abstracted from it, I want the cheapest hardware financially and operationally.

The problem is that we’re for the time being going forward. (The time being between now and when the data center is virtualized and floats around the enterprise, the cloud or whatever device can power and host it at the lowest cost, a Mac Mini perhaps).  Between now and the future then, data center 3.0 I’ll call it, how do we differentiate ourselves? How do we isolate our servers, our software from the competition?

• Price – but dear me, many a business has gone down that route and volume is key at this point else margins eat your profits – and what about concepts like support costs and service delivery?
• Functionality – great, but dear me reader, functionality is expensive and requires real investment and do our beloved users want to pay for said functionality, everyone says yes until the invoice arrives for approval and sign off
• Apple-ness – by this I mean belief in the product, belief in the service that only Apple seem to be able to achieve in the notebook/pc world – you mean you haven’t got one of these, oh well, maybe next year

I wonder then, going forward as the industry changes, both inside IT and outside the IT industry where the lines are drawn and where go, going forward, is branding enough? Is price or feature competition effective enough as a vehicle to protect revenues. Is Apple’s benefit that regardless of the perceived limitations not that the fans just sit and go wow, look at the design and buy it anyway? How do we then do this in the IT industry? Where commoditization, where hierarchical structures are changing, it used to be that server guy Mike made the recommendations on servers, but Fred who runs trading now wants to know what can be done about this data center space problem, IT is crossing the boundaries that we spent years creating, how then do we change the marketing, the lines of communication and support frameworks to meet this new target audience?

How do we sell servers or software, or a concept to a business unit, a CEO or CFO when concepts of MegaHertz, memory support, or number of PCI slots don’t quite raise the excitement that Mike has when the nice account manager says take a look at this, 5 pci slots and a redundant power supply!

We could go down the services route, indeed, fantastic, would you like  a 2u server or a virtualization product as part of a service? No capex, I repeat No capex, but as the world gets smaller, that poses the old problem, fine I’d love to have my virtual desktops powered by your service, but just one thing, I’ll have it hosted in India, at India prices, not at your UK prices, no they’re too much, and can I have that free mouse mat. I like mouse mats.

We need change, we need progress and development, a move to a scenario where the IT and business merge to create a unified platform for revenue generation, I just wonder if combined the two business units, are ready for this new world as are the vendors. Does this mean a rebrand of IT, a convergence where we offer a range of solutions mixing software and hardware with services and service delivery an overall solution comprising of everything you need, and does that mean the user gets closer or further away from the vendor? We’ll have to see,

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