Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
April 14, 2011 meeting
Present: Joe Desuta, Ashwin Rangan, Jim Sutter, Jeff Hecht, Subbu Murthy, Hicham Semaan, Jennifer Curlee, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers – note the change in June and July:
5/12/11 Enterprise social networking David Mann
6/9/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
7/14/11 IT as a service Jennifer Curlee
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan
Topic: The value of QA
Joe Desuta used the Wikipedia definition of QA – the systematic monitoring and evaluation of an activity to improve the probability of attaining a quality product or process, but it does not guarantee the outcome. QA as an IT function is not limited to software - any testing falls under QA. It is hard to quantify the ROI. It is relatively easy to find bugs in the features, but how does one put a value to that? How do you QA performance and/or data errors? Testing takes time and tends to delay the release but it is important when problems with the new release or product affect clients (or worse in a regulated industry), not just internal staff. The value of QA varies significantly, depending on the size and type of company, as does the ratio of tester to developer. Should the test team be part of the development team? Who is responsible for data integrity? The approach to QA is changing, from the traditional waterfall method (which makes a lot of sense when going to a new release of a package), to a more agile method where QA occurs a lot earlier and is part of the development team, sometimes part of the requirements team, where you can define for testability. Testing for security is becoming part of the requirements. The trend in QA is to use script free approaches, and to use testing tools in the cloud, tools which are more supporting of the Agile approach. Joe included the magic quadrant for integrated software quality suites.
We asked those present to share with us their experiences with QA.
Hicham wondered about the performance testing issues of QA. QA adds value by improving the product by finding errors before it is deployed, but is this enough?
Jennifer is a fan of QA but feels that it could add more value if it focused also on improving documentation and training.
Jeff is also a fan of QA but has in the past tended to include that effort as part of the development team.
Ashwin is now part of a heavily regulated industry, where testing is mandatory, with a track and trace requirement. About 10% of the 7,000 employees are in QA. In IT he has a 6-person QA team doing code testing, and an independent IT team involved way ahead in the protocol definition effort.
Jim said that he might be a bit out-of-date on this issue. He was on the board of WaveMaker, which was sold to VMWare and which saw a huge improvement going Agile. The winery tends to not have a separate IT QA group, as quality is not as big an issue as performance. He noted that in the auto industry, defects per 1,000 is used as a measure to quantify quality.
Subbu noted that one could be surprised by defects in things that you would assume were error free. He mentioned that social security numbers are not unique!
Thank you, Joe, for the interesting introduction and the handout. Joe's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
OC CIO Minutes March 10, 2011
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
March 10, 2011 meeting
Present: Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, David Mann, Tony Aldemir, Ashwin Rangan, Joe Desuta, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Ashwin’s guest Tony Aldemir, Edwards Lifesciences, to his first visit to the OC CIO Round Table. The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
4/14/11 The value of QA Joe Desuta
5/12/11 Enterprise social networking David Mann
6/9/11 IT as a service Jennifer Curlee
7/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan
Topic: Outsourcing
Jeff Reid started by defining terms, making the distinction between outsourcing, off-shoring, near-shoring and remote infrastructure management (RIM). The total value of outsourcing contracts in 2010 was $62B, a 6% growth per year – 8 of these were mega deals of $1B or more. India still leads by a large margin, but China is catching up, with the Philippines also growing. Jeff also listed cities by nation as big outsourcing centers. For outsourcing, he listed some of the pros (lower costs, increased efficiency, focus and corporate profits) and cons (increased PM complexity, loss of control and IP vulnerability). For off-shoring, the US pros include increased corporate profits, and the cons include unemployment, loss of industrial base and high trade deficits – the developing countries benefit, which is good if there are reciprocal agreements. He noted that the City of Costa Mesa was considering outsourcing several business services and functions, and he quoted the proposed cost savings and other benefits. The reasons for outsourcing include cost restructuring (move to variable costs), improved quality (with SLAs), service contracts, access to best practices, access to knowledge and a pool of talent. The reasons not to outsource include the outsourcer tends not to work directly for the process managers, loss of quality, language/accent difficulties, culture gaps, security and effect on employee morale. The set-up time for the switch to an outsourcer can be longer than expected, especially if both parties are not equally prepared. Communication is key; ability to create SLAs is important; training and repeat training is needed; the legal contract is important but doesn’t guarantee success; the issues don’t go away, just change; continuous change management is important; so is governance. Jeff attached a page or two on how to get started.
Jeff mentioned that most of his experience with outsourcing was from prior jobs – his new employer does not do very much, except with a local company.
We asked those present to share with us their experiences with outsourcing.
Keith said that he is not outsourcing IT at the moment – his current challenge is with manufacturing in Mexico. In the past he was involved mainly with task outsourcing. His main concern is when you outsource, knowledge retention is a problem.
Jennifer is looking to outsource as much as possible. She is down to 3 people in her development group, and is looking for skills in small measures.
Jeff Hecht said that they do a lot of business process outsourcing, such as claims processing. They acquired a company out of Dallas, which did a lot of outsourcing. The weakest area is QA. A great deal of IT is outsourced to China and India, where they found it very important to align the teams – the in-house contact(s) with the remote supporting staff, team by team. 24 by 7 support is outsourced, and the head of the remote staff was here for 3 weeks.
David echoed what Jeff said. His new employer provides outsourcing services to clients who demand both on-shore and off-shore services. They are US-based but have 100 people in India.
Tony said that they are in the process of outsourcing their upgrade to the JDEdwards ERP system. It’s a big enough job with the primary responsibility assigned to a core team within IT, supported by a major effort offshore. The reason for this approach is to mitigate the risk and protect against staff and knowledge retention issues. There is a timing tissue, a target schedule and a concern about change management.
Ashwin said that his direction is to do more and more off-shore, and to only do things here that add value. The timing is the only issue. He has had good experiences with outsourcing both at Conexant, where they started with IT and Y2K, proved that it was a viable approach, and by 2006 had outsourced 1200 design engineers at 4 locations in India. His experience with B of A was even more expansive outsourcing to 32 centers.
Thank you, Jeff, for the introduction and the handout, which I recommend to all those who did not attend then session. They are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
March 10, 2011 meeting
Present: Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, David Mann, Tony Aldemir, Ashwin Rangan, Joe Desuta, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Ashwin’s guest Tony Aldemir, Edwards Lifesciences, to his first visit to the OC CIO Round Table. The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
4/14/11 The value of QA Joe Desuta
5/12/11 Enterprise social networking David Mann
6/9/11 IT as a service Jennifer Curlee
7/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan
Topic: Outsourcing
Jeff Reid started by defining terms, making the distinction between outsourcing, off-shoring, near-shoring and remote infrastructure management (RIM). The total value of outsourcing contracts in 2010 was $62B, a 6% growth per year – 8 of these were mega deals of $1B or more. India still leads by a large margin, but China is catching up, with the Philippines also growing. Jeff also listed cities by nation as big outsourcing centers. For outsourcing, he listed some of the pros (lower costs, increased efficiency, focus and corporate profits) and cons (increased PM complexity, loss of control and IP vulnerability). For off-shoring, the US pros include increased corporate profits, and the cons include unemployment, loss of industrial base and high trade deficits – the developing countries benefit, which is good if there are reciprocal agreements. He noted that the City of Costa Mesa was considering outsourcing several business services and functions, and he quoted the proposed cost savings and other benefits. The reasons for outsourcing include cost restructuring (move to variable costs), improved quality (with SLAs), service contracts, access to best practices, access to knowledge and a pool of talent. The reasons not to outsource include the outsourcer tends not to work directly for the process managers, loss of quality, language/accent difficulties, culture gaps, security and effect on employee morale. The set-up time for the switch to an outsourcer can be longer than expected, especially if both parties are not equally prepared. Communication is key; ability to create SLAs is important; training and repeat training is needed; the legal contract is important but doesn’t guarantee success; the issues don’t go away, just change; continuous change management is important; so is governance. Jeff attached a page or two on how to get started.
Jeff mentioned that most of his experience with outsourcing was from prior jobs – his new employer does not do very much, except with a local company.
We asked those present to share with us their experiences with outsourcing.
Keith said that he is not outsourcing IT at the moment – his current challenge is with manufacturing in Mexico. In the past he was involved mainly with task outsourcing. His main concern is when you outsource, knowledge retention is a problem.
Jennifer is looking to outsource as much as possible. She is down to 3 people in her development group, and is looking for skills in small measures.
Jeff Hecht said that they do a lot of business process outsourcing, such as claims processing. They acquired a company out of Dallas, which did a lot of outsourcing. The weakest area is QA. A great deal of IT is outsourced to China and India, where they found it very important to align the teams – the in-house contact(s) with the remote supporting staff, team by team. 24 by 7 support is outsourced, and the head of the remote staff was here for 3 weeks.
David echoed what Jeff said. His new employer provides outsourcing services to clients who demand both on-shore and off-shore services. They are US-based but have 100 people in India.
Tony said that they are in the process of outsourcing their upgrade to the JDEdwards ERP system. It’s a big enough job with the primary responsibility assigned to a core team within IT, supported by a major effort offshore. The reason for this approach is to mitigate the risk and protect against staff and knowledge retention issues. There is a timing tissue, a target schedule and a concern about change management.
Ashwin said that his direction is to do more and more off-shore, and to only do things here that add value. The timing is the only issue. He has had good experiences with outsourcing both at Conexant, where they started with IT and Y2K, proved that it was a viable approach, and by 2006 had outsourced 1200 design engineers at 4 locations in India. His experience with B of A was even more expansive outsourcing to 32 centers.
Thank you, Jeff, for the introduction and the handout, which I recommend to all those who did not attend then session. They are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
Saturday, February 26, 2011
OC CIO Minutes February 10, 2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
February 10, 2011 meeting
Present: Keith Golden, Ashwin Rangan, William Zauner, Cameron Cosgrove, Subbu Murthy, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, David Mann, Mike Weller, Joe Desuta, Dave Phillips
We thanked Keith Golden for his presentation and welcomed Mike Weller to his first visit to the OC CIO Round Table. Several members volunteered to introduce future topics:
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 The value of QA Joe Desuta
5/12/11 Enterprise social networking David Mann
6/9/11 IT as a service Jennifer Curlee
7/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan
Topic: The evolving role of the CIO
Keith Golden started by reviewing the changes over the last 50 years, both in computers, applications and the demands on the person in charge. The title changed from DP Manager, to MIS Director, to VP Systems/Computer Services, to CIO, where the “I” stands for Information (or Innovation, Integration, Irritation) to Career is Over. The role is a combination of innovator, turnaround specialist, operations/process expert, business leader and strategist. The CIO must align with the business and business strategy, develop leadership and people skills, anticipate and drive change, cultivate board level influence, partner more, spend less and deliver. Technology keeps changing, and the CIO has to keep abreast, or loss out to bright young users who are familiar with the latest mobile technology options. The customer is asking for BP optimization, using new technologies like cloud computing. The ensuing discussion touched on the need to set the right expectations within the enterprise, and report against that. How should the CIO change to adapt to the future? Who should the CIO report to? How integrated should “integrated” be? Many of the CIOs present had their own ideas. Keith's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
David thanked Keith for a very good presentation. He agreed that it is a changing role, and if we don’t change, we will become obsolete. His aim was to become business partners, part of the strategic team, which just decided that they wanted to focus on the business, and not on running IT. They have just outsourced the running of IT to the company they hired to help develop their applications.
Jennifer Curlee is part of a small manufacturing company, which is in a downturn situation. The workload for IT has increased but not the budget, and so IT has to outsource as much as possible. As CIO she focuses on the strategic objectives.
Subbu also thanked Keith for his presentation. A CIO is facing a challenge as the user and business is becoming more knowledgeable. Thus a CIO has to become more innovative, and must gain the trust of the other executives. The CIO has to develop the skill set of a CEO, collaborate with other CIOs in like situations, and come up with an IT scorecard to report progress.
William Zauner said that he felt that the role of CIO would continue to be important in technology companies for at least 5 years. In other companies, the role will become less important and they will outsource most of the function, because of the availability of the applications and the technology options such as cloud computing. Now SAP can be
Installed in companies of 10 people on the cloud.
Joe sees CIOs becoming trusted partners and advisors to their CEOs, who tend to be hands-off on technology options, especially in smaller companies.
Mike agreed especially as users become more self-sufficient, more technology literate. The role of the CIO will become one of being the navigator.
February 10, 2011 meeting
Present: Keith Golden, Ashwin Rangan, William Zauner, Cameron Cosgrove, Subbu Murthy, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, David Mann, Mike Weller, Joe Desuta, Dave Phillips
We thanked Keith Golden for his presentation and welcomed Mike Weller to his first visit to the OC CIO Round Table. Several members volunteered to introduce future topics:
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 The value of QA Joe Desuta
5/12/11 Enterprise social networking David Mann
6/9/11 IT as a service Jennifer Curlee
7/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan
Topic: The evolving role of the CIO
Keith Golden started by reviewing the changes over the last 50 years, both in computers, applications and the demands on the person in charge. The title changed from DP Manager, to MIS Director, to VP Systems/Computer Services, to CIO, where the “I” stands for Information (or Innovation, Integration, Irritation) to Career is Over. The role is a combination of innovator, turnaround specialist, operations/process expert, business leader and strategist. The CIO must align with the business and business strategy, develop leadership and people skills, anticipate and drive change, cultivate board level influence, partner more, spend less and deliver. Technology keeps changing, and the CIO has to keep abreast, or loss out to bright young users who are familiar with the latest mobile technology options. The customer is asking for BP optimization, using new technologies like cloud computing. The ensuing discussion touched on the need to set the right expectations within the enterprise, and report against that. How should the CIO change to adapt to the future? Who should the CIO report to? How integrated should “integrated” be? Many of the CIOs present had their own ideas. Keith's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
David thanked Keith for a very good presentation. He agreed that it is a changing role, and if we don’t change, we will become obsolete. His aim was to become business partners, part of the strategic team, which just decided that they wanted to focus on the business, and not on running IT. They have just outsourced the running of IT to the company they hired to help develop their applications.
Jennifer Curlee is part of a small manufacturing company, which is in a downturn situation. The workload for IT has increased but not the budget, and so IT has to outsource as much as possible. As CIO she focuses on the strategic objectives.
Subbu also thanked Keith for his presentation. A CIO is facing a challenge as the user and business is becoming more knowledgeable. Thus a CIO has to become more innovative, and must gain the trust of the other executives. The CIO has to develop the skill set of a CEO, collaborate with other CIOs in like situations, and come up with an IT scorecard to report progress.
William Zauner said that he felt that the role of CIO would continue to be important in technology companies for at least 5 years. In other companies, the role will become less important and they will outsource most of the function, because of the availability of the applications and the technology options such as cloud computing. Now SAP can be
Installed in companies of 10 people on the cloud.
Joe sees CIOs becoming trusted partners and advisors to their CEOs, who tend to be hands-off on technology options, especially in smaller companies.
Mike agreed especially as users become more self-sufficient, more technology literate. The role of the CIO will become one of being the navigator.
Friday, February 4, 2011
OC CIO Minutes, January 13, 2011
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 13, 2011 meeting
Present: Hendrik Gerryts, Paul Gray, Jeff Reid, David Mann, Jon Hahn, Jon Grunzweig, Stephan Birnbach, Keith Golden, Bob Houghton, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Dave Phillips
Our thanks to Hendrik Gerryts, RJT Compuquest, for making the presentation on BI.
It was nice to see Paul Gray, IS Professor Emeritus, Claremont, on a rare visit. We welcomed Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty.
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
Topic: Business Intelligence
Hendrik gave several definitions of BI – techniques used in spotting, digging out, and analyzing business data; technologies which provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations; DSS by any other name; bringing the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format. The chart on page 4 of his handout is good. He gave a short history of BI, starting with a 1958 article by Hans Luhn, and the relationship between a BI system and a data warehouse, based on Forrester definitions. BI can be applied to measurement, analytics, reporting, collaboration and knowledge management within an enterprise. There are many keys to a successful BI strategy, including choosing the right C-level sponsor (not the CIO), common data definitions, understanding what the user/business needs, and choosing the right tool and systems integrator. He also included a list of CSFs for the implementation of BI. He quoted a Gartner paper from 2009 on the future of BI – I’m not sure the members totally bought into the predictions, but the following trends seemed reasonable. By 2014, one third of BI will be delivered through mobile devices, analytic processing will use in-memory functions, and more of the spending will be on system integrators not software vendors. The last 3 slides contain a list of BI products which contain a reporting tool, BI vendors and a 2 by 2 chart showing challengers and leaders.
We asked those present to share with us their experiences with BI.
Paul Gray, who wrote the first book on BI, is a member of INFORM, an applications group which does OR and analytics. IT tends not to be into modeling or analytics. This is an opportunity for IT to get involved with OR to become closer to the end user.
Jeff Reid reminded us that he has just started with a new company, and they are not heavy into BI as yet. They have a data warehouse application, and are trying to consolidate data more efficiently. They are a SAP shop and will look at compatible tools.
David Mann said that they had no BI implemented as yet either, but plan to this next year. They will aim to use the tools to provide them insight into patient loyalty, claim analytics, and fraud detection, and are interested in the use of mobile devices.
Jon Grunzweig said that he works for a private company in the office/retail/industrial warehousing business, which has just completed a 2-year study of BI tools and applications, but lacked a user sponsor/investor driving the effort. They went through a process of building a portfolio analysis capability using Microsoft BI tool set, but it wasn’t until the owner started to understand the potential that they gained traction within the company – a great case study.
Jon Hahn said that he also had just started with a new company (since May), and his near term goal is to modernize all the systems. BI comes relatively low on their priority list at the moment, but they do have one BI application for reporting purposes.
Stephan Birnbach said that he has a tale of what not to do with $1M. They ended up with a COGNOS application with low adoption. IT took over ownership of the system, and never gave it back to the user. They do have an analytics application in use.
Keith Golden is also only ¾ months in a new job. His predecessor purchased COSNOS but it will take a full year of basic blocking and tackling to get it effectively implemented. Yesterday, they listened to a presentation by Microsoft on their tools but it seems that Excel and a spreadsheet approach will be still in major use.
Bob Houghton spoke about his years at Western Digital, DDI and RealtyTrac - all three had implemented BI. A CSF is to get business ownership of the effort. The biggest fight he had was from within IT in the choice of the “right” tool, but if you do it right then it becomes indispensable.
William Zauner said that they use a DW and an application called Business Objects, which is a good tool other than single sign doesn’t work. The DW applications are pretty extensive and they have some analytics capability. The presentation tool (Excelsius) and its mobile application are loved by the executives. The biggest problem has been to get one version of the truth - one definition of the data.
Jennifer Curlee took over the reporting, after she convinced the CFO and his people that there was a better way, using the BI tool to report the data from the DW. There are still two versions of the displayed data, and she has to deal with a friend of the CEO who has other reporting ideas.
Jeff Hecht explained that this was their 3rd attempt at a BI project. They will use Microsoft tools, and they have several of the problems that are common to most of us – multiple ownership of the data and multiple legacy systems. Several years ago they built a dashboard application, but the owners never really bought into it, and one version of the truth is still a major problem.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 13, 2011 meeting
Present: Hendrik Gerryts, Paul Gray, Jeff Reid, David Mann, Jon Hahn, Jon Grunzweig, Stephan Birnbach, Keith Golden, Bob Houghton, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Dave Phillips
Our thanks to Hendrik Gerryts, RJT Compuquest, for making the presentation on BI.
It was nice to see Paul Gray, IS Professor Emeritus, Claremont, on a rare visit. We welcomed Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty.
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
Topic: Business Intelligence
Hendrik gave several definitions of BI – techniques used in spotting, digging out, and analyzing business data; technologies which provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations; DSS by any other name; bringing the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format. The chart on page 4 of his handout is good. He gave a short history of BI, starting with a 1958 article by Hans Luhn, and the relationship between a BI system and a data warehouse, based on Forrester definitions. BI can be applied to measurement, analytics, reporting, collaboration and knowledge management within an enterprise. There are many keys to a successful BI strategy, including choosing the right C-level sponsor (not the CIO), common data definitions, understanding what the user/business needs, and choosing the right tool and systems integrator. He also included a list of CSFs for the implementation of BI. He quoted a Gartner paper from 2009 on the future of BI – I’m not sure the members totally bought into the predictions, but the following trends seemed reasonable. By 2014, one third of BI will be delivered through mobile devices, analytic processing will use in-memory functions, and more of the spending will be on system integrators not software vendors. The last 3 slides contain a list of BI products which contain a reporting tool, BI vendors and a 2 by 2 chart showing challengers and leaders.
We asked those present to share with us their experiences with BI.
Paul Gray, who wrote the first book on BI, is a member of INFORM, an applications group which does OR and analytics. IT tends not to be into modeling or analytics. This is an opportunity for IT to get involved with OR to become closer to the end user.
Jeff Reid reminded us that he has just started with a new company, and they are not heavy into BI as yet. They have a data warehouse application, and are trying to consolidate data more efficiently. They are a SAP shop and will look at compatible tools.
David Mann said that they had no BI implemented as yet either, but plan to this next year. They will aim to use the tools to provide them insight into patient loyalty, claim analytics, and fraud detection, and are interested in the use of mobile devices.
Jon Grunzweig said that he works for a private company in the office/retail/industrial warehousing business, which has just completed a 2-year study of BI tools and applications, but lacked a user sponsor/investor driving the effort. They went through a process of building a portfolio analysis capability using Microsoft BI tool set, but it wasn’t until the owner started to understand the potential that they gained traction within the company – a great case study.
Jon Hahn said that he also had just started with a new company (since May), and his near term goal is to modernize all the systems. BI comes relatively low on their priority list at the moment, but they do have one BI application for reporting purposes.
Stephan Birnbach said that he has a tale of what not to do with $1M. They ended up with a COGNOS application with low adoption. IT took over ownership of the system, and never gave it back to the user. They do have an analytics application in use.
Keith Golden is also only ¾ months in a new job. His predecessor purchased COSNOS but it will take a full year of basic blocking and tackling to get it effectively implemented. Yesterday, they listened to a presentation by Microsoft on their tools but it seems that Excel and a spreadsheet approach will be still in major use.
Bob Houghton spoke about his years at Western Digital, DDI and RealtyTrac - all three had implemented BI. A CSF is to get business ownership of the effort. The biggest fight he had was from within IT in the choice of the “right” tool, but if you do it right then it becomes indispensable.
William Zauner said that they use a DW and an application called Business Objects, which is a good tool other than single sign doesn’t work. The DW applications are pretty extensive and they have some analytics capability. The presentation tool (Excelsius) and its mobile application are loved by the executives. The biggest problem has been to get one version of the truth - one definition of the data.
Jennifer Curlee took over the reporting, after she convinced the CFO and his people that there was a better way, using the BI tool to report the data from the DW. There are still two versions of the displayed data, and she has to deal with a friend of the CEO who has other reporting ideas.
Jeff Hecht explained that this was their 3rd attempt at a BI project. They will use Microsoft tools, and they have several of the problems that are common to most of us – multiple ownership of the data and multiple legacy systems. Several years ago they built a dashboard application, but the owners never really bought into it, and one version of the truth is still a major problem.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
OC CIO Minutes December 9, 2010
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
December 9, 2010 meeting
Present: Cameron Cosgrove, Subbu Murthy, Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, Dave Phillips
We toasted Paul Gray, IS Professor Emeritus, Claremont, on his 80th birthday on 12/8.
Our thanks to Sean for supplying an egg and bacon breakfast for those who wanted it.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through April 2011:
1/13/11 Business Intelligence update Sean Brown
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
Topic: The lack of standards in mobile computing
Cameron Cosgrove started by giving a quick overview of First American Financial – title insurance and escrow co., $4B, 900 offices, 12,000 US employees, 4,000 abroad. They have 4.500 cell phones now consolidated to 3 carriers, each with I account and pooled minutes – 90% Verizon; AT&T is the back up carrier and iPhone support; Sprint has their push-to-talk walkie-talkie for the security team. The 4-person support team supports 196 different devices – no standards prior to consolidation in 2008. Eliminating the yearly upgrade saves $235,000. To get the full flavor of Cameron’s presentation, please check his slides. In summary, there are standards issues – Active Sync follows their security policies; Active Directory account settings cause support problems and First American security policy demands password resets every 90 days. Blackberry devices require more support – potential savings if they could eliminate them. Their security standards include all devices must be registered to send/receive mail; mobile users need rights in Active Directory to sync to exchange server; all devices are encrypted; passwords have 4+ characters; auto wipe after 10 password attempts; device must lock after 10 min. inactivity; ability to remote wipe a lost/stolen device; removable storage is disabled; ability to push updates to device. After consolidation, the support team audited all accounts (creating a master wireless database) and cancelled hundreds of terminated users, for initial savings of $432K. They continue to do monthly audits, which result in substantial savings. Warranty replacement rebates amount to $12K per month. Savings from zero usage devices is $150K/year. Their ongoing team goals include being proactive in reducing costs, providing excellent levels of service (in the US and globally), maintain accurate database (can’t rely on vendor records), and partner with the business.
The discussion was free flowing and very active. The general impression was that the presentation was very effective and stated in straightforward terms – well worth reading for those of you who were not in attendance.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
December 9, 2010 meeting
Present: Cameron Cosgrove, Subbu Murthy, Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, Dave Phillips
We toasted Paul Gray, IS Professor Emeritus, Claremont, on his 80th birthday on 12/8.
Our thanks to Sean for supplying an egg and bacon breakfast for those who wanted it.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through April 2011:
1/13/11 Business Intelligence update Sean Brown
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
Topic: The lack of standards in mobile computing
Cameron Cosgrove started by giving a quick overview of First American Financial – title insurance and escrow co., $4B, 900 offices, 12,000 US employees, 4,000 abroad. They have 4.500 cell phones now consolidated to 3 carriers, each with I account and pooled minutes – 90% Verizon; AT&T is the back up carrier and iPhone support; Sprint has their push-to-talk walkie-talkie for the security team. The 4-person support team supports 196 different devices – no standards prior to consolidation in 2008. Eliminating the yearly upgrade saves $235,000. To get the full flavor of Cameron’s presentation, please check his slides. In summary, there are standards issues – Active Sync follows their security policies; Active Directory account settings cause support problems and First American security policy demands password resets every 90 days. Blackberry devices require more support – potential savings if they could eliminate them. Their security standards include all devices must be registered to send/receive mail; mobile users need rights in Active Directory to sync to exchange server; all devices are encrypted; passwords have 4+ characters; auto wipe after 10 password attempts; device must lock after 10 min. inactivity; ability to remote wipe a lost/stolen device; removable storage is disabled; ability to push updates to device. After consolidation, the support team audited all accounts (creating a master wireless database) and cancelled hundreds of terminated users, for initial savings of $432K. They continue to do monthly audits, which result in substantial savings. Warranty replacement rebates amount to $12K per month. Savings from zero usage devices is $150K/year. Their ongoing team goals include being proactive in reducing costs, providing excellent levels of service (in the US and globally), maintain accurate database (can’t rely on vendor records), and partner with the business.
The discussion was free flowing and very active. The general impression was that the presentation was very effective and stated in straightforward terms – well worth reading for those of you who were not in attendance.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
OC CIO Minutes, November 11, 2010
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
November 11, 2010 meeting
Present: Subbu Murthy, Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Keith Golden, David Mann, William Zauner, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Jennifer Curlee, Hicham Semaan, Dave Phillips
REMINDER: The next OC CIO meeting will be at the new RJTCompuquest office, 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through April 2011:
12/9/10 Lack of Standards in mobile computing Cameron Cosgrove
1/13/10 Business Intelligence update Sean Brown
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
We welcomed Joe Desuta to his first meeting.
Topic: IT Dashboards
IT has responsibility for many different functions within a company – for example, project management, change management, problem ticket management, helpdesk management, and asset management – all currently managed by separate tools or systems.
Subbu suggested that there is real value to be gained from integrating the reporting of status through a dashboard view of significant progress in these major categories, while providing the ability to drill down for detailed status of any particular project or problem area. The rationale for this includes facilitating better governance, providing transparency, resource management and integrating across multiple tool kits. The pragmatic approach to building dashboards is required, one that is ITIL compliant, modular, using commonly available platforms like MicroStrategy, IBM Cognos, OBIEE, and QlikView. Subbu compared the perfect life of a CIO versus the real world challenges of balancing budget vs. priority, wants vs. needs, resource vs. budget, infrastructure vs. applications, now vs. later, and business value vs. IT costs. It depends on which stage of maturity the CIO has evolved into – is he/she focused on operational efficiency as the technical expert, or has he/she learned the business and is now focused on strategic effectiveness as a Business Process expert, or has he/she become the market expert and focuses on revenue, on being entrepreneurial. The IT dashboard would look significantly different depending on which stage of maturity the CIO has evolved into. Thinking about IT as a multifunctional entity, where access to status in each area would be of value to the CIO, provoked an active discussion amongst the group!
We asked those present to share with us their use of dashboard technology to stay on top of various activities.
Jeff said that they don’t have any type of integrated tools to review progress but do have separate tracking tools, such as the helpdesk ticket open/closed status. Jeff focuses on tickets that are open too long. They also care about customer satisfaction and track that separately. They also have alerts regarding resource usage, and a green/yellow/red alert system for projects. He liked the idea of being able to drill down.
William also said that they don’t have an integrated dashboard but since they are a small shop, he stays in touch with project status by human contact. They do have a dashboard for the phone system. They also use a great BI tool, Xcelcius, to track judges current business and projections.
David M. agreed that they track most of this through the use of disjointed systems. He liked this approach. They have a time tracking system which tracks time charged to projects, but does not do a good job of tracking individual resources.
Keith is just taking over as CIO in a new company, and it is hard to get to grips on problems, to become aware of what is going on. He is stressing accountability, and is focusing on getting the underlying systems working before implementing a dashboard.
Joe is not at a stage where this approach fits. He just finished a project using Salesforce.com, where which method you use to display status is important. The ability to drill down is also very important.
Jim said that at one of his clients, the CIO does not have an integrated view on purpose. They take the view that they do not want to be separate from the company, and use the same tools as accounting for budget tracking, HR for personnel tracking, PMO tracking tools used by plant engineering (who do have a form of dashboard).
Hicham said that they do have a complex dashboard system tracking budgets, spreadsheets and tickets - all built in Excel – and would love to have something like this for the whole company. He is not sure where he would start – in IT, or elsewhere in the company.
Subbu - thank you for a great presentation and discussion. The slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
November 11, 2010 meeting
Present: Subbu Murthy, Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Keith Golden, David Mann, William Zauner, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Jennifer Curlee, Hicham Semaan, Dave Phillips
REMINDER: The next OC CIO meeting will be at the new RJTCompuquest office, 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through April 2011:
12/9/10 Lack of Standards in mobile computing Cameron Cosgrove
1/13/10 Business Intelligence update Sean Brown
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
We welcomed Joe Desuta to his first meeting.
Topic: IT Dashboards
IT has responsibility for many different functions within a company – for example, project management, change management, problem ticket management, helpdesk management, and asset management – all currently managed by separate tools or systems.
Subbu suggested that there is real value to be gained from integrating the reporting of status through a dashboard view of significant progress in these major categories, while providing the ability to drill down for detailed status of any particular project or problem area. The rationale for this includes facilitating better governance, providing transparency, resource management and integrating across multiple tool kits. The pragmatic approach to building dashboards is required, one that is ITIL compliant, modular, using commonly available platforms like MicroStrategy, IBM Cognos, OBIEE, and QlikView. Subbu compared the perfect life of a CIO versus the real world challenges of balancing budget vs. priority, wants vs. needs, resource vs. budget, infrastructure vs. applications, now vs. later, and business value vs. IT costs. It depends on which stage of maturity the CIO has evolved into – is he/she focused on operational efficiency as the technical expert, or has he/she learned the business and is now focused on strategic effectiveness as a Business Process expert, or has he/she become the market expert and focuses on revenue, on being entrepreneurial. The IT dashboard would look significantly different depending on which stage of maturity the CIO has evolved into. Thinking about IT as a multifunctional entity, where access to status in each area would be of value to the CIO, provoked an active discussion amongst the group!
We asked those present to share with us their use of dashboard technology to stay on top of various activities.
Jeff said that they don’t have any type of integrated tools to review progress but do have separate tracking tools, such as the helpdesk ticket open/closed status. Jeff focuses on tickets that are open too long. They also care about customer satisfaction and track that separately. They also have alerts regarding resource usage, and a green/yellow/red alert system for projects. He liked the idea of being able to drill down.
William also said that they don’t have an integrated dashboard but since they are a small shop, he stays in touch with project status by human contact. They do have a dashboard for the phone system. They also use a great BI tool, Xcelcius, to track judges current business and projections.
David M. agreed that they track most of this through the use of disjointed systems. He liked this approach. They have a time tracking system which tracks time charged to projects, but does not do a good job of tracking individual resources.
Keith is just taking over as CIO in a new company, and it is hard to get to grips on problems, to become aware of what is going on. He is stressing accountability, and is focusing on getting the underlying systems working before implementing a dashboard.
Joe is not at a stage where this approach fits. He just finished a project using Salesforce.com, where which method you use to display status is important. The ability to drill down is also very important.
Jim said that at one of his clients, the CIO does not have an integrated view on purpose. They take the view that they do not want to be separate from the company, and use the same tools as accounting for budget tracking, HR for personnel tracking, PMO tracking tools used by plant engineering (who do have a form of dashboard).
Hicham said that they do have a complex dashboard system tracking budgets, spreadsheets and tickets - all built in Excel – and would love to have something like this for the whole company. He is not sure where he would start – in IT, or elsewhere in the company.
Subbu - thank you for a great presentation and discussion. The slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
Monday, October 18, 2010
OC CIO Minutes October 14, 2010
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
October 14, 2010 meeting
Present: Jim Sutter, Cameron Cosgrove, Hicham Semaan, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Jennifer Curlee, Tina Haines, Dave Phillips
REMINDER: The next OC CIO meeting will be at the new RJTCompuquest office, 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through April 2011:
11/11/10 IT Dashboards Subbu Murthy
12/9/10 Lack of Standards in mobile computing Cameron Cosgrove
1/13/10 Business Intelligence update Sean Brown
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
We welcomed Cameron Cosgrove, First American, and Keith Golden, Econolite, to their first meetings. Each briefly described their responsibilities – Cameron is the CTO and VP in charge of the infrastructure at First American, and Keith just recently took over as CIO at Econolite, a traffic management company founded in 1933.
Topic: Next Generation WANs
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, predicted that the future would be WiMax and LTE, driven by demographics (the Internet generation), the multitude of Internet devices, and the demand created by apps and content. WiMax (World Interoperability for Microwave Access) is not new; it is based on IEEE 802.16, and provides a wireless alternative to Cable or DSL for the last mile without digging. WAN – MAN provides mobile support for a city wireless network, which includes telephone, TV and the Internet. Jim’s slides show a diagram and actual pictures of what it looks like. The potential applications include providing portable mobile broadband connectivity across cities and countries, supporting data, VoIP and IPTV services (triple play). It can be used to provide Internet connectivity as part of a business continuity plan, and a network to facilitate machine-to-machine communications such as Smart Metering. LTE stands for Long Term Evolution – surprise! Upgrading from 3G to 4G mobile communications technology – essentially a mobile broadband system. High peak upload and download rates, and sub 5 ms latency for small IP packages. Mobile TV can become a competitor for TV broadcast. Worldwide support for mobile users depends on the deployment of 1G, 2G and 3G technologies, using 3GPP standards. The natural path from 3GPP (GSM and HSPA) seems to be LTE. Jim listed all the organizations that have worked on this evolution. We will run out of fixed IP addresses next summer (IPv4). IPv6 will fix the problem but is not compatible with IPv4, so ISPs will continue to provide the translation. Jim included several slides on IPv6 details – the take home is to make sure you buy IPv6 compatible HD/SW. There is a significant difference in the latency of LTE over WiMax. Jim’s slide 26 is a good illustration of how all this fits together, and he adds some industry forecasts. What this means to CIOs is more reach, richer applications, more capable branch offices, potential cost reductions and more demand!
We asked those present to tell us about their experience with WiMax ad LTE.
Cameron said that he has no experience with either, as they have not started to use WiMax or LTE. They will make 4G cards available, but he does not think that this will add much to cell phone usage. He does negotiate with vendors for I year bulk rates as they have a high volume – Verizon is their primary vendor.
Hicham thanked Jim for his presentation on a very timely topic for him. He needs guidance, as they always have to add more T1 lines to support their 6 offices, and their class attendees, 55% of whom connect remotely from home. What is a good solution for him? Sean agreed to put him in touch with a good WAN consultant.
Jeff H. said that this is all for connecting more bandwidth at the desk of the mobile workforce. Who knows, but LTE might be too slow in a few years time. Sprint is their primary carrier, and the have WiMax available. As they are an early adopter of WiMax, they may hit the wall before LTE.
Sean also thanked Jim for an excellent presentation. Sean has a friend who works for Hyundai, and they are big into using microwave towers. He also suggested that for our Christmas meeting on 12/9/10, we should have a more extensive breakfast, and wanted to know who was interested in that idea.
Jeff R. also thought that this was a very timely topic for him. He is relatively new in his current position and the WAN contract is coming up for renewal. They have 200 employees in the US and 400 in China. They primarily use Sprint, and some ATT for international travel, despite poor ATT reception locally.
Jennifer just returned from a conference in Orlando. They are in 6 separate locations all within line-of-sight of each other, and they use everything, including T1s. They are trying to simplify their world. They use Verizon, T-Mobile and recently stopped using Sprint.
Jim, thank you for a great presentation, and for displaying command over the technology. Jim's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
See you on November 11, 2010 at 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
October 14, 2010 meeting
Present: Jim Sutter, Cameron Cosgrove, Hicham Semaan, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Jeff Reid, Keith Golden, Jennifer Curlee, Tina Haines, Dave Phillips
REMINDER: The next OC CIO meeting will be at the new RJTCompuquest office, 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.
The following have volunteered to introduce topics through April 2011:
11/11/10 IT Dashboards Subbu Murthy
12/9/10 Lack of Standards in mobile computing Cameron Cosgrove
1/13/10 Business Intelligence update Sean Brown
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
We welcomed Cameron Cosgrove, First American, and Keith Golden, Econolite, to their first meetings. Each briefly described their responsibilities – Cameron is the CTO and VP in charge of the infrastructure at First American, and Keith just recently took over as CIO at Econolite, a traffic management company founded in 1933.
Topic: Next Generation WANs
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, predicted that the future would be WiMax and LTE, driven by demographics (the Internet generation), the multitude of Internet devices, and the demand created by apps and content. WiMax (World Interoperability for Microwave Access) is not new; it is based on IEEE 802.16, and provides a wireless alternative to Cable or DSL for the last mile without digging. WAN – MAN provides mobile support for a city wireless network, which includes telephone, TV and the Internet. Jim’s slides show a diagram and actual pictures of what it looks like. The potential applications include providing portable mobile broadband connectivity across cities and countries, supporting data, VoIP and IPTV services (triple play). It can be used to provide Internet connectivity as part of a business continuity plan, and a network to facilitate machine-to-machine communications such as Smart Metering. LTE stands for Long Term Evolution – surprise! Upgrading from 3G to 4G mobile communications technology – essentially a mobile broadband system. High peak upload and download rates, and sub 5 ms latency for small IP packages. Mobile TV can become a competitor for TV broadcast. Worldwide support for mobile users depends on the deployment of 1G, 2G and 3G technologies, using 3GPP standards. The natural path from 3GPP (GSM and HSPA) seems to be LTE. Jim listed all the organizations that have worked on this evolution. We will run out of fixed IP addresses next summer (IPv4). IPv6 will fix the problem but is not compatible with IPv4, so ISPs will continue to provide the translation. Jim included several slides on IPv6 details – the take home is to make sure you buy IPv6 compatible HD/SW. There is a significant difference in the latency of LTE over WiMax. Jim’s slide 26 is a good illustration of how all this fits together, and he adds some industry forecasts. What this means to CIOs is more reach, richer applications, more capable branch offices, potential cost reductions and more demand!
We asked those present to tell us about their experience with WiMax ad LTE.
Cameron said that he has no experience with either, as they have not started to use WiMax or LTE. They will make 4G cards available, but he does not think that this will add much to cell phone usage. He does negotiate with vendors for I year bulk rates as they have a high volume – Verizon is their primary vendor.
Hicham thanked Jim for his presentation on a very timely topic for him. He needs guidance, as they always have to add more T1 lines to support their 6 offices, and their class attendees, 55% of whom connect remotely from home. What is a good solution for him? Sean agreed to put him in touch with a good WAN consultant.
Jeff H. said that this is all for connecting more bandwidth at the desk of the mobile workforce. Who knows, but LTE might be too slow in a few years time. Sprint is their primary carrier, and the have WiMax available. As they are an early adopter of WiMax, they may hit the wall before LTE.
Sean also thanked Jim for an excellent presentation. Sean has a friend who works for Hyundai, and they are big into using microwave towers. He also suggested that for our Christmas meeting on 12/9/10, we should have a more extensive breakfast, and wanted to know who was interested in that idea.
Jeff R. also thought that this was a very timely topic for him. He is relatively new in his current position and the WAN contract is coming up for renewal. They have 200 employees in the US and 400 in China. They primarily use Sprint, and some ATT for international travel, despite poor ATT reception locally.
Jennifer just returned from a conference in Orlando. They are in 6 separate locations all within line-of-sight of each other, and they use everything, including T1s. They are trying to simplify their world. They use Verizon, T-Mobile and recently stopped using Sprint.
Jim, thank you for a great presentation, and for displaying command over the technology. Jim's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
See you on November 11, 2010 at 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA 92612.
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