IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Migration Without Mishap

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Server migrations come in just about every size, shape and variety -- you can change operating systems, hardware platforms, vendors or do any combination of the three. But whether you seek to increase capacity, upgrade to the latest technology or standardize on a particular hardware or software platform, the ability for data center managers to effectively manage server migrations remains a significant challenge despite the proliferation of tools to enable a smooth transition.

"People have talked for years about the difficulty of moving from one desktop to another," says Bob Gill, managing director of the server sector of TheInfoPro, a consulting firm based in New York City. "But with servers, you have a whole different level of complexity. Even something as simple as migrating the files on a file or print server raises significant issues."

One of the main reasons to migrate is to cut costs, says Jeff Gould, CEO and director of research for Peerstone Research, a technology analyst firm based in San Francisco, Calif. "Over the last five years, companies have been increasingly making the transition from expensive Unix hardware with proprietary processors to commodity platforms, "This means having to choose between Windows and Linux server operating systems as well as selecting the best hardware vendor." (article continues)

Experts recommend the following strategies to increase your chances of completing a successful migration:

Let the application drive the migration According to Gill, this is the number-one rule when planning a migration. "Because the application drives the decision as to what hardware and software platform choices you have, in many ways the decision is beyond the scope of things in your control," he says. Adds Gould, "because these computers have become commoditized, people care less and less about the operating system or underlying hardware -- what matters is the applications you use, or plan to use. Are those applications supported on a given hardware or software platform? That's the key question."

Seize the opportunity to embrace virtualization, clustering and other high-availability solutions A server migration isn't just about continuing to do what you've always done; you can also use it to implement other, more advanced data center capabilities. For example, virtualization is the ability to share storage and processing capabilities regardless of the physical source of a resource; clustering is when multiple machines work together so that they can be viewed as a single computer. In either case, both techniques enable enterprises to gain access to more, and more powerful server capabilities than they would if just performing a straight migration from one server to another.

Bring IT workers quickly up to speed on the new technologies The skill set of employees is another critical consideration when migrating servers. Many of the existing environments are Unix-based. For obvious reasons -- since Linux is a flavor of Unix -- it's easier to transition IT workers to Linux rather than Windows. "But although the learning curve is a lot less steep, the ease of use and manageability of Windows Server means that salaries for Windows administrators are less," says Gould. "These are tradeoffs that companies have to make." (article continues)

Test the new environment thoroughly "Companies often fail to test the new environment completely enough," says Chip Nickolett, president of Comprehensive Solutions, a data center consultancy based in Brookfield, Wisc. "It's far better to catch and address problems pre-migration than post-migration."

Ascertain data integrity Companies often fail to appreciate the critical nature of data integrity. Even the most miniscule floating point differences can result in very costly computing errors. Says Nickolett, "The old system must be kept properly isolated when it is still running, before migration to the new system has been implemented."

Rein in "power users" One often-overlooked problem is that so-called power users have frequently been allowed to create systems and processes on their own. "The more people who have been allowed to do this, the more likely there will be problems," says Nickolett. "These people are often reluctant to disclose what they have done, they usually don't possess any documentation and are not receptive to having someone take these systems away from them." Getting such users to buy into the migration, and be transparent and open about their former activities that could impact the migration, is therefore essential.

Although automated tools are making the actual migrations easier to accomplish, many strategic and organizational issues still abound. And for many organizations, the main one is achieving a certain strategic "coherence" in the data center. "Are you basically a Unix shop with a few islands of Windows servers and intend to keep that balance? Or do you envision a long-term strategy of moving over to Linux entirely?" asks Gould. "As the applications out there increasingly become available -- and interoperable -- on a number of different server platforms, these are the important questions to ask.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

The Ins and Outs of SCM

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Advocates of software configuration management tools and techniques tend to resort to metaphor when describing why, once adopted, IT organizations can't live without them.

By far the most frequent comparison is to the assembly line popularized by Henry Ford (but not invented by him, as it is widely believed). Before that, workers built complex physical products one at a time: A single person -- or team -- created each part of a product individually and put them together, making customized changes to individual parts so that they would fit together correctly.

Traditional software development followed this same process. And it was inefficient and prone to delays and cost overruns. Using automated SCM development tools, on the other hand, means your development process is infinitely more predictable and reliable. Costs go down. Errors are dramatically reduced. Indeed, SCM -- like the industrial assembly line -- is transforming the way an entire industry works.

Fran Schmidt will attest to that. She was hired by Source Medical Inc. in Birmingham, Ala. three years ago, to be its manager of configuration management systems. Fran walked into a situation where the previous software development lifecycle (SDLC) regime had been broken for more than two years.

"It was horrible," she recalls. "They had onsite development, remote development, were operating on a twenty four-by-six schedule, and none of it was in sync. Not to mention that we had extremely tight budgetary and time constraints."

Schmidt had been watching a small company called AccuRev, based in Lexington, Mass., for several years, and decided to try its SCM product. "We were able to almost immediately achieve low maintenance and lost cost in our very distributed development environment," she says.

What to Look For

Over the last few years, dozens of SCM tools have been released into the market to provide options for IT development professionals who need help managing this complex process. These products support a broad range of diverse functionality. (article continues)

Here are essential capabilities that a good SCM tool will provide:

 

Indeed, you have to think of SCM in that way -- as an investment rather than an expense. "The payoff in productivity gains and reduced person-hours will far outweigh the cost of implementing it," says Tyler.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Expansion Planning For Systems Growth

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Something scary is happening in the world of computing. Even though everything is getting smaller and more powerful, we're faced with increasing demand for power to run systems, keep them cool and house them. Although disk drive capacity requirements double every year, if companies require more drives, the issues become how to deal with the increased expense to run systems and keep servers cool -- and where they will house everything.

"Server consolidation and virtual servers are a major step toward improving capacity utilization of servers," says Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at Taneja Group, a storage and server analyst consultancy in Hopkinton, Mass. "Every data center person should be looking at both. Companies are also turning to blade servers as another strategic way of consolidating space."

Restricted Space
Companies in cities such as Manhattan and London are facing serious storage issues because there physically isn't room for them to increase the size of their data centers. Many organizations are being forced to move their operations to locations with more open space.

Yet moving a data center is among the hardest processes from a planning and execution perspective. The volume of data that companies possess is daunting, and they don't have the luxury of simply turning systems off and putting them onto a truck. (article continues)

"It's a very expensive proposition, even in a best case scenario," says Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., an IT consultancy based in Milford, Mass. "All of a company's applications can be dynamically migrated online to a new site, but IT must make sure everything is synched and online before doing a hard cut over and decommissioning the old site."

But Duplessie cautions that such moves never go perfectly smoothly and it takes an enormous amount of time -- at least a year -- and bandwidth on top of the cost to complete a move and upgrade.

Starting Over
On the plus side, moving a data center enables a company to start with a clean slate. It can be an opportunity to recognize the past infrastructure mistakes and to architect and configure for the new millennium going forward.

Duplessie suggests that if an old data center site isn't going to go away, it can then be used as a disaster recovery backup site. He believes companies are starting to recognize that assets that have depreciated are ideal for housing second tier applications, or for disaster recovery.

"Many companies prefer to get rid of their old assets and tend to buy infrastructure for infrastructure sake," says Duplessie, "which solves one problem and creates another -- that's the nature of computing."

Another way to conserve data center space and plan for future growth, says Duplessie, is to evaluate data and determine what is mission critical and what isn't. "People are starting to realize that not all data should be treated exactly the same and not all data needs to be on the highest tech, most expensive gizmos." (article continues)

"I would be willing to bet there is huge amount of data that doesn't need to be spinning around twenty-four hours a day,' he adds. "Data's value and access patterns change over time, and because we architected it and stored it there on day one doesn't meant that's where it should be on day two-hundred."

If companies took 75 percent of their data off their primary production storage area and moved it to a lower cost, lower power, lower performing storage area, the savings garnered could be doubled, according to experts. 

"If it's not possible to grow physically we have to take a data-centric view,' says Duplessie. "If we place everything around the life cycle and value and importance of the data, which is variable over time, and don't treat it the same, we have the opportunity to make decisions based on whatever criteria we have. It's treating everything the same that gets us in this power, cooling and space problem because it's easier to make the decision to buy more of what we have -- but it's usually strategically worse for that operation."

Over the long term, companies need to recognize that data has a life cycle and it can be staged on different servers that have different attributes around performance. That will let IT devise plans that capitalize on existing data center usage and minimize the need to add real estate to duplicate what is already in place.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Is Real ILM Possible?

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Managing data effectively has always been a major challenge for businesses. How do you capture it? Store it? Process it? Access it? What do you do with it once its immediate usefulness to your organization is gone? And, naturally, how do you accomplish all this at the lowest possible cost?

Today, the darling theory of many IT managers, analysts and consultants is Information Lifecycle Management, or ILM. ILM solves all these problems and more -- at least according to its advocates. But critics believe that the technologies, much less the mindset of IT professionals and users, means that ILM is not quite ready for prime time.

"Is it possible?" asks Steve Dupulessie, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.  "Yes. Is it realistic? No."

ILM Defined
First, what is ILM? Although definitions abound, it's generally agreed that ILM is not a technology per se, but a set of management processes supported by technology that attempt to manage how data flows through a business, from the time it is collected until the time it is no longer needed.

Using ILM to manage costs is a major part of the picture. The expense of collecting, storing and managing data over its entire lifecycle must somehow correspond to its value to a business.

"ILM is really about taking a business view of information and developing the appropriate infrastructure to enable it, and in the process, reduce costs," says Jeff Porter, chair of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Data Management Forum. 

Regulatory requirements also play a part. By ensuring timely access to data -- both current and historical -- enterprises can more easily comply with legal directives such as Sarbanes-Oxley and perform audits or respond to other external demands to produce data in a timely manner. (article continues)

Not Just an IT Issue
"ILM requires collaboration among business users, records-management people, IT, legal professionals and security groups to determine the true value of that information for the business as it moves over time," says Porter. But such collaboration is difficult to achieve. "Any ILM initiative will fail unless all these people are involved, and committed," says Porter.

In a perfect world, companies would create a set of data-centric business policies that could have technologies that would automatically enforce them. "For example, if we said, 'no MP3 files on the corporate servers,' we could apply tools to seek out MP3s, delete or move them, and notify the users that they had violated corporate policy," says Dupulessie.

Indeed, on the technology side, products that support ILM are finally becoming available to do just that. Tiered storage products have been around for some time, but several other types of software, particularly data classification and master data management (MDM) systems, are emerging that promise to support ILM initiatives.

Over the past 18 months, a number of companies -- mostly small startups -- have released data classification products that can evaluate information value and automate movement across storage tiers based upon business policies. Right now, these things are largely being done with home-grown scripts, but EMC, Scentric, Abrevity and Kazeon Systems, among others, are marketing commercial data classification software that supports ILM. (article continues)

MDM offers an alternative technology solution. Banker is a proponent of MDM solutions, which go beyond ERP and CRM and represent the "newest attempt at achieving a single version of the truth," says Steve Banker, service director for the Arc Advisory Group, an analyst firm based in Denham, Massachusetts. The goal of MDM software is to collect all the different -- and frequently contradictory -- data that enterprises possess into a central repository. In short: if ILM represents the business processes, MDM is the technology that will get you there, says Baker.

Vendors producing MDM systems include Oracle, IBM and Informatica, among a host of others.

"We're just entering a time when ILM can be achieved based on these new technologies," Porter says, cautioning, however, that these products are largely 1. X versions, and enterprises need to do test installs and understand the vendors' roadmaps going forward before committing to a particular product.

Still, analysts say, as these technologies mature, ILM holds out significant promise for IT management.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Decision Support Systems for Executives

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Keeping a business on course and profitable requires a corporate leader to make judicious decisions at every step. It's no surprise, then, that decision support systems (DSS), long used at the operational levels of enterprises, have matured enough to become part of executives' everyday tools.

"Although some people think the term DSS is dated -- preferring to call it business intelligence, performance management, executive information system or some other name -- DSS is still a useful way to inclusively describe a broad variety of automated systems specifically designed to support decision-making," says Dan Power, editor of Decision Support Systems Resources, based in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

The Difference Is in the Data
When compared to DSS systems designed for the rank-and-file, executive DSS systems are much more visual. They focus on graphical representations of key metrics to help executives digest a lot of information quickly, according to William McKnight, senior vice president of information management at CSI, a systems consulting firm based in Plano, Texas. "In many, if not most cases, executives don't have the time to drill down into the data, but instead want to get to a quick conclusion," he says. (article continues)

Another key difference is that executives tend not to need real-time data as much as operating employees. "Up-to-the-minute information is less important than having ready access on figures for the month, the week, or perhaps the close of business the day before," McKnight says.

Although DSS technology is fairly mature, there have been recent advances in terms of portability: Web-based systems that can be accessed from anywhere using a standard web browser and executive dashboards that can be viewed on cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are making DSS a truly ubiquitous tool for IT executives who are frequently on the road.

Changing Behaviors to Better Exploit the Tools
The biggest challenges for organizations wishing to put executive DSS systems in place are behavioral rather than technical. "There are still some things that executives don't want to use a computer for -- they'd prefer to get certain information in paper form," says Power. "Also, what is the culture of the company? Is it fact-driven? If so, DSS systems probably will be more successful than if executives like to make decisions based on intuition." (article continues)

A secondary, but equally critical, concern is getting the data in shape. "Although it's pretty common these days for companies to have data warehouses, databases can sometimes be built specifically for DSS systems," says McKnight. "In either case, making sure that the data is well integrated, clean and kept up to date is essential."

Implementing DSS for the executive suite can motivate senior managers to rethink and re-engineer their business processes. "At first, it's smart to design your DSS systems so that they fit into executives' existing routines," says McKnight. "But eventually, if the DSS developers do a good job, the tools will encourage executives to modify their behavior to make the most of the rich information being captured and stored by the organization."

Ultimately, however, the real risk related to DSS is not doing it. "Some industries haven't yet moved to DSS, but that number is decreasing. The danger is that a competitor will make good use of DSS, will be more responsive to market conditions and will steal market share from you," said Power. "This isn't to say that you are guaranteed to be successful if you've put DSS into place -- there are no such guarantees -- but it's fast becoming a mandatory technology for individuals leading large complex companies."

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Web 2.0 Seduces the Enterprise

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Talk about disruptive technologies. Despite being widely available for only a few years, Web 2.0 tools, such as WYSIWYG blogging platforms, wikis, social networks, RSS and social bookmarking sites have had a tremendous impact on the way millions of people think about and use the Internet. The term "Web 2.0" itself didn't enter the popular lexicon until 2004; two years later, Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee coined the term "Enterprise 2.0," introducing the concept in a Spring 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review article entitled "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration."

In each case, the terms and their meanings inspired immediate controversy. Web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee has dismissed "Web 2.0" as "a piece of jargon," arguing that the term could just as well describe the original Web functions, which enabled easy connections between people and information. Some argued strongly against an "Enterprise 2.0" entry in Wikipedia, saying that it was too much of a buzzword; the entry survived that debate, but has since been redubbed "Enterprise social software." This entry itself may soon merge with an entry on "social computing."

While these disputes appear, at first glance, to center largely on semantics, they're emblematic of the seismic shift brought about by Web 2.0. Even the most technically disinclined users have to admit that the content creation and sharing tools clustered under the Web 2.0 rubric enhance and facilitate the Internet experience.

Who Wants To Collaborate?
McAfee refers to Web 2.0 applications generally as "emergent social software platforms." This is a crucial, unusual, and perhaps defining phrase," says McAfee, especially in the enterprise context. "I emphasize the word 'emergent' because the new platforms are not trying to dictate to users how (article continues)

they should contribute, or what they should be saying in what format or what structure. Instead, the smart managers and the smart technologists are presenting something that's pretty close to a blank slate, then trying to get out of the way of users and watch what emerges."

McAfee believes that "Enterprise 2.0" -- by which he simply means the use of "social software" or Web 2.0 tools inside of companies or between companies working together -- has great potential to increase worker productivity. The adoption of this collaborative software is not inevitable, however. Senior executives are excited by the possibilities, McAfee notes. "Their job is to make the organization run better. They want all information that will help them do that." But there's active resistance at other levels.

Some of the hostility comes from a simple, but revelatory, difference between social software and traditional business software. The latter is about imposing order and structure throughout an organization, which is, of course, a necessity in many areas. The former imposes little or no structure and by definition lends itself, says McAfee, "to the appearance of unanticipated patterns and structure and content." Unpredictability, understandably enough, makes lots of people nervous, especially if they have turf to protect.

Easier Than You Think
The fact is, says Forrester analyst Oliver Young, Web 2.0 tools make it easier for people to get things done. Interactions via e-mail and phone are relatively ad hoc and decentralized, he argues, while social software enables, "efficient interaction between people, content and data." (article continues)

Take RSS, for example. Often mistaken for another form of social software, RSS is actually an increasingly popular marketing tool. Companies can publish very specific information about new products, bug fixes and special promotions, and make it easily accessible to customers via RSS.

"Bringing the publish-and-subscribe paradigm of RSS into the enterprise has been one of the biggest hurdles," Young says, in large part because IT departments are concerned with the technology's security. RSS capabilities built into Internet Explorer 7 and Outlook, for example, don't provide the kind of security that can be built into a dedicated feed reader. "There's the potential that you'll be opening yourself to viruses and spyware," says Young, but quickly adds that this security concern is, right now, more theoretical than real.

Putting Web 2.0 To Use
Much of the above explains why Enterprise 2.0 is a lot like sex: everyone talks about it, most people think that others are doing it more, but in fact it's very difficult to know what's really going on inside the firewalls. Only a few major corporations have wholeheartedly embraced Enterprise 2.0 tools: McDonald's and Northwestern Mutual each have built new Intranets upon platforms centered on customizable home pages, social networking capabilities, wikis, blogs, RSS and other Web 2.0 tools, but in most organizations, the tools are often being used in small groups or divisions. Dell's support team has adopted wikis as a key tool for sharing solutions to customer problems, but it's unclear how often other segments of Dell use wikis. (article continues)

Blogs and wikis seem to be the most commonly used Web 2.0 tools in the enterprise, says Young, with RSS and social networking applications making some headway. This is likely to change soon, as Microsoft has added Web 2.0 pieces to SharePoint (basic blogging and wiki functionality) and other big players like IBM, SAP, Oracle and BEA are, says Young, "bringing these tools into the enterprise as part of the typical application upgrade."

Young says that IBM, with Lotus Connections, has the most complete Web 2.0 suite and that although hard sales numbers haven't been released, the company has "said anecdotally that they're doing better than they'd hoped up to this point."

These large, traditional enterprise software providers seem to be battling it out with scores of nimble Web 2.0 startups for business market share, but the most likely scenario, says Young, is that many smaller companies will provide discrete applications for, partner with and eventually be purchased by the bigger fish. The vast majority of CIOs want suites that will provide all of these tools and more, preferably in a one-stop shop scenario. Meanwhile, some examples of well-positioned small and specialized companies include SixApart for blogging; Atlassian Confluence and SocialText for wikis; Communispace for social networking; and NewsGator for RSS.

Web 2.0 tools will inevitably be ubiquitous within most enterprises, which will lead to fundamental changes in the way some business is conducted. This will be disruptive -- but the familiar, major brand packaging, support and security, and the slow, piecemeal adoption of the available tools means we're likely to look back on Enterprise 2.0 as less a revolution than a critical and natural step in IT evolution.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Revive That Derailed Development Project

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

When IT consultant Mike Benz's phone rings, it's often a client struggling with a software development project gone bad. Recently, for example, a retailer called the certified project management professional (PMP) in Minneapolis, Minn., in a panic: They needed to change their computer software, hardware and their business practices in order to comply with new credit card security standards put forth by the Payment Card Industry (PCI). Having let other projects take priority, they ran into trouble just when they ran out of time.

Application development project failures are ubiquitous; very few organizations don't have a sad story to tell, and often for the same reasons: too- tight deadlines with too-few resources; too much time spent on minutia; and, perhaps most importantly, solid project management practices have not been established.

You don't have to join the "woe is me" chorus. When implementing a development project, forewarned is forearmed.

Getting Better All the Time
Although application implementations are fraught with failure, in fact, the news isn't all bad, emphasizes Jim Johnson, chairman of The Standish Group, a technology research company based in Boston, Mass., that tracks projects and publishes software, "Chaos Report," every two years.

According to the 1998 report, a whopping 28 percent of all software projects worldwide failed or were not used. The number dropped to 23 percent in 2000 and then further decreased to 15 percent in 2002. Johnson attributes the decline between 2000 and 2002 to the fact that spending on Y2K projects slashed (article continues)

budgets for new projects. In 2004, however, the number rose to 18 percent and stayed steady in 2006. Johnson adds that in 1998 the project success rate was 26 percent, but by 2006, 35 percent of projects were delivered on time, on budget and in use.

Based on Johnson's "waste-to-value" ratio, companies are getting a better return on their IT investment. "For every dollar we spent on software projects in 1998, only 25 cents went towards value," explains Johnson, whereas by 2006, 59 cents went towards value. "I equate that to better project management, better project management techniques, smarter users who are able to articulate what their needs are and smaller projects that are more agile and done quicker."

Plan to Re-plan
"What sends a lot of software projects off track is poor initial conditions at the outset; mistakes get made fairly early in the lifecycle," says Peter Sterpe, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass. Software has a huge amount of variation and program requirements can easily change, Sterpe adds. "Estimating the scope of a project once and then never modifying it and sticking a team with it can really doom a project."

In the case of Benz's client, "There was no methodology. They were trying to solve lots of little tiny problems but they weren't looking at the whole picture," he says. The PCI project was low on the company's priority list and there was no plan for fixing all the problems that cropped up. (article continues)

Faced with a large monthly fine or loss of their authorization to take credit card payments, the retailer made the project the company's top priority. Benz insisted that management put together a team of dedicated gurus in a "war room" with food delivered. "We created a visual chart of the 100 things that needed to be done and we assigned each of those specifics tasks to the gurus," he says. "Every time someone got something done we marked it off and we all took tremendous pride in our accomplishment. We made tremendous progress in a short period of time and we were compliant with the PCI standards on deadline."

Such extraordinary efforts derail resources and personnel from day-to-day tasks. Sterpe advises companies with "track wreck" projects to look at whether the salvage is worth it -- or if it will exceed the benefits they will get from project.

Plot Your Path To Success
When a project is in danger, take these steps to get it back on track:

Communicate Identify the root cause of the problems and then have the courage to let everyone know.

Fix it People often will find a "fixer," someone with special skills, knowledge and strong leadership. Sometimes this means hiring a consultant.

Leverage the lessons After the carnage has been swept away, revisit and, if necessary, recreate the plan to conform to the new circumstances.

Know what's going on Chart the progress on a wall where everyone can note their responsibilities, spot incipient problems and check off accomplishments at a glance. "It builds morale and demonstrates progress," says Sterpe.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Welcome to the World of Web 2.0

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

You know the drill: You call tech support about a computer problem, you're immediately put on hold, and then you wait for anywhere between five minutes and forever before talking to a real person. You're asked to describe the problem, then you're put on hold again while the support person searches the company's internal difficult-to-search knowledgebase for a solution. Or your problem may involve a new product and the knowledgebase might not have been updated. Maybe your problem can be solved over the phone, maybe not. But almost certainly, you'll have lost lots of time waiting to find out.

At least one major computer software manufacturer has successfully tackled the problem using a Web 2.0 technology -- a wiki -- to drastically improve its customer support. "They added our wiki application to their traditional knowledgebase," says Jeff Brainard, the director of marketing at Socialtext, which is located in Palo Alto, Calif. Soon the number of customer service representatives using Socialtext's wiki to share problems and solutions not found in the knowledgebase skyrocketed. According to Brainard, more than 4,000 service representatives now use the wiki.

"There's a tangible benefit," says Brainard. "They get through calls more quickly. What used to take 15 clicks to solve now takes five. Their managers look better. The company estimates it's saving at least a million dollars a year, and maybe as much as $10 million."

The Promise of Web 2.0
Although "Web 2.0" is sometimes dismissed as being a term that's both trendy and vague, the six sources we spoke to, ranging from corporate consumers of Web 2.0 products to consultants to vendors, were able to define the difference between traditional Web applications and Web 2.0 (article continues)

applications. The traditional Web was about setting common standards -- TCP/IP, HTTP and FTP, for example -- for the use of e-mail and for Web browsers. It was about e-mail and websites. Web 2.0 is about building communities through user-generated content and enabling use through not just the PC but a variety of devices, such as cell phones, PDAs and kiosks. It's about personalization, multiple forms of content (audio, video, text, messaging) and customizable tools. The differences are visible, radical and useful.

According to a 2006 report by Forrester, wikis -- documents that can be created, added to and edited by anyone in a defined community -- have become one of the most popular Web 2.0 solutions in the enterprise. Blogs have also been embraced, as have instant messaging, forums, RSS feeds and Facebook-style profile pages for employees. Increasingly, business users who may have surreptitiously been using open-source wikis or who have been instant-messaging under the corporate radar are finding that their companies are now providing them with similar tools. The main difference is that the corporate Web 2.0 tools are usually more robust, more secure and more tightly controlled than the similar offerings available to consumers. And CIOs, according to another recent Forrester survey, aren't interested in picking and choosing their Web 2.0 tools one by one. Sixty-one percent of the 119 CIOs surveyed said, according to Forrester, that they want their Web 2.0 tools "as a suite. . .[from] a large, incumbent vendor."

In the Web 2.0 world, "large" and "incumbent" don't automatically mean traditional corporate vendors, such as Microsoft, SAP and IBM. Socialtext has only been around for five years, but (article continues)

2,000 organizations already use its package, which integrates RSS feeds, blogging, discussion forums and other common Web 2.0 tools with its wiki platform. Awareness, known as iUpload until July 2007, is barely eight years old, but its Headcovers Unlimited suite leads the pack of enterprise blogging platforms, according to Forrester.

Pitfalls Still Lurk
While vendors can provide SaaS (software as a service, or remotely hosted applications), Web 2.0 suites still face stumbling blocks:

and services, and has also eliminated coding from its wiki. Both Socialtext and Awareness integrate their tools into a company's Intranet home page, so they are  always visible -- and hopefully inviting -- to employees.

Web 2.0 Is Here to Stay
With Web 2.0 still a toddler, rapid change in this market segment will be a constant in the years to come. But the advantages are immediately clear. Web 2.0 marks a clear turning point in the way companies manage, organize and, perhaps most important, retain information. If nothing else, user-generated shared content has a hidden advantage that's rarely, if ever, discussed. "It's a way to keep information in-house after an employee goes out the door," says Lyons. "It's no longer locked up in their e-mail."

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

IT Budget Priorities in Perspective

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

At one time, the IT staff's mission was to stay out on the bleeding edge -- first adopter, first adapter, first developer, first to market. But now the frontlines have changed, withdrawing to more cautious ground where bottom-line hemorrhaging can be stemmed and new strategies drawn.

"Without IT and business goal alignment, there is a high probability that IT will be working on implementation projects that are not the top priorities for business," says Andrew Bartels, an analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. "That means that business will be charging ahead, trying to attain its goals without the necessary IT support to achieve success."

The three top IT budget pitfalls, according to Bartels, are:

"The IT budget needs to be prepared in parallel with the business budget," says Bartels, "with IT costs to support new business initiatives included in the relevant business unit budgets. Also, the IT budget needs to be adjusted based on which new business initiatives that involve IT investment are approved and funded, and which are not."  (article continues)

Strategy Revisited
"Executives who feel that they need the latest and greatest often get caught with an IT infrastructure that doesn't drive the full potential of their productivity," explains Edward E. Endicott, Account Manager of Business & Financial Services with Frost & Sullivan in Palo Alto, Calif.

However, slashing IT budgets and adopting a more cautious and even cynical approach to IT planning is not, in and of itself, a strategy for success. Forward momentum must be maintained and constantly measured.

Endicott recommends asking two questions: Will this technology or infrastructure improve our bottom line? And if so, how will it accomplish the improvement? In other words, the best IT strategy is in support of the organization's business goals. Something easier said than done in light of obstacles ranging from turf wars to budget restraints and increasing regulations.

So how can the budget get done?  According to Bartels, the way to make it all happen is as follows. At the macro level, have an IT strategic plan that is prepared in conjunction with the business' strategic plan, with business strategy feeding into the IT strategic plan but also with IT's input on the business strategic plan. And at the micro level, have IT relationship managers who are part of the IT department with a solid line reporting to the CIO, but who are assigned to work with business units on a dotted line basis. The IT relationship leaders should ideally be part of the business unit's executive team, where they participate in weekly staff meetings, keep track of business unit initiatives, and monitor, if not lead, IT projects in support of the business.

It becomes clear that there should be a tight connection between the strategic plan alignment of business and IT and the day-to-day alignment between business unit and IT.  And that should be done by the IT relationship leader. (article continues)

Working in Concert
"Often, the disconnect between what IT and business goals should be stems from not understanding how the IT infrastructure can improve business," says Endicott. "Both sets of goals can get caught up in thinking that the latest and greatest technology will or will not help business. Because of this, budgeting errors can be easily made."

In the end, the alignment of business and IT goals must be credibly tied to productivity and revenue benefits -- but this is not a function of budget alone.

By itself, IT/business goal alignment has no impact on productivity or revenues. "But," Bartels adds, "goals are abstractions until there is execution at the project level. Implementation projects that both put the right technology in place and change the related business processes are the key to achievement of productivity and revenue benefits."

As the experts advise, budgets should be developed so as to support and promote the business units of the enterprise. And IT executives should make sure the business owners understand and support the goals of the IT projects included in the budget. And, of course, be prepared to revise the budget and its plans based on changes in the financial status of the organization and business units just as any other sector of the organization does.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Service-Oriented Architecture Steps into the Future

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

When USinternetworking, an application service provider (ASP) to more than 150 companies, was still very small, software architects and programmers were able to keep track of the available application codes and figure out how to make them work together. But as the Annapolis, Md. based company grew, the task rapidly became unmanageable.

USi "had a lot of legacy code and a lot of different systems that we connected together in a variety of ways," explains Michael Rulf, vice president of advanced engineering at USi (acquired by AT&T in October 2006). "We were using SSH and various types of network calls. The lines between applications had started to blur."

Different parts of the organization had begun using different vendors for similar operations, such as those involving Customer Relationship Management (CRM), but these applications still needed to be able to work together. "I had to figure out how to get the data from one system to the other, and each one of them made very different transformations to the data. It rapidly became very messy. I found that SOA helps you a lot with that integration process," says Rulf.

Service-Oriented Architecture, aka SOA, is a system that enables companies to isolate and define sections of program code -- the services, which are usually part of large applications -- and then implement a standard form of communication, allowing data to pass between the different services. A service can exist anywhere -- inside or outside an enterprise or made accessible via the Web -- and can be used for a variety of purposes by those who have permission to access it. (article continues)

Grow Up Fast
"We went from a traditional way of doing integration with data feeds and message brokers and made a hard right so that things could be more scalable and streamlined," says Rulf. "That's an advantage of SOA."

USi decided to use a middleware SOA software product for transitioning, rolling out and managing its SOA environment. The software includes components for discovering what services you already have available in your enterprise, then describing and defining those services using a Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registry, which has become a global standard.

"What happens in large organizations when you change to an SOA environment," says Jim Connolly, director of development for Kettley, a financial technology company based in Newport Beach, Calif., "is that you start losing lots of [code] duplication," thereby getting rid of the unnecessary data that gums up applications and, in Connolly's words, "kills an organization."

While Connolly agrees that cataloging and describing all of the functions in an organization is an enormous task, it's well worth the effort. After SOA is implemented, no time is wasted writing code that already exists -- a simple "call" to a service suffices. When a mistake is discovered, it only needs to be changed once, and all applications that use that service immediately and automatically switch to the corrected code. Services can be written, rewritten and tested without any change to the user interface before being described, cataloged and deployed. SOA provides greater efficiency and a large, well-organized software knowledge base. (article continues)

Stabilizing the Application Environment
Perhaps most important, says Sateesh Narahari, the senior product marketing manager for APM (Applications Performance Management) at Symantec in Cupertino, Calif., is that software performance improves and systems become more stable.

"We check the availabilities of services 24/7," Narahari says. "Our APM products enable you to do a system 'health check' on a regular basis, and alert the proper person if something goes wrong."

Narahari strongly encourages his clients to focus on business requirements first, closely followed by performance. Through a constantly monitored system, the SOA environment enables even sprawling enterprises to build, define, manage and reuse code embedded in even the largest applications and systems in a methodical and economical fashion, without regard to what language the code is written in.

Implementing a SOA environment has surprisingly few technical issues. Cataloging the services and creating a central repository can both be done using either open source or commercial solutions, both of which are fairly well established. "It's about not reinventing the wheel," says Connolly.

Instead, the biggest challenges involve changing engrained habits and businesses processes, according to Connolly. "It's a change from the traditional mindset of programmers wanting to have the autonomy to write their own code in their own style to thinking in terms of specific problems and checking to see if someone else in the company has already solved them."

While it's a large task to transition to an SOA environment, experts agree that for most medium and large-size enterprises, it's a worthwhile long-term investment.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Managing Mobile Devices

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

They are the best of tools and the worst of tools. Mobile computing devices can support the workforce out in the field or make your most sensitive company secrets public knowledge. The only way to simultaneously unleash your workforce and rein in company threats is to control the risks.

Many IT departments mistakenly think they will be more efficient if they let employees set up their own remote access. "While some companies provide mobile devices to employees with e-mail services and other mobile applications, such as CRM, many of these devices are brought into the organization by employees who go out and buy them themselves and then find a way to connect to corporate applications," says Stacy Sudan, Research Analyst, Mobile Enterprise Software at IDC in Framingham, Mass. "It is very difficult for the IT department to keep track of and manage all of the devices that are actually connecting to the corporate network."

Another common error: "The wrong way to manage mobile devices is to have different departments handling different categories of mobile devices," says Ken Dulaney, Vice President of Mobile Computing at Gartner in Stamford, Conn. "Look at all devices in a similar way, and apply policies in a consistent manner across the board."  (article continues)

Know What's Connected
Once you know the exact number and type of devices that are tapping into your company system, you can develop a comprehensive mobile management system to tie up loose ends. Or you can choose among a variety of management suites.

"A lot of enterprises struggle today with mobile device management because they are unaware that dedicated mobile device management suites are available," says Ben Gray, Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. Gray says tools like Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite, HP Enterprise Mobility Suite, Motorola Mobility Suite, Altiris Handheld Management Suite and Afaria Management and Security are able to manage multiple device platforms (Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Symbian and Palm OS) and also enable software distribution and configuration management.

Most companies today rely on Microsoft's Systems Management Server or RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Server to do software management and distribution within the push e-mail server itself. "Mobile device management suites are really the gold standard today," says Gray. "In the future, traditional endpoint management vendors like Altiris, LanDesk and Microsoft will be adding more robust support for handheld devices."

If the task is too taxing on IT staff, consider outsourcing. "There is a growing market of managed mobility firms that companies can outsource device management to," advises Sandra Palumbo, Program Manager, Enterprise IT and Communications Services at Yankee Group in Boston, Mass. She mentions Movero, IntegratedMobile and even some of the carriers. (article continues)

Be sure to weigh options carefully and diligently compare features before buying a mobile device management suite. This is the one category of vendors where bigger is not always better. "The market for mobile security is a fragmented one with smaller pure-play mobile security ISVs, larger computer security firms and larger mobility companies all competing for a share of the pie," says Sudan.  "Most often, the smaller pure-play ISV's have the most complete security offerings. Some offer suites that encompass everything from mobile anti-virus and mobile firewall/ VPN to remote wipe/lock of the device."

Basic Reminders
Whichever approach you choose, keep security practices current and consistent among the various devices. Make sure basic policies are in place and regularly enforced to restrict unauthorized access by employees as well as company outsiders.

"It is also best to build applications with inherent back-up capabilities so you don't have to rely on personnel to back up files and sensitive data. Most e-mail systems have inherent back-up capabilities, but other apps may not," adds Dulaney.

Once you have a mobile management program in place, there is only one thing left to do. "Start using it," says Dulaney, "And keep using it -- every day."

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Service-Oriented Architecture Promises Increased Flexibility

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Wouldn't it be a great idea if an enterprise's IT resources could be linked and reused, enabling businesses to respond more quickly and cost-effectively to changing market conditions? That's the theory behind service-oriented architecture (SOA) and, in theory, systems developed according to SOA principles promise new levels of flexibility. In reality, however, nothing's ever that simple.

"You don't get SOA-based flexibility merely by building a library of services," says Randy Heffner, an analyst at Forrester Research based in Dallas, Texas. "AT&T learned this with its initial try at a Web services strategy, which took AT&T from having a bunch of disconnected, incoherent integration interfaces to having a bunch of disconnected, incoherent 'standards-based' interfaces."

But if the key to realizing the promise of SOA is not in the most obvious implementation, then where is it?

Right Key, Wrong Lock
Merely collecting services is not enough, says Heffner. To succeed with an SOA strategy, enterprises have to shape their service creation efforts within the context of business design and governance.

IT departments must approach the problem from a business-oriented perspective, rather than a technology-oriented one. "Quality management in SOA is not defined as how many defects per line of code you find, but how well the service meets the business requirements," says Sandy Carter, vice president of SOA and WebSphere strategy at IBM, in Somers, NY.

For example, an enterprise considering SOA must first ascertain whether an existing business process -- such as automated credit checking -- has already been created by another department in the company or another member of the IT staff. If this service already exists, a company can save time and money by (article continues)

avoiding redundant development efforts. If, on the other hand, IT finds that the automated credit check service doesn't exist, they can then begin to develop, create and test one.

"By identifying a coherent body of services needed for a given business domain, and by designing each service to deliver a clearly scoped, complete business unit of work, you create an inventory of business services that, in effect, provides a digital model of your business capabilities," Heffner explains.
 
Break Down the Business Functions
"Understanding how the business functions is key to identifying which services will succeed in an SOA environment," says Columbus, Ga.-based Frank Braski, manager of IT Applications Services at insurance giant Aflac. Braski breaks down what he calls "the business taxonomy" into seven data concepts, among which an enterprise "can practically model and define anything," he says. Those concepts are:

Unearthing artifacts is essential in every case. Artifacts are the instructions that explain specific business processes and services. This information includes: who owns the service, the performance requirements for the service in production, the current usage of the service, which applications are using the service and who can see the service.

"The key to understanding what business processes exist and how to create new ones is to ensure that the instructions are available in a repository and are easily understood by different parts of the organization, both business and IT," says Carter. (article continues)

Successful Services Reuse
Once you have identified the services to be reused and shared, consider refining a common service rather than simply duplicating it. "The best way to get to plain-and-simple 'use' instead of the typical so-much-copying-and-pasting 're-use' scenario is to K.I.S.S. -- Keep It Simple and Smart," advises Braski.

"Think Legos," Braski explains. "Given just a handful of basic building blocks with a couple different styles and colors -- presto! You can pretty much create anything you can imagine. Good Lego designers eventually discover a common set of basic 'tricks' or 'patterns' which they can apply time and again to solve problems common to many building challenges. In systems development, services can be as basic as those plastic building bricks."

K.I.S.S. also entails keeping the core definition of the service intact. "Designing a limited set of interactions as messages that are completely abstracted from any implementation or technology underpinning allows other technology-centric configuration and policy elements to change around them," says Sandra Rogers, IDC Program Director, SOA, Web Services and Integration in Framingham, Mass.

As artful as the end product may be, it must still face a reality check. "When several team members revise a document, it soon looks nothing like its original form. A similar situation can occur once a service is in production," says Carter. "This is why IT needs to conduct continuous monitoring to make sure the service meets the established business requirements."

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Is It Time for Diskless PCs?

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Although Oracle, NEC, Wyse and other major vendors have long promoted diskless PCs, the technology has failed to establish a beachhead within enterprise IT shops. This appears to be changing with the release of Microsoft's Vista operating system. Vista offers virtualization features specifically designed to make diskless PCs -- also known as network computers, or "thin clients," because of their significantly reduced cost when compared to traditional PCs -- more attractive.

Still, for a variety of technical and organizational reasons, a complete change of mindset is required before enterprise IT shops will fully accept them. "A lot of users don't like giving up the control of having applications and data stored locally," says Rich Seidner, president of Silicon Valley Virtual Inc., an IT consulting firm based in Woodside, Calif. "Making the shift requires enterprises to put user education and training programs, as well as new technological processes, in place"

Diskless Drawbacks
A diskless PC is exactly what it sounds like: a microcomputer without a dedicated hard drive. Instead, data and applications are stored on remote hard drives, such as those in storage area networks (SANs) kept in the data center. This approach has plusses and minuses. (article continues)

"While people may understand the total cost of ownership [TCO] savings," says Brian Madden, an independent consultant based in Silver Spring, Md. "Moving to diskless PCs requires investing in new software and technologies, and doing things in ways that are completely different from what they've done in the past"

Several challenges have impeded the mainstream deployment of network PCs. For starters, because a network connection is required at all times, this type of hardware tends not to work for companies with a large number of mobile employees who are frequently away from the office, or who habitually take laptops home to work. Likewise, not all applications have the architecture to operate on thin-client hardware. "Diskless PCs require either a server-based computing backend, or some kind of streaming solution," says Madden. Finally, many software vendors have yet to establish licensing arrangements that are compatible with use of diskless PCs.

Thin Clients Gain Weight
However, in addition to lower TCO, there are three key advantages to moving to diskless PCs that are responsible for increased interest in the technology:

Network PCs have been on the verge of making a breakthrough to more widespread use for more than a decade. As their advantages are leveraged by the ubiquitous availability of high-speed Internet access and the growing interest in virtualization technologies are making them increasingly attractive to enterprises, the diskless PC's day may finally have dawned.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

When WANs Aren't Wide Enough

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

CIO Magazine's recent tech poll revealed something that may not be surprising to corporate network managers: Spending on networks has eclipsed computer hardware as the top IT budget category. What is surprising is that this isn't due to an increase in the local area networks (LANs) that now run in almost every company office. Even though LANs are beginning to show their age, experts agree the existing technology can still supply plenty of bandwidth and hasn't required much new investment. The budget buster is the corporate WAN, or wide area network.

"Organizations are much more distributed," explains George Hamilton, the director of Yankee Group's enabling technologies enterprise group in Boston, Mass. "They've got a lot of branch offices and mobile users, and there's a big push to make enterprise applications that you would normally be able to use sitting at a desk in an office available to users wherever they are, whether they're at an airport or a hotel or their home PC or in a branch office. So you need to empower the network to be able to support those types of applications."

But while users are more distributed, data centers are becoming more centralized. According to Jim Metzler of Ashton, Metzler & Associates, in Sanibel, Fla., "HP is going from 85 data centers down to six. The state of Texas is going from 31 to two." As a result, data has to travel farther to get to any particular user.

Boosting WAN Capability
If WANs provide a future solution, they also pose a present problem. LANs carry traffic over 10/100Mbps Ethernet cables, says Hamilton, while WANs trudge along at a stodgy 1.544Mbps. Many companies are speeding up those WAN (article continues)

connections by simply adding more pipes, or bandwidth. But increasingly, IT centers are looking toward more sophisticated options, because there will always be demand for additional bandwidth.

"I'm very bullish on the whole network and application optimization space," Metzler says. "There's a variety of products and solutions out there to make the WAN perform better. Or make the applications that run over the WAN perform better."

The two most common techniques for sending less information over the network are:

These solutions are usually deployed via dedicated performance appliances offered by companies such as Cisco Systems, Juniper Solutions and Riverbed Technology.

Critical Data Gets Priority
Another smart investment, Hamilton and Metzler agree, is QoS software. QoS, or Quality of Service, enables network administrators to "see" into the network traffic, to identify what types of data are going where and control what gets network priority. (article continues)

NetQoS is a major provider of software and services in this category. "Our goal in life is to understand how well applications are performing for those remote users. That is really the best measure of how well the infrastructure is delivering applications and gives companies visibility into what is on the network," explains NetQoS VP of Marketing Steve Harriman. "Is VOiP a major consumer of bandwidth? Is SAP? Is it your salesforce automation system? Is it recreational use, which we're seeing increasing amounts of?"

Once the main bandwidth consumers have been determined, a company may decide that infrastructure upgrades are in order. Of course, upgrades are inevitable in any case, and what QoS software can do, says Harriman, is "ensure that mission-critical apps are getting first access to the pipe, ahead of recreational use, for example." A company may have a fairly long priority sequence, and then an "as available" bucket, which may be where recreational traffic gets routed.

Smart Investments Open the Pipes
Although every enterprise has its unique networking challenges, experts agree that increasing capacity, or simply adding more pipes, may be an effective "brute force" solution, but not necessarily a wise investment. Rather, IT professionals should first invest in a QoS product to analyze their network. Only then, based on the resulting insights of how data flows, consider investing in optimization, acceleration and differencing appliances. While more bandwidth will undoubtedly be needed sooner or later, these immediate investments will pay off in both the short and long term.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

IT Survival Skills

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

For IT professionals, certifications in technical areas serve as standard career currency. But even the most gilt-edged diplomas may no longer guarantee advancement. To reach the upper levels of the IT organization, training time is better spent sharpening interpersonal and project management skills.

According to an IT skills research survey by IT Training Magazine, a U.K.-based publication, demand has shifted over the last five years, moving away from technical training and toward business analysis, systems design and project management skills. IT training shops have likewise shifted their offerings to match the demand for these skills.

"The days of code-writing savants that we kept in the back room are over," says John Oberlin, associate vice chancellor and interim CEO at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We need well-rounded people with social skills and good judgment across a wide variety of situations."

IT Management is Still Management
The College of Information Technology at Georgia Southern University near Savannah, Ga., has a thriving Professional Development Center, serving companies such as Verisign, newspaper publisher Morris Multimedia and Memorial Health, a large health service organization in the area. What most of these companies want for their IT professionals is project management training, says associate dean Hans Reichgelt.

"Memorial Health was keen on communication," says Reichgelt. The Professional Development Center provided Verisign with PMI (Project Management Institute) Certification development units. Morris Multimedia wanted to improve its facility with Scrum, a flexible project management method designed for very small software development teams focusing on short-term goals. Overall, most of those being trained were already overseeing projects and were being groomed for greater management responsibilities. (article continues)

Similarly, Tom Carpenter, a longtime IT trainer and consultant for LearnKey in St. George, Utah, has found that his course, "Communication Skills for IT Professionals," struck a chord. The genesis of the course, Carpenter recalls, was the perception that information technology people are poor communicators. "I found out this was really true, and that the large majority of people working in IT had put close to 100 percent of their effort into developing their technical skills and almost no effort into developing their interpersonal skills."

The course focuses on "learning to speak the business language and communicating the business value of IT," says Carpenter, who still teaches on technical topics. Since the course was first offered in 2002, enrollment has more than doubled.

Training for Real Life
More and more organizations stress both written and verbal communication skills among their IT staff. University of North Carolina's Oberlin, for example, requires his 450 IT employees to be able to write short summary memorandums.

Training in project management, running business meetings and dispute resolution is also vital. Anthony Orr, the global best practices director for BMC Software in Houston, Texas, prepares employees for an even tougher test: communicating in the midst of chaos. Orr oversees a unique airport simulation workshop designed to give students a better understanding of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), a best practices framework for IT. In the simulation, students set up a service desk, add technical specialists and suppliers and manage the dynamics of the environment, all while increasing the complexity of the IT infrastructure.

"They experience what chaotic behavior is like within an organization where the processes aren't aligned correctly, the technology doesn't underpin the processes and there's no communication," says Orr. (article continues)

That's when the learning begins. "People come to the simulation and think, 'Wow, this is what I do when I come to work.' The value to the businesses is that the greater the level of complexity, the more you're able to be more efficient, more effective and more economical."

Orr notes that the program has been widely adopted across Europe and the Pacific Rim and is becoming increasingly important in the United States. "ITIL is all about service improvement," he says. "ITIL tries to connect business and IT overall."

Five Courses to Learn By
According to these experts, IT employees who want to progress in their career should take courses in the following five areas:

As software development becomes more streamlined and end users become more technically savvy, so-called "soft skills," especially project management and communication, will continue to become increasingly important for IT professionals and their employers. IT organizations must emphasize ongoing training in these areas in order to survive, thrive and add value to their businesses.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Wired Versus Wireless Networks: What's Right For You?

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

When comparing wired networks to wireless ones, it's six of one, half dozen of another. Wired network speeds have increased to the gigabit range, providing more rapid, reliable and secure access to stored data. On the other hand, wireless networks offer flexibility, mobility and faster return on investment (ROI). What's a network planner to do when faced with a purchasing decision?

An increasing number of businesses that already have wired networks in place are installing wireless networks to supplement their existing functionality, according to recent research by market research firm In-Stat, based in Scottsdale, Ariz. More than 75 percent of U.S. businesses currently have at least one mobile data application, and the use of wireless is spreading across multiple applications and all vertical markets. These numbers will only grow as more enterprises supply knowledge workers with notebook and laptop computers, and as wireless technologies continue to mature.

No Decision
Which network is the best option? This is one instance where the best choice may be not making a choice. That's the advice of Michael Spencer, a partner with i2 Partners, a strategic IT consulting firm based in Seattle, Wash. "Each technology has compelling advantages, but neither of them can substitute for the other," he says. "Think of them as complementing each other." (article continues)

Here's a rundown of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each:

What we're likely to see, according to networking experts, is that even as wired networks will remain the technology of choice for what Stanton calls the "heavy lifting" of a business, wireless penetration will continue to increase. Says Stanton, "Except for very unusual circumstances, we recommend that clients use a wired network as the foundation for their networking needs and layer wireless on top of that. That way you get the best of both worlds."

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Reinforcing WiFi Redundancy

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

Redundancy is routine in the constant scramble to keep a conventional enterprise network functioning. But the wireless infrastructure is often ignored, leaving enterprises vulnerable to malicious attacks and network failure.

No longer a hot-spot sideshow, wireless is on track to become the primary enterprise network sooner than you might think. "Although the all-wireless enterprise, such as Intel's, is not yet the norm, it is expected to be by mid- to late-2008 and into early 2009," says Chris Silva, an analyst with the Forrester research group based in Cambridge, Mass. Redundancy neglect now will only cause greater problems in the future.

Wired + Wireless = One Network
The impending move from wired to wireless is prodding IT professionals to shift gears and build a bulwark of safeguards. Successful transition, however, requires more than simply duplicating key parts of wireless hardware. "A redundant infrastructure means anticipating points of failure for the network and creating ways of preventing the network from failing, no matter what nightmare scenario takes place," advises Stan Schatt, VP of ABI Research in New York, N.Y.

Among the points of potential failures are the hidden recesses of the physical plant. "Redundancy efforts must ensure 100 percent coverage of the building as much as it must ensure constant reliability of the network. You have to account for new obstacles such as building materials, walls, stairwells and corner dead zones," advises Silva.

Paradoxically, despite intensified scrutiny of the wireless infrastructure, IT departments cannot afford to ignore the wired network. (article continues)

"Even though these networks are separate, wireless users often connect to a wire-line network. A network manager has to be aware of issues associated with the WiFi device and network that could bring down the wire-line network," observes Schatt.

In short, the entire network system -- both wired and wireless -- is mission critical.  Yet too many enterprises are missing the message, warns San Jose, Calif. -based Rachna Ahlawat, research director of Gartner's Wireless Networking. "There's not much difference in redundancy for wired and wireless. Both must be covered."

Eight Secrets to Achieving Redundancy
How can IT departments super-size their redundancy plans? Consider these eight ways to reinforce your entire network:

Make sure your enterprise is prepared for the future surge to an all-wireless network. The steps toward achieving wireless redundancy may differ from normal redundancy efforts, but the end goal remains the same. "Most network managers are looking for network resiliency; that means creating a network that is resilient enough not to fail should a component fail or should a hacker attack the network," says Schatt.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Transforming IT from Servant to Strategic Partner

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

When companies start to think about streamlining operations, the IT department is often among the first to be flagged. To survive, IT leaders must demonstrate that their department serves a strategic role in the organization's future. For many IT groups, that's a big change.

Redesigning IT's role starts with reorganizing its priorities. Senior IT leaders must focus on two points: how to make money for the enterprise and how to save money for the enterprise. Those two ends are the means to transform the IT department from a useful servant to a valued strategic partner.

"For the longest time, IT was where the gnarly IT heroes lived," explains Ray Paquet, an analyst with Gartner in Billerica, Mass. "Without so much as a 'by your leave,' they rode in, solved thorny problems and then rode away again."

But that image of the solitary techno-wizard single-handedly saving the day has gone the way of the modem. Today's IT heroes are MVPs who know how to be team players and help the entire enterprise achieve victory.

Be a Profit Prophet
This new wave of IT leaders knows that the entire IT operation must be geared more towards solid overall business successes so that it can be recognized by everyone, as opposed to arcane tech advancements obvious to only a select few.

"We want to buy magic, but technology is not magic," says Paquet. "It's time to realize Houdini died and get on with making decisions based on delivering profit.  Instead of trying to amaze or pacify your customers, begin to think and act like a business partner. Justify everything you do against specific business goals."

The key to success: Focus on business impact rather than technology for technology's sake. (article continues)

Make People Skills a Priority
In the new world, people skills are increasingly important on the priority list. "IT Operations really needs to recalibrate and get back to the human element," advises Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio in Boston, Mass. "It's imperative to communicate with other people in your organization."

While technological expertise is an acknowledged asset, an environment that spotlights tech talent to the exclusion of other skills can create a department of divas. "If you only hire and organize based on technology concerns, you will end up hearing a lot of 'that's not my problem' and 'that's not my job.' Yet the problems will still exist and IT then becomes expendable in the eyes of higher management," warns Paquet.

There is no technology fix that will solve this very human problem. Instead, people skills should top IT's "most wanted" list.

Claim the Prize
Top among those people skills is communication. When IT doesn't communicate well with the rest of the enterprise, everyone suffers - but IT suffers disproportionately.

"There are tons of examples where IT people drop the ball, lose millions [of dollars] for their enterprises and also lose recognition for what was initially a job very well done," DiDio says.

Conversely, it is common for IT managers to successfully negotiate potent deals for their organization. But because all the extras that were included with the deal were not communicated to the rest of the enterprise, those benefits were never collected. As a result, the organization never realized the significance of the achievement and, says DiDio, "it might as well never have happened."

"The root causes for relationship breakdowns between IT and the business are differing expectations and a lack of understanding of the pressures, impacts and realities of life on the other side of the fence," notes Brian Erickson, managing vice president of the Strategic Technology Solutions Practice at Hitachi Consulting in Dallas, Texas. "In the end, we believe that the closer the IT professionals are to the front-lines of the business, the more effective they can be in identifying and responding to changes." (article continues)

Redesign for Dollars
According to Erickson, there are specific steps that can help you to redesign IT operations to boost business advantage and overcome these common obstacles.  These include:

Successful IT redesign centers on developing people skills and opening communication channels, both within and outside IT. "Before you talk tools, talk to people," says DiDio.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Secrets to Successful Software Integration

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

As a hosted electronic data exchange company, SPS Commerce in Minneapolis, Minn., is in the business of connecting the software it creates to applications its customers use every day. When the company recently outgrew some of its own systems, it was in a unique position of living its own customers' experience.

Previously, SPS Commerce relied on transferring information manually into Lotus Notes. But managers were concerned about accuracy and timeliness, and also felt that Lotus Notes by itself wasn't an ideal platform for analyzing data. "Our decision was driven by velocity," explains Troy Benesh, SPS Marketing Services manager. "[That is] reducing the amount of set-up time, eliminating manual entry, setting strict data standards and efficiently handing off information to various groups." By integrating Lotus Notes and SPS' Oracle database with Saleforce's customer relationship management (CRM) application, SPS hoped to track users' activities, ensure follow-up tasks were performed in a timely manner and spotlight accountability from one end of the customer chain to the other. Now it was about to find out whether those hopes would hold water.

Like SPS, many companies face a fundamental dilemma: They are organized vertically with each function using customized software applications and databases, but the customer experience extends throughout all business functions. "That's where software integration can play the greatest role," says Mike Childress, vice president of Applications Portfolio Development at EDS in Plano, Texas. "It cuts across those domains because that's how the real world works."

Unfortunately, in the real world, integration between disparate systems doesn't always go smoothly. With so many elements involved, some key items may get overlooked. (article continues)

A Failure to Communicate
Software integration is made up of five key components, says Childress. They include the underlying architecture or tools that will be used; governance, where IT and business discuss the scope and priority of requests; the rules put in place for workflow; the behavioral or cultural aspect and service management. IT departments tend to focus on the first three components when negotiating with integration enablers; the latter two, however, are equally important.

If you don't have a culture that wants to and is incented to leverage the organization's integrated business system, you'll reintegrate the same business functions three or four times during various projects, notes Childress. This IT version of reinventing the wheel is exactly what application integration attempts to avoid.

Service management is the other piece companies often overlook. This component dictates how a company manages its business processes, applications and underlying infrastructure so systems can run 24/7 with zero downtime. Service management also addresses when an application can be taken down for maintenance and provides a solution if a piece of the infrastructure fails.

Also, when integrating the two systems, IT managers must make sure they understand the language of both the data and the event architecture. Otherwise, Childress warns, there may be a misunderstanding of basic terms like "employee." (article continues)

Increased Connections, Enhanced Performance
Integrating software can improve business performance in several ways. Probably the clearest benefit of software integration is the reduction of manual processes -- from the time savings in reducing the amount of data entry to the minimization of human errors.

Equally important, says Pat Backen, a software engineer at SPS Commerce, is the ability to leverage separate application strengths. "Every application has its plusses and minuses, but with integration methods, companies can fully capitalize on the strengths of each application while minimizing the downside.'
Business intelligence also increases when integrating data from separate data sources and applications. An overall view of the business can be developed to allow for better data mining and reporting; the resulting synthesis can be used to improve performance by delivering actionable information that was not available from either independent system before integration.

However, some of the most striking results SPS witnessed as a result of its own systems integration have been in increased levels of customer satisfaction. "Manual data entry had the potential to be a clog in the pipeline," Backen says. "By automating this process, we have greatly reduced the time it takes for our customers to be up and running. This is a win-win-win: happy customers, happy salespeople, happy management."

The bottom line: Before undertaking a systems integration project, address the crucial components: the enabling technology; the underlying architecture, the tools and the governance. Make sure there is a policy covering the scope and priority of requests about the data to be shared among the different business units. Last but not least, train employees to make the most of the integrated data. That's the ultimate key to improved results.

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IT Business Insider: Operations Management

Is the Internet the New WAN?

From the Editors of IT Business Insider

After close to two decades -- a lifetime in information technology -- the traditional corporate wide-area network (WAN) may be headed for the endangered-species list. The usurper: Internet-based virtual private networks (VPNs). Instead of depending on dedicated leased or owned lines, VPNs use a variety of technologies to carry data traffic over public networks in a secure and private manner. And as they are becoming increasingly competitive in terms of cost, flexibility and capacity, organizations of all sizes are taking notice.

However, migrating from leased lines to broadband isn't a slam dunk. IT managers must select VPN vendors with the appropriate levels of support and technology, and make sure the system meets the enterprise's needs for security and performance on an ongoing basis.

Expert Advice on Call
IT departments can choose between the do-it-yourself approach -- installing their own software and building their own VPNs in-house using a standard business broadband connection -- and purchasing VPN services from a carrier.

In general, the availability of in-house expertise is one of the most significant issues an IT department faces in implementing a VPN. IT managers should assess their department's skill sets and decide whether the in-house expertise exists to plan, design, implement and monitor a VPN. If such expertise is lacking, it makes more sense and may be more cost-effective to use a carrier-provided VPN.

In a recent survey by In-Stat, an industry analyst based in Scottsdale, Ariz., the key reasons enterprises gave for using carrier-provided VPNs were higher cost-benefit ratios and the desire to converge voice and data services on the same transport facilities. Converging voice with data offers opportunities to save overhead costs, but it can be technically challenging, since changes in data traffic can easily affect the quality of voice service and vice versa. "When carriers provide the IP VPNs, they bring their expertise to the table," explains In-Stat senior analyst Steve Hansen. (article continues)

But that doesn't mean they do all the work. Even with carrier-based VPN, the IT department may be in charge of much of the day-to-day administration. Typically, the vendor will be called upon to address issues beyond the scope of the in-house team's capabilities, such as solving difficult problems or assisting with planning. The vendor also usually takes responsibility for fundamental requirements, such as meeting service-level agreements for network availability and mean time to repair.

How Private is "Virtually Private"?
Security can be the decisive factor in choosing between DIY and carrier-based VPNs. Because security administration is complex, some DIY VPN implementations have proved to be less than fully secure. But even though carrier-based VPNs have rarely presented security problems, Hansen argues that "it's dangerous to say that security is not an issue." His advice: Find a carrier that will perform a security audit, offer advice about security vulnerabilities and suggest the best ways of addressing them in each particular situation.

Most carrier-provided VPNs use the IPsec protocol, which operates at the network layer, for security. However, a recent report by Infonetics Research in Campbell, Calif., found that enterprises with heightened security needs were increasingly choosing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, which now accounts for about 21 percent of VPNs.

"SSL allows companies to limit user access to a few specific applications or data sources, and does so at the application layer, which is an improvement in security over IPsec," says Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for VPNs and security at Infonetics Research. Another benefit: SSL can be quickly set up as a disaster recovery solution, decreasing network downtime when other forms of access fail. (article continues)

Ensuring High Performance
Some IT managers are reluctant to move critical services from leased lines, concerned that a broadband IP connection may not provide the level of performance they require. Migrating from a DS3 leased line to a DSL broadband line with equivalent bandwidth may not present a problem, but migrating from a high-capacity fiber leased line might degrade performance unless fiber-based Internet access is available. "You have to make sure what you're moving is compatible with the network performance criteria of the network you're going to," Hansen says.

Bandwidth isn't the only requirement for high performance. In applications where quality of service (QoS) is the driving factor, such as voice, videoconferencing and an increasing number of data applications, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is emerging as the preferred standard. Many enterprises are finding that with a VPN based on MPLS, they can more easily meet service-level agreements for metrics like latency (the time it takes for a packet to get from one point to another), packet loss (signal degradation due to congestion) and other equally important components of QoS.

The bottom line: Implementing and managing a broadband-based network is not a trivial task. Before migrating enterprise applications from a dedicated-line infrastructure to an Internet-based VPN, you will need to address issues of security and network performance, and put a team in place -- using in-house or vendor resources, or some combination of the two -- that can set and meet appropriate service levels for the network.

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