Tag-team of HP workshops provides essential path to IT maturity assessment and a data center transformation journey

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Learn more. Sponsor: HP.

The pace of change, degrees of complexity, and explosion around the uses of new devices and increased data sources are placing new requirements and new strain on older data centers. Research shows that a majority of enterprises are either planning for or are in the midst of data center improvements and expansions.

Deciding how to best improve your data center is not an easy equation. Those building new data centers now need to contend with architectural shifts to cloud and hybrid infrastructure models, as well as the need to cut total cost and reduce energy consumption for the long-term.

An added requirement for new data centers is to satisfy the needs of both short-and long-term goals, by effectively jibing the need for agility now with facility and staffing decisions that may well impact the company for 20 years or more.

All these fast-moving trends are accelerating the need for successful data center transformation (DCT). As a means to beginning such a DCT journey, to identify some proven ways that explore how to do DCT effectively, BriefingsDirect now examines two ongoing HP workshops as a means of accurately assessing a company’s maturity in order to know then how to best begin and take a DCT journey.

Join BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, as he interviews three HP experts on the Data Center Transformation Experience Workshop and the Converged Infrastructure Maturity Model Workshop: Helen Tang, Solutions Lead for Data Center Transformation and Converged Infrastructure Solution for HP Enterprise Business; Mark Edelmann, Senior Program Manager at HP’s Enterprise Storage, Servers, and Network Business Unit, and Mark Grindle, Business Consultant for Data Center Infrastructure Services and Technology Services in HP Enterprise Business.

Here are some excerpts:

Tang: What the world is demanding is essentially instant gratification. You can call it sort of an instant-on world, a world where everything is mobile, everybody is connected, interactive, and things just move very immediately and fluidly. All your customers and constituents want their need satisfied today, in an instant, as opposed to days or weeks. So, it takes a special kind of enterprise to do just that and compete in this world.

You need to be able to serve all of these customers, employees, partners, and citizens -- 0r if you happen to be a government organization -- with whatever they want or need instantly, any point, any time, through any channel. This is what HP is calling the Instant-On Enterprise, and we think it's the new imperative.

There are a lot of difficulties for technology, but also if you look at the big picture, we live in extremely exciting times. We have rapidly changing and evolving business models, new technology advances like cloud, and a rapidly changing workforce.

Architecture shifts

A Gartner stat: In the next four years, 43 percent of CIOs will have the majority of their IT infrastructure and organizations and apps running in the cloud or in some sort of software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology. Most organizations aren’t equipped to deal with that.

There’s an explosion of devices being used: smartphones, laptops, TouchPads, PDAs. According to the Gartner Group, by 2014, that’s less than three years, 90 percent of organizations will need to support their corporate applications on personal devices. Is IT ready for that? Not by a long shot today.

Last but not least, look at your workforce. In less than 10 years about half of the workforce will be millennials, which is defined as people born between the year of 1981 and 2000 -- the first generation to come of age in the new millennium. This is a Forrester statistic.

This younger generation grew up with the Internet. They work and communicate very differently from the workforce of today and they will be a main constituency for IT in less than 10 years. That’s going to force all of us to adjust to different types of support expectations, different user experiences, and governance.

Maturity is a psychological term used to indicate how a person responds to the circumstances or environment in an appropriate and adaptive manner.

Your organization is demanding ever more from IT -- more innovation, faster time to market, more services -- but at the same time, you're being constrained by older architectures, inflexible siloed infrastructure that you may have inherited over the years. How do you deliver this new level of agility and be able to meet those needs?

You have to take a transformational approach and look at things like converged infrastructure as a foundation for moving your current data center to a future state that’s able to support all of this growth, with virtualized resource pools, integrated automated processes across the data center, with an energy-efficient future-proofed physical data center design, that’s able to flex and meet these needs.

Edelmann: The IT Maturity Model approach consists of an overall assessment, and it’s a very objective assessment. It’s based on roughly 60 questions that we go through to specifically address the various dimensions, or as we call them domains, of the maturity of an IT infrastructure.

We've found it’s much more valuable to sit down face to face with the customer and go through this, and it actually requires an investment of time. There’s a lot of background information that has to be gathered and so forth, and it seems best if we're face to face as we go through this and have the discussion that’s necessary to really tease out all the details.

We apply these questions in a consultative, interactive way with our customers, because some of the discussions can get very, very detailed. Asking these questions of many of our customers that have participated in these workshops has been a new experience. We're going to ask our customers things that they probably never thought about before or have only thought of in a very brief sort of a way, but it’s important to get to the bottom of some of these issues.

From that, as we go through this, through some very detailed analysis that we have done over the years, we're able to position the customer’s infrastructure in one of five stages:

• The first stage, which is where most people start, is in Stage 1; we call that Compartmentalized and Legacy, which is rather essentially the least-mature stage.
• From there we move to Stage 2, which we call Standardized.
• Stage 3 then is Optimized.
• Stage 4 gets us into Automated and a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and,
  
• Stage 5 is more or less IT utopia necessary to become the Instant-On Enterprise that Helen just talked about. We called that Adaptively Sourced Infrastructure.

We evaluate each domain under several conditions against those five stages and we essentially wind up with a baseline of where the customer stands.

As a result of examining the infrastructure’s maturity along these lines, we're able to establish a baseline of the maturity of the infrastructure today. And, in the course of interviewing and discussing this with our customers, we also identify where they would like to be in terms of their maturity in the future. From that, we can put together a plan of how to get from here to there.

Even further behind

Most of our customers find out that they are a lot further behind than they thought they were. It's not necessarily due to any fault on their part, but possibly a result of aging infrastructure, because of the economic situation we have been in, disparate siloed infrastructure as a result of building out application focused stacks, which was kind of the way we approached IT historically.

Also, the impact of mergers and acquisitions has kind of forced some customers to put together different technologies, different platforms, using different vendors and so forth. Rationalizing all that can leave them in kind of a disparate sort of a state. So, they usually find that they are a lot further behind than they thought.

We've been doing this for a while and we've done a lot of examinations across the world and across various industries. We have a database of roughly 1,400 customers that we then compare the customer’s maturity to. So, the customer can determine where they stand with regards to the overall norms of IT infrastructures.

It's a difficult and a long journey to get to that level, but there are ways to get there, and that’s what we're here for.

We can also illustrate to the customer what the best-in-class behavior is, because right now, there aren’t a whole lot of infrastructures that are up at Stage 5. It's a difficult and a long journey to get to that level, but there are ways to get there, and that’s what we're here for.

Grindle: This process can also be structured if you do the Data Center Transformation Experience Workshop first and then follow that up with the Maturity Model.

The DCT workshop was originally designed and set up based on HP IT’s internal transformation. It's not theoretical and it's also extremely interactive. So, it's based on exactly what we went through to accomplish all the great things that we did, and we've continued to refine and improve it based on our customer experiences too. So, it's a great representation of our internal experiences as well as what customers and other businesses and other industries are going through.

During the process, we walk the customer through everything that we've learned, a lot of best practices, a lot of our experiences, and it's extremely interactive.

Then, as we go through each one of our dimensions, or each one of the panels, we probe with the customer to discuss what resonates well with them, where they think they are in certain areas, and it's a very interactive dialog of what we've learned and know and what they've learned and know and what they want to achieve.

The outcome is typically a very robust document and conversation around how the customer should proceed with their own transformation, how they should sequence it, what their priorities are, and true deliverables -- here are the tasks you need to take on and accomplish -- either with our help or on their own.

It’s a great way of developing a roadmap, a strategy, and an initial plan on how to go forward with their own transformational efforts.

Designed around strategy

It's definitely designed around strategy. Most people, when they look at transformation, think about their data centers, their servers, and somewhat their storage, but really the goal of our workshop is to help them understand, in a much more holistic view, that it's not just about that typical infrastructure. It has to do with program management, governance, the dramatic organizational change that goes on if you go through transformation.

Applications, the data, the business outcomes, all of this has to be tied in to to ensure that, at end of the day, you've implemented a very cost-effective solution that meets the needs of the businesses. That really is a game-changing type of move by your organization.

The financial elements are absolutely critical. There are very few businesses today that aren’t extremely focused on their bottom line and how they can reduce the operational cost.

Certainly, from the HP IT experience, we can show, although it's not a trivial investment to make this all happen, the returns are not only normally a lot larger than your investment, but they are year-over-year savings. That’s money that typically can be redeployed to areas that really impact the business, whether it's through manufacturing, marketing, or sales. This is money that can be reinvested in the business, and allowed to help grow the areas that really will have future impact on the growth of the business, while reducing the cost of your data centers and your operation.

Even though you're driving down the cost of your IT organization, you're not giving up quality and you are not giving up technology.

Interestingly enough, what we find is that, even though you're driving down the cost of your IT organization, you're not giving up quality and you are not giving up technology. You actually have to implement new technologies and robust technologies to help bring your cost down. Things like automations, operational efficiency, ITIL processes all help you drive the saving while you are allowed to upgrade your systems and your environments to current technologies and new technologies.

And, while we're on the topic of cost savings, a lot of times when we are talking to customer about transformation, it's normally being driven by some critical IT imperative, like they're out of space in their data center and they're about to look at building out a new data center or perhaps a obtaining a collocation site. A lot of times we find that we sit down and talk with them about how they can modernize their application, tier their storage, go with higher density equipment, virtualize their servers, they actually can free up space and avoid that major investment of the new data center.

I am working with a company right now that was looking at going to eight data centers and by implementing a lot of these new technologies -- higher virtualization rates, improvements to their applications, and better management of their data on their storage. We're trying to get them down into two data centers. So right there is a substantial change. And, that’s just an example of things that I have seen time and time again, as we've done these workshops.

It's all about walking through the problems and the issues that are at hand and figuring out what the right answers are to meet their needs, while trying to control the expense.

Tang: Both workshops are great. It's not really an either/or. I would start with the Data Center Transformation Experience Workshop, because that sets the scene in the background of how I start to approach this problem. What do I think about? What are the key areas of consideration? And, it maps out a strategy on a grander scale.

The CI Maturity Model Assessment specifically gets into when you think about implementation. Let's dive in and really drill deep into your current state versus future state when it comes to the five domains.

You say, "Okay, what would be the first step?" A lot of times, it makes sense to standardize, consolidate. Then, what is the next step? Sometimes that’s modernizing applications, and so on. That’s one approach we have seen.

In the more transformational approach, whereby you have the highest level of buy-in, all the way up to the CIO and sometimes CFO and CEO, you lay out an actual 12-18 month plan. HP can help with that, and you start executing toward that.

A lot of organizations don’t have the luxury of going top-down and doing the big bang transformation. Then, we take that more project-based approach. It still helps them a lot going through these two workshops. They get to see the big picture and all the things that are possible, but they start picking low-hanging fruit that would yield the highest ROI and solve their current pain points.

A lot of organizations don’t have the luxury of going top-down and doing the big bang transformation.

Edelmann: Often, the journey is a little bit different from one customer to the other.

The Maturity Model Workshop you might think of as being at a little lower level than the Data Center Transformation Workshop. As a result of the Maturity Model Workshops, we produce a report for the customer to understand -- A is where I'm at, and B is where I'm headed. Those gaps that are identified during the course of the assessment help lead a customer to project definitions.

In some cases, there may be some obvious things that can be done in the short term and capture some of that low-hanging fruit -- perhaps just implement a blade system or something like that -- that will give them immediate results on the path to higher maturity in their transformation journey.

Multiple starting points

There are multiple starting points and consequently multiple exit points from the Maturity Model Workshop as well.

Grindle: The result of the workshop is really a sequence series of events that the customer should follow up on next. Those can be very specific items, like gather your physical server inventories so that that can be analyzed, to other items such as run a Maturity Model Workshop, so that you can understand where you are in each of the areas and what the gaps are, based on where you really want to be.

It’s always interesting when we do these workshops, because we pull together a group of senior executives covering all the domains that I've talked about -- program management, governance -- their infrastructure people, their technology people, their applications people, and their operational people, and it’s always funny, the different results we see.

I had one customer that said to me that the deliverable we gave them out in the workshop was almost anti-climatic versus what they learned in the workshop. What they had learned during this one was that many people had different views of where the organization was and where it wanted to go.

It’s a great learning collaborative event that brings together a lot of the thoughts on where they want to head.

Each was correct from their particular discipline, but from an overarching view of what are we trying to do for the business, they weren’t all together on all of that. It’s funny how we see those lights go on as people are talking and you get these interesting dialogs of people saying, "Well, this is how that is." And someone else going, "No, it’s not. It’s really like this."

It’s amazing the collaboration that goes on just among the customer representatives above and beyond the customer with HP. It’s a great learning collaborative event that brings together a lot of the thoughts on where they want to head. It ends up motivating people to start taking those next actions and figuring out how they can move their data centers and their IT environment in a much more logical, and in most cases, aggressive fashion than they were originally thinking.

The place to learn more would be hp.com/go/dct. To learn more about the CI Maturity Model, you can go to hp.com/go/cimm.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Learn more. Sponsor: HP.

You may also be interested in:

• HP's Instant-On Enterprise Initiative Takes Aim at Shifting Needs of Business and Government
• Hastening Trends Around Cloud, Mobile Push Application Transformation as Priority, says Research
• Well-Planned Data Center Transformation Effort Delivers IT Efficiency Paybacks, Green IT Boost for Valero Energy
• Data Center Transformation Includes More than New Systems; There's Also Secure Data Removal, Recycling, Server Disposal

HP application transformation news responds to rapid shifts in how apps are managed, hosted, perceived

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: HP.

HP made a series of announcements April 12 on application transformation. In advance of the news, BriefingsDirect met with an HP application transformation expert to dig into some new research and to better understand HP’s response to the fast-moving trends supporting the rationale for application transformation.

These same trends are pointing to a deeper payoff from the well-managed embrace of hybrid computing models. But applications also have to be delivered more securely, even in these hybrid implementations, while the new delivery models also mean adding automation and governance features across the entire service lifecycle. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

The new research describes how top level enterprise executives are reacting to these fast-moving trends, buffeting nearly all global businesses. HP has delivered some new products and services designed to help companies move safely, yet directly, to transform their applications, improve their hosting options, and free up resources that can be used to provide the innovation needed to support better business processes. It's and the support of business processes, after all, that’s the real goal of these modernization activities.

And it was on this note that we welcomed Paul Evans, Worldwide Lead for Application Transformation for HP Enterprise Business. The discussion was moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Evans: We see three mega trends, and we validate this with customers. We haven’t just made these up. And, the three mega trends really come down to: One, people are evolving their business models.

When you get recessionary periods, hyper growth in particular markets, and the injection of new technologies, people look at how to make money and how to save money. They look at their business model and see they can make a change there. Of course, if you change the business model, then that means you change the business process. If you change the business process, the digital expression of a business process is an application. So, people need to change their apps.

So, you change your model and the process and need to change your app, because for most people now, the app is pretty much the digital expression of their business. For many of us, when we go online or do some form of transaction, at the end of the day, it’s an app that is authenticating this, validating the transaction, making the transaction, whatever it may be. That’s one mega trend we see happening.

The second mega trend is that technology innovation just keeps on going, whether it’s the infusion of cloud architectures that people are looking towards, or the whole mega trend around mobile connectivity. That is a game changer in their mind. It’s a radical transformational time for applications, as they accommodate and exploit those technologies.

No precedent

Some people just accommodate them and say, "Okay, we can do things better, maybe less expensively. We can be more innovative, more flexible in this way, or maybe we can do things differently. Maybe we can do things like we have never ever done them before."

I don’t believe there's any precedent for the mobile evolution that we're going to see coming towards us through smartphones, pads, or whatever it may be.

We can't look back over our shoulder and say, "What we did five years ago we'll just do that again, and it will be wonderful." I don’t think there is any precedent here. There is an opportunity for people to do some really innovative things.

Third, it’s the whole nature of the changing workforce. The expectations of people that are joining with the community every day on the net is very different from the people at the other end of the spectrum and their experience.

When we look at young people joining the net and when we look at young people coming into the workforce, their expectation is very high in terms of what they want, what they need, and what they would like to achieve. This is in terms of the tools they utilize, whether it’s social networking, whether it’s just the fact that their view is that they are sort of always on the network, whether it’s through their mobile or whether it’s through their notebook or whatever device they use.

When we look at young people joining the net and when we look at young people coming into the workforce, their expectation is very high.

They're always on, and therefore the expectations of those people who are going to be with us now for the next 60-70 years is starting from a position of, we have always known the web, we have always liked the web, we have always had the web. So their view is, we just want to see more of it and better. We want to see things as services rather than processes. The expectation of those people is also having a lot of effect. Those three mega trends affect the way that organizations have to respond.

Fundamental audience

So we actually went to the C-suite -- the CEO, CIO, and CFO -- and just tried to understand from them how they see things, too, because they are clearly a fundamental audience that we need to work with and understand their opinions and how their opinions have changed.

Two or three years ago, during the heavy economic times, cost was all it was all about. Take cost out. Take cost out. Don’t worry about the functionality; I need to take cost out. Now, that’s changed. We've seen, both from the public and the private sector, the view that we've got to be innovative. Innovation is going to be the way we keep ourselves different, keep ourselves alive the way we move forward.

A business requirement is that we need to innovate. If we stand still, we're probably going backwards. I know that sounds ridiculous, but you have do more than just keep up to speed. You've got to accelerate. And, we asked the C-suite if innovation therefore is important.

Some 95 percent of the people we talked to said innovation is key to the success of the organization. As I said, that was both public and private. Of course, the private sector would, but why would the public sector, because they don't have any competition? But, they are serving citizens who have expectations and want the same level of service that we see from a private organization in the public domain.

So, one, the audience said to us that innovation is key. Two, we didn’t see any massive difference between public and private. Then, we asked them how they relate innovation and technology. Basically, they told us that technology is the innovation engine. It is the thing that makes them innovative. They're going to have new products and new services, but whether the technology is involved in the front end or the back end of that, it’s involved. It’s not an administration function anymore. It's the life blood of what they do.

They told us that technology is the innovation engine. It is the thing that makes them innovative.

So it's not HP saying this. It's our customer saying to us that technology would be the engine that they will use to be innovative going forward. We told them, "Well, technology is a big thing. Are are we talking about mobiles? Are we talking about blade servers? What do you see?

Applications and software that derive more flexible process was the number one area where they would invest first, across all the audiences. So, their view was that they know there are lots of pieces for technology, but if they want to innovate, they see that applications and software is the vehicle that gets them there.

Changing definition of 'application'

The whole expectation around the application is changing, and I think it’s irreversible. We're not going to go backward. We're going to keep on driving forward, because people like HP and others see the real value here. We're going to start to have a different approach to apps. It’s going to be more component driven and it’s not going to be monolithic.

We have to go away from the monolithic app anyway, because it’s not a flexible device. It's not something that easily delivers innovation and agility. People have already understood that the cost of maintaining those monolithic, legacy applications is not acceptable.

We're going to get far more sophisticated in how we do those things, and they'll be tailored to this whole notion of context awareness. So, they'll understand where they are and what they're doing. Things will change by virtue of the context of the person, where they're based or what device they are using.

I really get excited by the fact we're just starting down that road, and there is a lot of good stuff more to come.

If you're looking at core applications, something that is fundamental to your business, they're not so easy to just move around.

You can look at an on-premise supply, you can look at off-premise, you can look at outsourcing or out-tasking, or you can look to the cloud. There are a lot more choices available to people who maybe could lower the cost, and that has a direct impact on the bottom line.

But, if you're looking at core applications, something that is fundamental to your business, they're not so easy to just move around. The CIO looks at those and say, "I’ve got this massive investment. What do I do?" Then, he swings around and sees the world of cloud and mobile heading towards them and says, "Now I'm challenged, because the CFO or CEO is telling me I need performance improvement, if I need to get into these new markets whatever it maybe."

At the same time, they needs to cut cost, be really innovative, and explore all these new technologies. He wants to understand what he's going to do with the old ones, which may take money and funding to achieve. At the same time, he wants to exploit and be innovative with the new. That’s a very difficult position to sit in the middle of and not feel the stretches and strains.

We sit with the CEOs on their side of the table and try and understand the balance of what business is looking to achieve, whether that would be improvement in product delivery or marketing and customer satisfaction. The things that people look to a technology group for and say, "Our website experience is losing its market share. Do something about it," that’s in the CIO’s regime. He looks around the other way and says, "But, I have got all these line of business guys that also want me to keep on making product or making whatever and I need to understand what I do with legacy."

So, we sit on their side of the table and say let's make a list, let's prioritize, let's understand some of the fundamentals of good business and your technology and come up with a list of actionable items. You got to have a plan that is not 12 months, because this is not a 12-month thing.

Building for the future

Anyone who's been keeping their eyes on HP for a while would have seen some significant investments, especially in the software area,, and this preceded the research where customers are telling us that apps and software are pretty important.

The investments in companies like ArcSight and Fortify have been there because, as they say in ice hockey terms, we're trying to predict where the puck is going to go, and we're trying to move toward where the puck will be, as opposed to where it is now.

We've been investing in acquisitions, but also investing in internal R&D, looking at the customer’s environment to see what things are really top of mind.

We've been investing in acquisitions, but also investing in internal R&D, looking at the customer’s environment to see what things are really top of mind. Effectively, we know this change is irreversible. The technology industry, whether you like it or not, never goes backward.

As I heard on a television program, we are compelled to travel into the future. It’s not being corny. That’s what we're doing. We're looking at this, so the new range of products and services that we're bringing out are around several of those core areas.

One, is that people need to get a real good handle on what they've got. A lot of CIOs we meet and a lot of people we talk to the IT function will openly admit that they have a no clear idea what their portfolio looks like. They don’t know how much it’s costing them. They don’t know what the components are. They don’t know how well they're aligned for the business.

They don’t know what sort of technology underpinnings they've got and what sort of security level they're implementing. That sounds like a pretty terrible picture, but unfortunately it’s pretty much reality. There are definite clients we meet who do know, but they're pretty rare.

So you’ve to get your head around that first, because if you don't know what you’ve got, then how the hell can you move forward? So, we've invested a lot in Application Portfolio Management, a new software product, combined that with a whole portfolio of services to exploit it, which really gives people a very rich graphical environment and the ability to understand the portfolio and make decisions.

This whole notion of where we've been in the past -- service-oriented architecture (SOA) and shared services -- is a real underpinning. Some people think SOA died. SOA did not die. It's actually one of the technological underpinnings for going forward in creating these shared services which we're going to be calling a cloud environment.

We tell people we can help them understand which apps are fit to go to the cloud and should go to the cloud. This is how we get them to the cloud. By the way, we'll also tell you the ones that shouldn't.

We get that question a lot. Of course, when you talk cloud, you invariably get people talking about the biggest excuse not to go to cloud, which is that it's not secure.

Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous people who know their way around certain bolt-ons, and have a way of infiltrating.

As I said, we're into irreversible change. We know there may be challenges, which is why the acquisition of companies like ArcSight and Fortify, and what we have brought out recently with the application securities in the product have really changed the rules on security, not to view this as a bolt on.

Anybody that is familiar with the notion of a stack knows we go from hardware at the bottom to application at the top with all the intermediate layers. We could bolt on a security enhancement to a piece of the stack with the view that we’ll stop you coming in.

Unfortunately, as you are aware, there are unscrupulous people who know their way around certain bolt-ons, and have a way of infiltrating. From reports in the press, it’s very clear about what can happen when they do. We've taken is a totally different approach.

Make security something that is inherent within the whole process. So that once you are through the gatekeeper, you can't just have a lot of fun and games inside the code. Once you are in, you're not going to get very far. Also, monitor this in real-time. Don't make this a static process, make it a dynamic process, so that you can dynamically see vulnerabilities and react to those in real-time.

Hybrid delivery

People are coming to us and saying that they have some productivity applications that maybe they shouldn't be running in an extremely expensive environment. We see a lot of people who run an app on a mainframe. We ask why, and the user responds because they always have. Maybe it's time that it didn’t.

There is a new option, this whole notion of hybrid delivery with the cloud, and looking at different models to deliver things. If you're short of cash and trying to be innovative, why would you want to spend a whole truck of cash on something that you don't need to? Go and spend it on something you should.

We need to help people understand how they can migrate their productivity up. Microsoft Exchange is a good example. Big productivity -- messaging is a productivity. Yes, it helps people do what they do every day.

If I'm running Exchange, I can move this to a private cloud environment, still within my firewall. The biggest challenge everybody faces is . how do you provision for it? How much infrastructure do I need to give people the response they are looking for?

The point is how to separate environments that can smooth those peaks and troughs. We believe exchange services for private cloud is the way to do that.

Now, everyone runs out of processing power and everyone runs out of storage. I do every day, especially storage. But, the point is how to separate environments that can smooth those peaks and troughs. We believe exchange services for private cloud is the way to do that.

The flip side is that people that are using the Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management (CRM) package. Maybe they don’t want to be in the CRM business. They want to build relationships with customers, want to understand who they are and
what they are. Maybe they don’t want to be in the whole provisioning business.

So, what we're offering is what we call Enterprise Cloud Services for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which says we will put this on our service. The customer just buys a service through the net and pays per usage. If they don’t use it, they don’t pay.

We're going to see a lot more of that style of hybrid delivery where you pay per use. What I want, I use, and I pay for. What I don’t want, I put it back. I don’t have to take any responsibility for infrastructure and storage and all the stuff that goes with it. I want to give that responsibility to someone else and get on with my core business.

It’s a SaaS model and other options. There was a model once where everyone was on premises. Then, the whole notion of outsourcing came in, and people looked at that and felt it was pretty good. So, they went to outsourcing.

We believe that this whole notion will be called "hybrid delivery." It will be a mixture of all of them -- on premises, off premised, people running services inside their firewall as private clouds. It’s actually a public provision service where it will be provisioned for them outside their firewall and then they buy what they want.

Also, one of the components of the announcement we are bringing out is what we call Cloud Service Automation, which we're extremely proud of. This is really for the people who want to get a cloud service up and running, want to do it fast, and don’t want to have to spend the next two years playing computer scientist. They want to get up, running, provisioned, and out there.

It just shows the pace of this market. We brought version one of this product out in January. In April, we're bringing out the next version with a significant level of enhancement around provisioning and manageability, and 4000 scripts embedded. So, people can just assemble things.

Back to the question you asked me earlier about the way the apps are going, this is really assembling procedures where the customer wants to do and can through a drag-and-drop environment. Some people view that as nearly impossible.

This is what we call fundamental building blocks of people that are looking to deploy a cloud environment.

Cloud Service Automation runs on the cloud system, which is enabled by BladeSystem Matrix. What that’s doing is provisioning an infrastructure, giving people the choices of network components, upgrading systems, and their virtualization environment. All of this is through drag-and-drop. It's just staring at the screen and saying they want Linux on that, HP-UX on that, Windows on that, and a VMware on that, and then drop it on.

So this is what we call fundamental building blocks of people that are looking to deploy a cloud environment. But there is some real sort of down to earth tactical things you’ve got to think about, too.

Take, for example, the client environment. We’ve talked a lot about the server, but the client world is changing at a high speed by virtue of people’s desire to use devices that are not chained to the desk anymore -- whether that’s more portable, notebook type machines, smartphones, pads or whatever. You’ve also got to take into account the fact that there are a lot of enterprise applications that you still use on traditional desktop PCs. You can't ignore those and should not.

A year after launching, about 13 percent of the Windows XP base moved to Windows Vista. So, the bulk of the market stayed with XP for whatever reason. Now,. they're saying they need to make that move, but some of these desktop apps are pretty sophisticated. This is not just simple productivity stuff. This is a part of the enterprise portfolio. Therefore, they also need to get worried about it big time and fairly quickly.

So what we’ve done for our customers is to look at their volume, their desktop environment, and come up with what apps they've got, what they do, are they useful, do they need all of them, could they get rid of some? The ones they want to move forward, do they need to change? Obviously, there are functional differences between XP and Windows 7.

We know all the gotchas. When you’ve used the special feature inside XP, we know how that will translate to Windows 7.

By virtue of our knowledge and experience we can give you a very good return on your investment because we know all of the differences. We know all the gotchas. When you’ve used the special feature inside XP, we know how that will translate to Windows 7.

We're just trying to help people see that this is really important. We have been sort of screaming and shouting for the last year or two, and we believe that people are really onto this now. HP has a role to play in pointing people in the right direction.

People just need to get to their heads around it, because we appreciate it. There are some big questions to answer. We don’t trivialize this. This is not a game. This is serious. Serious problems need serious people to respond.

A lot of this is at our hp.com/go/applicationtransformation page. There, you can then go off and explore things that will interest you.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: HP.

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Integration needs escalate as enterprises ramp up ESBs, seek to join SaaS and legacy, Forrester survey shows

Some 23 percent of software decision-makers have already implemented enterprise application integration software, and another 19 percent are currently expanding or upgrading their implementation according to new Forrester data examining integration trends.

Integration will remain a high priority in 2011, according to Forrester analyst Ken Vollmer, as virtually all enterprise application delivery projects require significant integration among applications, internal data sources, external trading partners, and more and more frequently, external data resources.

“Enterprises are seeking a lean, mean, and more holistic approach to integration, doing more real-time integration and planning increased use of enterprise service buses (ESBs) and data services platforms,” notes Vollmer.

Enterprises are seeking a lean, mean, and more holistic approach to integration.

In the survey, 58 percent of respondents have adopted ESBs, and another 32 percent are considering adoption. What else will drive integration? The need to integrate on-premises apps with software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps is affecting requirements—31 percent of respondents are planning to adopt SaaS within one year or more, said Vollmer.

The challenge, then, is not just middleware integrations amid a more complex and dynamic environment, but of integrating more types of services and resources from more places by more people. The bottleneck of IT-administered integrations based on installed integration platforms does not seem up to this task. The integration requirements need to shift right along with the elements that support “boundaryless” processes.

Reacting to these trends, Workday recently delivered a set of cloud-based integration capabilities to its partner ecosystem and growing stable of SaaS ERP users. [Disclosure: Workday is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Early advocacy of iPaaS

An early advocate for the "integration as a service" concept, Workday is delivering on that vision in a way that could rapidly broaden its appeal beyond human resources management (HRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) and into more general cloud services. The strong integration capabilities bolsters the appeal of Workday's applications services, draws in more service partners, and sets the stage for providing wider integration capabilities.

While business-to-business integration is a key requirement for how companies support their employees -- with complex interactions across suppliers for payroll, benefits, and recruitment -- the data and access control in human resources systems proves an essential ingredient for making general integrations become more automated and safe. The new cloud integration services and tools allow customers and partners to build, deploy, run and manage custom integrations for the numerous systems and applications.

It's time that agile integration become a feature of more applications, rather than a hand-crafted after-market exercise at the complex database and middleware tiers. And if that can happen quicker and better as a cloud-based iPaaS model, I'm all for it.

You may also be interested in:

• Delivering data analytics through Workday SaaS ERP apps empowers business managers at actual decision points
• Workday Integration Cloud debut raises bar on integration as service, deeply ingrains integration as apps function
  
• CEO interview: Workday's Aneel Bhusri on advancing SaaS and cloud models for improved ERP
• Workday builds out SaaS bellwether for human capital management services and costs control

Proliferating, outmoded applications and data explosion hamper enterprises in innovation, any quick move to cloud computing

A proliferation of on-premises applications, many of them outdated, and the ongoing data explosion are posing serious threats to businesses worldwide, according to a recent survey of companies in Europe and America by Capgemini.

The first annual Application Landscape report found that millions of applications are obsolete and no longer deliver full business value. The result, says Capgemini, is a need to rationalize and retire applications, freeing up valuable resources to drive innovation and future growth, rather than maintain outdated systems.

The sheer number of applications supported – up to 10,000 for global enterprises – combined with an estimated average data growth of five percent per month means applications management is on track to quickly become an issue of real significance. Moreover, as companies move toward the transfer of applications to the cloud, the need for systematic and well-managed application retirement will accelerate.

Outmoded applications

In in-depth interviews with CIOs and IT leaders in the US and Europe, Capgemini found that:

• Some 85 percent say their application portfolios are in need of rationalization
• Almost 60 percent of enterprise companies say they currently support "more" or "far more" applications than are necessary to run their business
  
• Only 4 percent say that every IT system they use is considered to be business critical
  
• Half agree that up to 50 percent of their application portfolio needs to be retired
  
• Another 61 percent say they keep all data beyond its expiration date "just in case"
  
• Also, 56 percent of large companies and enterprises say that half or more of their applications are custom-built, increasing the technical complexity of required platforms and technologies
  
• Only 13 percent say their application development and maintenance teams are aligned. And half (48 percent) say their teams are only in synch for 50 percent of the time or even less.

  Successful application management – achieved through a true lifecycle approach of 'build, deploy, maintain and retire' – can deliver tangible business benefits in tough economic times.

Ron Tolido, CTO at Capgemini for Application Services Continental Europe, said: “Our research reveals that key goals for CIOs are value creation, improving efficiencies and cutting costs. Despite the fact that data archiving and application retirement can result in significant cost savings, process efficiencies and increased agility, it still does not rank high enough on the agenda. This report shows that successful application management – achieved through a true lifecycle approach of 'build, deploy, maintain and retire' – can deliver tangible business benefits in tough economic times.”

In addition to acknowledging the growing importance of this issue, the report also reveals the numerous current barriers to effective application management including: the cost of retirement projects, the lack of immediate ROI, cultural resistance to change, regional differences, the lack of qualified developers to migrate retired application data, and most importantly that applications are not considered a key priority.

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HP updates Information Management Portfolio with holistic approach

Reducing risk. Increasing efficiency. Simplifying business information management. Those are the three goals of HP’s updated Information Management Portfolio -- and the updates are all based on consumer demands.

“Three trends are driving how information is managed,” says June Manley, worldwide product marketing director for HP Information Management. She noted those three trends as the information growth, a lack of ownership around information management, and diverse policies. The results of a March survey Coleman Parkes conducted for HP amplifies those trends. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

According to the survey, information management is at a breaking point for the enterprise:

• 68 percent of enterprises say the content explosion is adding greater complexity to an already complex world and causing significant storage issues and costs.
  
• 59 percent of companies say they are under pressure to cut costs on information-related processes and systems.
  
• 43 percent of enterprises leave it to IT to manage information, while 38 percent leave it to the CEO and board of directors.
  
• 70 percent of companies do not have a holistic approach to managing information.
  
• 73 percent of companies do not have a universal and strictly implemented formal information protection policy, and only 18 percent are planning to implement a policy.

Holistic information management

Updates to HP’s Information Management Portfolio work to address some of these pain points with a holistic approach. Essentially, HP is helping organizations break down information silos with a solution that crosses the information lifecycle, including capture, monitor, protect, retain, find, and implement.

“Rather than basing information management on people -- who are constantly changing -- or infrastructure -- which is increasingly complex and physically dispersed -- the most successful approach is managing the information itself,” Manley says.

You are ensuring the right information is saved and can be found when needed to meet both business and regulatory compliance needs.

“Enterprises need to manage the information throughout its life cycle based on its business value. When you do that, you can expect to increase business efficiency, flexibility and simplicity. You are ensuring the right information is saved and can be found when needed to meet both business and regulatory compliance needs.”

Here’s a brief look at HP’s Information Management portfolio:

• HP Information Management Services delivers an integrated solution for managing information in any phase of its life cycle. HP consulting services offer legal, IT, business and chief information security officers to help establish policies.

• HP Integrated Archive Platform scales to manage up to 1 petabyte of data, 300,000 users, and 20 million e-mail messages per day and supports VMware vSphere.
  
• HP TRIM Enterprise Records Management now offers multi-jurisdictional retention and a new bulk data loading capability. Localizing policies eliminates administrative overhead, reduces costs and simplifies compliance.
  
• HP Database Archiving is now integrated with HP TRIM.
  
• HP Data Protector software now provides Granular Recovery Extension for VMware vSphere, as well as snapshot support for 3PAR and non-HP arrays, at up to 70 percent lower total cost of ownership (TCO). HP Data Protector also adds down-to-the-second snapshot recovery to HP StorageWorks P4000.
  
• HP Data Protector Reporter improves insight into backup operations with enterprise-level, multisite global analysis and reporting. It also offers centralized, automated backup reporting.
  
• HP Storage Essentials software decreases costs for managing physical and virtual enterprise information infrastructure. HP Storage Essentials Backup Manager plug-in for HP Data Protector helps organizations monitor the entire backup process.

HP’s future information management vision

The next phase of HP’s information management vision is to break through dataset silos. Currently, there is information in a records management dataset, information in a backup dataset, and information in an archived dataset. HP is working to help enterprises break away from those dataset silos.

“Our vision is to make it possible to have a single policy to manage, whether it’s in a backup archive or in a records management dataset. You have a single copy that is stored. You have a single compliance retention policy,” Manley says.

“The future vision is a single viewpoint of all information and the ability to find that information. All of the lines disappear with this strategy to leave a single platform, a single viewpoint and a single policy. That’s how information management is going to look in the future.”

BriefingsDirect contributor Jennifer LeClaire provided editorial assistance and research on this post. She can be reached at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jleclaire and http://www.jenniferleclaire.com.

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Workday Integration Cloud debut raises bar on integration as service, deeply ingrains integration as apps function

Recognizing broad integration as an essential ingredient to modern business agility, Workday today delivered a set of cloud-based integration capabilities to its partner ecosystem and growing stable of software-as-a-service (SaaS) ERP users.

The Workday Integration Cloud Platform is joined by a graphical tools suite designed to broaden the use of integration by more types of workers so they -- as well as IT -- can build and deploy the desired integrations that best support processes among and between businesses.

Workday is using its SaaS-based enterprise solutions for human resources, payroll, and financial management as a beachhead for popularizing integration platform as a service (iPaaS). The goal is to allow for complex, custom integrations to be built using Workday tools and then be deployed and managed in the Workday Cloud. [Disclosure: Workday is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Opening up integration functions to more users on the front lines of business-to-business requirements empowers those workers. But providing those integration capabilities on a common enterprise cloud environment -- one that exploits enterprise service bus (ESB) technology and SOA benefits -- gives the users freedom without risk of chaos or lack of control and management.

Incidentally, I'll be on a live webinar this Wednesday at 2 pm ET on the general topic of integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and cloud-based computing approaches. Sign up to watch the panel discussion.

Early advocacy of iPaaS

An early advocate for the "integration as a service" concept, Workday is delivering on that vision in a way that could rapidly broaden its appeal beyond human resources management (HRM) and enterprise ERP and into more general cloud services. The strong integration capabilities bolsters the appeal of Workday's applications services, draws in more service partners, and sets the stage for providing wider integration capabilities.

While business-to-business integration is a key requirement for how companies support their employees -- with complex interactions across suppliers for payroll, benefits, and recruitment -- the data and access control in human resources systems proves an essential ingredient for making general integrations become more automated and safe. The new cloud integration services and tools allow customers and partners to build, deploy, run and manage custom integrations for the numerous systems and applications that connect to and from Workday.

The bottleneck of IT-administered integrations based on installed integration platforms does not seem up to this task.

But Workday executives say that "the sky is the limit" on where cloud-based integration -- that is part and parcel with applications services -- can go. And the timing is pretty hot. That's because we’re seeing that companies are focused on the business process level more, and that the resources, assets, participants and interfaces that support those processes are more varied and distributed than ever.

The challenge, then, is not just middleware integrations amid a more complex and dynamic environment, but of integrating more types of services and resources from more places by more people. The bottleneck of IT-administered integrations based on installed integration platforms does not seem up to this task. The integration requirements need to shift right along with the elements that support “boundaryless” processes.

Beat the complexity

Additionally, the historic separations of data integration, application integration and web services interoperability and access need to come together better. Those tasked with crafting and adapting business processes need to architect across the domains of integration, not be hobbled by the complexity and incompatibility among and between them. Logic and data need to play well together regardless of where they reside or how their underlying technology behaves.

In order to accomplish these new requirements, an uber integration capability that can be leveraged by various IT constituents amid an ecosystem – not installed by any or all those IT environments – appears the best and fastest approach. An integration platform in the cloud that can be leveraged and managed with enterprise-caliber security and access control at the process level can solve these vexing problems, for data, process, workflow, collaboration and traditional integration methods.

Cloud-based integration can turn IT into a rapid enabler of process innovation, rather than a costly bottleneck.

Embedding the integrations as core features of the common applications architecture also frees up the lock-in from the database integration hairball that often builds around on-premises n-tier architectures. The brittle nature of such custom integrations has also driven up the cost of computing significantly, while holding back companies from adopting new technology at a business pace, rather than an integrations pace.

That's why iPaaS and a multi-tenancy cloud environment can be a powerful productivity enhancer: businesses can far better create relationships between their organizations and pursue process innovations without the need to adjust a vast hairball of legacy software. Cloud-based integration can turn IT into a rapid enabler of process innovation, rather than a costly bottleneck.

Furthermore, the need to address people, process and technology concerns is cliche for all IT activities, but perhaps most important for how process integrations really work. Who gets to integrate what and how, and who can give permissions for cross-organizational interactions has been a thorny issue. Workday's approach to cloud integration building leverages permissions and policy-driven access and governance to make integration crafting a more mainstream corporate competency.

Benefits of multi-tenancy

Because Workday's SaaS offerings are architected on multi-tenancy operational model, whereby all users and partners to the Workday services and applications are in synch on versions and updates, integrations can be made and amended with far less complexity. A major deterrent for legacy-based EAI and middleware integrations is in the risk and complexity of making integrations that break when its time to upgrade apps or platforms.

And while APIs and lightweight connectors have been a huge benefit in recent years, the APIs interactions are not always enough for enterprise-level process integrations. There's also the problem of API sprawl, and the need to manage the interactions holistically and comprehensively.

It's the processes, after all, that count most and should be easy to safely make, remake and iterate on.

In a nutshell, Workday is working to break the integration-platform-database-applications vise that can hinder and bind enterprises and governments. The relations need to go deeper than APIs. Solving this is no small feat, but it may be one of the greatest long-term benefits of the cloud computing model, both in terms of cost and agility. It's the processes, after all, that count most and should be easy to safely make, remake and iterate on.

It's time that agile integration become a feature of more applications, rather than a hand-crafted after-market exercise at the complex database and middleware tiers. And if that can happen quicker and better as a cloud-based iPaaS model, I'm all for it.

Collaboration moves to services level

The need to effectively cobble together services, data, participants and logic and management in business processes needs to go beyond the over-burdened IT team. Social media trends show us that productivity comes from allowing individuals to reach out and craft new and better ways of doing things, of being collaborative wherever and however they can to support their goals.

Already we’re seeing self-motivated users integrate through outside entities, Facebook and Google apps being a prime examples. They are also accessing their own apps and data via web and mobile apps and via app stores. More data is being generated and stored in a variety of clouds and/or partners, and so the need to integrate the data from and amid third parties is an imperative, especially to gain comprehensive analytics. We need to both manage and examine Big Data as well as Far-Flung Data. Integration is a huge part of that.

As I mentioned, I'll be on a live webinar this Wednesday at 2 pm ET on the general topic of integration platform as a service (iPaaS) and cloud-based computing approaches. Sign up to watch the panel discussion.

You may also be interested in:

• Delivering data analytics through Workday SaaS ERP apps empowers business managers at actual decision points
• CEO interview: Workday's Aneel Bhusri on advancing SaaS and cloud models for improved ERP
• Workday builds out SaaS bellwether for human capital management services and costs control

Enterprise architecture’s quest for its proper identity

This guest post comes courtesy of Len Fehskens, Vice President of Skills and Capabilities at The Open Group.

By Len Fehskens

It is my impression, from what I read and hear in many enterprise and business architecture blogs and forums, that the enterprise architecture (EA) community comprises multiple factions, and which faction you are part of depends on how you answer two questions. These are fundamental questions that I suspect many in the EA community (present company excepted, of course) have not asked themselves explicitly, or, if they have, considered why they would answer them one way or the other.

I believe the answers to these questions color the way we talk and think about enterprise architecture, and until the EA community as a whole comes to a consensus regarding their answers, we risk talking past one another, using the same words but meaning significantly different things. [Disclosure: The Open Group is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

The two questions are:

• Is enterprise architecture primarily about IT or is it about the entire enterprise?
  
  
• Is enterprise architecture a “hard” discipline or a “soft” discipline?

My answers:

Enterprise architecture ought to be about the entire enterprise, because that’s what the name implies. If it’s really about IT, it ought to be called enterprise IT architecture. Whether or not you believe it’s possible or desirable to apply architectural thinking to the entire enterprise doesn’t change the fact that we ought to name things honestly. And when we name architectures, it seems reasonable to me to expect that if an architecture is implemented primarily in the [x] domain, it ought to be called an [x] architecture. Adding two more syllables (IT) to the seven (en-ter-prise ar-chi-tec-ture), or inserting two characters (IT) in the acronym (EA), isn’t an unbearable burden. Say it – “enterprise IT architecture.” Spell it – “EITA.”

Rarely has the cost of honesty been so modest. If you mean the architecture of an enterprise’s IT assets and capabilities, say EITA. Don’t say EA unless you really mean the architecture of the entire enterprise, not just its IT assets. Even if you consider the needs of the enterprise, or the structure of the enterprise’s processes, if the implementation of the architecture you’re developing will be mostly in the IT domain, it’s EITA, not EA. Even if you believe that architectural thinking can be meaningfully applied only to the IT function of an enterprise, it’s still EITA, not EA.

Soft discipline

My answer to the second question is that I believe enterprise architecture, as scoped above, is a “soft” discipline. I think talking about “manufacturing” or “engineering” enterprises is just silly; it’s another example of the kind of aggrandizement that misnaming enterprise IT architecture represents.

Even calling an enterprise a “system” is risky. We use the word system in two senses. One is a very broadly inclusive idea, often expressed as “everything is a system,” in that many things can be viewed as assemblies or aggregates of smaller components. This concept of system is useful because it encourages us to take a holistic, rather than reductionist, perspective, acknowledging that the relationships between the pieces are as important as the individual pieces themselves. The other sense of “system” is the one engineers use – a system is an artifact that has been methodically designed and built from interconnected components. Calling something a system in the first sense doesn’t make it a system in the second sense; it doesn’t make its behavior and performance analytically tractable or deterministic.

It is simply not possible to specify an enterprise as completely, and to the same level of detail, as it is to specify a building or a locomotive or an airplane. And, for the purpose of enterprise architecture, i.e., to ensure that an enterprise’s assets and capabilities are aligned with its vision, mission and strategy, it isn’t necessary to do so, even if we could.

It may be possible to do so for EITA, and maybe that’s where the idea that the same can be said of the enterprise as a whole comes from.

Calling something a system in the first sense doesn’t make it a system in the second sense; it doesn’t make its behavior and performance analytically tractable or deterministic.

If the enterprise as a whole is a system, it’s a people-intensive system, and as such one might as well talk about manufacturing or engineering people.

After all, why do we call them “enterprises”? Consider the first definition of the noun “enterprise” in the Oxford English Dictionary: “A design of which the execution is attempted; a piece of work taken in hand, an undertaking; chiefly, and now exclusively, a bold, arduous or momentous undertaking.” Clearly implicit in this definition is that this is something undertaken by people. There’s a nod to this reality when we refer to an enterprise as a “sociotechnical system”, but the “socio” too often gets short shrift while the “technical” gets the bulk of the attention.

Yes, people play a role in other “systems” – they live and work in buildings, they drive locomotives and pilot airplanes. But people don’t just interact with an enterprise; in a fundamental sense, they are the enterprise. And unlike buildings and locomotives and airplanes, enterprises are continually adapting themselves, in the homeostatic sense of maintaining their integrity and identity in the face of internal and external change, and in the sense of deliberately repurposing themselves in response to such change.

How would you answer these questions, and why would you answer them that way? Our answers strongly influence what we believe is within the purview of enterprise architecture, how we address that scope, and what we imagine we can accomplish by doing so.

This guest post comes courtesy of Len Fehskens, Vice President of Skills and Capabilities at The Open Group.

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