'Real-time infrastructure': where do you start?

I saw a lot of coverage last week on Tom Bittman's keynote at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Vegas about how IT infrastructure is going to evolve (summary: it's looking very cloud-like). Only a few of the articles (like Derrick Harris' blog) picked up some of the angles Donna Scott presented the next day to another packed room -- more of an "OK, I'm interested, now how do I get started?"