Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Sirens’ Song

First edition; 288 pages
ISBN 0-13-035389-2
( by:Mitch Peterson, Steve O’Conner, Harris Kern, Thomas Lah )

Preface

May 31st, 2001. Bill Gates grants a live interview. He appears on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to promote Microsoft’s latest software release. Two minutes into the interview, host Mark Haines wants to know about Microsoft’s service strategy: Isn’t Mr. Gates concerned that Microsoft doesn’t enjoy the same level of service revenues that Oracle and IBM do? Mr. Gates responds that Microsoft is now offering new consulting services. A visit to the Microsoft Web page confirms the new direction. (see Fig.0-1).

A quick search on www.google.com using the key words “Professional Services” and “Product” yields hundreds of Web sites for technology product companies also offering professional services. Besides Oracle and IBM, the who’s who list includes hardware manufacturers Alcatel, Aspect, Compaq, EMC, HP, Lucent, Nortel, and Sun; software makers PeopleSoft, Sybase, WebCT, Pumatech, and Red Hat. All of these technology companies have heard it. They can’t ignore it. The Siren’s Song of Services.

Microsoft Consulting Services Portfolio of Services

Microsoft® Consulting Services(MCS) provide help directly from Microsoft through every stage of the technology planning, deployment, and support process. MCS is staffed with Microsoft experts who can help you make the most of your IT investment. Specializing in real-life IT solutions, MCS offers a full range of programs for advanced technology requirements: e-commerce, enterprise applications planning, distributed network architecture computing, and more. Customers around the world have used MCS to improve productivity and establish a competitive advantage. With more than 100 offices and just under 4,000 consultants worldwide, Microsoft has the experience and expertise to align your IT vision and business goals. The following are some of the services we offer.

The Gartner Group has documented an identity crisis that both product and service companies constantly go through: Product companies want to become service companies and service companies want to become product companies. This Product-Services wheel is shown in Figure 0-2. For product companies offering technology, the turning point begins with product services, or services offered to support the core products of the company. These are commonly known as support services. But soon, the product company may be tempted to move in a different direction.

1 There is a Tide in the Affairs of Vendors: Product or Service Business?” Gartner Group, May 2000.
2 In Chapter 12, we review the service strategies of HP, Compaq, Sun, and EMC. From this review, it should become clear why companies like Compaq are motivated to move to offer consulting services.
3 In fact, the definition of professional services is very nebulous in the industry. Figure 0-2 provides a helpful and simple way to visualize and classify the various types of service offerings in which product companies invest.

Figure 0-2 Product-Services Wheel

In particular, the Sirens’ call of potentially high growth and high-margin consulting services for a product company is almost too tempting to resist, especially if the product company is experiencing erosion in product margins. 2. If you visit the Web sites of product companies such as IBM, HP, Compaq, EMC, and Silicon Graphics, you see very consistent positioning of their newly developed services. All of these product companies now offer at least four distinct flavors of services: ³
Support Services: These are basic break-fix support services that product companies have always offered.

Education Services: These are traditional product-training services offered by product companies.

Managed Services: These are services focused on successfully implementing the core products of the company. Typically, these services are tightly scoped and very similar from customer to customer. They are usually offered at a fixed price.

Consulting (or Professional) Services: These are services that move beyond implementation and into integrating the products of the company into the customer’s business. These services may involve developing custom code to integrate the product into existing infrastructure. These services may also involve consulting with the customer on actual workflow and business processes.

For the larger product companies like IBM and HP, a fifth service is offered:

Outsourcing: These are services where the product company literally takes over the day-to-day operations of the customer’s technical environment.

Table 0-1 provides a summary of the five types of services that product companies are now likely to offer. And there is good reason for product companies to develop and offer all these new services: over half of all Information Technology (IT) spending is on services! ⁴ Key customers often turn to their preferred and trusted product vendors to provide more and more of these services. According to the Gartner Group, this behavior is being driven by three factors: the continuing shortage of qualified technical talent, the trend of companies to refocus on their core competencies, and the ever-increasing complexity of new technology requiring specialized expertise for successful implementation.⁵

4. “IT Service Spending in the Crosswinds,” p.4, The Gartner Group, September 25, 2000
5. Ibid

Figure 0-3 Product Services

These product companies see this opportunity for new service revenues. Figure 0-3 illustrates the traditional service opportunities on which a product company would focus: support services and education services- both are closely related to the core product of the company. But now, product companies are exploring new service opportunities that seem very attractive (light gray). There are managed services, which are more complex than standard support services but are still closely related to the products of the company. And, they are typically being delivered by support-service personnel who have downtime between support calls. This means managed services don’t represent an investment in incremental staff to deliver the services. Finally, there are professional services, which may or may not be directly related to the product, but they do represent an incremental investment in new skill types.

The nice thing about professional-services revenues is that they don’t seem to have all the messy strings attached to them that product revenues do: no product qualification process, no backwards-compatibility discussions, and no never-ending support worries. With these high-level consulting services, it appears the product-service company can be “in and out.” They collect their money and move on. Or do they? No, not really. In fact, consulting services are just as complex and risky to deliver as any new product. Every service-centric company can validate this fact. Unfortunately, no product-centric company believes it can be true. And, here begins the rub! Not only are professional services complex to deliver, there are business risks to providing professional services that many product companies do not understand at first. If the new professional services offered by the product company are not aligned and somehow anchored to their product, there is the risk that the services will be both unprofitable and counterproductive to the objectives of the product company. We refer to this risk as the services alignment risk (SAR) factor. In chapter 2, we discuss this risk factor in more detail.

One of the oldest stories known to western Civilization is the Odyssey composed by the Greek poet Homer. In the story of the Odyssey, there is a conflict between a man named Odysseus and the Greek god Poseidon. Poseidon does not want Odysseus to return home to Ithaca, so the god hurls one challenge after another toward the tormented man. But this is not the true conflict. The defining conflict Odysseus faces is between intelligence and his arrogance. On the hand, he is a very smart man. His wits brought about the fall of Troy (it was his idea to build the Trojan horse), and his wits allow him to survive each challenge the gods present. But his intelligence and success make him arrogant-arrogant enough to believe he needs no assistance from any man or any god. This arrogance fuels the wrath of Poseidon. Not until Odysseus acknowledges his limitations is he permitted to return home.

Product companies face the identical challenge that Odysseus faced. They are skilled and successful at bringing products to market. They have money from lucrative product margins to invest in new endeavors. They are confident in their business savvy. But this confidence becomes a harmful blinder as they enter the world of providing services.
When service points are thin or customer engagements go awry, the product company has difficulty acknowledging it has entered a new realm- a realm where the natural laws are different, requiring new frameworks to succeed. This reality leads us to our first “Sirens’ Song.” Throughout this book, we will be highlighting false perceptions held by many product companies regarding professional services. Because these perceptions can prove deadly, we have named them Sirens’ Songs after the beautiful yet deadly monsters from the Odyssey. These Sirens were creatures that sang enchantingly to passing sailors, only to lead the sailors to crash into unseen boulders. The misperceptions we will be highlighting have the same effect: If they are not recognized, they can lead a product company to crash its service business.

Now, for our first Sirens’ Song of Services:

Sirens’ Song: Professional services are not dramatically different from support services or education services.
Boulder Ahead: The truth is professional services are dramatically different from other services typically offered by product companies. They are different in size, scope, and risk. They operate under a different financial model. Finally, they are the first service a product company offers that does not have to be directly linked to the product portfolio of the company.

Have we scared you? Good. But don’t get too scared. Despite the potential hazards, there are many compelling reasons for a product-centric company to move forward from basic support services.

Good Reasons to Offer New Services

Beyond pursuing additional revenue opportunities, there are many sound business reasons product companies offer more than just product support services. The Services Marketing Advisors Association provides this standard list of reasons: ⁶

• Client interest in business solutions as opposed to point products
• Deeper client relationships and improved account control
• Increased revenue per customer:
  • 50 to 100 percent higher revenues from both products and services
  • Product pull-through ⁸
• Increased margins
• Greater implementation control
• Improved customer satisfaction

In Living on the Fault Line, Geoffrey Moore provides an updated list of why technology companies specifically need an internal professional-services organization:

• To help implement projects that advance the company’s state of the art, featuring products that are fresh from R & D.
• To do the gritty, unglamorous work behind the scenes that has to be done to make the system work right. This is the very work that independent consulting firms want no part of.
• To develop domain expertise in one or more vertical markets to help differentiate the company’s existing products.

Moore states that by providing professional services, a product company can take on problems for long-established customers that no one else will tackle. “Not only does this help secure long-term loyalty and commitment, but it can also lead to the discovery of new market opportunities.” ⁹
And in reality, there are benefits to the end customer. By providing consulting services directly, the product-centric company can succeed in the following ways:

• Provide one-stop shopping for implementation
• Provide hard-to-find product expertise and technical skills
• Decrease time to complete the customer solution
• Allow customers to focus on their core competencies
• Provide a single point of contact
• Provide a single point of liability

These last two points are especially attractive to understaffed, overworked IT managers who have enough vendor relationships to juggle as it is. When coauthor Steve O’Connor was CIO at silicon Graphics, he drove his IT organization to work with a short list of seven strategic vendors. “I didn’t feel my management (team) and I could build effective relationships with more than seven vendors.” The practice reclaims cycles for the IT management team and creates deeper, more productive relationships with vendors.

6. “Training Fish to Fly? Seven Tips to Convert a Product Sales Force to Solutions Selling,” June 2001, www.itsma.com/education/prof_dev/pd_052901.html.
7. “Should Professional Services Be in Your Company’s Services Portfolio?” Shera Mikelson, Hahn Consulting.
8. Product pull-through is the act of leading with service sales and then pulling product sales in.
9. Geoffrey Moore, Living on the Fault Line, New York: Harper Collins, 2000

So, with a win-win situation in mind, the product company cranks the product-service wheel and begins offering new services to the customer.

The customer buys them. And then, the real fun begins: the fun of actually delivering these services in a consistent and profitable manner. For most product companies, this is when the journey begins to get rough. Engineering and implementing products profitably is one set of skills, doing the same for services is quite another. The principles are often the same, but their application is very different. If services are not managed properly, the product company may soon find its hard-won product margins being used to subsidize unprofitable service engagements.

Sirens’ Song: Professional services should be a high-margin component of a product company’s portfolio.

Boulder Ahead: The truth is many product companies are experiencing lower than expected margins from their professional-services business. Gross margins for professional -services business units have been running at 15 percent to 20 percent with net operating profits of zero.

In reality, some of the best and brightest product companies have struggled to maintain a profit in the journey of building a services organization. 10 IBM is used constantly as the poster child for success-a model for how a product company can transition itself into a true service and solution provider. But how many companies have the deep pockets of IBM? How many companies have a locked-in legacy install base that can carry them through the painful and unprofitable transition IBM went through? Not many. And, how many other examples of success have you read about? How long is the list of product companies that have actually developed a successful and profitable service organization that offers more than basic support services? The number of articles describing product companies that want to offer more complex services is endless. The number of articles documenting favorable results is almost nonexistent.

We know the service waters look inviting. We know you want to set sail. But are you prepared to navigate these waters? Have you built the right ship? Do you have the right maps? If the answer is no, not even Poseidon himself will be able to save you from the shipwreck ahead. This book is designed to help the product company listen to the Sirens’ Song of services without the sailing into the rocks, to help the product company succeed as it turns the product -service wheel without succumbing to blind arrogance.

10. “Should Professional Services Be in Your Company’s Services Portfolio?” Shera Mikelson, Hahn Consulting

Thomas has held many roles in both I/T and consulting over the past fifteen years. Previous roles include Business Development Manager, Regional Sales Director, and Senior I/T Development Manager. Most recently, Thomas was Director of Solutions Engineering at Silicon Graphics where his team was responsible for developing and launching consulting solutions on a global basis. He received an undergraduate degree in Information Systems and holds an MBA from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University.

First edition; 208 pages
ISBN 0-13-030770-X
( by: Gary S. Walker )

Table of Content

1. Introduction to Problem Management.

Help Desk. Internal and External Service Centers. Building a Successful Service Center. Problem Management Process Overview. Management Review and Oversight.

2. Service Center Organization.

Immediate Response Model. Managed Response Model.

3. Maintaining a Service Catalog.

Add a New Service. Remove a Service.

4. Problem Identification.

Problem Discovery. Problem Reporting Access. The Proactive Service Center. Implementation Considerations.

5. Customer Validation.

Typical Validation. Formal Validation. Validation Process Description. Validation Implementation.

6. Problem Logging.

Current Problem Logging Approaches. Future Problem Logging Methods. Service Request Categories Overview. Prioritizing Requests Overview.

7. Service Delivery.

Problem Determination. Work Restoration. Service Center Organization Overview. Escalation. Tier 1, 2, and 3 Problem Management Responsibilities. Service Request (Ticket) Ownership.

8. Knowledge Capture and Sharing.

Knowledge Capture and Sharing Overview. Knowledge Capture Process. Implementation.

9. Management, Review, and Oversight.

Building Your Plan: Strategic Objectives and Metrics. Using Metrics to Measure Your Progress. Formal Review of Metrics. Key Roles and Management Teams. Reports.

10. Service Level Agreements.

SLA Content. Using the SLA.

11. Service Center Tools.

Access Tools. Service Delivery Tools. Proactive Monitoring Tools. Customer-Enabling Tools.

12. Motivation.

Motivation Through Reward. Motivation Through Incentives. Other Motivation Techniques. The Manager’s Role in Motivation.

Index.

First edition; 208 pages
ISBN 0-13-030770-X
( by: Gary S. Walker )

Preface

In the past three decades, businesses have made staggering investments in technology to increase their productivity and efficiency. The technological infrastructure of these companies has become increasingly sophisticated and complex. Most companies today are extremely dependent on their technological infrastructure. Operating without it is like trying to run a business without a telephone or electricity. Businesses depend on their technology at least as much as, perhaps more than, any other utility. However, unlike the telephone and electric industries, technology has not had the benefit of 100 + years to mature under the control of a handful of companies. Thousands of companies contribute to technology, each doing whatever they think will sell the best. Extreme and rapid innovation is the rule, not the exception. Change is the rule, not the exception. The resulting complexity has posed a new challenge for companies: how to realize the potential and anticipated benefits of the investments in an environment of constant change.

Businesses are so reliant on technology that they need it to operate as reliably, consistently, and universally as the telephone and electricity. We are a long way from achieving that level of service. Businesses face rising costs because of constant failures that result in lost productivity. It is very difficult and expensive to find the resources with the expertise to manage and repair their infrastructures. It is extremely difficult and expensive to keep those resources trained to manage a constantly evolving environment.

But guess what. There is no choice but to invest in technology, because it has to bedone. Business cannot stop investing in technology or they will be crushed by the competition. So what have they done? They have standardized to limit the diversity, the expertise required, and the problems associated with diversity. They have striven to make the infrastructure as reliable as the telephone and to keep employees productive. And they have created a team that has the skills, the facilities, and the charter to fix existing problems and reduce future problems. That team is the service center, and this book shares how the best of those teams are doing just that.

Technology impacts more than just a business’s internal operations. What about the company’s customers? They often need support, as well. More companies are realizing the value of providing quality service to its customers. Some studies have indicated that keeping a customer costs one-tenth the price of getting a new one, while the return business from satisfied customers count for substantially more than one-tenth of a company’s revenue. It makes good economic sense to spend money on keeping existing clients satisfied. For many companies, that means providing customers with quality support for the products and services they purchase. So who in the company provides that service? You guessed it—the service center.

What is a service center? It is an organization whose charter and mission are to provide support services to internal or external customers, or to both. It is a concentration of expertise, processes, and tools dedicated to taking customers’ requests and fulfilling them in a timely and cost-effective manner, leaving the customer delighted with the experience. A service center has a defined range of service offerings, from fixing problems to providing value-added services, and everything in between.

This book is intended to help a company set up that service center and deliver those services cost effectively. The book focuses on structuring the organization and building the processes to move service requests efficiently and effectively through the organization to deliver quality service to the customer. It discusses the pitfalls that afflict many service centers and offers techniques and solutions to avoid those pitfalls. The book discusses the tools available to help a service center manage its business and deliver high quality cost-effective services to customers.

The traditional help desk is still around, but many have evolved into service centers. As more businesses are faced with increasing technology costsand increasing pressure to be productive and efficient internally—while delighting external customers—many more help desks will be forced to evolve. For a well-run help desk, the evolutionis natural and not overly difficult.

Most help desks were originally designed to provide one type of service, technical support. Help desks traditionally helped customers by fixing their problems and answering their questions. The help desk concentrated technical expertise, problem management processes, and tools to track and resolve customer problems, answer customer questions, and deliver that support as cost effectively as possible. Many help desks have done this quite successfully, and many have not. As their companies reengineer and look to streamline operations, many company executives have asked the simple question, “Today, you provide one type of service—technical support. How hard would it be to add additional services?” It’s a fair question, because the help desk already takes service requests, tracks them, makes delivery commitments to customers, delivers the services, and charges the customers. The organization, the processes, the tools are in place.

The evolution usually starts small, with simple, technology-related, value-added services, such as ordering PCs. You need a PC, contact the help desk. They’ll figure out what you need, order it, track the order, install it when it arrives, and then support you if you have any questions. Voila, the help desk is now providing value-added services. Since you are ordering the equipment and maintaining and fixing it all the time, how about keeping track of it? No one else does. Again, voila, you’re providing a value-added asset management service. Since you have all of that valuable information, can you report on it quarterly to the insurance and risk anagement department and the finance and accounting group? Yep, another—value added service. Hey, you guys are pretty good at this stuff. We need computer training. Can you make arrangements for that and then handle the scheduling? Its happened. You are no longer just a help desk—you are a service center, offering both traditional help desk support and value-added services to your customers.

This goes along for a while, and you tweak the processes and improve your delivery capability. Then, someone in the company gets the idea that a single point of contact for many internal services would be handy, and since you’re already capable of handling value-added servicesand you do it so well, you should consider handling many more. That certainly sounds reasonable. For example, how about a service for new employees. Instead of the HR department contacting the telecom department, the help desk, and the facilities department every time a new employee is hired, why don’t they just contact the service center and let them coordinate the rest. Like magic, you’ve added a service called New Employee Setup, or maybe even better, Amaze the New Employee.

You gather the vital information—her name, who she works for, when she starts, what budget to charge, where she’ll be sitting. You order her PC, you contact telecom to set up her phone and voice mailbox, and you contact facilities to set up her workspace. Then, you notify security and set up her appointment to get a badge, you schedule her into the next orientation class, and you schedule her in the next “PC and Networking in Our Company” class. Finally, you generate the standard welcome-on-board letter that tells her the classes she is scheduled for and where they are located. You have standard attachments that explain how to use the phone and how to log on to the PC, and most importantly, how to reach the service center. You email the package to HR, who is merely awaiting her arrival, secure in the knowledge that all is well, everything is ready, and that the new employee will be duly impressed with her new company.

Just as you do with the problems you handle, you follow up on this service to make sure the work is done on time. Now your follow-up includes telecom and facilities, who essentially act like any other tier 2 group. Instead of generating a trouble ticket, you generate a tracking ticket, which is associated with another new type of ticket, a work order. One work order is sent to telecom and another to facilities. The new tracking ticket looks amazingly similar to a trouble ticket. It has the same contact information—the customer name and location, the desired delivery date, the name of the agent who took the order, when the order was placed, the current status, and who else is involved. Work order tickets really aren’t much different than a traditional trouble ticket to dispatch, for example, a hardware support technician that includes information on where to go, what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, who is handling it, its current status and priority, and so on. The work order ticket even goes into a queue, just like a problem ticket dispatched to any tier 2 support group. And just as with trouble tickets, you have processes and tools in place to escalate the tracking and work order tickets, and to send notifications if there is a problem or if more work to be done.

The entire process is, logically, very similar to managing problems. The information must be tracked, people are assigned to do the work, the work is prioritized, time commitments are in place, processes are in place to handle work that can’t be done in the agreed upon time frame, additional levels of expertise are available to handle difficulties. Perhaps most importantly, it is all initiated, tracked, and closed centrally.

Many help desks resist this evolution. If their house is not in order and they are struggling to handle technical support, they should resist. Get the technical support in order first. Work on your problem management processes and take advantage of your existing tools. When your problem management processes are working, they’ll work just as well for other value-added services. That is the secret. If you can make and meet time commitmentsfor technical support to customers, you can easily add new value-added services to your repertoire. Value-added services are like the simplest, most common, recurring problems your customers call about. They’re easy because the request is common, so everyone is familiar with it. The solution is known; its predefined. Processes to deliver the solution are already in place. Processes to deal with unexpected complications are already defined and in use. Simple. You have the tools, the people, the processes, the organization, and the experience.

Overview

This book was written because problem management is one of the most important processes for any IT organization. Yet, of the hundreds of companies we have worked with, it is most often not done well. It seems that many companies consider problem management only as an afterthought, a necessary evil, overhead, or worse, all of the above.

So what is problem management? Problem management is a formal set of processes designed and implemented to quickly and efficiently resolve problems and questions. Those problems and questions come from customers, both internal and external.

Why is problem management important? Because how well you do at resolving those problems and questions determines how your customers perceive you. Further, how you provide those services can make an enormous difference in your overall costs—not only your costs, but also the costs your customers incur.

Do a poor job on your problem management processes and your customers will think ill of you. Internal customers can be the most vicious, because they know who to complain to. They also complain to each other, and before you know it, the entire company believes you to be incompetent, at least as far as problem management goes. Worse, that attitude can easily fail over to the entire IT department. Let’s face it—most of the IT department’s exposure is through the problem management function (the help desk) and that is where your reputation will be made or broken. It isn’t hard to justify spending to improve problem management when you calculate the number of hours of internal downtime and the average cost per hour the company absorbs for that downtime. Run the numbers and see for yourself.

External customers can be less vicious on a personal level, but from the business perspective, their impression is even more important. If they don’t like the way you handle problems, they may complain, but worse, they will most certainly vote with their dollar by taking it elsewhere—and will probably tell everyone they know to do the same. Your company worked hard and spent significant dollars to win that customer. To lose them because you provided poor service is an enormous waste. What will it cost you to win them back? Can you win them back? Can you ever win their friends and associates? Many studies have found that it is much cheaper to keep a customer than to win a new one. If your company hasn’t seen this light yet, you need to convince them.

This book was written to tell you what you can and should consider doing to improve your problem management processes. It is based on experience gained at many different sites and focuses on improving service delivery and efficiency. It’s true—you can do it better and cheaper. You may have to spend some capital up front, but a standard project cost/benefit analysis will show that you can recoup those costs quickly, and in some cases, can generate significant dollars.

This book was written for CIOs, vice presidents, help desk and service center managers, and the senior-level internal customers of the problem management department—anyone who can influence the problem management function and wants to understand more about what can and should be done to improve performance.

I appreciate any feedback you wish to provide. You can reach me at either garywalker@home.com or xogsw@hotmail.com.

Best of luck to you,
Gary Walker

Gary S. Walker is a leading IT consultant, helping Fortune 500 and emerging growth companies focus on the people, processes, and technology required to operate a highly reliable and cost effective infrastructure.

Published Works

• IT Problem Management

Building a Worldclass Infrastructure

First edition; 188 pages
ISBN: 0-13-022298-4
( by: Harris Kern , Stuart D. Galup and Guy Nemiro )

Table of Content

1. Introduction.

IT Infrastructure Assessment. What Is the Infrastructure?

2. What We Found in Our Travels.

What’s Wrong with Client/Server? The Problems. The Excuses. Applications Development Is Not an Issue. The Impact. Processes Are Not First.

3. The CIO’s Role.

Executives Out of Touch with Their Infrastructure. How Can the Infrastructure Catch Up Quickly? Lack of Time and Resource. Assure That Your IT Budget Provides for RAS. Marketing and Selling IT Services. Duplication of Efforts.

4. Case Studies.

The Problems Short-Listed. Current Organizational Structures.

5. The Problems Short-Listed.

The Top Three Missing or Broken Processes. The Other Issues. Internal Support Agreement.

6. Learn from the Past to Build the Future.

The Organization. Processes.

7. Building a World-Class Infrastructure.

Start Simple. Designing and Adhering to Your Key Methodologies. Know That Success Equals the Change You Manage.

8. The New Order.

Splitting the Technologies. Who’s in Charge?

9. The Organization for the Twenty-First Century.

Enterprise Services. Mission-Critical vs Non-Mission-Critical. Structuring Technical Staff. Functional Responsibilities. Epilogue The “World-Class” Infrastructure.

Appendix A: Frequently-Asked Questions.

General. People. Process. Technology.

Appendix B: Infrastructure Assessment Program.

The Industry Problem. People Issues. Process Issues. Technology Issues. The Program. Customer Requirements. The Deliverable. The Cost.

Appendix C: Service Level Agreements.

Information Systems Services Cost Options Definitions.

Appendix D: Internal Support Agreement.

Root Authority. Server Availability Hours. Backups. Support Responsibility.

Appendix E: Marketing Materials for an Internal Audience.

Enterprise Center. Systems Management. Quality Assurance. Customized reports. Data storage. Mission. Enterprise Center Tours. High-Tech Equipment. Information Technology Survey. Consulting Services. Bibliography.

Index.

Building a Worldclass Infrastructure

First edition; 188 pages
ISBN: 0-13-022298-4
( by: Harris Kern , Stuart D. Galup and Guy Nemiro )

Preface

Structure, Not Technology

This book brings an urgent message for any Information Technology professional who is responsible for planning, implementing, managing, and supporting client/server (or networked) computing environments. If you want to survive in the networked, client/server world, you must stop, analyze, reorganize and prioritize your infrastructure now.

We spent two years analyzing 40, cross industry Fortune 1000 companies. We were engaged to assist IT organizations in their quest for reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) with client/server environments. This book is based on these case studies.

We found that organizations everywhere have serious latent infrastructure issues. Too often IT managers deal only with the symptoms of their problems by blaming technology, the complexity, or the architecture of client/server environments. The fact is that all of these companies have infrastructure issues that inhibit their ability to have RAS in client/server environments.

All of the companies we analyzed are committed to client/server computing and the transformation to the new paradigm (i.e., any data, anywhere, anytime) which is becoming more prevalent every minute in Internet time. IT organizations must get their acts together to support their business requirements, but the terrifying fact is that IT organizations aren’t prepared for the onslaught of the networked world because of the organizational problems we highlight.

The first section highlights the issues and problems of networked computing we found in our travels around the world. This section highlights what not to do.

The second section tells you how to look at the past for answers to the problems in today’s environments. This section also shows you how to build that elusive world-class infrastructure.

The third section deals with how to structure your IT organization for the twenty-first century and how to give it a competitive advantage in the “dot comming” world.

And last, but so very important, are the questions we are asked most frequently by IT professionals during our travels.

This book is different than any other book we’ve written and any other books in the marketplace on IT organization structures because of the 40 case studies. This book is about the non-technical issues that IT organizations need to address to succeed in a client/server environment. This book is about basics-how to structure an organization so that it works. Through case studies and recommendations, we’ll show you how to set up procedures, policies, and metrics to make sure the organization is effective.

Guy Nemiro has been in the corporate IT and writing worlds for two decades. He is currently at Sun Microsystems where he has held a series of sales account management positions. He holds an MBA from the University of Southern California and has lectured at UCLA and UC Northbridge. He resides in Los Angeles.

Published Works

• IT Organization: Building a Worldclass Infrastructure

Dr. Stuart D. Galup ( D.B.A., Nova Southeastern University ) is an associate professor of computer information systems at Florida Atlantic University. He is a Certified Computing Professional and has held various information technology positions from programmer to CIO. His work in the transformation of information technology organization has been featured in Communications Research, Computerworld, and Datamation.

Published Works

• IT Organization: Building A Worldclass Infrastructure
• Building The New Enterprise: The Proof, Not The Hype

A Roadmap for the Enterprise

First edition; 355 pages
ISBN: 0-13-009719-5
( by: Alex Nghiem )

Table of Content

1. Business Drivers for Integration

Current Technological Limitations. Object-Oriented Technology. Component-Based Development (CBD). Middleware. Application Servers. HTML. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Packaged Applications. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). Summary.

2. The Basic Web Services Stack.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Extensible Markup Language (XML). XML Syntax. XML Parsers. Service-Oriented Access Protocol (SOAP). Web Services Definition Language (WSDL). WSDL Syntax. Invoking Existing Web Services: A Sample. Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). UDDI Categories. UDDI Data Model. UDDI Usage Scenarios. Types of UDDI Registries. Web Services and Other Technologies. Phases of Adoption. Phase I (2002ö2003+). Phase II (2003ö2005). Phase III (2006+). Summary.

3. Enterprise-Level Web Services.

RPC-Oriented Web Services (Synchronous). Document-Oriented Web Services (Asynchronous). Loose Coupling. Asynchrony Support. A Business-Level Interface. The Importance of Messaging. Guaranteed Delivery. Only-Once Delivery. In-Order Delivery. Transformation. Content-Based Routing. Workflow Modeling. Adapters. Message Warehousing. Management. Models of Integration. Point-to-Point Integration. Publish-Subscribe Integration. Summary.

4. Web Services Platforms.

The J2EE Platform. The J2EE APIs. Java XML Pack. J2EE Web Services Integration. Major J2EE Vendors. BEA Systems. Iona Technologies. The Microsoft .NET Platform. .NET’s Main Component Areas. Visual Studio.NET. Business Impact of .NET. Summary.

5. Deployment Issues.

Web Services Security. Authentication. Encryption. Authorization. XML and SOAP Security. Web Services Scalability. Web Services over HTTP. Summary.

6. Web Services Networks.

Grand Central. Overview. Value-Added Features. Grand Central Summary. Flamenco Networks. Overview. Additional Functionality. Migrating to Flamenco Networks. Factors for Selection. Interview: Flamenco Networks. Interview: Grand Central Communications. Summary.

7. Web Services Architectural Patterns.

Native Web Services. Web Services Proxy. Document-centric Web Services. Orchestration Web Services. Summary.

8. A Plan for Adopting Web Services.

Identify Goals. Select the Pilot Project. Learn the Standards. Address Gaps in the Standards. Re-Evaluate the Development Process. Organize the Workflow. Use Existing Infrastructure. Skills. Hardware. Software. Publish the Web Services. Manage the Web Services. Pick the Tools and Vendor. Build the Budget and Schedule. Summary.

9. Emerging Trend: Software as a Service.

Value Proposition. Revenue Models. Interview: Employease, an SAAS Pioneer. Summary.

Appendix A. ebXML and Other XML Initiatives.

ebXML. ebXML Basics. Sample ebXML Integration Scenario. ebXML and Web Services. WSFL and Other Emerging Technologies. Interoperability Groups. Web Services Interoperability Group (WS-I). SOAPBuilders Group. The Liberty Alliance Project. Summary.

Appendix B. Case Studies.

Lessons Learned from Case Studies. Case Study: Reducing Integration Costs. (Putnam Lovell Securities Incorporated). Case Study: Building a Marketplace with Web Services. (Pantechnik International). Case Study: Building Private UDDI Repositories. (Talaris Corporation).

Appendix C. Perspectives of Web Services Vendors.

Interview: SilverStream Software, an Early Adopter of WSFL. Interview: Collaxa and Web Services Orchestration. Interview: Iona Technologies, an Interoperability Veteran. Interview: Cape Clear-Simplifying Development.

Appendix D. Product Review: XMLBus.

Overview. XMLBus Tools. Web Service Builder. Web Service Manager. Test Client. Message Spy. UDDI Browser. The XAR File. Publishing a Web Service. Deploying a Web Service. Conclusion.

Index.