Here’s to a more balanced 2008

While everyone seems to be busy making predictions about hot technologies, revolutionary industry developments, and various tipping points being reached in 2008, I can’t help hoping that we see a bit more balance emerging in views and opinions over the coming 12 months. It’s probably wishful thinking given that more extreme and/or disruptive ideas are used as a lever for selling everything from hardware and software to management consulting and analyst research, but it would be nice to see us getting away from bandwagons, magic bullets and the simplistic 'single track' thinking that often accompanies them.

Of course that’s not to say that interesting things aren’t happening, and we can look forward some important trends and developments continuing to unfold in the coming year, such as the ongoing move towards more virtualised, dynamic and service oriented infrastructures, the gradual evolution of sourcing and outsourcing options, the awakening of more enterprises to the potential of social computing, etc. The only real seismic shifts we are likely to see, however, are in marketing collateral, analyst reports and the media.

So, while many around us are ‘bigging up’ SaaS, cloud computing, open source software, Web 2.0, and so on, we will continue to do what Freeform Dynamics has always done - examine all of the ideas and propositions in a practical, down-to-earth and objective manner, and provide insights and advice for those working in the real and complex world of ‘brown field’ IT and business.

And with this focus, the ‘how?’ is just as important as the ‘what?’ and the ‘why?’, so our emphasis on community research, tapping into the experience of practitioners as well as strategists, will remain a big part of what we do going forward. During 2007, we gathered over 45,000 responses from IT and business professionals in our research studies. Our analysts therefore really do have a good in-depth understanding of what’s going on out there, and it is a position we fully intend to maintain.

Let me finish by saying a big thank you to everyone that has supported Freeform Dynamics since it was founded two years ago, and wish all of our subscribers, readers, clients, partners, friends and anyone else who knows us a happy, harmonious and ‘balanced’ 2008.

What Does IT Really Want For Christmas?

It is that time of year again when wild office parties lead to the consumption of a mild excess of alcohol and non-health related foodstuffs and where people, even IT staff, look forward to receiving nice, or at least useful, presents. But for many IT departments in organizations where the financial year terminates on December 31 the last two weeks of this month can also give rise to a period of desperate phone calls to suppliers to find out if they specific equipment left in stock that are available for immediate delivery or, in especially desperate circumstances, for prompt personal collection. Why? Well by this time of the financial year even the most ineffectual finance director and CIO will have identified if they have any money left in the year's budget that desperately needs to be spent.

These situations, of which there are no few every year, naturally then beg the question just what does IT, and perhaps even the business, really want for Christmas? In some companies what to buy in a hurry can be fairly clear, especially if the IT department submitted proposals for a number of projects at the start of the year, not all of which were immediately put into effect. Clearly here it could simply be a matter of looking to see what project did not start for want of capital spend, find a supplier with the gear at the right price and who can deliver in time to satisfy the finance guys that the goods have been delivered in this financial year and off you go.

But sometimes things can be far less precise. In my own past life as IT Manager on several occasions I was faced with the challenge to spend money quickly, on one notable occasion simply to ensure that the company's reported profit for the year was not as large as it would otherwise have been, a result which would have lead to good "profit related" bonus payments across the organisation. As always the FD and MD decided, quite to my surprise, that whilst IT could utilise the capital effectively and to the benefit of the entire company, they could also use the department as a Scapegoat if anyone learned why the bonus payments were not as large as some may have been expecting. After all, to them IT was always a good Bad Guy.

Now some of the projects I had in mind simply could not take advantage of a 4 day spending window but I was left with quite a few possibilities. How did I decide between them? Well, I did a rational cost / benefit analysis over a jacket potato and beer lunch and then went with what my instincts told me were the achievable options that also could be seen to be useful.

So if you find yourself in a position in the next ten days where budget has to be spent what will you be rushing out to buy to benefit your business??

A list of one thing to do in 2008: Find the balance.

It’s the season for grand predictions, of forecasting the future, of top ten lists of the next big thing. I don’t really believe that a new year creates a magical desire to explore an entirely new set of technologies to the previous one, and furthermore, themes and initiatives should start with business objectives, and pick appropriate technologies to enable them, not the other way round.

In 2008, real life businesses are likely to be doing pretty much the same as 2007– seeking balance between revenue, costs and happy customers. Therein lies my proposed theme for 2008. Balance. Let’s not put the cart before the horse and start with technology this year.
How does an organisation find balance? By taking a broad as possible view – of everything - and then deciding how centralised intelligence and guidance can be used as a feedback mechanism for ensuring sensible things happen and risks are managed appropriately. I do believe I just described the fundamentals of an area we’ve heard lots about recently: governance, risk and compliance (GRC).

An increasing number of organisations have stopped just talking about this and are now being actively guided and influence by it. And why not? Good governance, appropriate risk management, and the satisfaction that these two pillars enable ones organisation to meet whatever compliance mandates it needs to makes perfect sense at any time of the year, not just Christmas.

The balance part is in getting these areas in the right proportions: Consider:

• Focusing on governance alone is like creating a new game and getting so caught up in inventing the rules that you never start playing;
• An overly intense risk management strategy stifles activity;
• A singular focus on compliance means piecemeal investment which maintains the fragmented corporate and technological capabilities we are trying to get away from.

The balance is gained from the realisation that these three were meant to be together, because they provide the right combination of input, feedback and output, without which any machine doesn’t work.

What an organisation does to achieve that, well, that’s when you can start reading all those other top ten lists – just to make sure you haven’t missed any cool new toys with which to address your actual business plans.

Managing signal to noise

A couple of months ago, I decided to get stuck in a bit more to the whole social media thing, as a few conversations with other’s that were much more active than me had planted the seed in my mind that I might be missing out on something. Those who know me will realise that this wasn’t so much me getting involved in social media for the first time, as I have been a producer and consumer of blogs for a couple of years now. It was more a case of stepping up a level.

Anyway, I made a real effort to go through the blog rolls of the 20 or so blogs to which I was already subscribed, took recommendations on interesting wikis, and signed up for a bunch more feeds. I also decided to explore the extreme real-time end of social media, and signed up to Twitter.

Fast forwarding to this weekend, I have just deleted my Twitter account and got rid of most of the RSS feeds I had added as part of the exercise.

Why?

Well two reasons. Firstly, I just couldn’t keep up with everything. I struggle to stay on top of my incoming email already, so having too many other streams to monitor and sort through just means more time away from the family and ‘real life’ and/or more chance of missing something important. This last point leads me on to the second reason paring things back again – the signal to noise ratio got considerably worse as I expanded my subscriptions beyond the hand-picked sources I had already been using.

One of the particular challenges I encountered was that so many bloggers and Twitterers out there are clearly on a mission or pushing a specific agenda. Nothing wrong with that in principle provided you take what you read with a pinch of salt, and I personally find it interesting and useful to understand the range of views that exists. Unless you are on the same mission, though, such sources quickly become very boring. There are only so many ways of making the case for ODF, for example, and a daily stream of evangelism thereafter is really just noise to most people.

However, with the exception of Twitter, which I struggled to see the point of, I did actually get some benefit from exploring things a bit more widely. I now have a list of blogs and wikis that might not have a high enough level of genuinely new insights to subscribe to on an ongoing basis, but do represent sources to browse from time to time to keep up to speed in certain areas or provide input for research. The difference is that it will be me going to them rather than them coming to me from this point onwards – which is pretty much the way I have been using the Web for the last decade.

So, while I remain a big fan and active user of social media, I have discovered that to me it is the content being exchanged that matters more than the act of communicating itself. Perhaps that makes me relatively ‘unsociable’ in the online sense, but when it’s the socialising that takes precedent, it is only natural that the signal to noise ratio deteriorates.

Again, nothing inherently wrong with this, but just like I all those ‘put the world to rights’ conversations in pubs, small talk and one-upmanship competitions at parties, etc, activities that are primarily about social interaction should not be confused with the production or exchange of useful information. Somewhere in between lies the ‘conversation around the water cooler’ that forms an important part keeping people informed and tuned in, and there are blogs out there that encapsulate this spirit and are therefore very worthwhile subscribing to (e.g. monkchips). Most of the other feeds I am left with are concerned with blogs and wikis that explore issues and debates in an objective, informed and thought provoking manner, with high level of original content - but these are harder to find than I think many social media advocates like to admit.

At the end of the day, it’s all about how you spend your time, so the trick is to find the optimum balance between continuous incoming streams and keeping tabs on the sources of information that are useful to access but on more of an ‘on demand’ basis. The next stop for me on my social media adventure is therefore tagging and bookmarking.

Are you willing to pay more for a stylish PC?

Over the course of the last few weeks I have had a number of conversations with big PC and Laptop vendors, most memorably Fujitsu-Siemens Computers and Hewlett Packard. During the course of these conversations it quickly became apparent that both companies have much in common when it comes to designing and building their new offerings. Clearly both companies have designs to produce systems that will appeal to a very broad range of potential customers, stretching from top of the range machines designed for enterprise use all the way down to relatively low cost entry level machines targeting consumers. For both companies the goal, naturally, is to produce quality systems at the right price and to ensure that the customer support systems operate effectively. So just how can vendors with such similar goals differentiate themselves?

Well it appears that both HP and Fujitsu-Siemens have identified two key differentiators, one obvious and easy to promote and market, the second far more ethereal. As for the later element, both vendors have strong, though difficult to communicate green credentials. And for these two vendors their credentials really do have strong realities for the organisations as entire entities, not just simple marketing stories. But however sound their green back stories, these are not easy accounts to market simply, either directly to potential customers or via channel partners.

This leaves them with the other card they have independently decided to attempt to exploit. Each will be looking to attract buyers by playing strongly the "design" card. Indeed both have carried out market research that suggests, in my opinion almost certainly correctly, that not only is design is an attribute they can exploit, it is also one for which some customers would be willing to pay a premium.

It will be interesting to watch the style battles develop. The promotion and evolution of these new premium styles will match them not only against their traditional competitors but will also bring them up against those such as Sony and Apple. Equally Lenovo, Acer and, to a lesser degree, Dell will be looking at how they could capture more of these premium sales. It will certainly make for a much more interesting marketplace in the coming months.

Avaya crosses the line

This is not going to be an in-depth post. I just wanted to put on record that I was very impressed with a lot of what I heard during the Avaya industry analyst conference a couple of weeks ago.

It was a pretty big gathering, with analysts from across the world rubbing shoulders with each other. I love events like this, as while we here at Freeform are continuously researching the European and North American markets, it is great to talk with people who have in-depth knowledge of thrusting economies like India and China.

With so many analysts on one place, it also reinforced the myriad of different styles, approaches and areas of coverage that exist within the research community. I guess it will be no surprise that with Avaya’s heritage, the majority of the delegates were specialists in the communications industry, and I lost count of the number of conversations I had on the nitty gritty of the telephony market that left me way behind.

So why was I impressed?

Well, I am a bit of a hybrid when it comes to coverage in that I think of myself as a business and IT analyst primarily, but with a reasonable working knowledge of how the communications part of the equation touches this world. This is very relevant to the Avaya discussion as one of the big topics of the conference was Unified Communications (UC). I don’t want to dwell on this specifically as Robin Bloor, who was also at the event, has already written a pretty good treatment of the topic, but the main point is that UC represents the clearest business and application level cross-over between the traditional IT and telephony spaces outside of the call centre environment that we have seen to date, and Avaya seems to ‘get’ what’s important to be successful once you cross over the old dividing line. The understanding is multi-dimensional too, i.e. Avaya is thinking as much about partnerships, IT related architectures and standards, and business process enhancement in the broader application sense, as well as simply neat functionality.

If you are an Avaya customer, I would encourage you to catch up with the firm’s latest developments in unified comms and 'Communications Enabled Business Processes' (CEBP), as ways of bridging the gap between domains that are still considered separate by many.

I am going to resist saying much more at this stage as Jon Collins and I will be spending some time in a week or so with the most visible player in the unified comms space, Cisco, and one of the objectives we have is to bring ourselves completely up to date with its ideas and developments with regard to IT/comms convergence. I’ll also have to track down the guys at my old firm Nortel, as there have been some interesting developments coming out of that camp in recent times too, and it is a while since I have caught up with them properly.

Looking at the bigger picture, the coming together of communications and IT at the application and process as well as the network level is a significant development which represents opportunities for both suppliers and customers. But it is obviously not just the traditional comms players that are moving into this area – IT incumbents such as Microsoft and IBM are also very active (see here and here) – they are just coming at it from a different direction. You’ll therefore be seeing us spending a lot of time on this topic in 2008.

Meanwhile, it is nice to see Avaya, backed by its new found private equity arrangement, starting to cross the line into the world of IT so convincingly.

Is ‘community spice’ the perfect recipe for small business IT management?

I had my first briefing with IT management provider Spiceworks today. I use the term ‘provider’ rather than ‘vendor’ because currently at least, it does not sell anything to the organisations using its software. Rather, its IT management software tools are free to download, and the revenue model is based on selling advertising space ‘around’ the application, much like you see on The Register, Silicon.com etc. The interesting part is that the adverts that the users of the Spiceworks are exposed to are designed to be complimentary to the subject area (small business IT).

The value of the ‘platform’ could be exponential in the future as it has the potential be used in a wider remit – community discussion, interaction, problem solving, access to related content, IT procurement and so on. These are all areas under consideration from a software provider which has so far harnessed user feedback to guide its rapidly evolving offering to the tune of 8 releases in the last 15 months.

Delivering user influenced improvements at this rate looks like a high speed version of what some of the bigger application software vendors do between releases – except the point is that it isn’t, because it’s happening in a place where larger vendors have had relatively little success in penetrating. There are many reasons, but not least because it is incredibly hard to balance licence sales against cost of sale, even with a ‘deep and wide’ channel strategy.

Indeed, scale could ultimately be Spicework’s Achilles heel -not in terms of reach, but in terms of being able to support the needs of growing IT shops. It’s probably the key criticism that a larger vendor could levy – beyond the intimidating (i.e. no licence revenues from users) business model, that is.

Spicework’s challenge as I see it is to ensure that it grows with its users. 200,000 daily users so far suggests that there is cause to maintain the highest possible level of innovation, so that its impressive early years are matched by a steady move to maturity and scalability, rather than remaining as an entry level tool set which has to be ‘handed off’ to a larger vendor as the user organisation grows up. It also needs to ensure that it exploits the potential of its platform as a distribution mechanism for related materials so that advertising revenues at the very least make it a sustainable endeavour.

Freeform Dynamics research has shown that there is a significant ‘step up’ in terms of burden on ‘the IT guy’ when an organisation moves above 10 employees. It steps up again at around 50. This is precisely the target user base of the Spiceworks offering, which, fundamentally, focuses on a pretty critical capability - asset management - at an important time in a small IT shop’s lifecycle. We often refer to ‘mindset’, something that later on in an organisation’s lifecycle is proving quite difficult for many to change. Get this right early enough and it might be possible to scale up an IT shop which enjoys the level of control and business alignment that larger IT shops are now trying to achieve. Imagine that.

Go Green At Christmas

As focus continues (at least in marketing circles) to be poured onto all matters "Green", especially Power consumption, one of our readers has suggested a quick, easy low business impact manner in which to significantly reduce electricity consumption this festive season. Mr. E. Scrooge suggests switching off all the power to all Christmas decorations, both in the office and at home. Sounds like a winner to me.

 

The Future of ‘Support’– Front Line or Public Face?

Over the course of the last few weeks I have spoken with quite a few organizations, including Fujitsu-Siemens, BT Basilica and Citrix amongst others, on the subject of IT support, perhaps once traditionally called the Help Desk. Now Freeform Dynamics has undertaken considerable research on the subject of support, best practice, support systems and power users. This pool of knowledge coupled with the experience of the analysts in the team allows us to interpret our findings in many ways and for me it has become apparent that the IT Help Desk has reached a major inflection point.

For most of its history the IT help desk / response desk / support desk has undertaken many roles in different organisations. Usually it is the primary contact point both when things go wrong with users' systems and when they wish to request new services. Now in one of my former roles in the IT world we also utilised the fact that the people we had manning our help desk also got on far better with the end users than the IT techies in the team did. This, frankly, permitted us to both increase user satisfaction with their contact with the IT group whilst dealing with more issues day by day.

These roles for IT support are undoubtedly valuable, but it appears to me that for many organisations the traditional role has become limiting. It is now very much the fact that "Support" is, for the majority of people inside the business or, for vendors of applications / services, their clients outside the primary contact point with the IT organization. "Support" is now so intertwined in the mind of users that it is become the measurement by which IT service quality is often measured. Or to put it bluntly, at the very least support has become the public face of the IT service taking the role over from the service itself.

The question then becomes just how this Public face could, and perhaps, should be utilised by "IT"? To my mind the answer is compelling – 'Support' must become a combination of the public face, the communication channel, the marketing machine and the very service delivery itself. Support must cease to be the reporting point for problems and advice and become the very conduit of service. Done well IT can then finally begin to both demonstrate the value it delivers to the business, it can position itself as a very visible means for the business to better exploit IT and for IT to guide and nurture its exploitation to the benefit of all.

Or is this a step too far?? What do you think?

GXS's cloak of shadows may be slipping off / when things start to look the same

A stealthy operator is starting to catch the eye.

I enjoyed my second biannual catch up with GXS this week. I have a soft spot for it because its Orlando event was the first I attended as an official technology market analyst, back in 2001. I had actually been a technology market analyst for some time before that because I'd been covering process automation technology since 1997, but much like real life, I'd never actually had a conversation with anyone that was covering technology outside of the plant floor.

Anyway, GXS had been busy - this much i knew - and as Dale reported earlier this year, it has spent a considerable amount of time over the last 5 or so years doing some distinctly unglamorous supply chain automation stuff, enabling trading partners to match their information exchanging capabilities to their logistics capabilities.

I think GXS may find itself becoming a victim of its own, quiet relative success in the not too distant future.

In the same way that BT is obliged to allow local loop access to third party service providers, GXS has spent a long time establishing its trading network infrastructure and is now reporting increasing forays into its market by newer, smaller players. It even reports a new wave of interest in EDI (electronic data interchange), by companies trying to sell it, and analysts who have never heard of it. Like any slightly dominant player in a market, it now has to sustain its position in an increasingly competitive environment.

All this obviously means its been doing something right. Its not standing still either, and is exploring several new areas, both aimed at creating additional service revenue - one from a recent acquisition (UDEX) around data quality services for product information / attributes, and the other aimed at turning the actual trading information passed between partners into business opportunities for financial services organisations (e.g. those offering trade credit) - the notion of 'looking into the pipe' is a new one, but is starting to catch on.

One of the areas that GXS and its acquired capabilities are active in is the 3 letter acronym- heavy product information management -PIM- arena, which is in turn related to MDM (master data management) and global data synchronisation - GDS - i won't go on - essentially we are talking about manufacturers, distributors and buyers being able to match their goods to increasingly complex data regarding the product's origins, attributes and so on - yet while I was listening to GXS's activities here what I was actually hearing was 'assets, relationships, storage, retrieval, impacts of changes'..and so on.

Yes, product data management is worlds apart from IT asset and service management in terms of topic and focus, but perhaps, not so far apart when you consider that the underlying need is to capture and understand the relationship of multiple items to each other, especially when things keep changing.

Its a high level relationship / similarity for sure, but when you are kicking off something as potentially laborious as a CMDB project for the first time, you should seek all the help you can get.