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The delivery metrics across your large-scale transformation program look strong. The closure report is signed off. The steering committee congratulates the team. And then, quietly, the organization continues doing things the old way...
With the infusion of AI into digital platforms, the role of the project professional is expanding yet again. But technology does not deliver transformation; disciplined project and product management does. This PM shares five lessons learned.
Virtualization has been dubbed one of the hottest technologies of the decade. By 2010, approximately 30 percent of non-desktop IT infrastructure will be virtualized, up from less than 5 percent in 2007, projects IT consulting firm Saugatuck Technology in its recently published report “The Many Faces of Virtualization: Understanding a New IT Reality.”
On the flip side, however, thru 2013 the most significant factor hindering user adoption of IT will be funding management tools, processes, expertise and services, rather than improving functionality, according to the report. The three big companies leading the virtualization pack through 2010, says Saugatuck, are Cisco, VMware and Citrix/XenSource. Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of disagreement about who the major players will be. I’m surprised Microsoft and Sun weren’t included, not to mention a bevy of small, very aggressive players that have been in this hot IT niche for quite some time.
Gartner Consulting deems virtualization the single most strategic technology in data centers today. And a “strategic technology,” according to the IT consulting firm, is defined as a big-dollar technology that could cripple an organization if adopted too late.
Gartner analyst Carl Claunch sees virtualization as a new distribution model for applications. For example, a software supplier might send you a virtual machine file that has everything--OS and applications pre-integrated--rather than selling and shipping just the application. That translates to less work for corporate IT departments, and vendors don’t have to test all the combinations.
But Claunch also raises a cautionary flag. Potential licensing complications have to be sorted out before pre-integrated applications become widespread. He also said that IT people have to keep tabs on vendors to make sure patches are updated.
Larry Cantwell, vice president and CTO of OnPATH Technologies in Lumberton, N.J., says virtualization is more than a hot trend; it’s a technology that will be more pervasive as companies realize that it not only streamlines and improves performance but also cuts costs.
OnPATH sells sophisticated software that creates a virtual infrastructure layer for data centers. Its customers are Fortune 100 companies. “Over the last few years, the IT emphasis was on speeds and feeds as they applied to storage networks,” Cantwell explains. “But primarily, speed was the primary goal. Now the focus is on virtualization, which simply means using resources more efficiently and keeping them online longer.”
Companies like VMware have made a big splash, but they’re really not doing anything that’s new, according to Cantwell. “Server virtualization has been going on for several years,” he says.
But new research is being done that explores the capabilities and possibilities of a high-powered CPU, says Cantwell. “And on the storage end--an area that was once left to chance--we’re seeing the physical connectivity of servers to storage along with the infrastructure to support virtualization,” he adds. “Now we’re exploring the virtualization of the infrastructure, or VIL. The question posed is, how do we take connectivity and optimize it so that we’re getting the most bang for the buck and also supporting the IO demands that will be placed within the network because of server virtualization and storage virtualization?”
From Drawing Board to Assembly Line
If server virtualization research has been going on for more than 20 years, why is it a hot topic now? The simple answer is that the demand for virtual IT solutions has never been greater, and installing virtual applications is now feasible.
“If you look at the hardware that’s available on servers, and the terabytes of disk space that’s available--off-the-shelf servers and the amount of horsepower that it generates--most applications are not able to handle all that capability,” Cantwell explains. “It’s easy to understand why virtualization on servers makes sense. More than an interesting prospect, companies are realizing that entire IT environments can be virtualized. So we’re seeing that a lot of end-point technologies are getting great traction, especially in the storage sector.”
Yet companies have not delved very deeply into the connectivity and virtualization of the network that connects devices together, Cantwell observes. “The next big step is creating virtualized networks,” he says.
Cantwell likens it to building a house without adequate plumbing. To build a house so people can actually live in it, a plumbing infrastructure also has to be built. It’s kind of a Catch-22. As technology becomes more and more complex, constant innovation is required.
“The hard part, from an engineering project management perspective, is figuring out what problems your customers are trying to solve,” says Cantwell. “On a practical front, they’re trying to cut their costs and consolidate their resources. They’re growing their storage and servers somewhere between 11 percent and 22 percent a year, and at the same time they’re crunched for budget dollars. This is why virtualization stands an excellent chance of solving these problems--because it allows end-user customers, data-center managers and CIOs to do more with the resources they have on hand.”
Even though recession fears are real, Cantwell thinks that companies will be spending aggressively on virtualization technology. It’s as basic as this: If there is technology that ultimately saves them money, they’re going to buy it. The big question for CIOs and CTOs this year is, “How do I spend IT dollars judiciously?” For example, rather than buying new servers, companies will look for ways to use what they have more efficiently.
The PM Dilemma
As Cantwell sees it, there is a lot of duplication of resources. “When our customers evaluate their budgets, they discover that they have redundant requests from different departments and business units,” he says. “They find that they have to conserve and consolidate resources in order to lower costs.”
On the IT end, companies also know that technology is becoming increasingly complex as more tools are introduced and there are multiple layers of the network to deal with, Cantwell observes. “They’re looking for ways to simplify the management of all their technical resources,” he says.
Clearly, IT project managers have their work cut out for them. In data centers, it means minimizing the amount of human intervention necessary, making a strong case for virtualization as a way to cut costs, pare spending and improve productivity. Other parts of organizations are looking to achieve the same ends.
