Published: October 29 2009, 12:15 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Robert Stroud

Today at the itSMF International Chapter Leadership meeting in Barcelona Spain, it was announced that today was the timeline for the withdrawal of ITIL v2. The announcement followed the review of the results from the joint survey undertaken by the itSMF International on behalf of the UK OGC.

Based on the feedback of the community the OGC announced that removal of the version 2 (exams and publications) to be completed globally by 30 June 2011.  The removal will take place in a phased approach with all with all language variants of individual qualifications and publications being removed at the same time.

Education Dates:

• - V2 Foundation to cease 30 June 2010
• - V2 Manager to cease 31 August 2010
• - V2 Practitioner and Foundation Bridge to cease 31 Dec 2010

(All of the above will be available for re-sits until 30 June 2011)

Publication Dates:

• - Service Support publications will be removed on 30 June 2011
• - Service Delivery publications will be removed on 30 June 2011
• - Availability of all other V2 publications to be considered as reprinting required with the proviso that they will be removed no later than 30 June 2011.

This announcement has been some time in coming and followed the availability of ITIL V3 publications and education in multiple languages which the itSMF International and Chapters have been heavily promoting. This announcement also reflects the examination data which had for some time identified that the majority of examinations are now based on V3.  This data is representative of the majority of organizations that I meet with that are on their ITIL journeys, with the vast majority already in the process of adopting aspects of V3.

By the way, if you want to provide the OGC with a comment please do not hesitate to drop a comment on the blog, I will of course pass all comments back to the OGC.

To find out more, the OGC press release is available at http://www.ogc.gov.uk/itil_ogc_withdrawal_of_itil_version2.asp

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Published: October 27 2009, 12:00 PM | 5 Comment(s)
by Robert Stroud

My travels recently took me to Tokyo for the CA Expo. When in Japan I usually stay at the hotel close to the office which helps my day and evening to be very predictable. I arrive at Narita, take the bus to the hotel, go to the office and then back to the hotel where I order their famous burger. Now this is no ordinary burger; it has pineapple, bacon, egg, 2 patties, lettuce, cheese and on top of all that I add an extra egg (and schedule an extra hour in the gym as well). 

On a past visit for an itSMF conference, I arrived and was faced with a challenge. The menu had changed and I couldn't find my beloved burger!  What to do?  I immediately logged a complaint, sorry incident with the Service Desk (hotel reception) and I believe that my issue was escalated to second level support as the Duty Manager called me back to give me a lengthy explanation about the business rationalization for the change in the menu. He then offered to make have a burger made as per my request. What great customer service! I was suitably impressed. 

Last week when I returned to Japan and my usual routine, imagine my delight as I opened the menu to find my famous burger was back on the menu!  Was my feedback that important that I changed the whole menu?  I called Room Service and asked for my burger, only to be told it was no longer on the menu and that the menu in my room was the old menu.  What devastation. I had not effected change, and in fact, poor change management by the hotel had led to significant drop in my satisfaction level. 

I had a similiar experience when I was taking one of my flights within Asia. The airline I was travelling on recently introduced a new service charge into effect that I experienced while in Asia. The IT Systems were updated, the staff informed, the Web site updated of the changes to the baggage rules but those who had bought tickets in the period prior to the change and had not visited the Web site had no idea and turned up to be hit with an additional charge that due to the coding of the IT systems could not be waived (well at least that's what I was told). I dutifully paid the charge and then caught my flight and again the customer experience rates as below average.

These experiences reminded me of the complexity of change management and that it clearly extends beyond IT and that if we do not get the cultural and organizational aspects correct then even the best IT change process won't make the situation better. Change is no longer just change for IT;  it is "IT enabled Business Change" and as such, change management must include the business and the cultural aspects must form part of your consideration.

Have you rolled the Business into your Change Advisory Board?  If not, maybe its time!

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Published: October 26 2009, 09:30 AM | 5 Comment(s)
by Dave Wilt

What is the defining characteristic of "self-service?"  Does the answer change when we ask from the service desk manager's perspective vs. the business end user's?

Many in the service desk world have come to think of "Web-based submission of a ticket" as "self-service" (with apologies to ITIL, "incident or request" is too cumbersome here so I'm using "ticket").  But really, what "service" are we enabling business users to "serve themselves" with here?  If the business user sees "submit a ticket" as a service, then I'll concede that web-based ticket submission is self-service in its own right.  What would your business users think?

What about the service desk manager - isn't reducing IT staff time on intake a good thing?  Of course it is, but isn't that aiming awfully low for self-service?  Isn't what happens AFTER the ticket is submitted - regardless of how it's submitted - more important to both the business user and IT?

Although the service desk manager can certainly cut costs by letting users input their own tickets into the system, eliminating the phone call isn't the main point for the user. It's getting what they need quickly.  If I use the world's slickest iPhone app to simply jiggle the phone to request a password reset, but then I wait a few hours for someone from IT to call me at my desk, confirm my identity and manually reset my password, was that "self-service?" The service I wanted was a password reset, not to submit the ticket for it.

As a business user I might use the Web, iPhone or Blackberry app, make a phone call into an Interactive Voice Response system, or use a carrier pigeon to submit a ticket.  From my point of view all I'm really changing is the transport mechanism for the request.  Making a phone call to explain an issue or request to a live IT person might be an inconvenience to some, but it might be easier, faster or reassuring to others. 

I would suggest that "self-service" is both about:

1) empowering the user to get what they want as quickly as they want it, and

2) eliminating IT staff interventions (isn't it nice that the second supports the first).  A knowledge system where users can search and find answers themselves is a good example of "true self-service" (provided the user gets what they need in the knowledge). A service catalog with back-end fulfillment workflow can also satisfy both the end user satisfaction and IT savings goals of self service -  even more so when the automation is "closed loop" by tying into identity management, software provisioning, or other "last mile" execution tools to deliver what the user needs.

Don't get me wrong, easy submission of tickets is a good thing.  But if we want to reap the rewards of self-service we need to aim higher in what we mean when we say it.  And if we want to promote "self-service" to the business user community let's make sure we know what they think self-service is.   Meanwhile if anyone has that jiggly iPhone feature in the works, let me know. 

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Published: October 24 2009, 12:00 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Robert Stroud

My travels last week led me to Asia, where I can report Service Management is clearly on the hearts and minds of IT professionals in the region with record attendances at the CA Expo in Japan, Thailand and Malaysian itSMF conferences.

The trip commenced with the CA EXPO event in Japan to which I was honored to be invited back following my visit in 2008.  This year my theme was Service Management In the Clouds and from the many discussions I had with people  following the speech, it was a topic that clearly resonated with the audience. The cornerstone of my proposition is that the role of the CIO is transitioning from management the IT factory to managing the IT supply chain. I recall that just a few short years ago the CIO would source all the components of the services delivered internally including Mainframe, Servers, Software, People and so on. Today this is changing as the CIO is now managing multiple suppliers that form a complex value chain with critical success factors including "elasticity" or being able to scale delivery up and down based on the business demand. This mandates that the CIO has an excellent understanding of the business deliverable and has good supplier management in place. This paradigm shift leads us as IT Geeks to talk about Cloud, Virtualization, SaaS, PaaS and many other great delivery vehicles but fundamentally if you don't understand the deliverable and the business value proposition you will simply move from internal chaos to larger shared chaos.  

Service Management and Governance provides the CIO with the fundamental skills in managing both the supply and demand side of IT. This evolving transition mandates that governance of your ITSM environment is paramount to success. This was the theme of my discussion in Malaysia. Malaysia, the 3^rd largest outsourcing country, is fortunate in that the Malaysian Government has recognized the opportunity offered by IT to be global in this period of economic downturn and has invested in the skills of the local workforce partnering with the itSMF, ISACA and many other industry bodies, providing funding to locals to develop their skills. Congratulations to the Malaysian government for their foresight!

The Thailand itSMF Conference and my discussions with industry professionals in Bangkok further reinforced in my mind the development and value in ITSM in the region. 300 people attended the event and I found that the greatest interest was in two related areas; ISO\IEC 20000 and the paradigm transition to Cloud computing.  Thailand is a rapidly developing economy and like Malaysia sees value in the IT industry allowing the economy to rapidly develop and develop not only internally, additionally across borders. 

I can confirm that globally the interest in the benefits of the concept of Cloud computing is escalating, and rapidly. Is it the pay per use model?  Is it the ability to scale? Is it the ability rapidly deliver business value? It is all of these but the interesting concept is the individuals I am speaking to are no longer simply IT professionals, increasing IT is the business themselves! Now that is a paradigm shift!

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Published: October 23 2009, 09:30 AM | no comments
by CA Community

Read Part 1 (PaaS), Part 2 (IaaS) and Part 3 (SaaS) here.

In the previous entries we discussed the possible impact of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), SaaS (Software a as a Service) and even briefly PaaS (Platform as a Service) on the role of our Cloud IT Manager separately.  

It is, however, important to realize these three models are not happening separately; they are all happening at the same time and as result are influencing each other. As all three models are delivered "as a service", vendors are preparing themselves to play their role in 1, 2 or even all 3 of these markets. Will our Cloud IT Manager only be a consumer of services provided by these vendors or will he retain other responsibilities as well? Sourcing services will certainly be a core activity, not only for end user services (like CRM) but also for IT services like Infrastructure, security and support as a service.  Before reaching a preliminary conclusion about our IT manager's future role, one of the questions I'd like to ask is:

Will a Cloud IT Manager be a more Lean IT manager?
Connecting Cloud Computing and Lean IT may at first glance seem farfetched, but both Cloud Computing and Lean IT are leveraging the concept that mass produced is almost always cheaper than custom made. Cloud Computing offers mass produced standardized services to millions of users, and as a result monthly amounts per user can be relatively low. The proverbial Ford Model T was all about using standardization to drive cost down - any color as long as it is black! Toyota perfected Lean manufacturing to be able to offer choice at affordable cost. They did so by using highly standardized components and combining these into unique, desirable automobiles, by using standardized processes in the last phases of their manufacturing process.  

More on the relationship between Cost and Cloud at a later date, but at minimum, what our Cloud IT manager can do today is use the Lean IT mantra of Maximizing Value (only do what adds value to the end customer) and Minimizing Waste (eliminating steps that do not add value) to guide his  current decisions on Cloud Computing. Just take any cloud proposal and evaluate it against these two criteria.  More long term I'd like to think that a Lean IT approach will help our Cloud IT Manager to combine standardized low-cost cloud services, into unique desirable and differentiating - customer relevant - services.

This last sentence sounds a bit too much like brochure talk, so let's explore this a bit further: Imagine a sporting goods manufacturer that traditionally ran a planning application to manage its logistical operations. This manufacturer outsourced most of its manufacturing to third parties. It may however still offer this planning application to help this "Extended Enterprise" go to market more efficiently than its competitors. Or one could think of an electronics manufacturer that differentiates itself with "unmatched customer service". This manufacturer runs a return-and-repair management system even though 90% of the repairs and returns are handled by third parties.  The traditional idea that internal applications are intended primarily for internal staff is increasingly no longer sustainable. A number of forward thinking companies therefore no longer provide their business applications (exclusively) on their own network. They take their applications and offer these on the Internet as a service. In some sense they have become cloud service providers, like a bank offering home banking or a travel agent offering online booking to its business customers. In some organizations the synergy between the original activities and providing the service makes them more competitive, others may at some point spin off this new activity as a new venture, while for some running the service is all they will be doing (having outsourced manufacturing, logistics, design, etc.). Our Cloud IT Manager is no longer just aligned or even integrated with the business, he is becoming the business.

Reaching conclusions on Cloud Computing is not easy. To some the whole cloud thing may be a bit overwhelming, providing yet more acronyms and complexity; to others it may seem the best idea since sliced bread. IT magazines continue to talk almost exclusively about Cloud Computing, as if there is nothing else left to invest in. For larger organizations Gartner disagrees with that and recently predicted that through 2012, IT will invest more in private than public cloud providers. Last month the US government announced a major many billion dollar large cloud computing initiative, while at the same time in Europe the Dutch Government basically forbids any use of the Cloud by government.

So when and where should your organization start?  Several organizations have started building Private Clouds. Not as a pilot, but as a first real project. Disentangling existing applications is way too expensive and labor intensive to just have a look; you need to build a business case. Others have started with SaaS for some less business critical applications (somehow CRM and sales force automation still seem to classify as such).  If you are serious about engaging with the business I would encourage you to investigate some PaaS platforms (like Force.com) and some technology for connecting Cloud and non Cloud applications (like Dutch based "Cloud Orchestrator" Cordys).

But no matter what you decide to do first; deployment will be more successful if you have a relative high level of maturity in your existing processes. Cloud Computing offers more options, more flexibility, more opportunities for efficiency and automation. But just like in the past: automating chaos will only give you one thing: automated chaos. If this four part blog only gave you one insight, I hope that it is that frameworks like ITIL and COBIT with their best practices for service portfolio management, security and risk management, configuration and asset management. etc.  are crucial to our Cloud IT Manager's chances of success, now maybe more than ever.  

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