By Dr. Ajei S. Gopal

A new era of dynamic applications and infrastructure is upon us, thanks in large part to the advent of service-oriented architectures (SOA) and other innovations in the core infrastructure. Over the next 15 years, the very nature of applications will evolve as SOA enables the dynamic creation of applications. Applications will no longer be confined behind the enterprise firewall. Instead, applications in this new world will be created on demand and will consume infrastructure resources on demand. More and more of the infrastructure will be virtualized. In fact, the applications themselves will become virtualized.

Although this new, innovative era has barely begun, associated changes have already occurred and have affected enterprises comprehensively. This dynamic approach has led, for example, to such blockbuster applications as Google Maps, Salesforce.com, Amazon and "mashups"—Web sites and applications that combine content from multiple sources to create new, integrated online experiences.

Are today's organizations nimble enough to take advantage of these new realities? In most cases, no. What's needed is a cultural shift in the IT department. First, IT and business leaders must collaborate in this transformation. Progressive companies are realizing that ad hoc processes within the IT infrastructure are not sufficient; instead, they need a well-disciplined infrastructure that aligns with the needs of the business. Second, a shift is necessary in the management of these applications and infrastructure. This requires a greater focus on real-time availability management.

Potential Benefits
Once companies are prepared internally, the potential benefits for customers are tremendous. An example of this dynamic and virtual environment occurs in the e-tailing environment every day. If a retail customer visiting a Web site puts an item in their shopping basket, the retailer can automatically suggest affinity purchases. Amazon, for one, does this with its "customers who bought this item also bought these" lists.

But let's say the owner of a site lacks the tools needed to enable this dynamic application. In a virtual application development environment, the retailer will simply connect via the Internet to the resources of other companies that offer these dynamic services. The retailer will then seamlessly integrate this capability into its technology infrastructure. More important, the process will be absorbed by the retailer's customer relationship management (CRM) business processes. This way, when a customer puts an item in their shopping basket, the site can perform a real-time, dynamic search across all providers of the service; figure out the most cost effective, relevant service; and then return that information to the customer. Best of all, from the customer's perspective, the entire process will be invisible and nearly instantaneous.

In this model, the infrastructure—including distributed systems, virtualized storage and virtualized networks—is assembled dynamically. This allows organizations to spend more wisely. This also allows the infrastructure team to focus on the service levels needed by the applications team. The final result is an improvement in, or even the creation of, a business service that supports the organization's customers.

To support these changes, CIOs must re-establish and redesign the ways in which objectives for application performance, application availability, disaster recovery and business continuity are met. Once they have accomplished that, CIOs must then turn to compliance needs. They must ensure that the entire enterprise computing environment—now much more dynamic and virtual than ever before—remains compliant with local, national and corporate regulations.

Look Ahead
Making all this happen in a cost effective manner will involve a tremendous amount of detailed planning. CIOs and business leaders will need to conduct even more discussions than they do today. Together, CIOs and business leaders will need to discuss ways to better manage projects, assets and IT services.

In this new environment, managing IT is no longer about managing individual technology silos. Rather, it's about taking an end-to-end view of what the IT infrastructure looks like—including assets that may not be owned by the enterprise-and creating a holistic, manageable solution that supports the services to the organization's customers. Welcome to 21st century IT.

Dr. Ajei S. Gopal is the senior vice president and general manager of CA's Enterprise System Management business unit.