I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase IT Transformation before, and I’d like to just take a few moments of your time to explain my view on it. Agree or disagree? Please comment below.
Let’s have a look at your current infrastructure inside your datacenter. Let’s say you’d like to upgrade it. Would you like the latest and greatest CPUs? Would you like an awesome network? Would you like to also enjoy the benefits of the best storage there is?
Of course you would! And you can!
It’s quite easy actually. You’re definitely able to find the best motherboard with the right chipset you want, the best CPU there is, the correct fans, PSUs, NICs and HBAs that are available out there. I’m certain you are able to define the exact network parts you want, with the best bandwidth and throughput, cables with the best shielding and the best firmware for it all. I’m also sure you can find the best storage for your environment as well, with the correct drives, amount of storage, cache and tiering functionality.
All this, and you can probably also put it all together. Piece of cake!
But is that your primary function at your organization? Or would you rather spend your time learning new functions, tools and applications that will help you make your job better and easier while also benefitting the organization?
For a while I’ve been talking to customers, partners and other friends about making the infrastructure “invisible” to the organization. Making the infrastructure “invisible” so that the organization doesn’t need to worry about which server, storage or network hardware they’re using. “Invisible” to the administrators as well, so that they don’t need to worry about every single event that comes up or need to configure every piece of hardware as anisolated island, but rather focus on the important tasks; delivering IT. Efficiently.
The most common first reaction I get is “What? You want to make my job obsolete? I’m a professional!”. My response to that is of course that I don’t wish anyone to be unemployed, but rather employed with different, more challenging and fun tasks. To enable this transformation of delivering IT, I recommend to customers, partners and other friends that they utilize integrated hardware and software so that they can automate many easy and mundane tasks that they do today.
For instance, how many servers/Virtual Machines/LUNs/VLANs have you deployed the last month? How long did you spend each time? What if you can take the time to automate these tasks so that you can just press a button (imagine pressing the big red button above) and you’re all done? Wouldn’t you be happier at your job then? Wouldn’t the organization be happier at your speed of delivery? Of course you would, and so would they.
I see more and more IT administrators stop clinging to their hardware, and instead focus on delivering the best darn IT they possibly can. They are using new integrated hardware and software, new tools for automation, and new applications for smarter monitoring. With all this new functionality they have more time to educate themselves on how to become even more efficient at doing their work, attracting a better salary and more challenging, fun tasks.
Isn’t that what we all want?
