Anna’s Blog: An Outsourcing & Offshoring Journal

HarveyNashUSA Webinar:The Big Opportunities of Big Data

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:23:42 +0000

It's 2011-Do You Know What All Your Machine Data Is Worth?

Last week, I had the pleasure of welcoming Doug Harr, CIO of Splunk, to the Harvey Nash webinar stage. In a presentation called, "The Big Opportunities of Big Data," Harr started off his talk by continuing a discussion that recurred at several of our Harvey Nash CIO Survey forum events this fall.

All year long, our CIO Survey forums have been addressing the importance of innovation. The Harvey Nash CIO Survey took a deep look at innovation and what it takes to be an innovation CIO who not only contributes to the ground-breaking work that their companies do, but leads and shapes it. The question for so many IT leaders at our forum events was this: How do I become a bigger force for innovation within my business? Doug Harr gave a compelling answer in his presentation.

Pointing out that the most important letter in CIO is the I-representing intelligence and innovation-Doug introduced our audience to big data and the growing innovation opportunity it represents to businesses of all sizes and their senior IT practitioners. One of his most elegant points was to remind CIOs that to be successfully innovative they must break out of the back office and focus on the customer-facing world.

Big data (also called machine data) he explained offers CIOs a unique pathway to this customer facing world. Every day businesses produce awesome amounts of machine data and the vast majority of it is unstructured. That means it can't be measured, analyzed or used to improve the business.unless today's CIOs decide to harness this powerful business intelligence resource. Doug explained how businesses can better understand customer activities and behavior, identify patterns of usage and revolutionize their transaction visibility simply by tapping into their ever-growing big data resources.

Based on the questions we heard at the end of the webinar, I know that many attendees were both excited and overwhelmed by the opportunity of big data. And that's what any innovation opportunity should be, challenging enough to test you and valuable enough to reel you in.

I want to thank Doug for taking the time to share his insights and experience with our webinar audience and being a part of the Harvey Nash learning series and CIO Survey forums. For those of you who would like to learn more about big data, I invite you to review Doug's presentation below.

The Big Opportunities of Big Data: It's Unstructured, It's Unwieldy, It's an Unreal Business Opportunity

Harvey Nash USA Webinar: The Big Opportunity of Big Data

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Harvey Nash October Webinar Q&A Transcript

On October 27, 2011, Harvey Nash's SVP of Technology Solutions, Anna Frazzetto hosted a webinar for IT professionals including senior leaders of IT. Anna was joined by Doug Harr, CIO of Splunk, to discuss big data - what it is and how to use it to your advantage. The presentation concluded with a short Q&A session; the following is a transcript of the session.

Q: Is there a size organization that this [Splunk] is best suited for?

DOUG: I do not think that it is related to the size of the organization. We have had customers that have just downloaded and used a free product, and we have people who are paying for terabytes of indexing a day. I think you can make use of this, no matter what the size of your business is.

Q: Are there any examples of unstructured workforce data that drive operational excellence?

DOUG: I know that as you look at what can be done with this information, you can take information that employees are obviously generating in your systems, and gain insight into how they are using them. You might have a professional services automation system, maybe that employees are getting in and using that system, you might have a helpdesk solution. We are looking at feeding data from ServiceNow (http://www.service-now.com/), which we are working on implementing as sort of our help desk tool and looking to feed that information into Splunk. The idea being that if there are any dashboards or reports that are not being provided by that particular solution that we might be able to add to that. One example is marrying up the helpdesk phone line information, like who is calling, and how long it is taking, with how long a ticket is taking to close out.

Q: You did mention defining the problem of unstructured data and then you presented some examples where companies were able to structure the data into dashboards; the piece that I don't understand is how you were able to derive those answers out of this bucket of unstructured data, and the process to get there? I am assuming it takes iterations, and maybe a lot of people.

DOUG: Yes, there are iterations, though not necessarily quite a lot of people needed. In my own implementations of Splunk, we have system admins who are there to help when we are looking to forward some additional log data, events or machine data, into Splunk, that's sort of one step. The next step, what Splunk does is it indexes the information. It lines it all up by date and time, across different functions, and it gives you a way to then start searching through and playing with the information. Then you can look for key values and things, and as soon as you find one, and define it, it is available to you from that point on to be used in named queries and searches and reports. You do refine the data over time; you can also immediately look for things for sort of search and discovery. So you start with this unstructured or semi-structured information, and you enrich it as you go through the process, and discover what you want to do with it.

Q: Can you compare your solution more closely with Hadoop?

DOUG: Splunk is fundamentally different from Hadoop in many ways. Hadoop is used by developers to store big data streams from their Apache web code for later use by custom-coded routines for that website or other related purposes. Splunk can now also ingest and do analytics on Hadoop data, or use Hadoop as a cold tier of long-term storage for our big data streams, although it is more of a tool for analytics on top of machine data.

We do have customers who are using both. Actually, just this week, Splunk announced the planned availability of a new software package called Splunk Enterprise™ with Hadoop. This new offering will include Splunk Enterprise™, the Splunk Hadoop integration layer and Apache™ Hadoop™.

The Splunk Hadoop integration layer will provide more than just point-to-point connectivity, with support currently planned for the following operations:
• Issuing MapReduce queries or higher-level queries from the Splunk search language (using Pig or Hive for example), or to pull the resulting data sets back into Splunk
• Indexing the output of Hadoop jobs in Splunk
• Indexing data storied in HDFS in Splunk
• Delivering data from Splunk to HDFS
• Calling Splunk APIs directly from Hadoop jobs

Q: How do you tie unstructured taxonomy to structured taxonomies for big data BI?

DOUG: Unstructured data sent into Splunk can be examined to determine the name/location of meaningful fields, whether they are actual data such as a product line="Garments" or a product line ID such as "12345." With Splunk, you can then call out to a database or other data source to pull in lookup values. So, for instance, you could look up the product line of "Garments" in Siebel, matching to id=12345. In which case, you would've taken an "unstructured" log file entry, and pulled in data from a structured source to give you activity by human readable categories (i.e. - how many people dumped their shopping cart of garments on 11/11/11 at noon?).

Q: How do you analyze market research data in local PCs and on the data center/servers in an organization to provide instant insights and analysis?

DOUG: We can Splunk data from PC servers and the like and correlate them to the same Splunk instance. Although it depends on what form the market research data is in, most data can be forwarded into Splunk for later reporting. We can pull in CSV files for instance and treat them like "log entries" or "events" for use in Splunk. Or, for example, we can put these into lookup tables, taking CDRs and looking up rates for a mobile phone company.

Cloud Crazy: The NYC CIO Forum Can't Shake the Cloud

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:07:48 +0000

Harvey Nash and PA Consulting’s final U.S. CIO Forum of 2011 was held in NYC this October and the focus of the night—without question—was cloud computing. It was a high-energy event where opinions were strong and insights uniquely New York. To give you an example of how animated and fun this cloud-centric discussion got, I will share with you one of my favorite quotes of the night: >“Cloud computing is like a beautiful woman that I would love to take out, but do not want to take home.”

It’s safe to say with passionate and hilarious insights like that, we had a great night of discussion. For my part, I felt one of the very best cloud computing issues that we explored was a question of approach. It seems that the senior executives (CEOs, COOs, etc.) are often very eager to jump into the cloud in one way or the other. However, our CIO/CTO panelists and attendees were for the most part far more cautious in their approach to pursuing the cloud.

That’s not to say attendees and panelists were not using the cloud or excited about its benefits. But the event did reveal that a good deal of CIOs feel that much of the frantic push toward the cloud is driven more by marketing than it is by strategic business analysis and decision making.

While the discussion got heated at times, the room agreed when the point was made that cloud computing is not a revolutionary new approach to IT but instead another sourcing strategy for businesses to consider. Attendees agreed whole heartedly with the advice given by the panel that CIOs need to take the reins in the cloud computing exploration. After all, cloud computing benefits businesses very differently based on industry, field and the company’s data media and data needs and engagement. One important piece of advice shared was that CIOs need to educate their CEOs on cloud as another sourcing partner and play the lead role in analyzing its business benefits, drawbacks and opportunities.

Several attendees and panelists also underscored the data risks of cloud computing. They felt the risks of giving over company data and intellectual property to a third party provider is high today for several reasons. First, it’s high because data is extraordinarily valuable in today’s knowledge economy. The breach, loss, theft or corruption of valuable data could be devastating. Secondly, data accessibility is also an issue. Cloud providers not only house data, they control how and when a business accesses their data, which is an important consideration as businesses examine where they want their growing stores of business data to reside.

The NYC event was an excellent end to our 2011 six-city tour of Harvey Nash CIO Survey forums. It reminded us all that while the cloud is still flying high at the top of many IT and innovation agendas, success is not merely a matter of finding the right solution or sourcing strategy. The business strategy and leadership behind a solution determines it success. The CIOs we met during this tour, from New York to California and everywhere in between, are demonstrating their determination and proficiency in playing a very prominent, very vocal role in planning, building and leading business strategy.

A special thank you to the panelists who share their evening and their insights with us at the 2011 CIO Forum in NY:

• Peter Grazioli, VP/CIO, Young Broadcasting Inc.
• John Donnarumma, CIO, GroupM
• Doug Harr, CIO, Splunk
• Michael Kolbrener, CIO, Aurora Bank FSB

From Chicago's Streets to Denver's Peaks...

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:12:52 +0000

This Land Was Made for Innovation

This September was a big month for the Harvey Nash CIO Forum events as we visited both Denver and Chicago in our global road show dedicated to our annual CIO Survey. I have always noticed differences—some subtle and some glaring—in these two IT communities in my visits with clients and local technology groups. However, this year the mood in both cities was identical.

Was the atmosphere nervous because of unsteady global marketplace? Depressed from poor employment releases and economic indicators? Not one bit on either count. These events were packed with enthusiastic and competitive IT executives and professionals who everywhere see opportunity and a chance for technology teams to play a central, vocal role in their business’s strategic growth. Part of me kept waiting for recession clouds to gather over the events—after all, the media keeps pushing them on us wherever we go—but neither Chicago nor Denver would have any of it.

I would like to give you a few short topic highlights to share the ideas that did captivate our CIO panels and IT executive attendees. My goal is to give you a real-world sense of the energy, hope and creativity I am seeing in IT communities across the U.S. I also want to thank the talented CIOs who served on our panels and gave our audiences a ton of interesting ideas to debate and strategies to consider.

Topic Highlights From Chicago’s CIO Forum

Innovation – Innovation was a central discussion point in Chicago where the majority of IT leaders and CIO panelists agreed that the role of IT innovation must be about changing the business and/or finding new revenue opportunities versus driving incremental increases across the business. The innovation discussion took an interesting twist as the talk examined Agile development and how it could further innovation activities. As participants examined Agile’s potential in fostering innovation, CIO panelist Ken O’Brien of RR Donnelley questioned whether or not it was fast enough and if businesses using Agile could compete with the speed and creativity of “dorm-room” velocity development.

IT & the Business – The separation of IT and the business was also a major topic of discussion at the Chicago event as attendees explored if technology was playing a role throughout businesses in eroding the separation. With CIOs and their IT organizations playing an increasing role in strategic business projects and plans, some businesses now put their IT development teams directly into the business units and teams they support. While the barriers or lack of barriers between IT and the business are different for every business, it’s clear from the Chicago event that IT’s role across the business is increasing for every business.

Topic Highlights From Denver’s CIO Forum

Innovation – Innovation and its critical role in helping businesses identify and take advantage of market opportunities was also a central discussion point in Denver. Business leaders at the event spoke to the fact that IT innovation today has to go far beyond finding new efficiencies. IT innovation today should be focused on driving growth and tapping into new market opportunities. The idea was thrown out that in today’s marketplace, all businesses need to be technology businesses in one way or another. Technology’s pervasiveness requires technology acumen and innovation from every business, no matter the industry, no matter the size.

Cloud Computing – The growth of cloud computing was an important topic in Denver as attendees debated what businesses—big or small—benefit most from it. The panel asked whether the name, cloud computing, was deterring smaller businesses that see it as an expensive trend for global enterprises. One thoughtful panelist pointed out that if you use the words “on demand” small businesses are much more accepting of cloud computing because they know and understand it.

Both Forums ended late as questions continued to flood the panelists, and attendees debated how to drive innovation, leverage emerging technologies and balance efficiency with the need for growth and greater competitiveness. As the talks went on and people stayed late, I was reminded of this fact: No matter how big and diverse America is, the drive to compete, the creativity to invent and the hopefulness needed to earnestly pursue bold ideas and big goals is one of our richest resources.

Once again I’d like to thank the Chicago and Denver CIO Forum Panelists and I invite you to contact me at anna.frazzetto@harveynash.com to learn more about the 2011 Harvey Nash CIO Survey.

Chicago Panelists
• Patricia Anderson, CTO, Apartments.com
• Ken O’Brien, CIO, RR Donnelley
• Bruce Schinelli, VP CIO, TTX Company
• John Vasilj, Former CTO, Chicago Transit Authority
• Andre Zardini, CIO, Rewards Network

Denver Panelists
• Mark Hagan, CIO/SVP of IT, EMSC/American Medical Response
• Stan Hume, CTO, Policy Studies
• Bill Perkins, CTO, Verecloud
• Brian Scriber, CTO, Open Scan Technologies, Inc.
• Philip Winterburn, CIO, Rivet Software

Recognizing and Being Recognized in Vietnam

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:57:52 +0000

We are very proud of our Vietnam team for recently receiving two Gold Sao Khue Awards in the BPO service and software development categories. Created by the Vietnam Software Association (VINASA), the awards recognize the contributions of organizations and individuals to the Vietnamese technology sector. Vietnam’s Vice Minister of Information Technology and Communication presented the awards in Hanoi on June 9. I was in Vietnam two weeks earlier on May 21 meeting with our client The Standard Media Index (SMI) and I had the fortunate opportunity to meet with a group of MBA students from Rider University that were visiting our software development and support services facility in Ho Chi Minh City.

The group traveled to Vietnam to learn more about the country and tour different types of businesses in Asia. Part of their course work focused on globalization and they reached out to our headquarters in Vietnam because they wanted to learn more about a successful business process outsourcing and software development facility. The Rider MBA group was a mix of professors and business executives. We provided a short presentation and took them on a tour of the facility. They also had the opportunity to meet with SMI. The group was blown away with our facility and said they envisioned a much smaller operation and that our center vastly exceeded their expectations. Everyone expressed that they were very impressed with the operations at the facility and asked to stay in touch.

SMI also enjoyed speaking to the group and sharing more about their business’ offerings. Based in Australia, SMI is a unique, independent source of advertising expenditure data. SMI combines the financial booking data of major media buying agencies to create a transparent advertising market for the first time. I have to tell you, they are a model client. Their commitment to our partnership and the success of the offshore team through their personal time investment and the camaraderie initiatives they have incorporated into the operation are great examples for others pursuing offshore engagements. We are working collaboratively on aggressively meeting their milestones. I look forward to sharing more about our work with SMI and both new best practices and lessons learned in future blogs.

I left energized from my meeting with SMI about our work ahead. As I boarded the plane in Vietnam to return home, I felt a sense of excitement and pride for our two offshore facilities. Seeing the Rider MBA group marvel at our facility, made me feel a great sense of accomplishment in our Vietnam team and the work they’ve been doing for the past 10+ years. As I’ve shared before in my blog, Vietnam has some of the most talented, hardworking IT professionals in the world. Both of our Vietnam facilities are truly world-class centers and will continue to have a significant impact on the international business community. Hearing about them receiving their fourth Sao Khue Award, was the icing on the cake.

Below are photos of our SMI client in HCMC.

This is our Software Development team

This is our BPO team

And here is a picture of the U.S. delegation from Rider University.

Cloud Computing – Lots of Questions, Lots of Answers

Fri, 20 May 2011 21:49:23 +0000

My colleague Lance Hendrix, Practice Director, Technology Solutions for Harvey Nash and I kicked off our 2011 Harvey Nash Webinar series with a cloud computing presentation that had the chat room buzzing up until the last minute of the event. What was all the chatter about?

First, our client and good friend Alfonso Perez, Head of Technology at Beezag gave an inside look into how and why his company went whole-cloud in 2010. I know many of our attendees appreciated having the chance to hear and question exactly how an organization made the move to the cloud, the tools and providers they use and the results they are seeing. (And for those of you who attended and are still dying to know what kind of car Beezag helped donate to a heroic, hardworking American family here is the full, heartwarming story.)

In addition to Alfonso's story and case study in scalability, Lance Hendrix—Harvey Nash's Technology Solutions Practice Director, analyzed some of the biggest issues, controversies and challenges in cloud computing today. From security and compliance to cost and convenience, Lance gave an excellent overview of the cloud marketplace today and the issues that have organizations of all sizes thinking as they examine the cloud possibilities. (To view a copy of the full presentation and a transcript of the Q&A session, please scroll down to the bottom of the blog.)

While there were many great questions, one question rings in my mind—and it was the first question of the Q&A: What about the security risks of cloud computing? This is a question you see asked every day in the marketplace as businesses wonder… If my data isn't sitting here (on-site, in our data center) how can it be safe and how can I protect it?

What hit me about the question had to do with some security survey results from our newly launched 2011 CIO Survey, in which CIOs across the U.S. revealed that they feel they are better prepared to identify and deal with cyber attacks than they are to deal with data misuse incidents from their own employees. Here are the numbers: 11% of CIOs said they are exposed in multiple areas when it comes to cyber attacks while nearly double (21%) said they are exposed in multiple areas when it comes to data misuse from employees.

The fact that the higher security risk comes from inside rather than out made me wonder if some of the cloud computing security conversation is a bit of a red herring. Many businesses worry that by moving their data "out into the cloud" it will be harder to protect. But can that be true if internal employees are a greater risk than external threats? Isn’t it better to leverage the cloud to distance data from a security threat rather than keep it exposed?

Obviously, it’s not as cut and dry as all that, but cloud computing does ask us to look differently at the "where" and the "how" of security. Lance covered the complexity of this security question nicely in our Webinar Q&A, explaining the concerns businesses—and specific industries—have when it comes to controlling and managing intellectual property, personal identity and other critical data in the cloud.

As someone who worked in IT and security services before the Internet was even a question, I can say this: security will always be a top concern in any IT solution whether it's outsourced, leased or a managed service. And well it should be, which means there is a big market opportunity for cloud solution providers that are able to successfully address and manage the security concerns and needs of today's cloud-cautious businesses.

I invite you to view the presentation Cloud Computing – Clearing up the Fog below. If you’d like to set up a time to discuss the content in more detail, don’t hesitate to send me an email at anna.frazzetto@harveynash.com.

Stay Tuned for Our Next Webinar
Keep an eye out for registration details for our next webinar, The iPad Goes to Work, Taking App Complexity up a Notch, on June 23 at 11 a.m. ET. This hour-long Webinar will be a dynamic and fun look at the complexities as well as the opportunities that come with developing apps for the iPad. What does it mean for programmers? How is it different from mobile application development. We will even explore some of the very best iPad apps increasing workplace productivity, collaboration and communication.

Harvey Nash USA Webinar: Cloud Computing

Harvey Nash May Webinar Q&A Transcript

On May 10, 2011, Harvey Nash's VP of Technology Solutions, Anna Frazzetto hosted a webinar for IT professionals including senior leaders of IT. Anna was joined by Alfonso Perez, Head of Technology at Beezag, and Lance Hendrix, Practice Director of Technology Solutions at Harvey Nash, to discuss the challenges and opportunities with cloud computing. The presentation concluded with a Q&A session; the following is a transcript of the session.

Q: Did you [Alfonso] move to a specific cloud application or company?
ALFONSO: We moved to Amazon Cloud (AWS), and at the same time, signed up for RightScale. So we were in a combination — RightScale is managing automation infrastructure on top of the Amazon cloud.

Q: What kind of car did you [Beezag] give away?
ALFONSO: I’ll tell you what I remember, and I apologize for what I don’t remember. It was a red car, mid-sized, U.S.-made with four doors. Once again, apologies for the lapse on the other info.

Editors note: The full story about the giveaway can be found here.

Q: What is ORM?
ALFONSO: Object Relational Mapping is a technique for managing relational data in an object-oriented design. Essentially, software that maps databases to objects in code.

Q: To what extent has Beezag moved to the cloud?
ALFONSO: Beezag operates 100% on the cloud. No servers at all in the office, only desktops.

Q: It seems that first you took infrastructure to the cloud and then app, but have you completely outsourced app dev and maintenance or is that still in Beezag's control?
ALFONSO: Beezag’s app offering has resided in the cloud almost from its inception. Application development has been in Beezag’s control all along. Outsourcing vendors provide resources managed directly by Beezag.

Q: Alfonso mentioned two cloud providers for his company, can you elaborate on that?
ALFONSO: Amazon for cloud and RightScale for cloud management.

Q: Did Beezag negotiate its own contract with the cloud computing company?
ALFONSO: This may be a drawback to cloud computing: There’s no big contract to negotiate because normally you’re not pre-buying anything large, or you’re not working on a large commitment of anything. This is basically pay-per-use. At least that’s the more common concept, and the one that’s more appealing.

So, usually you have to abide by what they tell you they’ll do and won’t do — restrictions and regulations and so forth. It’s all pretty straightforward. It’s more complicated if you’re in an industry such as healthcare or financial services. But I would say it’s also fairly adequate. The prices are what they are. There’s not a lot of negotiation back and forth with the cloud provider. They have discounted pricing for volume, and pay-per-use per hour mostly.

Now you can reserve instances for longer than an hour and that has its benefits. It also applies some lower discounts. But the simple answer is that there’s no negotiation. You read the rules, restrictions and regulations in the documentation they have online and you do your math based on the prices they advertise, and you are agreeing to all their terms and conditions.

Q: What about security being a risk of cloud computing?
LANCE: That is definitely something that has to be evaluated on an organization-by-organization basis. And the debate goes both ways on this. On one side, there’s the question of “Do I want my intellectual property outside of my physical control?” Physical access to servers, hard drives and things of this nature can be scary to some organizations, especially with the nature of intellectual property and the core value proposition that a business like mine brings.

In general, there’s more risk around the business and the business model. Obviously, there are other risks around things like personally identifiable information such as credit cards, customer profiles and things like Google docs. The risk of developing business strategy and sharing it over the cloud needs to be evaluated on an organization-by-organization basis.

Now, the arguments on the other side of that, especially as a small or medium organization, are “Do I really have the ability to control and manage that, and am I willing to pay the cost of doing so?” To a certain extent, for a lot of these cloud providers, it’s about trust. We have to assume that they’re building their business and putting themselves at risk to a certain extent to this type of security breach. Specifically with the physical security access.

We’ve also got to assume that, given their expertise in the field, they can probably do a better job of it than any small or medium organization. When it comes to anything other than physical access, I personally don’t view security in the cloud as any different than security in my enterprise, assuming I’ve got things like VPN access into my enterprise or that I’m hosting public websites that don’t protect information that is external to my enterprise.

So, really, the question of security to me is no different than if the servers were sitting in my own facility. Again, the only difference that I see between the cloud and most enterprise IT infrastructures these days is the physical location of the hardware. Any other security best practice should be followed in the cloud with the same due diligence that would be performed if the hardware was sitting within your own four walls. And the same question also comes about within the context of co-location. Then I’m also relying on the physical security and physical access restrictions and capabilities of the co-location provider.

Q: Please provide an example of the most prolific application re-architecting typically required after moving to the cloud.
LANCE: It depends upon which cloud you’re moving to. Some of the things that have to be taken into consideration are the storage and the way you access storage. Especially if you’re using raw S3 types of capabilities versus standing up on an SQL database and leveraging S3 for data tables within the environment.

The other thing is that while there is scale-up capability for the hardware in the cloud, there are sometimes challenges in regards to the fact that the hardware just doesn’t perform the same on an individual compute basis as it does on a dedicated server. And so you have to be prepared for more scale-out scenarios and more scalability horizontally as opposed to vertically. Those are some of the challenges that I see.

Again, some of the other unique aspects of most cloud providers are that the compute units themselves are relatively volatile. And so you have to be able to establish your infrastructure so you can bring servers up and down. Or, if servers fail, that your application can handle it by having standbys or network redundancy or various ways of ensuring that capability. Things will inevitably go bump in the shared infrastructure and it isn’t as easy as saying “I’m going to stand up an application on a single server and I’m going to provide a redundant power supply and redundant hard drives and redundant network connections.” Servers do fail in the cloud. There are ways of mitigating that with the application’s architecture, but those are some of the things that have to be considered when taking an application to the cloud.

Q: Do contracts include remedies for lost data, SLAs, etc.? Are they written for specific needs or are they generic?
ALFONSO: You can sign up for the cloud and accept terms and conditions online, but it’s not much of a contract. You are signing a contract and agreeing to terms and conditions, but it’s not negotiable unless you’re going to be a large consumer.

You can always go to the one of the providers and see if you can get away with something that’s more specific to you. While they are starting to adapt to industries that need more accountability such as financial services, they’re not really willing to be accountable for loss of data.

So, let me add to what Lance said earlier and maybe provide a bit of a contrasting perspective to the comment about reliability and so forth as it relates to cloud providers being accountable for loss of data. Infrastructure is infrastructure. You have a server sitting right next to you, or you have a server sitting in a shared hosted environment, or you have a server sitting in Amazon’s cloud. It’s basically a server, right? And, as Lance said, servers will fail. Infrastructure fails. But it’s no different than failure of a server right next to you.

In the case of data, the analogy is very similar. You have a database, which may be sitting right next to you, it may be sitting in a shared hosted environment, or it may be sitting in the cloud. The way you access the database is very similar. You establish a connection; you open up a port in the firewall in the cloud environment and it allows you access to that database that you set up special security around and so forth.

Even though personally I don’t necessarily see a difference in terms of where the power sits — yes, it’s in somebody else’s infrastructure and belongs to somebody else and somebody else is managing it, but it’s no different. It’s just hardware sitting somewhere that’s managed. So, in terms of reliability, it’s up to the service and the terms and conditions they offer.

In terms of accountability, they style it to say, “no, we’re not accountable for the data,” hence the challenge is with getting PCI/DSS Compliance for financial services companies that are trying to leverage the cloud. But I think they’re becoming more flexible and they’re starting to put measures in place to be able to embrace this.

LANCE: To add to what Alfonso said, your standard back-up and recovery procedures and your standard disaster recovery procedures, especially with regards to critical data, probably should not be significantly different, other than maybe the way you go about it, whether your infrastructure is hosted in the cloud, or whether it’s in a co-location facility or whether it’s hosted within your own four walls.

Q: Can you give us a little background on the concept of “the cloud”?
LANCE: I don’t know of any specific definition per se, but have always thought of it in terms of a concept I was introduced to many years ago when I learned object-oriented programming and a form of diagramming called Booch diagrams.

This was back when I also learned OMT and was studying Jacobsen’s use cases. These early design and architecture diagrams described their functionality in aggregate groupings that were represented as clouds on the diagram (they actually looked like clouds that a child would draw). I often think of cloud computing as those clouds on my Booch diagrams.

That is, we are provided a service (in respect to Amazon) that looks and behaves like a computer, albeit with some very specific parameters. But the actual magic of what is going on inside the specific unit that we are using is sort of hidden. In this respect, we are using a resource, but are unconcerned with how or where the service is being offered.

I feel this definition also holds true for other services that are starting to call themselves cloud, such as Google Docs or Dropbox.

Q: It sounds like cloud computing pushes the burden of computer scaling to the cloud provider, right? So, instead of my company needing to scale in a small way, the cloud provider will need to scale — and do so adequately enough to cover all its customers. But that fluctuation may be huge (think of the Mississippi River fluctuating to provide drainage for tributaries — ie, flooding). Wouldn't that cost be passed on to me anyway — with a clear threat of loss of service?
LANCE: There are many different aspects to scaling with IT systems, so we need to first be sure we are all talking about the same aspect of scaling.

If you are talking about scaling from the aspect that I need “N” computing units now or “N+1” or “N+X” computing units, then yes, that becomes the issue of the cloud provider; however, this does not mean that my application has been architected, designed, or implemented to even be able to scale by adding additional computing units.

Now, we come to two other aspects of your question — the first being about the provider you have chosen to scale to your needs in conjunction with demands from other customers; the second being about the cost or risk to your business if that provider fails to be able to scale or as a result of attempting to scale, you see a degradation in service or complete failure of the infrastructure.

This reminds me of discussions we were having in IT as recently as 5-6 years ago when we were faced with the decision to continue investing in expensive leased (private) network infrastructures or to leverage the “open Internet” and utilize technologies such as VPNs to secure traffic.

On one hand, we were spending significant dollars on a private infrastructure for two primary reasons: dependability (and the probability that we could recoup any revenue or losses associated with outages from the provider) and security. While I know that there are still a significant number of leased infrastructures still in existence, many companies have made the shift to leveraging the Internet for at least a certain amount of their communications infrastructure.

In the same way that we still have to evaluate the cost and risk of the network infrastructures that we use, we now also have other options for hosting our services and hardware resources. That is not to say that it makes financial sense to shift everything to the cloud. Again, you have to balance cost against risk in your evaluation of how much you want to shift your organization from other hosting options to the cloud.

With regards to scale and whether your provider can scale with your needs, this is going to be dependent on both your organizations needs and the provider that you choose and you should carefully consider both factors when evaluating a move to the cloud.

Q: Will cloud computing facilitate telework/telecommuting — employees working/consulting from home for employers in other cities without having to relocate?
LANCE: Not directly. However, once corporations and managers embrace the idea that they are provisioning services that they “can’t physically touch” with regards to hardware, it does open the door to the concept of leveraging other resources that we “can’t reach out and touch” such as people…

Q: Would you recommend placing business-critical documents on a cloud solution?
LANCE: It depends on your organization’s tolerance for risk and the costs associated with securing those documents outside of the cloud. Remember, anything that is not locked in an impenetrable, inaccessible location is not “safe,” and then it basically becomes useless.

That is to say that there is no such thing as absolutely safe and you should evaluate the risk and cost of the information getting in the wrong hands and balance it against the risk tolerance of the organization as a whole (the more risk-tolerant, the less likely you are to allocate capital costs to securing that information). If you crunch the numbers and the cost of securing outside the cloud is greater than you are willing to allocate capital resources to, then by all means, host in the cloud. This is going to vary from business to business and the nature of the information.

I would suggest that, as an organization, you work with your security officer to classify the various levels of information and attach values to those groupings of information. Then create corporate guidelines around what can and can’t be stored in the cloud. If you have a corporate risk officer, they should definitely be included in this discussion. Legal considerations will also pertain.

Q: Which database applications, such as SQL 2008 and Azure, are preferences of yours?
LANCE: That depends on the cloud solution or provider being targeted. For instance, the Microsoft cloud offering is obviously focused around their Microsoft SQL Server platform; however, if you are targeting Amazon as a cloud provider, then the solution is basically only limited by the operating systems offered by Amazon (Windows, Linux, etc.). It appears that there is a strong preference for MySQL on EC2/S3 but that is probably just the nature of early-adopter businesses that are already providing solutions in the cloud.

Q: How do you manage Quality Assurance (Testing) with the cloud?
LANCE: From the standpoint of process, the cloud should not be different than other hosting options. If you mean managing the QA environment and the impact of this, the picture is obviously different. If you move your infrastructure completely to the cloud, you probably don’t have physical hardware available to create these environments.

However, creating and leveraging the cloud for the QA environment can provide significant cost-advantages because you don’t have to have physical hardware available for various test scenarios. This includes ones that were cost-prohibitive on physical hardware but can now be accomplished easily and relatively cheaply in the cloud.

Additionally, if you don’t have to have the QA environment always available, then you can stand up an environment and tear it down as needed and not have to incur the capital expenses of physical hardware. This is the essence of the cloud and the concept of “pay for what you use.”

Q: Do you find that the cloud requires different kinds of IT expertise? How much different?
LANCE: It depends on where your organizational focus was to begin with. For instance, if you were an organization that had to manage and maintain a large set of hardware resources, once you moved to the cloud, you might find that your organization no longer needed this skill set as it would then be handled by the cloud provider.

However, you will still need your usual complement of systems administrators, developers, testers, operations personnel, etc. Additionally, you will need to either develop or hire people with experience in managing specific aspects of the cloud (persistence being one) or who know how to manage systems effectively in the cloud (this is slightly different than managing systems on physical hardware and infrastructure).

Q: Can you have two cloud providers in one infrastructure? One for the web server and one for the database server?
LANCE: It is possible, but probably not a good idea. One specific aspect of this type of architecture that makes it suspect is cost. With someone like Amazon, you have to consider the cost of moving information into and out of your instances. Usually data moved within a specific provider’s cloud has little if any cost. But sometimes there are costs for moving data between regions, so always consider and study the cost model carefully.

However, one aspect of reducing the risk of infrastructure failure for any provider or any single location would be to first leverage the “geoplex” capabilities of a provider (again, carefully consider costs). Beyond that, you can leverage multiple cloud providers. But rather than “horizontally slicing” an application in terms of tiers across providers, I would look to leverage more of a “vertical slicing” of the application such that you have a fully functional application across both providers. I would then look to balance workload between the two platforms or leverage an “active/passive” type of architecture between the two providers.

Q: What’s the difference between cloud and regular infrastructure outsourcing?
LANCE: The simple answer is that they are differentiated by the level or function of IT that is being outsourced and will vary depending on what type of infrastructure outsourcing you are doing.

Q: Won't moving to the cloud decrease use for technical staff?
LANCE: Depends on your organization, but in general, I would say not by much.

The Magic Number in Multisourcing

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:48:30 +0000

HDI’s Annual Conference is an annual must-attend event for me because it’s a knowledge-paloozah every time. This year was no exception, and I have the cramped hands from note taking and handshaking to prove it. To give you a sampling of the issues on the mind of IT leaders in attendance, I will quickly share three of the notable topics of discussion at the end of my conference presentation on “Multisourcing and the Message for Innovation.”

- Multisourcing Is Marvelous: It was undisputed among attendees of my presentation that multisourcing is a very good way to leverage and manage IT services. The consensus in the audience was that using multiple vendors creates healthy competition for services, allows companies to balance projects among providers to avoid overload and ensures neither the client nor the vendor become complacent in their expectations and performance.

- Three Is Perfect: While multisourcing takes a wide variety of forms, attendees also felt that three offered the ideal number of vendors. Any more than three is too many to manage but two does not offer enough of a competitive incentive for other vendors to perform at the top.

- Innovation Is Obscure: When the discussion on leveraging multiple vendors for innovation advantage began, several attendees noted that innovation has become a very muddled word in the marketplace. One participant noted that people often use the word innovation when they are talking about “operational excellence.” The conclusion of the group was that businesses and IT organizations need to more carefully define what they mean by innovation in order for any group (IT or business, internal or outsourced) to achieve their innovation goals.

I also was thrilled to hear one participant say that “outsourcing is no longer a taboo topic.” I have been working in IT outsourcing for a few decades now so let’s just say that losing the taboo has been a long time coming.

Bob Dylan & Me: Change Can Rock

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:13:58 +0000

Last week, I wrote a blog about how my road warrior business tools have changed pretty dramatically and in very good ways. The once pure PC me is now an iPad-toting Apple enthusiast, and I am all the more productive for it.

And now I am seeing change everywhere. This week news outlets around the world wrote about a big change for iconic 1960s musician and poet Bob Dylan. Known for fierce opposition to the Vietnam War decades ago, Dylan will appear in concert for the very first time in Vietnam this April.

Few people write about change better than Dylan who penned the classic, “Times They are a Changin.” This moment marks an important shift in the global image for Vietnam, a country that for a long time lived in the shadow of that war. Dylan’s appearance is an important milestone for a nation that with great perseverance has shifted from global isolation to a bright, dynamic economy the world is eager to embrace.

Times, they are a changing, it’s true. Whether it’s me from PC to iPad, Dylan from protestor to supporter, or Vietnam from isolation to global embrace. Too often change is too slow and too painful. But sometimes, change can mean celebration. So rock your heart out Mr. Dylan…this is change worth celebrating. Here’s hoping to catch one of your shows next time I visit Harvey Nash’s Vietnam offices.

iPad Increases Productivity…Believe Me

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 22:51:03 +0000

Last week Harvey Nash released research that showed the iPad to be far more than all the hype behind it. In a survey of 134 subscribers to Harvey Nash Online Appointments Magazine, 91% of participants said they believe their tablets increased productivity. And if that surprises you, join the club—75% percent of survey participants were 'surprised’ by how useful the device was.

I, however, am not at all surprised. That's because the iPad I bought six months ago has been a boon to my productivity almost since day one. There are plenty of skeptics when it comes to productivity and the iPad and I understand that. I have been a long-term, hardcore PC professional for decades. I'll admit to thinking Apple's technologies were for the "artsy" types and not the executive types for a very long time. And yet, here I am typing to you from my iPad, not long after going through a sales presentation with clients on my iPad and before reviewing and editing some reports on my…you guessed it...iPad.

I travel the globe and my iPad comes with me, easily slipping through security where my laptop once had to be unpacked, unbundled, scanned and repacked before our journey could begin again. It's an outstanding sales companion that allows me to quickly and unobtrusively pull out presentations, reports, pictures and videos in office or restaurant meetings.

If I am in New York City for the day, I leave the laptop and take the iPad knowing that I will be connected wherever I go, able to access e-mail and review anything that comes my way using the iWorks software suite (primarily Word, PowerPoint and Excel). On planes I can type, edit and create documents just as I would have done on my laptop. And when I am done working, the iPad is great for reviewing articles, catching up on newsletters and newspapers, reading iBooks or watching a movie.

It's true that when I am in the office, I am still working on my PC in order to access data and files through existing infrastructure. Am I laptop free? Not at all, but my iPad is freeing me to be a more proactive, better connected, faster and lighter mobile executive. And that—plus the simplified security routine—make it very worthwhile to me.

Offshoring Data – You Can Never Be Too Careful

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 20:18:18 +0000

The news is full of stories of leaked information these days. Whether it’s state secrets released by WikiLeaks or a product release slipping out early from a careless team member, information is supremely difficult to control in today’s world of instant online communications.

It’s no wonder that so many businesses cite intellectual property concerns as one of their top worries when considering IT offshoring. Once your data or systems for managing data cross borders and into a new nation, a whole new world of regulations and laws apply. Some of them might look similar to American intellectual property laws and some might look quite different. But the fact remains that no matter what laws mitigate or protect intellectual property, once information is out in the global marketplace today, you cannot take it back. It’s out and the damage is done.

Working in IT outsourcing for decades now , I have built sourcing solutions for companies from a wide range of industries (finance, media, manufacturing, telecom, energy, IT, pharmaceuticals, etc.). Each of them has expressed the same concerns in one form or another: How do I protect our data offshore? How can I be sure that my intellectual property will be safe when I outsource and/or offshore?

What I have learned over the years is that most leaks come from internal sources and the majority of those leaks are not malevolent but accidental. For example, a 2009 study by the IDC revealed that most business leaders (52%) reported their “insider threat incidents as accidental and only 19% believed the threats were deliberate.”

In terms of offshoring, businesses must see their offshore solution providers—no matter how distant they are—as extensions of their internal teams who must be held to the very highest levels of process excellence and security and confidentiality accountability. Any good outsourcing or offshore solutions provider will tell you that they expect no less.

So the challenge for those seeking the right offshoring partner is to distinguish between the providers who say they are rigorous in protecting intellectual property and data and those that truly do it. Below is the checklist I would give to anyone anxious to measure the security, integrity and intellectual capital sensitivity of an offshore provider:

- Data Access – Ask to see the strategy for how data is managed, protected and controlled. Who has access and how is access beyond that select group prevented? What kinds of non-disclosure agreements do they have staff members signing? Just as sensitive data is managed across your internal systems, good IT offshore solutions providers will have careful plans for data management and access.

- IT Security Assessment – Conduct a complete assessment of the IT environment (networks, hardware, etc.) and ensure that all major global security standards are met.

- Infrastructure Security Assessment – Also examine how the building(s) are secured. Who has access and how well controlled is it?

- Site Visit – Visit the site and meet the team members who will be working with your onshore team. Pictures and voices are not enough when it comes to understanding where your solutions will be managed. I highly encourage businesses to go and visit the offshore centers where they are sending valuable work.

- Referrals – Ask to speak with company clients from the same industry or a similar industry to see how well data and sensitive materials are being protected by the provider.

Always Start Small
Finally I always, always advise companies to start on small, non-sensitive projects to get a feel for an offshore provider. Never begin with something that could be bottom-line or brand-crushing when you are starting out with a new and distant provider.

Instead, start with a smaller project that will not put your brand on the line but will test the skills and service of the offshore team. As trust builds, businesses can then strategically and cautiously expand the workload and trust-load of their offshore providers, always ensuring that quality and security standards are exceeded.

Security and intellectual property are just one of the many issues I will discuss in my presentation on multisourcing best practices at the upcoming HDI Annual Conference and Expo this March. I encourage everyone interested in discussing the complex and exciting opportunities in outsourcing and offshoring to attend this year’s Conference. I hope to see you there.

More Information About Anna’s Session
Session 108: Multisourcing and the Message for Innovation
Wednesday, March 30, 2011, Session Block One, 10:15-11:15 a.m.

Brazil & Offshoring: More Time, More Training

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:18:14 +0000

Brazil is without a doubt one of today’s brightest economic success stories. First country out of the Great Recession, rich in natural resources and economic growth at seven percent, Brazil will soon leap frog France and Britain to become the world’s fifth largest economy.

With global eyes ogling this booming nation, it’s not surprising that today it is often named a high-potential IT offshoring destination. Just this December, Gartner listed Brazil as one of its “30 Leading Locations for Offshore Services” for 2010-2011.

I had the chance to visit Brazil at the New Year and was eager to see just a small part of this land that has captured the imagination and (increasingly) offshore strategies of a growing number of global businesses. Without a doubt I was impressed with Brazil’s grandness, its beauty and its rapidly growing infrastructure. However, both my visit and my conversations with leaders from several multinational corporations, indicate there are a few capability gaps—none insurmountable—that limit Brazil’s offshoring draw.

Over the last 10 years, we at Harvey Nash have watched Vietnam evolve from a young and eager rookie in the global IT offshoring market to a seasoned and savvy offshore industry veteran with what (I will argue with anyone) is the one of the most skilled, inquisitive, educated and hardworking IT talent pools in the world.

Like Brazil, Vietnam saw a quick-booming economy that outpaced its neighbors in recent years. Vietnam, its universities and government, have re-invested a significant portion of that economic windfall into expanding education—with intense focus on engineering and science—and encouraging economic development through corporate tax incentives.

To me, this is where Brazil can take important lessons from Vietnam’s success and excellence in the IT offshoring market. In addition to building physical infrastructure, Vietnam has invested heavily in its people infrastructure. The government, at times in partnership with private industry, has built numerous colleges and institutions of higher learning over the past decade. English has been named the official second language of the country and children begin learning it in grade school. Students are encouraged to pursue science and engineering and their efforts are rewarded with good job opportunities once they graduate.

Many business people I have spoken with that have tried or considered Brazil as an offshoring destination cite talent as one of the top challenges. English language skills are nowhere near as widespread as they are in India and Vietnam. With communication essential to IT team success, investment in language training and development is equally critical to Brazil’s offshoring services strategy. Brazil, like Vietnam has a very large, young workforce. Encouraging young Brazilians to pursue science and engineering degrees while increasing educational opportunities and resources will also be very valuable to strengthening the Brazilian IT offshoring industry.

Finally there must be sensitivity to project urgency as well as the customer service excellence required to provide global services. In both my personal experience and through discussions with other IT executives, sense of urgency is an area where Brazilian standards seem different from those in North America, Europe and Asia.

It cannot be enough to have skilled talent, good infrastructure and a supportive government. If business clients in any way feel that their speed of delivery is negatively impacted or that their needs are neglected by the IT teams to whom they have entrusted their data and applications, they will lose trust. That means skills in communication, project management and good old fashioned customer service—promptness, friendliness, responsiveness and understanding—must be adjusted to the standards of the customer. That is one hallmark of a truly great outsourcing destination—one that can incorporate the service needs of its clients with the cultural and work practices of its own environment.
While these may seem like very long-term strategies, we have seen Vietnam successfully achieve these goals in only a matter of years. Brazil too can become a leading offshore destination as long as business and government leaders remember that in any IT services engagement, highly skilled, service-oriented technicians and hard workers are as valuable as any telecommunication grid or IT system.

Offshore Adventures – From Australia to Vietnam

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:24:40 +0000

CIO Roundtable in Silicon Valley – A Collaborative Affair

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:19:26 +0000

On September 23rd, Harvey Nash and PA Consulting Group conducted a thoughtful executive-level learning and networking event in Silicon Valley. In lieu of our annual panel discussion, which features a handful of standout CIOs, we formulated an afternoon based on the direct input of local CIOs. This year’s event broke up the 54 CIO attendees into small groups of about eight to conduct roundtable discussions on the topics that were most pertinent to them. These included:

• Selling IT to the Business
• Becoming Indispensable to the Business
• Personal Networking for CIOs
• Cloud Computing
• Business Intelligence
• Social Networking for the Business

At the end of the roundtable discussions, we held a review session covering the key takeaways from all the topics discussed. At the end of the day, the new format afforded the audience an opportunity to meet and engage with their peers, and ensured every attendee had a chance to ask important questions and give advice.
For me, it was interesting to see which topics stirred the most heated debate and where people were in wholehearted agreement.

What topic did the groups agree on most readily?

• That the role of the CIO today is very different from the CIO of three years ago. According to attendees, CIOs today, more than ever, must embrace their role as a business leader. With strategic business objectives made starkly clear by the trimming back and streamlining of the recession, there is no longer room for CIOs who fancy themselves technologists first. Business goals and the bottom line are king, and today’s CIOs require thorough business goal and process understanding if they are to succeed.

What topics saw the most debate?

• SaaS – It seems like the ongoing debate of software as a services is… ongoing. While some IT leaders felt that it is now going mainstream, others felt there were still many unresolved issues about its provision and the widespread usage remains far off. Specific SaaS challenges for some CIO attendees included the ability to maintain control and security.

• Business Intelligence (BI) – Though BI systems and services are widespread, CIOs were mixed on their true efficiency. Some feel that despite sophisticated BI tools and functionality, businesses were gaining minimal strategic value. Most agreed that the intelligence gained from BI solutions needed to be more strategically integrated into IT and business operations.

Are these topics top of mind within your IT organization or across your network of IT peers? Do you have strong opinions on the changing role of the CIO, the expansion of SaaS or the effectiveness of BI solutions? If so, I invite you to share them with me at anna.frazzetto@harveynash.com. Let’s keep the debate going.

CIOs Speak Out – Insights into the CIO Mind-set

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:45:18 +0000

During the week of September 20th, Harvey Nash and PA Consulting Group went on a road show across the U.S. and conducted three CIO Forums. More than 75 IT leaders joined us in New York, Seattle and Denver to examine critical issues and learn from their peers. Attending each of the events, I heard firsthand what IT leaders are focusing on, striving for and frustrated with at this uniquely challenging time for businesses.

What I noted is that despite the hard times we are slowly leaving behind and the continued bottom-line pressure, today’s CIOs have a very clear sense of what’s working, what their focus is and how they are going to get there. There was great determination and clarity of purpose in each forum. I would like to thank the CIO panel leaders and participants who joined us and whose names are listed below. Your experience and perspective made the Forums dynamic, thoughtful and well worth attending.

I would also like to share some of the more lively arguments and ideas discussed during the event as a way to further the discussion on topics that are shaping today’s IT organizations and their agendas. Was the recession good? Can you continue to do more with less or has something got to give? Has outsourcing peaked? Here’s what CIOs in New York, Seattle and Denver had to say. I welcome your comments on any of these positions and ideas.

Better Post Recession – In several of the forums, IT leaders made the point that despite the turmoil of the past few years, their IT organizations are better for having endured this historic recession. Business processes were never more efficient and focus on business goals had never been sharper. Teams are leaner but stronger. The challenge now is to maintain focus and efficiency as budget reigns loosen and more demands from various areas of the business come in after a long dry spell.

Budgets Are Growing – Most IT leaders agreed that the recession required to do more with less but that it cannot be the constant modus operandi. One CIO pointed out that there comes a point when you really can’t do any more and less is just too little. That said, no CIOs at the Forums were clamoring for big budget increases. Instead, most attendees expressed relief to have a little more budget room to strategically tackle IT and business problems.

Outsourcing Has Peaked – To the majority of attendees at the Forums, outsourcing has peaked. That’s not to say that they will use it less, but that they have found the right balance of outsourcing and insourcing for their IT organizations. Will they continue to draw on outsourcing for greater efficiency and skill expansion? Yes. Will they be doing it in large segments and outsource new, bigger parts of their IT operation? Not likely.

IT and the Business Are Integrated – When it comes to the debate over whether IT and the business are well integrated or not, a handful of CIOs had one strong sentiment: enough already! According to several participants, the gap between IT and the business organization is no more different that the general business organization and the finance or legal department. IT is not an island but a functioning unit within the business that does have its own responsibilities and expertise but is still well aligned to business goals.

As we discussed these and many other topics, it struck me how true it is that IT is no island in today’s business world. The IT leaders at this event were focused first on business issues—such as increasing competitive advantage and better engaging and supporting customers. It was a reminder of the kind of steady concentration we all need to help accelerate a slow recovery and put businesses everywhere into in a more competitive, innovative position.

Once again I’d like to thank the CIO Forum Panelists and I invite you to contact me at anna.frazzetto@harveynash.com for more details on the Forums we hosted or to learn more about the 2010 Harvey Nash CIO Survey.

New York Panelists
• Alfonso Perez, Head of Technology, Beezag.com
• Jonathan Manley, CIO, Estee Lauder
• Larry Bonfante, CIO, United States Tennis Association
• Mark Mooney, CIO & SVP, McGraw-Hill

Denver Panelists
• Michael Kolbrener, CIO, Aurora Bank FSB
• Molly Rauzi, CIO, City and County of Denver
• Neil Holsteen, CIO, Janus
• Rod Hardin, Director, IT, Colorado Housing and Finance Authority
• Tom Wind, Former CEO, Lehman – Mortgage Cap Division

Seattle Panelists
• Edmond Mesrobian, CTO, RealNetworks
• Rob Strickland, Board Director/President, Atigeo
• Scott Porad, CTO, Cheezburger Network

Using Agile On- and Offshore: It Can Work!

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:30:15 +0000

On June 22, Harvey Nash hosted one of our most popular Webinar's to date. More than 170 busy IT leaders, managers and developers joined online as we presented the challenges and opportunities of using Agile to develop software with blended onshore and offshore teams.

Agile has a strong and growing fan base in the software development sector — the attendance levels of this summertime Webinar alone are clear evidence of that fact. However, for Agile to succeed as a software methodology, rigorous dedication to the collaborative, iterative approach is required. Let's face it, you can't dabble in software development and deliver a topnotch application. The same goes for the development methodology: you can't dabble in any methodology — be it Agile, incremental or waterfall — and succeed in delivering well-crafted software and solutions.

So what’s an IT organization with software development teams spread across multiple countries and time zones to do? Can Agile be successfully implemented when teams are both on- and offshore? As We explained in our Webinar, it can be done with smart compromises, excellent communication and outstanding ScrumMasters. To give you a taste of the insights he shared, I have listed just five of the many best practices discussed that day. I think this sampling provides good examples of the ways Agile must be adjusted to serve the needs of blended teams.

Agile Best Practices for a Blended Environment
Have ScrumMasters in Offshore Locations. Some organizations make the mistake of having only an onshore ScrumMaster and leveraging a project or site manager in their offshore location(s). Agile can only succeed among blended teams if all teams are being held to Agile standards. That requires a ScrumMaster in each location, leading teams, upholding the integrity of Scrum meetings, managing to burn down charts and teaching the methodology to new staff members. A project manager may be excellent at his or her job, but if he/she is not an Agile expert able to manage sprints and run Scrum meetings, onshore and offshore teams will not be working in synch and Agile will not succeed.

Use Externally Visible Tracking Tools. There are many good tracking tools businesses can leverage to give Agile teams direct insight into what is happening in the development process. In a blended development environment, these tools take on even greater importance as they serve as a primary way for development and business team members in separate locations to track progress of their peers and to understand their role in the greater project. Making these tools externally visible is an important part of upholding Agile's tenants of collaboration and transparency.

Keep Scrum Meetings Short & Local. Rather than trying to manage daily Scrum meetings across an on- and offshore team members and many time zones, keep them very short (15 minutes) and local. Each geography should manage its own 15-minute Scrum meeting and those results should be shared in a Scrum of Scrum meeting between ScrumMasters from each geography. Blending these meetings across locations is too chaotic, increases their length and becomes a serious drain on productivity.

Create a Message Board. By using a company intranet or open source tool, build a discussion board where all team members across locations can share issues and how they were addressed. This allows teams to maintain the collaborative spirit of Agile outside of Scrum meetings and despite time zone challenges. It also gives ScrumMasters a place to post issues identified in local Scrum meetings and share their resolution with the broad team to increase knowledge and performance across the entire organization.

Give Global Task Management to One Onshore ScrumMaster. Whether you have one or 10 onshore ScrumMasters, one of them must be the top ScrumMaster who manages all tasks and is able to report issues across the entire development organization and up to business stakeholders and leaders. Proximity to the business and business leaders make onshore ScrumMasters a better choice for this role as they can quickly gain business input on issues and questions and find out whether or not the solutions shaping up to meet business needs.

Remember, these are just five of many of the good lessons Harvey Nash shared for leveraging Agile in a blended development environment. We invite you to learn more through our Podcast and by reading the post-Webinar Q&A, which we have transcribed below.

Harvey Nash June Webinar Q&A Transcript

On June 22, 2010, Harvey Nash's VP of Technology Solutions, Anna Frazzetto hosted a Webinar for CIOs, CTOs and senior leaders of IT. During their presentation Anna discussed Agile software development and ways to successfully adapt the methodologies for offshore success. The presentation concluded with a Q&A session, where Anna was joined by Harvey Nash's IT Services Group Practice Director Eric Johnson. The following is a transcript of the session.

Q: Are there productivity metrics around the value of extreme pair programming?

A: That’s a very good question, and again it comes back to the idea of this being almost a religious argument in several ways.

There are metrics and they will be colored by whatever direction that the person giving the metrics wants them to come from. I've seen metrics that paint a very rosy picture, and I've seen metrics that paint a very dire picture. It kind of depends on who you believe.

Pair programming certainly does work, it works in certain environments, but it's very difficult for a lot of teams to wrap their head around the proper way to do it, so very often you’ll get back metrics that it fails, because team members don't understand it or they're not entirely bought into it.

In situations where team members are bought in, the kind of things that you see from pair programming is a significant decrease in bugs. If both people that are working on a particular piece are truly watching for what the other person is doing, and they’re truly talking amongst themselves as they’re working, the person that's coding will be kept honest by the other person that's looking over their shoulder.

So, again, it just kind of opens up discussion between team members. But as far as the kind of metrics that are available, they are available, but they’re very swayed according to who’s giving them.

I'm thinking of one particular study where I've seen a relative decrease in defects of something on the order of 35-40% of defects being introduced during the coding phase that are detected in initial system tests. But you've got to basically trade that off against your overall productivity for two developers versus one developer, and defect rates for a single developer.

Q: Would you recommend that offshore teams have their own product owners?

A: I would say no. In general, the role of the product owner, in my experience, is to prioritize the items of value to the business, in developing a release plan that meets a set of objectives for a product — the features and functionalities that need to be included in a release. At least in our business, the stakeholders are onshore, and you need the product owner to be close to the business and working with those folks hand-in-hand, and then able to communicate decisions down to ScrumMasters onshore and offshore. It is important for the offshore ScrumMaster to understand what the priorities are and have a very clear alignment in priorities with the onshore product owner.

Q? One of the things that we struggle with is overall transparency between teams and I'm wondering if you have any generalized tips to get teams to be as open as possible with one another.

A: One of the biggest pieces, if you're working with onshore teams, is physical proximity. Another piece is, a lot of times it's useful for various team members to sit in on one another's Scrums. Another idea is for dashboards to be written that merge together the work that's being done between different teams. Those are very specific things, but what I've also seen work, is if there are general meetings within the entire group that give some kind of an update as to what team members are doing, and what the different groups are doing amongst themselves.

Now, what I will say, a big piece of transparency is going to be watching for what one team is doing that could possibly affect another team. When you're doing that sort of thing, it's very important that at the very least different ScrumMasters sit in on one another's Scrums. The ScrumMaster needs to be responsible for being able to see what works and what another team is doing that could possibly affect their team. This works also with offshore groups.

So if you are holding a Scrum yourself, it’s important that the offshore ScrumMaster be wrapped into that if there's any chance that if could impact what they’re doing.

With distributed teams, one practice I've found to be useful is, out of each Scrum meeting, the ScrumMaster, or whoever is designated to take notes basically should be compiling the answers to the questions "What did you do yesterday?" "What are you working on today?" "Where are you having issues?" and "Where do you need some help?" In compiling those notes and posting them in a common place — a discussion board, there's open source software, TFS implements one — that can be helpful. Just post ad hoc or in-the-flow question and answers that need to be discussed between onshore and offshore locations so that everybody can see the questions that are coming up and everybody can see the answers. I find that helps a bit with transparency.

Even something as simple as having an intranet site that team members can go to with message boards or that opens up to dashboards that show even team successes or certain team challenges that are going on, that can be useful as well.

Q: How do you recommend handling bugs during a sprint? Enter every single bug as a task?

A: I've seen it done both ways. In general I think that it works better if there is a task that gets opened for each bug. Some teams will create just kind of a single bug-fixing task that’s a single multi-day task that gets burned up as team members work on bugs. That works OK, but I find that doing it that way is a little bit inexact and at the end, you want to get as solid a set of metrics around how much time you're spending on bug fixing as possible. You can really only get that in my opinion, if you open up a separate task for each bug.

Q: In terms of sprint cycles, how do you determine how long the sprint cycle should be, and what are the key factors in determining that?

A: That's something that I see plague quite a few companies. It can be a little bit confusing to figure out. What will drive that will be the business itself. They will tell you, first off, how often they can accept new releases and also how often they want to accept new releases. I will say that in general, sprints should be kept to somewhere less than a month. Anything above that, I've found, tends to cause the team to wander off a little bit too far. You want to have releases happen often enough that you can get fairly continuous feedback from the business and from the people accepting the software, to tell you whether or not the software is meeting their needs. You don't want to make it too short, because it can be difficult to put in all the things that you need to do.

For example, one-week sprints, from what I've seen, have never worked because it's almost impossible to fit in the initial level of documentation, the actual coding and the bug fixing, and the release, all within a single week. What I've seen is teams generally try doing either two or three-week sprints at the beginning and adjusting that as necessary.

One of the key factors behind Agile being as open as it is is the fact that you can change things to suit what your company is doing. So, if you try three weeks and you find that it's not working for you, adjust it in or out as necessary.

Q: I'm curious about your suggestion on running Scrum meetings. We do have a team onshore and a team offshore, and with the time difference it's been very cumbersome. Do you have any suggestions of what you've seen work?

A: I've actually run into that problem several times. What I've often seen happen is that the teams will hold their own separate Scrum meetings, and the ScrumMasters are the ones that end up getting together and so in the environment that I saw, the teams were roughly 12 hours apart from each other. So what would happen is that the ScrumMasters would get together at 6 a.m./p.m. to talk out what the issues were between their two teams. So, on each team, one member ends up having to do some amount of shifting, it's generally not that bad to be able to meet with the other one.

I've seen teams run Scrum meetings over e-mail, but that generally isn't as good because the entire idea is to foster communication. So you want your ScrumMasters to be talking between themselves about things that have come up or things that could be possible problems in the future.

Generally, I would almost never recommend in situations like that, having the entire Scrum team get together because it’s just too demanding on the team members. The whole idea is to get rid of meetings and to remove impediments from the team members who are actually doing the development work.

Q: One of the problems that I think most of us face in the software industry is, the fact is that, whether you’re in a service industry or product — and especially in product — you have to make six-month, nine-month, long-term promises to customers, to analysts, to board members. That's how you do your business, and customers are not happy for you to say, you know, "In three weeks we’ll tell you what we’ve happened to achieved." Scrum is incredibly more powerful than Waterfall. Scrum actually works. But it has to exist in a container where you make long-term promises and I heard nothing in this seminar and I see nothing in the literature that talks about how to resolve that conflict. I don’t see how we can be frankly talking in good faith about Agile if we don't address the fact that our businesses do depend on long-term promises.

A: Sure, and that's very true. You often won't see a lot of that within the Agile documentation because that's not what Agile focuses on.

It's very true that within the day-to-day business world, you've got to make long-term promises. So, what I've seen happen within that is you’ll make promises that are based on, as you were saying, three- or six-month engagements, and then work within that to produce whatever you need to produce within the two-week sprints that you're putting out. You've got pinned down the long-term goal, and then the sprints themselves are the ones where it gets adjusted day in and day out.

If the teams are being forced to pin down exactly what they're going to put out with each two-week sprint, that's going to make Agile very difficult to implement. If you can work to just pin down an end point that's out several months, you can do that with the idea of shifting between the individual releases. I've seen that work. What generally will happen is the last few sprints end up being a little more stressful in that situation because people realize that there may have been things that got pushed out that they didn't work in. So team members may end up doing a little bit more overtime in the end. You may end up seeing the burndown charts looking a little bit off. But it really can be done, and it ends up being better than a Waterfall methodology. It doesn't end up being true Agile, because, as you mentioned, you're not allowing teams to be able to put out what they need to. But, it can be done, and it does work better.

The thing that always gets brought up is the fact that if you were doing Waterfall, at the end of the six months, you’d be going back to them saying, "Here's what we weren't able to do" anyway. There's no methodology where you would at the end of six months go back and say "Here's exactly what we gave you." Agile is essentially just trying to get rid of as many of those "Hey, we weren't able to do that" as possible.

Comment from Webinar Attendee: Yeah, that's true. One of the things I say to my own crew is that Agile just makes us admit sooner the bad news we didn't want to have later, and that in fact is a positive thing because it gives us more options when there's still time to respond. The fact is that neither customers nor the most senior layers of management tend to appreciate that.

Agile just brings those kinds of things up earlier, that's exactly true.

Ways IT Can Contribute to Business Efficiency and Growth

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:55:27 +0000

Tips from New Jersey CIOs

On June 29, Harvey Nash hosted its 2010 CIO Survey U.S. Launch Event in Princeton, New Jersey. While the Harvey Nash CIO Survey is now more than a decade old, this is the first year we have been able to simultaneously analyze both a global perspective (2,500 IT leaders from around the world completed the survey) and a local market perspective (more than 75 New Jersey-based CIOs completed the survey). It’s not every day that you have the chance to explore global IT issues while hearing firsthand how they are currently affecting IT organizations — in this case IT organizations in New Jersey.

We were grateful to have the insights of three thoughtful IT executive panelists who helped articulate the challenges today’s CIOs are up against:

Bill Leo, former CIO for Oliver Wyman, a subsidiary of Marsh McLennan
Jon Harding, CIO from Conair
John Repko, Corporate SVP and CIO at Covance

The event served as a reminder that businesses, and therefore IT organizations, are still in a cautious, post-recession cost-cutting mode. Only 15% of CIOs in New Jersey saw budget increases the year prior compared to 27% of CIOs nationally. And despite the fact that one attendee reported a 24% budget increase over the year prior, attendees were united in their mission — increase efficiency while helping the business grow and succeed through IT.

Advice from the Frontlines
Attendees and panelists at the event shared many of the best practices they are employing as they strive to foster business success and IT innovation in these still uncertain times. I am happy to pass these CIO-to-CIO tips along and expand the learning to our national and global network of IT leaders and innovators.

Be Creative in Your Budget Allocation — If your budget is limited, like so many New Jersey budgets are, get creative in how you put the funds you do have to work. Strategic outsourcing and offshoring was one option shared by many New Jersey IT leaders. So was partnering with internal business groups (Finance, Marketing, Procurement, etc.) to join budgets and expand the scope of solutions.

Focus on Business Needs — Many New Jersey IT leaders emphasized the extreme importance of contributing to business goals, growth and success. It is critical for IT to go out into the business to find out where technology can fuel competitive advantage and business growth. Rather than waiting for the business to come to IT with needs, New Jersey IT leaders are focused on being proactive partners who are heavily engaged in learning and supporting critical business needs.

Use Gap Analysis Before Outsourcing — One piece of advice focused on outsourcing was to make sure the business conducts a strategic gap analysis before engaging an outsourcing provider. If the business and IT organization do not have a clear grasp of what the internal performance level is for a task or process, it will be very hard to measure the performance of an outsourcing provider. Good gap analysis allows a business to establish informed, realistic SLAs and metrics.

Secure Senior Sponsorship — In times where budgets are tight and every penny counts, senior-level sponsorship for IT projects (be they outsourcing initiatives or any sort of IT project) is more important than ever. By bringing business and executive leaders into project planning and winning their backing, CIOs can expect greater companywide support and possibly more budget, should it become necessary down the road.

As these insights demonstrate, the importance of ensuring that IT is delivering business value was a top-of-mind issue for New Jersey IT leaders. For me, it’s a valuable reminder of how prioritizing IT projects and teams around business needs is a hallmark of successful IT organizations.

In the months ahead, we will be hosting several CIO events in geographies across the U.S. I look forward to sharing more insights with you from CIO peers around the country and invite you to share your IT leadership advice and questions with me. Also, be sure to check out our CIO Survey microsite for more information about the 2010 CIO Survey and the events we are having around the U.S.:

September 20, 2010 — New York, NY
September 21, 2010 — Denver, CO
September 22, 2010 — Seattle, WA
September 23, 2010 — Silicon Valley, CA