Authors: Charlie Burns, Mike West

As we near the close of 2006, the “Big 4” disruptive technologies of SOA, SaaS, Open Source, and Utility Computing continue to be front-and-center in the strategies, planning, and thinking of IT organizations. Not surprisingly, these same initiatives also continue to be front-and-center in the marketing and messaging of major IT vendors.

Traditionally, the ownership, chargeback and management of applications or workloads (including their underlying infrastructures) were governed by appropriate business units in a vertical or silo’ed manner. However, SOA, SaaS, Open Source, and Utility Computing typically cause functionality and/or services to be shared across applications and workloads. These shared resources require a horizontal governance strategy that crosses the vertical business lines. Further, because these four initiatives impact common areas of IT resources and expertise, an overarching management process needs to be implemented to balance their respective priorities, cost strategies, long-term goals and key challenges.

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