Business Service Management Hub

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

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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…)

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

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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…)

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

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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…)

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

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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…)

The Hub Commentary_

Social platforms in IT have actually been there, just as prevalent in the business.  Most of us use a Wiki or some sort of shared collaboration and we update it with information as we come by it and correct information others have posted, etc.  Most of us have been to Wikipedia at least once.  The ability to manage massive amounts of data about devices in the work place becomes challenging as they become mobile, connected and disconnected through multiple forms of connections.  Self service and social platforms are accepted forms of keeping many sources of the data up to date and accurate.

Think about it, most of us do not keep rolodexes any longer.  We expect our friends and colleagues to update their own online cards with the most accurate data and we access it in real-time when we need it or capture it when they phone or email us next, why not with the assets and data in the work place?

Michele

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Report says social platforms evolving as new source of business intelligence; cloud computing as driver of business growth

The future of information technology (IT) will be dominated by data, with social platforms evolving as a new source of business intelligence, and cloud computing delivering on IT’s role as a driver of business growth, according to a new report from Accenture.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Innovation is an overused term, I agree.  True innovation are products and services that change the way an industry does business, however, business growth through new services and products are now more than ever dependent upon technology.  As you can see from this recent survey business is relying on IT to support business growth.

Growth is dependent upon automation of the routine to free resources to move from “Bulb Monitor” roles to service providers and more agile to deploy and manage new services that will use new technologies to drive business growth.  Operationally, IT must rethink how to take advantage of technology to not only deploy new technologies, but also how to free themselves from the routine tasks too.

I’ve seen and posted many of these articles already this year and look forward to the story of an organization who is putting it into action and moving from “Bulb Monitor” to the fuel for growth.

Michele

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A new survey from SAP suggests that IT budgets should be focused on innovation – but, as Gary Flood asks, is that enough?

Innovation. It’s both a very trendy but also much abused term at the moment in IT. And maybe we’d have a better idea of what it actually means – and what it could contribute? – if we were given a chance to do some of it.

(Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

What does the midsize market know that the enterprise ignores?  Nimble, think like a start-up, how do we we better serve our customers and how does IT communicate service performance and use technology to create great customer relationships.

Time to think about the revenue generating services and customer touching services.  It’s not about the end user within the organization.  Think about it, who else in the world outside of IT even knows what end user means.  It’s about the customer that buys your companies products and services, focus on service enabling and communicating service performance and value of those services.

Quality of the customer experience is king, what are you doing to enhance it?

Michele

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70% of midsize companies are actively pursuing analytics technology to better understand their customers and make better decisions.  (Read Full Article…)