We have all read and debated Nick Carr's book, Does IT Matter. As I look at some of the initiatives that IT shops are taking on these days I'd have to say that IT is trying to prove Mr. Carr wrong. This is the golden age of technology. I haven't seen a time so exciting since the Internet started catching on or since the .Com days.
Look at some of the top innovative initiatives that are grabbing the headlines today.
- Business Process Management (BPM)
- Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
- Enterprise 2.0
- Virtualization
- Green IT
BPM. I wrote this article (How did we become a Dilbert cartoon?) a few months back that discusses how IT has become unaligned with the business over the years preoccupying itself with hardware upgrades and OS patches. BPM is allowing IT to make a comeback by once again aligning with the business to help the business become more productive and cost effective.
SOA. This is another hot area where IT is finally starting to invest in architecture to allow the sharing of services between applications both internally to the company and externally with partners and customers. If done right, SOA can provide huge improvements in speed to market and major reductions in maintenance and support.
Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 is all about leveraging the improved Web 2.0 collaboration tools in the work place. As the baby boomer's move on and the younger generations enter the work place, never have we had so many Internet savvy users in the work place. The younger generation has taught us the value of social networking, collective intelligence, tagging, blogs, RSS feeds, and many other collaboration tools. These technologies are drastically changing the way the world collaborates and moves collaboration beyond the walls of one's own corporation. Companies that invest in Enterprise 2.0 technologies will reap the benefits of allowing the workforce to bubble up great ideas from the trenches while making their employees more productive.
Virtualization. Talk about exciting. Now with products like VMware, companies can drastically reduce the amount of servers they need to buy and maintain. Less servers means reduced heat, electricity, and floor space which leads to lower costs. Gone are the long procurement cycles where it may take several weeks to months to receive a new server. Now virtual servers can be set up in minutes on existing servers. What's even better is that you can mix Linux, Windows, Unix, or whatever type of OS you may have on the same physical servers. Virtual Appliances allow you to put all of the tiers of an application on the same server (ex: web server, application server, database server). This allows a company to leverage the speed of the PCI bus which is several hundred times faster then using gigabit ethernet. Now that's cool!
Green IT. IT shops are even becoming more environments friendly. While virtualization allows us to reduce the number of servers, some companies are also purchasing energy efficient servers, power strips, and encouraging telecommuting. Companies are saving money and the environment at the same time.
There are many more exciting things happening in IT today like the emergence of Open Source technologies, breakthroughs in chip technology, advancements in mobile technology, and many others.
When Nick Carr wrote his book a few years ago, IT was recovering from the foolish spend crazy .Com days where many IT shops were chasing technology for technology sake. Now, as we struggle through the "do more with less" era, many IT shops have realigned themselves with the business and are making a huge difference to the bottom line. So if you work for a company that has one or more of these initiatives in place or in motion, you can go to sleep at night knowing that your IT shop does matter.
Note£º
Enterprise 2.0 The Enterprise 2.0 term derives from Web 2.0 and is sometimes used to cover the introduction and implementation of social software within the enterprise, and the social and organizational changes related to its use. The term was coined by Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School in the spring 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review.
The term Enterprise Web 2.0 is sometimes used to cover the introduction and implementation of Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise including those other than social software such as Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Web as a Platform (WaaP).
Virtual appliances Virtual appliances are pre-built pre-configured ready-to-run enterprise applications that are packaged with an optimized operating system in a virtual machine. Not only are these self-contained application stacks easy to deploy and instantly available, they are also more secure and reliable. Certified virtual appliances are optimized to run in production on VMware virtualization platforms. Deploy virtual appliances on VMware Infrastructure 3 for an IT environment that is dynamic, efficient, and available.
Delivering and managing pre-configured software as virtual appliances offer many benefits for both ISVs and IT organizations. Virtual appliances are fundamentally changing how enterprise software is developed, distributed, deployed, and managed.
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