Rich Lechner of IBM came next, talking about the new enterprise and it’s new enterprise data center. Supporting business innovation is impacted, he said, by three things:

• Globalization
  The change from an exporter to a multi-country set of counties to a truly globally integrated enterprise - tapping into new talent pools around the world.
• Rising tide of information
  More and more information from many things including proliferating devices (especially those connected to the internet) and the focus has been on controlling and managing this. But real time data streaming, real-time analytics and bi-direction information are coming now and you must find a way to use this information.
• Business model changes
  Many new B2B and B2C business models empowered by the internet and ubiquitous access. But Social networking and mobile devices will continue to force new business models.

At the same time IT has to deliver operations to support the current business and adopt new technologies like cloud computing, web 2.0, SaaS and more. The bottom line remains delivering a great experience with unbounded scale - no upper limit, cloud computing. This is what an IT department must deliver to support innovation - massively scalable, on demand computing - and doing so can allow resources to be moved from operations to innovation. They see three steps:

1. Simplified - driving IT efficiency
2. Shared - rapid deployment of new infrastructure and services
3. Dynamic - responsive and goal-driven

The world, he says, is fundamentally changing. Enterprises don’t have borders, unbounded infrastructure and data that is real time and bi-directional. Collaboration is key and IT can (and should) enable this.