Preface

Structure, 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.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Ken Moskowitz, Doug Taggart, and Steve Levy from the Standard & Poor's IT organization. Ken is the CIO, Steve is Executive Vice President for Applications Development, and Doug is the Executive Vice President of Infrastructure. These gentlemen have created an atmosphere at S&P that's second to none. In the five years we've been visiting with IT organizations around the world we have been looking for an IT environment that's willing to apply our methodologies to build that elusive world-class infrastructure. Well, we found one, and it's theirs at S&P.

Most of our time was spent with Doug's organization. His direct reports are Stephanie Jason, Manager of the Help Desk; Rich Adams, Director of Global Technologies; John Andrews, Director of Network Operations; and Nikki Gomez, Director of Client Services.

Not only was it a pleasure to work with these people, but they understood the vision, methodologies, and what it truly takes to implement a world-class infrastructure. They've created an organizational structure that supports people, processes and technology.

Acknowledgments

From Harris Kern: My congratulations to Paul Zazzera, the CIO at Time, Inc., and his staff. When we first visited their IT shop 1995 to perform an infrastructure assessment, it was one of the worst-run environments we had ever seen. We visited them once again in 1999 to see if things had improved. Today they are in the top five of the world's most cost-efficient IT organizations.

To Michael Hawkins for his friendship and contributions on the New Enterprise series and the Enterprise Computing Institute. Michael's enthusiasm, support, and knowledge have been one of the primary reasons that both have been successful.

Thanks to Steve McKenna for his support and friendship. Steve truly understands the importance of having a reliable, available, and serviceable IT infrastructure.

I would also like to thank my wife, Hanny, for her special love and support. Without her great cooking I would never be able to remain healthy and work the number of hours that I do.

From Stuart Galup: I would like to thank Harris Kern for his friendship. He is a great writing partner and a knowledgeable information technology professional. I wish him luck with his series and hope to have the pleasure of working with him on another book in the future.

I would also like to thank my wife, Dawn, and daughter, Christen, for their support.

From Guy Nemiro: I, too, thank Harris Kern for the education, support, and leadership he has shown me. I'm grateful for the helpful insights from Al Fortag, Dan Kronstadt, Rich Schiesser, Terry Tolman, Craig Williams, and John Wingler.