To complement the brilliant introduction to the “Infrastructure Transformation Playbook for 2015” by my friend Glenn O’Donnell, the operation’s analyst team, the “O” in I&O, would like to welcome you to the “Infrastructure And Operations Transformation Playbook for 2015”.

In this playbook, we do not predict the future of technology but we try to understand how, in the age of the customer, I&O must transform to support businesses by accelerating the speed of service delivery, enabling capacity when and where needed and improving customers and employee experience.

All industries mature towards commoditization and abstraction of the underlying technology because knowledge and expertise are cumulative. Our industry will follow an identical trajectory that will result in ubiquitous and easier to implement, manage and change technology.

How infrastructure and operations will change in this context is the question that we attempt to answer. Today’s I&O role is to architect, implement, and operate the production engine that supports — and preferably anticipates — the business' various applications and services needs. By abstracting many infrastructure components, tomorrow will mark a tsunami change in technology and in the business-technology relationship. These changes have a direct impact on I&O. But they are not discrete ones: They follow adoption cycles that overlap each other and create uncertainty about the immediate future. The right technology management strategy is clouded by budget considerations, resistance to change, and the very pace at which different business types relate to their customers.

The infrastructure and operations (I&O) transformation playbook is a framework that uses yesterday's examples of technology disruption consequences to help technology management executives clarify how today's technologies could impact tomorrow's I&O organizations. Seneca the Elder said once that if a man doesn’t know what harbor he seeks, any wind is a good wind. What we are trying to accomplish with the I&O transformation playbook is to look at the prevailing winds to help you determine the safest way to harbor.

Thank you.

Jean-Pierre Garbani and the I&O Team