Not all business professionals are created equal. This is why businesses of all sizes, across every industry, and in every corner of the world invest significantly in the search and retention of top talent. People remain the single largest expense for just about every organization.
Everyone has worked with that person who just gets things done. Heck, maybe you’re that person but regardless of title, rank, or seniority these people know how to quickly and efficiently produce results.
Consider the example of a production worker on widget line “A” that consistently yields 18% more quality parts then any of their peers. Not only does this individual increase yields by 25% but also has a proven track record for producing no defect parts. This individual increases the output of everyone else on that assembly line. He also produces much less scrap and is certified for only a single audit step prior to shipment. Or the VP of engineering whose leadership skills and dedication to a proven process reduces the time required between concept and launch by 40+%. Everyone in the organization is affected by his ability to turn products around. The sales team wins more deals, the operations team has more time to react, and shareholders experience rapid growth.
In both of these examples, each employee is producing a far superior result and most likely is being compensated in some way for it. Many individuals will spend an unhealthy portion of their brain capacity telling themselves day in and day out that they deserve to make more money. The same time blaming others, or the process for their inability to produce similar results as our top performers. That is the time top performers spend producing results and increasing the gap between the self entitled worker and the true superstar employee.
As with people not all business technology is created equal. Unfortunately in most businesses the same logic used to find, hire, invest, and retain top performers does not carry over to the data-center. The typical business looks at technology infrastructure as just another expense on the IT budget.
If you had a system that performed 40+% faster, was reliable, agile, and relentlessly focused on the job(s) it is assigned, you should have no problem spending a little extra money on it. If you found a system that would have this kind of impact on your business, you would cost justify it in the same way you would an assembly fixture in your manufacturing facility. This piece of manufacturing equipment can produce 33% more widgets per hour and decrease changeover time from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. This results in higher output and allows the production scheduler to be much more agile with his/her build schedule. It also means they can easily take on the requirements from the large new customer their sales team just brought in, without having to build out a second manufacturing line and hire more people.
I hope that you all agree that efficiency and knowing your numbers (total cost of ownership) are key to creating a successful and sustainable business.
For those of you that have read my other posts I am a little partial to IBM Power Systems. In my opinion for good reason, but we won’t get into that. The below charts compare IBM Power8 technology to both competitive technology, as well as previous IBM Power technology. It speaks volumes for IBM Power when you look at the comparison between Power8 and Power7.
To take this full circle and bring us back to my original point. IBM Power Systems running IBM i is a superstar in the datacenter. IBM Power Systems are relentlessly focused on the tasks they are directed to do. They don’t require coddling, or constant management. They are the perfect asset for the datacenter and the business. So I leave you with one question…
What would it mean to you, if you could take advantage of this capability and deliver a significant cost savings to the business at the same time? Did I hear promotion?
So, for those of you that are blowing your budgets up with stacks and stacks of Intel servers, please take some advice from the late Steve Jobs (I know I’m going to get some flak for this).
“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.