Published: August 20 2009, 11:05 AM | 1 Comment(s)
by Marcel den Hartog

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

The events of past 8-12 months have left many of us in shock. “Truths” we all relied on no longer seem to make sense.  But more importantly, most of what we planned and executed in the comfort of a booming and ever growing economy is now under scrutiny. And this is especially true for IT.

Somehow, the promise that IT can help organizations to do things more efficient, faster and better than the competition still sounds magical. On the other hand, IT is just another department that provides your employees with all the necessary administrative tools they need to do their job.  Many top-level executives find it hard to balance between these two thoughts. They would like to treat IT as any other department, but at the same time realize that IT is very complex and embedded in everything the companies does.

It is easy to say that every big change also brings opportunities. But this is the time where a good manager, who is brave enough to question the “old” and drive the “new” without prejudice, can and will make a difference. As I said, a lot of yesterday’s decisions were taken when we were in a comfortable position. And when we find ourselves in a position like that, we make easy decisions. That’s human nature. And IT is not different.

It is also human nature to look for “5 Things A CIO Must Do To Survive A Crisis”. Blogs and other articles on the Internet are full of easy steps to make us believe that our current situation is manageable and that the solution to any problem can be condensed to 5 or 10 easy steps. Well, they are not!!. Nothing is as hard to change as the habits we developed in times when we felt comfortable. We all know that life has never been easy for an IT Executive.  But was it easy for any other manager? Even today, many IT departments have difficulties producing detailed cost breakdowns by application or department. And a breakdown should include all costs, including energy consumption, datacenter space etc. Which will allow us to make real “business” decisions. We have often made these decisions based on “gut feelings”, analyst reports and the input from employees throughout our IT organization who can sometimes “sell” their solution really well..

We often remember why we made certain decisions, but it is also human nature not to revisit these decisions when circumstances change. A decision made in 2001 would have been different if you had to make the same decision now.  So, to hold on to the decision you made 2001, now that everything around us has changed, might not be the right thing to do. This means that we have to change some of the perceptions we have developed in the past. Perceptions that are almost accepted as universal truths after all these years.

Many executives will still tell me that “A Mainframe is substantially more expensive than a suite of distributed servers running an application”. Many analysts and other industry specialists (including large IT departments) now agree that this “myth” or perception is not just wrong, it’s dangerous. Dangerous because it influences the decision making process in a negative way. Many large companies that own a mainframe still find it hard to accept that the platform that still runs >60% of the workload, costs a fraction compared to the distributed server farms they have. They often fear the wars (Windows vs Unix vs zOS) and decide to ignore the facts.

But let us look at it from a business perspective. Windows, Linux, Unix and the IBM Mainframe are here to stay. And depending on the situation, we now have the freedom and possibilities to run our business where it makes most sense. Choosing for one doesn’t automatically mean the other is bad! Moving critical workloads between platforms doesn’t just make sense; it is the way we will work in IT in the years to come. When electricity and manpower are a major cost-factor, it makes sense to move some of the workload (back) to a platform that is more efficient and more economic to manage. Many IT Architects still think that the way forward is the same way as we come from. It is not. The landscape has changed and so has the road.

No lists today I am afraid, just business sense. If it made sense to ship goods by truck from A to B and because of economic changes the quantity of goods decreases, we use a smaller van. When the economy changes again and the quantity of goods increases, we don’t use more vans, we switch back to a truck. When distributed servers are up for replacement after 3-4 years, we should look at the workload, the cost of management and the energy consumption and then decide where to move that workload to. And if it can run cheaper on an IBM Mainframe, we should move it to an IBM Mainframe. Does it have to stay on a Distributed server but can I free up another server by moving some of THAT workload to an IBM Mainframe, we should just do that.

OS wars have never really served the business anyway…..

Share this post:  Email

Share