Published: September 30 2009, 09:30 AM | no comments
by Jeff Foucher

Beware of the hype created by IT, especially when under the guise of "better, faster, cheaper."  For the shiny new penny of IT operations comes with a few pretty significant blindspots which IT has largely failed to address....until now.

A recent analyst report suggested that 70% of companies who virtualize production operations will fail a software license audit.   Another research report tracked a significant increase in software license audits over the past 2 years.

If either of those figures is even remotely close, it again serves as a reminder that the "quick win" of virtualization may have more far-reaching impact and bring non-IT problems down the road.  Of course, to the business folks in Finance, Procurement and Executive Management - virtualization is just cool enough to be reassuring and yet complex enough to be ignored when it comes to asking the hard questions and truly understanding its business impact.

"I can take this computer.....and double its usage?    If only our assembly lines / mining operations / derivatives business could do that!"

What these otherwise business-astute people should be asking is:    Does our (insert software vendor here) contract ALLOW US to do that?!?

I'll admit, it may be unlikely or improbable that software publishers have the time, or more importantly, the tools and methodology to properly audit customers deploying software in a virtual environment.   And there may be another disincentive:   audits can reveal under-utilization of licenses which may fuel the unwanted side effect of accelerated contract (re)negotiations.  However, the point is the organizations that have begun thinking about this and have started to proactively ensure they have a handle on their software assets will emerge as the victors in leveraging virtualization to its fullest while mitigating this very real downside risk.

Clues from the past, and standards for the future

One of the biggest "gotchas" overlooked by organizations in their zeal to consolidate servers based on the hype generated by the hardware manufacturers is that large-scale enterprise software applications are most often licensed by processor count or the server's "power rating" (similar to mainframes, where multiple attributes are assigned to specific models of a server product family).  When the workloads from multiple servers are consolidated unto a single larger/more powerful server the hardware savings in BTU, KVA, and footprint are measurable but will increase (sometimes dramatically) the cost of the license even though the actual workload hasn't increased REGARDLESS of how the virtualized "partition" or "logical server" is configured for each given software application. 

The argument by the publishers is that the configuration could be changed at ANY time by the customers...so they must charge that maximum license fee corresponding to the potential capacity that the physical hardware will allow.  When you add "clustering" approaches to the mix the cost skyrockets due to the even more dynamic configurability, greater capacity and multi-processor capabilities.

Addressing this on the publisher side may require software tagging standards such as ISO-19770-2 and the need for content-driven Software Asset Management tools in general.  Clearly a software vendor with experience in applying these principles in a Mainframe environment could give customers a leg up.

In any case, the onus is clearly upon IT to pragmatically develop the foundation layer needed to keep that shiny new penny full of luster - by establishing (first) a robust IT Asset Lifecycle Management (ITAM) program which will allow them to care for that software license or hardware contract with the same level of visibility and control they would otherwise have (but many still don't) in a non-virtualized world.

Fortunately, with IT Asset Management becoming more mainstream - driven by the real business cases it brings to bear, and championed by senior-level IT, Financial and Business executives alike - these questions may finally begin to be addressed as part of the strategic virtualization plan itself.

How is your company addressing ITAM and Virtualization?

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Published: September 28 2009, 09:15 AM | 1 Comment(s)
by Michael King

I received a comment on my last blog entry that got me thinking about the cultural shift that ITIL is forcing IT organizations to make. One facet of this cultural shift is that IT organizations need to bridge the communication gap between IT and the business, as well as change the perception of their organization held by end users and colleagues on the business side of the corporation.

When I worked on the Operations side of IT, I often encountered difficulty working with colleagues who were not fond of IT and people who worked in IT for various reasons. Whatever the reasons were, I found that the common theme that I was facing was that there was a communication gap between IT and the business. This issue in turn made it appear that IT was difficult to work with. In my opinion, the problem was on both sides of the house, IT and the business were struggling to understand each other's role in achieving the common business goals.

Here is how Service Level Management (SLM) can help improve communication between IT and business so they can improve their overall relationship.  During the requirements gathering and design phases of implementing an SLM process the business and IT should be encouraged to work together to define the service offering that IT will provide, and the business goal it is supposed to support.  During this process, IT needs to learn and demonstrate understanding of the business needs outlined by their customer by:

• Creating a written description of the service offering (this description should include a summary of the business case)
• Creating and documenting the process to deliver this service
• Creating a budget for creating and maintaining  the service offering
• Identifying the resources responsible for delivering and maintaining the service
• Creating KPI(s) to prove the service is being delivered to the negotiated service levels and during the negotiated business hours

In addition, the business will gain a better understanding of the costs and level of effort for IT to deliver a service to the business based upon mutually agreed upon business needs.  This collaboration will also give both IT and the business to share responsibility and equal stake in the success of the service offering, and hopefully increase respect and understanding for the two sides of the business.

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Published: September 22 2009, 08:08 PM | no comments
by CA Community

Learn the Steps or Feel the Beat?

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Published: September 21 2009, 10:02 AM | no comments
by Robert Stroud

I blogged on the ITIL V3 makeover and this week I am at the itSMF USA Fusion09 Convention where there is much buzz and miss information about the "makeover" so let's dispel this week's top 3 rumors!

1. Service Portfolio Management will be removed! 
   After an exhaustive review of the change log which, by the way is a good read at bedtime if you cannot sleep, it turns out that there are only a few references to the SPM.  It is clear that there will be some better interfacing with the other OGC best practices but don't worry, your SPM journey can safely continue.
   
2. Service Strategy (SS) will be totally rewritten.
   NO!  However, industry discussions will continue about how some of the concepts and diagrams in SS need a little work and it is my understanding that these efforts will be undertaken. 
   
3. The Change Log is not available to the public.
   This is true only if you don't take the time to register at the "best-management-practice website, and then review the change log.  The Change log is available for review and to register your "request for change."

When I read the change log I found 869 issues for ALL OGC best practice publications, with many already closed and almost half for non-ITIL publications. One change that I think needs to be made: I need to logon and put my change in for the use of the correct version of English in the core volumes which should be Australian English which will require all greetings to be G'Day and all names removed and each person referred to as "mate!"

If you have lost the link to the document released last week "OGC Mandate for Change - Project requirements for an update to the ITIL® core publications" take a look.

PS OGC - Change Request 15 remains open with the references to COBIT in Service Operation being incorrect - please confirm this will be corrected!

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Published: September 17 2009, 09:42 AM | 1 Comment(s)
by Robert Stroud

For Deadly Sin 1, click here.
For Deadly Sin 2, click here.  

Recently I was visiting with a financial organization who told me about their governance implementation and the results of a self assessment that they had just undertaken. The organization had been implementing multiple governance processes for some time but until that point had not done an assessment and were not sure of how good or bad the implementation was.  Upon review they found that in some process areas they were at a maturity level of 5 when the organization needed to be a 3, thus dramatically over servicing the domain. In other areas they were a 1 when they need to be a 4 – leaving the organization exposed. The sin being committed was that no one had monitored the implementation or was accountable for the metrics that were now being visualized.

Governance must have a set of processes that provide feedback loops to understand whether the processes status should be represented on a balanced scorecard or on dashboards that show the status of each key performance indicator.

More important than visualizing metrics is that the responsibility for metrics must be allocated and this must account for part of a role or there is no reason to even collect the metrics.

COBIT provides an excellent maturity model for each process allowing you to not only determine your KPI’s but the maturity model allows you to assess where you are and where you need to be!

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