IT innovation moves at a pace, and every now and then a paradigm shift occurs, which changes the way we live and the way we do business. The advent of client-server computing provided such a shift in the 1980’s, whilst the development of the World Wide Web provided a seismic shift and now pervades all aspects of society. Today, potentially, we are at the cusp of another paradigm shift, as the IT industry whips itself into a frenzy of activity to exploit the concept of Cloud Computing.

Putting aside the hype associated with Cloud Computing, and the seductive pull of adopting the latest trend in IT, there is a fundamental question that potential customers of Cloud Computing services need to pose –what are the benefits of adopting a Cloud Computing strategy for my organisation? Fundamentally the attraction in Cloud Computing is borne out of the potential to make large cost savings, increase productivity of staff, enhance service delivery, and be more agile as an organisation, amongst other things.

The challenge of a growing IT infrastructure
Whether it’s through the adoption of Cloud Computing or another paradigm, such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), every organisation should be seeking to maximise the benefits of any services it provides its customers, whilst simultaneously controlling the costs associated with providing the services. This conundrum is particularly difficult when it comes to the management of the IT infrastructure that underpins the provision of an organisation’s products and services to its customers and partners.

When an organisation reaches a certain size, it becomes necessary to invest in technology to help overrun IT staff to ensure the availability and management of the growing IT infrastructure. However the benefits afforded by technology from vendors such as BMC or IBM Tivoli come at a cost both financially and in terms of time, and as a consequence, care needs to be taken to ensure that a return on the investment is made. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, and perceived benefits don’t materialise, whilst costs spiral out of control. So, what goes wrong?

IT infrastructure management software is inherently complex, and necessitates commitment to:

•    Develop its reach and effectiveness
•    Ensure staff are adequately trained to use, develop and support the engineered solution
•    Invest in headcount to fulfil roles dedicated to working with management software
•    Provide succession planning in the event that staff move on

All too often, the additional costs associated with these commitments are not considered at the outset, and the decision to invest is based on the capital expenditure alone. Consequently, management commitment is eroded, and investment in the operational aspects of the service is half-hearted or non-existent. The net result is a lack of faith in the technology itself, a realisation that costs far exceed the derived benefits, and the prospect of another failed IT project. But the original problem of ensuring that IT supports the business adequately, still remains.

Look to the cloud
The risk associated with embarking on such an enterprise is daunting to say the least, but solutions do exist to aid the process. Orb Data (www.orb-data.com) for example, has developed a cloud service for those organisations that would prefer to have experts in the field of IT infrastructure management taking care of running this service on their behalf. The service is based on IBM Tivoli software.

IBM Tivoli software undoubtedly provides an extremely powerful toolset, but needs strong management to fully realise its ROI. Orb Data’s Tivoli as a Service solution, allows for devolvement of responsibilities, either internally through self service, or by allowing it to take on the day to day running of Tivoli components either in the cloud or remotely. Such flexibility to choose how much or how little responsibility companies wish a service provider to take over their Tivoli implementation,  liberates IT teams and enables them to focus on the tasks that matters, such as running mission critical applications and servers.

To save disappointment in IT investment, organisations need to be mindful that only with properly implemented and run systems management solutions will they achieve the ROI that the software vendors advertise. However, in this difficult time of reduced numbers of staff struggling to keep up with ever increasing demands, a cloud approach once again appears to be providing a solution.

Author: Simon Barnes, Director of Business Development and Marketing at Orb Data