IDG Contributor Network: Managed services and strategic outcomes

Given that ‘managed services’ can mean so many things to so many people, let’s dispense with the term for a moment and ask something more fundamental: What is the basic task that corporate IT leaders are trying to accomplish with their infrastructure?What is the purpose of all their servers, routers, firewalls, connectivity, cabling, software, applications, data centers, cloud computing, virtual instances, and more? As that mix of technologies has changed over the years, so has