Tag Archive | "Business Service Management"

Cultural Barriers Stymie IT-Led Innovation – CIO

Tags: Business Service Management, Innovation, Transformation, Trends


The Hub Commentary_

Good question, does IT lead innovation?  It depends upon what you consider IT.  Application development and infrastructure architecture tend to be the outward face of using technology for a new or improved service that drives quality with the customer experience and/or new revenue with a new service.  However, while data center operations is often an afterthought, they should be part of the plan and build to insure success.

While data center operations does not develop new services and architecture, there is opportunity here to apply good business service management practices.  These practices  illustrate quality customer experience and speed to market with new services with control over risk with service enablement baked into the services.

IT led innovation is a team effort between applications development, infrastructure and architecture and data center operations as a single cohesive unit.

Michele

___________________

The IT department won’t be able to lead business innovation projects if it has a bad reputation, says CA evangelist Steve Romero.  (Read Full Article…)

COBOL to Cloud Computing – Cloud Computing Journal

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, Cloud Computing Journal, COBOL, Transformation


The Hub Commentary_

As an old COBOL, mainframe programmer, I still chuckle that the mainframe never did die as expected and I enjoy the commentary in this article about the processing power, thought in design and speed of the VSAM files over today’s relational databases and 4GL tools.  In those days, much time was spent on design for speed, use of space and read once for many output purposes.

As hardware and storage became cheaper and processing power increased, this attention to design has somewhat fallen out of fashion.  As the author describes, the portfolio and modernization must be evaluated as we have described in previous posts regarding the service, value and costs to the organization.  As a manager of a long time ago once told me, “Michele, just because you can re-write it, doesn’t always mean that is the right answer.”

The most interesting metrics as reported by Gartner in the article were that 60-80% of all business applications are mainframe COBOL and 90% of financial transactions are mainframe COBOL.  Astounding!

Michele

___________________

With the exception of very small organizations, migrating to the cloud is not a simple switch that can convert them from an ‘ in-house’ data center to Cloud.  Large enterprises have to modernize much of their applications to adapt to cloud,…..  (Read Full Article…)

Is The Future of IT in BSM?

Tags: BSM, Business Service Management, Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, IT, VDI


Oh my, there was a lot of bad news about IT jobs last week. First of all Computerworld published a story called, As cloud grows, IT spending flatlines and then Forrester released a report suggesting that recent IT spending was actually hurting IT jobs growth. It’s enough to make an IT pro throw up his or her hands in despair.  But perhaps BSM could be the answer. 

While it’s clear there are some disturbing trends, it doesn’t have to be all gloom and doom. Let’s explore the numbers for a moment first. IDC says public cloud computing spending is going up at a fairly dramatic rate. This corresponds with a loss in IT jobs and the easy conclusion to make is that the shift to the public cloud is costing jobs (whether true or not).

Meanwhile, the Forrester report points out that companies are spending on IT infrastructure, yet not producing the corresponding jobs you would expect to coincide with that spending. What does it all mean?

It’s hard to find firm answers, but let’s assume that some of this jobs lag is due to trends like investments in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). By their nature these machines require less maintenance, at least on their face. You can upgrade them from the back end. You don’t have to deal with users downloading viruses, but these machines require far more network monitoring to be sure you are getting decent throughput across the system — and that’s where BSM comes in.

Same goes with the cloud. As I wrote recently in Cloud Control: Staying on Top of the Hybrid Cloud, “One consideration you might want to take into account when choosing an external cloud vendor is the extent to which it provides information for your monitoring systems.” As an IT professional one your big responsibilities in the future will be in monitoring your internal and external systems.

And these are just a couple of the small examples where BSM comes in. Remember, as a system BSM provides a way to monitor the health and well-being of your entire technology infrastructure, and it lets you see the business benefits of these technologies.

As you come to understand the information moving through these systems, you can begin to see the impact of technology across the entire organization and that kind of information is valuable.

That’s why I might not be exaggerating when I say that the future of IT might be in BSM because it is going to be increasingly important for organizations moving forward to understand the entire IT infrastructure and BSM can help you do that.

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

Your Service Costs What?! Justifying Internal Chargebacks

Tags: Business Service Management, Chargebacks, Cloud, Monitoring, Private Cloud, Utility Computing


I remember when I first started working for a consulting firm back in the 80s, how surprised I was to find that departments inside a company charged one another for services rendered. Today, as IT moves to internal or private cloud environments, you are setting up a series of internal services, for which you charge back based on usage, and you better be prepared to justify those costs to your internal customers. 

In some ways, charging for private cloud services is infinitely more fair than in the client-server model where everyone might have divided the cost equally even if one department was using the server more than another. With a private cloud, it becomes more like a utility bill, where you pay for what you use.

But as I learned in my first work experience, when you charge for a service, you may find that people can find a cheaper alternative elsewhere outside the company, so you have to be able to justify your costs. The copy center was a good example. Consultants could use the in-house service, or they could go to another copy center (if company policy allowed this).

We liked to think we provided a unique service. We worked beyond regular business hours and we boxed and shipped the items, sometimes at the last minute under great time pressure. Sure, they might find it cheaper at another copy center, but those people wouldn’t necessarily put up with their unreasonable demands.

But as costs tighten for everyone, being able to provide a service you can trust in-house for a reasonable cost based on understandable and measurable terms, becomes even more important than it was back in the 80s when I started my job. That means making sure your services are easy to access and use and guaranteeing certain service levels.

You can ensure that your systems and services are up and running by providing your IT department with solid monitoring tools that provide real metrics about up time. This can work in two ways. First of all, it lets your IT staff know when something isn’t working so they can react and fix it immediately.

Secondly, it gives you metrics that you can share with your internal customers to let them know in a fully open and transparent way just how often you are up (or down as the case may be). When you have solid data about the health and well being of your whole system, you can better justify the cost of the services you offer through that system, leaving you with a group of customers who might not always like the cost of the services, but at least understand what it is they’re paying for and why.

Photo by alanclever_2000 on Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

Euro CIOs Look to IT Consolidation: Survey – CBR

Tags: Availability, Business Service Management, CBR, Consolidation, Cost Reduction, IT Management, Performance


The Hub Commentary_

The continuation of centralizing, sharing, cost saving with the commodity IT.  These are short term savings that improve the bottom, however, do not improve the top line.  These are required and must always be on the agenda, balanced with growth initiatives.

The article mentions while providing higher performance and availability or quality of service.  These initiatives work to drive the top line in customer retention and new services for the business.  It is all a balancing act, but the key is not to lose sight of the long term growth for the short term save.

Michele

___________________

Cloud and virtualisation also on the agenda

CIOs across Europe have identified IT consolidation as a key near term initiative as they look for ways to maintain or improve performances despite the economic situation.  (Read Full Article…)

Outages Can Wreak Havoc on Productivity

Tags: Availability, Business Service Management, Gmail, Intuit, IT, Monitoring, Networking, Outages, Skype


In September, 2009 Gmail went down for two hours. To hear the complaining on social networks like Twitter at the time, you would have thought the entire world had come to a stand-still, but for many people it did. That’s because this service meant more to them than just a nice-to-have free service. People had actually come to depend on it to communicate for business and personal means. 

Other high profile outages have followed including the Intuit outage last June and the Skype outage in December. These two outages lasted more than a day, leaving many unhappy users in their wakes and providing a snapshot for you of what happens when your systems go down.

People who need these services to do their jobs are left looking for work-arounds that IT might not ultimately be happy with (like using unauthorized services to try and get something done).

The fact is that as you sit there looking at your monitoring dashboard, there are real people behind those red lights trying get their work done, and these stories illustrate in a very concrete fashion that when services go down–whether it’s a public service or a private one– it can have a profound impact on actual users.  It can be easy to forget that as you look at the data in front of you on monitors, but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not just some abstract representation of the service levels inside your company.

In fact, for every red light you see on the dashboard, is another person unable to complete a task using that service and the more mission critical it is, the bigger the effect.

So as you monitor your systems, and review your data and watch the activity streaming through your equipment, always remember that there are humans who depend on these tools to do their jobs, and when a service goes down, even for a little while, it can have major ramifications.

Photo by nan palmero on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License

Organizing IT for Excellent Service – Baseline

Tags: BSM, Business Alignment, Business Service Management


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

Role of IT In Social Media

Tags: Business Service Management, IT Management, Pink Elephant, Service Value, Social Media, Transformation


The Hub Commentary_

As a marketeer and IT professional, I’m not sure I see the connection between IT and social media unless the infrastructure is set up inside a business.  I say this as someone who has spent a great deal of time in recent months both studying and deploying inbound marketing via social media technologies.  As a business service management practice it relates in driving growth for the business, internally the technologies are useful in driving collaboration and efficiency, but only if there is value to the business for the objective of the practice.

I don’t see it as ITs role to set policy on the use or management of external sources for social media content.  I am fortunate to work for an organization that sees the benefit of the external conversation, has minimal policies and trusts employees to use good common sense in their external social conversations.  External social media is about creating the relationship with your customers, prospects, providing good information – it’s not about Tweeting for the sake of it or Facebook just to have a page.  There needs to be a business driver, otherwise it is a personal action.

The opening comments of it gets in the way of work and is a nuisance is perplexing to me.  It isn’t an IT concern to control or manage the external world.  It is company policy that should define what employees do via external channels.  That said, these external channels are inbound marketing, awareness, and leads generation.  This is the problem with IT, they do not control all technology and need to seek how to best leverage, evolve, exploit and support new uses of technology to drive business growth versus being the usual, eternal obstacle.

Social media is not something for IT to govern.  Until it makes a connection back to the organization, IT is not involved.  Once the connection back to the organization occurs, then there needs to be a business requirement and policy enforced – most of all support to leverage that relationship as best as possible to drive business growth as possible.  The external conversation is not for IT to manage or govern, that is a company policy.  Times have changed and building a relationship with your customers is relevant and expected.  So I disagree with ITs role in social media until it links back to the organization and the mechanics of that link.

So as the article slightly mentions, it is service to your customers and it is marketing to your prospective customers and thus business growth.  Drive business growth and create competitive advantage with better customer service with new technologies, ideas and avenues rather than being the usual obstacle.  So I challenge you not to find fault with social media, but…..

How do you use social media to grow your business?

Michele

___________________

BSM Rediscovered – Forrester Blogs

Tags: Business Service Management, Discovery, Forrester, IT Management Tools, ITIL


The Hub Commentary_

I respect my friend JP, however, on this post I might have to push back a bit.  Business service management isn’t really a single tool, nor is it ITIL, but the practice of aligning infrastructure as services to facilitate the cost and value discussion.  That takes bringing many data points together to understand the infrastructure in a logical manner.

Discovery is a nice automation for input into knowing what you have and relationships, however, I have found there are many types of discovery.  Some are good at physical devices and configurations, others read network topology maps, some sniff network traffic and others listen to ports and communication between devices.  All add relevant pieces to the puzzle, but none are BSM or the CMDB.

It takes an integration platform to bring it all together, make sense of it and provide the best early warning view possible to mitigate risk prior to changes and in live environments.  It also could include business data and volume of transactions or value of those transactions to illustrate value of business impact at a point in time raising or lowering risk based upon true business impact.

Many tools have something to contribute to the practice of Business Service Management and it is the organization that can piece them together in the manner that best meets the needs of their business that becomes successful.

How do you define Business Service Management?

Michele

___________________

I have in the past lamented the evolution of BSM into more of an ITIL support solution than the pure IT management project that we embarked on seven years ago. In the early years of BSM, we all were convinced of the importance of application dependency discovery: It was the bridge between the user, who sees an application, and IT, which sees infrastructures.   (Read Full Article…)

More Ent’s using Open Source to Gain Competitive Edge-computing.co.uk

Tags: Business Service Management, computing.co.uk, Open Source, Service Value, Transformation


The Hub Commentary_

To the point of more with less and making the right investments.  This goes to knowing your services, cost and value.  All part of the practice of business service management and I agree we are at a tipping point for Open Source solutions and not just the collaboration, management tools too.

I find this interesting as I have been using Open Office for almost 2 years now and those of us who use Open Source know that these products got it right.  They publish in both formats.  So I can take advantage of Open Office, but I can publish in Microsoft formats to share with the non-Open Source world.  That is the smart model to gain traction in the market.

Do you continue paying the tax to the big guys or invest those taxes in growth?

Michele

___________________

IT chiefs are increasingly turning to open-source software to help create a competitive advantage for the business, according to new research from Gartner.  (Read Full Article…)

IT Turf Wars: The Most Common Feuds in Tech – CIO

Tags: Application Development, Business Service Management, CIO, Growth, IT Management, Security, Service Value, Support


The Hub Commentary_

Classic read!  Great humor for a Monday morning.  Having spent most of my career on the Ops and Apps side of the house, I especially enjoy the “No” in innovation and security!  While it is a funny read, it defines the business service management practice.

Technology silos are not a service.  It takes applications to develop, operations to manage and support and security to secure the environment.  It also takes knowing the business objectives as the article uses an example with the marketing department going outside on their own.  It all goes back to basics, what is your business, what are you selling, how do you grow that business, how do you support the business.

Security and operational support have to be baked into services and solutions as they are developed and services/solutions must be driven by the business objectives to  provide the highest quality of service to your customers or offering new services, both driving revenue.  One component does not work without the other, but when all are interlocked – organizations are successful.  Then you have a business service management practice.

Check out today’s Featured Commentary and the Finding your Services post.

Is your IT business service enabling or multiple obstacles?

Michele

___________________

IT pros do battle every day — with cyber attackers, stubborn hardware, buggy software, clueless users, and the endless demands of other departments within their organization. But few can compare to the conflicts raging within IT itself.  (Read Full Article…)

Value & Benefits of Business Service Management

Tags: Business Alignment, Business Service Management, IT Management, Performance, ROI, Service Level, Service Value


I have been asked many, many times “what is the return of a business service management project / practice”.  The answer is honestly, “it depends” on your environment, how much efficiency can be driven into it, how much consolidation, cost of outages, the list goes on.  However, I know that is absolutely the answer everyone despises and I can say by NOT tackling a shift from technology to services, it costs you 2% of revenue (at a minimum) every year.

Thus, I put my old analyst hat back on and thought as an analyst what would I do?  Create a model by which to calculate and start building out a business case.  I have put this basic information into a short presentation and have added it to our resource page.  The first link is a streaming slide presentation and the second is a self contained PDF file with sound.  The PDF file takes a few minutes to download, but you can share the file as you like.

The objective with this slide show was to bring together the statistics from many analyst papers, provide a simple model and understanding of what it costs you to not manage services.  We are at a tipping point this year with agile technology, new deployment options and competitive cost models.

This post goes hand in hand with the previous Featured Post on Finding Your Services.  Know how to identify and classify your services for service value.  The next in that series will be examples of services and the start of a service catalog.

Let me know your thoughts on this!  How are you getting to service value and what does it cost you?

Michele

Click Here – This is the streaming slide show and is just over 6 minutes.

Click Here – This is the self contained PDF download – 8M download, it does take a few minutes to download and start, but you may share accordingly.

How to Improve IT Value Measurement – CIOInsight

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


The Hub Commentary_

Business service management practices have helped many organizations manage their IT infrastructure for the business services it supports and most importantly drives.  In my post regarding Finding your Services, this is a first step to linking services to service value within the business.

The article provides some simple, sound advice.  In fact, just last night I was speaking with a product manager about my days as a product manager and we always started new projects with a theme and objectives.  What part of the market were we driving to lead, meet or grow.  We balanced the must have customer quality as a small percentage and drove the largest portion of the spend on the next generation products that would both lead and grow the business.

IT is no different, it not a separate and distinct organization, it is the business.  It both operates and powers the business, but most importantly it must drive business growth.  Often times the case is IT spends no time looking for driving the business and concentrates solely on operating.  IT is becoming more and more of a commodity and those not driving growth and meeting the Service Value challenge in the coming year will be outsourced as the service providers know their Service Value.

Does your IT drive Service Value?  Do you know your Service Value?

Michele

___________________

You’ve heard it before. The CFO asks “how do we know what value we’re getting from IT?” The business line leader asks “How do I measure the value of IT to my P&L, not just help desk tickets closed?” The CEO asks “How do I know our IT spend is allocated to best support our objectives?”  (Read Full Article…)

IT Departments Still Not Sold on Personal Devices – CBR

Tags: Business Service Management, CBR, IT Management, Spending, Support


The Hub Commentary_

This is the week of consumerization of IT and personal devices in the workplace.  I have a couple of posts on the topic from the news yesterday and a blog article yesterday as well.  Good business service management practices would suggest against supporting device of the day from the employees.

The article covers the first major concern, security.  However, the most expensive component is rarely covered as we just expect the support desk has endless time and people to support anything and everything.  The cost of support will be high in a time IT is commoditizing and the support desk represents 10% of any operational budget.

Additional personal device support brings additional security practices, tools, etc. as does the support of the device.  The question comes down to is the additional cost burden, risk and risk mitigation practices worth the value they bring to driving business growth?

Commodity IT or business driver – which are you?

Michele

___________________

Lack of control and security worries holding back support

IT departments at businesses across the UK are still cautious about supporting personal devices at work, due to worries about control and security, new research has revealed.  (Read Full Article…)

Transforming IT to Show Cost of Svcs-5 Best Practices – NetworkWorld

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, CIOUpdate, Cost Reduction, IT Investment, IT Management Tools, Service Level


The Hub Commentary…

Several good  insights into effective ways to quantify the cost, quality, and value of IT in a way the business understands.

Randy

———————————–

Recently, we brought together 60 CIOs and IT leaders from the Fortune 1000 for our bi-annual “CIO Technology Business Management Council” meeting. The purpose of this event was to provide participants with an opportunity to learn from their peers about how to transform their IT organization into a services oriented organization and run “IT like a business.”  Read full article

Standards in Support and Taxes for the Luxory

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, Cost Reduction, IT Management, IT Management Tools, SaaS, Support, Transformation, VDI


I’ve seen a bit in the news about support, the consumerization of devices in the workplace and virtual desktop infrastructures that has brought this post together.  We seem to ebb and flow with new toys in the workplace and standardization of support.  The plain truth is that the standard environment is the most cost efficient.  If the role did not dictate that a given device be provided by the company to the individual, why would we assume we must support it?  I understand it did not come with a capital expenditure and made the employee accessible, if they choose to be, however, it does carry a significant cost burden that is often overlooked.

Service and support is commodity.  It is something that can and should be easily outsourced and the service provider will either standardize the support or will tax the customer for the varying types of devices that are supported.  I know that sounds harsh, but in these days where we should be seeking to spend less on operating and more on innovating this is one of the easiest and biggest cost saving area.  In most IT Operations budgets, the service and support function represents about 10% of the budget.  Tools no longer need to be in-house and custom if the business would rather not outsource, there are good SaaS offerings on the market to at least alleviate the burden of supporting the tools, paying the big boys maintenance taxes and paying for customized support of a commodity function.

I’ll make another bold statement, we care too much about the “end user” for the wrong reason.  No one outside of a data center even really knows what an “end user” is, but we all know who is our customer.  IT has to make this transformation to drive business growth and this is one of those starting places in knowing who is really the customer.  Whether or not our “end user” in the business is really happy or not with IT services is a debateable point.  The most important factor is whether or not we are able to transact business and support our buying customers that grow the business.  This is the mindset shift that needs to occur.

So supporting the latest version of iPhone from whichever provider and carrier and how happy our “end users” are when we re-image their machine because it is far cheaper to re-image to standard than figure out what they downloaded that broke something.  It’s about keeping the business productive, growing and making the customer of our goods and services happy and buying.  We should be automating the operations and shifting this attention, focus and resources on the growth side of the see saw.

I know this post is a bit controversial.  This is something that happens with each new toy that comes to market and budgets loosen, we forget the good efficiency practices we put in place in lean times.  I’ve answered hundreds of inquiry calls on this subject just before this function gets outsourced, the services are cheaper because the service provider will impose a standard and tax for the luxory.  We should be doing the same with good business service management practices shifting our focus and resources to the growth of business.

Are you taxing for the non-standard or spending more reacting and maintaining?

Michele

___________________

Network World — Cost-saving technologies remain a priority for IT in 2011 and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), with its ability to streamline operations, is one of the technologies at the top of the list.  (Read Full Article…)

Best Practices in Maximizing VDI Success – CIO

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, IT Management, Support, VDI, VMware


The Hub Commentary_

I challenge folks to put on their strategic business service management practice hats when they approach extremely strategic projects like VDI.  This is an area that has the large cost savings potential or biggest failure and money sucking projects.

Yesterday, I came across a couple of articles regarding the support of any device an employee has to avoid capital expenditure.  My mid career roots are deeply planted in the service and support arena and the human cost of supporting non-standard infrastructures is the biggest misuse of resources in a service and support organization.  VDI projects are about standardization and cost reduction, but that will only occur successfully with the proper management baked in from the beginning.

I agree with the article considering the network impact and security, etc. are all areas to explore and plan for, but the management of the infrastructure and a view for the service and support staff is a must have planning and design consideration upfront – not an after thought for implementation.

We had the opportunity to work with an extremely large retail organization this past year for the purpose of putting the face on top of the VDI infrastructure for the service and support organization.  Huge cost savings are realized with standard images, lighter desktops and a face to the infrastructure that indicates where the failure is when the business cannot access an application.

How do you visualize and manage your end-to-end VDI?

Michele

___________________

Network World — Cost-saving technologies remain a priority for IT in 2011 and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), with its ability to streamline operations, is one of the technologies at the top of the list.  (Read Full Article…)

Global IT Market Grew to $1.5 Trillion in 2010: IDC – CBR

Tags: Business Service Management, CBR, IDC, IT Management, Spending, Transformation, Trends


The Hub Commentary_

Did you take advantage of the investment opportunity to grow your and reform your data center?  Loosening of budgets and increased spending should be leveraged not just for your new toys, but should keep in mind that the new toys need to be managed and the management factors that service enable your data center should be baked in from the start and not an after thought.

We are in a time of growth to drive the business and part of that growth enablement is automating the commodity of operations in order to re-focus and move your resources from operating to growth of the business.

Are you still using high dollar resources to operate or are you driving to growth?

Michele

___________________

Global IT market grew by 8% year over year to cross $1.5 trillion at constant currency, including telecom services, the information and communications technology (ICT) market grew by 6% to $3 trillion in 2010, according to a new report by IDC.  (Read Full Article…)

Deutsche Telekom Introduces SaaS Offering for Energy Industry – CBR

Tags: Business Service Management, CBR, Deutsche Telekom, Energy, IT Management, SaaS, Service Providers, Transformation, Trends


The Hub Commentary_

This is the second offering like this I’ve seen in a week.  The first was the British Airways announcement with the software and service provider vendor.  This is a classic example of  a shift in the market and commoditization of some back office functions.  Great examples of business service management functions and knowing which services are commodity for cost versus those that are value and differentiate your services in the market place.

These are offerings and movements that enterprise IT shops should watch and take notice of in determining what is really value add and unique and most of all needs to be unique in your organization.  Leverage service offerings for the commodity services and accept standard processes so as to drive down costs and evolve your organization and roles to drive business growth with technology.

Are you merely powering the business or are you driving the business with technology?

Michele

___________________

Supports energy and network providers in their daily back office business with its portfolio of modular IT offerings

Deutsche Telekom has introduced complete Software as a Service (SaaS) package via the Internet for the energy industry.  (Read Full Article…)

Opposing Forces @ Work – Cost Reduction and Cost Increase

Tags: Business Service Management, Change, Cost Reduction, IT Management, Service Providers, Sourcing, Support, Transformation


Business service management practices are about understanding your costs and the value of services to the business so that IT manages as services appropriately.  I can hardly read an article these days that isn’t cloud or as-a-Service related.  I enjoy these and the transformation it is driving as it is long over due for most IT organizations.  When I wore an analyst hat and I would field inquiry calls regarding outsourcing, I would always start by saying you don’t outsource for cost savings.  I find these days with the flexible payment and contract options that we are being short sided and seeing these offerings as the low cost option.

Unless you are hideously inefficient, it really isn’t cheaper.  You outsource for change or to right source the services in your organization and drive standards.  Let me explain a bit more.  When you move portions of your IT to the cloud, a service provider, as-a-Service option, to a managed service provider or a full service outsourcing organization, they are still in the business to make a profit and you need to factor some time and resources (costs) to manage the provider.  The estimate to manage the provider is 3-7% of the cost of the contract, generally.  So this is one piece to factor into the overall cost, but change that is too difficult to create in your environment is another factor.  Short story of it, implementing standards.

So in some cases it may drive down costs with lower cost resources and standards, but that isn’t an apples to apples comparison to your current service offering.  However, it is the right reason to move the commodity to a service provider because we come full circle – not all services are created equal.  In-house data centers find themselves staffing the services with expensive resources and managing the services very similarly across the board.

So this is the driving down cost of the equation in right sourcing and creating change and standards, on the other side of the coin I read a lot about supporting the devices of our employees.  By not taking on the capex of buying smart phones, tablets, etc., but taking on the expensive support cost to support the devices of our employees.  I can guarantee you the service providers will tax you for this non-standard practice.  I can see the debate on both sides, you deemed they didn’t require the device or accessibility for their role, but they allowed themselves to be accessible if you support the device.  I would caution against this practice without fully evaluating the security and support costs of doing so.

We are in the midst of great change and there will be an ebb and flow as budgets loosen.  I find it exciting times and also find that there will be real success stories and others that may not enjoy the same success.

Are you right sizing your services and sourcing options?