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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Systems/Enterprise:
MARKET RESEARCH VALIDATES VERITAS'
UTILITY COMPUTING STRATEGY
VERITAS Software Corp, a leading storage software provider, announced
independent research by Dynamic Markets has revealed that a growing number of
organizations are deploying service level agreements (SLAs) between their IT
departments and lines of business. SLAs represent a tangible means of defining
IT services versus business needs and are a significant milestone towards
building the infrastructure required for utility computing. VERITAS provides a
building block approach to utility computing with integrated software
solutions that enable an IT infrastructure that is aligned with the changing
demands of business requirements. By evolving to a utility computing model
using VERITAS' building block approach, customers can optimize their existing
IT infrastructure to meet SLAs while lowering the cost of operation and
management.
According to the survey of over 1000 data center managers and functional
heads, 59 percent of organizations have introduced SLAs, presumably in an
effort to drive efficiencies and reduce costs, indicating IT departments are
striving for transparency by aligning themselves with business requirements.
In the organizations where SLAs are employed, they typically cover an agreed
service level for processing performance (37 percent), system availability as
a percentage of uptime (35 percent) and restoration times following an outage
(29 percent). However, almost two-fifths (39 percent) of organizations admit
to not having SLAs to cover any of these key performance areas.
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If one premise of SLAs is to introduce transparency with a view to allowing
efficiencies and resource prioritization, then there is some indication that
organizations are making headway. A third (34 percent) of non-IT functional
heads, who have a chargeback system in place to allocate IT costs to
individual departments, use their SLA reports to improve department operations
to make them more efficient, and 28 percent work with their IT department to
find ways in which to lower costs. However, 39 percent either do not use the
IT reports provided or are unsure how the information is used. The research
indicates a reason for this could be a lack of buy in from those the SLAs are
aimed to serve. In a quarter of cases, line of business heads are not involved
in defining SLAs affecting their department, and a further 19 percent report
having minimal input in their definition.
"Service level agreements, when implemented and managed correctly, provide
an
effective route towards allowing lines of business to determine their own IT
requirements, helping to make IT accountable and transparent," said Mark
Bregman, executive vice president of product operations for VERITAS Software.
"While service level agreements are not yet the norm in all organizations,
this research indicates that a significant proportion of businesses understand
the fundamentals of the utility computing model and are putting the processes
in place that will ultimately transform IT from a cost center to a value
center. VERITAS is committed to working with customers to develop, deploy and
refine service level agreements to best fit their unique needs, by providing a
building block approach with software that overcomes the inherent complexities
of the typical heterogeneous IT infrastructure."
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