Virtual Clarity, a consultancy that helps multinationals shift from outdated technology that no longer meets their needs and grow into an IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) infrastructure, today announced the debut of a white paper and accompanying video interview from digital technology economics pioneer Dr. Howard Rubin.

Abandoning old-guard IT philosophy: The Cloud as a prelude to “The Commons”
Dr. Rubin identifies a series of pain points of today’s digital quagmire that are all too familiar to anyone working in an enterprise organization, offering new insights into how companies can thrive. He notes that while technologies and approaches like the Cloud and creation of IT resource “commons” are within reach today, the IT industry has locked organizations into large hardware purchases, multiyear contracts and an accompanying way of thinking that effectively stunts an organization’s agility and precludes it from using IT to truly transform business. The result is an environment filled with “islands of technology,” on which a great deal of computing resources are underutilized.

As Rubin writes, “It’s inefficient for companies to have ‘Islands of Technology’; such as standalone data centers, storage silos and other non-strategic systems. It makes more sense to have some other entity host them for you at a reduced rate by applying more efficient economies of scale. In turn, corporations that turn over commodity IT services to ‘The Commons’ can lower their fixed IT operating costs and direct more investment into revenue-generating projects.”

Beyond Moore’s Law lies an unchartered IT frontier
But this financial and operational inefficiency isn’t even the worst of it. The unruly, plodding IT infrastructures that are today’s technological reality hamper organizations from excelling in a new digital economic age—one in which a company’s survival will depend on increased technology spending at a time when technology costs are spiking, thanks to the end of Moore’s Law.

Harnessing innovation in an age in where technology permeates the fabric of every aspect of our business and personal lives will require leaders of all industries and sectors to formulate sophisticated economic models and follow bold new technological visions. Or as Dr. Rubin puts it, “That’s the challenge of the future. It’s managing the transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age to a digital economy—an uncharted space with no latitude or longitude, where no one knows what the rules are.”

Video: an interview with Dr. Howard Rubin
Dr. Rubin sat down with Virtual Clarity’s Pinky Van-Lare to discuss the themes of his paper in more detail, including extensive elaborations that illustrate his perspective. “Just as we’ve had grazing lands in the past, everything gravitates to the commons; and that’s what we’ll start to see in technology. If you own everything and demand goes away, you’re stuck with the excess capacity.”

The white paper and video interview are sponsored and published by Virtual Clarity, and can be accessed here:

Virtual Clarity finds a philosophical kindred spirit in Dr. Rubin. Says Steve Peskin, CEO at Virtual Clarity, “We have always found great synergy with the views of Dr. Rubin. His framework and projections for the evolution of IT ratify our view that a major overhaul in thinking about IT is necessary to effect substantive improvements in agility and efficiency.”

About Virtual Clarity
Virtual Clarity works with you to shift from outdated technologies that no longer meet your needs for growth and flexibility to an IT-as-a-Service infrastructure. This means running IT like a profitable unit of business in the largest, most critical IT environments by aligning IT capabilities with the needs of business, at the speed of the business. The company combines zero infrastructure, agility, cost efficiency and innovation to bring a new kind of IT that meets modern business challenges and transforms both the infrastructure and culture that drive IT.