Tag Archive | "Forbes"

SAP’s CIO: You’re Putting Your Executive Career at Risk if You’re Not Social – Forbes

Tags: BSM, Business Service Management, CIO, Forbes, IT Management, Metrics, SAP, Service Value, Social Media, Transformation, Trends


The Hub Commentary_

I’ll start with, those that lead their markets, lead by a lot.  It is no surprise the leader of the Top 25 Social CIO’s is SAP.  Oliver Bussmann not only leads by >20% over the nearest follower, but by >80% over the #3 competitor.  Just as I mentioned in my previous post this morning, the next generation will be our future leaders, workers, buyers and customers.

I love when I can manage to triangulate and hit the trifecta of 3 blog posts in one day (Metrics, Top 25 Social CIOs and this article).  This is an IT department that doesn’t measure number of tickets closed or server uptime, but product innovation, interactions with customers, etc.  This is the difference in a CIO that “keeps the lights on” spending 1-2% of revenue annually just operating, from one that counts the financial aspects of business transformation and the one that leads strategic innovation and growth of the company.

I think back to 2007 and my entre into social media marketing.  I had a forward thinking marketing co-worker, Frank Strong, who was always on me to post a blog driving our companies presence in the market.  I must say, I would avoid him in the hall.  Then I didn’t have a Tweet account, much less Facebook, etc.  Then I needed to figure out how to build awareness for a product in a family of dozens of products and how would I make this small fish standout in the market – Social Media.  That was late 2010 / early 2011 ….. The BSM Hub had a Facebook page long before I had one personally.

Today, I communicate with my network via LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook, etc. from my TweetDeck console over coffee and lunch each day.  I have had customers reach in and I have had a few prospects do a bit of research via the Twitter that I’ve attended to personally, long before a sales executive is involved.  Oliver is correct, putting a face to the product and company, making it personable is much more the norm than a customer working directly with a sales executive these days.  I know I would never hear from my baby nephew if I didn’t learn to text, Tweet and Facebook!

This is how the next generation works and buys, are you social and personally available to your customers, workers, prospects and the market?

Michele

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Picture yourself as an Executive in 2017, struggling to make sense of how many of your peers failed to become social. Many of them pushed aside by their more savvy underlings who built up both internal and external social networks.  Their large networks wield tremendous power, collective intelligence and the ability to influence both employees and customers. Many of the executives that didn’t adapt were caught in a type of ‘vocational innovator’s dilemma’; where they stubbornly refused to change despite the warning signs.  (Read Full Article…)

The Cloud is Eating The World – Forbes

Tags: BSM, Business Alignment, Business Service Management, Cloud, Forbes, IT, IT Management, Monitoring, Performance, Service Providers, Service Value, Transformation


The Hub Commentary_

I cannot pass on this article today.  Last Friday I closed the week with a bit of humor on Qmunity entitled, “Eat or be Eaten – IT Transformation Underway”.  As a long time application developer and once with EDS and IBM have often known the revenue is driven by the services and software side versus the hardware.  In fact, I once had the opportunity to work for an insurance company who received their first life insurance programs (ALIS – Advanced Life Insurance System) which was free when this company purchased it’s first mainframe hardware.  

As is called out in the article, the world is upside down these days and the device, HW just facilitates the real value add of the service.  As soon as the Kindle came out, I suspected the price would drop as it is more about the subscription than the device.  Much like Cloud services, provide an easy mechanism to purchase and hope no one monitors the consumption.  High transaction volume, low price point model.

Michele

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Lately I’ve been seeing a quote by Marc Andreessen everywhere. It states that “Software is eating the world” which he declared in an article for The Wall Street Journal last summer. His argument was that “more and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services.” Which I completely agree with. At the time he pointed to Hewlett-Packard as an example: It had announcemed that it was exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth as a prime example of this trend.  (Read Full Article…)

Looking At Cloud Strategy Through The Lens Of Value – Forbes

Tags: Availability, Best Practices, Business Service Management, Cloud, Forbes, IT Management, IT Management Tools, Performance, Service Providers, Service Value


The Hub Commentary_

Cloud for the sake of cloud and a technology will leave organizations following their competition.  I could not agree more and have many times commented here on The Hub regarding the use of the right technology deployment for the service, cost and value as described in the post on defining your services.

Now more than ever if IT is to achieve getting to service orchestrator ,they must start managing technology as a service over silo’d technologies.  This is going to requiring baking management into the services such that they are service enabled and provide proactive visibility as to their performance in real-time to mitigate risk and deliver the highest quality of services.

Management always lags new technology, but in this case to achieve the imperative of becoming a service orchestrator / broker / manager, IT has to evaluate a new way of managing the services they are responsible.  Yes, IT is responsible for the service regardless of how it delivered.

With buying decisions moving to the business, the job of managing services will get harder before it gets easier.  The business is taking over out of frustration to drive change, however, ownership of managing the service is being overlooked and putting IT back into the reactionary seat.  Now is the time to move from reactionary to proactive service broker.

Are you driving or riding as your business takes competitive advantage or loss?

Michele

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If the innovative ways that businesses are using cloud computing haven’t set off alarms within your organization, it’s time that they did. Enterprises that look at the cloud solely through the lens of technology will be left behind by more agile competitors that use the cloud to develop innovative new business models based on faster time to market, new modes of customer interaction and more efficient operating models. Likewise, ITservice providers that market their cloud offerings simply as technology solutions will be outmaneuvered by competitors that position their offerings based on the business value they deliver.  (Read Full Article…)

Analyst: ‘Enormous’ Regulatory Risk For AT&T/T-Mobile Deal – Forbes

Tags: Business Service Management, Competition, Forbes, Service Providers, Telecomm, Transformation


The Hub Commentary_

The ebbs and flows of break-up and re-marry are alive and well in the Telecomm sector.  While this is interesting in the telco industry, I hear you asking, “Michele, what does this has to do with Business Service Management?”  It’s one sentence buried right in the middle of the article, lack of competition brings , fewer choices, higher prices and less innovation.

IT is in exactly the opposite situation these days with virtualization going mainstream and cloud providers popping up daily.  Due to the high cost of IT, lack of ability for the business to influence new services, flexibility and the delivery of services in market time, competition and new options have become available to meet those requirements.

Organizations have the opportunity to dig out of the hole of stagnation and illustrate a nimble approach in delivering new and higher quality services to the market while leveraging new technology.  The IT organizations that do this effectively and manage service value in lock step with business objectives will be next year’s leaders in their industry.

How are you driving innovation?

Michele

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It’s clear that AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA would reshape the U.S. wireless market by combining the country’s No. 2 and No. 4 operators. What’s not clear is whether the deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, will actually go through.  (Read Full Article…)

Virtualization And The Cloud: The Trouble Is Troubleshooting – Forbes

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, Forbes, IT Management, Virtualization


The Hub Commentary_

In this survey, more than half the respondents have implemented some form of cloud computing (thus virtualization) citing increased flexibility and decreased costs in hardware, power, heating and cooling.  The challenge the article highlights comes in managing the network and pinpointing root cause of incidents, much less finding signs of trouble.

Management is always overlooked when trying to take advantage of the short term cost savings.  As my dad always told me, “short cuts never got anyone anywhere fast”.  Service enabling the infrastructure is a must from the development and implementation and never more so than now with the future being right sourced with hybrid implementations of private, public and physical infrastructures.

When I speak to folks about Business Service Management practices and tools, I’m often met with eye rolls and shrugs, but it is so hard.  I always respond, no it isn’, it’s only as hard as you want to make it.  It can be achieved a service at a time and can provide the real success in your cloud and virtualization projects with a bigger bang for the buck with short term savings and real value add up front.  All it takes is a little foresight to integrate the sources of data you have already to paint the picture that will help you manage in real time with a live view of the environment to manage both practively and with speed during an incident.

How are you service enabling your cloud and virtualization infrastructure?

Michele

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More companies are taking advantage of cloud computing and virtualization technologies to streamline their network operations, but significant management challenges remain, according to Network Instruments’ State of the Network Global Study.

The company’s fourth annual study surveyed 265 network engineers, IT directors and CIOs, located in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and Australia.  (Read Full Article…)