Gartner says, Adapt to the new Delivery Models

And I called it myself, GDM (Global Delivery Model). Search my blog from it ;) Anyways...

The report, Alternative Delivery Models: A Sea of New Opportunities and Threats, says that IT leaders must explore these models or risk having business units implement the solutions without their knowledge and support.

Alternative delivery models require IT functions to acquire, package and deliver IT in new ways, the report said. “These alternative delivery models start from externals. Software-as-a-service is not something you buy and install in-house, it’s something you get from outside as available functionality, and you adapt to it,” said Claudio Da Rold, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

So this article really doesn't say much, but I can tell you a few things, where you should pay attention to and start adapting to:

1. "Pay-as-you-go" models: That is the foundation of the SaaS, VaaS or even DaaS (data center as a service), where you copy all your infrastructure, and have it rested somewhere and it is intelligent enough to calculate and trigger several critical alarms, such as power usage, consumption, uptime, ROI, user response, profits and then allow the business managers to even "play" such scenarios, such as a Virtual environment, a simple subset of your data center, whcih you can run in your office. That way you can pre-run scenarios, that will pre-calculate all that critical information, and ask you to choose for facilities like a. Google premises in Poland, Amazon premises in Guatemala, Avastu premises in Kampala, VMware premises in Dalian etc. The pay-as-you-go model is the foundation of a typical "business agile infrastructure".
2. "Use-and-throw" models : This applies to the test and development windows. You have to define, conceptualize, build, deploy, market, and tear down the virtual business units. A simple example is using simple, versatile, heterogeneous and agile data center tools such as openQRM (sorry about the brand name but these guys have a massive future in this area and will be the ones to watch!), it really amazes me that these guys are so deep and so broad in their product planning. Anyways, the whole idea is to have this component equally agile, to help businesses adapt to the continuously changing, or better said increasingly declining "business windows".
3. Virtual employees: Forget about the traditional employees. forget about the ones that drive miles to come to your office. forget about getting jobs where you need to sit and "show you face". you will have a typical multinational teams that will sit together in a virtual rooms. They basically sit and home and meet occasionally at conferences, bootcamps, roadtrips etc. You cannot imagine how productive the folks will be.
   
4. "Do-it-yourself" Models: The amazing thing about globalization is that , we started sourcing stuff around the world that could be easily done such as call centers, reservations, credit cards etc. India has greatly benifited from such models, but with virtualization and the self-service model, things are about to change. It ws funny to see the Indians learning to speak in the american accent, while I argue this, why would you need a human behind an activity that is easy to automate? Having said that, this simply means that the "virtual employees" around the world can elevate their operational levels to do more intellectual and useful things like "swarm research on alternative fuels!". Getting back to the topic, "self-service" models, like that of IKEA which are flawless and successful, will be used for mundane activities (depending upon what we will call a mundane activity as we all advance towards "advanced citizenry").
   

These , and more, models will help business get into more of a defining and tearing down LOBs without much overhead, without painful firings and outsourcings. Disruptive technologies and trends, such as sourcing (in- or out-sourcing), create a sense of insecurity and may seem to threaten our stability, but we all need to understand that these are merely "tools of change" and no matter how bad and evil they look, you can almost compare it with a change that you have to go through when your parent forces you to get into the water and learn to swim. It's scary in the beginning but at the end of the day, it is you who is gleaming back with confidence!

Enough for today ;-), here's the link that made me elaborate on what they may have meant.