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July 27, 2010 By Steve Towns, Editor
adequate compensation."
The DIR implemented governance changes earlier this year designed to give state agencies a stronger voice in the outsourcing project. And the state intends to alter its approach to server consolidation, regardless of how the current dispute ends, according to Swedberg, who manages the Texas data center contract.
Rather than shifting the entire contents of state servers onto new machines in the privatized data centers, the state will evaluate and prioritize each application running on agency servers and come up with an appropriate course of action. "This is very important because it's going to help us better tailor the priorities of what we transform first based on business requirements and technical risks," he said.
In addition, agencies will gain more flexibility to decide the level of service they need - for instance, how much downtime an application can have and how quickly problems must be fixed - for each application they run.
"Every application within the portfolio of an agency isn't alike. They all don't need the same level of service in terms of availability and everything else," said Swedberg. "So by going to an application-based transformation, we can go in and profile that application and, working with agency business executives, understand exactly what level of service each level of application really needs. And give them the tools to better be able to manage their IT budgets for data centers."
But Tieszen said changes implemented by the state fail to address a fundamental problem with the outsourcing plan: the DIR's lack of authority to centrally manage the initiative.
"Let's face it: The DIR is an agency with very little real influence, despite whatever state organizational chart you might look at," he said. "They were given a mandate to centrally manage the agencies and they failed to do that. They failed to get buy-in from the agencies from the very beginning."
Those problems have slowed server modernization and consolidation to a crawl and greatly increased IBM's costs, he said.
Despite the current problems, Texas remains committed to some form of data center consolidation, DIR officials said, adding that the concept enjoys support from a cross-section of state leaders.
"There's no going back from consolidation," Swedberg said. "We've got the buy-in across the board from the legislators, governor's office and executive directors of agencies. ... Everyone understands that it's the right direction to go."
Robinson characterized the DIR's warning to IBM as an effort to protect state agencies. "This is not a termination notice; this is a notice to cure," she said. "Our goals are to ensure the continued reliability and integrity and availability of the state's information technology resources."
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You are a moronic fool Swedberg. The 'datacenter' is all but dead, and you're just too stupid to realize it. You deserve the embarrassment that you will receive as a result of your stupidity involving this contract.
As for the state IT workers, they are, for the most part a technically savvy group. IBM has most of them now. IBM cannibalized a ton of the IT resources at the beginning of this contract when they were 're-badged' as IBM employees, as per the contract. The first of many BRILLIANT moves by Swedberg and his cronies. Let's give all the IT resources of the state away for free. Sounds great! However, the other, shrewd state agencies that were to be affected by this contract were on to DIR's maneuvering on this front and hid (as IBM has claimed) some of the more valuable IT resources knowing that they would need that key staff to keep the ships afloat if/when the contract failed. This contract was doomed from the start and there is plenty of blame to put around. The Texas Legislature for getting involved is such things from the start, DIR has been awful early and often, and IBM has been more of a late-comer to the blame party.You are a moronic fool Swedberg. The 'datacenter' is all but dead, and you're just too stupid to realize it. You deserve the embarrassment that you will receive as a result of your stupidity involving this contract.
As for the state IT workers, they are, for the most part a technically savvy group. IBM has most of them now. IBM cannibalized a ton of the IT resources at the beginning of this contract when they were 're-badged' as IBM employees, as per the contract. The first of many BRILLIANT moves by Swedberg and his cronies. Let's give all the IT resources of the state away for free. Sounds great! However, the other, shrewd state agencies that were to be affected by this contract were on to DIR's maneuvering on this front and hid (as IBM has claimed) some of the more valuable IT resources knowing that they would need that key staff to keep the ships afloat if/when the contract failed. This contract was doomed from the start and there is plenty of blame to put around. The Texas Legislature for getting involved is such things from the start, DIR has been awful early and often, and IBM has been more of a late-comer to the blame party.Maybe the good folks of Texas should have checked with the folks in the Hudson Valley in NY. Big Blue could care less about the US and has gone as far as to develop software that tells them how to maximize tax breaks while maximizing off-shoring of jobs. NY has lost millions, plus thousands of jobs thanks to these pieces of garbage.
Maybe the good folks of Texas should have checked with the folks in the Hudson Valley in NY. Big Blue could care less about the US and has gone as far as to develop software that tells them how to maximize tax breaks while maximizing off-shoring of jobs. NY has lost millions, plus thousands of jobs thanks to these pieces of garbage.