VitAL Magazine - July-August 2010

Inspiration for the modern business Volume 3 : Issue 6 : July / August 2010

IT delivers for Britain How to do more with less in the public sector

Reaching cloud nine Selecting the right cloud partner

Greening the enterprise Strategies for going green This issue: Cloud computing special

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leader

That which doesn’t kill you...

Leader W

hen you have worked in business journalism for a decade or so you see the headlines come and go: strong Sterling affecting exports; the dotcom bubble; the South East Asian recession; 9/11 etc. All serious and troubling in their time, but it’s worth noting, those of us left standing have pulled through – I’m talking economically and in no way wanting to diminish the plight of the victims of 9/11, here by the way. The point is we have come through them all and as the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. The latest headline is ‘Doing more with less’ and I suspect it is a contextual change we’re all going to have to come to terms with if we haven’t already.

In this issue our lead feature looks at the public sector. It accounts for a massive chunk of the UK’s economy and is at the forefront of this ‘doing more with less’ paradigm. Last year I heard Bill Taylor, chief executive of West Lancashire Borough Council, speak at a customer services conference and his knowledge, technical nouse and sheer enthusiasm left an impression on me, so when thinking about someone to contact about the challenge facing the public sector he was an obvious choice. He thinks the feat of improving service while cutting costs is achievable – and achievable through the use of IT. He’s not alone.

Economies achievable through the deployment of outsourcing, shared service, virtualisation, cloud computing and server and data centre rationalisation have been extensively discussed in the pages of VitAL over the last year or so. This July / August issue of VitAL has a distinctive cloud computing slant and it’s easy to see why. Government estimates were looking at savings of over £11 billion a year through implementation of these technologies if done properly.

A sum not to be sniffed at! The new governing coalition has yet to put it’s IT plans firmly on the record, but its response to the last Government’s proposals showed an enthusiasm for going further and faster and hopefully they will follow through on those intentions.

One more thing. In the back end of this issue you will find the VitAL Digest.

So successful was last July’s Digest that we decided to include it in 2010 – a bit of summer reading for you.

Until next time...

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 Matt Bailey, Editor

enough to survive, and even thrive, under the present economic

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

climate.

www.vital-mag.net

July / August 2010 : VitAL 1

contents

vital Inspiration for the modern business

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Contents

Inspiration for the modern business Inspiration for the modern business Volume 3 : Issue 6 : July / August 2010 Volume 3 : Issue 5 : May / June 2010

The VitAL Cover Story

10 Doing more with less in the public sector

Broadcast standard IT

matt bailey As the public sector cuts start to bite across the board, VitAL speaks to West Lancashire Borough Council chief executive Bill Taylor MBE and finds out what one council in North West England is doing with its IT in order to meet the challenge.

IT delivers for Britain

The world’s biggest broadcaster’s IT strategy

How to do more with less in the public sector

A perfect storm Reaching cloud nine

Securing the IT estate Selecting the right cloud partner

Doing more with less Greening the enterprise IT in a tough economic climate Strategies for going green

VISIT ONLINE AT:COMPUTING WWW.VitAL-MAG.NET THISVitAL ISSUE: CLOUD SPECIAL

Editor Matthew Bailey matthew.bailey@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4599 To advertise contact: Grant Farrell grant.farrell@31media.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)203 056 4598 Production & Design Toni Barrington toni.barrington@31media.co.uk Dean Cook dean.cook@31media.co.uk

VitAL Signs – Life in a world with IT

13 Jobs for the troubleshooters Steve White This issue, Steve is having problems with compatibility.

VitAL management

14 What to do when you’ve been hacked Steve Smith As recent news reports prove, the problem of hacking is not going away, if anything it is getting worse. Steve Smith offers some helpful advice on what to do if you’ve been hacked.

Editorial & Advertising Enquiries Tel: Fax: Email: Web:

+44 (0) 870 863 6930 +44 (0) 870 085 8837 info@31media.co.uk www.vital-mag.net

Printed by Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood. NP12 2YA © 2010 31 Media Limited. All rights reserved.

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

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

ISSN 1755-6465 Published by:

18 ITIL in the era of the cloud Shirley Lacey People are searching for solutions that offer better value with reduced cost and less risk. As organisations change their business models, cloud computing services may seem attractive.

Shirley Lacy reports.

VitAL profile

22 Legendary status 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.

Matt Bailey A maverick in the IT service management market, Cherwell Software is starting to challenge the proprietary software giants of ITSM according to industry pundits.

VitAL spoke to the company’s Europe managing director Tony Probert.

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

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

Launching iCore

IT Transition as a Service Transition is the process for moving large projects or major changes through Appraisal, Design, Build, Deploy and Operate stages in a manner that assures a smooth introduction into your Production environment.

Transition as a Service (TaaS) will: • Provide improved visibility to the cost, risk, functional capability and service delivery aspects of the change / project

iCore has a track record

• Introduce more reliable planning and sizing of the release and deployment activities, putting Live Service onto the Project Critical Path

many leading IT Organisations

• Engage with Change, Project, Program Managers and Teams at the right time, in the right way • Ensure solutions are designed and built with Operations in mind • Provide transition resources with both project and operational service expertise • Build you a fully effective transition operation and, if required, manage the skills transfer back into your own in-house team • Do this for an agreed price

For more information about

IT ‘Transition as a Service’ please contact: sales@icore-ltd.com or telephone 020 7464 8883

working on IT Transition for (including Global) and covering many leading technologies (including SAP and Virtualised). iCore will provide practical experience and methods in Service Transition to Clients as a Managed Service, which is both flexible and scalable and can be applied to anything from a project of around 6 months to a large program of 3-5 years.

We utilise best practice methods and guidance from ITIL v3, COBIT, CMMI-SVC and other industry frameworks to develop a strong approach to Transition which is both pragmatic and effective.

COntents

Contents VitAL SUPPORT

26 The truth about man-motivation

36 Pitching to secure budgets and pitched battles to keep them Matt Bailey Even in good economic times no budget will ever be approved unless it is sold properly to the people that matter. VitAL speaks to Sal Pinto who coaches senior staff in the techniques to succeed in these critical pitches.

NOEL BRUTON In the first of his regular centre page spots in VitAL magazine, Noel Bruton seeks to uncover the truth about motivation.

VitAL processes

28 Reaching cloud nine Peter Bauer We are constantly told that cloud computing offers all sorts of benefits, not least the financial savings through using on-demand, payas-you-go applications and services. Peter Bauer presents a practical how-to guide to selecting the right partner in the cloud.

VitAL drive – IT hits the fairway

39 Is summer officially here?

GERAINT LEWIS As summer is finally upon us Geraint Lewis ponders the role of IT in televised sports.

VitAL digest

16-page roundup of the stateof-the-art in IT service management.

31 E ntering the cloud John Rollason With a timely and detailed guide as to how to embark on a cloud project, what to consider and how far to commit, John Rollason heads into the cloud.

64 Secret of my success After a career spent in technical journalism, this issue VitAL editor Matt Bailey has the dubious honour of imparting the secret of his success.

VitAL eyes on

35 IT shows – added value or just a jolly?

Jonathan Westlake In the current economic climate, Jonathan Westlake asks whether it’s worth taking a trip to that trade show.

www.vital-mag.net

July / August 2010 : VitAL 5

news

Cost cutting is top of the agenda for CIOs I

n a survey of 250 chief information officers and IT professionals in organisations of 1,000 employees or more, 43 percent of British IT leaders said that reducing expenditure would be their top priority for the next three years, compared to 26 percent of their peers in the US, and just 17 percent in Germany. The research also showed that 50 percent have had their IT budgets cut for the current year (the same as the global average), despite the UK’s economy officially emerging from recession in January. The survey focused on recipients in global companies based in the United States, United Kingdom and Germany across the verticals of financial services, healthcare, retail and the public sector.

With spending cuts still firmly on the agenda, application modernisation was the preferred method of reducing outgoings, with almost two thirds (63 percent) of the UK’s respondents saying that it offered the best way of reducing IT costs. More than 80 percent also said that modernisation is important to their current IT strategy, with 86 percent either currently working on a modernisation project or having completed one in the last two years.

Among those that had completed modernisation projects, 70 percent claimed it had enabled them to reduce their overall IT operating costs, 63 percent had been able to support future business growth through modernisation, 60 percent said it has increased the speed of their operations or reaction time, and 55 percent claimed it has improved the agility of their business, ensuring their IT can react to business opportunities more quickly.

The study shows that, despite widespread optimism that the UK’s economy may finally be regaining momentum, budgetary constraints remain a fact of life for most businesses.

With half of the companies surveyed still experiencing budget cuts, ‘doing more with less’ and investing in technology projects with a fast, tangible ROI remains the focus for the post-credit crunch CIO. “Application modernisation has clearly been the unsung trend of the IT industry over the last 12 months, and is set to remain so for the immediate future,” comments Stuart McGill, CTO of the surveys sponsor, Micro Focus. “And with large projects realising tangible savings of millions of pounds in just a few years it is easy

IT departments look to managed services O

nly three per cent of UK businesses plan to replace IT staff to fill the skills gap left by the recession, according to a recent survey of UK IT managers commissioned by Esteem Systems.

As the UK starts to see signs of recovery, 64 percent of businesses and organisations admitted they will be investing in IT to help drive business forward. Just six percent said they would take a ‘wait and see’ approach to the recovery. The research also revealed that due to the demand for more flexible solutions to solve the skills shortage resulting from the recession, IT managed services are becoming a growth area.

“Our survey showed that businesses are understandably being cautious with regards to investing in recruitment, despite the fact that we’re coming out of recession,” comments Alastair Kitching, chief operating officer at Esteem Systems. “However, 95 percent of the businesses we questioned believe it’s vitally important to continue to invest in IT solutions, with 61 percent identifying managed services as a preferred approach. Businesses are clearly putting 6 VitAL : July / August 2010

IT at the heart of their plan for recovery, and managed systems are increasingly being seen as the best vehicle to deliver that recovery in IT. This is because the current climate may still be too unstable to commit to recruiting more staff, and there is also a real need to relieve the pressure on overstretched IT departments.”

GAC UK, part of the GAC Group, a global shipping, logistics and marine services provider, participated in the survey and said managed services was the right solution because it provided the skills they needed at the time. A spokesman says, “One of the bonuses of using managed services is that certain skill sets are more readily available to me at the time I need them, rather than employing a number of IT staff direct.”

Kitching concludes, “Skills that have been lost due to the cuts made over the past 12 to 18 months are more easily replaced by buying-in that expertise. It may be that businesses still fear a double dip recession could be around the corner and feel that a managed service is a more flexible solution at this time.”

to see why. CIOs and IT professionals are being asked to do two things at once: cut even more costs and innovate to meet customer demands.

They should remember that the savings they make by migrating their mainframe applications to more modern architectures can actually be reinvested into new projects, so they can in fact achieve both aims at the same time.”

Richard Holway, chairman of analyst firm TechMarketView LLP said, “One of the abiding themes of our research for the last decade has been ‘more for less’ – first in private sector IT and now very much the key topic in the public sector too. Saving money on IT doesn’t have to mean throwing everything away and starting again. Doing things in a more intelligent manner is often a smarter mov.”

iPad puts Apple in poll position A

s Apple announced that it had sold more than two million of its new iPad touchscreen tablets since the launch two months ago, analysts at RBC Capital Markets estimated that by the end of the year, over eight million units will have been sold worldwide.

The success of the iPad has underlined the resurgence of the Apple brand, which has now reportedly overtaken Microsoft as the biggest technology company in the world by market capitalisation.

There has been intense demand for the devices worldwide. It took just under a month for Apple to notch up one million sales, making it more popular than the iPhone, which took 74 days to hit the same figure in 2007.

www.vital-mag.net

news

Focus on the future

vital focus groups

A

nnounced in the last issue of VitAL, The VitAL Focus Groups which take place on 21st June 2011 at the Park Inn Hotel, Heathrow, will aim to focus on key strategies to help IT professionals through the tough economic times ahead.

The real theme of our time seems to be ‘doing more with less’ and clearly IT is the key to this process. The VitAL Focus

“

Groups aim to equip its delegates with the tools to cut costs while improving their service levels,” comments VitAL editor Matt Bailey. “While June 2011 is nearly a year away, I suspect we can safely assume that the economic situation, while unpredictably fluid and dynamic in many respects, will still be forcing companies to drive out cost.”

Key expert industry suppliers are supporting the event including Pink Elephant, Infravision, Kepner Tragoe, Cherwell Software and Wardown Consulting.

The VitAL Focus Groups will consist of fifteen syndicate rooms, each a forum to discuss a specialist subject for IT managers.

With some of the industry’s leading minds on hand to help facilitate and steer each session, we predict that they will quickly become a ‘must-attend’ event for anyone serious about IT in the modern environment.

In addition there will be networking opportunities available as well as a small exhibition area where delegates can interact with their peers and source the latest products and services.

The VitAL Focus Groups are open to all professionals within the IT industry although complimentary places are limited to 120 and are offered to managers, directors, and board executives on a first come first served basis. www.vitalfocusgroups.com

Coalition plans a level playing field for open source software in UK Government projects capability, security, scalability, transferability, support and manageability requirements.’ It also added that the government ‘will, wherever possible, avoid becoming locked in to proprietary software’.

The coalition also stressed its commitment to rolling out ‘superfast’ broadband to all areas: “We will introduce measures to ensure the rapid roll-out of superfast broadband access across the country. We will ensure that BT and other infrastructure providers allow the use of their assets to introduce superfast broadband in remote areas at the same time as in more populated areas. If necessary, we will consider using part of the TV licence fee that is supporting digital switch over to fund broadband in areas that the market alone will not reach.”

human contracts computer virus

A

T

he UK’s newly-elected coalition government says that it will create a level playing field for open source software in government projects and split large computing projects into smaller ones - which it says will give smaller companies a better chance to compete in tenders for public-sector IT contractors.

The coalition says it will take steps to open up government procurement and reduce costs; publish government ICT contracts online; create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components.

Although the previous Labour administration had set out an aim to encourage the use of open source software and methods in government projects, it reportedly gained little traction. Last year it said that open source should be on an equal footing with proprietary systems and that ‘procurement decisions will be made on the basis on the best value for money solution to the business requirement, taking account of total lifetime cost of ownership of the solution, including exit and transition costs, after ensuring that solutions fulfil minimum and essential www.vital-mag.net

scientist from the University of Reading claims to be the first human to have been infected with a computer virus after he contaminated an electronic chip which was inserted into his hand. Dr Mark Gasson said the device was programmed with a virus which could transfer itself to any other electronic systems it came in contact with, raising the possibility that in the future, advanced medical devices such as pacemakers could become vulnerable to cyber attacks.

The chip, a refined version of the ID chips used to track animals, has been programmed to open security doors for him and to unlock his mobile phone automatically. Dr Gasson told BBC News: “With the benefits of this type of technology come risks. We may improve ourselves in some way but much like the improvements with other technologies, mobile phones for example, they become vulnerable to risks, such as security problems and computer viruses.”

July / August 2010 : VitAL 7

news

IT staff are top team in World Cup A

study among 241 UK IT professionals, asked; should they experience a major IT disaster during the final of the World Cup would they delay fixing the problem, remarkably, 87 percent said they would forego the match to fix the problem. According to one respondent “the score will not change if you’re not watching it”.

This is in contrast to the findings released two weeks ago by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) who questioned 700 British businesses and found they were worried the competition could cost “a fortune in lost production as employees take time off and waste time nattering about the tournament”.

In the US IT staff were asked if they’d continue to watch the SuperBowl in the event of a crisis. Interestingly a similar level of response was found with 80 percent of the 262 respondents saying they’d stop watching and fix the disaster. A small minority of respondents, 12 percent in the UK and 15 percent in the US would continue to watch the game while leaving the organisation to fend for itself. One IT professional suggested that: “Those IT professionals choosing the footy over their duties, maybe the fault of corporate management not educating their people on Risk Management and Business Continuity.”

Speaking about the choices available, one respondent drew the comparison that it was akin to “secure employment or growing a big beer belly” a sentiment, although perhaps less expressively voiced, shared by the majority. Another made the statement that “You must fix your ship or sink with it”.

IT professionals are hacking their own systems to keep intruders out

EU paves way for ‘Data Centre 2.0’

A

survey of IT security professionals has discovered that 83 percent consider commercial applications, the ones you buy off the shelf, to be riddled with code flaws and vulnerabilities.

56 percent believe these flaws could allow hackers to exploit these software vulnerabilities; as a result, security professionals are making heavy investments in penetration and code testing, combined with application scanning, to try and build security into the software.

Half of the IT security professionals also admitted to hacking, with 73 percent of these respondents doing so to test the strength of their own network’s defences, 13 percent for fun or out of curiosity, and three percent targeting their efforts at the competition.

The survey also unearthed that, amongst the 300 IT security professionals interviewed (with the majority taken from companies employing 1,000 plus employees), 31 percent admitted to being victims of hacking. Interestingly, with 29 percent replyed ‘don’t know’. The majority of respondents cited the application layer to be the hackers’ main target.

57 percent of the IT security profession also confer that the best way to check that their software applications are free of vulnerabilities and secure is to combine all available techniques and solutions, including code and static analysis, web application firewalls, application scanners and pen testing. Only 5 percent of the survey respondents we spoke to said their organisations didn’t employ technology for software security.

8 VitAL : July / August 2010

T

he agreement on a pan-European ‘green’ Code of Conduct for Data Centres now paves the way for a new generation of facilities which will raise the bar on power efficiency and use of renewable energy sources.

The European Code of Conduct for Data Centres, which has been in place since the start of this year, has the support of ninetysix business participants and endorsers, it standardises the measurement of power consumption, utility and efficiency in the data centre and encourages best practice across the sector.

“As we plan the first data centres under the new Code of Conduct we’re looking at new ways of doing things – this is ‘data centre 2.0’, a leap forward in the way we use power and the efficiencies we deliver,” comments Alex Rabbetts, managing director of Migration Solutions. “The greener data centre is the key issue for the industry today. It is vital that we have our own house in order so we are ready to play a significant role in the development of the growing number of environmental ‘smart society’ projects, incorporating smart grid, smart cities and smart transportation projects, all of which rely on data processing and data centres for their success.”

www.vital-mag.net

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Don’t leave yourself exposed, contact us today on 01793 858181 or visit www.cherwellsoftware.com

Innovative Technology Built on Yesterday’s Values

cover story

Doing more with less in the public sector As the public sector cuts start to bite across the board, VitAL editor Matt Bailey speaks to West Lancashire Borough Council chief executive Bill Taylor MBE and finds out what one council in North West England can do with its IT in order to meet the challenge.

I

t is certainly a time of upheaval, uncertainty and change for all who work in the vast interconnected organisation that is the UK’s public sector. Central Government is wielding the axe, about to make swingeing cuts across the board. And in spite of assurances that certain areas will be ringfenced and protected from the chop, all levels of Government, both national and local will see their budgets cut while still being under pressure to deliver the same or better service than before. Clearly, IT will play a major role in squaring this circle.

Institute of Customer Services chief executive, Jo Causon points out that deep cuts - including

10 VitAL : July / August 2010

a likely freeze on pay and council tax - come at a time when public expectations for quality of service are at an all time high, and continuing to rise. “The sort of measures announced will put yet more pressure on public organisations to deliver more with less, while impacting on staff engagement.” she points out. “Meanwhile citizens – the public sector’s customers – are more demanding than ever. They expect – and pay for – individualised service, delivered on their terms. Research in the private sector has proved that customer focus can improve employee efficiency by over 70 percent. There is no reason for this to be any different in the public sector.” www.vital-mag.net

cover story

West Lancashire Borough Council is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and cost effective councils in the country. Bill Taylor has been its chief executive since 1997. He has a reputation for leading from the front and pushing the boundaries both in terms of customer service and technology.

With a background in human resources, Taylor has previously worked for five other local authorities in various management and professional capacities. He was seconded in 2004 as acting chief executive to another North West council to help with their improvement programme, but it is at West Lancs where his approach has delivered most recently. In recognition of his talents and abilities he was awarded an MBE in June.

Taylor has been chief executive of West Lancashire Council for 12 years. During this period the Council’s performance has improved in step change fashion, winning a string of national awards. In recent years the Council has become focused on maximising efficiency and Taylor is evangelical about the need for the public sector to markedly reduce its spending levels.

Born in Scotland, he left school at 15 and worked in an engineering factory and later attained a degree in Politics and Economics, a Masters in Local Government and a Post-Graduate Diploma in HR. He has worked for seven councils both on the frontline and at the corporate centre (Strathclyde Regional Council, Walsall MBC, Edinburgh City Council, Rochdale MBC and Harrogate BC).

In 2006, he undertook a secondment at Fylde Borough Council – as well as holding down the day job at West Lancashire and in 2007 he had a short exchange spell in Australian local government.

He also has experience of working in the private sector and was, for a number of years, www.vital-mag.net

a non-executive director of a technology company. In 2006-7, he was the first person from local government to be named as Business Leader of the Year in the National Customer Service Awards. His key business interests include: cost reduction and value for money; shared services; customer service/ technology interface; community safety; and leadership development. On a personal level, he says he is a reformed ‘gym junkie’ who now pursues his addictive habits on the golf course.

Technology focus “The focus for last decade has been on using technology to assist improvement in public services,” Bill Taylor told VitAL editor Matt Bailey, “and that was what determined the nature of investment. It was all about customer focus and quicker access to service. That was the primary focus of the previous Government’s E-Gov agenda, using technology to improve public service.”

Clearly the paradigm shift that came in the wake of the bank bailouts of the late noughties has changed this state of affairs. “There has been a major shift in emphasis,” confirms Taylor. “Public sector policy is no longer about step change improvement as it was in the past; the new game in town is all about how we get our costs down while minimising the damage done to service, or pulling off the trick of getting costs down while maintaining or improving service quality.”

The shift has come very quickly. “The situation is subtly different from a year ago,” says Taylor, “then cost - while still being highly significant factor - was not top of the agenda. Now of course, cost is the primary issue with quality of service a very close second.”

Taylor now has to juggle with these changed priorities and the technology used has to help

Taylor has been chief executive of West Lancashire Council for 12 years. During this period the Council’s performance has improved in step change fashion, winning a string of national awards. In recent years the Council has become focused on maximising efficiency and Taylor is evangelical about the need for the public sector to markedly reduce its spending levels.

July / August 2010 : VitAL 11

cover story

his council shift that emphasis. “This is the prism through which we have to view our IT requirements now,” he stresses. “Technology is really just another resource to help us deliver service and we view it in the same way as the other resources, but our mission for the last 10 years has been to train and recruit the best IT staff to deliver world-class services and our challenge will be retaining those people and perhaps getting by with fewer staff. We will have less money available for technology but we want to make a bigger impact.”

Farewell, the E-Gov fund Under the last Government’s E-Gov fund, every authority received £250k a year for four years to spend on improving their technology. In Lancashire where there are 15 councils, many invested the funds in call centres to improve customer service. In future without that fund available, the emphasis will be on thinking smarter. “We will have to look at how one piece of technology serve a number of areas,” says Taylor. “The emerging idea is to find an appropriate shared services mechanism. Local authorities may benefit from sharing a back office technology spine. A single technology platform across a number of councils could if 12 VitAL : July / August 2010

implemented properly, achieve the significant cost savings necessary in such a way that we also get service improvement.

“I would add that although the public sector has embarked on a major downsizing exercise, we need to be careful that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” adds Taylor. “We have recruited very good IT operatives and we need to make sure that everyone knows that they are the solution and not the problem. But there are ways of ensuring this. For example, if we are using shared services, we need to have a vehicle where staff are happy to work in that way, perhaps with them working on secondment, rather than them being TUPEd to a subcontractor. But IT professionals are part of the solution and we mustn’t blame them for high cost. They have been responding to the direction of the policy makers for ten years.

Now we have to look at the world differently and they are changing too.”

The new game in town is all about how we get our costs down while minimising the damage done to service, or pulling off the trick of getting costs down while maintaining or improving service quality.

A contradiction in terms?

“My philosophy on this is that government policy should be a juxtaposition of as much localism as is practically possible combined with the economy of scale that centralism brings. We can have centralism on procurement while delivering services locally. I think we can www.vital-mag.net

VitAL signs: Life in the world with IT

Jobs for the troubleshooters

Steve White is having problems with compatibility...

R

have our cake and ha’penny, as they say in Lancashire,” says Taylor. “It is possible for a number of local authorities to have a single technology back office platform, while at the same time acting locally. We would have a joint procurement hub but still have local councillors for local people.”

The growth of unified communication could also help deliver this aim. “We could use a joint call centre, where calls are answered by local operatives,” explains Taylor. “On the face it looks like you have policies which oppose, but you can have the best of both worlds. I don’t think there is a conflict there at all.

In the public sector it’s clear that the primary game in town is now getting costs down. “If we can find a protocol for sharing information we can use business process reengineering techniques and provide a better more timely service and reduce our costs. We need to pool info while maintaining the appropriate confidentiality.

“Counter intuitively perhaps there has never been a better time to be a senior manager in the public services,” concludes Taylor, “anybody can thrive during the good times, but now the chips are down the quality of leadership in both the field of technology but also corporately has never been more in demand.” VitAL www.vital-mag.net

ecently I was called to investigate a problem with a machine that was getting close to fully booting, and then blue-screened. Apparently there were no log files to help identify the problem, no way of instrumenting the machine to find out what was going on (and I found out afterwards that the support staff were being economical with the truth, there are plenty of ways of instrumenting it to find out, but since they hadn’t thought of them they chose not to mention them). The red herring was that this was first boot following a major patch upgrade, so the effort went to rolling back the patch installation – still the machine would not boot.

There seems to be a battle of fundamental philosophy in IT provision at the moment – manufacturers who develop and make hardware to a standard and others who write software to a standard and the customers put the two together and run the world on it – and the other hand where a single manufacturer owns both the hardware and operating system stack. This is a philosophical fight between Windows and the Linux distributors who run on compatible hardware, and Sun (the Oracle brand) and Apple, who own the hardware and operating system stack (And of course Oracle, who own the hardware, OS and application for a specific definition of ‘application’). Add to the mix the emulation software which allows an operating system to run as an application on different hardware and we have a third battalion joining the fray.

Putting the ‘I’m a PC; I’m an Apple’ argument to one side for a moment, and concentrating on the differences between the troubleshooting of the two environments, it matters whether there is one throat to choke or many.

This company were unlucky in that the hardware provider was not responsible for the crash, it was someone else’s problem.

The operating system was written by someone who does not own the hardware, and it took several days for the appropriate instrumentation and the right people to be brought to bear on the problem. It was only when a machine not just patched also failed in the same way that further investigation switched from the patching being the possible cause to there being ‘something else’. That thought direction revealed the reason – a completely different server for automatic backups had a full /var file system which did not show on any alert dashboard and it’s mode of failure caused a bad thing in the driver of the affected clients.

The visible downside of the one provider model for users is the ongoing dispute between Apple and Adobe. From the Apple site I quote “We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform.” This is where the philosophical war is being fought. If Apple holds their position it may be inconvenient for users in the short term, and it will be a visible upside for troubleshooting, availability and reliability for users into the future. VitAL The apple quote is from http://www.apple. com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ July / August 2010 : VitAL 13

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What to do when you’ve been hacked As recent news reports prove, the problem of hacking is not going away, if anything it is increasing. Steve Smith, managing director of Pentura offers advice on what to do if you’ve been hacked.

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hen your business discovers it has been hacked there are different mentalities on how to deal with it; for the Private Sector organisations the most important thing is to detect when a network or system has been hacked.

Once an attack has been detected it then becomes important to identify the extent of the compromise, isolate any compromised networks or systems and contain them to stop the attack effecting other networks or systems.

National security organisations may decide to take an altogether different approach and once they are satisfied it is being properly risk managed, let the attack continue in order to monitor its movements, understand how it 14 VitAL : July / August 2010

is working and what specific information it is targeting. They may argue that in some cases immediately isolating a malicious attack may mean that they are unable to understand the full extent and modus operandi of the attackers, strategically useful to prevent future attacks.

Escalation The next step is to decide who you need to tell and what industry-specific rules you should follow. The first point of call would be to notify someone in a security leadership position so that they can then decide on the next defensive step and whether to escalate the incident up to someone more senior.

If a virus is involved for example, it may be best to move up the chain of command to the www.vital-mag.net

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head of security who will then decide on the severity of the problem and whether or not to notify the board.

Depending on the severity of the incident, law enforcement authorities should be notified. Many large private sector organisations frown upon this approach however, embarrassed to be caught out and resorting to tackling and containing the problem themselves. Unfortunately this can often lead to press leaks and public uproar causing considerable reputational damage and the possibility of fines. Recent incidents in the NHS and Manchester Police are prime examples of what can happen when the public sector falls foul to hackers. These incidents have made top news stories and have made the public question just how safe their personal data is.

By notifying law enforcement authorities of a serious hacking incident, information provided can then be included in any ongoing investigations. There may have already been many similar hacking incidents and by pulling together disparate sources of information from multiple attacks, law enforcement authorities will be able to respond more effectively and protect organisations.

International problem It is not always clear how widespread an attack is, it could be on an international level where organisations such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) will need to respond. SOCA have strong links with other law enforcement communities throughout the world and where necessary may be able to share information about similar hacking incidents to strategically prepare and protect organisations against future attacks.

UK organisations that come under the umbrella of critical national infrastructure (eg communications, energy, finance etc) could seek advice and guidance from the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI). www.vital-mag.net

Damage limitation Businesses should also look at damage limitation and how best to protect business branding and market position. There are certain people and organisations that should be informed straight away; I would usually encourage organisations to notify law enforcement authorities of serious hacking incidents even when the incident is particularly sensitive. Once the attacks have been identified, contained and eradicated and systems are running without any hiccups, a decision should be made by the board on when to go public.

Going public before managing the situation may cause customers to panic and may even benefit competitors.

It is important to minimise the amount of damage done to your organisation, and to do this effectively you must be prepared.

If an organisation doesn’t have incident management, business continuity and disaster recovery policies in place then it will become more difficult to minimise the damage caused.

If you establish and test these policies and there are clear procedures and governance structures in place then responding to hacking incidents becomes much easier. In general, the faster you respond to and contain an attack then the less damage it will cause. Most organisations can expect to be attacked by hackers at some point but by being proactive and ready for the attack beforehand usually reduces the impact attacks will have.

The aftermath

It is important to minimise the amount of damage done to your organisation, and to do this effectively you must be prepared.

If an organisation doesn’t have incident management, business continuity and disaster recovery policies in place then it will become more difficult to minimise the damage caused.

After the incident the best way to clean up is to know where your information systems were beforehand. Backing up regularly will allow you to restore systems and information to an accurate level and with minimal downtime, allowing you to get back to your baseline quickly. Computer forensics coupled with intrusion detection, operating system and firewall logs may be needed to fully investigate the full extent of an attack. Understanding what July / August 2010 : VitAL 15

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A well maintained information security policy along with underlying incident management, business continuity and disaster recovery policies are a must for businesses and organisations to recover fully from any form of a serious hacking incident.

your vulnerabilities are and lessons learned from the incident should help you to minimise the likelihood and impact of it happening again.

In general, critical systems and assets should be cleaned first and so forth.

With the sharp increase in corporate espionage, it is also important to understand where all your information assets are and what impact hacking can have on these assets and your organisation. Espionage works when it is not detected so if you’re not aware of your assets you may not know what has been stolen or damaged.

A well maintained information security policy along with underlying incident management, business continuity and disaster recovery policies are a must for businesses and organisations to recover fully from any form of a serious hacking incident.

Learning from mistakes Organisations must learn from their mistakes in order to manage the risks from hackers and minimise the impact hacking incidents cause. They must understand how the incident happened from the detection of the attack all the way through to the recovery. How well they responded to the incident and what they should have done better are some of the key questions that need to be asked at a board level and pushed downwards.

By having a good understanding of what the risks and vulnerabilities are, what assets need to be protected from hackers and the impact future incidents can have on the organisation both financially and in terms of reputation is a good basis to win the financial support needed to implement proportionate controls against hacking. VitAL www.pentura.com 16 VitAL : July / August 2010

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ITIL in the era of the cloud The world has experienced a major change with the economic downturn and people are searching for solutions that offer better value with reduced cost and less risk. As organisations change their business models and ways of working, cloud computing services may seem attractive. Shirley Lacy reports.

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s with all fundamental changes in approach, the move to the cloud will depend on how individuals and organisations adapt their thinking to the new opportunities and ways of working.

ITIL provides best practices and models for managing services in the era of the cloud that will help people and organisations to adapt accordingly. It also covers shared services, utility computing, web services and mobile commerce.

Cloud service models – pros and cons Cloud service providers offer promises of cost savings, better productivity, easier implementations, less administration overhead and more time to focus on projects that add 18 VitAL : July / August 2010

value to the business. However, there are challenges with cloud computing services such as issues around security, data privacy and an inability to change easily in the future.

Would you be comfortable putting business critical services in the cloud? Mistakes could result in major incidents and downtime and less reliable services.

There are different cloud service models such as public, private and hybrid models.

Public cloud services can offer greater cost savings but may only provide a limited set of service level agreements. There may be difficulties verifying the security and compliance requirements. Private clouds offer greater control but may not deliver the costs savings and ability to scale up or down.

History tells us that there is more likely to www.vital-mag.net

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be a mixed environment. It is managing such diversity that will be a challenge for many organisations. This may be exacerbated if payas-you-go services from the cloud become fashionable in an organisation, there could be a wider range of applications across the user base that become difficult to manage.

What does ITIL offer in the era of the cloud?

An organisation needs to understand the business impact of moving to a cloud service model for a specific service or application. It is also important to understand the key drivers as these are also likely to affect other decisions in running your business and IT. The ITIL Service Strategy publication provides guidance on generating a service strategy for such a major shift in service delivery. It encourages us to think about: 1. Value creation and delivering business outcomes; 2. Understanding the business impact of using different service models (such as a cloud delivery model); 3. The need to understand internal and external costs and risks; 4. The needs to understand our overall portfolios of services; 5. The importance of understanding service dependencies; 6. Implementing a culture of continual improvement that is supported by an appropriate service management system.

ITIL provides guidance on service portfolio management that helps an organisation to maximise value from its services, while managing risks and costs. This guidance is particularly useful when moving to a different type of sourcing model where there could be significant changes to the value, cost and risk profile. ITIL helps managers to understand and www.vital-mag.net

model the quality requirements and related delivery costs of different models.

ITIL defines a ‘service’ as a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.

Delivering value from cloud services Value is derived from delivering better service delivery and customer experiences, such as those anticipated by moving to the cloud. ITIL describes the value of a service to a customer in terms of: Utility or fitness for purpose: Utility delivers improvement through the performance of the tasks used to achieve a business outcome, for example, users can perform their business activities faster through new functionality in an application service. This is often the attraction for business users of a cloud application, especially if they have an immediate need.

Warranty or fitness for use: Warranty requires the service to have sufficient capacity, to be available, continuous and secure to support the required performance.

A service has to have both utility and warranty to create value for the customer. Warranties in general are part of the value proposition that influences customers to buy. If customers experience poor service quality such as down time or security breaches they start to worry. Good and bad experiences influence a customer’s future buying decisions. Like other services, the experiences of cloud-based services will be influenced by news from the industry, within an organisation or personal experience. If the cloud computer service industry delivers ‘bad experiences’ such as security breaches, the trend towards the cloud may falter.

Cloud service providers offer promises of cost savings, better productivity, easier implementations, less administration overhead and more time to focus on projects that add value to the business.

However, there are challenges with cloud computing services such as issues around security, data privacy and an inability to change easily in the future.

July / August 2010 : VitAL 19

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ITIL provides guidance on how to: • define value chains and value networks; • define and manage the service portfolio – balancing value, cost and risk; • select the right sourcing strategy and suppliers for cloud computing services; • develop and maintain a service management system and service models; • design, build, test, release and deploy cloud computing services; • establish the right agreements, contracts and service level agreement; • manage service performance and service levels; • managing changes;

Good and bad experiences influence a customer’s future buying decisions. Like other services, the experiences of cloud-

• managing incidents.

based services will be The ITIL service strategy publication emphasises the importance of designing and building both utility and warranty into a service.

It provides examples of investment approaches and advice on modelling the Total Cost of Ownership and Total Cost of Utilisation.

Selecting a cloud solution and service provider Deciding whether to implement a business application in-house, out-source or use a cloud service provider depends on the type, level, and cost of the IT skills within your organisation; the budget for capital versus operational expenses; your IT infrastructure and architecture; the level of customisation and integration that your workflows and processes require into other elements of your IT solutions. Experience will also influence a customer’s decision on whether to outsource, retain an in-house service or bring services back in-house.

ITIL helps us to think about why customers switch from one service provider to another.

Understanding the characteristics of service providers helps us to understand why we may consider switching to a cloud service provider. In ITIL, the three building blocks of high performance service providers are: Market focus and position: the service provider understands the dynamics of their market space, and the customers within, better than their competing alternatives. They manage their services through appropriate strategies that enable them to build and manage valuable service portfolios, achieve optimal scale and grow their customer base. This is happening now with the major IT suppliers trying to ‘grab’ market share of the cloud computing services and there are significant cost savings on offer.

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Distinctive capabilities: the service provider offers distinctive, hard-to-replicate capabilities that deliver a promised customer needs and experience. The service provider delivers value to the customer and can communicate the underlying capabilities that enhance customer outcomes. Commercial vendors are emphasising their ability to deliver better services more cheaply while emphasising their specialist capabilities to manage security, environmental management of large data centres.

Performance anatomy: this is the creation of cultural and organisational characteristics that enables the organisation to compete with alternatives. For example, how does an external cloud service provider compete with an internal service provider and vice versa.

Moving to cloud-based services ITIL provides examples of modelling the economic value of a service. What matters is the net difference between the positive gains from the service and the losses from using the service. For example if we can increase the performance of our business activities to deliver a five percent increase in sales by moving to external cloud services, we should consider the additional costs of moving to the cloud and any estimated cost of service nonavailability or downtime.

ITIL distinguishes between different types of service provider: internal IT, shared service unit, external service provider. The sourcing model is a key factor in service strategy as each type has a different business model that affects the market space, competition, customers, contract and competition. With a move to cloud computing services a significant consideration will be any changes to the sourcing strategy.

influenced by news from the industry, within an organisation or personal experience. If the cloud computer service industry delivers ‘bad experiences’ such as security breaches, the trend towards the cloud may falter.

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If there is a major change to the ways of working as a result of moving to the cloud, the way that the service management processes are integrated across the enterprise will also need to change. ITIL provides guidance on how to do this and also how to implement new or changed services through the service lifecycle.

As people change jobs, a common challenge is training people in the organisation’s service management practices.

Adopting an industry accepted framework based on ITIL means that organisations can adopt a consistent approach to training their personnel round the world and take advantage of the ITIL qualification scheme.

ITIL key practices Many organisations are adopting the ITIL service lifecycle to enable them to manage business and technology changes more effectively and efficiently.

You can use the ITIL service lifecycle to help you to manage business and technology change for cloud services. The service lifecycle contains five stages: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement.

Key processes for managing cloud services through the service lifecycle are: • Managing the service strategy; • Service portfolio management; • Demand and capacity management; • Information security management; • IT service continuity management (working with the business and suppler);

Conclusion

• Service level management;

In conclusion, organisations need to take action to make sure that cloud computing services and suppliers will deliver value at the right cost and risk. ITIL provides the foundation and building blocks to establish a service management capability that enables you to support a diverse range of services including cloud services. VitAL www.connectsphere.com

• Supplier management; • Change management; • Release and deployment management; • Service validation and testing; • Incident management; • Problem management; • Continual service improvement.

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July / August 2010 : VitAL 21

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Legendary status A maverick in the IT service management market, Cherwell Software is starting to challenge the proprietary software giants of ITSM according to industry pundits. VitAL editor Matt Bailey spoke to the company’s Europe managing director Tony Probert.

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nowing that the roots of Cherwell are in the United States, I was always a little intrigued as to why the company was named after a river that flows near Oxford in the UK and lends its name to a service station on the M40. I suspected there must be a town or area in the States that could account for the brand. In fact the company is named after the Oxfordshire river. “The name Cherwell comes from the River Cherwell, which flows through the central part of England and joins the River Thames in Oxford,” says the company. “Even though we are a US-based company, we are fond of the history surrounding this river. The graphic in our logo is symbolic of these two rivers merging together.”

It turns out that CEO Vance Brown and the co founders of Cherwell are fans of the English fantasy novel as purveyed by Cherwell locals J.R.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis. “As the story goes, J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to stroll along Addison’s Walk, a beautiful path alongside the Cherwell.

And, it was during times like these that Tolkien developed the stories for The Lord of the Rings and Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia.

We’re big fans of Tolkien and Lewis, and their classic stories that have survived the test of time – stories about men and women engaged in noble causes”.

22 VitAL : July / August 2010

“At Cherwell Software, we’re passionate about our own noble cause; listening to our customers and caring for their needs. We are building a company that we believe will ‘survive the test of time’ by providing quality products with extraordinary customer care. We take seriously our tag-line: Innovative Technology built on Yesterday’s Values.”

And the final connection between the software company and the rural Oxfordshire idyll? Cherwell District Council now uses Cherwell Software for its service desk needs.

“We are not looking to just build a company and sell it. We want to build great technology – in an industry we enjoy – while building lasting relationships with both our employees and customers,” says Vance Brown. “Accordingly, our private company has no outside debt and no venture capital funding. We want to do this for a living; for the long haul. We have no ‘exit strategy’.”

IT veterans With more than 30 years in the IT industry, Cherwell’s European managing director, Tony Probert has spent more than 18 years helping to build, develop and manage startup operations for software companies within the UK and EMEA region. He spent eight years as European managing director for www.vital-mag.net

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GoldMine Software Corporation (now known as FrontRange Solutions), growing the European business from a two person start-up to more than 100 people, with revenues in excess of $15m.

He subsequently held a variety of senior management positions with responsibility for sales, channel management, marketing and international business development for a number of software companies. Having been involved with the help desk and service management industry within the UK and Europe since the late 1980s, Probert brings a wealth of knowledge, relationships and practical operational experience to Cherwell Software.

VitAL: What are the origins of the company; how did it start and develop; how has it grown and how is it structured?

Tony Probert: Cherwell Software has been formed by members of the original management team from a company called Bendata, which was a pioneer and leader in the help desk software industry, being the original developers of the HEAT product line.

The company was founded in 2003, as a result of a meeting between our CEO, Vance Brown and Arlen Feldman our CTO, with a view to bring a new solution and business model to the service desk industry.

The company has grown consistently year on year and even in this very challenging financial climate has been profitable for ten quarters in a row. This is no mean accomplishment, when in recent times we have seen many of our competitors have to cut staffing numbers, lose focus on product development or seeking to be acquired.

Cherwell has gaining significant recognition from leading industry analyst groups such as Forrester, IDC, Ovum and Gartner, with Forrester recently citing Cherwell as an ‘emerging leader of ITSM solutions’ able to compete with the ‘megavendors’ of BMC, CA, HP and IBM. We have also been finalists for recent industry awards, Pink Elephant ‘Innovation of the Year’ www.vital-mag.net

and Service Desk Institute ‘Supplier of the Year’, terrific recognition of the advances we have made.

Cherwell is a privately-owned and privatelyfunded company, with no outside influence from VC companies or corporate investors.

It has corporate headquarters in Colorado Springs, USA and European offices in the UK. We also have partner companies operating in North America, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Holland and Italy.

We are founded on the genuine principles of friendship, high morals and building for the future.

VitAL: What is the company’s specialist area or product group, if any?

TP: The development and delivery of IT Service Management solutions, based around the industry best practice requirements of ITIL v3, with 11 management processes covered

by PinkVERIFY certification. In addition, our solution has an underlying .net-based application development platform called CBAT (Codeless Business Application Technology), which also empowers our customers to easily develop other integrated business applications, such as Project Management, CRM, Facilities Management, Bug Tracking, Purchase Order and Student Record systems.

VitAL: Is that specialisation to make the best use of skills in the company or because it fits the company’s world view or has it simply evolved?

TP: The specialism is based on the vast help desk/service management industry experience of the individuals involved with Cherwell, which from a technical and commercial perspective equates to hundreds of man years of knowledge, experience and passion.

VitAL: How has any specialisation influenced the company’s general stance?

TP: Aside from the obvious, I would call it more a desire than a specialisation. The vision of the Cherwell founders is to create a solution

The vision of the Cherwell founders is to create a solution that changes the face of this industry for the benefit of the customer, by delivering a featurerich, open solution that is more scalable and flexible, simply priced, with significantly lower ongoing management overheads and choice of deployment, than that of the legacy companies people have been used to dealing with in recent years.

July / August 2010 : VitAL 23

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As organisations have to review their support strategies and have the need to be more efficient and productive, with few resources, at a lower cost they are having to review their legacy solutions and find more effective systems. The challenge in the main is financial and organisations being able to justify the projects required.

24 VitAL : July / August 2010

that changes the face of this industry for the benefit of the customer, by delivering a featurerich, open solution that is more scalable and flexible, simply priced, with significantly lower ongoing management overheads and choice of deployment, than that of the legacy companies people have been used to dealing with in recent years.

VitAL: Who are the company’s main customers today and in the future?

TP: Our customers are essentially any medium to enterprise organisation that has a requirement for a corporate service desk solution, whether it be for internal IT or external customer support. A key objective for us moving forward is to deliver our version of an ‘AppStore’, where those customers and partners that develop additional business applications using the CBAT platform can share them with our customer community to use.

VitAL: What is the company’s business model, ie, does it select a market and then design solutions to meet the needs of that market or does it specialise in particular solutions and seek markets where those solutions are needed?

TP: We have a specific market being service management but through the continued development of applications using our CBAT platform, we believe that solutions will be designed to both meet the changing needs of that market but will also see the development of solutions that will take us into new markets.

VitAL: What is the company’s commitment to corporate social responsibility, ie, ‘green’ issues?

TP: We are very aware of the need to protect the environment and as we build our business take appropriate measures to consider and protect the environment where possible.

Given the beautiful location of our corporate

headquarters, set at the foot of the Rocky Mountain range in Colorado, you cannot but be aware of the need for environmental protection.

VitAL: How does the company communicate with vendors and customers?

TP: We look to have an open dialogue with other vendors and are members of a raft of industry organisations that constantly bring us in to contact with vendor companies. As for our customers Cherwell uses a number of traditional methods, including user groups and an advisory board. We are also increasingly using new social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter etc, to communicate with and develop our customer community.

VitAL: What does the product range cover?

TP: An extensive and fully featured IT Service Management solution, asset discovery, web portal and mobile device technologies.

VitAL: What is your view of the current state of IT Service Management and IT in business and the economy in general, the challenges and the opportunities?

TP: Considering the current global economic climate IT Service Management seems to be relatively buoyant. I believe this is because as organisations have to review their support strategies and have the need to be more efficient and productive, with few resources, at a lower cost they are having to review their legacy solutions and find more effective systems. The challenge in the main is financial and organisations being able to justify the projects required. The opportunities are many; the replacement of legacy enterprise solutions that are costly to support, manage and maintain.

I think the current situation, the economic climate and the recent change of Government is a good opportunity for Cherwell in the European market. We are bringing technology to the market that is more open www.vital-mag.net

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and organisations that have to deliver more at lower cost are looking at their tools. Are they able to deliver with their existing tools? The big legacy software solutions are inflexible, expensive and not very adaptive. Their users need to look at alternatives and this is opening the door to us. We offer enterprise capability in a way that wasn’t there before. We can offer the ability to modify and customise without reprogramming or changes to source code, it’s all done through wizards. The big legacy systems simply can’t do that and that is an opportunity for us.

The window never closes it just moves. You need the right product at the right time and it’s the legacy vendors who are at risk now.

We provide a flexible technology that delivers more in a more cost effective way.

VitAL: Has the company grown organically or by acquisition and how much is growth expected in the future?

TP: As a privately-owned and funded company, Cherwell has and will grow organically, which will provide us with a much more stable and stronger financial base for the future, by having no debt or outside financial influences that could put negative and unwanted pressures on future business decisions.

The window never closes it just moves.

You need the right product at the right time and it’s the legacy vendors who are at risk now. We provide a flexible technology that delivers more in a more cost effective way.

VitAL: What are the future plans for the business?

TP: Continue business growth in our target markets and extend the capabilities of our solutions to more functional areas within customer organisations. However, it is our aim that this will never be achieved without retaining the very strong focus we have on delivering a quality solution backed by a world class customer service ethos.

VitAL: Tony Probert, thank you very much.

VitAL

www.cherwellsoftware.com www.vital-mag.net

July / August 2010 : VitAL 25

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The truth about man-motivation In the first of his regular centre page spots in VitAL magazine, Noel Bruton* seeks to uncover the truth about motivation.

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s the old joke goes, “I’m in shape – ‘round’ is a shape.” Perhaps my tendency to rotundity would have been lessened, had I paid greater heed some years ago to TV’s Mr Motivator. He appeared on UK breakfast television, clad in an outrageous spandex unitard and encouraged viewers to join him in a distant aerobic workout. But one thing ‘Mr Motivator’ could never have done was motivate me. Some viewers may have seen a friendly chap in a brightly coloured outfit, a persistent smile and a positive demeanour and decided to copy him as a way of capturing some of that joie-devivre, but not me. That’s only because I’m fundamentally non-athletic. I’d much rather exercise my mind than my body.

Which is perhaps why what Mr Motivator motivated me to do was not what he intended, but instead to try to understand why what he does works for some and not 26 VitAL : July / August 2010

others, and how I can make use of that understanding.

And therein lies the harsh reality of motivation, namely that it is not universal. One man’s motivator is another’s annoyance – which is why so much written about motivation is nonsense. Motivation cannot be applied by generalist technique. Any given attempt to motivate somebody in a certain direction may work, or it may just as easily drive them in a different or even opposite direction, if not bore them into apathy.

I would go further. It is actually impossible to motivate anybody at all. Motivation comes from within - it cannot be imposed from the outside.

To be motivated or not is a matter of personal choice of the prospective motivee, if there is such a word. Which also means that motivation cannot be taught as a series of techniques, à la ‘do this and they’ll run faster’. The closest you can ever get might be ‘do this and some of them might run a little faster’.

But don’t let that discourage you from trying, because you can directly influence that choice, and allow them to create their own motivation.

In other words, there are steps you can and should take to offer them the opportunity to approach their jobs positively. But it is important to be aware that whatever you say and do, it will not motivate or de-motivate your staff. Only they can do that and simply understanding that fact alone can give you a completely different and far more powerful approach to motivation.

Productivity As their manager, it is your professional duty to get the best out of your people. Your company has hired you to deliver a given outcome of productivity. You achieve that by orchestrating and amalgamating the efforts of your team.

Inevitably, one arrives at the question of how much productivity is possible. According to De Marco and Lister, researchers and writers who have conducted extensive studies of www.vital-mag.net

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Therein lies the harsh reality of motivation, namely that it is not universal.

One man’s motivator is another’s annoyance – which is why so much written about motivation is nonsense. Motivation cannot be applied by generalist technique. Any given attempt to motivate somebody in a certain direction may work, or it may just as easily drive them in a different or even opposite direction, if not bore them into apathy. productivity in IT, the difference between the outputs of unmotivated and highly motivated staff is not small – it is a factor of ten. So if you’ve got twenty people and they’re all ‘unmotivated’, you could theoretically replace them with only two ‘highly motivated’ workers, returning eighteen salaries-worth of assets to the balance sheet. Well, I say you could replace them, but in that scenario, the company would probably have replaced you first.

So we’re talking about achieving up to ten times the productivity. And if you have no real measure of that productivity to start with (and if you rely only on your support software and call logs for measurement, then you likely fall into that category), then you don’t know for sure whether your score is one or ten. Without accurate measurement, as a manager, you could be anywhere on an extremely broad scale, between a motivational superstar producing an outstanding return on headcount investment and a monumental underachiever pouring the company’s money down the drain.

It’s not all bad. Your service still exists, so it must be producing at least adequately. So it’s not a factor of ten. Perhaps your staff’s motivation isn’t ‘poor’, but let’s not be satisfied with ‘mediocre’ either. By definition, most IT support teams will be mediocre, making up the numbers in the statistical swell of the bell-curve. But again, the difference between ‘mediocre’ and ‘excellent’ is not small. It’s not a fraction, or a percentage; it too is a factor, in my common experience of between two and four.

Highly motivated IT support staff do not simply exceed averages – they blow them away.

Job satisfaction Our essential professionalism is not the only reason however, for seeking to get the best out of our people. If you go with me on the assumption that motivation and job satisfaction go hand in hand, that one produces the other, then the issue of job satisfaction is www.vital-mag.net

also paramount. A workforce that derives scant satisfaction from its activity is skating dangerously close to the edge of dissent and ultimately, rebellion. I’m not talking mutiny here, they’ve not been press-ganged and can always leave. But they can disrespect or even disavow management and ultimately company authority in tiny, invisible or internal ways, counter to the interests of themselves, their employer and their customers, in everything from secretly misdirecting their efforts to small acts of sabotage.

If you cannot make their job satisfying to do, then the best you can hope for is that they do it, albeit under duress, because they are grownups and professionals. Their hearts and minds won’t be in it, so the quality of their output will also be depressed. A failure to produce job satisfaction on the part of either the company, the manager or the employee, is ultimately a betrayal of the company’s objectives and the employee’s paid purpose, because it engenders a substandard end-product, counter to what the company intended and to what the customer needs and deserves. And the employee who consciously continues to turn out below what he knows is required is also breaking the promise he made when he took the job, which breach is both dishonest and unprofessional. The man-manager has a duty to pay attention to the state and creation of employee job-satisfaction.

Morale It’s worth noting here the difference between motivation and morale. They are most definitely not the same. In fact in some respects, a high level of morale can work counter to the development of high motivation. This is because morale is a positive emotion set brought about by the agreeability of and thus employee satisfaction with the status quo. I call it the ‘It’s nice to work here’ effect. Good restaurant, a window with a view, pleasant colleagues, use of a gym, free coffee and so on, these are the typical trappings of a

company that pays attention to the general level of morale. At a departmental level, common attributes might be a reasonable workload, satisfaction with a job well done, adequate resources and tools, a good working relationship with customers. All very pleasant of course, but this can ironically be restrictive as its very comfort can discourage change.

The concept of ‘change’ is important in any consideration of motivation. We all have a tendency to carve out for ourselves a way of doing our job in which we are as successful and stretched or as mediocre and untroubled as we want to be, depending on our personality and personal career agenda. Over time, this well fitted niche becomes quite a snug place to be – so much so that we may resist forces that would dislodge us from it. What if those forces are trying to encourage change and improvement? Then that too may be resisted by default. Resistance to change brought about by satisfaction with the present.

Motivation is required to move people from their niches. The very word ‘motivation’ implies a form of movement, not a state of rest.

Motivation lies within the realisation that where we are moving to is better than here, therefore it is worth giving up this niche. Successful man motivation comes from a clear vision of where that better place is, what it looks like, why it is better and how to get there. It is the ‘why it is better’ that is crucial, however – for that is different for everybody who will forsake their niche, and it must be worth that cost to them as individuals. That knowledge of your team members’ individuality is your most powerful motivational resource. *Noel Bruton is a long established, UK based consultant and trainer specialising in IT support management and delivery.

He is the bestselling author of ‘How to Manage the IT Helpdesk’ and ‘Managing the IT Services Process’.

VitAL

www.noelbruton.com July / August 2010 : VitAL 27

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Reaching cloud nine We are constantly told that cloud computing offers all sorts of benefits, not least the financial savings through using on-demand, pay-as-you-go applications and services. Peter Bauer, CEO of Mimecast presents a practical how-to guide to selecting the right partner in the cloud.

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ver the past year, cloud computing has dominated IT discussions around the country, and rightly so. It offers significant advantages to businesses, especially as resources become more constrained and IT departments struggle to add business value while maintaining all their existing infrastructures. However, care must be taken as not all cloudbased services are created equal.

Service delivery models vary greatly from hosted providers that replicate fragmented on-site technologies to sophisticated architectures; and benefits vary greatly too.

So if the devil is in the detail, as always seems to be the case, some practical tips for selecting the right partner may prove useful.

Is the basic design right?

Tight integration of services at the provider level is critical. In the case of email this means security, archiving, continuity and policy management. The ability to provide a unified service eliminates the need for multiple interfaces, reporting and policy management.

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They reduce management workload and are ‘aware’ of each other in a way that allows users visibility and access to their email as well as evidential quality to be maintained.

Can they lower IT costs long term?

Partnering with a cloud provider must, at all times, be a low commitment relationship.

Able to control licence fees by paying for access to applications on a per-user basis with a transparent pricing model, IT should at all times maintain complete control of user accounts. They should be able to centrally enforce company-wide policies with real-time implementation without having to rely on the service provider’s help desk.

With cloud services IT staff are abstracted from administering patches and general infrastructure maintenance and can have more time to work on strategic parts of the business. In fact, Butterfield Bank, with offices around the globe, has saved £750,000 per year by opting for unified email management – a reduction of 75 percent compared with in-house email management.

Tight integration of services at the provider level is critical. In the case of email this means security, archiving, continuity and policy management.

The ability to provide a unified service eliminates the need for multiple interfaces, reporting and policy management. www.vital-mag.net

Properly equipped for the job?

In the current climate every organisation is balancing the need to reduce risk and costs, but at the same time maintain or increase service levels. Headcount freezes are becoming the norm, but the IT organisation is still expected to deliver the same, if not better service to its customers.

When most companies need additional or temporary resource the first port of call is the preferred recruitment agency, who will perform a word matching exercise in their CV database, then send you a stack of CVs. With a Pink Elephant resource you get much more than a body – you get people who: • Are cost competitive • Are highly skilled in their field and have a very high aptitude for delivering ‘Service’, not simply ‘Techies’

• Understand ITIL and IT Service Management • Will transfer their knowledge to your staff • Have the backing of the world’s leading niche player in Service Management behind them – with the ability to call on their colleagues for help and support And finally, you will be using an organisation that really understands IT Service Management and can help you to reduce risk and costs, and increase customer satisfaction.

• Understand how good process can deliver benefits to the organisation, and will look to improve at any opportunity

To speak to us about our resourcing solutions and the quality of personnel we provide;

phone us on: + 44 (0) 118 903 6824 email us at: info.europe@pinkelephant.com or visit our website: www.pinkelephant.com

Pink Elephant – Leading the way in IT Service Management Best Practices © Pink Elephant 2008. 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.

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Can they offer business continuity?

A cloud provider must be architected to offer constant availability and have rigid service level agreements that back up their assertions. They must be set in stone, well-documented and protect against all possible risks to downtime.

Demand references of existing customers to compare your situation and ask questions if none are made immediately available.

On-demand email must also be completely transparent and fully interoperable with existing in-house email systems and processes.

For users, the experience with an application, such as Microsoft Outlook, shouldn’t just be seamless but more sophisticated and intuitive than fragmented in-house systems. It should provide more rapid access to archived emails, flawless security, and keep employees working even during outages.

Can they reduce the cost of email compliance?

Business leaders need to be realistic about the regulatory risks of poor email management.

Currently, organisations are struggling to manage the mountain of email, let alone comply with evolving regulations. Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Solomon Smith Barney were each fined $1.65 million for failing to produce emails requested in the course of an investigation. Furthermore, a 2008 survey found that 69 percent of UK companies were unable to produce a comprehensive email audit trail of email records, as required by law.

Partnering with the right cloud provider can substantially reduce the headache of managing and ensuring compliance, by providing an audit trail of all email activity across all user accounts. It must be made available at all times and involve minimal input from company resources.

Finding Mr Right Partner In summary, there’s no one size fits all cloud model and organisations need to evaluate a vendor for its understanding of the issues faced by staff and management alike. Selecting the right partner can deliver on the promises offered by cloud computing: low cost access to expert guidance and highly-tailored, powerful business applications. VitAL www.mimecast.com 30 VitAL : July / August 2010

There’s no one size fits all cloud model and organisations need to evaluate a vendor for its understanding of the issues faced by staff and management alike. Selecting the right partner can deliver on the promises offered by cloud computing: low cost access to expert guidance and highly-tailored, powerful business applications.

www.vital-mag.net

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Entering the cloud A timely and detailed guide as to how to embark on a cloud project, what to consider and how far to commit.

John Rollason of NetApp heads into the cloud.

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loud computing is a reality, and it’s a force that I believe IT professionals need to come to terms with quickly. The economic motivation for cloud is high; business need for speed and agility is like never before, and the technology has reached a level where it makes prudent investments in cloud services not only possible but fast and easy.

The cloud is here and it won’t go away, but what is it really, why should organisations use it and what are the risks? If you live in a corporate IT organisation, responsible for IT infrastructure, what factors do you need to consider?

What we mean by ‘the cloud’ ‘Cloud’ has become a catch-all term for utility or on-demand compute, but there are a lot of things that cloud isn’t. Let’s start by establishing some common terminology: Cloud: generally IT as a Service (ITaaS); Cloud computing: a business model for delivering IT as a service; Cloud services: the deliverable or what you actually get. This encompasses the following www.vital-mag.net

areas of ITaaS: - Infrastructure as a Service (servers, network, storage, management, reporting); - Platform as a Service (application building blocks and standards); - Software as a Service (applications); - Storage as a Service (primary, back-up, archive, DR. In my experience the best way to define cloud is actually to look at the problem it is trying to solve. For instance, when customers ask me about cloud, most of the time what they are thinking about falls into three main areas: Decreased storage costs: achieved via storage efficiency; Data centre efficiency: achieved via virtualisation and internal or private clouds; Conversion of capital expenditure into operational expenditure: achieved via external or public clouds.

Whether to create your own cloud, or use a third party The big question behind cloud computing is whether a company should build or expand

its own data centre (a private cloud), or whether it should outsource and access computing resources remotely over the Internet (a public cloud).

The solution is individual to every organisation; there is no single blueprint to apply and IT strategists and architects have to do their own homework. Organisational factors such as the need to balance opex with capex, attitude to risk, security, criticality of applications and the need for redundancy are unique to every organisation and demand a unique cloud analysis and definition.

How to define a cloud infrastructure and ‘cloud-safe’ data management policy There are two fundamentals to developing a robust cloud-based IT infrastructure: 1. Governance and compliance for outsourced public cloud applications; 2. The creation of internal cloud services to drive down costs and time to market for in house applications.

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If your organisation is just beginning to explore the cloud, you need to identify which services can reside in the cloud and which should be internal. Determine what systems and services are core to your business or store your crucial intellectual property. These should be categorised as high risk and not considered cloud opportunities in the near term.

You also need to develop a sourcing strategy to achieve the low cost, scalability and flexibility your business is seeking. This should include all the necessary protections such as data ownership and mobility, compliance and other elements familiar from more traditional IT contracts.

Implementing an external / public cloud infrastructure Since there are applications (CRM, ERP, messaging and collaboration) that are common to every company, outsourcing to an external cloud provider that can do a better job managing the application at a lower cost structure makes sense. Governance plays a central role in deciding which applications can be safely outsourced, and how to manage the processes.

You will need to assess the applications and build policies based upon the type of data.

Factors to consider include: how it is accessed and by whom; security and compliance aspects; and the strategic importance or competitive advantage the application or data offers.

Second, you need to assess the cloud service provider’s service offerings. Look at their capabilities, security, SLAs on availability and performance to see if they meet the levels required by the applications before agreeing to cloud-outsource the application.

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What are the risks of using an external cloud?

You should pay careful attention to: Service levels: Understand the service levels you can expect for transaction response times, data protection, and speed of data recovery.

Privacy: If someone else hosts and serves your data they could be approached by the US government to access and search that data without your knowledge or approval. Current indications are that they would be obligated to comply.

Compliance: You are probably already aware of the regulations that apply to your business. In theory, providers of cloud services can provide the same level of compliance for data stored in the cloud, but, since most of these services are young, you’ll need to take extra care.

Data ownership: Do you still own your data once it goes into the cloud? You may think the answer to this question is obvious, but the recent flap over Facebook’s attempt to change its terms of use suggests that the question is worth a second look.

Data mobility: Can you share data between cloud services? If you terminate a cloud relationship can you get your data back? What format will it be in? How can you be sure all other copies are destroyed?

As with any service that’s going to be critical to your company, the best advice is to ask a lot of questions and get all commitments in writing.

Do you still own your data once it goes into the cloud? You may think the answer to this question is obvious, but the recent flap over Facebook’s attempt to change its terms of use suggests that the question is worth a second look.

Implementing internal / private cloud infrastructure Internal clouds will help the business launch applications faster and at much lower cost. This is about building ITaaS capabilities in house, or building shared infrastructure that is offered as service to the business. www.vital-mag.net

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You’ll need pooled infrastructure, policybased automation to simplify provisioning, metrics and charge backs, service assurance and conformance to SLAs, as well as forward-looking capacity planning. Add a self-service portal to your internal cloud and now the applications teams are happy they can deploy faster and lower cost and the corporate IT governance guys will be happy too.

This space is evolving fast, so start with the basics; pool the infrastructure and use a vendor that offers dynamic virtualised infrastructure to quickly activate applications, or repurpose capacity and performance as loads from applications ramp up or down.

For this you need unified storage, network, and servers that can cater for wide range of applications requirements and choose highly efficient infrastructure.

Internal cloud services drive down costs and time to market for in house applications is built on a pooled dynamic infrastructure with utilisation levels in excess of 75 percent.

This is achieved through thin provisioning, deduplication, and cloning technologies (which can raise utilisation levels well in excess of 100 percent). The bottom line is that this approach yields big cost savings.

Summary - Cloud computing isn’t going away. It’s an IT concept we must all sign-up to.

- Provisioning an effective cloud infrastructure is individual to every business.

- In evaluating public versus private clouds – be aware of what you’re getting into and how to get out of it.

- For an external cloud – if there’s too much risk – don’t do it. Be selective about what you choose to put in an external cloud.

No amount of IT cost-saving can justify breaking a business.

- For internal clouds – make sure you understand what your data centre is capable of and consider vendors that can offer greatest flexibility and real unified computing. VitAL

Funding and building a cloud A simple place to start is to build an understanding of how much could be saved by virtualising the existing storage infrastructure. The silo approach often leads to storage from multiple vendors, as storage is bought for one particular project or one line of business. The result is the need to maintain multiple models for planning, provisioning and protection. The inability to share storage between vendors prevents unused capacity in one silo from being used by another that is running low. A detailed study of which data sits where leads to an accurate perspective on how much provisioned storage actually contains data. This in turn, provides the foundation from which to start to build the business case.

Presenting applications with a virtual array rather than a physical one increases storage utilisation dramatically. It also has the potential to reduce the variety of storage in the data-centre. Both these improvements result in reductions in the range of storage management techniques, and reduction in power, cooling and housing storage. The resulting savings in capex and opex fund subsequent steps along the road to a cloud infrastructure.

It may be necessary or desirable to maintain a multi-vendor storage strategy; in which case appropriate gateway technologies can further reduce the variety of storage management skills and techniques required. In fact, storage from multiple vendors, fronted by unified storage

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virtualisation gateways, could be the most pragmatic solution to deliver additional efficiencies from existing storage investments. From here it is possible to create the services the business needs from this virtualised storage infrastructure. Provisioning and protecting storage through policies that are defined at the virtualisation layer provides the agility and flexibility that are necessary characteristics of an effective cloud. These policies should codify the characteristics of the services they underpin. Typically, these will include storage protocol, response time, throughput, availability, backup schedule and mirroring schedule.

With a storage cloud established and functional, it is possible to reduce cost further, and fund additional progress towards building a broader cloud infrastructure. Storage efficiency is the goal of a set of tools and techniques that attempt to squeeze additional value out of each block of data. Techniques such as deduplication, thin provisioning, cloning and thin replication individually contribute towards the reduction in the storage capacity required to serve the business, and individually they can make a useful contribution. However, by applying these techniques in combination at the virtualisation layer, the capacity cost savings are magnified. For example, deduplication in conjunction with cloning can achieve in excess of a 90 percent reduction in the storage capacity required to underpin a production service in the cloud.

www.vital-mag.net

VitAL eyes on

IT shows – added value or just a jolly?

In the current economic climate, Jonathan Westlake asks whether it’s worth taking a trip to that trade show.

This space is evolving fast, so start with the basics; pool the infrastructure and use a vendor that offers dynamic virtualised infrastructure to quickly activate applications, or repurpose capacity and performance as loads from applications ramp up or down. For this you need unified storage, network, and servers that can cater for wide range of applications requirements and choose highly efficient infrastructure.

www.vital-mag.net

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he usual round of IT shows is upon us and I’m off to the IT Decisions show at the NEC, Birmingham in late June.

I try and make the effort to attend at least one show a year but with the current economic climate are they worth it?

Let’s reflect on the perceived value first.

Regardless of the show theme, various software/service and hardware vendors will on hand. Various workshops will also be available. Most shows for non-exhibiters are free and so from a knowledge acquisition/ updating point of view the benefit can outweigh the cost of travel/a day away from the office.

Rather than suffering from internet information overload, a show can give you an opportunity for an old fashioned get together and for a bit of face to face advice.

Are there any others reasons which justify attending an IT show? In my opinion the implicit reason for attendance is to cut through the latest IT jargon and that’s from someone in the industry!

Recent evidence indicates that small/ medium enterprises are baffled by technology and choices...so many terms!

So the show can provide a useful forum to combat this confusion. One topical term is Cloud Computing and this pervades the IT Decisions show I will be attending.

Interestingly research by GFI Software (May 2010) has also shown that UK IT software vendors are severely overestimating understanding of Cloud computing in SMEs. Their research highlighted that the degree of understanding of cloud computing terminology is considerably lower in the business sector than in the IT security sector

– 62% of senior business decision-makers have never heard of cloud computing.

My top tips if you do intend to attend a show Plan for a long day! Plan your workshops you wish to attend. Plan the vendor stands you wish to attend. Above all avoid aimlessly walking around the whole show.

Go with a purpose, what do you hope to find out about?

However, if you cannot attend an IT show and are looking for independent guidance then I recommend the excellent guides available from the UK Gov’t funded e-Skills website (reference below). The site includes a useful Cloud Computing introduction.

Useful references: www.itdshow.com/ITDecShow.html www.gfi.com www.e-skills.com/e-skills-UK-inwork/2197 VitAL

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Pitching to secure budgets and pitched battles to keep them

Even in good economic times no budget will ever be approved unless it is sold properly to the people that matter. Sal Pinto from EPS Comms Limited who coaches senior people in the techniques to succeed in these critical pitches, spoke to VitAL editor Matt Bailey.

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he process is always the same; it’s like a military campaign. When a budget is required for a new project, a series of pitches are prepared and delivered to the various stakeholders. For big ticket items, Board approval is a must. Some critical presentations are prepared for the board and the big guns are brought in to make the pitch.

Significant time and effort goes into this first pitch to the board initially, and as approval 36 VitAL : July / August 2010

gathers momentum, these pitches filter all the way down to operational levels.

“You have to be a bit of a showman” says Pinto. “Board members are busy people with big agendas and limited time. You need to make a really positive impact and grab their attention.” Sal goes on, “That’s not all. You have to keep their interest throughout the pitch, and make sure you end on the right note”.

This is often harder than it seems. “So many

pitches start very weakly, and are so boring, that it’s a wonder that the audience stays awake”, he says wryly. “I worked in IT and I’ve seen too many prime examples of how not to do it”.

Pinto’s company has devised Extreme Presentation Skills (EPS). Exponents of EPS successfully use the techniques in high profile sales pitches, typically these critical Board presentations. “EPS succeeds because it www.vital-mag.net

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combines both content and delivery skills. Put simply, it’s what you say (structure, rhetoric, visual aids) and how (voice, body language) you say it.

“So, to be a bit of a showman, you have to be a bit of an actor. Not in the sense of trying to be someone you’re not, because people see through this straight away. But you have to learn how to use your voice and body effectively, in the way of an actor.” Continues Sal “When these acting techniques are combined with rhetoric we begin to understand how great speakers persuade us. Look at Churchill, Kennedy or Obama.”

Supporting material Being a successful business presenter can often be much harder than, say, Obama making a big speech. More supporting material is required: graphs, processes, visual aids. So for a business context the EPS techniques include the need to communicate content with visual aids, structure and themes. What is actually happening during these pitches in favourable economic climates?

A pitch is assembled which puts together the benefits of a project and the board is asked to approve it. The pitch should help the decision makers understand the benefits and costs. The decision makers 38 VitAL : July / August 2010

can then decide if, and how much money to allocate to the project. There will always be competing calls on the budget funds, and the job of the Board is to decide where best to spend. Will the spend on Project A give bigger benefits than the spend on Project B? These are not just the measurable, tangible benefits, but the many intangibles which often can only be described qualitatively.

“So far, I’ve spoken about Boards and big ticket items. But the whole thing applies down to divisional and departmental budgets” continues Pinto. “The internal selling process and pitching goes all the way down the line.

And it applies to maintenance items as well as new projects”.

Cost cutting Fast forward to 2010. Halcyon days are distant memories. In all-too-many organisations the focus switches from improving benefits to cutting costs.

Boards in general and finance directors in particular look at all the budgets searching for cost savings. So some of the biggest projects, supported by the biggest budgets, are candidates for the prime cuts. All too often, promising projects in early stages are cut, expertise dispersed and future benefits ruled out.

What can the budget holders do to preserve their projects? Let’s look again at the statement above that ‘there will always be competing calls on the budget funds, and the job of the Board is to decide where best to spend. Will the spend on Project A give bigger benefits than the spend on Project B?’. “If we change the word ‘spend’ to ‘cuts’ then we accurately reflect today’s economic reality,” says Pinto. “We can make the best of this reality if we r ecognise that the same pitching process works here. We have to use the same approach to pitch for the retention of budgets as we did for the allocation of budgets for new projects. As before, it has to be approached like a military campaign. It’s a pitched battle between you and other budget holders.”

What this means is that we approach protection of existing budgets in the same way that we approach the allocation of new budgets. So, the IT director, the IT manager, the project manager and the user manager need to defend their budgets. That means preparing and delivering presentations and pitches to be made to the board. This may be even more necessary.

Looking back at the criteria for successful pitches for allocation of funds Pinto argues, “You still have to be a bit of a showman. Board members are still busy people with big agendas and limited time. You still need to make a really www.vital-mag.net

VitAL Drive: IT hits the fairway

“When these acting techniques are

Is summer officially here?

combined with rhetoric we begin to understand As summer is finally upon us Geraint Lewis ponders the role of IT in televised sports.

how great speakers persuade us. Look at Churchill, Kennedy or Obama.”

positive impact and grab their attention. You still have to keep their interest throughout the pitch, and make sure you still end on the right note.”

If this was hard in the original pitches it becomes harder still. The reason is that it’s harder to retain enthusiasm and positive attitude when facing the prospect of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Extreme presentation skills “Clearly the acting techniques are of enormous help,” says Pinto. “Being able to convey enthusiasm and positive feelings through the voice and body language are a major plus.

Simply firing a fusillade of bullet points, and using the full range of PowerPoint special effects will not clinch the argument. The visual aids have to be right. The structure – the opening and closing – has to be impactful. The story has to hang together and flow. All these are content skills which are not intuitive.”

When faced with the need to defend budgets, the best approach is to develop the most compelling pitch and deliver it in the most compelling way.

“Don’t be forced to deliver your message as a low-key position paper. Make your pitch using your best people and your best techniques.

Use external experts to help you prepare your pitches,” concludes Pinto. VitAL www.eps-comms.co.uk

A

s I sit in the garden, the smell of burgers on the BBQ drifts across from my neighbours’, Wimbledon has started and we can look forward to the Open Championships in St Andrews in July. While there may be prettier, longer and more difficult courses in the world, the backdrop of the clubhouse, the testing fairways running alongside the beach, the huge greens and the famous ‘Road Hole’ make it my favourite venue.

European golf and golfers will arrive at St Andrews on a (legal) high, following Graeme McDowell’s recent triumph at the US Open, together with a great performance from Lee Westwood at the Masters Tournament and recent wins for a number of European golfers on the US Tour give us a lot of confidence ahead of the Ryder Cup matches at Celtic Manor in September.

However, the Tiger is hiding in the long(ish) grass of the rough, he has won The Open the last two times it was played over the St Andrews course and while much has been made of his recent decline in form, he always seems to be able to raise his game when it comes to The Open and pushes it even higher when the event is being played at ‘The Home of Golf’.

I expect the BBC coverage to be second to none this year with full interactive options available to watch whichever players you want and significant coverage on the BBC Website. Which brings us to the question of how much impact do sporting events have on IT systems?

The recent World Cup Matches were all available online via either the BBC or ITV websites and I am sure that lots of people who were unable or not allowed to watch the matches, made covert arrangements to watch them at their desk.

Many companies are introducing web monitoring / filtering software that allows management to monitor which pages users are accessing and for how long. These packages are now sophisticated enough to block access to specific sites at specific times and for specific users. I wonder how many firms used such software to prevent access to the football matches during the world cup; and I wonder if it was it a good idea to do so.

I am sure arguments can be made for both blocking and allowing, as always it depends on the user and their attitude to the system.

However, spare a thought for the poor workers without offices, who spend their time travelling around the country, holding their meetings in coffee shops or service stations, no-one made arrangements for them to watch the matches. But I bet they arranged their diary so they could sit in the garden at home to enjoy the matches in the sun.

Is summer here? I hope so! VitAL July / August 2010 : VitAL 39

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vital planet

Greening the enterprise Kevin T McDonald, Washington USAbased senior information technology analyst and cloud strategist for ICF International Inc offers his perspective and strategies for greening your business.

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he planet has entered a new era where everything is on-demand.

The public and private sectors are all in, with YouTube videos explaining everything, from how to play jacks to the intricacies of the tax code. Social media, Blogs and Tweets flood the ether around the clock, requiring massive amounts of energy in support.

Organisations are becoming more dependent on these information services and the density of the information stored is increasingly skewed to voice and video. This means the storage and energy required to support data is growing at a rate that greatly outpaces any previous projections. In this environment, managing information systems has never been so challenging. With this growth of energy use, IT has taken centre stage in carbon reduction and sustainability.

This deluge of data is stored somewhere and with this growth comes responsibility.

We are at the dawn of the realisation that information technology consumes a lot of energy. As IT service providers, we should first realise that much of our organisation’s energy is expended in data centres. As carbon reduction becomes a cornerstone of an organisation’s strategic plan, aligning with the sustainability group potentially gains you a seat at the table, while discussing carbon reduction strategies, and it gives the sustainability group a reason to support IT efforts at data centre consolidation and modernisation that also contributes to energy efficiency. All of this contributes to greening the enterprise. www.vital-mag.net

Managing in the brave new world Equipment is depreciating and being replaced far in advance of the tax code. Power, space and cooling require mountains of equipment and advanced technology. The complexities of data centre evolution may require expertise far outside the nominal need to understand storage, memory and processing.

In the public sector in the United States, the government has mandated that all federal agencies measure and report their carbon footprint, similar to requirements in the UK and EU. The US also requires agencies to report on the number of data centres under management, utilisation and their approach to rationalising the number of data centres.

In the private sector, companies are starting to require their suppliers to measure, report and reduce their carbon footprint. These measures can reduce suppliers’ costs, reduce emissions and will possibly reduce future prices.

In terms of how we are managing our side of the carbon footprint, it is clear that IT can play a greater role in working to reduce the impact of information technology on our organisation’s energy use. The major question is whether we are actively leading or simply leaving it up to the sustainability department.

Measure twice, cut once The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides energy efficiency benchmarks for buildings by comparing energy use to similar structures in the same locale. With adjustments for weather, this provides a good starting July / August 2010 : VitAL 41

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The density of the information stored is increasingly skewed to voice and video. This means the storage and energy required to support data is growing at a rate that greatly outpaces any previous projections.

In this environment, managing information systems has never been so challenging. With this growth of energy use, IT has taken centre stage in carbon reduction and sustainability.

point to analyse an organisation’s building portfolio.

The EPA recently added data centres to its model. If the organisation’s data centre scores above 75 percent efficiency as compared to the baseline cohort, the organisation is eligible to apply for Energy Star certification for its data centre. This is similar to a LEED certification for a building, but geared towards the higher energy intensity of the data centre.

The basis for the EPA metric is the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) measure, developed by the Green Grid, a group dedicated to improving data centre efficiency.

PUE is the measure of total power usage divided by IT power usage for the facility. The closer the number is to one, the more efficient the data centre. Lower-scoring facilities can be retrofitted using cooling, building and data centre architecture. This also can be the basis for a data centre consolidation strategy.

In both cases, it does not hurt to have expert assistance.

Concentration of power, the future of data centres The capacity of the average server has grown tens or hundreds of times faster and it has become much more compact in the process.

So why the need for more data centres? In some cases, this may be the stovepipe effect of autonomous purchases.

The average global organisation has hundreds or thousands of procurement on42 VitAL : July / August 2010

ramps for information technology. Without a strong shared services model, it is likely that procurement moves along at the speed of business simply because it was the right thing to do. As the global data network improves in speed and capacity, the data centres and shared services model may come back into its own.

Utilisation, utilisation, utilisation The average utilisation of a traditional data centre is 10 to 25 percent of capacity. With this utilisation, the air conditioning and energy load does not use much more energy than the same data centre running at 100 percent. Any significant consolidation of workload should result in a corresponding increase in energy efficiency.

Virtualisation is simply creating a virtual server that appears to the software to have all the attributes, capabilities and processes as a real-world physical server. The only difference is that these virtual servers can number in the tens or hundreds per actual physical server. By combining lower workload servers together on one physical box, we are able to reduce the inefficiency of a standalone server and reduce the amount of hardware, space, power and cooling required to support the same workload.

If your overall business is moving data around, this can have a significant impact on your carbon footprint. Again, there are toolsets available to help with planning micro strategies www.vital-mag.net

vital planet

for combining workloads. Sufficient care should be taken to provide enough surge capacity to avoid overloading the consolidated servers.

Attention to internal factors, such as requiring energy efficient servers, storage, network equipment and desktops can have a dramatic impact. Desktop power management is another relatively painless tactic that can have immediate savings. Telework and making smart infrastructure decisions to support hoteling can reduce overall floor space requirements and contribute to a smaller footprint. Again, IT can lead in this space in coordination with sustainability as a driver for many of the considerations already considered part of the technology mandate.

Getting into the game Acquisition strategies for CIOs and CTOs may need to change to lead their organisations to consider sustainability options, such as using virtual servers or if hardware is required, specifying that the hardware meets strict energy efficiency guidelines.

Some organisations may initiate this process by starting with a moratorium on server purchases. This drives the server acquisition process back into the CIO’s organisation’s dashboard. If the IT function can take this on as a function or service, instead of a hardware or software decision, then the deployment of virtual servers as a service starts to make more and more sense.

If the core business strategy revolves around hardware-based services as a strategy, then it would pay an organisation to be the very best at providing this service at the best cost and performance possible. For the best in class are now serving up to 5,000 server instances 44 VitAL : July / August 2010

per staff member. With this as the competition, ‘World Class’ takes on an entirely different meaning.

If it cannot be done at a rate competitive with the best outside providers then, in the absence of some compelling security or business value for privacy and control, it may be time to start considering what or how the organisation can take advantage of moving this boundary.

Measure the current footprint for data centres.

This can start with energy usage à la PUE, but the more evolved approach to this census is how the centres are used and to what purpose, down to the applications catalogue and the utilisation. Advanced tools can provide whatif analysis, matching workloads with servers, to concentrate the workload and reduce the number of physical servers.

Consolidation strategies could include a hard centre with squishy walls for surge, multiple centres for redundancy and surge capacity or one big centre with a shared, managed centre simply for backup. Regardless of what strategy is selected, this decision could have immediate disruptive effects so the planning should be mature and multifaceted.

Engage your corporate sustainability group and open the doors for them in the areas that you may touch – those they have not been able to reach. Early adopters may need to tread carefully, but, as these services mature, being late to the game can cost you some points. It may even cost you the match. VitAL www.itgovernance.co.uk

Engage your corporate sustainability group and open the doors for them in the areas that you may touch – those they have not been able to reach. Early adopters may need to tread carefully, but, as these services mature, being late to the game can cost you some points.

It may even cost you the match.

Kevin T McDonald is the author of Above the Clouds, Managing Risk in the World of Cloud Computing (www.itgovernance. co.uk/products/2826). www.vital-mag.net

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digest

A vendor perspective of current IT management processes

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Leader L

ast year’s VitAL Digest proved so successful and popular it was a no-brainer to devote a section of the magazine to it again in 2010, so here it is once more, your summer companion to keep you businessfocussed over the holiday season.

Much has transpired in the intervening 12 months since the last Digest; the country has started to show all the signs of staging a recovery with economic growth pulling us out of the recession of 2008 and 2009. There is also a new and unprecedented coalition government to contend with that has embarked on a programme of massive cuts to public expenditure which are almost guaranteed to affect some of the key players in IT services. Fingers crossed that these cuts don’t stifle our nascent recovery at birth.

Inevitably perhaps some of these events are addressed by contributors to the Digest, not least NetSupport’s Chris Lovesey who explains how to do ‘more with less’. Pink Elephant’s new boss Marcus Harris explains how his company has pulled through in better shape than ever, while Steve Ingall of iCore asks if IT is really listening to the business, something it certainly has to do if it wants to thrive in these challenging times. Perhaps with the help of a ‘GPS for your business’ – as proposed by Cherwell fortunes could be improved.

Have a great summer.

Matt Bailey, Editor

Contents 1 Is IT really listening to the business?

Steve Ingall says it’s time for IT to open its ears to the needs of the business.

2 A GPS for your business Today’s cars are equipped with GPS devices that can proactively warn you the moment you veer off course. Tony Probert says the same peace of mind is now available for the IT professional.

4 Can you lower support costs while improving service levels?

IT departments are faced with the dilemma of how to cut their costs while continuing to provide the quality of service expected by their customers.

Chris Lovesey provides a timely reminder of the steps organisations can take to enable them to deliver ‘more with less’.

6 Premier league solution Premier Incorporated chose ServiceWise from TechExcel over a number of other solutions during its quest to bring process consolidation and automation to its IT services team.

8 Keeping in the pink A ubiquitous brand in ITIL and ITSM, VitAL editor Matt Bailey talks to Pink Elephant UK’s new chief executive Marcus Harris about the trials and challenges in the service management industry.

12 Remote Monitoring in the cloud Cloud-based remote monitoring and management enables more effective use of resources, facilitates profitable cross- and up-selling and builds strong customer relationships. Critically, it enables clear differentiation with vastly reduced investment in resources or staff training, hence delivering a rapid return, according to Phil Bousfield.

46 VitAL : July / August 2010

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Is IT really listening to the business?

Steve Ingall, head of consultancy, iCore Ltd, says it’s time for IT to open its ears.

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or many years there has been much talk about ‘Business IT Alignment’, yet almost daily we see situations where IT is clearly not listening or IT is hearing something completely different. Projects are cancelled because they are taking too long, not going to deliver, or have become self perpetuating. I recall a few years ago sitting in a Senior IT Steering Board and hearing the CEO clearly say to the CIO and her leadership team, “Stop breaking things and when things do break I want you to be able to fix them fast!”

When we came away I then heard the CIO translate this into a ‘programme that had to deliver Operational Excellence’ which then got translated by the IT Leadership into six completely different projects that all had different objectives and seemed to be solving differently problems, three of which decided the answer was to outsource. Turmoil!

I have since become painfully aware that the same messages are said in many (if not all) organisations and are still not heard. So why do we keep delivering the wrong things and delivering them badly? I strongly believe that this is because some principles and practices in IT service provision are significantly flawed and ineffective. I can’t explore all of these flaws within this article but let’s explore one of the CEO requirements above and some of the reasons why they said this. Let’s look at implementing new services or major changes as the cause of the CEO outburst.

The CEO perception is: 1. Bad vibes before go-live; 2. Last minute training and testing; 3. U nplanned spend just before and after golive; 4. Many complaints once live; 5. Support unable to cope with volume of work; 6. Panic buying to get it working.

Sound familiar?

Emergency changes Research conducted by iCore involving several large, global organisations indicates at go-live the support capability is woefully inadequate and ongoing financial provisioning is understated. This has been measured by taking several characteristics www.vital-mag.net

of the new service or change to assess its success. These include the number of emergency changes, the profile and trend of the Incidents logged, and the profile and trend of Resolution activities.

What causes this, and what can be done about it? The main principles I believe need to be reviewed are summarised quite nicely in the ITIL v3 publications ‘Service Design’ and ‘Service Transition’, and they sit right at the core of Project Management delivery. I challenge the principles of Project Management, covering the Business Case, Investment Appraisal, Cost Benefit Analysis, and Risk Management; they do not make realistic provision and consideration for the transition and ongoing support and maintenance of a new service or change.

Figure 1 shows research into the ‘pressure’ that builds within a project in both the Business and IT. This shows four phases or step changes which map closely to the common project phases of Design, Build, Deploy, and Stabilise. Surely, we do not plan for such sharp and continuing pressure?

I am often reminded on the ‘7Ps of Project Management’: “Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Project Performance.”

Visibility It is clear during Phase 1 the IT Operational Service has no visibility of the Project; Phase 2 involves an “engagement” by the Project with Ops; in Phase 3 the Project “expects” Ops to provide support; and Phase 4 sees the Project close. The hike in Phase 4 comes when lack of proper capacity planning, continuity planning, service reporting, and ongoing financial budgets come to light!

All these issues would be covered by proper Transition Planning.

Figure 2 shows detailed review of the research and shows the need for the Project to have to supplement BAU resources while they get up to speed with supporting the new service.

This is often unplanned work impacting service levels, budgets and customer satisfaction.

Eventually a steady state is achieved, but looking into the incidents before steady state there are other issues evident, namely the inefficiency of the BAU resources (and the impact on their other workloads) and a growing

customer dissatisfaction as an incident backlog develops and takes time to clear.

Better Transition would help to address most of these flaws and the resulting issues.

Transition must focus on: • Improved visibility to the cost, risk, functional capability and service delivery aspects of the project / change; • More reliable planning and sizing of the Transition activities, putting “Delivery of Operational Service” onto the Project Critical Path; • Ensuring New Service / Major Changes are designed and built with Operations in mind; • Defining realistic Operational Acceptance Criteria; • Planning effective Transition resources to enable smooth go-live; • Building a tried, tested and flexible Transition operation that is able to cope with the varied demands We owe the Business better delivery, so we should stop breaking things!

To find out more about effective “Transition of Service” you can contact Steve Ingall at steve.ingall@icore-ltd.com or visit the website at www.icore-ltd.com July / August 2010 : VitAL 47

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A GPS for your business Anytime, anywhere information technology. Today’s planes and cars are equipped with GPS devices that can proactively warn you the moment you veer off course. Tony Probert, European managing director of Cherwell Software says the same peace of mind is now available for the IT professional.

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ccurate, timely and available data is the key to a successful organisation, without easy access to critical information how can any organisation know its current status and be in a position to make decisions about what actions it needs to make on a day to day basis.

Information technology is experiencing a ‘revolution’ with the development of web technologies and the increasing capabilities of smartphones – they are changing the rules of the game in the way we receive and respond to critical information. Access to real time information can help organisations react immediately to situations and events that impact their business, delivering real time course correction data and creating a business GPS system.

An IT revolution The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘revolution’ as “a dramatic and far reaching change”. In today’s IT world, when talking about web technologies and smartphones the word revolution is appropriate. We are on the verge of a radical change in the delivery of mission-critical information, and more importantly, the ability for people to make timely business decisions ‘on-the-fly’.

Recently our CEO was sitting in his Colorado office wondering, with some concern, how his eighteen-year old son was doing. The night before his son had departed to Ghana in Africa, and he knew (from one of the many iPhone apps) that his son’s plane had landed. Suddenly his iPhone beeped and there was a text message from his son, sent only seconds before, from the other side of the world. His son had merely hit the ‘reply’ button to a message that had been sent to him while he was travelling.

The exploding worldwide network of mobile phone coverage recognised where he was in the world and immediately routed the text message back to our CEO’s cell phone in Colorado. The most amazing part of this story 48 VitAL : July / August 2010

is how much we take for granted the instant access to such information.

The relief of knowing nearly instantaneously that his son was safe was wonderful, but it also caused him to reflect on the dramatic changes we are experiencing with web based technologies and mobile phone devices, and how they are radically changing our daily lives.

‘After the fact’ Information Not very long ago, IT data went into the proverbial ‘black hole’ and most information extracted from this dark repository was reviewed and acted upon too late, ‘after the fact’. Although many organisations were proud of their book of monthly reports, most of the information was never used nor acted upon in a timely manner. Information in printed reports, utilising historical data, is often too late to make course corrections. Admittedly, reporting is still important for trending and analysis. However, with the advent of this latest technology revolution, management and technicians alike are in a position to instantaneously receive and use data, no matter where they are, to make real-time decisions and instant course corrections.

How important is this? If you were taking a plane trip from London Heathrow to New York, but the flight was two-degrees off course, how far would you be from your destination on arrival? While it is true that being only two-degrees off would equate to success in most organisations, in this example, you would end up some 90 miles from your desired destination—an unacceptable result in air travel.

Accordingly, today’s planes and cars can be equipped with ‘revolutionary’ GPS devices that can proactively warn you the moment your journey has taken the wrong direction. Such information saves a lot of time and money by allowing us to make the right decisions and course corrections before it is too late to meet our timely objectives. www.vital-mag.net

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Real-time Information With the new generation of web technologies and smartphones, real-time information in our IT business environments can be used to make course corrections along the way, anytime, anywhere. Equally important, because of how user-friendly these technologies have become, they are being used by people who were previously uncomfortable with the technology, or too busy to learn it.

During a visit to a major university our CEO had a meeting with the University president.

He had been told that this brilliant PhD was not technically savvy and did not like to spend a lot of time on his computer. However, he noticed that the president did carry an iPhone. Before long, they were engaged in a passionate discussion about their iPhone applications, trying to convince each other which applications were the best. The president then was quite intrigued when our CEO told him that there are iPhone applications that could notify him of any change requests that required his approval, providing him all the details needed to make a decision. Change approvals are often a bottleneck in organisations, especially when some of the approvers are frequent travellers, making it difficult to stay online.

The inefficiencies and costs caused by delayed approvals are significant in organisations, especially for approvals at the C-level. Such change approvals at the C-level typically are to approve the most expensive acquisitions—those that presumably have the most positive impact to the organisation, and perhaps the most risk. Accordingly, such delays in the approval process can be the most critical, having a negative impact on business activities.

Change approval functionality is only the tip of the iceberg of possibilities. Imagine how a senior executive in an organisation could utilise drill-down dashboards on their smartphone that would show ‘real time’, all the key performance indicators impacting www.vital-mag.net

their business. They could be immediately notified if any of their key business metrics enter the ‘red zone’. This type of management efficiency has often been referred to as ‘management by exception’. In other words, managers do not want to be notified about information that is ‘normal’ or in the ‘green’ zone. Instead, they want to be immediately prompted when issues are in the ‘yellow’ or ‘red’ zones – when the business is ‘off course’.

The CEO or their core management team are not the only benefactors of this mobile revolution. The efficiencies gained by an organisation’s IT staff can be enormous.

For example, when a technician now goes to an offsite location to deal with an incident or related task, they can open a browser or smartphone application and access all the incidents and tasks assigned to them. The technician can then close the incident or task, reassign it, or make notes for later follow-up – no matter where they are.

Twenty-five years ago, the idea that we would always carry a device in our pocket that could communicate instantaneously with anyone from anywhere at any time would be Star Trek fiction, “beam me up Scotty”. But it is a reality of the technology revolution. Today, the idea that management and technicians can access, from their pocket devices the necessary information to make vital course corrections – at anytime from anywhere – is truly revolutionary.

The benefits gained from the ability to make real-time change approvals and course corrections by management, together with the efficiencies gained by frontline technicians, represent radical change for our industry. It was once said “Revolutions never go backwards.”

Revolutionary technology is available today and through the creation of a real time ‘Business GPS’ system, it will inevitably change the way an organisation manages data and management decisions are made. VitAL www.cherwellsoftware.com

With the new generation of web technologies and smartphones, real-time information in our IT business environments can be used to make course corrections along the way, anytime, anywhere. Equally important, because of how user-friendly these technologies have become, they are being used by people who were previously uncomfortable with the technology, or too busy to learn it.

July / August 2010 : VitAL 49

vital digest

Can you lower support costs while improving service levels?

With the economic climate likely to remain unsettled for a while yet, IT departments are still faced with the dilemma of how to cut their cloth while continuing to provide the quality of service expected by their customers. Chris Lovesey, marketing manager at NetSupport, provides a timely reminder of the steps organisations can take to enable them to deliver ‘more with less’.

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avid Cameron’s recent stark message to government departments outlining the extent to which they will need to cut costs will not have been lost on the wider business community. In fact, in all probability, private sector organisations have no doubt become past masters at tightening their belts, and until we start to see tangible evidence that the new coalition’s plans are going to deliver the required results, the belt is likely to remain firmly buckled!

For IT Support departments the need to be seen as a team player when it comes to doing their bit on the cost cutting front presents them with a major dilemma. What impact will reducing their cost base have on their ability to maintain, let alone improve, the quality of service demanded by their customers?

For today’s forward looking IT managers buzzwords like ROI and TCO are almost part of everyday vocabulary but in these difficult times how easy is it to ‘blind’ the budget holder with science as you try to justify your request for the latest time and money saving device?

Desktop management Back in 1989 when NetSupport first started producing Desktop Management software the business case was simple. The relatively new concept of being able to ‘remote control’ a PC located in one part of the building, or worse, a totally different building, while sat at the comfort of your own workstation brought instant appeal to the new breed of increasingly 50 VitAL : July / August 2010

overworked helpdesk analysts. Modernisation through the use of computers was great but with this came the distinct possibility that things would break. In those halcyon days it was easy to present a compelling case as to why, with a little upfront investment, you would see a rapid return on your investment.

Remote control software enabled you to diagnose and resolve the majority of PC- and system-related issues without the need for a physical visit to the user. The combined benefits being that you cut out a lot of the wasted travel time and the associated costs, while at the same time the support desk instantly became more productive.

In the intervening 21 years technology has moved on apace but the underlying issues remain the same. Support teams are still expected to work leaner and smarter, maybe even more so at the moment, but when push comes to shove, if you are finding that the bean counters are using the current economic climate as an excuse to be a little more blinkered to the benefits that can be realised from that bit of initial investment perhaps it’s an ideal time to give them a nudge in the right direction.

Fire up the Quattro!

Let’s fast forward to today’s internet and gadget driven world, where fuel and utility bills are rocketing and decision makers have to consider the environmental impact of their choices. The modern corporate IT landscape and working practices have certainly changed

dramatically and support software has had to evolve with it.

Remote control products still aim to provide the same cost and productivity benefits that they did in the 80s but it is no longer simply about being able to view a DOS-based machine located down the corridor or ‘firing up the Quattro’ so you can dash out to one of your branch offices because someone has asked you what ‘Format C:’ means!

Products such as our own NetSupport Manager have needed to adapt in order to satisfy different demands, key among these being the ability to support the increasingly diverse range of devices, platforms and operating systems now in use across the modern enterprise and the move among cost conscious employers to offer home or mobile working as an alternative to using office resources.

The business case surely stacks up more today than it ever did. Corporate IT departments need their Remote Access tools to connect them securely to users located anywhere in the world, irrespective of the type of system they are using. While Windows desktops may still dominate; Mac, Linux and the raft of mobile related devices should also not present any barriers to the successful operation of your service desk.

Luxury or necessity?

It’s clear that using remote access software pays big dividends and quantifying the savings to be gained and improvements in www.vital-mag.net

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productivity for both the service desk and end user isn’t difficult, and a few years ago that’s where the story would end. However, today’s IT departments have access to a plethora of complementary tools to aid network management tasks. But when times are tight are these solutions considered luxury goods, nice to haves?

Flick through your copy of VitAL or one of the many lesser titles and it quickly becomes clear that Service Management and IT Asset Management are hot topics right now, just how did Service Desks function before ITIL! I’m probably preaching to the converted here but organisations where, and I’m afraid it’s acronym time again, TCO is high on the agenda will appreciate the relevance of solutions that can effectively help you manage your IT assets or enable helpdesks to react to incidents and problems in a timely fashion.

Ensuring IT assets are properly managed and maintained should be a high priority for any organisation but without the appropriate reporting mechanisms in place how easy is it to identify when a piece of kit is past its sell by date, which machines needs migrating to Windows 7 or if you are about to breach your software licensing agreements. www.vital-mag.net

IT assets can cost far more than necessary through waste and redundancy (direct costs) and overly complex management and maintenance (indirect costs). An effective IT asset management program allows you to control and manage assets, eliminate waste and redundancy and comply with ever-tightening government compliance regulations.

The annual cost of supporting your IT infrastructure can often result in costs spiralling out of control, where the initial purchase price of IT assets pales into insignificance. Understanding leasing arrangements and undertaking proactive asset management ensures compliance with software license agreements and makes budget forecasting more accurate.

Knowing how many of your users are using a specific application at any given time will allow for both effective trimming of software budgets and a realistic prediction of future software investment.

In your genes NetSupport DNA is typical of the new genre of ITAM solutions that are helping organisations make informed decisions about upgrades and the rollout of new

technology. Based on its powerful Hardware and Software Inventory component, DNA helps you uncover savings through process improvement, gain control of all inventory across the enterprise, increase accountability to ensure compliance and enhance the performance of assets and their life cycle management. And to help you meet your environmental responsibilities while also saving you a few quid, we even provide an Energy Monitoring component that will identify areas of potential energy wastage across your enterprise. (Although NetSupport solutions can of course be used to remotely power off systems just in case you can’t rely on your staff to do it themselves!)

For many IT service desks the tools are already in place to ensure you can do ‘more with less’ but for those who may be using the current economic climate as a reason not to dip a toe in the water, I hope I’ve presented a compelling case as to how deploying the right combination of Desktop and Asset Management solutions can give you that immediate ROI! NetSupport solutions are available to trial free for 30 days. VitAL www.netsupportsoftware.com July / August 2010 : VitAL 51

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Premier league solution Premier Incorporated chose ServiceWise from TechExcel over a number of other solutions during its quest to bring process consolidation and automation to its IT services team.

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erving more than 2,000 US hospitals and 53,000-plus other healthcare sites, the Premier healthcare alliance and its members are transforming healthcare together in the USA. Nearly 200 hospitals and health systems created and entirely own Premier Alliance.

Background The key objective for Premier’s CITS (Corporate Information Technology Services) Group was to implement a Help Desk solution that would provide application and technical support for its internal customers (employees). However, the vision of the CITS Group transcended the traditional ‘Break / Fix’ Help Desk as they wished to provide a centralised Service Desk that could streamline and automate business processes to benefit all its business units.

Premier identified several collaborative business processes and goals they wished to incorporate and improve in the context of the Service Desk: • Process: Incident Management; Goal: Increase uptime by providing a transparent view of problems from submission to resolution.

52 VitAL : July / August 2010

• Process: Problem Management and Root Cause Analysis; Goal: Increase uptime by identifying problems, learning from mistakes, and continuously improving.

• Process: Change Management; Goal: Lower risk, track all changes and reduce system downtime.

• Process: Applications Support; Goal: Manage requests for technical support that come from Premier’s externally-facing Solutions Centers.

• Process: IT Procurement; Goal: Streamline and track requests, approvals, ordering, receipt, and installation • Process: Technology Asset Management; Goal: Maximise use of equipment and lower costs by assisting with the operational management of assets over the asset lifecycle – from purchase to disposal.

• Process: Work Intake; Goal: Automate and streamline the extremely manual and time-consuming workforce on-boarding and exit processes which manage account activations and terminations.

Additionally Premier wished to exceed the timeliness and quality of service established by the outsourcing partner. Perhaps the greatest

challenge was the tight timeline to implement a new Help Desk Solution. In three months the support contract with the existing vendor would expire.

Required components • CRM. An application that included: an interface with a user database; a problem / case tracking resolution database; a knowledge repository; the ability to solicit customer satisfaction surveys; real-time problem monitoring by customers; the ability to prioritise issues based on severity; and the ability to create an escalation process.

• Workflow Management. An application that included a defined workflow management system with customisable business rules to streamline and automate processes.

• Metrics and Reports. Robust reporting was a must. Premier needed both corporate and individual reporting capabilities and the ability to perform analysis to effect continuous improvement.

• Asset Management. A central repository to manage all company assets throughout their lifecycle.

• Self-Service. An application that included www.vital-mag.net

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the ability to submit, monitor and track requests for service through a web-based portal. Premier also wanted to promote selfservice by empowering their customers to find their own solutions through ‘knowledge’ searches and access to Frequently Asked Questions. Additionally, it needed a vehicle to communicate outage information.

• Integration with existing third-party applications and tools.

The initiative A selection team was formed in February 2007. Members of the team had familiarity with several major tools including Siebel, Remedy and Magic. The team selected three tools to investigate further and began the RFI (request for information) process. The three vendors were: Siebel: Premier already owned other modules of the Siebel application and therefore had support knowledge with their existing staff.

This solution rose to the top due to this existing vendor relationship.

Magic: A mid-level application in the Remedy family; some team members had familiarity with this tool.

TechExcel-ServiceWise: Premier found this application through an internet search. After an initial product demonstration, it was clear ServiceWise could meet the requirements.

The three software vendors were sent a requirements list from Premier. Each vendor conducted presentations of their products.

It was during these demonstrations that the selection team began to see clear differences in the products and began working towards a final selection.

TechExcel demonstrated how even the most difficult of workflows could be easily mapped and improved using ServiceWise.

With ServiceWise, team members could see that their vision for a company-wide Service Desk was attainable. The team members recommended TechExcel’s ServiceWise to their executive committee and received approval. TechExcel was awarded the business in late May.

Implementation Premier had a hard ‘Go Live’ date of September 1st. With only three months to complete a full implementation, the team had doubts as to whether they could install, configure and test the newly selected tool on time. www.vital-mag.net

The TechExcel professional services team began working with the Premier implementation team immediately. Even before arriving onsite TechExcel assisted with setting up Premier’s environment and installing the necessary software pre-requisites and the ServiceWise application.

The TechExcel professional services team also provided guidance on legacy data migration, defining team roles, and detailing workflow considerations. This preparation work gave a ‘running start’ when the TechExcel professional services team arrived onsite.

Initially there were a few environmental challenges and integration issues; however, the team helped work through the issues quickly and seamlessly demonstrating their commitment to Premier’s success.

The scope of this project required the commitment of Premier’s Team as well. They reviewed all of the existing processes and procedures to validate and document them within the knowledge base component of ServiceWise. The team developed process documentation to be used by the Service Desk agents for potentially faster and easier resolutions. Premier also transitioned the knowledge data from the outgoing vendor into ServiceWise.

With the assistance of the TechExcel professional services team, Premier conducted a relatively easy migration and all deadlines for documentation in the new system were handily met.

The TechExcel team trained the Premier team on how to configure the ServiceWise application. Soon the Premier team became self-sufficient in developing and customising workflows with this agile application. In early July, with less than two months to go, the Premier team realised that their goal was within reach.

One of the most cumbersome and challenging workflows at Premier was the on-boarding process for new employees.

With the existing process, the helpdesk agent manually generated up to 12 help desk tickets after the original ‘IMAC’ (Install, move, add change) was submitted. The team was able to configure ServiceWise to create these tickets automatically dramatically increasing the team’s overall efficiency and minimising human error.

Premier’s implementation of ServiceWise required a change to the company’s support

paradigm which was previously limited to email and phone support. Email support was labour-intensive and it required manual intervention to copy and paste information from the email into a manually created ticket.

Premier wished to automatically generate tickets upon receipt of email. Even more importantly Premier desperately needed to move employees towards a web portal solution that would facilitate accurate and detailed ticket submission, again saving significant support time and resources over phone or email submission. The team anticipated employee resistance as email support had long been ingrained within the members of the organisation. Configuring a self-service portal that would be easy to use and have a high user acceptance level was imperative. To drive user adoption, the team utilised TechExcel ‘Best Practices’ and began extensive user communications.

This effort included quick reference guides provided by TechExcel.

The results As the ‘Go-Live’ date approached, the support Premier received was extraordinary. Both teams provided a heroic effort to meet the deadline. On September 1, 2007 Premier successfully went live with TechExcel’s ServiceWise. It enabled Premier to implement and automate five business processes – all fully customised, configured, and tested – within just three months.

During the first month after implementation, 1,319 tickets were submitted via the Web portal. One year later that number has jumped to 2,728 tickets representing an over 100 percent increase in portal submission of tickets.

The ultimate judge of the results is the user community. Premier has learned through the customer satisfaction surveys, generated through ServiceWise, there has been tremendous customer acceptance to the new support model. The success can be seen in the Customer Satisfaction KPI, which ended the fiscal year at a 99 percent rate. One customer’s response to the survey can best sum it up: “They (IT Service Desk Department) provided excellent response; solved my problem; and rendered 100 percent customer satisfaction. The department should be called the employee salvation desk.” VitAL www.techexcel.com July / August 2010 : VitAL 53

vital digest

Keeping in the pink A ubiquitous brand in the realm of ITIL and ITSM, VitAL editor Matt Bailey talks to Pink Elephant UK’s new chief executive Marcus Harris about the trials and challenges in the service management industry as we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century.

E

stablished over 30 years ago, as an independent, global professional services organisation for IT managment, this year Pink Elephant celebrates 21 years in the ITIL experience business. It is the world’s number one supplier of ITIL and ITSM conferences, education, consulting and support services. According to the company, to date, close to 200,000 IT professionals have benefited from its expertise. It has championed the growth of ITIL worldwide since its inception in 1989 – longer than any other supplier – and was selected as an international expert to contribute to the ITIL v3 project – as authors of v3’s Continual Service Improvement book and through representation on the International Exam Panel.

54 VitAL : July / August 2010

In January this year Pink Elephant UK appointed Marcus Harris as its chief executive.

As a former director at the BCS (British Computer Society) and prior to that, i2k - both organisations with a close relationship with Pink Elephant – the company was aware of the range of skills and experience that Harris had to offer.

Defining a clear vision and strategy for the next five years, Harris is responsible for leading the organisation through its next level of growth. His appointment shows that despite the appalling market conditions in 2009, Pink Elephant is going from strength to strength.

Harris is an enthusiastic and passionate advocate for quality IT Services through the development of individuals and organisation.

His experience in combining Continuous www.vital-mag.net

vital digest

“I set up i2K up a few years ago with a colleague after working for Wave Technologies, an early adopter in educational video apps training,” remembers Harris. “We offered a coached front end, managing a programme of development for the highest professional levels, in Microsoft as well as ITIL applications. We worked very closely with our partners offering professional coaching and managing back-end delivery with Pink Elephant as one of our partners.”

Professional Development with SFIA plus tool sets and professional accreditation means he has a fantastic understanding of the market Pink Elephant operates within. “Pink Elephant is a strong and enduring international brand, synonymous with quality and service delivery for over 20 years, and I am looking forward to the challenge of developing the business further,” he commented on his appointment.

A history in IT “I set up i2K up a few years ago with a colleague after working for Wave Technologies, an early adopter in educational video apps training,” remembers Harris. “We offered a coached front end, managing a programme of development for the highest professional levels, in Microsoft as well as ITIL applications. We worked very closely with our partners offering professional coaching and managing back-end delivery with Pink Elephant as one of our partners.”

Indeed Marcus Harris first came into contact with the guys at Pink Elephant working with them as a partner. “Pink Elephant supplied all i2k customers with ITIL training while we supplied Pink Elephant with their internal induction programme. It was a highly successful and genuine partnership.”

The relationship was so close that when Pink www.vital-mag.net

Elephant moved into new premises i2k took the top floor so Pink Elephant was effectively their landlord. “Apart from our rowdiness, the arrangement worked very well.”

Ultimately i2k grew and blossomed into a desirable outfit delivering professionalism to the IT community. Seeing its potential, BCS acquired i2k in 2007 and merged it with its membership business and its SFIA Plus business.

“When I moved on from BCS, I got a call from Alan McCarthy, Pink Elephant’s director of EMEA who had kept tabs on my progress,” explains Harris. “He informed me that he had decided to take 60 percent retirement, and asked me to step into the role of CEO. Knowledge of Pink Elephant’s reputation, customers and team ensured that I found myself parking in their car park and picking up the reins. That’s how I how I ended up here.”

Outside of work, Marcus is also an established speaker, presenter and part-time actor. Indeed his acting credits go back to 1978 and readers of a certain age may remember his starring role as Julian in ITV’s adaptation of Enid Blyton’s Famous 5. His side interest in the dramatic arts has continued to this day with roles in adverts, dramas and documentaries.

A changing business “My arrival at Pink Elephant coincided with the company taking a significant step forward with their business,” says Harris. With major upheaval in the market coming out of 2009; and companies such as Parity Training going into administration, Pink Elephant UK is in the right place to surge forward. “My task is to see the business double over the next four years and then achieve steady growth after that and on into the future,” says Harris.

Planning for this growth, Harris has so far doubled the size of sales force with the introduction of a telesales / telemarketing team.

He has increased the number of consultants and moved operations to new premises in the middle of Reading where he says there is plenty of space for expansion. At the same time Pink Elephant is launching new training centres in various regional locations, and will be Platinum sponsors at this year’s itSMF Annual Conference & Exhibition.

“We have our northern launch taking place around September this year. It will consist of a new training centre in the region,” Harris explains, “and thereafter we will open another four regional training venues, one a quarter over the next year.”

July / August 2010 : VitAL 55

vital digest

Pink resources have the support of a global ITSM organisation and have access to all the tools we use in our consulting assignments. In total this gives us three stages of engagement: education; consultancy; and resourcing. We are here to help our clients do it for themselves.

Three stages of engagement While Pink Elephant is a well known and trusted training partner for ITIL, it also has a very sophisticated consultancy business which it is Harris’s ambition to develop and push forward. “We have brought on board a number of key people to help in this area too. We’re also going back to our roots – offering resource on either short – or longterm contract, putting people into businesses to help them achieve their full potential. This isn’t just providing ‘bodies’, Pink resources have the support of a global ITSM organisation and have access to all the tools we use in our consulting assignments. In total this gives us three stages of engagement: education; consultancy; and resourcing.

We are here to help our clients do it for themselves. Of course we run the ITIL training which we are renowned for, but we offer a pure consultancy service where we go in and help the client move to another level, creating the environment for them to achieve this goal; and with our resourcing programme we bring people on site to help them do what they want to do.”

It is a very busy time for Marcus Harris and Pink Elephant. “We are putting together a full mirror of Parity’s schedule to fill the gap left when they went into receivership. And we are continuing the core business of Pink Elephant in rolling out best practice to the IT services industry.

“An awful lot of people know ITIL,” Harris adds, “they know its value and a lot of organisations have been through the training courses. They now talk about service desks rather than help desks, for example, but how many people 56 VitAL : July / August 2010

live and breathe the ITIL approach and really engage with it on a daily basis? It provides real tangible business benefits for organisations.

In principle it’s about helping IT to change business and deliver business value.”

Approach to the market Pink Elephant has to be one of the best known brands in the ITSM sector. “The level of awareness of the Pink Elephant brand and the affection in which it is held in the market are a massive bonus,” says Harris. “I was recently talking to a client about a COBIT/ITIL crossover programme and he immediately made the connection, he knew people in the organisation. Key members of our staff are well known out in the industry and our branding is well known too. It all helps to perpetuate the Pink Elephant name. A key part of Alan McCarthy’s role since the re-launch of Pink Elephant in 2004, has been to get the name back out there after the tumult of the late 90s – early 00s, and we have certainly benefitted from this approach.

“We’re raising the level of our communication with the client too,” expands Harris, “and have recruited a new team of telemarketers – to call through and touch base with our clients on a regular basis. We are building, cementing and developing our client base all the time, PinkLink (our e-Newsletter) is a key part of this process.”

A dynamic environment Clearly in the last six months the UK and indeed, the wider world has changed dramatically. “All I can say is that since arriving here at Pink Elephant in January, things have www.vital-mag.net

vital digest

developed and changed, not just inside the company,” says Harris. “We have been in the ascendancy – we had success and growth in 2008, but 2009 was a bad year for us as it was for most people, but business is now revving back up. We’re currently on a trajectory that looks like 2009 didn’t happen, we’re back on the growth line of 2008.”

Despite the rockier conditions in 2009, Harris says the company was to an extent insulated against downturn, so it could emerge aggressively in 2010. “I believe the UK economy is on the up now and lots of housekeeping is being done and bad debt is being cleared, there is an emphasis on excess cost being cut away at UK plc,” he comments.

“We should see significant growth next year.

Having said that, it is still a difficult market, all the symptoms of last year’s recession are still around, but the business indicators are on the up – fingers crossed that the UK doesn’t have a double dip.”

Pink Elephant benefitted from the recession to an extent. “Because there was significant damage done to our competitors, and we have performed better, we are picking up business and recruiting good people. We are in very good shape compared to many in the industry.”

The IT services world seems to be pulling through as well. “I haven’t heard of any project not happening because the budget has been removed. To my knowledge we haven’t lost any business because the budget isn’t there,” says Harris. “If as an organisation you want to deliver effective and lasting business change you have to improve your technology; your systems and processes have to take up the www.vital-mag.net

slack of any headcount reduction. And if you have to invest in technology, it makes good sense to invest in supporting processes.

“There is an exciting programme of reinvestment in IT processes, companies have to get more out of their existing systems and maximise their use of licenses. Change has to be handled properly, with consistency and competency. We offer support to people reaching these business objectives,” says Harris. “We are currently seeing expenditure to achieve gains. I haven’t seen much evidence of any cut backs as yet. People are spending to save – to extend their reach and create better products and better service. I’m enthused by what I’m seeing.” VitAL www.pinkelephant.com

“Because there was significant damage done to our competitors, and we have performed better, we are picking up business and recruiting good people. We are in very good shape compared to many in the industry.”

July / August 2010 : VitAL 57

vital digest

Remote Monitoring in the Cloud Cloud-based remote monitoring and management enables more effective use of resources, facilitates profitable cross- and up-selling and builds strong customer relationships. Critically, it enables clear differentiation with vastly reduced investment in resources or staff training, hence delivering a rapid return, according to Phil Bousfield, vice-president of product engineering at GFI Software.

V

alue added resellers and member service providers are increasingly turning to remote monitoring and management (RMM) technologies in a bid to improve managed service delivery and achieve differentiation. Yet recent research reveals that traditional on-premise RMM solutions are proving too time consuming and expensive to implement, as well as incurring significant ongoing costs and thus fundamentally constraining both the quality of service delivery and return on investment.

58 VitAL : July / August 2010

However, just as cloud computing is transforming the cost of ownership of software applications, VARs and MSPs adopting cloudbased RMM achieve rapid implementation with fixed cost and minimal training requirements.

Leveraging this model, resellers can immediately offer customers a range of highly flexible service offerings based on proactive maintenance and in depth reporting.

Cloud-based RMM enables more effective use of resources, facilitates profitable crossand up-selling and builds strong customer relationships. Critically, it enables clear www.vital-mag.net

vital digest

differentiation with vastly reduced investment in resources or staff training, hence delivering a rapid return.

Service desire RMM technologies deliver proven benefits in greater system up-time, reducing the cost of support and enabling organisations to evolve beyond the traditional break/fix model to a far more proactive managed service. For VARs and MSPs the technology is compelling, offering the chance to deliver far more effective service to customers while also reducing overheads and improving productivity.

According to recent research conducted

by GFI, MSPs and VARs cite server monitoring, LAN and Windows monitoring, patch management and remote support as the most valued features of RMM. The top reasons for adopting remote monitoring are to offer faster fix response times and deliver preventative maintenance.

With full, real time visibility of customer systems, VARs and MSPs can also undertake valuable cross and up selling, leveraging indepth performance reports to demonstrate to customers the need for additional storage and server requirements.

Yet while the technology is theoretically compelling, the results have been, to date, somewhat underwhelming. This research revealed that almost half of IT support companies and MSPs believe the initial investment in RMM software is too high and 42 percent say the return on investment never meets their expectations.

Complex model The primary problem faced by organisations attempting to implement RMM technology is the complex nature of traditional onpremise solutions. For a VAR looking to offer added value services to customers, www.vital-mag.net

the implementation of on-premise RMM requires significant investment in server hardware and communications infrastructure, as well as staff training.

The survey revealed that almost half of respondents complain that it took one month or longer from initial purchase to be fully up and running. Indeed, for 20 percent of MSPs, it actually took six months or longer. These organisations are also struggling to manage the financial burden of staff training, with 41 percent stating that it takes longer than one month to fully train technicians on the RMM system; with 15 percent citing in excess of six months.

Of even greater concern is the fact that 56 percent of respondents admit that staff do not have time to learn the whole RMM system. And, of those who do try to learn the full system, 40 percent of IT support managers think technical teams get too buried in the detail of RMM tool deployment and lose focus on customers.

Given these figures, it is perhaps no surprise that over half of MSPs state it is difficult to show customers value from managed services contracts.

Flexible solution In the current economy, VARs and MSPs keenly require an opportunity to both drive down operational costs and boost the competitive profile through the delivery of innovative, effective services to customers, which is why many have turned to RMM solutions. But, as these figures reveal, the investment in time, money and resources is simply too great to justify the traditional onpremise RMM model.

The alternative is to turn to cloud-based RMM technology. Just as growing numbers of organisations have embraced the pay as you go model for software applications, VARs

While the technology is theoretically compelling, the results have been, to date, somewhat underwhelming. This research revealed that almost half of IT support companies and MSPs believe the initial investment in RMM software is too high and 42 percent say the return on investment never meets their expectations.

July / August 2010 : VitAL 59

vital digest

This flexible model allows users to offer a raft of different service options to customers, options which can be expanded and enhanced as required, enabling managed services contracts to reflect customer needs. and MSPs can now consider the benefits of a Software as a Service (SaaS) approach to RMM. With all the core functionality of the RMM solution located in the cloud, the process of implementation is fundamentally simplified.

VARs need only to load agents onto the customer’s hardware and communications equipment, a process which takes seconds, and then follow a simple installation routine, which includes default monitoring suggestions. As a result, VARs can be up and running with RMM within minutes: there is no time consuming configuration to undertake, no training necessary and, since the cloud-based system automatically updates itself, there is no need to schedule housekeeping tasks such as software patches and upgrades.

Clear pricing The new generation of simple user interfaces requires minimal training, ensuring even a junior administrator can undertake the first level of troubleshooting, further reducing both upfront and ongoing costs. Furthermore, the cloud computing model also overcomes the complexity of traditional pricing which, according to the survey, is perceived as complex by 42 percent of respondents.

It also completely removes a problem cited by 53 percent of the survey respondents, of paying for areas of the system that are not used. Indeed, under the traditional onpremise RMM licensing, it is apparent that many actually have a significant investment in unused licenses. Furthermore, they are paying an additional 10 to 20 percent in support costs for on-premise RMM solutions. Following the pay-as-you–go cloud approach enables 60 VitAL : July / August 2010

them to acquire only the licenses required on a month by month basis, at a fixed cost which includes support, enabling a flexible scale-up/ scale-down model in line with business and customer requirements.

This flexible model allows users to offer a raft of different service options to customers, options which can be expanded and enhanced as required, enabling managed services contracts to reflect customer needs. VARs can also offer tailored, in-depth reporting solutions based on the in depth monitoring information to support customer organisations looking at how best to develop the IT infrastructure both during the recession and, critically, as markets begin to emerge back into growth.

Service value VARs and MSPs have been attempting to leverage RMM solutions to attain a key differential in a challenging, competitive and price sensitive marketplace. Yet far too many have been deterred by the high cost of entry and extended time-frame to get up and running. A cloud-based approach to RMM now enables resellers to rapidly achieve a new level of service that delivers better uptime to customers, as well as lower cost of service and greater employee productivity.

For the reseller, cloud-based RMM is not only enabling far more efficient and effective use of resources, but is also delivering the indepth information required to build a stronger customer relationship and support effective and relevant cross and up selling. Critically, this differential is being achieved without extensive upfront or ongoing investment in resources, training or staff, enabling the rapid ROI that is essential in the current market. VitAL www.gfi.com www.vital-mag.net

vital focus groups Helping you overcome obstacles

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One Day Event ● 120 Decision Makers ● 15 Thought Leading Debate Sessions Peer-to-Peer Networking

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directory

Hornbill Systems

Wardown Consulting

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

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

6 Rickett Street, London SW6 1RU

T: F: W: C: E:

T: 0871 717 7294 W: www.emereo.eu C: Andrew Smith E: marketing@emereo.eu

T: 020 8582 8282 F: 020 8582 8288 W: www.hornbill.com C: Sales E: info@hornbill.com

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

emereo solutions (uk) ltd

Emereo provides end-point security

Supportworks’ Enterprise Support Platform (ESP) provides a fully integrated platform for automating and managing Service Management related processes.

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

Supportworks ITSM is certified Pink Verify Enhanced.

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.

InfraVision

Kepner-tregoe

NetSupport Software Ltd

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.

Towngate East, Market Deeping, Peterborough, PE6 8NE

T: +44 (0) 1778 382270 F: +44 (0) 1778 382280 W: www.netsupportsoftware.co.uk C: Colette Reed E: colette@netsupportsoftware.co.uk NetSupport provides a range of complementary Remote Support and Service Management solutions that help organisations deliver a productive and cost effective IT support service. Products include multi-platform Remote Control solution NetSupport Manager, IT Asset Management suite NetSupport DNA and web based ITIL Service Management tool NetSupport ServiceDesk.

Pink Elephant

Sunrise Software

G2G3

Atlantic House, Imperial Way, Reading. RG2 0TD

50 Barwell Business Park, Leatherhead Rd

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 inspire organisations to move from a Break/Fix culture to a Service led culture. We enable clients to be ITIL aligned and therefore more efficient in 12 weeks with BMC SDE. Be inspired; be transformed; be a customer of InfraVision.

T: + 44 (0) 118 903 6824 F: + 44 (0) 118 903 6282 W: www.pinkelephant.com C: Frances Fenn E: info.emea@pinkelephant.com Acknowledged worldwide as niche, independent, IT Service Management Education and Consulting providers.

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

62 VitAL : July / August 2010

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

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.

Panama House, 14 The High Street, Lasswade, EH18 1ND T: + 44 (0) 131 461 3333 F: + 44 (0) 131 663 8934 W: www.g2g3.com C: David Arrowsmith E: info@g2g3.com G2G3 is the leading provider of communication tools, gaming solutions and simulations that propel enterprise IT and business alignment. Headquartered in the UK, G2G3 has a strong global network of partners supporting the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. www.vital-mag.net

directory

Dennis Adams Associates

avocent landesk

House-on-the-Hill Software

Tel: +44 (0)845 055 8935 www.dennisadams.co.uk info@dennisadams.co.uk

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

Dennis Adams Associates IT Management Consultants enable clients to:

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

l

l l

l

l

uild high performing IT Management B teams Implement effective IT Strategy reate empowering IT Processes C and Procedures Establish Production Supportable Technology Roadmaps Be visibly Accountable to the Business

Cherwell Software

unipress software

Brinkworth House, Brinkworth, SN15 5DF

UniPress Software – London

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

2 Sheraton Street

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

T: F: W: E:

EMC

Connaught House, Portsmouth Road, Send, Surrey, GU23 7JY T: F: W: E:

+44 (0) 1483 213 200 +44 (0) 1483 213 201 www.infra.co.uk infra-info.uk@emc.com

Based on ITIL best practice, EMC’s IT Service Automation & Operations solutions deliver end-to-end IT Service Management, visibility and control by enabling and improving the Service Desk function, servicecentric CMDB population and federation, as well as key processes.

www.vital-mag.net

UniPress Software Ltd London, W1F 8BH + 44 (0) 8450 646566 + 44 (0) 8450 636261 unipress.co.uk sales@unipress.co.uk

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

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

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

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

TEST MAGAZINE

31 Media, Media House, 16 Rippolson Road, London SE18 1NS T: +44 (0) 870 863 6930 F: +44 (0) 870 085 8837 W: www.31media.co.uk C: Grant Farrell E: grant.farrell@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.

IT Service Management Forum

e-Warehouse

.

150 Wharfedale Road, Winnersh Triangle, Wokingham, Berkshire.

RG41 5RG

e-Warehouse Ltd, Hampden House, Hampden House, Monument park, Chalgrove,Oxfordshire , OX44 7RW

T: F: W: C: E:

T: 0845 299 7539 f: 08717143802 w: www.oxygenservicedesk.com c: Victoria Eggleton e: oxygen@e-warehouse.com

Oxygen Service Desk is a process automation engine that simply interprets your pre-defined business processes and then mobilises the actual process, pushing work tasks to people and to systems, streamlining how the processes run across your entire department or organisation.

0118 918 6503 0118 969 9749 www.itsmf.co.uk Ben Clacy 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

July / August 2010 : VitAL 63

secrets of my success

Matt Bailey Editor, 31 Media As we try and profile all of our regular contributors in the Secret Of My Success section at the back of every VitAL issue, I decided it was high time I put myself in the chair and shone the angle poise lamp of truth in my own eyes for a change. So, this month we feature Matt Bailey, journeyman business-tobusiness journalist, editor and IT enthusiast.

VitAL: Name, company and job title please?

Married? Kids?

Matt Bailey: Matthew J Bailey, editor, 31 Media. I have been married to Cath for 14 years and have two daughters, Maisie (9) and Martha (5).

VitAL: What got you started in IT? MB: Like many of the respondents to these questions, I’ve never really worked in IT. I have worked in marketing for a large IT-based telecoms company and I’ve worked on a range of magazines in technical areas, from electronics to aerospace and beyond, but this is my first real in-depth IT-focussed assignment.

Also like many SOMS subjects my first meaningful brush with IT was courtesy of an early home computer, although – bucking the trend that has been developing here – my family plumped for the BBC Model B microcomputer, rather than the apparently more popular Sinclair ZXSpectrum option.

The Computer Programme, as it was predictably called, that complemented the BBC machine promised a world of home computing where the BBC Micro would take care of the family accounts and all manner of other important stuff from watering the plants to opening and closing the curtains (probably); the reality was that me and my three brothers became experts at Defender and Chucky Egg. That said, my older brother did persevere and became proficient in BBC Basic, then machine code and then all sorts of exotic programming techniques and languages. He went on to become CIO of an international banking group. For his sins he’s working very hard at the moment!

64 VitAL : July / August 2010

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

MB: Being shallow and an early convert to the desk top publishing revolution, I’ve always preferred Apple products, but perhaps that’s just because they look nice and my Mrs will let them in the house.

VitAL: First IT job and major IT triumph?

MB: My first IT triumph was getting the ZXSpectrums in the Bangor High Street branch of Smiths to repeat a rude word or phrase ad infinitum on the screen of a Saturday morning.

It’s been downhill since then. Also mastering the world of DTP in the early days, but technically this is my first proper IT job – editor of VitAL! VitAL: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? What did you learn from them?

MB: As part of my science degree I had to complete a course in ‘Computational Methods’.

As I was going through my year’s course work on-screen (an ancient Vax system) with the tutor, my terminal crashed and wiped the disk. I had no backup and the tutor wasn’t sympathetic.

What I learned was to always have a Plan B! VitAL: What do you like best about your job?

MB: Interesting subject matter. Nice people.

No two days are the same.

VitAL: What is your biggest ambition?

MB: To continue editing the top IT services title in the world and push it to even greater heights!

VitAL: What are your hobbies or interests?

MB: I have played the guitar in various bands

I have played the guitar in various bands for years – since I was a teen – and even dabbled in the music business (I was stage crew manager for Englebert Humperdink – fact). for years – since I was a teen – and even dabbled in the music business (I was stage crew manager for Englebert Humperdink – fact). I still record and play the odd gig with some friends which is great fun, but exhausting.

Otherwise it’s family stuff that appeals the most: gardening, cooking, reading, holidays. I used to have a VW camper and hope one day to get another one.

VitAL: What is the secret of your success?

MB: I’m not sure I can answer that question when I’ve effectively posed it myself... Honesty, integrity and making a little bit of knowledge go a long way.... Actually my wife tells me the secret of my success is her... and she’s probably right.

VitAL: Matt Bailey, thank you very much.

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