1. 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

2. 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

3. 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 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, …

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

5. 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 !

6. 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

7. 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