What's Your Purpose?

What Purpose Does Your IT Infrastructure Operation Serve?

In today’s fast-paced and technology-driven world, understanding the true purpose of your IT infrastructure operations is more critical than ever. IT infrastructure operations are the backbone of any organization, ensuring seamless functionality and optimization of both physical and virtual assets. By cutting downtime, raising efficiency, and enabling innovation, IT infrastructure becomes central to achieving your organization's goals, transforming from a cost center to a key driver of business value. It's all the more shocking to discover that over 60% of IT leaders say their infrastructure is not ready for the future, because the responsibility for getting it there falls squarely on the shoulders of the CIO.

The role of the CIO is pivotal in establishing a high-quality InfraOps framework. In addition to managing IT strategy and governance, they must align IT operations with business objectives. By ensuring that the right hardware and operational systems support the business’s needs, they elevate the IT department from a mere support function to a strategic driver of business success. But today's CIOs – especially in multinational companies – face three main challenges in achieving these goals. They must pick the right way to consume technical hardware, ensure clear and automated communication, and redesign existing systems for smooth workflow.

Our InfraOps framework lays out a plan that helps organizations meet these challenges head-on. What’s unique about our approach is the emphasis on going back to basics. Corporate incrementalism has led to a closed position where not much can change. CIOs need a pawn break to forcefully trigger “opening up” the game and chart a path forward to victory. This isn’t about a tool or a hire but a comprehensive strategy for industrializing our infrastructure operation from the foundation that reveals your purpose and demonstrates the vast value your organization provides. In short, it’s an invitation to take the “longcut” you know your company needs.

Maximizing Business Outcomes through Strategic InfraOps

IT infrastructure operations directly impact business outcomes. For instance, fast hardware deployment reduces time-to-market for new products. Strong cybersecurity protects the company’s intellectual property and customer data. By aligning InfraOps efforts with these kinds of outcomes, organizations can link their IT investments to quantifiable metrics of success. These include cost savings from less downtime, increased revenue from faster product launches, and better customer satisfaction from reliable IT. CIOs that can frame IT operations in terms of the value it delivers transform the narrative from viewing IT as a cost center to recognizing it as a vital contributor to business success.

The most obvious examples come from hardware-tech-core businesses, where high-quality InfraOps is table stakes for them. For example, content delivery network (CDN) businesses that improve their IT asset integration process will also create faster deployment cycles, directly linking InfraOps efforts to business success. But for most companies, the value of InfraOps is spread throughout the organization, making it more challenging to tease out all the different ways an IT infrastructure strategy can truly make a difference.

For example, a strong InfraOps playbook significantly reduces administrative tasks and CAPEX burdens. Often seen purely as cost savings, the reductions are instead opportunities to enhance value, as these efficiencies free up InfraOps professionals to focus on higher-value activities that directly contribute to business growth. Moreover, the savings can be reinvested into strategic InfraOps upgrades that future-proof the business.

Let's look at the example of a high-frequency trading (HFT) firm like Acme HFT that relies on their IT infrastructure to execute trades at lightning speed, capitalizing on market inefficiencies. Obviously, InfraOps clearly plays a critical role in their successfully executing trades. But in many respects, that’s the least interesting part of what Acme HFT does and certainly not how they ultimately succeed as a company. Consider what is actually involved in Acme HFT’s business model and just how reliant it is on a cutting-edge IT infrastructure strategy:

1. Identifying Market Opportunities: Acme HFT employs qualitative researchers (QRs) to identify potential trading opportunities in global markets under the premise that advantages could be exploited with a nimble and flexible IT infrastructure strategy.

2. Testing the Strategy: Once an opportunity is identified, rapid testing of the trading strategy is crucial, either through partner testing or private testing. Either way, having access to a robust InfraOps framework matters immensely, as every day without a fully operational and functional IT infrastructure that can test the strategy in real-time can result in missed opportunities and potential losses.

3. Deployment of Hardware: After successful testing, Acme HFT must quickly deploy technical hardware in the target market, which could be locations like Brazil, India, or Saudi Arabia. The speed from QR green light to powered-on hardware – manifested in the presence or absence of an InfraOps strategy – directly impacts the firm’s ability to swiftly and effectively capitalize on the trading opportunity.

With the hardware in place and operational, Acme HFT can then execute trades based on the tested strategy.

The Acme HFT example is instructive for all the reasons revealed above, but most of all because almost every multinational company that relies on a sophisticated IT framework has the very same incentives and economics at play. Regardless of whether they are larger or smaller, or whether they have a profit extraction methodology based on services or products, at the end of the day, the same needs must be met.

Key Actions for Executives and Managers

Each stakeholder must take ownership of their actions and advocate for logical business decisions that maximize the return on IT infrastructure. Here are starting points for organizations to consider:

• C-Level Executives: Empower the CIO and enhance InfraOps sovereignty to align with strategic goals while understanding how the technical hardware supports the business's profit-making activities.

• CIOs: Focus on tangible progress and foster an agile IT department while starting with foundational infrastructure work.

• Directors of Infrastructure: Treat hardware as a commodity and streamline deployments to create procurement efficiencies and multiple integration options.

• Engineers: Free up engineering resources from administrative tasks to allow them to concentrate on core competencies, drive progress, and improve collaboration.  

• Technical Project Managers: Leverage automation to streamline operations and centralize and automate processes to reduce reliance on inefficient communication.

• Datacenter and Colocation Managers: Use asset provenance and optimize infrastructure to ensure clear visibility and management of IT assets.

• Procurement and Sourcing Professionals: Drive value and efficiency by challenging standard procurement models that don’t commodify hardware.

• Compliance professionals: Link compliance to asset provenance to both streamline processes and make them more efficient.

• Logistics professionals: Optimize IT procurement and deployment, ensuring smooth tracking and management of technology assets.

To use these strategies well, organizations need to reverse engineer how they make money, closely observing how their business model relies on the need for technical hardware consumption. Although the tenets of InfraOps provide valuable guidance, the ideas are designed to kickstart internal conversations that lead to better infrastructure operations, and each enterprise will need to execute their own custom InfraOps playbook.

The Path to Enhanced Business Efficiency and Value

The journey toward becoming a more effective CIO, or stakeholder in this business area begins with recognizing the importance of InfraOps and reimagining what progress is possible. InfraOps is critical now and will only grow in importance. Understanding your role in linking it directly to business value is important. Challenge the perception that your department is mostly a cost center. Question existing processes and develop the confidence to increase your value and strategic impact. By applying these ideas, you can enhance your organization’s efficiency and future readiness.