Smart IT Infrastructure

The planet we live on isn't just getting smaller and flatter—it's also getting smarter. By "smarter," we mean a world where digital intelligence can be embedded not just in individual things, but also across entire systems, impacting everything from traffic flows to electric power to the way our food is grown, processed and delivered.

But you might be surprised to learn that information technology—which ought to be the smartest aspect of the planet—is itself in need of an intelligence makeover.

It's not a problem with the technology per se. Servers, storage, PCs, software, networking gear and the Internet will all continue to become more powerful, affordable and available. And according to IDC, data volumes and network bandwidth are expected to grow ten-fold in the next three years.

The problem is how all this technology is currently configured into systems: The way data centers are designed and operated. The way applications are developed and deployed. The way PCs and servers are managed, upgraded and kept secure. The fact is, the IT systems that underpin so much of how the world works must become much smarter.

How much smarter? The average commodity server rarely uses more than 6% of its available capacity. In some organizations, as many as 30% of servers aren't utilized at all; they simply waste energy and valuable data center space. IT energy consumption is expected to double in the next five years. In some cases, nearly 70% of companies' IT budgets can be devoted to managing, maintaining, securing and upgrading their systems rather than building new capabilities, services and applications.

And consider what's coming: hundreds of billions of smart things—sensors, cameras, cars, shipping containers, intelligent appliances, RFID tags by the hundreds of millions—all becoming interconnected. This will enable new, highly flexible ways of interacting with customers, employees, patients and citizens from any device, anywhere. The resulting volume of data promises insight and intelligence to solve some of our biggest problems—but only if we can process and make sense of it in real time.

If we are going to realize the enormous potential of a smarter planet, we have to reinvent the IT of the 21st century in the same way that we industrialized our factory floors in the 20th—making it more efficient, more dynamic, less complex and less costly.

Fortunately, smarter computing models are at hand. With "service oriented" software, companies can unlock business services from the underlying technology, so their software can be changed and reused flexibly—at a fraction of the cost of developing it from scratch. Virtualization can help companies reinvent their data centers, eliminating up to 70% of their servers and 80% of their floor space. Service management software can orchestrate all of these systems from one place, while letting IT users serve themselves, cutting administrative costs. Together, these new capabilities enable "cloud computing," a new way of looking at IT as a distributed capability, which can be tapped into simply and easily.

Information technology has taken us a long way in the past 50 years. But seizing the opportunities before us will depend on more than intelligent machines. It will depend on spreading intelligence across our technology infrastructures. Let's build a smarter planet.