【正文】 ale up to thousands of users and handle batch transactions efficiently.In contrast, a typical wholesale bank39。s two divisions didn39。s transparency helps business users understand how demand drives the consumption and cost of resources.Companies that make the transition gain big business benefits. By reducing plexity, eliminating redundant activity, and boosting the utilization of assets, they can make their infrastructure 20 to 30 percent more productive—on top of the benefit from previous efficiency efforts—thereby providing far greater output and flexibility. Even larger savings can be achieved by using lowcost, modity assets when possible. Developers no longer must specify an application39。s peak demand, which is rarely attained, vast amounts of expensive capacity sit unused across the infrastructure at any given time. Moreover, applications are tightly linked to individual servers and storage devices, so the excess capacity can39。9 / 10Managing nextgeneration IT infrastructureThe days of building to order are over. The time is ripe for an industrial revolution.James M. Kaplan, Markus L246。t be shared.Now, however, technological advances—bined with new skills and management practices—allow panies to shed this buildtoorder approach. A decade into the challenging transition to distributed puting, infrastructure groups are managing clientserver and Webcentered architectures with growing authority. Companies are adopting standardized application platforms and development languages. And today39。s technical underpinnings and can therefore focus on work that delivers greater business value。t radically change their organizational or reporting structures, IT governance now seeks to ensure that product and service levels are consistent across business units in order to minimize costs and to improve the infrastructure39。s application portfolio has more segments, with a wider range of needs. Some applications—such as derivatives, pricing, and riskmanagement tools—must execute putationintensive analyses in minutes rather than hours. Fundstransfer applications allow for little or no downtime。t easily be ported to new hardware. The group should also decide how to introduce new technologies and to migrate existing applications that are easier to move.At the product level, the group must define the features, service levels, and price of each product. For each application support product, to give one example, it will be necessary to specify a programming language, an acceptable level of downtime, and a price for infrastructure usage. That price, in turn, depends on how the group decides to charge for puting, storage, processor, and network usage. The group has to consider whether its pricing model should offer discounts for accurate demand forecasts or drive users to specific products through strategic pricing.Looking forward, panies may find that welldefined products and product portfolios are the single most important determinant of the infrastructure function39。 software tools for automating these operational processes。s example and aggregate demand across products instead of applications. and budgeting. Product demand drives budgets. Since the new model uses real demand forecasts, budgeting is easier. Moreover, with pricing transparency es knowledge. Business units will now know what their IT choices are going to cost。s responsible for ensuring that all applications run smoothly, even during times of peak demand.TCom, which outsources almost all of its IT operations to its sister pany TSystems, provides voice and data services to about 40 million consumers and very small businesses. It generates higher revenues than any other division of Deutsche Telekom. The pany39。s products and manages the underlying hardware, software, and networks. Like TCom, it takes a bird39。 Auerbach supplied the appropriate hardware, software, and services and then tallied up the cost. It was usually the subject of intense debate because the value of plex puter systems is hard to determine, and so is the cost of the associated installation, operations, and maintenance.Now, Zeppenfeld pays only for the puting resources he uses every month。 engineering support. TCom39。 the earlier it alerts TSystems, the lower the added capacity costs. The department managers who, with their teams, plan in advance and make the most accurate forecasts can increase their savings. These incentives are designed to improve the forecasting of TCom and the capacity planning of TSystems.Making it happenA nextgeneration infrastructure model poses practical challenges. The concept of IT bills based on actual consumption, for instance, is still very much in the development phase. Moreover, some panies get stuck migrating legacy applications to the new systems. Depreciation schedules may mean that purchase and leasing agreements for old ones still have a long time to run. At mo