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TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTS

SIMPLIFYING IT:
CAN YOU? SHOULD YOU?

s information technology inevitably complicated? Ask many people

on the business sideand even some IT professionalsand they'll
probably answer "yes." After all, what could possibly be more complicated than the ever-growing, constantly changing IT infrastructures, systems, and apps that now underlie just about every aspect
of every business?
But ask whether all that complexity guarantees greater efficiency
or productivity, cuts costs, enables innovations, or better supports
employees, customers and other IT end users, and you're likely to
receive a resounding "no."
Technology strategists say it's important to balance IT com-

competitive capability and business growth.

As one corporate executive put it in a June
2014 IDC white paper: "If you can't simplify, you can't remain competitive."

Contributing to IT Complexity
For such a major problem, complexity is
also a slippery one. As Garbani puts it:
"There is precious little information as to
what complexity is and how to evaluate it."
But if there isn't yet a standard definition
of complexity, there are certainly plenty of
obvious reasons for its existence. The biggest, of course, is the number and variety of
technologies, systems, and vendors involved
in the IT infrastructure of any midsize to
large enterprise. These infrastructures typically involve a patchwork of new and legacy
systems, physical and virtual servers, widely
scattered data centers, and public, private,
and hybrid cloud-storage environments.
Then there's big data, which Gartner
defines as "information of extreme size,
diversity, and complexity." It's no secret
that big data is creating entirely new chal-

plexity against business objectives. "Some IT complexity is indeed

inevitable and can, in fact, be a major driver of business value
by contributing to the creation of a more differentiated offering,
for example," Michael Grebe and Enno Danke acknowledge in
their 2013 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report, Simplify IT:
Six Ways to Reduce Complexity. But, they add: "Much complexity

The Many Causes of

IT Complexity
What makes some IT environments so complicated? Experts say
contributing factors include, among
others:
Corporate mergers and
aquisitions

is ultimately unnecessary and can translate into higher costs and

reduced agility and flexibility."

Reliance on legacy systems

No question: Simplification is among today's biggest IT chal-

Server sprawl

lenges. Many IT organizations rightly view complexity "as the root

cause of all IT operations ills," Forrester Research analyst JeanPierre Garbani notes in his 2011 report, Assessing Complexity in
IT Operations.
And concern extends beyond IT departments, up to the highest
strategic levels. In the past few years, surveys and reports documented executive fears that complicated IT infrastructures not only
create operational challenges and increase costs, but also threaten
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Skyrocketing storage needs

Rapidly changing business
requirements

Increasing demand for mobile-

device support
Suboptimal mix of IT skills

Decentralized IT decision-
making

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TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTS

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTS CAN HELP DETERMINE

THE LEVEL OF IT COMPLEXITY NEEDEDAND THE TRADEOFFS INVOLVED.
lenges for the IT organizations responsible for processing, securing, and storing all
that information, because existing options
are either too limited or too expensive to
scale up. "Meeting expectations for big data
means navigating a confusing mix of technology that is evolving faster than anyone
ever expected," Brian Hopkins, a Forrester
vice president and principal analyst, notes
in a November 2014 report.
Two other developments contributing to
IT complexity are:
The "bring-your-own-device" (BOYD)
trend, where employees increasingly
use their personal mobile devices
especially smartphones, but also tablet
computerson the job. IDC, another IT
research and consulting company, estimates that of 480 million smartphones
to be shipped worldwide by 2016, fully
two thirds will be used for BYOD. That
development can help companies save
significantly on hardware purchases. But
it also generates plenty of new concerns
about how to service and secure all these
different employee-owned devices.
T he Internet of Things (IoT), where
devices ranging from cardiac pacemakers
to forest-fire sensors to highway traffic
monitors can transmit information
such as updates on changing conditionsover the Internet without human
intervention. Gartner estimates that by
2020 more than 26 billion devices will be
connected via the IoT. The fast-growing
network also increases IT complexity and
the demands on IT organizations.

Suggestions for Simplification

Not surprisingly, IT simplification is anything but simple. In most cases, complexity
has developed gradually, stemming from a
range of sources, and, of course, scenarios
differ dramatically from one organization
to the next. However, experts offer three
pieces of advice for helping IT professionals address IT complexity:
1. Determine how much IT complexity
is needed to meet business objectives.

"There are potentially good business

reasons to embrace complexity," Forrester analyst Alan Mac Neela blogged.
For example, companies may need
especially sophisticatedand complicatedIT environments to support
new product launches, provide services
unique to their marketplaces, or comply
with strict regulatory requirements. He
recommends that organizations turn to
enterprise architects who can help determine the level of complexity needed
and the tradeoffs associated with each
choice. "Higher levels of complexity typically mean higher costs (directly or indirectly), so they must be associated with
a business return," he noted.

2. Educate the business side about IT

service costs. "Due to a lack of trans-

parency into IT costs, the business

may request a degree of IT support
for a given product or service that
is disproportionate to [its] business
value," in turn creating additional
complexity, according to Grebe and
Danke. They recommend that IT
organizations provide their business
counterparts with a comprehensive
look at the costs associated with these
requests. "Armed with this information, the business can make informed
judgments about its consumption of
IT servicesin terms of volume and
service levelrelative to business outcomes," the strategists explain in their
report.
3. Establish a comprehensive, integrated
approach to business and IT governance. Developing an enterprise-wide

governance framework helps align all

business and IT planning processes,
experts say. In turn, that integration
ensures that a company's technology spending will actually lead to the
desired business outcomes, and not
just create more complicated IT.
Is reducing IT complexity worth the
effort? Yes, according to the BCG report:
"We estimate that an effective simplification effort can reduce application infrastructure costs by up to 50 percent and
total IT costs by as much as 30 percent."

STREAMLINE IT FOR SIGNIFICANT SAVINGS

In one 2014 study, companies that undertook IT simplification efforts reported, on average:

10% - 30%

40% - 70%

$3,610

overall cost reduction

down-time reduction

per user in savings

SOURCE: IDC

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