Earlier this month at Microsoft’s TechEd conference, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft server and tools business, introduced a new initiative called Dynamic IT.

According to a story by Network World’s John Fontana, the concept is derived from remarks by Gartner’s Tom Bittman who told the TechEd audience that agility is the key in a world that is becoming more connected, providing opportunities that appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. Bittman said agility is not only the speed needed to adjust to change but also the ability to ensure operational efficiency and to do it systemwide using variable cost model, which enables customers to pay only for what they need.

In his talk, Muglia noted that customers want to take advantage of new technologies and computing approaches, such as mobile devices and software-as-a-service (SaaS), while still getting maximum value out of their existing environments. He identified four key areas of technical innovation that constitute Dynamic IT, which he called: Unified and Virtualized; Process-Led, Model-Driven; Service-Enabled; and User-Focused.

Unified and Virtualized - This, according to Muglia, requires a comprehensive and unified approach to virtualization, spanning operating systems, applications and servers with more powerful and more intuitive front-end technologies. Unified and virtualized environments can be managed comprehensively and consistently across a wide range of scenarios. The benefits include reduced costs, increased availability and better response to changing computing needs within an existing infrastructure.

Process-Led, Model-Driven - Dynamic IT takes advantage of ongoing advances in modeling capabilities to help IT automate processes where human decisions and input are not needed. Such capabilities improve organizational agility and help IT to optimize how a company’s systems and people work together. Using models to capture organizational knowledge helps to automate procedures, reduce complexity, and improve responsiveness to business demands.

Service-Enabled - Dynamic IT provides a powerful way for companies to enhance and extend their existing environments to support new business scenarios based on services. Customers today are faced with an array of options that involve SaaS, service-oriented architectures, and Web 2.0 technologies. A key benefit is that companies can transform their existing array of heterogeneous, distributed and often inflexible IT systems into a set of more connected, simplified and adaptable ones that can better support the business.