Business Service Management Hub

The Hub Commentary_

As a native Virginian, this is very positive news for the area in general from housing, jobs and quality of life.  The extension of incentives aligns with the growth of cloud providers and Amazon already has a stake in the Ashburn data center craze already.

I arrived back in this area during the dot.com bust and it was disheartening to see the number of empty buildings along the Dulles tech corridor.  Good to see the expansion and growth and the foresight to take advantage of this period of high tech growth in this region.

Michele

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Is it news to say that the data center business is booming in Ashburn, Virginia? Not exactly, as the town in Loudoun County has been a key connectivity hub since the early days of the Internet. But recent groundbreakings, facility openings and leases make it clear that Ashburn’s prominent place in the geography of the data center industry continues undiminished.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Accenture research indicates 40% of all cloud knowledgeable business will use the cloud to drive new revenue over the next 5 years.  This is a shift from just leveraging it operationally currently to cut costs on infrastructure for irregular surges in capacity requirements or moving from an old system to a new one that is Software-as-a-Service based.

This is a typical approach and cycle, go after the low hanging fruit first to cut costs before a strategic use is put in place.  This should serve as a wake-up call to IT operations that it is coming and will you be ready to monitor, manage and communicate effectively when the infrastructure requirements are ready for production operations.  Monitoring, managing and measuring complex mixed environments will require one of three choices to be made:  1) Seek to an integrated, single vendor that has the platform to manage the infrastructure, 2) Build the integration yourself across your heterogeneous environment or 3) Seek an integration platform that is your manager of managers.

I find what was old is new again.  I’ve read many papers and sat through many analyst presentations as of late that call for the integration platform that will enable IT operations to stitch together the fabric of the infrastructure in order to continue to communicate technology as services.  Now more than ever it is important to get to measuring and communicating technology as services as it only gets harder in these mixed environments.

I agree with the parting comment by the author, Jeanne Harris, smart IT executives will jump on their preparation to not only define new revenue generating avenues, but also operations to support and manage the new services without delay.

How ready are you to manage services in the cloud?

Michele

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If an IT leader works for a company that isn’t named Amazon, Google or Facebook, chances are it hasn’t gotten a big revenue boost from the cloud. It’s much more likely that the company has used the cloud to cut costs, replace a standalone software application or back up older documents.  (Read Full Article…)

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

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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…)

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_

The time has come to re-think IT, the assets, sourcing options and management with the focus on growth, sure cost cutting is still in the balance of things too.  Opportunities to re-think the routine, automation, leverage lower cost tools for the commodity and apply the shift in that spending toward growth.

One side effect to increased spending is the spending only on new technology without reimagining the whole picture of managing and operating on the day-to-day as well.  In another article posted today from the Cloud Computing Journal, downtime costs $100,000/hour.  Reimagining IT is the whole operational picture – this is exciting for those who embrace it and make the most of it both from new services and operations.

Michele

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Last week Gartner announced the results of Gartner’s 2011 CIO Survey and Agenda under the theme of reimagining IT. The idea behind this theme is that CIOs and IT leaders have an opportunity to use new business priorities and technologies to create value in new ways.  (Read Full Article…)