Archive | February, 2011

A Former “Prissy Girl” Takes on Tech – Fortune

Posted on 09 February 2011

The title caught my attention as I can relay a very similar story and entered the job market the same year as well. Yikes! However, I didn’t aspire or become CIO as Diane has done. The one aspect of the article that I would debate is supporting any device in the organization. The article describes a business service management approach at Intel in understanding the business and knowing how technology supports and drives the business growth, however, then takes a left turn with the roll your own approach.

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, Fortune, Intel, IT Management, Support

Forrester: SaaS Won’t Succeed with Some Apps – CIO

Posted on 09 February 2011

SaaS as the article describes is followed with a ton of hype in these days of the cloud and transformation to business service management versus the commodity at the lower level. The short term cost appeal with the subscription model and ease at which you can subscribe generates a lot of the hype. I believe in the model and again always suggest first going back to basics and identify your services and classify them giving you a sense of what you need to service and support.

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, Forrester, IT Management, SaaS, Service Providers

Winning the Consolidated Data Center Future – ITBusinessEdge

Posted on 08 February 2011

Consolidation can have short term gains and costs with longer term gains when approached as Arthur describes in his post. Its all about balancing operating and growing the business and business service management practices.

Tags: Business Service Management, Consolidation, IT Management, ITBusinessEdge, Transformation

The Cloud CIO: A Tale of Two IT Futures – CIO

Posted on 08 February 2011

I would agree that IT is commoditizing and the role of IT leaders is evolving much like my good friend Siki indicates where commodity services can be done elsewhere and which then frees the evolved IT resources to sit at the table as Diane describes to apply technology to business choices. This is the practices of business service management in action.

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, Cloud Computing Journal, IT Management, Roles, Service Providers, Transformation

One Size Most Definitely Does Not Fit All – Cloud Computing Journal

Posted on 08 February 2011

I read this post by a friend of mine and I couldn’t agree more wholeheartedly. Cloud computing by the nature of it screams heterogeneous environment versus a single vendor framework homogeneous environment. I also screams requirements for an integration platform and business service management practice to manage the services consuming the technology.

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, Cloud Computing Journal, End-to-End View, Integration, IT Management

First in a Series – Finding Your Services, The Golden Key

Posted on 08 February 2011

Starting any project is daunting and Business Service Management as an initiative is often thought of as big, hard and complicated. My personal opinion is that stems from the fact that it cuts horizontally across the data center and does not reside in one sphere of influence. However, as a long time product marketing / product manager I find it can be quite simple. One service at a time, one service team at a time approach rather than boiling the ocean all at once. Let’s start at the top, the service, and work our way down and back up again in a series of posts.

Tags: Business Service Management, Service Value

Funny commercials during Super Bowl

Posted on 08 February 2011

There were some funny commercials and some not so funny commercials during the Super Bowl. The one with Ozzie and Beiber was kind of funny, but I question…

Tags: BSM, Business Alignment, Business Service Management, IT Management, Service Level

The Data Center Powering the Super Bowl – Data Center Knowledge

Posted on 07 February 2011

For the folks that know me best, they are snickering at how this pains me to write and not only post once, but twice about Texas Stadium. My featured post on Friday was also about Texas Stadium and the Super Bowl and the Business Service Management opportunity facing those companies buying 30 second ads at $3M each. I believe the might Pug stole the show!

Tags: Business Service Management, Data Center Knowledge, IT Management, Service Value, Super Bowl

How British Airways Made Money From IT – CIO

Posted on 07 February 2011

This headline caught my eye as I will be the first to debate that IT is not a profit center. However, this is a prime example of IT realizing and classifying based upon Service Value and Business Service Management practices. In an effort to first cut support costs from old systems, right sourcing decisions and partnerships were established for industry must haves.

Tags: British Airways, Business Service Management, CIO, IT Management, SAP, Service Providers

Back to the Future – Monitoring 1999 Style

Posted on 07 February 2011

Tonight we’re gonna manage like it’s 1999. I was introduced to a prospect today that made me feel like I was in a timewarp. I was given of of those old school 400 question RFPs which called for in-depth answers about Event Management – and I mean everything about it, correlation, rules, weighting, etc. Do you know the difference between monitoring and business service management?

Tags: Business Service Management, IT Management Tools, Monitoring, Service Level

For Enterprise IT – Hybrid Cloud Management A Priority – IDC Blogs

Posted on 04 February 2011

Business service management, service levels and management of the cloud from the experts at IDC – Mary Johnston Turner.

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, IDC Blogs, IT Management, Service Level, Service Providers

Super Bowl, Victoria’s Secret and Business Service Management

Posted on 03 February 2011

I can already hear you asking and scratching your heads, “Michele, what do those 3 things have in common – cmon, get real”. Yes, I’m a long term IT nerd and tremendous football fan that remembers everything. Heck, I fessed up to crashing a data center for 7 hours in an earlier post. My motto: go large or stay home or as we say in the south: ” if you can’t run with the big dawgs, stay off the porch”!

Tags: Availability, Business Service Management, Cloud, CNN Money, IT Management, Service Value, USA Today

Cloud Computing brings Chance of Showers – SCMagazine

Posted on 03 February 2011

The author points out great security points in making the leap to the cloud and part of those warts not mentioned is the management of those VMs in the cloud from an end-to-end business service management perspective to manage against the risk he points to. How risky is it to have that VM in the cloud? How secure should you make the data and management of the VM? What business services are at risk?

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, IT Management, SCMagazine, Service Providers, Service Value, Virtualization

Cloud Computing (still) Needs a Bill of Rights – ZDNet

Posted on 03 February 2011

This article inspired me to write a full blown feature on the subject of vendor management, service level measurement/management/communication and basic business service management practices. The net of it, IT you own it – no shifting blame to others and no government intervention to set up terms and conditions. This is outsourcing, plain and simple – manage your provider.

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, IT Management, Service Level, Service Providers, ZDNet

I Didn’t Do It, It’s His Fault – Cloud Responsibility

Posted on 02 February 2011

Today I’m writing an article instead of just sharing the news having spent a little time consulting and reviewing major sourcing contracts for customers and being trained in the Ross Perot bootcamp of outsourcing early in my career. What I always find amazing is how much trust a subscriber puts in the provider during the contract negotiation. On one hand there is trust (I call it naivety) and the provider was successful in creating a relationship, playing on emotion and expertise in the market. On the other hand it is a recipe for disaster, a lose – win situation for you the subscriber. Know your rights and deploy business service management practices.

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, IT Management, Service Level, Service Providers, ZDNet

Are Open Systems Inevitable in the Cloud? – ITBusinessEdge

Posted on 02 February 2011

Today is the topic of integration in Business Service Management land. The nature of taking advantage of cloud and dynamic resources will require open connectivity. The subscriber maintains the responsibility for overall management of services to their customers. This in and of itself screams of open systems and integration platforms.

Tags: Business Service Management, IaaS, Integration, IT Management, Open Systems

More On Cloud Middleware – SaaSBlogs

Posted on 02 February 2011

I feel like changing things up here in Business Service Management land today. This blog caught my attention as it describes the leap of going from an independent software vendor (ISV) to aSaaS offering. It has challenges in how the software is architected so that it can then later be hosted and ultimately used by many customers in a single, multi-tenant environment to take full advantage of the economies of scale. The fact is most are run in dedicated environments to short cut this challenge.

Tags: Business Service Management, Integration, IT Management, SaaS, SaaSBlogs, Service Providers

Verizon Buys Terremark – Gartner Blogs

Posted on 02 February 2011

The Hub Commentary_ This week there has been significant buzz around this acquisition and I’ve held off posting and referring to any of the articles.  Lydia of Gartner sums it up well with her blog of yesterday.  One in debt without a sales team and the other in need of data center footprints and a […]

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, Gartner, IaaS, Service Providers

Waste Management Customers to Gain Data Visibility – ITNews

Posted on 01 February 2011

In my post today, Getting to Service Value, the principles I described regarding Business Service Management are put into action here with this CEO and CIO combination. The business is/was changing and technology was/is being re-thought and deployed to change the business.

Tags: Business Service Management, ITNews, Service Value, Transformation

Getting to Service Value with Business Service Management

Posted on 01 February 2011

What is a simple explanation of what Business Service Management (BSM) is, does – let’s take the BS out of the speak. I simply describe it as the ability for IT to communicate service performance (value) aligned with business objectives, while maintaining control over the infrastructure.

Tags: Business Service Management, Service Cost, Service Value