Key Developments
in the Infrastructure Function
Lessons from 2007—Mandates for 2008
Briefing for:
Chief Information Officers
Heads of Infrastructure
Infrastructure Executive Council®
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IEC199RVWX © 2007 Corporate Executive Board. All Rights Reserved.
Operating budgets within infrastructure increased 5.5%.
Early projections show only 4% increase in 2008.
Nearly 80% of heads of infrastructure express interest in
roadmapping the path to end-to-end virtualization.
80% of members have passed the pilot stage with server virtualization—
only 24% of those reported significant cost savings.
75% of infrastructure organizations will delay Vista adoption to 2009 or later.
Organizations in the top quintile of service-management effectiveness achieved
$5M in savings and up to a 70% improvement
in service quality over the lowest quintile.
The length of the average outsourcing contract shrank from 7 years in 2002
to 5.5 years in 2007—the size of contracts has shrunk even faster: industry contracts
value a more than $50M halved over the past five years.
Contents
I. A Year of Improving Partnership
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II. Five Questions for the Head of Infrastructure in 2007
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1. What critical IT and business partner needs are driving infrastructure priorities?
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2. How do I quantify the value of service management so I can better size my investment?
5
3. What skills and responsibilities should my service management resources have?
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4. What activities and characteristics positively inflect the performance
of a service management organization?
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5. How do infrastructure organizations use partnership competencies
to meet specific functional requirements?
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III. A Look Ahead to 2008
9
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IEC199RVWX © 2007 Corporate Executive Board. All Rights Reserved.
I. A Year of Improving Partnership
At a recent gathering in New York, the head of infrastructure for a large industrial chemicals company
remarked that he had seen such a drastic slow down in its ability to drive unit cost improvements that
he charged his staff with finding