How Adaptive Enterprise turns IT into a responsive business tool

There's one significant reason for this: The stepping stones of adaptive infrastructure (upon which the adaptive enterprise builds) and its kissing cousins 'policy-based computing' and 'utility' or 'on-demand computing,' have matured to the point where they now can turn the complex world of IT into an instantly responsive and highly measurable competitive business tool.

You need an emergency spike in computing power over here, you got it. You need to pay less for underutilized assets over there, you got it.

You need to bring a new business venture online with partners, suppliers and customers with tons of new storage, new Web services and never-go-down super servers you got that, too. And one more thing, you want to do all this, use what's already installed, and at the same time drive up revenue per bit and drive down the total cost, not a problem. An adaptive infrastructure can do all that for you too, and more.

'What's new and different about the adaptive enterprise,' says Peter Blackmore, executive vice president of HP's Enterprise Systems Group, 'is how you go from A to B, from silos to enterprise-wide business solutions, how you measure the results, and how its now all driven by the business side of the company, not the IT side.'

A steady stream of industry pundits talk about the speed at which business needs keep changing. That may be true some technology experts say that business requirements now change seven times faster than IT resources can be retooled but that's not the crucial point. The real crux is that no one can predict the future.

That's as true for any global company today as it was for the merchant guilds of the 15th century. You can anticipate, plan, forecast and sometimes even help 'invent' the future but sooner or later everyone and every company must adapt to unanticipated changes. This is where the concept called 'business agility' comes from, and the reason why it has spawned a fresh, holistic view of how to manage a business the idea called adaptive enterprise made real.


Bear in mind this idea of achieving agility is not a small-time undertaking
it has powerful effects on both operational and strategic planning. Certainly dramatic, market-defining changes get the most attention. But most enterprise-size companies make hundreds, even thousands, of upgrades to their IT infrastructure every week. An adaptive enterprise helps direct this work toward the company's real needs.