High Availability and Predictable Performance Alone Doesn't Do It
Today’s business climate is uncertain and many companies are relying more heavily on information technology to improve their competitive footing. This is a challenge for CIO’s, many of whom are struggling to meet existing business commitments with limited resources.
Over one hundred IT executives told us about their struggles to balance IT serviceability and business strategy. What's the perfect blend of providing high availability and predictable performance while wowing end users, meeting business goals and leading IT from a different, more business-oriented perspective? End users, customers, and growth and transformation of the organization are now an IT leader's top priority.
We call this the AlwaysOn Imperative™.
AlwaysOn Imperative™
Many IT departments lack sufficient resources-skilled personnel, streamlined processes and effective technology - to keep operations running smoothly when the business needs it. Moreover, existing applications were probably designed and deployed from the view of IT versus the view of the business, or better yet, the users whose job it is to impact the business.
For example, IT personnel expend significant effort analyzing technical specifications and products, defining IT acceptance testing, and managing project deliverables. Typically, the needs of the users get little attention. When the application isn’t broadly adopted by the users or they experience problems, IT sometimes blames the users.
This technical perspective and approach to designing, deploying and managing IT systems has existed for the past thirty plus years and its weaknesses are becoming more pronounced. Atrion believes that the mindset and perspective of IT needs to change. Change away from technical considerations to those of the users and business.
Applications should be designed centered on business requirements, user needs and business value over the near and long term. The main focus during the deployment phase should be on user acceptance, training and usage plus IT metrics for business impact (e.g. application availability & performance for the users; user adoption rates; and productivity gains).
The operational focus should be proactively centered on high availability and performance through awareness and visibility into the applications and all other elements that must be functioning optimally in order to ensure critical business services are enabled and business goals are met.
Atrion has developed five tenets for the AlwaysOn Philosophy:
Manage from the Business Process Perspective
Monitor critical applications down through underlying equipment understanding the business impact even the most basic component could have which will quicken problem resolution and reduce unplanned downtime.
Focus on User Experience
Shift perspective from technology performance to business impacting user productivity.
Design with the End in Mind
Meet the objective of high availability and performance over the multi-year usage period.
Follow the Money
Stay focused on the financial and business benefits of IT systems vs. technical benefits.
Break the Silos
Achieve high collaboration across the units within IT and with users.