July 23rd, 2008 by Louis DiMeglio
During Interop New York 2008 Hot Stage I had the opportunity to sit down with Barry Cummings, the team lead for the InteropNet Help Desk to talk to him about his experiences with Interop and EM7.
ScienceLogic: What’s your real job when you’re not here?
Cummings: I’m a consultant. I have a networking services company through which I offer services all the way from Layer 1 to desktop support.
ScienceLogic: How long have you been involved with Interop?
Cummings: I attended my first show in 1996. I volunteered for my first shown in 1999 and haven’t missed a year since.
ScienceLogic: What makes you want to come back each year for the additional punishment?
Cummings: Working with the team, which are long-term established friendships at this point. That and the excitement of working with the new technologies as they or even before they come out.
ScienceLogic: In Las Vegas you were Team Lead for Help Desk. What are you going be doing in NY?
Cummings: Same thing. That position incorporates some management over the show floor and off-show floor area. That’s kinda where they put me and I’ve been doing it solidly for about 5 years.
ScienceLogic: What are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the show over the years, what sticks out?
Cummings: The amount of monitoring that we have and what we do with it has really been changing. We went from more, to almost none and now back to more. We’ve been through numerous vendors and apps over the years and until recently weren’t overly happy.
ScienceLogic: Did the integration between Service Desk and Monitoring that ScienceLogic created help streamline things in a meaningful manner?
Cummings: Absolutely. In the short time that we have to get things setup there’s no way to integrate multiple products in this area. Having things pre-integrated allowed us to quickly link network events and the related tickets together in the management system [EM7].
ScienceLogic: Moving forward on the Service Desk, do you think you can move away from your current paper driven process to a completely paperless process?
Cummings: I could potentially see it changing as we get the process down and fine tune it. We might be able to get an electronic interface for people. It’s tough. There’s always going to be an aspect of the shows we have to hand off on paper and get to legacy people such as electricians and movers.
ScienceLogic: If there was one thing you could improve that you think would make the overall show or help desk operate better, what would it be?
Cummings: We need to keep refining processes down to get information into EM7. Get better at using the integration and automation that already exists in EM7.
Popularity: 2% [?]
July 23rd, 2008
July 22nd, 2008 by Julia Lim
We had the pleasure of interviewing client Opus Interactive’s Director of DataCenter Operations at Interop Las Vegas this year, and thought this was a great time to highlight some of the other successes that Opus has had in managing their growth and IT operations.
Like most of the service providers we talk to, they look to virtualization to provide immediate benefits to the business – e.g, cost savings from server consolidation and support for Green IT through cutting power/cooling requirements. And one more dimension to virtualization – Opus launched a new service, vClustr, which is a virtual dedicated server that provides the benefits of a fully managed dedicated server at a fraction of the cost…managed by EM7, of course.
We were happy to help Opus by working with them to implement our EM7 solution. Their growth plan was severely limited by inefficient processes and tools. As Opus grew rapidly in 2006, the tools they had in place were not easy to integrate as they were managed independently. There was a manual billing and ticketing infrastructure in place, and valuable engineer time was spent on maintaining what they had instead of enabling business growth. The company faced a choice, either grow by adding overhead and bodies or grow through automation.
Opus chose automation. They needed an automated solution to cover their immediate needs, and also enable them to scale processes for emerging technologies and future service offerings. Throughout their growth, Opus wanted to maintain their “customer first” philosophy and expand their green efforts.
By choosing EM7, Opus was able to replace their multiple, disparate tools with a single, integrated management system for networks, servers, applications, service desk assets and virtualization infrastructure. EM7 provided automated billing, ticketing, alerts and escalation options as well as a branded customer portal for transparency and self-service ticketing.
The results were tremendous. Opus Interactive recouped $130k per year of engineering resources. They automated critical operations to increase efficiency, enabled proactive monitoring and prepared for growth, while giving the business the processes and tools to grow the business without additional human capital resources.
We’re glad that we could help such a great company achieve their goals of providing an efficient “best-in-class” solution that combined superior customer service with a green philosophy.
Get the entire case study here.
Popularity: 4% [?]
July 22nd, 2008
July 21st, 2008 by Louis DiMeglio
For the past week I’ve been in Freemont California (outside San Jose) with the InteropNet Team getting the network back up after Vegas so that it’s ready for New York. This Hot Stage has been interesting because it really has been about the difference in the shows in Las Vegas and New York. The show in New York is a bit smaller, but because access to the venue (Javitz Center) is more restrictive than the access the team gets in Vegas (Mandalay Bay), things need to be done differently.
The big difference between the two cities is the amount of time that the InteropNet team gets to produce a live, fully operational and redundant network. In Las Vegas, this was nearly a full week of time - a tight timeframe across 17 different vendors, but now we’re looking back at that timeframe as a luxury. In NY, we’ll be getting started Saturday morning, and the network needs to be delivered on Sunday morning for the registration desk and exhibitor move-in to begin. If you’re keeping score, that’s about 24 hours to deliver a working network. Sounds hard, but it’s even harder when you consider that this means four DS-3s from two different locations, 17 full and 7 half racks of network gear, all the fiber and copper that the network is delivered over, etc all have to get done. Good thing that with 2 and 3/4 kids, I’m not planning on much sleep, and I don’t think the rest of the team is either.
In order to try and get the network delivered in that short timeframe, we worked hard at Hot Stage to assure that everything is ready to go. With some luck, the work that we’ve done here will allow us simply to roll the network gear into place, run the cables, fire up and go.
Now, things never really work out that way but that’s what EM7 is going to be there for. We’ll watch in real time as the network elements come live and be able to let the other InteropNet vendors know if their gear isn’t behaving as expected or is not visible for all the areas of the network that it should be. We’ll keep track of all of this in the EM7 ticketing system so that after the show we’ll be able to analyze the behavior of the network and systems as we did after Vegas.
I’m looking forward to the show and once again working with some of the top engineers in the country on a complex and rapidly deployed network. Speaking of which, we’re still looking for volunteers to help in the NOC. Volunteers get to work with some really smart people, get an education that would be hard to get anywhere else, and get a trip to NY where your expenses (for things like hotel accommodations and food provided by the show) are taken care of. Sound interesting? Be sure and check out the application.
Popularity: 4% [?]
July 21st, 2008
July 18th, 2008 by Julia Lim
Rodrigues & Urlocker had a nice spin on an announcement about security vulnerabilities in the Spring Framework. How could these vulnerabilities have gone unnoticed for so long? “After all, isn’t one of the hallmarks of open source the strong community vetting?”
Stacey Higginbotham adds a “dose of reality” to the cloud computing craze in her post on “10 Reasons Enterprises Aren’t Ready to Trust the Cloud”. Check the link for the full list which include security, portability and reliability. Cloud Computing – the next big thing, emphasis on “next”.
This just tickled my funny bone. And made me feel sorry for a certain technical marketing manager… But really, if it’s that hard to explain where the name came from, you’re not paying your marketing people enough. ;-p
As IT spending growth slows, virtualization (and the ROI it promises) rises to the top. According to a Goldman Sachs report, “server virtualization” and “consolidation” are the top priorities for technology executives. Goldman predicts the overall growth in spending to slip from “7 percent to 5 percent this year.”
Butler Group analyst Roy Illsley shares his advice for implementing holistic systems management or “simplification, so that the IT department can manage the technology stack at a higher level, and therefore enable it to manage a wider range of technologies more efficiently.” Hmm… simplifying IT, breaking down silos, automation, visibility across heterogeneous infrastructure…sounds very very familiar.
Popularity: 11% [?]
July 18th, 2008
July 18th, 2008 by Rajiv Patnam
Perception is often a form of reality. When I look back at the first Dotcom revolution, the first thing I think of is the massive rise of technology and creative energy in Silicon Valley. But I soon start thinking about the atmosphere that fostered that spirit and energy, a fun and easy-going vibe that allowed individuals to act like, well individuals! The fun laid-back atmosphere had many stories and tales of crazy parties to celebrate the success that was happening. Indeed those mavericks lived a “Play Hard, Work Harder” lifestyle.
I recently spoke with a friend who left the DC region for a position in Silicon Valley. When I asked what he thought of the move he said, “Well, you have the same giant buildings with technology company names on the outside rising out of nowhere. You have the same high quality of engineer, but it seems that the difference is in DC, everyone wears a suit or a tie and looks down upon you if you grab a drink at lunch, or unwind like a younger person would.”
I thought long and hard about his comment and decided that I would have to find out for myself. Is the DC area high tech community really that stuffy? Do people really not enjoy a good stiff drink after a long day?
Last night, I attended the Twin Tech party, a sponsored happy hour with the worthy goal of “mixing up our vast, and somewhat fragmented technology culture here in the greater DC region”. I can officially say, the DC tech scene is changing and it’s changing fast.
Let’s start with the venue, instead of holding this event in the suburbs (McCormick & Schmicks anyone?) or at a large hotel bar, they chose to have the event at a trendy up-and-coming part of town in what can be best described as one of DC’s hottest bars, Local 16. Not only that, because of the overwhelming response to attend, they had to rent out the bar next to it as well.
I expected that I would arrive and find the place mostly empty and have a few suits there chatting over a drink or 2. Instead I found myself at the overflow bar with a number of young up and comers in the space. It was impossible to get into the original venue, and the second venue was packed as well! Amongst all the people I found a friendly, happy, open vibe that allowed for great conversation, and interesting discussion about new technologies and the ideas people had about using and building the future.
It was the best of both worlds for a young technologist. I was able to discuss the topics and issues that were most facilitating and relevant (Social Networking from a corporate perspective, new blogging ideas, how new media is helping old media, etc), while still having a great time, and allowing myself to be properly refreshed for a hot DC summer night.
Popularity: 9% [?]
July 18th, 2008
July 16th, 2008 by Julia Lim
Back in April, we attended a session at the FOSE conference that highlighted Web 2.0 usage in the public sector. We also found through a survey of government workers that 65% of government IT workers surveyed said that Web 2.0 tools are important to their operations. The overall message was that all IT, government included, have too many projects they could be taking on for the amount of resources they have. For much of the IT topics we covered in the survey, importance was high but actual deployment was lower.
Dan Munz, project manager of the Collaboration Project commented on the unique work that the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) is doing to bring together government leaders. The Collaboration Project seeks to innovate across government not just down the silos and create a safe place for leaders to have discussions around innovation.
ScienceLogic: What is the National Academy of Public Administration?
Dan Munz: The Academy is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to tackling government’s most complex challenges. We were founded in 1967 by James Webb, the NASA administrator who took us to the moon – he saw that he could consult the National Academy of Sciences for expert technical advice, but had no counterpart in government for expert management advice. That’s been our mission ever since.
ScienceLogic: What is the Collaboration Project? How long has it been around?
Dan Munz: The Collaboration Project is the Academy’s response to two parallel trends we see in government. The first is the government’s need to transform the way it does business. There is a strong demand for change out there driven by a number of challenges that are forcing the government to rethink its mission and structure. Challenges include a public disconnected from government; a multi-sector workforce and increasing reliance on contractors; financial instability; and new types of security threats, just to name a few. More and more, the challenges facing government reach across the traditional boundaries of agency and mission. But government isn’t configured to work that way.
The second trend is the unprecedented opportunity collaborative technology offers to drive transformational change in government. Tools like blogs, wikis, and mashups are changing the way leaders think about problems. They’re focusing not on what they can do just within their offices or agencies, but what voices they need to pull together across government, non-profits, the general citizenry, and other stakeholders to solve these problems. The Collaboration Project’s goal is to encourage this type of thinking and empower leaders committed to use collaborative technology to:
- strengthen citizen civic engagement;
- enhance government transparency;
- improve service delivery and operational efficiency; and
- facilitate coordination and innovation within and between agencies.
ScienceLogic: Why focus on Web 2.0 in the government?
Dan Munz: The question of how web 2.0 will impact federal IT departments is a critical one. Our view is that “the era of big systems” is basically over. Things like disk space, bandwidth, and computing power are basically shifting from being assets to being commodities.
There’s also a shift in expectations. People both inside and outside government – especially Gen-X and Gen-Y – are incredibly frustrated by being able to use lightning-fast apps like Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook that don’t even live on their hard drives while the government and other large organizations still operate clunky PCs, space-limited e-mail accounts, and sluggish e-mail servers.
So aside from the opportunity for transformative leadership, the idea of web 2.0 at a government level is very appealing in terms of getting the most out of the IT infrastructure we already have, rather than embarking on costly, large-scale projects in an era of diminishing budgets.
ScienceLogic: How do you build a sense of community at the Collaboration Project?
Dan Munz: Some community feel emerges naturally, from a sense that mass collaboration really is a tool for “doing government” in a whole new way.
The more formal community building mechanisms we have include our web page, where we share insights, news, case studies, and other content – The virtual space serves as an anchor for people, whether they’re experts or beginners, to learn about what we do.
Finally, we are conducting an ongoing series of in-person meetings, usually featuring a leader who has harnessed collaborative technology in what we think is a truly revolutionary new way.
ScienceLogic: How do you hear about cool new government Web 2.0 projects?
Dan Munz: That’s a key question, because part of our mission is to inspire action by finding leaders who have succeeded and highlight their accomplishments. We’ve done that with folks like Kip Hawley, TSA, Molly O’Neill, EPA, and Jim Walker, Alabama DHS.
We also feel that the Academy’s position as a “safe space” for leaders means that we’re a place people can turn to when they hear about an emerging trend or project and want some help making sense of it.
ScienceLogic: What are the most innovative uses of Web 2.0 technology you’ve seen in the government?
Dan Munz: It’s important to distinguish between agencies that are simply adjusting to the reality of web 2.0, and those that are “using” it. Getting a YouTube account for your agency, or putting some photos on Flickr, is a great first step, but we want to inspire leaders to really transform their normal ways of doing business. At the moment a few that come to mind are the EPA Puget Sound Mashup, ODNI’s Intellipedia, TSA IdeaFactory, the PTO Peer-to-Patent Project, and Virtual Alabama, to name a few.
The TSA launched the IdeaFactory in February 2008. TSA set up a collaboration platform with commenting, voting, etc. to form communities in a way to bring people to consensus and offer ways to improve the agency’s performance.
ScienceLogic: Do you see a difference between state and local versus federal adoption of Web 2.0?
Dan Munz: That’s a hard generalization to make – at all levels you see leaders who recognize the potential in this technology to bring new voices into the governance process.
ScienceLogic: What are the obstacles to Web 2.0 adoption by government agencies?
Dan Munz: The three main challenges that we see are in the areas of technology, culture, and policy/governance.
The technology issue is probably the simplest to solve – it’s important to choose a technology that fits the problem you’re trying to solve, but these technologies are usually inexpensive and almost never very complex.
The question of culture is harder, particularly given the way that baby boomers, gen-xers, and millenials are beginning to interact in the workforce. How do you gain acceptance and buy-in among groups that have very different comfort levels with collaborative tools and environments?
Finally, the most daunting challenge might be the questions of policy and governance, if only because those are the things that most commonly prevent leaders from even dipping a toe in the waters of collaboration. Most of the policies, regulations, and statutes governing the way government does business don’t anticipate things like wikis, blogs, or instant messaging. One of our most important missions is helping leaders who just want to get to action navigate these obstacles.
ScienceLogic: Is there any advice you can give to government employees getting started with Web 2.0? Or any places you would point them to for more info?
Dan Munz: It’s shameless plug time! I’d of course point them to our web page, collaborationproject.org, where, among other things, we’ve collected a case library of over 40 instances of collaborative technology being used in the government and non-profit sectors. The library is growing every day and is a sort of “database of record” for what is and isn’t working in terms of collaborative government. I think that would be a great place to start for anyone looking to get started but not really knowing the way.
In terms of advice, the best thing to say is that, once you’ve settled on a problem you want to solve and an audience you want to reach out to, just do it! We believe strongly that there are a lot of organizational and leadership issues that still need to be addressed regarding collaboration in government, but our biggest mantra is about getting leaders to action. The most successful projects we’ve seen are ones that try something daring and new, and discover the true power of what they’ve done as it catches on more and more widely.
Popularity: 18% [?]
July 16th, 2008
July 15th, 2008 by Julia Lim
Yesterday we featured our initial Q&A with Doug McClure, who took some time to answer some strategic questions on BSM Lite. Today, Doug shares his thoughts on BSM and CMDB strategies for companies and how his stint in the U.S. Navy helped shape his future passion for BSM.
ScienceLogic: Can you share any of the strategies/advice that you give to companies embarking on their BSM journeys?
Doug McClure: Well, first they’ve got to have a BSM strategy. Nearly all the clients I talk to or hear about wanting to do BSM do not have a BSM strategy. I talk a lot about this on my blog and with clients and it is relevant whether you’re going to think about “BSM Lite” or “BSM Heavy” approaches.
Once we have a BSM strategy, we need to establish a BSM roadmap that guides us in how we’ll implement the BSM strategy in a more tactical manner, focusing on short term iterative quick wins and 30-60-90 day projects. For more of my thoughts on BSM strategy and roadmapping, see the following blog posts.
As I’ve alluded to previously, a client first must define and understand what “BSM Lite” may mean to them. Don’t take what the analysts or the vendors pitch for what you should do to achieve BSM or what value you should get from it.
For any type of BSM to be successful, each client must define what BSM means to them and state what they expect to get from BSM. They must make it personal, make it a part of their company culture and elevate it to be as an important initiative as compliance, risk management, SOA, ITIL, or other initiatives may be within the company.
Please don’t get scared off from this strategy thing. Please don’t blow this off as something that the secret enterprise architecture council should be doing. If you’re unable to get an audience in these areas within your company, start within your own sphere of influence.
Your strategy could be as simple as enabling the local operations center to more efficiently classify, triage and resolve problems based on a simple business service or application contextual understanding. Focus on how this changes the game within your environment. Come up with your own metrics and measures to assess the value this has to this organizational use. Trust me, you’ll need to justify your investment some time in the future.
Another trait of successful BSM implementations is that of the formal monitoring and management tools group has established some sort of database or knowledge repository that enables them to “manage the business of IT management and monitoring” if you will. In my opinion, the vendor community has let their clients down significantly in this area. The CMDB may be the correct answer, but most companies just don’t value monitoring enough to demand that this be included in their formal CMDB initiatives.
In my last job, we developed an application that I referred to as the “Service Management Database” or “SMDB”. Others may call it something else, but in essence, it was the database that captured what was monitored, how it was monitored, who owned it, what business services and applications it supported, the impact an outage or event from it had on the business services or applications, etc.
One key component of this “SMDB” was establishing the relationships of real and synthetic user and transaction monitoring steps to associated servers and applications. This is a significant gap area in many tools and vendor CMDBs.
Clients who have instituted something formal such as this generally have a very good handle on management and monitoring within their environment. Far too many clients do not have adequate monitoring (read visibility) in place to begin their BSM journey.
I’d strongly recommend a good hard look at how well the client’s monitoring and management practices are implemented and managed. Simply put, if they don’t have adequate visibility into how well those business services and applications are performing, you can’t expect to manage what you can’t “see” that may be impacting the business, clients, revenue, etc.
Just ask yourself this – can you explicitly state what monitoring is in place for a given business service or application? Can you quantify the impact of a simple event to a business service or application? Can you explain why something is red, yellow, purple or green and what causes it to change from one color to another? If you can’t, your BSM journey will be challenging.
Those with formal CMDB initiatives have their hands full with high risk, long time to value projects to just get a handle with traditional configuration management models. Taking these low level configuration items (CI’s) and establishing application and service dependencies comes after a lot of work getting through the organizational challenges of getting systems access to populate the CMDB.
I strongly recommend that the formal monitoring and management tools group create an authoritative database that enables them to establish end-to-end visibility into the service and application delivery chain and the impacts it has on the business, customer, etc. This ultimately becomes part of a more realistic federated CMDB within the business.
ScienceLogic: Can you provide an example of a successful implementation of BSM? Were there specific factors that especially contributed to its success?
Doug McClure: I’ve touched on the highlights of the most successful BSM implementations throughout my previous answers. Clients that have rallied around an organizational change or transformation focusing every team member’s efforts and energy towards ensuring that the business goals and objectives are being met through the delivery of highly available business services and applications.
Far too often the “change” never happens and it’s the “talking heads” that are preaching to the choir about what should be done. Every person on the front line, in the support teams, at the help desk, etc. must understand how they support or impact the business in business terms. Try putting this simple phrase after job titles “Hi, my name is Doug. I’m a Systems Administrator, Supporting the Business”.
That was a mouthful, but simply put, these clients have an impressively instrumented business and IT environment with the right amount of visibility into each area, joined together with an organization that thinks, operates and responds based on their understanding of the business goals and objectives and how these business services and applications enable business success.
The operational model for an organization fully adopting BSM identifies ways to establish a service management mentality across the entire business service and application delivery and support chain. The delivery, operations and support organizations must be incented to manage the services and applications being delivered with this end-to-end context.
A leading, outside the box “service management organization” may include the traditional IT silos but within a matrixed fashion focused on one or more key business services and applications. The “service management organization” is then incented to work together, as a team, for the end-to-end delivery and support of these services or applications.
It’s no longer one’s job to just be the systems administrator, database administrator or network engineer, their job is now to support specific business services and applications. They provide the subject matter expertise needed to support the services and applications together, as a team, eliminating the finger pointing or “not my problem” attitudes that exist in the majority of IT organizations today.
Overall, the KISS approach is what will enable BSM of any type (lite, heavy) to be the most successful. If it just feels natural, doesn’t take any additional effort, clicks or tasks to do then it’s going to work. BSM should be transparent and not just another buzz word. It’s not a form that gets filled out or a special process to follow in the run book. It’s doing the right thing for the business, no matter what the situation, crisis, buzz word or technology initiative of the day is.
ScienceLogic: How did you get involved in BSM?
Doug McClure: I think the foundations of my service management background and passion were initially established during my service in the US Navy. Today, I relate that experience to what I call BSM for the Military or Mission Services Management (MSM).
We had been taught over and over that extreme attention to the details of the mission at hand (aka “the business”) was the number one priority and that all of our technology, services, and applications existed for those Sailors and Marines on the other end (the “customer”). I can recall countless instances where mission critical communications services (telephony, orderwires, teletypes, command and control systems, etc.) were impacted in one way or another. It was extremely critical that we understood who was impacted and to what degree so that contingency plans could be activated. We weren’t just talking about lost revenue, poor sales or customer experience; we were talking about human lives and the security of the United States.
It is that military bearing, attention to detail and real world experience that drives me with many of my modern day BSM endeavors. That migration from “Mission Services Management” to BSM was honed working for over 10 years working in the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and datacenter, hosting and colocation business.
In those rapid growth businesses during the Internet boom, service differentiation was what “made you millions” or paved your way to bankruptcy. The companies I worked for had an extreme passion and focus on ensuring that their services, applications and Internet access products were of the highest quality, highly reliable and just plain better than the competition.
Again, the IT infrastructure, service quality and customer experience relationship was ingrained in all of our heads. It was all hands on deck when Webmail, Internet access, DNS, or the network experienced problems. We were measured in terms of how many customers experienced a busy signal or dropped connection or if you couldn’t log in fast enough to read your email. Companies like Keynote Systems and LionBridge/Veritest/Inverse tested the quality of our networks, services and applications and publicly ranked us against our competition. We thought in terms of customer experience and impact every minute of the day, 24×7.
It was in my last job managing a traditional enterprise management and monitoring development group for a nationwide ISP where I was able to work with emerging technology to help get a handle on the complexities of these rapidly growing IT environments filled with emerging technologies and products. Applying this early technology to complex service problems in our environment proved to me that the technology, coupled with the right emphasis on how the technology was implemented and an emphasis on the people and processes within the organization could bring BSM to life.
Where I felt left out in the cold was with my vendor relationship. While their technology gave me the potential, they didn’t teach me how to work through the organizational and technological problems to successfully implement the BSM strategy. My very first end-to-end BSM pilot was extremely successful and provided visibility into the IT environment and business service impact that have never been available before.
And here I am today, working at a software vendor for the first time. Welcome to the “dark side” as they say. The approach and methodology we followed for BSM has become the basis of the core BSM Methodology that I teach IBMers and our clients around the world today.
My personal mission and drive here at IBM Tivoli is to ensure that BSM is something that the typical monitoring tools administrator can actually implement and that our BSM story is something that any of our clients can be successful with. The sales and marketing slicks must be backed up by something like this whomever you are these days. Clients shouldn’t put up for “marketecture”, me too and gee whiz buzz words.
BSM takes a partnership and commitment to every client’s success, and I want to be involved in those BSM efforts in every industry or market worldwide. We need more thought leaders collaborating together in an open and public forum to change legacy attitudes about BSM and do what we can to enable client’s to be as successful as they can be.
Popularity: 21% [?]
July 15th, 2008
July 14th, 2008 by Julia Lim
We had the opportunity to chat with Doug McClure, who is currently the Senior Managing Consultant for Business Service Management (BSM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) for the IBM Software Services for Tivoli (ISST) team at IBM Tivoli (part of Software Group (SWG)). He currently leads the Virtual BSM Practice within IBM Software Services for Tivoli.
ScienceLogic: What is “BSM Lite” and how is it different from “heavy” BSM?
Doug McClure: I think the concepts that Peter Sevcik from Net Forecast initially outlined in his blog post sum up what “BSM Lite” is all about: a simpler, less expensive, more responsive way of achieving the goals and objectives of Business Service Management (BSM). He’s contrasted this nicely against what he termed “BSM Heavy” being the larger investments in time and resources to deploy domain specific tools and solutions each providing a view into the business service delivery with some aggregation and consolidation to tie up all of the disparate tool’s information into a concise end-to-end business service management story.
I’m pleased that he leveraged some of my thinking around a better working definition of what BSM really is from the BSM Defined page on my blog. Of course, these definitions are going to vary depending on whom you talk with and how they see the overall BSM Maturity Model. I’ve created a BSM Maturity Model that aligns with the famous Gartner IT maturity model. I’d like to think that a “BSM Lite” solution is one attacking the low hanging fruit, enabling one to achieve value quicker, and in a more tactical manner. The “BSM Heavy” solutions are capable of the same, but span all along the BSM Maturity Model by adding additional point solutions, products and technologies from their broader portfolio.
ScienceLogic: Does “BSM Lite” just refer to the tools, or can it refer to the process and methodology as well?
Doug McClure: I think that BSM is as much a philosophy as it is technology, process, people and methodology. If we can get people to think, operate and respond differently than they do today with a focus on the business, customers, quality, revenue, or whatever else is most important to their business goals and objectives, than that is Business Service Management and could be “BSM Lite” if you will.
Being that I work for IBM Tivoli, one of my personal objectives is to identify ways to use our key BSM enabling products in a more efficient, effective and BSM centric way. This was a huge driver for trying to hold DevCampTivoli focused on “Collaborative Development of End-to-End BSM Solutions”.
In my opinion, we don’t make things very easy for our clients and the answer can’t be to “buy this product, module or widget” to fill in the gaps. In my opinion, we must establish a BSM overlay within IBM Tivoli’s development and product management organization that ensures that we have clearly thought about how to enable BSM with the hundreds or products that we sell. In my opinion, every product release must incorporate the fundamentals of enabling BSM in addition to the core domain specific functionality intended. I hope to keep this spirit alive and get our smartest IBMers and clients thinking about the best way to take a “BSM Heavy” solution and make it “lighter”. I hope to share more about my plans here and guidance for the industry in general soon.
That said, I am always interested in consulting with clients and collaborate with peers in the industry to figure out how to get the focus on the people, process and technology as key components of their BSM strategies. I am absolutely convinced that without a documented BSM strategy, roadmap and top level sponsorship within the business and IT, the chances of BSM success greatly diminish.
ScienceLogic: Given the complexities involved in implementing a BSM strategy and dealing with the people and processes components of any business, how does “BSM Lite” really work? Should the expectations and outcomes be “lite” as well?
Doug McClure: Time will tell if “BSM Lite” will work. I’m seeing emerging companies that are already breaking down some of the barriers to BSM success. I do not expect that those choosing to begin with a “BSM Lite” approach should expect “lite” outcomes.
The outcomes are the same regardless of the approach IF you’ve got a documented BSM strategy, roadmap and top level sponsorship in place before you begin. New features, capabilities and technologies will be needed as the needs of the business change and companies mature in BSM and fundamental IT management. This will likely force companies to move in more “BSM Heavy” directions to fill those gaps.
In my opinion, this is the ideal scenario now as it gives “BSM Lite” vendors opportunities to grow their products and solutions. It also GREATLY improves the chances for success with a “BSM Heavy” solution because the organization would have already had matured enough to approach a “BSM Heavy” solution than if they hadn’t done a “BSM Lite” solution in the past.
ScienceLogic: Is “BSM Lite” more appropriate for a small or midsized organization, or does it apply equally to large companies? Is there an ideal profile for a company that can successfully implement a BSM strategy? Is there a different profile for “BSM Lite”?
Doug McClure: From an economic perspective, the concepts of “BSM Lite” are appropriate for all companies. Remember, with “BSM Lite” we’re focused on identifying ways to make the goals and objectives of BSM easier to implement and in a more cost effective way. Any company concerned about their IT cost overhead should care about this, especially when the risks of starting out with a “BSM Heavy” type deployment are much greater and the time to value generally much longer.
The “ideal” profile for any company is one where the BSM initiative begins by establishing top level buy in through creation of a formal BSM strategy for the company. This BSM strategy personalizes how the company defines what BSM is, what value the company expects from it, and how it will use BSM as a competitive differentiator for delivery of its business and IT services, products, etc.
The organizational “profile” I’ve seen most successful is when implementing a BSM strategy originates from within or actively includes a group that many companies have now that serves as a liaison or relationship management role between the various lines of business and IT. Sometimes this group is often seen as the gatekeeper to filter (and hinder) business driven requirements into the IT organization. In the ideal scenario, this group works very closely with the business and IT (usually staffed by business people and not IT people) to understand both the business side and IT side of complex business services and applications.
Apart from the traditional IT components, what this group can do is help IT really understand the business perspective. Analysis of the impact on the business in business terms is only possible by collaborating with a group such as this. True value oriented BSM becomes attainable when we get to this level of IT and business alignment, cooperation, collaboration and communication.
If BSM is an IT only initiative, this will likely result in an IT centric perspective severely lacking in the necessary business perspective. In these cases where IT doesn’t invest their BSM efforts with the business as an equal partner, the implementation ultimately becomes a “CYA” tool for IT and not achieve the desired value oriented expected.
To some degree “BSM Lite” may have an entirely different profile. If we see the price points, complexity and time to value change significantly we may see these types of deployments originate exclusively within the Line of Business. The possibility may exist where large enterprises operating in a shared IT services or IT outsourcing type model that the Line of Business brings in a “BSM Lite” solution to gain the visibility, checks and balances needed to ensure that the LoB’s needs are being met from the internal/external provider. I’d envision that “BSM Lite” may even be capable of operating within a “SaaS” model or other managed service type offering where the price points are below the signing levels triggering broader IT involvement and review.
To Be Continued…
Popularity: 20% [?]
July 14th, 2008
July 11th, 2008 by Julia Lim
The big news this week is of course Diane Greene’s surprising ousting as CEO of virtualization giant VMware. There was a lot of speculation about the reasoning behind this decision – from stock prices dropping for VMware and parent EMC to fighting Microsoft with Microsoft (new CEO Paul Maritz is an old MS exec) to tensions between VMware and EMC (communications, culture, tie-in to EMC storage/sales) to a possible cloud computing future for VMware that Maritz is better positioned to drive.
But in the end, it seems like Tucci didn’t have faith that Greene had the chops to run the successfully growing company anymore. So she could build it to the stature it has now but just as MS comes out of the gates, all of a sudden she’s no good? Boy, I can’t wait for Greene’s book on this. CEOs, take heed – don’t be too successful or the board will fire you. (Or alternatively don’t let the guy who doesn’t like you stack the board!)
So where does VMware go from here? Rachel Chalmers, Research Director for Infrastructure Management at The 451 Group, places a bet on cloud computing – saying that VMware plans to offer a new suite of cloud computing at the next VMworld Conference. And here’s a nice piece on the Burton Group’s Data Center Strategies Blog that suggests another multi-pronged winning strategy.
Oh no. The virtualization management space, if it didn’t before, is beginning to remind me of the Internet boom time when everyone and their brother (literally, ask me about it sometime) got into the act. Introducing, DynamicOps and their product, Virtual Resource Manager (VRM). The two-week old company and product are spinouts from Credit Suisse, where the original solution was home-grown and in production for more than 2 years, managing thousands of virtual machines. I’m really interested in taking a closer look at it and seeing just what VRM does differently to meet the unique requirements of virtualization management at such a scale.
Forrester Research released a research report on “the Five Essential Metrics for Managing IT.” The study relates the “Operational Health” metric to the measuring of IT failures. Dave will be happy to note that the report uses one of his favorite phrases – talking about the “dial-tone reliability of IT services”.
Popularity: 15% [?]
July 11th, 2008
July 8th, 2008 by Julia Lim
VMware and EMC announced today that co-founder Diane Greene is leaving her post as CEO of the virtualization giant, effectively immediately. Former Microsoft executive, Paul Maritz, head of EMC’s cloud computing division, will replace her. (img credit Fortune Magazine/Joe Pugliese)
There’s speculation that falling VMware share prices, with no end in sight because of “poor revenue outlook” is the reason for the ouster.
Hmm. The stock went public at $29, went as high as $125 and is now at $40.26 (and falling as I write), almost a 40% premium over the first offering. Say what you will about the recently launched Microsoft Hyper-V and the Citrix offering that we never hear about, but VMware is the dominant virtualization player (and likely to remain so for at least some time given Microsoft’s track record with new product releases) in an exploding market. Gartner predictions are that the installed base of VMs will grow more than 10x between 2007 and 2011 and that by 2012 the majority of x86 server workloads will be running in a VM.
The future still looks pretty rosy for VMware – perhaps they’ll be taking a smaller chunk of the pie, but the pie’s getting much bigger. And all indications pointed to VMware moving up the stack and providing more management solutions (and more revenue streams) for the x86 virtualization market they helped to build.
So why the change? And why now? Is it a coincidence that it’s an ex-Microsoft exec taking over just as Hyper-V ships? Can only someone who knows the Microsoft Way combat the Microsoft Way? Remember this is the guy who wrote that Microsoft should “cut off Netscape’s air supply”.
So, good idea to say that Microsoft execs are better than VMware execs just as the Hyper-V juggernaut gets rolling? If I didn’t know better, I’d say this is the latest example of a MS FUD campaign…
Popularity: 26% [?]
July 8th, 2008
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