There is a great online (free) book called The Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management that was brought to our attention by one of our advisors. Only the first four chapters are available online, but it's definitely worth signing up and downloading. A choice selection from the first chapter strikes close to our thinking and ideas around the next generation of IT systems management:

Implementing Agile IT Environments For modern IT organizations, keeping up with the pace of changes that are required in order to support business initiatives can be challenging. It often seems that as soon as a new solution is implemented, it’s time to make modifications to the infrastructure. Changes can come from within the IT department—for example, when a server must be upgraded to new hardware for maintenance reasons—or from business units.

We believe this is a fundamental paradigm shift that needs to happen for operators and IT staff. Bringing some of the ideas and tenets behind agile programming to IT will dramatically increase uptime and operational efficiency.