CIO Mind

I participate recently a very nice conference on Green-IT. The conference was a success: lot’s of speakers, full fall, people taking notes, lot’s of questions asked.

Only one issue: despite the fact the conference targeted clients, they were nowhere to be found.

I saw a lot of people I know, account managers, sales managers even some country managers, but NO users.

Probably this is the supreme sign of hype: a conference full of vendors but no clients.

Cloud computing seems to reach the “Peak of Inflated Expectations“. Even Larry Ellison admits it:

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

In “Peak of Inflated Expectations” phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.

Usually in this phase the only ones making money are journalists and event organizers. So be aware…

I attended on Tuesday to a Business Continuity conference.

Totally boring!

The conference program stated clearly “business” continuity. Probably none of the presenters have read it

All the presentations were about IT continuity… Plenty of it.

None of the presenters and – apparently – many of the attendees noticed the “business” in “business continuity”

Business continuity is about continuing the business. Or using Wikipedia definition:

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is an interdisciplinary concept used to create and validate a practiced logistical plan for how an organization will recover and restore partially or completely interrupted critical (urgent) function(s) within a predetermined time after a disaster or extended disruption. The logistical plan is called a Business Continuity Plan.

I so nothing at the conference about Business Impact Analysis, Threat Analysis, and so on.

Of course no sane business leader will throw money on things he can not understand. Again and again they are presented wonderful projects that aim to virtualize servers, to asynchronously replicate data, to implement “clones” and snap-shots and so on which they tend to reject, and the IT guys complain about “the business guys that don’t understand”.

The same IT guys goes to a doctor and ask him “Doctor, please speak in plain English”!

How about speaking “in plain English” to their business colleagues?

At eLiberatica conference a Microsoft evangelist answered to a question about why Microsoft is involving in Open Source with “you know, it is like in chess”

For sure this is not a corporate formal position but an employee perception of his company plans and policies.

Is Microsoft playing a gambit with open source?

A gambit is a chess opening in which the first player risks or sacrifices material, usually a pawn), with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position.

So this is an attack, and the “give away” is poisoned. Microsoft “sacrifices” material - money, intellectual property - with the hope to gain a future advantage.

It is also a temporary situation.

Microsoft still see open source as an enemy. They not accepted it as an integral part of the IT industry and still try fighting it - they aim for “check-mat”

In modern chess, the typical response to a moderately sound gambit is to accept the material and give the material back at an advantageous time.
For gambits that are less sound, the accepting player is more likely to try to hold onto his extra material.

It is expected for a company to chase profit. Of course a company giving away something should expect some kind of return.

I am only questioning the attitude: open source involvement: This should be a COLABORATION not a fight.

I still wonder if this a “sound” gambit or a “less sound” one?!

I wish I have had read Gerald Weinberg book long ago, when I was a client.

Gerald’s book “The Secrets of Consulting” dispel some of myths associated with the consultants. By the way, it looks the consultants are human, too.
One should read at least the first chapter: “Why consulting is so tough”.

As per Gerald there are three laws of consulting:

• In spite of what your client may tell you, there’s always a problem.
• No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem.
• Never forget they’re paying you by the hour, not by the solution.

Managers don’t hire consultants to solve problems. No manager ever has a problem. As Gerald puts it:

In the culture of management, the worst thing you can do is to admit to anyone that you have a problem you can’t handle by yourself. If you really need help, you have to sneak it in somehow without admitting in public that there is any problem at all.

This is related with the issue of face saving. In CEE countries this is even more important than in US or UK. According to Hofstede “Power Distance Index” (PDI) and “Uncertainty Avoidance Index” (UAI) are much higher around the region compared to Anglo-Saxon cultures.

Also work of Edward T. Hall shed some light on this. Monochronic versus Polychronic time perception makes a significant difference in problem acknowledging and solving.

Sometimes the first task of client and consultant is to define the problem as “opportunity for improvement”.

I do remember my client days when I use to say: “We don’t have any problem; we just don’t know exactly how to improve this”. Now looking behind, I understand that we had a serious problem, but we launched a “major improvement project” not a “problem solving project”.

Next time when you convince yourself to bring in some consultant, spare some time and admit that you NEED help.

It is not V as in “five”, but V as in “virtual”. After “baby boomers” and “Generation X” get ready for “Generation V”

Adam Sarner, Principal Research Analyst with Gartner predicts:

In 10 years, the key influence on all business-to-consumer (B2C) purchases will be the online experiences associated with them. By 2015, more money will be spent on marketing and selling to multiple, anonymous, online personas than marketing and selling offline.

The virtual environment levels the play field and creates the perfect meritocracy. Does not mater if one is beautiful or ugly, if is young or old, the only thing does matter is what he can achieve in this virtual environment. One can be a “40th-level half-elf” or a guru on creating tracks for Trackmania.

IT systems must begin to understand those multiple personas, must be able to analyze the online environment. Simply segmenting customers on age and location is no longer enough.

This is part two of a series covering the results of CIO Agenda 2007. First part is here.

Business priorities

Companies know they must prepare for the increased competition and they place “Improving business processes” as they number one priority for 2007. In 2006 “Improving business processes” was also on the first place indicating longer term planning.

“The need for revenue growth” is a close second as expected. Due to increased competition this year, the business leaders must pay closer attention to this one and bring it to second place from the fourth place in 2006.

On the third place is also a priority related to increased competitiveness: “Improving the effectiveness of the enterprise workforce”. Interestingly this was not in the first ten last year. One can speculate that after investments in tools and machines, now the business leaders decided to invest also in the workforce.

The extensive growth phase is also indicated by the place of “Controlling enterprise-wide operating costs”, 5 in Romania and 2 world wide (according to Gartner).

IT Budgets

IT budgets overall increase by 23% in 2007 versus 2006. This indicates a strong commitment of business leaders towards IT. Business leaders are convinced that investing in IT will help them achieve their goals.

IS Organization Capabilities

IT organizations have the funds they need (they just received a 23% increase in their budget) and deliver services to meet business expectations.

Most of the IT organizations also deliver the technology innovations needed by the business and have the necessary flexibility to adapt to current extensive growth phase.

Despite having funds and delivering excellent services, the IT organizations do not have enough business skills and CIO is not a player in business strategy. The two are connected: without an organization with strong business skills, the CIO cannot be a player in business strategy.

The CIOs must take this opportunity – increased budgets, extensive growth of the enterprise – and work hard to build an organization with strong business skills. This is a window of opportunity that will last probably 2 years.

This is part two of a series covering the results of CIO Agenda 2007. First part is here.

In 2007 IT budget grow by 23% to help companies to grow while facing an increased competition.

On Tuesday 19th CIO Council Romania released its second CIO Agenda survey. The survey includes input from 25 Romanian CIOs:

• IT budgets totaling more than EUR 270 millions
• Average IT budget of respondents is EUR 10 million

Provides a comprehensive view of CIO priorities, initiative, decisions and issues including:

• Business expectations for CIOs and IT
• CIO strategies and priorities

Romanian market
Competition is increasing on the Romanian market: in 2006 only 5% of the companies have their growth plans challenged while in 2007 this increased to 15%. In 2006 85% of the companies aim to grow faster than the market while in 2007 this decrease by 10% to 75%.

Paths to growth
Most of the companies want to “play safe”: 53% want to increase in the same market with new products or services. In Romania most of the markets grow, some of them with double digits CAGR. Now it’s the moment when the pie is sliced and everyone wants a bigger slice.
Romania is in a consolidation wave: 19% of the companies aim to grow by acquiring other companies or making partnerships.

14% will expand into new markets.

A surprisingly small percentage, only 14% will increase relationships with current customers. This indicates that most of the companies are in an extensive growth phase. Most of the companies want to get new clients, and current customers are sometimes neglected.

This is part one of a series covering the results of CIO Agenda 2007. The second part is here.

The corporate IT is invaded by the consumer world: wireless, PDA, messenger, Skype, you name it!

The peoples shops around for entertainment and convenience. While corporate IT is not expected to provide entertainment, it is judged by the convenience it provides.

I have heard countless times complain of IT senior executives about their users that demand convenience.

Users expect corporate intranet to rival Google, purchasing process to be friendly like Amazon, to contact workmates via messenger like they contact their friends.
They expect corporate phonebook to have at least LinkedIN functionalities, expect knowledge management systems like Wikipedia and the list can go on for ever.

The average IT executive thinks the corporate IT is like army: you have to suffer to strengthen yourself! Rough edges are not only accepted but expected. One has to fight with cumbersome processes, bloated web pages, and weird rules to perform even the most simple tasks.

They position themselves like the drill sergeant of corporate IT!

Even if your CFO will be happy with the cost reduction you achieved, it will be very hard to live with a crowd of angry customers.

Your users will compare your offering with the convenience industry outside and you will be in real trouble!

These days most employees are knowledge workers. They don’t need punch clocks, complicated processes or bloated software.

The first priority for you is to remove any obstacle preventing them to achieve highest intellectual productivity. Second give them tools they like and use happily. As Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth use to say:

Nice IS a feature!

It is now time to throw away your campaign hat and bring in a charmed flute!

I jumped the fence!

After 7 year, 7 very challenging years building the Rompetrol IT, I decided to return to the vendor side. This time, on my own.

Yes, I started my own consulting practice. I don’t want to use the blog for advertising, so I wont go into details. Enough said it is, of course, IT related.