CIO’s Dilemma – Managing Enterprise Technology (Part 2)

This is a continuation of part 1.

As enterprises move toward hybrid environments, one of the key pain points will become operational process and tools. Organizations have become great at managing silos, but their staff tends to see the world from the construct of those silos of endpoints, networks, infrastructure, and applications.

In a hybrid environment with a mix of providers, sourcing and architectures, the physical location of an asset (or process) will not be as clearly defined. Yet, its attributes, performance, KPIs and cost will have an increasingly important impact on how IT delivers services to end customers. Ultimately, IT remains responsible for the complex enterprise technology footprint that extends from the home into the data center and out to potentially dozens of cloud service providers.

Along with enterprise technology management processes and organizational changes, I&O leaders will need tools to actively monitor and manage any process, anywhere, at any time.

So, imagine if you will, an IT asset management solution for enterprise technology management, with the ability to visualize a complete purchasing, security, or service management process, beginning to end, and to see what components it uses, what performance levels (or issues) they have, what KPI’s or SLA’s it is hitting, and being able to map all the pieces into a coherent workflow.

I had a recent conversation with a CIO who articulated the problem like this:

• Where is my application? I need to see all my mission critical apps (or even ALL my apps) across all the infrastructure installed in all my data centers, and in the hybrid cloud.
• What about enterprise technology management process? I need to see high level business services, and applications that make them up, and the infrastructure they are implemented on.
• What is happening with service performance and availability? I need to be able to visualize system faults, performance metrics, capacity issues, delays, security, and compliance gaps – wherever they are.
• How can my staff figure this out? I need my staff to be able to see the end-to-end connectivity and have the tools to quickly identify bottlenecks or issues that are impacting the end user experience. Why can’t I replace staff with automated processes like we have done in other parts of the business?
• I need to be able to audit and report on everything. Where is the data and when was it last accessed (and by whom)? Which devices are at what levels of software – and potentially at risk for zero-day exploits?
• And lastly, what employee has what device, what applications, what security levels, and how does this map to their current location or job function since these things are continuously changing?

There are a few innovative tools today that are beginning to pull these pieces together, but not many. Oomnitza is at the forefront to further democratize process automation - developing the ideas behind enterprise technology management, and how this will be a fundamental requirement for IT success in this evolving “infrastructure and digital experience anywhere” world.

My question to you as an IT Leader is: As we continue to automate individual processes, how will you create an autonomous operations environment that synchronizes many disparate processes end to end, to support your end customer, and your enterprise mission?

David J. Cappuccio was formerly a VP, Distinguished Analyst and Chief of Research for the Infrastructure teams at Gartner where he spearheaded research in enterprise data center, cloud and hybrid strategies. His experience extends decades in the technology arena, including financial services, IT operations, and management consulting. He currently serves as an independent consultant and advisory board member.