VMware's "Accelerating the Business of Innovation" Ad

I was reading the Wall Street Journal the other morning and came across an interesting half-page ad in the Personal Journal section. It stated simply, "Accelerating the business of innovation." They had a big head shot of John Hill, CTO of Siemens IT Solutions and Services, where he provided the quote around better return on capital investments, faster responsiveness to their customers, et cetera.

The one statement that Mr Hill made that resonated with me was, "freedom to focus on business innovation, not rudimentary IT plumbing." Perfectly stated Mr. Hill.

I couldn't agree more.

We have all seen, for many years now, that IT is working hard enough to just keep the lights on and not enough time on helping the business innovate, increase competitive advantage, et cetera. The business depends on IT more than ever before and business executives do see the strategic importance of technology as core to their product and service strategy and central to their differentiation and competitive advantage. But the rub here is that executives I've talked to are concerned about the ability of their IT organizations to support it. Now that isn't to say that some IT executives aren't working hard to fulfill the business' needs using all the tools and processes at their disposal, but..

Here is where the ad got me to thinking. This is where IT can get out of the vicious cycle that it finds itself in when it comes to the old standard, design-build-operate model that has plagued it for years. By using virtualization technologies like VMware ESX and Citrix XenServer along with a solid application and desktop delivery infrastructure like Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop, now combine that with a new strategy of business technology, IT can make the transformation to business enabler and achieve what I called in a previous post "convergence".

The technology of virtualization and application delivery speak for themselves, so I won't do a deep dive here, but these technologies need to be a key, base components of an IT Portfolio.

IT needs to take steps to transform itself from Information Technology to Business Technology by utilizing these technologies along with ITIL, Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, et cetera. IT executives cannot afford to maintain status quo. They must replace standalone, product-oriented support functions through business-oriented services and focus the remaining IT organization on a proactive governance model of the company's ecosystem.

Business-Technology-as-a-Service (BTaaS) is what needs to happen. With the virtualization and application delivery infrastructures as the base of the BTaaS formula, IT can be transformed.