How the recession is reshaping IT ops

InfoWorld - Economic conditions may be even worse than they appear, and that spells significant changes for IT.

Smart chief technology officers and CIOs are no doubt listening when the great economic minds of our times publicly predict what the next few months might hold. Whether that's the IMF calling the current situation a "Great Recession," Warren Buffett remarking about how the U.S. economy has "fallen off a cliff," or Harvard economics professor Robert Barro saying there's a 20% chance we'll sink into a depression, one collective outlook for March is that 2009 is a lost cause in terms of economic recovery.

IT shops simply cannot afford to ignore the world at large, so CIOs are likely to keep purse strings tight for months to come, and as a result, there will undoubtedly be long-lasting changes.

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"It's a very strange environment that's been created," said David Williams, an analyst at Gartner Inc. "It will definitely reshape IT management and operations in a number of ways. Some will be subtle, some deeper."

Cost-cutting is changing how IT operates

The fundamentals of the economy have changed. With so much financial pressure, IT shops are being forced to make moves that optimize costs much more quickly than they would in an economic boom. Cloud computing, consolidation and virtualization were already gaining steam, and the recession will kick their adoption into high gear, analysts agreed.

"There's an incredible focus this year on driving efficiency," said Rick Villars, an analyst at IDC. "What this means is reducing capital expenditures and trying to cut operational expenses wherever possible."

To that end, Cisco Systems Inc. is planning a big data center push this week with virtualization smack in the middle of its strategy. Hewlett-Packard Co. detailed last week new products and services it claims can help customers plan for the economic recovery.

Analyst firms predict that IT shops will turn their budgets toward cost-cutting technologies -- specifically cloud computing, server and storage consolidation, and virtualization -- that will help reduce capital expenditures. IDC projects that IT spending on cloud computing will reach $42 billion by 2012, with cost savings as the primary driver. Gartner predicts that 10% of servers will be virtual by year's end, and that number will skyrocket to 60% by 2013.

That trio of cost-reducing trends, Gartner's Williams said, "eats away at the role of the data center manager. It's a bit unrealistic to say that IT will be thrown away, but it's going to be a harder job than ever."