While everyone talks about IT infrastructure, there is little agreement on what the term actually means. Some companies view infrastructure mostly as their underlying investment in systems, servers, networks and generic applications such as email. Many go a step further and believe that the design of an effective company infrastructure must include a company’s core software architecture in terms of standards, components, and Web services. A few others are even more ambitious and believe that the data architecture itself, including content standards as well as internal and external taxonomies, should all be seen as part of a company’s underlying infrastructure framework.
These different definitions and understandings can result in radically different strategies and behaviour in terms of IT organizational structures, operating principles and sourcing decisions. While our research has revealed that many CIOs prefer to expand their infrastructure capabilities as opposed to developing new applications, they are clearly struggling to develop the necessary funding models and supporting metrics.
In this report, Kirt will discuss the results of our ongoing infrastructure strategy interviews with IT executives in large corporations. Particular emphasis will be given to identifying advanced techniques for creating, exploiting, and managing, what CSC Research refers to as Thick Infrastructure (Thick I).