Archive | April, 2011

Why Projects Fail and How to Rescue Them – Baseline

Posted on 28 April 2011

The Hub Commentary Unclear requirements, ambiguous priorities, lack of resources and unrealistic timelines are all notable reasons for failed projects.   But these are only a few…check out other obstacles that cause many projects to crash and burn and the strategies to recover those failed projects. ————————————————————- Failed projects are costly, so a sound project recovery […]

Tags: Baseline, Best Practices, Business Alignment, Business Service Management, IT, IT Management

VDI’s Impact on Network Infrastructure – ITBusinessEdge

Posted on 28 April 2011

Virtualized Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) can save organizations on the hardware with the thin client, but as Arthur points out there are additional costs to consider and with everything there is a break-even and savings point with volume. We are back to the dumb terminal! What is old is new again.

Tags: Business Service Management, End-to-End View, IT Management Tools, Monitoring, VDI

Are Enterprises Really Gaga for the Cloud?

Posted on 28 April 2011

There’s an awful lot of statistics and predictions floating around about how long it will take for companies to adopt the cloud, but in my experience, change happens very slowly in the Enterprise and it could be years before many adopt private clouds.

Tags: BSM, Business Service Management, Cloud, Enterprise IT, Private Cloud

4 Companies that Get IT – 1 Purpose — Attachmate

Posted on 27 April 2011

The day has finally arrived to announce the closing of one chapter and the start of another. As my loyal followers know, we did belong to Novell, but we have remained true to keeping this site focused on best practices, insight, opinion and resources and not on the vendor technology specifically. Today I will go ahead and post this news as it is significant in the enterprise software market in general.

Tags: Attachmate, Business Service Management, NetIQ, Novell

2011 Outsourcing Survey: Chasing Fast And Cheap – InformationWeek

Posted on 25 April 2011

There is no doubt the cloud and outsourcing options are here to stay and will continue to eat away at the data center. Those that deploy, monitor, manage, and measure their services in mixed environments taking advantage of the best options will lead their industry with technology in the coming year.

Tags: Business Service Management, IT Management, Monitoring, Performance, Service Value, Sourcing, Transformation

VMware Launches Cloud Foundry

Posted on 25 April 2011

In an interesting move, VWware is launching CloudFoundry.com, an open platform as a service (PaaS) offering. It should be interesting to see if it’s open enough to support BSM monitoring.

Tags: BSM, Business Service Management, Cloud, Monitoring, PaaS, Virtualization, VMware

Amazon EC2 debacle drags on into Day 2 – NetworkWorld

Posted on 24 April 2011

The Hub Commentary_ The news continued through the weekend on the Amazon outage this past week.  While many who are commenting are using it as an opportunity to point the finger that the cloud has failed.  I do not.  The cloud is here to stay. The role of the IT organization is changing to that […]

Tags: Amazon EC2, Business Service Management, Cloud, DR, Service Providers

Outages, Monitoring and Being Prepared

Posted on 22 April 2011

When Amazon EC2 service went down the other day, it didn’t necessarily show the weakness of the Cloud model, but instead showed just how vulnerable everyone is regardless of the location of your infrastructure. If it could happen to Amazon with all its fail-safes, it could happen to you too and you have to be ready.

Tags: Amazon EC2, Business Service Management, Cloud Computing, Disasters, Enterprise IT, Outages

Amazon cloud outage derails Reddit, Quora – CNet & NetworkWorld

Posted on 21 April 2011

Outages always make for big headlines and make for good examples of the cost of visibility and management. I read these articles with positive thoughts and still see cloud computing as the future and those who are bold took advantage of growing business earlier rather than later.

Tags: Amazon EC2, Business Service Management, Cloud Computing Journal, DR, IT Management, Service Value

It’s the Agility, Stupid! – Novell

Posted on 20 April 2011

I’ve commented in this similar vein on many posts this year and the cost calculation and business value is covered in my post and recorded presentation here on The Hub. My friend Michael sums up this topic well with citations from InformationWeek and Forrester. It is not about the technology, it is about the service value the technology brings to the business, something those in the business service management practice have known for many years.

Tags: Business Alignment, Business Service Management, Cloud, Innovation, Novell, Service Providers, Service Value, Transformation

My First 48 Hours with iPad 2: One CIO’s Story – CIO

Posted on 20 April 2011

As the iPad2 came to market and there were many articles regarding the use of employees bringing their own devices to the work environment saving capex spending. My challenge with this is the hidden cost of support and security of data.

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, iPad, Service Value

Where BTM Meets BSM

Posted on 20 April 2011

You can use Business Transaction Management (BTM) to build a better understanding of certain types of data inside your enterprise and you can link this data to your Business Service Management (BSM) system to have a one-stop shop for valuable business data.

Tags: BSM, BTM, Business Service Management, Enterprise IT, SLA

Transparency In The Cloud, Part III: 2 More Questions to Ask Every SaaS Provider – SaaSBlogs

Posted on 19 April 2011

Flexible pricing and flexible services (or features), both great questions to explore as Matt describes. However, the reason some software and services are more suitable in an as-a-Service model is because it is standard. The pricing is cheaper due to economies of scale created by sharing the same service with many.

Tags: Business Service Management, SaaS, Service Providers

Organizing IT for Excellent Service – Baseline

Posted on 19 April 2011

If you want to avoid IT silos and provide more value and transparency back to the business this is a worthwhile read.

Tags: BSM, Business Alignment, Business Service Management, Cost Reduction, IT Management, IT Management Tools, Service Level, Service Value

Reducing Complexity in the Enterprise

Posted on 18 April 2011

Enterprise software has grown so complex that it consumes much of the time and energy of IT just to maintain it. By moving some software to the cloud, IT can return to its role of mapping technology to business and monitoring the entire system, rather than babysitting software.

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud Computing, Enterprise IT, Microsoft, VMware

The Cloud Outscales, But Does It Outperform? – ITBusinessEdge

Posted on 18 April 2011

I would agree network performance is an aspect to consider when setting up and considering deployment options for mass storage. Another aspect to consider is something I covered in another post on Categorizing your Serivces and which services, inclusive of data, should be put out in the cloud.

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, DR, Performance, Service Level, Service Providers, Storage

Evolving towards a Business Assurance Center – Doug McClure

Posted on 17 April 2011

It is time for IT to evolve and bring together the right information from the right sources for creating the right actions for management and service performance communication within the business.

Tags: Business Alignment, Business Service Management, IT Management, Service Value, Transformation

The Essential Metrics For Infrastructure And Operations – Forrester

Posted on 17 April 2011

I tend to agree with Rachel, there is no secret set of standard metrics. There are methods and classifications for services, but no one size fits all. I will also add that measurements drive behavior as well and that I would offer caution in over measuring.

Tags: Business Alignment, Business Service Management, Forrester, IT Management, Measuring, Metrics, Performance

The Virtues of a Living Conversation Versus One Frozen in Stone – EMA

Posted on 15 April 2011

I came across this piece by my friend Dennis this week and thought how appropriate in reflection of the many articles I read, post and blog about regarding the tremendous change under foot for IT organizations this coming year.

Tags: Business Service Management, Change, Cloud, EMA, IT Management Tools, Service Value, Transformation

Business Service Management and Taxes!

Posted on 14 April 2011

It’s everyone’s favorite time of year in the US, tax season. It has a been a few years since Intuit experienced a major outage on filing day, but many of us loyal Turbo Tax, eFilers remember it fondly.

Tags: Availability, Business Service Management, IT Management Tools