Business Service Management Hub

I ended last week with a little tongue in cheek humor. I had started the week on a conference call on Monday and as I was looking out the window, a large bird came swooping past my window to land in a tree overlooking my patio.Curiosity of a Scorpion was getting the best of me to figure out what kind of big bird just landed so close. With a handy pair of binoculars I see it is a fairly large owl, that’s kinda cool, but what is it doing. It took a minute or two to discern what exactly it was doing, oh no it’s eating a mouse or rat. This provided my quote of the week, “Eat or be Eaten”.

I posted twice this week, IT and the CIO Fast Forward 5 Years – How Will You Get There? and IT Departments Need to Run Like IT Vendors and it seemed I couldn’t stop finding articles regarding the IT transformation:  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Good Monday Morning!  Scanning the early news and came across this list of metrics from Forrester that they are building out for their next conference.  In the comments to the article, there is a link to the KPI Library.  

These IT metrics have been around for decades and are good for evaluating and implementing process improvements.  In this day of the Cloud and competition for IT business, I might suggest that these need to be in context of the service and could even go one step further and categorized for 4 high level services:  Growth, Quality, Productivity and Cost.

All services are not created equal and thus the metrics for each will vary based upon the priority of the service to the business.  I’ve posted here on this chart of services last week and in a previous post.  These metrics are suited for IT Operators, while the rest of IT is slowly being outsourced or moved to the business focusing on the services offered by the business and the services that will drive the business.

How do you measure your technology for the transformation that is underway?

Michele

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Help us build out a list of metrics that organizations are using to measure their infrastructure and operations departments. We will use this data to create a list of consensus metrics and benchmark their values.  (Read Full Article…)

Is the enterprise ready for the cloud? Companies like Google, Salesforce, IBM and others think so and they’re creating solutions give enterprise customers what they want. Cloud-computing solutions are gaining traction across the market. As a CIO, the value of cloud computing is clear. And chances are, if your company hasn’t already deployed cloud solutions, you’re making plans to do so. However, with budget limitations, unless your CEO finds value in cloud computing, it may be challenging to get the solution you want. How can you educate your CEO and convince him or her that cloud computing will be a boon to your business?  Read More Here . . .

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I am still a little lost on the press convince your CEO of a new technology. Shouldn’t we be driving solutions leveraging the right deployment technology to drive competitive edge into the organization. Technology for the sake of a technology has no real value. While I agree with many of the points in this particular article on 10 Ways to Sell your CEO on Cloud Computing, it is still selling technology versus a business driving solution. We as IT have to change our thinking to that of the service providers that are popping up daily in selling our CEOs solutions leveraging technologies that drive agility and quality performance into the business, just so happens they use things like virtualization and cloud computing.

I’ve been working with many service providers as of late and it is reminiscent of the dot com era. Those that will survive and thrive are not just chasing the latest technology trend for the short term, but are baking in the practice that will sustain them for the long term and what business is asking of its own IT organizations, the ability to answer 3 questions:

(1)    “Am I open for business?”

(2)    ”How are we performing?” ”What is the customer experience?”

(3)    ”What is the risk of an outage?”

all in real time so as to take action, rather than reporting on it after the game is over.  The reason most organizations outsource services is not for cost, but for change that they cannot create from within the organization.  The time for IT to change and become the service provider of choice driving value and competitive advantage into their organizations has come.  Time to manage the business rather than convince someone of an IT technology or process.

What do you think?

Michele

Like many CIOs, you may find yourself struggling to innovate in advance of an anticipated economic recovery, while still striving to keep costs down in a decidedly uncertain business climate. And, even though you’re striving to be seen as a valued, senior member of your management teams, the enterprise perception of how much IT contributes to a competitive edge is decidedly mixed.  Read More Here . . .

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As part of its look to the future CIOInsight highlights the Top 3 initiatives keeping CIOs up at night: cutting costs, operational efficiencies and deliver consistent and stable IT performance to the business. These initiatives are neck and neck with the number of organizations that see IT as their competitive edge in the market. Most IT organizations still spend ~85% of their IT budget “just keeping the lights on”, with minimal focus on supporting and delivering upon stable and consistently performing innovative services aligned with business objectives. This percentage of spend is generally ~ 1 – 2 % of revenue spent annually operating rather than driving.

The cost of not evolving is far greater for IT organizations than the cost of transforming and adding value to their business.  Buying decisions are also migrating to the business because they have more options and they are creating change.  Outsourcing is never done for cost savings, it is to create change in the environment that the organization is unable to create on it’s own.

Time for change may have arrived in 2012.  Good set of insights.

Michele

Here are a few topics around monitoring the Enterprise that are common problem areas for IT.   While this is not the entire list, it is a common problem area I hear about often.  Do you have more, please let me know.

1) You have many tools monitoring your infrastructure. While you may be feeding events from many tools into your favorite management tool (AKA: Manager of Managers), you still rely on the underlying consoles for day to day management (IE: while events are able to come in, you are not able to access other features of the underlying management tool to look at performance charts, issues actions against alarms, seeing topology maps, etc).

2) While looking at a sea or red, it is not quickly obvious which outages or performance problems should be worked on first. Is it easy for Level 1 operators to know that server1.mycompany.com is a critical component of three different important company Services (IE: EMail, Purchasing, etc) and server2.mycompany.com is a single node is a cluster of ten and not as critical.

3) The IT Department is graded on the availability of the Services (and/or systems) and you have to manually update spreadsheets at the end of the period (monthly, quarterly, etc) to determine your grade. You have no way realtime to see where you are at within an active Service Level period. You are not able to map current outages to key/important SLA’s.

4) It is not clear that help desk tickets have been opened for a problem identified by one of your management tools… or the current status of the ticket… or if change requests has been opened to address the problem.

When looking for your next upgrade, one stop shopping to a single vendor is not always ideal. The Enterprise has many tools from many vendors and while the one particular management tool has ways to integrate with third parties, it was not designed to do full fledge bi-directional integration. Most tools report on how you did for an SLA and ignore how you are currently doing.  Mapping of critical business processes and/or services is typically within a silo (IE: just that management tool, it might have some additional feeds, but not a true end to end view of the service and components supporting the Service). Many tools open tickets, but very few allow you to visualize all aspects of the total health of the device (think all the ITIL practices here).   Use a product that was designed from the ground up to integrate, correlate and visualize vasts amounts of data from several underlying management tools.

– Tobin

The Hub Commentary_

This is a topic I lean a little less toward IT driving than I do marketing as a technology to reach customers and prospects.  Most social media tools are external to an organization and not really something I believe IT should own and more the realm of the marketeers to use to reach out to their customers and prospects.

Now as a rogue marketeer in my own organization, I will say that there are a couple of tools and items that some technical assistance would be nice.  This comes in the forms of blogs and websites you might use in your social media strategy.  It is true, as a rogue, you can set-up your own blog and website hosted by others with a mild amount of technical expertise, however, I’m sure there are others who could have moved me faster.

The other item I’ll mention is that when these rogue efforts happen, who owns the domain, who keeps it going after the employee leaves, etc.?  These are items where the IT organization could come in handy to negotiate contracts, insure domains are with the company, etc.

I believe the social media strategy is a marketing strategy, however, I do believe there is a supporting role where IT should be involved and with Service Managers in place marrying IT and business objectives, this could be well managed.

How does your IT organization work with Marketing on Social Media, customer outreach?

Michele

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Social technology is coming into every organization whether IT wants it or not. The adoption of social technologies to support business and customer needs has been fastest outside of IT — often with IT playing catch-up and struggling to provide value. CIOs are at a crossroads where they can either choose to lead IT toward social business maturity or sit back and watch as the rest of the organization pushes ahead, leaving IT in social business obscurity. The choice is easy, but the execution is difficult.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Another nice piece from Forrester regarding business transformation and the roles of CIOs due to the ability for the business to buy their own technology.  The real message is that the budget is being controlled by the business and less by the IT organization forcing IT to better communicate the value of underlying technologies and how they will help in growing the business.  The focus has to always be on the business even when it is internally focused projects.

In order for this transformation to be successful, there is the emerging role of  Service Managers requiring tools and management as services rather than technologies measuring services in real time as to their value to the business and how they are performing.  Thus this incorporates the measuring of the mixed environment of internally provided services and those that are coming from external service providers.

The service providers create competitive pressures for IT to begin this transformation sooner rather than later in working with the business to begin driving growth of the business with technology.  IT must become agents change and take the leadership role in driving this transformation.

Are you are driver or rider?

Michele

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As you may know, I recently was named the Research Director for our CIO team — a team of highly accomplished and experienced analysts at Forrester. One of our first tasks as a team was to define the current changes in the technology and business landscape and develop a cohesive view of what this means for the role of CIO.   (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

I tend to agree with James and have written often on the same subject.  Those leading their industry this year, likely won’t be the ones leading next year.  The question is are you trying to merely drive down costs or fuel growth?  Even with the Amazon blip of a week or so ago, those fueling growth are unwaivered in their approach.

Define and leverage the cloud as a deployment option with the right objective and measure it accordingly.  There will be blips in service from service providers, have an alternative plan for those occurrences based upon the requirements of the service.  Having the proper monitoring and management in place to monitor and measure services will be key.

Just because you push services to external providers does not mean you have alleviated the accountability for the service.  Management of the providers has to be factored into the cost of the service.

I look forward to comparing this years Fortune 500 list to next years and find the movers and shakers of their industry.

Do you run for cost or fuel for growth?

Michele

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Is your cloud strategy centered on saving money or fueling revenue growth? Where you land on this question could determine a lot about your experience level with cloud services and what guidance you should be giving to your application developers and infrastructure & operations teams. According to our research the majority of CIOs would vote for the savings, seeing cloud computing as an evolution of outsourcing and hosting that can drive down capital and operations expenses. In some cases this is correct but in many the opposite will result.  (Read Full Article…)

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.

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Failed projects are costly, so a sound project recovery strategy can pay off handsomely. A new study from project management firm PM Solutions, “Strategies for Project Recovery,” says the average American company manages $200 million in projects each year, with perhaps one-third of those, or $74 million worth, at risk of failing. But action strategies can salvage faltering projects about 75% of the time.  Read more…

The Hub Commentary_

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.

So what makes it different now and why is it so prevalent in the news?  That’s an easy answer, Competition ala service providers.  Today in fact I discussed just this topic with a global audience and why competition will be the catalyst for change or outsourcing this time.  Service providers are going direct to the business to sell their services.  They speak exactly the language the business wants to hear, make it simple to buy and this will push IT organizations to adopt a business service management practice or get outsourced.

I like the notion of a Chief Acceleration Officer.  I enjoy times and situations like this where there is a challenge to solve for and the requirement for change where I know most IT organizations are change averse.  IT has been in this cycle of 80% + spent on just keeping the lights on for more than 20 years.  This equates to 1-2% of revenue annually just running the operations and thus very little is expended to grow the top line.  This is crazy when technology should be driving business innovation and growth.

I challenge you to pick up this years Fortune 500 magazine and then pick up next years and see who takes over leading their industry and that will tell you who embraced technology to drive growth and create efficiencies within IT to shift that 80/20 pie to something more like 60/40.  I wholeheartedly agree with my friend Michael, it’s about the agility and business value that a technology brings an organization.  Efficiencies are good, but should not be the only focus.

How are you driving service value and agility to be the change in your organization?

Michele

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With the promise of cloud computing splashed across every headline today, it’s easy to lose track of where its greatest opportunities lie. Yes, saving money is important. It can help nudge the dreaded 80/20 maintenance-to-innovation ratio in the right direction. But when you’re thinking about the cloud, don’t stop there. It’s agility that can drive business growth and innovation, turning IT leaders into heroes.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary

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

Randy

Building IT around the business services it provides, rather than around assets or activities, pays off.   Learn more about the direct benefits…

The Hub Commentary_

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.

Nice article and no doubt nice presentation by Doug.

Michele

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As technology changes rapidly around us and as more and more companies begin to adopt smarter, dynamic infrastructure, services and applications to support the goals, objectives and expected outcomes of the business, technology and business operations and support organizations must also evolve to support these changes.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

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.

For instance, if the service desk gets measured for number of tickets completed, they tend to cherry pick and submit every conversation to garner more points.  Counting time for application groups turns each non-developing task into something that requires planning.  All of this again leads to measuring IT and technology rather than the services driving the business.

As we’ve discussed in many articles and as Rachel too points out, it’s more about the value, action and method of measuring services and performance than technology metrics.

How are you measuring your IT – technology or services?

Michele

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ne thing that I’ve found in common across infrastructure and operations groups of all shapes and sizes is that they are continually searching for the ideal set of key performance indicators. A set of metrics that perfectly measures their infrastructure, demonstrates the excellence of their operations, but are still simple and cheap to collect.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Nice article and similar to a previous post of mine on Finding your Services. In that post I described mapping your services based upon cost and value to the organization.  Keeping those differentiating services in house and evaluating other deployment options, like Cloud, for those that do not differentiate your organization.

A component called out in this article is usually the obstacle that keeps these projects from being right sourced, fear of losing jobs.  It’s a job evolution as the author describes to a service provider, business analyst, value add analytics driving growth into the business.

The model is much like that of the manager of managers.  IT becomes the manager of managers and analyst of services and will require the tools to aid in turning data into information.  There becomes the requirement for the integration platform that pulls data from the various monitors and service providers, as well as the value/volume of transactions being processed driving growth.

IT becomes “glue and the view” into the services they provide and their performance to the organization.

How are you preparing to evolve your data center staff and services?

Michele

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When CIOs take calculated risks, choosing emerging technologies from less established companies, the payoff can be enticing. We take you inside the journey of two established organizations for a deeper look at this success.   (Read Full Article…)

Sean Larner CEO of both l’arbre solutions and Broolz, chats with Michele Hudnall of Novell on how the cloud and new cloud-based vendors are impacting the business services landscape. They also explore the ways these new offerings are competing with internal IT to provide the business with the services.

I had the great opportunity to speak with a good friend on Cloud Chasers a little over a week ago now on April Fools day. A very good day to catch up with friends and chat about the competition cloud based services are presenting to today’s IT organizations. I started my career as an IT outsourcing service provider with virtualized mainframes, I find that what’s old is new again in an even more flexible model than previous used.

We’ve spoken about the shift that IT must make in delivering and communicating service performance, rather than technology performance for many years. The catalyst for change is competition and it is heating up in the market. The service providers know their costs and the value of their services and are bypassing the IT organizations and selling directly to the business. This presents an interesting dynamic – does the business really know how to manage the service provider well? and should the IT organization serve as the gatekeeper?

These are the opposing forces. As new services come to the data center or old ones are updated, the delivery mechanism should be evaluated. Adopting cloud isn’t really the objective, but driving business growth is the objective and can a cloud based service deliver a business service for higher business growth, is the question.

Come listen to my friend from across the small pond discuss his thoughts on the topic as a CEO of a cloud based collaboration service for the enterprise on Cloud Chasers.

Michele

Michele

No one questions the need to select an operating system for the data center, the debate is Windows? Linux? Both? No one questions the need to implement an identity and security solution for the data center, that’s an easy sell. And virtualization of the data center is becoming an accepted “best practice”.

But many people still seem to question the value of Business Service Management for the data center. This has always seemed puzzling to me, because of one simple question that seems to get lost in the shuffle…”At the end of the day…what is the ultimate purpose of the data center?”

In my opinion, the answer has always been a very simple one:

“The purpose of the data center is to support the mission critical, revenue producing, customer facing business services that you deliver to your customer.”

Business Service Management is about understanding in “real time” the availability and performance of those business services and being able to measure the level of the service being delivered. And if those services aren’t available or they aren’t performing, being able to quickly determine the root cause of the problem in order to minimize the impact to the end users of that business service.

Without those mission critical, revenue producing, customer facing business services, there would be no need for an OS or a security solution or virtualization…in fact, there would be no need for a data center at all.

So the real question in my mind isn’t “Why would someone implement a Business Service Management solution for their data center?” It’s ”Why isn’t Business Service Management being deployed in every data center on this planet?”

Ann Jones

The Hub Commentary

The role of the C”I”O continues to evolve.  And the “I”s have it!  Infrastructure, integration, intelligence and innovation will need to be the focus of  next-generation CIOs.  As the article states, this is a year of innovation and the re-alignment of IT resources.  The shift is from keeping the lights on to growing the revenue with new products and services.

This impact IT operations in that they have to be ready to support and analyze the mission critical and need to automate the routine and mundane.  What I find most astounding in the article is as usual, Innovation comes in 4th.

5-10% of budget is allocated for innovation and growth where >70% of the budget goes first to infrastructure and just keeping the lights on.  This is the shift that needs to occur by optimizing and leveraging technology for integration and automation shifting the spend on infrastructure down shifting the spend on innovation and growth to 30% or better.

Innovation and growth has to come to the forefront this year and stop being the afterthought or the nice to have after everything else is done.

Randy

While next-gen CIOs will emerge from traditional technology backgrounds as well as business-leader backgrounds with technology expertise, the report says, current CIOs will need to master four emerging personas in order to compete in the new environment.  Read more

The Hub Commentary_

Mark McDonald of Gartner has hit the nail on the head – Playing for fun or Playing for Food?  IT being insulated from the business and the external customer means they play for fun, no consequences for their actions. Business service management practices and understanding service value and being the power of the business would bring the risk / reward closer to home to most IT organizations.

I once was on the IT side of the fence many moons ago.  I was working on a project that used a new tool we had purchased and I had the pre-sales technician stop by one day to look over my work and offer some tips and tricks.  As I sat and listened to him that morning what became clear to me was I was on the wrong side of the fence.  I love technology, I love working with people and I love solving the puzzle and bringing the project to life.

My favorite project while in IT was one where I revamped an old system and how billing occurred driving an additional 90K+ / month into the company.  That day I knew I did something with technology that drove value and revenue for the business.  As IT professionals, we lose sight of this by being insulated and thus focus inward and on the wrong things.

I jumped the fence and went to the dark side of the vendor community where we play for fun and for food!

Does you IT play for Fun or for Food?

Michele

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People ask about the differences between ‘the business’ and ‘IT’ and what people can do to eliminate them. It is a great question and unfortunately a persistent one. Usually when you have an issue that people recognize and work to resolve but cannot, there are deeper issues involved. I think that this is a big part of the situation here.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

It’s the age old question…are IT departments organizing their assets to more effectively deliver valued  services back to the business or are they still organizing for their own convenience based on the technology assets they have gathered along the way?    This Baseline article provides valuable insights to the value of a service-oriented IT organization.

Randy

A service-oriented IT organization that’s built around the business services that IT provides, rather than around its assets or activities, offer real value to the enterprise.  Read full article