Business Service Management Hub

The Hub Commentary_

This is a fun article.  Reminds me of “The Mainframe is Dying” and yet it is still here.  I tend to agree with Arthur on this one, the data center will live on, but is under great change and the speed of change is coming fast.

This is nothing new to outsource, we’ve been through this before.  The difference this time is that the business is calling the shots.  According to a Gartner and Forbes survey of Board of Directors, 65% of BoD count on technology to drive competitive advantage for the business. The role of IT is evolving and it is an imperative that IT move from reactive and managing technology to proactively managing services and a manager/broker of services and be able to answer 3 simple questions in real time, 24x7x365:

• Are we open for business?
• How are we performing?
• What is our current risk?

Answering these questions requires turning a sea of technical data into actionable, intelligent information in real time. The time has come to make a difference in the business with technology.

The reason for the dramatic claims that the data center is dying, much like the mainframe, is the level of business frustration to drive change in behavior within IT organizations.

How is your IT organization evolving?

Michele

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At the turn of the 20th Century, city planners in New York and other great metropolitan areas were in a state of panic. If population growth continued unabated, their cities would be rendered uninhabitable due to the enormous amounts of manure left behind by all the horses needed to cart food in for the starving masses.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Nice article summing up considerations that must be evaluated when assessing a cloud deployment option.  IDC predicts that by 2013, 52% of IT budgets will be dedicated to “OUTSOURCED IT” – ASP, Public Cloud, and Enterprise/Hosted Private Cloud.  There is also a shift in where the budget and where spending decisions are being made – in the business.

As a former analyst in the sourcing space going back to the first ASP/ISP/MSP, du jour of the late 90’s / early 2000, the speed of this shift and the shift in decision making serves as an indicator in businesses to create change to drive the business.  The requirement to move from technology operator to service manager or broker has been there for almost 20 years.  Now there is competition to force the change.

Rarely is outsourcing cheaper, but it does create change that cannot be achieved easily from within.  Cloud deployment for the sake of it still isn’t the right blanket direction.  Looking at deployment options, commodity services, speed to market to drive competitive advantage whether inside or out are all factors to evaluate and consider.

If one lesson can be learned from these historical ebbs and flows between insourced and outsourced services, it should be that of service enablement in order to make the transition to service manager/broker at the time of deployment rather than an afterthought.  An effective service manager/broker will rely heavily on the federation or integration of data in order to manage the services delivered as mentioned by Gartner in the slides attached to the article.

How will you service enable  your infrastructure to deliver service value that powers your business, regardless of technology platform?

Michele

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It’s human nature to want the newest and best of everything, even if the ramifications are still unknown. Enterprises fall into this trap as well, considering they are built and run by humans. It’s kind of the digital version of shoot first and ask questions later.  (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Consolidation can have short term gains and costs with longer term gains when approached as Arthur describes in his post.  Its all about balancing operating and growing the business and business service management practices.

Many approach consolidation much like new technology, virtualization, for the short term cost saving to remove hardware and software licenses from the equation.  However, when done right it with investments and spending upfront, there are greater gains in the longer term.  Arthur mentions SIRVA and how they spent to consolidate and gain and ends with a reduction in staff by a third.

Who really removes people?  It is possible and generally is why IT does not turn inward to automate and drive efficiencies in their own organization as they do when applying technology for automating other parts of the organization.  As was noted in today’s earlier news commentary, the roles in IT start to shift as service managers and analysts applying technology to the business – not “bulb monitors” watching the commodity operate.

These are interesting times and it will be interesting to keep this years Fortune 500 edition and compare it to 2012 and 2013 and see who takes over each industry and is leading with the use of technology.

Michele

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It isn’t often that the phrase “do more with less” is literally true, but that is exactly what’s happening with the latest round of data center consolidation.   (Read Full Article…)

The Hub Commentary_

Management instrumentation required, service enable during development.  New technology getting ready for production, but not ready for production creates the virtual stall.  Service enabling, instrumenting and an integration strategy will keep management on track.  Old management tools are no going to provide the data required for virtual infrastructures.  It will be a combination of the virtualization and traditional management tools that will provide the end-to-end view through an integrated strategy that will break the stalemate of the virtual stall.

Michele

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We’re hearing a lot about “virtual stall” these days. Supposedly, this is what happens when too many virtual machines clog up both physical infrastructure and traditional management systems, bringing productivity to a halt. This places an artificial cap on the amount of virtualization the typical enterprise can handle, and, by extension, its ability to leverage cloud technology.  (Read Full Article…)