Operations & Service Delivery

As discussed in “Backup is not Archive!”1 all IT organisations should evaluate the deployment of an archival platform to reduce storage costs and improve unstructured data management. Our 2008 survey found archiving in ANZ organisations to be immature and with many risks. A follow-up survey in 2011, and on-going client discussion, shows this situation has improved as evidenced by higher implementation success rates and customer satisfaction scores. We found the products most commonly used in production were Symantec Enterprise Vault and Commvault Simpana. These products were very well rated by the organisations that used them while EMC on the other hand continues to struggle.

The Australian Institute of Management recognises that leadership and management will need to continue to evolve to keep up with technological innovation and globalisation. Whilst organisations are usually aware of the need to keep up with technological changes, they often struggle with the practical implications for management and impact on organisational structure. On the one hand operational management can increasingly be automated, and on the other hand the ability to build and lead high performance teams is gaining in importance. Having appropriate people in executive team leadership positions is critical.

The intense focus on social media and related technologies and how it will influence organisations has increased in the last year. Nor will it dim. The catalyst for the change has emanated from four companies and their products which have significantly altered behaviour and interaction with technology – in particular with devices. Business and IT executives wishing to understand the forces of consumerisation and social media (Social IT) and its impact within organisations need to look at the compound effect brought about by network connections between those four companies and how people connect with them.

A competency centre for Business Intelligence (BI) must have an active mandate and involvement from the senior executive to sustain optimised delivery of the organisational BI strategy. This leadership is a key factor in the ability to successfully deliver the initial benefits of the competency centre within a three month development period, establishing long term benefits.

Organisations that are still running Windows XP fleets are debating holding off a desktop refresh (to Windows 7) until Windows 8 becomes available. There are three key considerations to this discussion: product functionality, management, and licensing. In each of these three categories, IBRS concludes that there is no compelling reason to wait for Windows 8.

The challenge of servicing customers well through various channels and over many devices has added considerable complexity to operations. The blindness of monitoring how well the IT operation is working has been removed and now data flows in huge amounts. The principal goal is to provide high quality customer experience and not simply rely on dashboards to churn out machine data reports. The skills of analysis and insight should be more keenly applied to the data in order to reveal and clarify the value of the data. How the reams of data can be used for an organisation to deliver a high customer experience remains the main task. Organisations that believe that solely monitoring data to support transactions will likely miss the significance of what the data can yield and strengthen their customer contacts.

Cloud computing has multiple dimensions that must be considered when analysing risk. The use of four key variables can rapidly identify the expected level of risk in a cloud computing scenario. These four variables – deployment model, geographic location of data, supplier arrangements and information criticality – can be quickly applied to assess the level of risk and determine a suitable mitigation strategy.

Despite recent IT Shared Services (ITSS) failures in government, the global appetite for ITSS seems to continue unabated. Given evolving developments in the cloud, ITSS seems assured of longevity. It is thus important to understand its nuances, especially from a delivery perspective. Whilst tempting to think of ITSS initiatives merely as ambitious programs of work capable of delivering attractive savings, it seems that a scaled-backed, incremental delivery approach, though perhaps more costly and time-consuming than other methods, may result in more lasting and beneficial outcomes.

The instincts of greed and ambition can sometime blindside the architects of IT Shared Services (ITSS) initiatives. Thinking too grandiosely and without sufficient regard for the consequences of ITSS can doom such ventures from the outset. Conversely, taking more level-headed approaches, tempered by the honest counsel of those that aren’t necessarily management sycophants, can have the opposite effect.

The seemingly growing deployment of enterprise social media may add another layer to organisational communications and collaborative suites; or it may replace them altogether. At this stage definite judgement is not possible, given the varying feedback on usage, value and overall benefits. Ostensibly these tools are being introduced to improve collaboration and productivity. Yet the evidence is not conclusive on those criteria. Nevertheless, it is not necessary to rationalise such deployments on efficacy criteria alone.