I want to share with you a paper that Sendmail produced along with Gartner on Modernizing IT Infrastructures. The following quote from the paper sums up what the Gartner research portion of the paper addresses:
“Most IT portfolios have grown up haphazardly throughout the years, mixing technologies, vendors and architectures that require increasing resources to manage. A modernization program works with the application strategy to drive the IT organization to achieve a desired state. Note that it is not just buying new computers. Modernization is about creating a more-flexible and dynamic IT environment,” (‘Signs Indicate a Train Wreck is Coming, Unless You Modernize IT’, Scott. D. Nelson, Valentin T. Sribar, and Andy Kyte, August 27, 2008.)
The IT messaging environment is no exception. In fact, given the evolution of messaging infrastructures (first spam and viruses, then denial-of-service attacks, address harvesting, outbound policy enforcement, complex routing, etc) it is now a top priority of most enterprise modernization projects. Is it a top priority of yours?
This is especially true in the financial servers market today. It is impossible for anyone to escape all of the negative news about our country’s financial crisis. It seems like everyday we hear something about banks failing, merging, and being broken apart and sold in pieces. In fact, since summer of this year there have been six major bank mergers, including such big names as Bear Sterns, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia, not to mention the dozens of regional bank mergers across the county.
The impact these mergers have on the entities involved is staggering on many fronts, including the difficult task of merging the different messaging infrastructures while maintaining great customer service and protecting brand.
In the research note, Gartner outlines the top indicators of a potential IT train wreck in its response to the central question, “What should a company do to avoid this so-called train wreck?” We help translate those indicators into recognizable terms for IT messaging teams by using examples from the experience of its experts.
I think you’ll like it. Check it and let us know what you think.