Brokers in the Cloud

(Vision on the future of the Cloud and the Cloud Brokerage concept explained)

The cloud technologies are steadily getting up the hype curve and even have reached the ‘Slope of Enlightenment’ for some concrete cases according to Gartner. More and more companies – be it IT consulting players or internal IT departments of large enterprises – are showing increasing interest for the cloud technologies, propositions and new business models they might bring.

The last news about Amazon permanently loosing client’s data or Sony letting more than 10 mln credit card accounts to be compromised only underline the worries associated with the cloud: “Is it secure enough? Who is responsible in case if…?”

And nevertheless, the cloud continues its triumphal entry. Many name the Cloud a truly revolutionary step in the history of computing. Small businesses and individuals have been benefiting from the different aspects of the cloud. Personally I have been using various Google Apps, music services like GrooveShark or storage/backup services like Dropbox already for quite a while. Larger companies are trying ‘to keep up with Johnsons’ and are gradually making next step from adopting virtualization techniques to the wider applications of the possibilities that the cloud concept can offer.

If you search “Cloud Computing” in Google, Slideshare or YouTube, you will find hundreds and thousands links to various sources. And I see no added value in repeating diverse speculations or what has already become the common knowledge about the cloud. Today I have tried to make a small selection of two topics related to the cloud, which either bring some new idea to the cloud concept in general, or go deeper on a specific aspect of this wide topic.

 

The first presentation is by Peter Hinssen about the vision of the cloud-shaped future. Peter quite proficiently takes the old concept of “The New Normal” and together with a couple of other famous concepts applies it to create a vision for the cloud. The “New Normal” concept was first introduced by Roger McNamee in 2004 and further consequently promoted by McKinsey for business and for IT in 2009. An idea based on that strong foundation together with well-placed jokes and high-quality animation makes the 7 minutes video-presentation well-worth viewing.

 

And the second presentation I’ve made myself. Here I just tried to take a specific cloud-related topic, uncover it to a certain extent and convert the pure theory to something more practical and applied in the end.

The presentation is about the Cloud Brokerage concept, which is basically showing how the role of an intermediary can be realized in the maturing Cloud market. The original idea comes from Gartner. Despite the fact that the company template and some information slides were used, the presentation itself was made in my free time as a hobby and might not be aligned with the official company position.

What do you think about these two pieces? Do you know any other worthwhile presentations on the cloud topic? Please let me know in the comments.

Business Information Management (BiSL)

I am continually trying to learn more about different new and established best practices and standards in various areas of IT management.
At the same time I started to learn about the best practices already AFTER I received a couple of academic degrees in IT management. So, my attitude to the "best" part here is quite skeptical.

On the one hand I always try to get from them what is really useful. But on the other hand I am always careful about trusting the proposed theories, and in any case do not try creating an idol from a practice (or body of knowledge), even if it is a practice of many or if the number of related certifications account to more than a million. In the end all the practices I have encountered so far are just collections and selections (by whom?) of (applications of) different theories and research results, sometimes spiced with interesting case studies. I have seen both better and worse theories, models or frameworks. And providing the situation allows, I would prefer to make a proper individual selection of tools and models for each concrete case.

The last framework or collection of practices I’ve learned more in-depth about (and of course, received a certification) was BiSL – Business Information Services Library.

BiSL is a public domain standard since 2005, governed by the ASL BiSL foundation. The framework describes a standard for processes within business information management at the strategy, management and operations level. BiSL was developed in the Netherlands by Getronics Consulting (formerly PinkRoccade) for the applications division BAS that was later bought by Capgemini in 2008.

BiSL is closely related to the ITIL and ASL frameworks, yet the main difference between these frameworks is that ITIL and ASL focus on the supply side of information (the purpose of an IT organisation), whereas BiSL focuses on the demand side (arising from the end-user organisation) (from wikipedia). The three frameworks are often shown as three domains covering different parts of IT demand and supply organizations:

Note: the text on the figure is in Dutch. “Vraag” and “Aanbod” mean “Demand” and “Supply” correspondingly. “Beheer” is a typical Dutch word which is sometimes translated as “management” (like in “IT-Management”), but more often means just “administration” (like in “system administration”).

Because BiSL was published earlier than ITILv3, in the description of BiSL the authors refer to the 2nd version of ITIL. And that is why ITIL is positioned as something entirely technical and belonging only to the Supply side.

The framework itself explains the business information management in several dimensions.

In its most basic representation the framework consists of seven elements which are grouped in three layers. The Governance, Management and Operations management layers position different elements of information management processes and structures in the organizational hierarchy. The four largest elements describe the most distinctive blocks:

• Daily Operation (lower left) – explains the daily provision of information in an organization and communication with people who need the information provided (of course, they call them “users”)
• Introduction of Changes (lower right) – explains the design of new schemes, methods, systems or applications for information provision
• Organization Information Provision – explains the organizational structure responsible for the information provision and includes its roles, responsibilities and external relations
• Future Information Provision – focuses on what kinds or types of information an organization needs or might need in the future

The “Management” layer outlines the four types of management responsibilities most important for proper business information management. And the rhomb with two triangles indicate the so called “Connecting processes”.

Further, there is a structural hierarchy in the model. Every basic element consists of some three to five sub-processes with corresponding descriptions and relations. And those in turn are broken down to even more operational activities.

 

A good point of the BiSL practice is that on the site of ASL-BiSL Foundation you can after a basic registration download for free a comprehensive management guide. The book is absolutely enough to understand the basics and details of the BiSL framework and information management practices proposed.

On the foundation page devoted to BiSL instead of immediately focusing on the framework they give only a very generic preface trying to refer to the topics like Business-IT Alignment or even Business Strategy. But also on the same page you can download a presentation with a bit more detailed introduction to BiSL which will not only give you an initial overview of the framework, but will also let you feel the “spirit” of BiSL.

 

As for the certification scheme I mentioned in the beginning, it is quite standard. There is only a foundation-level exam: 40 multiple-choice questions, 60 minutes, 26 correct answers or more to succeed. Typical for any foundation-level exams the questions cover only the understanding of the main concepts, even though sometimes quite an in-depth understanding. Unfortunately, the exam seems to be only available in Dutch.

 

As a short summary, here are a couple of pluses and minuses I’ve noticed in the BiSL best practice:

Pluses:

• BiSL is the only framework I have encountered so far which is specifically devoted to information management and which accentuates the value of information as a precious asset of any organization. In other more all-encompassing and generic frameworks the information asset is often silently implied but is not given an explicit attention, and thus can get lost while going from theory to the practical implementation.
• The BiSL principles and ideas fit with other frameworks and real-life examples I have encountered so far. Wonder if there are any success stories or vice versa failure stories – please let me know if you have any.

Minuses:

• From the framework itself, names and descriptions it is apparently visible that BiSL was created and written by people from IT, not from business. My fist impression was that the authors after the years of career in IT domains reached some professional maturity and finally made a "discovery" that IT is not an enclosed domain dancing tango on its own, that business exists, that IT in fact adds (or at least should add) value to the business activities, and that something has to be done about that .
• After release of ITILv3 in 2007 with its focus exceeding only technical administration and covering the part of BiSL domain, BiSL became less popular and is not likely to become similar worldwide de-facto standard as ITIL. Thus the professional value of the certification is only relevant for particular situations: when the framework is already in use by your company/client or when a specific solution for information management is required.
• The complexity of the basic framework. In my resent master thesis I devoted the whole chapter to simplicity, complexity and human perception. Just look at the last OGC standards. ITIL in its 3rd version came down to only 5 domains (books) that form a logical life-cycle together. Prince2 in the last (2009) version is represented by 3 sets of 7 elements (all magical numbers). With years those standards have become more mature. The BiSL framework is still lacking that. The first look at the basic model of seemingly only 7 elements creates an impression of complexity because of all those different triangles, rhombs and rectangles piled together without any evident explanation. There is nothing wrong if many elements are needed to explain complex ideas. But the main goal of any model is to bring simplicity and structure, and the basic representation of any framework, in my opinion, must convey just that – the main idea made simple enough to be grasped by anybody.

 

But to end the BiSL story with something nice, I must say that I have really enjoyed reading a whitepaper by Mark Smalley, one of the active proponents of ASL and BiSL practices. The paper with the name “IT is from Flatland, Business is from Spaceland” explains in an entertaining manner the complex relations between people from business and from IT and leaves an impression of something more mature than the official description of BiSL framework. I’ve especially remembered an example with toilet paper used in the paper

Have any questions or comments? - Don’t hesitate to let me know.

Infographics – Keep Your Message Easy to Digest

The pictures and graphs in this post were found on the resource which is neither management oriented nor IT-related. The main topics covered there are design, creativity and architecture. But, as we have already seen in a motivation movie, proper design and creative representation of information can often be at least as much important as the content of the message. That particular post I’ll refer to here was written by Steph and devoted to Infographics – the art of making news, scientific data and other information far easier to perceive and digest.

Most businesses and business relations today can be hardly described by linear models alone, like the classic production chain model. The world is full of interrelations and interactions. For some companies this means the network of local suppliers, clients and partners. For others the geography encompasses the whole world with different languages, different time-zones and different legal regulations. The most advanced and strategic-thinking businesses actively add the time aspect, the dynamics of interactions to additionally address risks and opportunities. (In a publication by McKinsey “Building the supply chain of the future” you can find examples of how the dynamics aspect is addressed by some companies).

All this makes networks of relations even more complex and difficult to describe.

Information is only powerful and useful when it can be easily perceived and understood. Of course, there exist proven scientific ways to describe networks and processes in them. This diagram I’ve seen lately in the ITIL Service Strategy book was an example of Value Net Diagram approach:

Far to often such methods make the message too complicated and overcrowded with details. Bringing to the addressee an elaborate detailed description they forget the main goal of any model – to ease the perception and make it a pleasant experience.

But let’s have a look at what I’ve found at the WebUrbanist site.

Lawsuits in Mobile Business

(image via: design language)

The number of participants and arrows is comparable to those on the image above. But add colors, arrange the elements properly and focus on one thing, and you will get absolutely different picture in terms of perception.

The Colors of the Web

(image via: colourlovers)

Another even more colorful picture shows exactly that – the colors represented in web logo’s.

iPad’s Competition

Only lazy has not heard or read about the iPad’s successes last year. According to Mashable (based on IDC reports) in just one quarter, the iPad helped drive up sales of media tablets by 45% and took nearly 90% of the market. The Apple COO has boldly stated that iPad has a “huge, first-mover advantage” and that Android-based devices are “bizarre product[s]” with no “real tablet experience”. But is that all of competition iPad faced in 2010 and will face in 2011?

(image via: section design)

Information Sharing in 2010

But let’s get back to information and its sharing. This graph compares Facebook to other information sharing services on different dimensions.

(image via: add this)

Use Social Media to Build the Company

This image is a great example of infographics. It is clear and concise, and makes the information easy to digest with bright colors and eye-catching visuals.

(image via: elliance)

Media Timeline

Just look at the diversity of information sources we use now. No doubt, in any of them information should be useful and easily perceived to stay-out from the competition.

(image via: design you trust)

How Would You Like Your Graphic Design?

And the last example. Funny and with some retro-touch, I believe it's applicable to any business, not only design.

(image via: colin harman)

You can find more examples of Infographics on the WebUrbanist page.

Stay inspired and keep it simple.

Global Forces and the Future of IT Consulting

Yesterday I read an article by McKinsey about the “Global forces shaping the future of business and society”. There was nothing special in the article, but one thing struck me, and not for the first time. Once again the current situation of IT as a branch or professional domain became evident. I could read the attitude of business-thinking people to technology, and the direction where IT goes.

The executives and partners interviewed in the paper talked about increasing agility and global connectedness, decreasing time to market, importance of readiness for ever changing frame and basis of market competition. And I could read between the lines the two trends speaking out loud and clear: commoditization of IT and integration of technology into business.

I saw it in my last research as well. From the interviews with 11 C-level managers, senior and principal consultants I could make several conclusions which come back again now. The interviewed experts mentioned that the new generation of executives is coming, much more familiar with contemporary technology and its possibilities. They want to talk about technology and what it means for business on the one hand. But on the other hand they are much more demanding and want their partners from IT to understand the business ways and to talk about the business value instead of technical details. The interviewees also explicitly mentioned the trends of IT commoditization, its integration in daily life and business and increased outsourcing trends.

So, what does it mean for IT consulting companies? It means that they would need more and more people capable of speaking the business language and understanding what is important for business managers, what is important for business development, while seeing the enablers brought by technological progress. I believe that it is quite a radical step for many IT consulting companies. Because, actually, this way of thinking pushes IT to the background and makes general business consulting or management consulting central. “IT doesn’t matter” – as Carr once already said. Not that many are ready to accept this paradigm.

You can see the proof of the trend in the current development of the strongest strategic consulting companies. McKinsey or BCG come to the “IT” areas and develop their departments dealing with IT. They recognize the opportunity and see that the niche of trusted advisor and strategic partner helping with conceptual technology questions is not filled adequately by existing IT consulting companies. Because those are more often perceived as just “commodity deliverers” or “service providers”.

Thus, the message for IT consulting is clear: stop thinking IT, start thinking business; and make business clients see and believe that this change has happened.

But what will happen with IT consulting companies deciding to stay in “commodity” area? I believe that their market will gradually shrink. If you look back at the McKinsey’s article and the global trends they foresee, you can say that the demand for developed-market productivity together with ever-expanding global networks will drive companies to further outsource the commodity activities, and often – not to the expensive western IT consulting players, but to the providers from emerging economies.

IT Governance - The Community Perspectives

Not so long time ago a great discussion was started by Tru DO KHAC in the IT Governance group in LinkedIn.

Its name said "CHALLENGE: Describe "IT governance" in no more than a 160 characters SMS message (including spaces, punctuations and carriage returns)". And you will find almost a hundred reactions there by now.

Here I will share with you my 10 favorite definitions and make a brief analysis of the challenge results.

My ten personal favorites (not necessarily in the order of mentioning):

• IT Governance is aligning IT processes and solutions with the organization's strategic priorities and objectives to achieve valuable business outcomes. (Jenny Steinmetz)


• The leadership and organisational structures and processes that ensure that IT sustains and extents the organisation's strategies and objectives. (ITGI 2003, "Board Briefing on IT Governance, 2nd Edition" cited by Patrick Soenenрер)


• IT Governance is a subset discipline of Corporate Governance focused on information technology (IT) systems and their performance and risk management. (Wikipedia cited by Andrew N Dowden)


• IT Governance: Specifying the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the use of IT. (from Weill&Ross cited by Igor Knezevic)


• IT Governance is the processes and relationships that lead to reasoned decision-making to ensure maximum value is realized from investment in technology. (Steve Romero)


• IT Governance is evaluating IT change against IT Policies and Standards to ensure alignment with the IT Strategy, or when this is not possible or desirable that the discrepancy is identified, quantified and managed going forward. (Kevin L. Smith's)


• IT Governance is an activity of making longterm decisions that concern all key aspects of using IT in the organization. (Mikhail Zyryanov)


• IT Governance is a management framework to deliver efficient and effective IT services which are aligned to core business plans and strategy. (Pete Linforth)


• It is a framework for implementing processes that enable business & IT to align themselves with corporate strategies using standards, approvals and metrics. (Maryellen Evans)


• IT Governance is how IT investments are managed in terms of cost, risk and value to the organisation. (Laurence Lock Lee)

My own contributed definition of IT Governance was "An umbrella encompassing roles, rules and mechanisms at strategic level to enable IT efficiently support the goals and vision of your organization."

Looking at all the variety of viewpoints it's difficult to gather them all under one definition. That is why I believe that IT Governance is rather an umbrella-term than something that can be briefly and precisely defined.

In general all definitions given in the discussion can be divided into six large groups:

• Accountabilities - those definitions talking about control, rules, compliance, and decision rights. Arguably most of these definitions are inspired by the research of P.Weill and J.Ross

keywords: rights, accountabilities, control, rules, decisions, direct, enforce, decisions, ownership

example: "Ernest Rosello: The assignment of decision-making rights and accountabilities regarding behavior in the desirable use of IT"

• BITA (Business-IT Alignment) - the definitions saying about alignment in one or another way - some definitions directly involved the word "alignment" or "Business-IT Alignment"; others mentioned "joined effort" or "support of business goals"

keywords: alignment, enable business, support of business goals, joined effort

example: "Jenny Steinmetz: IT Governance is aligning IT processes and solutions with the organization's strategic priorities and objectives to achieve valuable business outcomes."

• Framework - IT Governance is defined as a framework of principles, practices, standards or other elements; or "framework" is a substantial element of the definition.

keywords: framework, structure, set, umbrella

example: "Pete Linforth: IT Governance is a management framework to deliver efficient and effective IT services which are aligned to core business plans and strategy."

• List - here IT Governance is defined as a sum of its elements. I placed the definitions containing more than 3 elements into this group.

example: "Safdar: IT Governance is relationship of Processes, Structuring and Accountabilities optimized to address Strategic Alignemnt , Value Delivery ,Risk mgmt , Performamnce Mgmt and Resource Mgmt."

• Financial/investments perspective - in these definitions the financial component was explicitly mentioned or was made the focal point of the definition

keywords: investments, money, profit, total cost of ownership, shareholder value

example: "Laurence Lock Lee: IT Governance is how IT investments are managed in terms of cost, risk and value to the organisation."

• Other - all other definitions not falling under any of the previous categories.

example: "Harrell Van Norman: IT Governance is a good way to make sure your are doing the right thing"

Every definition could fall under more than one category. In total at the moment of the analysis there were 97 comments including 16 not providing any definition.

If you are interested in grouped definitions in xls format, you can download the file here.

So, even though the concept is relatively vague and definitions say sometimes about absolutely different things, we can notice the typical line and common understanding which unites the community and allows a professional to say if he or she belongs there.

In a parallel thread in the same group a discussion was started by Miguel Garcia-Menendez about the proper name for the "IT Governance" concept.

It did not get as much attention as the Challenge thread. But the commentors agreed that at least "IT" should not take the first place in the name. The proposed names included:

• Business Governance of IT
• Enterprise Governance of IT
• Corporate Governance of IT

However, just like I discussed whether "Business & IT Alignment" is a proper term, I believe that it is too late to think of a new name. Even though the name "IT Governance" puts too much focus on IT, it is already too much established and has too strong position and recognition as a term to be changed.

In the future I plan to make an overview of how the topic of IT Governance is covered by blogs, by scientific publications, by existing standards and practices. If you have any information on that or have any suggestions, I will be glad to read from you.

Picture source: iStockPhoto

Do you know how to motivate people?

I saw this great animated video presentation on the blog of Vaughan Merlyn and couldn't withstand sharing it here.

It is an RSA Animate’s remarkable adaptation of Daniel Pink’s presentation to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) on motivation.

Just like Vaughan I can point a few reasons why I was taken by this video:

1. It is an excellent presentation skill example with all the tricks like hierarchical structuring, repeating of the main ideas, illustrative examples, etc.,etc.

2. Science made simple. Unless you are a scientist yourself, after typing a keyword "motivation" in any scientific search engine, you will drown in the sea of sophisticated research papers of any tinges from researchers of any caliber. This presentation gives an example how you can use the power of science and bring it to mere mortals.

3. The power of animation. With the magic of handwritten animation those 10 minutes have passed for me like in the twinkling of an eye.

Business-IT Integration Balance Model (Introduction)

Business-IT Integration Balance Model is intended to be used at negotiations between the Business and IT parties as a tool for initial strategic assessment of existing and desired situations in their relations.

The model helps to define the organizational changes necessary for proper Business and IT Alignment.

BUSINESS-IT INTEGRATION BALANCE MODEL

The main idea is that in relations of business and IT representatives different maturity levels of both parties are possible. And for proper balanced relations the maturity of each party has to correspond to each other.

As IT penetrates deeper in our lives and becomes a part of daily routine, you can often encounter a situation when business managers have relatively good understanding of technology possibilities and advantages. And at the same time people from IT (IT department, IT provider, IT managers, you name it) are not that willing to make a step towards understanding of business needs, requests, and of advantages and restrictions brought by technology. They are too much submerged in the technology complexity and their maturity is not sufficient for productive communication with people from the business side.

TYPICAL DIFFERENCE IN MATURITY LEVELS

As a result of this maturity difference we see the difference in mindsets, difference in values, difference in the language used. This is often described as abscence of Business-IT Alignment.

In an ideal situation there is not much difference between a business manager and an IT manager (you can also think about a CIO as a fully-fledged board member here). IT managers take responsibility for the results, budgets and the financial part of projects, notice new business opportunities or threats through the lenses of knowledge of appearing techhnologies and innovation trends. Business managers understand at least the basics, main principles of technologies used and value brought by them, and don't take the arrogant position in respect to IT, like "ah, I have no idea, it's the realm of techno-geeks" or "those IT guys, they can never make it just work". Instead they leverage on the possibilities which IT makes possible and take into account potential limitations or points of failure.

The business and IT realms in such a situation become integrated. And there are examples of companies where you can already find it.

But, of course, not every company can get it to the highest maturity level. And in fact, not every company needs it. A company producing glass bottles for the last 20+ years is not likely to revolutionize its business by introducing some changes in IT.

It is much more important here to watch the balance between the business need for IT, its IT maturity, the understanding of the situation by people from business on the one side, and IT provider focus, mindset, its business maturity on the other side.

If you try to map your company or some example from your experience on this maturity model, it will immediately become evident where and what type of disagreement might be there, and what possible improvements are needed.

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Notes:

Initially the model was introduced in 2006 by Paul Leenards and was based on the models of Nolan and McFarlan. You can find a brief description on his blog.

Resently I made a scientific research to challenge, validate the model and see how well it reflects the real-life situation. If interested, you can download the complete public report here.