The document discusses how mission-critical IT continues to drive mission-critical business operations. It notes that major system outages continue to plague even large organizations, costing hundreds of thousands per incident on average. The interconnectedness of modern systems means reliability is more important than ever. More than a third of applications are now deemed mission-critical. While virtualization and automation have improved availability, most organizations remain in early stages of implementing next-generation infrastructure strategies. Truly mission-critical systems require high flexibility, scalability, and reliability combined.

1. 1 © 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

2. Mission-Critical IT Still Drives Mission-
Critical Business
John Brand, VP and Principal Analyst, CIO Group
March, 2012
jbrand@forrester.com
2 © 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited
2009

3. Enterprise IT is facing
fundamental change.
Mission-critical has now
become a global imperative
for the entire industry.
“Who would have thought that
email would ever have become
mission-critical?”
3 © 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

4. The public face of mission-critical failures
 Major system outages continue to plague the best and brightest
– Blackberry, Amazon, major international banks (HSBC, NatWest, First Direct,
RBS, OCBC and DBS)
 Ponemon Institute Study, February 2011
– The cost of a data center outage ranges from a minimum cost of $38,969 to a
maximum of $1,017,746 per organization, with an overall average cost of
$505,502 per incident.
 Interconnectedness of systems mean reliability is even more critical than
ever
– It‟s not just you….it‟s who you serve and who serves you
– Data provided and consumed by third parties can disrupt entire industries, not
just your own organisation
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5. More Than A Third Of Applications Are Deemed
Mission-Critical
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6. Reality: Three common approaches to implementing
“next-generation” infrastructure
Data Centre Data Centre Data Centre
Refresh Renovation Transformation
FOCUS: FOCUS:
FOCUS:
reduce operational complexity, optimise capacity, availability,
increase capacity/density, increase
increase flexibility/agility, flexibility, performance and cost -
power efficiency, maximise floor
At least 80%
space Less than
availability/reliability, optimise
efficiency through policy
based on each business requirement
and policy
of 15% of APPROACH:
APPROACH:
organisations
APPROACH:
significant use of infrastructure
organisations
significant use of infrastructure and
significant use of infrastructure,
platform and application
are here
virtualisation (CPU, storage, are here
platform virtualisation. Increased use
virtualisation. Strong emphasis on
network). Optimise use of assets
of automation. Optimise availability of
assets
Less than 5%
business service level management
and policy automation
of
INVESTMENT STRATEGY:
INVESTMENT STRATEGY: INVESTMENT STRATEGY: organisations
minimise capital investments,
preference for variable operational
maximise depreciation schedules reduce capital investments, focus on
and optimise asset value variable operational cost models are here
costs for all business requirements.
Change of focus from „cost-to-have‟
to „cost-to-do‟
(and most of
KPI‟s: KPI‟s: these are
KPI‟s:
IT service level metrics IT service-to-value metrics service
Business value metrics
providers)
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7. Reality Bites: Most Organizations Remain at Stage 2
Stage 2
Stage 1
“Strategic
“Acclimation”
consolidation”
Gaining
Manageable
confidence as a
deployment of
concept and
business critical
toolset
workloads
Stage 3 Stage 4
“Process “Pooling and
Improvement” automation”
Using tools to Service centres,
automate virtual chargeback,
landscape SLAs, QoS
7 © 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited SOURCE: Adapted from Forrester Research Report, July 2009
“Assess Your Infrastructure Virtualization Maturity”

8. The Seven Qualities Of Extraordinary Software
Forrester Research, “The Seven Qualities Of Wildly Desirable Software” - January 2011, Mike Gualtieri
8 © 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

9. Mission-critical: evolving to meet changing business
needs
Large Variable
workloads Rapid workloads
Little or no and/or
change random
change
Few Many
moving moving
parts parts
Past ------- Future
High performance mission- Highly flexible, scalable
critical system system – with in-built reliability
Only the most mature organisations have managed to combine
mission-critical capabilities with the requirement for flexibility at scale
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10. Highly Available Applications Are Monitored, Fault
Tolerant, And Fixable
"We have been averaging about 20 minutes a year of unplanned unavailability per
year for our primary ERP application, about 1.5 minutes per month. " (Major
aerospace manufacturer, ERP system)
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11. Evolving “backup and restore” towards “resilience
and recovery”
October 2011 “2012 IT Budget Planning Guide For CIOs”
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12. Unix still provides a trusted mission-critical
environment
 Unix kernel implementations for mission critical workloads are typically
“trim and tuned”
– Overall level of kernel maturity is perceived as higher than that of other
operating systems such as Linux, providing better reliability, particularly under
heavy loads.
 Better error recovery from transient errors, especially network and I/O
device failures
– Particularly when using hardware partitioning and virtualisation
 Predictive diagnostics are perceived as being better
– UNIX perceived to be giving better warning of impending component failure
 Seen as having much more mature clustering for both HA and DR than
x86 alternative
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13. HP-UX Users‟ Immediate Plans
Unix
Total cost
Disaster Immature
Reliability Scalability Availability of
recovery alternatives
ownership
January 2012 “Oracle Versus HP: Customers Lose; Oracle And x86 Linux Vendors Win”
13 © 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

14. The OS centric view of the
world is changing…fast.
Effective management of a
platform that supports multiple
OS’s can deliver better
price/performance and flexibility
than standardising on any single
operating system
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15. Three steps to build your always-on, always-
available enterprise
 Step 1: Understand the costs of downtime of critical services
– Calculate potential impact on revenue, productivity and relationships
 Step 2: Focus availability on the end-to-end-service, not on infrastructure
components
– The seamless transition from the old-world of "mission-critical" to the new-
world of "continuous availability" is driven by continuous evolution
 Step 3: Match business objectives to the right mix of technologies
– Focus on the capabilities, not the products
– The effective management capabilities of the platform are more important than
any specific feature or function
– It is never an “either/or‟ infrastructure/architecture decision for supporting
mission-critical
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16. Thank you
John Brand
+61 3.902.41703
jbrand@forrester.com
www.forrester.com
© 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited