CA Community






This Blog
Syndication

January 2012 - Posts

Out with the old and in with the new - at home and in IT

Published: January 27 2012, 10:36 AM | no comments
by Mary Cauwels

As we prepare to close the first month of the new year, I am looking back on how I spent a lot of the weekends using the "out with the old, in with the new" mantra. And that got me thinking (scary, I know) about the relationship between innovating new products or services and transforming application portfolios or moving services to the cloud.

In order to make room for the new ideas, it is necessary to make space by evaluating the so-called "old" products and services. This rationalization might actually need to occur prior to innovation activities or at the very least in lock-step with it. However, it is not a simple matter of carte blanche removal of all things old. I learned that while sitting on the floor with my son during the "clean out" of his room. Surrounded by LegosTM, race cars, and plastic army men, my son and I had to discuss what to keep, what to donate to charity,  and what to throw away or recycle. This is the case in organizations as well. The dialogue between IT and business is critical.

Consider the path that Nordea Bank took when embarking on their Total Application Portfolio Assessment project (TAPAS), recently published in a customer success story.

Nordea recognized that years of mergers and acquisitions have resulted in redundant, antiquated, or unused applications. Meanwhile, they needed to gear up to bring new innovations in financial products and services to market quickly which meant freeing up resources. Enter CA Clarity PPM. It brought Nordea the solution they needed to evaluate the 3,300 business applications spanning from banking systems to customer relationship management, human resources, and accounting applications.

According to Michael Steffensen, Head of Group IT Business Support at Nordea, "The CA Technologies PPM solution provides comprehensive visibility of application details to support the TAPAS project and enables greater governance. It also acts as a tool for communication between business and IT to ensure an open dialogue is maintained and that application decisions are supported by all key prospects." This included the selection of the evaluation criteria. Now Nordea can maintain a score for each application that relates to the business criteria such as functional quality, business and strategic value with IT criteria such as application costs and technical quality. This qualitative and quantitative data guides more "informed decisions as to whether to retire, keep as-is, upgrade or replace an application," explains Steffenson.

The result is an expected €3.5 million in cost savings which will not only free up funding resources for new innovation but will also free up IT staff to support new projects. Fortunately for Nordea, they expect continued benefits for years to come.  And with the latest release of CA Clarity PPM, coordinating innovation and transformation and aligning business and IT is even easier. 

As for my son, our transformation project was a success as well - for now at least.

 Lego image provided by Mary Cauwels.

Share this post:  
Tags: , , , ,
Leave a comment

 

By: Mary Cauwels
As Director of Product Marketing, Mary is responsible for coordinating go-to-market activities for IT Service & Portfolio Management solutions from CA Technologies. She brings 15 years of experience in service management and customer relationship management. Prior to joining CA Technologies, Mary...
Read More..

Improve Products with Passion from the People

Published: January 24 2012, 02:13 PM | no comments
by Crystal Miceli

Last week a number of websites, including the very popular Wikipedia, shut down in protest over proposed US piracy legislation.  The bills are the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), both of which are primarily focused on preventing the illegal downloading or viewing of TV shows and movies online.   A very interesting effect of the website blackout protests was the impact it had on users of the sites, and the fact that it made these users aware of and invested in politics they may not have cared about before.  These previously uninvolved  citizens are now reaching out to their representatives to question their support for the laws, and some of these legislators have already pulled their support. 

This got me thinking about the power of the crowd, and how passion can be harnessed to improve delivery of products and services.

If passion about a product or service can be generated, whether through awareness or debate, what might that do to brand loyalty?  It seems that, if you feel like you can have an impact on an outcome, you become more invested in that outcome being a positive one.

These days, everyone has an opportunity to participate, via user forums, online reviews, “likes” on Facebook, etc.  You should channel that input into your product’s roadmap, and make it clear to those who are passionate about your product or service that you are listening and taking action on their ideas.  Then your customers are involved in your success, and will promote your products for you, in their own organizations and when they are speaking to those outside.   It’s a grass roots approach, but it appears to work.

 

Share this post:  
Tags: , , , ,
Leave a comment

 

By: Crystal Miceli
Crystal Miceli serves as Sr. Principal Solution Marketing Manager for CA Technologies, specializing in Project & Portfolio Management, IT Asset Management and Service Desk solutions. Crystal has over 15 years of experience in designing and implementing IT Service Management solutions across a range...
Read More..

Prediction 3 - Data, Data everywhere, finally turning into information

Published: January 10 2012, 01:50 PM | no comments
by Robert Stroud

There is so much data being thrown at us each day it's overwhelming! Email, instant messages, Web pages, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, RFID networks, texts, embedded systems in cars and the list goes on and on. All this data is collected and simply waiting to be used. Let me take a step back and define what I mean.

The Wikipedia definition for Big Data is:

"Big data is a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage, and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set."

What is happening is that enterprises are collecting exceptionally large volumes of data, in multiple formats from multiple sources. The volume of data is increasing, as is access to it with the evolving interconnected world of social networks, sensor networks, customer chat sessions, etc. In fact everything is available on the Internet somewhere. For example the United States Library of Congress and Twitter just signed an agreement (Dec. 7) that will see an archive of every public Tweet ever tweeted added to the library's repository (note to self be careful what I tweet).

The value, however, is NOT in the data, it is in the analytics of the data to make effective business decisions from the intelligence that is identified within the information. Prediction 3 for 2012 is that origanizations will commence mining the information for value to make effective decisions. 

Potential value propositions could include early indications of trends that are working to move new products quickly to or from them market. For instance if a new product is working within a certain demographic you can rapidly target like demographics. Now in the past this information may have taken days or weeks. With big data aggregation and analytics, it could be available in minutes or hours.

More than ever before analytics of the information will be critical, but like all processes using data, garbage in will probably lead to garbage out, unless you can identify the garbage!

 This blog also appears at CA Technologies Service Management blog.

Share this post:  
Tags: , , ,
Leave a comment

 

By: Robert Stroud
Robert Stroud serves as VP and as Service Management, Cloud Computing and Governance Evangelist at CA Technologies. Robert also serves as an International vice president of ISACA, is part of the Framework committee and was the former chair of the COBIT Steering Committee. Robert also serves on the itSMF...
Read More..

I didn’t want an iPad, but it’s changing my life

Published: January 04 2012, 03:27 PM | no comments
by Robert Stroud

Last week as 2011 was ending and my mind rapidly accelerated into 2012, I published the first of my blogs on predictions for 2012 "The invasion of consumer devices has begun - and it started with that gift under the tree." This blog cites Prediction 2, but first some background ... After reading the "invasion" blog, one of my colleagues in Europe wrote me an interesting email reinforcing the commoditization of IT and the proliferation of devices. The reply below has been edited to preserve anonymity.

"I read the recent blog with interest. J  I also got an iPad 2 for Christmas - even though I had not asked for one! My first reaction was - what can I exchange it for? But then I kept it - as a good blackmail device to use with my teenage girls when I want them to do stuff for me. (Note to self: another good use for the iPad).

I find this device - at the moment - a real distraction, taking precious time which I would normally spend playing the violin, doing exercises and reading books (the books I really want are not available in iPad format - nor in Kindle format).

I got a Kindle last year and only use it if I want a book urgently or instantly. And not a lot of books I want - especially in languages other than English French and in German - are available on the Kindle (same as with iPad). We tried to use it on our sailing and cycling holidays - downloading "The Times" wherever we had Internet access - but then we hardly read it as we were too busy with our outdoor activities.

But I am sure I will become a more productive user of these devices with time."

On a call later with that same colleague on another matter, our discussion turned to reminiscing to the times when just a few years ago we took documents home to do work, or simply totally separated our work and family time. Today the fusing of these activities - family and work - is clearly happening!  Are you finding your boundaries between work and social activities blurring? Do you find yourself checking your iPhone when on vacation? And if you do, can you resist the urge to reply? I know when on my last vacation I had to fight to ignore the email and not reply! By Day 3 I gave in and replied to just the critical emails and by day 5 I was replying to everything.

Prediction 2 for 2012 - the blurring of work and social boundaries will accelerate driven by iPad's, iPhones, Android's, etc. For me the battle is lost and it's time for electronic device therapy. What about you?

This blog also appears on CA Technologies Service Management blog.

Share this post:  
Tags: , , , ,
Leave a comment

 

By: Robert Stroud
Robert Stroud serves as VP and as Service Management, Cloud Computing and Governance Evangelist at CA Technologies. Robert also serves as an International vice president of ISACA, is part of the Framework committee and was the former chair of the COBIT Steering Committee. Robert also serves on the itSMF...
Read More..

More Posts