Cafeteria IT: An approach to infrastucture management
David Christiansen has a great post over at techdarkside entitled, “What IT Should Learn from GoDaddy.com“. In it, he argues that IT departments should offer pre-spec’d, preconfigured, “cafeteria style” offerings to their internal organization. A la:
- Standalone High-Speed-Production-Server: $16,000
- Standalone Medium-Speed-Production-Server: $11,000
- Virtual Medium-Speed-Development-Server: $6000
- Storage Space: $5000/TB
The idea is that your infrastructure team would go out and spec out these configurations for typical applications, add some overhead (say 15%) to cover cabinet space, UPS, etc., and then offer them to all departments for whatever applications they want to run.
Christiansen argues that departments will be more likely to use these configurations (rather than going through the trouble of spec’ing something custom) because they are readily available buffet style, like a cafeteria.
What I love about this approach is that it clearly places the onus for paying for the gear on the originating department (so the gear doesn’t somehow come out of IT’s budget!) and that it increases visibility into the inner costs and workings of the IT hairball. This is a great way to take your users to the next level in understanding their infrastructure needs.
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