Finding flexibility

At Nielsen Media Network’s datacenter in Dunedin, Fla., CIO Kim Ross oversees a massive computer processing operation that collects the television programming preference data of tens of millions of viewers every day, parses it, and distributes it to the TV industry. In the past few years, Ross found that his system architecture, which includes more than 200 servers, had become increasingly complicated, and the unceasing purchasing, upgrading, and integration demands had become onerous. So in February, Ross tapped Sun Microsystems' new Orion initiative to help ease the complexity and increase the manageability of his systems, which includes Sun ONE (Open Net Environment).

Orion offers scheduled and integrated releases of Sun infrastructure software for distribution across Solaris or Linux servers. Ross expects Orion will help him execute what is becoming a primary objective of enterprise chief technologists: to structure his computing platforms so that they are more flexible, manageable, and dynamic. “Orion is an enhancement to the way Sun ONE and other components are deployed in our enterprise,” he says.

As are other technology chiefs, Ross is making tough demands on vendors these days. He wants dynamic solutions to solve the complexity that arises from integrating multiple hardware and software programs as well as allow for flexibility, especially when IT budgets are being scrutinized in tough economic times. And he says vendors are getting the message.

"The fact is that suddenly people who are doing enterprise software development are including more and more of their components within frameworks," Ross says. "If you started out, like us, with a best of breed [practice], you wind up getting lots of different products for different systems. That has advantages, but you've also presented yourself with integration problems. How do you hook them together and maintain them?"

Now major platform vendors -- such as Sun with Orion and N1, IBM with WebSphere, and Commerce One with Conductor -- are dancing as fast as they can to meet these complex needs. In short, enterprise chief technologists say they can now build simple, flexible, and dynamic platforms to meet the growing needs of their enterprise datacenters.

Reacting to complexity

"The need in the software framework space is greater now because of the complexity," according to Ross. "In the past, offers of 'soup to nuts' would mean just buying from one place. That's not what this is about. This is about making sure pieces operate together and that you're not locked into one set so that you can swap in other pieces if you want to. The vendor can no longer say, 'I'll be your one-stop shop'.''

Ross isn't alone in moving to a variety of sophisticated, flexible platforms.