Referred to as organic IT, John McCarthy, group director of research at industry analyst Forrester Research, believes that sharing software, processors, storage and networks across applications using this process could help an enterprise cut its technology infrastructure costs.
McCarthy said this allowed enterprises to be more flexible and adaptable to the business environment. "CIOs and business people are frustrated by today's IT infrastructure reality," he argued. A report by Forrester Research's Frank Gillett published earlier this year, found that companies needed a way to increase use of technology they already had, and the ability to make it more flexible on short notice.
"Despite IT budgets that can exceed US$1 billion a year, Global 3500 firms still find that their key applications can't talk to one another," the report found. "Meanwhile, they keep adding hardware and software to their infrastructure brew, making things more complex and difficult to integrate."
According to McCarthy, CIOs should be thinking about implementing elements of organic IT now. "Preparing today so that migration isn't as dramatic," he said.
However, McCarthy admits it's an evoluntary path, and that enterprises are generally about three to five years away from achieving this vision of organic IT. But he believes that CIOs are waking up to a new reality where the technology costs too much, and doesn't deliver on its promise with vendors offering warmed-over technology repeats.
