VitAL Magazine - November-December 2011

ce en er Ue nf ss i co W f m ho its s

vital Inspiration for the modern business volume 5 : Issue 2 : november / December 2011

What next for the cloud? ...and is it meeting our requirements?

Coming out of the silo reaching beyond it to demonstrate improvement

shifting up a gear addressing it’s middle market FEATuRE FOCuS: SERViCE CATAlOguES – CHAnging THE FACE OF iT: P24-27

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Innovative Technology Built Upon Yesterday’s Values

LeADeR

Farewell Steve jobs, hello Jobs Board Leader F

irst of all can i just say how great it is to be back. Sometimes it’s good to try something new if only to prove that you shouldn’t have gone in the first place. And so here i am back in the editor’s chair of VitAl after my brief summer sojourn. Sincere thanks of course to John hancock for doing such a sterling job during my sabbatical. he did much more than simply keeping the train on the tracks.

Down to business... For our cover story this issue I spoke to Adam Maurice, founder and managing director of outsource IT service Management company The Internet Group. He told me how his company has had to ‘shift up a gear’ to gain ITIL and sDI accreditation demanded by the middle market. One thing that amazed me was that Maurice started the company while he was still at school in 1999 – he is now 28. Thinking back to my somewhat more distant youth, I remember a few of my friends and acquaintances attempting to start their own ‘computer’ businesses, attempting to sell games for their BBC Model Bs, sinclair spectrums and Dragons and while for many this lead on to degrees in computing or electronics, most never went the distance.

As I have mentioned in my new editor’s Blog (www.vital-mag.net/category/ editors-blog/) on the vitAL website, I was saddened to hear about the untimely death of steve jobs. with his passing I can’t help thinking that one of the true geniuses, risk-takers and original thinkers of the IT industry has departed and will be sadly missed. The newspapers have been saying that Jobs left plans and instructions which will keep Apple in innovative new products and concepts for some time to come, but his absence will leave a void in the industry. I suspect we won’t see his like again for some time.

Another innovation on the vitAL website is the Jobs Board (www.vital-mag. net/category/jobs-2/), this has nothing obvious to do with the erstwhile chief executive of Apple, it is in fact your first port of call if you are on the hunt for a new position in the service management or wider IT sector. Check it out.

Until next time...

Matt Bailey, Editor

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

www.vital-mag.net

November / December 2011 : VitAL 1

vital ONLINE

Jobs Online

For the latest vacant situations in your sector visit the VitAL Jobs Board at:

www.vital-mag.net/category/jobsboard www.31media.co.uk

vital Inspiration for the modern business

CE N RE E FE U N SS I CO W F M HO itS S

VitAL : Inspiration for the modern business

vital Inspiration for the modern business Volume 5 : Issue 2 : November / December 2011

COnTenTs

Contents 6 news THE VitAl COVER STORy

8 shifting up a gear MATT BAilEy over the last three years outsource Service management supplier The internet Group has been scaling up its services. in the process it has had to tackle SDi and iTil and fundamentally shift up a gear in the way it does business. matt Bailey spoke to the company’s managing director Adam Maurice.

What next for the cloud? ...and Is it meeting our requirements?

Coming out of the silo Volume 5 : Issue 2 : November/Decemberr 2011

Reaching beyond IT to demonstrate improvement

Shifting up a gear Addressing IT’s middle market FEATURE FOCUS: SERVICE CATALOGUES – CHANGING THE FACE OF IT: P24-27

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 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.

VitAl SignS – liFE in A WORld WiTH iT

11 roasted service manager and all the trimmings?

STEVE WHiTE The financial chaos is causing problems for under-resourced iT service teams who are often the first to get cut in a crisis. Steve White would rather be shovelling coal on the Titanic.

VitAl MAnAgEMEnT

12 service desk express MATT BAilEy When rail operator east Coast main line split from National express it needed to get its improved Service Desk up and running pronto. With parts of the iT estate hurtling around the country at 120mph, this presented some unique challenges. matt Bailey spoke to David Wilson.

16 What next for the cloud?

TREVOR BAyliSS The concept of cloud computing has been around for so long now, it is inevitable that all of us are using it to some degree but can we be sure of the service we are receiving and does it really meet our requirements? Trevor Bayliss finds out.

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:

VitAl PROFilE 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.

20 translating knowledge into results A familiar name in the world of iTil, pink elephant has been at the forefront of iT management best practise for over 30 years. Caroline Wyatt, head of Corporate Development explains the company’s approach and offers an example of how its ‘classroom in the cloud’ approach to training is helping one of its clients.

PRInCe2® is the Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce MsP® is the Registered Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce

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 November / December 2011 : VitAL

3

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service management at its best

e t th a s e iss u ferenc m t n ’ Don SMF Co at t i us UK isit E4

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CONTENTS

Contents 24 service catalogues – changing the face of it

40 coming out of the silo

TOny PROBERT At a recent seminar, the delegates chose the Service Catalogue as their focus. With this in mind, Tony Probert, sets out to explore the business benefits for an organisation of developing and implementing a Service Catalogue.

VitAl SuPPPORT

28 Why and how to clear the it support backlog nOEl BRuTOn This issue Noel Bruton says it’s time to climb mount backlog and get the support group’s workflow under control.

30 the power of choice – a new model for the hybrid cloud dAVid AKKA After all the hype and discussion, cloud services are moving from concept to reality, and Cios now have to make decisions on where data should be stored. David Akka says that a hybrid approach may be your best option.

VitAl PROCESS

32 re-engineer to succeed

AndREW BRuMMER To successfully present improvement value, an iTSm return on investment report must come out of the silo to reach beyond the boundaries of iT and demonstrate operational improvement values. Andrew Brummer reports.

42 the freedom of wireless MARTin POPPElAARS low-cost wireless links reduce installation and maintenance costs and provide mobility; however, designing an effective wirelessnetworking solution requires an understanding of today’s complex wireless technologies, their benefits, and their trade-offs. Martin Poppelaars makes the case for going wireless.

46 concealed cloud costs dAVE PAulding According to Dave Paulding of interactive intelligence businesses need to be very careful to look out for hidden costs when choosing cloud services.

VitAl EyES On

47 freeware – think before you download!

JOnATHAn WESTlAKE Timely advice from Jonathan Westlake on how – and indeed if – to go about choosing and downloading freeware.

VitAl PlAnET

MARK lyTTlE it’s time to get to grips with people-intensive iT processes and shift iT spend from ‘keeping the lights on’ to strategic and business-enabling iT projects, says Mark Lyttle.

48 the greening of the it estate MARK MOnROE one of the main attractions of going green is the fact that it can potentially save you thousands of pounds, and at the same time improve efficiencies, according to mark monroe of The Green Grid.

VitAl EVEnTS

36 evolution of theory CHRiSTinE HEAdFORd Christine headford explains why continual service improvement (CSi) must evolve to include business intelligence (Bi) and how heroes – highly empowered and resourceful operatives – can help.

www.vital-mag.net

53 itsmf conference & exhibition 2011 preview 64 secret of my success Adam maurice, founder and managing director of The internet Group.

November / December 2011 : VitAL

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news

75 percent of UK businesses moving to subscription-based purchasing S

enior IT managers across the UK are increasingly looking to purchase business applications via a subscription model, a survey has uncovered. Carried out by research specialists Vanson Bourne, the survey polled 100 senior IT managers in UK Enterprises (minimum 1,000 employees) on their thoughts about purchasing business applications via subscription rather than through capital investments. The survey highlighted that 75 percent of UK businesses have either deployed, or are in the process of deploying, a subscription-based purchasing model for some or all of their business applications. This reflects a requirement for businesses to adapt to changing consumer purchasing habits linked to a marketwide rise in subscription services for consumers.

“The survey results back up what we have observed in the market,” says Richard Britton, managing director of the survey’s sponsor

Reuse still not widespread in IT industry

C

omputer Aid International, the UK registered ICT for development charity, has released findings of the first, in a two part series, of independent research conducted by Vanson Bourne examining 100 senior IT decision makers in UK companies on their IT disposal practices. The research establishes how companies with 1,000 plus employees dispose of their IT and the factors that influence their disposal methods.

Despite declining IT budgets, PC turnover in the UK remains high with respondents disposing of an average of 542 computers per year. Typically, UK companies replace their base units every 3.7 years and their monitors every four years. Despite the economic climate, one third of companies replace their base units as often as every three years and one in five replace monitors during this time frame as well.

Worryingly, only 14 percent of companies follow best practice in IT disposal and send all their working computers for reuse and recycle the rest. Among the remaining respondents, 63 percent cite data protection concerns as a reason for avoiding reuse.

Cost is also a factor with 53 percent stating that this influences their decision not to reuse while 24 percent suggested that contractual obligations to a leasing company prevented them from doing so. 83 percent of these respondents wanted to reuse working equipment if factors such as data protection and cost were addressed.

6 VitAL : November / December 2011

CloudSense. “We are currently seeing the rise of a subscription economy where consumers buy goods and services via subscription, rather than as one off capital expenditures. The popularity of services such as Spotify, Zipcars and even the ‘Boris bikes’ underlines this trend.

This is largely driven by the greater choice, reduced cost and flexibility that subscription services can provide to consumers. The subscription economy is growing fast and those businesses that cannot react quickly enough to take advantage of it will be left behind. A new consumer purchasing model, however, requires a new approach to back office systems in order to provide the flexibility and scalability required. Here businesses should look to implement subscriptionbased business applications that mirror the consumer purchasing model. For the first time we are here seeing businesses taking the lead from the consumer environment.”

Consumerisation of IT fuels security fears T

he results of a global survey of nearly 750 IT professionals on the effect that personal devices have on business found that many (62 percent) IT managers feel they lack the necessary tools to properly manage personal devices. Conducted by Dimensional Research and commissioned by Dell KACE, the survey revealed 87 percent of companies have employees that use some kind of personal device for work including laptops, smartphones and tablet computers; however, they are unable to effectively protect corporate data and intellectual property as well as ensure compliance.

“Consumer products are evolving into viable businesses tools, but according to our research, the majority of companies do not have a proper strategy in place to manage these devices. This opens them up to serious security risks,” said Diane Hagglund, senior research analyst for Dimensional Research and the study’s author. “Consumerisation of IT is not simply a passing trend. It is the way business will be conducted on an ongoing basis, especially in the small and medium business (SMB) market, so it is critical that companies put policies and standards into place to support these devices, and ensure the security of corporate and intellectual property.”

According to the research, security needs top the list for IT managers when it comes to managing external mobile devices with 82 percent citing their concerns about the use of personal devices for business use, and another 62 percent specifically concerned about network security breaches.

www.vital-mag.net

news

Lean IT certification launched A

PMG has announced the launch of a new certification: Lean IT. Based on the core principles of Lean, the certification helps IT departments become customer- and valueoriented, removing waste, inflexibility and variability according to the company. Lean IT departments and organisations benefit from increased customer value, eliminated waste, continual improvement and maintain value with less effort it says.

The Foundation level certification is for IT professionals who want to focus on effective

management and improving their IT services.

The principles of Lean IT are applicable to all organisations with IT operations regardless of industry or sector. APMG says any organisation effectively applying Lean IT will notice increased customer satisfaction, reductions of IT costs and in time to market of changes and increased productivity and ability to manage demand.

Lean IT is the extension of established Lean manufacturing and services principles to the development and management of information

technology products and services. It has been in development since 2003, but in the past couple of years its methodology has been applied to services organisations and now APMGInternational has developed a qualification to help individuals and organisations deliver value to customers through more effective management services.

The Lean IT scheme consists of a single, Foundation level examination to test a candidate’s knowledge and understanding of Lean IT concepts and core principles.

Professional development programme For IT service managers T

he itSMF has launched its own professional service management credentialing programme – priSM (Professional Recognition for IT Service Management). Available exclusively to itSMF members, the programme for professional recognition and personal development in the ITSM industry provides a structured path for professional growth while maintaining a registry for professionals to track their continued good standing according to the itSMF. It says the programme will help ITSM professionals better define their career and enhance earning potential by attaining credentials within a measurable framework based on an individual’s existing training, experience, certifications and industry contributions.

The itSMF UK was established over 20 years ago to help IT professionals resolve their service management issues. Recently appointed CEO, Ben Clacy, explains why the itSMF UK is offering this professional credentials programme to its members: “As the largest independent service management forum in the UK, we are committed to providing our members with opportunities to build their knowledge and advance best practice in the ITSM industry,” he says. “priSM ensures that members are formally recognised and rewarded for their growth and professional achievements. Individuals who hold the priSM credential will stand out as ITSM professionals because they possess industry recognised certifications such as ITIL, PRINCE2, and Six Sigma as well as demonstrable practical experience.”

There are five levels of priSM credential providing an international structure for gauging professional progress: • Student in Service Management (SSM) – for students with an interest in ITSM; • Associate in Service Management (ASM) – for entry-level professionals;

• Professional in Service Management (PSM) – for mid-level, experienced Service Management professionals; • Distinguished Professional in Service Management (DPSM) – for senior, experienced Service Management professionals and leaders • Fellow in Service Management (FSM) – for those senior professionals who have been recognised for making significant contributions to the profession and its body of knowledge.

The validation and granting of credentials is administered by The priSM Institute, a wholly owned subsidiary of itSMF International, and governed by its own board of directors, to ensure separation from the itSMF and maintain the integrity of the programme. The global itSMF movement has over 53 Chapters around the world and currently two of the three global regions are actively engaged in the priSM programme – the Americas and EMEA Regions. The Asia Pacific region was scheduled to go live in Q3, 2011.

“We have members already signing up for the programme who understand the importance of professional recognition and ‘up-skilling’ their workforce in order to maintain competitive edge,” concludes Clacy. “While the global recession has had an impact on the service management marketplace, the drive for improved governance, standards and compliance continues.

With less money available to invest, smart organisations realise that good service management practices will be of upmost importance to their business and this includes ensuring there is continuous investment in modern service improvement programmes, methodologies and most importantly, people. priSM helps to keep IT professionals abreast of new process-based methodologies and best practice.” www.theprisminstitute.org

Businesses failing to think strategically over ITSM

B

usinesses are failing to set IT Service Management strategies to deliver clear market distinction and increase profitability, according to ICCM Solutions.

The company is warning that the crux of the issue is a common failure of the IT Service Management industry to consider the wider business picture. James Gay, co-founder and

www.vital-mag.net

director of ICCM Solutions, says, “Progressive IT Service Management strategies do not need to reinvent the wheel; instead what is needed is a shift in the thinking of IT people to align IT service management with the whole business. Service Management is no longer solely about IT delivering business process deployment, but should offer services which demonstrate value, efficiency and

the potential for new business revenue streams.”

James Gay adds, “IT must act and communicate as a business unit itself, rather than an independent silo. In doing this IT can make itself an imperative clog in the business wheel, which drives organisational efficiency in improving tasks, processes and ultimately with improved decision making.”

November / December 2011 : VitAL 7

COveR sTORy

Shifting up a gear over the last three years outsource Service management supplier The internet Group has been scaling up its services to add the mid-market to its existing portfolio of Sme clients. in the process it has had to tackle SDi and iTil and fundamentally shift up a gear in the way it does business. matt Bailey spoke to the company’s managing director Adam Maurice.

8 VitAL : November / December 2011

www.vital-mag.net

cover story

I

t is no surprise that the outsourced IT Service Management sector is growing.

In the current climate it could be argued that shifting IT services off the headcount is a sure-fire way to reduce costs – certainly in the short term. The Internet Group (TIG) is a provider of IT managed services and a 3-star SDI accredited IT Service Desk. Based in North London, it currently employs over 60 people, including more than 35 highly qualified engineers. The company was started in 1999 when managing director and founder Adam Maurice was still at school.

Over the past three years it has been scaling up its business to add mid-market clients to its existing SME portfolio.

“We are seeing a number of mid-market businesses re-evaluating their IT spend,” says Adam Maurice. “The message we are getting from customers and prospects alike in the mid market is that the biggest challenge IT managers are confronted with is how to manage and keep up IT operations in a highly constrained budgetary environment. IT managers and CIOs alike are facing a tough time and they are using outsourcing as a means extending budgets and operational efficiency.”

The company came about because Maurice wanted to offer IT support to small companies that didn’t have their own internal IT department. “That was the space we were in,” he explains, “the ‘S’ of SME – companies with up to 20 users. In these types of operations you typically find that it’s the office manager or the finance person who has responsibility for the IT.” As the financial conditions have changed over the last few years Maurice has seen demand for external IT support grow from larger businesses. “We are now offering our services to the mid-market which is a completely different prospect,” he says.

“The smaller companies are after a personal relationship where the IT support staff know their business, whereas the larger clients understand that their service is more driven by process and procedure rather than the first hand knowledge.” www.vital-mag.net

Process and procedure About three years ago the company got involved with the Service Desk Institute (SDI). “In order to penetrate the middle market we needed to up our game,” says Maurice. “We needed to get all the processes and procedures in place so we went down the certification route and got a three star rating, in fact we are the smallest company in the world to achieve a three star SDI accreditation.”

Achieving this level of accreditation meant massive investment in staff, technology, resources and training. “We now follow the complete ITIL process. The smaller companies are less interested in that sort of accreditation, they just want to know they can pick up the phone and someone will sort out their problems. At the higher end of the market it’s all about compliance and governance and whether you are recording the calls and what you are going to do about auditing, it is a completely different market.”

Three years ago when the company first ventured into the mid market it split the technical function of the business into two parts, the support services function and the project delivery function or professional services.

“We found that by implementing SDI and ITIL, the support services became far more structured and since then we have had a kind of internal battle about who is more processaligned. Professional Services want to be PRINCE 2 for all their projects and the support guys want to do SDI and ITIL,” says Maurice.

“We felt that it was something we needed to do, but what actually happened in the business was that by becoming SDI accredited it raised the bar in the support department and all the other departments had to follow suit. By introducing SDI and ITIL to the whole business we were able to deal with the bigger companies far more easily, they expect it and many of them demand it. They need the ability track and monitor progress on calls and view statistics without asking us. All of that is given to them automatically. Smaller businesses

“We found that by implementing SDI and ITIL, the support services became far more structured and since then we have had a kind of internal battle about who is more process-aligned.

Professional Services want to be PRINCE 2 for all their projects and the support guys want to do SDI and ITIL,”

November / December 2011 : VitAL 9

COveR sTORy

“we sent out a mail shot to our customers about two months ago.

It was about an online backup service and the subject line was ‘Online backup: what we can do for you’. we got a mixed response.

Last month we sent out the same mailer, but in the subject line we put ‘Cloud backup’ and we had a massive response.

This demonstrates the power of ‘cloud’ as a buzz word.”

10 VitAL : November / December 2011

don’t care about first contact resolution or average resolution time. All they want to ensure is that their staff are happy and their computers are working.”

One of the big challenges TIG has had as a business is in understanding what the differences are between what companies want at the sMe level and the mid-market level.

“It’s requires a lot of training,” says Maurice.

“The staff on the service Desk and the escalation groups have to be able to deal with people with a wide range of IT knowledge. For example in a smaller business you may well be dealing with someone with no IT knowledge whatsoever.

They don’t know what a router is and certainly don’t know how to reboot one. In a larger business there may be an IT administrator or even an IT manager on-site who has a much higher level of knowledge and we may well be dealing with their internal IT department whereas in the smaller businesses we are dealing with all their staff individually, so you have to be able to adapt your offering to deal with people in both camps. Having that spectrum of skill in the service Desk is very important. we have had to be a lot more detailed and a lot more understanding of what those more IT-literate people want.”

cloudy outlook?

I suggest to Maurice that when and if all applications and data are in the cloud this will level the playing field considerably. “we have yet to see much evidence of this,” he replies, “we now have clients in the very small, medium and large business groups and cloud adoption is totally varied across these groups. we have clients right now who have said they are not interested in the cloud: ‘If we can’t see it; if it’s not on our site; if we can’t touch it, it doesn’t exist’. Others say they intend to go totally cloud. Others want to go hybrid with bits of both. Although our client base is a very mixed bag, no-one yet has actually fully gone over to the cloud.”

A major TIG client that was offered a grant to completely overhaul its IT infrastructure and had the choice to move totally into the cloud instead decided to take the on-premise option. “They have replaced all their platform with vMware and still have all their servers on site. we are not seeing in our market the

massive cloud adoption that people are talking about; I don’t know why. none of our clients or prospects has said they don’t like Ms exchange and have switched to Office 365, none have gone over to Google Apps. we believe the cloud is good for some things and not for others.”

Coming back to the question of where the service Desk sits when everything is in the cloud, Maurice believes that its role becomes even more important. “If users have a problem they can’t speak directly to the cloud providers, typically because they are not offering the first and second line of support. This makes the role of the service Desk even more important because they are the people who are going to act as a conduit between the user problem and the cloud provider. we believe that it is a growing market whether people go to the cloud or not.”

Clearly though the amount of hype and genuine provable efficiency and cold hard cash savings promised by the cloud are a big incentive to find out more. “we sent out a mail shot to our customers about two months ago. It was about an online backup service and the subject line was ‘Online backup: what we can do for you’. we got a mixed response. Last month we sent out the same mailer, but in the subject line we put ‘Cloud backup’ and we had a massive response. This demonstrates the power of ‘cloud’ as a buzz word.”

As we have discussed many times in these pages, the cloud in one form or another has been around for over a decade, “The recession, in my opinion is the thing that gave the cloud a massive boost. People were being told that it could save money, but there are many sectors that can’t use public cloud. I met someone from the insurance industry recently and their take on the cloud is that they can’t use it. They don’t have a cloud strategy.”

consumerisation of it People are using their own devices in the workplace and this brings a whole set of challenges for IT support. “I have a friend at a large property company,” says Maurice, “They bought all their staff iPads and docking stations when they upgraded their systems.

Their biggest worry was about what data was www.vital-mag.net

vitaL signs: LIFe In THe wORLD wITH IT

Roasted Service Manager and all the trimmings? leaving the office in these devices. It is very difficult to keep control of.”

In the recent past many companies would give their staff portable devices, notable Blackberrys, but now the trend is for people to use their own iPhone, iPads and other tablet and smartphone devices. “This brings with it many data protection issues. The data on a smartphone may belong to the user’s company, but the device belongs to the user. what happens when that person leaves the company? It makes for a very complicated situation.”

Two of the major barriers to a more efficient IT world are connectivity and infrastructure.

“I don’t feel I can go home and use voice over IP (voIP) for work, the quality is not good enough. In a perfect world you could be working anywhere and nobody would know the difference. At the moment it is close, but it’s not quite there,” says Maurice.

“It’s about technology enabling business.

Our clients rely on us to supply solutions to allow them to grow their business and do things more effectively and efficiently. That is what technology is supposed to do. That is why the service Desk is so important.

As businesses become more reliant on technology, they need to have people on the other end of the phone who can deal with the inevitable problems in a process-driven and procedural way to allow them to get on with their business.”

doing business in difficult times while many are finding the going very tough as economies around the world flat-line or go into recession, Adam Maurice is optimistic about the prospects for the IT services sector. “The global recession has actually allowed us to grow very quickly because the larger companies are looking to reduce headcount and make things more efficient and streamlined,” he says. “with a lot of the bigger contracts we have been awarded over the last few years there has been an existing IT department but the directors have decided to downsize it and outsource part of the requirement. As the world is still in the uncertain state they are trying to reduce costs and streamline the business, this makes them a lot more open to outsourcing.” VitAL www.theinternetgroup.com www.vital-mag.net

The financial chaos is causing problems for under-resourced iT service teams who are often the first to get cut in a crisis. Steve White is tackling problem management.

T

he DoWNGrADiNG of the US credit rating from AAA to AA+ had a huge (some might argue unprecedented) effect on trading volumes in the few days following. it could be considered as a change in environment (Cretaceous -Tertiary extinction event?) where only the fittest could survive. Some companies had near death experiences. of the two separate instances that came to my attention, the ultimate root causes were the same.

In one, on Monday someone realised that they were going to run out of space by Friday on a disk array, and that more space would be required otherwise they would not be open to trade. They alerted the people who make the budgets available. They did so on Tuesday as well... and on wednesday. On Thursday they added the very last hot-spare drive to the pool, and deleted all the things on the array which were deemed not to be mission critical.

On Friday, they did open for trade, and the hardware arrived during the day.

In another, they had a certain capacity for trade volumes, and due to the high number of trades, and market volatility driving some unusual client behaviour in their systems they ran out of resources before the end of the trading day.

The root causes in both instances were the same; when it came to cutting costs (making people redundant), both institutions have leaned heavily on their IT departments to make the cuts. neither businesses reduced by an equal percentage the trading staff, nor the customers that they handle - that would, of course be madness; to reduce the number of people in a business who can be singled out as ‘making money’ would be unthinkable.

The focus of the staff reductions and budget reductions was on the support organisations.

And one of the obvious roles to cut and not

focus on replacing was Capacity Managers – after all, what good is a Capacity Manager in a crisis?

This imbalance in headcount reduction results in ‘Organisational Diabetes’, where the internal imbalances between trading and support lead the organisation to firstly go blind, so it cannot see into the future properly, and then begin to lose nerve feeling, so it does not know that there are problems with the core systems until it’s either just in time late (survivable with a panic), or too late.

As a reaction to the reductions in budget, organisations have to do more with fewer resources, and there is a temptation to rearrange, restructure and mess with the internal IT support organisation to attempt to continue to cover all the functions, but now only part-time for each role – and this can further unsettle the individuals, leading in some cases to ill-health and worse.

This is a choice that some financial services companies are making – to lean on the IT support departments until they break – because the first sign of having cut too far can be a series of near Death experiences, and they should be a sign to the Board that they have trimmed support too far.

By the time this issue of vitAL is distributed, either the Greeks have or have not (yet) defaulted. The financial regulators have taken some infrastructure suppliers to one side and asked them to prepare for a 60 percent increase in trading volumes above the recent maximums reached. some under-resourced and over-tightened IT infrastructures may be barely able to cope with the volume of trade.

At a previous place of work we made some t-shirts up, simply saying ‘I’d rather be shoveling in the boiler-room of the Titanic’. you can now contact Steve White at: stevescolumn@vital-mag.net VitAL

November / December 2011 : VitAL 11

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Service Desk express When rail operator east Coast main line split from National express it needed to get its improved Service Desk up and running pronto.

With parts of the iT estate hurtling around the country at 120mph though, the east Coast Service Desk presented some unique challenges. matt Bailey spoke to Service Desk manager David Wilson.

e

AST CoAST main line forms one of the UK’s main transport arteries, linking london, the east midlands, Yorkshire, Northeast england and Scotland; it carried more than 18 million passengers in 2010. Founded in 1996, the number of services the company operates has almost doubled since then, and was set to increase by a further 15 percent during 2011. it has 3,100 employees at 15 stations, depots and offices located along its routes. it has also pioneered the use of technology on railways by being the first UK train route to offer wireless internet access.

To add to this complexity, east Coast is currently moving from ownership by national express, which it transferred from in 2010, to being re-franchised in 2013. As its existing service Desk was delivered from a basic, centralised national express call logging system, east Coast needed to implement

12 VitAL : November / December 2011

an entirely new system for its analysts who handle requests from its staff across the UK. This support was also extended to the 3,500 customers who use its onboard wi-Fi every day. The rail company therefore engaged in an evaluation process to identify a service Desk solution that would not only effectively meet these requirements but could be implemented within a tight, three-month independence timetable from national express. In the end it plumped for Hornbill’s supportworks ITsM solution.

it support on the move “east Coast Main Line was franchised to national express,” explains service Desk manager David wilson. “But last year we reverted but to public ownership and we are looking to go back out to tender in 2013. when national express originally took us over we had

a very small, five-man service Desk team which was taken in to national express. when we left we had to quickly put together a new service Desk team and that’s when we decided to go with supportworks . From ordering, we had it in and running in eight weeks including importing the existing call data from national express.

“About a year ago we launched our own service Desk which covers our internal IT as well as our wi-Fi customers – about 3,500 users a day,” adds wilson. “The transition went very smoothly and after a year up and running it’s operating very well.”

Day to day, the service Desk supports a varied range of customers. “we cover all the railway systems support, our control centre systems which operate 24/7 365 days a year, in addition we cover the sort of finance and administration systems that any large organisation has,” says wilson. “On top of that www.vital-mag.net

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“We wanted the move to being a public

we also provide support for EPOS (electronic point of sale) retailing systems, up and down the route and on board trains as well as the on-board Wi-Fi service.”

Unique challenge

sector organisation to mean more than just a change of ownership.

We wanted to take the opportunity to transform the services we could offer both to our customers and our own internal users,”

14 VitAL : November / December 2011

With so much of the IT estate constantly on the move, the Service Desk is presented with a unique challenge. “All our kit and configuration is recorded in the support tool,” explains Wilson, “so we can keep track of everything that way. There is a server and a Wi-Fi system on every train which is associated with an asset number and we track it that way. The fact that it is part of a few hundred tonnes of equipment shuttling around at 120mph is really by the by as far as configuration tracking is concerned.

What we have is a wide area network (WAN) with parts of it that are mobile. Each train has its own local area network (LAN) on-board which goes out to the internet via an on-board communications solution. It facilitates the customer Wi-Fi but also allows our VPN (virtual private network) to cover our rolling stock.”

Under National Express, East Coast had two years running with a system that did not offer asset tracking, customer management or reporting at all. “We were a bit blinded to the volume of calls coming in, how they were breaking down and which areas of the business were affected,” says Wilson. “Supportworks pulls in all our customer information straight away; it ties in to our operations systems and all our assets are automatically updated every evening. Basically it gives us full control and visibility of all the assets and customers we are supporting. Once you have all that in place you can start trending against it. This allows us to see which systems are experiencing problems and undertake effective problem management and start addressing the underlying issues rather than just fire-fighting which is where we were for two years with National Express.”

East Coast now has full visibility across support requests. This has enabled the Service Desk team to offer stronger SLAs and improve asset management processes. For example since all requests for user account creation, new hardware and software and other benefits

pass through Supportworks, East Coast can monitor user accounts, hardware purchasing, software licensing and other factors to ensure that such items are being allocated correctly. In total, SLA resolution has improved by eight percent.

The IT Support team has seen the time spent on support calls fall by 10 percent, with customer Wi-Fi calls able to be resolved within five minutes. As a result, it can spend less time dealing with regular IT support calls and more time on the unique support issues that have arisen as East Coast moves towards independent ownership of all of its IT resources. For example, East Coast has been able to pinpoint and repair recurring areas of failure in its onboard EPOS system.

Support expansion East Coast is now looking to expand its configuration management database (CMDB) which currently only covers hardware items. “We are looking to put all our mobile telecommunications into the CMDB as well,” says Wilson. “We are introducing automated reporting for various system owners and department heads, They like to see what their teams are doing and how their systems are performing so we’re getting all that automated and set up so it moves the administration overhead from those teams, freeing up their staff for more valuable work. We are also developing web-based self-service which will be specifically branded for East Coast, with our specific processes in place.”

When this is completed in Q4 2011, users will be able to fix certain issues themselves. This will in turn reduce time spent on calls, free the support department for more proactive action and help establish the new, public-sector East Coast Mainline as an organisation with firstclass IT support.

“We wanted the move to being a public sector organisation to mean more than just a change of ownership. We wanted to take the opportunity to transform the services we could offer both to our customers and our own internal users,” concludes Wilson. VitAL www.vital-mag.net

vitAL MAnAGeMenT

What next for the cloud?

The concept of cloud computing has been around for so long now, it is inevitable that all of us are using it to some degree but can we be sure of the service we are receiving and does it really meet our requirements? Associate iT director for infrastructure at Aston University, Trevor Bayliss finds out.

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hiCh FACeT of cloud computer services do you currently use or need? The options seem to be endless, but include platform as a Service (or good old Server virtualisation), Software as a Service (or application virtualisation) and Desktop as a Service (or desktop virtualisation) to name but a few. There is a cloud computing option for nearly all aspects of iT and i am sure others will follow in the future. if the selection possibilities of cloud computing services aren’t bad enough, the complexity increases further by the increasing number of deployment methods; such as, private, public, community, and hybrid clouds.

16 VitAL : November / December 2011

public cloud The market place is full of Public cloud service providers who will sell a variety of services but can these really be relied on? These public services do come with distinct benefits to businesses, like easy setup, minimal capital investment, and scalability, but these services have not been without well reported incidents, which have even affected the whole service at some providers, raising questions on the reliability. Of course, the good old service Level Agreement (sLA) will be mentioned, but what protection does this really give you should all your business systems be affected – very little in most cases. The fact that this is an www.vital-mag.net

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agreement means the provider will always want exemptions covering most the larger incidents as they are classed as “out of their control” and the businesses will always be convinced that these are so unlikely to occur that it is isn’t an issue. Of course, the impact can be devastating especially to small businesses.

The use of public cloud services puts a high reliance on connectivity to the Internet – lose your internet link or have service provider issues then and you can’t access your systems. Thus to take full advantage of public cloud services you need to have a suitable and reliable internet connectivity but can small businesses really afford this? This is likely to be tested even further now that cloud computing devices are coming to market which have all applications and data held within the cloud.

Private cloud Most large organisations have implemented Private clouds via IT infrastructures installed and managed locally within their own network.

In many infrastructures this started out as a simple way of providing virtual servers to reduce the quantity of physical equipment being installed in data centres but these internal services are growing to cover all aspects of cloud computing from application services to virtual desktop environments.

To ensure performance and reliability of the infrastructure used to support these new private cloud services businesses are finding that the physical equipment within the data centre is starting to grow again (like Jevons Paradox ), thus impacting on the power and environmental provision.

This growing provision of private cloud services can mean a large capital investment in infrastructure equipment but despite this, many of the benefits of public clouds can be found. Perhaps the major obstacle to many businesses for implementing Private clouds is the technical resources needed to manage the environment – can current staff be trained? Or do they have time to take over these roles? Or are new staff needed? Either way private cloud www.vital-mag.net

services can bring cloud computing to an organisation while solving some of the issues of public clouds and removing the reliance on internet connections.

To ensure performance and reliability of the

Is hybrid the best option?

So which is best? The obvious, well heralded, answer is a hybrid cloud, ie, a mixture of the two. This allows local cloud services to support business critical applications and storage of important data, while allowing with public cloud services to be used to provide additional capacity and resilience.

Many of the major software companies are now starting to provide applications which can take benefit of this hybrid cloud infrastructure and this trend seems to be continuing. At present the main approach seems to be via ‘federated’ management which allows both private and public cloud provided services to be managed from a single point and in most cases will also provide mechanisms to migrate data between them.

The cloud in the public sector While the business community starts to make good use of cloud computing, is this true within the public sector? The public sector has started to use cloud services, such as universities using cloud-based services for the provision of email to their students (and in some cases staff) but the level of take up on other cloud services seems to be slow.

A fundamental part of cloud services is that the system can be anywhere on the internet but this ambiguous location of the service and hence the data it holds has been a major obstacle for public sector organisations although the Government has now released guidelines covering this. A few providers (such as the email services mentioned above) have mitigated this by installing large data centres within the European Union and have contracts confirming that all data will be retained within the EU. To drive the move towards cloud computing further, the UK Government launched Phase

infrastructure used to support these new private cloud services businesses are finding that the physical equipment within the data centre is starting to grow again (like Jevons Paradox ), thus impacting on the power and environmental provision.

November / December 2011 : VitAL 17

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so there are some aspects of cloud computing which need to be addressed and improved but the whole industry seems to be behind this approach – we just need to hope that everyone follows the same path and puts the user of cloud services first.

2 of its Data Centre strategy in March 2011, a project labelled the G-Cloud, for which the Cabinet Office report stated the following: “Public sector organisations will benefit from ready access to a wide range of pre-accredited ICT services. These will include both ‘public cloud’ services and common and custom ‘private cloud’ services procured by other public sector organisations. services will offer usage-based pricing, elastic scalability (up or down), and there will be in built flexibility to switch to alternate services or providers.”

The level to which this strategy is adopted is still to be seen but some of the first implementation plans are due to be released in next few months - it is clear there are potential savings and other benefits to be made. even within the education sector cloud computing strategies are being created.

The Higher education Funding Council for england (HeFCe) announced a programme, as part of a suite of activities under the University Modernisation Fund (UMF), which will see a £12.5 million investment to “deliver efficiencies through shared services in cloud computing infrastructure and applications”.

This funding includes £10 million for shared IT infrastructure, to support the delivery of virtual servers, storage and data management applications. There is also funding of £2.5 million to establish cloud computing and shared services in central administration functions to support learning, teaching, and research. while this shows all sectors are moving towards a cloud computing model, there is definitely a difference in pace with the public sector clearly wanting some assurances or guarantees of service which seems to mean a private or hybrid cloud computing environment.

cloud – What next?

It is difficult to be certain of what lies ahead, especially without a crystal ball that could tell you the future of IT, but cloud computing seems to be with us for a while. The benefits 18 VitAL : November / December 2011

of cloud computing services are not limited to small areas of business but are capable of supporting everything from large corporate, to small businesses and even public sector organisations.

Obviously the requirements of each business area changes and hence the type of cloud computing service is different. small businesses are likely to have fewer internal resources and thus put more emphasis on public cloud services whereas corporate organisations will have greater flexibility and resources so are more likely to go for private or hybrid cloud environments. even with these differences in approach, there are some common areas of improvement needed: service Level agreements: The service level agreements provided for services needs to be more robust and cover all aspects of the service so that businesses can be sure they can function or be covered for any loss. An interesting element is how sLAs will be developed to cover hybrid environments in future. internet connectivity: To take full advantage of internet-based cloud computing services the performance and reliability of Internet services needs to be high. The sLA for these Internet services also needs to be improved in line with those mentioned above. data location: service providers are going to have to provide some guarantees on location of data and the controls applied. integration: To enable greater use of the different deployment models the virtualisation infrastructure used by service providers and businesses will need to compatible so that services can be transferred seamlessly between them. so there are some aspects of cloud computing which need to be addressed and improved but the whole industry seems to be behind this approach – we just need to hope that everyone follows the same path and puts the user of cloud services first. VitAL www.vital-mag.net

2011

the world’s leading

it Service Management

conFerence

LONDON

itSMF UK’s 2011 Annual Conference and Exhibiton will be returning to the Novotel London West in Hammersmith on 7th - 8th November.

where the IT service management profession have the opportunity to recognise the achievements of their peers - the best trainers, students and writers, project team members, innovators and service management champions.

This year the master of ceremonies is the award winning comedian and Comic Relief co-founder Lenny Henry, who will be leading the evening’s proceedings with his own unique brand of humour.

Other speakers include: Mark Hall, Deputy Chief Now in its 20th year, the itSMF UK Conference offers a unique opportunity to share service management experience, network with colleagues, learn from industry leaders, and discuss the latest tools and techniques that support the ITSM industry - all under one roof in one of London’s best conference venues.

Revenue & Customs.

Unusually for CIO’s, Mark is an IT Service Management Professional by trade and has been actively involved with ITIL and itSMF since the early 1990s.

Key highlights this year include: • More than 40 educational sessions from thought leaders in service management such as the Audit Commission, Deutsche Bank, Dominos Pizza, GCHQ, the Northampton, Pepsico, Tesco Bank, and BT Global Services • Our dedicated ITSM exhibition, showcasing the latest products and services from around 50 service management software, training and consultancy organisations.

• Our celebrated Awards Dinner

Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain’s greatest Paralympic athlete, has eleven gold medals and has competed in six wheelchair marathons.

Tanni was recently elevated to the cross benches of the House of Lords with special interest in youth, health, sport and disability.

be part of it... 7th-8th November, Novotel London West For further information or to book online go to www.itsmf.co.uk Platinum sponsor

Gold sponsors

International

Silver sponsors

Wireless sponsor

vitAL PROFILe

Translating knowledge into results A familiar name in the world of iTil, pink elephant has been at the forefront of iT management best practise for over 30 years.

Caroline Wyatt, head of Corporate Development explains the company’s approach and offers an example of how its ‘classroom in the cloud’ approach to training is helping one of its clients.

p

iNK elephANT is an independent global profes sional ser v ic es organisation and world leader in iT management best practices. The company exists to optimise and transform iT Services for its clients, specialising in improving the quality of iT services through the application of recognised best practice frameworks, including the iT infrastructure library (iTil®).

20 VitAL : November / December 2011

The company began life in the netherlands, over 30 years ago, and was set up by a couple of entrepreneurial Dutch graduates, one of whom is still very much at the helm of the european organisation. supplying intelligent, motivated and service focused individuals into complex IT environments has always been a cornerstone of the company philosophy.

From these origins the company now has global presence and a team of international www.vital-mag.net

vital profile

The basis of our success is our unique understanding of how service organisations develop, what underlying processes are needed to make technology consistently valuable, and how people feel and behave.

consultants who deliver services to corporate clients around the world.

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

Caroline Wyatt: Our approach to implementing Service Management has been honed over 20 years of supporting transformation through the implementation of IT Service Management best practices. Our approach and experience in managing people through these organisational and cultural change programmes sets us apart. We work hard to translate knowledge into results.

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?

CW: With the first decade of the new millennium ending in a serious global financial slowdown, organisations have been forced to refocus on increasing IT value contribution while also keeping a very tight grip on costs; reducing IT risks; and increasing and sustaining the service quality provided to its customers. But at the same time, IT can no longer be seen simply as a technology supplier – it must be seen to be adding value to the business and providing corporate strategic capability.

IT business performance allows it to change the focus from technology and production to customers and services. This enables IT to become service-oriented, aligning itself with the organisation to provide innovative and customer-driven solutions to business problems.

IT Services has no other option than to transform itself from its ‘traditional’ support function to that of strategic contributor to business success now and in the future.

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

CW: This is Pink Elephant’s business.

The basis of our success is our unique understanding of how service organisations develop, what underlying processes are needed to make technology consistently

www.vital-mag.net

valuable, and how people feel and behave.

This understanding and knowledge is the basis for our success.

Pink Elephant does not sell any hardware or software. We don’t design or develop technical systems. We are an Independent ITSM professional services company and think that understanding what our clients need comes from a broad view of what goes on in our industry and society in general.

We recognise how important people are to our success, so we have developed selection criteria that ensure we provide the right people who will bring expertise and enthusiasm to any project. They are passionate about what they do. They are also chosen because they have the practical knowledge which they can translate into results. They have the ability transfer that knowledge to your people, so that they can translate it into results.

We attract the best people in the industry.

That is why our clients entrust us with accountability in their most critical projects.

Our people are not simply IT professionals.

Whether they are consultants, trainers, analysts or support staff, they are capable, and trained ITSM thought leaders. They create and develop ITSM products and services, many being accepted as the, ‘industry standard’. We have always been at the forefront of ITIL, from its inception through to the latest version, and our people are still actively participating in its future development.

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

CW: Our customers are pre-dominantly market-leading blue chips with large, complex IT infrastructures, although increasingly we service clients from both private and the public sector as control, governance and the need to improve services becomes all pervasive.

We strive to be agile, flexible and responsive to devise solutions that fit our clients’ unique situations. And in the drive to be thought leaders in our field we are always looking to the future, for a better way of working, on how to improve services, delivery and value to our clients.

November / December 2011 : VitAL 21

vitAL PROFILe

Between sessions delegates have access to a closed portal where they can ask the trainer questions, share and review responses, tap into a Trainer Blog, access additional mentoring, and communicate with other course participants.

To support this assertion and to demonstrate how we operate, we felt it would be useful to include a case study written with one of our key education clients rather than keep talking about how great we are!

a virtual world of itiL learning goes live at csc Background: CsC is one of the world’s largest and most respected providers of information technology services. For more than 50 years, CsC has provided technologyenabled solutions and services to solve their clients’ toughest challenges. CsC has approximately 93,000 professionals serving clients in more than 90 countries. In eMeA there are approximately 21,400 professionals with around 7,500 of those based in the UK. The delivery of managed IT services is a vital part of CsC’s business. And as a leading provider of consulting and outsourcing solutions to blue chip clients in every major industry sector, CsC is committed to driving business effectiveness for customers through the delivery of IT services founded in ITILaligned processes and workflows.

Maintaining a highly qualified ITIL workforce is therefore critical to the day-to-day service management and service operations businesses of CsC, and training staff to achieve ITIL Foundation, Intermediate and expert Level certification is a strategic priority for the company.

The challenge: In the UK, CsC has a widely distributed workforce. This makes classroombased training events a logistical and financial challenge. And when it comes to removing key personnel from client services to undertake a five-day ITIL Intermediate level certification course, the scheduling issues for staff can be immense. with burgeoning travel and accommodation costs eating into valuable training budgets, it was time for a new approach as Robert Humphrey, eMeA Learning and Development Manager at CsC, explains. “we wanted to take the ITIL classroom to our people – giving them access to high quality interactive training that’s easy to schedule into a working day,” he says. “Alongside minimising disruption to our personnel, delivering ITIL in a virtual learning environment would allow us to reinvest savings on travel and accommodation

22 VitAL : November / December 2011

costs into what counts most – more training for more people.” when considering this new approach CsC contacted its ITIL education Partner, Pink elephant. Having already used it for traditional classroom courses and worked with it to successfully develop an innovative blended learning ITIL Foundation programme for its staff they were the first choice to help enable its ‘classroom in the cloud’ vision for ITIL practitioners.

The solution: In close collaboration with the Learning and Development and service Management resourcing teams at CsC, Pink elephant evolved a format that would ensure delegates would benefit from an engaging and fully interactive online learning environment that provided ample opportunities for collaboration and debate – a key aspect of Pink elephant’s approach to ITIL advanced learning programmes.Using ReDTRAy’s e-learning delivery platform – an on-demand online meeting, web conferencing and videoconferencing application – Pink elephant evolved an instructor-led online classroom training programme.

As Robert Humphrey highlights, getting the initial induction session right was key. It was important to establish delegates were confident using the technology, were clear on the training objectives, and were fully engaged with the virtual classroom programme format. “we wanted to demonstrate that this approach would give them everything they’d experience in a real-world classroom – and more,” he says. “we worked hard to ensure the induction set the scene for positive and productive delegate participation.”

During each five week ITIL Intermediate course delegates attend twice-weekly threehour instructor-led online sessions from the comfort of their desk. Alongside being able to hear a Pink elephant lecturer, delegates can view and participate in interactive whiteboard presentations in real time, respond to questions, engage in group discussions, and write and share e-notes. what’s more, each ‘bite-sized ITIL’ session is recorded so delegates can revisit and review sessions as often as they need. During each live session the Pink elephant lecturer monitors individual delegate presence, providing ongoing mentoring and support. www.vital-mag.net

vitAL PROFILe

Management reports on attendance and scoring from course exercises enable the lecturer to identify who is doing well and who needs extra support. This reporting also supports discussion with the training function and the delegate’s manager if there are any issues. Having a course that runs over five weeks means that issues can be picked up and resolved effectively.

But that’s not all. Between sessions delegates have access to a closed portal where they can ask the trainer questions, share and review responses, tap into a Trainer Blog, access additional mentoring, and communicate with other course participants.

At the close of the programme, delegates come together in the ‘real world’ for an intensive morning review session before sitting the ITIL certification examination in the afternoon.

The outcomes: “Delegate feedback on the programme has been excellent,” confirms Robert Humphrey, “but the results speak for themselves.”

Following the initial pilot programme, delegate pass rates were on par with the traditional classroom-based course pass rate of 90 percent. But today CsC is achieving a 100 percent pass rate, with some delegates achieving the maximum score possible in the final ITIL certification exam.

“Pink elephant worked with us to adapt the format exactly to our needs,” explains Humphrey. “They have an excellent track record in ITIL education and collaborated closely with us to ensure the virtual learning programme for ITIL practitioners was refined to our specific needs – evolving, for example, the online learning community to supplement virtual classroom sessions.”

Delegates confirm the bite-sized online sessions are much easier to schedule alongside daily work responsibilities, with the added benefit of giving them time to think about and absorb information between sessions. what’s more, the new trail blazing approach has enabled CsC to release around 40 percent of its ITIL Practitioner training budget – previously allocated for travel and accommodation – to deliver additional training. “we’ve shown the virtual world of advanced ITIL learning can be just as effective and fulfilling for delegates – and that our trail blazing approach has paid off in more ways than one,” concludes Humphrey. Following the successful launch of the programme in the UK, CsC is now looking to roll out the ITIL Practitioner ‘classroom in the cloud’ initiative across europe. VitAL www.pinkelephant.com

“I knew this would be a big step up from ITIL Foundation level, but the twice weekly sessions made it easy to get on board with the material – and were painless to schedule into my working week.”

delegate perspectives ben thompson – service Level manager, manufacturing, csc UK Ben confirms his biggest worry before attending the pilot online ITIL v3 Intermediate Operational support & Analysis course was that he’d miss out on valuable interaction with other delegates. “As it turned out, my concerns were completely unjustified” he says.

“The virtual classroom approach was just as effective and enjoyable and it was easy to build rapport with the others. what’s more, the Pink elephant lecturer created a community of trust in which open discussion and debate was actively encouraged.” cath gardiner – esm new business manager, csc UK Cath Gardiner admits she had no trepidations about the ‘classroom in the cloud’ aspect of her course. For her, tackling the advanced ITIL v3 Intermediate Operational support & Analysis topic matter was the big challenge. “I knew this would be a big step up from ITIL Foundation level, but the twice weekly sessions made it easy to get on board with the material – and were painless to schedule into my working week,” she says. But it was the final review and examination day that proved a real highlight. “you finally get to meet everyone and put a face to a name – it really helps to cement relationships,” she confirms. “And it was great to get that vital last input from a Pink elephant lecturer before taking the exam.”

www.vital-mag.net

November / December 2011 : VitAL 23

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Service Catalogues – Changing the face of IT At a recent seminar, the delegates chose the Service Catalogue as their focus. With this in mind, Cherwell Software’s Tony Probert, sets out to explore the business benefits for an organisation of developing and implementing a Service Catalogue.

h

AViNG ATTeNDeD a recent seminar hosted by the Service Desk institute (SDi), it reminded me that people directly involved in the Service Desk industry can often take things for granted and assume that the rest of the world should also understand things that we might take as a given. in this particular instance the topic was Service Catalogues, something that is now accepted as commonplace by vendors, industry analysts, iTil gurus, etc. however, this occasion was a sharp reminder to me that those people on the day-to-day front line of service delivery do not necessarily have the time or luxury of keeping themselves up to date with 24 VitAL : November / December 2011

evolving trends and initiatives, albeit that they may hold significant business benefits. in one of the sessions during the SDi seminar delegates suggested and chose a key topic for a roundtable work group, and the largest group by far was for those who wanted to know more about Service Catalogues. working on the premise that this group were representative of those people that worked in the UK service Desk industry, it seemed timely and appropriate to write this article to explain and explore the business benefits of developing and implementing a service Catalogue for an organisation. Although the concept of a service Catalogue has principally www.vital-mag.net

vital management

A Service Catalogue can also be used to manage consumption and provide visibility for customers into their usage of corporate IT services. In order to achieve that, it would have to be connected to (or be the system of record) for IT usage and consumption data.

www.vital-mag.net

been a product of the ITIL initiative, you do not need to necessarily adopt the ITIL framework or become practitioners. Ultimately, good business practice is good business practice and if it offers significantly business value, then it behoves any organisation to review and consider the implications and benefits that implementing a Service Catalogue could potentially offer.

Even if you are familiar with the Service Catalogue concept from a business or technical perspective, I encourage you to read on as you may find the definitions and guidelines useful to deploy in your own organisation. So let’s start with getting back to basics.

What is a Service Catalogue?

A Service Catalogue is a list of services that an organisation provides, often to its employees or customers. Each service within the catalogue typically includes: • A description of the service; • Timeframes or service level agreement for fulfilling the service; • Who is entitled to request/view the service; • Costs (if any); • How to fulfil the service.

The user perspective: A user goes to a website to search for a specific service, such as requesting a new laptop, requesting a change in benefits, or adding a new employee to a department. The Service Catalogue site groups services by category and allows for searching (especially when hundreds or thousands of services are available). The user selects a desired service and sees the description and details. The user enters any pertinent information (contact information, service-specific questions) and submits the request for service. The request requires approval, and goes through routing, servicelevel management, and other processes necessary to fulfil the request. The user may return to the site later to check on the status of a request, or to view overall metrics on how well the organisation is performing the services it provides.

The business perspective: Business unit managers determine what services should be ‘published’ to end-users via the Service Catalogue. Business unit managers and analysts define what questions are to be asked of the user, any approvals necessary for a request, and what other systems or processes are needed to fulfil the request.

Once the service is defined and the fulfilment process organised, these people or a more technical employee would build the requisite functionality into the service definition and then publish this to the Service Catalogue, which is

typically an integrated component of an ITSM software solution.

From the two perspectives outlined above you can now begin to understand how the introduction of a Service Catalogue achieves two key objectives: 1. Providing a structured self-service approach to end users, thereby reducing the amount of calls and requests that need to be manually handled by the service desk; 2. The business is able to build a well defined list of services, ensuring a consistent approach to the delivery of required business services.

Benefits of a Service Catalogue There are a variety of benefits a Service Catalogue can provide. Just the creation of an initial version of a Service Catalogue, essentially listing the services IT offers to its customers already has a benefit by framing the conversation between an IT department and the customer. Offerings will be more standardised, as now there is a basis for discussion and changes should follow a standard change process.

A Service Catalogue can also be used to manage consumption and provide visibility for customers into their usage of corporate IT services. In order to achieve that, it would have to be connected to (or be the system of record) for IT usage and consumption data.

Finally, by interfacing a Service Catalogue with the Request Fulfilment process, thereby creating a Service Request, the Service Catalogue can also help in the management of the Request Fulfilment process, essentially automating that process. For example, a user who needs a laptop replacement could simply ‘order’ that laptop via a Service Request.

The Service Catalogue will ensure that all necessary approvers will be notified, the approvals will be recorded, and the delivery process for the new laptop started. The user can be kept up-to-date along the way by automated notifications as the request progresses, until the laptop is eventually delivered to the user’s desk.

Start small and evolve Many Service Catalogue software applications have common characteristics and can be often heavy on definitions, but lacking in service delivery workflow management for IT, as well as falling short on providing a simple way for internal or external users to order services and tracking the progress of delivery tasks.

The IT groups for many organisations are already performing back office fulfilment tasks, albeit often manually and inefficiently.

Therefore, in order to implement an effective November / December 2011 : VitAL 25

vital management

Service Catalogue, they need to develop efficient and repeatable processes for service request fulfilment, publish available services online, and tie online user Service Catalogue interactions into back office service delivery processes. This obviously requires a degree of effort, but if IT organisations start with a focus on their four or five most heavily requested IT services (and add more at a later stage), a simple Service Catalogue implementation can be accomplished fairly quickly, without a huge software investment and implementation project. Business service delivery improvements, such as reduced service desk workload, can be realised quickly. The IT team can then redeploy existing resources into expanding the Service Catalogue. In fact, Service Catalogue initiatives that start modestly and grow over time produce measurable cost savings within just a few months. These savings can be reinvested in the Service Catalogue, making it essentially self-funding very quickly.

Planning to design and implement a Service Catalogue The key to success in any project is to ensure appropriate design and definition of the required services to be built and delivered.

The following section provides some general direction and advice regarding the initial design and definition of a Service Catalogue.

Be clear as to the purpose of a Service Catalogue: • Provide a clear picture of all the business services for which you are responsible for; • Foster a clear understanding of what your customers can expect from using those services; • Provide a basis for managing and monitoring the infrastructure that is aligned to business requirements.

Identify and define required service types: A Service Catalogue has two components and it is important to understand what you need to design and implement for your organisation.

1. The Business Service Catalogue – This contains details of all IT Services delivered to the Business (in Business speak and available to the Business if required). The Business Service Catalogue should contain 26 VitAL : November / December 2011

the relationships with business units and business processes that are supported by each IT Service. Typically these are in the forms of Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Example: Project Management, Procurement, Application Development and enhancement, IT Support.

2. The Technical Service Catalogue – This expands the on the Business Service Catalogue with relationships to supporting services, shared services, components and Configuration Items necessary to support the provision of services to the Business (typically this is an internal IT information source, so is not usually available to the Business). The Technical Service Catalogue focuses internally on defining and documenting support agreements and contracts (Operational Level Agreements and contracts with external providers or third parties). Example: Email Management, Network Management; Service Classification: Next there are three classes of services.

These become particularly important when, if you extend this model to cost out the services you provide: 1. Core IT Services: These include services that are required by all stakeholders (irrespective of the line of business) to be up and running. Every business function would need these services to exist in the working environment. In terms of extending this model to chargeback, every business function would have to pay an appropriate share; there is no option to opt out of this service. Example: telephony, Email, IT infrastructure support.

2. Subscription Based Services: Based on their line of business, a client could subscribe to these services. In terms of extending this model to chargeback, these services will only apply to a client if the client subscribes to the service. Example: Research for the Customer, Non Standard Technology Evaluation, Application Support 3. On Demand Services: These are discretionary services that IT provides on a pay-per-use basis. In terms of extending this model to chargeback, these services can be charged back to the client whenever the client requests special activities outside the standard service package. Example: IT consulting, project management etc.

Some simple guidelines Adopt the KISS principle to avoid over complication: Your primary objective for creating an actionable Service Catalogue is to clearly differentiate service requests into finite tasks that can be completed in short time frames. Creating Service Catalogue complexity will only frustrate users, who will then attempt to find ways around the new processes by submitting requests through back door channels, making service measurement and improvement all but impossible moving forward.

Avoid pre-built service content: Although this notion may run counter to industry trends—as many software vendors offer prebuilt service definitions and SLAs—every organisation is different and has unique communication and service delivery needs. A one size fits all approach to content often does not fit any organisation very well. Increasingly more organisations recognise the need to define their own services and SLAs. These organisations realise that pre-built content, which forces arbitrary process changes, has little real value and may even be counterproductive.

The term ‘round peg in a square hole’ comes to mind. So, those solutions that offer customisable templates could be better options to consider. By starting small with discrete, easily definable services and using a flexible software solution that makes it simple to add services over time, it is significantly easier to avoid the problems associated with fixed, pre-built content.

Focus on delivering clean, simple and quick wins: Avoid being drawn into the creation of over elaborate service definitions.

What can be defined as ‘standard’ definitions end up being too generic to be meaningful to business users who have specific jobrelated or business needs. Therefore, a good Service Catalogue will focus on making it easy for users to request services and track delivery status, while standardising and automating back office fulfilment activities.

Many ITSM products now provide the majority, if not all of the functionality (but some products are definitely better than others) that once had to be custom developed. www.vital-mag.net

vitAL MAnAGeMenT

with that in mind, more organisations are starting small on service Catalogue projects to avoid the “Big Bang” approach. As previously mentioned some start with as few as five commonly requested service items, enabling them to quickly provide real value to the business. The buyin generated by getting a service Catalogue implemented and quickly providing value is a solid start toward maintaining the momentum. start small, think big. That’s the way most successful businesses get going and that is the best advice IT groups can follow when it comes to service Catalogues.

can service catalogues change the face of it? service Catalogues provide numerous benefits to IT departments, including; reduced costs, improved delivery times and enhanced service quality. From a broader perspective, a well implemented service Catalogue can radically alter the role and perception of IT within an organisation. As IT is seen to streamline service request and delivery processes through the use of service Catalogues, it will actually start to welcome additional projects and encourage the use of its services by marketing projects to targeted internal groups and departments. This is a major shift.

Users will see IT as less of an unresponsive service provider and more of a business partner/enabler.

Impatience with the delivery of IT projects has led many larger organisations to hire outside consultancy groups and contractors.

As a result, IT can lose control over technology services and infrastructure. Business and IT infrastructure projects can become ends in and of themselves, sidetracked from achieving critical business objectives. service Catalogues can put IT back in control. enabling them to identify key services and standardising their delivery processes will allow IT to improve response times, assume more responsibilities, develop new and more business-focused skill sets, and reduce reliance on outsourcing for strategic projects.

IT roles in the past have been highly technical and often specialised. service Catalogues will result in more business-focused service www.vital-mag.net

ownership. since service Catalogues enable IT to be run more as a business, those designated as services owners will need increased business skills, as opposed to traditional technical skills alone.

Although improved ITsM solution service Catalogue offerings are becoming increasingly main stream, there are still large numbers of organisations where this function is provided as a discrete, rather than integrated service. even though these discrete systems can provide useful service Catalogues, users still have to stop what they are doing and access a separate application to request services. An integrated technology solution will provide relevant service Catalogue pages directly via corporate web portals, so users can request a service without unduly interrupting their own workflow and so offering a distinct business benefit.

service catalogues – a panacea for service improvement? will the introduction of service Catalogues cure many of the service delivery headaches experienced by our IT professionals? not necessarily, but the business benefits of service Catalogues should be obvious to both the IT and end user communities. Most organisations provide their end users and customers with a list of the services and products they provide, a convenient way to order them, and terms of their delivery. so why not integrate these with service management delivery and automate the processes?

For the more sophisticated business, these processes are often automatically tied into fulfilment and financial systems that automate the order fulfilment and accounting processes. These systems routinely collect a variety of data, which is used to identify service-fulfilment bottlenecks, improve delivery processes, reduce costs and personalise customer experiences. To run as a business, IT needs to adopt the same processes as the business it serves.

Therefore, the adoption of a service Catalogue culture for an organisation will undoubtedly improve service delivery and service quality for the benefit of all. VitAL www.cherwell.com

will the introduction of service Catalogues cure many of the service delivery headaches experienced by our IT professionals? not necessarily, but the business benefits of service Catalogues should be obvious to both the IT and end user communities.

November / December 2011 : VitAL 27

vitAL sUPPORT

Why and how to clear the IT support backlog This issue Noel Bruton says it’s time to climb mount backlog and get the support group’s workflow under control.

h

AViNG A backlog of outstanding support jobs is not uncommon. in fact, it is almost necessary to have some backlog in order to guarantee a smooth flow of work through the support group and maximise return on resources investment. But when the backlog starts to contain, or even be dominated by work that is impeding user productivity, then you have a major problem.

Clear your backlog. It can be done – two recent clients of mine have both brought their backlogs down to a small fraction of what they were, shifting the bulk of the problem in less than a fortnight. And we’re talking call backlogs numbering in the hundreds here.

is it real?

First thing to find out is whether it really is a backlog. There are two dimensions here, one being job ownership and the other your own staff’s productivity. Make sure all calls are owned, that is that named members of the support service are assigned to be the next person to make a difference to the state of each enquiry. If it’s not owned, nothing will happen with it. Be also aware whether the next person to take action is supposed to be the user. If it is, first stop the service-level clock – you are not to be judged on work you cannot influence. next send an email to remind the user that you are waiting for him. Thereafter, a 28 VitAL : November / December 2011

lack of reply means the issue is not pressing the user, so it is likely to have little business impact and it can be closed because it is not real.

On the question of productivity, I have a rule of thumb. If a hypothetical ten percent increase in your query-solving productivity over a week would be greater than the backlog, then you don’t have a backlog programme – but you may well have a productivity problem. you must measure the productivity of your staff. It is unavoidable.

There is a quantity of work coming in, a quantity of resource available to meet it and so a quantity of resolutions going out. These are quantities – they must be matched together, which means that as a manager, it is your duty to do that matching. If you do not measure staff productivity now, give it a try – the politics and suspicions may have to be dealt with first, but the effects can be magical.

Why you must clear it The main reasons for clearing the backlog are the effect of its maintenance on staff, the impact on service overall and the cost of keeping the backlog.

If yours is like most support desks, its backlog will most probably be demoralising your staff. every morning, they are faced with this mountain of work, and still the phone keeps ringing. It can take away the point of providing a good service. Clear your backlog so your

people can start enjoying their job again.

And what about you, the manager? How does this backlog make you look to your people, when you don’t appear to be doing anything about it? Clear your backlog to show you have not lost control. even though the backlog persists, your people still want to deliver a good service.

They still want to demonstrate that they are doing their best. Trouble is, that very laudable desire gets perverted by the backlog. The staff start to cherry-pick – clearing the calls they can, or will enjoy doing, partly to claw some job satisfaction from this execrable situation, partly to keep their numbers up. The result is that the easy calls get cleared, the difficult ones get missed, avoided or just plain forgotten. And it may be the difficult problems which are causing all the damage. Clear your backlog to stop the erosion of service.

Backlogs cost money. An outstanding user problem means a user has lost productivity. you can define productivity as a user’s contribution to corporate turnover, and you can calculate that out by the hour. The age of your backlog in working hours, multiplied by the number of users affected, then by the sum of user productivity per hour, finally by their proportional dependence on Information Technology will give you a cash figure. That number may scare the living daylights out of you. Clear your backlog to save money. www.vital-mag.net

vital support

If yours is like most support desks, its backlog will most probably be demoralising your staff.

Every morning, they are faced with this mountain of work, and still the phone keeps ringing. It can take away the point of providing a good service. Clear your backlog so your people can start enjoying their job again.

www.vital-mag.net

How to clear it You could close the support desk; although not during working hours. No incoming work means no interruptions to the task of producing outgoing completions. One client of mine has started a phase of planned overtime to clear their backlog. Of course, users can’t be contacted during overtime, but at least the research and diagnosis can be done without telephone interruptions – until, that is, that word gets around the building that the service desk is populated tonight, so it’s OK to work late.

Another idea is to set up an action team, drawn from each of the walks of the supportinvolved sections of the IT department. One of the preconditions might be that all non-urgent project work stops, right now, until the backlog is cleared. That’s also a partial incentive, and I know a couple of IT services managers who have offered that and other more bankable incentives to get the backlog cleared.

The first thing the support manager has to do is insist on it being cleared, expressively, consistently, continually. Tighten up your management of service priorities and output. OK, perhaps you’ll be seen as an ogre for a month, but needs must, for everybody’s benefit. Put some pressure on your team leaders, show it matters, show you care, and remember to congratulate and reward success. I’m sure the Raj Tandoori in town can seat all two dozen of you, if you book in advance.

Daily measurement meetings work. Every morning, no more than twenty minutes. What did Networks Section achieve yesterday?

What target is Applications Support setting itself for tomorrow? How can the rest of us help? Well done Installations Group, splendid effort. Tech Services, how is your clearance strategy developing?

The backlog itself Get yourself a strategy. Examine the queue, and yes, that means reading every outstanding problem, even though that might be excruciatingly embarrassing.

You’ll look at some of these and think, how the blazes did that one get missed? Never mind, it did, it’s history, get on with it.

Prioritise the jobs. There are some in there that should not have come to you in the first place. There are some that have gone nuclear by now, so the user is probably chasing other users, vendors, anybody to get some progress.

Close anything which is actually dead.

There are some calls in their which have become irrelevant, because the software

version has changed, or the user has retired, been promoted or left. Oh, yes. I’ve seen plenty of backlogs with calls going back over two years. Your staff may have been avoiding contacting those users because of the embarrassment of having to begin a telephone conversation with the line “you remember that call you logged with us a year ago last February?”

If it’s dead, kill it. Send out Emails to the appropriate users telling them what you are doing and why you are doing it. And if they ask you to “keep the call open”, refuse. If you cannot influence a problem (Eg if it is intermittent), then don’t claim you can. You know the sort of call – the computer did something funny one day, so the user wants you to keep the call open just in case it does it again. There’s no point in keeping a job like that open, not least on the principle that you cannot influence it, so it should not be in your in-tray. Forget it – technology moves too fast, there will be a new version of the software soon that will probably fix the bug anyway.

For severe backlogs, insist on plans for clearance. That might mean going down to some detail, involving calculating the manhours involved. You’ll have to take into account things like activity time, target time relative to other work, perhaps even going to the lengths of drawing up Gantt charts. Still, with that level of measurement, you’ll know for sure whether you truly do need increased resources, either temporarily or permanently.

But don’t bust a blood vessel over this. You will never get rid of the whole of the backlog, because of the law of diminishing returns. A slight backlog means a regular flow of work, which is efficient as it means your resources are not idling. But so long as you have prioritised the work, the important stuff doesn’t queue unnecessarily and the few outstanding calls that are left are truly low priority, then you can rest easier and give yourself and your willing staff a hefty pat on the back.

The next question is how to prevent the backlog building again – but that’s another article. VitAL www.noelbruton.com Noel Bruton is a UK-based, independent consultant and trainer who since 1991 has advised companies all over the world and in a wide range of industries on the practical realities of IT support improvement. He is the author of the best selling ‘How To Manage the IT Helpdesk’ and ‘Managing the IT Services Process’. See more of his work at www.noelbruton.com.

November / December 2011 : VitAL 29

vitAL MAnAGeMenT

The power of choice – a new model for the hybrid cloud After all the hype and discussion, cloud services are moving from concept to reality, and Cios now have to make decisions on where data should be stored. David Akka, managing director, magic Software says that a hybrid may be the best option.

Ready or not, the cloud will have a dramatic impact on the way we plan provision, create and deploy applications in the future.

C

loUD CompUTiNG’S adoption rate is quickly accelerating and, spurred by organisations’ need to enable growth and reduce costs, it’s now transitioning from the very early adopters, to an early majority phase in the technology adoption lifecycle. it’s seen by many Cios as the next logical solution, as capital expenditure is replaced with operational expenditure and users benefit from the economies of scale that cloud computing brings.

In fact, according to a report published in May 2011 by Ovum, nearly 50 percent of multinational corporations are using cloud computing services of some kind.

From 102 multinational corporations which have been surveyed, with at least 10,000 employees, it was found that 45 percent have adopted cloud computing, compared to only 28 percent last year. so it seems that after much hype and discussion, cloud services are moving from concept to reality, and CIOs now have to make important decisions on where data should be stored, to best suit their organisations, the type of data they handle and, importantly, their strategies moving forward. The challenge now is not only where to begin, but more importantly, which cloud option best suits your business?

the hybrid option Of course, moving to the cloud doesn’t have to be all about a wholesale, lock, stock and barrel shift. Most organisations may prefer to keep core applications in-house and move the less ‘critical’ apps to the cloud. whilst the cloud can, of course, offer many cost 30 VitAL : November / December 2011

and operational advantages there is still some reluctance from organisations to store their mission sensitive information, such as financial or strategic planning data on the public cloud.

In all likelihood, many organisations will choose the ’middle way’ that is, adopt a hybrid cloud model which has the ability to relay data and logic from core enterprise applications that are onpremise to other applications that reside in the cloud. In this way, organisations can decide which information stays on their internal network and which information can be carried across to the public cloud. This model gives organisations the power of choice and allows them to deploy applications and data where and when necessary. so while we’d expect that a significant proportion of applications will remain on premise for some years, ready or not, the cloud will have a dramatic impact on the way we plan provision, create and deploy applications in the future. so the challenge for CIOs is how does this work in reality? where do businesses begin in combining the mix of on-premise, public and private cloud applications?

Furthermore, how do CIOs ensure that they protect investments made in the past, all the while ensuring longevity of new investments?

making the hybrid cloud a reality Part of this begins with future-proofing applications so that they are cloud-ready, be they third party or legacy. new approaches, in the form of application platforms, are

providing organisations with the ability to deploy in multiple channels and with this approach, developers, whether in-house or Isvs, can now develop an application for the desktop, take that particular code, and move to a different engine and develop it on the cloud or on their mobile devices, without having to re-write from scratch.

The same application, which doesn’t necessarily have to be written in-house but could also include existing applications such as eRP or CRM, can run in the cloud, on premise, on mobile or on a combination of all three. For the hybrid model, for example, organisations can run the same application on the cloud and on mobile devices from exactly the same codebase.

This also means that organisations can benefit from cloud computing without having to make all the decisions now on what they should move to the cloud. It also means that they can gradually migrate applications to cloud environments, while protecting investments in existing business logic developed. so as CIO’s now go through the process of determining which applications they should move, how this fits in with their IT assets and infrastructure and the cost benefits that can be achieved, they can factor in that they do in fact have the power of choice; there are ways for them to have the flexibility to deploy their applications on-premise, or in the private cloud, public cloud, or both – and even switch from one to the other simply and cost-efficiently as and when business needs change. VitAL www.magicsoftware.com www.vital-mag.net

vitAL PROCesses

Re-engineer to succeed it’s time to get to grips with people-intensive iT processes and shift iT spend from ‘keeping the lights on’ to strategic and business-enabling iT projects, says Mark Lyttle, chief executive of Fusion Business Solutions.

i

N The current climate, increasing iT spend is very difficult and can often only be achieved by reducing the amount spent on iT operations, or so-called ‘keeping the lights on’. While one-off cost-cutting provides a starter, the real gain is in improving iT efficiency – but how easy is this to achieve?

A good starting point is to calculate the budget spent on IT operations (typically around 70 to 85 percent) and use this as a baseline to measure progress over time.

As much of these day-to-day IT operations costs are people-based, the most effective strategy is to make these individuals more efficient by ensuring business and operational processes are supported with software tools –

32 VitAL : November / December 2011

a method which is often dubbed ‘IT process reengineering’. The initial focus should centre on the biggest cost centre or people groups, such as the service desk, the server administration team or application support.

Once an IT process has been identified, the improvement or re-engineering process should start with the key performance indicator that measures the improvement. For the service desk, this could be the service desk cost per support user. As typically 85 percent of the cost of the service desk is people-related, the focus should centre on how to improve their productivity and efficiency.

Implementing a new service desk tool will have no impact on this at all, so the focus www.vital-mag.net

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vital processes

IT process reengineering is similar to business process re-engineering that was made popular in the ’90s by Hammer.

Crucially, it involves evaluating whether

should be on implementing new processes that can be supported by the tool, starting with the most time consuming and inefficient parts of the process. Understanding how the service desk are spending their time is key.

Worthwhile considerations might include; ‘can multiple service desks be consolidated across businesses or regions or functions?’; ‘How much time are the service desk spending communicating updates to customers?’; ‘What are the frequent, repetitive incidents?’; ‘How much time is spent interfacing with the second or third line and ‘how much manual re-tying is there between systems?’

In this respect, IT process re-engineering is similar to business process re-engineering that was made popular in the ’90s by Hammer.

Crucially, it involves evaluating whether existing processes are needed and undertaken and whether the root-cause of issues can be tackled. For example, if a service desk spends lots of time tackling laptop issues then, given laptops can take up to ten times the effort to support than desktops, does the IT organisation have more laptops than is needed?

Simplification

existing processes are needed and undertaken and whether the root-cause of issues can be tackled.

Essentially, IT process re-engineering is about simplifying processes, standardising and

then automating. It’s important to stress that this is not about gathering detailed requirements and then building or customising a tool to support this as this approach is too slow, lacks flexibility and has a high cost of maintenance. Instead using a tool to drive best practice and standardisation through ‘out of the box’ features is the best strategic approach.

Having a ‘platform’ tool that combines multiple modules such as service desk, change and configuration management, configuration management database (CMDB) etc also helps, as it removes the need for the many point-to-point integrations needed to automate processes. In many ways, this is not unlike the way that ERP systems are used.

When it is focused on people-intensive areas, driving process simplification, standardisation and automation IT, process re-engineering has a real and significant potential to reduce the budget required IT operations, freeing critical spend for strategic and business-enabling projects. In its simplest terms, to get the maximum return on IT investments, organisations must put people first and concentrate on making processes more efficient within the IT operations department. VitAL www.fusion.co.uk

Process checklist A successful IT-enabled process – should have the following characteristics: Key performance indicator: Whether it is based on cost/efficiency, quality, service or customer satisfaction (or a combination), knowing how well the process is being performed is essential.

Standardisation: The process must be implemented consistently across the organisation.

If staff are trained in the technology but not the process, it will be performed in different ways leading to inconsistencies and inefficiencies.

Integrate the process: Ensure the process is embedded into the systems, rather than being an add-on. This should result in total adherence to the process and increased likelihood of project success.

Out with the old: The process depends on systems, but good systems don’t automatically replace bad practices. Too many organisations fall into the trap of buying new systems and customising them to deliver the old, inefficient processes.

Be clear from the outset: To be successful, the process should be precise and based on clear instructions rather than general guidelines. Lack of supporting work instructions and definitions can lead to processes being performed inconsistently and mean that reporting data cannot be relied upon

34 VitAL : November / December 2011

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vitAL PROCesses

Evolution of theory Christine Headford, product director at rmS Services explains why continual service improvement (CSi) must evolve to include business intelligence (Bi) and how heroes – highly empowered and resourceful operatives can help.

i

Til hAS been around a long time; it is 20 years since the first iTil manuals started appearing on desks and iT professionals started collecting their iTil badges. The industry saw a pronounced surge in take up at the start of the 21st century and most iT departments now operate along common lines even if not overtly purporting to be ‘doing’ iTil, due to a common understanding of the key processes involved.

The jargon of ITIL, of Incidents, Problems and Changes, has been adopted as the lexicon of ITsM almost without thought to its origin.

However, organisations who implement ITIL as a deliberate methodology fully realise that it is not a one-off task to set up their ITsM processes, but an ongoing mission to continually improve. This is described within

36 VitAL : November / December 2011

ITIL as Continual service Improvement, where, having set up a service, your process includes mechanisms to continually identify areas for improvement. But how long before you run out of opportunities?

opportunities for improvement At the outset of an ITIL project the opportunities for improvement are obvious and we have seen ITsM product fashions supporting the next quick win. we’ve seen online knowledge bases to improve first time fix rates, and automated monitoring tools to automatically detect failures, report them and even fix them without user intervention. More recently the fashion has been for self service, with end user portals, and online service catalogues.

There will be further opportunities for www.vital-mag.net

vital processes

The jargon of ITIL, of

Fig 1. The service-oriented ITIL v3 is the most applied methodology for organisational setup.

Incidents, Problems

(56627 Forrester Research, Inc., Market Overview: IT Service Management Support Tools, March 2011)

and Changes, has been adopted as the lexicon of ITSM almost without thought to its origin.

Fig 2. Business Intelligence is moving from silos to centralisation to agility (Forrester Research, Inc., Trends 2011 and Beyond: Business Intelligence, March 2011)

However, organisations who implement ITIL as a deliberate methodology fully realise that it is not a one-off task to set up

Fig 3. The role of the BI HERO (57558 Forrester Research, Inc., Empower BI HEROES With Self-Service Tools, October 2010)

their ITSM processes, significant improvements, as new technologies become available. For example, technologies now exist which read a person’s micro expressions and tell you how they are really feeling. How useful would it be for helpdesk staff to be able to understand the level of frustration being experienced by the user they are currently helping? There are also badges your staff can wear which monitor how people are interacting and can help promote cooperative team work. But to get results now, rather than look for technology to provide the improvement, where do you direct your efforts?

The concern is that ITSM and ITIL are proving the 80/20 rule in as much that for 20 percent of the effort you can achieve 80 percent of the required result. We assert that the 80 percent has now been realised and IT now has to www.vital-mag.net

work much harder to get a significant return.

So organisations will need to be able to judge just how much effort is needed and just what the return will be, otherwise the initiative may well be uneconomic. The low hanging fruit have already been picked and now it’s time to reach a little higher.

The answer to this is Business Intelligence (BI). The world of BI has been focused on the enterprise and running the business, but successful organisations treat IT as a business within the business, and it should turn the BI focus on itself. The problem in the past has been the cost and effort of implementing BI, with large ramp up times and expensive tools. But with the advent of Agile BI tools and Self Service BI, this is now changing and the opportunity is there for IT to turn the spotlight

but an ongoing mission to continually improve.

November / December 2011 : VitAL 37

vitAL PROCesses

Organisations will

on its own performance. now is the time that ITIL and BI can, and should, converge.

need to be able to

Looking for the detail

judge just how much effort is needed and just what the return will be, otherwise the initiative may well be uneconomic. The low hanging fruit have already been picked and now it’s time to reach a little higher.

38 VitAL : November / December 2011

“The days of a ‘universal panacea’ that will give improvement to all are over. Organisations now have to look at the detail of what they want to do to drive improvement, and this can only be done with a suitable Business Intelligence tool – so the two are becoming intrinsically linked,” said David williams, MD of RMs services. But what can BI show you? Hidden in your ITsM system are copious data, that if revealed would provide very interesting information.

The first place to start is a high level view across different aspects of the services provided. This might be looking at trends in volumes, response metrics, and costing information, where anomalies may show. Is a particular application taking significantly more time and effort to implement/support/upgrade than others? Are there spikes in the number of incidents – what could be causing these?

An important point to note is that the information needed to give these insights is often spread across many databases and spreadsheets. But luckily, the new range of Agile BI tools can pull this information together easily and allow information from one area to be combined with information from another.

Having spotted an interesting anomaly, the BI tool should then allow a deep dive into the data, dicing and slicing by different criteria and displaying the raw data as necessary.

The spikes in incidents may be associated with particular types of changes, which can be seen by overlaying the trends in incidents, with the change schedule, isolating particular types. Understanding what has happened may allow you to address the issue and stop those

incidents in the first place. However, finding this level of detail with traditional BI tools has placed a considerable strain on already stretched IT resources.

holding out for a hero The market-leading independent research company, Forrester, has recognised this phenomenon christening the champions within a company as ‘HeROes’ – it is important to enable these heroes with self service tools that can be provided by the company’s IT Department enabling the individual, whilst retaining control.

“Groundswell technologies – social, mobile, video, and cloud – put tremendous power in the hands of customers. Only empowered employees can respond at the speed of empowered customers – and they’re often information workers outside of IT. We call these innovative information workers HEROes – highly empowered and resourceful operatives. The HERO Index is a new tool we have developed to measure just how empowered and resourceful your own employees are. Our data reveals that some industries (like technology products and services) and job descriptions (like marketing and nonretail sales) harbour more HEROes than others. Your new job is to find the HEROes in your organisation and to encourage and support their innovative applications.”

Forrester Research, Inc., The HeRO Index: Finding empowered employees, June 2010.

“In Forrester’s recently published book, Empowered, Forrester Research analysts describe ways that new technologies can empower business people and make them true HEROes through individual contributions to their respective company’s top and bottom lines. The book also points out how business www.vital-mag.net

vitAL PROCesses

intelligence (BI) is a key technology for HEROes, not only helping them to make sense of the mountains of data that they have to deal with, but actually allowing them to make better and faster decisions. But BI applications tend to exhibit an interesting paradoxical pattern: The more you use them, the more new and different requirements keep pouring in. This neverending snowball effect of new BI requests from business users puts a significant strain on IT resources. Even with the most noble IT efforts, the ‘build it and they will come’ BI paradox will take its toll. In the end, BI business users have no choice but to start fulfilling a significant portion of their own BI requirements using BI technologies that can enable BI self-service and empower BI.” Forrester Research, Inc. Report ‘empower BI HeROes with self-service’ (October 2010)

the impact of improvement The other area of interest is in really understanding the impact of improvements

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you make. you may suppose that adding additional staff to a particular process will increase the performance of that area, but what actually happens? you’re more likely to see an initial dip as existing staff help train the new people, but how long does this last and when do you start to see the improvement?

By mapping the changes in resourcing to the performance metrics you will be able to understand the necessary bedding-in period for particular types of improvements and set expectations accordingly.

Initiatives, which were made on an economic case for a specific return on investment, will now be able to prove, or disprove themselves, by turning the spotlight on the data, through BI. Management will demand this level of planning and control and IT will need to implement BI to support it.

People are asking, has ITIL has its day? But with CsI it will go on forever – when supported by agile BI. VitAL www.rms.co.uk

People are asking, has ITIL has its day?

But with CsI it will go on forever – when supported by agile BI.

November / December 2011 : VitAL 39

vitAL PROCesses

Coming out of the silo To successfully present improvement value, an iTSm return on investment report must come out of the silo to reach beyond the boundaries of iT and demonstrate operational improvement values.

Andrew Brummer of iCCm Solutions reports.

m

eASUriNG A return on investment (roi) for any part of a business can be a strain at the best of times. The complexity increases if it means altering legacy decisions or apparent established wisdom.

For an organisation to work truly effectively it must realise and tackle its operational efficiencies and present relevant value; return on investment, value on investment, or total cost of ownership, generically referred to as the roi report.

The ROI report is often the backbone in supporting a business’ decision or objective to encourage some level of change. This could be a change in technology, resources, business processes – the list is endless.

40 VitAL : November / December 2011

each industry, organisation and department has varying methods of defining ROI. The IT service Management (ITsM) industry is no different; albeit there are common themes between verticals and challenges. The problem is that ITsM ROI reports are usually collated by the IT team and by default are commonly presented by, for and in the language of IT. The challenge for ITsM professionals is to accurately represent ROI to support the business objective and subsequently induce change.

presenting financial information The IT person typically has little financial background or organisational fiscal www.vital-mag.net

vital processes

understanding, and so is focused on delivering an IT message in justification of an IT recommendation. This makes the understanding and relevance of an ITSM ROI report, outside of the IT sphere, very difficult.

This is compounded by the inherent nature of IT to steer away from finding hard facts during research and information gathering.

Many reasons feed this behaviour, including resource availability, access to company and department finances, understanding how costs are assigned, non-visibility of individual and departmental value to the company, and inability to gather data – through nonavailability, resistance, and fear of what will be found.

However, the reality is that factual data is an essential part of any ROI report. This integral data includes: volumes, costs and revenue impacts; change costs for technology, resources and consulting; the time period in which the organisation expects to see a return and what the increased throughput is expected to be. Critically, and often not planned for, is how these metrics and measurements will be tracked and who will be accountable.

Another challenge is presented in the way IT professionals interpret data, it is often dependant on their background. Entry into the industry through, for example, data centre, problem resolution, operational transition or business analysts, will ‘command’ the view of how a person takes on financial figures.

It is essential for IT professionals to grasp the necessity for these hard facts to be recognised, understood and presented accurately in an ROI report. This is only the starting point though. To substantiate the change to the business the presentation of this data must also be fit for purpose.

Looking beyond the IT sphere IT Service Management programmes have the ability to return real organisational value.

The challenge for the ITSM industry is being able to find it, validate it, gain organisational agreement, make the ROI relevant, be able to track and demonstrate it.

To do this, the focus needs to be on understanding how to find relevant metrics, operational benefits and key performance indicators. All these key activities are driven to ensure that the ROI is sound, owned, and substantiates business needs and challenges.

However this cannot be achieved without giving consideration to spheres of the business outside of IT. When a technology professional is evaluating ROI, they are often doing so in isolation rather than considering the whole company. On that basis, one has to question the true relevance www.vital-mag.net

of many ITSM ROI reports as they stand today.

If a report fails to consider other business streams, including HR, finance and facilities, and is drafted with an IT management audience in mind, rather than the operational management teams (who will expect reports to be in layman’s business terms) then it will have little relevance to the rest of the organisation and hold little credibility.

To successfully present improvement value, an ITSM ROI report must come out of the silo to reach beyond the boundaries of IT and demonstrate operational improvement values.

After all, it is almost impossible for operational efficiency programmes to substantiate the effort, investment and change without bringing to the attention the organisational benefits.

Bringing silos together The purpose of an ROI report should not be the justification of recommendations for a pre-defined answer. The real (and factual) costs of an outage, incident or failed change must be understood in order to demonstrate the true ROI value, and as such, substantiate business need and activities such as change, project initiation, or product implementations.

Good and skilled as technology professionals are, they now need to be more than IT people and intrinsically understand the relevance of an ITSM ROI programme and its importance to a company – in short, the business objective.

If an IT person was asked to associate their bonus, income or performance milestones to their ability to realise the ROI set out, then one would expect that person to give thorough consideration to how and why the ROI can be achieved. In that vein, we cannot expect an organisation’s management teams to commit funds or establish improvement plans unless they had made those same considerations.

For the commitment to be given by management teams, the presented value within an ITSM ROI report must be both meaningful and relevant to the business. Only then can the ROI induce some level of change, and the ITSM industry can begin to efficiently plan for, present and realise ROI savings.

A prevailing industry question is whether an ITSM standard for ROI reporting could negate the problems with IT professionals in putting together reports which appear to be unfit for purpose. Although the concept of ROI is feasible, the plethora of variables makes a standard view unattainable. But one thing is clear – ROI must be brought out of the silo and into the heart of the business, with IT focusing on the ‘how to find’ and ‘what ROI looks like’ rather than ‘what it is’. VitAL www.iccm.co.uk

IT Service Management programmes have the ability to return real organisational value.

The challenge for the ITSM industry is being able to find it, validate it, gain organisational agreement, make the ROI relevant, be able to track and demonstrate it.

November / December 2011 : VitAL 41

vitAL PROCesses

The freedom of wireless low-cost wireless links reduce installation and maintenance costs and provide mobility; however, designing an effective wireless-networking solution requires an understanding of today’s complex wireless technologies, their benefits, and their trade-offs. Martin Poppelaars of lantronix makes the case.

Worth the investment?

Local Area networks (LAns) run on wire cable. wire is expensive to install and difficult to reconfigure for changes in the production environment. It does not allow for mobility, and there are certain places it simply cannot go. For instance, running cable throughout a factory floor is extremely difficult if not impossible. Because of these limitations, wLAns (wireless LAns) have become a hot commodity, revolutionising the way we work and do business today.

Data applications running over wireless networks can be found everywhere in our daily lives. They are particularly attractive to industries where certain functions are difficult 42 VitAL : November / December 2011

to perform because of large areas, harsh operating conditions, or other restrictions.

For example, wireless applications are ideally suited for pharmaceutical manufacturing applications, where an ultraclean environment is required to monitor, control, and configure equipment.

The real-world benefits of wireless, however, can be seen across almost every industry. some specific examples include the following: Healthcare: The medical and healthcare industries are aggressively seeking productivity gains as a result of the current nursing and doctor shortage. with this situation expected to worsen as baby boomers age and require more care, an increasing number of medical www.vital-mag.net

vital processes

Businesses of all types are finding that wireless networks meet the high availability and capacity requirements needed for their specific applications. Once a decision is made to deploy a wireless system, the overriding question then becomes one of standards.

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and healthcare industries are modifying their processes by building convincing wireless return on investment (ROI) models. Use of computer-based physician order entry (CPOE) and barcode scanning for medications is expected to expand over the next few years and wireless communications networks are essential to their success.

As news of medical mistakes become more public, wireless applications are also becoming a key component in improving accuracy and quality of care in hospitals.

Now hospital emergency-room doctors can examine a seriously injured patient, order x-rays, have the patient transferred to surgery, and receive the x-rays electronically in the operating room. In addition, physicians can remotely check a patient’s status, test results, medication schedules, or other information based on up-to-date entries made by nurses on their rounds. Quality of care improves dramatically as patient information is more accessible wirelessly and as more accurate information is recorded by immediate record keeping.

Retail: Retailers are seeking ways to improve productivity, reduce costs, and generate incremental revenue. WLANs and the applications that run over them offer proven solutions. Popular examples include multimedia kiosks and selfservice displays that employ audio, video, animation, and graphics to run point of sale (POS) and information applications.

By improving the timeliness and flow of information, these wireless solutions lead to better overall customer satisfaction and increased profitability.

A major music store, for example, has set up wireless kiosks that provide real-time streaming of music videos, seasonal fashion displays, ticket-selling services, local web access, on-line music sampling, and other content residing on a video server.

In the future, retailers will be able to install RFID (radio frequency identification device) readers into their store shelves.

With these readers, retailers will have the capability to detect when the shelves are empty and need to be restocked – all via wireless communication.

Transport: Before wireless, checking in a rental car was a lengthy procedure that

took far too long. In addition, the mass of paperwork that had to be manually entered on a daily basis was getting out of control.

Worse still, returned vehicles would stay on the premises for hours before being able to be turned around and re-rented. These companies needed a real-time solution to help improve their rental-return process, and WLANs are allowing them to accomplish strategic business goals in new and innovative ways.

For example, to reduce the costs of vehicle damage, a major rental-car agency is using a wireless system that allows damaged cars to be inspected and an appraisal prepared within two minutes. The company estimates that it will save millions of pounds per year on unrecovered costs. It also ensures that crucial customer information and signatures are not lost.

Manufacturing: Productivity improvements; inventory management; and quality control.

All are common challenges found in virtually every manufacturing facility today. From automotive to warehouse environments, the need to attach essential devices such as PLCs, CNC/DNC equipment, process and quality control equipment, pump controllers, barcode operator displays, scales and weighing stations, printers and machine vision systems is common.

Wireless networks offer the solution for all these challenges.

For example, a major facility control centre had problems operating process-control equipment on a legacy network that was independent of the LAN. To network-enable all of the process control equipment at the support centre would have required more than 1,500 feet of wiring and conduit spanning multiple buildings. Instead, wireless device servers have been integrated to Ethernetenable all of the equipment in the support centre. This solution also delivers significant time-savings, as over 500 PCs in the support centre have access to real-time information as it is generated by the process control equipment. This eliminates the need for a technician to patrol the floor and monitor each device individually, and speeds the response time when a failure occurs.

These examples prove that businesses of all types are finding that wireless networks meet November / December 2011 : VitAL 43

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Over the past decade, wireless local area networks have played a key role in revolutionising the use of technology in our society. In the office and at home, and now across most business infrastructures, wireless connectivity is permeating every aspect of our lives.

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the high availability and capacity requirements needed for their specific applications. Once a decision is made to deploy a wireless system, the overriding question then becomes one of standards.

Surveying the wireless landscape Today’s popular wireless-networking standards are various and can prove very difficult to choose between. There are, however, important differences that are worth exploring in greater detail: 900MHz technology: This is an unlicensed spectrum that has been commonly and traditionally used for portable phones, microwaves and wireless internet services.

Internationally, the 900 MHz band is widely used for Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile telephone systems or military communications. As a result, companies with sites around the globe cannot standardise on 900MHz-based solutions for all locations. But the 900MHz band suffers from a lack of interoperability, as vendors employ proprietary radio protocols. The industry, on the other hand, is moving towards standards-based systems, with multi-vendor support for common WLAN infrastructures.

By contrast, Wi-Fi consumers are not restricted to a single vendor for upgrades and expansion of their WLAN systems.

Wi-Fi: In a mixed wireless network environment, it is important to select standards- based wireless products that are able to exchange and use information.

Wi-Fi is a generic term that refers to any type of 802.11 network, the term is promoted by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Therefore, any products tested and approved as ‘Wi-Fi Certified®’ by the Wi-Fi Alliance are certified as interoperable with each other, even if they are from different manufacturers. A user with a Wi-Fi Certified product can also use any brand of access point with any other brand of client hardware that is also Wi-Fi certified.

Users benefit from this interoperability by not being locked into one vendor’s solution.

Bluetooth: Named after the Viking, Harald Bluetooth, bluetooth is a short-range (10 metre) frequency-hopping protocol that links devices. Designed to operate in noisy frequency environments, bluetooth uses a fast acknowledgement and frequency-hopping scheme to make a link robust. It avoids interference from other signals by hopping to a new frequency after transmitting or receiving a packet. Compared with other systems in the same frequency band, bluetooth hops faster and uses shorter packets. As a short-range, low-cost, wireless solution, bluetooth requires less operating power than most other devices.

However, because it shares a specific radio spectrum, there is potential for interference with consumer appliances that operate in the same spectrum, such as cordless phones, microwaves and baby monitors.

Bedding in the right solution Over the past decade, wireless local area networks have played a key role in revolutionising the use of technology in our society. In the office and at home, and now across most business infrastructures, wireless connectivity is permeating every aspect of our lives. But as has been demonstrated, there are an abundance of complexities associated with wireless connectivity. The effort involved in understanding this technology and bringing it to embedded solutions can be daunting, time-consuming and expensive. It is therefore important for organisations to seek out providers that can simplify the process.

To capitalise on the growth in this space, they need a convenient, cost- effective, and easy-to-install solution for adding wireless connectivity to their embedded designs.

Finding a provider that offers the flexibility to suit specific wireless requirements, with the ability to add connectivity modules to any product quickly and easily, is an important place to start. VitAL www.lantronix.com www.vital-mag.net

vitAL PROCesses

Concealed cloud costs According to Dave Paulding of interactive intelligence businesses need to be very careful to look out for hidden costs when choosing cloud services.

CIOs and C-level executives involved in the decision to migrate to the cloud need to fully understand the extent of the costs involved, both up front and hidden, this will ensure they get their silver lining and are not drenched in a shower of expenses.

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N ThiS day and age of austerity companies are looking to save money across the board through improved business efficiencies. There are many ways that this can be done, but one of the most effective is to move processes and systems to the cloud.

This enables businesses to cut a range of costs associated with on-premise iT and communications systems, including capital expenditure, maintenance and power bills.

However, choosing the right service is vital to not only save costs, but also to improve their visibility and predictability. The way most cloud contracts work is that the customer is charged for a set cost per user per month for a fixed duration. Any so-called hidden costs that might be expected from a service should be included in this rate. such a model makes it very easy for CFOs to predict their monthly IT spend as this should always stay the same. This is one of the reasons why cloud computing is so attractive to businesses – budget visibility.

Indeed a recent Interactive Intelligence survey showed that 64 percent of CeOs are actively pursuing to move their business applications to the cloud.

hidden in the clouds However, businesses need to take care when choosing a provider and a service as there could be unexpected costs. Most of these unwanted surprises occur when the customer needs to change its cloud contract for whatever reason – moving premises,

increasing/decreasing the number of users, altering the service. some providers are not clear about such costs and these could be ongoing depending on the nature of the solution, providing great uncertainty.

The key is to look for providers that offer a known fixed price for any bespoke or customisation work.

The other expense that might come into play is telephony costs which are determined by how the system is designed and how the business connects to the solution.

Additional costs would come in with the volume of call traffic but that is no different to having a system in a company’s building – they still need to pay for those variable costs.

The costs are not hidden, but neither are they fixed as they are dependent on the volume of traffic the company makes and receives.

True cloud-based applications should allow the user to manage and administer any changes to cut out the never-ending developing, integration and customisation costs. One way of doing this is for vendors to limit the amount of customisations and changes to the system to keep costs down and therefore ensure that the cost passed on to the customer is limited.

finding mr right As can be seen, choosing the right provider that offers transparent pricing for their services makes it easy to predict IT budgets. But www.vital-mag.net

vitaL eYes on

what about the other unintended costs? Those costs that arise from the impact the cloud service can have upon business operations?

These need to be considered just as carefully as the face value of a service.

It is important to realise that not all clouds are the same and businesses need to examine how a service is delivered, as this can have a great impact on control, which in itself is costly. Take for instance, Communications as a service (Caas), which is one of the main areas where businesses are moving to the cloud. some providers will redirect a customer’s phone lines to a centrally hosted data centre, yet this not only removes operational control away from the client, but it can also pose a security risk. Other providers will allow the customer to keep their phone lines and will bridge these to the hosted data centre. However, this is likely to be a collection of different platforms and servers from third party vendors, meaning that the provider is unlikely to be able to offer the customer the exact solution it needs. This impacts not only the control of what the system looks like and can cope with, but also limits the capacity for expansion or results in costly delays while the provider acquires additional platforms and servers.

Both of these options give control to the provider, when it needs to be with the customer. A third option is local control. This solution sees all lines and calls staying onpremise, combined with an on-site proxy and gateway meaning that even if connectivity with a data centre is lost, calls can still be made. This greatly reduces the associated costs of time-outs.

fast, reliable broadband Finally, cloud services rely on fast and reliable broadband connectivity. A slow service could result in employees not being able to access applications as quickly as they need to, meaning that productivity is impeded.

Likewise, if connectivity is lost, then work is likely to come to a standstill. Both of these scenarios have to be considered carefully when looking at the service offered by an IsP and what they charge for the bandwidth that is required to use the cloud.

CIOs and C-level executives involved in the decision to migrate to the cloud need to fully understand the extent of the costs involved, both up front and hidden, this will ensure they get their silver lining and are not drenched in a shower of expenses. VitAL www.inin.com www.vital-mag.net

Freeware – Think before you download!

Timely advice from Jonathan Westlake on how – and indeed if – to go about choosing and downloading freeware.

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reeWAre hAS been a great boon in recent years. At its best it can provide free effective applications for any size of business. At its worst it can be an avenue to problems for your pC or network. one fundamental difference between freeware software and commercial software is the responsibility or assurance that the software is clean of malware. Freeware is without any commercial comeback, a sort of ‘downloader beware’ scenario.

Rather like Christmas shopping on the web there is an element of excitement when hunting for freeware which if not checked can be dangerous - you find a download option for a freeware application and may think “Great, I want it now”. However, stop, don’t press that button! you might regret it. so how do you avoid getting perhaps more than you bargained for when looking for freeware solutions?

The answer is rather mundane and boils down to doing your homework/research.

Look for references or ‘noise’ on the web

about the freeware application you are interested in. Google it and see what you get. If there is evidence of problems/loading issues/performance issues then perhaps it is best avoided. Find out what your friends or other businesses use instead.

As an example, which is well documented on the web, are peer-to-peer file sharing applications. The following both represent an alternative to iTunes. Bearshare is an example of an application, which has evidence of performance issues on a PC if downloaded. winamp is an alternative, which has a good reputation and no evidence of problems once loaded. so based on the research of both an opinion can be formed. VitAL Useful references: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_ shareware_sites.htm good example of freeware: http://www.avast.com/free-antivirusdownload November / December 2011 : VitAL 47

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The greening of the IT estate Today, one of the main attractions of going green is the simple fact that greening your iT estate can potentially save you thousands of pounds, and at the same time massively improve efficiencies, according to Mark Monroe Monroe, executive director of The Green Grid.

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N reCeNT years, the greening of the iT estate has been associated with huge resource efforts and has sometimes been motivated by for ecological or corporate social responsibility reasons. Today, one of the main attractions of going green is the simple fact that greening your iT estate can potentially save your business thousands of pounds, and at the same time massively improve efficiencies across business.

security of the data centre For any information-rich company, whether it operates in the financial services, utilities or even telco, being able to store and process corporate data securely and cost effectively is a major priority; and can impact greatly on a companies’ performance levels. One of the most secure and cost effective options for storing data is within a data centre as, in the event that your server goes down, they have numerous functions in place to ensure that all data is backed up and accessible at all times – providing their customers a competitive advantage.

Factors such as heat and humidity within a data centre affect on the performance of servers and therefore, need to be closely monitored and controlled at all times. For this reason, data centres across the world continually strive to achieve the ultimate working conditions for storing data, but until the last five years or so, did not focus on reducing their energy usage to cut costs. sustainability metrics have been designed to help improve the resource efficiency of data centre facilities by measuring the effectiveness of carbon and water use tied specifically to the IT energy infrastructure they contain. For example, the Carbon Usage effectiveness (CUe), water Usage effectiveness (wUe), 48 VitAL : November / December 2011

and Power Usage effectiveness (PUe) metrics all are designed to help IT, facilities, and sustainability organisations across the globe optimise their data centres.

PUe helps managers determine the efficiency of the power and cooling systems in their data centres by comparing the total amount of energy consumed by the data centre facility to the amount of energy consumed by the IT equipment inside it.

PUe was first published in 2007, and was recently ratified by a cross-industry data centre metric task force as the recommended measurement for determining energy efficiency in dedicated data centre facilities.

CUe will help managers determine the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated in delivering work from the IT gear in a data centre facility. similarly, wUe will help managers determine the amount of water used by the facility, and the amount used to deliver work from IT operations.

design, build and operate Decision-makers need the right tools to design, build, and operate their data centres in a sustainable way as they plan for increased computing, networking, and storage demands and this emphasises the importance and relevance of these metrics today. CUe and wUe metrics are significant steps forward in helping data centre operators measure the effectiveness of carbon and water used by their data centres. Using a standard set of metrics like PUe, CUe, and wUe will lead to better managing of natural resources, therefore potentially reducing consumption, which leads to lower operating costs.

A recent survey carried out by The Green Grid revealed that 49 percent of www.vital-mag.net

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data centres are now using economisers to achieve essential cost and energy reductions. economisers are intended to reduce energy consumption by using free outside air cooling instead of mechanical chillers, which saves energy while ensuring that optimum temperatures are maintained within a data centre.

The research findings showed that the use of economisers has reached a tipping point, with half of respondents saying that they already used them and a further 24 percent considering implementing them in the near future.

optimum deployment

what we are witnessing is a technology that is maturing far faster than previously thought. we now need to make sure that data centre managers have the tools and information they need to understand how and what the best economiser options are for optimum deployment. Factors such as the location of a data centre will determine what economiser is best. For example, a data centre in the sahara where the environment is air rich and

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water poor, could not depend on a waterside system based economiser. In terms of what conditions are best, dry, cool climates are the best for economisation, where hours of application may be limited in hotter, more humid areas. with the recent launch of the first carbon neutral data centre, which opened in Iceland, we may continue to see a trend where an increasing number of leading global data centre operators will move to colder climates in order to reduce their energy consumption in line with regulation, keep costs down and in turn be able to offer more competitive prices to customers.

As already highlighted, cost and in particular return on investment usually has a massive influence over whether a company decides to invest in energy saving measures or not.

The survey findings positively conveyed that the return on investment from adoption is very convincing, with respondents registering an average saving of 20 percent on energy costs and seven percent on maintenance costs.

For companies operating in sectors such as

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Greening of the IT estate will no doubt be near the top of business agenda as businesses and data centre operators attempt to reduce energy usage and maintenance costs; not only to reduce spend and increase profits but to improve

financial services, utilities and telco, reducing IT costs is no longer a consideration but a necessity with the consequences of the economic downturn continuing to be a major impact on budgets. For many businesses, being able to reduce IT spend, whilst boosting performance levels is a real competitive advantage. Cloud computing has helped this to become more of a reality by enabling data centres to offer an OPeX pay as-youuse model, which also provides businesses with greater scalability.

more work to do Interestingly our research found that despite these impressive results more can still be achieved. Responses showed that there is an average 4,724 hours per year available in which economisers can be used effectively, however their actual use amongst the sample averaged at 3,943 hours or 80 percent of the time.

The main reasons cited for the 20 percent gap included concerns with switching over between economiser and mechanical cooling systems and maintenance of the economiser itself. In the future, we need to look at how we can tighten the transition

between economiser and mechanical cooling technology and shorten required maintenance time.

The most significant barriers to change include difficulty in retrofitting existing facilities, reliability concerns and initial deployment costs. However, the satisfaction levels indicated by the survey suggest that any challenges are worth it with eight out of ten people saying that they would recommend their specific type of economiser to others.

The popularity of economisers will continue to raise the bar for robust data centres with low energy consumption being a real selling point. with this demand, we will see further developments of sustainable metrics and data centre models, which are paramount to enabling businesses and data centres to drive down energy usage effectively.

Greening of the IT estate will no doubt be near the top of business agenda as businesses and data centre operators attempt to reduce energy usage and maintenance costs; not only to reduce spend and increase profits but to improve performance, security and help them to meet tough new regulations surrounding energy consumption. VitAL www.thegreengrid.org

performance, security and help them to meet tough new regulations surrounding energy consumption.

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itSMF 2011 London Conference & Exhibition Preview

ITsMF PRevIew

Countdown to London 2011 Now in its 20th year, itSmF UK Conference and exhibition is the annual event for iT Service management professionals, offering education, networking and an annual awards dinner all under one roof in lively West london.

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TSmF UK’S 2011 Annual Conference and exhibition will be returning to the Novotel london West in hammersmith on 7th-8th November. “moving the Conference to london last year was a very positive step,” commented itSmF UK chief executive Ben Clacy. “The venue was welcomed not just by our UK delegates by also by the large number of overseas attendees, for whom the venue is a short hop along the m4 from heathrow.”

Once again the programme of 40-plus educational sessions will be divided into topics to help delegates find the most appropriate content for their needs. Alongside the more practical experience-based sessions in the Lessons Learned, softer skills and Tips and Techniques streams, there’s a range of specially selected topics as well as interactive workshops and sponsor-led presentations.

As always, some of the most valuable content in the agenda comes from members’ case-studies: • Brian Crighton from Tesco Bank talks about his experience in building up an ITIL v3-based service management capability from a team of one in 2009 to a 50-strong department delivering a service capability with the right people tools and processes in place.

• Clare Hubbard from the Met Office discusses the global MyOceans project which led to her receiving itsMF UK’s service Management Champion award last year.

• Nick Jackson and Paul Bernardi of Barclays Bank talk about effective change management within their organisation.

• Meanwhile, Andrew Binnian and Dave Caldwell reveal their tips for prioritising and driving ITsM transformation to support business change and improve effectiveness at Heineken UK, and Martin neville of the Audit Commission explains how effective supplier management can make a real difference to service delivery.

service management sessions These user stories are complemented by a variety of sessions from ITsM luminaries such as Ivor Macfarlane of IBM (‘Can IT people be service managers?’); vawns Guest and Peter Hubbard from Pink elephant, who discuss Change versus Release Management; and Karen Brusch from CGI, who leads an interactive session about setting up a service Catalogue. There are sessions on Green ITsM, planning network support for the London 2012 Olympics, and implementing ITIL processes in 15 countries, as well as updates on ITIL 2011 edition and the ITIL Masters qualification, the IsO/IeC 20000 standard, and the new prisM credentialing scheme. There’s even a session intriguingly titled, ‘Is your information secure? Are you sure? How bad would it be if you were wrong?’ from the masters of information security at GCHQ. All in all, there’s definitely something for everyone in this year’s schedule.

Keynotes Topping and tailing the event, the Conference includes keynote presentations from two truly inspirational figures. The opening plenary is given

by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Britain’s

52 VitAL : November / December 2011

greatest Paralympic athlete with eleven gold medals and six wheelchair marathons under her belt. A tireless campaigner for social development through sport, Tanni was recently elevated to the cross benches of the House of Lords as a ‘people’s peer’ with special interest in youth, health, sport and disability. Tanni’s strong motivational presentation style will be getting the conference off to a flying start.

The closing presentation will be given by Mark Hall, deputy chief information officer for HM Revenue & Customs. Unusually for CIOs, Mark is an IT service Management professional by trade and has been actively involved with ITIL and itsMF since the early 1990s, having been a former chairman of itsMF UK and a BCs examiner.

Mark’s highly topical closing plenary is entitled ‘IT service Management in times of austerity’, and focuses on the issues facing the public sector in times of unprecedented cutbacks, and the likely impact that they will have on service management.

A quick escalator trip from the Conference rooms brings delegates to the exhibition floor, where the ITsM industry’s leading vendors, consultants and trainers are available to discuss the latest tools, techniques and trends. “we’re very grateful to our sponsors and exhibitors,” commented Clacy, “without whom our conference just wouldn’t be possible in its current form. In the end, it’s the delegates that really make the conference and whether they are newcomers or regulars catching up with old friends, we can offer them a very warm welcome at the itsMF UK Conference.” VitAL www.vital-mag.net

itsmf preview itsmf preview

“Moving the Conference to London last year was a very positive step,” commented itSMF UK chief executive Ben Clacy. “The venue was welcomed not just by our UK delegates by also by the large number of overseas attendees, for whom the venue is a short hop along the M4 from Heathrow.”

Industry achievement As always, the focus of the Conference is the annual ITSM awards dinner, and this year the host will be popular entertainer Lenny Henry. “This is a great opportunity to celebrate commitment, dedication and innovation in service management,” said Clacy, with awards presented for:

Lenny Henry

•

Student of the year (ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000);

•

Trainer of the year;

•

Project of the year;

•

Service Innovation of the year;

•

Service Champion of the year;

•

Submission of the year;

•

The Paul Rappaport Award for Outstanding Contribution to Service Management.

As itSMF UK Chairman Barry Corless recently commented, “Every year I walk away from our awards ceremony thinking we can’t top that next year. I continue to be proved wrong.” www.itsmf.co.uk

Tanni Gre-Thompson

Mark Hall

www.vital-mag.net

November / December 2011 : VitAL 53

Visit Axios Systems at Stand D2

Introducing

v10

POWER.SIMPLIFIED SIMPLIFIED All ITIL v3 Processes in One Product Wizard-based reporting & decision support Modern, attractive and easy to use Seamless, non-intrusive upgrades “We have saved £3.1 million through delivering over 500 customer-focused improvements with the help of the assyst solution.”

Sheila Liddell Shop Direct

Practical guidance for choosing an ITSM subscription model

www.axiossystems.com/saas_vs_onpremise

Service Desk and IT Service Management Software

a nd em

as

t

View the webcast: ITSM Software: SaaS vs. On-Premise at:

On D

that's right for your organisation.

w ebc

www.axiossystems.com

SHOW liSTingS SHOW liSTingS SHOW liSTingS SHOW liSTingS SHOW liSTingS SHOW liSTingS SHOW liSTingS ITsMF PRevIew

itSMF 2010 exhibition listing For further details of companies listed here in bold see the listings section in this preview (p57-60) 31 Media

uKCMg

STAnd C4

www.ukcmg.org.uk

D7

IBM

Agelise

e7

Icore

e4

APMg

B8

ilx

E9

Axios

d2

Intel

D9

Barclay Rae/Jo Johns

A11/A12

Interlink software

B5

UKCMG is an independent, not for profit, user group organisation targeted at

BCS

A14

IT Governance

A13

improving members’ knowledge, skills and abilities in Capacity Management

CA

F6

Kepner Tregoe

C2

and related IT service management disciplines.

Capacitas

A6

Loyalist

C3

UKCMG members organise regular events for training and networking with

Cherwell

F3/F4

LRs

e6

leading international speakers and industry experts. we achieve this through a

Connectsphere

C6

Marval

D1/e1

combination of regional meetings, a two-day Annual Conference, free one-day

Devoteam

B6

Omninet

e5

forum, with networking between end-users, consultants & suppliers.

epaccsys

C5

PeopleCert

B4

Fox IT

A9

Pink Elephant

B1

Frontrange

G1

sDI

A10

g2g3

E2

Serena

A4

Global Knowledge

e3

service-now.Com

F1/F2

neXt event:

Solisma

C7

UKcmg free forum on the 22nd november, ditton park, slough.

global

F5

Technology Solutions

E8

Techexcel

B7

Hitachi

D6

The stationery Office

B2/B3

Hornbill

D4/D5

uKCMg

C4

HP

A7/A8

vMware

A15

UKCMG is an excellent forum in which IT professionals can improve and acquire skills, learn from experts and exchange information and ideas with experienced practitioners.

Free one-day event covering service Management, Capacity Management, Performance and Mainframe topics from end user and vendor speakers.

A table-top exhibition will run alongside. for more information visit: www.ukcmg.org.uk.

56 VitAL : November / December 2011

www.vital-mag.net

show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings show listings

APMG International

www.apmg-international.com

stand B5

International

APMG-International is showcasing its portfolio of accredited certifications including ITIL®, ISO/IEC 20000, Change & Problem Analyst and Service Catalogue. Come and talk to us on stand B5 for advice on making your way through the ITIL qualification scheme, how to ‘mix and match’ qualifications to best suit the career you want, and for exam tips. All our service management certifications give you ITIL credits so you’re sure to find something that interests and inspires you. Our Accredited Training Organizations have gone through the most rigorous assessment process in the industry so you can choose our courses with confidence.

Axios Systems Axios Systems, Axios House, 60 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7HF Tel: 0131 220 4748 Email: assystuk@axiossystems.com www.axiossystems.com

assyst from Axios Systems – Service Management that Performs In the modern age of commerce, IT is a fundamental enabler of business performance. Rapid growth in an ever-changing market is the key to survival and profitability in the global market. Axios Systems’ focus is to support your business success through our innovative Service Management platform, assyst. The assyst solution enables the rapid design, deployment and support of the new services your business needs right now. With options for on-premise ownership and subscription-based SaaS access, we have a solution to fit your organization.

Combining over two decades of R&D with the latest Web 2.0 technologies, assyst is one of the most mature and innovative solutions in the market. Encapsulating full-spectrum ITIL functionality, assyst was architected as an all-in-one solution with a uniquely configurable design to support the rapid change you need to continually align IT capability with business direction.

Our team of industry experts have been there and done it. Our unparalleled experience, spanning all industries, allows us to cut to the chase and work with you to get demonstrable results that impact the bottom line fast.

In an increasingly unstable vendor market, Axios Systems has the longevity, continuity and experience to deliver results to large enterprise organizations across the globe. Our track record of delivering success for household brand names speaks for itself.

We stick with our customers for the journey, which is why 97% of our customers come back to us year on year.

Find out more about how you can optimize IT and gain that vital business edge with assyst: www.axiossystems.com

stand D2

*

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Cherwell Software Tel:

stand F3/F4

+44 (0)1793 858181

Email: sales@cherwell.com Web: www.cherwell.com

The complete IT Service Management solution Cherwell Software, the developer of Cherwell Service Management™ and acknowledged by leading industry analysts as ‘an emerging leader of ITSM solutions’, provides a fully integrated service management solution for IT and support professionals. Cherwell offers you complete choice of software deployment and licensing models; on premise, Cherwell hosted, hosted by preferred third party; perpetual purchase or subscription; you choose!

Designed using Microsoft’s .NET platform and Web 2.0 technology Cherwell delivers 11 fully integrated ITIL v3 PinkVERIFIED management processes straight ‘out-of-the-box’, including; Incident, Problem, Change, CMBD, Request, SLA, Service Catalog, Release and Knowledge.

Cherwell licensing delivers all product functionality based on a concurrent user model and includes all 11 ITIL V3 management processes, plus additional modules including; our unique CMDB visualisation, dynamic dashboards, unlimited end user self-service, graphical workflow, mobile device and social media integration, open API for systems integration, AD/LDAP integration, report writer, customer survey module, an Outlook email add-in which eradicates the need to ‘cut and paste’ emails ever again, plus much more.

G2G3

Cherwell Service Management is 100% configurable by its end users and provides a highly scalable and extensible development platform. Our unique CBAT development platform delivers a true Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, empowering customers to develop integrated business applications such as; CRM, HR, Purchase Ordering, Project Management, Student Records and Facilities Management systems. All product upgrades are completely seamless, ensuring lower system management overheads and enabling customers to realise the benefits of new functionality more quickly.

In a recent Total Economic Impact (TEI) study by Forrester Consulting, for an organisation where Cherwell were selected to replace a legacy ‘Enterprise’ class solution, the financial analysis calculated an ROI of 108% and a total payback period of less than 10 months. This demonstrates truly significant cost savings for organisation currently using any legacy ‘Enterprise’ class service desk products.

Visit our website at www.cherwell.com for more information, you can also watch a number of short video clips designed to give an introduction to Cherwell and a clear overview of product features and functionality.

Visit us at Stand F3 & F4 and participate in our Game Show to win an iPad2, all entrants will receive a free 2GB USB Flash Drive.

stand E2

Email: info@g2g3.com Web: www.g2g3.com Twitter: twitter.com/g2g3

G2G3 is the leading provider of Organisational Change Management (OCM) and Transformation Programs which create IT organisations that are ready, willing and able to change.

G2G3 drives successful transformation through a combination of G2G3 solutions, including Simulation, Communications, Contextual Education, Infographics and more. This proven and award-winning methodology helps manage complex organisational transition to the desired transformation end-state, ultimately helping realise the long-term value from business improvement efforts.

Engaging G2G3 will drive the success of your IT transformation initiative, project or product, ensuring the effective on-boarding of all involved, and creating a culture of change by choice.

G2G3 transformation solutions include: In-room simulations: G2G3 offers a range of high-impact, ready-to-go, in-room business simulations that accelerate learning, change and transformation initiatives.

These are available in a number of variants for ITSM, ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, Lean IT, Project Portfolio Management, Business Continuity and many more. G2G3 can also design and develop bespoke in-room simulations solutions to meet your specific requirements.

Virtual Simulations: G2G3 are experts in creating virtual serious games and simulations. Our power lies in our ability to combine advanced 3D technologies

with gaming dynamics and unsurpassed IT enterprise industry knowledge. Virtual simulations are ideal for marketing, education or cultural change purposes.

Serious Games and Gamification: G2G3 are experts in ‘gamification’ – the act of applying game-like techniques to non-game environments. G2G3 can design and create exciting gamification solutions within IT enterprises to help drive innovation, transformation programs, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change across organisations.

Organisational Change Management (OCM): The G2G3 OCM approach drives successful transformation through the delivery of a bespoke combination of G2G3 solutions, including Simulation, Communications, Contextual Learning and Training, Infographics and more. This proven and highly-contextual methodology helps manage complex organisational and workforce transition to the desired transformation end-state, ultimately helping realise the long-term value from business improvement efforts.

Infographics and Knowledge Visualisation: By combining collaborative consulting with information design, G2G3 can create a visual knowledge strategy that will deliver tangible results across your transformation, change or communication program. Our infographics cut through the complexities traditionally associated with IT to design solutions that create immediate visual clarity and understanding.

To find out more about how our solutions can help you, contact us today.

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ILX Group

stand E9

ILX Group, 115 Hammersmith Road, London, W14 OQH Web: www.ilxgroup.com Tel: 01270 611600 Email: training@ilxgroup.com

ILX Group – Transforming the way people learn ILX Group is proud to be exhibiting at the itSMF UK Conference. This year we are delighted to announce an exclusive opportunity for organisations to speak with one of our ILX Consulting experts about organisational capability. Places are limited so contact us on 01270 611 600 quoting itSMFE9 to learn more*, or simply come and visit us at stand E9 to hear about the ILX Group full service offering as well as some great promotional opportunities on offer at the show!

Why visit ILX Group?

Our products and services

ILX Group is a global software technology company that specialises in delivering engaging learning experiences to consumers and corporate clients across the world.

ILX Group delivers learning products and services in over 100 countries across 5,000 organisations worldwide and is a global leader in IT Service Management, Project and Programme Management, Business Financial Literacy and Implementation Consulting.

As an internationally recognised ATO and ACO we create both formal and informal learning products, including interactive multimedia e-learning, games, simulations and mobile apps, as well as employing innovative software applications and other aspects of technology in the classroom.

As IT Service Management evolves and the framework continues to mature, organisations are discovering that the benefits reach beyond the IT department, and are beginning to be adopted within different scenarios throughout the business.

ILX Group is committed to building awareness and helping organisations mature towards adopting a more synergised approach to improving business capability.

We provide the full ITIL® suite of products from Foundation through to achievement of the ITIL Expert status as well as a collection of products and services, including maturity assessments and organisational health checks that help businesses achieve up to the internationally recognised standard ISO/IEC20000.

ILX Consulting has consistently delivered tangible improvements in capability, productivity and customer satisfaction to a wide range of businesses and organisations. *Subject to terms and conditions

Pink Elephant

stand B1

Email: Info.europe@pinkelephant.com Tel: + 44 (0) 118 324 0620 Web: www.pinkelephant.com

Pink Elephant is an independent global professional services organisation and world leader in IT management best practices. The company exists to optimise and transform IT Services for our clients, specialising in improving the quality of IT services through the application of recognised best practice frameworks, including the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®).

Our approach to implementing Service Management has been honed over 20 years of supporting transformation through the implementation of IT Service Management best practices. Our approach and experience in managing people through these organisational and cultural change programmes sets us apart. We Translate Knowledge into Results.

As Platinum Sponsors at this years Annual itSMF Conference and Exhibition we will not only be showcasing our Service Management expertise in Flexible Resourcing, Service Desk and Consulting solutions, we will also be launching our exciting LIVE Instructor Led Online Classrooms in the cloud...

Visit us at the exhibition on Stand B1 Using state of the art Cloud Rooms Technology™, Pink Elephant has developed a range of ITIL courses that can be delivered to our clients using the instructor led online approach. This is NOT traditional CBT or self paced online learning, this is a fully interactive course putting the classroom in the cloud...

The only difference between our conventional courses and our Instructor-Led OnLine (ILO) courses is that with ILO you do not physically sit in a classroom. Instead you access your “classroom” online, and you can interact with your instructor and classmates with chat, audio and video as you move through the lessons. Everything else remains the same, including the same expert instructor, the same course materials, and the same Pink Elephant techniques and strategies.

Why Instructor Led Online?

• Low cost • Environmentally friendly • Flexible learning • Allows for minimum time away from desk • No travel costs & Expenses • Can be delivered as client specific event or part of our public schedule.

Come and talk to us at the show about how we can use our tailored and flexible solutions to support your IT transformation projects. We have two speakers at the conference, our business, delivery teams and a key client who is a special advocate of our services. We will also be running ILO demonstrations from the stand and will be offering on stand promotions for guests and clients.

We hope to see you there.

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Solisma

stand C07

Solisma

Service Improvement Manager

Web: www.solisma.com

Web: service-improvement.com

Email: info@solisma.com

Email: sales@service-improvement.com

Solisma is a leading global provider of integrated service management solutions. Combined with our global partner network, we offer a comprehensive range of ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000 courseware, training, consulting and assessment services that help you quickly and cost-effectively improve your service management capability like never before.

Planning your next compliance or maturity assessment?

Then you need to take a look at Service Improvement Manager (SIM). Unlike other assessment spreadsheets and tools, SIM offers you a complete quality management solution your whole team can use.

Assess: Assess yourself against a wide range of frameworks and standards; Baseline: Measure your current-state and predicted levels of compliance and maturity; Benchmark: Compare your capability levels against your industry peers; Improve: Centrally create and manage your improvement initiatives with ease.

Now you can finally put those old spreadsheets to rest. With SIM, you can centrally manage a broad range of assessments with ease. Your improvement tasks are automatically generated and prioritised for you; just ready and waiting to be loaded into an improvement plan and launched with a simple click of a button.

Come and meet your new best friend – visit service-improvement.com Be sure to drop by the Solisma stand at the itSMF conference to complete your free ITSM capability assessment and enter the draw to win a full year’s subscription to SIM.

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT stand A14

Serena

www.bcs.org/servicemanagement

www.serena.com

stand A4

ukinfo@serena.com Tel: 01727 812812

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, has been at the forefront of ITIL’s development and growth, delivering over 300,000 certifications around the world since 2000. The Institute’s IT service management and ITIL certifications embrace the ITIL scheme and also include our own Specialist certifications, which draw on a broader range of best practice, enabling job specific skill development by focusing on individual roles within service management.

The Institute’s IT service management professional certification portfolio has been developed to raise the standard of competence and performance of professionals working in this area of IT. Delivered via a network of high quality accredited training and examination partners, our portfolio is internationally recognised and supported by the Institute’s broad range of professional development services.

Our new ITSM career path We understand that effective service management is a crucial requirement in today’s fast-paced IT dependent organisations. That’s why we’ve developed our new IT service management career path; to enable IT professionals to progress their career in service management and employers to develop the skills and competencies their organisation needs to deliver efficient and reliable IT service management.

Today, there seems to be no way of stemming the flood of break-fix requests pouring in to your service desk. These interrupt driven issues consume valuable staff time and often need escalations to Level 2 or Level 3 support, which ultimately takes away from your ability to offer IT Services that really matter to the business.

So how do you transform your service desk to keep pace with break-fix issues while making room for innovation? Specifically, how do you empower your IT organisation to deliver innovative new services that offer compelling value and clear-cut competitive advantages to the business?

Join us at the itSMF Conference on Tuesday 8th November at 10.20am in the Bouzy Room as we discuss how Serena’s Orchestrated ITSM solution provides tangible ways to achieve this goal. During this session, we will show you how your IT Service Management organisation can benefit from: 1) Providing users with a unified request centre that becomes the “new face of IT” 2) Delivering just-in-time knowledgebase content to avoid unnecessary requests 3) Enabling user self-service to dramatically improve frontline service desk productivity 4) Leveraging a true process platform to compose new business and IT services 5) Maintaining end-to-end visibility into service levels, costs, and resource utilization

Kepner-Tregoe

stand C02

Contact: Steve White T:

01628 778776

E:

swhite@kepner-tregoe.com

W:

www.kepner-tregoe.com

Kepner-Tregoe (KT) helps service organisations significantly improve their strategic and operational results by maximising Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – the ultimate measure of success for a service-driven business. With over 50 years’ experience, we understand the challenges of consistently delivering high-quality, world-class service and support. Our clients’ results demonstrate dramatic performance improvements in increased customer satisfaction, reduced resolution times, decreases in service costs, increases in first time fix-rate, reduced service performance variances and increased employee retention.

Our KT Service Value ManagementSM (SVM) suite of business solutions is focused on the six key drivers that contribute most to CLV. These are: Strategy and Culture, Monitor and Control, Service Processes, People, Tools, and Organisation. Within each of the key areas that drive CLV, KT then offers a range of services that are customised to client need.

Kepner-Tregoe Resolve®, a core SVM service offering, for example, is the only proprietary method acknowledged by ITIL as best practice for problem analysis and troubleshooting. Through a combination of analysis, training, business process integration, and performance system improvement, KT helps organisations improve their ability to delight customers and become more efficient. The KT Resolve® process dramatically increases performance against key indicators like Mean-Time-To-Resolve, Customer Satisfaction, Cost of Service, helping organisations transform their support function from being a cost centre to a true competitive advantage.

KT combines proven methodologies, capability transfer, over 50 years of experience, and a relentless focus on execution to drive predictable, measurable results. We collaborate with organisations to diagnose their greatest needs to design tailored, effective solutions. And we bring together the right team to deliver rapid results. Because the work is collaborative, improvements are sustainable and add lasting value – offering a truly effective alternative to traditional business consulting. But don’t take our word for it. Find out for yourself by contacting us via our details below.

G2G3

stand E2

E: info@g2g3.com T: @g2g3 W: www.g2g3.com G2G3 creates innovative people-based readiness solutions, including immersive simulations, serious games, education, communications, infographics and more. Engaging G2G3 will drive the success and raise the profile of your IT transformation initiative, project or product, ensuring the effective onboarding of all involved. G2G3 is different from other vendors; we use our energy, enthusiasm and creative flair to create your competitive advantage. The unique products and services offered by G2G3 include: Ready-to-go simulations: G2G3 offer a range of high-impact, in-room business simulations that accelerate learning and transformation initiatives. These are available in a number of industry variants for ITSM, ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, Cloud, Lean IT, Project Portfolio Management, Business Continuity and many more.

Bespoke simulations: G2G3 can design and develop a bespoke in-room simulation solution around your specific requirements in a scenario of your choice. G2G3’s high-profile bespoke simulation clients include HP, BMC, CA, IBM, Microsoft and many more.

Virtual simulations and serious games: G2G3 are experts in creating virtual serious games and simulations. Our power lies in our ability to combine advanced 3D technologies with gaming dynamics and excellent IT enterprise industry knowledge.

Virtual simulations and serious games are ideal for marketing, education or transformation purposes Infographics and knowledge visualisation: Take a new look at your processes and complex information with G2G3’s Infographics services. By combining collaborative consulting with information design, G2G3 can create a visual knowledge strategy that will deliver tangible results across your transformation, change or communication initiative.

Cloud-based assessments – Pathfinder: Pathfinder is a cost-effective, cloud-based assessment portal. Pathfinder reveals where your key processes are now, where they need to be, and how to get there. With a Pathfinder consultation, in less than ten days, you will receive a bespoke, facts-based Journey Plan for the future providing structured, actionable and measurable service improvements aligned to your everchanging business needs.

Readiness programmes – Consulting, Education and Communications: G2G3 offer a range of people-focused consulting, education and communication solutions for IT enterprises, including Readiness Programs, ITIL Foundation courseware (blended with or without simulation), Contextual Learning, Sales Enablement, Communications Programs and more. Our enviable list of readiness clients include: BP, Intel, DHL, Thomson Reuteurs and many more.

landesk software

stand G06

T: 01483 744444 E: contactus@landesk.com For more than two decades, LANDesk Software Inc has developed solutions that help organisations manage IT complexity; discover, track and safeguard assets; and enable IT staff to improve service levels. LANDesk® systems management, endpoint security, and IT service management (ITSM) solutions are easy to use, reliable, and deliver rapid ROI. LANDesk solutions have won a number of industry awards, and research firms like Gartner and Forrester consistently rank LANDesk as an industry leader.

Specifically, our ITSM solutions combine LANDesk® Service Desk, LANDesk® Process Manager, and LANDesk® Asset Lifecycle Manager, offering world-class support to employees, citizens and customers: • LANDesk Service Desk helps organisations deliver cost-effective IT services, improve resolution rates, minimise recurring incidents, and enforce standardisation.

Consolidating ITIL®-verified, process-driven incident, problem, change, and configuration management in a single touch point, LANDesk Service Desk handles all types of incidents, problems, and service requests. The solution has achieved PinkVERIFY status through Pink Elephant’s software certification scheme for all 14 processes that make up ITIL v3, the worldwide standard for IT service and support.

• LANDesk Asset Lifecycle Manager helps customers manage hardware and software assets from initial request to procurement and all the way through to disposal. The solution enables organisations to manage compliance, regulatory, security, license, privacy, and tax requirements while maintaining tight control over investment and aggregation of cost data for informed decision making.

• LANDesk Process Manager offers a single tool to both build and execute consistent, predictable IT processes, rescuing IT staff from endlessly repeating the same tasks. It can be used stand-alone or to complement other LANDesk solutions— from LANDesk® Management Suite to LANDesk Service Desk—simplifying IT management with less infrastructure and resource investment.

LANDesk technologies are offered either directly or through an extensive international network of solutions providers serving markets that include education, financial services, healthcare, IT, law, manufacturing, professional services, retail, transportation and utilities. The company has regional offices and development centres worldwide and employees in 18 countries.

directory

Hornbill Systems

Ares, Odyssey Business Park, West End Road, Ruislip, HA4 6QD T: 020 8582 8282 F: 020 8582 8288 W: www.hornbill.com C: sales@hornbill.com E: info@hornbill.com Hornbill develops and markets ‘Supportworks’, applications for IT Service Management (ITSM) and business helpdesks. Hornbill’s ITSM & service desk software with a ‘Human Touch’, enables its customers to provide excellent service while benefiting from consolidation on a single technology platform.

InfraVision

Delegate House, 30A Hart Street, Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, RG9 2AL T: +44 (0) 1491 635340 F: +44 (0) 1491 579835 W: www.infravision.com C: Nigel Todd E: info@infravision.com BMC Software’s #1 partner for Service Desk Express and the Alignability Process Model, delivering rapid implementation of proven ITIL aligned processes, procedures, work instructions and tool settings, and transformation to service-led approach in only 12 weeks!

Pink Elephant

Atlantic House, Imperial Way, Reading. RG2 0TD 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 : November / December 2011

ICCM Solutions

Cedar House, Riverside Business Village, Swindon Road, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, SN16 9RS T: + 44 (0) 1666 828 600 F: + 44 (0) 1666 826 103 W: www.iccm.co.uk C: Kate Springer E: sales@iccm.co.uk One of the overriding directives of ICCM Solutions is the simplification of complexity in Service Management environments. ICCM provides a global client base with sophisticated ITIL aligned Service Management Solutions built on Business Process Management (BPM) Architecture, from Metastorm BPM®.

iCore

60 Lombard Street, London EC3V 9EA

T: +44 (0) 207 464 8883 F: +44 (0) 207 464 8888 W: www.icore-ltd.com E: sales@icore-ltd.com C: Greg Lake iCore is the largest specialist IT Service Management Consultancy in the UK. ICore has a long & impressive track record in delivering & embedding pragmatic IT service management, solutions, relying on the deep, real world experience of our mature & determined consultancy team.

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.

ManageEngine

G2G3

ZOHO Corp, 4900 Hopyard Rd, Suite 310, Pleasanton, CA – 94588, USA

T: 925-924-9500 F: 925-924-9600 W: www.manageengine.com E: eval@manageengine.com C: Gerald A. Raja ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is highly customizable, smart and flexible Help Desk Software used by more than 10,000 IT managers worldwide in 23 different languages. It helps you to implement ITIL best practices on the go and restore your IT services on-time.

ManageEngine has a suite of software products in Enterprise IT management space like Network monitoring, Desktop Management, Applications, Logs, AD management, et al.

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

Tel: +44 (0)845 055 8935 www.dennisadams.co.uk info@dennisadams.co.uk Dennis Adams Associates IT Management Consultants enable clients to: ●

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Build high performing IT Management teams Implement effective IT strategy Create empowering IT Processes and Procedures establish Production supportable Technology Roadmaps Be visibly Accountable to the Business

CHERWEll SOFTWARE

SiTEHElPdESK.COM lTd

Eagle House, lynchborough Road, Passfields , Hants gu30 7SB

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

T: F: W: E: C:

T: F: W: C: E:

+44 (0) 207 419 5174 +44 (0) 870 138 3824 www.sitehelpdesk.com sales@sitehelpdesk.com Bryan Taylor

sitehelpdesk.com will take you to the forefront of service delivery with a suite of products designed to provide you with low cost web browser based action tracking and self-help, making your services instantly available 24 by 7.

SOliSMA

lime Kiln House, lime Kiln, Wooton Bassett, Wiltshire, Sn4 7HF T: + 44 (0) 1793 858181 W: www.cherwellsoftware.com/contact 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.

AVOCEnT lAndESK

APMg

T: +44 (0) 207 193 2085 W: www.solisma.com E: info@solisma.com C: sales@service-improvement.com Service improvement Made Simple! solisma is a leading global provider of ITIL and IsO/IeC 20000 courseware, training, consulting and assessment services, with a global partner network to help you quickly and cost-effectively improve your ITsM capability like never before. To learn more, contact us today or visit service-improvement.com

iT SERViCE MAnAgEMEnT FORuM

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

As an accredited iTil® examination institute, ApmG offers our training organizations a range of benefits to help them demonstrate the quality and professionalism of their services.

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

glOBAl TECHnOlOgy SOluTiOnS lTd

T: 01288 355800 W: www.globaltechnologysolutions.com E: info@globaltechnologysolutions.com

“taking the headache out of recruitment” specialists in service Management and Technical resource throughout the UK and globally. we believe in “quality” not “quantity” when submitting cvs.

Let GTs manage your recruitment process and allow us to become your most valued solution provider.

E-WAREHOuSE

dukes Court, duke Street, Woking, Surrey gu22 7Ad

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150 Wharfedale Road, Winnersh Triangle, Wokingham, Berkshire.

Rg41 5Rg

e-Warehouse ltd, Hampden House, Hampden House, Monument park, Chalgrove,Oxfordshire , Ox44 7RW

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.

T: F: W: C: E:

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

www.vital-mag.net

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

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.

November / December 2011 : VitAL 63

seCReTs OF My sUCCess

Adam Maurice managing director of The Internet Group

Adam maurice is founder and managing director of The internet Group an iT managed service provider.

Although only 28, he has been working in the iT industry since 1999, when he was still at school...

My first IT job was working remotely for a small Internet

VitAl: name, company and job title please? Married? Kids?

Adam Maurice: I’m Adam Maurice, Managing Director of The Internet Group Ltd. I am married with one daughter.

VitAl: what got you started in IT? AM: I started my first company when I was still at school. when I was in my final year I went to an exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall on a school trip. I was utterly transfixed by the speakers, who were entrepreneurs that had experienced a lot of success in the IT world. I immediately thought, “if they can do it, why can’t I?” The rest is history!

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

AM: I worked for Microsoft and BT briefly before setting up my first company, and I loved that culture of ‘Big Business’. That was really the inspiration.

VitAl: what was your first IT job, what was your first major IT triumph?

AM: My first IT job was working remotely for a small Internet company in scotland after school each day. I would login from home and answer technical questions from their users. The fact that I was earning money from sitting in front of my computer (which as a teenager I was doing anyway!) was really exciting.

VitAl: Did you ever make any embarrassing mistakes? what did you learn from them?

AM: The biggest mistake I ever made was faxing a copy of all our internal paperwork for a legal dispute over to the other sides’ solicitors! That was very embarrassing 64 VitAL : November / December 2011

(and expensive). I haven’t used a fax machine since!

VitAl: what do you like best about your job?

AM: I love the fact that every day is different, but most importantly I love going and seeing our clients who tell me that The Internet Group has made a positive impact on their business. That is the bit that is really rewarding.

VitAl: what is your biggest ambition?

AM: My biggest ambition is to grow The Internet Group into the business that it deserves to be, and become one of the leading managed service providers in the UK. we have made great strides in recent years, and despite the recession have achieved 38 percent growth this year.

VitAl: what are your hobbies or interests?

AM: since an early age I have always been interested in computers and the Internet, however after welcoming a new addition to the family earlier this year, I find that whenever I am away from the office I am spending time with my wife and daughter; I rarely use my home PC now. I also enjoy fine dining and travel.

VitAl: what is the secret of your success?

AM: I would say that there is no secret, as such. I believe that anyone who thinks there are shortcuts to success is wrong – I have built The Internet Group to what it is with good people, lots and lots of hard work and, most importantly, a strong dedication and drive to succeed.

company in Scotland after school each day.

I would login from home and answer technical questions from their users. The fact that I was earning money from sitting in front of my computer (which as a teenager I was doing anyway!) was really exciting.

VitAl: Adam Maurice, thank you very much. www.vital-mag.net

Subscribe FREE to the most VitAL source of information / June 2011 Volume 4 : Issue 5 : May

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Visit us on Stand B1.

Classrooms in the Cloud...

Another first from the Thought Leaders in IT Service Management.

Interactive Instructor Led Online courses launching at the itSMF exhibition.

Using state of the art Cloud Rooms Technology™, Pink Elephant has developed a range of ITIL courses that can be delivered to our clients using the instructor led online approach. This is NOT traditional CBT or self paced online learning, this is a fully interactive course putting the classroom in the cloud...

Why Instructor Led Online?

The only difference between our conventional courses and our Instructor-Led On-Line (ILO) courses is that with ILO you do not physically sit in a classroom. Instead you access your “classroom” online, and you can interact with your instructor and classmates with chat, audio and video as you move through the lessons. Everything else remains the same, including the same expert instructor, the same course materials, and the same Pink Elephant techniques and strategies.

• Flexible learning

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• Low cost • Environmentally friendly • Allows for minimum time away from desk • No travel costs & Expenses • Can be delivered as client specific event or part of our public schedule.

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