Businesses need to get rid of IT clutter in order to start innovating properly and remain competitive.
So claims Steve Mills, president of IBM's software group, who used the opening keynote of Big Blue's Pulse 2011 event in Las Vegas to offer guidance to the 7,000 assembled delegates as to why they need to start questioning more thoroughly what resources they're using, where and why.
"[Technology] is like fire. It can either heat your home or burn it down. We need to start to understand how to think about controlling and using it effectively," he said.
"None of you have infinite budgets."
Many businesses are spending 70-80 per cent of their total IT budget simply keeping the lights on, or on run-time costs, according to Mills. This unfocused and wasteful approach can't and shouldn't go on, he warned.
"We have accumulated one hell of a lot of IT and data," he said, adding there are zettabytes of data and millions of servers around the world all using resources and computing power but not necessarily delivering value in return.
"Run costs are now reaching a breaking point where they are becoming unmanageable. You've got to start to bring down costs. You've got to bring down run-time expenses. Probably all of you have done some of this, but the question is have you done enough of it?" he said.
"How can you improve service delivery if you're struggling with sprawl every hour of every day? You can't get there."
Consolidation and federation will be key, according to Mills who said that IBM has also tried to de-clutter and look at what it doesn't need as well as what it does need.
Since 1997, Big Blue has slashed the number of apps it runs from 15,000 down to just 4,700, according to Mills. Furthermore, the number of networks in use is down from 31 to one, there are now just five web hosting centres, compared with the 80 back in 1997 and, today, the number of hosted data centres has come down from 155 to just seven.
In other warps of life we can easily realise the benefits of certain logic, for example using one plane to get 300 people from one New York to California, rather than everyone travelling individually by road, Mills said. However, that common sense doesn't always transport itself to the IT world," he added.
"The fewer boxes you have means fewer power supplies, cost and labour. You can't deny it. It's arithmetic. Anyone who denies it is not thinking clearly," Mills said.
Referring to the plane vs car thinking analogy, he added: "We don't debate these things but in the virtual world we debate these things endlessly. You're entitled to your opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts!"
Mills said that IBM was just at the beginning of its journey to rationalise IT spending and use and encouraged delegates to throw out their unwanted assets and start on their own journeys.
"If you haven't got the message, I'm telling you all you need to get rid of IT. Clean out your basements, clean out your attics, you garages. Clean it, put it on eBay, clean up the place," he said.
"Why do you need 10 different ledger systems? It's not going to happen overnight but I'm telling you to attack the problems. Why pay IT vendors more than you have to?"
