VitAL Magazine - July-August 2009

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Inspiration for the modern business Volume 2 : Issue 6 : July / August 2009

Accelerated learning experience Learning lessons from Apollo 13

Doing more with less Surviving tough times

Telecommuting The technical challenge

FEATURE FOCUS: ITIL – DOES IT WORK? 24-27

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LEADER

40 YEARS AGO...

LEADER T

HE COVER of this issue is a dramatic reminder of the momentous events that took place exactly 40 years ago on July 16. Although the cover and the feature within pertain to the near-tragedy of Apollo 13 and what a great role-play the managing of the unfolding events surrounding the rescue of the stricken mission makes for experiential training, it put me in mind of the original moon shot mission of Apollo 11 and indeed the incredible Apollo project as a whole.

While the combined computing power used in all the Apollo missions probably couldn’t even run the simplest of iPhone Apps (not quite true, I’m sure the Calculator App is roughly analogous, perhaps without its fancy touch-screen interface, that is just the calculating part of it), it remains a monument to what man can achieve with the technology at hand when he really puts his mind to it.

What is striking however is how stratospherically IT technology has progressed in those 40 intervening years, propelled by the financial imperatives of an informationhungry market, compared to how far space craft technology has moved on in the same period. You could be forgiven for having believed, back in ’69, that by 2009 we would all be living on Venus and regularly crossing interstellar space, that the cosmos would be our new home. Clearly that never happened.

In reality, the latest plans from NASA to - at long last - send manned missions back to the Moon and then Mars, use roughly the same space craft hardware as the Apollo missions – basically an adapted and developed Saturn 5 rocket with a more advanced, but conceptually similar lander vehicle. While highly exciting for space enthusiasts, these goals are woefully short of the ones envisaged 40 years ago before the economic and political realities of the 70s and 80s put the kibosh on them.

In contrast to this there is the bright technological future predicted by IT visionaries like inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil who see few limits on human endeavour once the ‘singularity’ – effectively the point at which machines start to write their own programming – is reached and true machine intelligence becomes a reality. These futurologists predict this crucial paradigm shift will take place anytime between the next five and thirty years.

Until next time, keep watching the stars!

1 Matt Bailey 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

July / August 2009 : VitAL

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CONTENTS

Contents Inspiration for the modern business

6 News THE VITAL COVER STORY

16 A degree of quality JONATHAN WESTLAKE

10 Accelerated learning experience

Cover image courtesy of NASA

Editor Matthew Bailey matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1293 934464 To advertise contact: Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)1293 934461 Production & Design Toni Barrington toni.barrington@31media.co.uk Dean Cook dean.cook@31media.co.uk Editorial & Advertising Enquiries 31 Media, Crawley Business Centre, Stephenson Way, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 1TN Tel: +44 (0) 870 863 6930 Fax: +44 (0) 870 085 8837 Email: info@31media.co.uk Web: www.vital-mag.net

You should be investing in experiential training now if you want to thrive in the downturn. And what experience could be more challenging than the plight of Apollo 13?

VITAL SIGNS LIFE IN A WORLD WITH IT

13 The holistic detective agency

20 Cloud your judgement, save your business SIMON KELSON

STEVE WHITE Steve is having problems getting the three groups in a support organisation he was involved with recently talking to each other

VITAL SERVICES

14 Retaining the talent ALWYN WELCH

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

Now is the time to take emotion out of disaster recovery planning and examine it from a business perspective. And cloud computing could help this process.

© 2009 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.

VITAL DRIVE IT HITS THE FAIRWAY

ISSN 1755-6465

Published by:

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.

Exploring the role of academic qualifications in IT service management and service desk careers.

23 Virtually having a ball

Can an IT professional still have a successful career in the UK, and what impact is the credit crunch having on organisations’ personnel and training needs?

GERAINT LEWIS This month Geraint is grappling with the attractions of virtualisation and the technicalities of golf course design.

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.

Subscription Rates: UK £30.00 per year, Rest of the World £60.00 per year Please direct all subscription enquiries to: subscriptions@31media.co.uk

July / August 2009 : VitAL

3

New Version £3 Now Available

A Fresh Approach to IT Asset Management

Maintaining a complete inventory of your PC and Servers is essential but nothing new; managing application and internet usage is refreshing; deploying software applications on demand is definitely time saving; but managing any number of separate networks over the internet…now that’s the business.

NetSupport DNA is a complete modular solution that delivers Hardware and Software inventory and License Management. It features detailed and fully customisable Alerting, Application and Internet Metering / Usage Control and both push and pull Software Distribution over a LAN or WAN. NetSupport DNA now also provides an integrated communication gateway allowing secure interaction with your assets, anywhere, over the internet without the need for a VPN or changes to your existing network or firewall configuration.

With a new Energy Monitoring component helping to highlight areas of potential energy wastage across an organisation’s computers, full AD integration, optional ITIL-based Helpdesk and market leading Remote Control, there has never been a better time to see how NetSupport DNA can save you money and time. Download a 50 user trial copy today.

For more information and to download a free trial please visit

www.netsupportdna.com sales@netsupportsoftware.co.uk

01778 382270

www.netsupportsoftware.com

CONTENTS

Contents VITAL PROCESSES

24 ITIL – does it really work?

DAVID MOUNT

VITAL MANAGEMENT

32 Measuring the actual not the theoretical FRANK PURANIK

VITAL PLANET

38 When the going gets tough

BEN GRIMES Advice for IT managers looking to reduce overheads and increase efficiencies in the face of shrinking budgets and dwindling resources.

Six headline tips to save time and money and reap environmental rewards too.

42 The telecommuting top ten ANDREW MCGRATH

Much work has been put into developing ITIL and many vendors want to be ITIL compatible, but does it really deliver and what value does it provide the end user?

28 Does the IT manager really know what’s going on over the network?

NIGEL HAWTHORN

When it comes to service management dashboards there is an obsession with availability which completely ignores the user experience: the journey.

36 The Italian IT job DAVID AMINZADE

For flexible working to be a success it is important to know the technological challenges that can be expected and the best practices to adopt. Andrew McGrath shares his top ten tips for flexible and remote working.

VITAL DIGEST 16-page round-up of the state-of-the-art in IT service management.

48 Secret of my success

5

Why do IT managers no longer want to police the network, but still have complete visibility on what type of applications are being used?

Can they have their cake and eat it?

Having put down roots in the south of Italy, David Aminzade can now see the parallels between the southern Italian way of life and IT security.

This issue, regular VitAL columnist Steve White of Kepner Tragoe takes the hot seat.

July / August 2009 : VitAL

NEWS

Fraud Academy opens its doors P

RICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS HAS launched the PwC Fraud Academy, a forum that it says allows members to share information on how best to prevent, detect and investigate fraud, bribery and other economic crime. At an inaugural event in London, PwC Fraud Academy members heard from Richard Alderman, director of the Serious Fraud Office, on likely developments in the role and approach of the SFO and the impact this could have on UK businesses.

John Tracey, a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

forensic accounting practice said: “We wanted to provide a forum for clients and others to share knowledge at a time of unprecedented change in how fraud and economic crime is perpetrated and combated. The ebbing economic tide is exposing frauds that lay submerged and were sustainable when times were good. Alongside this, the downturn is affecting companies of all sizes in all sectors. Banking covenants are being breached, costs are being cut, reputations and businesses are on the line. The pressure for some to

WEB-WISE LEARNING

A

6

WEB site capability offering proven distance learning for project management and IT qualifications has been launched by Focus on Training, in response to what it says is a growing demand for e-learning as a route to professional development. With packages from all the leading accredited providers on a single web site at www.focus-on-training. co.uk choosing an E-learning course will be much simpler and quicker according to the training provider.

Web site visitors can select from packages covering qualifications currently including PRINCE2, ITIL, APM and MSP and the company says the list of categories will be extended regularly. Focus on Training offers advice on choice

VitAL : July / August 2009

of the most suitable course for each individual, and there is tutorial support for students whenever they need help with their studies.

The distance learning packs available span a range of training styles. Some are predominantly paper-based; others use CDs or online web access with realistic exam simulations. For higher level qualifications e-learning can be combined with a classroom-style workshop to consolidate understanding of how methods are applied to real life scenarios.

Distance learning is also being adopted by organisations as an effective, flexible and economic means of staff development. In this case, the learning resources can be made available to multiple employees via web access, and student progress can be readily monitored.

Focus business development director Rex Gibson says, “In the past, distance learning was often seen as second best. The new computer-based solutions are far more interactive and effective. Our experience is that users are well motivated and examination pass rates can be higher with quality e-learning packages than with their classroom equivalents.”

‘cross the line’, or to turn a blind eye while others do so, is growing.

Companies urgently need to look to at the measures they have in place to resist this trend.”

“The rapid increase in the prevalence and mobility of digital technology in business has changed the game. Over the last two decades certain types of fraud have evolved from Tippex and fax machines to deeply digital affairs. It is strange to imagine, but at the time of the UK’s last downturn in 2001, the internet was not even a commonly used business tool. Now it is used

by almost every business and most private individual have access,” commented Andrew Gordon, a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP forensic accounting practice.

“This is just one example of how the landscape has changed and how the speed of change can render companies’ preventative systems and procedures obsolete.

Companies are faced with a continually shifting terrain in this area and joining the Fraud Academy will help them to respond to the threat of fraud in the most appropriate and effective way.”

IT problems have to wait when the footy’s on

A

SURVEY has shown if you’re unlucky enough to suffer a major security failure during the last five minutes of a major football match, 39 percent of IT professionals say the problem will have to wait until the game is over. On the flip side, the survey of 151 IT professionals also revealed that an incredibly loyal 61 percent of IT professional surveyed would right their company’s IT problems before watching the football.

The survey was commissioned to find out attitudes into Firewall Management & the Security Implications and focused the survey at mainly IT security managers and technical staff from multinational organisations and government departments employing 1000 to 5000 or more. The key finding of the survey has found that 51 percent of IT professionals believe their corporate firewall base rules are in a mess.

The survey also found that one in five IT professionals admit that either they or a colleague has cheated to get an audit passed and a staggering nine percent have avoided having any audit conducted on their firewall base rules. 63 percent only check and audit their firewalls from anything between three months to a year.

This does beg the question: are the billions of pounds that companies spend on firewalls actually doing what they are supposed to do to keep out the infiltrators?

Ruvi Kitov, CEO of the survey’s sponsor, Tufin Technologies said “If your firewall rules are out of synch, then it’s almost impossible to police and to gauge who has access to your network. Managing and configuring firewalls can be a nightmare without the right automation tools, which is why it’s no surprise to us that people are admitting that their firewall rules are in a mess and some are even cheating to get them through the audit process.”

NEWS

GROWING FEARS OVER IDENTITY THEFT IN AUSTRALIA SHOULD BE SHARED BY UK CONSUMERS

A

CCORDING TO a new study by Sydney-based research company, callcentres.net, Australian consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about issues of security and the methods organisations use to verify their identity.

The 2009 Salmat VeCommerce Identity Verification Study highlights consumers’ fears that traditional PINs and passwords do not provide adequate protection of their personal information, with 67 percent of consumers down under reporting that they believe their security details are at risk.

Just over half felt that someone else may be able to accurately guess their password, PIN or security details for interactions over the phone, while 59 percent said they believe someone else may actually know these details.

General manager EMEA at Salmat VeCommerce, Brett Feldon, commented, “These figures are high but are by no means surprising when you consider the widespread reliance on passwords and PINs and the increased consumer awareness about how these can increase exposure to identity theft. When it comes to tackling fraud, Australia represents one of the most advanced countries in the World. Already some of the largest Australian insurance companies are using tools such as voice biometrics to replace the vulnerability of passwords and many of its leading banks are preparing to roll out the technology within the next six months. While this is good news for Australian consumers, it also begs the question why the UK is lagging behind.”

The most preferred alternative method of verifying identity was biometric voice identification, a technology that enables a person’s identity to be authenticated using the unique characteristics of their voice. This was favoured by 45 percent of the respondents, followed by PIN (21 percent), password (18 percent) and personal details or history questions (16 percent).

Home working makes happy employees and productive companies

F

OLLOWING NATIONAL home working day on Friday 15 May when it was estimated that five million people worked from home, the results of a survey carried out by Interactive Intelligence, have revealed that both employees and managers believe that a home working solution can increase productivity.

The survey found that 90 percent of respondents who worked from home said that it offered them a better work/life balance. A further 81 percent said they worked more productively when at home, most likely due to the fact that 71 percent of home workers feel less stressed than their office-based counterparts.

According to Work Wise UK the number of UK employees working

from home has increased by 32 percent over the last decade, with more than 3.5 million people working from home in 2008 or onein-eight of the population.

The survey suggests, however, that some managers are reluctant to implement a home working strategy. Sixty percent stated that the lack of control over staff was preventing them from implementing a home working solution while 63 percent stated that loss of functionality was also a factor.

For those companies that have already taken the plunge and adopted a home working strategy, the benefits are clear. Ninety percent of managers believe that it made their company more productive. Additional benefits cited by those that manage home workers included increasing the flexibility of the workforce and creating happier staff. The most popular reason for implementing a home working solution was identified as providing a flexible working solution for staff, with a particular focus on supporting those that have childcare responsibilities.

Dave Paulding, regional sales director UK, Middle East and Africa for Interactive Intelligence comments, “An effective home working strategy allows users to be ‘in the office’ no matter where they are and can help companies to maintain an optimum level of service at all times by connecting all employees, regardless of their location.

It can also deliver additional benefits such as reducing carbon footprint and travel costs and cutting office overhead costs such as rent and energy.”

July / August 2009 : VitAL

7

NEWS

First sign of recovery?

U

K BUSINESSES expect the pace of economic decline to slow markedly over the next quarter, with the economy shrinking at just half the pace of recent quarters, according to the latest Business Trends report by accountants and business advisers BDO Stoy Hayward LLP. The BDO Output Index has registered its strongest monthly gain since February 2004, rising to 92.0 in May from 90.0 in April. This suggests that GDP growth will be minus 0.3 percent over the next quarter. The index, which measures short-run turnover expectations and order book strength, does not yet signal the end of the downturn. However the numbers are creeping closer to the 95.0 mark which signals recovery.

Given how quickly the indices have rebounded, the numbers give further support to the Chancellor’s predictions of a recovery starting in Q4 2009. Additionally, the Inflation Index continues its return towards more normal levels, as quantitative easing and the overall weak pound carry on the successful attack against deflationary expectations.

Peter Hemington, Partner at BDO Stoy Hayward, says: “These figures are good news but we can’t call the end of the recession yet. There are still two risks that could lead to a w-shaped recession. First, official figures suggest that there has been little recovery in bank lending. The banks still need time to sort themselves out and it seems that there is insufficient capital in the system. Public policy may need to readdress this soon.

“Second, it is clear that the Chancellor is walking a tightrope on spending – too much and he will lose the confidence of the markets,

too little and recovery could stall. While he needs to articulate better how he will bring borrowing down in future, the grave downside risks that we still face argue in favour of continuing relatively loose fiscal policy through 2010.”

“It is clear that the Chancellor is walking a tightrope on spending – too much and he will lose the confidence of the markets, too little and recovery could stall. While he needs to articulate better how he will bring borrowing down in future, the grave downside risks that we still face argue in favour of continuing relatively loose fiscal policy through 2010.”

SMALL BUSINESSES EMBRACE THE CLOUD TO TACKLE RECESSION

A

8

S ALAN Sugar took over as enterprise tsar last month he stressed the importance of the role that small businesses (SMEs) will play in creating the recovery path for the British economy.

“What needs to be sorted out is the economic climate, small businesses and other enterprises,” he said. 97 percent of Britain’s private sector comprises of small companies and cloud computing is playing a vital role in helping companies to reduce IT costs while providing them with a completely flexible solution. Meanwhile, innovations like unified communications are

VitAL : July / August 2009

helping to increase productivity in the workplace and customer relationship management (CRM) tools are also playing a large role in keeping SMEs afloat, by helping them to grow and find new customers.

“We are in a recession and business finance has dried up. With businesses struggling, the hosted model allows them to cut costs dramatically and doesn’t usually require the financing of capital expenditure. With a small monthly fee it’s ideal for organisations that want to maximise cash flow, and for those struggling to get leasing for new hardware,” comments Piers Linney, director of Genesis Communications, an independent provider of hosted IT solutions.

“Smaller businesses are keen to have access to the same technologies as the bigger businesses at a significantly reduced cost. Software as a service (SaaS) is ideal for these businesses and allows them to grow and shrink their requirements as their business needs change.”

LONDON TO PARIS FOR COMPUTER AID

T

HE CHARITY that recycles computers for use in the developing world, Computer Aid is calling for volunteers to raise money by cycling from London to Paris next spring.

“Our London to Paris challenge is open to anyone,” says the charity. “It links two great European cities, and includes 300km of fantastic cycling over a short four day weekend. Between now and then we’ll support you all the way to raise your sponsorship and your fitness.

Not only will this event be an amazing experience, your participation will also make a massive difference: every pound you raise means vital computer literacy for a child in the developing world!”

If you want to find out more check out the website at: www.computeraid.org/paris.htm

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COVER STORY

Accelerated learning experience You should be investing in experiential training now if you want to thrive in the downturn. Quanta trainer, WILL EDWARDS says the use of business simulations, in which mission-critical environments are recreated, offers the kind of accelerated learning experience that delivers most beneďŹ ts.

And what experience could be more challenging than the plight of Apollo 13?

10

VitAL : July / August 2009

COVER STORY

Images courtesy of NASA

I

T SEEMS that, unlike the forecasted bird-flu epidemic that was supposed to decimate the population, the credit-crunch did not turn out to be just another hyped-up scare. Amongst many other effects that might be attributed to the crunch including, for example, a rise in the number of house burglaries here in the UK, MPs expenses are being scrutinised like never before. Personally, I don’t believe the expenses row to be any kind of coincidence. There is no question about it: right now, times are hard.

With the UK economy in some difficulty, the Retail Price Index (RPI) for April showed the biggest monthly drop since records began in 1948 according to a recent report from the BBC. The same source also quoted a similar worrying trend in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) – the government’s preferred measure for inflation. At present, it is also reported that the Bank of England is trying to forestall deflation in the UK by cutting interest rates as a means of stimulating the economy.

During such difficult economic times, it is quite natural for us, both personally and from an organisational perspective, to begin pulling in the belt by curbing spending until things get better; as, of course, they inevitably must. So within many organisations, there is significant pressure being applied from above to cut operational budgets particularly in areas that may be perceived to be something of a luxury; and often, training programmes are one of the first candidate-items to make it onto the list. In this article, we will consider why your company should reverse that logic; and, far from cutting-back on training, should right now, be actually investing.

The primary reason to invest in training – whether it is for an individual or an organisation – is to facilitate the transition from one state to another. For this reason, 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 that will be strong enough to survive, and even thrive, under the present economic climate. Competitors, unable to make rapid transitions – adapting to

the changing demands of the markets within which they operate – will simply fall along the wayside leaving those organisations that are agile enough to prosper.

Adopting best practice The case for adopting best practice frameworks, such as ITIL, is that they allow organisations to genuinely benefit from the experiences of others without being condemned to repeat their mistakes. It is true to say that not all adopters manage to effectively leverage the benefits, of course, since there are many challenges to be overcome when dealing with significant organisational change. However, it is fair to say that the adoption of best practice, for many, has been instrumental in the achievement of organisational excellence in the field of service management. The current state of the art in service management is ITIL Version 3 which was released in the summer of 2007 replacing the older Version 2 best practice and is now reaching maturity.

Perhaps the biggest change in ITIL v3 is the embracing of the concept of the service lifecycle. It is not an entirely new idea of course: you could find it in ITIL v2 if you knew what you were looking for; and the same basic idea is also to be found within Enterprise Architecture. As a wise man once said, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’. However, that said, the successful translation of this concept into operational activity holds the promise of transforming units that serve the business into real strategic assets able to deliver organisational change effectively and rapidly, bringing about real business benefits.

Such agility enables organisations to improve their speed-to-market with new or changed product offerings; improve their ability to cope with significant organisational change including, for example, mergers and acquisitions; and to improve organisational capability for making rapid adjustments and course-corrections that may be deemed necessary both in the present, and future, economic situation. Furthermore the ability to ensure that Business Change projects do

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

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COVER STORY

The time is right in service management – and ITIL in particular – to find a better way of communicating the important messages; and I firmly believe that business simulations represent the way forward.

actually succeed at delivering the required changes on time and within budget is an increasingly important differentiator for service operations.

Knowledge management

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Additional, major benefits are brought about via service management, and ITIL v3 in particular, through the application of good organisational knowledge management.

If your company does not already have a proper knowledge management strategy in place, now is the time to give consideration to the reasons it can be of benefit. The biggest benefit is undoubtedly the facilitating of better decision-making by getting the right information, in the right format, in front of the right people when it is needed. However, a secondary benefit to the organisation is that it also promotes agility. A proper strategy can enable specialist knowledge – often quite an investment in itself - to be effectively captured in a manner that immunises the operation from the effects of staff turnover; a particularly important consideration in uncertain times.

Given the above facts, I believe it is not only sensible, but imperative for service organisations to be working toward the adoption of best practice; and that,

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pragmatically, means the adoption of best practice based on ITIL for many. It also makes a very good case for investment in training; and for doing it now, while the economic situation remains bleak, because it is by transforming the organisation itself that the necessary capabilities required to become lean and agile can be effectively harnessed.

Learning through experience Of course, if you are considering investing in training, it is important that you make the best-possible investment in terms of the effectiveness of the training and value for money. With regard to the effectiveness of training programmes, it must be said that research has shown that many of the more traditional approaches, quite simply, have failed to translate much of our learning into quantifiable business benefits. The observation has driven more recent developments in approaches to service management training that embrace experiential, rather than theoretical learning.

The use of business simulations, in which mission-critical business environments are recreated can most effectively facilitate the kind of accelerated learning experience that delivers most benefit.

At the recent Service Desk Show, held at Earl’s Court, London, I was invited to speak on the subject of experiential learning. Since actions speak louder than words, we also ran an actual simulation based on the historic voyage of Apollo 13, live at the conference.

Our experiences at the show, together with feedback solicited from our visitors, have contributed to a rising conviction within me that the time is right in service management – and ITIL, in particular – to find a better way of communicating the important messages; and, I firmly believe that business simulations represent the way forward.

As I pointed out at the show, we would perhaps expect, from the work Peter Honey has done on learning styles, that experiential learning would be more suited to those individuals with pragmatic or activist learning styles; and perhaps less effective when dealing with people who prefer the theorist or reflector approaches. What we have found, in practice, however is not quite what we expected: the great majority of people seem to prefer the experiential, simulation-based training to the more traditional theoretical approach. Indeed, the figure is certainly well above 90 percent at present; though, for an odd one or two people in every hundred or so,

VITAL SIGNS — LIFE IN THE WORLD COVERWITH STORY IT

The Holistic Detective Agency There are at least three worlds in a support organisation I was involved with recently, and they are not talking to each other.

we have found a preference for the theoretical approach. Personally, I think that simulation is so very effective because it contains some elements of all four identified learning styles. So, in putting together an effective training programme for the introduction or development of service management, I would certainly recommend making use of business simulations to some extent.

Survival of the fittest The economic situation in the UK at present represents a certain kind of environmental pressure that will dictate the shape, size and structure of the organisations that survive it. Such organisations will, not only prosper in the future, but will also be better-able to cope with similar economic downturns in the longer term because they will be better adapted. The adoption of best practice – for example ITIL v3 - will be an enabler for many organisations allowing them to make the necessary transition to become fitter, leaner and more agile. Thus, now, rather than later, is exactly the right time to invest in ITIL and the necessary organisational transformation; and, as part of the necessary change, a good training programme should include elements of experiential learning to deliver the greatest benefit for the organisation.

One last consideration related to why you should source your service management training right now is that your training provider will undoubtedly give you a very good deal at the moment. So remember that you can utilise this unique opportunity, in the current the economic situation to help you make the necessary transformation to become a fitter, stronger organisation capable of outperforming your competitors both now and in the future. www.quanta.co.uk

T

HE WORLD at the grass roots is simple and runs something like this: “Give me a problem. I solve it. Give me another problem.

I solve that too. It’s not us, it’s you. It’s not the software, it’s the hardware. It’s not my department, it’s this other department. It’s not me, it’s you. I hate every tool you’ve ever bought for me. I only like tools I’ve written myself. See my notebook? That’s where my brain lives.”

Then there’s the line managers’ world, which is completely different, and runs something like: “I’ve three new initiatives to implement this week, and I had three last week and three the week before. My engineers act up worse than inebriated cats, are as hard to herd as fog and think that Dilbert is a role model.

My SLAs are my everything. I wonder which initiatives I can ignore this week?”

And then, above the cloud line are the executives: “Why aren’t my customers renewing? I have great SLAs. Customers are happy. Customer sat is at an all time high!”

The haunted look of fear flickers over their laptop-illuminated faces.

One support organisation uses nine tools to handle the customer relationship management and eight knowledge and document systems to help solve problems.

17 tools, some of which they cannot cut and paste with, and some which exist on a separate machine that is not networked – the engineers literally have to walk to the terminal with a hand scribbled note to seek wisdom at the temple of esoteric knowledge.

The thinking that got us here won’t get us out, but reflecting on how we got here can inform us of the next step. Would this happen in a manufacturing environment?

Don’t successful manufacturing concerns move to a new location that is of an appropriate size and maintain or enhance

logical workflow? What’s the equivalent in customer case handling and knowledge management? Deploying a new tool is one of those initiatives that line managers hate because it’s something else to do, engineers hate because they didn’t write it and senior executives hate because it’s a big ticket item with lots of business risk.

The problem with all of this is that it’s still not mirroring a move that a manufacturing company would make. Buying a big shiny KM solution, or buying a new CRM solution, or buying a very nice troubleshooting method on their own is like moving the print shop to a new location but leaving the stores of paper and envelopes at the old location. It also seems that the creation of a bespoke solution that combines all the CRM, KM, search, sales and invoicing is a job too complex to get right in under a lot of years.

For the first time I believe that there is a chance that the madness of legacy, incompatible tooling will come to an end. It’s taken the realisation that most companies do exactly the same things in sales for a ‘write code once use many’ subscription model to flourish in the CRM world. Most companies do the same thing in support as well – sure everyone thinks that they are ‘special’, but there are more similarities than differences in support organisations and if you’ve taken Clarify or Remedy out of the box and fired it up for your organisation, you are very similar to everyone else. If we begin with the premise that all engineers hate the tool that they are given to use, at least with the ‘cloud’ we have a chance for them to hate a tool which integrates knowledge capture, storage and searching, case handling and contact management in a way that maximises the workflow and throughput in a logical manner.

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Retaining the talent Can an IT professional still have a successful career in the UK, and what impact is the credit crunch having on organisations’ personnel and training needs? ALWYN WELCH, chief executive of Parity finds out.

I

T’S NO longer enough to say that the papers are full of doom and gloom: the reality of a troubled economy has hit, with belts being tightened across the board.

Banking is obviously in turmoil, but this has a knock on effect on all the supporting industries, including recruitment, IT and training. ‘Recession fever’ is causing immense volatility in the market, and unrest among IT professionals and their employers alike.

However, despite the onset of recession, there are jobs out there, especially for people with desirable skills and experience. And

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organisations, having become dependent on IT to do their business over the last 20 years, cannot suddenly turn off mission critical systems or end projects vital to their survival.

So, can an IT professional still plan their career in the UK, and what impact is the credit crunch having on organisation’s personnel and training needs? While any kind of forecasting is becoming out of date before it is published, CIOs do still need to make plans – for riding the current storms, retaining the talent that will see them through to the end of 2009 and preventing

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the haemorrhaging of the skills vital for their own business and the industry at large over the next four to five years.

IT and skills in demand IT is a vital enabler in how organisations flex to manage the change recession brings – be it in going global, undergoing M&A activity or pushing vital projects to a speedy completion. This leads to increased demand for enterprise project managers, IT transformation specialists and process experts.

As a result, certain skills are increasingly in demand. Hot roles are around architecture, as organisations undertake data integration projects, and application integration, especially process integrations. Nearly a third of the people we’re placing are in managerial roles. Programmers and software developers are still heavily in demand.

However, it would be naïve to say that IT jobs are not at risk. In the medium term, M&A activity will lead to duplication in operational staff and infrastructure roles, and to longer hardware refresh cycles. At the same time, specialists will still be in vogue, especially those who can execute customerfacing strategies.

IT professionals need to ensure their skills are honed, not generic, and that they are adding value to their organisation – otherwise, as the recession bites, they may find they become dispensable.

The impact on training Some have said that the recession will lead to an increase in the number of teachers. While this is a somewhat flippant response, there is definitely appeal in finding a recession-proof job. However, you don’t have to become a teacher to do this – getting the right training can make you highly employable, even if the recession goes beyond 2009. Training is often counter-cyclical to the normal economic trends, as people seek to build up their skills to counteract uncertainty in the market.

At the same time, training budgets will face cuts in many organisations in the short term, as the board looks for any opportunities to cut costs. Any outlay on training must show a

clear return to the business, delivering value to its core people and operations. We will see an increase in best practice in training buying, as HR teams are forced to build clear business cases.

Wise businesses will use the next few years to ‘skill up’ their people, knowing that training is cheaper than buying-in more staff, and is key to retaining top talent and preserving the business through the tough times.

Training in demand It’s well known that one of the biggest barriers to adult learning is finding the time, and that’s true more than ever in a recession.

It is clear that training delivers real business value in the current climate but the days of asking to go on a course, and your manager signing it off on a whim, are over. Courses must be qualified by business need and the results proven afterwards. Ultimately, training has to provide value – now more than ever.

IT in the UK The last downturn, brought on by the dot com crash in 2000/2001, had a massive impact on skills in IT in this country. Young people saw the cuts in jobs and were put off from studying IT. As a result, in some areas there is still a skills shortage and, despite the recession, employers are prepared to pay more for experienced specialists.

This time around the recession will be different for IT, and we need to communicate that: far from being the cause of the recession, IT has the potential to deliver a way out of it. IT is about driving business efficiency, increasing workforce productivity and providing the infrastructure for change and growth. It’s at the heart of the way businesses will pull through the recession, and needs a skilled, UK-based workforce of IT specialists and project managers to make it a success.

If IT in the UK is not invested in through training that adds value and opportunities for the best staff, UK business will be weakened, and the UK’s ability to compete on the world stage will suffer. www.paritytraining.com

It would be naïve to say that IT jobs are not at risk. In the medium term, M&A activity will lead to duplication in operational staff and infrastructure roles, and to longer hardware refresh cycles. At the same time, specialists will still be in vogue, especially those who can execute customerfacing strategies.

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A degree of quality Senior lecturer in Applied Computing at Staffordshire University, JONATHAN WESTLAKE, explores various perspectives on the role of academic qualifications for IT service management and service desk careers.

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ITH THE proliferation of job titles for help desk and service desk personnel it is interesting to reflect on the role of qualifications not only to get into this type of job role but also to professionally develop the role. This article defines the qualification ‘mix’ that is available and puts forward perspectives of why qualifications count. The mix can be defined as consisting of: academic qualifications; experience; and certification courses. All three have merit and together offer a perspective for help desk/service desk personnel to consider. Let us examine each in turn.

Academic qualifications IT is a unique industry in many ways as it accepts skills from multi-disciplines and has historically accepted all-comers in a variety of roles. The help desk/service desk is no different and those in this role already will acknowledge the scope and difficulty of the role. Indeed in one of my roles at the University I encourage prospective industrial placement students not to overlook the help desk/service desk

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A degree gives a breadth and depth and usually (as with ours) the university will encourage work experience as part of the course either by a year-long placement or a mini-summer placement. One of the spins-offs from our course is that employers can recruit placement students during the course and groom them for the future as an alternative to the traditional graduate programme.

placement roles. So why does the help desk/ service desk role need qualifications? And what types of qualifications are appropriate?

The starting point for qualifications is a recommendation that you should obtain a bachelor’s degree in information technology or computer science. This is typically offered by the UK university system and I describe below the Staffordshire University offering as an example.

As you would expect we have a long history in offering computing courses at both our Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent campuses. More recently we have offered under our umbrella Applied Information Technology a number of themed degrees and one of these is directed at the help desk/service desk career, B.Sc(Hons) User Support Systems. The British Computer Society approved these courses in November 2008 for Chartered IT Professional (CITP) status on completion. This typically is a three year award but can also benefit from a year long placement in an appropriate work role.

We also give the opportunity for other courses to take an optional module called IT User Support. Both the degree course and the module aims to review current thinking in the way user support is delivered and topics covered include a gamut of subject areas including forms of support, development of skills and technology of user support.

Why do a degree?

So why the recommendation to do a degree? Our perspective is that a degree is an educational course more than a training course. The justification for the time and fees

for a degree are that the student is exposed to a rounded delivery of content which includes developing communication skills both verbal and written and furthermore, it develops evaluative skills and the ability to put all IT into an applied context. As part of the award I should stress that students do gain practical problem solving skills covering a wide range of IT problems using the state of the art help desk/service desk tools.

A degree gives a breadth and depth and usually (as with ours) the university will encourage work experience as part of the course either by a year-long placement or a mini-summer placement. One of the spins-offs from our course is that employers can recruit placement students during the course and groom them for the future as an alternative to the traditional graduate programme.

Experience So what of experience only? I think all readers would acknowledge that experience is generally highly valued but is not enough on its own. The mix needs to augment experience with qualifications not only to get into a role but also maintain it in challenging economic times.

The university system can also value experience via accreditation of prior learning or experience. Indeed the part-time and elearning courses that I look after attract applicants who have ten, 15 or sometimes more years experience but no formal qualification. We at Staffordshire map this experience to modules or part modules to highlight gaps and develop new or retrain professional skills.

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VITAL MANAGEMENT SERVICES

The mix of academic qualification and experience is irresistible to employers and in our experience employers will consider applicants with limited years of study if they also possess previous customer-service experience and proficiency in typical computer applications.

Certification The final part of the mix is to gain industrystandard certifications to help you to become a help desk engineer or to provide proof of skill. Evidence indicates the most popular to be the A+ certification from the Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA); the MCDST (Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician) and an HDI certification from the Help Desk Institute.

These help desk certification training qualifications are not mutually exclusive with a

degree but can augment a degree qualification by providing more specialist training and skills provision.

Review your perspective In conclusion take the opportunity to reflect on your perspective of qualifications for help desk/service desk. Perhaps at your next job appraisal? At Staffordshire University we promote life-long learning and this can incorporate many forms of qualifications as part of a learning journey. As outlined above it could be a part-time degree course; an online diploma or degree; a professional training course or even a return to full-time education.

One of the upsides of the current economic climate is to take advantage of education and training opportunities as part of a plan to prepare for the future. www.staffs.ac.uk

About Staffordshire University

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Originally, North Staffordshire Polytechnic, the University is noted for its science departments.

The School of Computing was originally situated at Blackheath Lane on the edge of Stafford in GEC’s former Nelson Research Laboratory. It offered one of the first BSc courses in computing in the United Kingdom and its first major computer was a second hand DEUCE. The School of Computing has now moved to a purpose-built building on the Beaconside campus and the newly refurbished Brindley Building in Stoke. It continues to offer one of the best respected computing degrees in the UK. The Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology (FCET) is a Cisco Networking Academy. Former students at the Univeristy include: Lemmy, lead singer of rock band Motörhead; comedian Dave Gorman; and John Mayock, athlete and olympian.

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The mix of academic qualification and experience is irresistible to employers and in our experience employers will consider applicants with limited years of study if they also possess previous customerservice experience and proficiency in typical computer applications.

Focus on improving service Approximately 80% of IT budgets is still consumed by maintaining day-to-day operations, so it makes sense, particularly in these times of extreme cost challenges, to make this the slickest, leanest and most efficient area within IT. Pink Elephant strongly believes that the purpose of ITIL education is to enable an organisation to empower its employees with specialist knowledge.

The emphasis should not be about driving people towards an overwhelming “Expert” program that will take at least 2-3 years to complete. It should simply ensure that employees can return to the workplace with an understanding of the best practice framework, talking a common language, and equipped to make a positive contribution to improving service.

22 points for an individual does not equate to Service Improvement for IT PinkWeek: 14-18 September 2009 Join Pink Elephant for a week long series of events, certified courses and activities designed to equip your employees with the knowledge and skills, required to return to the workplace and start making a difference.

Pink Elephant are hosting – PinkWeek – aimed at teams involved in the day to day practical operations environment. The seminars, workshops and team building events, will all be based around the central theme of Improving Service.

All PinkWeek events will be held at the prestigious Wokefield Park set in the rural Berkshire countryside on 14-18th September 2009.

PinkWeek Schedule: 14-18 September 2009 Monday Stream 1

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

ITIL V3 Capability: Practitioner Operational Support & Analysis (OSA) Service Desk, Incident, Request, Access, Event, Problem, Technical, Application & IT Operations Management

Stream 2

ITIL V3 Capability: Practitioner Release, Control & Validation (RCV) Change, Release and Deployment Management, Service Validation and Testing, Service Asset and Configuration Management, Request Fulfillment, Service Evaluation and Knowledge Management

Stream 3

Problem Solving Techniques Knowledge Centred Support Foundation Workshop

Stream 4

Developing a Vision & Strategy Stream 5

Kepner Tregoe Workshop

Defining & Managing IT Services The Service Catalogue Seminar

How to Create a Service Catalogue According to ITIL

The Basics – ITIL V3 Foundations ITIL V2-V3 Bridging Foundation

ITIL V3 Foundation Course

To book yourself or your teams on these events and to find out full information: Call: +44 (0) 118 903 6824 email: info.europe@pinkelephant.com or visit our website: www.pinkelephant.com

Pink Elephant – Leading the way in IT Service Management Best Practices © Pink Elephant 2009. These contents are protected by copyright and cannot be reproduced in any manner. Pink Elephant and its logo, PinkVERIFY, PinkSCAN, PinkATLAS, PinkSELECT, and PinkREADY are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Pink Elephant Inc. ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

VITAL SERVICES

Cloud your judgement, save your business Now is the time to take emotion out of disaster recovery planning and examine it from a business perspective.

According to SIMON KELSON, managing director of Atlanta Technology, cloud computing could provide an answer.

D

ISASTER RECOVERY planning may be influenced by emotion more than hardnosed fact, hardly surprising given the messages IT professionals continue to receive from professional consulting firms.

In fact, DR marketing is a fearful thing: “Backup of vital company information is critical to a company’s survival, no matter what size the company. Recent studies show that 93 percent of businesses that lose data due to a disaster go out of business within two years.”

“No matter what the scale or cause, the consequences for the under prepared business may be terminal. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in Washington found that 93 percent of businesses which suffer more than 10 days of system downtime will file for bankruptcy within a year.”

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“Forty percent of all SMBs will go out of business if they cannot get to their data in the first 24 hours after a crisis.”

But how many of these businesses would have gone out of business anyway – without data loss or downtime to blame for the failure? Along with these dire warnings many organisations are dealing with tapebackups, ever-shortening backup windows, changing business requirements, untested DR plans, IT staff with too much to do and cash escaping from the business. The fact is disaster recovery costs money. In harsh economic times, spending money on conventional DR could create a bigger risk for your long-term survival than the disasters themselves.

More and more evidence suggests that what tips business over the edge is lack of cash. It is not necessarily the loss of data that kills a

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company, it is when cash generation itself is compromised. Now is the time to take emotion out of DR planning and examine it from a business perspective.

The problems with DR Organisations implementing their own DR face many problems: • Lack of rational criteria for investment. Fear appeals can be irresistible, especially when it’s difficult to establish a rational planning framework to deal with risk.

• Obsolescence. Equipment silently goes out of date. Capacities that were mind-blowing five years ago may not be sufficient for today’s demands.

• Planning. Almost by definition, most people aren’t familiar with disaster. DR plans are typically first attempts with little benefit from real experience.

• Keeping the plan up-to-date. The more the business changes, the busier people get, and the less time they have to ensure the DR plans reflect real needs. Planning for tomorrow’s disaster may take second place to fighting today’s fires.

• Testing the plan. Disaster simulation can seem like an unaffordable luxury in today’s frantic environment. It can wait until tomorrow, can’t it?

• IT staff time. The pressure is on, and working on DR doesn’t appear to support the business. Not a good place to be when times are hard.

• Cost. DR costs a lot in equipment, time and resources. Organisations running their own DR infrastructures pay high costs for real servers that are otherwise unproductive, and bandwidth to keep production and DR servers in sync. Database synchronisation and file mirroring often consume lots of expensive bandwidth.

The implications of over investment in DR Running DR has its own implications for the business • Cost. Lack of cash affects the business’s ability to survive in difficult times. Capital expenditure and working capital are crucial to business change, competitive survival and defence.

• IT staff time. If IT staff are busy working the

The fact is disaster recovery costs money. In harsh economic times, spending money on conventional DR could create a bigger risk for your long-term survival than the disasters themselves.

DR plan they aren’t reacting to changing business demands, and if the business isn’t changing as fast as it needs to, it’s in trouble. IT has to be responsive to keep the business healthy.

• Probability of disaster. Busy staff working with out-of-date documentation and obsolescent equipment is a disaster waiting to happen. Indeed, the case can be made that disasters come along with higher frequency when times are tough: people are stretched, experience may be lacking and routine tasks get forgotten.

When disaster strikes Disaster, when it strikes, has other implications.

Disaster recovery often has two measurements: Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO).

RPO describes the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time, while RTO is the duration of time within which a business process must be restored to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in business continuity.

In many conventional DR scenarios, backups can be a day old and databases can take days to populate, so both RPO and RTO performance is poor. Failed restoration, which is surprisingly common, can extend RTO catastrophically. By

definition, the business is at risk if it fails to meet RP and RT objectives in a disaster.

The inevitable effect of even a well-handled disaster is to increase the overhead and drain the cash out of the business as the recovery plan kicks in: alternative premises, new communications links, relocation, data recovery, increased staff costs, replacement equipment, communication plans. Businesses with syndicated seats and recovery centres will not be immune from this impact on the P&L. Of course, many of these extra costs will be covered by business interruption and equipment insurance, but claims are not settled immediately for all items under cover, so cash flow suffers.

Many businesses are currently looking at their cash reserves as key to surviving the economic downturn; delaying capital projects and reducing operating costs. Any new disasters may just tip things over the edge.

This potential ‘double whammy’ means any continuity planning should focus on the maintenance of cash flow and any system that plays a key part in cash generation.

Can cloud computing stop us doing DR? To get away from the problems of DR we need a new way of working, and for some organisations cloud computing offers a world without DR: or rather, a world where business continuity is built-in to the offering.

These people never see a tape, never have to upgrade a server, never see another backup window. They have ‘IT that just works’.

But what about the majority of organisations that can’t immediately transport all their production IT infrastructure into the cloud? Is the picture looking brighter for them? Can new techniques and technologies change the face of DR? The answer is a resounding ‘yes’. DR capabilities are changing: • Better management methods are banishing fear, uncertainty and doubt, and replacing it with impact analysis, with emphasis on cash. Business Continuity Management provides a management framework that captures best practice.

• Smarter, faster technologies make fantastic RPO and RTO achievable without paying an arm and a leg.

• Experienced partner organisations have the

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experience, bandwidth and technologies to offload the DR process. The DR process itself becomes less vulnerable and benefits from economies of scale and centralisation/ continuity of specialist expertise.

So organisations should be planning to maintain business continuity, and testing their plans, but what about technology? How do we avoid weakening our position by over-investing in DR? The news here is good. Every facet of technology that supports DR has changed for the better. The new DR is more cost-effective, takes less management, and protects better than ever before.

Technical advances revolutionising DR

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1. Continuous Data Protection (CDP). CDP is different from traditional backup in that you don’t have to specify the point in time to which you would like to recover until you are ready to perform a restore. Traditional backups can only restore data to the point at which the backup was taken. With CDP, there are no backup schedules. CDP appliances provide local continuous backup and also take transactionally consistent snapshots of servers, which are transmitted to an off-site

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disaster recovery site. In case of failure, an instance of the failing server is brought online, and users can access their applications and data from their designated workplaces over a secure VPN. CDP appliances have to be smart – they must minimise the amount of data transmitted over the network and still provide an image that can be instantiated quickly in case of failure.

Data replication and communication between sites generally accounts for 30 percent of all recurring DR costs. Therefore, replication should be optimised to minimise bandwidth requirements and reduce the overall cost of DR. Good CDP appliances ensure that data changes are replicated at the smallest possible level of granularity, reducing bandwidth and associated storage costs.

CDP appliances often use compression and other bandwidth-saving techniques, replacing the need for general-purpose bandwidth-saving technologies. CDP can allow achievement of RPO measured in minutes.

2. Virtualisation. Virtualisation of servers, storage and recently, I/O, is radically reducing the cost of servers across the board. In a DR context virtualisation in the DR site reduces

VITAL DRIVE. IT HITS THE FAIRWAY

The idea behind cloud computing is to

Virtually having a ball

provide dynamically scalable, virtualised This month GERAINT is grappling with the attractions of virtualisation and the technicalities of golf course design.

computing services in a transparent manner.

The technologies behind cloud computing let companies deliver flexible, cost effective ‘DR as a Service’ to customers of all sizes. cost and also provides another key benefit – the ability to quickly bring new servers on-line that are exact virtual copies of failed systems. Virtualisation in the DR centre allows achievement of RTO measured in minutes.

3. Cloud Computing. The idea behind cloud computing is to provide dynamically scalable, virtualised computing services in a transparent manner. The technologies behind cloud computing let companies deliver flexible, cost effective ‘DR as a Service’ to customers of all sizes.

DR is dead, long live DR Good disaster recovery is becoming attainable for organisations of all sizes, with performance metrics and cost that could only have been dreamed of before CDP, virtualisation and cloud computing arrived on the scene. It’s likely that today’s turbulent environment may make failure more likely, but business continuity planning with an emphasis on cash management lets people plan and act rationally, rather than being frightened into expensive solutions. DR as a Service can deliver effective disaster recovery to all organisations. www.atlantatechnology.co.uk

C

URRENTLY I am hearing a lot about virtualisation and how “Small is the way forward.” It seems to be the new technology that everyone wants to get involved with or to get me involved with. I like the idea of moving away from the old “one server, one application” model as there is no doubt that internal resources of the servers are underutilised and that I spend a great deal of time doing the same updates and checks on our current “server smallholding” of seven boxes, sitting in a very small room that somebody as an afterthought decided would be the server room.

The expected reduced capital costs as a result of requiring less hardware appeal to me as do the increased energy efficiencies of running fewer physical servers and the knock on saving on cooling costs. However, I have a nagging doubt in the back of my mind, something about all my eggs in one basket.

Over the years I have been lucky (or is it skilful) in that I have only suffered a couple of major hardware failures, the worst of which resulted in a site being off line and out of action for one day. It is just the thought of one server being responsible for everything that makes me a little nervous.

I know that I can have full redundancy from a stand-alongside server so this risk of a major outage is negligible it is just sometimes the comfort of knowing that if there is a failure of one server, the show can go on. So maybe for the time-being I’ll stay with my big boxes.

The world of golf course design is going the other way however. Bigger is better as the designers try to combat the dual threat of stronger, fitter golfers and better technology combining to allow the golf ball to be hit

further than ever, by making new courses longer than ever, bunkers the size of small Gulf states and rough high enough to hide an elephant in.

This approach to the threat works for new courses but what about the old courses, designed many years ago, for a number of these courses there is no land available to expand into or the desire to see the course changed to reflect the need to combat the big hitters.

Maybe it’s time for the players, club and ball designers to get together to agree a new standard for professional clubs and balls, that prevent players blasting the ball down the fairway, bypassing the fairway bunkers and traps.

It may be that a similar approach is taken as with the javelin event some years ago, where there was a real danger of the crowd being hit as the javelin was being thrown so far.

The javelin was redesigned making it harder to throw further, reducing the risk of a member of the crowd being speared by a world record throw; maybe in the future we shall see competition class balls and clubs that restrict the distance that the ball can be hit.

Not that hitting the ball too far has ever been a problem for me when I have ventured onto a golf course.

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ITIL â&#x20AC;&#x201C; does it really work?

Much work has been put into developing ITIL and many vendors want to be ITIL compatible, but does it really deliver and what value does it really provide the end user?

DAVID MOUNT, UK technical director of NetIQ , reports.

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VITAL PROCESSES

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Principally, ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) was born from the need to develop standard procedures and best practice and is based on those used across a wide range of public and private sector organisations.

The ITIL framework brings together people, processes and technology with a common terminology and accepted, global standards which can aid communication between suppliers and clients and improve understanding of what needs to be done to align with the needs of the business.

S

INCE ITIL was introduced there has been much debate on the value that it adds to organisations and why they would opt to consider ITIL-based processes at all. In this era of ever more complex mandates, regulations and legislation, is ITIL simply another management buzzword; an extra layer of bureaucracy that adds a further burden to already over-stretched IT departments, or can it add real value to an organisation’s operations and help to achieve the all-important operational efficiencies that it was originally intended to deliver? Here we consider the pros and cons of the ITIL disciplines and framework, the approaches needed to make it work and the value that process automation can play in leveraging existing technology investments to drive greater efficiency, while ensuring that the quality and cost of service are the very best that can be achieved.

What is ITIL striving to achieve?

Principally, ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) was born from the need to develop standard procedures and best practice and is based on those used across a wide range of public and private sector organisations. The ITIL framework brings together people, processes and technology with a common terminology and accepted, global standards which can aid communication between suppliers and clients and improve understanding of what needs to be done to align with the needs of the business.

ITIL is a non prescriptive framework; there are no mandates enforcing its adoption, nor is there a rigid set of rules, in fact many organisations prefer to take a more selective approach to ITIL, only using those aspects which most suit specific operational functions such as configuration management or incident management. The framework sets out to drive greater alignment with the business and IT operations, so that IT supports the businesses needs, rather than providing an additional cost.

The latest version of ITIL v3 sets out a lifecycle approach to continual service improvement which organisations can appraise at each

stage, to ensure IT continually realigns to the needs of the business. This framework: • Describes strategies to align service management with the business strategy; • Explains how to use the strategy to create designs for service; • Details how these can be used in a real business environment; • Sets out how to support the day to day running of the service.

This approach can, and does, add real value to businesses but those embarking on the process of ITIL adoption need to carefully consider what they’re trying to achieve to ensure that the benefit outweighs the cost of implementation.

Take incident management as an example, perhaps the most ‘customer-facing’ of all ITIL processes. ITIL incident management provides a framework for organisations to improve their methodology and therefore reduce the effect on an organisation, the ITIL objective is to restore service levels in the fastest time with the least possible impact for the business and end user, and at the lowest possible cost to the organisation.

Incident management is one of the disciplines where established processes and terms can ensure issues are resolved quickly, minimising the impact on the end user and enabling an organisation to shrink the time between steps so that a service can be restored more quickly, for example dealing with routine ‘known errors’ in a consistent, timely manner.

Of equal importance, these processes can more readily help in problem management, by establishing a means to carry out root cause analysis. Undertaking this type of analysis enables organisations to eliminate known errors and reduce or prevent incidents from occurring, resulting in streamlined operations.

However, this kind of analysis, while valuable in the long-term, can create a heavy administrative burden to analyse and resolve the issue. Identifying trends or common issues and their impact is essential in focusing limited resources, saving costs and making service improvements over time.

July / August 2009 : VitAL

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VITAL PROCESSES

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What are the challenges of ITIL?

26

Despite these obvious advantages, as with any new system implementation, for many organisations ITIL could be viewed with a large degree of scepticism. Potential concerns centre on it bringing additional cost, disruption and increased layers of bureaucracy, or unwanted investment of time and resource when capital outlays are being squeezed.

Making ITIL successful depends on weighing up the benefits on a case by case basis. As with any procedural change, before embarking on ITIL implementations, it is essential to do a thorough assessment to identify how your current organisational structure compares to the ITIL framework and then look at how you would need to change your organisation and culture to best use ITIL. Implementing any kind of new process requires resource and in the current economic climate managers need to carefully consider if they will get full payback for their investment.

The first challenge is for the individuals themselves. Changes on any level can often bring a degree of resistance and implementing ITIL can require a shift in mindset. Therefore training, leadership and flexibility are important for its success. So-called ‘green field’ implementations tend to be the most successful as ITIL-based approaches can be delivered from the ‘ground-up’ rather than worked into the existing processes and technology.

For some, the further investment in additional technology needed to fully adopt ITIL processes, particularly in today’s budgetconscious environment, is a barrier to adoption. The resources required to deploy, configure, and maintain these frameworks could outweigh the expected benefits and organisations also need to consider if they can integrate their existing technologies or if they need to replace these with, for example, a new suite of ITIL-based service desk solutions.

Documentation is a key component of ITIL, yet efficiencies can only be realised when this information is fed back into a cohesive system.

Documenting incidents does not provide root-

VitAL :July / August 2009

cause analysis of issues, and streamlining the time to resolution requires close alignment with problem management for improvements to be realised. For this to happen, a process needs to be built which captures and records the incidents, uses this knowledge to classify incidents, who is being affected, why it’s occurring and record the diagnosis and the process to restore service. Initially, this will mean that the service desk needs to allocate more time to their tasks, however, if there are long terms gains to be made, then the move towards ITIL-adherence can pay dividends.

Introducing ITPA as an ITIL enabler There are now technologies available which can help to leverage existing IT investments and are closely allied with the core objectives of ITIL. IT process automation tools (ITPA) are essentially a means of capturing, modelling and automating IT operations processes providing benefits around the reduction of operational cost and risk as they help to offload repetitive, manual tasks from overburdened IT operations staff. It brings control and automation to IT operations by improving run books and ITIL-based processes.

These tools can bridge the gaps between existing systems, ensuring (as an example) that the systems management platform is tied to the service desk system resulting in a streamlining of processes between the

infrastructure and the service teams, leading to even greater efficiencies.

Automation can operate at two distinct levels; a macro or micro level. At a macro level, ITPA spans multiple disciplines, silos and technologies. Macro level automation would be the overarching processes of incident, problem or change management. Micro level automation fits within a single silo or technology. It is typically a routine, individual process performed by administration staff, such as alleviating the problem of known errors. It defines the set of processes needed to identify and communicate the problem to the relevant staff and to determine the appropriate response and implement the fix. The micro level process automation is also commonly referred to as Run Book Automation (although Gartner tend to use this term to encompass both Macro and Micro level ITPA).

ITPA not only increases the value of existing technology investment but can also help to ‘liberate’ data traditionally trapped in silos of different technology areas - which can then be used to implement improvements and to enable more effective service delivery.

By modelling and automating responses a company can minimise risk and improve the consistency of response to common incidents. Human nature dictates that people may attempt to circumvent a process, so automation enforces a means of process

VITAL PROCESSES

In a climate where organisations are being forced to focus on driving ever greater efficiencies, most can derive some benefit from re-assessing the way in which they deal with processes and considering areas in which

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automation can deliver time and resource savings.

execution that is not reliant on people following a set of procedures. It also allows an organisation to capture tribal knowledge and prevent information flight caused by people leaving an organisation.

From a compliance perspective this level of automation also provides an audit trail when it is essential to demonstrate that a task is undertaken in a consistent process.

Automation tools can build in a set of checks so that managers can be confident that these are completed to a satisfactory level, in addition to eliminating the risk of human error. This also means that, for all auditing that is carried out on IT processes, the company can demonstrate that the procedure has complied with best practice. In this way, ITPA crosses the three ITIL pillars of people, process and technology, bringing with it demonstrable cost savings.

We ourselves are working with a number of organisations to build workflows to automate and orchestrate operational IT processes that involve multiple types of data, applications and company departments. Administrative and labour intensive tasks which address processes such as disk space clean up, server re-boots, new system releases or password resets, can be a considerable drain on an organisation’s time. Automated remediation of these tasks can free up considerable man hours; an end user could interact with a process rather than a person to obtain a password reset, if the process and the supporting technology is put in place, thereby freeing up the people to concentrate on other essential tasks.

We also work with numerous organisations to provide incident enrichment. We integrate the knowledge with the technology – incidents are recorded and fully populated with timely and pertinent information at the time of incident creation, then appropriately updated through the incident lifecycle. This detail can be gathered by using technology to capture and query the information. This additional level of detail allows an individual to then make a much more informed, faster decision about how to resolve the incident in the most timely manner and with minimal impact. This detail

also allows root cause analysis and moves an organisation on from Incident Management into Problem Management.

These examples demonstrate the natural synergies that exist between process automation and ITIL in improving service quality, without increasing headcount, delivering process consistency and saving costs and resources.

It’s probably fair to say that many organisations do not yet have strong adherence to ITIL and nor have they yet reached the level of documenting all IT processes and determining what information needs to be shared with whom and who is responsible for managing which aspects of the overall process. Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss the framework as another level of ‘process for process’s sake’ especially in this cost-conscious era. In a climate where organisations are being forced to focus on driving ever greater efficiencies, most can derive some benefit from re-assessing the way in which they deal with processes and considering areas in which automation can deliver time and resource savings. www.netiq.com

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Does the IT manager really know whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going on over the network?

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NIGEL HAWTHORN, EMEA marketing VP at Blue Coat explores why IT managers no longer want to police the network, but have complete visibility on what type of applications are being used.

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For most people, the boundaries between the home and office are becoming ever more blurred. An element of trust now pervades most companies which means that contrary to popular opinion, most IT managers don’t want to stop staff from using the organisation’s network for private purposes. Allowing personal use at the office keeps users at their desk instead of going out shopping at break-times – therefore if they spend two minutes of their lunch hour doing private stuff; they probably spend the other 58 on work.

A

CCORDING TO a recent independent UK survey commissioned by Blue Coat Systems, IT managers are losing control over what applications are running on their networks. Over half of the network managers questioned, stated that the IT department knows about less than 60 percent of the applications being run on the corporate network.

It’s scary to even contemplate the amount of valuable bandwidth capacity that is being wasted, not to mention the potential loss of productivity for the users waiting for their data when non-business traffic is using the available space in the pipe. For too long network administrators, security managers and application experts have been locked in a battle each fighting for their own budgets that sometimes pulls IT in different directions.

Today, so many applications use the browser as the user front-end and the same IP port numbers (and often HTTPS encryption), so packet-level devices cannot identify the applications. Now just to add to the difficulties facing IT managers the growing use of resource-heavy applications such as software as a service (SaaS), videoconferencing and Web 2.0 technologies, many of which look the same to the firewall and routers – and it’s clear that just when we need the clearest view of traffic, we are obscuring the information.

The organisation must come first For most people, the boundaries between the home and office are becoming ever more

blurred. An element of trust now pervades most companies which means that contrary to popular opinion, most IT managers don’t want to stop staff from using the organisation’s network for private purposes. Allowing personal use at the office keeps users at their desk instead of going out shopping at breaktimes – therefore if they spend two minutes of their lunch hour doing private stuff; they probably spend the other 58 on work.

However, the rapid growth of Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook and Twitter has made it increasingly difficult for the IT manager to manage their network and to ensure the prioritisation of work traffic. This was highlighted from the survey findings that revealed that IT managers believe that around 40 percent of traffic on company networks was non-work-related. This traffic is often delivered with the same priority as mission-critical traffic, such as the order processing department accessing the ordering application.

From the IT manager’s perspective, even at a basic level, a web-hosted application, a standard web page, a YouTube video and a browser-based access to Oracle may all look very similar, making it very difficult for them to track applications and their impact on the network. This in conjunction with the rise of service oriented architecture and the growing popularity of Web 2.0 applications prompted at least half of respondents to confess they could account for less than 60 percent of the applications on their networks. This doesn’t

just pose direct cost implications for network expenses, it also raises security concerns with the threats from malware, trojans, botnets and phishing attacks. Sadly, hackers, spammers and phishers see Web 2.0 applications as a great resource, placing malware on social networking pages and employee social networking posts can inadvertently send confidential information out of the organisation.

By identifying and limiting the social bandwidth hogs and inspecting traffic for unknown applications entering the organisation (often malware) the IT manager can ensure response times for critical business applications will be quicker resulting in greater IT value to the business.

The truth is that companies need to identify the traffic that is going across the network in order to identify the applications that are clogging the company pipes. They should then use the available tools and technologies to prioritise the business critical traffic.

Furthermore, in a time of economic woe, strong decisions have to be made that put the company first. This shouldn’t necessarily be about cutting off staff access to applications such as Facebook, YouTube and iPlayer (as this results in dissatisfied employees); it’s about putting the organisation before the requirements of the individual.

For the IT managers, it should be less about pure numbers or service level agreements, and more about enabling the complete business process. Therefore, IT managers

July / August 2009 : VitAL

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VITAL PROCESSES

Strong decisions have to be made that put the company first. This shouldn’t necessarily be about cutting off staff access to applications such as Facebook, YouTube and iPlayer (as this results in dissatisfied employees); it’s about putting the organisation before the requirements of the individual.

can potentially save the organisation money by limiting recreational use of corporate networks by staff and accelerating the business critical applications to provide the best possible balance of work productivity and efficiency.

So how can the IT manager do this?

Complete visibility, acceleration and control 30

The nature of business applications is changing fast, with most key network applications available via a web-browser front end.

Network measurement is moving from simple connectivity and uptime to performance, response-time and consistency for office workers, home workers and those accessing computing services while outside the office.

VitAL :July / August 2009

Organisations should therefore look to adopt application-level intelligence solutions to identify and track all traffic on the network.

When traffic can be identified using multiple simultaneous parameters, real knowledge can lead to priority decisions that align with the business. The types of parameters include, but are not limited to: application, user and group, bandwidth usage, response-time, network and server delays, source of the requests and the requesting user application.

As more traffic is SSL-encrypted, the IT manager needs to be able to inspect inside the encrypted wrappers to be successful.

In addition, there’s little point in being able to indentify traffic unless optimisation and bandwidth management decision can be made on that data – so a set of simple probes that pass information but do not act on it are not enough.

When recreational applications or traffic hijack an organisation’s network, the IT manager may respond by increasing bandwidth capacity.

But without other controls in place, throwing more bandwidth at the problem won’t solve the issue or prevent it from recurring. Indeed in many cases, it provides no improvement to the individual user. Recreational applications often absorb the additional bandwidth while critical applications still suffer from poor response times.

The good news The good news is that there are now solutions available which can provide the level of visibility and act on changing attributes - accelerating critical applications and changing bandwidth priorities proactively

when response-times increase past a certain level. This capability enables the IT manager to administer appropriate policy controls to contain unsanctioned traffic, protect missioncritical applications, and optimise demanding business applications.

Through simple policy-setting, this provides complete visibility and control over all the applications, users and content on the organisation’s network. However, an increasing number of applications and web sites are in a grey area - used for both personal and business purposes, so it’s difficult to classify them as strictly one or the other. As mentioned earlier, popular services such as instant messaging (IM), some social networking sites and even YouTube are increasingly used by businesses, because that’s where their customers are.

The IT manager now has the capacity to diagnose today’s response-times and where the bottlenecks are, then classify all the different applications (potentially with differences based on other parameters other than just application) and then set WAN optimisation priorities. This gives the IT manager the choice on whether or not to allow the use of sites such as LinkedIn at off peak times and enable them to quickly determine which key applications to protect and where to allocate appropriate network resources.

With this technology deployed, the organisation can manage the increase in recreational applications today, and these tools are essential in ensuring how organisations look to anticipate and protect their network from the next wave of Internet phenomena, whatever this may prove to be. www.bluecoat.com

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VITAL PROCESSES

Measuring the actual not the theoretical According to Itrinegy product director FRANK PURANIK when it comes to service management dashboards there is an obsession with availability which completely ignores the user experience: the journey.

P

ICTURE YOURSELF sitting at a road traffic controller’s (imaginary) dashboard. There would be red lights showing problems at traffic lights, roundabouts, road closures, accidents etc, and green lights indicating everything is fine. These systems are great for reporting the state (or availability) of the infrastructure just like a service management dashboard. What they fail to show is how long a particular driver’s journey is going to take.

And so it is again with service management dashboards. In essence, there is an obsession with availability which completely ignores the user experience: the journey.

When I first started out in the application performance monitoring space, the majority of tools developed were for monitoring systems and application availability from a server perspective, using tools such as Tivoli, BMC Patrol, and Microsoft MOM etc. Later, products like HP Openview would monitor network devices, displaying maps showing “red lights” when there was an issue. Sound familiar?

While these tools were great at telling you whether or not an application, server or network component was available, they didn’t help you understand the user’s experience of accessing and using that application.

Keeping the customer satisfied And as we recognize today, service management is not just about how available the technology is but making sure the customer is happy with their experience of it. An application or service can be showing on the monitoring panel as being 100 percent available but responding so slowly as to be regarded as being unavailable as far as the user is concerned. At best, this could be regarded as an annoyance but if application performance is really poor there are productivity implications for the end-user organisation and possibly financial penalties

32

VitAL : July / August 2009

VITAL PROCESSES

While these tools were great at telling you whether or not an application, server or network component was available, they didn’t help you understand the user’s experience of accessing and using that application.

So, companies today are looking for more from their service management providers.

There are more mobile applications needed for remote workers, to be delivered on mobile devices. It has been estimated that more than 52 percent of corporate workforces are now working outside of headquartered offices and so there is an increasing need to guarantee the performance of applications no matter what devices are being deployed. Recent adverts for the iPhone bear witness to this trend with an increasing number of business-oriented applications being made available on this device.

Network issues

for the service management provider.

Indeed, even for ‘internal’ applications poor performance simply leads to non-use.

Add to this, a move to datacentre consolidation/virtualisation, cloud computing, branch office initiatives and home service applications and you will find more and more applications today are expected to run across WANs, Satellite, 3G, GPRS, WiFi etc and this adds a very significant extra dimension to the far simpler problem of internal monitoring of application performance and availability. After all, before the external network arrived most of the factors in application delivery, number of users, server capability (CPU, Memory, Disk…) were understood and controlled. Now it’s like making a journey from Manchester to London – how long will it take? Who knows?

Cloudy days I remember the software industry entering

into the uncontrolled world of network delivery of their applications under guises such as application service provider (ASP) or on-demand software and later renamed SaaS (software as a service). Generally these were supported by the service industry in the form of ‘hosting’. Equally, companies may have decided to externally ‘host’ some of their applications. Both imply a network (usually WAN, sometimes Internet) delivery of the application with all the uncertainty that brings.

Now we have cloud computing which is fundamentally SaaS, platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). All will be ‘hosted’ and delivered over networks as uncontrolled as the Internet. This is an important marketplace with estimated market revenue in the USA of over $4 billion. If you are in doubt about this brave new world, look at the success of salesforce.com.

Unfortunately, there is a whole world of difference between how an application runs in a LAN and how it runs over the WAN, satellite, mobile 3G/GPRS networks etc and it’s not just about increasing bandwidth in the event of performance problem as ISPs would have you believe. There are other important factors such as latency (delay), losses and congestion in the ISPs core network or in the client end of the network and the service management providers need to have a focus on this.

Networked applications are very much at the ‘Core’ of the things we do every day, both professionally and personally. Examples include accessing our bank accounts online, booking travel tickets, social networking (Facebook), accessing web-based CRM systems such as Salesforce, controlling traffic lights, modern IP based public CCTV, and smart phone applications. So, keeping tabs on the performance of networked applications is just as essential in service management as it is to the end user.

So, from being of negligible interest network performance must now rank with the other major system resources of CPU, Memory, Disk

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33

VITAL PROCESSES

I/O and storage. It’s the least controllable too, so at the very least we must make it visible and understandable.

One possible solution

34

While solutions already exist that enable service providers and IT departments to understand application quality of service and response times, typically these have been large, appliance-based systems that are prohibitively expensive. Some designs are centred on network protocol analysers or ‘packet sniffers’ that capture huge quantities of data, some of it commercially sensitive, and much of it irrelevant to pinpointing and resolving service availability problems. So what’s the answer?

Recognizing the cost-conscious times we operate in, one possible solution is AppQoS Live! This is an example of a networked applications monitoring solution that can be readily accessed, is easy to use and can be deployed on any modern server or even laptops and PCs, without the need for installation. It enables any IT specialist or consultant to investigate issues such as: application usage; application response time; network performance; and quality of service, all in real time.

It initially starts delivering information regarding application response times, transfer rates, bandwidth usage, etc, from a ‘satellite’ level perspective but then allows its users to drill down in order provide detailed analysis of the root cause of the poor performance. For example, it can help determine: • Whether it is a network or server issue; • Whether the application really is performing badly / worse than normal; • Who is effected (single or multiple users); • Where in the network the problem exists;

VitAL :July / August 2009

• What is running over the network; • Whether other applications or traffic types are responsible; • Is the other traffic relevant or undesirable; • What other requests are being issued to the server.

When placed into a rack mount server, laptop, or PC, the software transforms it into a powerful application monitoring appliance.

There is no need to install any software and the operating system (Windows, Linux, Unix etc) or other applications on the host machine are not impacted in any way.

Next, this system would be plugged into the network segment of interest and with no configuration, would provide concise, organised and easy-to understand views of key network activity data within minutes. Data gathered would be stored in a folder on any existing hard drive or on other writeable or flash media such a USB stick or SD card. This data could be exported for inclusion in reports, presentations etc. If it is no longer needed, it is simply removed from the host machine which then can be used for other activities.

The real benefit is that there is no need for a dedicated appliance in order to achieve sophisticated networked applications monitoring, so significant savings can be achieved. You can choose the hardware (within limits) from your regular suppliers. At the same time, on the portable front, having a team of consultants equipped with copies of the CD also means they can respond rapidly when service level issues arise, rather than waiting for the right appliance to be set up or re-configured. As a result, it should be possible to resolve issues more efficiently, leading to improved customer satisfaction levels.

If you’re offering any kind of hosted, centralised or managed service then managing the service in a cost-effective way is important.

Solutions like AppQoS Live! allow for greater utilisation of the standard hardware you have invested. At the same time, the issue of dedicated hardware appliance obsolescence is completely overcome. This coupled with the substantially lower acquisition cost, less hardware management costs, lower training costs and ease of deployment, amount to a substantially lower TCO and hence a greater ROI than alternative and proprietary hardware based appliances, a real win for anyone offering a service where networked applications are part of the equation. www.itrinegy.com

So, companies today are looking for more from their service management providers.

There are more mobile applications needed for remote workers, to be delivered on mobile devices. It has been estimated that more than 52 percent of corporate workforces are now working outside of headquartered offices and so there is an increasing need to guarantee the performance of applications no matter what devices are being deployed.

Cutbacks needn’t put you in the slow lane.

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www.emcitmanagement.com EMC2, EMC, and where information lives are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation. © Copyright 2009 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

VITAL MANAGEMENT

The Italian IT job Having put down roots in the south of Italy, DAVID AMINZADE, regional director of Tufin can now see the parallels between the southern Italian way of life and IT security.

T

HREE YEARS ago I bought a house in the south of Italy and since then I have been trying to immerse myself in the local culture. It recently occurred to me that actually there was a great deal of similarity between the nuances and national characteristics of Italy and the challenges faced by IT security professionals today.

A love of Spaghetti 36

A rule base that has evolved over several years with several vendors’ products and many different security administrators will certainly resemble the characteristics of spaghetti. When you start pulling on one end you never know what the consequences are.

Even in the south of Italy companies

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now-a-days need to improve the efficiency of their firewall operation and make what they have go faster and further as budget for hardware or software upgrades are under close scrutiny. The ability to understand which rules are most frequently used, enable the security professional to improve performance by ensuring a close match between rule ranking and rule usage. This is even more the case when non used rules and shadowed rules can be clearly identified. These classes of rules only add complexity, degrade performance and increase business continuity risk.

Road signs are only suggestions For all of you who have driven in the

VITAL MANAGEMENT

south of Italy you will know that all traffic laws, which by the way are still contained in the Italian criminal not the civil code, are merely suggestions to be adhered to or ignored depending on the situation.

Such is often the case when people are writing new or changing existing security rules. We all know that we should include a comment or a clean-up rule but sometimes expediency makes us ignore these good practice guidelines.

The need to meet with a growing number of compliancy requirements either internal audit reviews, external audit demands such as SOX or Basel II or from industry specific requirements such as PCI-DSS is far more costly if a history of indiscipline has existed.

It is of little use spending money to optimise your firewall infrastructure and enable automatic compliance if you do not deal stop subsequent non compliance. The ability to flag non compliance to the relevant IT/security/ compliance/business manager protects your investment, maintains your firewall estate’s performance and ensures cost free ongoing compliance.

Sleeping in the afternoon The one local habit that I have taken to most easily is sleeping in the afternoon. The opportunity to wind down and take a nap after a nice lunch is a great way to recharge your batteries. I think that this should be added as a criterion for any new security investment.

“Does this investment allow me to take a nap in the afternoon?”

In summary it is clear to me that companies are looking for ways to remove cost from firewall administration while adding performance. The ever increasing demands of compliance from all quarters means that the delivery of compliance needs to be automated and assured. To ensure ongoing OPEX reduction and operational efficiency, rule changes going forward need to be assessed against and internal or external best practice standard automatically and violations flagged to the responsible manager.

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It recently occurred to me that actually there was a great deal of similarity between the nuances and national characteristics of Italy and the challenges faced by IT security professionals today.

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VITAL PLANET

When the going gets tough A new white paper, “Managing IT in Tough Economic Climates” by Avocent CTO BEN GRIMES offers advice for IT managers looking to reduce overhead and increase efficiencies in the face of shrinking budgets and dwindling resources and offers six headline tips to save time and money and reap the environmental rewards too.

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HERE HAS never been a more critical time for IT to align itself with the business to aid in streamlining processes and reducing operating expenses. In past economic downturns, those companies that focused on cost containment and process improvement emerged victorious. In this current climate, businesses must again look at ways to do more with less and can use the new strategies and tools at their fingertips to help them weather the storm.

Power management A 2008 survey of 300 data centre IT decision makers revealed that energy conservation was considered the most difficult issue to resolve

VitAL : July / August 2009

using currently available tools; managing the total cost of power was a close second. Effective new technologies, such as intelligent power distribution devices and power management software, enable effective, granular monitoring of every appliance in the organisation and strategic reductions in energy consumption.

Process automation More than ever, businesses need to ensure they are maximising staff productivity. In addition to necessary business functions, IT typically manages an enormous volume of unique devices on a day-to-day basis, from employees’ PDAs and mobile devices to servers and appliances in the data centre. Companies

that implement automated management tools can simplify the complexity of managing their IT environments, streamline processes, and improve productivity and customer service. By implementing greater systems management oversight and control, IT managers can substantially increase staff productivity and make sustainable operational gains.

Asset management Closer management of software and hardware assets throughout their lifecycle is now more essential than ever, given the recent surge in server consolidation. Businesses need to have a sound process for effectively decommissioning servers in place, because managing dormant

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

Service organizations need to transform from traditional customer support to customer service and from cost centers to profit centers.

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

We understand the complexity of consistently delivering high-quality, world-class service and support. With so many factors affecting Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), our Service Value Management model focuses on the six key drivers that contribute most to CLV: Strategy and Culture, Monitor and Control, Service Processes, People, Tools, and Organization.

THE S VM M O D E L

W HAT IS CU S TOMER LIFET IM E VALUE?

Service Processes Performance, Stability, Efficiency

If you had to put a single dollar value on a customer, what would that be? That dollar value is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), the present value of all future cash flows attributed directly to your relationship with that customer. Focusing on CLV allows you to make decisions that align your service organization with your company’s strategy and achieve your targeted bottomline results.

People Development, Leverage, Leadership

This model brings clarity to improvement efforts by providing a logical framework for identifying the actions that can most influence CLV. Strategy & Culture Vision, Competitive Advantage, Segmentation Monitor & Control KPIs, SLAs, Dashboards

Tools Selection, Alignment, Knowledge Organization Structure, Motivation, Sustainability

R A P I D R E S U L T S . L A S T I N G VA L U E .

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VITAL PLANET

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servers can drive immediate cost savings. In several anecdotal cases, IT shops have stated that 30 percent of servers in large data centres are ‘dead’; these servers not only take up valuable rack space but also waste precious data centre energy in power and cooling.

“Surprisingly, nearly a third of all the IT assets within an organisation are unaccounted for, and that can place a financial strain on any business,” says Grimes. “Regulatory compliance under HIPAA and SOX, for example, requires that companies be prepared to show that they are not misusing software licenses, and that they are protecting sensitive data and operating in a secure manner. Asset management helps here too.”

The following six tips to save time and money and generally improve upon and be more successful at choosing the best rack and equipment setup for their data centres should also provide great value in the data centre:

and maintenance of server health, and allows faster troubleshooting and problem resolution to ensure all servers are up and running 24/7.

1. Consider out-of-band remote access for improved hardware management When deciding in-the-rack equipment set up, consider a system based on out-ofband technologies for improved remote management of IT assets. Out-of-band technologies were first utilised to ensure reliability by providing access to IT assets along an alternate route, so failed equipment could be restored quickly and easily. Today’s out-of-band systems optimise IT assets to boost productivity, performance and security, while easing infrastructure management issues across complex heterogeneous networks by bringing together technology elements systematically. The out-of-band infrastructure provides secure alternate paths into the production infrastructure so that disconnected assets can be reconnected and subsequently returned to normal operation.

This infrastructure includes serial console servers, KVM switches, intelligent power distribution units, service processor managers, and blade managers.

4. Power equipment with intelligent PDUs for remote on/off for quick recovery of equipment For quick recovery of equipment, access to secure remote power on/off is necessary for improved control of servers and network gear.

Intelligent power distribution units (IPDUs) can provide integrated console and power management as well as independent control of each power port, versus powering off an entire power strip.

2. Investigate and utilise service processor management for more complete server management Service processors and technology inside servers provide granular information about the health status of the server and provide a mechanism for remote powering cycling of the server. Examples of server health status include temperature, fan speed and voltage.

Leveraging this technology inside servers allows IT organisations to streamline data centre management and reduce operational costs because it enables proactive monitoring

VitAL : July / August 2009

3. Implement three-phase power for more efficient power distribution to IT assets As rack and server densities increase, substantially more power is required. Threephase power provides a long-term solution for this problem because it can support growing power requirements as data centres become more densely populated. Three-phase power distribution devices are designed to accept a single three-phase input voltage then convert it to three single, split-phase power circuits. This is far more cost effective than running numerous single-phase circuits because an entire data centre rack can be powered with a single circuit, or two circuits for redundancy.

5. Use energy measurement tools for improved understanding of capacity, consumption, and cost Whether cutting costs or going green, companies need the ability to monitor and measure IT energy consumption, costs and trends across all levels of data centres and remote locations: at the device level, the rack level, within a row of racks or the entire room. Access to information that details gives IT administrators, facilities departments and the company the right data to analyse costs and develop a cost-reduction action plan.

6. Add centralised management software as the over-arching tool for IT asset management Data centres require secure centralised management for all physical and virtualised assets to allow administrators to remotely diagnose and modify any managed device, regardless of the health or status of the operating system or network connection.

The goal should be to find software that can integrate with new technologies and provide a consistent interface to lessen the complexity of managing the environment. www.avocent.com

Data centres require secure centralised management for all physical and virtualised assets to allow administrators to remotely diagnose and modify any managed device, regardless of the health or status of the operating system or network connection.

The goal should be to find software that can integrate with new technologies and provide a consistent interface to lessen the complexity of managing the environment.

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SERVICE DESK PROFESSIONAL TWO A one day course aimed at more experienced Service Desk staff. Covering topics such as getting new starters up to speed, coaching skills, project work, dealing with staleness and standing out for the right reasons. The intention is to send attendees away keen to re-energise their own performance and that of the Service Desk. £350 (+VAT) per person.

SERVICE DESK MANAGER A two day course suitable for Service Desk supervisors, team leaders or managers. The course covers a range of service management and managerial/supervisory practices and techniques. Time is set aside to discuss individual challenges and situations. All attendees receive a copy of our “Service Desk Good Practice Guide” template.

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VITAL PLANET

The telecommuting top ten For flexible working to be a success for employers and employees alike, it is important to know the technological challenges that can be expected and the best practices to adopt. With this is mind, ANDREW MCGRATH, commercial director of ntl:Telewest Business, shares his top ten tips for flexible and remote working.

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T MAY represent something of a ‘magic bullet’, a cure-all that solves a bunch of societal problems at a stroke. Flexible working and telecommuting have the potential to cut down the traffic on our roads and the pollution in our air while making us both more productive at work and allowing us more time to spend with our nearest and dearest. There are also the implications for employers that allow flexible working in that they can reduce their office space requirements and the costs associated with buying and leasing property.

According to a survey conducted by the National Life Insurance Co, four out of ten

VitAL : July / August 2009

employees state that their jobs are “very” or “extremely” stressful. Those in high stress jobs are three times more likely than others to suffer from stress-related medical conditions and are twice as likely to resign. The study states that women, in particular, report stress related to the conflict between work and family.

Although estimates vary as to the exact number of workers telecommuting, in the US studies anticipate that the number will rise over the next few years. But factors inhibiting this continued growth include distrust from employers and what has been described as ‘personal disconnectedness’ of employees.

Telecommuting in particular is seen as a

solution to the traffic congestion caused by single-car commuting, and the associated air pollution and hydrocarbon use. Investment in network infrastructure and hardware is balanced by the increased productivity and reduction in stress of the telecommuting staff, which makes the arrangement attractive to companies, especially those who face large operating costs related to the need for a central office.

Legislation on flexible working and company-wide green initiatives mean that many businesses will soon be rolling out forms of home, remote and flexible working if they aren’t already. For workers based in

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VITAL PLANET

remote areas this can be an opportunity to save a vast amount of money on commuting and also give them a new found freedom as they better balance their home/work responsibilities. However, for flexible working to be a resounding success for employers and employees alike, it is important to know the technological challenges they can expect and best practices they should adopt.

contactable. In order to minimise confusion for colleagues, associates and customers, try to route calls to a single contact number, so that they can be reached whether they are in the office, a meeting, the car, or at home.

Business continuity With the British weather getting less and less predictable, flexible working can form part of organisations’ business continuity plans, as the same set-up used to allow remote access can be employed to keep companies ticking over if the worst should happen.

1. Broadband The increasing popularity of working from home has prompted many companies to include home broadband as part of its employee benefits package. Although this must be allocated as a taxable benefit, it does give employees extra flexibility and the chance to choose a high-speed package.

2. Laptops From being a luxury item just a few years ago, laptops have now become relatively inexpensive, with many companies choosing to replace desktops with laptops as a matter of course. For mobile or remote workers they are essential items, but if you are planning to give employees remote access to company servers remember to provide adequate training on how to use the equipment and access information securely.

3. Security Whenever an employee accesses company information, whether this is at home or on the road, they must be able to do this securely to prevent information from being lost or misappropriated. Most companies use virtual private networks (VPNs), which securely ring fence the information passing between company servers and workers’ computers, to achieve this, and higher levels of security are available.

Remote diagnostics

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In order for flexible working to be fair across the whole company, employees from every department should be given the means by which to work remotely, including staff that work in the IT department. For IT staff to be able to maintain and repair any problems it is advisable to provide monitoring systems that IT staff can access in and out of the office.

Using a single contact number for employees A remote working employee still needs to be

VitAL : July / August 2009

Although estimates vary as to the exact number of workers telecommuting, in the US studies anticipate that the number will rise over the next few years. But factors inhibiting this continued growth include distrust from employers and what has been described as ‘personal disconnectedness’ of employees.

7. Hot desking As companies are looking to reduce costs wherever possible, one option they can consider with flexible working is saving money on their most expensive asset – the space they lease or own. As offices require less space so they can move to smaller, cheaper premises with hot desks available for when workers come into the office.

8. Smartphones Giving employees smartphones, such as BlackBerrys or even iPhones, can dramatically increase their productivity by reducing the ‘dead time’ of commuting and travelling to and from meetings. The chance to read and respond to emails and make calls keeps workers in the loop and ultimately reduces the time they need to spend in the office.

9. Smartphones II As well as being great for emails and calls, today’s smartphones can also be used as mini-computers, loaded with the same applications that workers use on their desktops or laptops. This saves time as workers don’t have to return to the office to upload orders, take payments and reduces the burden and errors involved in transferring information between systems.

10. Deciding on a supplier Ensuring that a flexible working policy works well involves working with the right suppliers to find the solution that’s meets each organisation’s individual needs. The worthwhile providers are those that don’t offer ‘cheapest’ or ‘fastest’ as standard, but instead take the time to get to know a business before recommending what it can do to save time and money while helping it to grow. www.ntltelewestbusiness.co.uk

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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.

IT Service Management Consulting Training WARDOWN CONSULTING

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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.

INFRA CORPORATION

KEPNER-TREGOE

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

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 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.

IT Service Management Systems

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PINK ELEPHANT

AXIOS SYSTEMS

Atlantic House, Imperial Way, Reading. RG2 0TD

60 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7HF

T: F: W: C: E:

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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.

VitAL :July / August 2009

IT Security EMEREO SOLUTIONS (UK) LTD

T: F: W: C: E:

+44 (0) 131 220 4748 +44 (0) 131 220 4281 www.axiossystems.com Jenny Duncan jennifer.duncan@axiossystems.com

Axios Systems, a leading provider of IT Service Management solutions, uses a customer-centric approach to ensure customers can align their Service and Support with the overall business goals.

Axios is headquartered in the UK, with 12 offices across the world.

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.

IT Service Management Systems INFRAVISION

Delegate House, 30A Hart Street, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, RG9 2AL T: +44 (0) 1491 635340 F: +44 (0) 1491 579835 W: www.infravision.com C: Nigel Todd E: 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.

IT Service Management Systems SUNRISE SOFTWARE

50 Barwell Business Park, Leatherhead Road 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.

DIRECTORY

Helpdesk Internal/External ICCM SOLUTIONS

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.

RICHMOND SYSTEMS

West House, West Street, Haslemere, Surrey GU27 2AB T: +44 (0) 1428 641616 F: +44 (0) 1428 641717 W: www.richmondsupportdesk.com C: Simon Armstrong E: info@richmondsys.com Richmond Systems service management solution Richmond SupportDesk enables rapid implementation of enterprise wide support based on ITIL® best practices.

Richmond SupportDesk maximises the efficiency of your support operation and raises service levels for internal IT Service Management and Managed Service Provider environments.

General Training UKCMG

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

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

Industry Body / Association 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.

Publications, Events, Conferences TEST MAGAZINE

31 Media, Crawley Business Centre, Stephenson Way, Crawley, West Sussex, RH10 1TN T: +44 (0) 870 863 6930 F: +44 (0) 870 085 8837 W: www.31media.co.uk C: Lorretta Walsh E: lorretta.walsh@31media.co.uk The European Software Tester is a publication designed specifically for individuals and organisations aligned with software testing. With independent, practical, and insightful editorial T.E.S.T aims to inspire its readers and provide its advertisers with a clearly defined route to market.

Qualifications and Accreditations ISEB

First Floor, Block D, North Star House, North Star Ave, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN1 3JJ T: +44 (0) 1793 417655 F: +44 (0) 1793 417559 W: www.iseb-exams.com E: isebenq@hq.bcs.org.uk ISEB is part of the British Computer Society (BCS) and is a worldwide exam body.

Respected by employers for over 40 years ISEB have delivered over 380,000 exams worldwide in over 50 countries and continue to lead the way in exams for IT professionals.

IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT FORUM

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

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

Qualifications and Accreditations APMG

Sword House, Totteridge Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK T: F: W: C: E:

+ 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.

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

To advertise in VitAL contact Grant Farrell on +44 (0)1293 934461

Inspiration for the modern business

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July / August 2009 : VitAL

47

SECRETS OF MY SUCCESS

Steve White Kepner Tregoe

“The customer had a backup, but they lost three days of production rebuilding their machine. The customer was someone I fancied at the time, and that reformatted any chance I had. <sigh>. I have been very careful with format ever since.”

This month regular VitAL ‘Life in the world with IT’ columnist Steve White of Kepner Tragoe steps up to the plate to share with us the secret of his success.

Vital: Name, company and job title please?

Steve White: Steve White, Kepner Tregoe, Product Manager for the KT Resolve RCA product.

Vital: Married? Kids??

SW: Married with a boy aged nine and a girl aged eight going on 14.

VitAL: What got you started in IT? SW: While shelf filling in Tesco age 20, a friend had just started with Sun Microsystems, and one day he showed me what he did – mending computers. I needed at least an HND to be considered for a job so I packed off to the Poly of Central London, and by age 24 I was a field engineer for Sun.

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VitAL: Was there any one person or organisation that was your inspiration?

SW: John Peel was my hero. If part of being human is our ability to communicate complex thoughts with elegance, beauty and calm, I considered him a role model. IT is just stuff – the people that use IT and support IT are real people and being able to communicate with them, and they communicate with each other is vital.

VitAL :July / August 2009

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

SW: Working for Sun – and my major IT triumph was winning an ‘atta-boy’ for taking and processing a large (well, actually very large) quantity of customer support calls in 1993.

Those were the heady days of the IT boom, and Sun was doing really well. An all expenses paid three-day trip to Maui, Hawaii +1 was a ‘whatever’ for the winners in California, but I was based in the UK and it was a very, very big deal.

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

SW: One morning I had changed a failed CDC 800Mb drive at SCSI address 2,0 and in the afternoon was working on similar equipment where the failed drive was at address 2,1. I replaced the dead drive and formatted the good side of the mirror by confusing the target address. The customer had a backup, but they lost three days of production rebuilding their machine. The customer was someone I fancied at the time, and that reformatted any chance I had. <sigh>. I have been very careful with format ever since.

VitAL: What is your biggest ambition?

SW: It’s so big that I need to hold in my head the ambition and the obvious reality that it’s not attainable – someone recently called this my ‘Miss World’ speech. During my time working in customer support within Sun we introduced KT, so I lived through the job without consistent

troubleshooting and then with it. Before KT it was a scratchy place to work, and full of conflict.

Once we did the implementation it was still a hard job, but it was less scratchy, there was less conflict between engineers and managers, and it was a nicer place to work. My ambition is that the whole IT support industry get behind one troubleshooting method for the benefit of their customers; stop finger pointing, align with and make the resolution of hard problems run more smoothly which will build more confidence in IT and grow the IT market... And be the best dad in the world.

VitAL: What do you like best about your job?

SW: Having managed the worldwide implementation of good quality consistent troubleshooting across Sun I joined KT in 2006 as the product manager for the product I specified while working for Sun. The best bit is seeing people understand the process, enjoy using it and then go on to develop cool new ways of using it.

VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests?

SW: Folk music, non-professional theatre, raising kids, cooking stuff in unusual and interesting ways outdoors for large groups of people.

VitAL: What is the secret of your success?

SW: Passion and business results.

VitAL: Steve White, thank you very much.

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