VitAL Magazine - January-February 2010

E T IN NE NL .

O AG L M tA LVi tA T .Vi SI VI WW W AT

vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 3 : Issue 3 : January / February 2010

What’s in store for IT service management Andy Ross’s predictions for 2010

Managing the massive Getting to grips with large IT projects

Achieving carbon peace of mind IT and the green agenda

FEATURE FOCUS: IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: 32-35

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leader

The old ‘green shoots’ cliché Leader Y

es it’s a cliché, but wouldn’t it be appropriate as we head towards spring to see the green shoots (to – perhaps tempting fate – use John Major’s much derided phrase) of a recovery. Unemployment figures were down for the first time since the onset of this recession yesterday and it’s expected that the next set of economic results will show growth.

Despite the good news, the economy will still be in a deep black hole courtesy of the banking industry and its massive bail-out package kindly donated by you and I, the tax-payer. So no surprises then that my, none too wild, speculation last summer that the Government would look to IT for public sector savings appears to be coming true. Lots of ‘painless, change the technology but don’t make anyone redundant’, win-win-type savings at that!

Late last year the Conservatives, evidently smelling blood, or at least seeing an area where they could trump the Government, leaked a report detailing how massive savings can be made through various Web 2.0 initiatives (full details in the News section on page 6): cloud computing, private (I’m not sure if ‘private’ is the correct term in the public sector) cloud, virtualisation etc.

The Conservatives potentially laudable reaction to the report was to state that it plans to get the IT community more involved in coming up with a better plan, claiming that the Government plans are not ambitious enough. The official line from the Cabinet Office is that the report is “still a work in progress” and that it would be published shortly. I await its publication with interest.

I suspect the powers that be have been keeping a beady eye on these technologies for some time. The minister responsible, Andrew Miller, did seem to be well clued-up on the virtues and potential of the cloud back in the summer, which is as it should be of course. Although the full report has not yet been published as VitAL goes to press, the initiatives mooted do seem to be a step in the right direction, if perhaps the inevitable result of advancing technology.

Anyway, the combined effect of all this has been to put me in an optimistic frame of mind for the new decade, long may it continue...

Service management training in particular, becomes vitally

important in tough economic times

because it will be

those operations that can adapt quickest to changing circumstances Matt Bailey, Editor

that will be strong enough to survive, and even thrive, under the present economic

If you have any thoughts, feedback, or suggestions on how we can improve VitAL Magazine, please feel free to email me matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk

climate.

www.vital-mag.net

January / February 2010 : VitAL 1

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vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 3 : Issue 2 : November / December 2009

The future is in their hands What the ‘realtime generation’ thinks of IT

Volume 3 : Issue 2 : November/December 2009

Courting disaster

A healthy reliance on ITSM

Are we just paying lip service to DR?

Taking the temperature of IT in healthcare

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contents

vital Inspiration for the modern business

E T IN NE NL .

O AG L M tA LVi tA T .Vi SI VI WW W AT

vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 3 : Issue 3 : January / February 2010

What’s in store for IT service management

Contents 6 News The VitAL Cover Story

8 Predicting the future – assessing the past andy ross Andy Ross takes a look back at the challenges faced by IT managed services in 2009 and assesses the prospects for the sector and predictions for the market in 2010.

Andy Ross’s predictions for 2010

Managing the massive Getting to grips with large IT projects

Achieving carbon peace of mind IT and the green agenda

FEATURE FOCUS: IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: 32-35

Editor Matthew Bailey matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4599 To advertise contact: Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4598

VitAL Signs – Life in a world with IT

11 Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt Steve White When real life starts to imitate IT.

VitAL management

12 Whom does the cloud serve?

Dom Monkhouse

What IT service professionals need to consider to make cloud computing a viable option.

Production & Design Toni Barrington toni.barrington@31media.co.uk Dean Cook dean.cook@31media.co.uk Editorial & Advertising Enquiries 31 Media Limited, Media House 16 Rippolson Road, London SE18 1NS Tel: +44 (0) 870 863 6930 Fax: +44 (0) 870 085 8837 Email: info@31media.co.uk Web: www.vital-mag.net

16 Managing the massive

Printed by Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood. NP12 2YA © 2010 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.

ISSN 1755-6465 Published by:

20 Creating a global standard for IT knowledge, service, and execution

Ivan Lloyd

‘Technology tunnel vision’ is what happens when there is a desire to implement a particular technology as opposed to aligning to business objectives. How do you manage these issues and processes during large scale IT projects?

How the world’s largest privately held commercial real estate firm, Cushman & Wakefield tackled the challenge of switching to a consolidated service desk.

22 Avoiding the World Cup nightmare Nigel Hawthorne

Timely advice on how to avoid network infrastructure meltdown when the staff start watching the World Cup with live on-line video streaming over your network this summer.

26 Engaging the bored board Michelle Major-Goldsmith and David Stephens VitAL Magazine, Proud to be the UKCMG’s Official Publication ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark, and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Why is it so difficult to sell service management and the ITIL framework?

Surely it’s just common sense?

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.

For a FREE annual subscription to VitAL Magazine please visit: www.vital-mag.net/subscribe January / February 2010 : VitAL 3

Transform Your Customers‘ In today’s highly connected world, Journey good customer support is just not enough; and one customer experience has the power to affect many others.

S e r v i c e va l u e M a n a g e M e n t

SM

Customer Service as a Profit Center Sm

Traditional Customer Support Profit Centers

Transform from traditional customer support to customer ser vice and from cost centers to profit centers.

Customer Service Cost Centers

At Kepner-Tregoe (KT), we take a holistic approach to creating business value by making service a direct, profound driver of revenue and profit.

Service Value Management (SVM) is about transforming the customer experience. By staying engaged with you from the project start through to your value realisation, we aim to: • Maximise your customer loyalty • Increase your customer satisfaction • Decrease your support costs • Reduce your risks R A P I D R E S U L T S . L A S T I N G VA L U E .

To SEE how wE cAN IMPRoVE yoUR cUSToMERS joURNEy c A L L U S T o D Ay o N + 4 4 1 6 2 8 7 7 8 7 7 6 oR F o R M o R E I N F o R M A T I o N , V I S I T: w w w . K E P N E R - T R E G o E . c o M / S E R V I c E VA L U E /

COntents

Contents VitAL eyes on

29 Open source server-based databases – a viable economic choice?

47 ITSM: Experiential learning explained through Confucius Derek Elphick You don’t learn to ride a bike by reading the instructions booklet do you? This is exactly the principle of Experiential Learning in delivering ITIL-related awareness and training. Confucius would have approved!

Jonathan Westlake The choice of server-based databases has never been so interesting! As a champion of the open source movement Jonathan Westlake continually speculates about the open source database market, and 2009 was particularly rich with events.

30 Healthy service Matt Bailey As project CLIO aligns all IT services at global healthy food brand Danone, IS manager Aurelian Sin and InfraVision project manager Martijn Adams discuss the project’s many benefits.

32 ITSM leads the way in the public sector Patrick Bolger

The financial crisis in the public sector has highlighted how best practice and innovative use of ITSM tools are helping managers to find creative ways to reduce cost. How is Government policy is driving investment in the public sector?

50 Does service really matter?

Brenda Iniguez Why service matters more than ever in these tough economic times.

VitAL drive – it hits the fairway

53 It is amazing how technology can surprise you Geraint Lewis First your phone was a watch and now your watch is a phone.

Geraint Lewis hails the return of a lost classic and pines for a dummy wah-wah pedal.

54 Putting the user at the centre of things Hammad Khan A strategy that puts the user in control, at the centre of things is the principal benefit of a user-centred approach.

VitAL processes

36 Social network security Simon Morris How do you manage the security issues social networking brings to business and if a company decides to stop staff using social networking how can it monitor this and avoid security breaches?

40 One system to rule them all Phil Van Etten Many IT organisations are waking up to the potential of unified communications – a strategic initiative with many benefits.

44 TUSBs: An employee’s dream – IT’s worst nightmare John Jefferis Avoiding USB risk exposure – how to define and enforce an effective USB security strategy.

VitAL planet

58 The green agenda – Achieving carbon peace of mind Chris Gabriel The introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment has put ‘green’ back on the agenda. But, a lowcarbon outlook can also bring efficiency and financial benefits.

64 Secret of my success This issue we grill software entrepreneur Stephen Clarke, managing director of Truancy Call.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 5

news

Public sector reaches for the cloud Matt Bailey reports

B

ac k i n S e p t e m b e r I suggested that the Government was looking to cloud computing (among other initiatives) to deliver the double whammy of massively reducing cost while also cutting down its carbon footprint, following an event at the House of Commons: Shared Vision For Smarter Services, chaired by VitAL contributor and chief executive of green IT charity Global Action Plan, Trewin Restorick.

Late last year my suspicions were confirmed when a draft document was leaked by the opposition that details how the government could cut billions from its IT budget each year.

According to the report, the savings and efficiencies will be realised by implementing a number of IT-based solutions.

Firstly the report proposes a unified communications-type initiative, the Public Sector

Network (PSN), a single telecoms infrastructure that will provide converged voice and data communications.

The report also introduces the G-Cloud, a cloud infrastructure allowing public sector bodies to host their IT systems on a central, efficient data centre.

According to the report, the G-Cloud will play a key role in realising the £3.2bn savings that the government’s Operational Efficiency Programme said can be achieved by improving the efficiency and sharing of back office IT systems.

Taking a leaf out of Steve Jobs’ book, the report proposes a Government Application Store (G-AS), an online portal allowing public sector organisations access to business applications

and services. The G-Cloud and more efficient server technology will allow the number of data centres being used in the public sector to be cut from hundreds to just 10 - 12, the report says.

All public sector bodies will be provided with a common design for desktop and software, which suppliers will be required to provide at the lowest price available. The report says this will provide significant economies of scale and better information security. It estimates that once implemented across the public sector, this will deliver a saving of £400m per year A spokesman for the Cabinet Office was reported as saying the report was “still a work in progress” and that it would be published shortly.

New mentors for ITIL update

T

he update to the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Version 3

by The Stationery Office (TSO) is gathering pace with the appointment of the four ‘mentors’ for the project. David Wheeldon, Colin Rudd, Shirley Lacy and Ashley Hanna are now working alongside publisher TSO in their new roles in the ITIL update.

According to TSO, the task of the mentors is to coach, advise and review the work of the authors updating the five core ITIL publications and the ‘Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle’.

Wheeldon is mentoring the authors working on the ITIL volumes ‘Service Strategy’ and ‘Continual Service Improvement’. He was author himself of several of the original ITIL Version 1 books, joint author of the Version 2 ‘Service Delivery’ publication and joint author of the current Version 3 ‘Service Operation’ book.

Rudd takes on the role of mentoring the authors updating the remaining three core ITIL volumes: ‘Service Design’, ‘Service Transition’ and ‘Service Operation’. Director of IT Enterprise Management Services, Rudd was co-author of the ITIL Version 3 ‘Service Design’

6 VitAL : January / February 2010

publication and has delivered IT service management (ITSM) training and consultancy worldwide.

Lacy becomes the project mentor, in an overarching role to ensure consistency throughout the books. She will also directly mentor the author of the ‘Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle’ update.

Managing director of ConnectSphere, Lacy was co-author of the ITIL Version 3 ‘Service Transition’ book and she has been an active contributor to the development of international standards.

As technical continuity editor, Hanna will mainly be responsible for ensuring the correctness and consistency of diagrams and definitions throughout ITIL. Hanna will therefore not only liaise with the authors but will also work with the TSO editorial, production and graphic design staff. Hanna contributed as an author to ITIL Version 2 and was co-author of the ITIL Version 3 ‘Glossary of Terms, Definitions and Acronyms’.

The new, updated editions of all the ITIL Version 3 core publications will be released in early 2011. There are no current plans for ITIL Version 4 according to TSO. “Choosing the right mentors for this project was a vital task,” says Janine Eves, OGC contract manager and publisher at TSO. “We needed to find people with experience and understanding of the ITIL materials to date, as well as knowledge of the ITIL community and environment. As such, we are delighted to welcome David, Colin, Shirley and Ashley into their new roles. In each case, there needs to be a strong relationship between the mentor and the author. The mentor is there to support, motivate and encourage, as well as asking questions and providing insights. This update process will help to ensure that TSO’s core ITIL Version 3 publications continue to offer the highest quality guidance for ITSM.”

www.vital-mag.net

news

Do you have any monitors to donate?

C

omputer Aid International says it is currently extremely short of monitors. It needs and will reuse both CRT (old style monitors) that are either 15” or 17” and TFT (flat screen) monitors that were manufactured from the year 2002.

Computer Aid International is a UK registered charity that aims to reduce poverty through practical ICT solutions. It provides only the highest quality, professionally refurbished computers for reuse in education, health and not-for-profit organisations in developing countries.

At Computer Aid’s London workshop the charity data-wipes, tests and professionally refurbishes donated computers and laptops from UK organisations and individuals.

To date it has provided over 150,000 PCs to where they are most needed in more than 100 countries across Africa and South America, making it the world’s largest and most experienced ICT for development provider.

For information on donating individual donations of monitors please go to: www.computeraid.org/individual-donations.asp.

And for information on business donations please go to: www.computeraid.org/donation-form.asp

Cost-effective training for a new economic climate F

ocus on Training has announced its schedule of professional training courses for 2010. The emphasis is on business-critical skill sets which will enable organisations to survive the challenging economic climate – and includes the first accredited course in Green IT. The Green IT course is new for 2010, and leads to a qualification from the British Computer Society. It explains how IT can help reduce the carbon footprint of an organisation.

In total there are 8,000 Project Management and IT course options to choose from.

According to Focus on Training there is strong interest in courses which help organisations cope with change, and deliver project benefits more effectively. Attention is shifting from PRINCE2® project methodology training to courses which instill personal skills – such as Change Management and the accredited training from the Association for Project Management.

Making training affordable is another key theme for 2010. Development director, Rex Gibson explains. “We reduced the cost of training both by introducing additional

venues to avoid travel and hotel costs – and through the launch of on-line learning options.

A good example is IT service management training, ITIL, where we now train in 30 cities from Exeter to Aberdeen, and where we will be launching new online learning options in January.” www.focus-on-training.co.uk

Government “in a time warp” on broadband A

ccessibility to good broadband remains a luxury – rather than the necessity it has to be – for the UK’s army of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up to 97 percent of the British economy according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). SMEs – particularly those located in rural areas – are still finding their ambitions to build their businesses severely hampered by the inaccessibility of high-speed, low contention broadband. The Government recently announced that it would come to the rescue of businesses without broadband www.vital-mag.net

with a commitment to provide a universal broadband service with speeds of up to 2Mbps by 2012.

However, the FSB has lambasted these government plans for lacking ambition and being in a ‘time warp’. “More than half of small businesses rely on the Internet for up to 50 percent of their annual turnover, yet simple tasks such as emailing, marketing, buying and selling are time-consuming because their broadband speeds are letting them down,” comments John Wright, national chairman of the FSB. “The reality is that the plans to increase broadband speeds do

not go anywhere near far enough,” adds Mark Seemann, Director at communications and hosted IT provider Outsourcery. “The aim is essentially to tinker with the broadband speed rather than solving the underlying issue which is that the UK is using arcane technology. The nation’s copper infrastructure desperately needs to be upgraded to fibre optic in order to satisfy businesses requirements for today and in the future.”

A broadband infrastructure dependent on copper wires will not push much past speeds of 50Mbps – even with the latest broadband technology – while

a purely fibre optic infrastructure can reach speeds of 100 Mbps per customer, rising to 1GB. This allows for the most advanced business applications, such as high definition video conferencing and streaming complex software over the Internet – two increasingly important business tools that can be problematic with low broadband speed.

“All that we need now is for UK plc to get on with the job of providing the broadband infrastructure which is vital for our nation’s competitiveness in an increasingly tough global market place,” concludes Seemann.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 7

cover story

Predicting the future – assessing the past Andy Ross, CEO of Northgate Managed Services, takes a retrospective look at the challenges faced by IT managed services in 2009 and the prospects for the sector and predictions for the market in 2010.

8 VitAL : January / February 2010

www.vital-mag.net

cover story

A

s the economic downturn continues to drive a reduction in discretionary spend across UK businesses, we have seen a significant shift away from the use of IT for organisational transformation and innovation, to the greater need to improve efficiency and cut costs. The shortage of capital has resulted in large-scale projects which would usually account for up to 20 percent additional spend on top of annual service agreements, being replaced with strategies to support and extend the shelflife of existing IT infrastructure.

Changing customer needs In order to survive and grow in these budgetconscious times, the ability to adapt to the changing needs of clients and deliver real business value has become paramount.

Customers now expect to get lots more for much less when considering IT investments and IT outsourcing.

IT service providers that have retained market position and experienced success throughout 2009 have been those that have planned well for this shift and demonstrated high levels of flexibility to clients without compromising on quality. As every company assesses its operational costs and expenditure, providers have had to tailor IT solutions to meet individual budgets and objectives – from the simple provision of IT consultancy and guidance or implementation of one-off projects, to the complete outsourcing of IT requirements as part of a managed service.

Value-added services Managed service providers should always evaluate a company’s existing IT resources and how they can be improved as a first step before recommending new solutions. However, in this economic climate, the first and most important priority is generating cost savings. Value-added services such as lifecycle management for desktop resources, application support, and hardware maintenance and repair solutions offer real business value and are becoming a first port-of-call over an IT overhaul for the majority of UK companies, but these often need to be funded from immediate and cashable savings. Managed print solutions are also becoming increasingly popular.

Without proper management and monitoring, a company’s daily ‘print run’ and inefficient use www.vital-mag.net

of printers and copiers can have a big impact on budget, security and the environment.

Managed print solutions help companies use their assets more intelligently and efficiently, putting an end to unpredictable print costs.

It is also popular as a way to prevent leaks of important information to competitors or into the public domain, which could have dramatic financial, legal or HR repercussions for business during tough times.

Flexible working environments A key trend we have seen throughout 2009 is the move towards a flexible working environment to help increase productivity and efficiency, as well as to minimise operational overheads. Staff are no longer chained to their desk in an office. In fact, businesses are encouraging employees to spend more time working at home – reducing travel time, reducing carbon emissions and taking the often stressful commute out of employees’ daily routine. This has resulted in a rising demand for the ‘office desk experience’ at home setup for staff, including secure, reliable infrastructure and communications platforms and 24/7 on-site and remote support.

Across the majority of the industry, there is now an increased requirement for ondemand solutions, from hosted data centres and Software as a Service (SaaS), to pay-as-you-go access to technical staff in the bid to reduce support costs.

The uptake of technologies such as Voice over IP (VoIP), converged networks, wireless technologies, and video conferencing has steadily increased and many of our clients are now looking at the cloud to take advantage of its flexibility in terms of deployment and low investment risks.

There is still a strong commitment from UK organisations to reducing their carbon footprint; however, over the past 18-months or so, the use of virtual technologies to reduce travel and energy consumption has primarily been driven by saving money.

We have seen a significant shift away from the use of IT for organisational transformation and innovation, to the greater need to improve efficiency and cut costs.

The shortage of capital has resulted in largescale projects which would usually account for up to 20 percent additional spend on top of annual service agreements, being replaced with strategies to support and extend the shelf-life of existing IT infrastructure.

Data security An increasing challenge for managed service providers is the responsibility for the security, resilience and integrity of organisational data and providing that guarantee and reassurance to clients. Moving from an environment where a company has complete control of its data January / February 2010 : VitAL 9

cover story

This year has also seen a continuing trend in public sector procurements becoming longer and more complex. The cost of progressing to tender has risen through the increasing use of the Competitive Dialogue procurement process, leaving many smaller providers unable to compete.

10 VitAL : January / February 2010

and processes, to an outsourced environment where it is being managed and processed by someone else, requires modifications to management processes to ensure consistency for data security throughout an organisation.

The impact of data loss on companies – operational, financial and reputational, means that the security and protection of company data is becoming one of the highest priorities for many organisations.

Client contracts The recession has brought with it a significant change in the customer-supplier dynamic, and many customers, even those that have long-term outsourcing contracts, are looking to their managed service providers to flex services and reduce costs and charges. It is important now more than ever, that providers continue to assess every IT option available to help businesses save money and become an intrinsic part of their clients’ move towards increased efficiency. It is no good waiting until contract renewal stage to suggest new ways of working, the industry has become more competitive so providers must continually innovate and pass on cost savings to customers. A major element of this success is a managed service provider’s supply chain.

Providers that have been most successful this year are those that have built long-term strategic partnerships over the years with selected suppliers to ensure that customers continue to benefit from robust technology and a competitive price. It is also important that providers take an agnostic approach to supplier management to ensure they are not pigeonholed by a particular brand or costing structure.

This year has also seen a continuing trend in public sector procurements becoming longer and more complex. The cost of progressing to tender has risen through the increasing use of the Competitive Dialogue procurement process, leaving many smaller providers unable to compete.

In order to compete in the current marketplace, it has also become important to implement innovative financing approaches offering more flexible payment options and allowing clients to turn traditional capex items into opex. As is commonplace in the market nowadays, we allow customers to benefit from their solution straight away with payment spread over an agreed period or even the life of the contract.

Increasingly we are using lease finance to allow customers to invest in new IT infrastructures without the hit of a large upfront investment.

Off-shore The recession is certainly driving customers to look offshore in a bid to cut costs. As a company with presence across the UK and with a centre of excellence in Northern Ireland, Northgate Managed Services offers a near shore alternative. To compete with offshore competitors, providers must continue to review the market and solutions to minimise costs – a challenge that smaller providers could struggle with in 2010.

In addition to delivering remote support, many of the infrastructure support services we provide to clients require us to be present thier sites – some of our SLAs require us to replace failed equipment within 15 minutes – and we just can’t do that from an offshore location.

A continued shortage of skilled IT professionals in the UK has provided further opportunities for offshore companies to pick up contracts.

Moving into 2010, we believe there needs to be a stronger commitment to tap into the huge talent pool that exists amongst 16-19 year olds across the UK. We as an industry need to start offering school leavers a direct route to employment so that they can develop a longterm career in the IT sector. By implementing our IT Apprenticeship scheme as an additional option to our existing graduate recruitment scheme, we are developing a qualified and talented workforce that will help us grow our business over the long term and allow us to remain price competitive. www.vital-mag.net

VitAL signs: Life in the world coverwith story IT

Successes in 2009 The current recession has had an impact on all areas of business and IT managed services certainly hasn’t escaped. That aside, some companies have had a challenging but successful year, maintaining high levels of service and client retention and growth.

As many forward-thinking businesses did, we anticipated the recession and implemented a robust plan based upon three key principles; to continue to deliver our commitments and value to clients; to protect the jobs of all permanent employees and to continue to deliver financial results to our shareholders. This focus and direction has been the lynchpin for the retention of all 15 major clients that came up for renewal in 2009.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt For Steve White, two recently running threads came together this month; and both are examples of real life imitating IT.

Looking to the future – 2010 In 2010, opportunities for IT managed service providers to implement and support virtualisation of their IT infrastructures and develop flexible and mobile working practices will continue to grow. The introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment in the UK and the need to reduce energy expenditure will drive further investment in greener technologies.

However, the main priority for customers will still be to achieve significant cost reduction.

Resilience, protection and security of data will continue to be an ongoing challenge for both businesses and providers, and will lead to an increase in projects to create the robust architectures and processes needed to offer the necessary levels of protection in an increasingly open and networked business world.

The increased complexity of procurement processes and client contracts could also see a marked increase in acquisitions and mergers of smaller suppliers, moving towards a more oligopolistic market. There is already a blurring between hardware and services companies and this trend is likely to continue.

The introduction of Next Generation Networks and the seemingly relentless move to doing business on and across the Internet will mean changes in 2010. This will lead to the need for better operational controls, and many organisations wanting to take advantage of the benefits of these networks and the Internet can deliver, will need to not only change their existing underlying telecoms infrastructures, but also have a complete re-think as to how their systems and applications are architected.

This is a major opportunity for managed service providers, and could lead to a completely new flavour of IT outsourcing service offerings. 2010 could just be the year when the Internet comes of age in the world of business. VitAL www.northgate-is.com/managedservices www.vital-mag.net

F

irstly I was ‘inundated’ with a letter following my recent article on ‘how to kill a company’ where I suggested that the recipe for the destruction of a company was silent data corruption in a core IT system which remained undetected for too long, and brought the company down. My correspondent pointed out that there is clear to see data corruption going on every day throughout companies and governments, the corrupting of good quality information from problem detectors toward the people who make the decisions; the removal of ‘bad news’ from upward reporting. My correspondent had been documenting in regular reports, through his manager to the CIO that there was a problem in a particular function in the IT department.

The CIO reigned with a climate of fear, and it was in no-one’s interest to tell the CIO the truth as the messenger would be ‘shot’. The line manager removed all traces of negative news from his report before forwarding it on, so as far as the CIO was concerned everything was fine, no big decisions were required and he could report upwards that there were no issues. When the issue became obvious, the time for inexpensive remedial action had passed.

This is, of course, one great big silent data corruption, and the only antidote is to require, as a senior manager, the exact opposite of data corruption. There’s one company where

the directive from the CEO was ‘tell me personally about bad news within 24 hours, or you’ll be fired’. Establishing a direct channel for bad news – the basic belief of accurate and timely reporting – into the culture of an organisation had a dramatic effect on the reduction of non-IT data corruption.

Secondly, being at a client site when breaking news about them hits the front pages is always interesting. This client was having a challenge with IT security – data was leaking out of the building. This came as little surprise to me. As a visitor to their site I was not given a visitor badge – I was expected to ‘draft’ through the building ‘security barriers’ after my contact had opened the gate (and up to three people could follow through behind someone with a badge, both in and out, without any challenge), badges were not worn by employees, car park security could be completely circumvented by arriving in the morning before security arrived – the list went on. The thin veneer of security was defeatable by a visitor with no malicious intent. The data corruption here is that when these flaws had been pointed out to ‘Security’ by conscientious staff, Security not only took no action, but did not even see the need to change their processes. Another of Mark Twain’s quotes is applicable here; “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”. VitAL January / February 2010 : VitAL 11

vital management

Whom does the cloud serve?

IT industry blogger Dominic Monkhouse tells us what issues need to be considered to make using cloud computing a viable option.

C

loud computing has been hailed as the future of IT, a way to cut-out the cost of hardware and maintenance, allowing employees to access applications from any location and so on. It can already fulfil much of this promise, and indeed small and medium sized businesses are already using the cloud with great benefit. However, there are equally some issues that need to be considered when a business decides when and where cloud is a viable option.

The immediate problem we face is that there is no accepted definition of ‘the cloud’.

Is it a technology or a business model? Is the internet the cloud? And, if so, does that mean we should consider Google Apps and YouTube as the cloud? Is the cloud a replacement for locally-installed software, a content delivery

12 VitAL : January / February 2010

network or is it a virtual storage and server park? There is no definitive answer to these questions and a wide range of cloud products exist, which makes it difficult for businesses to decide whether the cloud is right for them.

With confusion comes misconception; these need to be cleared up before deciding whether cloud is truly a sensible business option.

Misconceptions 1. Cloud is not suitable for e-commerce.

Cloud is, in fact, suitable for most businesses regardless of industry. The key is to understand what type of data to store in the cloud. The most sensitive business data, such as customer credit card details, should not be considered for cloud and should be encrypted, kept internal or stored www.vital-mag.net

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with a specialist payment service provider to ensure maximum security at all times.

However, certain applications (CRM, ERP, messaging and collaboration) are common to many companies. Using an external cloud provider to manage the application at a lower cost makes sense. Businesses then need to assess the applications and build policies based upon the type of data.

If these steps are taken, there’s no reason why any business should miss out on the advantages of cloud.

2. Cloud is a security threat. As long as the right data is stored, there shouldn’t be any security issue in the cloud. It is true that data is stored outside the company’s physical premises if it’s in the cloud. However, if employees are careful with passwords and other security, the data stored there is not critical, or you encrypt the data to be stored, you can rest easy.

3. All IT departments know exactly what ‘cloud’ is. According to a recent PEER 1 survey, 88 percent of key IT decision makers do not use cloud. Thirty nine percent of these claim lack of knowledge about the technology is putting them off. Clearly not all businesses are cloud-confident. It’s up to the experts, whether that’s technology vendors or service providers, to educate and ensure cloud is fully utilised across all sectors.

4. Cloud will replace the IT department.

Cloud technology is designed to work alongside skilled IT staff, not make them redundant. Making applications, data and other information easily available and quick to access and manage, will free up time IT staff have spent on admin duties. This in turn will allow staff to concentrate on improving and future-proofing IT systems. The ‘rip and replace’ culture has never worked in IT – it’s no different with staff.

5. Cloud is the answer to all problems.

Cloud can make things easier – benefits www.vital-mag.net

include reduction in the cost of hardware and maintenance, flexibility and scalability and the ability for employees to access applications from any location. However, if cloud is not understood and therefore used improperly, it can be a hindrance.

It’s in these situations that data is lost, or stolen. The most important step is to do your research and understand exactly what your company needs from the cloud before you make the move.

Areas of concern The most prominent area of concern, surrounding the cloud, is security. After all, who would move their internal data out of their company offices onto the internet?

The reality is more complex. Cloud technology is sufficiently secure for the large majority of corporate data, but businesses must be ruthless about the security of passwords and logins to match this – the technical security measures in place at cloud providers are much better than internal IT at a typical company, but these are no use if an attacker can guess a password, or login and so access the system – which they can now attempt without visiting the company’s office.

However, the cloud is not yet ready for the most sensitive business data – for instance few clouds meet PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards), so the cloud is not yet secure enough to host or process credit card data. A business looking to move into e-commerce and meet the online payment standards needs to make sure its system is as secure as possible. Customers won’t care that e-commerce employees can access cloud applications from anywhere if their card details have been lost. E-commerce in the cloud is best achieved in combination with a specialist payment service provider who processes and stores the most sensitive credit card data.

The size of the business is also a big determining factor for cloud uptake. For large

Making applications, data and other information easily available and quick to access and manage, will free up time IT staff have spent on admin duties.

This in turn will allow staff to concentrate on improving and futureproofing IT systems. The ‘rip and replace’ culture has never worked in IT – it’s no different with staff.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 13

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businesses with their own IT department, cloud or on-demand IT services and applications offer a flexible resource to tap into. These companies will have the technical expertise to be able to manage, and make the most of cloud computing. For smaller businesses, inhouse IT skills are a mixed bag – some have plenty of knowledge, others have very little. This level of knowledge has larger consequences than at first it would appear – especially since the benefits of cloud are largest for those small businesses who do have the in-house IT skills and so can use the cloud to access cloud systems of a quality and scale which they could not possibly afford in-house.

The aforementioned study found that 88 percent of IT decision makers do not use cloud technologies, with 39 percent of respondents claiming that lack of knowledge is putting them off. The independent study which canvassed the opinions of over 200 IT decision-makers reveals that concerns about security put off 24 percent of would-be cloud users, while 21 percent perceive that lack of control outweighs the benefits of cloud hosting.

Despite the concerns, 49 percent of those surveyed say that they are considering the technology. The availability and reliability of cloud computing are viewed as key benefits for 69 percent of respondents, while another 63 percent are attracted to its performance benefits. Scalability and flexibility are both factors that appeal to over 60 percent of potential cloud hosting users, with 43 percent citing security as being a reason to choose cloud hosting.

PEER 1 commissioned this research to gain a better understanding of IT decision makers’ perceptions of cloud hosting. The results clearly illustrate that there is lot of confusion around both benefits and limitations of cloud hosting. A case in point here is feedback on the security of cloud: 23 percent cite a perceived lack of security as a deterrent, whilst 43 percent see security as a benefit. There are some very mixed messages out there.

There are many benefits to cloud, as it can reduce costs and increase flexibility for 14 VitAL : January / February 2010

businesses, which is appealing for any IT decision maker. But the industry needs to help leaders make an informed decision by providing standards that will address concerns around security and compliance.

So who does cloud works for?

The cloud provides a wide range of services, from web-delivered applications (such as SalesForce CRM) to scalable pools of server capacity (such as ElasticHosts). In all cases, they provide a great way to cut out the cost of hardware and maintenance, buy scalable capacity on demand and access this from any location.

Today, the cloud works best where businesses have a relatively high level of in-house IT skills and limited investment in existing solutions. New small businesses which have the skills to do so are building their IT on the cloud from day one, and so gaining access to cloud systems of a quality and at a scale which they could not possibly afford in-house – whether these are bestin-class web-delivered applications or scalable and flexible cloud server capacity.

Equally larger businesses are using the cloud as a flexible resource to tap into, and are moving the systems which most need ondemand capacity, scalability and flexibility or remote access.

The thing to remember about cloud is that, like any IT advancement, it has its strengths and its weaknesses. There are significant advantages in reduced costs and increased mobility, flexibility and scalability. Security in the cloud is good, but the most sensitive systems or types of data should remain internal or with specialist processing providers. Cloud is not the panacea it is being hyped as, but does work harmoniously and fruitfully for many, providing capabilities which they could not otherwise access. Cloud should be considered by all, since the benefits are real and significant, while approached with open eyes and assessed skilfully for when and where it is best used.

There is lot of confusion around both benefits and limitations of cloud hosting. A case in point here is feedback on the security of cloud: 23 percent cite a perceived lack of security as a deterrent, whilst 43 percent see security as a benefit. There are some very mixed messages out there.

VitAL

http://dommonkhouse.wordpress.com/ www.vital-mag.net

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vital management

Managing the massive ‘Technology tunnel vision’ is a phrase Ivan Lloyd, director at Corporate Project Solutions uses to describe IT projects that are selected based on a desire to implement a particular technology as opposed to aligning to business objectives.

Here he considers the best way to manage these issues and processes during large scale projects.

W

hen it comes to large IT projects and indeed IT projects of any scale, there are still a range of issues that need to be tackled. I don’t believe there should ever really be an ‘IT project’ as such, Information technology may be the largest element of a project’s delivery, however IT itself should purely be used to help deliver as part of an overall business project.

The press is frequently dominated by stories of large government IT project failures in terms of cost and schedule overruns, however most organisations will also have more than their fair share of IT project failures. These failures are easily recognisable when viewed as late delivery or overspend, however far fewer 16 VitAL : January / February 2010

organisations seem to recognise project failures when it comes to quality and even fewer when it comes to understanding whether the project delivered the benefits that it set out to – if in fact they were ever agreed at the start.

Strategic objectives Many businesses do not have documented and prioritised strategic business objectives as an organisation. The fallout from this is that without business objectives how can you ensure that each and every new project or programme that is initiated clearly aligns and will therefore contribute to driving the business forward. www.vital-mag.net

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This portfolio management process needs to be understood and brought into a CXO level. If each project is then assessed against business objectives during initiation, businesses would realise there is no need to spend time, money and resources on a significant number of IT projects.

Big bang Change of any sort is not easy to implement successfully and all projects deliver (or should deliver) change. Undertaking large projects with significant change and therefore significant timescales and costs are never going to be easy. People, by their nature, are change adverse. However by ensuring that the change is staged and delivery is incremental, risks will be reduced and benefits and progress can be monitored and controlled far more effectively.

Projects that don’t adhere to this philosophy because they feel that it will be cheaper and quicker to deliver in one big hit will be far more likely to fail. Always remember; the longer the project the more likely the scope will creep and the technology will change, the bigger the single change the less likely it will be adopted.

Project overheads Requirements capture, prototyping, testing and indeed project management are all viewed to a greater or lesser extent by many senior executives as overheads. What counts for executives is the number of lines of code cut and the number of screens written ie, the physical product output.

How many times when you look at project plan do you see 80 percent of the effort with development and 20 percent of the effort with other activities and then how often do you hear from the user ‘the product doesn’t do what we wanted, the product doesn’t work or when am I going to have my product?’

Without the correct level of spend on all of these ‘overheads’ IT projects are doomed to fail or at best perform poorly. www.vital-mag.net

Benefit realisation Organisations rarely have effective benefit realisation approaches in place either during or after the project has finished. The philosophy frequently seems to be along the lines of ‘we’ve started so we’ll finish’ or ‘we’ve spent half the money so we might as well spend the rest’ or ‘we’ve spent all the money now so why check’.

Without an effective benefit realisation process, ie checking at regular intervals during the project that the original benefits and indeed potentially new benefits are actually going to be achieved organisations will never stop poorly performing projects. If the right level of benefit is not going to be achieved then the project needs to be stopped. Once the project has been completed ongoing benefits still need to be monitored otherwise organisations will never learn from mistakes or understand success correctly.

Project management There is a misconception that managing projects is simple. Project management as a discipline is frequently undervalued within an organisation and indeed in some it’s viewed as a necessary overhead. Many people believe project management is common sense, which to a degree at its basic level it is, yet so many managers seem to lack the required planning and management skills when managing large projects.

Very few project managers seem to be rewarded for their project work, ie meeting deadlines, adhering to budgets and delivering benefits. If they were they would be more likely to ensure projects are properly initiated, benefits documented and most importantly the documented benefits realised. Project managers in the IT industry often have little experience or formal training in project management; they are often moved into project management having been the best developer or the best business analyst. There is a tendency for IT project managers to see a

I don’t believe there should ever really be an ‘IT project’ as such, Information technology may be the largest element of a project’s delivery, however IT itself should purely be used to help deliver as part of an overall business project. new technology and then decide on a project to introduce the technology. This is not how project management should work. Business objectives alone should drive a project and not technology.

A good project manager in any industry is one who spends the right ratio of time planning a project as they do delivering a project. Fin Goulding, CIO at lastminute.com, worked with Corporate Project Solutions to implement an Enterprise Project Management environment in order to improve project quality, visibility and value. Fin described a good project manager as someone who knows when to stop a project.

So many project managers’ CVs promote the number of projects they have completed and delivered on. Very few have ever cancelled a project through time spent researching, testing and monitoring.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 17

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How to tackle these issues

What the business wants

Project delivery relies on five key elements; People, Process, Technology, Organisation and Strategy. If all five elements are in place and are effective then businesses will be far better placed to deliver the right projects and to deliver them on time, to budget, to quality and with the right benefits.

People: Experienced project management and project support staff, trained in techniques, processes and tools with a structured career path and recognition of achievement. Training and awareness of the process should extend outside of the traditional project staff and encompass all project stakeholders Process: A standardised set of processes encompassing portfolio, programme, project and resource management. Processes should be owned and maintained and monitored by the project organisation.

Technology: Appropriate technology to underpin the other four elements. The technology should enable project delivery providing automated guidance, control, governance and reporting. The right technology should provide support to the organisation to enable effective decision making.

Organisation: An organisation structure that supports project delivery encompassing elements such as portfolio and project management offices, project reporting structures and decision making processes.

Strategy: Defined at the CXO level the business strategy needs to ensure organisational-wide understanding of the entire project management process and culture. The strategy will determine how an organisation will succeed in managing project delivery.

When starting new projects always undertake a formal initiation process as part of an overall portfolio management framework.

Organisations need to clearly document what it is the business wants the project to deliver ie, the scope, what the costs and timescales will be, the quality measures, the benefits expected and what risks are involved in implementation.

If there is a large amount of risk involved in delivering the benefits, businesses should balance their appetite for risk with the business benefit measures.

Once the business has started spending money on a project it is very hard to stop.

Organisations need to understand this at the beginning, in the planning stage and ensure there are specific break points at key stages at which to measure performance and benefits. If these aren’t being met and there are no clear and feasible plans to get back on track the project needs to be cancelled before further budget is spent.

I have seen huge demand for our services since the recession, as organisations realise the cost and efficiency benefits of well managed projects. The best advice is to tackle projects in achievable steps. Many businesses still try to do too much without realising what the main problems are and tackling them individually.

We aim to deliver the maximum benefit from the minimum change. Culturally change is always difficult so if you can break projects down into smaller elements of change, ensure each element is embedded and then move to the next, you are far more likely to succeed than embarking on a huge change in one hit.

18 VitAL : January / February 2010

Very few project managers seem to be rewarded for their project work, ie meeting deadlines, adhering to budgets and delivering benefits. If they were they would be more likely to ensure projects are properly initiated, benefits documented and most importantly the documented benefits realised.

VitAL

www.cps.co.uk www.vital-mag.net

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Creating a global standard for IT knowledge, service, and execution As the world’s largest privately held commercial real estate firm, Cushman & Wakefield recognises the need to create a consolidated service desk. However, five years ago, the situation was very different.

As Steve Kennedy, associate director of Cushman & Wakefield recalls.

T

he IT service desk was little more than a basic call-logging system, and, even then, only 30 percent of calls in the UK were actually recorded,” remembers Steve Kennedy, associate director of Cushman & Wakefield. “Outside the UK, there was no way of capturing calls at all.” In order to make the service desk more effective, Cushman & Wakefield introduced standardised and repeatable processes based on ITIL best practice principles, to provide IT support to 2,000 users across Europe and demonstrate the true value of IT to the global business. For 20 VitAL : January / February 2010

Kennedy, developing and running a robust infrastructure and IT service delivery model are crucial to supporting the company’s overall business.

Implementing ITIL guidelines The company was in the midst of restructuring its IT department to reduce unplanned system outages. The IT service management team took the opportunity to introduce a best practice approach to IT based on ITIL principles. As a commercial property firm, Cushman & Wakefield prides itself on delivering a consistent www.vital-mag.net

vital management

Now, Cushman & Wakefield’s pan-European service desk handles around 2,000 IT calls per month, mainly administrative enquiries relating to password reset and file access as well as requests for new equipment and videoconferencing set-ups. This is a huge improvement from five years ago because the new system has enabled the service desk to grow to far more than a basic call-logging system, and enables a pan-European service.

level of service to its clients around the world – why could this not apply to the delivery of IT services to employees?

“When I joined Cushman & Wakefield, I wanted to create a best practice IT framework focused on delivering tangible benefits to the organisation rather than a set of ITIL processes for ITIL’s sake,” says Kennedy. “We soon developed a series of structured, repeatable processes that were easy to roll out across Europe and could demonstrate a clear path of escalation, total ownership and accountability of the IT department.”

Creating a pan-European service desk Together with the IT service management team and his group of 10 analysts, Kennedy has created a pan-European service desk, based not only on ITIL guidelines, but also on the LANDesk ITBM suite, a desktop application designed to provide IT and business support to employees, customers and public citizens. The suite enables Cushman & Wakefield to cater for the IT support needs of employees across EMEA in a coherent, structured and proactive way. The team manages a centralised IT infrastructure comprising both fixed and mobile assets and has a small number of dedicated IT experts in each country, all working from the same system. www.vital-mag.net

Now, Cushman & Wakefield’s pan-European service desk handles around 2,000 IT calls per month, mainly administrative enquiries relating to password reset and file access as well as requests for new equipment and video-conferencing set-ups. This is a huge improvement from five years ago because the new system has enabled the service desk to grow to far more than a basic calllogging system, and enables a pan-European service.

By upgrading the original HelpDesk system to the ITBM suite and combining ITIL-verified principles with this suite, Cushman & Wakefield can now demonstrate impact analysis, facilitate speedy resolution of problems and provide timely and automated communication of progress to IT users. This has dramatically enhanced customer interaction, increased greater end-user confidence in the IT service desk and its accountability to the organisation.

The future Cushman & Wakefield continues to consider ways of maximising the IT service desk such as automating the interaction between their monitoring solution, Solar Winds, and the ITBM software so that updates and closures are synchronised between the two systems.

However, the number one priority is duplicating the success of the pan-European service desk on a global scale. Cushman & Wakefield’s US operation has also installed the ITBM suite but it is currently run independently and managed on an outsourced basis. The plan is to integrate the EMEA service desk with the USA and Asia to create one consolidated, seamless service desk operation.

Steve Kennedy has ambitious plans for the future. Just as the corporation draws upon its full-service platform to help clients meet nearterm challenges and maximise long-term value, Steve hopes to replicate this sentiment in the company’s approach to IT. “When I started, it was an exciting time.

LANDesk ITBM had been installed and it gave us the ideal framework to define and create a whole new set of processes that could be rolled out across EMEA,” explains Kennedy. “Since then, you could say that the UK has been a very successful pilot scheme, so successful in fact that we want to share that success with every part of Cushman & Wakefield. My ultimate aim is to have one fully integrated global service desk that delivers employees worldwide first-class IT support. And, from the positive feedback my team has received so far – we must be doing something right!” VitAL www.avocent.com January / February 2010 : VitAL 21

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Avoiding the World Cup nightmare Following the first ever online only live streaming of the England football team’s 1-0 defeat against Ukraine, Blue Coat’s EMEA marketing VP Nigel Hawthorn, looks into the implications that live online video streaming events could have on an organisation’s network infrastructure ahead of this summer’s World Cup.

T

he 2010 World Cup in South Africa promises worldwide coverage like never before, with the BBC Sport website offering live video streaming of all matches. Though a small number of matches were shown online in 2006, this time the number of matches available across the web includes all matches that the BBC has the rights to. Probably more importantly, the success of iPlayer and YouTube has led to an assumption on the part of users that the quality will be good to the desktop.

22 VitAL : January / February 2010

This concept was fully supported by Director of BBC Sport, Roger Mosey, who commented ahead of the World Cup in 2006: “We know a lot of online viewing is done in the office, so we suspect this will allow people both to do their job and to keep up with the very latest action.”

Now, at the risk of sounding like a World Cup party pooper, we need to consider the impact on the organisation and the network from the amount of bandwidth that will be eaten up by employees watching live 90-minute matches on their desktop PCs this summer. www.vital-mag.net

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Business critical apps, branch offices and employee productivity With the qualifiers now at an end, IT managers from organisations of all sizes up and down the UK will be bracing themselves for demands on their networks and Internet gateway that are potentially greater than anything in the past, particularly with the inclusion of England in the summer’s tournament increasing employee interest. With no major time zone difference between the UK and South Africa, employees are also likely to be watching in prime office working hours (24 matches scheduled between Monday and Friday afternoons).

As workers turn to the Web for live match coverage during work hours, organisations should certainly be wary about a potential drain on employee performance and productivity, but press forward to protect against a greater threat – the impact on branch offices and applications. Usually individuals are blissfully unaware of the performance implications that continuous live streaming has on the company’s Internet gateway or the Wide Area Network (WAN) link that connects their branch office location to a corporate data centre or centralised Internet access point.

An IT manager’s Internet gateway – its lifeline to the Internet – can quickly be fouled up by staff accessing live video streaming. In addition, slender WAN links to branch offices can be invaded by football fever so that internal business critical traffic is impaired.

This leads onto one of the most critical areas for the effects of employees turning to the Web for the summer’s World Cup coverage, the branch offices. This is because many organisations’ internet access is centralised and “backhauled” inbound Internet traffic is www.vital-mag.net

delivered to branch offices over the WAN that links them to the data centre or headquarters.

Therefore, the added load of multiple instances of a live match stream could swamp the WAN links to branch offices, making business-critical applications and communication exceedingly slow or stop completely.

Already these WAN links are under considerable strain, due in part to centralisation of servers and applications away from the branch office. Performance of remotely hosted applications and files is sluggish at best, requiring WAN optimisation solutions to compensate for burgeoning network limitations. Continuous video streaming of live match access will exacerbate this situation.

Managing World Cup fever?

There are a number of different approaches that IT managers can take in order to ensure that their Internet gateway is fully available for business use of the Internet, rather than overwhelmed by online World Cup fever.

Certain organisations may take a strict approach by attempting to block web access to all known sites that stream the World Cup live. By using web filtering systems, IT management can block access to global sports sites, though users are likely to be unhappy and may still spend time attempting to circumvent the blocking.

A second option would be to block the protocols used for streaming, however this may include all Real, Microsoft and Flash streams – and in doing so, block internal streams, streaming news and standard parts of web sites, interfering with work-related web information.

Instead of either of the above approaches, organisations may look to adopt a more

At the risk of sounding like a World Cup party pooper, we need to consider the impact on the organisation and the network from the amount of bandwidth that will be eaten up by employees watching live 90-minute matches on their desktop PCs this summer.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 23

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Organisations may look to adopt a more flexible attitude that keeps employee morale high and minimises any World Cup disruption.

IT management can improve their network infrastructure to reduce stream usage, optimise streaming data and allow users to time-shift the matches to be during normal breaks in the working day.

flexible attitude that keeps employee morale high and minimises any World Cup disruption.

IT management can improve their network infrastructure to reduce stream usage, optimise streaming data and allow users to time-shift the matches to be during normal breaks in the working day, as follows.

Firstly, bandwidth management devices at the Internet egress point can be set to define one stream provider as ‘approved’ and given a high priority (management then encourage employees to use that stream), other streams are lower priority or blocked.

Secondly, appliances can be installed within the organisation’s network to split the streams – meaning that one stream request can be sent to multiple users simultaneously.

This greatly reduces the upstream bandwidth required.

Thirdly, WAN optimisation appliances that support streaming data can be deployed between offices to cache and optimise the protocols between them. Fourthly, many of the stream splitting appliances can also cache the streams, allowing users to time-shift and watch the game later. Happily, this doesn’t mean installing four appliances, many devices can deliver multiple benefits in one.

In this way, management can allow video content while minimising the load on the Internet gateway or branch office by caching locally through a proxy appliance. Employees are then contented and the World Cup 24 VitAL : January / February 2010

shouldn’t impact access of business-related video or content on websites.

Cherish the footy!

In summary, the World Cup only comes around once every four years and should be cherished.

However, while we all want to keep abreast of all the latest action, organisations may want to stop and consider the impact next summer could have on their network resources and look at sensible ways in which to manage this down to an acceptable amount. Above all, whether it’s England vs. Brazil on a Wednesday at midday or Denmark vs. Ivory Coast Monday at 3pm in the afternoon, organisations must ensure that non-essential application traffic does not interfere with crucial business operations.

VitAL

www.bluecoat.com www.vital-mag.net

Whether your challenge is reducing costs or increasing productivity or efficiency, we can help.

“Our SLA performance has always been extremely high — better than 99 percent. The LANDesk solution helps us maintain this high level of customer satisfaction, while considerably improving our ability to analyse and report on our own internal processes.”

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It has increased our productivity, decreased our time of call closure, minimized our down time, and has saved us significant time and money.”

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Copyright © 2009, Avocent Corporation. All rights reserved. Avocent, LANDesk and Touchpaper and their respective logos are among the registered trademarks or trademarks of Avocent Corporation, its subsidiaries or its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries.

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Engaging the bored board Why is it so difficult to sell service management and the ITIL framework? After all it’s just about common sense.

Michelle Major-Goldsmith, head of service management training at Sysop and head of professional service, David Stephens offer some advice.

I

magine your typical IT manager, he is focused on the IT infrastructure and therefore engages in conversations about IT in a technical way, proudly vocalising about what the hardware and applications do, how they do it, at what speed and for how long.

This is also how the service management piece plays out too. We hear comments such as, “Our team have attended a brilliant set of ITIL courses. They now know how to write and improve processes for Incident Management, Problem, Change, Release, and even how to design a CMDB. It’ll be great, we will do things the right way, we’ll know where to go

26 VitAL : January / February 2010

to find information; we’ll know exactly where our infrastructure is. More than that, we can look at what’s going wrong and know exactly what affects what. Best of all, we can do proper financial management and surely that will please the board?”

However, the board are sitting in their offices, thinking about different things. In short, there are two sets of dialogue, coming from two directions, from the very people who should understand what each other are talking about.

Consider the quote in the ITIL books: “IT is at the heart of every business”. It may be so, but then why is it that the focus of IT plays out like this: www.vital-mag.net

vital management

We hold review meetings, and what do we talk about? Two things – how good we are or how bad we are. Either way, it is a view of IT, from an IT perspective, talking about IT-focused performance. We’re consistently brilliant at one thing in IT and that is providing endless statistics about how full, empty, fast or slow something is, depending on what we are trying to prove or cover up. However, this doesn’t mean much in terms of communicating with the board. Where are the links between the demands of the organisation and the way the services support them? It tends to be just a pile of statistics showing that more money is needed to prop up IT.

Growth at minimum cost Put yourself in the shoes of a CEO for a moment. She thinks, “I want to grow this business. The recession is on its way out and we can see through the gloom. We need to grow this year by around 10 percent, but we can’t increase the cost base by more than three percent, so everyone will have to get by on a minimum, I especially don’t want that IT manager coming to me with excuses about ‘performance this and terabytes that’. We need to achieve growth at minimum cost.”

If we actually start to have conversations with the CEO about her business rather than IT we might learn something. As we know from our ITIL tomes, effective service management is about providing value to customers without the associated costs, risks and complexity.

The CEO isn’t interested in throughput, disk space, transaction rates and CPU. Her focus is on the success of the business and in making sure that it operates effectively, and delivers growth.

What the IT manager really needs to do is ensure two things: 1. That he understands what that business is actually trying to achieve – its objectives; 2. Get the CEO to understand how important IT is in getting fulfilment of the those objectives.

The CEO has demands set by shareholders and customers. She wants to economise where possible and also grow the business.

The IT manager needs to be able support this strategy by providing IT services to support the business processes. He knows that he can use service management to enhance the delivery of www.vital-mag.net

the services, the processes and the supporting technology. This in turn should lead to a more robust and responsive IT offering, and for the CEO less down time, more productivity, and of course that all important growth.

A business will always need to grow or it will stagnate or worse, die. IT has to help the business grow! But what do we mean by growth? IT may have entered into a dialogue with the CEO, now it’s time to show we really want to understand the business strategy and start questioning the growth.

Establish how the business intends to grow.

Depending on the growth strategy chosen, there will be different implications. Simply taking the message of growing the business could lead to all sorts of ill advised projects and purchases, most of which will achieve no more than further denting both the reputation of IT and the already restricted budgets.

What does growth mean?

In the commercial world, we have three typical definitions for growth: 1. Increasing the value of each sale. This may actually be through increasing the price of the products or increasing the basket of products each customer buys; 2. Increasing the number of customers, so you have more people buying the same things; 3. Increasing the frequency of sales, so people buy the products more often.

Each of these has a subtly different impact on the infrastructure needed to support them.

Increasing the cost of products may just mean a simple project to ensure all prices on the web site and in stores are all increased by a percentage. Potentially there are no hardware/ software changes.

By increasing the number of customers, there may be a need to expand transaction processing capacity or even integrate IT with another organisation if there was a takeover to increase market share. This is likely to be a major project in either case. Frequency of sales may mean a need to increase current network, processing and storage capacity.

These are simplistic views, but demonstrate the ways it can go wrong if there is no real dialogue and understating of objectives and strategy. In the public sector it is expressed in a slightly different way: January / February 2010 : VitAL 27

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1. Increase service take-up. Encouraging your current users to use all the services available to them and use them more often; 2. Provide services to more people. Take the services you have but offer them out to more people. Retire legacy systems, encourage use of your new investments; 3. Provide more services. Do things internally that have typically been done by third parties in the past. Growing and enhancing the portfolio with some cutting edge services.

So when the business talks about growth, they want to know that they have control of the supporting infrastructure. However, the business considerations tend to be: • The logistical support of what they are doing – how will it be supported and delivered?

• How reliable will the performance be? The first time the infrastructure fails we’ll lose customers to competitors.

• Do we have the right assets to support this?

• How do we market this drive? Do we have the capability to promote it and deliver this growth?

• What about the finance? How do we achieve this growth with the cost restrictions in place?

The IT manager is thinking, “these are very important considerations but I need the business to understand not just logistics and warehousing and market spaces, I also need them to consider the impacts on the IT services. I don’t need the CEO to understand the technical detail. I do need to engage her in how the services are being used.”

The changing role of IT Consider the way the role of it has changed. In the ’70s IT was used to replace clerical tasks such as payroll and invoicing. In the ’80s and ’90s focus shifted and it was used to provide essential services to support vital business processes. In the 21st Century the business is increasingly dependent on IT for competitive advantage. Take the low cost airlines as an example. Could they begin to operate without their online booking systems? Consider how they reduced their administration costs by getting us to check in on line and even print out own tickets. Today IT is the business. Most modern businesses simply can’t operate without it!

In reality what the CEO is thinking is now mirrored by the IT manager but from the other 28 VitAL : January / February 2010

direction. The CEO is concerned with how all the parts fit together and are supported to deliver the growth plan and cost containment.

The IT manager is now fully conversant with the requirements of the strategy and can consider how IT can adapt to meet these demands.

Keeping the attention of the board We need to have a very different conversation.

IT can start to engage the CEO in how the business depends on IT. How the way they use IT can be flexed to impact on the overall cost base. IT can use the profile of the way the technology is used to have sensible discussions about creative ways of using the services to get the most from the investment. To reduce demand where we are feeling the strain and utilise the spare capacity more effectively.

This is how good IT strategy evolves! After all, sadly most organisations do things the way they do because they always did.

By understanding how and when IT supports business process they can build up profiles of activity and use these to have discussions offering suggestions and alternatives. After all isn’t that how Mr Branson encourages us to use the trains in a particular way or how British Gas entices with bronze, silver or gold boiler maintenance packages? This is about using their resources in the most effective way, only achievable if you know how your business or customers are using the service.

We need to engage the Board. Both talking to them and listening to what they have to say. By listening we can propose services that actually deliver to the needs of the business and demonstrate our ability to keep commitments. From here, we demonstrate the reliability of not only the infrastructure but of the entire IT department through the services we deliver and through how we execute that delivery. We agree what to deliver, under what scope and to what measurements.

This builds us up to be respected by the business for our consistency and commitment to the delivery of service and for us to have respect for the business, as they are now treating us as an integral part of their strategy.

This leads ultimately to trust, a ‘service culture’ where a true partnership status exists. Now all we need to do is maintain that trust through continual service improvement and dialogue.

ITIL guidance There must be some ITIL guidance, something www.vital-mag.net

VitAL eyes on

The reality is that it isn’t that hard to align

Open source serverbased databases - a viable economic choice?

strategies and engage the board. It’s about

The choice of server-based databases has never been so interesting! As a champion of the open source movement Jonathan Westlake continually speculates about the open source database market and 2009 was particularly rich with events.

creating and maintaining a dialogue to establish common goals. to tell us how to align our IT and business strategies; something that tells us how to establish a service culture and achieve shared strategy, vision and objectives; and here it is: 1. In 1937, British born economist Ronald Coase concluded that the boundaries of firms are determined by transaction costs.

2. The concept of transaction costs used here is not to be confused with the discrete cost of transactions such as requests, payments, trades and updates to databases. What is referred to here are the overall costs of economic exchange between two parties, including but not limited to costs incurred in finding and selecting qualified suppliers for goods or services of required specifications, negotiating an agreement, cost of consuming good or services, governing the relationship with suppliers, to ensuring that commitments are fulfilled as agreed.

3. Policing and enforcement costs are the costs of making sure the other party sticks to the terms of the contract, and taking appropriate action (often through the legal system) if this turns out to be the case.

This is the Introduction to the ITIL Service Strategy book. Here is a guidance that is supposed to support IT in engaging with the business and aligning IT strategy to the business strategy.

Sadly, what we have here is a great big pile of words that do no more that put off even the most hardened and determined and even then they’ll skip it to get to the useful stuff. The reality is that it isn’t that hard to align strategies and engage the board. It’s about creating and maintaining a dialogue to establish common goals. VitAL www.sysop.co.uk www.vital-mag.net

I

use a number of open source offerings for my various University database modules but primarily the MySQL database for teaching/advising on server-based database development and administration.

The appeal is the low cost approach and the use of MySQL as part of a Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) platform where the database supports a web front end.

More recently, I have also looked at the PostgreSQL and Firebird open source alternatives (links at the end of this column) as an alternative to MySQL given the uncertainty over MySQL’s future. MySQL can be considered as an enterprise database as it has most the administration features (eg transaction handling such as rollback) common in proprietary products such as Oracle.

During 2009 we have had the added spice in that MySQL may now come under the umbrella of Oracle via the impending takeover of Sun Microsystems (awaiting European approval as at 14th Dec, 2009).

Recent statistics indicate that open source server-based database use is rising and based on my personal experience I suggest the pros and cons include the following:

Cons – Mission critical or non-mission critical usage? Should an open source product be used for mission critical applications?

In conclusion, is MySQL now under threat from Oracle? Recent news suggests that Oracle has made reassurances about the future of MySQL as part of gaining final approval for the takeover of Sun from the European Commission.

Perhaps Oracle and MySQL (and any other open source database offerings) are different ‘horses for courses’ and as such represent choice for a business looking to service their database needs across their IT infrastructure.

The future of the server database market has never been more competitive and hopefully the European Commission will ensure that the choice remains with the business user and no one database vendor dominates.

VitAL

www.mysql.com www.firebirdsql.org www.postgresql.org www.staffs.ac.uk

Pros – Zero licence costs; – Reduced maintenance charges; – Open source products are now well established; – MySQL often offered for web-hosting accounts.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 29

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Healthy service As project CLIO (Common Language for IT Organizations) aligns all IT services at global healthy food brand Danone, VitAL editor Matt Bailey spoke to Danone IS manager SEE (South East Europe) and Clio Competence Center Aurelian Sin and InfraVision project manager Martijn Adams.

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ack in September 2008 we reported that global healthy foods brand Danone was taking unprecedented control of its IT processes through automation, integration and ITIL best practice with the roll out of BMC Service Desk Express Suite from InfraVision.

The roll out gave the Danone IT organisations at 253 sites, across 13 time zones and in 11 different languages increased service desk performance, manageability and organisational alignment.

Aurelian Sin, IS manager Danone South East Europe, explains the relationship: “We have worked closely with Infravision on Project CLIO since 2007. We researched the market carefully and decided on BMC Service Desk Express and using InfraVision as implementation partner because they proposed a different approach that was quick and relatively painless to roll out. With the Alignability Process Model (APM) InfraVision offered a completely new approach which differed noticeably from the time-consuming standard of describing every process meticulously. What would normally take a year could now be done in one month. They proposed an original approach, promising that we could start the roll out within the short time frame that was set and they fulfilled that promise.”

Danone combined the InfraVision offer into one Service Management approach named CLIO (Common Language for IT Organizations), with four key components: – Process model: APM; – Application: BMC SDE; – Standard Service Catalogue; – A BI solution allowing advanced analytics.

Healthy brands Danone’s mission is to bring health through food to as many people as possible. It operates 30 VitAL : January / February 2010

200 plants, employs 88,000 people, and has a presence in more than 120 countries across all five continents. It has leading positions in its four business lines: fresh dairy products (number one worldwide), beverages (number two in the packaged water market), baby food (number two worldwide), and medical nutrition.

The company has traditionally operated a relatively de-centralised technology support strategy, with most of the countries where it has a footprint typically managing their own IT processes. The result of this siloed approach was that the support environment became increasingly difficult to manage. Spread across different countries, the support teams relied on a variety of tools – in some cases, even spreadsheets – to manage end users’ technology.

“The IT service departments at Danone range widely in size from organisation to organisation; from one or two people, to larger service management organisations.

We had to offer the same tools and functionality to all regardless of their scale,” explains Sin. “For example, when we rolled out Clio, we were able to use it, after training for six ITIL processes, straight away in all departments, moving from unit to unit in a fast and pragmatic way.”

“The departments are all different from country to country,” agrees InfraVision project manager Martijn Adams, “so we have to deal with over 30 IT managers and every aspect of the CLIO has to benefit all of them.

Clearly, under these circumstances change management and project management are extremely important. A pilot project in Romania led to the first roll-out, which was in the UK and Ireland. The processes had to allow for different levels of maturity of IT organisations to be combined in the system.” www.vital-mag.net

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“The IT service departments at Danone range widely in size from organisation to organisation; from one or two people, to larger service management organisations. We had to offer the same tools and functionality to all regardless of their scale.”

Aurelian Sin, Danone IS manager SEE and Clio Competence Center.

“If you look at how fast we rolled out the initial project you can really begin to see the value. It took less than 12 weeks, whereas a typical ITIL implementation could take up to two years!”

InfraVision project manager Martijn Adams

says Adams. “Features of a tool are nice but the important question is; does the tool support my processes? And even more importantly; will the project approach make sure these processes and the supporting tool are embedded in my organisation and accepted by my staff? The answer to the last question depends 95 percent on the partner you select to implement the solution and much less on the tool. Having said that, there are of course good tools and not so good tools on the market.”

Speaking the language of IT

Alignability Process Model (APM) InfraVision uses the Alignability Process Model for implementing service management tools.

This model is based on the experience of over 300 organisations over the past 10 years and provides real life best practices for 11 ITIL processes. This approach ensures success and saves a tremendous amount of money, time and frustration for organisations wanting to implement a service management tool based on ITIL best practices. APM was central to Project CLIO. “The APM model has firm foundations,” claims Adams. “It is based on established standards like ITIL, but is not solely based on theory; it is developed from practical experience.”

If there is a downside for InfraVision from deploying APM it’s that the average size of www.vital-mag.net

projects has reduced, but as Adams explains, that’s not always a bad thing. “Though the average size of contract is smaller, the quality improves greatly which in turn drives more business. The benefit for the customer is that they no longer have to change systems every six years or so.”

The success with CLIO has driven further partnership. “After working with InfraVision on this project we have started looking into other areas where they can help us,” says Sin. “Run book automation is our next step, but we are considering more.”

InfraVision has over 10 years’ experience in implementing service management processes (ITIL) and tooling. “What we have learned during hundreds of projects is that a ‘tool only’ implementation will most likely fail,”

“We’re all starting to speak the same language,” says Aurelian Sin. “We have the same problems; we make the same changes and our SLAs are comparable. This allows us to see the best performers and share best practice across all the organisations.”

Looking to the future, Sin sees the process and the change management maturing in the organisation, but he also identifies avenues for development. “One project we have in mind is run book automation,” he says. “We are finding tasks that can be automated, the repetitive tasks where no value is added by staff, and seeing how we can automate them.”

“This is part of the whole vision of service management,” adds Martijn Adams. “The help desk moving towards service desk and on to service management. Automation is a key part of this process. Even in Eastern Europe where salaries are lower, automation can play a role by reducing resources consumed. If you look at how fast we rolled out the initial project you can really begin to see the value. It took less than 12 weeks, whereas a typical ITIL implementation could take up to two years!” VitAL www.infravision.com January / February 2010 : VitAL 31

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Feature sponsored by:

University Hospital of South Manchester

ITSM leads the way in the public sector The financial crisis in the public sector has highlighted how best practice and innovative use of ITSM tools are helping managers to find creative ways to reduce cost. Patrick Bolger, chief marketing officer at Hornbill Systems explains how Government policy is driving investment in technology.

I

n the last decade, strategic initiatives like e-Government set a progressive agenda for technology in Government, with the mission, as described by Tony Blair, of “ensuring that IT supports the business transformation of government itself so that we can provide better, more efficient, public services.”

Although several eGovernment programmes have received criticism for slow and patchy progress, there can be no doubt that in many ways, technology has made interaction with government a less torturous task. Renewing car tax online is now relatively painless, compared with digging out paperwork and making the

32 VitAL : January / February 2010

trip to the local Post Office to fill out forms and pay by cheque.

Promoting best practice One of the six principles of eGovernment was a commitment to “promote global best practice”, which fuelled the adoption of frameworks such as ITIL and the ISO/IEC 20000 standard. While central Government was relatively well versed in ITSM frameworks, it took a little longer for other areas of the public sector to embrace best practice. Today, an ever-increasing number of services are being made available online and with IT being placed directly in the www.vital-mag.net

vital management

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public view, ITIL is now widely adopted by all areas of the public sector to manage service delivery and improvement.

Investment in ITSM to cope with tough times Following Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget Report in Dec 2009, economists stated that “Whitehall departments’ budgets will be reduced by almost a fifth after the next election - a reduction of almost £36 billion over three years.” The current Public Sector budget deficit of £16.2bn and a net debt figure equivalent to 60 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) are stark figures that require drastic action by whichever political party holds the reins after this year’s general election.

Although the Government does not produce regular figures for its total IT spending, analysts at Cable estimated the figure at around £17 billion for 2007/08. In its study “Operational Efficiency Program,” HM Treasury said “Backoffice operations and IT, led by Martin Read, recommends better management information, benchmarking and review of costs, and better governance of IT-enabled change programmes to achieve £4 billion of savings a year on back office operations, and £3.2 billion of savings a year on IT spending.”

It will no doubt be challenging to find such huge savings, particularly when the demand for services in the public sector is increasing and service levels are expected to be maintained and improved. Against a backdrop of anticipated budget cuts and headcount freeze, organisations are looking at innovative ways to maintain service levels and IT service management tools have a critical role to play in delivering efficiencies.

Annual surveys by the Society of Information Technology Management (socitm) show that since 2005, Hornbill has consistently been the fastest growing IT service management software vendor to local authorities, with more than twice as many customers acquired in the sector than our closest competitors.

In compiling this article I sought feedback from our customers in separate areas of the public sector and asked whether their investment in ITSM would enable them to cope with reduced budgets.

Government Central and local Government anticipate a fairly significant reduction in IT spending, but many believe that they will not feel the impact during 2010, as budgets have already been agreed.

These organisations believe that continued www.vital-mag.net

investment in best practice this year will enable them to cope with the inevitable reality of having to achieve more with less during the next four to five years.

Plymouth City Council has gone live with seven ITIL disciplines and is introducing improvements to existing and new processes using elements of both ITIL v2 and v3 with Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM. Disciplines already deployed include Incident, Change, Configuration, Problem, Request Fulfilment, Access Management and Service Level Management. The ICT Service Delivery Team is currently working on Release, Event and Knowledge Management.

“Plymouth City Council is committed to using the ITIL framework. It helps us improve service efficiency, improve system availability, allow prioritisation of services, and ensure better quality assurance,” explains Mel Gwynn, operational service delivery manager at Plymouth City Council. “This enables the Council to save money while better serving citizens. Supportworks ITSM has enabled us to implement ITIL in a phased manner. We have now largely completed implementing many of our processes and are looking at where we can adopt elements of ITIL v3 to provide further improvements. This approach allows us to mature our existing ITIL v2 processes and adopt new ITIL v3 processes at our own pace.”

The ICT Team has also implemented the Supportworks Customer SelfService portal where the most frequent service requests are standardised. Callers to the Service Desk are encouraged to use the SelfService facility wherever possible, which reduces the load on the Service Desk and eliminates time wasted requesting further information. “Service delivery performance has definitely improved when compared to our old way of working,” says Gwynn. “This is down to the combination of Supportworks ITSM and the fact that we have revisited our processes, streamlined and automated them using the ITIL framework.”

Customer Service Direct (CSD) is a publicprivate partnership between BT, Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District Council. The organisation is a joint venture formed to provide a collaborative infrastructure that can support the councils and the services that they provide to the public. CSD has pioneered such a new working partnership to create a shared services model; an approach that has been promoted within several Government reports, to drive efficiencies by uniting resources and expertise.

Although several eGovernment programmes have received criticism for slow and patchy progress, there can be no doubt that in many ways, technology has made interaction with government a less torturous task.

Renewing car tax online is now relatively painless, compared with digging out paperwork and making the trip to the local Post Office to fill out forms and pay by cheque.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 33

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Feature sponsored by:

Northumbria University

Plymouth City from the air

The organisation provides central HR and ICT support functions based on ITIL best practice to the members of the partnership, in a more cost efficient way. At the heart of the support services is a centralised IT and HR support desk that uses Hornbill’s Supportworks ESP (Enterprise Support Platform). Implementing Supportworks as a central system enables the partners to deliver service at a consistently high performance, while also managing costs.

Initially proven with use by the centralised ICT team to support council employees, Supportworks has also been rolled out for use by the HR team and is now accessible to 500 staff. Using Supportworks as a consolidated service platform enables staff to support over 6,000 PCs used by employees throughout the partner organisations, as well as HR support to over 30,000 local authority staff and a further 40,000 ex-council staff. The system is able to identify different types of customer, so that each receives the appropriate support level.

Healthcare NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) came into operation in April 2005 with a primary role of delivering the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). NPfIT commits the NHS to lifelong electronic health records for patients, round the clock, with online access to patient records 34 VitAL : January / February 2010

for clinicians and information about best clinical practice. Although there has been some controversy regarding the delay in introducing some of the services, many services have been successfully deployed.

NHS Trusts can choose to support these new services and systems using their own resources, or by contracting with their Local Service Provider (LSP). Although Trusts can reduce costs by providing the service themselves, they must be accredited by CfH to ensure that they are supporting those services and communicating with other service providers using a common language and in a consistent manner. This has driven adoption of the ITIL framework and in financial terms, the NHS would benefit greatly if every trust were to become accredited.

There is no doubt that the National Programme for IT will bring huge benefits to patients through increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of staff and clinicians. However, it brings with it challenges for the IT department, as they are faced with integrating new systems and supporting increasing numbers of users through their organisation. Investment in IT service management technology enables IT teams to provide a more responsive and efficient service to large numbers of end users, without increasing headcount.

Hornbill has gained significant traction within

the healthcare sector by providing an ITILcompatible solution that can be deployed in just days with full support for the CfH minimum data set. This enables NHS and Primary Care Trusts to seamlessly integrate with the LSP and automates reporting of contractual service level agreements (SLAs). NHS Trusts that have already been accredited by CfH using Supportworks CfH solution includes; Buckinghamshire Hospitals, Chelsea & Westminster, and Wirral Health Informatics.

Anglia Support Partnership has adopted a shared services approach, providing IT services to five NHS organisations in the East of England and is using Supportworks ITSM to manage and improve service delivery to over 10,000 employees at 200 locations.

The Partnership provides IT support services to staff in its seven partner organisations – NHS Cambridgeshire, Cambridgeshire Community Services, NHS Norfolk, Norfolk Community Health & Care, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, NHS Peterborough, Peterborough Community Services, as well as the Strategic Health Authority – NHS East of England.

University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, a major acute teaching hospital, has successfully utilised Supportworks ITSM to manage the new Registration Authority Smart Card system, part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). The trust has over 4,000 security verified users that will be registered with the Authority. The IT team is now using Supportworks ITSM to record the details of every NHS CRS Smart Card issued, including user identifier, access rights and a history of any changes and the expiry date.

“Under NPfIT we are increasingly bringing in new systems to support both administration and specialist departments and our users need support,” says Mark Wright, head of service management at the Trust. “We now have the framework to provide a managed service to end users, as well as the ability to adopt ITIL best practice, a key part of our IT strategy. We can now provide the evidence necessary to become a Connecting for Health Accredited Service Desk. This enables us to provide a seamless service, linking up to our Local Service Provider to streamline support resolution.”

Education Historically ITIL has had less traction in the education sector, with many institutions believing that the framework was complex and expensive to adopt. However, much www.vital-mag.net

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Plymouth Civic Centre

has changed in the last few years. Education now faces many of the same challenges as other areas of the public sector; increased investment in technology, coupled with heavier dependency on IT for learning, teaching and administration has driven the need to transform service support from fire-fighting to proactive IT service management.

The Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) is a powerful lobbying voice that represents the whole of higher education, and increasingly further education, in the provision and development of academic, management and administrative information systems. UCISA has published resources and is producing case studies and materials in bite-sized chunks that are easier to digest. The work is intended to assist both institutions new to ITIL and those that have already embarked upon ITIL implementations, helping institutions to look at the ITIL framework to review and improve their service management processes.

IT staff within universities face common challenges from the sheer size of the user populations they support. IT is stretched to deliver service to thousands of academic and administrative staff and students numbering in the tens of thousands. The budget cuts announced by Lord Mandelson in Dec 2009 further increases the pressure on IT to deliver www.vital-mag.net

even greater levels of operational efficiency.

Hornbill has a significant presence in the education sector and many of our customers are finding innovative ways of getting the most from their investment in service management technology, by extending its use to other departments and faculties.

At the University of Northumbria the reliance on IT has grown exponentially over the last ten years, and increasingly IT systems provide a backbone to the University’s daily business.

The 130-strong IT Services department uses Supportworks service desk software to underpin and strengthen the provision of service to staff and students. Originally used for IT service management, Supportworks has now been extended to other areas; Estates Management, Security, Finance, Library & Learning Services and the Academic School Administration offices use the tool to manage and automate an array of different service requests.

By offering a number of interactive services Northumbria has encouraged use of the Customer SelfService portal across the institution. Users can request new passwords by text, with responses sent directly to a mobile phone. Text messages can be sent to advise that day’s menu in the restaurants, or even the availability of computers in the open access areas for students.

Northumbria IT Services operates an outof-hours service on behalf of NorMAN (North Eastern Metropolitan Area Network), providing first line support to other universities. This service is not viable for individual institutions, given the relatively small number of students requiring help outside core business hours and at weekends. The Out of Hours Helpline now covers 17 universities located in Scotland, Yorkshire, the Midlands, London, the South Coast and South West.

This innovative use of Supportworks has enhanced IT Services’ ability to provide an improved service to increasing numbers of users, without needing to hire additional staff, while income from subscribers to the out of hours service is generating revenue that helps to cover overheads. According to Debbie Figgis, IT customer services manager at Northumbria University; “There is no doubt that we can now provide a better service to our customers, while retaining the same level of IT resource. It has made us more efficient as a team, with reduced duplication of logging and tracking calls. The SelfService option has made our service more transparent, which has also improved our customer service.”

Innovative use of IT service management The Gershon Efficiency Review, commissioned in 2003 by central government assessed how the public sector could exploit opportunities for efficiency savings, so that resources could be released for front-line public service delivery.

The programme aims to raise productivity, enhance value for money and deliver efficiency gains through reforms that involved ‘Doing the same for less, or more for the same’.

Despite the bleak projections for IT spending, Hornbill anticipates continued demand for technology that enables public sector organisations to operate more efficiently.

Against a backdrop of headcount and budget cuts it will be almost impossible for the public sector to sustain momentum without technology that enables these organisations to cope with demand and maintain service levels. The examples above demonstrate that innovative use of service management tools creates efficiencies that enable budget stricken service departments to manage through an economic downturn.

More examples of Hornbill customers in the public sector can be found at: http:// www.hornbill.com/company/success/ VitAL

www.hornbill.com January / February 2010 : VitAL 35

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Social network security Simon Morris, founder and R&D director of Pentura looks at how best to manage the security issues social networking brings to business and if a company decides to stop staff using social networking how can it monitor this and avoid security breaches from threats left behind by computers that have been used to access social networks in the past.

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ocial networks can simply be described as people having conversations online using a range of communication tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo and Twitter. A social network is exactly what it says on the tin, it’s a communication network of social contacts which seems to have become the most popular way to stay in touch.

Forrester Research stated that the number of people using the web will increase by 45 percent to 2.2 billion by 2013, the total global internet audience is currently 625 million and two thirds of these internet users have now 36 VitAL : January / February 2010

joined a social networking site (417m). This is a huge number of people and consequently the security risks are equally substantial.

Businesses must address these risks.

A question of morale It seems hard to justify the use of social networking in business as the sites are more focused on keeping in touch with friends, sharing photos, video and chatting; however businesses should not prevent employees from catching up with colleagues and talking with friends while in the office, on their tea break or having a cigarette. www.vital-mag.net

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Staff morale is important and it would be viewed as draconian to block reasonable use of social networking sites at work. Many businesses are now embracing benefits in social networking to bring them closer to their customers and improve brand experience.

The uses of social media seem endless, but what are the security issues that businesses need to consider before embarking on a new marketing campaign or allowing staff the luxury of keeping in touch with friends and family at their desks?

The risks Social Networking brings with it a variety of risks ranging from identity theft and malware infections to the potential for letting careless employees damage corporate reputation and messaging. Social networking uses diverse integrated functionality to convey information as well as feature-rich functionality including web, chat, audio, video, pictures and integrated applications. As the use of these social networking tools increases in the corporate environment, so too does the inherent information security risks.

Many of the applications available for download on these websites can propagate malicious code from third parties, which can include viruses or trojans and signing up to these could involve consenting to the deployment of spyware. These also pose data leakage and malware risks to any business that allows access to social networking sites.

One of the largest security risks for businesses permitting access to social networking is the fact sites like Facebook offer thousands of integrated applications that its users can install and run. These applications include calendars that allow friends to be reminded when it’s your birthday, tools to send friends online greeting cards, quizzes on myriad topics etc. Many have been designed by users and hosted externally which means that there is little regulation or standards to adhere to. In this case one primary security issue is the ability of the application in question to extract www.vital-mag.net

profile information which would then be stored at a third party location with obvious security implications.

Another risk for business environments involves the shortening of URLs on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. While this is not a specific issue of social networking sites it is an effective phishing medium. Users of these sites let down their guard down so easily and this is a huge concern for businesses.

Shortening URLs has been born out of a characteristic of social networking type sites because users are limited to the number of characters for messages and posts. To get around this, third-party services such as tinyurl.com can encode the URL into a much shorter version but there is a clear security risk associated with this. The shortened URL does not tell the user the real destination of the link they are clicking on and they only find out once they are there, which may be too late if the site happens to contain drive-by malware.

How to tackle the risks There is no simple solution to manage these risks. Businesses can implement technical barriers to prevent any use of Twitter, Facebook or similar applications but then the business may have lost a valuable sales and marketing tool in its effort to protect its information security and privacy.

Businesses should firstly have an Acceptable Use Policy that details how social networking sites and applications can be used. The policy should also define consequences for failure to comply as this can lead to the termination of employment and legal action. It will always be difficult to restrict what employees do on their personal social networking accounts so it is important for a business to protect its information based on a worst case scenario idea that employees will download malicious code and will divulge information they shouldn’t.

It is crucial for organisations to carry out a risk assessment to establish which information is most critical to the business. They also need

Many of the applications available for download on these websites can propagate malicious code from third parties, which can include viruses or trojans and signing up to these could involve consenting to the deployment of spyware. These also pose data leakage and malware risks to any business that allows access to social networking sites.

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to evaluate how it might become vulnerable and how to protect it. Assessing current and future risk posed to the business is imperative so action can be taken and high level critical threats can be mitigated. They must also make sure their current infrastructure has the most up to date and application-aware security solutions (including both network- and endpoint-based solutions) to block any harmful files that may be accidently opened.

Employees should receive education on the information security risks involved in their internet access and how they can guard against them - for example, only installing or running applications from trusted sources approved by the corporate IT department.

Many organisations are faced with large volumes of information when looking at their internal vulnerabilities. I believe the most effective method of prioritising these vulnerabilities involves a number of key steps which are known as a Vulnerability Risk Assessment (VRA) service. This includes: modelling and mapping the network and importing rules from multiple devices, defining the threat origins and classifying the assets based on importance to the business.

This identifies the vulnerabilities presenting the greatest threat to the business, thus allowing remediation and protection of the most important assets. Remediation may involve patching endpoint systems, changing rules on routers or firewalls to prevent the threat from entering the network, 38 VitAL : January / February 2010

or deploying new technology to address the threats. These Risk Assessments have a proven track record of success, and in many cases, remediation of the top 30 – 40 threats has dramatically brought down the overall business risk.

Granular control Technologies have started to emerge that offer granular control of social networking functionality. Palo Alto Networks offer one such technology that is unique in the firewall marketplace. It allows businesses to gain user application usage visibility and affect a policy to control social networking site access from almost any aspect such as chat, email, apps and file transfer. As well as securing site access, companies that harness web 2.0 functionality for their own use should be mindful of ensuring their applications and website code is fully checked and written in a secure manner which can be validated.

Last but not least, use common sense on the internet and in email, by taking an extra moment or two to think about what you’ve received or are about to do can mean the difference between looking at a seemingly harmless funny photo and risking critical business and personal information such as customer details, business plans, bank account details, all of which you don’t want to be in the hands of anyone other than yourself or your business. VitAL www.pentura.com

It will always be difficult to restrict what employees do on their personal social networking accounts so it is important for a business to protect its information based on a worst case scenario idea that employees will download malicious code and will divulge information they shouldn’t. www.vital-mag.net

Voice Mobile Visual Collaboration

UNIFYING COMMUNICATIONS For organisations everywhere, the rapid pace of technology change in business IT is shifting how, where, who and what they work with. UC Expo offers a unique glimpse into the business potential of the new Voice, Mobile, Visual and Collaboration arenas, giving you the opportunity to gain a real competitive advantage in an ever evolving world.

Get your business really talking

Incorporating

VoIP is the foundation layer for delivering flexible, efficient communications. Voice 10 will show you how to specify, manage and build the infrastructure you need to make your communications vision a reality.

Voice 10 focusses on: • The underlying elements and apps critical to VoIP and UC • How to ensure a successful VoIP deployment • Combining VoIP and CRM strategies and processes • The future for VoIP in the connected world

The challenge now is to deliver innovative, real-time applications to mobile workers.

Mobile 10 covers the range of options and devices available.

Mobile 10 focusses on: • Seamless, integrated solutions for mobile and field service workers • End-to-end UC solutions from the desktop to the mobile • The latest innovations in Mobile UC Platforms, Applications and Services • Integrating and managing mobile business applications in the Cloud

REGISTER NOW FOR YOUR FREE PLACE:

WWW.UCEXPO.CO.UK/VITAL

Visual 10 showcases the latest telepresence, video and web conferencing solutions.

Visual 10 focusses on: • Unifying the workspace using messaging and voice, video and web conferencing • Deploying Skype as a business tool • Telepresence and the future of video/web conferencing • Using mobile video and UC to transform on-premise and field service operations

Sponsors:

Collaboration 10 is all about the next-generation communications that allow businesses to communicate and collaborate flexibily and efficiently across multiple channels in any location.

Collaboration 10 focusses on: • Planning, implementing and managing UC infrastructures • Measuring the business value of a UC solution • Integrating UC into business to deliver competitive advantage • Bringing UC to life in the contact centre

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One system to rule them all A strategic IT initiative with many benefits, Phil Van Etten, chief executive of Azaleos outlines why many organisations are waking up to the potential of unified communications.

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couple of years ago the concept of unified communications (UC) was more a vision and hype of the vendor community than reality. Today this vision is slowly maturing into reality as one of the strategic IT initiatives for many organisations. Technology developments and standards have driven the interest in unified communications. Public sector and commercial organisations are starting to deploy UC across their enterprises as they seek to benefit from integrating and automating a variety of communication ser vices into a single, coherent architecture. In doing so, they are realising the benefits of improved efficiencies and productivity, cost reductions and better, faster communications inside and outside the enterprise.

And yet, in spite of this new momentum for UC, is corporate IT really ready for this new medium? The ability for UC to extend beyond the corporate network or mobile network is the www.vital-mag.net

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IT professionals have traditionally had a piecemeal approach to communications through deploying one technology after another without a coherent and integrated strategy. The shift taking place through UC is the move to join all these disparate pieces together through a single framework.

end goal but how big and cumbersome are the hurdles? It must deliver communications and web capabilities in real-time wherever the user is, whatever they are doing and wherever needed, whether that is in the office, at home, on a train or in another country. And most importantly it must work across whatever device or application that is best for the end-user.

While the benefits of UC are extremely compelling, there is still resistance and uncertainty inside the corporation. The resistance comes primarily from two fronts.

The first is IT professionals that are already overworked and overwhelmed keeping other mission-critical systems up and running, and also potentially under-trained and insecure with being tasked with keeping the phone systems running now. The second comes from internal corporate telecoms personnel used to managing their own PBX hardware and also fearing UC as an unknown and insecure world where everybody’s data is intertwined with no boundaries or uptime safeguards.

The opportunity As the tight economy continues (and UC becomes more mainstream) tighter budgets and fewer resources will lead many IT and business professionals to a more aggressive UC strategy and deployment.

The rise in mobility as well as the proliferation of new services is driving major change within the enterprise today. IT professionals have traditionally had a piecemeal approach to communications through deploying one technology after another without a coherent and integrated strategy. The shift taking place through UC is the move to join all these disparate pieces together through a single framework.

The desire for UC is significant. According to research by IDC, the unified communications market in Europe was worth $2.6 billion in 2008, and will grow at a CAGR of 39 percent to a value of $13.5 billion by 2013. This makes www.vital-mag.net

it one of the brightest spots in a very tough technology market. The reason is that it delivers communications services in an easy to use environment for the end-user. For example, UC allows users to search for contacts on the corporate directory, instantly start an IM or video session, initiate a web conference with colleagues, check last call and listen to voicemail all from one interface.

Moreover, the benefit of UC is its ability to embed itself within traditional applications so that a user can simply click on a name or number in a document and start a call, instant message or email. By creating a ‘one system to rule them all’ for communications the opportunities to streamline and optimise the way users work is significant. However, UC comes with its challenges.

Start with a plan The first challenge for many is not knowing where to start. Often companies start down the road to UC without the necessary planning or understanding of their assets and value. For IT professionals this is a key stage in conducting a review of their communication equipment and systems. As a result of the complexity of UC, this review - and additionally the initial implementation and ongoing servicing of a UC implementation - quite often benefits from the assistance of IT consultants and/or outsourcers experienced in UC systems. From this audit, IT can then create a vision for its UC with clear goals and objectives.

Many organisations make the common mistake of trying to equate UC with IP Telephony and by starting off their UC experience trying to roll out VOIP and/or a PBX replacement. One important thing to remember about UC is that it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing, telephonyled proposition. In fact, some of the simplest and earliest IT wins around UC focus in on only an initial install of an enterprise IM + presence system and/or a corporate web conferencing system. PBX replacements and voice-mail integrated with email can be a distant phase

two or three of the overall UC rollout strategy.

The next big mistake is that quite often IT tries to roll out UC to everyone. The problem with this approach is that not every user wants everything. Organisations need to make sure the technology is deployed to the right people and teams that are going to use it. As Steve Blood, senior VP at Gartner, said recently, “one of the pitfalls is you shouldn’t be giving it to everyone because not everyone is going to use it. Companies should be identifying the user groups that are going to be using this technology.” For example, a complex and distributed workforce would more likely benefit from unified communications than a company where all staff resides in one office.

A final misstep often seen with new UC systems is that IT attempts to own the ongoing monitoring and maintenance of the UC system post deployment. UC involves many new concepts and IT skill sets, and because it is a core mission-critical system (especially when you include the IM, email and telephony components), it can often be most efficient to look at turning over the management of this system to an outsourced managed service provider. The outsourcer brings skill sets and training to the job which doesn’t have to be hired and maintained within IT.

Cost benefit One of the principle drivers for UC is the ability to reduce costs. Unfortunately many companies make the mistake of first trying to zero in on ‘soft’ productivity cost benefits which are notoriously hard to measure and quantify.

Such an ROI approach can sometimes leave new UC projects dead-on-arrival and scrapped after the pilot phase is completed.

A more successful approach is to focus on cost reductions via integrated systems and the elimination of system (hardware and software) redundancies. Many may argue that if systems such as email, web conferencing, instant messaging, mobile and fixed telephony are in place already, how much more can be achieved January / February 2010 : VitAL 41

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in terms of costs? However, by simplifying and integrating all forms of communications major costs can be saved. According to research

by Orange Business Services, UC can have a significant impact on the bottom line.

By unifying all communications into a single strategy, managed and delivered by the internal IT team or through a managed service provider agreement, organisations have the opportunity to make significant cost reductions in the way the services are supported. By creating a single framework, IT can to consolidate the number of communications suppliers they are paying for their various communications services. Furthermore, by considering a managed services approach to unified communications, further benefits exist for those firms willing to relinquish the management of their communications.

Making it work together No vendor has a product that completely supports all of an organisation’s UC needs.

As a result, interoperability of systems can be important to the success of the UC initiative.

While many solutions do support industry standards, some will be best if they function in their own environment. On the other hand, some products are geared to interoperate with many different systems and so provide much more agility for the enterprise.

An important part of the interoperability challenge is the ability to understand how the services are used in the first instance and what the UC vision is for the enterprise. For example, knowing that users would benefit from click to call on a name in a spreadsheet will influence the interoperability of the products needed to achieve this goal. Mapping out the systems and overlaying what is required will provide the gap analysis that will shape the investment and solutions required to deliver the correct UC environment.

Driving greater productivity Having a UC environment mapped to the ne eds of the business can improve productivity.

Multiple studies have shown this to be case.

However, studies have also found that while more communication has improved productivity, the increase in communication channels and the change in ‘traditional’ work processes brought about by UC, can also 42 VitAL : January / February 2010

quickly wipe away any productivity gains. It appears that users are being overwhelmed by the different forms of communication and struggle to keep up.

According to the Orange Business Services research, the majority (95 percent) of the respondents said they have improved the business productivity but are not satisfied by the resulting slow speed of communication.

In fact, around 45 percent of CIOs agreed that colleague response time decreases significantly due to multiple communication channels.

Understanding how individuals, teams or groups communicate will help IT build a UC environment that delivers the appropriate communication services to every user. In having this flexibility, productivity and response times are improved.

Recent research by Aberdeen Group found that best-in-class respondents improved their responsiveness to others by 31 percent, more than two times the industry average and five times faster than laggards.

Change management The ever increasing number of enterprises (over 66 percent of European enterprises in 2009) conducting UC trials and pilots leaves no doubt that enterprise adoption of UC will increase, despite current deployment rates remaining below 20 percent according to Gartner. The state of the global economy, a reluctance to engage in a telephony rip and replace strategy, and a faulty ‘all or nothing’ approach to UC deployments have all combined to contribute to a dampened adoption of unified communications.

Nevertheless, the barriers are quickly being overcome and the path towards UC is becoming a permanent part of the IT strategy.

As products become deployed, the challenges will shift from technology to organisational and change management.

Unified communications has tangible benefits to a business whether it is reducing costs through consolidating products and services or improving productivity through better communication and enhanced customer service. Now is the time for IT professionals to start the journey towards creating one system to rule them all. VitAL www.azaleos.com

One important thing to remember about UC is that it doesn’t have to be an all-ornothing, telephony-led proposition. In fact, some of the simplest and earliest IT wins around UC focus in on only an initial install of an enterprise IM + presence system and/ or a corporate web conferencing system.

PBX replacements and voice-mail integrated with email can be a distant phase two or three of the overall UC rollout strategy.

www.vital-mag.net

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USBs: An employee’s dream - IT’s worst nightmare Avoiding USB risk exposure, John Jefferis, vice president of Ironkey on how to define and enforce an effective USB security strategy.

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SB drives, or memory sticks as they are sometimes referred to, are immensely popular and increasingly selected as the weapon of choice by employees looking for flexibility in their working environment. Having proved invaluable in increasing productivity they are easy to use, regardless of the user’s technical ability, and able to carry millions of pages of data.

The scenarios where they bring benefits are numerous, for example working from home, working on location at a client site, those using multiple computers, when travelling they can provide a means to back up your lap top, transfer information between your portable devices, and sharing data with customers at conferences or exhibitions, to name just a few.

However, a word to the wise – this productivity 44 VitAL : January / February 2010

www.vital-mag.net

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comes at a cost higher than the original price tag.

These dream devices are proving an absolute nightmare for IT managers as they struggle to ensure the data they carry is secure.

A standard DVD-data-sized (4GB) key fob drive can be bought online for less than ten pounds and from high-street retailers for little more. Coupled with the fact that a growing number of mobile phones and MP3 players are now starting to reach this level of storage capacity – and come with standard or miniUSB connectors, and you begin to understand the scale of the problem.

Serious risk One serious risk is that of being lost or stolen as highlighted in an annual national independent study conducted by Ponemon Institute into ‘Trends in Insider Compliance with Data Security Policies’. In its most recent study (published June 2009) it discovered that 43 percent of respondents admit to having lost or had stolen a portable data-bearing device.

Another increasingly apparent issue is that of spreading viruses and malware. This was aptly illustrated by Ealing Council who revealed in September that it was forced to cut internet and phone links to preserve “core systems and data” when a worker plugged an infected memory stick into a computer in May 2009.

The sophisticated virus spread rapidly, with further shutdowns required when the network was re-infected twice the next week, with all terminals having to be rebuilt or replaced. The Council is faced with a £501,000 bill for the emergency recovery and in lost revenue but it is feared the final cost could top £1.1 million if a new computer security system is needed.

This is not an isolated incident and, in fact, was virtually the same as that suffered by Manchester City Council in February. However, both of these risks can be counterbalanced by defining an effective IT security strategy.

Here’s how: www.vital-mag.net

Step 1: Ban staff from using unprotected sticks and uncontrolled devices. In the first instance, companies should bar staff using vanilla (ie unprotected) USB sticks onto company premises, or use them on work-athome PCs if company data is involved.

Provide an authorised

Step 2: Give them something they can use. Employees want to use them so remove the allure of vanilla sticks and provide an authorised corporate secure USB storage device. Increased productivity should compensate for the initial outlay and using a pooling system will help keep a lid on costs.

By definition secure means a USB stick with a degree of security intelligence built into it.

This intelligence is quite benign and sensible, typically including on-board anti-malware and virus software – updated across the Internet each time the device gains access.

Increased productivity

Step 3: Induction. If you don’t already have a staff induction course, you need one, as all sorts of company legislation needs to be explained to new employees, as well as temporary workers from agencies. An important part of the process is to familiarise all employees with security policies. It is worth stating that any amendments to the security policy, and any other policies for that matter, should be communicated to existing employees with a method for tracking those that have been made aware of the change – ignorance shouldn’t be used as a defence.

corporate secure USB storage device.

should compensate for the initial outlay and using a pooling system will help keep a lid on costs. By definition secure means a USB stick with a degree of security intelligence built into it.

Step 4: Education versus draconian. Rather than ‘because I said so’, all mandates should include an educational element so as not to be viewed as a pointless exercise created by those who ‘don’t understand how we work’.

Explaining the reasoning behind rules will often gain employees support as they can follow the impetus behind the instruction rather than simply wishing to circumnavigate the obstruction.

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Step 5: Identify what’s out there. It’s vital to use on-network/IT resource technology that analyses new devices as they are hooked up to the company system and lock out any unauthorised device. No exceptions, even for the MD. Step 6: Manage centrally. All devices should be involved in a remote portable device scheme, whereby portable devices are updated with IT security policies and checked for general well-being as they connect to the company IT resource – directly, or across the Internet. A reputable IT security system will include the remote management and tracking of secure intelligent flash drives, and also include the ability to recover content, reset a password and re-deploy or destroy data on a device as and when required. It’s often this remote control facility that proves a serious lifesaver for staff and management, as USB sticks and portable storage devices can throw a wobbly.

Step 7: Back up. Finally, you’d be surprised how many people rely on these devices yet fail to take a back-up – even though their desktop or laptop PC is backed up automatically and regularly.

Good management software

We can’t all be super-tech-savvy Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, but we can use our IT resources sensibly and comply with best practice, without having to worry about it.

That’s what differentiates a good IT security strategy from an effective one.

In an ideal world, all staff would understand the need for IT security, and backups for that matter, but life’s too short, and some staff, let’s face it, have other priorities in life. They – and we – are only human after all. This is where an effective IT security strategy that utilises automated security management of portable storage devices, as well as other on-network resources, is so critical. Good management software operates unobtrusively in the background.

We can’t all be super-tech-savvy Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, but we can use our IT resources sensibly and comply with best practice, without having to worry about it. That’s what differentiates a good IT security strategy from an effective one. VitAL www.ironkey.com 46 VitAL : January / February 2010

www.vital-mag.net

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ITSM: Experiential learning explained through Confucius You don’t learn to ride a bike by reading the instructions booklet, do you? This is exactly the principle of Experiential Learning in delivering ITIL-related awareness and training. PlanNet’s head of service management, Derek Elphick explains all with a little help from Confucious.

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hear and I forget. I see and I remember.

I do and I understand.” With this quote, ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius gave us an important insight into learning: lectures go in one ear and out the other, PowerPoint presentations make things ring a bell, but the only way to truly learn something is through active practice.

Decades ago learning equalled plain knowledge absorption. Now Montessori schools teach nursery children through ‘guided discovery’, English teachers help foreigners of all ages learn the language through role-plays and games, and it’s high time businesses trained their staff likewise, in order to improve efficiency – and efficacy, too.

Confucius tackles ITIL So how does this apply to service management, and more specifically, ITIL? Well sure, it’s nice to hold accreditations, but theory alone doesn’t imply understanding: “He who learns but does not think, is lost!” says Confucius, before adding: “He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.” Training employees to deal with common and uncommon incidents or just to manage changes in the system through Best Practice is, in fact, essential to avoid time-wasting, low customer satisfaction and needless financial loss, or as Confucius would say “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”

With anything best practice, the know-how is more important than the know-what, therefore certificates may not be enough if they do not give practical experience of the knowledge they provide. It is also important to have a tailored approach, realising which processes are relevant to the business and how to apply www.vital-mag.net

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Montessori schools

them to everyday operations and incidents.

Investing in an ITIL Foundation course, then, may not have the expected results – and the main reason, surprisingly, has social and cultural roots.

In fact, surveys in the sector all agree that one of the major pitfalls in putting ITIL into practice is not money or lack of guidance, which are at third and second position, but internal resistance to change. People do not understand why they should change and cannot see the benefits, causing them not to really collaborate in putting ITIL into practice.

teach nursery children through ‘guided discovery’, English teachers help foreigners of all ages learn the

Are you experienced?

Training all employees involved in the operations is important to get the best out of best practice. “If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.” Easy to say, but how do you teach people effectively? Well, using experiential learning’s methodology, through role-play involving real life examples the participants take on a role (that can either be the one they are currently performing within their organisation or a different one to allow them to experience challenges connected to other roles) and are encouraged to make mistakes and see the consequences of their actions in a safe, virtual environment. From that experience they understand why it is so important to change behaviour and operational procedures and learn how to put theory into practice, which results in a change of perspective on the whole management of IT services.

The strategy used in experiential learning is surprisingly simple: participants are free to make their own choices and at the end of each round of role-play, the facilitator who leads the game reviews with them a series of reports, while at the same time discussing their own perception of their performance in different areas, so that they can see what needs improvement, where they have progressed and how an action taken by a department can be successful in an area but cause discontent 48 VitAL : January / February 2010

language through roleplays and games, and it’s high time businesses trained their staff likewise, in order to improve efficiency – in another. Reflecting upon mistakes and successes leads to building a theory, and then to planning a new technique to be put into practice in the following round, copying the good and changing the bad, learning again from strengths and weaknesses of the new tactic, in fact self-teaching the notions.

and efficacy, too.

Kolb and Fry Do, review, create a theory, plan, do again. This technique is found in David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, contained in his publication ‘Experiential Learning: Experience As The Source Of Learning And Development’ dated 1984. Kolb, an educational theorist known for his contributions in the field of organisational www.vital-mag.net

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behaviour, developed the Experiential Learning Model (ELM) with Ron Fry in the early Seventies, an approach to learning based on experience. Through this cycle, the trainee uses all the learning bases – experience, reflection, thinking, action – encompassing the ways of learning recognised by Confucius for gaining wisdom: “By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” Activities if truth be told require in fact an effort, but that’s why the knowledge acquired through them will almost certainly remain in memory.

According to the Learning Pyramid, a graphic representation of average memory retention rates for each different learning technique, people remember only 10-30 percent of what they read, hear and see but 70-90 percent of what they do as an activity, especially if talking through it or teaching someone else what they have learnt. The pyramid is based on research carried out by the National Training Laboratory in Bethel, Maine in the early sixties and is still used as an indicator when explaining the effectiveness of teaching methods similar to this.

So with only a morning or afternoon session of experiential learning, one not only manages to see how the ITIL principles work in practice and what their effects and benefits are, but the information on best practice processes will have all sunk in.

Whether you are planning a whole IT system revolution, a small migration or are just cautiously studying your next moves – “The cautious seldom err,” sure, but be aware they don’t seem to achieve anything of importance, either – experiential learning should be the launching pad for all operations; it might be unbelievable that one can achieve such an insight in only a half-day session, and certainly the journey to making the best of ITIL processes can be long, but let’s keep in mind that “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” VitAL www.plan-net.co.uk www.vital-mag.net

Confucius Born in China in 551 BCE, Confucius was a teacher, thinker, philosopher, and social and political theorist and has influenced not only Chinese culture but the whole thinking world for over 2,000 years. Considered to be the greatest master by his compatriots, his principles were followed with religious faith giving birth to a doctrine called Confucianism.

With his philosophy based on selfdevelopment, personal and governmental morality, honesty, justice and social correctness, Confucius contributed to the development of many different theories in areas such as education, politics and ethics.

He died in 479 BCE leaving a series of books and quotes that remain current even in modern times.

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Does service really matter?

Brenda Iniguez, Americas service management services director at FrontRange Solutions says service matters more than ever in these tough times.

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n these tough economic times, though it’s tempting to include service in the many cutbacks being made across the breadth of an organisation, it is important to remember that it’s precisely service that will keep your current customers and will continue to attract new ones, which is essential in surviving the downturn. The gap in the quality of customer service from those organisations that are cutting back to those continuing to build and improve their service offerings is most certainly widening during these tough times. Don’t let your organisation fall into the service reduction bucket.

50 VitAL : January / February 2010

Generation Y If you look at the emerging demographics, with millions of ‘Generation Y’ers coming into the workforce, as well as becoming key consumers of services, that should underline the need for businesses to reassess their service provision. This young demographic’s demand is for more, not less, personalised and tailored services, fully utilising technology to deliver robust services. Organisations that are providing and delivering robust services win; there is no second place.

Why does service matter? It gives organisations the ability to stay connected with their customers, to hear their feedback www.vital-mag.net

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and take tangible, proactive action to meet their demands: what they need, where they need it, and how they want it met – across multiple channels (in person, online, self service, etc).

Delving into the topic of offering multiple channels of service, in today’s highly mobile marketplace, being able to offer meaningful service via several channels is key, particularly to the younger customers. Workplace and lifestyle demands are dictating service be provided in many options, but always provided consistently and reliably.

Effective service What does effective service look like? Perhaps this is best described from the customer’s point of view: • Multiple options – service offerings available when, where and how customers need them, for example, self service or talking live to a person; • Easy access to services – across multiple channels (in person, phone, email, web); • Service in both the good and the challenging times – organisations which actually listen to their customers and which find workable solutions to meet their specific needs… especially in tough or challenging situations; • Doing what they say or promise to do, including following up on commitments made; • Offering access to help around the clock and seven days a week.

To meet the Generation X/Y and mobile workforce customer demand for more personalised services, organisations are looking to customer-focused technology to help meet their service needs across the multiple delivery channels. Well beyond providing phone support and written documentation services, today’s customers are demanding additional service provision. Things like web self services, self-help knowledge areas, FAQs, ask-the-experts, knowledge look-up, pod casts www.vital-mag.net

and video recordings for ‘how to’ instructions or announcements are all essential for serving customers effectively.

Basically delivering access to a customers’ entire portfolio all on a single device (PDA, phone, online) so customers can have onestop access to services for addressing their queries. And with technology, it doesn’t have to be a ‘price versus service’ equation.

Using technology and automating the service options not only meets customers’ service demands but can also maximise an organisation’s efficiency. For example, according to Help Desk Institute (HDI) metrics, the cost for a support call is $26 per call where a web request is $21 per call and self help is $18 per call. So when you apply the dollar savings per call, say 600 self help calls a month (vs. phone), it equates to a $4,800 savings a month or $57,600 annual savings just for this one service option change.

Five steps to service heaven To help move organisations towards improving their customer service offerings, here are five steps to consider: 1. Insure you are actually listening to your customers frequently and across all your customer demographics (crossing age, gender, location) to get a true idea of their actual service needs.

Customer service requirements are specific to each demographic group and can be quite varied. The service needs of a 65 year old retired, customer are often quite different from a young 26 year old mobile professional or a 20 year old homemaker; 2. Tailor your service offerings so they meet the growing service demands, but effectively use technology to do so, minimising the service delivery costs; 3. Increase your service offering from the basic phone channel. Even adding one additional channel like web self service or self help

In today’s highly mobile marketplace, being able to offer meaningful service via several channels is key, particularly to the younger customers.

Workplace and lifestyle demands are dictating service be provided in many options, but always provided consistently and reliably.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 51

vital A New Era ONLINE

Print Digital Online

For exclusive news, features, opinion, comment, directory, digital archive and much more visit

www.vital-mag.net

www.31media.co.uk

VitAL Drive: IT hits the fairway

Does Service really matter? Absolutely and always. In good times and especially

It is amazing how technology can surprise you

in times of challenge, it’s service that will First your phone was a watch and now your watch is a phone.

Geraint Lewis hails the return of a lost classic and pines for a dummy wah-wah pedal.

keep your current customers coming back and service that is the competitive advantage to draw potential new customers to do business with your organisation. will send the message to your customers that you are ‘responsive’ to their service needs; 4. Change your employee incentive programmes to encourage and reward your employees for taking tangible actions to meet customer needs and permanently solve real customer issues at the root cause, not simply finding a temporary workaround; 5. Build training programmes that have service as the key focus element, so that every action you take for customers has service at the heart of the offering; that all things done for customers should be done with service in mind. I recently came across a huge banner inside an organisation that read: “Your job is to take care of the customer… or to take care of those who do”. Service should be at the heart of everything an organisation does.

Does Service really matter? Absolutely and always. In good times and especially in times of challenge, it’s service that will keep your current customers coming back and service that is the competitive advantage to draw potential new customers to do business with your organisation. VitAL www.frontrange.com www.vital-mag.net

I

was recently talking with a colleague about the apparent decline of the humble wrist watch. At the recent Open Championships, my colleague was bombarded with requests for the correct time. The reason?

People now no longer have a wrist watch as they use the clock function on their mobile device.

With the “Mobiles ban” in full force on the course, they had no idea of the time and given the traditional Scottish summer weather: driving rain and howling winds they couldn’t rely on sun dials.

Personally I wish more venues would impose a similar ban, attendance at a recent football match was ruined for me by the idiot in front of me who kept up an almost constant commentary via mobile phone to various friends, some of whom were in the stadium as well!

I now read that LG has produced a mobile phone the size and shape of a watch that you can wear on your wrist, as well as making / taking calls, surfing the internet, posting tweets and blog updates, it will also display the time.

I am now confidently expecting Apple to launch a new iPod with a cassette playing function in the near

future, called the WalkmanPod. Watch this space….

What did I want in my virtual xmas stocking last year? It has got to be a wah-wah pedal for our Guitar Hero Game. I can only truly pretend to be Jimi Hendrix as I ‘strum’ along to Spanish Castle Magic if I have the pedal.

I know it’s only (pretend) Rock ‘n’ Roll, but I like it. VitAL

January / February 2010 : VitAL 53

vital processes

Putting the user at the centre of things A strategy that puts the user in control at the centre of things is, according to Zabisco director Hammad Khan, the principal benefit of a user-centred approach.

H

ave a conversation with almost anybody and most would agree that making your end-users perspective a leading factor in how you approach your business makes sense. So why is it that when you look closely, so many businesses (and nonprofit organisations and public bodies for that matter) don’t actually adopt this seemingly obvious idea?

Taking ‘The user’s point of view’ doesn’t have to be quite as opened ended as it sounds. The idea of User Centred Design (aka UCD) is a well-established practice; it even has an ISO standard (ISO 13407), so your managers can be confident of implementing it into existing business process. When I’ve been asked to come into an organisation and get them to start taking a UCD approach to a project, we’ve found it to be one of the easiest change

54 VitAL : January / February 2010

management practices to go through, as it’s driven by common-sense as opposed to other methodologies that rely on a decision making process that not everybody agrees on. Of course, it also delivers the best user experience at the end and that is no bad way to create a closer and more engaging relationship with your customers.

Collaboration User Centred Design is not just about ‘bluesky thinking’ over what people might want (which can be dangerous in its own right as opinion quickly becomes fact during internal brainstorms). UCD encourages the inclusion of your target audiences in the process.

Requirements capture, prototyping, revision cycles, testing and ongoing feedback – almost every part of a project’s lifecycle is www.vital-mag.net

vital processes

an opportunity to include your users into the process and keep things focused in their favour.

The result is that you and your team are collaborating, rather than competing on how to drive out your business goals more effectively; with the end users being the grounding voice throughout. All those well established business mantras like ‘the customer is always right’ exist for a reason, so adopting UCD allows us to pay homage to this, while being realistic at the same time.

One way to quickly see how much UCD influences a company’s outward facing communications and services is of course by looking at its website. Being a digital agency, this is something we analyse and implement regularly. How a business chooses to label and organise its content and the navigation around it is often a good indicator as to how much the end users have been taken into consideration and whether this has been given preference over the needs of the business itself.

Those taking an inside-out view will often have their navigation and calls to action reflecting how their organisation is structured; its departments, locations and sales contacts.

Conversely, organisations who have taken a more user-centred perspective are more likely to have a navigation that better reflects the needs of their audience; how they can help, softer language etc.

Good intentions So, why is it so many businesses don’t get this right? Is it because they don’t care about their customers? That’s not often the case. Projects often start with good intentions, but the user’s www.vital-mag.net

needs and viewpoints get overshadowed by politics and personalities. Working in corporate web design and development, this is a pattern we come across regularly and it’s easy to see how it can occur.

In a typical organisation, there are usually competing groups vying for the space, prominence and functionality that meet their specific needs: a marketing department wanting to push the latest product line for example; the CEO wanting to communicate the new strategy; or the Finance team needing to publish reports. Each a valid business need, but ultimately serving that of the organisation first, rather than what their audience needs.

This internal struggle also comes with political connotations and in extreme cases can even get personal. Seldom does one group or department back down in favour of another in a ‘straight up’ fight. By using UCD as the methodology throughout, it’s a lot easier (and quicker) to get the compromise needed, as everybody knows up front that if a particular feature, function or requirement isn’t high on the audience agenda it can be re-thought.

Similarly if the terminology used for navigation isn’t driving the user to their goal, then it can be re-architected. An instant business benefit of taking this approach is to getting a better return on investment (ROI) from your pay per click advertising on sites such as Google or Bing. Why waste money on bringing traffic to your website, if people will get lost, confused and ultimately leave before fully engaging with what you had to offer? This kind of optimising is something we do a lot of and it doesn’t always have to come attached to a big redesign project either.

So, why is it so many businesses don’t get this right? Is it because they don’t care about their customers? That’s not often the case.

Projects often start with good intentions, but the user’s needs and viewpoints get overshadowed by politics and personalities.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 55

vital processes

To give an example, getting the balance right can be as simple as promoting a product’s benefits instead of listing its features; a subtle difference, but one that engages in a totally different way. Clearly thought out benefits can inspire somebody to think about how a product or service fits with them as an individual.

Defining features relies on the hope your market can find a connection with it. In a world that is ever more competitive and sceptical, the question is – why risk it?

Clearly thought out benefits can inspire somebody to think about how a product or service fits with them as

User-focussed structure In website design (or more accurately, information architecture), one of the most common patterns we see is clients who want to know why a navigation structure that that looks similar to example A below is not working well for them (ie low traffic, poor sales, high drop-out rates etc): About us | Products | Services | Partners | News | Contact us Simple enough and not wrong in any tangible way, but actually this speaks volumes about how the organisation thinks – pretty much about themselves predominantly! By looking at these choices, the user is not educated about what’s on offer or whether the information they are after is even available.

Let’s apply this to a fictitious business as an example – say Acme Watches. If a potential customer came along looking for the latest prices, would they be in ‘products’? Maybe, but what if Acme Watches doesn’t sell direct to the consumer and you have to find an authorised reseller (which happens to be inside ‘partners’).

The user might search around and find the appropriate content they need, but more than likely they’ll switch off, or turn back to Google 56 VitAL : January / February 2010

an individual. Defining for a new and more obvious direction.

If however Acme Watches got the team together and brainstormed on how to better communicate their proposition, they may have come up with something like example B: Who we are | What we do | How we can help | Who we work with | Get in touch If however, they adopted UCD and took both internal and external perspectives, they’d more likely end up with something not too different from example C. About Acme Watches | Mens’ Watches | Ladies’ Watches | Repairs & Servicing | Where to buy Again, a small change, but a huge difference when it comes to keeping users engaged. I’m sure I don’t need to patronise by spelling out the improvement, but if you know of a sceptic and fancy making a quick few quid, put these examples through some A/B testing and put your money on C! VitAL www.zabisco.com

features relies on the hope your market can find a connection with it. In a world that is ever more competitive and sceptical, the question is – why risk it?

www.vital-mag.net

vital planet

The green agenda – Achieving carbon peace of mind The introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment has put ‘green’ back on the agenda. But Chris Gabriel, director of marketing and solutions at Logicalis says a low-carbon outlook can also bring efficiency and financial benefits.

A

s of April this year, the prospect of real financial penalties stemming from the introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (recently renamed the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme) means the board will be paying closer attention to IT’s power consumption than ever before, placing carbon reduction strategies at the forefront of all IT manager’s minds.

While the initial phase of CRC is only compulsory for large ‘low energy-intensive’ private and public organisations, the cost and resource efficiency benefits of going green reveal a compelling case for change as we move toward economic recovery; green is firmly back on the agenda for businesses of all sizes as we enter this new decade.

However, with so much green-wash out there, it can be difficult knowing where to start.

IT assets with a green-label can often come with a hefty price tag in tow, so it is important to thoroughly assess the real-life business efficiency benefits of every potential green IT purchase.

Contrary to popular belief, though, it doesn’t always cost the earth to be green.

Organisations can take small but effective steps towards achieving a carbon efficient IT strategy. The key is to start at the very beginning, understanding what you’ve got and

58 VitAL : January / February 2010

www.vital-mag.net

vital planet

taking a pragmatic approach that aligns with business need. The following three step plan will help kick-start your green agenda, taking the IT department and the business that bit closer to achieving carbon-piece-of-mind:

Measure This is where the leg work begins. To lay the foundations of any green IT strategy, organisations need to first identify their existing carbon demands; taking a 50,000 ft view and knowing exactly what you’ve got and how you use it is paramount. Thorough auditing and measurement will help you to understand and prioritise what changes need to be made to take you on the road to achieving carbon reduction goals.

Bringing on-board a specialist IT partner or consultant can help accelerate and ease the challenges of this procedure. Furthermore, a third party will bring with it objectivity – as highlighted before, on the surface it may seem easy to dive feet first into a full-on ‘green-label’ approach, but it is not always the best option for achieving long term goals.

Today, savvy organisations are embarking on Thermal Assessment Services that provide a detailed audit of carbon outputs as the first step in planning a carbon-efficient IT strategy.

This will make clear where you are, and where you need to be. By helping to identify practical ways to overcome the capacity and energy limitations, operational vulnerabilities, and technology constraints that exist in IT infrastructures and data centres, you will be able to make informed and intelligent decisions about the strategy you hope to pursue.

Mend Once you have a clear view of your current carbon landscape, you can then explore innovative ways to increase efficiencies. Small changes can make big differences. We call it Tweak-onomics; you may call it intelligent IT investment.

A big-bang approach can be limited in terms of releasing capital investment and safeguarding business continuity, so it is advisable to prioritise change with small proven www.vital-mag.net

steps that will maximise return on efficiency at every turn.

Tweak-onomics provides a series of tips that require minimum investment but result in maximum output, helping drive down costs and enhance performance all the while reducing carbon consumption and increasing IT efficiency. Examples include: • Data de-duplication. Corporate IT systems are awash with data that is inaccurate, incomplete, out-of-date, duplicated, redundant or just plain meaningless. This dirty data is the type that can, over time, turn a lean organisation into one that is slow to respond to market demand. Most underestimate the extent of the problem, and are unaware of the amount of efficiency savings – carbon, resource and cost - can be gleaned by cleaning it up.

Getting rid of all that unnecessary data enables organisations to increase backup storage efficiency by up to 5000 percent. In turn, this frees up critical data centre space and dramatically reduces power consumption, keeping cooling costs down and carbon footprints to a minimum.

• Lower power states. Thirty percent of power is wasted by organisations each year as a result of inactive PCs. Energy savings can be maximised by placing machines into lower power states without interfering with end-user productivity. PC Power Management tools can reduce power use by up to 97 percent or £35 per desktop.

• IT process automation. Automating IT processes across the board can provide significant efficiencies in carbon output, resource and operating costs, as well as improving service delivery if you identify where automation can change an operating model; eg move to 24/7 data centre ‘lights out’ model, where systems not in use at any one time can power down accordingly; and share common infrastructures and move workloads automatically based on organisational requirements.

Organisations can take small but effective steps towards achieving a carbon efficient IT strategy.

The key is to start at the very beginning, understanding what you’ve got and taking a pragmatic approach that aligns with business need.

Manage and Monitor There is no quick fix to being and staying green, January / February 2010 : VitAL 59

vital planet

it is an ongoing process of identifying where further efficiencies can be made. Monitoring technology usage in order to maintain green strategies and seek out further efficiencies is vital.

Many organisations are actively taking steps to become more efficient, and thereby reduce their energy bill and carbon footprint, but few are able to truly provide demonstrable evidence of the impact these policies have. Today, advanced enterprise software is available to address this problem, providing solutions that increase profitability, aid sustainability and visibly communicate and support cultural change within the workplace.

Investing in interactive reporting tools that enable you to have a complete and ongoing view of carbon outputs and energy usage, helps identify where further efficiencies need to be made, makes your carbon efficiency strategy and its success visible to the board and demonstrates IT’s supporting role in becoming green.

Examples of how a holistic approach to carbon management, monitoring and reporting can be seen in Verdium’s environmental dashboard and Computer Associates’ (CA) Eco-Software. For example, CA’s new business-focused dashboard enables the entire business to monitor its environmental footprint, from the carbon footprint in a retailer’s store, through to the energy use in its data centre. When fed with information from active carbon management systems now available from Cisco or HP, the business can measure and prove its sustainability programmes.

For the IT department, having the ability to promote CO2 and energy savings across the organisation is a powerful tool in promoting the wider environmental agenda.

While taking this pragmatic step-by-step approach into account, IT managers and CIOs will understand that there is always further justification to ‘go green’ than just saving the planet; every action toward increasing efficiency, whether labelled ‘green’ or not is good for the bottom line. With the economy still affecting business in all sectors, finding areas of efficiency savings and innovation will be crucial in maintaining business growth.

Looking forward, as you feel the pressure to go green, think of this as the time to show IT as an enabler and asset to the business rather than just an incremental cost. VitAL www.uk.logicalis.com 60 VitAL : January / February 2010

Top tips for green and efficient IT Process (server) virtualisation Typically operating at between five and 20 percent, under-utilised servers are clogging up data centres and wasting floor space, power, and cooling capacity. The mantra is simple, consolidate if you can.

Storage virtualisation and consolidation Growing at some 45 percent year on year, the need for storage seems unstoppable.

It’s not; consolidating and virtualising storage into shared resource pools can drive up utilisation and reduce this growth.

Information life cycle management (ILM) 85 percent of corporate data is unstructured information and 30-40 percent of it is duplicated data. ILM allows organisations to create a tiered storage strategy, classifying and moving data to the right level of storage, saving space as well as money.

Application consolidation Many applications are very rarely used or their functionality has been superseded by a new application. Operate a streamlined application strategy by documenting an application footprint and rationalise accordingly.

Desktop power management and thin client The average thin client device draws about one-tenth the power of the desktop PC; so major energy and cooling savings are achievable. Similarly, PC power management can reduce power use by up to 97 percent, saving up to £35 per desktop.

Branch / remote office consolidation Collapsing remote services into a well-managed environmentally efficient central processing and storage environment can have considerable benefits where large numbers of remote file and print services exist, as well as the side benefit of improved information lifecycle management and regulation of that remote data.

Unified communication and video conferencing UC and video collaboration can take people off roads, planes, and enable truly flexible home working strategies, drastically curtailing an individual’s carbon footprint.

Appliance consolidation Data centres now support a range of appliances and many are surprised to find out how many firewalls they operate, or how many load balancers they have. Both legacy servers and new appliances have potential for consolidation which can deliver significant service improvement opportunities.

Intelligent buildings By using biometric systems, intelligent communications and server technologies, shared service buildings will allow one intelligent building to play the role of two, or more.

Digital forms By replacing the initial paper exchange, data is digitised at the source, emailed, stored and moved around an organisation much faster and efficiently and paper consumption is reduced. Turning out print queues to double-sided printing can also reduce paper use in an average office by 40 percent.

www.vital-mag.net

directory

Customer Service Network

Creative Industries Centre, Wolverhampton Science Park, Wolverhampton, WV10 9TG T: F: W: C: E:

01902 311641

01902 311637 www.customernet.com Chris Walker chrisw@customernet.com

UKCMG

FOX IT

Suite A1, Kebbell House, Carpenders Park, Watford. WD19 5BE

Chester House, 76-86 Chertsey Road, Woking, Surrey, GU21 5BJ

T: F: W: C: E:

T: F: W: E:

+ 44 (0) 20 8421 5330 + 44 (0) 20 8421 5457 www.ukcmg.org.uk Laura Goss, UKCMG Secretariat ukcmg@ukcmg.org.uk

+44 (0) 1483 221222 +44 (0) 1483 221500 www.foxit.net enquiries@foxit.net

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.

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 end-users, consultants & suppliers

Fox IT is a global independent Service Management specialist having undertaken transformation engagements in over 50 countries.

Recognised as the premier supplier of Consultancy, Education, Solutions and Accelerators, Fox IT has the most extensive ITIL based ITSM and Governance practice in the world.

FrontRange Solutions

ICCM Solutions

unipress software

™

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: Chantelle Mearing E: chantelle.mearing@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.

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: Kate Colclough E: info@iccm.co.uk ICCM supply Service Desk software created within Metastorms™ leading process improvement architecture. This collaboration delivers unparalleled Service Management capabilities across all industries and business functions. By developing its technology from the process up around the ITIL® framework ICCM’s software allows customers to tailor processes around their company’s actual needs.

UniPress Software – London UniPress Software Ltd 2 Sheraton Street London, W1F 8BH T: F: W: E:

+ 44 (0) 8450 646566 + 44 (0) 8450 636261 unipress.co.uk sales@unipress.co.uk

Web Help Desk is a 100% web-based helpdesk solution which provides a low cost of ownership, ultimate portability and simple implementation. A totally cross-platform solution, Web Help Desk has a diverse feature-set that will allow you to fulfil any submitted request more efficiently and effectively.

Cherwell Software

Hornbill Systems

APMG

Ares, Odyssey Business Park, West End Road, Ruislip, HA4 6QD

Sword House, Totteridge Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK

T: F: W: C: E:

Brinkworth House, Brinkworth, SN15 5DF

T: F: W: C: E:

T: + 44 (0) 1793 680280 W: www.cherwellsoftware.com/contact

020 8582 8282 020 8582 8288 www.hornbill.com Sales 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.

www.vital-mag.net

+ 44 (0) 1494 452 450 + 44 (0) 1494 459559 www.apmg-uk.com Nicola McKinney nicola.mckinney@apmgroup.co.uk

As an accredited ITIL® Examination Institute, APMG offers our training organizations a range of benefits to help them demonstrate the quality and professionalism of their services.

Call us to find out how your business could benefit from our accreditation services.

Cherwell Service Management delivers ITIL v3 best practice ‘out-of-the-box’ including: Incident, Problem, Change, CMDB, SLA, Knowledge, SelfService and is PinkVERIFY certified. Our unique CBAT development platform empowers users to fully customise screens, workflow processes and develop additional business applications. The Cherwell solution is available via a standard license model or ‘On Demand’ SaaS service.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 61

directory

CUSTOMER MAGAZINE

Wardown Consulting

emereo solutions (uk) ltd

31 Media, Media House, 16 Rippolson Road, London SE18 1NS

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

6 Rickett Street, London SW6 1RU

T: F: W: C: E:

T: F: W: C: E:

T: W: C: E:

+44 (0) 870 863 6930 +44 (0) 870 085 8837 www.31media.co.uk Matthew Bailey matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk

Customer is a UK based magazine for senior professionals who are committed to ensuring their businesses are totally customer centric. With a pragmatic editorial approach Customer aims to bring clarity and vision to a sector that has become increasingly complex.

InfraVision

Delegate House, 30A Hart Street, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, RG9 2AL T: F: W: C: E:

+44 (0) 1491 635340 +44 (0) 1491 579835 www.infravision.com Nigel Todd n.todd@infravision.com

InfraVision improves your service organisation, delivering value to your company’s core business. The unique combination of ITIL process knowledge and thorough knowledge of Service and System Management Software enables us to deliver successful implementation within the defined budget.

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.

0871 717 7294 www.emereo.eu Andrew Smith marketing@emereo.eu

Emereo provides end-point security and data loss prevention solutions to organisations wishing to protect their data and information without inhibiting their people. Our chosen solution, DriveLock, ensure IT security policies are both people- and information-centric.

Kepner-tregoe

NetSupport Software

Quayside House, Thames Side, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1QN T: +44 (0) 1753 856716 F: +44 (0) 1753 854929 W: www.kepner-tregoe.com C: Steve White E: swhite@kepner-tregoe.com

Towngate East, Market Deeping, Peterborough, PE6 8NE

T: +44 (0) 1778 382270 F: +44 (0) 1778 382280 W: www.netsupportsoftware.co.uk C: Colette Reed E: colette@netsupportsoftware.co.uk

Kepner-Tregoe provides consulting and training services to organizations worldwide.

We collaborate with clients to implement their strategies by embedding problem-solving, decision-making, and project execution methods through individual and team skill development and process improvement. Clients build competitive advantage by using our systematic processes to achieve rapid, targeted results and create lasting value.

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.

Pink Elephant

Sunrise Software

iCore

Atlantic House, Imperial Way, Reading. RG2 0TD

50 Barwell Business Park, Leatherhead Rd

60 Lombard Street, London. EC3V 9EA

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.

62 VitAL : January / February 2010

Chessington, Surrey. KT9 2NY T: +44 (0) 208 391 9000 F: +44 (0) 208 391 0404 W: www.sunrisesoftware.co.uk C: Angela Steel E: welcome@sunrisesoftware.co.uk Sunrise is a leading independent provider of service management software solutions for IT and across the organisation, with a customer base of over 1000 blue chip and public sector organisations.

T: F: W: E:

+44 (0) 207 464 8414 +44 (0) 207 464 8888 www.icore-ltd.com enquiries@icore-ltd.com

iCore is the UK’s largest independent service management consultancy. From best practice alignment, governance, outsourcing and contract consulting to ITIL training and recruitment — our range of high quality services help to ensure our clients optimise ROI through the deployment of efficient and effective IT service provision methods and sustainable controls.

www.vital-mag.net

directory

BCS

North Star House, North Star Avenue, Swindon, SN2 1FA T: W: C: E:

+44 (0) 1793 417596 www.bcs.org Suky Kaur Sunner suky.kaursunner@hq.bcs.org.uk

BCS is the leading professional body for those working in IT. We have over 65,000 members in more than 100 countries and are the qualifying body for Chartered IT Professionals (CITP). Please go to www. bcs.org to learn more.

avocent landesk

Dukes Court, Duke Street, Woking, Surrey GU22 7AD

House-on-the-Hill Software

T: +44 (0) 1483 744444 F: +44 (0) 1483 744401 W: www.landesk.com C: Sarah Lewis E: sarah.lewis@avocent.com Avocent delivers IT operations management solutions that reduce operating costs, simplify management and increase the availability of critical IT environments 24/7 via integrated, centralized software. This includes Systems Management, Security Management, Data Centre Management and IT Service Management.

127 Stockport Rd, Marple, Cheshire SK6 6AF T: F: W: C: E:

+44 (0) 161 449 7057 +44 (0) 161 449 7122 www.houseonthehill.com Tim Roche info@houseonthehill.com

Specialists in providing comprehensive solutions for any size business on time, in budget and carefully tailored to your needs, House-on-the-Hill produces SupportDesk; the most flexible ITILcompatible Service Management solution on the market. House-on-the-Hill provides comprehensive solutions for over 500 businesses worldwide.

tesseract

Customer Service Network

TEST MAGAZINE

1 Newmans Row, Lincoln Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, HP12 3RE T: +44 (0) 1494 465066 F: +44 (0) 1494 464756 W: www.tesseract.co.uk C: Mark Montgomery E: websales@tesseract.co.uk

Third Avenue, Globe Business Park

31 Media, Media House, 16 Rippolson Road, London SE18 1NS

Marlow, Buckinghamshire SL7 1EY T: +44 (0) 1628 898 888 F: +44 (0) 1628 898 777 W: www.kana.com C: Warren Holtman

T: F: W: C: E:

+44 (0) 870 863 6930 +44 (0) 870 085 8837 www.31media.co.uk Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.co.uk

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T: +44 (0) 1926 405 777 F: +44 (0) 1926 405 778 W: www.fgiltd.co.uk C: Jayne Neal, Sales Manager E: jayne@fgiltd.co.uk FGI are leading suppliers of ITIL®, PRINCE2™ and ISO20000 training and consultancy. Our dedication to these core competencies allow us to provide the highest quality service. We work with your organisation to understand and develop the most effective training programmes.

January / February 2010 : VitAL 63

secrets of my success

Stephen Clarke Truancy Call Ltd

VitAL: Name, company and job title please?

Married? Kids?

Stephen Clarke: Stephen Clarke, managing director, Truancy Call Ltd. Two children aged 10 and 4.

VitAL: What got you started in IT? SC: I have always had an interest in IT since owning my own Sinclair Spectrum in the 1980s.

This progressed as I got older and I dabbled in computer programming for a while with a thought that I may want to move into that area but it was marketing that took my interest and after completing a marketing degree I worked for a period as a marketing manager for an insurance company. However, Marketing and IT were my passions so within a few years I moved sideways to take up a product manager role within Truancy Call Ltd and quickly progressed to director and then managing director. It helps to have logical mind when liaising with the technical people in the company and I certainly think my passion for IT helps VitAL: Was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration?

SC: In 2000 I read an article about two schoolgirls who went missing on their way to school. They were located after three days but their parents were angry that their school had not notified them about the absence. The Department for Children, Schools and Families recommends that schools phone parents after their children have had unexplained absences of more than a few hours.

This is a major task for school offices, which highlighted a need for technology to safeguard children’s welfare through first-day contact with parents of absentees. The Truancy Call software we developed links school registers to a system that sends out emails, text messages and voice calls, informing parents of their child’s unexpected absence and requesting an explanation.

VitAL: What was your first IT job and what was your first major IT triumph?

64 VitAL : January / February 2010

SC: I did not have a first IT job as such, however, the first triumph for Truancy Call Ltd must have been when we collected two awards at the Orange small business awards: one for the company and one for me personally. More recently we won the Best use of Technology Category at the Fast Growth Business Awards.

VitAL: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? What did you learn from them?

SC: Not so much embarrassing mistakes but when I picked up a BT Essence of the Entrepreneur award I had to have my photograph taken. The photographer decided that he wanted to link the image to the company name. He decided that I should be dressed as a stereotypical truant, so I was dressed in shorts, a blazer and a hat, holding a skateboard and smoking a cigarette while stood in a park in Oxford in the middle of the day! Parents were wandering by taking their children to the park looking at this grown man dressed as a schoolboy. What I learnt from this is that sometimes you just have to throw yourself into things no matter how much it might take you outside your comfort zone.

VitAL: What do you like best about your job?

SC: The variety; one day I will be out visiting schools with our area managers, next I will be doing radio and TV interviews and then the following day I will be pitching in and speaking to customers to answer any technical queries we have. This was the case when we sent out over two million text messages to parents via our

Call Parents system to advise them of school closures during the recent snow.

VitAL: What is your biggest ambition?

SC: We currently operate in the UK, Ireland and Australia and I would like to move the company further into overseas expansions, while expanding our product range in the UK within the education market, public sector and corporate markets using the similar technology to what we have already developed.

VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests?

SC: I enjoy spending time with my family, skiing when the opportunity arises and I am currently learning to play the drums.

VitAL: What is the secret of your success?

SC: Since I started Truancy Call Ltd in 2000 I have led the business to continuous growth and success. This can be largely attributed to our innovative use of technology to help schools tackle issues such as truancy and bullying, while saving them money and halving the time administrative staff spend calling parents.

I regularly visit customers to obtain feedback and as a result we can now send messages in 15 different languages, which has increased the volume of automated phone calls sent out and in turn increased turnover. Our products are now used in over 1,000 schools in the UK, Australia and Republic of Ireland.

VitAL: Stephen Clarke, thank you very much. www.vital-mag.net

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