Chapter 9. The Organization for the Twenty-First Century

Whether it's the twenty-first or thirtieth century, whether it's legacy computing, client/server computing or something new coming along in the next N number of years, if you're supporting mission-critical systems, don't tamper with something that's worked for several decades. As we mentioned earlier in the book, mission critical in the IT world is synonymous with mainframe computing, Please don't let mainframe computing turn you off. Keep an open mind as you read this section. Much of what we discuss evolved from the nasty mainframe era.

In our 1994 book, Rightsizing the New Enterprise, we made a comment which we still use at speaking engagements, "Don't trash mainframe disciplines." In 1994 we were referring to processes. After performing extensive case studies we include the organization structure in the category of mainframe disciplines. Don't trash the disciplines!

In this section we introduce you to the structure to best support Enterprise Computing. Not mainframe computing, not client/server computing, but Enterprise Computing. Technology has nothing to do with it.

You'll probably go into shock after reading the first few paragraphs of this section. After 40 infrastructure assessments encompassing hundreds of pages of data, history repeats itself.

We started putting together a structure to resolve the issues shown in Table 2-1 and, lo and behold, it looked very familiar. Much of the structure looked just like the mainframe data center environment that evolved back in the 1970s.

We kept doubting our overall solution. After all, how would it look to be part of the Enterprise Computing Institute and sound like mainframe people? Is it a coincidence? Actually, the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. No other environment provided better RAS for supporting mission-critical applications than the mainframe environment. The key words are mission-critical. Technology had absolutely nothing to do with it. So why did we choose to ignore it after all these years? We automatically assumed that it wouldn't work for client/server computing because the technology and architecture was so much different. And let's not forget the bad rap the mainframe environment received in the late eighties and early nineties. But as we enter the 21st century, IT professionals better wake up and start embracing the positive aspect from that era!

We need to stop the rhetoric and stop reinventing the wheel. A good example of this is how companies with non-mainframe environments do everything possible not to use the term data center. In our travels we've heard that the term data center has a mainframe connotation. So what's the point? They refer to it as the production server room, Server room, computer room, etc. Come on gang, let's really be proud of what the data center exemplified.