I’ve been traveling a lot lately, speaking and talking to CIOs about how they’re managing through the recession. Funny thing is, strip away the immediate financial pressure (I know, but work with me here) and there’s a baseline set of issues they’re all dealing with:
- More data
- More pressure to make that data work for the business
- Applying the massive potential of virtualization to the data center and infrastructure
Oh yeah, and make it safe, secure, available 24/7, efficient, automated, fast, and cheap!
If you asked the tech gurus among us five years ago what the next “killer app” would be, few would have responded “virtualization.” But I think you can make the case that in the world of the CIO, virtualization has fundamentally changed the way they work.
Starting with the massive and quick ROI from server consolidation, to the business continuity and disaster recovery benefits, to today’s application virtualization and cloud computing, this has been a true paradigm shift.
And the best may be yet to come. The next evolutionary step under way is to “dynamic infrastructure.” In this week’s ExpertPOV, IBM’s Mark Shearer defines it as an infrastructure that “leverages existing assets along with innovative, new solutions to create an infrastructure that is consolidated, virtualized, automated and resilient.”
According to Chris Mierzwa, writing at CIO.com, “building a smarter, more dynamic infrastructure will not be without challenges, but the world is moving forward and we can't afford to let our infrastructure lag behind. It’s imperative for leaders of government, business and communities to embrace the vision of a 21st century infrastructure capable of handling the
increasing demands of a globally integrated society."
This article originally appeared on
infoboom.