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 |  | | Data centers: How to cut carbon emissions and costs | | McKinsey on Business Technology, Winter 2008
Will Forrest, James Kaplan, Noah Kindler
Every large organization depends on vast arrays of servers to run applications, support electronic communications, and provide productivity tools. Most companies have plans to significantly expand their capacity to meet demand for more new applications and more data. But building and operating the data center facilities required to house these farms consumes ever-larger portions of technology budgets and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. For some information-intensive businesses, data centers represent half of the corporate carbon footprint. As a result, stakeholders and influential pressure groups are taking keen interest in how companies manage their carbon footprints, and adopting best practices will help companies reduce pollution and further improve corporate citizenship. | Launch this article (PDF - 636 KB) |
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| | | The next step in open innovation | | McKinsey on Business Technology, Fall 2008
The Internet and new social-networking technologies are allowing companies and their customers to interact with unprecedented levels of richness. Some leading organizations are using this opportunity to draw customers into the heart of the product-development process.
Cocreating products and services with customers, however, is uncertain territory, fraught with challenges and questions—for instance, who owns the resulting intellectual property? Nonetheless, smart companies are now beginning to encourage their customers to help them develop the products and services consumers really want.
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| | | Meeting the demand for data storage | | McKinsey on Business Technology, Fall 2008
Data storage has become one of the fastest-growing parts of the IT budget, thanks to enterprise-wide transactional systems, massive data warehouses, and explosive growth in e-mail traffic. If storage costs continue their rapid rise, they could make it harder for companies to store and exploit new forms of data.
Companies often store many more copies of data than they need, partly out of concerns about losing information and partly because of poor planning. In most cases, they could meet legal, regulatory, and strategic needs with simpler storage configurations.
IT executives should develop better policies for managing storage and for communicating more effectively to their internal clients the trade-offs of cost, reliability, accessibility, and risk. Developing a menu of storage options, each with a clear cost attached, can help IT executives work with the business to develop a more efficient storage organization.
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| | | Building the Web 2.0 enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey results | | McKinsey on Business Technology, Fall 2008
Companies have adopted more Web 2.0 tools this year than in 2007 and are using them for higher-value purposes, according to McKinsey’s second annual survey on the business use of Web 2.0 technologies.
Some 21 percent of the respondents are very satisfied with the way their companies use Web 2.0 tools, which are changing management practices and even organizational structures.
Other companies report that the barriers to adopting Web 2.0 tools include management’s inability to grasp their potential financial returns, unresponsive corporate cultures, and less-than-enthusiastic leadership.
| Launch this article (PDF - 650 KB) |
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| | | Applying Lean Techniques to Application Development and Maintenance | | McKinsey on Business Technology, Spring 2007
Lean techniques, originally developed to reduce waste in manufacturing, are boosting performance in more and more service environments. Application development and maintenance—the part of IT that works closely with the business to develop software services—is a good candidate for lean. Many processes around software development are poorly organized, resulting in rework, unbalanced workloads, and other forms of waste that harm both productivity and morale. The transformation to lean requires that companies identify and measure the main sources of waste and define opportunities to reduce it. Lean, like any major transformation, demands sustained leadership commitment and a thoughtful approach to introducing and rolling out change. | | Launch this article (PDF - 900 KB) |
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| | | Building Stronger IT Vendor Relationships | | McKinsey on Business Technology, Spring 2005
The benefits of strong supplier partnerships are well-known to many industries. Yet few companies have built relationships with their IT vendors. A recent McKinsey survey shows that although many companies aspire to closer vendor ties, their behavior is often at odds with this objective. To create higher-impact vendor relationships, companies should analyze their IT vendor portfolios to determine which suppliers are critical, and then change how they behave and communicate with these chosen vendors. | | Launch this article (PDF - 151 KB) |
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| | | Managing Next-Generation IT Infrastructure | | McKinsey on Business Technology, Winter 2004
Until recently many companies have built their IT infrastructure to order. The result is that there are many application silos, each configured differently. With enormous pressures to cut costs and consolidate, CIOs have to find a way to manage their infrastructures. Instead of configuring something based on the application, they need to build to a service requirement. | | Launch this article (PDF - 267 KB) |
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| | | Power Unbound: The Emerging Importance of Grid Computing | | McKinsey White Paper, Summer 2004
In the next few years we are likely to see a profound change in enterprise computing. Applications and servers will no longer be so tightly linked. Instead, applications will be spread over standard, cheaper hardware. Grid computing will allow companies to react quicker to changing market conditions. | | Launch this article (PDF - 255 KB) |
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| | | Smart Ideas for Cutting Infrastructure Costs | | McKinsey on Business Technology, Fall 2003
To improve IT's performance, paring the costs of managing the infrastructure is only the first step - but it's worth doing thoroughly. | | Launch this article (PDF - 54 KB) |
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| | | Designing IT for Business | | The McKinsey Quarterly, 2003 Number 3
When business and computer people put their heads together, they can transform a company’s IT architecture. | | Read more on the McKinsey Quarterly site |
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