CIOs are finding a direct connection between business agility and a sound IT infrastructure. Scott Miggo, VP of Infrastructure Engineering at Nationwide Insurance, sees virtualization as one of several methods large enterprises are harnessing to enable their IT infrastructures — and in particular, their data centers — to be more responsive to business demands.

Scott Miggo

When it comes to dealing quickly with business changes and shifting processing volumes, Nationwide Services Co. has a leg up on the competition, thanks to its virtualized IT infrastructure.

"It's certainly a lot quicker to bring up a virtual instance than a physical one," says Scott Miggo, Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering at the shared-services unit of Nationwide Insurance. The success the company has had with its virtualization project "also helps us in handling spikes in usage," Miggo says.

The approach is proving to be very cost-effective. With about 1,500 virtual servers already at its main Columbus, Ohio, data center, Nationwide expects to save an additional $16,000 per month on electricity when it adds 800 more virtual servers this year. "This project is enabling us to reduce utility costs and become greener by reducing our carbon footprint," Miggo says.

Of course, virtualization is only one of several methods large enterprises are harnessing to enable their IT infrastructures — and in particular, their data centers — to be more responsive to business demands. They are deriving greater flexibility and reducing costs through asset management, service-oriented architectures (SOA) and software-as-a-service options, mobile connectivity, remote clients, standardization and server-optimization strategies.

Enhanced information architecture agility is becoming de rigueur at many large corporations. According to a recent research report by Aberdeen Group, best-in-class companies are nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to have key professionals trained in architecture-agility concepts. "Accurate, consistent, timely, secure, role-tailored information is essential to the success of every strategic business initiative," according to Aberdeen Senior Research Analyst Michael Dortch, author of the report.

Boosting Asset Management

Chuck Musciano

Company: Martin Marietta Materials, construction materials
Revenue: $2 billion
IT: Chuck Musciano, CIO
Headquarters: Raleigh, N.C.
Key Infrastructure Strategy: Asset management program keeps track of 2,000 devices in the field.

It might sound basic, but asset management can improve IT utilization markedly. At Martin Marietta Materials, for instance, a careful, controlled IT-asset management program implemented a year ago has lowered hardware costs as well as software-rollout expenses. It's also ensuring information security for compliance purposes.

Even as equipment proliferates, a "robust asset-management system allows us to detect all devices on our network," says Chuck Musciano, Vice President and CIO at the $2 billion producer of construction materials.

Asset management also keeps the company "absolutely current on the security side," Musciano adds. Without the program, "keeping track of 2,000 devices in the field is a huge struggle," he says. The system makes it easy to account for remote laptops and to track whether machines have been patched and managed correctly, Musciano says. Individuals come in and connect to the network, he says, which "allows us to do a lot of preventive maintenance."

On-Demand Responsiveness

Jeff Keisling

Company: Wyeth Pharmaceuticals
Revenue: $22.4 billion
IT: Jeff Keisling, Vice President and CIO
Headquarters: Madison, N.J.
Key Infrastructure Strategy: Uses     on-demand storage capacity.

CIOs generally agree that sound infrastructure practices are not only essential for the IT group, but for the business itself. "Maintaining an agile, flexible infrastructure is more important today than ever," says Jeff Keisling, Vice President, Corporate Information Services and CIO at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. "Our global business evolves quickly, and our business leaders expect our IT services to keep up with, or ideally be ahead of, changes in the business environment."

As a case in point, Wyeth, the $22.4 billion drug manufacturer, uses on-demand storage capacity to more quickly respond to business needs. The on-demand model also helps the company rein in hardware and software costs by placing a "per-unit" cost on business changes such as IT costs associated with provisioning — adding or reducing — new staff, Keisling says.

Nationwide Services is also testing ways to trim the cost of operating separate, smaller data centers to support its network of call centers. This year, the company plans to convert some 2,000 desktops, primarily in geographically dispersed call centers, to virtual machines.

Currently, the desktop applications used by call center staff run at a local satellite data center, and many machines are shared by more than one service representative. Using virtual machines "will enable us to just project the image, instead of sending the work back and forth across the wire," Miggo says. The virtual desktop will provide representatives with an image of the work, but the actual processing will run at the corporate data center in Ohio. "It's less data to push across the line if you are only providing the call center with the image," Miggo adds.

Virtualization of the satellite desktop machines will also let Nationwide Services customize desktops for each employee, including the shared devices they use. "You will be able to bring up a private, virtualized image for the employee on the next shift, using the same PC that someone else was just using on the last shift," he says.

Ultimately, Nationwide Services can consolidate the processing load of a number of smaller data centers around the country into the main Columbus data center, resulting in significant annual savings. The company is currently doing a proof-of-concept trial of this approach, keeping a careful eye on the latency, or time it takes to send the images between Columbus and the call centers, Miggo says.

Flexible Solutions

Nationwide isn't alone in leveraging server virtualization as a means to save money and boost IT flexibility. At Wyeth, several hundred offshore users in India are equipped with a virtual Wyeth desktop system that actually is running on servers at the company's data center in Pennsylvania. The desktop images can be customized to the specific business function for each user, managed and controlled centrally, and deleted when no longer required.

Wyeth's Keisling says server virtualization is more flexible than traditional server environments in several ways: "Wherever possible, we aim to 'preprovision' virtual server and storage capacity to reduce the time [it takes] to deliver a new service."

Others are also seeing benefits. "We are far more flexible and capable by having a virtual environment," says Vincent Melvin, Vice President and CIO at Arrow Electronics. For the $16 billion electronic components distributor and supply-channel partner, dynamically provisioning workloads and software test environments lets IT respond faster to business units' needs. Moreover, Melvin says the ability to quickly copy or "clone" an environment is very helpful. "We can move databases and large amounts of data very quickly," he says, which is useful when trying to test a new application without taking it live on a mission-critical basis

Vincent Melvin

Company: Arrow Electronics, electronic components distributor and supply-channel partner
Revenue: $16 billion
IT: Vincent Melvin, vice president and CIO
Headquarters: Melville, N.Y.
Key Infrastructure Strategy: Server virtualization. May port business applications to mobile platforms such as iPhone or BlackBerry devices.

Melvin notes a few limitations of virtual environments, too. For example, he says, it's not realistic to expect virtualization to be used in a test-bed setting to perfectly duplicate a mission-critical production environment. "We were virtualizing the I/O configuration fairly effectively in most test-bed environments," he says. "But you cannot define a true production environment this way." Arrow had to purchase additional hardware "to physically duplicate the I/O environment. That was a lesson we didn't anticipate when we started out with our virtualization project."

Mobile Access

Melvin is exploring other infrastructure options, such as extending software applications to Apple's iPhone or Research In Motion's BlackBerry mobile platforms. "The prospect of extending our customers' interaction to include mobile access is pretty intriguing and exciting to us," he says.

Wyeth's Keisling says that CIOs must get out ahead of the curve or they'll get caught behind it. "If we wait until we're asked for a service," he says, "we're already late, and that may compromise a business priority."

While Melvin at Arrow says it's always difficult to "balance the present stabilization needs of the business against taking some thoughtful steps forward," the rewards go to those who act swiftly. "You have to pick the spots where there is a true return on investment as you go forward," he says. Then, dive in.

Doug Bartholomew is a San Francisco-based technology writer and editor.

Ask the Experts

Scott Miggo, Nationwide Services Co.
Scott.miggo@smartenterpriseexchange.com

As Vice President of Nationwide Services Company-IT and Infrastructure Engineering, Miggo is responsible for enhanced delivery of all infrastructure technology within the enterprise. His areas of responsibility include network, mainframes, distributed servers, storage, collaboration, desktop PCs and peripherals, Web hosting and middleware, security, data warehousing and data center migration and facilities engineering.

Scott has more than 25 years of leadership experience in information technology, marketing and operations management, including 19 years at Nationwide IT. His team is currently leading efforts around virtualization, data center optimization and data center facilities planning.

Vincent Melvin, Arrow Electronics Inc.
vincent.melvin@smartenterpriseexchange.com

Vincent Melvin is Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Arrow Electronics Inc. He is responsible for managing Arrow's global information technology systems, services and capabilities. He also serves as a corporate officer.

Prior to Arrow, Melvin was Executive Vice President and CIO of Sanmina-SCI, Inc. (SSCI), a leading electronics manufacturing services provider, where he established a customer-focused organization that closely aligned IT initiatives and investment with the business strategy. In 2000, Melvin was Director, Information Systems, at Solectron Technology, responsible for all IT services and operations at the company's East Region. Earlier in his career, he held various positions at IBM in IT, logistics and systems engineering during an 18-year career there. Melvin holds a Master of Science degree in industrial administration from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jeffrey E. Keisling, Wyeth
jeffrey.keisling@smartenterpriseexchange.com

Jeffrey E. Keisling is Vice President, Corporate Information Services, and Chief Information Officer at Wyeth. He is responsible for providing the company's strategic IT direction, as well as managing the technology organization and business-application solution units. Keisling joined the company in 2000 and previously was Vice President - Information Services for Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Chuck Musciano, Martin Marietta Materials
chuck.musciano@smartenterpriseexchange.com

Chuck Musciano is the Chief Information Officer for Martin Marietta Materials, responsible for his company's information infrastructure. Previously, served as CIO of the American Kennel Club, where he architected a transition from a legacy mainframe system to a Web-based computing environment. Musciano held a variety of roles during his 15-year tenure at Harris Corp. He has written compilers, developed user interfaces, designed multiprocessors, developed shared-Unix data centers, and was part of the seminal development of the ARPANet and Internet. A graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Musciano is co-author of O'Reilly's "HTML: The Definitive Guide." His blog, "The Effective CIO" (www.effectivecio.com), regularly addresses the challenges facing IT executives.