Tag Archive | "Business Service Management"

Using Social Network Marketing in an IT Transformation – ITSM Portal

Tags: Business Service Management, Communication, Service Value, Social Media, Transformation


The Hub Commentary_

Social media marketing to your customers is a no brainer and makes sense.  Use within the organization becomes sticky as the article points out regarding broadcasting to the external world, internal projects.  So what is the answer to leveraging this real-time communication trend within the organization?

Novell has built into it’s Configuration Management System a social media interface watching the trend and adoption of social media back in 2008.  It provides the opportunity to share information during projects as well as post project inclusive of a tag wall.

Configuration management databases are notoriously difficult to maintain and often fall out of date when not used.  The concept in developing this system was to provide open access and, much like Wikipedia, enable many people from various roles to add to the data regarding configurations

While this addresses one component within a data center, I expect that more and more avenues will be adopted as we move through transformation.  Many development organization already use wiki’s and twiki’s to interact and track information during projects and most organizations have long since been using some form of Instant Messenger.

I predict that in the not so distant future we will see Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) versions of Twitter and Facebook for use internally to the organization as communication tools.  This will require cost and value discussions as with any business service management practice and will require some education to become useful and powerful tools without becoming toys and distractions.

Having grown up with the telephone and prior to the internet, I see the value to instant access to folks I know who could provide a quick answer real-time via an IM, etc.  However, I do believe we lose far more than we gain by losing the live interactions and organizations will need to work to maintain healthy, productive environments.

What is your social media implementation inside your organization?

Michele

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Social Networking has always existed in different forms. In the distant past, people communicated face-to-face or wrote letters to each other. With the advent of the electronics age, social networking took different forms: phone calls, emails, texting, IM, etc.  (Read Full Article…)

Cost Transparency is a Two-way Street

Tags: Business Service Management, Costs, IT, Private Cloud, Service Model


In a recent blog post called  IT Cost Transparency = Power to the people on the bmcsoftware blog, Tony Narvarrete wrote that when your users don’t understand IT costs, they can take them for granted. That means they probably think of them as free and as such, they don’t really care about consumption. Yet his title seemed to suggest that the advantage of knowing this cost rested with the users when it’s actually advantageous to both IT and users when service costs are laid out in a clear way.

A couple of years ago before there was a lot of talk about private clouds, I learned about a Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) initiative that provided a way for teams to set up and break down projects very quickly while in the field. The spokesperson explained they set up a portal with a series of tightly defined service offerings, and that individual projects were charged based on the services they used and for how long. That meant, users only kept a project open for as long as they needed and no more.

Even if you’ve established a services approach at your company, if you haven’t set up a cost structure for your users, there is no basis for them to understand cost and consumption. If I’m in a situation like the DISA service portal, I know if I’m using a certain number of software licenses, a certain amount of hard drive space and so much memory and it’s going to cost me x dollars for x days, I’m going to make darn sure, it gets shut off the day I don’t need it anymore.

On the other hand, if I don’t know how much these services cost, it’s not going to matter to me how many resources I’m using, and I’m probably not going to think to give those resources back when I’m done. It’s one of the reasons that companies have thousands of SharePoint sites sitting around on the company servers  — because there is nothing compelling project owners to shut them down, even long after the project is over.

But when you tell your customer-users exactly what it’s costing them to use your services, you can plan your resource requirements better because chances are you won’t have so many of these orphaned projects sucking resources. It’s better for IT pros because you can make better use of  existing IT resources, and it’s better for users because they can negotiate based on a firmer understanding of the costs of using a particular service.

When your users understand the relationship between cost and consumption, everybody wins.

Photo by Oran Viriyincy on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

Don’t Run IT as a Business-Run it as Part of the Business-IT Skeptic

Tags: Business Service Management, IT Management, Service Level, Service Value


The Hub Commentary_

The IT Skeptic has an interesting post regarding service levels, running IT as a business, business service management practices.  I’ll cut to the chase on my views on these topics:  internal IT SLAs are meaningless when after the fact reporting the score, IT is not a business and IT is not a profit center.

Why is IT the only unit within a business that we speak of as IT and business?  Do we say sales and the business, marketing and the business, customer service and business, the list goes on and on.  All of the units are the business and all should practice good business service management practices measuring cost and value against the objectives of the business in prioritizing work and investments.

As a product company in technology, I think we may have a unique view.  We produce a product that needs to meet the requirements of the market and customers, sales, support, consulting, marketing, development, testing, etc. – all departments must contribute to the success of any given product brought to market and each is evaluated for cost and value.

Embracing business service management practices is a step in the right direction in breaking the “and” versus it’s just business.  Monitoring and measuring as services and changing the dialog around to cost and value supporting business objectives will advance your IT organization.

Are you an “and” or just business?


Michele

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“Run IT as a business”. I’ve been guilty of using it in the dim dark past. If providing IT is your business, say you are EDS, then that is a special case where the mantra makes sense. But for most organisations, running IT as an internal business is counter-productive if not downright destructive. In most situations, IT is a team-member not a supplier.  (Read Full Article…)

Raising performance by reducing IT complexity: An interview with TalkTalk’s CIO – McKinsey

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, McKinsey, Service Value, Transformation


The Hub Commentary_

The link to read the article below merely requires you to set up a sign-on with McKinsey for free.

Nice article to take heed to as we ebb and flow with new technology.  A doesn’t pass that I don’t read an article regarding bringing the mobile devices to the workplace and expecting support as an example.  Business service management practices have to govern the cost and business value of doing so or we end up spending more to support without a business value.

David speaks of joining as CIO into an organization that had grown fast, had many systems, decentralized, spaghetti strings of complexity to manage and support.  We all sit on the cusp of this reality as many seek to take the short term gains of new technology (cloud, virtualization, consumer devices, etc.).

It’s great when things ar booming and business is good, everyone overlooks the reality of what is progressing in IT.  In fact, we do it to ourselves because we do not have or take the time to step back, plan and take the time to do the long term right thing strategically to sustain long term growth.

I experienced this once in my career as well, the cost of doing business starts to overshadow the IT organization when it grows in this manner.  The business enjoys the revenue growth, but they too are looking at the spend against the revenue as margins and thus IT while seeming to support the growth is dragging down the business.

It is easier to measure twice and cut once up front than to create change as David did here and I commend him and his efforts.  I also see and understand that it took the team from the business and IT to come together as one unit and drive business goals and objectives to make this successful.  Often times creating change like this is difficult for the business and why it is often outsourced.  If outsourced, they would not have realized these savings.  The savings would have gone to the margin of the service provider and the business to manage the relationship.

This team achieved a 50% reduction in IT budget over 2 years and 65% in data size and cost in 3 years, that is truly phenomenal and also shows it can be done when the team comes together.  And as David looks back in the close of the story, he indicates holding firm to standards earlier would have made it more successful.

Thus putting the proper business service management strategy in place while in growth mode and service enabling the infrastructure as it grows and leverages new technology may take 5 minutes more, but in the end saves and grows the business faster and more successfully.  Awesome article!

Are you growing your business and service enabling the infrastructure at the same time?

Michele

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Since TalkTalk’s inception, in 2003, the company has grown both organically and through acquisitions to become the United Kingdom’s second-largest broadband provider, serving more than four million customers. Rapid growth, however, left the company with fragmented and inflexible operations and IT, which raised operating costs and made it harder to manage the customer base and maximize revenues across brands.  (Read Full Article…)

5 Questions to Help Recenter IT Design on the Business – CIO

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, Innovation, Transformation


The Hub Commentary_

Business service management practices have always known business and technology are one and not ‘and’ one to another.  Designing services above the silos based upon desired business outcomes is absolutely the right approach, I wholeheartedly agree with Randy’s assessment and this has been at the heart of all business service management projects and practices.

Measurements – if you cannot measure it, it may not be worth monitoring and managing, let the business outcomes be your measuring guide.

Mapping – now map your underlying infrastructure to the top line services.

Automation – what automations and improvements can you make to the supporting infrastructure that will improve the top line outcomes.

Innovation – look at how applying new technologies can improve the capabilities in driving top line outcomes.

This is the transformation that the data center will need to move through in the coming year with a concept that is not new, business service management.

Is you data center IT or Business focused?

Michele

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Stop designing IT architecture around applications and start designing for business outcomes, says Forrester’s Randy Heffner. He shares five key questions to get you started. (Read Full Article…)

Too Many Systems, Not Enough Vision

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


Once upon time, you tended to side with a single vendor. You were an IBM shop or a Microsoft shop. Those days have disappeared for most organizations. Heterogeneity rules the day and it complicates the life of any IT pro. 

When you take the diverse set of hardware and software found in any large enterprise today and you factor in the cloud with a set of virtual services and external cloud vendors, it complicates the situation even further. And it begs the question about how you control it and get a broad view across the entire spectrum of hardware and software inside and outside your organization.

There are no simple answers to monitoring an increasingly complex computing environment, but a recent article on ITBusinessEdge called A Growing Problem: Data Management on the Cloud suggests there is a way to gain some semblance of control of this situation. And that is the subject of this blog: Business Service Management tools.

The article quotes,  Vikas Aggarwal, CEO at Zyrion, who calls BSM, “the ideal approach for addressing the rapidly growing cloud manageability issues.”

That’s because BSM tools at their best give you the ability to look across the entire environment, to see what’s working and what’s not, but it’s not just simply what’s on and what’s not. A good BSM system gives you insight across the business and the impact it has on what you do.

And it’s not just the fact that you are in the cloud that’s the issue. It’s so much more than that. You are spread across geographies. You are physical and virtual. You have a set of services you provide and all of the components that make up that service have to be in sync.

No tool is a panacea to the problems that face IT, but one way to get on top of the situation is to have a broad view across your computing landscape, whatever it comprises and wherever it lives and BSM, at least gives you a fighting chance to see the big picture.

Photo by ny156uk on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

5 Reasons Why CIOs Can’t Ignore Consumerization of IT – CIO

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, Consumerization, Dell, Service Value, Social Media


The Hub Commentary_

Consumer technology trends will always push that of the internal IT organizations.  The next generation of workforce I think of as the “me generation”.  When did we shift from getting a job and doing the job to me the worker defining the job and how it is done?  I do find this curious and am a proponent of the flexible work environment.

With everything there comes a need for balance:  flexibility and control, the heart of any good business service management practice.  The first example of social media driving sales is an excellent example.  That same sort of internal community building can be useful in finding pockets of expertise with business and productivity applications.  You are creating a big presentation, who has done something similar? who might have an example? who could help with this tricky macro?  The possibilities are endless.

I do, however, see a significant risk to the business when everyone works the way they choose to work, with their own devices.  Where is the data? How secure is the transport? Are you losing your IP when these workers leave the company?

The balancing act of cost, risk and service value will become increasingly more relevant as the conversation continues.

How flexible is your business and how do you manage risk?

Michele

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Social media’s emergence as a key business app is just one of the trends that have led to a point of no return on consumer IT. Dell’s Paul D’Arcy explains — and shares how CIOs can plan for and benefit from the consumerization of IT.   (Read Full Article…)

Service Models and Virtual Desktops – Hand in Hand

Tags: Business Service Management, IT Management, Service Model, Service Value, VDI


I have had this discussion many times and with some coaxing have decided to write about it here. The conversation typically starts with the basic question of – how does one create an accurate service model for a virtualized desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment with such a high degree of dynamism? A Service Model is typically a hierarchical representation of a service. That service can be made up of any number of applications, dependency, and components. The service model is also heavily influenced by the audience that will be viewing it (look for a separate post on this).

The big challenge in modeling a VDI environment has to do not so much with the virtualization, but the means by which the VDI solution handles the logged off users. Based upon the implementation when a user logs off for the day, their data is stored, and the system itself is torn down freeing up resources. Basically, this means that user johnW would be logged into virtdesk_123 one day and would then have virtdesk_982 at next power up. Further, virtual desktop could potentially be hosted on different hosts based on load balancing policies.

An additional challenge to creating the service model is introduced when the requirement of maintaining a history is present. For example, performance trends, behavior models, etc.

The primary means I use to tackle this challenge is to not focus on the desktops. I instead focus on the user and more specifically their role. It is the identity that matters, not the physical infrastructure. This simple answer to a complex scenario allows one to easily address the challenges mentioned above. Historical information is stored against the user object as opposed to the dynamic desktops. Of course, the argument will usually come up around the tracking of software and virus scans. Again, I focus on the user and their roles. If the client has an entitlement system where by users are entitled to use specific software packages based upon role membership, then this model becomes even easier.

The service models will vary based upon the needs of the audience who wish to see the information but, I will typically start with something that looks like the following. Top level of Roles, followed by a sub category of Users per role. The user will then have a list of information categories such as assigned template/desktop(s), entitled software, service requests, and environment health. Against each of these I will typically link in the information befitting the category complete with some business logic to control the role up of state through the service model.

I am not going to pretend that any environment is perfect. I also realize that it may not be as easy as it sounds to follow this method based upon tools being used in a specific vdi environment. It is however the method I use when I approach vdi service model. It is easier to have a plan as a starting point going in that not to have one at all.

I am hopeful that this was of some help to you. I am always open for new methods to do this so if you tackle this differently with less pain, please enlighten me, I would love to hear it.

How are you managing your virtual desktops?

John

8 IT Cliches That Must Go – CIO

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


The Hub Commentary_

This is a great article and the biggest one of them all that I would add to include, “Align IT to the Business”.   Do we say, align sales to the business or align investment banking to the business or align claims processing to the business or distribution of product to the business?  Why is IT different?  IT is the power of the business, they are not separate.

Many of the cliches listed are because IT is not operating as part of the business.  For example 2 & 3, one where legacy processes define how things are delivered and one where it was likely over customized for a commodity process.  Another favorite of mine is the final #8, buying just because it comes from a big name regardless of cost.  All of these tell me that there is no business service management practice in place.

If IT were part of the business and operated as part of the business, most of these cliches would not exist.

I challenge you to become part of the business and make business decisions and the cliches would evaporate, service quality would improve and IT would start looking at driving revenue rather than looking for scapegoat cliches.  However, I post this as there is tongue in cheek humor to the article for a Monday!

How are you removing the IT cliches?

Michele

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Now that another season of NFL games has come to an end and our national summer pastime is about to begin, it’s time to swap one set of cliches for another. Sports broadcasting is replete with cliches—nice, comfortable, familiar, predictable phrases that connect current sports fans with previous and future generations of sports enthusiasts.  (Read Full Article…)

Is it Time for ITSM?

Tags: Business Service Management, Service Providers, Service Quality, Service Value


The Hub Commentary_

In many of my business service management posts I’ve spoken about right sizing your service responses and not all services are created equal.  After reading Ken’s post on the BSM Review and the Monday I have had, I think that my comments might not be interpreted as I intended them.

Right sizing services, meaning, the appropriate response based upon the criticality to the business and the impact that the incident may be incurring.  This by no means meant  to deliver lower quality service and I agree with Ken, service does seem to be degrading.

Today I was reminded of high quality service from my favorite automobile service department.  Yes, I have only had 1 car service department at a car dealership since moving back to Northern Virginia >10 years ago.

While I do not like going to the dealership or servicing the car and yes, it might be a tiny bit more expensive, the service is the best I’ve ever received.  Today, I woke up to a flat tire on my truck, which means I have to change it in order to get it somewhere to be repaired or replaced.  Girl, truck, precarious looking jack set-up, tight lug nuts, stuck tire and 3 calls to the dealership and it was changed.  Never did Dustin complain about my calls and when I was ready to give up and just pay to have it towed or someone to come over and change it he kindly just said “you are almost there, try this…..and the tire will come off, don’t be afraid”.  He was right, tire changed and tomorrow I go up to finalize the service without the cost of a tow truck and more wait time.

Now, he didn’t have to help me over the phone, I have changed tires before, this one was just a little sticky, but it didn’t cost him anything to offer a few kind words to progress step-by-step even when I was ready to throw in the towel just pay to make the problem go away.

As IT, we do need to be mindful of attending to the right things at the right time, but there are ways to right size and take care of the little things with care without leaving our customers feeling like IT didn’t listen, doesn’t care or left it in their self service hands.  High quality service doesn’t mean responding fast to all things at all times, but responding appropriately with sincerity, care and high quality.

There is competition and service providers help to provide change in defining standards that we sometimes cannot do easily from within, however, if we communicate service quality appropriately and deliver high quality appropriately, we will remain in demand.

How do you balance high quality, communicate quality and maintain your customers?

Michele

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How to Present The IT Story – CIOInsight

Tags: Business Service Management, IT Investment, Service Value


The Hub Commentary_

I’ve worked with many IT organizations on telling the story and building the case for IT automation in terms of the business story and support of a business service management practice.  When a project does not have a hard dollar impact and is more soft costs, the story becomes a bit more challenging, but not impossible.

The thing to keep in mind with this audience, no one cares “how IT” does it’s job.  They want to know the results of an investment.  You are investing XYZ to achieve savings, higher quality, new services, driving XYZ revenue.  Remind them of an outage and how much it cost and how this project drives quality, reduces these costs and costs over time.  They don’t care that ITIL or other internal processes are used as a piece of the process improvement – they care about quality of service, costs over time and driving revenue.

Translate the IT speak into costs, value and revenue growth and you will hit a home run every time.  Then the key is to measure and continue to communicate your achievements in the same terms.  Check out this previous post to understand what it costs you on average to maintain the status quo.

How do you measure and communicate your services?

Michele

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You’ve been called upon to make a major presentation to your organization. Your job is to “sell” the audience on your latest IT initiative. Now what? Use these eight tips to tell your IT story in a way that engages and motivates your audience.  (Read Full Article…)

Box.net Funding Signals Change in Enterprise IT

Tags: box.net, BSM, Business Service Management, Cloud, collaboration, Enterprise IT


Box.net, the plucky online and storage and collaboration play got a $48 million boost from venture capitalists recently. If you’re wondering why you should care, it’s because it shows that the VCs are backing the Box approach to software and that could have big implications for you moving forward in terms of enterprise software.

Box CEO Aaron Levie has never been shy about his disdain for the way enterprise software is sold or how difficult it is to use. In his view, enterprise software should be as simple to use as consumer software and for too long it’s been the opposite. He wrote on a blog post announcing the funding:

The world of enterprise information technology is changing dramatically. Prohibitive pricing models, inflexible infrastructure, and lack of end-user satisfaction are all unsustainable in today’s business environment

If you’re an IT Pro, that description has to sound familiar. Most enterprise software is expensive, difficult to maintain and end users generally don’t love their applications. Levie’s company is hoping to change the way enterprise software works by providing storage, collaboration and file sharing tools that are simple to use and maintain. Box does this in a couple of ways.

First of all it’s a cloud-based system. That means that all of the software elements are updated on the back end and as administrators you aren’t stuck trying to distribute every patch that comes down the pike to your end users. In addition, Box updates and changes the software on a regular basis. You get updates sometimes on weekly basis instead of a two or three year cycle.

Second of all, there are mobile pieces in place, so you can get your files any time and any place. Just last week Box released an upgrade to the iOS version of Box that provided some key enterprise pieces including document-level password protection and SSO login ability to access enterprise identity systems.

Box files sync across the system automatically, so no matter where you access your files, you get the most recent versions. Box also uses a freemium model to build interest from the ground up. Box’s formula is to let end users come to IT and tell them about the service, rather than the other way around. After they get the first wave hooked, they attempt to get the company to sign up for the paying version.

With today’s $48 million boost, Box should be able to build out its cloud infrastructure even further providing the foundation for an enterprise-class cloud-based system. And you should care because it shows that Levie and his company might be onto something and you need to understand what this means and how you can monitor and work with companies like Box in the future world of enterprise software.

Photo by Alexyv on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

Microsoft Shows Off Cloud Monitor Prototype at CeBIT

Tags: BSM, Business, Business Service Management, Cloud Computing, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Personal computer, Servers, Windows Intune


Microsoft seems to be paying attention to the Business Service Management (BSM) space, at least in its own way.  At the recent CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany, Microsoft unveiled a new PC monitoring tool called Windows Intune, and they also displayed the prototype of a new cloud monitoring system they are calling Microsoft Dynamic IT.

Microsoft Dynamic IT

Designed in Microsoft Silverlight, the tool is visually appealing and they displayed it on a huge LCD screen giving it Mission Control feel. Instead of monitoring PCs as with the Windows Intune product, it gives you insight into the overall health of the servers running your cloud services.

If everything is running smoothly, a green check mark appears next to the server name, but if there is a problem a red X appears letting you know there could be an issue that requires your attention. The prototype was connected to three servers located somewhere in Microsoft’s vast booth. A picture of the main control panel is shown below:

Microsoft Cloud Monitor
As administrator, should you encounter a problem,  you can drill down into the server in question, as you can with Windows Intune, discover the nature of the problem and take action to fix it. In the example shown below, the Redmond server needed a patch installed.

Monitoring tools like BSM of course give you a much more comprehensive view of your systems, but this type of tool proves that monitoring in general is becoming a key task for IT, and that having these types of tools in place will become increasingly important moving forward.

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4 Reasons Why Apple and Its IPad Still Rule the Tablet Market – CIO

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


The Hub Commentary_

The survey says 7% of IT buyers plan to buy iPad Tablets in Q1 2011 not as a replacement to laptops, but more experimental.  I know I am hooked and have it on the top of my “want” list, however, I continue with my “need” requirements.  The same struggle businesses will go through in determining the business value of the iPad internal to the organization.

I really want one and am a fan, but what will I get that I don’t really already have with my laptop.  Definite cool factor and smaller, lighter footprint, no doubt.  It will carry additional costs with the 3G service, so we would all need to be mindful there.

So what will it take to be adopted in the enterprise?  It will be driving down internal costs and the apps that also drive down costs and increase productivity.

Where in the enterprise and IT will the iPad rule?  In servicing and interacting with your customers.  It will be the unique applications that take advantage of that 1-click ease in the apps store, exposure to potential customers and providing the same experience with your customers that they enjoy with other suppliers.

So what would push me right off the ledge from the “want” to “need” category in justifying my iPad2?  Starz Play on the iPad….Starz are you listening?  I am a happy Verizon FiOS customer, I take my Wi-Fi with me with no additional charges and I download and watch movies from Starz for one flat monthly rate where ever I am.  However, for that monthly rate I don’t use it as often as I thought on the laptop.  However, I see the iPad as the device I would get more out of the subscription.

Ok, not a great justification and I may find a different service provider who supplies the device I choose use.  So you see from a business perspective, it is the subscription and the customer interaction that will be relevant and we are mobile enough that we will switch to he who makes life simple and transacts business the way we want to interact.

How will you deploy and support tablets in your enterprise?

Michele

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When it comes to releasing new form factors for its iPad tablet and other products, Apple not only gets there first; it gets there best. (Read Full Article…..)

iPad, iPhone Changing Role of IT – CIO Insight

Tags: Apple, Business Service Management, CIOInsight, iPad, Service Value


The Hub Commentary_

iPad Friday I think.  As I discussed in the previous post, the cost and value for business purpose will have to be weighed.  Just because the employee makes the capital expenditure, doesn’t mean it will be cheaper when you factor in support and address security vulnerabilities.

So far, I see cost, cool factor, but haven’t read the article or had the “aha”  there is the unique enterprise value-add use.  Make no mistake, I want one too, but have yet to find something that I cannot do more cheaply on my current laptop – which I call the “Barbie” laptop as it is quite small and light.

There will come a tipping point in the enterprise, but I haven’t heard, read or seen it yet.

How is your enterprise planning to use Tablets in the enterprise?

Michele

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One of the more surprising results of the mobile revolution is the way that IT departments have lost their role as the providers of the technology. It’s now just as likely that people will be doing business with personally owned devices, as they are to use devices issued by their employers.  (Read Full Article…)

The iPad 2 is Coming, So Are You a Technology Climber or a Proven Early Adopter? – Gartner Blogs

Tags: Business Service Management, Gartner, IT Management, Service Value


The Hub Commentary_

Adopter or climber?  Hmmmm I have to laugh, sometimes I am, rarely though and I’ve spent my career in the technology field.  I finally got myself an iPod a few years ago with accumulated airline points, I only traded up to a smart phone (Android) last year only because it had an up to date GPS, which so far has not proven itself better than my old standby Garmin, which I also got with airline points and is the size of a baseball.  I did purchase the first gen Kindle to read my newspaper while traveling and I no longer had to deal with the paperboy trashing my flowers in the spring.

As I’ve written several times today already, but what exactly will be the tipping point in the enterprise to embrace the tablets?  IT would be wise to be applying thought to inventive ways to communicate and interact with their customers with these mobile devices first.

Are you an adopter or climber and how will your enterprise use tablets?

Michele

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I grew up in transition neighborhoods outside of Cleveland Ohio and Hartford Connecticut.  By transition I mean it was a neighborhood where people moved in after the family got a promotion, generally into the lower ranks of middle management and then as they worked their way up the corporate ladder they moved out as senior management either to trade up their house or town.   (Read Full Article…)

Microsoft Intune Moves Monitoring to the Mainstream

Tags: BSM, Business, Business Service Management, Cloud Computing, Microsoft, Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft Windows, Personal computer, Windows Intune


Windows Intune

This week at the CeBIT technology fair in Hannover, Germany;  Microsoft was showing off Windows Intune, a cloud-based PC monitoring tool that lets IT pros monitor the health of all the Window PCs in their charge from a simple Web-based interface. What’s interesting about it from a BSM standpoint, is that it brings monitoring of this sort into the mainstream.

The system has a series of tools to enable administrators to see problems at glance, whether it’s a malware infestation or a PC that needs a patch. The administrator can troubleshoot problems by drilling down to the PC in question and going so far as seeing all the software installed, whether it’s from Microsoft or another vendor.

The system uses the same anti-virus engine found in Microsoft Security Essentials, the free anti-virus program available from Microsoft for consumers.

If you’re an administrator, once you see a problem, you can fix it on a single machine, a group of machines (which you can define by type, department or any organization you wish). You can even apply a patch to a test bed if you have defined one to test it before deploying.

Because it’s cloud-based, users don’t need to be attached to the network to receive a patch or remove a virus. If your CEO runs into a problem on the road, you can fix it from the Console and any patches or fixes are downloaded to the monitored machine.

While Microsoft hasn’t developed a mobile application to work in conjunction with Intune, you can configure it to receive an email whenever a crisis happens, and you can define what constitutes a crisis, so that you don’t receive email for every little problem reported by the system.

From the email  notification, you can view the console in your mobile phone’s browser.

The product will be available starting on March 23rd and cost $11 per PC per month with volume discounts, depending on the number of PCs you are monitoring.

While this tool doesn’t have the sophistication of a full-scale Business Service Management console, it shows that there is a desire for this type of monitoring on a broad level, and it puts monitoring within reach of even small businesses (although Microsoft doesn’t see this as being limited to the SMB market by any means).

Global CIO: Why BMW Suddenly Loves Mobile Apps – InformationWeek

Tags: BMW, Business Service Management, Innovation, Mobile


The Hub Commentary_

IT spends >85% of its time just keeping the lights on.  Those who will lead their industries next year are realigning how IT works, taking advantage of automating tools and applying resources toward the development, deployment and operational support of new and innovative services for the customer.  Business service management practices have become the imperative this year rather than the “nice to have”.

Consumers are mobile, they expect connectivity, to interact with the their suppliers real-time, on-demand, from whatever device and where ever they may be.  The technologists that embrace the customer experience and drive automation into the routine, maintenance of IT will be the leaders of industry.

iPad2 was announced today.  Watch the video and how they think of the customer experience and something as simple as a cover to protect the device, but also functional in waking/sleeping the device, cleaning the screen and serving as a stand.  Customer experience is the name of the game and driving revenue.

How are you re-aligning your IT resources and growing revenue?

Check out this previous post and slide deck to see what it is costing you to not realign resources for good Business Service Management practices.

Michele

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You, too, should probably be thinking about tying your products to the mobile Internet, even if you think $100 million is a bit rich to throw at this opportunity. (Read Full Article…)

Is Cloud Computing About Productivity or Something Else? – ZDNet

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, Cost Reduction, IT Management, IT Management Tools, ZDNet


The Hub Commentary

We’ve all had to “do more with less” in ever changing IT environments.  Cloud computing offers up an encouraging promise that we can actually “get more for less”.  But more of what?  Access to more applications, more compute power, more flexibility, more agility and certainly more innovation.

Randy

Cloud computing is more about agility, cost control and being able to do things previously impossible rather than increased productivity doing what the organization has always done.  Read more

4 Personas of the Next-Generation CIO – IT News

Tags: Best Practices, Business Alignment, Business Service Management, CIO, Transformation, Trends


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