Is it Possible to Achieve a Return on ITIL?

There has been quite a few arguments in trying to prove or debunk that ITIL can produce any kind of ROI. The pragmatic answer is: Yes it can, but not as easy as ITIL guidance can hope for. Let’s step back and define what ITIL is. A simplistic view is that ITIL is a set…

How CFOs Can Learn to Love Disaster Recovery

I admit it: I’ve always hated the term business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR). It just sounds so broad and like spending money in case something bad happens. And it always comes wrapped with technical terms like “recovery point objectives,” “failover SLA’s,” and “OS compatibility.” Frankly, all those technical terms just don’t resonate with me. What does…

Why and When to Invest in a CMDB System

Out of the 11 vendors I spoke to, five had a SaaS/cloud offering and several more plan to. CMDB’s are enablers and some vendors lean more strongly to one than the other. Many vendors link the CMDB to a service desk offering explicitly, but not all do. Some are more operationally or performance management centric….

Why and When to Invest in a CMDB System

The CMDB tidal wave may seemed to have peaked about two or three years ago and left a trail of ruin and devastation in its wake. However, like many technology trends, the CMDB built up a lot of hype, then confusion, then disillusion. Missed in all of this, however, is the fundamental fact that a…

Sourcing: Keep it Simple and Standard

In a traditional global IT enterprise, different business units, geographic regions, and functional entities each do things their own way. Service providers, meanwhile, have generally accommodated these specialized requirements. After all, the customer is always right, right?. This mindset is changing as business organizations gradually accept the proposition that a great majority of their IT…

State CIOs Fighting Budget Battles with Technology

State and local agencies are under constant pressure to provide high-quality services to citizens while managing budget reductions. While some economic indicators are improving, agency budgets are not forecasted to recover in the short term. According to an August survey by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO), The 2010 State CIO Survey:…

Teleworkers are a Boon to the Bottom Line

The convergence of economics and technical advances increasingly make telework a necessity instead of a wish-list item for businesses today. It’s my belief that those organizations not using available technology to enable and expand their own virtual work force are leaving a windfall unclaimed. I came to Logicalis from an organization where nearly everyone worked…

4 Easy Budget Cuts Every IT Manager Can Find

The first article in this series, Understanding the ROI of Value Creation, is about safeguarding IT budgets shared an approach to protecting IT budgets by reallocating non-value creating IT spend to efforts creating tangible business value. The second article, How to Recapture IT Spending, then explored ways to recapture non-value IT spending as a means…

How to Recapture IT Spending

The first article in this series about safeguarding IT budgets shared an approach to protecting IT budgets by reallocating non-value creating IT spend to efforts creating tangible business value. While that approach can protect or even expand IT budgets, it may not be enough. A second approach — recapturing non-value creating IT spend — can…

A New Deal from Microsoft?

On October 20, 2010, Microsoft signed a headline-grabbing deal with New York City that may be a bellwether for how Microsoft technology will be purchased in 2011. During the press conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stood shoulder to shoulder with Mayor Michael Bloomberg to announce a $100M, 100,000-user deal with the city. Surprisingly, while the…