Note: I love technology…believe me I do.  I just really liked this photo

I Just finished reading Implementing new technologies for the right reasons over on the Enterprise CIO Forum.  The article, written by Martin Davis of Canada’s J D Irving Ltd, provides a nice reminder in today’s technology driven world.  The post is a good one with some excellent advice and worth jumping over and reading. I’d like to highlight one very important aspect from that post.

Martin writes:

It often seems that we decide on a technology solution then start looking for an opportunity to use it, or we implement technology projects because they seem like a good idea. Possibly you feel that IT is leading the customer and worry that if IT did not propose new solutions the business would still be using pen and paper?

Now…what Martin says is really nothing new (and he even admits that)…but its worth repeating.  Actually, it seems like we have to repeat it regularly within IT because we tend to forget it.  That said, I think we in IT need to start communicating this same message out to those not in IT as well, especially given that many technology projects are now being kicked off and driven by non-IT people and groups.

What I’ve found over the last few years is that many non-IT groups have been given more control over their technology projects and/or have Shadow IT projects underway.  These projects have given their stakeholders a feel for technology projects, which leads to more technology projects…and more technology projects.

The danger here, as most of us in IT know too well, is that implementing technology for technology’s sake is a bad idea.  Just because we can implement a new ‘gee whiz’ system, doesn’t always mean we should.

Martin continues with:

The boundaries between IT and business are becoming increasingly blurred by consumer technology, however IT is still responsible for researching and making the business aware of opportunities. But, this should be one of many inputs into the business strategy process, and not the only reason to implement new technology.

Very true.  Just because a technology is available, doesn’t mean its right for the business. Keep in mind – Strategy first, Technology Second.

Image Credit: No Technology in Brighton By Sammy0716 on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

I just finished watching an interview titled Cloud benefits are speed, simplicity and resource leverage on the Enterprise CIO Forum website with Joel Dobbs, Vice President of IT at Eisai Corporation of North America.

In the interview, Mr. Dobbs shares his view of cloud computing and why an organization should consider the cloud.

His main argument is that the cloud can free up IT professionals from the basic operational aspects of IT in order to pursue more ‘strategic goals’ for the organization.

Jump over and watch the interview…there are some good insights there.

After watching the interview, think about what Mr. Dobbs is saying. The reasons given for moving to the cloud are that its simple, fast and a way to leverage resources.

Let’s take a look at these reasons for a few minutes.

Yes…the cloud brings simplicity to infrastructure rollout and maintenance.

Yes…the cloud allows an organization to quickly turn on new systems and rollout new servers.

Yes…the cloud allows an organization to leverage resources.

As an example of this…I can turn on a new server with all the ‘fixins’ (RAM, storage, processors, etc) using Amazon’s EC2 service or RackSpace’s Cloud Servers and have that server running within about 10 minutes.   This is something that would be unthinkable a few years ago.

So yes…the cloud is simple, fast and leveraged. Something that used to take hours, days, weeks or months in the past and required a team of Server & Infrastructure professionals can be done in the matter of minutes buy a semi-knowledgeable person like me.

But…one thing that many people tend to overlook is the trade-off that this simplicity, speed and leverage requires.   Sometimes that trade-off is something major like the recent Amazon EC2 outage. Sometimes that trade-off is a security risk. Sometimes that trade-off isn’t known until it hits home.

The cloud does provide a simple, fast and leveraged resource that can be used to off-load work from over-worked IT professionals. But…just remember that there are trade-offs.  Make sure those trade-offs won’t harm your business…make sure the trade-offs are something you can live with.  If you plan to run your business from the cloud, be prepared for that ‘black swan’ event….because it will happen.  Amazon’s EC2 system failed and took down a large number of businesses.

So yes…the cloud is simple, fast and leveraged. Those are good things and bad.  Make sure you’re prepared for the good, the bad and the ugly…because all three will happen.

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

Image Credit: simplicity nuke By smemon87 on flickr

If you aren’t familiar with the idea of user personas, go read Ten Steps to User Personas or Personas: The Foundation of a Great User Experience or User personas and how they can improve your site for a brief background on how personas are used.

Again – I’ve mostly run across personas in the web space as a way to help guide/drive design of websites and content.  I have used user ‘scenarios’ before in selection projects but never taken the formal step of creating personas.

In my thinking about the subject, I’ve come up with a few positives outcomes of creating personas for selection projects.  They are:

• Thinking about personas forces you to think about the people first.  What type of people will use your technology? How will those people interact with it?
• Personas force you to roleplay and gameplay your technology strategy.  While thinking about user personas, you are forced to walk through your strategy and technology roadmap to ensure it matches your organizational culture.
• Thinking about personas forces you to bridge the gap between strategy and tactics.  Do you have the right people in place to take advantage of the technology?
• Personas can help you think through support requirements for the new technology.

Now…most of the above are things that any good team and/or consultant should do anyway…but by focusing first on the users and user personas, wouldn’t it force to you really think through your strategy and technology from a people perspective? I think so.

Let’s take a look at an example of how user personas might help in technology selection.

Imagine you’re tasked with selecting a Web Content Management System (WCM) for your organization. The idea is to allow a large portion of users to have access to the WCM to create their own content and then push that content through an editing / publishing workflow.

Seems simple enough right? You put out an RFP and begin your technology selection process.  You look at demos and have tons of meetings and finally select the ‘winner’ based on your selection criteria.

You’ve developed your requirements for the technology. You know what you want the WCM to ‘do’…but do you know what users will be using it and/or how those users will interact with it?  Does the new WCM align well with your organizational culture? Is the chosen platform usable and useful to the people in your organization?

Sure…you want a platform that is ‘easy to use’, etc…but ‘easy to use’ for you is different than ‘easy to use’ for Janice, the 65 year old user from Group X who’ll be the one responsible for updating the content for that group.    Will Janice be able to use the content editor screen of the WCM to input or edit content ?  Will she have to know HTML to do her job?

Does the WCM you’ve chosen allow a user like Janice to do her job without some serious customization?  If not, what work will be needed to make it easier for Janice to embrace this new platform?

The answers to these questions are strictly dependent on how you develop your selection criteria….and I think user personas will help. By crafting user personas that covers the broadest range of users, you ensure that the people using the technology are considered. Building a set of user personas for your internal user groups will help you not only craft a good technology strategy but also help in selecting the right technology platform for your organization.

Personas have been used for years in the application development and web design/development fields…but I’ve never seen them used for technology selection projects.  I’ve seen some consultants use user stories and user scenarios for technology selection and strategy projects but I haven’t seen personas …..have you?

If you’ve used personas in technology selection projects, I’d love to know how they worked out for you.

Image credit: Personas by CannedTuna, on Flickr

Application Modernization….only two words…but two words that denote a big undertaking for most organizations.

I’ve touched on the subject of modernizing applications and infrastructure, in a few posts in the past (see here and here).  In my consulting efforts, I’ve run across many CIO’s and IT professionals who would love to do nothing but focus on modernizing their legacy systems to be better prepared for the future.  Most have failed at making the case for these modernization projects – namely because the organization sees them as ‘plumbing’ projects.

People see these ‘plumbing’ projects as something that don’t necessarily need to be done  – re-plumbing the organization won’t really deliver in new value or competitive advantage they argue.  They see these projects as being something that can be scheduled when the IT staff has downtime…but we all know there’s little downtime for today’s IT.

I’ve been asked by a few CIO’s in the past to help them justify these modernization projects…and I have to say that its one of the hardest things an IT team can do today. The reason its so hard – because most modernization projects are attempting to replace or improve something that is working just fine today.  Many organizations don’t see the value in spending millions of dollars on a perfectly capable application.

Let’s look at an example. Imagine you’ve been tasked by your CIO to put together a business case for a revamp / rebuild of your data center.  You put together spreadsheets that show costs for new equipment and infrastructure.  You provide a reasonable argument about what the redesign needs to take place.  You use charts, numbers and lots of language to try to build your argument.

After spending days (or weeks or months) putting this business case together, you present it to the CIO and IT leadership team. They are blown away with your research and presentation. You are feeling on top of the world….but then the CIO asks one question that deflates your ego quickly.  He asks the one question that seems to matter the most – if this project isn’t started today, will the current data center be able to handle ongoing operations for the coming year? What about 2 years?

Now…sometimes the answer to that question is no….but many times, the answer is yes.  If the IT staff has done their job, the data center has been keeping up with the times and the current architecture can handle anything the current organization can throw at it.

So…if your answer to the CIO’s question is ‘yes…the data center can hold up for another year or two’…then what chance do you have of getting funded to rebuild said data center? {hint: your chance is close to zero}.

In order to make these types of projects seem valuable to the organization, you must show real value and opportunity.

From plumbing to innovation driver

So….you need to get your application modernization project funded…but you can’t quite seem to get the business to understand why they should spend a few hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars to  rebuild something that’s working perfectly today.  Sure…they understand that the money will have to be spent eventually to improve the infrastructure / application at some point in the future…but they know they don’t have to do it today.

So…how do you get a project funded that, according to the business leadership, doesn’t need to be funded?

You’ve got to sell the business on the value of the project.  You’ve got to sell the business on the value of what the ‘plumbing’ project can bring once completed.  Most importantly…you’ve got to remove the stigma of the project as being a ‘plumbing’ project and show why the project is much more important than that.

Let’s revisit that data center project above.  You can throw together charts and numbers all day long…but at the end of the data, your asking for money to upgrade a data center that does what it needs to do today.

But…what if you were able to show how your data center upgrade could help to drive new revenue?  What if you can show innovative ways to use the new hardware and/or new software to drive innovation?

Imagine being able to put together a proposal that can show an immediate or short term payback for the investment? Imagine what the CEO would say if you told her that your investment of $350,000 this year in new infrastructure could lead to new services with the possibility of $1.5 million in revenue over the next 2 years?  Your CEO would have to take a long hard look at your project, wouldn’t they?

If you need examples of companies doing this today, look at Amazon’s additional revenue from their IT infrastructure (AWS, EC2, etc).  Think about your infrastructure and how it might be able to provide new revenue opportunities for your business.  Would your modernization project provide more opportunities for revenue? More opportunities for better service and/or new services?

Whether you’re talking about a data center upgrade, data warehouse upgrade or legacy application rewrite, the modernization project is a tough one to get approved for most IT groups. Next time you’re looking at getting funding for an application modernization project, take some time to think about how that new application / infrastructure can be used to deliver bottom line (or top line) value to the company.

Rather than focus on the money that your project needs from the business, focus on money your project can deliver to the organization in the coming years.  In the end, to get your modernization project funded, you’ve got to show the business that its not just a ‘plumbing’ project. You’ve got to show the roadmap to innovation and revenue…you’ll be surprised at how much more you can get done when people see a return on what had been thought of as simple ‘plumbing’ project.

Image Credit: Plumbing By BodHack on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

square peg into a round hole By rosipaw on flickr

In the IT world, we tend to take a single-minded approach to our technology platforms.   We have email systems. We have web systems. We have HR and Finance systems.

Many organizations are implementing collaboration tools and social tools in the enterprise.  But…most organizations are implementing these platforms with blinders on without long-term plans for how those tools might need to adapt for how users really want to use it.

As we’ve seen in recent days/weeks in events around the world….technology is being used for much more than that. Technology is being adapted for their situation.  They are using the tools at hand in ways that weren’t really considered when those tools were created.

Linda Tucci had a great comment on this in her recent post titled Egypt’s CIO lesson: We use IT tools in ways unintended by toolmakers. She writes:

The truth is that tools take on a life of their own once put in the hands of human beings, who, by nature, are innovative. People are hard-wired to adapt tools in ways the toolmaker never intended — sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.

Very true.

How many times have you seen a technology platform implemented within a company to find that nobody uses it…or….people use it differently than planned?  It happens often.

If you are planning a new technology implementiation, are you thinking about how your people will use that technology? Are you thinking about how that technology might be used (or not used) once implemented. Are you thinking about the culture of your organization and how the technology fits with that culture.

You know people will attempt to use a technology differently than originally planned…so are you planning for those changes to come in the future? How will your technology strategy & platforms accommodate these changes.

Something to keep in mind during your next technology assessment / technology selection project…you don’t want to build a square peg today and find that you have a round hole next year, do you?

Image Credit: square peg into a round hole By rosipaw on flickr

The question of outsourcing all IT functions within a small business was asked of me by an acquaintance after she read two of my Small Business CIO articles: Small Business CIO – Manager of Constraints and Outsourcing, Value & Capabilities – Priorities for Small Business CIO’s.

This person, who I’ll call Heather,  is the owner & CEO of a ~ 100 person firm. She’s thinking long and hard about dropping her entire IT team and starting from scratch.  As part of her thought process, she had been looking at outsourcing a good portion of her IT infrastructure and only keeping the core assets that she needs in-house.

Heather had already determined that she’d offload her email platform.   To her, that was an easy decision…they’ve had nothing but trouble with their in-house exchange server.  She’s also determined that her website hosting will go off-site to a managed services firm.  Both are pretty straightforward decisions and are easily supported by an cost/benefit analysis.

But…she’s now rethinking her entire plan. When she contacted me, she’d come to the conclusion that she should do away with 75% of her IT staff, outsource all IT platforms and save hundreds of thousands per year.

Outsourcing Small Business IT

While I’ve been a big proponent of outsourcing some information technology functions, especially within Small Business IT shops, I’m alarmed at the level of cuts Heather’s proposing.

Heather’s core business revolves around services.  Her company provides marketing services to real estate firms.  In talking through the issues with Heather, she doesn’t see her information technology team and assets as a core piece of her company’s competitive advantage.

During a few phone calls and email exchanges on the subject with Heather, I was able to convince her to take a step back and rethink her approach.

While she is still convinced that she can outsource most of her IT platforms, she’s realized that there are a few that would be nice to have some ownership on.

For one, her financial IT system(accounting, billing, etc).  She had thought she could easily outsource the entire technology platform but has come to realize that her livelihood is based around how her financial platform.

Another outcome of Heather’s rethinking her IT outsourcing initiative – the majority of her IT staff will keep their jobs.    Like many IT teams in the small business world, their focus will be changing from platform maintenance to technology initiatives that help the organization position themselves as a leader in their field.

Cutting Small Business IT to the bone

Heather is the second small business owner that I’ve talked to in the last month who’s been thinking about outsourcing their entire IT team.  In addition, many CIO’s and IT leader’s that I’ve talked with have said the same thing (you can read more on the subject in my post titled Outsourcing, Value & Capabilities – Priorities for Small Business CIO’s.

I’d caution everyone out there who’s looking at outsourcing part (or all) of their information technology function to be careful. Sure you can get away with going to the cloud for some IT platforms and you can easily outsource things like web and email hosting, but outsourcing to much IT can be deadly.  More on that in another post.

PS - While I wasn’t paid for my time by Heather and didn’t ask for payment…I offered my suggestions on her plans and, thankfully, she listened. That said, I may start up a consulting practice solely focus on Small Business IT…seems to be a lot of folks in the SMB space needing assistance.

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Long answer?  Read on

Vince Kellen does a great job arguing the point in a post titled “Echolalia: The CIO is Dead! Long Live the CIO!” on The Cutter Blog. Jump over and read it.

Shameless Plug – Kellen was the Editor of the January 2010 Edition of the Cutter IT Journal and was helpful in getting “The Future Proof CIO” article that Gene De Libero and I co-authored.

In Kellen’s post, he writes about the ever present argument that the CIO’s role will go away.   The best argument for the role to always be around?  This line from Kellen’s post:

The CIO role has been and will continue to be focused on the information integration of the firm, especially as newer and more difficult forms of information grow.

I was struck by how straightforward and simple that statement was.

Many of the CIO’s that I’ve worked with have seen their focus being ‘delivering technology to meet strategic objectives’.  Not a bad focus actually…but Kellen’s definition of the CIO role is actually much stronger and much more important.

As CIO, if you focus on ‘delivering technology’, you’ll always be the ‘IT group’.  You’ll always be focused on the technology rather than the problem. And…you may

Why not step back and start focusing on the problem in business today?  That problem is a simple one:

How can an organization deliver their service or product in a way that is smarter, more effective and more useful to clients?

Answering that question should be the focus of every member of senior leadership.  The CIO’s role should be to deliver the necessary information to address this most important problem.  By focusing on the problem, the CIO can move out of the ‘CIO as Tech Guru’ to ‘CIO as Strategist’.

What will happen if we continue to focus on the technology? I think we’ll continue to see people discussing whether the role of the CIO is important enough for organizations.  Start focusing on the business problems and focus on the Real Business of IT and that discussion will end rather quickly.

Image courtesty of CIO.com

I’m a bit slow on my reading lately….so bear with me as I catch up. Just read through the 2010 State of the CIO Survey published by CIO.com.

A few highlights:

• This year, nearly one third—30 percent—of the 594 IT leaders we polled say meeting or beating business goals is a personal leadership competency critically needed by their organizations, up significantly from the 18 percent who said so last year.
• 22 percent cited “identifying and seizing on commercial opportunities”—more than triple last year’s 6 percent
• Aligning IT initiatives with business has dropped significantly over the last 2 years – 64 percent, down from 71 percent last year and 82 percent two years ago
• Still, most CIOs have no P&L duties. According to our survey, just 9 percent head up a line of business
• There are impressive jumps in the numbers of IT leaders concentrating on customer although the majority of respondents still don’t spend their time with any

Interesting results.

A few more stats:

Projects that CIO’s canceled last year:

• 39% were were infrastructure upgrades
• 31% enterprise software rollouts
• 21% were unified communications projects
• 20% were network upgrades

Projects that got funded were:

• 63% – projects that improved end-user productivity
• 53% – projects improved the quality of products
• 39% – projects that helped create new offerings

From those stats, it looks like CIO’s have been focusing on driving growth and improvements in the business…which is an excellent thing to see.

Take a second to review those that got canceled. Those are the projects that aren’t sexy. They are the ‘plumbing’ of the organizations….nobody outside of IT really cares or understands what a ‘network upgrade’ means to the company.

But…what happens next year when the recessions is over and the IT infrastructure can’t keep up? Will the CIO & IT organization have moved off to the cloud entirely as Gartner predicts will happen with 20% of businesses by 2012?

CIO reports on another Gartner study that says 2010 is the year of transformation of IT using social technologies. According to Gartner, this approach “raises productivity and increases value from current IT assets”. Perhaps CIO’s have been looking to the future and realized that they can get more value from their current assets.  This realization has allowed them to shift their focus from operational to transformational as reported in the survey results above.

The next few years in the IT space will be interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing what 2010 & beyond brings for CIO’s.

What do you think about these results?  Are you seeing the same things in your organization that are reported in the CIO.com survey?

While Gene’s question is a fair one, I have to ask a much simpler question….do you have a technology strategic plan? Or at the very least, do you discuss technology and/or IT in your organization’s strategic plan?

I know its a simple question….but its an important one.

Last year I spent some time working with a medium sized organization’s CIO and IT group.  They had just finalized the organization’s strategic plan for the following year and wanted someone to come in and review for completeness and see if there were any holes.

When I met with the team, they were extremely pleased with their work and they were excited to have been included in the strategic planning process.  They were ready and raring to get to work on the new strategic plan.

I received the plan and reviewed it.  It wasn’t bad…it fit the organization well.  The culture fit the strategic plan.

There was only one problem.  At no point was there any discussion of using technology to reach the objectives listed in the plan.

A good portion of the strategic plan revolved around technology but there was little discussion of any strategy to actually acquire, implement and utilize technology

So…back to Gene’s question – is Cloud Computing part of your strategic plan.  Based on my experiences, organizations forget about technology as part of their strategic plans.

Have you included technology in your strategic plan?

Progress Software’s CTO Dr John Bates predicts that 2010 will see the following “revolutionary” changes in the IT space:

1. Real-time insight and business control will become a must-have, as organizations can ill-afford to lose money and customer through being slow to notice problems in delivery.

2. Event-driven computing will accelerate, driven by business needs, and impacting both the way applications are built and how they are deployed in the enterprise.

3. Cloud computing will become mainstream, with storage-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and compute-as-a-service, becoming widely sold and used.

4. Mobile computing will continue to be the biggest driver of innovation, extending the move from the desktop to the PDA to internet-enabled in-car systems, and even the fabled ‘internet fridges.’

5. CIOs will be forced to justify IT investments, because the recession has killed off the notion of ‘IT for IT’s sake,’ CIOs must demonstrate rapid return on investment, business relevance and the strategic importance of IT to innovate to release funding for projects.

Some interesting predictions.  Let’s take a brief look at each prediction and see if it makes sense.

Prediction #1 – Real-time insight and business control will be a must have.

I can see this. This type of data is a must-have regardless of whether the year is 2000, 2010 or 2050.  Why is real-time data so important though?

Is it needed to create more efficient processes?  Is it needed to create better plans?   Perhaps.  But I’d argue that real-time data is only important if you use it to get closer to your customers.

According to Progress Software:

In 2009, our research found that 67% of businesses only become aware of problems when customers report them. 80% of companies already have critical business events they need to monitor in real time

Why do you think Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms are such a hit today with organizations?  It isn’t necessarily because organizations are social…it’s because it gets the brand closer to the customer and in near-real-time.

Is real-time data a revolution or an evolution? I say revolution when it comes to IT but its an evolutionary for other parts of the business due to the avaolability of near-real-time data over the last year.

Prediction #2 – Event-driven computing will accelerate and impact the way applications are built and deployed.

Event-driven computing.  Huh.  That sounds like something that’s been around a while.  While it has been around a while, I’m not sure it’s been used to its fullest extent.

What is event-driven computing? Well..in a few words: event-driven computing is a way of building applications and architectures to be able to respond quickly to any event. If you’d like to read more on the subject, go take a look at Event-Driven Computing: An Introduction for more details.

So what can event-driven computing provide to IT?  Real-time behavior of users and systems. Observation for alerts. Predictive Processing.  Some really interesting stuff here.

Is event-driven computing a revolution or an evolution? I say revolution because, if it were to happen in 2010, it would require a completely new way of building applications.

Prediction #3 – Cloud computing will become more mainstream.

There are a lot of people that would argue for and against this point.  To get one side of the argument, go read the latest BusinessWeek article titled “Forecast for 2010: The coming Cloud Catastrophe“. See another side to the argument in David Linthicum’s article on InfoWorld titled “Top 5 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2010“.

Will Cloud computing become more mainstream: Yes.  Is it revolutionary?  Not yet.

Prediction #4 – Mobile computing will continue to drive innovation

Yep.  I agree.  The mobile space is hot and will continue to be hot.  This will mean a new approach to data and security for IT groups around the globe.

Mobile computing has been around a while.  The Blackberry (granted – not really a mobile computing platform) was the first real game-changer for IT and the iPhone has changed things forever in the mobile computing space.  Add to that the netbooks and forthcoming generation of tablet computers, some rumored to run the iPhone OS and Google Android OS, and you’ve got a fully-connected, fully functional mobile platform.

But is it mobile computing going to be revolutionary? I’m not sure I’d call it that. Evolutionary is the word here. IT groups have been dealing with mobile computing for a long while and the processes and procedures are in place (for the most part).

Prediction #5 – CIO’s will have to justify IT investments with strategic plans and show rapid ROI for each project

Agreed but I’m not sure this is revolutionary. This is something that most CIO’s and organizations have been looking at for a few years now.   In years past, the CIO had to justify spending and with the economy in shambles, the Chief Information Officer‘s of today have had to provide even more justification for IT projects.  This justification is even more reason for The New CIO to be able to move into the strategic discussion with other leadership team members to help further align IT and the Business.

So…is this Revolutionary? Not at all.  We’ve been seeing this evolve for years.

Will 2010 be Revolutionary or Evolutionary for IT?

So…out of the 5 ‘revolutions’ for 2010 for the IT space listed by Dr Bates, I see only 2 that might be revolutionary while the rest are really more of an evolution for the majority of organizations and consumers.

Will 2010 be revolutionary for IT? I think it can be.  I think if more CIO’s take the approach that I’ve been arguing for in my New CIO series’, we’d see an awesome revolution in IT across many organizations. Think about how much more efficient your team could be if they spent less time on ensuring your employees weren’t surfing Facebook and more time on driving innovation through technology.

Focus on building revenue and driving innovation with technology and you’ll see a revolution. Focus on the same things you’ve always focused on, and you’ll be luck to see anything at all.

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