Dear Mr. Hurd: We Agree On Something! 30/70 Is The Right Goal For Enterprise IT.

re: Dear Mr. Hurd: We Agree On Something! 30/70 Is The Right Goal For Enterprise IT.

john_doe — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:08:15 GMT

Glenn, I really enjoyed your blog, and based on my experience, i mostly agree with you. The company i used to work for, a big internet company in Europe, learned their lesson: They painfully reduced DCs from 15 to 2 or 3, but this obviously was the right thing to do. But more "cost savings" were necessary so they fired truckloads of people. In the meantime,and through my help, the company turned into a 100% DELL shop, which helped rationalise operations, and this was also a good thing. But, as you mentionned, they starved their IT, and then firing the very key people they needed, with results you can easily imagine Instead of staying a key factor to its business products, IT Dept only became a cost issue, reducing people's commitment and will to sustain constant innovation. 30/70 figure seems quite unrealistic to me, because that means overdedicated and unstarved IT people which is in direct contradiction with "off the shelf" IT infrastructure ran by "off the shelf" replaceable IT consultants. Running a 40/60 figure at Dell is a great achievement. Congratulations. I work now for a government agency that has more a 90/10 or 80/20 figure and though replacing all SUNs with DELLs would help :) i think 30/70 can only be achieved if you invest in the right IT people ... and Dell servers , of course ;) John

re: Dear Mr. Hurd: We Agree On Something! 30/70 Is The Right Goal For Enterprise IT.

Avid_Reader — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:53:19 GMT

Mark,

Where was HP criticized? If Dell can't talk about it's "famous internal infrastructure" on it's on blog, then where would you like to see it?

re: Dear Mr. Hurd: We Agree On Something! 30/70 Is The Right Goal For Enterprise IT.

Mark — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:57:23 GMT

Oh plese Dell. Stop talking about your famous internal infrastructure.

Every employee knows its a joke. And critizising HP looks also foolish.

Look at their stock and look at yours.

re: Dear Mr. Hurd: We Agree On Something! 30/70 Is The Right Goal For Enterprise IT.

Shahid — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:53:03 GMT

Glenn - I think your post hits a number of key points of corporate IT management, especially the last three bullets. I'm currently working for a company that is certainly guilty of the starving corporate IT and keeping it as far away from the business as possible - and evidence of the harm that's causing is obvious. It's more of a cultural decision than anything, and it's a choice rather than a result of neglect, so that harm has been balanced by perceived gains elsewhere. For anyone more curious - email me if you want some more details as to why & what exactly happens when that's the case.

It's interesting to hear there's a figure for the maintenance / innovation investment split. I'm slightly sceptical that it can be pulled further away from maintenance towards innovation - it sounds a bit too much like what a CIO wants to hear. On the other hand, IT management tools are getting better, so I'd be really interested to hear how other companies feel their resources are distributed. In my company I estimate it holds at about 60/40 maintenance / innovation.