1993-2009
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
October 8, 2009 meeting
Present: Tina Haines, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, Jeff Reid, William Zauner,
Jim Sutter
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
We are still looking for volunteers to introduce the following topics, starting in January:
IT alignment with the CEO/business
IT Governance
Web 2.0/Web 3.0
On-demand computing
Go Green with ?
Service Catalog
CIO longevity (or lack thereof)
Topic: IT Organization Trends
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, introduced the meeting and provided a comprehensive handout. Tina provided significant background on organizational thinking and OD thinking. Quotes from Andy Grove, Peter Drucker, Parkinson, and Werner von Braun spiced the material. Elements of OD theory affect:
Behavior
Motivation
Performance
Teamwork and cooperation
And, inter organization relationships.
She pointed out that despite all the organization styles defined and adopted over the years, most still tend to be quite hierarchical. She gave the pros and cons of the hierarchical, matrix, flat, and federated approaches. She led a discussion on decentralization verses centralization, followed by some thoughts on 21st Century trends (Globalization, Diversity, and Flexibility). She pointed out that best practices were difficult to nail down, despite efforts by ITIL and others. Some laws to guide us in the New Rapidly Changing environment:
If you understand it, it’s obsolete.
Strategy: If it’s static, it’s obsolete.
Training: If it’s certified, it’s obsolete.
Understandably, a discussion followed.
Future workforce dynamics were examined that supported material presented in prior meeting regarding the changing demographics and the expectations of Gen Y entrants in the workforce. Among the statistics Tina cited: “there is a huge amount of expertise walking out of the economy. In 2010, 3 people will leave the economy for every person that enters it; by 2012, 4. By 2016, 6 people will leave for every new worker that joins. These are staggering realities”. More lively discussion.
Tina reported on the results of her recent survey of Peer Group members. Sixty-two (62) percent report to the CEO. A fine presentation and excellent handout material. Thanks Tina.
William Zauner, JAMS, commented that his organization is a combination of Federated and Flat. He underscored the longevity that he and his fellow executives have and the resulting trust and cooperation that characterizes JAMS. The issues he deals with have to due with resource limitations and responding to aggressive ideas of independent lawyers and their technology initiatives.
Jenifer Curlee, Surefire, described her portfolio management approach to organizing IT work. The resources are organized by function within the business. She co-locates IT resources in these functions and sets tight architectural standards and guidelines. Given the various priorities of different areas of the business, significant negotiation is an on going part of the job.
Jeff Reid, formerly of Conexant/Toyota, pointed out that he has experienced all flavors of the organizational styles described. He has reported to the CFO, and the CIO. He has seen companies get flatter as they are forced to reduce size. Throughout, the key to success and effective operation is trust, mutual respect, and relationship building.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, in his consulting work, has dealt mostly with IT organizations that were highly centralized and stated that this seems to be a trend in leading companies. Rockwell operated in four very distinct industries, providing significant challenges in providing corporate IT services and governance.
Thanks, again, to Tina Haines for leading a top-notch discussion. Tina's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Friday, October 30, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 9-10-09
1993-2009
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 10, 2009 meeting
Present: Mitch Morris, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Reid, Jeff Hecht, Tina Haines, Subbu Murthy, Sean Brown, Sharon Solomon, Dave Phillips
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
We are looking for volunteers to introduce the following topics, starting in January:
IT alignment with the CEO/business
IT Governance
Web 2.0/Web 3.0
On-demand computing
Go Green with ?
Service Catalog
CIO longevity (or lack thereof)
Topic: e-Discovery – Data retention and other related topics
Mitch Morris, IAPMO, started this very interactive discussion by stating that document retention means many things to many people, depending on rules and practices defined by their industry or as part of the definitions contained in SOX, HIPPA, and COBRA. If you are not mandated by federal or state law, it is very important to define your own policy, which will make e-discovery much more efficient. In this way, you can define how long to keep ”old” data, reduce the amount and governance of data you need to store for all types of storage devices (hard disks, servers, mobile devices, e-mail, tapes, off-site storage, etc.). e-Discovery deals with discovery in civil litigation of electronic stored information (ESI), which is very different from paper because of volume, transience, persistence and the metadata, which usually accompanies the data. This was the subject of 2 amendments to rules 16 and 26 of Federal Rules of Civil Procedures, 12/1/06 – please refer to Mitch’s handout for the precise definitions. Responding to an attorney’s broad request for data (a data witch hunt) can have serious financial, time and resources impacts. The best advice is anticipate the possibility and work with your legal department to define a response process. Do not to respond directly to the requesting attorney but work through your own legal department to narrow down the data requested, and the time frame for developing an estimate and doing the work. The members present had a variety of experiences with trying to be responsive to requests for information, on the one hand, and not overwhelming the IT organization on the other hand. There is also a confidentiality aspect to this subject so we will not identify the precise organization and experience. Most organizations have had some experience with trying to respond to request for e-discovery. One organization had 2 e-discovery legal actions, and so they had to define the search parameters and the financial impact before responding to the request. They now have 1 person in IT as their litigation point of contact. They also have purchased a device to archive all their email. Another organization makes sure that their response policy is contained in all the contracts with their outsourcers. Mitch mentioned the Sedona Conference, which is an annual conference set up to define legal and operational guidelines for responding to such requests. He included a 2-page summary of the best practices, recommendations and principles addressing electronic document production – it lists the top 14 best practices. Fundamentally, lawyers don’t fully understand IT yet, nor the impact of their requests on IT. It is important for your company to have a data retention policy.
Thanks again to Mitch for an informative handout and for the interactive discussion.
Mitch Morris' handout is at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 10, 2009 meeting
Present: Mitch Morris, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Reid, Jeff Hecht, Tina Haines, Subbu Murthy, Sean Brown, Sharon Solomon, Dave Phillips
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
We are looking for volunteers to introduce the following topics, starting in January:
IT alignment with the CEO/business
IT Governance
Web 2.0/Web 3.0
On-demand computing
Go Green with ?
Service Catalog
CIO longevity (or lack thereof)
Topic: e-Discovery – Data retention and other related topics
Mitch Morris, IAPMO, started this very interactive discussion by stating that document retention means many things to many people, depending on rules and practices defined by their industry or as part of the definitions contained in SOX, HIPPA, and COBRA. If you are not mandated by federal or state law, it is very important to define your own policy, which will make e-discovery much more efficient. In this way, you can define how long to keep ”old” data, reduce the amount and governance of data you need to store for all types of storage devices (hard disks, servers, mobile devices, e-mail, tapes, off-site storage, etc.). e-Discovery deals with discovery in civil litigation of electronic stored information (ESI), which is very different from paper because of volume, transience, persistence and the metadata, which usually accompanies the data. This was the subject of 2 amendments to rules 16 and 26 of Federal Rules of Civil Procedures, 12/1/06 – please refer to Mitch’s handout for the precise definitions. Responding to an attorney’s broad request for data (a data witch hunt) can have serious financial, time and resources impacts. The best advice is anticipate the possibility and work with your legal department to define a response process. Do not to respond directly to the requesting attorney but work through your own legal department to narrow down the data requested, and the time frame for developing an estimate and doing the work. The members present had a variety of experiences with trying to be responsive to requests for information, on the one hand, and not overwhelming the IT organization on the other hand. There is also a confidentiality aspect to this subject so we will not identify the precise organization and experience. Most organizations have had some experience with trying to respond to request for e-discovery. One organization had 2 e-discovery legal actions, and so they had to define the search parameters and the financial impact before responding to the request. They now have 1 person in IT as their litigation point of contact. They also have purchased a device to archive all their email. Another organization makes sure that their response policy is contained in all the contracts with their outsourcers. Mitch mentioned the Sedona Conference, which is an annual conference set up to define legal and operational guidelines for responding to such requests. He included a 2-page summary of the best practices, recommendations and principles addressing electronic document production – it lists the top 14 best practices. Fundamentally, lawyers don’t fully understand IT yet, nor the impact of their requests on IT. It is important for your company to have a data retention policy.
Thanks again to Mitch for an informative handout and for the interactive discussion.
Mitch Morris' handout is at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 8-13-09
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
August 13, 2009 meeting
Present: Carmella Cassetta, Tina Haines, Jim Sutter, Jeff Reid, Sharon Solomon, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available. Carmella introduced this topic by conference call from Toronto, where she was attending a meeting at one of her regional centers.
Topic: ERP Implementations – lessons learned.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, began by doing a situation analysis – 106 locations, 3 regional centers (Toronto, Tampa, and Santa Ana), growing through acquisition, $1-1.5 B revenue, 10,000 employees, 7 different systems and technical environments, no data standards, past ERP implementations failed. She summarized the reasons for an ERP – common information flow throughout the organization, effectiveness, efficiency, lower TCO, organizational alignment, optimized business processes, integrated financials, technical obsolescence. It was a $45M investment, but she had executive commitment, support and participation, without which any ERP implementation will fail, and a business strategy and discipline to align BP changes to match a vanilla package implementation. Other common reasons for failure include poor project management, poor estimates of time and resource requirements, not cleaning inconsistent data prior to implementation, cultural rejection, poor change management, inadequate training, and customizing the software. Because of these, the stats show 35% of ERP projects are cancelled, and only 10% are completed on time and within budget. To ensure success, identify each CSF and develop a plan to support each of them. For example, identify the project as a business driven project (not an IT project) by identifying the executive sponsor, creating a cross-functional team to formulate business needs up-front and identify the strategic priorities, and to support the changes in company culture, structure and processes. CCI’s ERP project was named UNIFY. Carmella has several slides on other CSFs, including a Gartner one which suggested accepting “best practice” ERP for your industry (in CCI’s case, CAMPUSVIEW), and minimize customizations. CCI’s approach did many things right, including tying success to business bonus and performance plans. She has several slides in her handout detailing the UNIFY project in its 3 phases, the role of the executive oversight committee, and the PMO. She hired a consulting company, PRTM, to help her with the project organization and structure, and to support CCI throughout the 3-year implementation. I thoroughly recommend that you review the handout and the slides on CCI’s approach. To summarize, Carmella shared with us some lessons learned at this stage of the project – 60% complete, 40 sites to convert over the next 6-8 months, within 10% of original budget, schedule delay of 6 months waiting on software enhancements. The organization is responding well, with several keys to success. The hardest parts include getting the right balance of training (before and after installation), don’t underestimate the difficulties of change, waiting on customization, maintaining good communications and business alignment over 3 years, and keeping to the cost estimates. Her slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio/cio-council-erp-update-081309 .
Tina Haines congratulated Carmella on an excellent presentation, and on her leadership throughout the project. Tina has been involved with implementing ERP systems 4 times, with probably the most successful being one centralized in Singapore, supporting 40 business units and 110K employees. She recently was involved with converting a UK company into the US system, using in-country resources, which became a problem because they wanted to optimize the system.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting, complimented Carmella on a very good presentation and project. He suggested that CCI offer a course on Project Management, focusing on ERP implementation best practices. Many years ago, before they had the benefit of best practices, Rockwell tended to “learn as we go”. His Winery client used the ERP implementation to try to unify the company, which were historically split in two. They selected the JD Edwards system as the base system, but the project was nowhere near as well managed as CCI’s. They allowed many modifications to be made to the order entry system. They also wanted best of breed solutions for other systems. Three years ago, they dropped maintenance and now are starting to inch closer to Oracle’s ERP.
Jeff Reid thought the presentation was excellent, and wished he had listened to it before he started his first implementation. Many companies go through agonies with an ERP project. He noted that PRTM worked out well for them. He will use this as a checklist for his next ERP implementation project.
Sharon Solomon also complimented Carmella on a great presentation and project leadership. Support from the top down is very important. She remembers her first ERP project – they were 10 months into the project when another company acquired them, and she was selected to be on the N. A. leadership group for the implementation. She made sure it was business driven, and that they developed an effective monthly communications meeting because the rumor mill can be very destructive. When they acquired another company, they were able to convert them very quickly to the new ERP system, working closely with top management.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thought the presentation was excellent and he took lots of notes. Enhancements to Campus View did cause problems. Getting the users to be part of the selection process is important. He remembers working for an Asian company whose philosophy was “change or be beheaded”. He agrees that its important to find a partner to help manage the project, use best practices, and to help with change management – they have used Sharepoint to help them do change management.
Thanks again to Carmella for an excellent introduction and handout.
August 13, 2009 meeting
Present: Carmella Cassetta, Tina Haines, Jim Sutter, Jeff Reid, Sharon Solomon, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available. Carmella introduced this topic by conference call from Toronto, where she was attending a meeting at one of her regional centers.
Topic: ERP Implementations – lessons learned.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, began by doing a situation analysis – 106 locations, 3 regional centers (Toronto, Tampa, and Santa Ana), growing through acquisition, $1-1.5 B revenue, 10,000 employees, 7 different systems and technical environments, no data standards, past ERP implementations failed. She summarized the reasons for an ERP – common information flow throughout the organization, effectiveness, efficiency, lower TCO, organizational alignment, optimized business processes, integrated financials, technical obsolescence. It was a $45M investment, but she had executive commitment, support and participation, without which any ERP implementation will fail, and a business strategy and discipline to align BP changes to match a vanilla package implementation. Other common reasons for failure include poor project management, poor estimates of time and resource requirements, not cleaning inconsistent data prior to implementation, cultural rejection, poor change management, inadequate training, and customizing the software. Because of these, the stats show 35% of ERP projects are cancelled, and only 10% are completed on time and within budget. To ensure success, identify each CSF and develop a plan to support each of them. For example, identify the project as a business driven project (not an IT project) by identifying the executive sponsor, creating a cross-functional team to formulate business needs up-front and identify the strategic priorities, and to support the changes in company culture, structure and processes. CCI’s ERP project was named UNIFY. Carmella has several slides on other CSFs, including a Gartner one which suggested accepting “best practice” ERP for your industry (in CCI’s case, CAMPUSVIEW), and minimize customizations. CCI’s approach did many things right, including tying success to business bonus and performance plans. She has several slides in her handout detailing the UNIFY project in its 3 phases, the role of the executive oversight committee, and the PMO. She hired a consulting company, PRTM, to help her with the project organization and structure, and to support CCI throughout the 3-year implementation. I thoroughly recommend that you review the handout and the slides on CCI’s approach. To summarize, Carmella shared with us some lessons learned at this stage of the project – 60% complete, 40 sites to convert over the next 6-8 months, within 10% of original budget, schedule delay of 6 months waiting on software enhancements. The organization is responding well, with several keys to success. The hardest parts include getting the right balance of training (before and after installation), don’t underestimate the difficulties of change, waiting on customization, maintaining good communications and business alignment over 3 years, and keeping to the cost estimates. Her slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio/cio-council-erp-update-081309 .
Tina Haines congratulated Carmella on an excellent presentation, and on her leadership throughout the project. Tina has been involved with implementing ERP systems 4 times, with probably the most successful being one centralized in Singapore, supporting 40 business units and 110K employees. She recently was involved with converting a UK company into the US system, using in-country resources, which became a problem because they wanted to optimize the system.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting, complimented Carmella on a very good presentation and project. He suggested that CCI offer a course on Project Management, focusing on ERP implementation best practices. Many years ago, before they had the benefit of best practices, Rockwell tended to “learn as we go”. His Winery client used the ERP implementation to try to unify the company, which were historically split in two. They selected the JD Edwards system as the base system, but the project was nowhere near as well managed as CCI’s. They allowed many modifications to be made to the order entry system. They also wanted best of breed solutions for other systems. Three years ago, they dropped maintenance and now are starting to inch closer to Oracle’s ERP.
Jeff Reid thought the presentation was excellent, and wished he had listened to it before he started his first implementation. Many companies go through agonies with an ERP project. He noted that PRTM worked out well for them. He will use this as a checklist for his next ERP implementation project.
Sharon Solomon also complimented Carmella on a great presentation and project leadership. Support from the top down is very important. She remembers her first ERP project – they were 10 months into the project when another company acquired them, and she was selected to be on the N. A. leadership group for the implementation. She made sure it was business driven, and that they developed an effective monthly communications meeting because the rumor mill can be very destructive. When they acquired another company, they were able to convert them very quickly to the new ERP system, working closely with top management.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thought the presentation was excellent and he took lots of notes. Enhancements to Campus View did cause problems. Getting the users to be part of the selection process is important. He remembers working for an Asian company whose philosophy was “change or be beheaded”. He agrees that its important to find a partner to help manage the project, use best practices, and to help with change management – they have used Sharepoint to help them do change management.
Thanks again to Carmella for an excellent introduction and handout.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 7-9-09
1993-2009
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
July 9, 2009 meeting
Present: Sharon Solomon, Subbu Murthy, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, Andy King, Sean Brown, Tina Haines, William Zauner, Jeff Hecht, David Mann, Dave Phillips
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: Personal Networking.
Sharon Solomon enjoyed preparing the introduction. She started by defining terms - personal networking, social networking, and the services that support these in addition to email and instant messaging. The most popular worldwide (and dangerous?) is Facebook, followed by MySpace and Twitter (although we were having a difficult time trying to define the value of it!). The most widely used professionally is Linkedin. There are many more! See Sharon’s handout for a more complete list. There are many reasons to use networking, not least of which is when you find yourself “in transition”. Other types of networks include alumni, employment, company, industry, vendors, hobbies, friends, family, etc. When using these social networking tools/services there are issues with privacy and currency of personal information, potential for misuse, and risks. When using Linkedin there are Do’s and Don’ts – take time on the profile, summary and bio to accentuate your strengths, use recommendations carefully. Effective networking depends on your willingness to contribute, and how effectively you use your network to form a personal advisory board. You can use it to create your own brand – business card (with photo), tag line, bio, elevator speak, resume, career portfolio and social network profile. There are many network groups and professional organizations that you might consider joining – see handout for lists, and for reading recommendations and source materials.
Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said there are many reasons for businesses to use networking as well as personal, including business content generation, market leadership positioning, customer relationship support, customer service support, community building, content monitoring, and decision support. It is important to go with the intension of contributing. He spends 10-20 hours a week networking.
Jeff Reid thanked Sharon for her presentation. He preferred face-to-face meetings to Facebook. He has used Linkedin extensively and finds it very good, and has opened a Twitter account, without much success. He does have a new business card with photo.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, also thanked Sharon for a great introduction. He uses Linkedin for business, and suggests that we open OC CIO peer group network on Linkedin. He also uses Facebook daily for fun, communicating with friends past and present. He recommended http://www.cnbc.com/id/31849843 for Social Networking's 'Naked' Truth - Tech Check with Jim Goldman.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thought that this was a great subject, and is a big user of Linkedin. He noted that during the US Open Golf tournament, Ian Poulter used Twitter a lot to keep everyone informed of his actions during rain delays. He questions the value of Facebook but uses it to find friends from the past.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, said that much to her surprise, she got a lot out of this discussion. She, like Jeff, much prefers the face-to-face contact, and is not convinced of the value of electronic networks, although she sees that Linkedin must be very useful to search people. Based on the state of her company, she is now in transition herself and will have to become familiar with all these services.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that the only networking service he uses is Linkedin. He does a lot of face-to-face networking through business groups and children’s activities, like AYSO, etc. This session has been very useful and he also thanked Sharon for her efforts. It highlighted his concerns about stuff on the Internet never goes away, and so Facebook could be dangerous long term.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, echoed his thanks to Sharon. He is on Linkedin and a university network, but is not a huge user – more comfortable face-to-face – maybe it is a generational thing. He repeated his concerns about the younger employees not getting much interface with their management and thus not learning how to become a manager. He is a big user of instant text messaging
David Mann, Word & Brown, complimented Sharon on her presentation. As technology leaders, we are always looking for ways to use technology to advantage, and he has used Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, but not yet Linkedin. He likes the idea of using these network services for business intelligence.
Thanks again to Sharon for the very good introduction and handout.
See you on August 13, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
July 9, 2009 meeting
Present: Sharon Solomon, Subbu Murthy, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, Andy King, Sean Brown, Tina Haines, William Zauner, Jeff Hecht, David Mann, Dave Phillips
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: Personal Networking.
Sharon Solomon enjoyed preparing the introduction. She started by defining terms - personal networking, social networking, and the services that support these in addition to email and instant messaging. The most popular worldwide (and dangerous?) is Facebook, followed by MySpace and Twitter (although we were having a difficult time trying to define the value of it!). The most widely used professionally is Linkedin. There are many more! See Sharon’s handout for a more complete list. There are many reasons to use networking, not least of which is when you find yourself “in transition”. Other types of networks include alumni, employment, company, industry, vendors, hobbies, friends, family, etc. When using these social networking tools/services there are issues with privacy and currency of personal information, potential for misuse, and risks. When using Linkedin there are Do’s and Don’ts – take time on the profile, summary and bio to accentuate your strengths, use recommendations carefully. Effective networking depends on your willingness to contribute, and how effectively you use your network to form a personal advisory board. You can use it to create your own brand – business card (with photo), tag line, bio, elevator speak, resume, career portfolio and social network profile. There are many network groups and professional organizations that you might consider joining – see handout for lists, and for reading recommendations and source materials.
Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said there are many reasons for businesses to use networking as well as personal, including business content generation, market leadership positioning, customer relationship support, customer service support, community building, content monitoring, and decision support. It is important to go with the intension of contributing. He spends 10-20 hours a week networking.
Jeff Reid thanked Sharon for her presentation. He preferred face-to-face meetings to Facebook. He has used Linkedin extensively and finds it very good, and has opened a Twitter account, without much success. He does have a new business card with photo.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, also thanked Sharon for a great introduction. He uses Linkedin for business, and suggests that we open OC CIO peer group network on Linkedin. He also uses Facebook daily for fun, communicating with friends past and present. He recommended http://www.cnbc.com/id/31849843 for Social Networking's 'Naked' Truth - Tech Check with Jim Goldman.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, thought that this was a great subject, and is a big user of Linkedin. He noted that during the US Open Golf tournament, Ian Poulter used Twitter a lot to keep everyone informed of his actions during rain delays. He questions the value of Facebook but uses it to find friends from the past.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, said that much to her surprise, she got a lot out of this discussion. She, like Jeff, much prefers the face-to-face contact, and is not convinced of the value of electronic networks, although she sees that Linkedin must be very useful to search people. Based on the state of her company, she is now in transition herself and will have to become familiar with all these services.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that the only networking service he uses is Linkedin. He does a lot of face-to-face networking through business groups and children’s activities, like AYSO, etc. This session has been very useful and he also thanked Sharon for her efforts. It highlighted his concerns about stuff on the Internet never goes away, and so Facebook could be dangerous long term.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, echoed his thanks to Sharon. He is on Linkedin and a university network, but is not a huge user – more comfortable face-to-face – maybe it is a generational thing. He repeated his concerns about the younger employees not getting much interface with their management and thus not learning how to become a manager. He is a big user of instant text messaging
David Mann, Word & Brown, complimented Sharon on her presentation. As technology leaders, we are always looking for ways to use technology to advantage, and he has used Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, but not yet Linkedin. He likes the idea of using these network services for business intelligence.
Thanks again to Sharon for the very good introduction and handout.
See you on August 13, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 6-11-09
1993-2009
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
June 11, 2009 meeting
Present: Sean Brown, Greg Gillis, Jim Sutter, Sharon Solomon, Jeff Reid, Jeff Hecht, Jennifer Curlee, David Mann, Andy King, William Zauner, Carmella Cassetta, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Greg Gillis, SAP, to the meeting to assist with the presentation.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: Cloud computing update.
This is a popular topic and is the lead article in the June 1, 2009 CIO Magazine – Cloud Control. Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, started with an informative video, http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBd14rjcs0. Cloud computing is a dynamically scalable computing resource, where virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. It incorporates infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS) and software (SaaS) as a service. IDC forecasts the Cloud computing market to grow to $42B by 2012, from $16B in 2008, and will consume 25% of the total IT budget. It’s becoming popular as a pay-as-you-go option because of increased bandwidth, faster and cheaper hardware, virtualization and web services protocols. Users can avoid capital expenditures, and consumers are billed for what they use as a utility (like electricity), or subscription (like a paper). There are little or no upfront or termination costs, and services are provided with service level agreements. Despite differences of opinion on what Nicholas Carr has to say, there are names worth watching in this space. Founded in 1994, Amazon is one of the innovators in Web-based computing, offering pay-as-you-go access to virtual servers and data storage space (see Sean’s handout for more detail). Prominent customers include NY Times and Eli Lilly. Another major force is Salesforce.com, founded in 1999, with its set of CRM tools and a platform for building web applications. Google is a big player offering Google Apps, and a simple Web site creation tool, Postini. While the company’s main focus is search, no one knows the Internet quite like Google. And never underestimate Microsoft. The Pros of the Cloud include fast start-up, scalability, business agility, faster product development, and no capital expenditures. The Cons include bandwidth can become expensive, application performance could suffer, data integrity, you could be too big to scale, and human capital may be lacking. To mitigate this, you can demand SAS 70 compliance. Gartner lists several issues which potential users of Cloud computing should be aware of, including the location of the data storage units, data segregation and availability, disaster recovery, long-term viability of the vendor and how to recover your data if the vendor becomes unable to respond. Sean's presentation is at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that he has limited experience with Cloud computing, although he is on the Board of a small vendor that offers a development environment on Amazon. Lots of Silicon Valley start-ups use the Cloud approach. He agrees that there are issues including integrating with other IT services used, and management problems, especially for small company CIOs when trying to solve service problems. One of his clients is looking at this especially since they have found a predictive maintenance SaaS provider to enhance their J D Edwards systems.
Sharon Solomon enjoyed the presentation. It makes you think about what do you need in your environment, and how best to supply those services – part Cloud and part in-house. She worked in a heavily regulated environment where they had to be very careful with protecting against unauthorized access to data, but they did use Salesforce.com
Jeff Reid also does not have much experience with SaaS, and he has lots of questions, similar to those you have when considering outsourcing. How open are these vendors to audit? Last month, he introduced the topic of Virtualization but talked about it in terms of in-house use of virtual resources. Cloud computing adds another wrinkle to that discussion, and it depends where you are in your business cycle.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that it depends on where you are in your business cycle and on where you are with each of your applications. They are looking hard at outsourcing Exchange to a Cloud vendor. He likes the availability (24X7X52), DR, etc. Integration is an issue. You still need expertise to run the Cloud computing and to manage the network.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they outsource their storefront, which is transaction based. They are starting to use SaaS where they don’t have in-house expertise, like using Avatax (?) for Tax. They are finding problems with the interface between it and SAP, and are having performance problems. They have had to segregate the services.
David Mann, Word & Brown, complimented Sean on his presentation. They are seriously evaluating the ROI of Cloud computing, and last year looked at Salesforce.com. The balance is between time-to-market vs. integration. They have decided to go with Microsoft CRM, as it gave them more options than Salesforce.com.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, added his compliments on the presentation, and reflected on how company culture affects these decisions. It is not their style to use Cloud computing, but they will crawl, walk then run with it. They might go with Salesforce.com, but don’t like subscription services – they prefer capital expenses to operating expenses.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, also thought it was a good presentation. They use SaaS for Emergency Call-in, and are seriously looking at Cloud computing for things they are trying to test. It depends on the data, the application, whether it is informative, not transactional in nature.
Thanks again to Sean and Greg for the very good introduction and informative handout.
See you on July 9, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
June 11, 2009 meeting
Present: Sean Brown, Greg Gillis, Jim Sutter, Sharon Solomon, Jeff Reid, Jeff Hecht, Jennifer Curlee, David Mann, Andy King, William Zauner, Carmella Cassetta, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Greg Gillis, SAP, to the meeting to assist with the presentation.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: Cloud computing update.
This is a popular topic and is the lead article in the June 1, 2009 CIO Magazine – Cloud Control. Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, started with an informative video, http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdBd14rjcs0. Cloud computing is a dynamically scalable computing resource, where virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. It incorporates infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS) and software (SaaS) as a service. IDC forecasts the Cloud computing market to grow to $42B by 2012, from $16B in 2008, and will consume 25% of the total IT budget. It’s becoming popular as a pay-as-you-go option because of increased bandwidth, faster and cheaper hardware, virtualization and web services protocols. Users can avoid capital expenditures, and consumers are billed for what they use as a utility (like electricity), or subscription (like a paper). There are little or no upfront or termination costs, and services are provided with service level agreements. Despite differences of opinion on what Nicholas Carr has to say, there are names worth watching in this space. Founded in 1994, Amazon is one of the innovators in Web-based computing, offering pay-as-you-go access to virtual servers and data storage space (see Sean’s handout for more detail). Prominent customers include NY Times and Eli Lilly. Another major force is Salesforce.com, founded in 1999, with its set of CRM tools and a platform for building web applications. Google is a big player offering Google Apps, and a simple Web site creation tool, Postini. While the company’s main focus is search, no one knows the Internet quite like Google. And never underestimate Microsoft. The Pros of the Cloud include fast start-up, scalability, business agility, faster product development, and no capital expenditures. The Cons include bandwidth can become expensive, application performance could suffer, data integrity, you could be too big to scale, and human capital may be lacking. To mitigate this, you can demand SAS 70 compliance. Gartner lists several issues which potential users of Cloud computing should be aware of, including the location of the data storage units, data segregation and availability, disaster recovery, long-term viability of the vendor and how to recover your data if the vendor becomes unable to respond. Sean's presentation is at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that he has limited experience with Cloud computing, although he is on the Board of a small vendor that offers a development environment on Amazon. Lots of Silicon Valley start-ups use the Cloud approach. He agrees that there are issues including integrating with other IT services used, and management problems, especially for small company CIOs when trying to solve service problems. One of his clients is looking at this especially since they have found a predictive maintenance SaaS provider to enhance their J D Edwards systems.
Sharon Solomon enjoyed the presentation. It makes you think about what do you need in your environment, and how best to supply those services – part Cloud and part in-house. She worked in a heavily regulated environment where they had to be very careful with protecting against unauthorized access to data, but they did use Salesforce.com
Jeff Reid also does not have much experience with SaaS, and he has lots of questions, similar to those you have when considering outsourcing. How open are these vendors to audit? Last month, he introduced the topic of Virtualization but talked about it in terms of in-house use of virtual resources. Cloud computing adds another wrinkle to that discussion, and it depends where you are in your business cycle.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that it depends on where you are in your business cycle and on where you are with each of your applications. They are looking hard at outsourcing Exchange to a Cloud vendor. He likes the availability (24X7X52), DR, etc. Integration is an issue. You still need expertise to run the Cloud computing and to manage the network.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they outsource their storefront, which is transaction based. They are starting to use SaaS where they don’t have in-house expertise, like using Avatax (?) for Tax. They are finding problems with the interface between it and SAP, and are having performance problems. They have had to segregate the services.
David Mann, Word & Brown, complimented Sean on his presentation. They are seriously evaluating the ROI of Cloud computing, and last year looked at Salesforce.com. The balance is between time-to-market vs. integration. They have decided to go with Microsoft CRM, as it gave them more options than Salesforce.com.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, added his compliments on the presentation, and reflected on how company culture affects these decisions. It is not their style to use Cloud computing, but they will crawl, walk then run with it. They might go with Salesforce.com, but don’t like subscription services – they prefer capital expenses to operating expenses.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, also thought it was a good presentation. They use SaaS for Emergency Call-in, and are seriously looking at Cloud computing for things they are trying to test. It depends on the data, the application, whether it is informative, not transactional in nature.
Thanks again to Sean and Greg for the very good introduction and informative handout.
See you on July 9, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 5-14-09
1993-2009
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
May 14, 2009 meeting
Present: Jeff Reid, Steve Kronebusch, Andy King, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Sharon Solomon, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Steve Kronebusch, Sidepath – Simplifying Networks, to the meeting as a subject matter expert to provide technical backup where needed.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: Virtualization – server, storage, desktop, application, network.
Jeff Reid said that preparing this introduction proved to be very enlightening. He had some experience with virtualization at Conexant using VMWare, and more at Thornton Holdings where they ran into problems with compatibility between the virtualization software and their Great Plains, Citrix and Microsoft software. The official response from the vendors was “we can’t support you”, but unofficially they would put them in touch with many of their users who were running VM. Before virtualization, a given application ran on a specific hardware and OS software platform. Virtualization decouples the components, allowing sharing of resources, increased utilization (decreases future costs), lessens management overhead (still necessary, and capacity planning is important), reduces power consumption, and reduces response time for creating new virtual servers (to 30 min. or so). The areas of virtualization include servers, storage, desktop, applications and networks. The VM software turns hardware into software instances, which the Hypervisor maps to the physical server, router, switch or storage. The Connection Broker software allows a user to connect to his/her own virtual desktop of data and services, like the thin client concept. There are several virtualization packages – VMWare (market leader), Microsoft Hyper V (relatively new), Citrix Xen (building on their thin client experience), Virtual Iron (Oracle just bought them). This presentation is focused on VMWare and Compellent. VMWare breaks the dependency between OS and the hardware, allowing a large number of virtual machines to share a single pool of server resources, increasing utilization thus decreasing costs. Compellent breaks the dependency between servers and storage, by virtualizing all disks into one pool of storage, accessible by any server, reducing cost and wasted of storage capacity. This combination dynamically balances computing and storage resources based on business needs and predefined rules. It allows you to setup, test and implement DR with no downtime and less cost and complexity. It enables cost effective high availability for applications (and data protection and recovery) on virtual machines by combining snapshots of files and automatic restart of virtual machines in case of server failure. You can run multiple desk top OS (Mac, XP or Vista OS) on the same machine. Cisco has allowed workers to choose from a handful of laptops – about 25% choose Macs. Jeff’s handout covers this in more detail along with general thoughts and advice. A virtual management tool is required (VMWare’s is VCenter). Get your staff certified. Do an assessment. Review your current data backup and recovery processes. Power consumption will reduce but will increase in spots because of footprint density and you might need hot air removal. It is worth looking at and there are compelling reasons for implementing virtualization. His slides can ce found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, said that they use VMWare in a test environment. It gives application developers a playpen (pig pen!). They are relatively small in number (10 people), and so there is not a compelling reason to go virtualization. He complimented Jeff on his presentation, and now has more energy to plan for more.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, also thanked Jeff for the thoroughness of his presentation, for which Jeff thanked Steve for his assistance. Jim does see a problem with taking this to the BoD – great IT story, but why didn’t we do this before. At one of his clients, they went to Vista with all new hardware, more laptops than desktops, never went to XP, and didn’t find a cost reason to go thin client. Looking back to his many years in the business, he remembers vividly the very large mainframe, and all its complexity. Now we are back to more of the same!
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they are relatively small (25 servers) and welcome virtualization to cut expenses. They went to a Xen server, deferred management tools, and will go gradually to virtualization. Her concerns revolve around performance and the network.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that they have gone virtual for all their developers (50 in both locations). It provides high availability and many alternative environments. He is able to make the case for cost avoidance. They provide a virtual desktop environment for their offshore developers, as they don’t want proprietary software to go offshore. They use best of breed solutions, and they can start with a low risk, low cost entry point. It provides for more productivity, and for staged test environments. It is great for websites, especially low volume sites.
Sharon Solomon complimented Jeff for a great presentation. At Watson Pharmaceuticals, they had a 3-year plan to go virtual, and presented it to the CFO. Remember that this is a very regulated environment, and so backup, DR and rollout were very important.
Steve Kronebusch, Sidepath, thanked the group for inviting him to participate and he enjoyed the meeting. It is not often that he gets to hear the discussion from the CIO’s point of view.
Thanks again to Jeff and Steve for the very good introduction and informative handout.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
May 14, 2009 meeting
Present: Jeff Reid, Steve Kronebusch, Andy King, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Sharon Solomon, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Steve Kronebusch, Sidepath – Simplifying Networks, to the meeting as a subject matter expert to provide technical backup where needed.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: Virtualization – server, storage, desktop, application, network.
Jeff Reid said that preparing this introduction proved to be very enlightening. He had some experience with virtualization at Conexant using VMWare, and more at Thornton Holdings where they ran into problems with compatibility between the virtualization software and their Great Plains, Citrix and Microsoft software. The official response from the vendors was “we can’t support you”, but unofficially they would put them in touch with many of their users who were running VM. Before virtualization, a given application ran on a specific hardware and OS software platform. Virtualization decouples the components, allowing sharing of resources, increased utilization (decreases future costs), lessens management overhead (still necessary, and capacity planning is important), reduces power consumption, and reduces response time for creating new virtual servers (to 30 min. or so). The areas of virtualization include servers, storage, desktop, applications and networks. The VM software turns hardware into software instances, which the Hypervisor maps to the physical server, router, switch or storage. The Connection Broker software allows a user to connect to his/her own virtual desktop of data and services, like the thin client concept. There are several virtualization packages – VMWare (market leader), Microsoft Hyper V (relatively new), Citrix Xen (building on their thin client experience), Virtual Iron (Oracle just bought them). This presentation is focused on VMWare and Compellent. VMWare breaks the dependency between OS and the hardware, allowing a large number of virtual machines to share a single pool of server resources, increasing utilization thus decreasing costs. Compellent breaks the dependency between servers and storage, by virtualizing all disks into one pool of storage, accessible by any server, reducing cost and wasted of storage capacity. This combination dynamically balances computing and storage resources based on business needs and predefined rules. It allows you to setup, test and implement DR with no downtime and less cost and complexity. It enables cost effective high availability for applications (and data protection and recovery) on virtual machines by combining snapshots of files and automatic restart of virtual machines in case of server failure. You can run multiple desk top OS (Mac, XP or Vista OS) on the same machine. Cisco has allowed workers to choose from a handful of laptops – about 25% choose Macs. Jeff’s handout covers this in more detail along with general thoughts and advice. A virtual management tool is required (VMWare’s is VCenter). Get your staff certified. Do an assessment. Review your current data backup and recovery processes. Power consumption will reduce but will increase in spots because of footprint density and you might need hot air removal. It is worth looking at and there are compelling reasons for implementing virtualization. His slides can ce found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, said that they use VMWare in a test environment. It gives application developers a playpen (pig pen!). They are relatively small in number (10 people), and so there is not a compelling reason to go virtualization. He complimented Jeff on his presentation, and now has more energy to plan for more.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, also thanked Jeff for the thoroughness of his presentation, for which Jeff thanked Steve for his assistance. Jim does see a problem with taking this to the BoD – great IT story, but why didn’t we do this before. At one of his clients, they went to Vista with all new hardware, more laptops than desktops, never went to XP, and didn’t find a cost reason to go thin client. Looking back to his many years in the business, he remembers vividly the very large mainframe, and all its complexity. Now we are back to more of the same!
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they are relatively small (25 servers) and welcome virtualization to cut expenses. They went to a Xen server, deferred management tools, and will go gradually to virtualization. Her concerns revolve around performance and the network.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that they have gone virtual for all their developers (50 in both locations). It provides high availability and many alternative environments. He is able to make the case for cost avoidance. They provide a virtual desktop environment for their offshore developers, as they don’t want proprietary software to go offshore. They use best of breed solutions, and they can start with a low risk, low cost entry point. It provides for more productivity, and for staged test environments. It is great for websites, especially low volume sites.
Sharon Solomon complimented Jeff for a great presentation. At Watson Pharmaceuticals, they had a 3-year plan to go virtual, and presented it to the CFO. Remember that this is a very regulated environment, and so backup, DR and rollout were very important.
Steve Kronebusch, Sidepath, thanked the group for inviting him to participate and he enjoyed the meeting. It is not often that he gets to hear the discussion from the CIO’s point of view.
Thanks again to Jeff and Steve for the very good introduction and informative handout.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 4-09-09
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
April 9, 2009 meeting
Present: Paul Gray, Jeff Hecht, Carmella Cassetta, Jennifer Curlee, Jesus Unzueta, Sean Brown, Chris Andreozzi, Mitch Morris, David Mann, Dave Phillips
The revised schedule of topics and speakers (through September, 2009) is listed in Attachment A. Check to see if and when you are presenting the introduction.
Due to an injury, Paul Gray made his presentation over the speakerphone from home, with Sean Brown operating his slide projector.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: Telecommuting – techniques, practices, and policies
In introducing the voice of Paul Gray to the group, I mentioned that Paul had presented this topic to the OC CIO Round Table in December 1995, and it has been a topic that has been revisited a few times since then, both here and in the Bay Area CIO Round Table. Paul mentioned that he co-authored his first book on the subject in late 1974, with Jack Nilles, and he still uses Nilles’ definitions:
Telecommuting - moving the work to the workers, not the workers to the work, more than 1 day per week. Early attempts included relocating the work place to satellite offices close to home. (Teleworking - any form of substitution of IT for work related travel)
Over the last 35 years it has been a mixed bag. It can improve worker productivity (American Express, British Telecom, IBM, concierge at Hyatt-Regency, Santa Clara). Workers are more amenable to overtime. It saves companies money ($5,000 per employee), reduces absenteeism, and reduces traffic congestion. Helps the environment, and is an incentive to attract and retain workers. It does require careful planning from management and cooperation from all employees, because teleworkers need a desk/office when they do come in to the office (hoteling) at least 1 to 2 days a week. Telecommuting is not for everybody – some people need the discipline of coming in to the office every day. You still have to manage the remote workers and establish productivity metrics, and there are set-up costs involved (equipment, supplies), and safety concerns (Dell sends out a 2 man team to set-up properly to begin with). There are teleworker challenges – how to not become invisible, to maintain a high enough profile, to not work 24 hours a day, to still learn about promotions and interesting project opportunities. A Steelcase survey of 700 workers found that of the 46% allowed to commute, only 32% do. The technology has improved and it is getting much easier. Paul ended by listing the 10 rules for a company considering telecommuting option:
- make sure that the $ savings calculation is sound (Paul included a Savings calculator in his handout – see attached)
- get HR involved
- insist on a separate home office and provide help line support
- provide a dedicated land line
- cover the teleworker home office costs
- pilot telecommuting with strong workers, not marginal employees
- involve workers in meetings, even if they have to come in to the office
- remote employees are NOT available at all hours
- conduct casual conversations with all employees, remote or local
- consider them for plum assignments, make them 1st class citizens
We asked each of the members present if they supported telecommuting.
Paul's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that they do not formally support telecommuting, but still have a few that do in IT. They do not have many of the more formalized support procedures. There is a lot of resistance from management because of the productivity issue, data security, and personal liability issues. He worries about how employees get to learn management skills if you don’t see them in action. They do use offshore resources for development projects.
Chris Andreozzi, Knowledge Centrix, said that he is worried about the safety liability issues. They recently implemented the Cisco Home Office product for a company, and it’s expensive ($25,000 per home office, plus backend infrastructure). He used to telecommute to Houston, spending 2 weeks per month on the road. Now he owns a company, and sets the rules. Sales people can telecommute; engineers work in the office. Key is the character of the individual, and the availability of good metrics. He is worried about the loss of synergy, but there are big savings from hoteling.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said that they do it informally. Some of the executives are very passionate about not working at home. They are starting to do it more formally, especially as they need the space. They treat it as a perk, and only pay part of the costs (not the Internet). They do support distance learning.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that there is a bias against telecommuting in a manufacturing environment. They do need to build the infrastructure to support it, as they have 6 facilities within 2 miles. She has her office in the same building as the other executives, and they do support some aspects of hoteling. Within IT, they do allow trusted employees to telecommute.
Jesus Unzueta, Convera, said that their executives can work wherever they want, and in IT, setting up the infrastructure to support it is expensive. Everyone gets a laptop but they pay for their own Internet connection. It’s important to get HR involved because not every job can be done from home. Business analysts need to be close to their customers and available when needed, depending on which part of the company they are supporting. It’s often up to the individual executive to set the rules.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that if you work from home, and have young children, its important to get a baby sitter. Business consulting involves 5-10% face time, and 90-95% solution generation. Strategic discussions need to be face to face, but many of the day-today decisions can be done over the phone. However, in these days of economic uncertainty, it’s important to maintain a good relationship with your boss, and that quite often means face-to-face time.
Mitch Morris, IAPMO, said that he has seen full companies managed remotely – it is totally dependent on the organization’s culture. It also depends on what the individual worker is trying to do. In IT, you do need hands on for some aspects of break fix support. When he is providing consulting support, he tends to work at the client’s office.
David Mann, Word & Brown, agreed with Jeff in saying that management does not support telecommuting, but they do work with offshore resources for development projects, which is starting to change minds. It is because development projects have specific deadlines and deliverables, which can be measured. So most of the work can be done remotely, but the P.M./business consultant has to interact with the client.
Thanks again to Paul Gray for presenting the introduction from home and for the handouts.
See you on May 14, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
April 9, 2009 meeting
Present: Paul Gray, Jeff Hecht, Carmella Cassetta, Jennifer Curlee, Jesus Unzueta, Sean Brown, Chris Andreozzi, Mitch Morris, David Mann, Dave Phillips
The revised schedule of topics and speakers (through September, 2009) is listed in Attachment A. Check to see if and when you are presenting the introduction.
Due to an injury, Paul Gray made his presentation over the speakerphone from home, with Sean Brown operating his slide projector.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: Telecommuting – techniques, practices, and policies
In introducing the voice of Paul Gray to the group, I mentioned that Paul had presented this topic to the OC CIO Round Table in December 1995, and it has been a topic that has been revisited a few times since then, both here and in the Bay Area CIO Round Table. Paul mentioned that he co-authored his first book on the subject in late 1974, with Jack Nilles, and he still uses Nilles’ definitions:
Telecommuting - moving the work to the workers, not the workers to the work, more than 1 day per week. Early attempts included relocating the work place to satellite offices close to home. (Teleworking - any form of substitution of IT for work related travel)
Over the last 35 years it has been a mixed bag. It can improve worker productivity (American Express, British Telecom, IBM, concierge at Hyatt-Regency, Santa Clara). Workers are more amenable to overtime. It saves companies money ($5,000 per employee), reduces absenteeism, and reduces traffic congestion. Helps the environment, and is an incentive to attract and retain workers. It does require careful planning from management and cooperation from all employees, because teleworkers need a desk/office when they do come in to the office (hoteling) at least 1 to 2 days a week. Telecommuting is not for everybody – some people need the discipline of coming in to the office every day. You still have to manage the remote workers and establish productivity metrics, and there are set-up costs involved (equipment, supplies), and safety concerns (Dell sends out a 2 man team to set-up properly to begin with). There are teleworker challenges – how to not become invisible, to maintain a high enough profile, to not work 24 hours a day, to still learn about promotions and interesting project opportunities. A Steelcase survey of 700 workers found that of the 46% allowed to commute, only 32% do. The technology has improved and it is getting much easier. Paul ended by listing the 10 rules for a company considering telecommuting option:
- make sure that the $ savings calculation is sound (Paul included a Savings calculator in his handout – see attached)
- get HR involved
- insist on a separate home office and provide help line support
- provide a dedicated land line
- cover the teleworker home office costs
- pilot telecommuting with strong workers, not marginal employees
- involve workers in meetings, even if they have to come in to the office
- remote employees are NOT available at all hours
- conduct casual conversations with all employees, remote or local
- consider them for plum assignments, make them 1st class citizens
We asked each of the members present if they supported telecommuting.
Paul's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that they do not formally support telecommuting, but still have a few that do in IT. They do not have many of the more formalized support procedures. There is a lot of resistance from management because of the productivity issue, data security, and personal liability issues. He worries about how employees get to learn management skills if you don’t see them in action. They do use offshore resources for development projects.
Chris Andreozzi, Knowledge Centrix, said that he is worried about the safety liability issues. They recently implemented the Cisco Home Office product for a company, and it’s expensive ($25,000 per home office, plus backend infrastructure). He used to telecommute to Houston, spending 2 weeks per month on the road. Now he owns a company, and sets the rules. Sales people can telecommute; engineers work in the office. Key is the character of the individual, and the availability of good metrics. He is worried about the loss of synergy, but there are big savings from hoteling.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said that they do it informally. Some of the executives are very passionate about not working at home. They are starting to do it more formally, especially as they need the space. They treat it as a perk, and only pay part of the costs (not the Internet). They do support distance learning.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that there is a bias against telecommuting in a manufacturing environment. They do need to build the infrastructure to support it, as they have 6 facilities within 2 miles. She has her office in the same building as the other executives, and they do support some aspects of hoteling. Within IT, they do allow trusted employees to telecommute.
Jesus Unzueta, Convera, said that their executives can work wherever they want, and in IT, setting up the infrastructure to support it is expensive. Everyone gets a laptop but they pay for their own Internet connection. It’s important to get HR involved because not every job can be done from home. Business analysts need to be close to their customers and available when needed, depending on which part of the company they are supporting. It’s often up to the individual executive to set the rules.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that if you work from home, and have young children, its important to get a baby sitter. Business consulting involves 5-10% face time, and 90-95% solution generation. Strategic discussions need to be face to face, but many of the day-today decisions can be done over the phone. However, in these days of economic uncertainty, it’s important to maintain a good relationship with your boss, and that quite often means face-to-face time.
Mitch Morris, IAPMO, said that he has seen full companies managed remotely – it is totally dependent on the organization’s culture. It also depends on what the individual worker is trying to do. In IT, you do need hands on for some aspects of break fix support. When he is providing consulting support, he tends to work at the client’s office.
David Mann, Word & Brown, agreed with Jeff in saying that management does not support telecommuting, but they do work with offshore resources for development projects, which is starting to change minds. It is because development projects have specific deadlines and deliverables, which can be measured. So most of the work can be done remotely, but the P.M./business consultant has to interact with the client.
Thanks again to Paul Gray for presenting the introduction from home and for the handouts.
See you on May 14, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
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