How to Optimize IT Resources Through Infrastructure, People, and Processes

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share your personal backstory with us? 

I am a native Arizonan and graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. I have been married to my wife, Alexis, for 17 years, and we have three amazing children. Our oldest son, Noah, received a heart transplant at just six months old, which sparked my passion for healthcare. Although I don’t have a medical background, I leverage my experience in product development and technology to improve healthcare for people like my son.

After spending the first ten years of my career in banking, I moved into healthcare, first at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona and then Banner Health. At Banner, I was fortunate to work under some exceptional leaders—Bryce Carder, Alex Morehouse, Ryan Smith, and Diana Wise—who provided the support and mentorship I needed to develop as a leader. I’m incredibly grateful for the investment they made in me.

During my final two years at Banner, I served as the Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations. Ultimately, I chose to pursue my dream of working with a startup and joined Thiru Thangarathinam at KeenStack. KeenStack is a professional services consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations implement, optimize, and manage their ServiceNow platforms to streamline workflows, improve operational efficiency, and drive digital transformation. Through strategic guidance, technical implementation, and ongoing support, KeenStack empowers clients to maximize the value of their ServiceNow investments. Thiru previously founded and successfully sold a Salesforce professional services company, MST Solutions, and was embarking on a new and ambitious venture focused on ServiceNow. Given ServiceNow’s pivotal role at Banner Health, I recognized this as an opportunity to positively impact healthcare on a broader scale, improving experiences for providers, members, patients like my son, and caregivers like my wife, who navigate the complex challenges of healthcare for a special-needs child.

Let’s talk about how to optimize IT Resources. How do you assess the current state of your IT infrastructure? What metrics do you use to measure its efficiency?

There are a few different angles to consider when assessing the current state of your infrastructure, which I’ve broken down below.

Infrastructure Health
When evaluating infrastructure health things to consider include system uptime, reliability, and performance. There are numerous tools available that can help you track and manage these factors. Solutions like Dynatrace, DataDog, and ServiceNow ITOM excel at aggregating events from various monitoring tools, enabling system owners to monitor total uptime, reliability, and performance effectively. Having managed infrastructure teams, I always found it interesting to hear server, virtual machine, and desktop teams tout their individual uptimes. However, what often gets neglected is the broader view of business services and the importance of establishing SLAs that assure business stakeholders their systems will function at an agreed-upon threshold. Another critical consideration is the exponential cost increase associated with achieving higher uptime, reliability, and performance. High availability architectures or full disaster recovery environments can be costly, so it’s crucial to prioritize infrastructure supporting mission-critical business services.

Cost & Resource Utilization
Another key area to consider is cost and resource utilization. Mismanagement or incorrect platforming of workloads can be financially catastrophic for enterprises that rely heavily on access to capital and operating budgets to stay competitive. There are numerous hosting options, from hyperscalers like AWS, GCP, and Azure, to cloud-adjacent infrastructure solutions like Dell Apex and HPE GreenLake, as well as traditional on-premise environments. Ensuring workloads are placed where they maximize infrastructure utilization at the lowest cost is essential. For example, a data platform that requires significant compute resource scaling for tasks like model training is best suited for cloud environments using specialized processors like AWS Graviton. In contrast, hospital imaging storage might better fit cloud-adjacent or on-premise solutions, particularly if cloud cold storage can’t meet retrieval SLAs. Finally, consider the human resources needed to manage increasingly complex infrastructure environments. The more standardized your environment, the fewer variations in resource skills required. At a previous employer, we managed multiple storage and compute infrastructures from Cisco, HPE, Dell, and Pure. One of the best decisions I made was moving away from chasing best-of-breed solutions and selecting a partner capable of delivering comprehensive end-to-end solutions for our on-premise and near-cloud infrastructure needs.

Automation & Operational Efficiency
Over the past several years, technology around infrastructure provisioning and configuration has significantly improved. Tools such as Terraform and CloudFormation for provisioning, Chef and Puppet for configuration management, or Ansible, which bridges both areas, have made considerable impacts. DevOps engineering has strongly influenced infrastructure management, and failure to invest in this area is strategically risky. In a previous executive position I held, one of the most impactful concepts we adopted was implementing a platform engineering framework across all infrastructure services, beginning with cloud and extending to our on-premise infrastructure teams, including networking. It’s important to recognize potential pushback from team members who may have become comfortable with legacy skills like manual server builds or switch configurations. I’ve personally experienced the silent resistance against automation in legacy organizations, making it vital to approach these transitions with effective change management strategies.

Security & Compliance
There is significant synergy between platform engineering and security. Incorporating “policy as code” into your infrastructure-as-code (IaC) platform engineering efforts substantially enhances the security posture of your infrastructure and applications. Initially, when we began cloud application development, developers created bespoke policy and infrastructure for each application. After years of this approach, standardizing policy changes became impossible without triggering a cascade of unexpected issues. Upon completing our platform engineering initiative, all application teams began using standardized IaC sets regardless of the hyperscaler. This approach allowed universal policy changes across hyperscalers with minimal disruption—a true game-changer. An additional benefit of platform engineering is embedding critical approval gates into infrastructure and application development processes. For instance, all new IaC is scanned by Wiz.io, and no application progresses beyond the development environment without GitHub code scanning.

Considering all these factors, the primary metrics to watch are those documented in the SLAs you’ve developed with your business stakeholders and the OLAs established internally between IT teams. Monitoring components that enable adherence to these SLAs and OLAs typically ensures a stable and efficient operating environment. Without defined SLAs and OLAs, you might deliver stable services but at a cost significantly exceeding enterprise requirements—in other words, paying for platinum-level solutions when gold or silver would suffice.

How do you prioritize and allocate resources for hardware and software upgrades to maximize performance?

I am a huge proponent of Bi-modal IT to ensure that an organization can prioritize and allocate resources for hardware and software upgrades. Bi-modal IT is essentially a fancy way of saying you need to operate your IT organization in two distinct modes: one for operational activities and the other for innovation. I’ve seen many organizations struggle with basic “lights-on” operational tasks, like hardware and software upgrades, because these things often fall by the wayside as they pursue more exciting business initiatives. That approach may seem acceptable until you face a security breach resulting from unpatched hardware or a software vulnerability that was already addressed in an upgrade never deployed.

Resource planning can be complicated, but platforms like ServiceNow provide tools such as timecard tracking, allowing organizations to establish a baseline of resource allocation toward operational versus project-based work. Once you have a clear baseline for operational (“lights-on”) activities, you can effectively forecast incremental resources required for enterprise initiatives. If your organization’s leadership directs you to pull resources away from essential operational tasks, you can clearly communicate what work won’t get done and the associated risks of that decision. The benefit of being methodical and quantitative in your approach is that your enterprise leadership team can make fully informed decisions.

What security measures do you have in place to safeguard your IT infrastructure while optimizing its performance?

The scope of security measures in place at an organization can vary drastically depending on the type of business being operated but generally follows a common framework regardless of industry. A larger healthcare system might have extensive technology and policy measures within each category, whereas a startup might have significantly fewer measures in place, though still covering the key areas outlined below.

Here are some main focus areas for security measures:

Identity Access Management
Identification, authentication, and authorization are essential components of any IAM program. Numerous tools support the activities and workflows surrounding these measures.

Network Security
SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is currently one of the most discussed terms in the marketplace because it combines network security with network management. SASE addresses the challenges caused by having too many tools and insufficient skilled resources to operate them effectively. Integrating network security and operations into a single interface shows significant promise as a differentiator.

Endpoint Security
Having worked in a healthcare system for the past 9.5 years, endpoint security has been particularly challenging due to difficulties in tracking and managing all endpoints, especially biomedical devices, given their variability and complexity. At my previous healthcare organization, we heavily invested in hardware and software asset management solutions from ServiceNow and supplemented these with additional products like Axonius for Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management to improve asset visibility.

Cloud Security
Our platform engineering framework was critical to our cloud security strategy. It standardized our Policy management via Policy-as-Code and deployment of cloud Infrastructure via Infrastructure as Code (IaC), creating a streamlined, secure, and scalable pathway for application and data engineering teams to deploy cloud services.

Security Compliance and Risk Management
Regular audits to assess compliance with frameworks like HIPAA, NIST, and SOC 2 were fundamental for our organization. Additionally, cybersecurity performed vulnerability scans using Tenable, generating incidents for our infrastructure teams to resolve, which was crucial for maintaining compliance and managing security risks.

How do you identify the skill sets and competencies required for your IT team to effectively manage and optimize resources?

The most effective method to identify necessary skills and competencies for our IT teams was to first establish a clear roadmap outlining where we’re headed with our infrastructure. Secondly, we identified the specific technologies required to move our organization forward. Finally, we documented the skills needed to operate and support these technologies. As we transitioned toward a platform engineering framework for infrastructure, it quickly became evident that investing in DevOps skill sets was essential to develop pipelines and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and policy-as-code (PaC). Once we settled on HashiCorp’s Terraform and Sentinel products, it clarified exactly which skill sets we needed. The same structured approach applied to provisioning and configuration automation with Ansible. However, since we were moving away from extensive on-premise infrastructure, it was crucial to understand the durability of those legacy skills and how team members could transition to new roles supporting cloud infrastructure over time.

What strategies do you use to foster professional development and continuous learning within your IT team?

I’ve always believed in transparency regarding the direction I’m taking the organization, sometimes even to a fault. However, I firmly believe that empowering team members by clearly communicating how their work will evolve provides them the opportunity to proactively develop new skills or explore paths into new roles, either internally or externally, aligning with their professional goals. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t acknowledge that this approach occasionally stirred up significant challenges in my career. Yet, whether through deliberate change management or not, I believe a leader must initiate necessary changes proactively. From my perspective, genuine care for the team involves driving transformation directly rather than relying on external consultants who may lack a deep investment in the organization’s people.

Can you share examples of how cross-functional collaboration has contributed to resource optimization in your IT department?

When I first was given the position of a VP of Infrastructure and Operations, one of my primary objectives was to begin deprecating our data centers. The data centers had served their purpose for years, but their cost no longer justified their value. Additionally, I strongly believed our patients cared about the quality of care they received rather than how effectively we could manage servers. The effort to migrate data centers was monumental and significantly impacted roles within our organization, as we transitioned to a colocation facility and deployed hardware through Dell Apex services. The cross-functional collaboration from the team to not only accomplish this complex task but also support affected team members in transitioning to new opportunities was outstanding.

How do you identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in your IT processes that might hinder resource optimization?

If you had asked me a year ago how I would identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in IT processes, I would have recommended hiring a consulting firm to review workflows and analyze data to determine where work was getting stalled. However, after spending several months with my new organization, a pure-play ServiceNow integrator, I would now advocate investing in process mining. Utilizing AI-driven solutions to analyze workflow data such as identifying tickets stuck in approval queues, bouncing between departments, or repeatedly reopened due to incomplete actions is transformative. Effective process mining not only pinpoints inefficiencies but also sets the stage for leveraging Agentic AI tools like task automation, significantly reducing human involvement in routine and repetitive operational tasks.

How do you ensure that your IT processes are aligned with business objectives and contribute to overall organizational efficiency?

The best way to ensure that IT processes align with business objectives and contribute effectively to organizational efficiency is by investing in your operating model, specifically through Business Value Mapping and governance structures:

Business Value Mapping:

• • Business Outcomes: Defines strategic goals and measurable business impacts.
  • Business Capabilities: Identifies key operational capabilities driving these outcomes.
  • IT Initiatives: Maps technology solutions that enable these capabilities.
  • Technology Enablers: Specifies the platforms, tools, and integrations supporting these initiatives.

Governance: Clearly defining roles and responsibilities for stakeholders across IT, business units, and external consultants is critical. Establishing clear accountability ensures smooth operations during platform upgrades, incident responses, and compliance checks. Hybrid governance structures may offer the most flexibility, particularly in complex organizations with a broad platform user base.

Can you share experiences where you’ve successfully automated routine tasks to free up resources for higher-value activities?

One of the most impactful examples of automating routine tasks comes from platform engineering initiatives. Investing in Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and Policy-as-Code (PaC) enables application and data development teams to easily access and deploy pre-approved, secure cloud infrastructure directly into their environments. This automation can significantly reduce resource demands across application development, security, infrastructure, network, and quality assurance teams, creating widespread efficiency gains for the entire enterprise.

Fantastic. Here is the primary question of our interview. What are your 5 Tips to Optimize IT Resources Through Infrastructure, People, and Processes? Please share a story or example for each.

Immunity to Change Fatigue
Develop a resilient team that isn’t demoralized by constant change. Adapting to change must become a cornerstone for your organization. As business leaders become more adaptable and use data to pivot, the organization’s infrastructure must enable business adaptability. Health systems typically operate on slim margins, and IT is one of the largest line items at 3-5% of the total operating budget. For example, I previously managed a large IT Field Services team that spent more time performing tasks better suited to a remote service desk than doing actual fieldwork. This was a costly misuse of resources, justified by the flawed assumption that providers prioritized personal relationships with technicians over the speed and efficiency of service delivery.

To address this, I changed leadership, bringing in someone willing to advocate for the changes needed to improve support for providers and patients rather than viewing them as resource reductions for clinical teams.

Don’t Automate Trash
Don’t automate your inefficiencies—automation tools cost money and resources to manage. Instead, allocate resources to evaluating workflows and challenge unnecessary approvals and validations that can be handled dynamically. Before automating, ask critical questions: What’s the business need this workflow fulfills? Is the workflow necessary? Are the right teams assigned the correct work? Can automation proactively eliminate the workflow entirely?

For example, we had a team responsible for configuring devices, such as Windows laptops, sent to employees. When we introduced Windows Autopilot, a zero-touch provisioning tool, the team initially created a workflow that auto-provisioned devices but then sent them back to IT to manually add custom applications before shipping—defeating the purpose of automation. After addressing this issue, devices were shipped directly to employees, with most custom applications automatically pushed after delivery, maximizing efficiency.

Application Portfolio Management and Application Rationalization
Investing in application portfolio management is essential, especially for large enterprises with extensive IT footprints. Too often, teams purchase tools with 90% capability overlap simply because they focus on the 10% differentiation—often a non-critical aspect—or lack awareness of existing solutions’ capabilities. For instance, ServiceNow is a platform solution offering modules across numerous IT and business services. Throughout my career, I’ve seen teams default to their familiar “hammer,” overlooking whether they should build a cloud-native app or leverage existing platforms like Salesforce, ServiceNow, or Workday. Without portfolio management, decisions depend solely on individual enterprise architects’ knowledge or the technology stack familiar to the receiving IT team.

If you have an application portfolio management solution in place, you should enforce strict controls to prevent redundant technologies from entering your organization. When redundant solutions are identified, deprecate them swiftly to achieve cost savings and reduce the technology footprint your IT team manages.

1. 1. Infrastructure Operating Model
       I’ve witnessed many preventable disasters stemming from the absence of a strong IT operating model. The concept is simple, though execution can be challenging, particularly in hybrid or decentralized models. Such models require stringent technical controls to prevent individual business units from deviating from established standards. Essential components include:
      1. Align technology with business priorities
      2. Establish strong governance frameworks
      3. Maintain controlled flexibility
      4. Focus on end-user adoption
      5. Establish metrics for success

At a previous employer, the ServiceNow platform replaced HP Service Manager (now known as Micro Focus Service Manager). Once ServiceNow was implemented for ITSM, teams found the platform empowering and began developing applications independently. Unfortunately, insufficient controls led to deviations from baseline configurations, ultimately preventing the adoption of future platform enhancements. Eventually, the organization faced a costly choice: either migrate to a new instance or invest heavily in cleaning up the existing platform.

1. 2. Vendor Resources
       Leveraging vendors effectively can significantly enhance your efforts to optimize IT resources across infrastructure, people, and processes. I’ve found that outsourcing operational tasks to managed service providers can be highly beneficial, particularly when you establish contractual targets focused on optimization and efficiency gains. Recognizing when and how to engage vendors—whether through managed services, staff augmentation, or project delivery—is critical for effective resource optimization.

How do you maintain a balance between short-term resource optimization goals and long-term strategic IT planning?

I have always been a strong advocate for Bi-modal IT, which helps organizations effectively prioritize resources for both short-term operational tasks and long-term strategic initiatives. Bi-modal IT involves managing your IT organization in two distinct modes: operational (“keeping the lights on”) and innovation. I’ve seen many organizations neglect essential operational tasks like hardware and software upgrades while pursuing exciting business projects. This neglect often seems manageable until it leads to a significant issue, such as a security breach from unpatched systems. Effective resource planning tools, like ServiceNow’s timecard tracking, can help establish a clear baseline of resources allocated to operational tasks versus strategic projects. Having this baseline allows you to accurately forecast additional resources needed for strategic IT planning, ensuring both immediate needs and long-term objectives are properly balanced.

What role does feedback from end-users and stakeholders play in shaping your resource optimization strategies?

Feedback from end-users and stakeholders is essential for shaping resource optimization strategies. Ideally, the feedback loop is minimal, indicating that end-users are unaware of backend processes, allowing stakeholders to focus solely on their needs. My ideal scenario would involve fully automating IT processes to the extent that users and stakeholders either notice nothing or experience improved performance without being consciously aware of any changes made on our end.

How do you adapt your resource optimization strategies to accommodate technological advancements and industry trends?

I believe that the best way to adapt your resource optimization strategies to accommodate technological advancements and industry trends is to shift away from large capital investments that require a long period of depreciation before adjustments can be made. This means investing more in as-a-service offerings, placing the responsibility of accommodating technological advancements and industry trends on the vendor providing the service. This is a radical shift for many organizations that have become accustomed to spending capital on infrastructure as opposed to using an operating budget.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Bill McDermott, chairman and CEO at ServiceNow, would be an intriguing person to have lunch with. He has a unique way of looking at the world that I believe I could benefit from.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

This article originally appeared in Authority Magazine.