Posts Tagged ‘datacentertrust’

Any company – whether it’s two people or 200,000 – must have a coherent internal communications system in place, enabling it to thrive on every level within the organization.  As with many things, it all begins with a plan. A good communications plan will include processes that allow all employees to both hear the message and be heard as well.  Succeeding with that communications plan also means the senior management team must fully comprehend and embrace the ‘message’ related to corporate policy and new strategic initiatives to all employees in a way that they will understand.

Corporate communications can take many forms: email, memos, website announcements, manager conversations and town hall meetings, and the like.

Let’s look at an example: A company needing to implement a revised strategy for growth.  The first method of communications will likely be in the form of senior management explaining the new plan to their direct reports – the VP and director-level management staff – in a management town hall-type format. Other useful first methods might be an offsite management retreat, or a memo explaining the new strategy and what the responsibilities of certain corporate functions will be. This first communication must be followed by other reinforcing communications, such as the ones that were mentioned above , if the new strategy is to become successful.

The key to a successful corporate communications plan is that all employees must: a) receive the message, b) understand the message, c) understand how the message will affect their way of doing their job, and d) know that they can communicate back up the chain of command when needed.  This last point is very important in order for a new strategy or other initiative to be successful.  Employees who are actually doing required work are closest to the actual processes involved with that work, and thus tend to know – better than those in leadership – what does and what doesn’t work well.  Therefore, a successful corporate communications program allows employees to communicate their issues and ideas up the chain of command and allow for more successful implementations or provide more timely knowledge that can change a failing program.

So whether we’re talking implementation of a broad-reaching corporate strategy, or a successful personal relationship, communications is the name of any successful game.  Either way, in order for everyone involved to be on the same page and work towards the same goals, communications needs smart planning and must go in all. Ready…aim…

—

Tagged as: active garage, backup, business, corporate communications, datacentertrust, emails, Leadership, management, Matthew Carmen, phone, servers, townhall meetings

Alright, so you’ve toiled and slaved and spent countless sleepless nights (and probably countless ducats as well) to launch your shiny new mobile-local-social app that’s turned into the next big thing. Congrats and all. No really..no small feat, this; good work! Though before you pop open that magnum of La Grande Dame, allow me to ask: happy with your disaster recovery plan?

You. Do. Have. A. Disaster. Recovery. Plan. Right??

No? Step into my office. A Disaster Recovery plan is not the sort of thing you consider briefly, only to shove in the corner for a rainy day. All that’s needed is a cut of some errant fiber line, or some natural disaster to come along and your über-popular app could be down. As for you: that’d be time to dust off the ole resume once again. (I’m hearing the faintest sound of a teeny tiny violin playing.)

Let’s avoid this sad-sack scenario then, shall we? The good news is that although DR planning is a serious undertaking which should be performed by – ahem! – professionals, there are a few easy steps you can take right now to help appropriately prepare you for the unthinkable:

• Ask yourself: What’s the worst that could happen? No, seriously. If that volcano erupts and hot liquid magma melts the datacenter where your servers live, it’s trouble. (Volcanoes do erupt, you know.) You’ll first need to determine how many hours or days your app can be down before your business is irreversibly affected. This is known as Maximum Tolerable Downtime, or MTD.
• Research, research, research. Now that you know how quickly you’ll need to be up and running post-blackout, time to start looking into backup options. If your app is running on, say, Rackspace Cloud, you might want to start by learning about their load balancers-as-a-service, and reach out to your account manager for additional detail and customization. Similarly, if you’re running Amazon AWS, their Elastic Load Balancing offering is where I’d start. (With Amazon, you’ll almost certainly want to work with a company who has experience with tailoring  failover using AWS) Spend your time wisely and dig (and Digg) appropriately. Be super conservative as well – underestimate your MTD by perhaps 30% and ensure the solution you’ve picked can meet this. In writing.
• Go time. Once you’ve selected your backup and recovery solution, time to implement and test. A weekend maintenance window is a good time to test and ensure that your DR system works. Make any adjustments and test again right away. Repeat this processed until perfect.

Keep in mind that his is the quick-and-dirty version of DR planning, but hopefully will give you a rough idea and perhaps serve as a primer regarding how you might approach this very important part of your infrastructure.

So if you’re still asking yourself, should I…?

The answer is simple: you bet your sweet little app!

—

Tagged as: active garage, amazon cloud, Cloud services, data backup, data center, data recovery, datacentertrust, Disaster Recovery, DR, marc watley, rackspace

Well here we are in May. 2011 seems to be flying by – the year is almost half over, and in the corporate world you know what that means:

Time to start planning for 2012.

This is that time of the year everyone dislikes. For operations and the overall business, it is essentially time away from what they want to focus on, and for the finance teams, it is that time when they find themselves refereeing battles between operations and business for the finite amount of dollars.  All in all, this time of the year is where the challenges of the year ahead are discussed, strategized around, and hopefully addressed.

The three distinct groups – business, operations, and finance teams, each play a role in ensuring a successful budgeting and planning season.  In the case of the business, each area – whether a business unit, product line or service; needs to have its strategy fully developed by the executive team and communicated to all levels of the business.  By doing this, each person – from the lowest level all the way up – will know:

• What the corporate strategy is, going forward,
• How their work will help move the company towards the goal, and
• It will provide management teams the direction in which to plan programs and projects.

By establishing a clear direction across the board, the business will be able to have conversations with the operational areas (such as IT) to make sure that the needs of the business are top priority for everyone.

No Personal Agendas

In my experiences, which have taken place in each of the three distinct areas, one thing has always been paramount to success, “Don’t come to the negotiations with a personal agenda”.  The more emotion that is brought to the table, the longer and more drawn out the negotiations become, and feelings are hurt at the end of the process.  Many times these feelings carry forward and the working relationships between people, groups and departments can be irreparably harmed.  This definitely does not help the long-term growth of a company.

The IT Operations View

In the case of the IT operations groups, this time of year is typically focused on two major things;

1. The planning of programs and projects that benefit the business, and
2. The planning of the IT organization.

In the case of the second point, IT has to weigh the benefits to the business versus the needs of the IT organization.  This means that with a finite amount of budget dollars available, the IT department needs to find the right mix of dollars for the benefit of the business while having enough budget to make sure the IT department is able to do the things it needs to do to ensure the business survives long term.  This internal IT spend will likely include: disaster recovery, continued infrastructure modernization, replacement systems for facilities, server and storage growth and refresh, etc.  These areas of spend need to be voiced to the business and discussions need to take place at this time of year, at times, the business seems to forget that ongoing operations need to be sustained and this costs money. May and June are critical communication months in the budgeting and planning season.  Communicating now means that once the finance team is ready to open the budgeting tool, usually right after the July 4^th holiday, the whole budgeting project goes more smoothly.

The Finance Team View

The finance team always hopes for a smooth budget season.  Depending on the work they do in these early stages of the process, this smooth season is possible.  At this time of the year, the finance team needs to make sure that its message is communicated as well.  The finance team needs to make sure that all of the business and operational groups know and understand the process by which the budget will happen, what the key dates are, what the budgeting system will include and what business and operations will need to add to it.  These are all very important, the more the business and operational groups understand about what they are responsible to do at this point and throughout the whole budgeting process, the easier it becomes for everyone.

Another area that the finance team needs to be working on at this point is the final testing for its budgeting system.  Changes to the system from previous years may have been done due to upgraded equipment and upgrades in software functionality.  If a completely new system has been implemented (Hyperion and Cognos-TM1 are the two largest systems currently in use by midsized and large companies), the work becomes even more challenging.  Lastly, on the finance side of the budgeting triangle, training the usage of the system must be planned for.  All planning sessions need to be calendared, and anyone who will use the system including: cost center managers, department managers, executives and financial representation should be included in the training. (Either a complete training on a new system, or in the case of the use of the same system, a refresher course will be needed as well as complete training for new users.)

Plan Ahead for Success

Just like most endeavors, the more work that is put into the early phases of the annual planning exercise, the easier it become to achieve success.  The easier the complete budgeting process is, the less evasive to all areas involved it is.  Remember, for most people involved, the budget process is an addition to their “regular” job.  Remember, throughout the whole process, nothing is personal, it is all about moving the business forward…the right way.  Lastly, there are professionals, like myself, that can help with anything from questions to process and system integration.  We are here to help and make your business grow.

—

Tagged as: active garage, budget, Business Strategy, computers, data center trust, data centers, datacentertrust, finance budget, finance team, IT operations, Matthew Carmen, operations team, profits, success, technology, yearly budget

Yes, yes I know…ol’ Marc has subjected you to yet another bad pun. You’ve got to admit though that it fits the bill here. The term “cloud” is, in my book, one of the most over-used technology terms in recent memory, and it’s high time for change.

(Ridiculous sidebar: Anyone else watch Science Bob conjure that “cloud” on Jimmy Kimmel Live the other night? Hilarious!)

The thing is, almost all of what we use on the web today exists ‘in the cloud’ at some level or another. Think about it – your mail isn’t fed from a server sitting in your basement is it? No, it’s typically one of a cluster of mail servers in the “cloud” – perhaps located within your company’s datacenter or provided by Yahoo!, Hotmail, Gmail, or the like.  What about shopping? Our profiles, containing our shipping addresses, purchase preferences, and credit card numbers, likewise exist in the “cloud”.  The social utilities we’ve come to depend on for business and fun – LinkedIn, Facebook, Salesforce, Twitter, Foursquare, etcetera, are also services used almost entirely in the “cloud”.  The technology that powers the various “cloud” solutions continues to advance rapidly.  This, along with increased availability and reduced costs worldwide for high-speed Internet access, has allowed the service offerings to evolve as well.

The fact that both individuals and growing businesses can tailor solutions from the breadth of available “cloud” services is fantastic.  The issue at hand is the term “cloud” itself: an umbrella term most often used to describe and present ‘hosted’ or remote services – services which have expanded rapidly during the last two years. The term “cloud” has simply reached a point of causing confusion.  For example, though commonly referred to as “cloud computing”, it’s not always actually computing, is it?  We can now select from solutions allowing us to compute, store/archive/recover data, manage content, send/receive mail, place calls, conference, and network with colleagues, friends, and prospects – all with a moniker of “cloud” attached. “Cloud” is descriptive in this sense, sure, but only mildly so. My $0.02 is that the term “on demand infrastructure” – or simply “on-demand”- is more reflective of available solutions and less confusing than the term “cloud”.  Adopting the “on demand” term virtually eliminates the need for wonder, fretting, or quarrel over the best flavor of the solution – public/multi-tenant (Amazon EC2), private (your own VMware or Terremark Enterprise Cloud instance), Platform (Salesforce), or hybrid form. Whatever the end solution, simply think of it as on-demand infrastructure; the level of access, control, and security needed upon deployment are completely up to – and configurable by – the user.

I’ve noticed in the past several months that several technology companies including Oracle, F5, Servosity, and Rackspace have begun to use “on demand” (seemingly in place of “cloud”) to describe their services, features, and benefits. I think it’s a smart move, but who knows where this will end up; the term “on demand” might work best for everyone. Might not.

Anyhow, Cloud: you’ve served us pretty well…thanks. Now it’s time to bid adieu and bon voyage.  Oh, and when you reach wherever it is that you Internet buzzwords fade away to, please do say hello to our old friend “Web 2.0”, will you?

—

Tagged as: active garage, cloud, cloud computing, data center trust, datacentertrust, IT Infrastructure, marc watley, on demand, technology, web 2.0

For most companies, Information Technology is not their core business.  IT is, however, one of the biggest factors by which a company can differentiate itself from its competitors.  By using technology wisely, companies can automate many of their processes, allowing its labor force to focus attention on new products and services for both external and internal clients.  Capital funding is required to accomplish this, and in this economy this means reallocation of current funds, not an addition of new funds for a companies IT department.  It is a proven fact that good investments in IT facilitate rapid company growth.

As with most other departments within a corporation, IT runs on human resources – labor.  Therefore, the last thing a company should look to do when wanting to save or reallocate capital is to cut its labor force.  Once the labor force is cut, it is very hard to get back the productivity in the future.  When this happens, most IT departments become very reactive – they end up fighting the many fires that crop up and have little time to implement new technologies that could benefit the entire company.

Decimating a labor force – though providing significant short term financial savings – inhibits corporate growth.  With this in mind, what areas within IT should companies consider to free up funds for growth initiatives?

1. Managed sourcing options for routine activities.  By routine activities I mean regular processes such as batch computing, monitoring of the IT environment, network connectivity and maintaining the physical environment.  Most of these are important areas that tend to be labor-intensive activities.  Within IT, the monitoring, network and physical management of the datacenter tend to have the largest staff of any group.  By considering managed services, a company can get high quality service and typically good pricing areas as well.  With the savings, labor can be added to groups that are doing application development and other innovative services which stimulate business growth.
2. Implement tight asset management procedures.  By tracking a company’s software and hardware assets, existing assets can then be utilized more efficiently.   On the software side, a company needs to know what it owns, what piece of equipment it is running on, and how much of the total purchase it owns is actually being used.  Having an inventory system will allow the user community access to all of this information, and encourages the use of existing inventory instead of always buying more simply because a new project has budget money.  By implementing a rigorous asset management system, companies waste a lot less – often as much as 20% – on new purchases and maintenance of those new purchases.  These savings can likewise be used for continued corporate growth.
3. Going green can provide great cost savings. One way companies can become “greener” is through server virtualization.  By vitalizing servers, companies can save much needed capital on two fronts.  First, by having fewer physical devices in your datacenter, less electricity will be used, thereby lowering the company’s electricity costs.  Secondly, many states and utility companies offer rebates and/or lower rates for electricity for companies who virtualize their server farms.  For example, one utility in Wisconsin offers a rebate of $250 per virtualized server.   Through the use of VMware or similar product can, if engineered correctly, reduce the physical presence of a server farm down by as much as 20 percent – serious savings can continue on well into the future.

All in all, there are several ways in which a company can save much needed capital without reducing the workforce, then reallocate the capital in such a way as to stimulate new growth.   Yes, certain positions may be deemed as unnecessary and the workload shifted to managed service providers or the like, but overall, the company will be able to use more of its skilled teams for forward-thinking growth opportunities. Such initiatives, which can be funded by cutting wasteful spending, work seamlessly with careful planning and execution.

—

Tagged as: active garage, corporate cost savings, cost savings in IT, datacentertrust, environment friendly, going green, Infrastructure planning, IT Finance, IT Planning, Matthew Carmen, server farms, virtual servers, virtualization

This past week I took a vacation, to Hawaii.  I tried to focus on the much-needed relaxation, keeping my mind free of business and the stresses of life; and for the most part, I did.  One work-related thought lingered on, however: integrity in one’s work.   I began to notice integrity – in its various forms –  all over the islands, and kept thinking about how core it is in business, specifically in the consulting and financial worlds where I practice.  Integrity is the one thing that every person should have.  It doesn’t matter what job, economic status, social standing, or any other measure people use to “judge” each other, integrity should be the main benchmark as to one’s character.

The only place I did not see complete integrity was at the USC-University of Hawaii football game.  One of our players (I am a proud USC alum) slammed the opposing quarterback with a truly illegal hit – not exactly playing with integrity, right?  The UH quarterback was knocked out of the game, and when I left the islands on Tuesday, he had still not returned to practice.  The USC player has to look into the mirror and examine his actions, his integrity in question.

The people in the service industry, hotels, restaurants, museums and other places, seemed to do their jobs with integrity.  They were all very helpful, pleasant and seemed truly to enjoy their jobs.  This could be that they were happy to have any job in today’s economy, but I don’t think it was that simple.  It could possibly be tied to the cultural differences in the islands versus the mainland, but again, I don’t think so.  I just think that the people I dealt with actually enjoyed their lives as they were.  What a great place to be in.

Everything I witnessed got me to thinking about integrity in business.  Let me state clearly that I believe the great majority of people – probably more than 98% – hold integrity high on their list, and incorporate into their work accordingly.  What is unfortunate is that the small minority of people that lack integrity are the ones who make all the news.  I go into dealings with people – meetings, XXX, XXX, etc. – with the assumption that those people are honest, forthright and willing to stand to their word.  I hope that people inside and outside of the business world look at me this way in return.  When I make a claim to someone – say a client – I back it up, and if questioned, I’m ready to address it right away.

Integrity and Relationships

Doing business is establishing and growing relationships, and these relationships cannot be strong if not forged with integrity.   For example, my company seeks long-term relationships with all of our clients, essentially becoming a trusted advisor to their organization and solving datacenter, connectivity and IT financial challenges.  Clearly, if our firm is viewed as lacking in integrity, these relationships could not flourish, and the company could not and would not be in business.  At the end of the day, a person has only his or her word, and must operate with integrity to ensure trust.  If they choose to conduct themselves otherwise, there is no need to trust or deal with them.  There are too many people and companies that do things the right way to work with those who do not.

Conclusion

I learned two things on vacation.

1. It is really important to actually take vacations and clear your mind of professional stress, etc.  Upon your return, you may come up with some new ideas that will revolutionize your business and dealing with clients, co-workers, and management.
2. I do know that if you don’t have integrity and the internal fortitude to use it, you might as well give it up.  You will never move up in your chosen field or establish close and trusted relationships with people, professionally or personally.  Lastly, look at yourself in the mirror, if you aren’t happy with the person you are looking at, figure out why that is and work on transforming that view into one you like.

—

Tagged as: active garage, business ethics, datacentertrust, hawaii, integrity, keeping your word, Matthew Carmen, relaxation, vacation

Question: A wildfire 10 miles away from your company headquarters is raging out of control. The fire captain just ordered everyone in your building to evacuate. All staff have safely evacuated premises, and now you are likewise heading out, taking one final look at your datacenter – still humming away, unsuspectingly. You have offsite data storage but no offsite server infrastructure, applications, etc.

What do you do?

I’m paraphrasing from a not-so-great movie here – Speed (Keanu may have been good in The Matrix but the predictable tête-à-tête between his and Dennis Hopper’s character in Speed still makes me chuckle) – but IT executives today are, in fact, increasingly faced with the threat of disasters – whether natural (such as a wildfire) or man-made (e.g. some ding-dong crashing a vehicle into your datacenter). I may be taking a bit of creative license here, but this could not be a more serious issue. (Recall those horrible wildfires in San Diego, California area a few years back? The example above was culled from situations experienced during that period.)

As organizations – and their customers – increasingly rely on database, server, and IP-connected applications and data sources, the importance and responsibility of maintaining continuity of the business infrastructure and limiting costly downtime in the event of a disaster, is paramount.

Though many an organization had active disaster recovery (DR) projects on the books a few years ago, the global financial crunch of the last 20 or so months has wreaked havoc on IT budgets everywhere; only now are many of these DR projects once again taking priority.

If you’re thinking that you can ‘wait it out’ and disaster won’t strike on your watch, think again. Apparently, some 93 percent of organizations have had to execute on their disaster recovery plans. Yep. This according to an annual DR survey from Symantec last year.  A few more points from this survey:

• In general it takes companies [with active DR plans] on average three hours to achieve skeleton operations after an outage, and four hours to be up and running
• The average annual budget for DR initiatives is $50MM (including backup, recovery, clustering, archiving, spare servers, replication, tape, services, DR plan development and offsite costs)
• Virtualization has caused 64 percent of organizations worldwide to reevaluate their DR plans

Whether your organization is a small recently funded startup or well-entrenched in the Fortune 100, designing, implementing, and testing a DR plan is an endeavor that takes dedication, careful planning and time (the entire process can take weeks or even months). There are many excellent resources available which can provide knowledge and detail as to the individual steps of a DR planning initiative.  (Cisco’s DR Best Practices site or Disaster Recovery are great places to begin, by the way.)  What follows is a high-level, best-practices overview of the planning process:

Executive Sponsorship

This first step of a successful DR plan involves two key components: One is to secure plan sponsorship and engagement from senior company leadership – CEO, COO, CIO, etc. The other is to establish a planning team that is representative of all functional units of the organization – sales, operations, finance, IT, etc.  This step is the catalyst to a smooth planning initiative, and requires focus and patience.  (The ability to herd cats wouldn’t hurt, either.) It may also be helpful to reduce the impact on internal resources by leveraging outside help from a consulting firm well-versed in DR planning.

Information Gathering

This portion of the planning process – information gathering, due diligence and assessment – is the most involved and most time-consuming, and a true test of teamwork across the organization.

The first step in this part of a DR planning initiative is performing a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), which helps to assess the overall risk to normal business operations (and revenue flow) should disaster strike right this second. The BIA is typically comprised of identifying and ranking all critical business systems, analysis impact of interruption on critical systems, and most importantly, establishing the maximum length of time critical systems can remain unavailable without causing irreparable harm to the business. This length of time is also known as Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD).  Working backwards from the MTD will allow acceptable Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) to be reached.

With BIA in hand, the next steps are conducting a risk assessment and developing the recovery strategy.  The risk assessment will help to determine the probability of a critical system becoming severely disrupted, identifying vulnerabilities, and documenting the acceptability of these risks to the organization.  Engagement from the entire planning team is necessary in order to accurately review and record details for critical records, systems, processing requirements, support teams, vendors, etc. – all needed in order to develop the recovery strategy.

Also important in the recovery strategy is identifying the recovery infrastructure and outsourcing options – ideally alternate datacenter facilities from which critical systems and data can be recovered in the event of a serious interruption.  This, as they say, is the point at which the bacon hits the frying pan: Many organizations are leveraging the power and abundance of Cloud-based IT resources to lower infrastructure costs, and Cloud is particularly applicable for DR.  In fact, there are more than a few services who provide continuous data protection: typically accomplished via unobtrusive software agents residing on each server in a datacenter. These agents are then connected to a black box also residing in the datacenter, incrementally taking images of each server, de-duplicating the data, then replicating that data via secure WAN to a remote data store, ultimately providing on-demand (via secure web console) recovery from the remote location at any time. Companies such as nScaled, iland, and Simply Continuous offer such services and can even help build a business case to illustrate the ROI for this service.  Point is, do thy homework and explore if Cloud services such as these might make a sound fit into your organization’s DR plan.

Planning and Testing

Armed with a full impact analysis, risk assessment, recovery goals, and outsourced options, now the actual DR plan can be developed. The DR plan is a living document that identifies the criteria for invoking the plan, procedures for operating the business in contingency mode, steps to recovering lost data, and criteria and procedures for returning to normal business operations. Key activity in this step is to identify in the DR plan – a recovery team (which should consist of both primary and alternate personnel from each business unit) and to identify recovery processes and procedures at each business unit level.  Also important is to ensure the DR plan itself is available offsite – both via the web and in permanent media form (print, CD-ROM, etc.)

Equally important to having a DR plan is regular testing. This step includes designing disaster/disruption scenarios and the development and documentation of action plans for each scenario. Conducting regular testing with full operational participation is key to successful testing.

Ongoing Plan Evaluation

An effective DR plan is only a good plan if continually kept in lock-step with all changes within the organization.  Such changes include infrastructure, technology, and procedures – all of which must be kept under constant review, and the DR plan updated accordingly.  Also, DR plan testing should be evaluated on a regular basis, and any adjustments made (systems, applications, vendors, established procedures, etc.).

So there you have it – four key building blocks to tailoring a DR plan for your organization.  Of course, if the ‘disaster’ arrives in the form of a city-sized asteroid hurtling towards Earth, needless to say any plan will likely not make much difference. Anything short of such a global catastrophe, however, and a well-developed and maintained DR plan will keep employees and customers connected and business moving forward, with minimum downtime.

Again, this is by no means a complete recipe for designing and implementing a DR plan but instead is meant to serve as a high-level overview…offered as food for thought.  I encourage you to learn more, explore options, ask for help if needed – whatever it takes to thoroughly prepare your organization for the worst, should the worst ever occur. To loosely paraphrase our man Keanu once again from another of his, er, more questionable films from back in the day – Johnny Mnemonic – this is one topic where you absolutely, positively don’t want to “get caught in the 404″.

—

Tagged as: backup, cloud, cloud computing, Data, datacentertrust, Disaster Recovery, DR, DR Best practices, iland, IT Finance, marc watley, Maximum Tolerable Downtime, nScaled, recovery, servers, Simply Continuous, Speed, virtualization

Regardless of the size of your organization, someone is responsible for identifying the need of a service or product being purchased. One could therefore surmise this individual would also assume the ongoing ownership and maintenance of the product, providing vendor management oversight, right? Well, you might be surprised by the number of occasions on which the linear progression of identifying a need and satisfying the need becomes disconnected in technology organizations.

This disconnect often occurs when a business unit obtains approval to bring a new product to the company which in turn places new or expanded requirements on its Information Technology (IT) organization.  With their backs often against the wall, the IT department will “buy” the technology in order to meet required deadlines. What happens in this case is that the IT department ends up relying on the vendor to manage the technology, and often times let the supplier act as the IT point of contact for the “customer” – the internal business unit.  Well, as we know problems often start out small and later mushroom out of control.  This situation is no exception:  If the new product the company has developed becomes successful, IT will continue to buy more of the necessary technology for the business unit.  The next thing you know, the original contract for, say, $100,000 morphs into an agreement covering perhaps $5M in purchases – and since the vendor manages the technology, no clear internal owner exists.  A sure-fire recipe for big problems.

The process starts with the negotiation of the contract which typically initiates a rather ‘interesting” time within the organization.  The discussions with the supplier often times become stressful with both sides treating the negotiations as a form of competition to obtain the best price and terms.  This is further complicated with the coordination of the different groups who provide input and are required to approve on both sides of the agreement. For example, the finance departments will be called upon to review the financial impact to budgets and Return on Investment (“ROI”), while the procurement and legal departments review terms and conditions.  With all these organizational units involved, the final agreement ends up segregated into sections which are relevant to disparate groups within the organization, and in many instances no single person understands the agreement as a whole.  This issue can be avoided by identifying the organizational unit that owns and drives the negotiation of the agreement, and ensuring this unit also has the authority to represent the company and manage the supplier.  By insisting on thorough preparation and coordination regarding input and approval processes in advance, the individual or group acting in the vendor management capacity will not only secure a contract which is beneficial to the company but will also foster a positive ongoing relationship with the supplier.

With the vendor management role clearly defined, you will avoid the most costly mistake of relying on the supplier to manage the agreement for your company.  The vendor manager will not only monitor the suppliers’ performance, but will also leverage the vendor on your company’s behalf to provide service level and performance metrics along with other valued services such as expert consulting support.  The individual acting in this role in your company can carry the title of Vendor Manager and coordinate with the technology owner(s), or this role can actually be incorporated into the technology owner’s job description.  In any event, the most important role of the vendor manager is to routinely meet with the supplier to review performance and to insure the negotiated service level agreements are applicable and are being met.  For those of you who practice ITIL, you may even want to invite your suppliers to attend your problem management reviews.  Problem Management aims to resolve the root causes of incidents and thus to minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors.   Inviting suppliers to problem management reviews was always my favorite way to make sure the supplier understood my business and was focused on working for my company.

Identifying issues with your existing contract will insure that your company is prepared when it is time to negotiate a new agreement. This is especially critical in large organizations with dedicated procurement departments.  These procurement teams are responsible for negotiating agreements on behalf of the technology owner(s), often based upon templates and procurement methodologies meant to cover everything from bed pans to mainframes.  In these circumstances, the vendor manager must be prepared to identify and educate the procurement manager on any issues with the current supplier. This is especially true with products that the procurement department might consider as “commodities”.   (Products are referred to as commodities when the product is seen as fungible or the same no matter who produces it.)  The commodities tag can sometimes prove to be a BIG mistake, especially with technology as this term is often applied incorrectly.  I once had a junior level negotiator assigned to a request for purchase because the procurement department perceived desktop computers as fungible commodities.   That quickly changed once we were able to quickly show – from trends in our monthly product performance scorecards that we had experienced a 20% failure rate of over 75,000 desktops that had been in service less than a year.  These failures not only had a negative impact on customer service but also negatively impacted IT service level metrics with a dramatic increase in help desk calls and required additional contracted field support to fix the devices.  The vendor manager was subsequently able to successfully team with the procurement department and negotiate product quality guarantee’s which the suppliers indicated had never before been included in their contracts.

Once your suppliers are being actively managed, your organization can maintain a fully mature vendor management model by monitoring the lifecycle of your agreements.  The hallmark of a mature vendor management lifecycle model is tracking when agreements are scheduled to terminate.    Being prepared for expiring contracts is critical because your vendor manager will make sure all necessary parties are prepared to enter into a negotiation and avoid delays which result in the original agreement being extended because the organization was not ready to negotiate.  This is often times the point where organizations which are not prepared will bring in outside assistance to coordinate the competitive bid process and subsequent negotiations.  If you believe your organization needs external assistance, make sure that whomever you contract with is not only negotiating terms and conditions, but also provides an on-going vendor management model after the negotiation.

Lastly, I mentioned the importance of fostering a positive relationship with your supplier.  You want your account manager and his/her team to be the envy of the organization for account relationships.   Obviously the amount of revenue an account team brings to their organization is a major component in determining their performance within their company.  However, don’t underestimate the importance that suppliers place on their representatives to maintain healthy relationships.  Just as within your organization, you want your suppliers’ account team to be proud to be working for their company and proudly say they are servicing your company because, at the end of the day, your success is a result of performance – and support – of suppliers’ product and services.

At this point you’re ready to begin managing your vendors.  As we’ve seen, a successful relationship with your suppliers begins not with the contract itself but with the management of the agreement after it has been negotiated.  If you haven’t met with your suppliers recently give them a call and initiate your vendor management process by asking for an account review.  Before the review, draft a list of items you would expect them to cover when they walk into the room and then compare your list with their presentation.  You’ll quickly be able to identify gaps in your supplier relationship and use your list as a roadmap for obtaining better pricing and services from your vendor.  The results are guaranteed not only to surprise yourself but will result in new respect from your vendor.

Tagged as: active garage, Brian Superczynski, contracts, costs, data center trust, datacentertrust, IT Finance, ITIL, ROI, suppliers, vendor management, vendors

In uncertain economic times, businesses are forced to redefine “business as usual” and come up with a new definition. This new definition must allow companies to not only to sustain business, but drive profitability with the face of uncertainty looming through the window. With a big bite coming directly out of Profit Margin, typically attributed to the lack of consumer spending, how is it possible for companies to survive?

Anyone with any business knowledge understands that the only way to preserve profitability when revenues are down is by reducing costs.  However, proceed with caution here and do not jump to conclusions. Keep in mind, the economic downturn will not last forever.  Therefore a company must be positioned to return to “business as usual” when the opportunity arises.  With these key points in mind, there are many different approaches to reducing costs which will allow for preserving staff, maintaining a high level of product quality, as well as maintaining the high level of customer service that is currently being delivered.

One of the primary areas that hold a great deal of operating cost savings is in the area of IT.  Here are 4 simple cost saving measures that may hold the key to a great deal of cost savings:

• Assess Maintenance and Support Contracts: Depending on the size and complexity of an organization and whether or not a company has an asset management practice, the on-going charges for software and hardware support and maintenance agreements can compound exponentially.  Discovering software or hardware that is no longer being used, then conducting a deep dive into the current base of IT contracts and determining whether maintenance is being paid on these assets , is a great way to pulling the plug on unnecessary infrastructure costs.  On-going cost control and monitoring is an effective way for an organization to implement an asset management program.
• Consider Re-Negotiation of License and Maintenance Contracts: Hardware and Software companies are faced with the same challenges as everyone else in the business world. They are looking for ways to sustain their businesses in a new economy.  Although we look at the down-turn of the economy as a challenge when running and sustaining business, we also need to position this as an opportunity to leverage better contracts. Take the opportunity of a down economy to negotiate better rates and terms.  Consider third party maintenance on equipment; Third party maintenance can be just as good as OEM, at a fraction of the cost.
• Reduce Printing Costs: The average cost per page for personal B&W laser printers average around $0.04 to $0.05. Eliminate personal printers by replacing stand-alone units with more efficient network-multi-function printers. By implementing a multi-function network printer/copier, an immediate savings of $0.02 per page can be yielded.  Again, another expense that can grow exponentially.
• Eliminate Digital Storage Waste: According to Iron Mountain, on average, unstructured data claims 60% of total storage capacity.  Even under the best circumstances, approximately 30% – 40% of data falls under this category.  On average, a company’s storage requirements may grow anywhere from 30% – 50%.  With requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley, the need to maintain inactive data has dramatically increased the storage requirements for all organizations. By outsourcing storage, companies can realize tremendous storage infrastructure cost savings and preserve a more efficient infrastructure.

Although this article only touches on a few different ideas in which financial relief can be recognized by an organization, it hopefully provides examples as to how hidden cost saving opportunities may exist where you least expect them. Take the opportunity to seek out your own hidden treasures and you will find your company positioned strongly for the next economic up-turn.

—

Tagged as: active garage, brian beedle, cost saving, datacentertrust, digital storage, infrastructor, IT cost saving, maintenance contracts, outsourcing, printing, support contracts

By now, you’re probably well aware of the AT&T/iPad security debacle earlier this month, yes?

Good.

AT&T’s security breach was cause for serious concern for iPad users and was first reported at Gawker.

Since this story, there have been scores of articles prattling on about the “vulnerability of the Cloud”, “Cloud failures”, etc.  Sensational headlines pay bills, granted, and while it’s important that security issues receive attention, I’d much rather look at this from a more holistic angle:

Why adopting Cloud solutions is unavoidable for companies who want to remain competitive?

and also…

How Cloud can be introduced into IT environments in a secure and highly available fashion?

Let’s be Swarovski-crystal clear here: This incident was a good thing, friends! At fault in the iPad incident was a poorly-secured back-end on AT&T’s side of the fence.  As Gawker’s Ryan Tate accurately points out in his story,

“AT&T exposed a very large and valuable cache of email addresses, VIP and otherwise.”

That said, the pundits do have a point, which is that this incident has implications regarding security – in this particular instance with the underlying AT&T Cloud infrastructure powering the iPad.  Responsibility for security with Cloud services is a critical one and falls on all parties involved: the device manufacturers, application developers, and service/infrastructure providers, who must provide and maintain a secure environment as well as immediately resolve all issues when discovered.  Same goes for the end users. Thankfully in this case, only one person outside of Goatse Security (who were evidently behind the “attack”) was provided the list of 114,000 email addresses after having leaked the flaw to AT&T where it allegedly went unaddressed for almost a day.  That person was Ryan Tate at Gawker, who broke the story. While white hat groups like these are sometimes criticized for their “alternative disclosure process”, they actually do more help than harm.  The more ‘holes’ like this found, the more secure Cloud solutions will become available for all of us in the long run.  I say “hats off” (sorry couldn’t help that one!) and keep up the good work.

So, should these security issues be taken seriously?

Hell yes!

Should you hold off moving any of your company’s IT infrastructure to the Cloud as a result of incidents such as “iPadgate”?

Absolutely not!

Both consumers and small businesses alike have, en masse, placed their trust in Cloud-based solutions, much to the degree that services like GMail and GoToMeeting, for example, have become core to day-to-day life – both in personal and business settings.  At the enterprise level, CIOs and CTOs worldwide are rapidly climbing aboard the Cloud train as well, deploying various solutions within their organizations. These highly scalable, on-demand solutions can help businesses to deploy additional infrastructure quickly with reduced capital costs and refreshed technology – often helping to optimize operating costs as well. The rate of adoption in the business community is increasing rapidly: Gartner forecasts that, by 2012, some one in five businesses will own no IT assets, and that by 2013 businesses will be spending some $150 billion on Cloud services.

Question is, how can businesses take advantage of high-level Cloud solutions right now and still retain some peace of mind relative to availability and security?  Fairly easily, and in a just a few steps. Whether your organization is a startup or an established enterprise, Cloud solutions can play a key role in your IT organization. Risks related to security, control, and availability with Cloud services are not dissimilar from those in any IT environment, and can be mitigated through careful provider selection and sound planning. Here are a few steps that might be helpful in your adoption of these services:

First : Strategize. Plan. Then plan some more.

Devising a sound strategy and planning effectively is a sure first step to approaching and taking advantage of Cloud solutions for your business. The one thing you can’t afford to do is to get this stuff wrong.  This is especially true if your company itself is a service provider of one form or another, as most businesses today are.  It would only take one mishap – say, the inability to quickly test and release a patch to your popular online game, or having physicians who are unable to access their patients’ electronic medical records, etc. – to realize the importance of effective planning and smart Cloud provider selection.  If you need a hand with strategy vetting the  providers and options, don’t be afraid to ‘phone a friend’ – there are many IT consultants and brokerage firms out there fluent in Cloud who are objective and can be helpful from strategy through to implementation, often saving you both time and resources.

Planning for the deployment of Cloud services such as storage or rich content delivery is fairly straightforward, as the related services – Amazon’s S3 storage or EdgeCast’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, for example – are more or less plug-and-play and can be segregated from the rest of your infrastructure.  Those services that include compute functions however (Cloud-based servers and related infrastructure) will take a bit more time and detail at the planning stage.  Most businesses considering Cloud deployments of this type spend the necessary time to analyze existing and future needs around each of their main environments, which typically fall under:

• Development
• Testing
• Quality Assurance (QA)
• Production

Evaluating Cloud services by IT discipline is smart, since there are many available options for compute power (CPU), memory, storage, and networking – and the build requirements within each environment will likely be varied.  A good strategy should include a thorough understanding of the resources you currently have in place by spending the necessary time to evaluate the needs with each of your IT environments.

Understanding your existing financial exposure and budget for Cloud solutions during this stage is also important.  Some questions to consider:

• Hardware: What is the current value of existing hardware per environment, and how close are you to needing hardware refresh? What are the capital costs associated with such a refresh?
• Network: What are the current monthly costs for networking/IP bandwidth, per environment?
• Labor: What are the current human resource costs associated with operating each environment (operations, monitoring, support, etc.)?
• Roadmap: What are the hardware, infrastructure, performance, and human resource requirements, per environment, over the next  18-24 months needed to support growth demands?

From these and similar questions, you should be able to arrive at total monthly operating costs – both for your current environment and at scale.  (Consultants can be helpful here as well, many times providing that second set of objective “eyes”.)   With your Cloud approach now defined, you’ll likely see immediate capital  and operating cost reductions, the ability to quickly scale infrastructure commensurate with usage and growth, and the ability to reallocate human resources to support more business-critical IT functions. Still with me?  Alrighty then…on to finding and selecting the right providers.

Next : Thou shalt do thy homework.

There might be as many shops hawking Cloud services today as there were candy and toy shops selling Beanie Babies many years back…craziness! As you step through your due diligence with potential providers, beware the Cloud pricing that sounds too good to be true…because, as the adage dictates, it probably is.  When you dig below that wow-this-provider-is-30%-cheaper-than-the-others! pricing, don’t be too surprised at what you’ll likely find.  The provider in question might indeed have some of the shiny bells and whistles you’re after, but perhaps only one datacenter…so if the ground opens up during an earthquake and swallows it whole, or a tornado carries it away Dorothy-and-Toto-style, well…don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Other low-cost leaders tend to lure you in with great pricing, but have limited resources on hand (meaning they’ll need to go out and buy those Bugatti Veyron-grade servers you’re after and will charge huge setup fees accordingly).  Also, ensure your provider-to-be is well-certified and maintains full regulatory compliance (typically SAS-70 Type II at a minimum) with your organization.  So, let’s move those “life on the B/C/D-list” providers right into the rubbish bin, shall we?  Right.  So now we’re left with the few real players – names you’ll likely recognize: Amazon, Google, Joyent, Microsoft, Rackspace, Rightscale, Terremark.  (These are but a few of the many A-list providers available.) Spend time with each prospective provider; ask tough questions, ensuring the selected provider has ridiculously good support, lots of IP bandwidth options, and security features that exceed your own requirements.  Take a good, hard look at the providers’ pricing, negotiating wherever possible and comparing to your existing cost structure.  When it comes to final selection time, take a well-organized approach to this as well.  My colleague Matt Carmen recently broke down in detail the process of selecting the right outsourced IT provider, which I would recommend checking out.

Finally : A phased approach.

Now that you’ve got a good head for the Cloud services and options that will best suit your business, it’s time to get tactical.   A best practice when approaching any Cloud solution is to pilot, evaluate, then implement in phases.  Select which of your IT environments will work best for a pilot.  The pilot should be brief, but long enough to provide a thorough evaluation…30-45 days is usually enough time.  We’re still on the leading edge of what Cloud can provide, and solutions are constantly evolving.  Providing feedback during a pilot period is key – try to break the solution and be as granular as possible with your providers as to how their service can be improved.  The good providers will work with you and incorporate your feedback into their services…and everyone wins.

Post a successful pilot, make the move into a full launch window with the same, sure-footed project management aplomb as you might with releasing a new product to your customers. You’ll find here again that the provider(s) you’ve selected will work hand-in-hand with your team, ensuring a smooth transition and quickly addressing any issues.

Congratulations!

Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? Your organization is now among a rapidly growing number of businesses who have embraced Cloud solutions and whose IT organizations have realized increased availability, efficiency, and productivity as a result. Once you’ve got one environment successfully ported and humming right along, you’ll likely see the benefits of deploying the rest of your environments in similar fashion.

Stir. Repeat. Enjoy.

—

Tagged as: active garage, amazon, cloud computing, Cloud services, datacentertrust, gawker, gotomeeting, marc watley, matt carmen, rackspace, rightscale, sas-70, sas-70 type II, terremark