15–18 November 2010 • Sydney, Australia

Trip Report

IT Infrastructure & Operations

This year’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo was focused on the theme, “Transitions, New Realities, Rules and Opportunities”. This report offers an overview of what was on attendees’ minds and what they learned from Gartner analysts and one another.

Key Takeaways Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) is adapting to a number of trends that have brought issues related to cost savings, compliance and innovation to the fore. In recent years, attaining efficiency on a limited budget was the primary goal. Today, technological advances and changes in the marketplace have ushered in a host of other challenges: • Data center power and cooling is on the agenda — energy consumption is doubling every six years. Dozens of new ways to transform facilities design and manage workloads are emerging. But measuring the problem is your first challenge. • Cloud computing raises questions about security, storage, hosting, server viability and latency. • Windows 7 migration is becoming urgent as Microsoft ends its support of XP. • Unified communication and collaboration (UCC) increases the importance that enterprises place on vendor and technology capabilities and selection. • Fabric-based computing presents risks, as enterprises often become wedded to a single vendor.

Conference Highlights I&O attendees found the following five sessions especially valuable. The Big Migration: Windows 7 and Office 2010 Now is the time to plan a move from Windows XP, because by 2013, 60% of important independent software vendor (ISV) Windows applications will have a new release that does not support Windows XP. This session explained about Windows 7 and Office 2010; how long you can run your current software, how quickly you should migrate, and how you should plan your migration. Recommendations: • Eliminate XP by YE12 or mid-2013. • If you’ve started deploying Vista on new PCs, stay the course — but switch to Windows 7 in 2011. • Deploy MS Office 2010 with Windows 7 in 2011, if it makes sense for your organization. Unified Communications and Collaboration Scenario: Are We There Yet? The convergence of communications, collaboration and social media, combined with innovations in cloud computing, is creating challenges and opportunities for CIOs and IT planners. It’s time to rethink your UCC strategies. But prepare for a complex project. You likely have large existing investments that will be difficult to change, such as e-mail and telephony systems. And you must factor in new developments: what to do about emerging opportunities in mobile and social media; and what impact new consumer devices like media tablets will have on your workplace. They present you with numerous questions: “What about bandwidth? Does it support video? Who will own and who will pay?” 1

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

15-18 November 2010

Sydney, Australia

IT Infrastructure & Operations Community Recommendations: • Inventory your UCC environment and identify gaps between what your enterprise needs and what you have in your portfolio. • Identify opportunities for piloting UCC projects within your enterprise. • Create a process for identifying and fulfilling business needs for new UCC services. Fabric Computing in the Next Generation Data Center: What, How and When? Fabric computing is a set of compute, storage memory and input/output (I/O) components joined through a fabric interconnect and the software that configures and maintains them. Fabric computing, which integrates these systems, is causing a sensation in the marketplace. Companies that had been partners are now competitive, vying for the same space. The risk for the buyer is in committing to a single vendor. Recommendations • Understand cost and procurement implications, and negotiate a road map. • Plot your approach carefully — your choice of vendor is particularly critical. Infrastructure & Operations the Top 10 Trends to Watch David Cappuccio, Gartner research VP delivered the Top 10 Trends in Infrastructure and Operations. What you be on your radar, what you need to be aware of and how recommendations on how to move forward. 1. Virtualization Is Just Beginning, virtualization is a continuing process, not a one-time project. Cloud-based services offer an alternative to on-premises IT infrastructure. Transition to virtualized server infrastructures drives shred-disk storage and applications and users expect all data to be available all the time 2. Big Data — The Elephant in the Room, regardless of budget constraints, growth continues based on demand, more access creates more data and this will only continue. Deduplication is becoming standard, auditing, archiving and recovery is increasingly complex. How will you manage your Pattern Based Strategy? 3. Energy Efficiency and Monitoring, power issues are moving up on the food chain, CRS tightly links, consumption is becoming as critical as performance with increased awareness and focus on power. 4. Unified Communications — Extended — UC tightly integrated communications applications. Ensure your apps providers are planning for taking advantage of UC, review what other UC business scenarios make sense in your business. Mobile platform is a key unifier. 5. Staff Retention and Retraining, create a ‘T’ shaped IT staff by ensuring there are business linkages between the critical skills needed and the value to the business by breaking down the silos, enable and reward learning, share skills and ensuring a vertical focus and a depth of technology learning 6. Social Networks — Ready or Not, begin evaluation of usage patterns and develop a code of conduct within the organization. Carefully listen to the collective and understand that new employees bring their networks to work and we can’t stop them any longer. However, their input can drive IT. 7. Legacy Migrations — Your Users, this effects everyone. Build a migration timeline, classify applications and users, build inventories and ensure viability and value of Office licenses. 8. Compute Density — Scale Vertically, virtualization is critical to success. Ensure you analyze asset use highs and lows, map server growth to energy and cooling requirements and engage the facilities team. 9. Cloud Computing , ensure you evaluate commodity services you provide and what can move to the cloud, categorize applications/services based on SLAs and risk before proceeding and evaluate the cloud delivery model for internal use. 10.Converged Fabrics, a completely different approach to data centre design, develop a long term data center strategy; think “hybrid” Recommendations • Take virtualization to the next level — focused on all facets of IT. • Scale vertically first, horizontally second. The new KPI will be about compute per kilowatt. 2

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

15-18 November 2010

Sydney, Australia

IT Infrastructure & Operations Community • Staff skill sets will reach a crisis point if not addressed soon. Look again at incentives and motivational techniques. • Social networks will be an impact on all enterprises — get ready for it. • Fabric-based systems are the future — eventually. Achieving Cloud Computing at Scale: A Review of Architecture and Method In this session Cameron Haight, Gartner Research VP looked at the challenges IT organizations will confront in building next generation virtual data centre, that the data centre design and management architecture have to evolve to support the next generation virtual data centers and that the operations processes will be critical to their success. CIOs and enterprise architects should … • Monday Morning - Begin to think unconventionally with respect to IT service delivery now — or face the prospect of an uncompetitive future! • Your Next 90 Days - Examine all critical areas of IT — infrastructure, process and people and understand the impact of architecture upon all three - Assess the applicability of cloud-scale technologies and design practices for future architectures • Your Next 12 Months - Explore the application of Lean IT and Agile methodologies for process optimization - Create an environment for employee innovation and that rewards measured risk - Begin personnel development activities before the first day on the job

Keynotes Welcome address, opening remarks and Gartner analyst opening keynote On the first day of Symposium, an ensemble of leading Gartner analysts took the audience through the impact of the industry dynamics that shaped this year’s theme: “Transitions: New Realities, Rules and Opportunities”. We learned about the three new realities of our age: 1) the power of unprecedented choice; 2) a wild, open world as evidenced by the growing influence of social media and context-aware computing; and 3) a shift in mind-set from seeking outputs to ensuring outcomes. We were then taken through the three new rules of this new era: 1) smart control, which will replace the complete control that IT has historically had of its environments; 2) intelligent business, which will replace traditional business intelligence; and 3) IT dynamism, the migration of IT projects from being “built to last” toward IT projects that are “built to change.” Finally, we heard about two new opportunities: 1) the fusion of multiple existing and emerging technologies to create new business value; and 2) the wide-open opportunity to lead the initiatives underpinning the new opportunities … will it be IT? Business line executives? Functional executives? There’s no clear answer.

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Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

15-18 November 2010

Sydney, Australia

IT Infrastructure & Operations Community Gartner Research Senior Vice President Peter Sondergaard also took the audience through the four broad trends that Gartner believes will alter IT and drive economic change: cloud computing, social computing, context-aware computing and Pattern-Based Strategy™. Mastermind interview: Shane Robison, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, HP — HP sharpens focus on cloud, mobility Gartner analysts Tom Austin and Matt Boon conducted a Mastermind interview with Shane Robison, HP’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer to better understand his views on emerging technologies and trends shaping the future of enterprise computing. The far reaching interview touched on HP’s leadership turmoil, along with cloud computing, printing, servers, networking, applications and mobile devices. Addressing the elephant in the room head on, Mr Robison clarified that Léo Apotheker’s appointment as CEO following Mark Hurd’s resignation had nothing to do with the company’s business operations. Moving on from what he described as this “difficult time,” HP is now focused on maintaining momentum and improving its operational excellence. HP has reinvented itself over the past seven years. It has a wide portfolio of products allowing it to participate in every layer of the computing stack from data centre infrastructure out to handheld devices. The ongoing challenge is in finding greater synergies between the many different parts of the business. Today, Mr Robison is focused on driving innovation in cloud computing and mobility. The company is responding to market demands for it to operate as a service-based business. CIOs want partners who can help them manage service levels for a business rather than simply install and maintain infrastructure. HP has a unique focus in that it develops both traditional IT systems and services for the cloud. HP sees significant growth in both the “private cloud” and “public cloud” markets, but doesn’t see great distinctions between the two. There is more change unfolding today than at any time in history. Looking ahead, HP plans to navigate these “wild times in the technology industry” by: • Keeping a close eye on the changing competitive landscape. Tomorrow’s competitors are unlikely to be traditional IT companies, a situation described as a “complicated chess game.” Mr Robison works with a team at HP which provides competitive analysis. • Looking carefully at how it invests R&D dollars to achieve the best competitive outcome, and resolve the biggest pain points for customers. • Investigating more how it can use ARM’s microprocessor architecture. It is a successful technology for mobile devices in particular that holds notable potential for HP and its customers. • Investing heavily in software. This will include more acquisitions, but SAP is an unlikely target, Mr Robison said in response to questions. More focus will be directed towards data analytics, management software platforms, and social media-oriented activities. HP Labs are analysing Twitter streams to monitor consumer buying patterns, or intent to purchase, for example. • Evolving its investment in the technology acquired from Palm. Mr Robison described Palm’s architecture as “new, clean, high level. It assumes you are always connected. And not being connected is the exception. This is the flip of traditional architectures.” For this reason he believes it will compete well against iOS, Android, Windows Mobile and Blackberry. However, he concedes it will not be an easy battle.

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Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

15-18 November 2010

Sydney, Australia

IT Infrastructure & Operations Community Mastermind Interview: Lonely Planet Matt Goldberg, CEO and Chris Boden, global director emerging platforms, Lonely Planet In this revealing Mastermind Interview by Gartner analysts Dave Aron and Brian Prentice, two executives from the iconic travel guidebook publisher shared how it feels to be at the cutting edge of digitization of business, an issue more and more businesses will be facing in coming years. Digital innovation doesn’t mean just moving your traditional business model to the Internet. Lonely Planet’s Chris Boden, global director emerging platforms, cited that as being like watching the radio on black and white TV. CEO Matt Goldberg credits the culture at Lonely Planet as being one that incubates digital innovation by allowing strategic IT resources to “experiment restlessly”. Other key takeaways from this full house session at Gartner Symposium Sydney included: • Ensure your content management system has enough flexibility to enable delivery into multiple formats without requiring major recoding. Consumer preferences change frequently, competitor applications can appear rapidly and the capabilities of the platforms themselves are continuously evolving. If the IT function delivers a flexible content management system, individual departments can budget and manage specific projects that align with their business goals, easing budget and development pressure within IT. • Mobile application projects require a clearly defined goal and need to be rolled out quickly. Rapid deployment and assessment is preferable to excessive planning, as a full-scale market assessment is likely to be out-of-date before it is completed. All projects should have clearly defined goals that include both assisting customers and aligning with core business goals. • An act of goodwill can reap financial rewards. During the travel disruptions earlier this year with the Iceland Volcano, Lonely Planet gave away content to support stranded travellers. Initially seen as a loss of revenue justified essentially on the brand value it generated, it turned out that this resulted in a noticeable spike in revenue for other related content as people started browsing around to see what else is available. • Take advantage of application features built into mobile platforms such as location tracking and user preferences. Merely shrinking content to fit into a smaller screen size does not provide a differentiated experience, and does not qualify as “innovative”. • Social media activity needs to be integrated into the overall business, not operated within a silo. Lonely Planet warns against developing distinct “social media strategies”, preferring to think holistically about how a given social service might benefit both the business and customer. • Expect to fail sometimes. Lonely Planet has experimented with many different platforms, “some have panned out and some haven’t,” Chris Boden says. “Part of innovation is you have to be prepared to experiment and link to platforms that will fail.” Closing Locknote: Todd Sampson, CEO, Leo Burnett Sydney Creativity: the last remaining advantage Todd Sampson is CEO of one of Australia’s leading advertising firms, Leo Burnett Sydney, co-creator of Earth Hour and a popular panellist on TV hit The Gruen Transfer. Mr. Sampson closed the 2010 Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Sydney by advocating creativity as the key to solving any problem — big, small, social, political, economic, technical or environmental. The well-attended session carried a series of challenging thoughts for CIOs and other senior executives: • Creativity differentiates you in a crowded marketplace. CIOs should not let existing IT resources and budgets act as a default roadblock to deploying new and creative ideas. • Creativity is a well-developed but underrated skill in IT departments. Creative problem solving tactics are routinely used to solve specific deployment issues and balance resource utilisation, but the same approaches should be translated into thinking more broadly about how the overall business functions and where it can be enhanced. • Managers need to devote specific time to learning and leading the creative process. Practical techniques offered for fostering creativity included scheduling regular “idea generation” sessions, sometimes inviting people outside your immediate project scope; “reversing” — examining the outcomes from adopting the 5

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

15-18 November 2010

Sydney, Australia

IT Infrastructure & Operations Community contrary approach to accepted wisdom; and “rent a head” — brainstorming how a business leader you respect might solve a specific problem. • Inherent conservatism and fear of unpredictable outcomes often result in new ideas being blocked. Mr. Sampson suggested this is particularly true in larger organisations. A key management skill is learning to balance two conflicting drivers: whereby creativity is essential for expansion, while conservatism is important for stability. “Creativity has the power to change the world, but fear has the power to stop that from happening and the most successful leaders and organisations of the future will be the ones that can successfully balance both.”

What People Asked About People who don’t need the newest technologies are asking for them. How should we respond to requests for the latest and greatest, the most gigabytes and bandwidth, etc.? It’s the 80/20 rule, where 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. End users are getting smarter and more demanding, and as a result, there are many unused capabilities out there. This makes it hard to leap to an integrated vision. Something like extra gigabytes might be important for someone working on scientific research, but not for many other users. It’s important to assess users’ needs before allocating extra capabilities. We have been trying to design applications for the lowest common denominator — because too often, applications are ignored and never used. Applications getting “thrown over the wall” is the single biggest complaint, from a network perspective. To tackle this issue, try the “lifeboat strategy.” Try to ensure that all parties in IT are on board. Make sure that the various parts of IT are all involved on day one. If you’re moving toward the idea that a project is either successful or not, you should instead frame it as “you’re all successful or you’re not.” From a tool perspective, we’ve seen effective use of network simulation tools, such as “Virtual Enterprise,” which test the developers as well as the application. The idea is to use simulation to put developers behind the application they’re creating, as if they were working at the worst location — some remote outpost, for example — and had to do their work there for a day or two. Then they know what it’s like to experience latency. I’m getting a lot of push-back for trying to move to new vendors. A lot of people in-house say things like “This affects my career path,” because they’ve become so adept at working with a certain vendor and its products. The recommendation to them is, “Let’s not stop here; let’s do more.” Get these folks over the first hurdle. The message is, “You’re a very intelligent person and you’ve learned to work with this vendor and product line. You’ll find a better career path and become a better employee by learning to work with this second vendor.” How do you get people on board with software licensing compliance and vendor audits? Make sure employees understand how software is licensed and what rights the contract gives them. They might have moved from the application a year ago, but there is a ghost image. Make a careful analysis of what you will do if you get audited. What should I do if I’m being audited by a vendor? If you are being audited, focus on what the contract says. Inventory agents are good to have, but it’s like waving a red flag to ask the vendor where things are installed. Only offer up what is being requested. Is server virtualization only suitable for Windows workloads? Low-utilization Windows servers are certainly the biggest target for first virtualization projects, offering 10:1 consolidation ratios. But this perception is really rooted in the virtualization vendors’ marketing. Linux and Unix servers can be very successfully virtualized, too, albeit at lower consolidation ratios and using different tools. Ultimately even mainframe workloads shouldn’t be off-limits as your skills and experience grow.

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

15-18 November 2010

Sydney, Australia

IT Infrastructure & Operations Community Things to Watch For IT dynamism. Once upon a time, IT projects were “built to last,” based on nailed-down business requirements and focused on a specific long-term function. IT made deep, single-vendor commitments. In the new era, you will routinely start projects — even build data centers — without knowing all the requirements. Change is simply happening too fast to do anything else. The new rule is “built-to-change.” Virtualization is just one way of achieving the necessary agility in the “built to change” era. It enables “pace layering,” reducing friction between layers of IT that are changing at different rates by repurposing infrastructure to meet new requirements. Virtualization is not just about servers or cost-saving. It’s about how infrastructure as a whole enables IT to become more scalable and flexible, using fewer resources. Treat virtualization as a continuing process, not a project that should be finished. The interplay of trends. Cloud computing, converged fabrics and UCC are just a few trends that start to break down vertical technical silos. Maintain a “horizontal” vision that looks across the entire enterprise, rather than at a single area, no matter what your role is in IT. Leveraging change instead of trying to fight it. Rather than prohibit the use of tools like Facebook in the office, get some value from it. Corporate staples like instant messaging started out facing the same resistance, but ended up producing real benefits in productivity and efficiency. The same will prove true of social media, and potentially a dozen of yet-unseen developments in the years to come. Maintain a positive and creative attitude.

GARTNER IT Infrastructure & Operations COMMUNITY analysts Matt Boon

Nick Ingelbrecht

Managing VP

Research Director

Focus Area — Data Center, Client Computing & IT Operations and Technology and Service Provider

Focus Area — Strategic Planning, Customer Experience Management, Portal Strategy, Cloud Computing, VoIP, Unified Communications and Collaboration

Michele Caminos

Geoff Johnson

Research VP

Research VP

Focus Area — Data Center, Client Computing & IT Operations and Technology and Service Provider

Focus Area — Data Center, Client Computing & IT Operations and Technology and Service Provider

David Cappuccio

Mark Margevicius

Research VP

Research VP

Focus Area — Data Center, Client Computing & IT Operations and Technology and Service Provider

Focus Area — Data Center, Client Computing & IT Operations and Technology and Service Provider

Bob Hafner

Errol Rasit

Managing VP

Principal Research Analyst

Focus Area — VoIP, Unified Communications and Collaboration, Mobile Enterprise Strategy

Focus Area — Data Center, Client Computing & IT Operations and Technology and Service Provider

Cameron Haight

Phil Sargeant

Research VP

Research VP

Focus Area — Data Center, Client Computing & IT Operations and Technology and Service Provider

Focus Area — Data Center, Client Computing & IT Operations and Technology and Service Provider

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Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

15-18 November 2010

Sydney, Australia

IT Infrastructure & Operations Community

2010 SYMPOSIUM/ITXPO SPONSORS

Platinum CA Technologies Citrix Systems Asia Pacific Ektron EMC EMC Greenplum Hitachi Data Systems Interactive Intelligence Kaspersky Lab Australia & New Zealand Riverbed Technology Pty Ltd Sitecore Symantec Telstra VMware

Silver Sponsors AirWatch APC by Schneider Electric Architecting the Enterprise Blue Coat Systems Australia Pty Ltd Compuware Elcom Technology FICO Frontline Systems Australia Global Speech Networks Hagrid Solutions Interactive Micro Focus Australia Pty Ltd Nimsoft Pegasystems Research In Motion Australia Pty Ltd Sky Technologies Software AG Squiz Truphone

Symposium/ITxpo 2011 The World’s Most Important Gathering of CIOs and Senior IT Executives It’s not too early to start planning for next year. We hope to see you again 14-17 November 2011 in Gold Coast, Queensland. Keep up with the latest news, alumni benefits and registration details as they are unveiled for this exciting event by visiting gartner.com/au/symposium.

Upcoming IT Leader Role Events Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit 22-23 February 2011, Sydney • gartner.com/ap/bi

Gartner Data Center & IT Operations Summit 15-16 March 2011, Sydney • gartner.com/ap/datacenter

Gartner Business Process Management Summit 9-10 August 2011, Sydney

Gartner Service Orientated Architecture & Application Integration Summit 9-10 August 2011, Sydney

As a Symposium/ITxpo attendee, you qualify for our exclusive offer to register at the discounted rate of AU $2,325 — that’s $525 off the standard registration fee. To receive this special offer, register with priority code: SYMPD. You can also pass a special offer along to colleagues: they can save $525 on the standard registration fee when they register with priority code: SYMRAC. To take advantage of these special offers, visit the summit website or call 1300 766 663 (Australia only) or +61 2 8569 7622

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