The trend toward business technology is bringing transformational change to the IT function.
As technology and business converge, the IT organization evolves from infrastructure provider to enabler of innovation and competitive success. IT’s focus shifts to delivering strategic business services and driving favorable business outcomes. And IT’s performance is being measured against bottom-line business goals — lower costs, reduced risk, accelerated growth.
The new emphasis on business technology carries important implications for technical resources allocation. Skilled IT professionals are being redeployed from operations-oriented support, maintenance and management to more strategically central activities. And IT organizations are increasingly dedicating skilled resources to building highly automated, highly virtualized “next-generation data centers.” These 24x7 lights-out environments leverage HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure technology — including standardized, modular hardware and software building blocks — to establish an efficient services supply chain.
The result of this migration of key technical people is a widening resource gap, a potentially severe shortage of operations-related knowledge and know-how within many IT organizations today and in the years ahead.
The precise dimensions of this resource squeeze are difficult to measure. But analysts predict that the 65 percent of technical resources currently consumed by day-to-day operations will need to shrink dramatically with the increased IT focus on powering growth, innovation and competitive advantage.* HP estimates that by 2009 the typical enterprise will have on the order of 20 percent fewer people available for operations-oriented tasks. Yet these tasks, of course, remain essential underpinnings of successful business service delivery.
Target skills shortfalls, sourcing challenges
How to address the skills gap created by accelerating IT resource realignment?
Data Center Services from HP offer a convenient, just-in-time sourcing model designed to help you cut operations costs, increase efficiency and enhance service quality. As technical expertise gets redirected to value-added activities that drive better business outcomes, these proven HP services enable you to replace it on an as-needed basis. So you can substantially lessen the need to maintain in-house staff dedicated to infrastructure implementation, support and management.
HP Data Center Services comprise a rich portfolio of short-term service engagements and ad hoc resources that simplify resource optimization with:
- Expert assessments in areas such as IT performance, availability, power and cooling, security and service management improvement
- Automated and remote support delivered by innovative “service-smart” technologies
- Variable access to needed technical skills and expertise
- Variable access to project-specific resources for initiatives such as migrations and deployments
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