The Tipping Point

ITIL V3 is starting to take off – Yeah! In a session about CMDB implementations earlier today the audience was asked to answer a question regarding their interest in ITIL V3 and if they have projects underway to convert from ITIL V2 to V3 – well to everyone’s surprise, the scale is starting to tip in favor of V3. This will be an interesting metric to follow over the next 12 months.

Another interesting metric is about CMDB projects and how many companies have CMDB implementation projects underway – well the numbers are growing again and about forty five percent of attendees show that they have projects underway to do just that. By 2012, the rest will follow except for about 8% that do not care nor want to consider it – that percent has been somewhat consistent for the years and is not unusual. These are considered the late adopters that will eventually come. We have to build it and they will come!

 

From Agility to Fragility

If you’ve been following the posts on this blog along with what’s on everyone’s mind here at the Data Center Gartner conference, you would’ve realized by now that Virtualization is in the spot light. What I found interesting is that in any session that you attend, the word “virtualization” will come up many times even the session was not covering this topic. Interesting! So this morning in a town hall meeting, the subject of virtualization came up once again. The panel of Gartner analyst on stage talked about the hard realities of virtualization. While virtualization presents itself as a very attractive idea, it can be indeed a scary one at the same time. Traditionally, IT environments have been very forgiving in a sense that you can survive without a good change management process, ITAM process or any other process. In the new word of virtualization sharable services become the new norm. If you’re going to share computing power across multiple business units and apliations you must plan ahead and mature very quickly to strengthen the processes that guard the environment. Otherwise, you’re in for a big surprise. The more I think about that, the more I say Hurry Up and Wait! Hurry up -> think about virtualization and make it part the future, but Wait – > and think it through before you actually start. Have a strategy in mind. Process and people are key factors in a virtualized environment, so assess your readiness first and make sure you can deliver the benefits of virtualization without creating bigger problems. The good news is that the technologies are here and ready, the question is Are You Ready?

 

Process Does Matter – more than ever before!

Once of the themes that took a little longer to emerge is the importance of process and people in this time of IT transformation. The idea is in a virtual and more agile IT infrastructure and operations, process becomes more important than ever before. So while the initial reaction to the economic crunch is that companies are cutting back and investing less on process improvement projects in IT. We will soon realize that, if anything, they must invest more – otherwise they are doomed to fail. We may come to learn this the hard way – but many of the discussions here at the Gartner conference and the town hall meeting this morning makes the connection very clear.

However, ITIL & ITAM processes must evolve and be updated to work well in a virtual infrastructure. Cloud computing and the computing fabric call for very strong processes to manage changes, incidents, capacity, availability, demand, provisioning …etc. Think about it for a second! If you do not have strong processes, you may be the victim of massive problems. Someone said that ITIL needs to become VITIL = Virtual ITIL (or ITIL for a virtual infrastructure). Well how about ITAM, we need to also define the virtual asset lifecycle so ITAM becomes VITAM.

Let’s get to work and figure out were to start. We need to take all these processes and tailor them to function well in serving the needs of a virtual IT.

Guess what else? People will also need change to best support the future infrastructure. New roles may be conceived for these virtual processes or the skill set of existing roles need to evolve over time to fulfill the requirements of the future.

A good place to start would be to discuss where to start and tackle the processes one at a time. What would be your pick?

 

Return on Maturity = the equation

Let’s first address the IT Maturity Model. Gartner Analysts explained that the IT Maturity Model is comprised of the following three elements:

• Process
• Infrastructure
• Culture

I am sure by now you recognize the good old “process, people and technology” which summarizes the structural elements of any IT practice – no surprises yet. However, the question that is being proposed here is how do you measure the return on maturity, IT maturity that is? In other words why should we care to mature and advance our practices, other than because we can or because others are doing it? Well, Thomas Bittman explained that return on IT maturity is to be measured by the dimensions of 1) economics, 2) agility, & 3) quality of service. So the equation is:

Return on IT Maturity = Economics + Agility + Quality of Service or RIM = E + A + QS

Interesting! If you stair at this equation for a minute or two, you will realize how much work is required to figure out how to measure each factor in this equation, and you can imagine how long it may take for such measure to be accepted by practitioners. If anything, economics is something that we know how to measure today. Even though, we still see bad examples here and there. But we’re far from fully understanding how to measure agility and quality of service.

Thoughts!

 

The Biggest Question

There were some great discussions regarding what are the big and important questions that IT must address today to be successful tomorrow? Well here is the winner, for any given organization the following questions becomes the most important: what Can and Should be outsourced, and what Must be managed internally? You can imagine that the answer will differ by company, by business and there is no silver bullet. This is one of these questions that will take you back to the fundamentals of understanding what is the business you’re supporting is all about. Anything that is categorized as a core competency must stay in-house. The rest can be history. So what is a core competency? I will let you answer that one for your organization and please be critical of what you end up calling a core competency.

Most of the discussions concluded that usually there is a higher cost associated with an in-sourcing model. But as long as there are good reasons why we’re doing it, it is OK. This is when we start running IT like a business where these critical decisions are made in light of what services IT needs to provide in order to support the strategic objectives of the organization. Who cares how IT goes about making these services available. Examples to this included, call center services. If the call is handled by your own internal call center or routed elsewhere, why should that matter? What matters though is the level of service and quality – those can not suffer in the process. Here is a simpler example, do you Really need to build you own search engine or can you use a service like Google or Yahoo?

Please share your thoughts on this. Also let us know what other questions you think IT should be asking today?

 

Virtualization 2.0: Is it a Curse or a Cure?

Virtualization 2.0 is all about agility – which means that IT can respond to business computing needs within hours not days or weeks. This is a good thing right? Well it depends on who you ask. David Cappuccio told me that to the business this is like magic where IT becomes a hero. For IT, this is can become a curse because if IT does not have solid tracking processes, they quickly loose control to virtual sprawl. Of course it is much harder to fix virtual sprawl problems than physical sprawl. Simply the good old way to disconnecting the server and see who screams can be not done in a virtual environment.

So we need to approach Virtualization 2.0 carefully to avoid coming around a full circle to where we are today only this time with bigger more complicated problems. After all ghost servers are bad and we are trying to fix that today, in the world of Virtualization 2.0 we may end up creating virtual ghosts.

This is what Cameron Haight likes to call, speed can kill! So be ware.

 

The Evolution of Virtualization

Virtualization is being positioned as one of the most critical topics today for IT and DC management. The idea is to move from the traditional component computing model to a virtual computing model that is built mainly on concepts of cloud computing. This allows for better utilization of computing power in general, which then translated to cost savings across the enterprise. So what does the evolution of virtualization really look like? Here is what Thomas Bittman had to say about that:

• Virtualization 1.0 = Consolidation, where cost savings is the key driver
• Virtualization 2.0 = Agility, where speed is the key driver
• Virtualization 3.0 = Alternate Sourcing, where cloud computing and a use of hybrid IT sourcing strategies become the main focus

In this economy, Virtualization 1.0 is quite popular as organizations are focused mainly on reducing costs or managing with smaller budgets. Where do you think you organization is going with virtualization. Please share your thoughts with us.

 

Live from Vegas: Gartner Data Center Conference 2008

The 27th annual Gartner Data Center Conference 2008 is in full action this week at the MGM Grand Conference Center in Las Vegas, NV. I will be blogging about important data center related topics and sharing thoughts and perspectives of what matters. The intention is to share our thoughts on building better data center and intimately better IT. So stay tuned for more to come! I look forward to collaborating with you and learning more in the process.

 

ITAM Program – Ready or Not?

We know by now that ITAM programs are large in size and complex in scope and implementation. Communication in these types of programs is a key success factor. Simply because it takes the organization an extended period of time to reach the end goal and it is critical to take the time to communicate and celebrate the small wins that ultimately lead to the finish line. Also the fact that organizations are dynamic in nature where players and people change, makes it important to constantly communicate and reiterate overall goals, past achievements and next steps.

At Pepperweed Consulting LLC, Ari Tomboulides, Director of IT Management Consulting, likes to summarize the topic of communication in a cube representation. He calls it the Communication Cube. This cube addresses the four dimensions of communications:

1. What are we trying to communicate?
2. Who are we communicating with?
3. How we communicate it?
4. When do we communicate?

The four questions address the content, channel, frequency and audience. Below is an illustrative image of the Communication Cube. This picture is very expressive of the main elements of effective communications and it sits well in people’s mind and they do not forget it. I hope by now you noticed that the cube seems to address three elements only, channel, frequency and audience. So what happened to the fourth and most important element, the content?

Let us hear your thoughts on the topic of communication as it applies to ITAM or ITIL programs in general. Let us know what works in your organization and what doesn’t work.

 

There Is Hope!

When we have all the key information about our assets our chances to succeed are much greater. I learned over the past decade while battling various IT issues and particularly asset related issues that process is an essential key component to success. I also came to realize that for the past decade we were focused on fixing the wrong problem. “Successful problem solving requires finding the right solution to the right problem. We fail more often because we solve the wrong problem than because we get the wrong solution to the right problem.” (Dr. Russell Ackoff (1974), Redesigning the Future, Wiley, p4). In IT we failed to recognize the need for an ITAM program. ITAM is what was missing in IT all along and still is in many establishments today. That’s why without a solid and sound ITAM program:

-        the implementation of a true CMDB is hard and nearly an impossible endeavor,

-        it is tortuous to asses the cost of IT and no chance at figuring out your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO),

-        IT costs too much to manage and maintain which places the organization on the bleeding edge, and

-        there is no way in getting the IT Service Management (ITSM) in order,

…without a solid ITAM foundation, we simply stand no chance.

Now that we understand and recognize the need for a solid ITAM program, why do we still fail? Because we keep buying tools and neglect the process aspect of things. Process is the procedures that define how people use technologies/tools and information to accomplish certain tasks. “Most organizations fail at IT asset management as they underestimate the process adherence required to get IT asset management right. IT asset management is 70% process and 30% technology, but no formalized best-practice methodologies for IT asset management exist” (Forrester, 2005).