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know what the data center costs,” he explains.
The IT executives have a few words of advice for any of their counterparts considering far-reaching changes to an enterprise’s IT structure. First, says Vereecke, saving money should never be the main goal. Financial gains are great if they happen, but too much of a focus on the bottom line can endanger the viability of a project.
“We made a big investment in top-of-the-line servers,” Vereecke says. “My advice is to spend enough; don’t try to go for the cheaper solutions. [Virtualization] might boost cost savings with certain companies but might not with others. The software and the hardware you need to support it are expensive. We did manage to save costs, but that wasn’t necessarily what we set out to do.”
Brown, meanwhile, emphasizes the need to keep users involved and to quell the fears that arise with any wide-ranging transformation.
“We’ve taken a consultative approach with the end users, so we’ll come up with solutions to their problems,” he says. “We put proofs of concept in place, and let them use and see the benefits of the system.”
With all of Behringer’s locations previously boasting their own IT teams and servers, Brown says some tech staff couldn’t help but feel that ongoing centralization initiative “was sort of diminishing their role in the organization.”
“But it worked out OK in the end because we made an effort . . . emphasizing support more than managing data centers,” he says.
Vereecke says the VMWare implementation benefited from strong management and end-user support.
“We’ve always been about advanced technology, so we never had a situation where we had to convince people of the value of what we were doing,” he says.
talk first, act later According to Gartner’s Handler, communication should be at the heart of the architecture agenda,
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and this is an area where too many would-be “IT architects” lapse.
“Most IT executives have issues with enterprise architecture because they fail to do the up-leg work with regard to planning, communication, expectations management and change management,” he says.
“Enterprise architecture is not a magic bullet. It’s a tool. If its use is appropriate, and it’s appropriately used, it can do good things. But used inappropriately, it can do harm,” Handler adds.
The danger of introducing a wholly new IT structure is a result of its tendency to impact other segments of the enterprise. Brown, for example, believes SOA could alter Behringer in some significant ways — most of them positive.
“Traditionally, because we’ve had all the expertise in terms of application software inside [IT], there’s been a tendency for us to almost do everything for everybody,” says Brown. “But because we’re trying to reduce our costs, at introducing chargeback for services, we’re looking at how we can now work better in terms of defining requirements, put change processes in and stop the scope creep that goes on within the organization, so people spend more time thinking about what they really need in the first place.”
But as profound as an architecture change can be, Handler is quick to warn CIOs to keep their projects “grounded in reality.”
“The business purpose, including the strategy, must be used to develop the enterprise architecture,” he says. “IT execs need to define its purpose, specify attainable objectives, and build an architecture that solves problems, addresses opportunities . . . and is usable by those who need it.”
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