It has been about 16 years since client/server computing
first hit the headlines. The client/server model was designed to
give users greater flexibility and ease IT management by offering
users what the industry said would be a viable alternative to
mainframe computing.
Most people now agree the client/server approach failed, and
Forrester Research has a new model: organic IT. I recently met
Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett, who has been a driving
force behind the new concept.
Gillett's first remark was that client/server computing is
inefficient. For instance, programming with Java or the Microsoft
application programming interfaces leads to proprietary code, which
increases labour costs. The answer to this dilemma is XML web
services, which provide a standard way to build applications.
His other main bugbear was that client/server computing is
remarkably inefficient in the way it uses computing resources.
The classic example is a website that needs to cope with a peak of
100,000 users on the last day of a marketing promotion. To support
this peak, the IT director needs to ensure the datacentre for the
website has enough capacity in terms of processing power, network
bandwidth and storage to cope with the huge influx of users. For
most of the time this expensive computing infrastructure sits idle.
Gillett argued that during the idle time, the IT resources could be
redeployed, and thus improve the utilisation of hardware.
Up to a point, this makes perfect sense. Why should I need to buy
2Tbytes of storage up front when I only need 500Gbytes today. It is
cheaper to buy the lower-capacity disc system and expand as and
when I need to. As a bonus, I may find that the cost per terabyte
of disc capacity falls over time. The same is true of memory or
processing power. This is simply the application of Moore's Law:
performance doubles every 18 months while the cost remains
static.
This is clearly great news for users. If organic IT succeeds, you
will never need to buy expensive hardware up front, instead waiting
until you need the extra power or headroom it offers.
Somehow, I don't think this is how the industry sees organic IT, as
I believe it could restrict how hardware firms position their
enterprise hardware. "Room for growth" and "headroom" are simply
other ways of referring to under-used and expensive IT
infrastructure.
Suppliers need users to buy this hardware to recoup the cost of the
research and development work they have undertaken in creating such
products. Rest assured, they will make their money back somehow.