This week I came across an article from Anne Zink of AZtech Strategies which is worth a read. Anne mentions extracts from Daniel Pink’s book “A whole new mind”. This year I heard Daniel speak at the Pink Elephant conference in Las Vegas, where he covered many points within the book, and they make a lot of sense, knowing how the market is moving and being driven. Most of us are in the Services environment, and so we need to think from a customers prospective, and transition from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. The Conceptual Age, Pink states, will be marked by a more artistic and holistic approach to every aspect of life. In order to differentiate ourselves and prosper in this new age, we will need to develop our softer, right brain oriented skills to enable us to connect with each other at a deeper level. Anne’s article reviews the issues having interviewed 300+ CIO in corporate America and lists a few of the main symptoms:
•  Internally focused meetings and tasks taking priority over customer focused and sales enabling activities.
•  Customers continually complain your IT capabilities (or lack there of) are hurting their businesses.
•  Restructuring or re-organization within 18 months of the last restructure and re-organization.
•  Cross functional initiatives designed to improve corporate alignment fail to meet their objectives or consistently miss milestones.
•  An endless parade of consultants down the executive corridor.
•  Etc, etc..

Now I can certainly relate to the Restructuring one, as within every large corporate I’ve worked for, indeed every 12 to 18 months they have carried out major re-organisation and re-structuring, normally before the processes are fully operational and embedded from the last one! Yet the business blames IT? The reality is that these re-orgs will continue to happen after each financial year has concluded and we do need to start thinking outside of the box for solution to ease transition from all levels, including IT and the systems that the business depends upon.

Finally! This week I start blogging on the ITP site as well, expanding both my audience and network and enabling a wider scope of conversation. Check it out and sign up!

On my return the only issue (after landing 15mins early) was that one has to walk miles up and down floors, using trains just to get out. The Iris eye recognition device for Passport control fast track was slower than the normal manual line. Why? Well only one Iris device and about 6 desks all open. Now one would think that a brand new $8billion terminal would have more than one Iris device to cater for all UK residents. Then getting to the car, was in issue with only 2 elevators, one flight of stairs and yes only 2 ticket machines, per flow sector. Now I do not have the figures for the capacity of the car park on each floor, but even I could tell that at ½ capacity, at 8pm in the evening, this was insufficient. I spent longer waiting for my turn at this machine, than I did for passport control.

With this I will leave T5 alone for a while! However it all goes to prove that even in a major project and design, capacity planning with “common sense” is required. Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is also needed as the project proceeds, as I’m sure it is very difficult to use the “common sense” approach from cad/cam designs, but as things get built, then Pilots run, the capacity demands needs to be reviewed to ensure the Client (passenger) is served appropriately.

When did you last review your project for an implementation of technology or service from a capacity perspective and a “common sense” perspective? Using the knowledge management method of DIKW (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom) , where often the “wisdom” element is our own interpretation of the DIK and therefore utilising our “common sense” to make appropriate decisions for the benefit of our customer, whomever that is.

This year each of the tracks based around our solution offerings will also be brown down to match the new ITIL v3 lifecycle approach to Service Management. This ensures that each tack and solution area will show you how it fits in with Service Strategy, Design, Transition, Operations and CSI. Obviously some will have a stronger alignment in one area then the other, but this should help you both understand more of our solutions and of ITIL v3.

Now Lisbon I’ve been to several times before and it’s a nice compact coastal city. Great history to catch up on, architecture, and food! Combining all these elements should make Userworld in EMEA as great an place to attend as Vancouver was last year, with the added advantage that in May Lisbon will be warm, if not even hot!

Looking forward to seeing many of you there, please look out for me and say “hello”. It’s always great to meet others interested in ITIL and Service Management for the Business.

When flying out I had the pleasure of Heathrow T5 (see blog on T5), but I was pleasantly surprised. It was quiet, smooth transition even through security and yes my bags actually arrived at my destination. All this just goes to prove that the “big bang” approach is really not the way to go. It’s nearly always best to start off small, perhaps with a “pilot” (not a good pun in this example) with a few internal flights transferring over first, to prove the processes, products, partners and people (the ITIL 4 “p”s). Then when you review with your Continual Service Improvement (CSI) programme you can resolve any issues and move onto the next scaling up of the transition, until you have completion. British Airports Authorities (BAA) and British Airways (BA) have had to revert to plan B, and slow down the transition, in doing so they are able to cope with issues and lesson customer impact. I had no problem 3 weeks after the opening with my travel experience, and as they slowly now scale up they are much better able to cope.

The main lesson to be learnt here is that no matter what type of project you are planning (CMDB implementation, Virtualisation, BSM), it is best to start with a pilot and in a small manageable impact reduced manner, and over time scale up whilst reviewing at each phase with the CSI processes. Big Bang fails in 90% of cases, so why do we always think of going that way?

Yesterday I presented in a Webex on "hints and tips for your CMDB implementation" which can be viewed here, along with the other 2 in the series. One of the tips was about starting small and working up once you've been able to iron out the problems and test all the 4 "P"'s. Have a listen if your working on your CMDB implementations.

What has all this got to do with ITIL and IT Service Management, well actually quite a lot! The perfect triangle of elements that are most frequently used to deliver Service Management can actually be categorised into three distinct areas.

Service Support, Service Automation and Service Assurance. These areas are the basis on which ITIL V3 also stands as they are the core components of Business Service Management. As the focus is all on Service, then we need to know the Utility and Warranty of that service(s). Is it Fit for purpose and does it perform as requested removing the constraints that we had before, and is it fit for use (available, capacious, continuous and secure). To ensure we can deliver on that we must be able to support the service (warranty), assure and insure that it is available, secure and stable (warranty) and where possible automate to ensure integrity, repeatability and adherence to standards (utility). These 3 areas, the perfect triangle, are important areas to be matured en route to achieving BSM. Watch this space as you see more in the coming weeks on each of these areas of focus.

The good news is I'm off tomorrow on holiday (vacation) and looking forward to exploring more of Nappa Valley and Yosemite National Park, so I’ll not be blogging next week! The bad news is that I have to use Terminal 5 tomorrow - think of me!

Fortunately for me my flight from London, whist from Heathrow, was not from the new Terminal 5. A huge sigh of relief was given when I discovered this when checking in on-line.  Now there is an example of the failure of not taking a “life-cycle” approach to service. Whilst I do not know all the specific details, I’d say it’s pretty safe to assume that many of the service elements were tested in silos and not as the integrated whole. Some examples given were that whilst the staff did turn up on the opening day, they could not get into the staff parking area as quickly as normal due to new security equipment. This meant that the staff were queuing up to get parked and not where they should have been within T5. Add to this the failure of the new state of the art baggage handling equipment and you have the disaster we heard on the news. The most worrying element was the lack of contingency plans in the event of a failure of a major business critical process or service. Business continuity management was obviously left aside, to the huge determent of both the British Airports Authorities (BAA), actually owned by the Spanish! British Airways the main customer of T5 and of course as the countries main carrier the whole country received the reputation damage to the extent that questions were tabled in parliament. From this sad warning, please take note and avoid the losses (£16million or $32million after one week) and damage that failing to take a life-cycle approach to services can cause. Whilst ITIL v3 is perceived as being relevant only to IT, the concepts are not, they are relevant to any service, Business, IT or Passenger Terminal! Maybe they should have played our BMC Airport Simulation tool!

Well as always, I’ve been busy and just released 6 BMCTV interviews (top right box) with ITIL Chief Architect Sharon Taylor. The 6 short interviews cover each of the new books, yes including the “Introduction to Service Management” book, and we explore some of the key areas in each book. Check them out when you have time, each one lasts 15mins or less.

However never short of good innovative ideas, we’ve just launched an ITIL v3 game. Yes, an online game to test your ITIL and BSM knowledge. If any of you have ever taken the BMC Airport simulation training day, you’ll recognise the concept. So check it out here. This was the invention of my colleague, Linda Donovan who after attending the Airport Simulation thought it would be a great way to spread the word, both within organisational departments and at conferences. So a few months of planning have now paid off, I hope you enjoy this bit of educational fun.

Now back to the acquisition of Bladelogic. The area we will see most attention and growth is around Release Management across the datacenter. BladeLogic enables the following components of a release management process as defined under ITIL best practice:
• Design, Build, and Package a Release—they provide the ability to document and package configurations, installation routines, and deployment instructions for software releases across various environments. It also provides the ability to document the policies that need to be complied with for any given software release across various environments.
• Deploy & Install—BladeLogic automates the promotion and distribution of software across platforms and environments while ensuring compliance against the release policies. It does this by taking into consideration the configuration changes from the build environment to test and production environments and the impact of that on application configuration integrity.
This will be an integrated enhancement to our earlier Marimba acquisition ensuring we more tightly comply with ITIL v3 for software, applications and OS releases, utilising the power of knowledge within the Atrium CMDB. This is a very exciting time for BMC as we deliver more capabilities within BSM whilst embracing ITIL v3. Check out the recent Webinar with my good friend Kurt Milne, Managing Director at the ITPI and Bladelogic on the “Top 10 Management Principles that Lead to IT Operational Excellence”

One final thing -  I love BladeLogic’s Symbol for share trading – BLOG!

Off to Houston, Texas and Tulsa, Oklahoma next week.

Obviously when you travel a fair amount you come across many good and annoying things, well this morning has one of the annoying ones. The hotel I was staying in next to the office can only give me a late check-out of 12 noon, but my flight out is not until 10pm! So I even asked how much to buy some extra hours to keep the room the room for longer, to be informed that it would be a full daily rate. (health warning: a rant is about to start). This got he annoyed. Surely a daily rate would infer by definition of the word “day” to last from at least dawn to dust – a day. In which case I had already paid for that. But no, it appears (and I’m sure you all know anyway), that a daily rate is actually from about check-in (normally 2pm) until check-out (normally noon), so in fact you’ve paid for only 22 of the 24hours, and of course we also know that Business travellers tend not to check-in until evening anyway and checkout generally after breakfast heading to meetings or office, so the same rate for probably only 12hours. So now I’m homeless from noon until my taxi to the airport comes at 8pm. Oh the joys of travel!

Now that the rant is over (you can tell I was annoyed this morning), it is great to report that many of the clients in this region are moving forward well with BSM taking a step by step approach through an improvement plan focussing on the major business benefit areas, like Change Management and CMDB. It’s good from my perspective to keep in touch with these clients I’ve spent many days with over the years to see their progress and see how they put in action best practices with ITIL v3’s 4 “P”’s People, Process, Product and Partners. The extra “P” I would like to add is Performance. When you get all the other 4 “P”s in place my 5th “P” is the automatic return, improved performace of both the business and IT services. These organisations are all top performers in not only their sector but also in country. Proof indeed of the benefits that can be realised.

So, off tonight on the homeward journey. Next week I’ll be in Paris speaking to an audience on ITIL v3 and BSM.

Also back travelling as usual, this week I’ve been at the ITSMF annual event in Antwerp, Belgium, with over 300 delegates. The keynote speaker was Paul Wilkinson, co-author of the book ‘IT Service Management from Hell” and co-owner of Gaming Works (of simulation games fame, such as ‘Apollo 13’and ‘The Challenge of Egypt’). Paul made a great opening address with the “ABC’s of ICT”. So what are the ABC’s? Well really quite simple, but it always appears impossible for organisations to be cognisant of and manage. This is the main reason for so many IT project failures including many ITIL ones. Paul first gave this presentation 10years ago, and shamefully for the industry it’s still relevant.  A is for Attitude, B is for Behaviour and C is for Cultural change. So many times we focus on the Process, Products and event Partners but still fail on the People side of ITIL v3’s 4 “P”’s to manage the ABC’s.

Check out Paul’s book on “The IT Service Management from Hell”, whilst it comical with cartoons, it’s sad with reality and worth a read to see how we address this problem. The first step as always, is with “Me”. We need to start owning and understanding the problem and little by little others will get the message and work on the ABC’s together. We, Atwell Williams, George Spalding from Pink Elephant and I,  wrote a white paper recently on “ cultural change and enabling the implementation of BSM” which is also worth a read in this area.

It was my opportunity to present later and it was now my responsibility to bring in the ABC elements into my presentation. My opening was to quote my very own CEO, Bob Beauchamp, who said a few years back now that “There is no such thing as an IT project; there are Business Projects supported by IT”. If we all starting thinking like this statement, then all we do will be related back to the Business, changing our Attitude with the inevitable Behavioural changes to ensure we only carry out our role in reflection to the business and the Culture will change as we all begin to think in this way.

So please consider the ABC’s and that all projects are Business projects supported by IT, hopefully we then become much more successful in delivering working, accepted solutions.

So to remain relevant and to survive in the current and next economic environment we need to be more “right” mind thinking, expanding the things we as humans do that are difficult to automate or outsource, like empathy for sales and services. Recognising facial expressions is more powerful to Sales today, then understanding the process of selling.

Hopefully some of this makes sense to you, it did to me, another reason why in ITIL it covers more of the Strategy and Design phases, elements are they difficult to automate and outsource, relationship management of suppliers and partners becomes more prominent too. It all makes sense and we need to be aware or we will be “optional”, in the words of Accenture’s CEO, “How do we become not optional?” this is the new survival technique. We in IT need to start thinking in this new way, becoming part of the business, as well as supporting it. We need that empathy with our customers, and to design more with the right brain, to ensure we are not optional.

Off on holiday now for 10days, hopefully when I return I’ll have to stories to relay.

From our IT point of view it simply proves that merging old and new together can achieve the overall objectives if carried out in a controlled, planned and integrated manner. Some things need to be rebuilt but look old or like the original to be accepted, other systems need to be updated and integrated and work alongside completely new systems, all to achieve the overall business objectives. No one has the luxury of a “green field” site these days, and so we need to review the existing infrastructure and plan our strategy in line with the business demands and constraints. Then we need to draw up the designs ready for the new transition to take place, and finally for operations to take control and ensure we keep the “lights on” as and when required to fulfil those Business objectives. Without continuous reviews and improvements being made we would fail, so this element is in no way a luxury, but a necessity in our fast changing world.

If a nation can do all this with a new city (how many new cities do you know of being created in the 21st century?) then we can achieve this success and more within our own organisations, especially if we have a set of guidance in our hands.

So why is it the term appears to have “almost disappeared” within the market, was it just unachievable or ill defined? Has BSM taken its place within the marketplace? Now I notice that within ITIL v3 we have more of the elements that made up IRM, with references to supplier management throughout the lifecycle, references to Facilities management and the importance of understanding these conditions and constraints and the impact they have on IT resources and services. I mean, the air conditioning fails in the Server room and these system may need to be shutdown even though they have no error or fault, just to protect them from overheating and being damaged. This would directly impact the services being hosted by these servers.

So will IRM make a comeback, either in its former guise, or in a new form? My guess is that yes, it is on the verge of making a comeback as we see more collaboration between IT and the business functions, more integration of the business systems (ERP and BSM), the possible emergence of Business Portfolio Management, integrating Service PM, with Project PM, Product PM, Facilities PM etc, to provide an overall view of what’s about to happen, what is happening and what has happened across the business. Enabling better or improved Service designs, incorporating demand management with an understanding of ALL of the conditions and constraints, from a BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE. Now this sounds just like what is described within the Service Strategy book in ITIL v3.

So what is your view on this? Has IRM already gone into the sunset, or it is about to rise up with a new dawn? I’d like to hear what you think, in case I’ve got it all wrong.

This week I got the car into the dealership to check it out. Turns out that the aerial was faulty and had to be replaced, as the Satellite looks for 3 signals to triangulate your position for the exact location, but only 2 of my aerial signals was transmitting. So all working again, but it got me thinking about our own positions. So often we need to look at things from 3 different perspectives to gain a full understanding of what is really going on, or where we are. We all know that there are two sides to very viewpoint, which is true, and to gain a balanced view the third is needed to help make an informed judgement. This is true with most things, like relationships, when people split up, and also with how our services are functioning. We need to look at things from the IT Perspective (our default!), the Business Perspective AND the customer’s perspective. Get all three and you’ve then got the best viewpoint of how things are really working. All too often we stick with one or two views, and like my car, end up thinking we are 10miles south of where we actually are.

Remember to check all three positions.

This past month, I’ve been landed with more equipment that I’m expected to carry on my already full key ring or in my pockets. My bank has just sent a “PINsentry” small calculator looking device that I am to use by inserting my new “authentication” card (another card for my full wallet/card holder). Then when I want to access my online account, from anywhere in the world, I need to carry these things with me. Insert the card into the Pinsentry, it provides a unique PIN to be entered onto the login screen so I can access my account. Nice. Friendly, more stuff to carry and more hassle. Then my company decides they needed more security too and issues a keyfob “RSA secureID” device which issues a random number very few seconds or so to be entered when I need to access the Company domains. More things to carry on my person. So the list goes on with credit card companies, Share dealing companies, etc etc etc.

So now when I travel, and as you know I travel a lot, I have to carry more and more things, just in case. (oh and of course the Airlines are so helpful here by reducing the weight I carry now too!) It really is unacceptable, and yet each company thinks it’s fine, it’s only a little device, easy! Yes, but not when multiplied 10 times. The whole consumer industry needs to stop and think about the consumer and see if they can come up with some single system for all. Yes it needs to be secure, but it also needs to be easy and aid, not annoy or hinder the consumer. This “pulling of things together” really needs to start, before it gets more complex and then people will actually become more careless and the whole security point becomes a hindrance to business.

It’s the same with IT Service Management, too many organisations have “silos” of applications and disciplines, that really should work together. The owners of these silos do things that appear minor to them for their client, but when all the others “silos” are doing something similar, but different, the end result is annoyance, hindrance, and inefficiency for the client! Please start thinking from the Business (client) perspective, I’ve said this so many times before. Just stop and think. If you can converge, share and make life for the business and client more effective and easy to engage, whilst adding value then try and move towards it. Internally in one organisation it should be easy, across organisations and industries, less so, but still ought to be sought.

Agree?

Now don’t let me hear a word of complaint from you American’s until you start paying $2+ per litre like I do here in the UK (that’s over $10 a gallon!!). Mind you if the Americans did start paying that sort of sum, I do think a green revolution would take hold over there.

So what has all this got to do with IT, well I believe the energy crisis is beginning to take hold in IT decisions and investments too. We’ve all heard of the crisis in California a couple of years back, when they ran out of power – electricity, something considered essential and always there. Now for our sins we in IT devour a lot of power, and it’s getting worse, the more power and storage we pack into servers, the more servers we have, then we start to put them into server farms, and then air cooling is required and yet more power is needed for that too. So increasing the utilisation of what we already have is what we need to focus on. We all know that as much as 80% of capacity is not utilised and so the drive toward virtualisation is providing the solution. One can have different instances of implementations of systems and software, yet still held on one server, not several. Systems and protocols are protected and isolated as required, but the server is being more fully utilised, reducing the need for more capacity and more power.

So one of my predictions for 2008 is, it’s hardly surprising, that I believe virtualisation will dominate the next 2 years, as we try to not only reduce overheads, but also reduce our power usage and in some part help efforts towards green IT. Now virtualisation can cause its own management issues, so now really is the time to understand your current environment and get controls in place, before you analyse where the savings can be made with virtualisation. Also use management tools to ensure you can manage the virtual world and its instances, dependencies and implications. Moving to Virtualisation is one thing, managing the new environment is quite another, you’ll hear more about this from us this year.

Well the holiday period is over for another year, I sincerely hope you all had a great time with family and friends and that 2008 will be healthy and happy, with these two we can cope with anything thrown at us!

Now their is a question for you. Let’s hope we can, otherwise we’re all out of a job! The point really is does the business look to IT to realise value, or even expect IT to realize value, or because of our poor reputation with the business, do they simply expect IT to keep the lights on, by spending money? The truth is IT is already realising great value to the business, in fact the majority of businesses would not be in business today were is not for IT. So let’s break it down a little here and look at what we mean by value.

Firstly value is determined by the Customer, not by the provider. Why? Because everyone perceives value in different ways and therefore value is variable, it will change over time and context. Often time value has to be negotiated to get the balance right between Benefit over Price and the Quality Received over the expectations obtained. Remember that value is not always financial! So what does all this mean? Well if the value expected is not realised then the money spent is greater than or equal to the value added, and value added is not value until it is realised, or benefited from. Clear as mud?

Try this. Most people instinctively feel that they are adding value to the organisation, but when asked exactly how they add value and how much value they add they find it very difficult.  In addition, we point out that even if they could quantify how much value they add, they very often have no idea whether that value add is effectively being used in achieving the end-objective of the business (e.g. making revenue by selling a particular product or service).

In IT we often make the mistake of thinking that if we communicate the cost of IT to the business then they will automatically calculate the value of IT.  This is not true.
• Firstly the cost of IT is a gross amount, it is not possible to determine value unless it can be allocated to specific business outcomes
• Secondly, most IT departments don’t have a good idea of the cost of IT, either because this is accounted for by someone else, or because they are so fragmented that it is difficult to determine the cost across different IT units

The end result is that IT has no way of showing how they added value, because they can not link specific costs AND activities to specific business outcomes.  As a result the business mostly sees them as “spending money”. If IT wants to demonstrate value it has to link its services to where value is realized, not where value is added (ie Adding more disk capacity is value add, but until it benefits the users in that they now have larger email inboxes and don’t have to keep deleting mails, it’s not value realised)
If IT can not do this it will always be viewed as ‘money spent’ v ‘value added’ not value realised.

Therefore we need to be able at all times to demonstrate or articulate the value we are adding to the business user or services, and not to the infrastructure. Can you?

Now I’ve had some comments on this from various people whilst I’ve been “on the road” at conferences. What’s your view?

Finally, this week also included the UK office Christmas party at a Jazz club. The meal was actually a buffet and when opened we slowly made our way though (the bar being too comfortable!). Typically, I started ½ way through the process!! Taking my plate first to then load it up with food, ignoring the fact that at the start of the process was the collection of your serviette and cutlery. So I then made the obvious comment, should a process be document and explained first, or should it be intuitive? Actually in this case a little of both, had it been explained it would have avoided a collision at the end of the food collection, but it should also be intuitive to enable quick take up and correction “on the fly”. Thank goodness it was nothing more important than obtaining fuel for the party!!

The temple of Karnack is the most complete example to be found, and the most amazing thing is that when the temple was already built the addition of two obelisks was made. These are made of solid granite and weigh over 300tones. No one knows to this day how they were brought into position and erected within an existing building. How advanced these Egyptians were. Truly amazing.

What they realised was that planning and design were paramount, then understanding your constraints (in their case, slaves!) and ensuing everyone was focussed, understood their own role and how important each person, and steps were in achieving the goals and finished objectives. We can learn a few lessons from them. Now I’m sure our endeavours will not be looked at in 3,000 years and marvelled at, but we still need to ensure we carry out the same disciplined principles and achieve our business driven objectives. Hopefully our customers will then marvel at our achievements now!

To that end we need to start implementing the CMDB, something that has been around as a concept for a mere 20 years, and struggled with. Technology has moved on and federation makes it earlier (but not easy). Many people understand the benefits and have even purchased the technology, now they need to work on that plan and start to deploy. We’ll help you along the way, we already have our book the “ step by step guide to building a CMDB” out, and we’ll start on a webinar series next year to help you further. Together we’ll achieve what was once thought impossible, and the business world will change as a result.

The most obvious question to be raised is why transfer, sensitive, confidential data in this unsecured manner? Why not use digital encryption transfer as one would expect in the Finance sector. What were the processes and how can such a manual step be acceptable in today’s hi-tech environment. The cultural behaviour of the employees comes under scrutiny, did they not think of the implications (business perspective) had this CD gone astray? Why not send it registered, using a DHL or Fedex style of service with full tracking, what sort of Governance and compliance rules were followed here?

Yes there will be an enquiry, and public funds spent correcting the situation, but this needs to stop. Many organisations will use this warning as a wake-up call to review their own processes and procedures for data management, and in particular in regard to confidential information of client details. Alignment and understanding of regulations, like the Data Protection Act need to be revisited. Electronic data transfer security looked into. Access Management, the new process within ITIL v3 will need to be reviewed to ensure all data is protected, secure and has integrity. How do you manage access to your infrastructure, application and data? Is it time for a review?

We all hope that none of the 25million British citizens will become adversely impacted by this poor management of data and security process, but it’s still too early to tell. The CD’s are still not found and could be in anyone’s hands today. Do you know where your data is today?

One of the excellent questions that came from the floor was “how do you cope in a virtualised environment?” What an excellent question. The truth is that unless you have a handle of your Infrastructure and more importantly its relationship to the Business services and processes, you’re just not going to be able cope. Applications and Operating systems sharing devices with multiple “versions” deployed, is just part of what you need to manage Just think when in such virtualisation we can move any of them from one server, or virtualised environment  to another to resume or maintain service. Try supporting the customer when this happens when you don’t have a CMDB understanding the current position, or the “what if” scenarios necessary for change assessments or problem root cause resolution. So my advise, you’d better deploy your CMS now, as trying to do it in a virtualised world will be exponentially more difficult. All nodded and agreed.

So if you’ve not started your CMS or CMDB eco system implementation, you’d better get started, if your organisation is talking of virtualisation.  If they are already starting virtualisation and you’ve not got a CMS or CMDB project underway – panic, your world is going to get so much more difficult. The good thing about panicking is that you turn to experts to help you get their fast. You can talk to us or any or our BMC Atrium partners, but I’d recommend you do it quickly.

Finally, have you seen the new ITP Roundtable on “ITIL v3 6 months on”? If not check it out, some good comments there, from authors and industry leaders. http://www.itpreport.com/default.asp?Mode=Show&A=1402

Last week whilst in Vancouver for the BMC Userworld I met with some clients for various discussions, one is a great, but often repeated question, and so I wanted to share with you my thoughts.

The question was a difficult one – “when seeking to set SLA’s where do you start?” Obviously one has to determine “where you are currently” before answering this, as many will have some form of SLA’s, even if informal or implicit, but generally we should now be looking at services from a business perspective and not IT’s.

The biggest mistake is not asking the right questions of the business, especially in their own terms. You should not be seeing details of 99.9% uptime on xxxx server, but more on a Business Service, so you can map the IT Services that support it, and then the infrastructure that supports that. Remember also that the Business will just ask for 100% when they think they need it, so you need to discuss their actual requirements, when they work and when they don’t, when apps or services are critical and when not or less so. Also determine things like – if they say Payroll service asks for availablity at 99/9% of the time, then ask – is that just between the hours of 9-5, excluding weekends and public holidays? So you know the boundaries. Then ask, can the 0.1% be used by IT all at once, or how can it be split? What about a window for routine and maintenance changes? When the business wants/needs an upgrade can this be excluded from normal SLA, and fall under a Change SLA (then negotiate that).

It’s really quite complex, but the key is to start by fact finding with the Business. Then ask their requirements, and question them, so you (and they) fully understand them. Then armed with the information determine if you can supply that level of Service with the current resources, and infrastructure, if not, go back and tell them what you can deliver, or what the “upgrade” cost will be. When you start the discovery phase it becomes and interesting exercise for the business to. They start to review their own business services, and the criticality of them, time based. Once IT has interpreted them and worked out the costs to provide, that again can focus on the minds of what’s really critical, based on financial and technical constraints.  ITIL v3 helps a lot here in the Strategy and Design books because it’s more business focussed, so it’s worth checking out.

We have an old whitepaper which was created before ITIL v3 came out, but the content is still relevant from a BSM perspective, so it’s worth checking out still. 
http://documents.bmc.com/products/documents/74/95/57495/57495.pdf

Off tomorrow to Washington DC, for a CIO event and then to Nashville for an ITSMF meeting. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some thoughts from these events with you next week.

We had 4 of the ITIL v3 authors speaking, in addition to Sharon Taylor, Chief Architect. One of the authors, Vernon Lloyd (Service Design), made a really good point, that I wanted to share with you. What’s your view? The business people look out the front door of the organisation and see a wonderful view of open space, long straight road and tons of opportunity. With this view they see growth into new areas or opportunity, perhaps transportation, Hospitality and make plans based on this world as they see it. However at the same time, IT look out the back door, and also have a view, but it’s different, they see mountains, waterfalls, rivers winding, and little room for manoeuvre. They start planning on how to ride the rapids, scale the mountains and protect the landscape from pollution. So here we have it, one organisation, two views, with almost opposing plans.

Obvious here, that this has to change, all of the organisation needs to look out of all the windows and get the full landscape, and align their plans, before integrating their solutions and services to one common goal. This is why ITIL v3 is so important, we need the Strategy book, to ensure we have the full picture, we need then to design based on our opportunities AND constraints, and smoothly with minimal disruption transition to operate on our common goal.

So what window do you look out of? What view do you have? When did you last walk to another window and check that view and the impact it may have on you? Do you know the common goal? Make today the day you look out of a different window to a different view but from the same house, and take action appropriately.

Finally, some great Podcasts from Ynema have been recorded this week, so check them out and hear what’s been going on in our House this week. The view I have in Vancouver is of a lake and mountain with sea plans taking off and landing, what’s yours?

The most interesting thing, that I certainly was not aware of, is singularism. Apparently in he past people were encouraged just to accept the decision made for them by the state and not to question, therefore choice was simply not available. Only one make of car was available, only one Bank, only one make of TV etc. and one was only allowed one of each per family. Therefore it was easy to choose, there was no choice. Even if you inherited a home from a deceased parent, you had 18months to sell it! Now we in the West find this unbelievable especially as we actually have so much choice we have business specifically set up to help us choose. Why is this so interesting now, well we now have two types of people in Romania, the “before revolution generation” and the “After revolution generation”, I guess we actually have the “transition generation” too. So we need to understand how this affects and influences the new managers or decision makers in how they select tools or products. Being the only BSM solution with maturity, makes it easy in this market, but being one of many vendors adds complexity many are not comfortable with.

All this just goes to show that we need to be very aware of the cultural differences in the markets we trade in. In this case choice is so new it’s too confusing and delaying the decision making process considerably. Maybe there is a lot to be said for limited choice!!

One reader said:

Sorry Ken, I respectfully disagree with you and ITIL.  Too much of a diehard accountant I suppose.  I don’t much care for the fuzzing-up of the meaning of long-established terms of art.

Management is not an asset.  Management is a labor cost. 

If this unfortunate trend continues, everything will be an asset.  Oh, in ITIL v.3, everything is an asset!

A service is a service.  An asset is an asset.  A service can have value for the organization.  An asset can have value for the organization.  A service can have promised service guarantees. 
A service can have utility.  My first job after XXX and XXXX XXXX was building the utility rate models for San Diego Gas & Electric – trust me, utilities have service levels to meet and they work hard to hard to keep them. 

The word they were looking for is value, not asset.

ITIL provides a great framework.  But, knowing Rob Stroud, Malcolm Fry and George Spalding as I do, I think we need to take their advice with a huge dose of salt.  Let’s not redefine words just for the IT “good practices.”

I replied:

It’s also great that we can open up a debate, as at the start I too was “unconvinced” about having all these elements described as Assets, but as you work through more of the logic in today’s environment it did make more sense to me. More than happy to hear more of your view though, and take it back to Michael who will be at BMC’s Userworld in 2 weeks time. He is also sharing a platform with me in Washington in November, so I can continue the debate then too!

There has always been a difference between how IT describe an Asset and Accountants describe an asset. The Accountancy view is something that appreciates or depreciates in value, and value often directly related to financial value only. Within IT the Asset will have not only financial value but also that “fit for purpose” value. A keyboard is not a fixed asset, as it’s of so little financial value that it is depreciated immediately and certainly unlikely to appreciate (although I guess one from the 1960’s may now have a greater value through rarity). But it is fit for purpose and extremely valuable for IT – the Desktop or laptop is useless without it. So Finance would not call it an asset, IT very definitely would.

The same goes for this definition which includes Management. Think outsourcing and Managed services, I’ve known accountants to treat these over the terms on the agreement and amortise them (something that used to only apply to assets eg buildings). So are you saying that a Managed Service is not an Asset to the organisation that is purchasing it?

Interested to hear more of your view in this.

Many thanks for responding too.

Plus after further investigation and input from others I supplied the following:

Similar to the definition of service, the definition of asset continues to change and evolve.  This has been a hot topic in accounting during the internet age.  By no means is it a cut and dried issue.  That said, the most accepted accounting definition of asset is from the IFRS Framework: "An asset is a resource controlled by the enterprise as a result of past events and from which future economic benefits are expected to flow to the enterprise."
It is not necessary, in accounting, for control of access to the benefit to be legally enforceable for a resource to be an asset, provided the entity can control its use by other means.  Such as a contractually managed service, for example.  In accounting, an asset is not the same as ownership.  In accounting, ownership is described by the term "equity". 

Notice these CFO categories of intangible assets (particularly numbers 7 and 8):

Categories of Identifiable Intangible Assets
 
1.Marketing-related intangible assets (e.g., trademarks, trade names, brand names, logos). 
2.Technology-related intangible assets (e.g., process patents, patent applications, technical documentation, such as laboratory notebooks, technical know-how). 
3.Artistic-related intangible assets (e.g., literary works and copyrights, musical compositions, copyrights, maps, engravings). 
4.Data processing-related intangible assets (e.g., proprietary computer software, software copyrights, automated databases, integrated circuit masks and masters) 
5.Engineering-related intangible assets (e.g., industrial design, product patents, trade secrets, engineering drawings and schematics, blueprints, proprietary documentation). 
6.Customer-related intangible assets (e.g., customer lists, customer contracts, customer relationships, open purchase orders). 
7.Contract-related intangible assets (e.g., favourable supplier contracts, license agreements, franchise agreements, non-compete agreements). 
8.Human capital-related intangible assets (e.g., a trained and assembled workforce, employment agreements, union contracts) 
9.Location-related intangible assets (e.g., leasehold interests, mineral exploitation rights, easements, air rights, water rights).
10.Goodwill-related intangible assets (e.g., institutional goodwill, professional practice goodwill, personal goodwill or a professional, celebrity goodwill, general business going-concern value). 

There are several fundamental issues at play here which do not appear to be properly understood: Value, Customer Orientation, Assets and Strategic Assets.  These terms may seem intuitive but, as with all subjective sciences, often mask a greater nuance.  So let’s deal with these.

Value
Why use a tortured phrase like “Value Creation” or “creating value for customers” if all we mean is that customers are getting a good deal?  These terms reflect an important shift in mindset from managing the resources that go into work (the inputs) to managing performance (the outputs or results).  And, more than that, it reflects a view of what performance is and how organizations perform.

When we think about the real and pragmatic work organizations do, we are likely to think about the concrete things they make, or the services they provide, than about an abstraction called value.  Yet management’s mission, first and foremost, is value creation.  Without it, they will not prosper for long.

Calculating the economic value of a good or service (determining how much it’s worth) is generally straightforward.  The value created for a customer usually resides in time or labor or materials saved, and those savings can be translated into a cash equivalent.  But services create value in other ways.

There is usually a difficult-to-quantify leap to be made between the product or service delivered and the value created.  Charles Revson, a cosmetics executive, once observed that his industry sells “hope in a jar.”  For customers, value often resides in intangibles.  Clearly, it is important to tease out all the chief components of value.

Value not only takes many forms, it comes from many sources – a product’s usefulness, its quality, the image associated with it, its availability, or the component services that accompany it.  The more intangible the value appears, the more important it is to recognize that value is defined by customers.  The same IT service would create vastly more value for a customer who sends ten thousand packages a day than one that sends only ten.  Or the same IT service that contributes to saving your life as compared to saving you money.

Customer Orientation
It is natural for people who live inside the organization to get wrapped up in what they do, to focus in what they make, and the craft that goes into the making.  This is historically how businesses defined what they made.  Their challenge, in these mental models, was to increase productivity, and the way to do that was to make production processes as efficient as possible.  Management’s mission was to make things, and make them more cheaply.  This is called Taylorism.  It is the philosophy that however simple a task might appear; you need to study it systematically to determine the “one best way” to do it.   This is also the philosophy of ITILv2.  The parameters of value are all contained in the walls of IT; the walls of the factory.

While it does suffer from an awful reputation, Taylorism isn’t wrong.  It was just too narrow in how it thought about management’s mission.  It doesn’t ask an important question, “Are we making the right things to begin with?”  If you are driving from London to Cardiff by car, you need to make the journey averaging 55 miles per gallon.  That is an efficiency target.  This efficiency target is irrelevant, however, if you ought to be driving in the opposite direction to Manchester.  But that is an effectiveness target.  Futile, of course, if your reason for traveling in the first place is for perilous heart surgery – but the surgeon in Manchester is inadequately trained.

Taylorism, also known as the Manufacturing Mindset, worked well in a world of mass production where the challenge was to produce more things at a lower cost.  Value equals Efficiency and Effectiveness.  But in a world in services, the question “what is value? – needs a different answer.

Peter Drucker offered a different definition.  Customer’s don’t buy products, he observed, they buy the satisfaction of particular needs.  This means that what the customer values is often different from what the provider thinks he sells.  This is called the Marketing Mindset.  It is a sense-and-response model that begins with the customers.

This is where Utility and Warranty come in.  They focus on outcomes.  A customer doesn’t want to buy quarter-inch drills; they want to buy quarter-inch holes.  But all too often IT, much like manufacturers, is focused on specifications and building to specifications.  Most organizations are hampered by mass production mental models.  Note: Utility and Warranty is NOT the same as “Functional and Non-functional” or “Efficiency and Effectiveness.”  The latter terms are about the drills.  Utility and Warranty is about the holes; the desired outcomes.  Rather than fuzzying things, they illuminate the CIO’s mission.

Without an understanding of customer outcomes, any discussion about customer requirements or customer value would be futile - truly.  It is not sufficient to deliver to a set specification; a service provider should establish how the customer genuinely needs its services.  Therefore, ITIL begins with a philosophy of facilitating customer desired outcomes (utility and warranty) as compared to customer requirements, customer satisfaction or even customer delight.  Organizational structures, process, technologies and measurement systems must be locked onto customer outcomes rather than specifications.  Similar IT organizations may produce and deliver similar IT services.  However, they may be organized radically different, or measure performance differently because they are pursuing different business outcomes.

Drucker called this the “…managerial equivalent of realizing the world isn’t flat.”

A service organization is more than an administrative unit.  It is also a collection of productive resources. A basic assumption of the RBV is that the resources and capabilities underlying production differ across organizations. They are intrinsically different. Some are superior to others. What matters is the organization endowed with superior resources/capabilities is better able to produce more economically or better satisfy customers.  Strategic Assets are defined as the “set of difficult to trade and imitate, scarce, appropriable and specialized Resources and Capabilities that bestow competitive advantage.”  Service Management is comprised of Resources and Capabilities. Hence, it is potentially a strategic asset. 

A Managed Service is a bundle of Resources and Capabilities.  In many cases, scarce, difficult to trade, imitate or appropriate.   In contracts with exclusivity (E.g.  Microsoft’s Xbox and Halo game developers) it may be a source of distinctiveness.  Why couldn’t a managed service be, not only an asset, but a strategic asset?

Note: I did not invent these, nor I’m sure the ITIL Authors.  We are all plagiarists; copying the ideas of leading practitioners and thinkers like Coase, Drucker, Ted Levitt, Edith Penrose, Stephen Haeckle, Clay Christensen, and many, many others.  These are very well established concepts by leaders in the field – not our opinions.  They are also well established in the business and leading IT organizations.

Nor are these American-centric concepts.  They can found by leading UK management thinkers such as Matthias Holweg and Frits Pil (Univ of Cambridge), James Teboul, Susan Barlow, Stephen Parry, Mike Faulkner, Daniel Jones, Gary Fisher and many, many others.

The ideas just seem to be new to IT.  ;-)

(Service Strategy) Any Resource or Capability. Assets of a Service Provider include anything that could contribute to the delivery of a Service. Assets can be one of the following types: Management, Organisation, Process, Knowledge, People, Information, Applications, Infrastructure, and Financial Capital.

So that covers quite a lot then. Management as an asset, I could think of a few that could not be described as an asset!  But yes, managing funds for example is a service that produces income (fees) and therefore an asset to the organisation, and so the same for all the others listed, including people, probably the most expensive and valuable asset within the organisation, and making up the organisation. Now you’ll notice that the list does not include a service! Why is that? My view is that you need all of those elements listed to make up a service, which once operational provides value to the customer and generates income (or cost recovery) and so therefore becomes an asset.

And the ITIL definition of a Service?

A means of delivering value to Customers by facilitating Outcomes Customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific Costs and Risks.

The best example here are the utilities we all use, Electricity.  We simply want the end product – electric to power devices in our homes, and without having the cost of the infrastructure, generator, pipelines, management etc. More than ever these days we are all seeking to acquire a service, rather than all the components that make one up, to get our end value.

So what about Utility then?

(Service Strategy) Functionality offered by a Product or Service to meet a particular need. Utility is often summarised as "what it does".

So the Utility is all about understanding if the Asset, Product or Service is fit for purpose, does it deliver what is requested and required? Good point, if it does not, then why have it in the first place! Or if only partially meets the requirements at least we need to know that and determine if we still need or want it. So the requirements are key here! In fact the output from Service Strategy and Service Design are key in determining the Service Utility!

And so what about this Warranty thing? I thought that was what you got with a new car or dishwasher!!

(Service Strategy) A promise or guarantee that a product or Service will meet its agreed Requirements.

So this is really how you ensure you can support and maintain the Asset, Product or service, the operational element to meet the service level you bought into. So it is the same as I get with my car or dishwasher then, the support and maintenance should anything happen which deviates from the normal operations of the equipment or service. Good point, why buy an expensive Asset if you’re not clear how it is going to be supported and kept operational? This will take into account our Service Transition and Service Operations then, and hopefully service design too, based on the strategy (utility).

Therefore, this service as an asset with utility and warranty sums up the service lifecycle and ITIL v3 really. Impressive, because this is not that complicated, in fact I’d say back to documented common sense. Something ITIL was well known for all the way through. So if I lease my car, suddenly that becomes a Service which is an asset to me as it delivers the value I require without the ownership and the car fulfils the utility I require (and more!!), including the warranty so it’s operational and maintained, often incorporating breakdown cover (sound familiar?).

So there you have it, all cleared up, nice and easy. Just think car or dishwasher.

Next week off to chilly Moscow and Bucharest to present at some ITSM events, then it’s off to Vancouver for the BMC Userworld.

(NB: all the quotes on definitions are taken from the free downloadable ITIL v3 glossary)

We have five of the ITIL v3 team, including Sharon Taylor, Michael Nieves, Vernon Lloyd, George Spalding and Gary Case. We also have Kurt Milne, Managing Director of the IT Process Institute (of Visible Ops handbook fame), who just released some new research on “Change, Configuration and Release – what’s really driving improved performance?” With some valuable findings for those wishing to improve performance and understand which ITIL processes provide the most benefit.

We also have speakers from CSC, Vodaphone, CDI IT Outsourcing, E Daly Consulting and Database Brothers Inc , and only two BMC’ers. The focus is on Best Practices and in particular the new ITIL v3, so please made every effect to come along and learn from the Authors and experts in our field. Trust me, you’ll get as much value attending this one track, as you would attending the ITSMf annual events.

Now that’s all for the non BMC customers, for those of you already using our solutions, we’ve got even more on offer, check out the full listing of sessions here.

Finally isn’t it great when technology and process automation really works well. Just today I had to call my Bank to arrange a transfer of some funds over a US Account. Now when I called them and got the automated response system, I took a deep breath thinking “Here we go…”, but they simply asked for the 10 digit ID number, which I had, certain digits from my Pin number, which I remembered, and then I was through to an Agent. Yes, one what spoke clear English, well Scottish actually, they new my name instantly and asked me to confirm my identity by asking for my postal code (zip code) and mobile phone number. Then in less than 10mins on the phone I had arranged the money wire from the UK to the US, painless. If only all call centers or even service desks were as customer orientated. So often you have to enter many elements of data, hoping it’ll be of use, only to be asked for all your information when you get to an agent, who speaks poor English (or whatever your primary language is), and the whole process gets you very frustrated, yet the SLA’s are great and the Service Desk thinks all is well!

Would love to hear some of your worst experiences!  

However whilst at our HQ I experienced, not a process problem, but a mind set problem with the service desk. Not having office space at HQ, I found an empty meeting room and decided to decamp there. Grabbed the Ethernet cable and set up shop. Only to discover that I could not gain access. So decided to be a good boy and contact the Service Desk and log an incident. Sure they did the normal thing of assuming I’m an idiot, and asked me to unplug and re-plug the cable in to ensure it was correctly seated (of course I’d done this several time before calling them anyway). So they logged the call and said someone would come out to visit my location. Great! Though Mr Impatient here, could not wait and after 10mins, I wandered off to another room and got connection to work. So when the Service Desk called back to confirm my problem details and location, I told them I had moved rooms and was working, but suggested they may like to still visit that meeting room and resolve the issue, to avoid someone else experiencing the problem and calling them. However, after I hung up, I get the automated Email update of the Incident informing me that the incident is now resolved and closed. Whilst I know, I personally have a work-around in place (I moved), the root cause was not resolved and so another Incident will undoubtedly be raised when that meeting room is being used with network access required. Consider it a manual event alert.

To be fair, the Service Desk may have closed my Incident and opened a Problem ticket to resolve the root cause, but I suspect not. I suspect the service agent was content to close off another incident on his queue and move onto the next service disruption incident call. The proactive element not being followed through. So the main point here, is not that unless the person has a service mentality and thinks the logic through, we’ll never be fully proactive, regardless of the processes in place and the automated tools facilitating them. As always it boils down to the people element.

Lets remember to educate and try to instil a service mentality into all that work in our service industry. One of the best tools for this I seen is the Airport Simulation training “game” we deliver, which is fun and easy to play, but provides loads of “light bulb” moments to see the importance of working together, communication and being customer focussed. Maybe we all need to go through this once a year, to remind ourselves of the wider picture, when we’re often in the day to day drudgery of the detail.

The Service Desk mentality I mentioned is not uncommon in other industries too, I’ve come across it at Airports, Hotels, Restaurants and even car dealers. So we in IT are not unique, but we could be!!

My experience of the week reminded me of people doing things in half measure. Firstly when I entered the US and went through immigration it struck me how bad things were. I was in a rush to catch a connecting flight and so asked the airline steward if I could get to be one of the first off the plane. I was. Joined the queue (or line as the Americans call it) and walked in line to the front of it. Only to be put into a lottery at the last moment. Many Homeland security desks were open, maybe 10 or 15, and you one is simply told to “pick” another line by a counter, no formal queuing system now, just the luck of the draw. Unfortunately for me, I chose a counter which was the slowest to process, and I mean the slowest. Whilst I was about first off the plane and into the line, I was now the last from my flight to be processed. All because the process was not thought through from a customer perspective and the queuing processes was abandoned at the crucial point, the selection of a counter. No ticketing system to ensure each person is taken in rotation. Simple effective, but not in place. Mind you that was the least of my concerns, when Homeland security then decided to retain me for 2hours, only to advise me that all my paperwork was in order. Needless to say I missed my flight, and the one after (which was fully booked) and the 1st one the next day, which had a computer problem with the transfer system.

Now doing things by half is something I find all too often within organisations. Implementing Incident Management and not Problem Management, the final stage in making Incident more effective, by reducing the root cause and therefore more incidents. Implementing Change Management without Capacity Management. It’s obvious that most changes will impact capacity negatively or positively, yet few implement then together, nor indeed integrate them. Release management and not Deployment, something now covered in ITIL v3. Just because something is released (a new version of software), does not mean it is, or has been, deployed. It simply means it’s ready for deployment. Just like my line at immigration, you get so far in order, then at the crucial moment its “luck of the draw” to completion. Even implementing ITIL without a continual improvement programme, utilising something like CMMi, or Six Sigma, or a compliance policy without Cobit to ensure it’s measured and managed.

Why do we do things by half? Mostly I think it’s because we believe we’re saving time and money. When in fact it’s the reverse. So yet again, I recommend, please review your processes from the customer’s perspective and ensure you do that last phase for the best possible advantage to the customer. In the end it is much more satisfying and beneficial to all involved. End the lottery in getting to the front of the line.

Off on holiday now for a week touring Ireland.

This week I’ve been back on the road again for the final batch of our Best Practice and Compliance Roadshow. The final one being in Oslo, Norway, where I stayed overnight. Now what got me thinking about all these questions? What I saw in the bathroom of my hotel room. Oxygen. Yes a can of oxygen. Now I’ve seen this for sale before at a conference in Las Vegas, and it is supposed to stimulate the brain again ready for the next batch of “death by powerpoint”, but really!

15years ago we would not have thought about buying bottled water for anything other than travelling abroad and trying to avoid tummy upsets. Now people buy water in bottles everyday, and sometimes, like a airports, pay a fortune for it! Now it seems we are about to have a huge wave of people purchasing Oxygen. Apparently, according to the label, it helps improve the mind, the skin, overall heath and wellbeing, even combats jetlag, (Maybe I need some). So I can just imagine we’ll all end up buying it and using it on a regula