【正文】 products in optimal fashion (Exhibit 1). As product orders roll in, a factory manager monitors the infrastructure for capacityplanning and sourcing purposes.With this model, filling an IT requirement is rather like shopping by catalog. A developer who needs a storage product, for instance, chooses from a portfolio of options, each described by service level (such as speed, capacity, or availability) and priced according to the infrastructure assets consumed (say, $7 a month for a gigabyte of managed storage). The system39。ve seen at Deutsche Telekom and other panies suggests that creating a nextgeneration infrastructure involves action on three fronts: segmenting user demand, developing productlike services across business units, and creating shared factories to streamline the delivery of IT.Segmenting user demandLarge IT organizations support thousands of applications, hundreds of physical sites, and tens of thousands of end users. All three of these elements are critical drivers of infrastructure demand: applications require servers and storage, sites need network connectivity, and users want access to desktops, laptops, PDAs, and so forth. To standardize these segments, an IT organization must first develop a deep understanding of the shape of current demand for infrastructure services and how that demand will most likely evolve. Then it needs to categorize demand into segments (such as uptime, throughput, and scalability) that are meaningful to business users.When grouped in this way, most applications fall into a relatively small number of clusters. A pharmaceutical manufacturer, for instance, found that most of a business unit39。t reap the benefits of scale and reuse. Good initial research into user needs is critical, as it is for any consumer products pany.The supply side: Creating shared factoriesThe traditional buildtoorder model limits the infrastructure function39。s cheerful demeanor may be surprising given his job. As head of IT operations for TCom, Deutsche Telekom39。 TSystems must learn how to use excess capacity in other areas. TSystems must take on a lot more responsibility, notes Michael Auerbach, the TSystems manager for all TCom IT operations. At the end of the day, it39。 notice. Drastic, acrosstheboard changes in usage are unlikely for most panies, but this added flexibility in individual areas is still a wele benefit. Marketing, for instance, has fluctuating needs. Take an campaign generating several million responses. Previously, a sixmonth lead time was needed to purchase new hardware and software. The new model forces marketing to produce more accurate forecasts but cuts the lead time in half. Now, TCom lets TSystems know about the marketing group39。s IT architecture practice in North America and specializes in the hightech and industrial sectors. He is based in Silicon Valley.The authors wish to thank Andrew Appel for his contributions to this article.This article was first published in the Winter 2004 issue of McKinsey on IT.Notes1 Grid puting breaks down an application39。 engineering support. TCom39。s products and manages the underlying hardware, software, and networks. Like TCom, it takes a bird39。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。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。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。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