It Organization: Building a Worldclass Infrastructure - Hardcover

Kern, Harris; Galup, Stuart; Nemiro, Guy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0130222984 ISBN 13: 9780130222985

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2000

Synopsis

It is painfully clear that few companies are achieving their goals for client/server reliability, availability, and serviceability. It is becoming equally clear that the problems are not technical, but organizational. How does one structure an IT organization that can achieve today's business goals using today's tools and architectures? This book takes on the challenge, and offers realistic, specific answers based on the experiences of more than 40 leading companies. You'll learn exactly what not to do, which lessons to draw lessons from the success of the traditional data center, and most importantly, how to design for the 21st century paradigm of "any data, anywhere, anytime." Learn what it really means to treat your network like you treat your data center; to organize your enterprise around mission-critical support instead of specific technologies; to maintain both centralized control and decentralized operations; to establish standards without imposing rigidity, and to bring discipline without bureaucracy. The book is concise, but the diagnoses are specific -- and so are the solutions.

About this title

About the Author

Harris Kern is an IT consultant who specializes in working with Fortune 1000 firms to establish cost-effective, highly-available infrastructures; and the co-author of four Sun Microsystems Press books, including Building the New Enterprise . He resides in Woodland Hills, CA.

Stuart D. Galup is Assistant Professor of Computer Information Systems at Florida Atlantic University and a Certified Computing Professional. He resides in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

From the Back Cover

2229H-4

Organizing IT for excellence in 21st century distributed environments

Few organizations are achieving their goals for reliability, availability, and serviceability in distributed environments and the obstacles aren't technical, they're organizational. How does one structure an IT organization to succeed with today's tools and architectures? IT Organization: Building a World-Class Infrastructure delivers realistic, specific answers that draw upon the experiences of more than 40 leading companies. You'll discover how to:

• Design your organization to deliver "any data, anywhere, anytime"
• Combine mainframe-class discipline with 21st century flexibility
• Treat your network like you treat your data center
• Organize around business-critical support functions instead of trendy technologies
• Establish standards without imposing rigidity -- and achieve discipline without bureaucracy
• Overcome the myths that prevent IT organizations from succeeding

Harris Kern and his colleagues have built a worldwide reputation for evaluating IT organizations and identifying solutions -- fast. This concise, to-the-point book will help you do the same. Here are the right questions to ask, specific "people and process" techniques that work, sample SLAs and internal support agreements -- everything you need to make change happen, now!

From the Inside Flap

PrefaceStructure, Not Technology

This book brings an urgent message for any Information Technology professional who is responsible for planning, implementing, managing, and supporting client/server (or networked) computing environments. If you want to survive in the networked, client/server world, you must stop, analyze, reorganize and prioritize your infrastructure now.

We spent two years analyzing 40, cross industry Fortune 1000 companies. We were engaged to assist IT organizations in their quest for reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) with client/server environments. This book is based on these case studies.

We found that organizations everywhere have serious latent infrastructure issues. Too often IT managers deal only with the symptoms of their problems by blaming technology, the complexity, or the architecture of client/server environments. The fact is that all of these companies have infrastructure issues that inhibit their ability to have RAS in client/server environments.

All of the companies we analyzed are committed to client/server computing and the transformation to the new paradigm (i.e., any data, anywhere, anytime) which is becoming more prevalent every minute in Internet time. IT organizations must get their acts together to support their business requirements, but the terrifying fact is that IT organizations aren't prepared for the onslaught of the networked world because of the organizational problems we highlight.

The first section highlights the issues and problems of networked computing we found in our travels around the world. This section highlights what not to do.

The second section tells you how to look at the past for answers to the problems in today's environments. This section also shows you how to build that elusive world-class infrastructure.

The third section deals with how to structure your IT organization for the twenty-first century and how to give it a competitive advantage in the "dot comming" world.

And last, but so very important, are the questions we are asked most frequently by IT professionals during our travels.

This book is different than any other book we've written and any other books in the marketplace on IT organization structures because of the 40 case studies. This book is about the non-technical issues that IT organizations need to address to succeed in a client/server environment. This book is about basics-how to structure an organization so that it works. Through case studies and recommendations, we'll show you how to set up procedures, policies, and metrics to make sure the organization is effective.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0130222984
• ISBN 13: 9780130222985
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 172