VitAL Magazine - January-February 2008

Inspiration for the modern business Volume 1 : Issue 3 : January / February 2008

A Healthy Application IT just the medicine After the storm

will you be PC ready?

Putting your best clients ďŹ rst the key to account management

Technology mapping the future creating a built environment

FEATURE FOCUS: Helpdesk Systems pages 12-17

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LEADER

LEADER IT, MAKING THE WORLD WORK BETTER

T John Hancock

Because we have new technologies and new techniques available to us, does not mean that we should throw away the whole of the business practice book

HERE ARE two ways in which you can regenerate the built environment. The first is to pull down everything that was there previously, level the ground and build a wholly new edifice on an entirely new ground plan.

The alternative is to remove the inside from an otherwise attractive established building, clean what is left and build the new creation within the outline of the old structure. Each method has its own qualities and challenges.

The advantage of demolition and complete renewal is that you can more or less start with a clean sheet of paper unfettered by any constraints from the old structure. However the disadvantage may be that a whole area of entirely newly built properties can struggle to generate any of the character that a more traditional area with the properties of mixed age and type has developed - the patina and provenance that comes with age. However for some functions which themselves are only relatively recent there will be no equivalent older buildings to adapt so for instance you would be unlikely to build an airport in the Regency style.

The disadvantage of retaining an old structure and building new infrastructure within it is set you are constrained by the dimensions and basic design of the old structure such as where the windows are placed. However, by retaining the basic form of the old property the sense of place and feel of the area

is also retained. So if part of the value has been the way in which things fitted together and worked with each other then retaining the old structure may be exactly the way to go. The wonder of these regenerated buildings is that modern methods often make building‘s so much more efficient and pleasant for its users.

It’s just the same with business. Because we have new technologies and new techniques available to us, does not mean that we should throw away the whole of the business practice book that has served our economy so well for the past four or five centuries. In the same way that clever architects and builders can improve the functionality of an old building whilst retaining those features that many would define as quality, so modern managers can take the latest technologies and ideas and apply them within the traditional qualities of well regulated responsibility and processes that have made our business system so successful.

In this issue we look at a way that the sales process can be improved and how IT can support this, we look at how the work of architects and planners can be greatly enhanced by the application of technology and we look at how the quality of our healthcare can be improved by the use of IT based systems to put the best and latest knowledge in front of those who are charged with our clinical wellbeing John Hancock

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January / February 2008 : VitAL

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CONTENTS

Contents Inspiration for the modern business

THE VitAL PROFILE

12 COVER STORY

22 HELPDESK SYSTEMS

IT can also be brought to bear on some of the most important issues affecting our lives and there is no issue more important than our health. John Hamcock talked to Ian McKinnell, Head of Development at the National Library for Health about how the National Library for Health is using the power of IT to improve all of our lives when we most need it.

It’s always good to listen to people, as Nigel says, and its nowadays equally important, as he adds, to listen to the machines that are doing the job

BRINGING IDEAS TO LIFE

Editor John Hancock john.hancock@31media.net Assistant Editor Camilla Dunwell camilla.dunwell@31media.net Advertising Sales Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.net Production & Design Dean Cook dean.cook@31media.net Editorial & Advertising Enquiries 31 Media Limited, Media House, 16 Rippolson Road, London, SE18 1NS Tel: +44 (0) 208 316 7433 Fax: +44 (0) 208 316 5233 email: info@31media.net web: www.vital-mag.net

VitAL SIGNS – life in a world with IT

17 ITIL V4?

STEVE WHITE With ITIL v3 already rolling out and making a difference, Steve looks to what we might expect from future ITIL generations and how that will help IT in the business

18 KEY TO SUCCESS RICHARD HIGHAM

Printed by Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood. NP12 2YA © 2008 31 Media Limited. All rights reserved.

VitAL Magazine is edited, designed, and published by 31 Media Limited. No part of VitAL Magazine may be reproduced, transmitted, stored electronically, distributed, or copied, in whole or part without the prior written consent of the publisher. A reprint service is available.

Opinions expressed in this journal do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or VitAL Magazine or its publisher, 31 Media Limited.

NIGEL TODD

25 A TECHNOLOGY HUB

AL KINGSLEY The helpdesk has capabilities beyond its nominal purpose and, as Al explains, making use of these capabilities can add significant value to the operation

27 DON’T FORGET THAT ITIL NEEDS PEOPLE! If we know that efficiency is an important component of profitability then we should apply that principle to managing clients as well to processes; Richard explains how

PATRICK BOLGER We consider the needs of the technology but how often do we consider the people who use it? Patrick thinks, not often enough and he shows why it is important

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All Images © iStockPhoto.com 2007

ISSN 1755-6465 PLEASE RECYCLE

VitAL Magazine, Proud to be the UKCMG’s Official Publication

SUBSCRIBING TO VITAL MAGAZINE VitAL Magazine is published six times per year for directors, department heads, and managers who are looking to improve the impact that IT implementation has on their customers and business.

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January / February 2008 : VitAL

Unbiased advice and bespoke IT Service Management solutions

ITIL v2-v3 Foundation and Managers Bridge ITIL v2 and v3 Foundation Certificate Public schedule and on-site options available.

Visit our website www.wardownconsulting.co.uk for details.

Tel: 01582 488242 Fax: 01582 488343 E-mail: training@wardownconsulting.co.uk Website: www.wardownconsulting.co.uk Wardown Consulting Limited.

Prudence Place, Proctor Way, Luton, Bedfordshire. LU2 9PE

IT Service Management Training & Consultancy

CONTENTS

Contents 30 VIRTUALISATION – A GOOD THING BUT… JON ROLLS

38 SERVICE WITHOUT TEARS TOBY STRAUSS

46 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER WALTER SCHUMANN

Views as to the best security and protection systems vary form user to user but Walter believes that there are some myths out there, which he seeks to explode

48 CDP – BUZZ vs BENEFIT IAN MASTERS

Jon Rolls considers the benefits and pitfalls of Virtualisation and looks at some ways to avoid the worst problems

32 PUTTING YOUR REPUTATION ON THE LINE

JOHN HANCOCK John Interviews service management provider Vanco to find out what are the pressures faced in that market and how the firm keeps ahead of the game

Capacity surplus in one place can be applied to cover for capacity shortage elsewhere to assist, as Toby explains, better resource utilisation for all

42 WORKING ON THE GERM FARM CAMILLA DUNWELL

34 NOT JUST CRUNCHING NUMBERS

In the knowledge economy, protecting data is a key function for any business but, asks Ian, how best can that be done; what factors need to be considered?

50 DISASTER READY DESKTOPS

RAJU POOKOTTIL

NICK CAVALANCIA

Have you ever wondered what those dark marks and greasy stains on your keyboard and equipment controls really are? Camilla tells all; this is not one for the squeamish!

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44 A SAFE BOX FOR YOUR DATA IT is pervading every sphere of human activity including, as Raju so graphically demonstrates, the designs of our future cities, workplaces and living spaces

STEVE TONGISH We need to keep data for ever longer even information that we don’t need daily. How to store it safely but not fill current workspace?

Steve suggests some solutions

All disaster plans address big strategic and tactical issues, but Nick asks how ready are the front line troops and to weather real storms that might affect the business?

January / February 2008 : VitAL

We know ITIL inside-out New ITIL® V3 Overviews, Bridging and Foundation courses now available for delivery.

For expert advice and guidance talk to the experts.

From ITIL’s inception, Pink Elephant has been involved, contributing substantially to the original and version 2 book sets. Having authored one of the five new core texts in version 3, Continual Service Improvement, we know ITIL inside out.

Whether you’re new to ITIL, are taking your skills further or want to find out what’s new, we lead the way in offering the widest choice of courses – as we always have done. We were the very first in the UK to offer the original ITIL Foundation course and Practitioner courses.

And we co-wrote and delivered the very first IT Service Managers course with the Civil Service College.

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We're committed to delivering the highest standards of training for our clients. Not only do our lecturers hold full ITIL certification, they are all formally accredited by the examination institutes and complete our rigorous internal ‘Train the Trainer’ Programme. They also deliver consulting projects to keep their skills sharp.

Talk to the experts.

Whatever your ITIL requirements, Pink Elephant can help.

Whether you want information or advice on ITIL version 3, guidance on implementing an IT Service Management philosophy, or to find out more about our existing and new courses – including COBIT Foundations, SAM Essentials and ISO/IEC 20000 Essentials – just get in touch.

For public or on-site courses call to book now on +44 (0) 118 903 6824 Email info.emea@pinkelephant.com Visit http://blog.pinkelephant.com/itilv3 www.pinkelephant.com

Pink Elephant – Leading the way in IT Service Management Best Practices © Pink Elephant Inc., 2007. The contents of this brochure are protected by copyright and cannot be reproduced in any manner. Pink Elephant and its logo, PinkVerify, PinkScan, ATLAS, PinkSelect, and PinkReady are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Pink Elephant Inc. ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.

CONTENTS

Contents 52 STRIPPING AWAY THE GREENWASH KELLY SMITH

56 CMDB: A JOURNEY NOT A DESTINATION

RICHARD MUIRHEAD CMDB can, as Richard shows, offer a lot of value to the business but, like everything, there are ways of maximising both the quality and longevity of that value addition

NEW: VitAL ENDING – The last word for information

64 DATA OR INTELLIGENCE – YOU CHOOSE GLYN YARNALL

58 A SUCCESSFUL CELEBRATION OF SUCCESS Carbon reduction and neutrality are today’ buzzwords but, as Kelly warns, achieving these laudable ends for a data centre requires some thought to avoid greenwash

JOHN HANCOCK A run down of the 2007 itSMF Conference and Exhibition in Brighton with a list of award winners

Properly applied data, used to better understand the process becomes intelligence and, as Glyn explains, that can make everybody appreciate what IT can do for them

Contributors Name: RICHARD HIGHAM Title: International Sector Head Company: Mercuri International Business: Sales Optimisation Consultancy Tel: 0771 2588 757 Email: Richard-higham@mercuri.co.uk Web: www.mercuri.co.uk Name: NIGEL TODD Title: Sales Director Company: Ibertek Business: Service Management Solution Provider Tel: 01344 742835 Email: info@ibertek.com Web: www.ibertek.com Name: AL KINGSLEY Title: Managing Director Company: NetSupport Software Ltd Business: Software Developer Tel: 01778 382270 Email: neil@netsupportsoftware.co.uk Web: www.netsupportsoftware.co.uk Name: PATRICK BOLGER Title: Sales Director Company: Hornbill Systems Business: Delivers Service Management solutions Tel: 020 8582 8282 Email: info@hornbill.com Web: www.hornbill.com

Name: Title:

JON ROLLS

Senior Director of Product Management Company: ScriptLogic Business: Desktop Management Software Solutions Tel: 01628 518433 Email: emeasales@scriptlogic.com Web: www.scriptlogic.com Name: RAJU POOKOTTIL Title: Director Company: Zmapping Ltd. Business: 3D mapping of the built environment Tel: 02071903306 Email: raju@zmapping.com Web: www.zmapping.com Name: TOBY STRAUSS Title: Executive Chairman Company: OrderWork Business: IT services marketplace Tel: 0845 373 3572 Email: tstrauss@orderwork.co.uk Web: www.orderwork.co.uk Name: STEVE TONGISH, EMEA Title: Marketing Director Company: Plasmon Name: Title:

WALTER SCHUMANN

General Manager and Senior VP sales, EMEA Company: Astaro

Name: IAN MASTERS Title: UK Sales and Marketing Director Company: Double-Take Software Tel: 01905 745711 Email: imasters@doubletake.com Web: www.doubletake.com Name: Title:

NICK CAVALANCIA

VP product marketing management Company: ScriptLogic Corporation Name: KELLY SMITH Title: Managing Director Company: Smartbunker Business: Managed Data Services Tel: 01522 503300 Email: kelly.smith@centrinet.net Web: www.smartbunker.com Name: RICHARD MUIRHEAD Title: CEO and founder Company: Tideway Systems Tel: 0870 843 3929 Email: info@tideway.com Web: www.tideway.com Name: Title: Tel: Email:

GLYN YARNALL

Management Consultant 07734 591267 glyn.yarnall@ntlworld.com

Name: CAMILLA DUNWELL Title: Assistant Editor Company: ViTAL Magazine Tel: 01736 793363 Email: camilla.dunwell@31media.net Web: www.31media.net

January / February 2008 : VitAL

7

NEWS

Strategic change is still a struggle for most A

RECENT survey from the Pentacle Business School has revealed that many organisations are still finding it difficult to manage strategic change, with 83% of respondents believing that such initiatives do nothing to improve profitability.

Graham Ridgway, CEO of IT business management expert Touchpaper, has made the following comments on these findings: “Strategic change initiatives are essential for

any organisation wishing to remain competitive, but poor management often cancels out the potential benefits of such projects.

The fact that an overwhelming number of respondents failed to understand how change can positively impact the bottom line shows that many organisations simply don’t have faith in their current procedures to measure and monitor change effectively.

But in this day and age, there’s no excuse

MAKE MEETINGS MAGIC - A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PRODUCTIVE MEETINGS Katherine Woods and Ingrid Uden MEETINGS CAN be one of

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the most frustrating and time consuming elements of working life, but also one of the most necessary.

Most managers know that they and their staff spend too much time in meetings, but don’t have a clue how to maximise meeting potential and achieve their targets. Katherine Woods and Ingrid Uden of Meeting Magic, specialists in facilitating productive meetings, have published a new book offering practical advice to help managers deal with the most common problems that arise when planning and managing meetings.

Katherine explains: ‘Billions of pounds are lost each year in ineffective meetings and recent research revealed that long and pointless meetings are the principal cause of anger in European offices*. Meeting Magic is an easy to use guide for managers which will help them run more effective and strategic meetings, save precious time and energy and keep their staff motivated and focused.’

Common problems reported by managers include not sticking to the agenda, not adhering to the time allocated for the meeting and domination by stronger characters. Meeting Magic offers practical and easy to implement solutions to these and other problems.

Katherine goes on to say: ‘In our experience, the same issues crop up again and again and it can be frustrating for both the chairperson and attendees. Our book offers practical advice and tips on the most common problems that organisations frequently experience, such as how to deal with personality conflicts and unclear outcomes, how to keep everyone energised and how to manage information effectively.’

Meeting Magic, a Practical Guide for Managers who want to make their Meetings Productive by Katherine Woods and Ingrid Uden is available from major UK book suppliers and online from www.amazon.co.uk and www.meetingmagic.co.uk

VitAL : January / February 2008

for organisations not to have automated systems in place, which use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track and manage change over time. By putting a central change management structure in place, organisations can streamline approval processes and minimise operational upheaval. KPIs also mean that senior management can be kept in the loop as to the overall impact of strategic change on profit.”

ASTARO TURNS APPLE iPHONE INTO BUSINESS TOOL

READING, UK (11th December, 2007) - Astaro Corporation

(www.astaro.com), a leader in delivering unified threat management (UTM) security appliances, today announced that iPhone users can now use two varieties of road warrior virtual private network (VPN) inherent in all Astaro Security Gateway appliances to safely and securely connect their iPhone to their home and business networks. iPhone users can easily access email and internal sites protected behind any Astaro Security Gateway security appliance. Whether travelling offsite or working from the road, users will no longer have to open their laptop in order to access company or home network resources. Astaro’s VPN capabilities have allowed iPhone users to work as if they are inside their network, even when they are not.

Set up and configuration is easy requiring as little as five clicks to create VPN access on the Astaro side. The Astaro Security Gateway offers four different levels of road warrior VPN; SSL, IPSec, L2TP over IPSec, and PPTP. The Apple iPhone is compatible with two of these, (L2TP over IPSec and PPTP) offering users a choice in which VPN access to use.

Astaro’s product offering is available commercially as a software ISO, hardware appliance or virtual appliance and provides the flexibility to meet any deployment scenario.

Astaro also offers a non-commercial, free, home user software license available for download on their website, www.astaro. com . The home user license uses the same software as the commercial license, includes all subscriptions, and offers protection to ten IP addresses.

“As an Apple iPhone user myself, we have made it extremely easy to access networks protected by Astaro Security Gateway” said Gert Hansen, Chief Security Architect and co-founder of Astaro. “It’s a great feeling to provide everyone with an Apple iPhone the ability to connect to their networks for free.” Hansen continued “Astaro’s VPN compatibility makes the iPhone more than just a cool new gadget to show off.

It turns the iPhone into a real business tool, albeit a very stylish one.”

Astaro has created a configuration guide providing step by step instructions on how to configure Apple’s iPhone and Astaro Security Gateway VPN settings.

IBERTEK: Elite Solution Partner for BMC Service Desk Express – formerly known as Magic Service Desk

Sales Solution Design Implementation Integration Training Support ITIL Workshops

www.ibertek.com

Tel: 01344 742835 Email: info@ibertek.com

Making Service Management work for you

NEWS

Fast strategy

How strategic agility will help you stay ahead of the game Yves Doz & Mikko Kosonen

G

ROWTH AND renewal must be at the heart of the business agenda say the authors of Fast Strategy. The key to achieving this is strategic agility.

Based on research and interviews with 150 corporate leaders and senior executives, Fast Strategy, due to be published on 7th January 2008 by Wharton School Publishing, shows managers and CEOs how to develop the strategic agility they need for their companies to succeed.

“It has long been a dilemma - how companies reinvent themselves,” says Vivienne Cox, Chief Executive - Gas, Power & Renewables, BP plc.

“The Fast Strategy findings resonate powerfully with my own experience. It is a thought provoking contribution for those seeking to renew their business.”

Fast Strategy analyses the risks facing successful companies and identifies the three essential components of strategic agility they will need in order to gain and maintain continued growth: Strategic Sensitivity. The sharpness of perception and the intensity of awareness and attention.

Resource Fluidity. The internal capability to reconfigure business systems and redeploy resources rapidly.

Collective Commitment. The ability of the top team to make bold decisions, fast, without being bogged in ‘win lose’ politics at the top.

Together these allow CEOs and their management teams to perceive early, decide quickly, and deploy resources with strength and speed.

The book shows how strategically agile companies can learn to take advantage of change and disruption, make bold moves and transform themselves, without losing momentum.

The book reflects the experiences of established companies including Accenture, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Nokia and SAP in responding to business challenges, both successfully and unsuccessfully.

Authors Doz and Kosonen, combine their expertise in strategic management and cutting-edge industry, to offer clear insights into the problems of real companies, as well as articulate the concepts that will deliver strategic agility and shape the future of business.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Yves Doz, a professor of Strategic Management, is currently the Timken Chaired Professor of Global Technology and Innovation at INSEAD and Visiting Professor at the Helsinki School of Economics. He has also taught at Harvard Business School, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. He has researched and published widely on the strategy and organization of multinational companies. His previous works include The Multinational Mission, with CK Prahalad, and From Global to Metanational, with Jose Santos and Peter Williamson. He consults extensively for major global companies.

Mikko Kosonen is currently Executive Vice President of the Finnish Innovation Fund.

Since joining Nokia in 1984, he has held several senior executive positions, most recently as Head of Strategy and CIO for Nokia Corporation from 1997 to 2005. Dr Kosonen has lectured extensively in Finland and abroad on strategic renewal, based on his experiences at Nokia and as a business scholar. He is Vice Chairman of the Finland Post Board of Directors and has served on several advisory boards, including Hewlett Packard, the Center for Knowledge and Innovation Research, and the Finnish Association of Business Administration.

The red faced taxman PERHAPS THE biggest item of news for IT

Service Managers has been the loss of a data bearing CD in transit between two government offices. It almost beggars belief that such a casual approach could become part of the process for handling the most sensitive data in the country.

As is so often the case, the weak link here was not in the technology but in the people purporting to use the technology.

There is no point going over the facts any more, readers will have no doubt digested them on several occasions. But it does highlight the massive significance that technology and information have now assumed in our society; with that comes the onus of responsibility on the shoulders of those responsible for managing the systems that handle that information. It also highlights that focusing on IT alone will not guarantee security; as is so often the case, the weak link here was not in the technology but in the people purporting to use the technology. Laziness, carelessness, poor training; it doesn’t really matter what the immediate cause of the problem was what matters is that we must not forget that in all the drive to implement the latest technology standards we must never forget that whatever technology we have will always be operated by people and that those people will only operate it as well as they have been trained to.

SMARTBUNKER WINS DATA CENTRE DYNAMICS AWARD SMARTBUNKER, THE UK’s first zero carbon

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data centre, announced on 6th December 2007 that it was declared winner of the Data Centre Dynamics pan-European Award for Innovation in an Outsourced Environment at an award ceremony which took place in London on 4th December, 2007. Smartbunker, which provides enterprise class managed server hosting with minimum environmental impact, won over

VitAL : January / February 2008

established data centre competition to take away this prestigious award.

Kelly Smith, managing director at Smartbunker, commented, “It has been an extraordinary couple of years for Smartbunker.

We recognised the market requirement for an outsourced data centre service that would not create the environmentally damaging consequences of traditional data centre design

but without compromising on service and security. We designed Smartbunker to deliver just that and launched its services commercially earlier this year. Data Centre Dynamics has bought together a panel of eminent and independent data centre experts to judge this award and we would like to thank them for recognising what we have bought to the market for data centre services.”

*OTQJSJOH $VTUPNFS $FOUSJDJUZ Volume 1 Issue 1 April/May 2008

Customer Service or Bust is the time bomb ticking?

Contact Centres Diversify our neighbours are calling

Win Each Battle To Win The War companies prepare

Feature Focus: Customer Centricity, are we there yet?

6I]VKPQVO +XZQT " K][\WUMZUIOIbQVM VM\ *OTQJSJOH $VTUPNFS $FOUSJDJUZ www.31media.net

COVER STORY

Bringing ideas to life Ian McKinnell talks to John Hancock about the ways in which IT is being leveraged to bring the real power of knowledge to the doctor’s consulting room

O

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VER THE years we’ve grown used to what IT systems can do but in most cases our understanding of IT capabilities is limited to what it does directly for us in the context of our work. There is nothing to be ashamed of there, after all why would we concern ourselves with IT applications that other people use in their work? Of course, as in any profession, IT Services managers might well be interested in another application of the technology if they thought that it might be transferable to their own situation, and an increasing number of people today have an interest in IT as a part of their recreation portfolio. But what about the wider applications of the technology?

VitAL : January / February 2008

So much of our world today is driven or managed by the underlying IT capabilities that put the information needed to serve us in the place where it is required. For instance, how many are aware of the extent to which IT informs our treatment when we visit the doctor. Of course we all know about the NHS records being kept on a computer system but how many know about the work going on in the background to leveraged the power of computers to bring the best and most appropriate knowledge from around the world to bear on whatever our condition may be.

As part of an occasional series of articles on how IT easy impacting on our lives at the most basic levels, VitAL Magazine met Ian McKinnell,

it is also about network access to each local NHS library service (there are 450 individual library services in the NHS run by 1275 librarians).

COVER STORY

One of the projects accompanying these changes is to turn NICE guidance into XML format, in which form NICE can provide a web service linked to a map of medicines to access – using RSS (blogging) services and our own ‘ask a librarian’ service. The National Health Service (NHS) is essentially a knowledge industry with 700,000 professionals associated with it. Current service and knowledge feeds are a key part of their operations but accessing the right knowledge can be difficult with, for instance, 30,000 biomedical journals alone; it would be impossible for any clinician to keep up with all of the knowledge in those journals.

We see our service as being analogous with the provision of drinking quality water—we provide clear clean knowledge on tap by distilling the information in those 30,000 biomedical journals to their essential knowledge content for clinicians and then creating an access route to that knowledge.

We work with the international Cochrane collaboration which takes each clinical treatment and undertakes regular systematic reviews as a basis from which to inform clinicians around the world of the latest available information about that treatment.

The National Library for Health (NLH) makes that information available to clinicians and to the public.

Head of Development at the National Library for Health. We wanted to know what are the challenges faced by that organisation, how those challenges being addressed and we hope that, from this, readers might discern some ideas that they can apply in or use to inform their own efforts.

VitAL Magazine: There will be readers who have never heard of your organisation so before we ask too much about it, what is the National Library for Health?

Ian McKinnell: It’s a website that can be found at www.library.nhs.uk . It works as a digital resource that users can access through the web but it is also about network access to each local NHS library service (there are 450 individual library services in the NHS run by 1275 librarians). We offer a discovery service, current awareness services such as what are the latest papers available – librarians put current and up to date information on the web for users

VM: How does the library fit into the health service and what does it mean for the ordinary patient?

IM: It probably means more for clinician staff than for the general public (NHS Choices is the service aimed more at the public). Our focus is on getting [appropriate and high quality] knowledge to the point of care. We provide a website for clinicians but we also use Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) to turn the NHS from a service using websites into a Web service with knowledge services embedded into whatever clinical screen a clinician may be using; i.e. we already provide an information button on the clinician’s screen and will soon have embedded a search box into the GPs’ systems so that they will be able to research their patients’ conditions through their own screen without the need to go to a separate web site for each piece of information.

We have a strategic alliance with Microsoft and Connecting for Health to put more ‘NHSness’ into health programmes. This will provide a Microsoft research pane within

a Word document with direct access to the National Library for Health so putting the library right on to people’s desktops [and where and when they need it].

There is also a Map of medicine being rolled out across all NHS regions – it’s a Care Pathway tool. Care Pathway is another embedded tool to search NLH resources. It is a knowledge tree for the clinician to track down for each patient’s condition to drive up the quality of care by accessing the latest guidance and knowledge about drugs and treatments.

VM: What are the ongoing issues and challenges that the library faces?

IM: Resources (money and people) to effect knowledge creation; i.e. distilling, treating/ preparing and transporting knowledge from source to user.

Service Orientated Architecture may not be new for the wider world of IT but it’s very new for libraries and the NHS. A significant challenge is that it will change the way that the NHS buys knowledge, generates knowledge and distributes knowledge. We are on a steep learning curve.

For instance, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) is still producing guideline documents in PDF format so that the information is locked in to the document.

One of the projects accompanying these changes is to turn NICE guidance into XML format, in which form NICE can provide a web service linked to a map of medicines and available for clinicians to include in their patient’s notes. This will be a great example of knowledge mobilisation, making knowledge available and accessible at the point of care.

All NHS bodies could offer similar examples: we need an enterprise architecture for knowledge. Sir Muir Grey, Director of the NHS National Knowledge Service, has spoken of the knowledge meme, knowledge that can be used in all sorts of places. [NB. A meme is an idea that is passed on from one human generation to another; the cultural equivalent of a gene.]

Our library services buy a lot of knowledge in from other publishers. We are planning to move that knowledge from the separate publishers’ portals to the NHS’ own portal.

January / February 2008 : VitAL

13

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COVER STORY

We are working with OCLC to build a Link Resolver for the NHS. That will bring together all the electronic and paper holdings of the NHS Library Service Part of the single knowledge sign on project is to link NHS Library logons with other logons in the NHS. The current NHS single sign on is very secure; it will be ideal if we can join their sign on with ours. The route to that will be to turn Athens into SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) and we will work with Eduserv [suppliers of Athens Access & Identity Management] to achieve that.

VM: What issues, challenges and opportunities has the library faced as part of the current change climate in the NHS and in particular what have been the IT issues?

IM: We’re driving our own changes as our contribution to NHS developments.

The Kennedy Report Learning Works) recommended the establishment of a National Knowledge Service and NLH is a child of that idea. Our drive is to introduce the best possible evidence in to all clinical decisions by ensuring that the best evidence is available and accessible.

One significant challenge that we face is that of identity management if you’re going to buy knowledge from different publishers

and provide personal access. At the moment the problem in the NHS is that any individual may have several logons through which he or she can access information. Ideally each individual should have only one log on and the challenge is how to create one identity providing access across NHS IT services plus other related services such as universities where a consultant may have a teaching contract. Student access also often also requires several logons.

NLH has cracked the problem of single knowledge logon for the NHS; there are now 257,000 users with an Athens logon – a single username and password to access all resources in or associated with the NHS Library services.

VM: I understand that you are working with [description of business to be inserted] OCLC; what is this project and what do you see as the benefits to the library and to its users?

IM: We are working with OCLC to build a Link Resolver for the NHS. That will bring together all the electronic and paper holdings of the NHS Library Service. The problem to be solved is how to link users who may have found a reference to a relevant article for their purposes to the best available copy of that article whether that be direct access to an electronic copy, a link to a library that holds a paper copy or a service to send an electronic or digital copy to the user.

This is often described as the last mile, the situation where researchers find articles relevant to their work but can’t always get to a copy. The Link Resolver Service will help here and that is something that OCLC will contribute.

The plan is to ‘go where your users are’. Users are often already on Google Scholar or Pubmed (a way of accessing Medline, itself the biggest biomedical knowledge base in the world and free); Link Resolver will allow Google Scholar and Pubmed users direct access to the NHS library where the article will be available for them to use.

VM: Is this a standalone project or is it part of a larger, long term development programme?

IM: It’s another part of the National Knowledge Service – getting knowledge mobilised and into clinical support systems.

January / February 2008 : VitAL

15

COVER STORY

we also use Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) to turn the NHS from a service using 16

websites into a Web service with knowledge services embedded VitAL : January / February 2008

VM: How is the program progressing and what are the IT implications for the health service?

IM: We often talk about 2011 as our target date which gives us just over three years to go. We are on target to bring our search facilities on the line by April 2008 and we already have Web services running which can feed into clinical systems plus we already have the knowledge single sign on for libraries. Now we have to join all of that with other NHS sign ons and with the higher education system by 2011.

The next thing that we want is to produce more personalisation and collaboration services; i.e. not the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Nationalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Library but my library. We want people to be able to gather knowledge in their personal space and to share it with colleagues.

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve set up 29 specialist virtual libraries for

different specialities; communities of practices to draw together the best knowledge in each speciality; clinicians working with other clinicians to decide what is the best evidence.

We want to take that idea forward using the tools and techniques of social networking.

VM: Who are currently the largest users of the NLH and will that change as a result of the current programme?

IM: Clinicians will remain the largest users for the foreseeable future but eventually we would hope that patients will also be able to be users of the service.

VM: What are the future plans for the library?

IM: There are something like 700,000 clinicians in the NHS of whom 257,000 currently use the

VITAL SIGNS – LIFE IN THE WORLD WITH IT

ITIL V4?

Steve White speculates what next for the ITIL dynasty of ideas

IT Services Management will come out of the basement, shrug off the cost centre reputation and take it’s rightful place

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library so our first plan is to consider, ‘how do we reach out to the rest?’

No doubt about it then, the National Health Service in general and the National Library for Health in particular face some challenges on a scale that might daunt any IT services manager. But it cannot be denied that some of the solutions being considered and implemented by the Library will bring exciting new levels of applied knowledge to a service that has the potential to be essential for all of us. And with ideas such as single logons across a number of organisations and direct access to knowledge the ideas could well be applicable in a number of other areas.

Our thanks to Ian for his time and in particular the comprehensive answers that he gave to our questions.

Y FIRST formal introduction to ITIL V3 was at the itSMF Conference in Brighton last November, and linking the activity of the IT organisation to the goals of the business makes perfect sense to me – something we’ve been working on for some time. But, with V3 out the door, what’s V4 going to look like?

Whether the service provider type is internal to the organisation or serving multiple business units in the same organisation, it matters whether the business has a ‘Products Offered’ or a ‘Markets Served’ Driving Force. If the service provider type is an external service provider, then clearly they have a ‘Markets Served’ strategy.

For a Products Offered company, there is no long term relationship between the end user of the product and the product provider – with the product being differentiated from other competing products by a uniqueness; price, value, quality etc.

The Markets Served business is attempting to build a powerful franchise or relationship with clearly defined customers or consumers, and competitive advantage is achieved by sustaining a superior relationship with its market and fulfilling needs better than its rivals.

ITIL V3 extends its horizon to the direct customers of the IT Department and aligns the mission of IT with the needs of the business.

This allows IT to have serious and interesting strategy and budget discussions with the business, turning IT away from being a cost centre, towards a competitive advantage. For a Products Offered business, this is probably enough.

The opportunity I see is where the IT infrastructure is operating within a Markets Served business, because when we align the Service Management with the needs of the customers of the business that is being supported, then we have a further mindset change, a further [r]evolution and even more interesting discussions may be had.

With the alignment of the IT Services with the mission of the customers of the business, we can begin to think of the Service Management strategy and operations directly influencing the Lifetime Value of the Customer to the business, then IT Services Management will come out of the basement, shrug off the cost centre reputation and take it’s rightful place, shoulder to shoulder with Sales and Product Development as a direct contributor to maximising Customer Lifetime Value.

January / February 2008 : VitAL

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VITAL MANAGEMENT

‘MANY SUCCESSFUL KAM organisations have

integrated the measurement of their strategic accounts with information technology systems.

Having a mix of quantitative and qualitative measurement criteria is important to top performers’

Key to success Richard Higham looks at best practice in key account management (KAM) – and the importance of having the right business processes in place to support it

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ANY SUCCESSFUL KAM organisations have integrated the measurement of their strategic accounts with information technology systems. Having a mix of quantitative and qualitative measurement criteria is important to top performers’ Interest in key account management (KAM) has never been higher. KAM is now moving back to the top of the agenda as companies recognise the impact their top relationships have on sales income and profitability in a demanding marketplace – and look to their work processes and systems to optimise their KAM. Indeed, the organisations getting the best return on their investment in KAM are typically those who align their sales, marketing and

VitAL : January / February 2008

related business workflows – and the IT infrastructure that supports them – to support the KAM process.

Already, in many areas of corporate life, KAM is king. Consider the way a large electronics company recently brought its top 300 global accounts under the control of a central group to reduce the tensions of managing global accounts through country centred structures: or the action recently taken by a top US organisation when it gathered its European leaders to examine the issues that define success in key account management.

Or the Big Four accounting firm that like many European organisations is looking to upgrade its KAM approach.

A recent exercise by independent consultant,

Across the organisations surveyed in eight European countries including France, Germany, the UK and Scandinavia, KAM had increased sales income by an average of more than 27%, and profits by almost 30%

VITAL MANAGEMENT

20

Mercuri surveyed 560 European companies on their KAM opinions and experiences. The research revealed that the appetite for key account management is growing: indeed, 89% of organisations felt that the importance of KAM would increase. Across the organisations surveyed in eight European countries including France, Germany, the UK and Scandinavia, KAM had increased sales income by an average of more than 27%, and profits by almost 30%. 90% of those surveyed said they did KAM to improve customer satisfaction – and almost 75% said they did it to improve their competitive situation. Around half had adopted KAM in response to customer demand.

These findings underlined KAM’s positive effect: indeed, for 15% of the organisations surveyed KAM had had a major impact, increasing sales income and profitability by more than 50%.

VitAL : January / February 2008

The gain…

The research reveals that those who benefit most have dedicated KAM; they select key accounts thoroughly; they integrate KAM into their organisation, while having a dedicated KAM unit with full time management; and they provide specialist training for their key account managers. Typically organisations of this kind ensure that their IT is aligned with the business.

The major KAM beneficiaries are also early adopters - seven in ten of the top performers have been doing KAM for over five years.

Top KAM performers have reached a level where ‘the corporate culture supports the whole KAM approach’ and where ‘KAM processes are defined, known and accepted across the entire organisation’, according to the survey. These organisations are better able to measure KAM success – vital

if key account management is to enjoy the wide internal support it needs – and a well thought out IT infrastructure helps to ensure that measurement is both accurate and meaningful.

Focusing on the ‘KAM Team’ has the greatest impact on the success of any key account programme according to the survey. Top performers analyse the competencies of the key account management staff to match them with KAM’s requirements; they provide special training and development packages for them; and they manage KAM needs as part of the organisation’s wider HR strategy.

…and the pain Organisations say that key account management is both important and difficult.

As one head of sales puts it, “It is hard making key account management happen

VITAL MANAGEMENT

The key account manager should be as much the client’s advocate within their own company as they are the company’s representative to the client. here. I can see all the opportunity – increased sales, better profit [and] sustained growth.

All my colleagues seem to see is cost, service problems and risk.”

Or, as another international sales director observes: “Scoping out a key account management process and redefining our sales management structure has proved invaluable in propelling our business model forward in terms of increased sales productivity. It has had a measurable impact on the business result”.

This mixture of opportunity and challenge is confirmed by the research results. It seems that organisations see customer satisfaction levels increase by an average of 76% when they apply KAM methodology. Yet almost as many organisations (79%) feel that they would still see a large or medium increase in turnover if they were to eliminate their three largest KAM problems - and 80% predicted a similar increase in profitability as a result.

What stands in the way?

Currently, the top three barriers to effective KAM are pricing and price pressure; time pressures; and. Crucially, internal recognition and strategic development. Maintaining customer satisfaction comes a close fourth, according to the research.

Working with partners at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, Mercuri has identified the drivers for the KAM revival. They include consolidation (as a global industry example, between 1980 and 2000 Ford reduced its supplier base by 44%, Motorola by 90%); greater purchasing professionalism; globalisation (buying decisions being focused on worldwide centres of excellence, demanding standardised products and terms); and increased expectation, creating increasingly demanding clients. The increasingly successful integration of systems across the enterprise has played a significant role in the acceleration of at least three of these drivers.

The best KAM people KAM research reveals that people are the single most important factor for key account success. All too often the response to the changing landscape described above has been to simply upgrade the level of salesperson involved with the client.

But what is needed is a new kind of animal. The key account manager should be as much the client’s advocate within their

own company as they are the company’s representative to the client. They have to manage professionally but usually have responsibility without authority - “the authority to influence” as one risk manager puts it. A surprising number of key account managers have evolved from being salespeople without a specific development path to equip them for their new role.

The new breed of key account manager needs to understand the client and the business issues that matter to them. To do this well, they must invest time in the relationship. They will then be able to provide their own organisation not only with accurate information but also with useful insights into the client that confirm or challenge intended strategies.

Their understanding will manifest itself on three levels: • The world in which the key account operates – the big picture.

• The client as a business: its goals, its markets, its financial drivers, and its critically important issues.

• The way it takes decisions - its people, politics and procedures.

This understanding then needs to be correlated with the key account manager’s own employer’s core competence - and an analysis of the competitive situation. The key account manager needs to lead a vigorous internal appraisal of how the current offering stacks up. All too often the current way of working is unclear. Over half our survey respondents felt the single biggest improvement they could make in their key account management would be to improve planning and the realisation of plans.

Whatever steps the key account manager takes, they should never forget that their investment in the KAM relationship will produce a substantial return.

Measuring KAM Top performers have confidence that their measurement process accurately measures KAM effectiveness: and in most cases, those performers have developed simple but effective management dashboards. For example one KAM programme manager we have worked with looks at only five areas: 1. Is the account below, at or above budget?

2. Is the account predicted to end the year below, at or above budget?

3. When was the account plan written or reviewed?

4. When was the last account team meeting?

5. In the view of the account manager, how is the team cooperating?

Another programme manager asks only three questions: 1. Is there a contact matrix in place?

2. Is there a hospitality plan in place?

3. Has the rating of our products changed in the last month?

Some might regard those dashboards as simplistic, but in the experience of both programme managers they work in practice and act as clear early warning indicators.

In addition, it appears that many successful KAM organisations have integrated the measurement of their strategic accounts with information technology systems.

Having a mix of quantitative and qualitative measurement criteria is important to top performers.

When approaching KAM it is helpful to begin with the five dimensions of strategies, solutions, people, management and measurement. Within those dimensions, the survey results offer the following lessons for financial services sales: Strategies: The way key accounts are selected is the starting point. Top KAM performers focus strongly on account selection and regularly review whether their accounts meet the KAM criteria they have set.

Solutions: Top KAM performers are more willing to invest in tailor made solutions than others. They also recognise that key accounts need to influence the total company product and service range. Perhaps this is also the reason they suffer less from price pressures.

People: Top KAM performers develop tools to measure KAM specific competencies and incorporate them into the training packages for strategic account managers. Also, KAM criteria are embedded higher in their human resource strategy.

Management: Top performers concentrate on defining the right structures for customer alignment and proper functioning of a KAM programme: they also pay more attention to KAM processes.

Measurement: It is clear that successful companies have found a way to measure the individual performance of key accounts.

Following the old rule, ‘You can manage only what you can measure,’ this is the precondition for a really professional steering of KAM.

January / February 2008 : VitAL

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VITAL MANAGEMENT

The key to successful Service Management – and by that I mean cost

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effective, efficient and pragmatic – is to have the right blend of People, Process and Technology

Helpdesk systems 22

Nigel Todd explains how businesses may very well have the equipment but asks is it connected to provide the service?

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OST IT desks have re badged themselves from Help Desk to Service Desk. At the same time the demands of the business are more fluid. In addition the business often wants more from less.

How do you achieve that?

VitAL : January / February 2008

The internal IT support function of most organisations have evolved tremendously over the last 10 years, but even those that have moved from a Help Desk to a Service Desk culture may still have some room for improvement.

But there are so many organisations and products and methodologies on offer that making the right choices and choosing the right strategy can be a little daunting.

I have worked in Service Management for over 15 years, a short tenure compared to some, but the nature of my job is such that I get to see inside many different businesses and in particular inside many Service Management departments, understanding their working practices and the relationship with the Business. This has allowed me to gain an insight to what seems to work and, equally important, what doesn’t.

The key to successful Service Management

VITAL MANAGEMENT

Feature sponsored by:

Figure 1: Source, Forrester Research, Implementing BSM, Keep the Big Picture in Mind If you want to reap the full benefits by Thomas Mendel PhD and Peter O’Neill with Jean-Pierre Garbani and Reedwan Iqbal April 2006.

– and by that I mean cost effective, efficient and pragmatic – is to have the right blend of People, Process and Technology. Yes, I know you have heard that before, but let’s look in more detail at what that actually means.

People It is all very well hiring suitably qualified individuals for roles, but do you encourage them to review and refine your working practices? Do you encourage them to challenge the processes that exist and what value they add? Do you empower them to devise revisions to procedures and constantly refine ways of getting the job done? The organisations that do encourage free thinking and responsibility, within the framework of a strategic approach, have a better working environment, have motivated staff with less turnover and deliver a higher level of service.

Process Having clear, simple, easy to follow processes

not only brings clarity to individuals; they know what they need to do next and how to do it, but also increases the transparency to the business of where their Service Request is and when it will be concluded. Don’t get hung up on ITIL. Take the bits that work for you, but implement them rigorously. Ensure that the process maps to your business needs and serves the business well. The organisations that recognise their raison d’être is to keep the business doing what it does for as long as possible and for as little as possible and therefore constantly refine their processes are the most aligned IT organisations and are seen as partners of the business rather than the ‘IT Department’.

Technology This is largely seen as simply a vehicle for delivering, managing and monitoring the Service Management processes. But it can be so much more and can increase the capabilities of your Service Desk dramatically.

So how do you move up the curve from Chaotic to the almost nirvana like state of Predictive IT Service Delivery Look at figure 1 produced by Forrester Research.

The curve represents the development or maturity of your organisation with respect to Business Service Management (BSM). BSM is defined as “Understanding the metrics their business users employ to decide if IT is providing value, and linking these metrics and their associated business services to IT infrastructure components.”

In other words BSM is about IT recognising what the business wants, the components involved in delivering that

January / February 2008 : VitAL

23

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VITAL MANAGEMENT and then making sure what the business wants the business gets.

You may be able to plot your organisations progress against the curve and compare yourself to the percentage of $1b companies that have achieved the same level of maturity as you.

So how do you move up the curve from Chaotic to the almost nirvana like state of Predictive IT Service Delivery?

Most organisations have started to implement ITIL services such as Incident, Problem and Change Management. They may also have some rudimentary Asset Management, by which I mean they know how many PC’s/ screens/printers are in their purview, but may not have taken it further to; 1. Lifecycle management of those assets; when did we buy it, what is its residual worth and therefore should we scrap it rather than fix it?

2. Relationships between assets – if I switch off this hub, who loses network connectivity?

This can be achieved relatively easily and cheaply with an automated discovery tool that will bring you a list of all your components and how they are interconnected. Some even draw pretty pictures of the infrastructure and they are great for adorning your wall.

But there is another area that can deliver far greater impact upon your ability to meet

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A Technology Hub Al Kingsley explains the importance of the helpdesk function within a modern business THE (OFTEN correct)

perception of a helpdesk is simply that of a reactive contact point within an organisation where internal and/or external issues can be flagged for resolution.

Within the modern IT infrastructure, the scope and complexity of helpdesk technologies have extended to fulfil the needs of a massively diverse range of corporate structures and requirements. Helpdesk products, much like the technology they are used to support and report on, have evolved significantly over the last five years and my belief is that the key to effective helpdesk efficiency is understanding and modifying working practices, where needed, to best leverage the core helpdesk functionality.

For many organisations, the natural first

stage for consideration of helpdesk solutions and implementation is to glean guidance and understanding from best practices, such as ITIL. While I would maintain that this provides an excellent foundation for review, there is an equally strong justification for not simply considering a helpdesk solution as only a nominated repository for reacting to user support requests. Helpdesk products increasingly provide a vital step in proactive desktop management and often far more than the stereotypical assumption that all they deliver is post event reporting.

A suitably proficient system should provide metrics and analysis of user behaviour, statistics on consistent problem areas and offer an interface that allows for predictive assessment of where technology investment is most needed in order to maintain operational efficiency. Continuing on the theme of proactive helpdesk delivery, integrated helpdesk solutions should also be

seen as a collection of complementary tools rather than a stand alone data repository.

Increasingly, a unified helpdesk system will provide system inventory and software versioning, as well as real time resource management, thus providing a far more comprehensive picture of the environment within which a ticket has been raised.

Within our own sector, we increasingly see the alignment of remote control technologies with helpdesk systems that, when combined with system inventories, provide a reporting, diagnostic and subsequent resolution tool from a single desktop with minimal impact on the desktop user.

The helpdesk remains firmly fixed as the central linchpin for maintaining operational efficiency and desktop productivity and the challenge for us all remains to integrate the flexibility of these systems without compromising the unique needs of each organisation.

January / February 2008 : VitAL

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VITAL MANAGEMENT

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the businesses needs; proactive management.

What is proactive management – surely it must be tricky if only 9% of $1bn companies had it in 2005 and only 25% are expected to have it in 2008. Or is it so complicated and/or expensive that they cannot justify it? Well, that is the puzzling part, it is not hard to do, not expensive to do and can easily be justified.

Nearly every brand of server, network hub, switch or router purchased within the last five years will have been supplied with an on board monitoring facility. Your servers are more than likely, right now, whilst you read this, throwing valuable information out across your network detailing how well they are feeling. But no one

VitAL : January / February 2008

is listening! Your server will tell you how long there is to go before a hard drive failure. It will tell you the health and availability of its memory resources. It will certainly tell you when a component has failed. But then it is too late. Because if your server has failed you will find out fairly quickly anyway when the users of the service it provides call you and shout at you.

So how do you avoid those phone calls? By enabling a listener for the data the servers and devices in your infrastructure are providing.

Set thresholds so that the listener filters out the ‘I am the mail server and I feel fine’ SNMP messages and allows the ‘I am the mail server

Nearly every brand of server, network hub, switch or router purchased within the last five years will have been supplied with an on board monitoring facility

VITAL MANAGEMENT

Don’t forget that ITIL needs people!

Patrick Bolger reminds us to remember that whatever system we use, the most important component is people RESEARCH BY the

Service Futures Group recently found that “ITIL implementation is largely influenced by the perception, motives and attitudes of those involved.” www.service-futures.org While successful ITIL adoption combines People, Process and Technology, in fact, organisations all too frequently focus on the last aspects at the expense of the first. In my experience this means that some quick wins can be missed entirely. ITIL foundation training is deemed sufficient for IT staff, but more emphasis must be placed on culture for real success.

Adopting what I call the Human Touch involves changing the service ethos of the IT Department: making the customer feel in control of the business, with IT providing services at their request and communicating

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in an appropriate manner and language.

How can an organisation do this? IT teams are historically made up of technical specialists recruited to support the IT infrastructure, whose understanding of the supported business is all too often very limited. For greater success in service terms, this needs to be reversed with a high percentage of service staff having real knowledge of the business and a focus on the value of customer service, while IT management in parallel refines the support processes so that they are business driven.

The new V3 release of ITIL has moved much closer to embracing business value but it still uses acronyms and terms that the business does not immediately relate to, so a more pragmatic tack can be taken.

Breaking down barriers between IT and other departments doesn’t necessitate a radical change of process, maybe some creative thinking instead. Just sending an

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envoy from IT to visit key departments and check for any issues on a daily basis can help.

Remember that none of the aspects of ITIL works alone. Technology can actually do more than just apply ITIL process – it can help create that service ethos too.

For example, a SelfService customer portal should allow requests to be raised in business language, covering options and possibly costs in a way that makes sense. IT staff responding to calls should also be aware of the services that are most important to the customer and their requests prioritised appropriately.

Even the customer’s satisfaction level with services should be measured and visible. This information prepares IT staff when interacting with the customer and enables them to offer a better service and focus on providing that all important Human Touch.

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VITAL MANAGEMENT

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Often you already own the component pieces, you perhaps have yet to enable them or join them up

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and I am not feeling well because my hard drive is getting full’ SNMP messages through.

And then do something about the message.

Configure your service desk tool so that the message is automatically logged, an incident is created and then routed to the team or individual that looks after the mail server. If you are running a 24x7 operation, you may also send pager or SMS text messages to the on duty personnel.

IT must know before the service users that something is wrong or going wrong so that they may address it early enough to avoid a service interruption. This is known as event management. An event occurs in your environment and a process of dealing with it kicks off automatically, following the management of that event through to eradication of its effects.

And the really nice thing about this is that it isn’t hard to do. It isn’t expensive to achieve.

It doesn’t take a long time to make it happen.

Often you already own the component pieces, you perhaps have yet to enable them or join them up. I often encounter organisations that say “... yes we have MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager)…” but don’t have it connected to their Service Desk in any way. MOM should trap the event alerts and cause an incident to be logged straight away in your Service Desk.

This can happen at the application level or worst case, get MOM to send an email to your Service Desk!

By drawing together the event detail, and understanding the Configuration item(s) that

VitAL : January / February 2008

Figure 2: The link between event monitoring and the Service Desk can be as simple as an email. Source: BMC Software

has caused the event and the relationship of those items to the end users of services affected, the Service Desk can easily understand the impact of the event and deal with the effects of it accordingly – i.e. respond immediately and tell the users of the impending issue, or schedule an update for the components for non urgent items.

The final element in all of this is to report back to the business all that you have achieved.

Be your own PR department and tell of your successes. If you have transformed the health and availability of services to the business, shout about it. No one else will shout for you.

Equally important; share your success with your staff. Nothing feels better than recognition for a good job done well.

Summary • Empower your staff to challenge and refine the processes you run.

• Ask the business what it wants.

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Virtualisation – a good thing but...

Jon Rolls considers how a development that can benefit users must also be managed itself

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T COULD be said that 2007 is the year virtualisation came of age. The spotlight on virtualisation, aided in part by the frenzy around VMware’s IPO, has certainly helped to bring the virtues of the IT model to a wider business audience. Ten years ago it was much more of a challenge for a company to move to a virtual environment, but with increased network bandwidth and greater solution choices, virtualisation is no longer a question of ‘if,’ but ‘when’. With this is mind, it’s probable that you are either looking at incorporating virtualisation technologies into your environment or, at the very least, will want to understand how the technology affects the bigger picture of business computing. One thing is certain; virtualisation has a big impact on IT manageability. If you look at the desktop for example, virtualisation actually adds another layer of complexity.

While, desktop virtualisation can provide great benefits to companies, such as reduced total cost of ownership, on demand access and a secure, consistent working environment, it

VitAL : January / February 2008

is unlikely that companies will move to totally virtual desktop environment, for a variety of reasons. A key consideration is that virtual desktops require that users have some sort of connectivity to the server but remote workers who are working offline still need to be able to access their applications, which would not be possible if the company ran on an entirely virtual network. Similarly, remote workers dealing with large graphics files (such as designers working from home) may struggle to obtain high quality application performance levels when screen updates have to be sent across the network.

As a result, it is more likely that organisations will need to support a ‘hybrid environment’ of physical and virtual desktops. In some organisations one person may migrate from one to the other, while someone else may use a virtual desktop when at home, but a physical one when at work. This is where seamless management comes into play. IT management issues will not disappear with the advent of virtualisation. In fact, there is going to be

one thing is certain; virtualisation has a big impact on IT manageability. If you look at the desktop for example, virtualisation actually adds another layer of complexity increasing need for desktop management solutions that can help administrators bridge both worlds.

Indeed, as companies embrace virtual desktop initiatives, traditional management tools have to be able to extend their capabilities

VITAL MANAGEMENT

Is virtualisation the an the answer for everything?

We should virtualise everything – it’s what all the IT press is telling us

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to different desktop environments regardless of whether they are physical or not. A centrally configured desktop management system remains the name of the game, helping organisations ensure a consistent experience for the users, monitoring and applying user settings based on current needs. This extends to the application of security policies, control over device lockdown, patching and anti malware initiatives.

In order to maximise the benefits promised by virtualisation, it is important that businesses are advised on the planning and careful management requirements that will be needed. What we have to avoid is thinking that virtualisation is the panacea for IT complexity, as this will only cause headaches later down the line when the reality sets in. On the other hand, a managed approach, which supports a seamless blend of physical and virtual infrastructures could actually accelerate the strategic use of the technology and be the perfect antidote.

UT MAYBE virtualisation is not a panacea and we should first consider some of the cons as well as the pros.

Perhaps there are some cases when it is not such a good idea. And maybe we need to decide just what we mean by virtualisation and virtual machines (VMs) anyway.

Virtualisation as an approach can be used to cover issues from abstraction of application coding to logical partitions for operating systems to consolidation of lightly used single-application servers to SANs and LANs. It can be described as data centre, service or server virtualisation, or storage virtualisation or network virtualisation or a variety of other forms of virtualisation.

But for most people, judging from the press, the talk is all about VMware (or possibly Microsoft Virtual Server, Xen or similar) and server consolidation to address the problems caused by so many autonomous systems distributed across the enterprise to meet local needs but only running single applications at a system utilisation of say 5-10%. It is also touted as an enabler for utility computing in conjunction with auto-provisioning to yield an agile IT solution.

It may well be very suitable for consolidating lightly used small boxes and good for ease of roll-out of systems and for separating development/ test/ QA/ pilot/ production users and for supporting stable systems running on old versions

of infrastructure. But virtualisation is probably less good for RDBMS and heavy I/O applications and maybe less relevant than some think for new systems being implemented from scratch.

So, there are some questions that should be asked before virtualising things. If the application is on a dedicated box and running at 5% utilisation, what will be the utilisation as a VM on a centralised box?

The overhead to run the VM depends on a variety of factors, but primarily the number of disk I/Os and CPU interrupts.

The overhead may be as much as 50% or even a lot more if the application is database oriented.

The performance questions need to be addressed with real measurement of real metrics as well as monitoring the virtual hypervisor view of things. It is usually estimated on the basis of an application trial or small pilot production implementation with as many relevant metrics as practical collected and analysed.

Finally, as with all layers of software, its attributes need to be assessed. Its resource demands, capture ratios, device driver comprehensiveness, robustness, fiduciarity and integrity all merit consideration. And, of course, there is always an earnest hope for bug free code enabling it. Clearly virtualisation is a potential minefield. It needs to be tackled in a considered way like any other IT project.

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Putting your reputation on the line

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John Hancock finds that Vanco offers a service that has to always keep one step ahead of its clients’ technology capabilities.

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With the possibility of remote management capabilities becoming available and proactive management approaches, it became possible to offer clients a guaranteed uptime or no payment VitAL : January / February 2008

OMETIMES, THE best way to see a sector is through the eyes of those who work in it. For this reason, among the many articles that we have planned for the months ahead, VitAL also plans to talk with key players in IT to find out how they are faring in the business today and what they see for the sector’s future. For this issue, we have conducted a couple of interviews for just that purpose. In this instance, we went to visit a customer of EMC. Vanco is a business that has pioneered a number of service management methodologies, in particular some remote monitoring ideas and a willingness to put its money where its service proposition is in its commitment to service. We met Vanco UK Limited and asked the questions: Vanco’s Chief Technical Officer, John Locke provided the answers.

VitAL Magazine: What were the origins of Vanco, i.e. how did it start and develop and how has it grown?

John Locke: Founder and CEO Allen Timpany purchased the company for £1 in 1988. It has since grown by around 30 to 40 per cent year on year through an absolute focus on customer requirements and excellent delivery, based around an innovative VNO business model – an approach Vanco pioneered. Allen foresaw that PC based technology would not need repair in the future and decided that it would be better to work in a smart manner rather than rely on past needs. Also, with the growth in the number of UK telecoms carriers, he foresaw a growth in choice which, unlike with the previous monopoly, would provide an incentive to service.

VITAL MANAGEMENT

With the possibility of remote management capabilities becoming available and proactive management approaches, it became possible to offer clients a guaranteed uptime or no payment. This guarantee also made Vanco think very carefully about the solutions and services it proposed and drove the aim to be proactive rather than reactive so that problems could be solved even before they impacted on the client Proactive management helps to ensure that the services we provide are future proof by making us think ahead as part of our own business model.

The whole idea is to be customer focused and as part of this, we negotiate with each client, each year, to assess their infrastructure and technology and see what we can add to their cost efficiency.

VM: What are the product/services that the business delivers?

JL: Vanco enables its clients to access all WAN technologies, all access types, at a full range of bandwidths, and in all geographies that they operate in. We offer a number of virtual network capabilities in which Vanco brings together the most appropriate components for each client’s needs. Those components will vary from each client according to their needs and, of course, according to their current circumstances.

VM: Are there any particular areas in which Vanco specialises?

JL: We started with WAN and now support LAN, IP Telephony/Voice over IP, and application-aware networking. These are all subsets that can be added to our underlying service solution. Our clients have the capability to review the management information, or raise a change request, look at performance statistics, events and documents, and can see faults at the same time that they are seen at Vanco. In this way our service is totally transparent which we believe is the right way to deal with customers.

VM: What were the challenges faced by the company prior to dealing with EMC’s Resource Management Software Group?

JL: Scalability, spotting and reliability. With EMC we are using its EMC Smarts service management software alerting us to root cause faults. The management system needs to perform to give you the right alerts but not multiple versions of the same alert plus intelligent polling to help us look more closely at problem areas. There are a number of ways of doing this, but as a business whose key USP is our efficiency, we needed to have IT management software which could deliver optimum efficiency (service availability) to us,

via automation, so that we could continue to offer efficiency and improved services to our clients. In the EMC Resource Management Software solutions we found just that.

VM: How did those challenges impact on the business?

JL: Vanco needed a proactive fault reporting process. Vanco’s target is to identify and inform the client on 80% of faults before they call Vanco (the “spotting rate”). The onus of fault identification is therefore transferred to Vanco.

This target is a commitment which forms part of the Service Level Agreement and Vanco NMC engineers are incentivised to achieve these targets. This is supported by highly automated systems and processes including our Remedy Help Desk systemEMC Smarts network management platform. Additionally, creditability with our customers in managing customer networks at the device level, and proactive fault handling are key business factors for our decision to use EMC Smarts.

VM: How did you first get involved with EMC? JL: We dealt with SMARTS first, which was acquired by EMC in February 2005, and is now part of EMC’s Resource Management Software Group.

VM: How has that relationship worked in addressing current challenges and in planning the future for the business?

JL: This has worked well and I have seen greater product improvements since EMC has taken on the EMC Smarts portfolio. We now have clearly identified road maps, robust testing methods and feature enhancements and new capabilities are coming down stream that add value to the platform. EMC has introduced architectural integrity into Smarts and its evolution so that we can be reassured that changes will be planned, structured and beneficial, and not disruptive.

VM: How do you see the future development of the relationship with EMC? JL: We’re mainly interested in the EMC Smarts product development and future features, plus we are currently considering other EMC solutions. We are very happy with EMC’s Smarts management solutions and now wish to consider other tools, although this is still at an early stage.

VM: Do you expect Vanco’s growth to be with increased market share in current markets or through involvement in new markets; if so, what?

JL: We expect growth to come [through] increases in the current market share. The

we needed to have IT management software which could deliver optimum efficiency (service availability) to us, via automation, so that we could continue to offer efficiency and improved services to our clients current VNO market is very large and we see a lot of potential in what we are doing today, being both a market leader and developing our current offer to improve the usefulness of our service to our clients.

VM: Has the company grown organically or by acquisition and how is corporate growth expected to come in the future?

JL: Mainly organically, with one small acquisition in 2005 to increase US presence. This was the purchase of a company called Universal Axis which was in Chapter 11 at the time.

VM: What are the future plans for the business?

JL: Further growth in our current market.

VM: What is your view of the current state of IT Service Management and IT - in business and the economy in general? What challenges and opportunities do you see?

JL: A balance has to be found between technology advancements and the ability to manage them. The ability to manage usually lags behind technology, but the challenge for us is to ensure that our capability is always up to managing the client’s [latest] technology.

Because the market is so big and so diverse, there are many opportunities in areas where transparent and guaranteed service will be appreciated. We must, though, retain our own balance [of efficiency and cost effectiveness] to secure our long-term service proposition.

So there we have a business that is not only offering a different level of service but is also prepared to put its reputation (and fees) on the line to demonstrate maximum commitment to that service. It also puts great store by the software that it uses because, when your reputation and ability to charge relay on the quality and capability of your software, that software has to be chosen with some care. Perhaps a foretaste of where service management is headed for the future?

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Not just crunching numbers Raju Pookottil shows how IT has a place in building our future world – quite literally

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VEN DURING early 1990s, many architectural and engineering practices were still working with pen and paper, on traditional drafting boards. But the mid 1990’s saw the huge impact of IT on these professions through the adoption of computer aided design (CAD) packages and a whole new language for architects and engineers; the three dimensional (3D) capabilities of CAD systems brought a whole new era to the world of architectural drawing in particular.

Now architects could draw their schemes as a single entity describing the whole building.

Plans, sections, elevations and isometrics

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could all be combined into one single 3D drawing offering viewing from any angle.

These days, colour schemes and materials and realistic texturing can be applied, animations created and even full real time walkthroughs of developments can be viewed over the internet, just as in a video game.

So, could that be the end of what IT can offer architects? Let’s see how architects have taken a couple more leaps forward in pioneering the use of technology just as it has become available. With Google and Microsoft battling against each other 3D city models have suddenly become the buzz word. Online world

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Small 3D city models around the proposed sites can now be modelled in just a few days at a cheaper cost than sending surveyors out to the field and creating paper drawings

building games like second life have added to this phenomenon of drawing the whole world around us in 3D. More powerful computer systems and graphics engines predominantly developed for the gaming world have fuelled the growth of this segment. A few years before 3D city models became known to the general public, thanks to Google Earth, the technique had already been used by architects to assist with the masterplanning of schemes to see those proposed schemes in a lifelike context.

Small 3D city models around the proposed sites can now be modelled in just a few days at a cheaper cost than sending surveyors

out to the field and creating paper drawings with levels of the ground and heights of the buildings around. The architect can now have a full blown digital 3D replica of a large site and, say, a 1km x 1km patch around that site.

The models produced by these modern programmes are so accurate that the terrain and streets follow the actual contours or levels close to 10cms. This means that if a street starts at a level of +5.7m above sea level and climbs up towards the other end to +9.8m, this can be measured off the model without sending a surveyor out there to manually measure this information. Similarly, building

heights can be measured off the model with accuracies close to 10cms.

The technology behind such 3D cities has probably existed for more than a century.

Similar technologies were used by spy planes to take aerial photographs of war zones and to derive the heights of the terrain. Analogue instruments were used by trained technicians to derive this height information from multiple photographic prints. But what has made these same techniques accessible to the architect is the recent advances in processor speeds and memory that would allow machines to deal with large amounts of data to be loaded and worked upon simultaneously.

The data used for building 3D architectural and landscape models come from a variety of sources, with the main one being large aerial photographs. With each image at a whopping 120 mega pixel and around 100mb in size and each large site comprising of a few such images, a powerful machine just had to be the only answer. Compare that with today’s best digital cameras delivering in the region of 10 mega pixels.

The architect can now take one of these city models, zoom in to his site, delete the old buildings that exist there and replace them with a whole new model of his proposed scheme. Clients or critics can ‘stand’ at various viewpoints around the large context, virtual world, model and experience a preview of what the new buildings would look like from each of those points. They can walk around and see if the new building will block their views of the cathedral behind, if it will block sun light to neighbouring buildings or if it will simply overpower the serene surroundings.

The models can be used to drop in many

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local authorities such as the Greater London Authority, Birmingham, Sheffield, Newcastle etc have their own city models helping them with the planning process alternate proposals and see what fits the bill best. Stakeholders can visualise exactly what they can expect to see in a couple of years on from a few blocks down the lane.

The technology is also being welcomed by city councils. Already local authorities such as the Greater London Authority, Birmingham, Sheffield, Newcastle etc have their own city models helping them with the planning process. Each time a new development proposal is submitted the council asks for a 3D model of the scheme from the architect and places it into their 3D city model. They can now see exactly what impact the new development will make on the city skyline.

They can interactively and accurately check if protected views are affected.

Up until recently, these large models covering several sq kms needed powerful systems to open and edit. But gone are those days. Now, sections as large as a few sq kms can be placed on the internet for public viewing. One square kilometre of a city can be compressed to less than 5mb, downloaded in under 10 seconds and be driven around as fast as a racing video game.

Full textures can be added and realistic lighting conditions simulated online. And if you thought PDFs are just digital versions of boring 2D pages, a city model including textures can be incorporated into the latest PDFs for full real time navigation. These can be emailed to multiple users and anyone with the latest PDF readers can just open and navigate around these models.

To top it all, the models can even be viewed in full eye popping stereo using special projectors and glasses. During some recent architectural exhibitions, the London 3D model was stereoscopically projected onto a wall and viewers had the chance to fly all over London, zooming past the London eye, take a sharp turn around St Paul’s cathedral, walk over the Millennium bridge and pass right through Tower bridge.

So, can we conclude that the architect should now be fully satisfied that technology

One square kilometre of a city can be compressed to less than 5mb, downloaded in under 10 seconds and be driven around as fast as a racing video game has fulfilled all he can ask for? Not yet. What about those nice architectural models of buildings we see everywhere? Will the digital world of renderings, animations and real time navigation mean an end to those pretty models encased in glass cases and displayed at exhibitions and corporate lobbies? It just looks like architects and their clients and the general public will never cease to get the pleasure out of these scale models. Probably the mere fact that these models offer the touchy feely factor adds a whole new dimension to the experience that a digital image can never match. A physical model also enables the viewer to just walk around and inspect it from all.

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extremely difficult, always assuming that you know who the right people are. While this winter’s big requirement may be for experts in high definition television, next summer may bring a need for mobile integration specialists.

Should you invest in training or seek new recruits? Demands for services may vary by region; how will it be possible to make a profit on providing support services to far-flung parts of the country?

How it’s usually done

Service without tears Toby Strauss considers a better way to build an IT services business Introduction: the service imperative The provision of support and services in the IT sector is growing in importance. Whether a company is providing computer hardware, networking or home entertainment products, customers are demanding help with installation and operation and want a supplier who can fix any problems that arise once a product is up and running. Falling margins on hardware are also building pressure on suppliers to provide more than a simple retail sale. Box-shifting looks likely to become a thing of the past.

The company wanting to develop its own services offering, however, faces multiple difficulties. Finding the right people is

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Historically, there have been three broad approaches for resourcing services work. They include (figure 1): Full ‘insourcing’: the employment of sufficient technical experts to provide all services via the in house team. This can be a good model where demand is foreseeable and when most of the work is carried out within a tight geographic area. It suits smaller firms who need a depth of expertise in one particular area.

Although it gives full control, however, peaks and troughs in demand and requirements for scarce skills can be difficult to manage and many companies lack the scale to make this model work long term. Furthermore, recruitment of skilled staff in the IT industry is notoriously difficult. A recent report by eSkills states that “76 per cent of companies with hard to fill IT vacancies have had to delay the development of new products and services while 42 per cent have suffered from an increase in their operating costs”.

Use of contractors and preferred supplier lists: the judicious use of external companies or self employed resources. This model

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EVOLUTION OF SERVICE HISTORY

works well in certain situations for larger companies; for example it enables software development firms to flex the size of project teams using contractors. Similarly it allows larger IT firms to use preferred suppliers for specialised, well scoped requirements such as cabling. The model works best if the requirement is medium term in duration (e.g. more than three months and less than 12), and when requirements are clearly understood and regularly repeated, so that the effort of finding and interviewing a number of people to find the chosen contractor is worthwhile. When there is a wide diversity of requirements or a significant number of smaller jobs, however, it can be administratively very inefficient and costly to manage the recruitment and management of a broad pool of contractors or preferred suppliers.

Outsourcing: the delegation of specific tasks or activities to other companies. This has the benefit of a clear contractual relationship with a specialist in that field, but is time consuming to set up and requires an environment with

While this winter’s big requirement may be for experts in high definition television, next summer may bring a need for mobile integration specialists little change so that the scope can be accurately defined.

Many large scale outsourcing projects have floundered amid much publicity.

Compass Management, an IT outsourcing consultancy practice, stated recently that in its experience “up to 65% of all outsourcing contracts worth over £20m unravel before running their full term”.

IT SERVICES FIRM’S UTILISATION

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A new approach The final model, ‘flexible resourcing’, is new and has only been fully achievable since the internet became pervasive. Requirements for work are posted on a web based platform, and suppliers can bid on the work if they have the appropriate skills. Suppliers are rated after each job and paid through the platform. A single framework agreement can thereby cover many suppliers. Essentially it enables firms needing resources to tap into a new source of IT services skills: the spare capacity available within other firms. And we know that capacity exists. Most major IT services firms that are stock exchange listed report 60 to 70% utilisation rates. And we know that even smaller firms have similar levels of utilisation (figure 2).

The new model enables people to optimise service delivery and exploit new services opportunities quickly. Companies can tap into spare capacity within the industry through an approach that provides: • Vetted IT resources on demand, which can be purchased by the job and on a part time basis, if desired.

• The routing of jobs to multiple suppliers, thereby using marketplace disciplines to maintain keen pricing and quality.

• A single platform that means that there is no need to negotiate and maintain multiple supplier agreements.

What are the drawbacks?

The potential issues arising from the flexible resourcing model fall into two areas; quality control and competitive conflict.

Quality control: for flexible resourcing to work effectively, it is essential to have in place a failsafe means of monitoring the quality of work completed. The most successful way to achieve this is to have both a central vetting system, which includes rigorous reference checks before suppliers are admitted to the marketplace, and a means of rating every job. In this way, every job is essential to a supplier’s rating, and any fall in quality of service will be immediately visible to potential clients.

Competitive conflict: in the IT services sector there is always a fine line between collaboration and competition, so companies need to know that they can avoid finding themselves in a position in which they are working alongside a direct competitor.

To manage this, the flexible resourcing platform needs to be able to handle business rules that enable companies to avoid working with particular suppliers, or types of suppliers.

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FLEXIBLE SOURCING: MEETING KEY SERVICE DELIVERY OBJECTIVES

Quality control: for flexible resourcing to work effectively, it is essential to have in place a failsafe means of monitoring the quality of work Practical applications There are an increasing number of examples of companies taking advantage of this flexible outsourcing concept: Global marketplace for skills procurement Sun Microsystems has used flexible resourcing to build its own global marketplace for procuring Sun skills. Not only has the company broadened its base of suppliers, but some companies have prospered solely on the back of supplying resource through the Sun marketplace. The company has also achieved some 20% cost savings from its existing base of suppliers through implementing this approach.

Managing peaks in demand Others are using the concept to manage remote geographic coverage and peaks in demand. DSGi, the owner of PC World and Dixons, is augmenting its permanent teams with expert, local, vetted suppliers to serve its customers right across the UK. One of the primary benefits to the company is the fact that it needs to deal only with a single vendor – in this case, OrderWork.

New revenue streams Some companies are using flexible resourcing to gain new revenue streams. A major telecommunications and networking provider had historically turned down work when it involved scarce or unusual technologies. Using flexible resourcing, it is now able to tap into best of breed specialists quickly and easily and obtain market leading quotes on behalf of their customers. The

overhead of managing these bids has been dramatically reduced, a new source of business been developed and relationships with clients deepened by providing a one stop solution to their needs.

New services for retailers Finally, retailers have used the concept to launch new services. They have created and launched new service propositions confident in the knowledge that they can place the work at competitive prices; and knowing that they haven’t had to invest up front in technicians or a field engineering force in the face of uncertain and uneven demand. As a result they have created new revenue streams at more attractive margins that their existing product sales.

Using spare capacity Suppliers are happy too. They gain access to new work with little or no sales or marketing effort.

And they know they will be paid promptly as soon as the work is satisfactorily completed, an issue that affects small suppliers in particular. For larger IT firms, some of the risk of recruiting new services staff is mitigated by the fact that spare capacity can be sold off via a flexible resourcing service.

Flexing for the future Amid the rapid growth of the IT industry as it produces ever more complex products, a rigid approach to service delivery is never going to work. Nobody can predict the precise popularity of a particular new network device, gadget or piece of hardware, nor how much support it is likely to require. The characteristics of the flexible resourcing approach meet the demands of those seeking to enter the services space (figure 3), as well as those already working in it. Flexible resourcing is coming of age and suppliers who fail to recognise this fact do so at their own risk.

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Working on the Germ Farm Your desk may harbour more germs than you’d really like to share with, says Camilla Dunwell

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N A May 2002 article in the Wall Street Journal, Suein L Hwang met Harley Sitner, senior director of marketing in a software business: Sitner works to a ‘bubble up’ theory that anything really important will find its way to the surface of the paper pile on his desk. You can imagine how the desk looks. But it may be more than aesthetics that are compromised when desks get messy. In one of those ‘more information than we want to know’ moments, researchers from the University of Arizona concluded that “the average office desk harbours 20,961 germs per square inch, which is 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat”. Don’t ask!

The desk surface, keyboard, mouse, telephone, desk light, monitor, speakers,

VitAL : January / February 2008

docking stations, printer or anything with an ‘on/off’ button can all become dirty germ farms. Electrical equipment builds up an attractive charge that draws and holds dust; also, touching equipment, leaves a greasy deposit or dirt magnet.

Less pleasantly, when people sneeze, cough, speak or even, heavens forefend, lick their finger to wipe away a mark, they deposit blobs of bacteria into an environment that is, given that most dust is human skin cells, a cafeteria for germs.

And beyond the normal wear and tear of work, some people snack at their desks leaving crumbs, smears of mayonnaise or sticky rings of Coca Cola to nourish the local germ population. Others rest their feet, catnap, perform a manicure (not a pedicure,

surely!) and even floss their teeth on or over their desk. Add to that, according to research from New York University Medical Center, a decline in hand washing and you can see how the office environment in general and our desks in particular can so easily contribute to the ills that beset us all from time to time.

Apparently, the germs most commonly present on our desks are from the human Para Influenza Virus 1 group which are most responsible for the spread of respiratory infections (colds and flu). But there are more serious issues related to office hygiene in general and desks in particular.

In their book, Total Workplace performance: Rethinking the office environment, Stan Aronoff and Audrey Kaplan explain that the

VITAL SERVICES

the average office desk harbours 20,961 germs per square inch, which is 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat cost of an unhygienic desk might eventually be real illness leading to lower productivity or even time away from work.

The solution is to spring clean desks and equipment right away and, for longer term health, continue to regularly clean and consider the new antibacterial keyboards, mouse units and wrist rests. And while it may seem a little anal to keep antibacterial wipes in a desk drawer, for those who use a lot of shared equipment or are even frequent users of their own telephone, it may help to avoid cross infection from people less scrupulous about personal hygiene than

the usual user or simply from their own germs deposited at an earlier date. Of course, hand washing will also help.

It takes very little time at the start of each day to wipe down a desk with a disinfectant wipe and there are a number of low cost, low tech aids to cleanliness that can make the desk area not only cleaner but also a more pleasant place to work. Office cleaners use disposable glass and surface cleaner wipes – anti static to counter the dust attracting properties of electrical equipment – fabric and carpet cleaner and deodoriser,

spot and stain remover polish, and all purpose cleaner. If your office employs a cleaner, make sure that they use the right materials and, if staff members are expected to keep their own areas clean, place a caddy containing these materials somewhere like the stationary cupboard.

One of those fluffy dusters on a stick will help remove dust from awkward surfaces, such as under the equipment, and a clean soft brush will help to clean particles out of keyboards and the like before using the antibacterial wipe.

Cleanliness, in this sense, should be a routine but not an obsession. Also, for those who have been adherents of the ‘bubble up’ theory, and to avoid having to work in the toilet for a cleaner workspace, they might even consider tidying up that desk for fewer places for bacteria to flourish and, at the same time, create a nicer office.

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A safe box for your data Steve Tongish considers how to store data that you may have to keep but rarely need to use

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ANY PEOPLE have a box in the attic in which they keep items that are precious to them. Unique and irreplaceable objects, collected throughout a lifetime: wedding photographs, sports trophies, academic certificates, the book a grandmother gave them, clippings of past triumphs covered in the local paper. A box in the attic is a low maintenance and stable archive for objects that, although one might not need to look at them everyday, it would be devastating to lose.

Many companies have data that is, in more practical terms, just as precious to them: customer records, original contracts, emails with suppliers, employee pension documents.

Instead of, figuratively, tucking this important data away in a box in the attic, many companies

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leave it scattered around their house: in their SAN, on application servers, personal laptops, and on backup tapes sitting in a filing cabinet.

Although a company may not care as deeply for their data as an individual cares for the book their grandmother gave them, it is, perhaps, time that they started caring just a little bit more.

There are many reasons why it is important for companies to be able to safely hold electronic records over a long time period.

Clearly, it is bad practice to lose an employee’s pension record, or be unable to look over old but still current business contracts and their supporting email chains. On top of bad practice, it is also quite likely to be illegal.

Data protection legislation and a growing

it is bad practice to lose an employee’s pension record, or be unable to look over old but still current business contracts and their supporting email chains. On top of bad practice, it is also quite likely to be illegal

VITAL SERVICES body of industry specific regulations bestow on companies the obligation to safely manage data archives for many years. Archived data needs to be quickly accessible for discovery, and must maintain its authenticity to ensure it hasn’t been altered.

Once data is no longer actively being used, companies must decide if they need to keep it and for how long according to best practice, legal obligation and regulatory compliance. If it is not needed, it should be deleted to free up space on their primary storage systems.

However, if it is still required, companies are likely to want to move the data to a lower cost and lower maintenance archiving system. The archiving systems commonly available today are based on three different technologies: hard disk drive, tape and optical.

Hard disk drive systems, for example, RAID storage, are a popular archiving choice for businesses as they are usually relatively easy to attach to a network, have fast access speeds and unit costs have fallen, making them relatively cheap to purchase. However, as a spinning mechanical system, which needs to be powered at all times, these systems will eventually break and can cost a considerable amount to power and cool over their lifetime.

Additionally, data that is written to the magnetic disk can become unstable leading

to data corruption over time. These physical traits demand that data stored on magnetic disk be protected through a secondary backup procedure, adding extra cost and administration.

Following our box in the attic analogy, this type of archive would require us to visit the box everyday to make sure it was OK, check the contents to see that they were still there and leave the light on, permanently.

Magnetic tape is able to store huge amounts of data in a compact space and once written does not require power to maintain. Tape is a popular choice for archiving, though does have some significant drawbacks that do not lend themselves to the ideal of archiving, as represented by our box.

Anyone who has fought to restore data from an old backup tape will tell you just how unreliable magnetic tape can be. It wears with use, can easily be damaged and must be stored in carefully maintained temperature and humidity conditions. As with magnetic disk, data stored on tape is also subject to corruption so should be frequently monitored if used for long term data storage.

Though in comparison to hard drives, and to follow our analogy, a tape archive allows the attic light to be turned off, the box itself will still need regular visits to make sure

everything is OK. The final category of archiving technology is optical. In many ways optical most matches our ideal archive as represented by the box in the attic. Using laser technology, data is stored on a disk by changing the physical structure of the disk itself. Once data is written it is extremely stable and cannot be altered, ensuring both record authenticity and data integrity. Like tape systems, optical disks do not need to be continuously powered so are extremely energy efficient. Optical disks come in a variety of formats so it is important to select one that is designed specifically for professional data storage. UDO (Ultra Density Optical) is the only optical format with a proven track record for long term data archiving.

Many organisations are far from perfect when it comes to securely archiving their data. However, with a near universal move to electronic records, companies are now increasingly required to maintain data records for a very long time, often many decades.

Like the box in the attic, the best systems are those that simply get on with their role unaided, cost little to maintain, and preserve the family treasures in perfect order for as long as possible, so your data, like the book your grandmother gave you, can be passed to the next generation.

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VITAL SERVICES

Putting it all together Walter Schumann considers the relative merits of Unified Threat Management or best of breed?

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HERE HAS long been debate among IT experts as to which concept is most advantageous, Unified Threat Management (UTM) or best of breed. Some IT professionals prefer to use several related technologies from one vendor, already integrated into a complete package, whereas others prefer to select a series of well known point products from different vendors.

IT security and protection of information continue to be one of the main movers in today’s IT economy. Convenient communication platforms offer a variety of possibilities for outside users to do mischief and steal business data. The list of security vulnerabilities seems endless, so, over the years, companies have shaped their IT infrastructure by installing the most effective security solutions they could acquire.

Firewalls, which limit network traffic, and virus scanners that prevent the majority of worms, malware and Trojans from entering an enterprise’s IT, were amongst the first IT security systems to be installed by organisations. With further IP communication developments, corporations started to enable data exchange between their branch and head offices utilising VPN technology. IT staff in medium sized businesses and large scale enterprises tried to meet developing demands by deploying separate firewall, VPN, URL filtering, anti virus, and anti spam products across their company’s network.

However, for smaller companies and their hard pressed IT staff, the deployment of many

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separate security solutions was never a realistic option. This is one reason why market analysts predicted a trend towards UTM appliances, unifying and integrating multiple security features on a single hardware platform. In the face of budget cuts and new security threats even larger companies began deploying UTM appliances, if only to shut out intruders to branch offices or off site departments.

Originally, IDC defined Unified Threat Management security appliances as products including network firewall capabilities, network intrusion detection and prevention (IDP) and gateway anti virus (AV) functionality.

However, in the fast moving security market, UTM vendors needed to include much more in order to stay ahead of the threats that faced their customers. For instance, to be up to speed, solutions should now include protection against viruses, worms, spam, spyware, phishing, and block access to unauthorised content. The latest developments even feature email encryption, SSL VPN, active/ active clustering and safeguards for the flood of unsecured instant messaging traffic and peer to peer file sharing traffic.

As understanding has grown of the types of threats and the necessary protection, increasing numbers of companies have become aware that when comparing best of breed concepts with Unified Threat Management approaches, the difference is not in quality or security. As it stands, the term ‘best of breed’ implies that any other technology would be inferior

or somewhat less secure than the product of choice. In reality, UTM appliances integrate the very same technologies that are featured in point products, the differences are in granularity, not security. Anything else would drive up IT administration costs.

Even though point products generally offer more configuration options and a longer list of features, this doesn’t automatically translate into higher security. Medium sized companies simply do not need the same amount of management tools as global corporations, not least because they generally do not have the resources to manage such solutions. It works to their advantage if UTM vendors take point technologies and limit the options to the tools that are really needed.

Another driver towards adoption of UTM appliances, is that organisations deploying new point products which address developing Internet threat, not only face booming licensing costs, but training, integration and management efforts also grow exponentially. Any technology that is hard to operate will result in unnecessary costs. By offering vendor consolidation, UTM appliances reduce license and training costs, and IT staff can perform administration tasks for all security solutions by using the same GUI. Parameters, like network definitions, need only be configured once and are activated for different applications. This reduces the risk of incorrectly configuring, or even neglecting to deploy security technology.

What IT staff in all companies really need is an efficient way of installing rock solid security solutions. IDC foresees a strong, sustained growth in the integrated security appliance market over the next years, in line with customers’ increased awareness of the need to protect their network infrastructure and simplify critical business processes.

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CDP – Buzz vs Benefit Ian Masters discusses Continuous Data Protection (CDP) to separate the buzz from the benefits

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OR ORGANISATIONS focused on solving real world problems, understanding the distinction between the buzz and the benefits from Continuous Data Protection (CDP) will help them make the best choice to safeguard their electronic assets.

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There is some uncertainty in the market over what defines CDP. The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) defines CDP as ‘a methodology that continuously captures or tracks data modifications and stores changes independent of the primary data, enabling recovery from any point in the past.

CDP systems can provide fine granularity of restorable objects to infinitely variable recovery points’.

The capabilities described by the SNIA definition of CDP are not trivial. They require a technology solution that stores all data changes as they happen and can arbitrarily return to infinite points in time to recover previous versions of data. This makes true CDP a very expensive proposition for customers.

This expense may be difficult to justify

when an organisation’s data isn’t perceived as sufficiently valuable and even where the value is recognised, most can’t afford these types of CDP solutions. In this sense, true true CDP products are a solution to a problem that customers cannot afford to solve.

Companies are instead opting for near CDP solutions or backup and recovery solutions that integrate CDP like capabilities. While solutions based on the strictest definitions of CDP may eventually gain momentum in the market as the enabling technology comes down in price, the majority of businesses don’t have a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) that requires, and justifies, this type of CDP. There is clearly a need for something that provides better recoverability than tape but is simple and affordable enough to deploy across the

VITAL SERVICES

with desktop management solutions, scripting languages and other technologies that exist today, organisations can proactively create the disaster ready desktop configuration enterprise, not just on a few systems.

Another issue affecting take up of CDP is that it has traditionally taken a very narrow approach to business continuity. Solutions have mainly focused on file level recovery and not application data like that created

by Microsoft Exchange Server or Microsoft SQL Server. If the first line of defence in a disaster recovery solution is protecting the data, the second is undoubtedly protecting the application. Providing a real time copy of the data and availability of the application associated with it, enables a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) significantly better than that provided by solutions like tape backup or CDP. CDP provides no provision for RTO and focuses solely on RPO, which is only half of the customer challenge.

While true CDP solutions have not gained widespread traction, the promise of CDP, despite its problems, thrives. It does so in the form known as near CDP. Many traditional backup vendors have differentiated themselves from their competitors by integrating CDP capabilities into existing solutions rather than tackling the concept head on. These

solutions provide many, but not infinite, points of recovery. This satisfies most customers’ RPO goals far more readily than relying on retrieval from tape based solutions by providing snapshot copies of important data for recovery purposes.

Though near CDP promises to be an easy way to augment the backup solutions that customers use today, it still doesn’t account for the complete recovery of a company’s business critical systems. To the end user, recovery isn’t complete until they are able to resume their work where they left off. This means not only restoring a previous version of the data but also the operating systems and applications and all the other aspects that are required to give users access to that information.

Alternatives exist today that provide this unified approach to recovery. In these solutions, asynchronous file based replication is combined with application availability and snapshot technologies to fulfil at least the spirit, if not the definition, of CDP. In terms of data protection, real time replication provides for the continuous capture of changes to protected data and the storage of those changes separate from the production data. If needed, a company can recover to this real time copy of the data in the event of a major disaster. Because these solutions are typically based on bytelevel replication, including features such as compression and bandwidth throttling, they are more efficient at moving data across long distances when compared to the data movement technologies employed by purebred CDP solutions.

For recovery from unwanted changes such as those caused by human error, viruses, or corruption, disk based snapshot capabilities allow rollback to multiple (albeit not infinite) copies of the protected data. Disk based snapshots are usually difference based (copy on write technology) and consume less storage space. Their periodic nature also further reduces storage requirements when compared to keeping infinitely accessible copies of data changes. A combination of data replication and disk based snapshots ensure that the RPO goals for a company’s data can be met.

Where these solutions truly exceed the promise of CDP is their ability to ensure RTO goals as well as RPO goals. By continuously monitoring the availability of the production systems and failing over to a secondary system in the event of an outage, they provide an RTO of minutes rather than hours or days. Most true CDP solutions today do not provide any high availability for the applications creating the data and instead leave recovery to the IT administrator who is most likely using a complex, manual, time consuming process.

Evaluating the Options No solution is one size fits all. Each company’s business is unique so each business continuity recovery plan will be different. However, the high level approach to business continuity planning is generally the same. The key to business continuity and recovery planning is to first understand the impact an outage, loss or major disaster would have on your ability to provide a product or service and then pick the right procedures and tools to minimise that impact.

The first recommendation we make is to assess and rank each of the business systems within your organisation and assign the appropriate level of protection to them. Not all systems require the same levels of protection; in fact, some may not need protection at all.

Successful plans account for this and are able to restore systems defined as business critical as rapidly as possible while making the most of limited resources. The challenge for most companies in prioritizing these systems and choosing the right solution is simply a matter of quantifying the value of the data the solutions protect and calculating the Return on Investment (ROI).

Most true CDP solutions today do not provide any high availability for the applications creating the data and instead leave recovery to the IT administrator Summary The reality of CDP is that it has not lived up to the buzz it generated. This is not because the promise of CDP isn’t appealing to customers but because CDP, as narrowly defined by industry organisations, was not permitted the opportunity to integrate with other data protection and recovery capabilities.

A hybrid solution combines the best of CDP with the best of continuous data replication and application availability while keeping costs down. Successful vendors will continue to build CDP into their products where it is appropriate and successful IT organisations will learn to use the technology in a way that best addresses all of its recovery goals while staying within budget and without sacrificing capabilities.

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Disaster ready desktops Nick Cavalancia considers how disaster planning can be migrated right down to the machines that staff use every day

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HEN THE topic of business continuity and/or disaster recovery is raised, most IT professionals tend to begin thinking about server redundancy, clustering, offsite backups, etc. While this is all critical, one aspect of the organisation always seems to be overlooked and some would argue it is as critical a part: the desktop. What good is it to have a completely redundant set of services (Active Directory, email, applications, data, etc.) when you have no easy means to access it? Is it possible to actually create a disaster ready desktop?

One firm, for instance, has a disaster recovery plan that includes hurricanes, fire, and even a chemical spill on the highway immediately

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behind their building. The plan includes a cold site where servers are lying in wait, with the IT planning to fly to the offsite location and restore the servers. But at the time of planning, no consideration was made on how the users will access the newly restored alternate data centre. It is often overlooked.

Organisations also need to make a plan on how to not only get users access to their data and applications, but to ensure the desktop they utilise can be configured to maintain user productivity. It is not unreasonable for organisations to aspire to not just create a make shift desktop for users to get minimal access to services they need; with desktop management solutions, scripting languages

and other technologies that exist today, organisations can proactively create the disaster ready desktop configuration so that in the event of a disaster, alternative desktops can function nearly identically to normal business operations.

Since an organisation that is worried about business continuity most likely has a plan for getting servers and services up and running, they are therefore aware of the configuration of the environment in which a disaster ready desktop will exist. So what does the disaster ready desktop look like? In order to create a consistent, secure and functional working environment for the user involves: • Applications – not minimal applications, but all the applications required to perform the job. Disaster ready desktops need to be either based on an image that already has the applications incorporated or they will need to be able to have applications deployed to them.

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• Alternative Configuration – applications that rely on servers will most likely need some tweaking of the configuration; a server name, an IP address, etc will need to be reconfigured to point to alternate servers.

• Supporting Elements – applications are not an island; they require drive mappings to access data, printers, shortcuts on the user’s desktop, etc. all to make the application usable and the user productive.

• Security Updates – because desktops used in a disaster are most likely not managed on a daily basis (they may even be cold site spares that require your IT staff to image upon use), so having a way to ensure the most up to date patches have been applied is critical to prevent the introduction of malicious code. Equally as important is having anti virus and anti spyware solutions

with desktop management solutions, scripting languages and other technologies that exist today, organisations can proactively create the disaster ready desktop configuration to protect against known and unknown threats.

• Security Policies – just because users are at a DR location doesn’t mean the

organisation’s security policies should be pushed aside: implementing locked down desktops, blocking inappropriate access on the Internet, and blocking access to USB and other storage devices (as dictated by an organisation’s policy) should be put into effect.

While it may seem like a lot, it truly isn’t for the organisation that is already doing this today.

It does mean spending the time to ensure the configuration and deployment methods used in production today can be duplicated and modified to create the alternate (and yet completely functioning) environment for users in the event of a disaster.

So can the disaster ready desktop be built?

Yes – it simply takes the same focus and proactive attitude given to servers and services when planning for a disaster.

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Stripping away the Greenwash Kelly Smith considers how data centres can match up to the challenge of the times

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S THE impact of commercial and industrial activities on the environment are becoming better understood, IT’s share of responsibility within the overall problem is gaining recognition. Traditional methods of generating power, through burning fossil fuels, transfer a significant carbon footprint to users of that power. The data centre is a very power hungry industrial proposition. As a result, within the IT sector, the data centre is being viewed with increasing unease. Given predicted growth rates, and no change in their design or method in which they are powered, the environmental consequences of data centres could force them into a corner from which they cannot escape.

However, several factors are combining to push data centres into adopting more environmentally benign policies. In the long term, government regulations, the introduction of carbon taxes and the cost implications of

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rising electricity usage and pricing will force change. In the short term the most pressing reason for change is the consumer.

End users, in increasing numbers, are coming to expect data centres to provide a service that not only meet their requirements but also operate responsibly. Power consumption has become a key area of concern. The current scope for environmental action is very broad and the real, rather than perceived, efficacy of each measure can vary wildly. The dilemma for the data centre manager is to choose a scheme that comes at a price that won’t cripple the viability of their business. The problem for consumers is to know which of the plethora of environmental schemes and policies presented by data centres provide genuine environmental benefits. In reality, there is a real risk that all concerned are being presented with ‘greenwash.’

The dictionary defines greenwash as,

several factors are combining to push data centres into adopting more environmentally benign policies

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at the data centre level, managers can decide what source of energy they want to use. This is down to the way that the UK’s electricity market is constructed

‘misleading information designed to conceal abuse of the environment in order to present a positive public image.’ Environmental power generation schemes fall into one of only a few categories, which can be placed on a scale, from disastrous (melting ice caps) to acceptable (if not exactly environmentally friendly, then at least sustainable). For the time being, with our current level of technology, ‘acceptable’ is as good as it gets.

With knowledge of the various categories, it’s fairly straightforward to understand and spot greenwash when it occurs.

The UK’s use of Fossil Fuels

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Firmly at the not environmentally friendly end of the scale is the unqualified use of fossil fuels.

Simplistically, coal or gas is burnt to heat water that spins turbines, which generate electricity.

The electricity is distributed throughout the UK on the National Grid and delivered to the data centre, wherever it is located. Burning the fuel releases carbon that had previously been locked within it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The vast majority of scientists accept that increased carbon emissions are the cause of climate change. According to the DTI, the UK’s fossil fuel generated power is responsible for over five million tonnes of carbon emissions each day.

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Carbon Offsetting The first stage on the journey towards sustainable electrical generation is ‘carbon offsetting’. That is, instead of reducing or eliminating the use of electricity generated from fossil fuels, the data centre pays a third party company to implement schemes, often in far flung countries, designed to extract an equal amount of carbon from the environment.

The classic example is tree planting, as trees absorb carbon.

Carbon offsetting is a large and growing business. According to CarbonTradeWatch. org, “In the first three quarters of 2006, about EUR 89 million were sold to companies and individuals all over the world, up 300 per cent from 2005. It is predicted that the voluntary offsets market will be worth EUR 450 million in three years time.”

There have been very vocal doubts raised over carbon offsetting schemes. Once out of the ground and emitted into the atmosphere through the power station’s chimney, fossil carbon joins the active carbon pool (the carbon in circulation before the fossil derived additions) and will not go back into the fossil carbon pool for many thousands of years.

There is, even if tree planting schemes are effective, more carbon in circulation than there would otherwise have been. As soon

as the planted trees are cut down and burnt or simply die and rot, the captured fossil carbon is re released. This carbon will, relevant to ourselves and our descendents, never be neutralised and it cannot in any meaningful way be offset. Carbon offsetting schemes assuage guilt whilst allowing business as usual but are no answer and can be quite safely viewed as greenwash.

Carbon Neutral The term carbon neutrality implies that the overall amount of carbon in circulation remains the same. The great hope for carbon neutral power generation is the use of biomass fuels.

Biomass is usually composed of agricultural or forestry products grown specifically for the purpose. Biomass fuel contains only carbon already in circulation in the environment, albeit temporarily locked into plant form.

Burning biomass fuel to generate power will release carbon that has recently been in circulation back into the atmosphere. Given a complete lifecycle of a similar plant and an equivalent amount of carbon will return to the biomass. So far, so good; biomass seems to offer genuine carbon neutrality and as such has got to be better than the false promise of carbon offsetting.

Biomass fuel is certainly a more compelling

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Carbon offsetting schemes assuage guilt whilst allowing business as usual but are no answer alternative to fossil fuel power generation but it is not without problems. Releasing biomass derived carbon into the atmosphere is only neutral if a similar quantity of carbon is taken up by new biomass. This depends on the lag time between carbon release and re absorption, and whether biomass farming is undertaken sustainably.

If we take trees as examples of biomass fuels (trees are seen as the most likely source of biomass fuel in Scotland), each tree takes around 30 years to grow from seed to full tree.

If a tree is felled to use for fuel, the carbon released will be reabsorbed in 30 years time. If trees (or whatever original biomass was used) are harvested at an accelerating rate to furnish power stations with fuel, without planting new trees at the same rate, or without allowing new trees to mature, there will be an overall gain in carbon in the atmosphere.

The other significant criticism of biomass is that to create fuel on an industrial scale would require industrial farming techniques. These farming methods are not typically linked to local ecological health.

Overall, carbon neutral biomass schemes are very much a step in the right direction.

Theoretically, they offer a credible alternative to traditional power generation. However, the practice may not match the theory and as such they have a light coat of greenwash.

Zero Carbon Renewable power supplies, wind, wave, tide, hydro and solar do not release any carbon into the atmosphere during power generation and as such the energy produced has been dubbed, ‘zero carbon’. The government has set a target of 10% of UK power to be generated from renewables by 2010, up from the current 2.5%.

Nuclear energy is also zero carbon and currently accounts for 22% of UK power generation. It is likely that the UK will at some point invest in an expansion in its nuclear capacity. However, given the potential environmental damage that this type of fuel can bring, no one outside of the nuclear industry is likely to hold nuclear energy up as the green beacon of power generation.

Some will point out that the manufacture and implementation of a renewable site creates carbon emissions. However, over the life of the plant these figures are not hugely significant. Additionally, local populations are often less than keen on a change to their scenery caused by industrial scale renewable power installations (this hasn’t stopped the Navarre region of Spain generating 70% of its power from wind and solar sources). The most significant criticism of renewable energy is its inherent unpredictability. What happens if it isn’t windy?

Nothing is simple On a macro scale, the UK is likely to invest in a combination of reliable carbon neutral

energy from biomass fuel, more desirable but less reliable zero carbon renewable schemes, additional nuclear generation capacity as well as seeing out the useful life of many of the existing coal and gas fuelled power stations. Some time in the future, mankind may make a technological breakthrough enabling the generation of power in a way that benefits the environment. In the meantime the best we can do as a country is opt for the best mix of the most acceptable solutions.

However, at the data centre level, managers can decide what source of energy they want to use. This is down to the way that the UK’s electricity market is constructed. Power generation companies are independent from the delivery mechanism, the National Grid. The company selling power to the data centre can be different again. The data centre manager can purchase zero carbon renewable energy, the most environmentally sound option of all, and not have to worry about the overall strategic needs of the country.

No need for greenwash Green power initiatives that satisfy current customer demand for environmentally aware suppliers, when fully considered over the long term, often enhance the internal cost structure of the data centre or cost so little that the demand they create more than compensates.

The data centre that selects such a supplier may pay a little more for power (in fact, if low energy servers are installed the overall power costs may fall) but they will be responsible for zero carbon emissions. It is these green initiatives, properly costed and with their effects on demand taken into account that should be implemented.

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CMDB: a journey not a destination Richard Muirhead considers how to get the best from this useful tool

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VERY ASPECT of business can now be improved through the use of technology – which in turn puts increasing pressure on the infrastructure supporting it. As a result, many organisations are turning to ITIL to help them to address IT support and delivery challenges and deal more effectively with operational processes including service delivery and change management. The CMDB (Configuration Management Database) is a fundamental component of the ITIL framework, yet despite increasing awareness and demand for CMDBs by IT adopters, many still struggle to understand exactly what a CMDB is and how it can be used and implemented to maximise the potential of their ITIL framework.

At its core, the CMDB is a trusted, dynamic and unified repository of information about all configurable IT components, and how they map to the delivery of IT services. As such it is fundamental to ITIL, providing a central point for governance, asset, inventory and change and configuration control, as well as a core system for more effective service assurance.

A CMDB also has great potential above and beyond enabling ITIL processes – it provides the foundation for the cultural, political and organisational changes necessary to allow new technology and process initiatives to succeed.

In practical terms a CMDB with up to date and easily accessible information will help the service desk log calls more quickly with a higher degree of accuracy. It will also support best practice ITIL processes to better manage problems, track incidents and help IT operations to gain a holistic view of the technology environment. But many IT adopters only view the CMDB as a thing to buy rather than an enabler of data integration in support of superior processes and organisational efficiencies. This can make the CMDB a

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potentially tough sell within organisations that may not feel that they are ready for such an all or nothing approach.

According to research from Enterprise Management Associates , the biggest obstacle to CMDB adoption is currently a lack of resource and budget commitment due to a low level of buy in within the IT department.

Clearly a political and cultural transformation is required to ensure adoption, and with huge differences between organisations in terms of their process maturity and business goals it is essential that enterprises approach their CMDB initiatives in a way that best fits their current situation. Manual data gathering, big bang deployments and a lack of focus are all factors that can stop a CMDB dead in its tracks. However if deployment is considered to be a work in progress and is implemented following a few general rules, there is a far better likelihood that the resulting CMDB will be accurate, effective and deliver maximum return on investment.

1. AUTOMATE. Too often, the data for a CMDB is gathered manually – an incredibly time consuming process – meaning that it is often out-of-date, inaccurate or largely irrelevant by the stage of analysis.

Application dependency mapping (ADM) tools can provide a transparent and constantly updated view of an entire infrastructure in seconds, compared to up to 60 hours when done manually.

2. UNDERSTAND. what you have. If you don’t know what information is available within the organisation, you are unnecessarily limiting the data available to management processes. Inventory everything you have from the start and update on a regular basis, including the data used by facilities and support functions.

3. DON’T TRY AND DO IT ALL IN ONE GO.

CMDB is a process rather than a single

entity that you can buy or construct. As an IT environment grows and functions organically, so must the CMDB. It is quite literally a journey of discovery and like all journeys must begin with a first step.

4. MAKE IT SCALABLE. We all know IT environments are growing – the more an infrastructure expands, the more pressure is put on the CMDB. Make sure that the CMDB can be federated and offer information reconciliation so that as the task becomes more complex the scope of the CMDB can be expanded to include additional sources of information and to automate information access.

5. MAKE IT FLEXIBLE. Technology changes on a daily basis and what works or is available today may be different tomorrow. By taking a flexible approach to process design you can allow for process adjustments that respond to technical advances, without having to make fundamental changes.

6. PRIORITISE ACCORDING TO BUSINESS NEEDS. Start from the top down with the

key business requirements before moving to the components that support these management elements. If you do it the other way round, in today’s competitive and highly regulated business environments, the goal posts will have moved by the time you reach the top.

While a CMDB can certainly offer dramatic operational and business benefits within an ITIL framework, the manner in which it is implemented should in no way be so dramatic. A bite sized, automated approach that takes into account the individual circumstances of the business is crucial to success, and as more organisations begin to see CMDB implementation as a journey not a destination, the greater the rewards and opportunities we should expect to see from this crucial resource.

Sharing Best Practices & Experience Performance Testing

Performance Engineering

Capacity Management Performance Management

SLM

Capacity Planning

Performance Assurance

UKCMG members organise regular events for training and networking with leading international speakers and industry experts.

Best Practice Conference

UKCMG Shared Experience

Forum

Vendors

Users

Consultants

Education Masterclasses

UKCMG IT USER FORUM MASTERCLASSES Virtualisation and Beginners Capacity Management 4th & 5th March 2008, Hilton Hotel, Olympia, London UKCMG ANNUAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2008 19th - 21st May 2008, Whittlebury Hall Hotel, Northampton UKCMG offers three membership options: Corporate, Personal and Vendor membership.

www.ukcmg.org.uk

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8421 5330 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8421 5457 Email: ukcmg@ukcmg.org.uk

UKCMG's Offical Media Partner

VITAL PROFILE

A successful celebration of success John Hancock reviews another successful conference and exhibition for itSMF members

W

E LIVE in a virtual world and as IT professionals IT Service Managers would appreciate that more than most.

However this virtual world is not perfect.

The worst image associated with IT is that of the slightly bent backed, geek, sitting alone in a darkened room, staring at a computer screen through which he chooses to exist as an alternative to living in the real world.

You only have to watch an episode of TV’s

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VitAL : January / February 2008

comedy show, ‘The IT Crowd’ to know that. It, of course, is a wholly unfair and untrue image as far as the majority of IT personnel are concerned but it is, as the old advertisement says, good to talk.

The problem is that even when people do talk these days it is more often than not on the telephone rather than face to face, or perhaps on one of the new videoconferencing systems that seem to occupy the end of every

VITAL PROFILE

This 16th itSMF annual conference and Exhibition provided a three day opportunity for delegates to network, improve their knowledge of IT Service Management, see and discuss the latest products and services and recognise those who had achieved success

boardroom and conference room. It’s useful, it’s efficient, it’s cost effective, it’s even green but it’s not healthy. We humans are pack animals and need to meet and interact with other humans to make our own brains work better. We respond as much to presence and handshakes and shared experiences as we do to facts, no matter how good the technology that is used to present those facts. We need to get together from time to time.

As much as anything else this is a purpose served by the annual conference. It’s an opportunity to get together, to network to perhaps relax in the company of other people whose broad agenda and priorities are much the same as your own and hopefully to recognise the people and successes that have marked the high points in your profession over the past year or so.

That is really the purpose of the itSMF UK

Conference and Exhibition held for 2007 on the 12th of the 14th of November at the Hilton Metropole in Brighton. In a return to the city by the sea, this 16th itSMF annual conference and Exhibition provided a three day opportunity for delegates to network, improve their knowledge of IT Service Management, see and discuss the latest products and services and recognise those who had achieved success during the preceding year. It is the largest IT Service Management event with over 1000 delegates and 80 or more exhibitors. VitAL Magazine was a proud to be represented as a media sponsor in this our first year of publication.

The opening day on Monday the 12th of November saw brief contributions from chairman of the life and CEO Keith Aldis followed by the opening keynote speech from Lawrence Leyton. The largest part of the conference was then taken up with two and a half days of speakers in six different locations around the hotel complex plus the experimental learning sessions in the Lancaster room. In more than 50 sessions delegates were able to hear expert commentary on the widest possible range of subjects and of course were able to discuss those subjects not only with the speakers but also among themselves after the sessions and around the exhibition area. On the first evening there was a buffet dinner and entertainment.

By the end of the second day (Tuesday) delegates will either have renewed old friendships or struck up new ones and were ready to really relax. So the Gala Dinner and annual Awards Ceremony on that evening made a welcome opportunity to dress up a little and relax among friends. But most

importantly it was an opportunity to recognise the successes of those who had brought credit to the professions and won the various awards during the preceding year.

The itSMF UK Chapter now has over 19,000 members making it the largest of the 46 itSMF chapters worldwide and fittingly it has the only awards program that truly recognizes continued improvement and commitment to IT Service Management.

Keith Aldis, itSMF Chief Executive said: “This year saw the most nominations ever received in our 16 year history all aiming to win the ITSM’s coveted prize which recognises their outstanding achievements and significant contribution to the industry. At the individual and corporate level, all the nominated candidates provided first class examples of what can be achieved and set targets to which we can all aspire.”

The following organisations and individuals were itSMF UK award winners on the night.

• Project of the Year – Provident Financial, Insight Service Management • Trainer of the Year – John Griffiths, Fox IT • Innovation of the Year – Virgin Money and Axios Systems – assystNET • Service Management Champion of the Year – Marc Guy – Central Office of Information • Submission of the Year – Julie Macmillan – National Australia Group • Student of the Year – Dinah Turner, Department for Work and Pensions All in all a glittering end to a busy and enjoyable event. Delegates left better informed better connected and better aware of the good things that are being done by IT Service Managers and their teams around the country.

January / February 2008 : VitAL

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Address Management & Database Solutions CAPSCAN

Grand Union House, 20 Kentish Town Road, London NW1 9BB T: +44 (0)20 7428 1255 F: +44 (0)20 7267 2745 W: www.capscan.com C: Kate Overton, CRM Manager E: enquiries@capscan.com Capscan is a leading supplier of international addressing software and data integrity services. The company’s award-winning solutions enable you to capture, verify and enhance name and address data. They help organisations to lower costs, reduce fraud and improve customer service.

Enterprise Software Configuration Management MKS SYSTEMS LTD

Duke’s Court, Duke Street, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5BH T: 01483 733 900 F: 01483 733901 W: www.mks.com/uk C: Lara Sparkes, Marketing Manager E: lara.sparkes@mks.com Founded in 1984, MKS’s ALM solution and its single architecture, drives high levels of user productivity, facilitates rapid deployment, issue management and process standardisation while delivering a complete view of application development activity through real-time metrics, trends and reporting.

Customer Service & Call Centre Solutions CUSTOMER SERVICE NETWORK

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Creative Industries Centre, Wolverhampton Science Park, Wolverhampton, WV10 9TG T: 01902 311641 F: 01902 311637 W: www.customernet.com C: Chris Walker E: chrisw@customernet.com Customer Service Network are experts in Customer and Employee perception measurement. We work with many of the UK’s leading names to help them better understand what their customers and people want. Contact us to find out how we can help.

VitAL : January / February 2008

EGAIN COMMUNICATIONS

ICCM SOLUTIONS

258 Bath Road, Slough, Berkshire, SL1 4DX T: +44 (0) 1753 464646 F: +44 (0) 1753 464647 W: www.egain.com E: ukinfo@egain.com eGain is a leading provider of customer service and contact centre software.

Over 800 enterprise customers worldwide have relied on eGain to transform their traditional call centres, help desks and web customer service operations into multichannel customer interaction hubs.

Unit 4 Charlton Business Park, Crudwell Road, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, SN16 9RU T: + 44 (0) 1666 828 600 F: + 44 (0) 1666 826103 W: www.iccm.co.uk C: Jessica Yeung E: info@iccm.co.uk ICCM supply Service software solutions & ITIL V2 & V3 training and consultancy to over 400 global clients in both the private and public sector. e-Service Desk is PinkVerify™ Service Support Enhanced, proving compatibility and pedigree for organisations seeking to align their business with industry best practice.

General Training UKCMG

Suite A1, Kebbell House, Carpenders Park, Watford. WD19 5BE T: + 44 (0) 20 8421 5330 F: + 44 (0) 20 8421 5457 W: www.ukcmg.org.uk C: Laura Goss, UKCMG Secretariat E: ukcmg@ukcmg.org.uk UKCMG is an independent, non-profit, user group organisation targeted at improving members’ knowledge, skills and abilities in Capacity Management and related IT service management disciplines.

We achieve this through a combination of events including, a three-day Annual Conference and networking between endusers, consultants & suppliers

Helpdesk Internal/External IBERTEK

Venture House, Arlington Square, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1WA T: F: W: C: E:

01344 742835 01344 742935 www.ibertek.com Nigel Todd Nigel.todd@ibertek.com

IBERTEK specialises in delivering successful ITIL compatible Service Management and complimentary Solutions to organisations of all sizes in all ranges of vertical markets.

Industry body IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT FORUM

150 Wharfedale Road, Winnersh Triangle, Wokingham, Berkshire. RG41 5RG T: 0118 918 6503 F: 0118 969 9749 W: www.itsmf.co.uk C: Ben Clacy E: ben.clacy@itsmf.co.uk The itSMF is the only internationally recognised and independent organisation whose sole focus is on the on-going development and promotion of IT Service Management ’best practice‘, standards and qualifications.

The forum has 14,000 UK members and official itSMF chapters in 44 countries.

IT Asset Management BMC SOFTWARE

Assurance House, Vicarage Road, Egham, Surrey. TW20 9JY T: +44 (0) 1784 478 000 F: +44 (0) 1784 430 581 W: www.bmc.com/uk C: Michelle Sunnick E: michelle_sunnick@bmc.com BMC Software is a leading global provider of enterprise management solutions that empower companies to automate their IT and increase its business value. Delivering Business Service Management, BMC solutions span enterprise systems, applications, databases and service management.

DIRECTORY

IT Service Management Systems EMC

Tower, Great West Road, Brentford, TW8 9AN, UK T: +44 (0)208 758 6750 F: +44 (0)208 758 6751 W: http://uk.emc.com/smarts/itil C: Suhela Dighe, Marketing Director E: EMCsmartsEMEA@emc.com As part of EMC’s Resource Management solutions, EMC Smarts for ITIL process automation and CMDB strategy empower customers to roll out their ITIL initiatives with minimum risk, automatically populate their CMDB with real-time information on Network, Server and Application resources.

Your VitAL Magazine News Views Strategy Management Case studies and Opinion pieces

To advertise in VitAL contact Grant Farrell on +44 (0) 208 316 8002

Inspiration for the modern business

vital-mag.net

EPICOR

IXIF LIMITED

: 1 The Arena, Downshire Way, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG21 1PU T: 0800 3161155 F: 01344 468020 W: www.epicor.com C: Rachel Barber-Kebby E: Euromarketing@epicor.com With over 20 years experience and 15,000 customers, Epicor is a leading provider of ITSM Solutions.

Epicor ITSM provides a robust set of service management features that supports the key IT processes outlined by the ITIL.

Connect House, 21 Willow Lane, Mitcham, Surrey, CR4 4NA

FRONTRANGE SOLUTIONS

HORNBILL SYSTEMS

T: F: W: C: E:

020 8274 3359 020 8274 3393 www.ixif.net Royston Adamson-Green rag@ixif.net

IXIF’s MidGuard is a critical component within the ITIL framework Best Practice for Service Delivery and Service Level Agreement reporting.

IXIF is also a Jacarta Platinum Reseller for environmental monitoring products, essential for lowering your carbon footprint in the Datacentre.

™

100 Longwater Avenue, GreenPark, Reading, RG2 6GP T: +44 (0)870 401 7300 F: +44 (0)870 401 7301 W: www.frontrange.co.uk C: Kirsty Waller E: Kirsty.waller@frontrange.com With over 8500 customers worldwide, FrontRange are the leading provider of consolidated IT Service solutions, including: • HEAT Service & Support – Award-winning Incident Management & Helpdesk Automation • FrontRange ITSM – Fully integrated, scalable, ITIL aligned IT Service & Infrastructure Management.

INFRA CORPORATION

Connaught House, Portsmouth Road, Send, Surrey GU23 7JY T: +44 (0) 148 321 3200 F: +44 (0) 148 321 3201 W: www.infra.co.uk C: Lindsay Potter E: Lindsay.potter@infra.co.ukm Infra is the international developer of 100% web-based ITSM solution infraEnterprise - including Incident, Problem, Change, Configuration, Release, Availability and Service Level Management. infraEnterprise supports industry best practice methodology such as ITIL and KCS, delivering best value for comparative depth of functionality.

Ares, Odyssey Business Park, West End Road, Ruislip, HA4 6QD T: 020 8582 8282 F: 020 8582 8288 W: www.hornbill.com C: Sales E: info@hornbill.com Supportworks’ Enterprise Support Platform (ESP) provides a fully integrated platform for automating and managing Service Management related processes.

Supportworks ESP is the foundation of Hornbill’s ITIL, Helpdesk, Customer, HR and Industry Support solutions.

Supportworks ITSM is certified Pink Verify Enhanced.

IT Service Management Consultants ICORE

60 Lombard Street, London. EC3V 9EA T: +44 (0) 207 464 8414 F: +44 (0) 207 464 8888 W: www.icore-ltd.com C: Jane Tweddle – iCore Sales & Marketing Director E: info@icore-ltd.com The UK’s largest independent service management consultancy, this year iCore celebrates ten years in operation. Our services include maturity assessment, process design and development, service improvement and more. iCore has consultants who are fully qualified in ITIL, COBIT, ISO20000 and PRINCE2.

January / February 2008 : VitAL

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IT Service Management Consultants PINK ELEPHANT

Atlantic House, Imperial Way, Reading. RG2 0TD T: F: W: C: E:

+ 44 (0) 118 903 6824 + 44 (0) 118 903 6282 www.pinkelephant.com Frances Fenn info.emea@pinkelephant.com

Acknowledged worldwide as niche, independent, IT Service Management Education and Consulting providers.

Having trained more people than any other company in ITIL related subjects since 1987, we have contributed to all 3 versions of the ITIL books.

G2G3

Panama House, 14 The High Street, Lasswade, EH18 1ND T: + 44 (0) 131 461 3333 F: + 44 (0) 131 663 8934 W: www.g2g3.com C: David Arrowsmith E: info@g2g3.com

Lewes Enterprise Centre, 112 Malling St, Lewes, E Sussex, BN7 2RJ

G2G3 is the leading provider of communication tools, gaming solutions and simulations that propel enterprise IT and business alignment. Headquartered in the UK, G2G3 has a strong global network of partners supporting the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

STI has been presenting Helpdesk courses since 1989. They are the longest established in the UK and probably Europe. We present at 7 UK public venues and frequently on-site. We are also an Authorised Training Partner for Help Desk Institute.

WARDOWN CONSULTING

TOUCHPAPER SOFTWARE

Prudence Place, Proctor Way, Luton, Bedfordshire. LU2 9PE

Dukes Court, Duke Street, Woking, Surrey GU21 5RT T: +44 (0) 1483 744444 F: +44(0) 1483 744401 W: www.touchpaper.com C: Louisa Maguire E: intouch@touchpaper.com With over 20 years’ experience, Touchpaper is one of the most established international providers of IT Business Management (ITBM) solutions (covering IT Service Management, Customer Service Solutions and Network & Systems Management). Touchpaper serves 1,800 customers and 3 million users.

T: F: W: C: E:

01582 488242 01582 488343 www.wardownconsulting.co.uk Rosemary Gurney rosemary.gurney@wardownconsulting.co.uk

Wardown Consulting was established to help businesses capitalise from the substantial benefits that IT Service Management can deliver. Our consultants boast a wealth of industry experience and are accredited to deliver ITIL v2 and v3 training.

IT Service Management Consulting Training CONNECTSPHERE

IT Support Training STI

IT Service Management Systems NETSUPPORT SOFTWARE

T: F: W: C: E:

01273 890922 01273 890513 www.sti-ltd.co.uk John Fahey enquiries@sti-ltd.co.uk

Publications, Events, Conferences CUSTOMER MAGAZINE

Media House, 16 Rippolson Road, London, SE18 1NS T: +44 (0) 208 316 8002 F: +44 (0) 208 316 5233 W: www.31media.net C: Grant Farrell E: grant.farrell@31media.net Customer is a UK based magazine for senior proffeisonals who are committed to ensuring their businesses are totally customer centric. With a pragmatic eidtorial approach Cusitomer aims to bring

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Business and Technology Centre, Bessemer Drive, Stevenage, Hertfordshire SG1 2DX T: +44 (0)845 838 2345 F: +44 (0) 845 838 2346 W: www.connectsphere.com C: Shirley Lacy E: shirley.lacy@connectsphere.com ConnectSphere has a great track record in delivering in successful service improvement programmes that deliver value. Let ConnectSphere help you to plan and apply ISO 20000 and ITIL service management practices using our assessment, consultancy, implementation and training services.

VitAL : January / February 2008

Towngate East, Market Deeping, Peterborough, PE6 8NE T: +44 (0) 1778 382270 F: +44 (0) 1778 382280 W: www.netsupportsoftware.co.uk C: Neil McLenahan E: neil@netsupportsoftware.co.uk NetSupport are developers of desktop management and remote control software packages. The product range comprises NetSupport Manager Remote Control, NetSupport DNA Helpdesk (providing a web-based ITIL-compliant helpdesk), NetSupport DNA Asset Management Suite and NetSupport Protect desktop security and recovery.

clarity and vision to a sector that has become increasingly complex.

Published six times per year and distributed to over 10,000 managers and directors Customer is The Publication for any individual or business that wishes to understand how to align themselves so they can deliver a complete customer experience.

DIRECTORY

VITAL FOCUS GROUPS

Advertiser index

ISEB

Customer Magazine.......................11 Media House, 16 Rippolson Road, London, SE18 1NS T: +44 (0) 208 316 8002 F: +44 (0) 208 316 5233 W: www.31media.net C: Grant Farrell E: grant.farrell@31media.net The VitAL Focus Groups are peer to peer discussion forums that take place at regular intervals throughout the year and provide a solid platform for senior IT professionals to discuss,

Block D, North Star House, North Star Avenue, Swindon. SN2 1FA T: +44 (0) 1793 417530 F: +44 (0) 1793 417570 W: www.iseb-exams.com C: Stephen Daniels E: Qualsmarketing@hq.bcs.org.uk ISEB is a worldwide IT exam body.

ISEB have provided 165,000 exams in the last 3 years to IT Professionals worldwide, covering eight major subject areas including ITIL, Software Testing, Business Analysis, Project Management, Systems Development and IT Law.

Recruitment BALE IT SERVICES

debate, and hopefully resolve some

and is facilitated by a leading industry supplier who lends their expertise to assist in the discussions. Supported by VitAL Magazine, the leading industry publication, the Focus Groups are a ‘must attend’ for any professional that is serious about IT.

Qualifications and Accreditations AIM ACADEMY

Station House, Stamford New Road, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA14 1EP T: 0161 942 2121 F: 0161 941 4873 W: www.aimacademy.com C: Paul Flanagan E: paul.flanagan@aimacademy.com Aim Academy specialises in accredited training in: Prince2, ITIL, APMP, MSP. We are committed to offering the highest quality end to end service with courses delivered by experienced practitioners. Whatever your needs we can make your learning enjoyable and successful.

EMC..................................................27 Epicor...............................................36 FrontRange Solutions ....................29 G2G3................................................47 Gartner............................................53 Hornbill.................Inside Front Cover Ibertek .............................................09 ICCM.................................................45 iCore.................................................14

of their key challenges. Each session is held at a prestigious London venue

eGain ..................Outside Back Cover

Wincombe Business Centre, Shaftesbury, Dorset. SP7 9QJ

Infra..................................................24

T: F: W: C: E:

ISEB..................................................19

01747 855607 01747 853579 www.baleit.co.uk Dan Jenkins dan.jenkins@baleit.co.uk

We specialise in your IT Service Management Permanent and Contract recruitment requirements. We have distinctive differentiators for both Candidates and Clients alike setting us apart from other agencies. Please contact us now to discuss your requirements.

itSMF......................Inside Back Cover Pink Elephant..................................06 Subscriptions..................................02 UKCMG ............................................57 Wardown Consulting.....................04

Your VitAL Magazine News, Views, Strategy Management Case studies and Opinion pieces To advertise in VitAL contact Grant Farrell on +44 (0) 208 316 8002

Inspiration for the modern business

vital-mag.net January / February 2008 : VitAL

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VITAL ENDING – THE LAST WORD FOR INFORMATION

IN THIS new column, Glyn will set out some of the things that we ought to be thinking about but don’t always remember to address or,

even when we remember, they tend to go to the bottom of the ‘to do’ list, or maybe, there is no crisis to bring them to the fore. Perhaps it would be worth elevating some thoughts to the ‘gets done’ list on occasions and get value from them. Hence the name of the column, because it is vital that everything gets dealt with in the end.

Data or intelligence – you choose Glyn Yarnall says let others in on the process to find what they need

A

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S A marketing consultant, I’m expected to deliver solutions to meet the insatiable needs of a hungry sales team.

When I first check out the situation, I am often surprised at the number of sites where information is seen as ‘incidental’ data scattered across laptops, PDAs and, of course, in people’s heads.

No problem you may think, they have something approaching a CRM system, don’t they? The truth is that’s not always the case and, even if one exists, it rarely performs at 100% of its original expectations. Add to this the fact that pay back on such an investment is measured over years and you begin to wonder what the fuss was all about.

So why don’t we find other ways to make our data work harder for a living? One reason – or

VitAL : January / February 2008

is that excuse – often cited is that, in a world where changes are rapid and frequent, focus can be given to the more measurable financial aspects, leaving the less tangible customer and market data to languish. By contrast, from a marketer’s perspective, it seems frustrating that I.T. can’t respond to our very reasonable requests for market intelligence on ‘What sectors tend to buy product A combined with product B?’ or ‘What’s the average sales cycle from enquiry to order?’ OK, maybe there’s a bit of techie work needed but how difficult can it be?

Joking aside, this is where you can make a difference without spending a year’s I.T. budget pampering to the whims of the sales force. If you want to win a few brownie points with the Board, then get the sales and marketing guys

together and ask what would make their daily grind easier. By capturing their comments, you can then prioritise and grade their ‘wish list’ based on cost and effort, combined with the perceived benefit and reach. A feature that only one salesperson would use, taking six months and £50,000 to implement will score lower than one that helps the whole sales team and can be introduced in weeks at minimal expense.

It’s a short step from here to generating a short, cheap piece of analysis that will go on to influence anything from new product development to end of life, marketing strategies to sales campaigns. And even though it’s not your full blown CRM solution, who knows, you may find the odd marketer who appreciates your team after all.

x ~{ { x{ | ~{ { x{ The only internationally recognised and independent organisation dedicated to IT Service Management. It is a non-profit-making organisation wholly owned and principally operated by the members. itSMF is global with chapters around the world, giving members access to a network of industry experts and peers all ready to exchange ideas and experiences to avoid duplicating mistakes and improve service management.

Regular regional meetings and an Annual Conference & Exhibition plus web-based facilities combine to provide a rich and rewarding learning experience. Plus there are huge savings to be made when purchasing best practice materials.

The itSMF benefits IT service professionals at all levels within an organisation. It provides the latest industry information, facilitates knowledge sharing and helps members during every phase of the IT

helping develop & promote best practice & standards in IT Service Management

Tel: +44 (0) 118 918 6500 Fax: +44 (0) 118 969 9749 Or visit our website

www.itsmf.co.uk

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As a result of this in-depth assessment you will receive an external view of what can be achieved in a particular division of your business including the quick wins, high level implementation estimates and an outline business case.