Unify and Simplify
Enterprise IT is complex. We need to make the management of IT simple.

Every CIO I talk to is concerned that the IT environment is growing more complex all the time. There's no disputing this fact - here is why. Consider what has happened in business process automation during the course of my 30-year career in the IT industry. Back then, the focus of IT was the automation of back-office processes, including accounting, finance and order processing. From there, they moved to the front office, handling order-to-cash, customer relations management and the like. Now they're moving beyond the front office into what is known as the extended enterprise. Businesses are extending the scope of automation to customers the enterprise aims to serve. An obvious example is wireless devices in supermarkets that use RFID technology tied into direct ordering through the Internet.

To be sure, the continued automation of business processes is a good thing; it drives up productivity and enables economic growth. But each layer of automation tends to be built on a new technology base, without replacing the things that were there before. The result of this aggregation of technology: We are creating ever more complexity in the enterprise IT environment.

On top of all this come new technologies, including virtualization of storage, networks and databases, service-oriented architectures (SOA), and the proliferation of BlackBerry devices and other wireless gadgets. Managing and securing this increasingly complex stew of technologies is the greatest challenge CIOs face today.

But many CIOs are still managing complexity the old-fashioned way: by throwing labor at the problem. This is an inefficient and expensive solution, because it forces CIOs to spend most of their IT budget on tactical activities, primarily labor. As a result, CIOs are prevented from pursuing strategic projects that could deliver enormous value to the business. That's a waste. The CIO's true mission is not merely to hold this enormous complexity together, but rather to act as an architect for change in business processes.

So what do CIOs need to help Them move beyond the day-to-day management of IT and assume a strategic role in the business?

If CIOs automate their infrastructures correctly, they will find that their companies' IT dollars are shifting toward strategic and transformational projects. Their organisational structures will be built more around infrastructure services and less around technologies. Their companies' capacities to innovate will grow, and their requirements for labor will diminish.

In other words, by managing IT more effectively, a CIO can do what the CIO is supposed to do: transform business processes to deliver profound value.

The management of IT must change from a disjointed collection of point solutions to a software suite that supports a company's IT processes. Integrated suites of software are required to manage and secure all layers of IT, including storage, networks, systems, applications, platforms, services and users. At CA, we call this approach Enterprise IT Management, or EITM.

EITM is designed to do for IT what ERP did for business processes. EITM provides a path for the evolution of enterprise wide IT management from a reactive, event-driven approach to one that is proactive. In this environment, IT organisations can begin to anticipate their business needs. They can then configure their systems accordingly. Finally, they can optimize to ensure those needs are met.

The bottom line: Enterprise IT is not simple. And it's not going to become simple. What we have to do instead is to make the management of IT simple.

Armed with this approach, CIOs will be in an ideal position to play a strategic business role. They will be able to ensure that their organisations reap all the benefits of IT -both today and in the future.