Why Infrastructure Technology Is Challenging | SOA World Magazine

I like writing about “Infrastructure Software.” One of the most challenging things about being an advocate for a broad horizontally applicable technology is that it does not solve a particular business problem.

Instead, it solves about 100,000 business problems.

That was an admittedly uber-geeky joke I made on my column “Integration Edge” on ebizQ in an article about Legacy Modernization.

Although I was making light of the situation, the impact for a technology advocate is real. The problem with writing about infrastructure software is that everyone is impacted by it, yet nobody is particularly interested in it. It’s a bit like America’s “crumbling” infrastructure” – roads and bridges. Critically important, yet so easily overlooked. That’s why I often refer to software like Integration or Data Management as infrastructure software.

I had breakfast this morning with the CEO and the CTO of Algebraix Data, an interesting Austin-based infrastructure software company. We were discussing the challenges of bringing such software to market, and I mentioned “infrastructure software does all the heavy lifting, yet gets almost none of the credit”. When things are working well, nobody sees infrastructure software. When things go well, it’s the end-user products like Salesforce.com that get the credit. It’s a tough marketing problem to crack.

Why Infrastructure Technology Is Challenging | SOA World Magazine.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.