Next-Gen Tools Help IT Run Like a Business

Service value management (including SLM and BSM) – Service value management in Q2, 2009 remains more of an aspiration than a reality. And yet, in parallel with costs, it represents virtually 50% of the equation when it comes to financial planning. You can begin to piece it together through SLM, QoE, service portfolio management chargeback…

Next-Gen Tools Help IT Run Like a Business

Next-generation asset management (NGAM) was conceived around the idea that enterprise IT is becoming more and more of a business as business services and IT services become more closely intertwined. At its core, the NGAM vision is a simple one: IT services are “products” and so all capex and opex assets associated with IT are…

Reshuffling the Outsourcing Deck

Lower costs, better results. There’s the four word outsourcers’ mantra and, inevitably, what this means in tough times is companies are on the prowl for more, for less money, from their outsourcing partners. And that just may mean new geographies emerging as prime locations. One reality: India remains the hub for most U.S. outsourcing initiatives,…

Reshuffling the Outsourcing Deck

Maryland-based Inflection Point Systems, a software development firm, looks closer to home―choosing to outsource to Monterey, Mexico, where around 65 people are working on projects, said Gerardo Montemayor, Inflection Point’s CTO. Montemayor pegs the cost differential at 50% and, he stresses, in Mexico his operation has lower turnover (“single digit”) than is typical among U.S….

The Outsourcing Continuum, Recap

When you start on your journey to outsourcing, you have expectations that you will never have to worry about your technology infrastructure again. That’s not strictly true, because now you worry about the technology on a different level. You now worry more about how you can use the application of the technology to provide your…

Five More Ways to Cut Costs Without Cutting Services

Last month I wrote about five ways your organization could cut costs without cutting services. While that article offered advice on embracing data center automation, exploring open-source software and eliminating duplicate software, there were several other ideas that didn’t fit into that story. Here, then, are five more ways to cut costs without cutting services:…

Five More Ways to Cut Costs Without Cutting Services

4. Go Green – Talk of Green IT usually turns back to something covered in my first story about cutting IT costs: virtualization. “If you still have each server tied to an individual application, you’re probably seeing, to be charitable, a 20% utilization rate,” said KPMG’s Snyder. According to Snyder, server consolidation through virtualization is…

It All Comes Down to Project Management

Does your organization have a high success rate in delivering IT projects? If the answer to this question is “No”, then it’s probably safe to assume that the project management maturity level within your organization is low. As a former CIO I know project management is one area that many CIO’s tend to take for…

It All Comes Down to Project Management

Over the years, I’ve never met a project manager that truly understands the skill set of the entire team. We begin a project, have frequent status meetings and typically find out at the last minute that an area is not making their date. During the project initiation phase, management should take the time to level…

IT Budgets Flat or Falling for Remainder of 2009

To reduce the effect of outliers on the middle, Computer Economics (CE) uses the median when reporting its findings. What this means for CIOs reading their latest research is a little less than half of those surveyed (45%) were actually able to increase their operational spending this year, while 17% of CIOs had to get…