by Dave Lowenstein of Federated Networks
Starting something new, anything new is always hard, for the gravitational pull of complacency has immense power. What’s even more difficult is starting something new that is transformational in its scope. Initiating disruptive transformational change in an IT industry that is skeptical and pretty darn jaded (but hey, who can blame them given the current state of affairs) is much harder still.
No doubt we software vendors have not made our path any easier by aggressively calling out the shortcomings of existing solutions, irrespective of the admittedly fortuitous timing of our now seemingly discerning comments.
When we set out to form Federated Networks with the goal of developing a secure product suite that could protect user data, content and communications against networked software's most pervasive threat vectors, we had no idea what we would be in for along the way.
Intuitively, one might have thought the stage was well set for a pied piper selling "The Answer" to an industry with a self-evident set of problems. But, alas, the world is not beating a path to our door (cue violin music) … but then again, our product hasn’t even been released so we actually have no reason to whine (too much).
Admittedly, we miscalculated in quite a few places. It’s now abundantly clear that the benefits derived from being industry outsiders that allowed us to objectively evaluate all existing industry ideas from first principles, actually was to our disadvantage as we began marketing the company. Additionally, we have also made at least the following marketing errors:
Entrenchment - We failed to recognize just how entrenched the skeptical IT industry world view is. In most industries, skeptics are usually right for some period of time but, in the case of cyber security, the skeptics have always been right. This, of course, makes being skeptical a very logical position to take; therefore the entrenchment.
It strikes us as more than just a little convenient that the "impossibility notion" provides a convenient excuse or perhaps a plausible one for existing purveyors of weak security solutions to hide behind. Well, we believe that software can in fact can be made secure (particularly if aided by hardware isolation).
But, lest the Pharisees get too worked up, we do not believe that everything can be made impossible to hack forever. Nonetheless, remains our BHAG (thought we’d give a shout-out to a now underused mid-90’s business buzzword "big hairy audacious goal").
Standard Practice - We erroneously chose not to follow industry standard practice of creating a technical white paper outlining our theories. Our thinking was that black box empirical investigation was much more applicable than words on paper -- as many solution providers seem long on talk and short on results. We still believe that’s the case, but more words on paper might have helped with the “how/why" folks.
Commitment - We did not initially realize the intellectual and emotional commitment many of software security analysts, consultants, practitioner’s and even casual IT observers had to their own ideas regarding the solution directions most likely to be effective. At the end of the day, there are many, many more cyber security arm-chair quarterbacks than we imagined; most with pretty strong convictions in their beliefs and ideas related to what might or will work to secure cyber space. It’s tough to be heard when everyone’s trying to talk.
And so we miscalculated. In the meantime, we will take at least some comfort in the fact that having our ideas qualified as crazy or absurd, seems to be viewed at least by some as an important step on the path to greatness.
“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” ~ Albert Einstein
Dave Lowenstein is the CEO of Federated Networks.
by Ernie von Simson
Apple’s integrated business model is rattling last year’s IT leaders just as minicomputer companies were rattled and ultimately destroyed by the PC and the PC’s “layered” business model two decades ago.
When the market moves, even the soundest business strategy cannot withstand such shock waves.
And the market is obviously moving as the enterprise CIOs refocus from PCs and websites to iPhones, Droids and iPads.
Many large companies have developed apps that build brand and enhance revenues by offering consumers time-saving convenience; useful and usable information; or, best of all in this dark economy, real savings from lower prices. A few examples include:
Bending the Cost Curve: A major health insurer is coupling apps with Big Data analytics to help its policyholders find the best and most cost effective source of medical attention, both near home and wherever the person may be traveling. That’s great for the person, good for the insurance company, and perhaps a credible early harbinger of “bending” the hitherto relentless upward curve of health care costs.
Selling Product: Automobile company apps embed a powerful dashboard of warning flags like reduced battery charge, low tire pressure, bearing vibration, etc. The ability to start the vehicle through the phone is cute but the information is even more valuable. These apps are credited with actually selling cars and other services.
Selling Services: Home security service apps let customers engage and disengage intrusion alarms while also receiving alerts of open windows and garage doors and images captured by nanny cams. Significantly, these systems are easier for the customer to operate than the systems built into the home. So again, the apps help sell the basic home-monitoring service.
Extending Customer Service: Banks are offering their small- and medium-business owners apps that help allocate transactions to accounts and engage their own customers. Over time, these “free” apps could set off a new competition with commercial SaaS vendors by mirroring functions offered today for a price. But meanwhile the apps are improving relationships with the bank’s most profitable customers.
Discounting Products: Makers of consumer packaged goods like snacks and cereals want to link “opt-in” consumer databases with smart phone apps. They help consumers save money by driving coupons to their cell phones while they’re in the supermarket filling their grocery carts. This real-time notification at point of purchase will effectively displace coupons clipped from newspapers or sent through the mail.
CIO focus on smartphone and tablet apps is just one indicator of Apple’s impact on the IT market. Another is the radical shift in how smartphones and tablets are governed in major corporations. I’ll have more to say on that in my next blog.
Ernie von Simson is the senior partner in the CIO Strategy Exchange and the author of The Limits of Strategy an inside analysis of the success and failure of IT companies over the past 30 years.
by Chuck Tatham of CiRBA
The green movement and “greening” of the data center was a trend that attracted some attention for a time but never really caught on as a meaningful trend. Having a greener data center is admirable from a corporate responsibility perspective, but in many cases power is of interest due to more pressing operational concerns. It’s not unusual to hear about data centers that simply can’t access more power for growth or that power costs are too big as a portion of IT spend.
If taking care of these problems results in the ability to be more “green” then great, but the prime concern is dealing with the core issue at hand: power constraint could result in the need to build a new data center to the tune of $10’s of millions.
The challenge in planning or managing power consumption is that, historically, it has been dealt with at a macro level. An organization may have a sense for real power consumed at the facility (provided by the utility) or server rack level but, generally, not beyond these high level points of aggregation.
The issue is that the rate of power consumed relates to how much “work” is being performed by the equipment housed in the data center. Servers, storage and networking gear all consume more or less power depending on how utilized they are. To get to the root of power issues it has become necessary to understand consumption at the server level.
Power should be considered as part of the general infrastructure capacity food group along with CPU, IO, RAM and storage etc. Historically, this hasn’t been possible without investment in specialized plug level power monitoring and even then there was no correlation between actual workloads and consumption; pretty crude.
There are many systems that can track the utilization of servers from a CPU perspective. Combined with manufacturer’s specifications on power draw it is possible to relate CPU activity and estimate power consumption as a function of CPU behaviour. For example, if a server is operating at 50% of its CPU capacity, then its power consumption will be some portion of its maximum power draw.
A number of companies have come up with calculations that can get you fairly close to what the actual draw may be. This kind of estimate, although rough, can go a long way toward understanding power needs at a workload level.
Intel’s latest server architecture can now provide real time power consumption data. This data can be tracked over time alongside other capacity data such as CPU, IO and RAM providing a direct correlation between server utilization and power.
Whether you choose to use estimated power consumption or invest in more advanced servers there will be a need to make sense of it and factor it into decisions. Analytics that can examine server behaviour and key metrics combined with power along with business policies can ensure that your hardware choices, workload layouts and even time of day placements are fully informed by the realities of power consumption.
Having this kind of visibility can help you avoid costly data center builds, maximize the density of what you already own. Understanding the demands of mission critical workloads allows for DR planning that includes prioritizing applications to fit on a subset of infrastructure while you work to bring everything back to normal.
The pinnacle of sophistication in power management is placement of workloads by time of day or off peak periods such that you can even turn some servers off for meaningful periods of time and save money and some trees.
Chuck Tatham is SVP of operations and business development of CiRBA, a data center intelligence analytics software provider that determines optimal workload placements and resource allocations required to safely maximize the efficiency of Cloud, virtual and physical infrastructure.
by Ernie von Simson
August is usually a slow somnolent month; a torpid time to loll at the beach, play with the kids, or read empty novels, certain that nothing strenuous can happen before Labor Day.
This August was different. The IT sector’s dynamic mobile business suffered three major reversals: Apple lost Steve Jobs; HP abandoned both WebOS and its tablet (and will probably sell its industry-leading PC business); and Google may abandon Android neutrality with the acquisition of Motorola Mobile. Any of these three could cause major disruptions that may not be visible for three years.
The Apple CEO transition from Steve Jobs to the highly regarded Tim Cook raises questions. Can the greatest innovator since Thomas Edison be succeeded by any chief operating officer? Wall Street remains upbeat assuming the company surely has a three-year product pipeline.
But the history of Steve’s previous replacement in 1985 paints a less optimistic picture. Sales and profits rose for the first years under John Sculley, masking the essential stagnation that relegated Apple to a minority market share until Steve returned in 1997.
Will that happen again? Can any CEO hold to a fixed product pipeline against big money competitors like Google and Microsoft?
HP’s abandonment of the mobility market and possible sale of its PC business reawakens questions about the company’s strategically destructive zig-zags over the last 20 years. CEO John Young forced out the leader of the company’s successful computer business to push more R&D emphasis on the traditional instrumentation business — the same business his own successor spun off a few years later.
Carly Fiorina bought the Compaq PC business over the loud objections of several insiders and was herself ousted. Her successor Mark Hurd bought Palm and cut R&D. Now his successor wants to abandon Palm’s WebOS and spin off PCs. After all those turns, HP’s ratio of market capitalization to revenues is now 0.4 — versus 2.0 times for IBM and 3.1 times for Microsoft.
Are the lions gathering? Will there be an HP at anything like its present scale three years from now?
Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobile could signal the end of the independent smartphone companies as the sector follows Apple and RIM: integrating processor, operating software, hardware, and even apps. As a rule, the company that controls the platform can eventually control the rest. That was certainly evident when Microsoft’s move into productivity apps during the 1980s placed WordPerfect, Lotus, and Borland at an extreme disadvantage. And, again, once Oracle moved from database into apps, it eventually absorbed Siebel and Peoplesoft.
Three years from now, there could easily be three vertically integrated smartphone makers: Apple, Google/Motorola, and Microsoft/Nokia with the positions or alliances of RIM, HTC, Samsung, and the rest yet to be determined.
Potentially destructive change has been a constant in the IT industry. For the mobility sector, change comes faster and rattles more destructively.
Ernie von Simson is the senior partner in the CIO Strategy Exchange and the author of The Limits of Strategy an inside analysis of the success and failure of IT companies over the past 30 years.
This is my third and final post in a blog series regarding application portfolio modernization projects. Specifically, I have covered different approaches and processes for making smart application portfolio decisions.
As a short recap, in my first post I discussed the business costs of doing nothing, even in the midst of a largely flat or even lower budget cycle. I also addressed the risk associated with an aging and monolithic application portfolio stack.
In my second blog post, I talked about experiences shared by CIOs regarding the options taken, ranging from whole scale application overhaul projects to iterative approaches focused more on process improvement or quality improvement in the application.
In this last post, I will focus on the first option of migration approach, which is to undertake a full transformational project that takes the existing application workload off of a mainframe platform and moves it to a distributed platform on Linux, Unix, or Windows.
What are the options for approaching such a project?
It all depends on the application characteristics within the portfolio. To understand this requires a thorough assessment of technical complexity and associated risk, a process which helps determine the best approach to use in the migration.
The assessment is used to evaluate the application itself, including main COBOL code, other legacy language code components, the transaction processing environment (such as CICS), and batch processing. It is also important to review the application touch-points, such as how an application interfaces with other applications in regards to monitoring tools, batch interfaces, and reporting tools. Once the entire application and interface is fully understood, a migration approach and strategy can be developed. The assessment findings process also helps to determine the best way to stage the migration and line up the teams in the build, test, and deploy project stages.
In most cases, a strategy will involve an incremental approach to migrations and a careful design of the project based on business and technical requirements. One typical portfolio approach is to start with a re-host of an application that has the least risk and complexity. This approach allows the IT team to get comfortable with the entire migration process, build expertise, and boost confidence in the target platform's performance capability versus running on the mainframe. Sometimes referred to as a pilot, it gives the organization a quick win to gain buy-in within the company.
Program management is the key lynchpin in any project, regardless of approach. Any migration will involve multiple teams across both the internal and vendor groups. It takes an experienced program manager with a strong background in computing platforms and complex technology projects to be able to orchestrate and execute the program.
Just as the quality of program management can make or break a project, organizational change management (OCM) presents a similar challenge and must be handled effectively. A common failure in most IT projects, ineffective OCM is also a culprit in our history of migration projects. Often, the most overlooked aspect of a project is the "human factor" of how a job actually changes from current platform to target after the migration is achieved.
One of my favorite approaches here is to have a skilled migration consultant expert lead a series of casual learning lunches in which he or she shares knowledge and experience at the work site. War stories and victories over a pizza go a long way in accepting change.
It all comes down to the basics of IT project management that has dogged our industry since the '90s. Migration projects aren't exempt from this basic tenant. While transformational projects are serious undertakings that deserve careful design and planning, the payoff is the hard dollar savings in operational costs that boost ROI better than any other technology project out there today.
Faced with this latest period of tumult and uncertainty in the tech industry (and the economy in general), how should CIOs respond? Almost certainly, some emerging companies with promising products or services, will run through their cash or otherwise fail to achieve reasonable scale.
Or they’ll fall victim to first mover dis-advantage and be eclipsed by a late-comers just as FaceBook trounced MySpace or Google sank AltaVista.
Establishment incumbents are equally vulnerable in times of sweeping change; witness the unhappy fates of Data General, Datapoint, Digital Equipment, Wang, and so many more.
Emerging companies offer too little visibility to provide their customers sufficient early warning to cut their losses. So here, the prudent response is to adopt a defensive stance from the first purchase forward:
1. Focus on “precise solutions to pressing problems,” as a top CIO once advised. In other words, avoid companies with grandiose roadmaps that go well beyond the focal issue -- the need for a unique solution to a functional shortfall in current software.
2. Postpone tight integration between the new product or service and the enterprise infrastructure or applications base until enough time passes to provide sufficient visibility. Yes that may require postponing full benefits or temporary installing costly work-arounds. But either will be more economic than a forced disengagement.
3. Avoid start-ups that seem overly intent on buying new business by cutting prices, concentrating far less on developing a profitable business model. Put another way: "Hope" is not a strategy. If the business doesn’t make economic sense it won’t exist for long.
4. Accept companies with a product or service that’s broadly attractive enough to make the business a reasonable acquisition targets should their efforts fail. Of course, this approach carries another form of risk since the acquirer may let the company wither or impose such Draconian maintenance costs or service degradation as to make the original service essentially unviable.
5. Develop an exit plan even before ink dries on the initial contract. If the company fails, what steps will be required to get clear of the encumbrance? Can some of these steps be taken in advance?
For establishment IT companies, three early warning signs have recurred in failure after failure over the past 30 years:
If these signals occur, it’s time to start making contingency plans for a graceful disengagement or at least reducing forward commitments.
Ernie von Simson is the senior partner in the CIO Strategy Exchange and the author of The Limits of Strategy an inside analysis of the success and failure of IT companies over the past 30 years.
Okay, I admit that I stole the idea for this title from Jim Collins. Collins introduced the
world to BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals) in his book Built to Last. It's a simple yet truly powerful concept.
For those who have pursued BHAGs, you've probably stepped in a few BHOCs (big hairy 'Oh craps!') along the way. Sometimes you slip and fall immediately, but often you don't know you've stepped in a BHOC until something begins to smell funny.
Good leaders know how to effectively guide their teams through problems, big or small, ensuring they don't fail in achieving their mission.
But maybe you want to be better than a good leader. Maybe even move up to great? Then learn to spot BHOCs before you step in them. Here are some basics:
1. Gather your team (especially those in the trenches) and other stakeholders and brainstorm risks around time, dollars, scope, quality, people, technology, etc.; ask them what they see as the biggest "Oh craps!" facing the effort
2. Don't judge any idea or you'll suppress risks (they'll still be there, you just won't know about them!)
3. Have a mechanism to continually listen for and capture risks throughout the life of the effort
4. Assess all risks based on probability of happening, and impact if a risk should occur (You will have risks from low probability and low impact, to high probability and high impact)
5. Document how you'll handle each risk:
a. Accept as is
b. Abolish
c. Avoid by modifying the project
d. Actively manage/mitigate
e. Assemble a contingency plan to execute if a risk occurs
I've always believed that the biggest risk facing any project is not identifying the risks that can sink a project. This is one BHOC that can easily be abolished.
All projects experience BHOCs. But with some early, honest and open risk management, you'll have a lot less crap to deal with!
Read more strategies and trends for IT leaders at www.CIOUpdate.com.
John D. Hughes is founder of GrowthWave, an Interim CIO/CEO Advisory firm in Seattle, WA, and author of the recently released leadership fable, Haunting the CEO: A tale of true leadership in an era of IT failure. John can be reached at jhughes@growthwave.com.
It's been quite a long time since there's been such a tectonic shift in service models and commercial forms within the IT Services industry. In my opinion, the last time we saw a "stand up and take note" change in how IT was delivered to enterprises occurred during the era of the dot-com exuberance. Coincidentally, that was immediately after the prior global recession, just about 10 years ago.
The shifting footing that is occurring today is being driven by the rapidly accelerating "As-a-Service" marketplace and its associated economic impact.
The greatest difference between the two eye-opening periods of innovation, however, rests with the underlying economics. The dot-com rush was almost entirely prospective, betting on economic models for value creation that were speculative at best. Yet, it changed the way IT was acquired, assembled, and delivered to the enterprise. Speed became more important, and the distributed nature of work and systems became commonplace.
The "As-a-Service" emphasis builds off that legacy, but it is less about the creation of "exchanges" among trading partners and more about modernizing the inefficient and resource-intensive business processes that epitomize common systems architectures and business functions.
The delivery models for IT and IT-enabled business functions are being transformed in radical ways. The "old world" approaches of complex development, integration and provisioning that were intensive in terms of capital (human and financial), and lacking efficiency in leverage, are being sacrificed at the altar of mobility, big data, ubiquitous networking, cybersecurity, and virtualization.
The IT industry - in terms of product and services providers - is being reformed in real-time. Those players that are betrothed to legacy business models, such as staff augmentation, commodity-oriented computing capacity, or consulting-heavy systems deployment, are facing headwinds unlike anything seen before. Their offerings aren't nearly as relevant in the "As-a-Service" economy.
The reasons are rather straightforward. If you're in the business of "how" rather than "what," then your value is marginal and replaceable. "As-a-Service" is all about "what" the services and business functions entail.
Progressive CIOs are leaping for joy at the opportunity to reassert their relevance at the table of business strategy. "As-a-Service" requires that the IT leadership play a much more prominent role than ever before, but also a role that demands new skills and disciplines. And the industry partners on which those CIOs call for services will need to pass new tests of legitimacy and leadership.
The "As-a-Service" economy will shift spend profiles, technology stacks, and business relationships in ways that are not yet evident. All we know for sure is that yesterday's approaches to acquiring, deploying and operating IT are fading fast.
Peter Allen is president of Global Sales and Marketing for CSC and is a 30-year IT services industry veteran. He believes that the As-a-Service model is the next major shift in the evolution of information technology.
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