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by Piers Ford on Sunday, 15 March 2009
zoomHAMON: Previously, CIOs have reduced costs by cutting budgets or delaying projects, leaving the organisation vulnerable.
"Today's CIOs are under increasing pressure to reduce costs and maximise existing resources," says Christoph Reichert, VP High Performance Computing (HPC) sales at vendor Platform Computing.
"At the same time, they are faced with a need for greater IT processing power and the significant challenge of making the best possible decisions in the shortest amount of time. CIOs in many industries including financial services, oil and gas, and electronics, are turning to the many benefits that high performance computing offers." he says.
"The technology involves pooling processing power across an organisation to create a virtual supercomputer, so that processing power can be deployed where and when it is needed most," adds Reichert.
Transparency, or the lack of it, has been a major contributor to the volatility of the markets. With major fraud cases surfacing, there will be more pressure to have the right controls in place. It’s a tough balancing act.
"This pooling of computing power is just the start. In the next 18 months, organisations will begin to start pooling the power of their data centres to establish ‘internal clouds', giving users significant computing power on tap," he expects.
Reichert's prediction echoes Zaki Sabbagh's similar view that the concept of cloud computing is gaining favour fast. But Sabbagh says there are other technologies which will also become increasingly important architectural weapons in the CIO's armoury of systems to be deployed in 2009.
"Virtualisation will be crucial from an architecture point of view," he says. "We've already started to create our first virtualised systems environment. Over the last three or four years, we've introduced armies of blade servers which are generating huge amounts of heat and cooling requirements, and they're all using hugely varying percentages of their overall capacity."
Airline inspiration
Vendor Amadeus has a strong presence in the Middle East, supplying technology to all Arab Air Carriers Organisation (AACO) airlines including Etihad, as well as many travel agencies. Few sectors have been hit as quickly and sharply by the downturn, and executive vice president for development Jean-Paul Hamon says CIOs in other industries could do well to watch how this market responds to tough economic conditions.
"CIOs will be under significant pressure to reduce costs," he explains. "In the past, many CIOs have simply reduced costs by cutting the IT budget and often delaying important technology projects. Unfortunately, this often leaves organisations in a more vulnerable position and less able to compete in both good and bad times - one thing CIOs must avoid in the current climate.
"Their challenge is to maintain the dual principles of innovation - vital to the long term health of any organisations - and cost control. This is what our community-based management platform, which allows airlines to adopt new generation technology on a pay-per-use basis - enabled for airline."
Hamon says agile IT infrastructures will become very important as they support the dynamic strategies organisations need in order to survive: "This will mean balancing projects that deliver measurable ROI and those critical to your long-term IT strategy."
Vendor Amadeus has a strong presence in the Middle East, supplying technology to all Arab Air Carriers Organisation (AACO) airlines including Etihad, as well as many travel agencies. Few sectors have been hit as quickly and sharply by the downturn, and executive vice president for development Jean-Paul Hamon says CIOs in other industries could do well to watch how this market responds to tough economic conditions.
"CIOs will be under significant pressure to reduce costs," he explains. "In the past, many CIOs have simply reduced costs by cutting the IT budget and often delaying important technology projects. Unfortunately, this often leaves organisations in a more vulnerable position and less able to compete in both good and bad times - one thing CIOs must avoid in the current climate.
"Their challenge is to maintain the dual principles of innovation - vital to the long term health of any organisations - and cost control. This is what our community-based management platform, which allows airlines to adopt new generation technology on a pay-per-use basis - enabled for airline."
Hamon says agile IT infrastructures will become very important as they support the dynamic strategies organisations need in order to survive: "This will mean balancing projects that deliver measurable ROI and those critical to your long-term IT strategy."
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