Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 12, 2012 meeting
Present: Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Jeff Hecht, William Zauner, Jon Hahn, Subbu Murthy, Jon Grunzweig, Ashwin Rangan, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of topics and speakers through August:
2/9/12 10 Career Management Mistakes Susan Howington
3/8/12 New Security Challenges Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown
4/12/12 Mobile Device Security David Mann, Neudesic
5/10/12 Global Company IT Challenges Rich Hoffman, Avery Dennison
6/14/12 Big Data Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus)
7/12/12 Developing IT Teams Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty
8/9/12 Mobile Application Development Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Coll
Topic: 2012 CIO Survival Tip
Jim Sutter first gave a version of this presentation about 10-15 years ago and was recently asked to update it for a SIM presentation. The challenges for a CIO have changed over the years but one that always is at, or near the top, is the challenge of being perceived to ADD VALUE. This is strange as it is widely accepted that IT – technology in general - has added significant productivity benefits to our industrial economy. But close to home the CEO is always concerned whether he is getting value for his/her IT expenditures. Not that IT is alone in this analysis. All corporate functions are under cost pressures, and why should IT be different? IT has issues that are unique – rarely will the real needs be contained to one user department, and department VP/managers are reluctant to commit to hard savings. Jim’s slides 8 and 9 show IT to have three levels of clients (CEO/Management Committee; Department VP/Management; Associates/individual users) , and provides three types of services (Strategic thinking; Operational Services/Data/ Network/desktop/remote devices support; software development projects and delivery). The impact and expectations are very different depending on who you are and where you fit within the organization. The major take away message here is to make sure that you, or someone within IT, schedules time with each level and type of user. The amount of time and effort will vary depending on the state of affairs but always find time for a minimum level of interaction. The second take away is that everything is measurable in its own way, and so benchmarking is not only possible but very important, whether you do it within the organization, within your industry, or with the best of class companies. There is an amazing amount of data out there, and most of it is fairly accessible. Jim's slides are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
This was a very interactive session and thoroughly enjoyable. Each member was asked to share what he felt was his most important survival tip, or effective benchmark effort.
William works for the largest company in the alternative dispute resolution industry. They do a survey every 2/3 years but it is difficult to get at the real data. His most effective survival tip is to be paranoid. He makes certain that he visits every office once a year to listen to requirements first hand.
Jon likes the idea of doing more benchmarking and is interested in developing a survey approach. He currently subscribes to Gartner for IT expenditure information, especially for companies in the hi-tech manufacturing/semiconductor arena.
Jim mentioned that in the past, Deloitte was active involved in developing benchmark data in the auto industry.
Ashwin recommended reading an INTEL paper on their website analyzing the ROI on IT development projects.
Joe mentioned that the real estate trade association puts out lots of reports on benchmark data.
Jon ‘s best survival approach is to put the time and effort into touching base with all levels of users from the CEO down.
Subbu felt that there was 3 types of value – real, perceived, relative (used for continuous improvement approaches)
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
OC CIO Minutes December 8, 2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
December 8, 2011 meeting
Present: Joe Desuta, Jennifer Curlee, David Mann, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Keith Golden, Jim Sutter, Dave Phillips
We started the meeting by developing the Round Table list of topics, speakers and dates for 2010. The following is a list of topics and speakers through August:
1/12/12 CIO Survival Tips Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Grp.
2/9/12 10 Career Management Mistakes Susan Howington
3/8/12 New Security Challenges Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown
4/12/12 Mobile Device Security David Mann, Neudesic
5/10/12 Global Company IT Challenges Rich Hoffman, Avery Dennison
6/14/12 Big Data Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus)
7/12/12 Developing IT Teams Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty
8/9/12 Mobile Application Development Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Coll
Topic: Google Apps
Joe started by giving us a brief introduction to First Team Real Estate – 2,300 employees of which 1,800-2,000 are independent agents. When he took over as CIO they were having problems with email reliability, and he choose Google over Microsoft because of the availability of tools, reliability and cost. He had just attended, by invitation, a Google conference in Mountain View with 350 other users and much of his material is from that conference. Google apps is cloud-based email, productivity and collaboration software. He mentioned the challenges for messaging, collaboration, remote and mobile access. Google offers a new approach – cloud + Internet + web browser. The tools for today’s worker include gmail, talk, groups, calendar, docs, Google cloud connect, sites, video, and Postini. Google apps keep getting better with more frequent releases, improved productivity, and dramatically lower costs. Reliability in 2010 was 99.984% . He listed a selection of the businesses, which have gone Google. Joe’s slides include more information for each tool and more detail regarding First Team Real Estate. His slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
This was a good presentation and a very interactive session. I encourage you to read Joe’s slides again to get more of the details.
See you on Jan 12, 2012 at 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA
December 8, 2011 meeting
Present: Joe Desuta, Jennifer Curlee, David Mann, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Keith Golden, Jim Sutter, Dave Phillips
We started the meeting by developing the Round Table list of topics, speakers and dates for 2010. The following is a list of topics and speakers through August:
1/12/12 CIO Survival Tips Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Grp.
2/9/12 10 Career Management Mistakes Susan Howington
3/8/12 New Security Challenges Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown
4/12/12 Mobile Device Security David Mann, Neudesic
5/10/12 Global Company IT Challenges Rich Hoffman, Avery Dennison
6/14/12 Big Data Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus)
7/12/12 Developing IT Teams Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty
8/9/12 Mobile Application Development Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Coll
Topic: Google Apps
Joe started by giving us a brief introduction to First Team Real Estate – 2,300 employees of which 1,800-2,000 are independent agents. When he took over as CIO they were having problems with email reliability, and he choose Google over Microsoft because of the availability of tools, reliability and cost. He had just attended, by invitation, a Google conference in Mountain View with 350 other users and much of his material is from that conference. Google apps is cloud-based email, productivity and collaboration software. He mentioned the challenges for messaging, collaboration, remote and mobile access. Google offers a new approach – cloud + Internet + web browser. The tools for today’s worker include gmail, talk, groups, calendar, docs, Google cloud connect, sites, video, and Postini. Google apps keep getting better with more frequent releases, improved productivity, and dramatically lower costs. Reliability in 2010 was 99.984% . He listed a selection of the businesses, which have gone Google. Joe’s slides include more information for each tool and more detail regarding First Team Real Estate. His slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
This was a good presentation and a very interactive session. I encourage you to read Joe’s slides again to get more of the details.
See you on Jan 12, 2012 at 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at 18301 Von Karman, Suite 5000, Irvine, CA
Monday, November 28, 2011
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 11-10-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
Present: David Mann, Phil Scott, Sean Brown, William Zauner, Jon Grunzweig, Subbu Murthy, Keith Golden, Jeff Reid, Joe Desuta, Jim Sutter,
Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
12/8/11 Google Aps. Joe Desuta, First Team Real Estate
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers for the first 6 months of 2012.
Topic: Social Media
David Mann introduced Phil Scott, Neudesic, to present the topic – Phil has CIO responsibilities at Neudesic. Attached is a copy of his presentation slides that are well worth reading again. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook meet some of the needs of users but not those of most businesses. Individuals want to be able to connect with people on an opt-in basis, easy user interface, large audience conversations, and grass roots empowerment. Businesses want to know each user, leverage LOB systems, respect for records management policies, content moderation and extensive reporting capabilities. There are many social media options. In a cloud-only environment you have systems like Yammer, Salesforce or Microsoft’s Office 365. In an on-premise single system, you could use Sharepoint, Newsgator, Jive or Socialcast. Neudesic’s Pulse is another option for both environments providing a collaboration fabric to leverage existing investments to allow users to follow and comment on without learning a new UX. Social media can exist in the cloud, or on premise. The market trend is Sharepoint, and the need to support video properly. Future challenges include needing to address user adoption, provide location-based services, more integration with messaging tools and using HTML 5 as the mobile platform. To get started with social media, Phil’s advice is to identify internal champions, limit the change imposed on users, and avoid brave new world scenarios.
We asked the group if IT was taking the lead on social media usage in their environments, or is a user group such as Marketing pushing it.
William said that IT has obtained domains on Twitter and Facebook, but it is Marketing that has taken the lead in using social media within the business.Jon described his environment as old school, with older employees with little interest in using public social networking. IT is pushing using Sharepoint.Subbu said that budget constraints didn’t allow much experimentation. The focus is to fix the infrastructure. Marketing is taking the lead in social networking.
Keith said that they are implementing CRM, and looking at the next step. There are small pockets of interest but IT will be out in front.
Jeff is working closely with Sales and Marketing on the use of Twitter and Facebook. They are looking at Sharepoint but not moving very fast.
Joe indicated that Sales and Marketing are taking the lead, but not making huge progress. IT is looking at Google for social collaboration.
Jim observed that at, one client, it was HR taking the lead in this space, using mainly Twitter and Facebook. A few years ago, IT made a big investment in Tibco, and now they are looking at Sharepoint.
Thank you, Phil and David, for a lively introduction to an interesting topic.
Monday, October 24, 2011
OC CIO Minutes October 13, 2011
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
October 13, 2011 meeting
Present: Sean Brown, Charles Wilson, David Mann, Subbu Murthy, William Zauner, Keith Golden, Jennifer Curlee, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
11/10/11 Social Media David Mann, Neudesic
12/8/11 Google Aps. Joe Desuta, First Team Real Estate
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers.
Topic: Trends in Business Analytics
We welcomed Charles Wilson, Director of Business Analytics at RJT Compuquest, to his 1st OC CIO Round Table, to introduce the topic - his presentation is attached. His focus was on the changes in business and in business analytics. The operating environment is focused on coping with risk, complexity and regulation, while the customer/employee expects the company to cope with the demands of mobility, social media and openness. Slide 4 lists the risk events encountered in the past few years in areas such as political, financial, compliance, strategic, operational and environmental. The next few slides touch on the technology innovations, comparing the way it was (having to move data from one environment to another in order to do the analytics), and the way it is with in-memory data analytic technology. The cost of inventory carried is still a good indicator of understanding the market, and returns and allowances of how well the product fits the customer requirements. The integration of what happens at the front line, through transaction analysis to the financials and reporting requirements is key. Charles spoke to the importance of context and master data enabling analysis. It seems that only 10% of the people within an enterprise use business analytics, mainly because of performance and cost. His slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked the group how many employees they have working on business analytics.
William said that he has one person dedicated to business analytics. He has a fairly well defined set of analytics, and they provide very useful information to their customers. It is hard to get political and technical market information.
Jennifer also has one person dedicated to producing business intelligence, plus people within Finance who are assigned, and customer service staff to control the quality. They discovered a fairly high degree of fraud on selling through the Internet. Their integrated ERP system is very useful, plus a replication read only source.
Keith complimented Charles on his presentation. They are not yet at that level, as they are still focused on integrating their systems and cannot do much in BI/BA yet. He is making changes in IT to enable them in the future.
Sean also thought it was a great presentation. From a SAP perspective, they find that the direction of using in-memory sources is the way to go.
Subbu said that there was a difference between micro and macro analytics. He has found that CIOs tend not to use these tools internally. His goal is to build analytic tools for the CIO/IT space.
David said that there is a team within Neudesic concentrating on BI/BA. In the medical area, they are working with hospitals to use analytics to prevent repeat treatment. He agrees that context is king!
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
October 13, 2011 meeting
Present: Sean Brown, Charles Wilson, David Mann, Subbu Murthy, William Zauner, Keith Golden, Jennifer Curlee, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
11/10/11 Social Media David Mann, Neudesic
12/8/11 Google Aps. Joe Desuta, First Team Real Estate
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers.
Topic: Trends in Business Analytics
We welcomed Charles Wilson, Director of Business Analytics at RJT Compuquest, to his 1st OC CIO Round Table, to introduce the topic - his presentation is attached. His focus was on the changes in business and in business analytics. The operating environment is focused on coping with risk, complexity and regulation, while the customer/employee expects the company to cope with the demands of mobility, social media and openness. Slide 4 lists the risk events encountered in the past few years in areas such as political, financial, compliance, strategic, operational and environmental. The next few slides touch on the technology innovations, comparing the way it was (having to move data from one environment to another in order to do the analytics), and the way it is with in-memory data analytic technology. The cost of inventory carried is still a good indicator of understanding the market, and returns and allowances of how well the product fits the customer requirements. The integration of what happens at the front line, through transaction analysis to the financials and reporting requirements is key. Charles spoke to the importance of context and master data enabling analysis. It seems that only 10% of the people within an enterprise use business analytics, mainly because of performance and cost. His slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked the group how many employees they have working on business analytics.
William said that he has one person dedicated to business analytics. He has a fairly well defined set of analytics, and they provide very useful information to their customers. It is hard to get political and technical market information.
Jennifer also has one person dedicated to producing business intelligence, plus people within Finance who are assigned, and customer service staff to control the quality. They discovered a fairly high degree of fraud on selling through the Internet. Their integrated ERP system is very useful, plus a replication read only source.
Keith complimented Charles on his presentation. They are not yet at that level, as they are still focused on integrating their systems and cannot do much in BI/BA yet. He is making changes in IT to enable them in the future.
Sean also thought it was a great presentation. From a SAP perspective, they find that the direction of using in-memory sources is the way to go.
Subbu said that there was a difference between micro and macro analytics. He has found that CIOs tend not to use these tools internally. His goal is to build analytic tools for the CIO/IT space.
David said that there is a team within Neudesic concentrating on BI/BA. In the medical area, they are working with hospitals to use analytics to prevent repeat treatment. He agrees that context is king!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
OC CIO Minutes September 8, 2011
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 8, 2011 meeting
Present: Hicham Semaan, Jim Sutter, Sean Brown, Jeff Hecht, Keith Golden, Jeff Reid, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
10/13/11 Business Analytics trends Sean Brown/Charles Wilson, RJT Compuquest
11/10/11 Google Aps. Joe Desuta, First Team Real Estate
12/8/11 Social Media David Mann, Neudesic
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers.
Topic: Microsoft Update
This is the second time that Hicham has shared with us his take on Microsoft progress and direction, based on his attending their Partners Conference, held this year in LA. There were 15,000 attendees, representing 8,000 - 9,000 partners worldwide. His overall take on Microsoft is that despite being a very successful company, they are being challenged on several fronts, and their market niche – PC/desktop software for business – is under attach from several different angles and companies. The do seem to own the “connect” environment for gaming control replacement. Linc, their unified communication product is very strong, It makes connections very easily, has built in video conferencing, and is better than VOIP. Hicham is looking at replacing his phone switch with it, but acknowledges that it would be hard to run a call center using it. The question of reliability is still an issue. It runs on Windows. His slides looked at IT today, and into tomorrow, and how Microsoft will affect that. Slide 2 touched on transformation – how to manage consumerization at home and in the office (he has a slide which spells out Microsoft’s strategy), moving to the cloud (slide 5) and enhancing productivity (a strong point for Microsoft, see slide 6). His 7th slide pulls it all together. These provided a platform for a very active discussion – I think it took us 45 min to get through the first 2 slides! Another successful presentation because it shares with us the direction that Microsoft is headed and Hicham provides a filter through which we can reflect on how it might affect each of us. His slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 8, 2011 meeting
Present: Hicham Semaan, Jim Sutter, Sean Brown, Jeff Hecht, Keith Golden, Jeff Reid, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
10/13/11 Business Analytics trends Sean Brown/Charles Wilson, RJT Compuquest
11/10/11 Google Aps. Joe Desuta, First Team Real Estate
12/8/11 Social Media David Mann, Neudesic
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers.
Topic: Microsoft Update
This is the second time that Hicham has shared with us his take on Microsoft progress and direction, based on his attending their Partners Conference, held this year in LA. There were 15,000 attendees, representing 8,000 - 9,000 partners worldwide. His overall take on Microsoft is that despite being a very successful company, they are being challenged on several fronts, and their market niche – PC/desktop software for business – is under attach from several different angles and companies. The do seem to own the “connect” environment for gaming control replacement. Linc, their unified communication product is very strong, It makes connections very easily, has built in video conferencing, and is better than VOIP. Hicham is looking at replacing his phone switch with it, but acknowledges that it would be hard to run a call center using it. The question of reliability is still an issue. It runs on Windows. His slides looked at IT today, and into tomorrow, and how Microsoft will affect that. Slide 2 touched on transformation – how to manage consumerization at home and in the office (he has a slide which spells out Microsoft’s strategy), moving to the cloud (slide 5) and enhancing productivity (a strong point for Microsoft, see slide 6). His 7th slide pulls it all together. These provided a platform for a very active discussion – I think it took us 45 min to get through the first 2 slides! Another successful presentation because it shares with us the direction that Microsoft is headed and Hicham provides a filter through which we can reflect on how it might affect each of us. His slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
OC CIO Minutes August 11, 2011
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
August 11, 2011 meeting
Present: Ashwin Rangan, Jeff Hecht, Jim Sutter, Jon Hahn, Joe Desuta, David Mann, Sean Brown, Andy King, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
9/8/11 Microsoft Update Hicham Semaan, Quickstart
10/13/11 Business Analytics trends Sean Brown/Charles Wilson, RJT Compuquest
11/10/11 Google Aps. Joe Desuta, First Team Real Estate
12/8/11 Social Media David Mann, Neudesic
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers.
Topic: Mobility
Ashwin acknowledged that a lot of his presentation was borrowed from Simon Guest, Neudesic, from his mobility roadshow. There are 80,000 activations per day counting both AT&T and Verizon, and Microsoft has spent $1B actively marketing Window Phone 7. This causes problems with what to do with the older devices – refurbish them or mine for metals. Also you would think that you could run out of new customers but people are buying 2 or more for various reasons. Symbian has 40% share of the OS worldwide, with Android at 18%. In the US, Android has grown to 33% share in 12 months, with Apple making a steady ascent. Check out Ashwin’s slides as he lists iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Microsoft summary numbers – interesting reading. In terms of application development, is it best to write once for all devices (Open Source - HTML5), or target for your particular device? It’s the same old problem. The device feature matrix is interesting – again I recommend you spend some time studying the slides in Ashwin’s handout. They are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked the group to share with us their biggest challenge with mobility.
Jeff’s biggest problem is that they are in a regulated industry, and security is the challenge. Everyone wants to have their own type of device so they have to pilot them to determine which devices can run on their networks, and allow only those devices which meet basic standards.
Jim related that his client's biggest challenge is to accommodate all their innovations – the field people want to do competitive analysis on their smartphones. They are also thinking about having their own ap store.
Jon’s biggest challenge is user support, as the devices come from all over the world. He has no mobile aps as yet.
Dave’s challenges include the variety of platforms because they work with many different clients, and how to implement the gatekeeper concept so that everything developed for one client stays that way. Nuedesic has invested heavily in mobility.
Joe stated that mobile aps are not on his radar as yet. He has a nice suite of applications, which might not migrate to the mobile environment that easily.
Sean said that as a SAP partner they have invested heavily in mobility. There is a lot of proof of concept activity going on.
Andy said that they are a Blackberry user, with a legacy ERP system. They will be evaluating the integration of desk top PCs, to tablet, to iPod
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
August 11, 2011 meeting
Present: Ashwin Rangan, Jeff Hecht, Jim Sutter, Jon Hahn, Joe Desuta, David Mann, Sean Brown, Andy King, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
9/8/11 Microsoft Update Hicham Semaan, Quickstart
10/13/11 Business Analytics trends Sean Brown/Charles Wilson, RJT Compuquest
11/10/11 Google Aps. Joe Desuta, First Team Real Estate
12/8/11 Social Media David Mann, Neudesic
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers.
Topic: Mobility
Ashwin acknowledged that a lot of his presentation was borrowed from Simon Guest, Neudesic, from his mobility roadshow. There are 80,000 activations per day counting both AT&T and Verizon, and Microsoft has spent $1B actively marketing Window Phone 7. This causes problems with what to do with the older devices – refurbish them or mine for metals. Also you would think that you could run out of new customers but people are buying 2 or more for various reasons. Symbian has 40% share of the OS worldwide, with Android at 18%. In the US, Android has grown to 33% share in 12 months, with Apple making a steady ascent. Check out Ashwin’s slides as he lists iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Microsoft summary numbers – interesting reading. In terms of application development, is it best to write once for all devices (Open Source - HTML5), or target for your particular device? It’s the same old problem. The device feature matrix is interesting – again I recommend you spend some time studying the slides in Ashwin’s handout. They are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked the group to share with us their biggest challenge with mobility.
Jeff’s biggest problem is that they are in a regulated industry, and security is the challenge. Everyone wants to have their own type of device so they have to pilot them to determine which devices can run on their networks, and allow only those devices which meet basic standards.
Jim related that his client's biggest challenge is to accommodate all their innovations – the field people want to do competitive analysis on their smartphones. They are also thinking about having their own ap store.
Jon’s biggest challenge is user support, as the devices come from all over the world. He has no mobile aps as yet.
Dave’s challenges include the variety of platforms because they work with many different clients, and how to implement the gatekeeper concept so that everything developed for one client stays that way. Nuedesic has invested heavily in mobility.
Joe stated that mobile aps are not on his radar as yet. He has a nice suite of applications, which might not migrate to the mobile environment that easily.
Sean said that as a SAP partner they have invested heavily in mobility. There is a lot of proof of concept activity going on.
Andy said that they are a Blackberry user, with a legacy ERP system. They will be evaluating the integration of desk top PCs, to tablet, to iPod
Monday, August 1, 2011
OC CIO Minutes July 14, 2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
July 14, 2011 meeting
Present: Jennifer Curlee, Jim Sutter, David Mann, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers for September through December.
Topic: IT as a Service
Jennifer started by quoting IT costs as a % of revenue – Gartner states 3.5% (4.3% of operating expense) whereas Computer Economics states it’s more like 1.5% to 1.8% of revenue. IT costs per user are down from $8K in 2006 to $7K in 2010. Forrester claims that it would be much better if IT costs were stated in terms of service items users understand (like email, web hosting, etc.) rather than in IT units like servers, storage arrays, etc. Chargeback/allocation is useful because it helps contain cost, demand accountability, transparency, value and impact of IT. The challenge of establishing of a chargeback/allocation system is that what’s included as IT costs varies from company to company. What you might like would be simple to understand, accountable, fair, predictable and controllable. Various chargeback models are based on either or all of direct costs, % usage and/or subscription fees. Jennifer’s handout contained many examples of the different methods. If you want a service based pricing approach, it should be based on a measured unit of service, supports a price to value relationship, and requires a service catalog to provide a framework for IT as a business within a business. To get started you must produce a catalog of services, estimate TCO per unit and establish a pricing structure. Jennifer included samples of infrastructure chargeback from BizCloud catalog, and from Amazon. To support such a system you have to have chargeback tracking tools, which she also listed.
Thank you, Jennifer, for an excellent presentation and handout. We had a very interactive discussion throughout maybe because of rather than in spite of the small turnout. It’s a topic that we could revisit again soon. It certainly reminded us of the struggles we had in the past trying to implement such systems, whether to distribute costs, or at least control costs and/or influence usage.
July 14, 2011 meeting
Present: Jennifer Curlee, Jim Sutter, David Mann, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
The following is a list of future topics and speakers:
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan
Please send me your suggestions for topics and speakers for September through December.
Topic: IT as a Service
Jennifer started by quoting IT costs as a % of revenue – Gartner states 3.5% (4.3% of operating expense) whereas Computer Economics states it’s more like 1.5% to 1.8% of revenue. IT costs per user are down from $8K in 2006 to $7K in 2010. Forrester claims that it would be much better if IT costs were stated in terms of service items users understand (like email, web hosting, etc.) rather than in IT units like servers, storage arrays, etc. Chargeback/allocation is useful because it helps contain cost, demand accountability, transparency, value and impact of IT. The challenge of establishing of a chargeback/allocation system is that what’s included as IT costs varies from company to company. What you might like would be simple to understand, accountable, fair, predictable and controllable. Various chargeback models are based on either or all of direct costs, % usage and/or subscription fees. Jennifer’s handout contained many examples of the different methods. If you want a service based pricing approach, it should be based on a measured unit of service, supports a price to value relationship, and requires a service catalog to provide a framework for IT as a business within a business. To get started you must produce a catalog of services, estimate TCO per unit and establish a pricing structure. Jennifer included samples of infrastructure chargeback from BizCloud catalog, and from Amazon. To support such a system you have to have chargeback tracking tools, which she also listed.
Thank you, Jennifer, for an excellent presentation and handout. We had a very interactive discussion throughout maybe because of rather than in spite of the small turnout. It’s a topic that we could revisit again soon. It certainly reminded us of the struggles we had in the past trying to implement such systems, whether to distribute costs, or at least control costs and/or influence usage.
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