May the Force (of Transformation) Be With You

Force (of Transformation)
Spiros Liolis
a Jedi Master is not,
but at Transformation a Master he is
Photo courtesy © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM

“Train yourself to let
go of everything you
fear to lose.”
Yoda, Master Jedi, Star Wars character

What is Transformation
Answer
• Moving from one state to a fundamentally
new one that builds upon the DNA of the
traditional enterprise.

The evolution of transformation
Transformation to date
• Companies face unprecedented
challenges for resources, products, and
services. This puts them under pressure
to cut costs while improving
performance.
• Companies, when thought of
transformation they did some or all of
the following:
• Consolidation and Virtualization… but
very selective (we do the easy stuff)
• Never transformed “People &
Processes” aspects
• Selective centralization of groups
(mostly business support groups like
HR)

The results so far
Results to date
• Companies by now have:
• Shifted from server sprawl to VM
sprawl
• Maintained many legacy systems
and apps
• Still encounter major OPEX costs
• Maintained old and outdated
skills, practices and behaviors
AND YET… Organizations still put relentless
pressure to cut costs while improving
performance
So, what are you doing wrong?

Top reasons for failure
Transformation initiatives gone “south”
• Companies typically fail due to the
following IT related issues:
• Delegated to “outsiders” only
• Underestimating/ignoring impact of
change
• Poor planning
• Trying to do it… cheap
• Lack of sound business case
• Poor vendor management
• Failure to update computing concepts
• Failure to understand the
Supply/Demand Chain
• Failure to understand the financial
realities

So what is the right approach?
Embrace the future principles
• Tailored Digital Enterprise and IT
transformation
• Enterprise specific needs and
requirements
• Establish clear technology vision,
mission and scope
• Milestone and metrics driven

New Digital Enterprise
According to Gartner
“The vision of a "software-defined data center" is one where all IT
infrastructure is virtualized and delivered as a service — and where
the management model for these services is abstracted from being
managed one box at a time to a policy-based, network-wide view.”
One problem though, the implementation has been
tied to physical infrastructure
Digital Enterprise is about:
• Business/IT solution alignment
• Organisation, operations & governance alignment
• Facilities optimisation/integration
• Hybrid Delivery Services
• User-Centric computing
Cloud broker
Hybrid IT Brings It All Together
On-premise Off-premise
Traditional
infrastructure
Client-
provisioned
private cloud
Managed
private
cloud
Virtual
private
cloud
Public
cloud

Hybrid Delivery Services
Organizations must built a model whereby:
• Distinguish between demand-based
services (e.g., account management) and
supply-driven services (e.g., application
design and deployments.
• Develop an effective model for IT
governance is critical
• It is designed for strategic interaction, and
it should be spelled out clearly. Make sure
to include how IT can align itself to the
delivery of services to relevant internal
“customers.”
• Capability planning for the future
function (three to five years) should
support the selection of “what” to source
in the value chain and the strategic
transition of “freed” resources.
• Pool IT’s resources
Understand Design
Source
Deliver
Source
Supply Demand chain
Value/price/speed of delivery

Train your staff
Let them become the Force of change
• Train your staff early
• Retain key employees
• Walk them through the
process
• “There is no escape. Don't
make me destroy you.”
• “Luke, you do not yet
realize your importance. “
• Luke: All right, I'll give it a try.
• Yoda: No. Try not. Do... or do not.
There is no try.

Build your Governance
System (process) is at the heart of compliance
Systems consist of people, structures,
technologies, and processes that work together
to make organizations viable.
• Enable new roles and responsibilities
• Establish business level policies
• Understand service and deployment model
differences
• Identify critical performance objectives
• Establish security and privacy requirements
• Establish service management requirements
• Prepare for service failure management
• Establish the disaster recovery plan
• Define an effective management process
• Understand the exit process

User Centric Computing
IT organizations are rethinking desktop
and mobility strategies and adopting a
user-centric, rather than a device centric,
point of view.
• reduce the OPEX of supporting
numerous desktop devices with various
application requirements
• Rationalize secure data and back up
data
• support smaller, less functional devices
but broader range of devices

New Mixture of technologies
The future infrastructure will most
likely be a combination of the different
building blocks with usually one or two
predominant approaches.
The result will be a much more
efficient, agile and cost effective
infrastructure than today which can
support the needs of the business.
A single model will only exist in either
new start up or leading edge businesses
Many businesses will converge to a
single model over a period of years

Edge DCs and flexible facilities
The reasons are manifold and focus on
capacity utilization and process flexibilities.
• Shift from product/service dedicated brick
and mortar facilities to more versatile but
multiple facilities (Edge DCs) in closer to
consumption base
• Ramp capacity up and down in
accordance to demand or to utilize the
process environment for client-by-client
basis
• Examples: Modular Container, Stick-built
Container, Isolator or Controlled
Environment Modules, and Autonomous
PODs

Trends
Unlimited Power
DC power demands are moderating.
• Servers lighten their load
• Power distribution gets efficient
• Power costs, availability and alternatives grow
• Power is distributed to the edge and device
No revolutionary cooling tech, but refined systems.
• Blub, blub, blub... Immersion-cooled servers
• Mix of technologies (free and evaporative cooling)
• More appropriate data center locations (N)
• Operating temperatures rise
Keeping our cool

On the horizon
Although proponents of the cloud may predict an
eventual move to universal Cloud, we note that:
• In the next 5 years, digital sales have the
potential to account for 40+% of inflow revenue
• Need fast development of new financial models
• Legacy systems is alive and well
• Increasing regulatory & societal pressures
• Fast growing research and analytics
• Need for Omni-channel experience
• Requests for predictive analytics
• Rise of non-traditional players (fintech)

What to watch out for
• Wrong or insufficient IT service
portfolio
• Unclear role of IT in the core value
chain
• Not aware of various operating mode
• Lack of business und
• No agile development process & cu
• Lack in simplification and automation
• Future data centers will NOT be a
fanciful science fiction romp.

Remember
• Know the basics of transformation – otherwise
you can’t lead the transformation
• Plan your transformation across People,
Process and Technology– don’t think in silos
• Work across business units and solution areas
• Transform IT to a service-provider with
customer focus
• The Technology Ecosystem becomes critical
• Treat the DC as manufacturing facility
Matter your business challenge size does not,
how you Transform it will

May the Force (of Transformation) Be With You

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