Posts Tagged ‘HP’
Consumerization of Enterprise Software
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ross/3055802287/
Figure 1: Consumerization of IT
The devastation in traditional Publishing needs precious little mentioning. Just think about a brand like BusinessWeek selling for a meager cash offer in the $2 million to $5 million range, McGraw Hill getting into interactive text books through Inkling or Flipboard delivering “… your personalized social magazine” to your iPad. This devastation might not have gotten the attention that the plight of the ‘big three’ automobile manufacturers got, but in its own way it is as shocking as a visit to the abandoned properties in Detroit is.
As most of my clients do enterprise software, many of my discussions with them is about the consumerization of IT. From a day-to-day perspective this consumerization is primarily about six aspects:
- Use of less expensive/consumer-focused components as infrastructure
- ‘Pay as you go’ pricing (through Cloud pricing mechanisms/policies)
- Use of web application interfaces to monitor IT infrastructure
- Use of mobile and consumer based devices for accessing IT alerts and interfacing with systems
- Use of the fast growing number of mobile applications to enhance productivity
- Application of enterprise social networks and social software in the data center
From a strategic perspective, IT consumerization IMHO is all about the transformation toward “everything as a service” [1]. The virtuous cycle driven by Cloud, Mobile and Social manifests itself at three levels:
- It obviously affects the IT folks with whom I discuss the subject. Immense changes are already taking place in many IT departments.
- It affects their company. For example, the company might need to change the business design in order to optimize its supply chain.
- It affects the clients of their company. Their definition of value changes these days faster than the time it takes the CIO I speak with to say “value.”
© Copyright 2010 Israel Gat
Figure 2: The Virtuous Cycle of Cloud, Mobile and Social
Sometimes I get a push-back from my clients on this topic. The push-back is usually rooted in the immense complexity (and fragility) of the enterprise software systems that had been built over the past ten, twenty or thirty years. The folks who push back on me point out that consumerization of IT will not scale big time until enterprise software gets “consumerized” or at least modernized.
I agree with this good counter-point but only up to a point. I believe two factors are likely to accelerate the pace toward “consumerization” of enterprise software:
- Any department/business unit that can get a service in entirety from an outside source is likely to do so without worrying about enterprise software and/or data center considerations. This is already happening in Marketing. As other functions start doing so, more and more links in the value chain of enterprise software will be “consumerized.” In other words, these services will be carried out without the involvement of the IT department.
- Once the switch-over costs from legacy code to state-of-the-art code are less than the steady state costs (to maintain and update legacy code), the “consumerization” of enterprise software is going to happen with ferocious urgency.
If you are in enterprise software you need to start modernizing your applications today. The reason is the imperative need to mitigate risk prior to reaching the end-point, almost irrespective of how far down the road the end-point might be. See Llewellyn Falco‘s excellent video clip Rewriting Vs Refactoring for a crisp articulation of the risk involved in rewriting and why starting to refactor now is the best way to mitigate the risk.
Footnotes:
[1] The phrase “Everything as a Service” has been coined by Russ Daniels.
A Good Start Point for Devops – Guest Post by Peter McGarahan
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevepj2009/3461077400/
Many of the devops posts in this blog were written from a dev perspective. Today’s guest post by Peter McGarahan examines the topic from the ops perspective. It is inspired by the following eloquent quip about change:
Assume we’re starting from scratch. Assume that we actually are a startup that doesn’t have over a hundred years of experience and sub-optimized IT legacy.
A few biographical details for readers who might not know Peter or know of him. Peter J. McGarahan is the founder and president of McGarahan & Associates, an IT Service Management consulting and training organization. Peter offers 27 years of IT and Business Service Management experience in optimizing and aligning the service and support organizations of the Fortune 1000 to deliver value against business objectives. His thought leadership has influenced the maturity and image of the service and support industry. His passion for customer service led the Taco Bell support organization to achieve the Help Desk Institute Team Excellence Award in 1995. IT Support News named him one of the “Top 25 Professionals in the Service and Support Industry” in 1999. Support professionals voted McGarahan “The Legend of the Year” in 2002 and again in 2004 at the Service Desk Professionals conference for his endless energy, mentoring and leadership coaching. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, McGarahan has left his service signature on the support industry / community.
Here is Peter:
As a former Director of Infrastructure & Operations (I&O), I found it beneficial to establish a respectful working relationship with my Development Colleagues. It was important for the accountable leaders to better understand the objectives, workings and success metrics of each team. It was also critical for the leader to establish the ‘rules of engagement’ for how each team would assist each other in achieving their stated objectives (success metrics). It certainly helped to have an IT / Business leader who established a cooperative / collaborative teamwork culture. She also supported it with shared IT / Business objectives and performance goals for all accountable IT leaders. The I&O team certainly benefited from a CIO who understood the importance of customer service, the value of support and the business impact (negative IT perception) caused by repetitive incidents, problems and service disruptions. It was a game changing day for I&O when the CIO announced that all accountable leaders would have half of their performance objectives (bonus compensation) based on the success metrics of the I&O team.
In working with Infrastructure & Operations organizations, it has become apparent that as we continue to implement, measure and continuously improve the IT Infrastructure Library v3 (ITIL) processes, we must simultaneously address how we focus on all things new! In a recent Cutter Executive Update entitled IT’s Change Imperative, I relate lessons learned from my conversations with Geir Ramleth, CIO of Bechtel and Ron Griffin, Senior VP of Applications for Hewlett-Packard. Their leadership, vision and courage inspired me to think differently about how IT can better work together for the benefit of the business. In the end, the only success that matters – is the continued growth and profitability of the business. A summary of their change success stories:
- Hewlett-Packard CIO Randy Mott hired the right people to implement his IT strategy and change plan that included building, consolidating and automating its data centers; transferred work in-house from contractors; standardized on only a quarter of its apps; and built one central data warehouse — all while cutting spending in half.
- Geir Ramleth, CIO of Bechtel described how he used cloud computing principles to transform IT and make Bechtel’s computing environment more agile. He had a vision of allowing Bechtal’s global employees access to the right resources at any place at any time with any device – delivered securely and cost-effectively. He encouraged his IT people to step outside their comfort zones and do things in a different way. He resisted modifying the current state and went with the transformational change fearing they would only wind-up incrementally better. In targeting a desired end state, he gave his team guiding instructions to “Assume we’re starting from scratch. Assume that we actually are a startup that doesn’t have over a hundred years of experience and sub-optimized IT legacy.”
In the spirit of change, we should challenge ourselves to develop shared ‘devops’ goals / objectives. In the end, these should help us identify, link and realize how to translate IT objectives / metrics into tangible business benefits / value.
I have listed some shared ‘devops’ goals / objectives that I believe are a good starting point. I encourage and invite your thoughts, opinions and ideas around these and any others that you feel would aid ‘devops’ in working to establish measurable business value credibility.
- Lower the total cost of ownership of all services (best way to achieve this is build them with serviceability, usability and maintainability in the design of all new applications, systems and services).
- Increase business value – achieve business benefits (lower operational costs, increased revenues, improved customer experience)
- Simplified navigation
- Productivity enhancing capabilities /functionality
- Plug ‘n play integration
- Personalization
- Training / On-line Self-help features
3. Minimize business impact
- Reduce change-related outages / incidents.
- Reduce number of problems / incidents / calls.
- Reduce the number of requests / training-related calls / inquiries.
- Provide insights and tracking to the number of Known errors / workarounds / knowledge articles (solutions).
- Speed to resolution based on business prioritization model
- Operating Level Agreement / Commitment between Single Point of Contact (SPOC) Service Desk and internal IT Service Providers based on response / resolution times / commitments.
- Bug-fix Process:
– Provide insights into the ‘bug/fix/enhancement’ list and process with transparent visibility to business prioritization (needs / requirements / quantifiable benefits).
4. Improved and frequent Communication
- A marketing / product launch / status update and awareness campaign.
- Especially around rollout / enhancement time.
The Agile Executive 