Tag Archive | "Service Providers"

ITIL vs The Cloud: Pick One – CIO – Really?!?!

Tags: Business Alignment, Business Service Management, CIO, Cloud, ITIL, Service Providers, Trends


The Hub Commentary

The opening statement of the article says it all and what I heard is, “the technology and services are incompatible with our processes” and resistance to change and why I predicted the service providers will feast on data centers in 2011 in my predictions post and why I also predicted first in the list that ITIL will wane in the conversation.  Data  center staff has to wake up and smell the coffee, so to speak.  Technology is commodity, driving business is the value.  Think of it this way, when you go to the bakery do you care how they make the chocolate cake or do you just want to buy a chocolate cake?

It is no longer about the monitoring and managing of technology and configurations, that’s the commodity and those jobs are with the service providers.  The IT jobs are analytics, business performance, using technology to grow the business.  All three of my posts today are articles referencing the impending transformation that the data center must embrace in 2011 or be outsourced.

Business is frustrated with IT because IT does nothing but talk and impose “how” to manage technology on the business rather than delivering and driving services.  When you outsource (cloud, as-a-Service, take your pick), you are purchasing a service, not managing the infrastructure and how they manage their processes.  Define the contract, service expectation, reliability/performance/availability considerations and what you expect during an service impacting event.  That’s it.  The service provider is tasked with meeting that service contract and defining the processes that insure they do.

Now I also state in these conversations over and over again, many of these start-up service providers are one outage away from being out of business because they do not have good practices in place.  Yes, as a customer you should quiz and probe to gain comfort that they do know how to run the business (you notice I said run the business – not manage problem tickets), write the contract and manage to the contract.

I have several service level agreement posts and cloud service provider posts.  ITIL (I am certified) is advice on processes, not SEC filing rules for public companies.  ITIL and it’s followers will slowly fade into the woodwork if they do not embrace changing market dynamics and technologies.  The single biggest problem with ITIL that I will blog separately on is that it is still stuck in defining a life cycle, a process for the service and not how to deliver service value driving business value.   More on that another day…

2011 is the year of the cloud, virtualization, service providers, analytics for business performance and mixed /complex environments, not ITIL in the least.  Communicating performance inclusive of right sourced components as part of the service is the transformation goal.   No one will care how the data center communicates business performance, only that they do and drive value!

Are you communicating business performance and driving value or still communicating how you manage a data center resistant to the cloud because it changes a process?

Michele

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The Cloud is fundamentally incompatible with ITIL — the most widely accepted framework for professional IT management.  (Read Full Article…)

IT Hiring Shows Gains, but Jobs may be Shifting – NetworkWorld

Tags: Business Alignment, Business Service Management, Jobs, NetworkWorld, Service Providers, Transformation, Trends


The Hub Commentary__

Absolutely the jobs are shifting.  Technology and the monitoring, configuring and management of it is commodity.  Much of it could be run in the cloud, by a service provider, managed by SaaS offerings and open source – the choices are endless today in configuring the right sized and right sourced data center.

As in my previous commentary on the post regarding business performance and the requirements in 2011 for IT to transform itself, this is the transformation.  IT is no longer about technology monitoring and managing, it is about communicating business performance and using technology to drive business growth and performance.  This is and will shift the traditional technologist jobs to the service providers and the analytical and service management roles inside the data center.

Is your IT and data center tranforming yet?

Michele

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The U.S. Labor Dept. said that the economy added 103,000 jobs overall, and led to an unemployment rate reduction from 9.8% to 9.4%, a broader trend that also appeared in tech hiring.  (Read Full Article…)

Where Network and Systems Management is Headed Next – NetworkWorld

Tags: Availability, Business Service Management, Change, IT Management, NetworkWorld, Open Source, Performance, Predictions, Service Providers


The Hub Commentary     __

I tend to agree with the increased focus on performance and end-user monitoring and believe it will be driven by the requirement to monitor the service providers as cloud services are incorporated.  Controlled change management with an end-to-end view of the complex infrastructure will work to mitigate risk and both will rely on an integration platform and strategy.

Open Source monitoring for the commodity will also rise in popularity and implementation, but I don’t agree with building more into the monitoring tools or waiting for one vendor to build a single framework.  A single vendor framework is and has never been built ground up to monitor and manage the data center.  The big four all grow through acquisition of many technologies and cobble them together through data layer integrations.  No offense to my vendor friends, I’ve been a product manager for one of them and did exactly the same thing after an acquisition was made – it’s the quickest way to claim integration victory.

I believe we will see data centers leveraging Open Source, Cloud services for both Services (commodity management – ala ITSM tools) and Infrastructure (to test out excess capacity and demand flexibility options); rise in both availability and performance monitoring for new technology and delivery methods; and end-to-end visibility requirements to mitigate risk and speed restoration time.  All of this is solved and future proofs the data center by considering a  sound integration platform and strategy pulling together the physical, virtual, cloud environment into a single view for monitoring, managing and measuring.

Push your suppliers to build the best monitoring/management tools possible and leverage an integration platform to bring the best of your investments together to transform your data center into a service provider.  Oh yeah, 2011 will be the tipping for data center transformation into a service provider – not technology manager.

Michele

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Depending on where they stand in the overall environment, network and systems management companies hear different concerns from their enterprise IT clientele. Here’s a look at how the year will shake out in a number of different areas … (read full article…)

Accidental Cloud Ldr–Stealth Cloud Followers–Which Cloud are you On?

Tags: Best Practices, Business Alignment, Business Service Management, Cloud, Service Providers


Are you leading your organizations cloud roll-out or are you reacting to it? It is happening, better to lead than follow!

The WorkloadIQ post and the article Richard references on the Stealth Cloud from a CIO article reminds me of a previous article about the Accidental Cloud Leader from a Networkworld article.  Both of these articles point to the cloud is coming, the choice facing IT organizations is whether to lead, control costs, mitigate risk, deliver quality service and manage costs or to follow with rising costs, reactive IT, high risk and poor service quality. Richard hits the nail on the head, IT is traditionally change averse and insecure with the concept of outsourcing services. Technology is evolving faster and faster and the very organization that should adopt, deploy and lead with technology continues to lag.

In almost all cases when it comes to sourcing decisions they are done to create change that an organization has difficulty bringing to the organization, not for cost reasons. Commodity functions are best suited for outsourcing, driving standards and managing costs. However, outsourcing the service does not remove accountability for managing service delivery.

Cloud providers are popping up faster than service providers during the dotcom boom days of web hosting, application hosting, etc. There are several key factors to consider as pointed out in these articles and blog posts:

  • Availability of service
  • Risk of a secure service
  • Reliability of the service provider
  • Cost of support

Availability of Service and Reliability of the service provider
The dotcom bust of service providers in the early 2000 era came down to lack of mature management processes. Many providers today are one significant outage away from being out of business. Is this who you trust your services to? Who’s managing and leading this due diligence in contracting for the services in the leader / follower scenario?

When seeking service providers, it is important to understand their management processes and capabilities. You do not want to define them, but the lack of management transparency and process indicates maturity of the service provider and their ability to delivery availibility of services. One thing to note here is not to ask for inappropriate service levels and/or penalties. Investigate their typical services, leverage the cloud and service providers for the commodity and take advantage of the economies of scale they offer.

Risk of a secure service
Security as an obstacle in going to the cloud or leveraging an as-a-service provider is, quite frankly, IT noise. As described in these articles and blogs, this is the service providers business and they know it is their number one objection. In many cases, they may offer a far more secure environment than most IT organizations and thus the rise of IT insecurity and noise. However, again, it is an area that must be investigated as it relates to the mature management practices of a service provider.

Cost of support
Organizations are expressing frustration with their IT organizations as a perceived obstacle to agility and innovation when they go to the cloud directly. As Richard’s blog points out, this costs your IT organization more in the long run to support, the service will go down, the business will call support for help, the provider most likely may not be reliable and in the worst case, data and security can be breached.

Management generally lags new technology and this cycle to go to the service providers directly for a defined service and defined cost is more appealing to the business. Management lags both with IT internally and with the service providers compounding the risk of an outage or security breach.

Providing the ability to monitor, manage and measure technology services both internally as well as the performance and availability of the service provider insuring quality service delivery will be key. Service enabling your infrastructure could not be easier today and would provide the control with agility your organization is screaming for from your IT organization. Management does not have to be an afterthought and the right platform can future-proof your services with technology adoption agility, it merely takes some proactive planning.

Check out these articles and then answer:  Are you following or leading your organizations cloud rollout – it is happening and coming . . . Are you Stealth or Leading? What are your challenges and concerns?

The Rise of the Stealth Cloud – CIO Update

Tags: Business Alignment, Business Service Management, CIOUpdate, Cloud, Service Providers, Trends, Virtualization


Shadow IT has worried CIOs for decades. The practice is often defended as a source of innovation and a faster-than-normal way for users to get their jobs done but this off the radar technology use by employees presents serious dangers to the corporation ranging from increased security threats to compliance issues.  (read more…)

Unisys Offers ‘Hosted Private Cloud’ – NetworkWorld

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, IT Management, NetworkWorld, Service Providers


Unisys on Tuesday introduced a dedicated, hosted computing service that lets customers quickly add extra capacity for short-term use, a feature Unisys says is unique among what it calls “hosted private clouds.”  (read more …)

Why IT Jobs are Never Coming Back – CIO

Tags: Business Service Management, CIO, Cloud, Service Providers, Trends


The combination of more automation, increased offshoring, and better global IT infrastructure has taken its toll on the U.S. IT profession, resulting in a net loss of 1.5 million corporate IT jobs over the last decade, according to recent research from IT consultancy and benchmarking provider The Hackett Group.  (read more …)

Cloud Computing: 2011 Predictions – NetworkWorld

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, NetworkWorld, Predictions, Service Providers


It’s been an incredibly interesting, exciting, and tumultuous year for cloud computing. But, as the saying goes, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Next year will be one in which the pedal hits the metal, resulting in enormous acceleration for cloud computing.  (read more …)

Business in the Cloud – BSM Brings Value Back into the Data Center

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, Service Level, Service Providers


Business going to the Cloud can be the Catalyst for IT to Measure and Communicate Value!

How many of us have heard what a road block IT is, how costly / what a mystery IT is and IT cannot communicate value to the business leaving frustration in the organization. It’s sort of like the Mars and Venus thing and “if they only understood me better” debate. It’s OK to laugh, we all suffer these discussions, I too am guilt – the makings of a good Dilbert cartoon no doubt ending with Catbert reigning down his wrath of mandates. However, with all sourcing decisions, it is about creating change in an environment where change is difficult and should be embraced. IT has the opportunity to do just that and be the hero in the end. This is a good sourcing option as it creates the change that will drive down costs that are difficult for in-house IT to drive.

Moving from technology silos to managing and communicating in terms of services is easier than one thinks. It does require different management approaches and technology, measuring in terms of service and yes, sometimes the right investment can save money in the end while creating value. A recent NetworkworkWorld Article has a good quote from a good friend of mine and Forrester analyst, Glenn O’Donnell, “invest in analysis, not monitoring”. The monitoring data is required, but means nothing when not related to other bits of techno data and turned into information by which to perform useful analysis about services and the value delivered to the business. This becomes ever more challenging when in a mixed environment, physical, virtual, cloud, and when many management tools exist as well.

CIO also published an article yesterday “Why IT Costs Must Come Out of the Black Box — Now” describing similar requirements for service measuring and service transparency. The lack of transparency drives the business to seek alternatives where they contract for a service and know the cost. What is often left out is the definition of good service levels, which is a topic for a separate blog. The new service appears cheaper and why is that? Economies of scale is one piece, shared service, ……the second piece is they are very standard, non custom, no configuration, minimal choices, if any, services. Standardization that is difficult to impose from in-house without the cost transparency, service measurements and links to business priorities. This is not a fair apples to apples comparison of services, however, a standardization many IT organizations have difficulty implementing as an in-house provider without the measuring of services and transparency, but possible moving forward.

Instead of challenging the business in moving to a cloud provider, I suggest embracing it and offer that history will repeat itself with many of these start up providers bringing the service back in-house and providing the opportunity to be the hero, improve service quality, reduce costs and communicate value. Many will fail due to lack of good service level agreements, lack of the business asking for them and collapse or dissatisfaction of the business with a single costly service impacting event.

Embrace the opportunity to do a few things in the meantime:

1. Standardize, drive down costs for services and technologies that do not require customization
2. Measure the provider, start to deliver service levels and views of transparency of in and outsourced services
3. Develop and Implement the service view and transparency into the “black box” of IT
4. Invest in the analytic measuring and viewing technology, less on the commodity monitoring – explore open source

When Outsourcing Creates Good Change – Embrace the Cloud Providers – Consolidate Tools and Invest in becoming a Service Measuring Organization Communicating Value!

I See Your 10 and Raise You 4 . . . . .

Tags: Business Service Management, Cloud, ITIL, Service Providers, Trends


Tis the season for Vegas, gambling and the Gartner Data Center Conference and thus many top 10 Predictions for the coming year. I’m not a gambler, take these as you may, but for those who know me might say she might just have a bit of challenge the status quo in her and a knack for blowing things up from time to time. As a bit of a researcher of the IT management industry, these are just my musings to add to recent flurry of top 10 lists from my friends on WorkloadIQ and Baseline that sparked my imagination of further possibilities. Here goes, a tad controversial, I welcome the discussion!

  • ITIL has reached its height in the America’s and ITIL will begin to wane in conversation. Data center efficiency is an expected given to the busines and are tiring of investing in inward focused programs and are demanding a focus on the top line versus the bottom line and deployment of agile technology for growth.
  • ITIL will begin its next revision to release late to the wave in late 2012 in reaction to waning interest. Second rev took 20 years, 3rd rev took 6 years and the 4th rev is late. Service Value will take ITIL center stage in the 4th revision in advancing ITIL up the maturity curve from silos of processes, integrated processes, a service life cyle to finally focusing on the Service Value contribution.
  • Service Providers will experience double digit growth driving the growth in IT Management Technology spend leading to new licensing models with lower up front costs and longer term revenue sharing with the vendors. The tide begins to turn with the customer to the vendors shifting toward the Service Providers. Growth in the Management market and the Service Provider market is driven by virtualization, private cloud and public cloud deployment.
  • Management of the private/public cloud and virtualization is the make or break key to value and success, whether internal or external. Service Providers that ignore management are one outage away from being out of business and data centers that ignore management are in the process of being outsourced.

I’m not a gambler, won’t bet my house on these, but having been witness to the same new technology, IT Management and Sourcing cycles for >25 years (I started working IT when I was twelve I agree with Richard’s blog that we are at a tipping point. Sourcing options become appealing when the level of frustration for change is high and we are in a perfect storm of agile technology, sourcing options and an increasing focus on growth and innovation.

Those who embrace new technology and sourcing options and harness the power with agility for driving value with speed are those that will drive their industry. All you have to do is look at the annual F500 list and see who leads your industry and leads it by magnitudes greater than #4, 5, 6, etc. and you see those that lead with technology.

Which cloud does your data center choose to be on, the Cloud Leader or a Stealth Cloud Follower?