IBM Almaden Institute 2007 Industry Problems Panel Complexity & Evolution Harrick M. Vin Vice President (R&D); Head, Systems Research Lab (SRL) Tata Consultancy Services April 11, 2007

IT Plant Management: Tasks The Day-to-day Challenges IT Plant Management: Tasks Infra & Appl Consolidation Re-engineering & Migration Reduce TCO; Improve Profitability Agile, high-assurance Systems Capacity Planning; Resource Scheduling Security & Compliance Over the past decade, Information Technology (IT) has become an integral part of our lives. IT is everywhere : from banking and financial services to retail, from healthcare to telecommunication, and from manufacturing to transportation. Enterprises deliver IT products and services to us using their IT plant. These IT plants consist of a large collection of hardware and software components, often distributed across the world. Managing these IT plants involves a wide-range of tasks. Anomaly Detection; Root-cause Analysis Operational Excellence

Main Challenge: Scale & Complexity The Problem Main Challenge: Scale & Complexity 30,000+ servers 5+ OS w/ 20+ versions 10+ database products 2500+ app server instances 25+ middleware envr. 35+ programming languages 200,000+ desktops 10+ petabytes of storage 197,000 e-mail boxes, … Infrastructure Inventory Top-tier bank in the US 4000+ business apps Average age: 3.5+ years 10-20 years: 190+ 20+ years: 60+ Significant overlaps 25+ account opening apps 10+ authentication apps 12+ credit decision engines 15+ BI tools, …

Main Challenge: Scale & Complexity The Problem Main Challenge: Scale & Complexity

The Problem is Further Compounded … Application Dev Teams Capacity Planning Operation Support Compliance Plant Mgmt Security Too many different views and silo-based understanding; Little understanding of the global picture !

Where Has Complexity Come From? Understanding the Problem Where Has Complexity Come From? Key contributor: Evolution Evolution dimensions: Technology: Hardware, software (OS, middleware), tools, … Functionality: Application and system, business Requirements: Service levels Workload: Types and volume Business: New markets, Globalization, M&A, … State-of-the-art: “Reactive Fire-fighting” System evolution is manual and intuition-based … an art form ! Focus is on “quick fix” rather than “right fix” Implications: High total-cost-of-operations (TCO) Brittle IT plants  Reluctance to upgrade anything Deployment time >> Development time  Lack of agility Lack of design principles for system evolution  Complexity Educational problem: Students don’t understand systems engineering or evolution

For more information, contact: Harrick Vin (harrick.vin@tcs.com) “The goal of computing is insights, not data.” --- Richard Hamming “The main challenge of computing is: How not to make a mess of it !” --- Edsgar W. Dijkstra For more information, contact: Harrick Vin (harrick.vin@tcs.com)