Stamford, CT September 18, 2001 A recent research study by META Group indicates that infrastructure and infrastructure development (ID) will be among the most critical core competencies IT organizations must maintain by 2003.
"Parts of application development, systems integration, networking and application maintenance may be outsourced," said report co-author Bruce Robertson, vice president in META Group's Adaptive Infrastructure Strategies (AIS) Infusion program, "but it's ultimately the IT organization that is responsible for creating and maintaining an infrastructure that can support new applications and new business initiatives."
Other significant findings from the study, titled E-Business: Impact on Infrastructure, include:
- Slowing Budgets. ID priorities will evolve from overhead cost estimation to business investment planning. Marketing of ID projects and solutions will have to focus on cost issues. The emphasis is on cheaper, not just faster and better.
- E-Business Infrastructure Facing Slow Growth. Real reductions in budget will continue beyond 2001.
- Middleware Components. It will take another couple of years before middleware enhancements enable substantial reduction in application architecture complexity. Implementation of system-to-system infrastructure is still planned.
- Users Seeking Vendors That Deliver Business Value -- Not Just Technology. Users also want vendors to take responsibility for their products and services through actual implementation.
- Changing ID Organization. Its role will evolve from infrastructure planning to delivery of universal services (execution, security, and directory) and integration services (application, analytical, portal, and content.)
"Given slowing budgets, ID organizations will need to employ techniques such as infrastructure pattern matching (design), infrastructure impact assessment (planning), predictive cost modeling (budgeting), application subscriptions (packaging), and account management (customer service) to compete for investment dollars," added Robertson.
