1993-2009
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
February 12, 2009 meeting
Present: John Pringle, Jeff Reid, Sharon Solomon, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We started the meeting with a review of the discussion topics that gained the most votes for the coming year, and a draft schedule of speakers for selected topics. Please review the attachment that lists the topics in the order of voting preference and availability of speakers. Check to see if your name is listed as a speaker – if not please contact me ASAP to volunteer. I am looking for volunteers to prepare the introduction to:
Data Retention and Classification, e-discovery - Aug 13, 2009
ERP Implementations – lessons learned - Sept. 9, 2009
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: IT Human Capital – Generation Y
John Pringle handed out copies of his presentation (attached) and he used it as a guide to a very interactive discussion. I suggest you open his presentation and refer to it as you read these notes of a very fluid discussion. John's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio . He stated out with a definition of Gen Y – 76 million of them, born 1977-90, 1 in 4 live with a single mother, 3 in 4 with working mothers, online 87%. Check his definition of Gen X, Young Boomers and Old Boomers! Most adults use email and search, but the older you are the less likely you are to use the Internet for anything else beyond e-commerce – less than 20% of adults use SNS (social networking services), and few use online entertainment. It’s not clear how many Gen Y use traditional email, preferring to use IM and cell phones. John had several pages of Gen Y defining characteristics (and the implications for employees), although this could change in the current economic climate. We discussed a few of these, such as their feeling entitled (looking for challenging work), thrive on change (can handle changes), love instant gratification, needy (want constant feedback), high expectations (for themselves, their bosses and companies), question everything (creative independent thinkers), don’t expect to work for the same company for long, work hard for long hours, live and breath technology. We talked about what motivates Gen Y’ers – things like technology innovation, supervisors who listen, flexible schedules. They will stay if they have challenging work, a chance to show off, to live a well balance life and a casual dress work environment. John listed the top web sites that they will visit, including KaZaA (music download) and Facebook. Non-certified skills that increased in value in the 4th quarter of 2008 include NetWeaver Portals (SAP EP), PHP (server-side HTML embedded scripting language for web developers), Apple OSX/Tiger/Leopard and ITIL. He also listed 10 technology developments for the future. Then he gave us a test – if you want a list of the “right” answers, send me an email. John also included a list of his sources for your review.
See you on March 12, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 1-8-09
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 8, 2009 meeting
Present: Sharon Solomon, Mitch Morris, Sean Brown, Jennifer Curlee, Jim Sutter, Dave Phillips
The New Year started slowly as several members were unable to make it at the last moment, including our scheduled speaker, Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions. In place of the normal presentation, we had asked members to come to the meeting with one technology prediction, and to briefly describe how it might affect our future.
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: Technology Predictions
I started the discussion by selecting Memristor as my technology prediction. Since the dawn of electronics, we’ve had only three types of circuit components —resistors, inductors, and capacitors. But in 1971, UC Berkeley’s Leon Chua theorized the possibility of a fourth type of component, one that would be able to measure the flow of electric current: the memristor. Now, just 37 years later, Hewlett-Packard has built one.
What is it? As its name implies, the memristor can “remember” how much current has passed through it. And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties. Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off, making it a great candidate to replace today’s flash memory. Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and far faster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. They could also replace RAM chips, as we know them, so that, after you turn off your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of cost and consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-state computers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster than today’s PCs. Someday the memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states that today's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroes around.
When is it coming? Researchers say that no real barrier prevents implementing the memristor in circuitry immediately. But it's up to the business side to push products through to commercial reality. Memristors made to replace flash memory (at a lower cost and lower power consumption) will likely appear first; HP's goal is to offer them by 2012. Beyond that, memristors will likely replace both DRAM and hard disks in the 2014-to-2016 time frame. As for memristor-based analog computers, that step may take 20-plus years.
This was one of the 15 predictions listed in CIO Insider, Oct 31, and PC World, Oct 29. Others include Quad Core (multiple core CPUs), the Nehalem chip (Graphics Board GPU), USB 3.0, wireless power transmission, Windows 7, Google desktop OS, and cell phone GPS.
Sharon Solomon came armed with several predictions: Gartner’s Top 10 for 2009, as listed in CIO Magazine Michael Bullock blog, including virtualization, cloud computing, web oriented architectures, enterprise mashups, networking systems, BI and Green computing. Neal Weinberg, Network World, had 9 hot technologies for 2009, including 802.11n, which means that wireless LANs are now viable. Unisys rolled out 5 predictions for 2009 including 3 on IT automation, service delivery and infrastructure management. Apple also had 6 including iPod 3.6, iPhone SDK, Macbook Air and their new OS 10.6 Leopard.
Jim Sutter shared with us some of the following Tech Republic’s predictions:
IN: IT pros with business skills - OUT: Technical certifications
IN: Web-based applications - OUT: Build-it-yourself custom software
IN: Automating processes to save money - OUT: Long-term projects
IN: Macs in the enterprise - OUT: Upgrading XP machines to Vista
IN: Virtualization - OUT: Infinite racks of small servers
IN: Core i7 - OUT: The Pentium brand
IN: Thin clients - OUT: A laptop for every knowledge worker
IN: WiMAX - OUT: Metro Wi-Fi
IN: Ubuntu - OUT: Red Hat
IN: Business Intelligence (BI) - OUT: SNMP data overload
IN: Telecommuting - OUT: The 8-5 work day
IN: HP laptops and desktops - OUT: Dell laptops and desktops
IN: Multifunction server appliances - OUT: Best-of-breed network devices
IN: Smartphones - OUT: Desktop-replacement notebooks
IN: Video conferencing - OUT: Air travel for a single meeting
IN: More internships - OUT: Filling open positions
IN: Conserving energy - OUT: Building IT for future growth
IN: WAN acceleration - OUT: Dark fiber
IN: 3G broadband - OUT: Frame relay
IN: Netbooks - OUT: Desktop PCs
IN: Microsoft Office on the Web - OUT: Azure, Live Mesh, and Windows Live
IN: CIOs with minimal tech background - OUT: CIO as lead engineer
IN: IT/business integration - OUT: Centralized IT departments
Mitch, Jennifer and Sean were active in the discussion without presenting specific technology predictions. This was a fun session.
See you on January 8, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
January 8, 2009 meeting
Present: Sharon Solomon, Mitch Morris, Sean Brown, Jennifer Curlee, Jim Sutter, Dave Phillips
The New Year started slowly as several members were unable to make it at the last moment, including our scheduled speaker, Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions. In place of the normal presentation, we had asked members to come to the meeting with one technology prediction, and to briefly describe how it might affect our future.
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: Technology Predictions
I started the discussion by selecting Memristor as my technology prediction. Since the dawn of electronics, we’ve had only three types of circuit components —resistors, inductors, and capacitors. But in 1971, UC Berkeley’s Leon Chua theorized the possibility of a fourth type of component, one that would be able to measure the flow of electric current: the memristor. Now, just 37 years later, Hewlett-Packard has built one.
What is it? As its name implies, the memristor can “remember” how much current has passed through it. And by alternating the amount of current that passes through it, a memristor can also become a one-element circuit component with unique properties. Most notably, it can save its electronic state even when the current is turned off, making it a great candidate to replace today’s flash memory. Memristors will theoretically be cheaper and far faster than flash memory, and allow far greater memory densities. They could also replace RAM chips, as we know them, so that, after you turn off your computer, it will remember exactly what it was doing when you turn it back on, and return to work instantly. This lowering of cost and consolidating of components may lead to affordable, solid-state computers that fit in your pocket and run many times faster than today’s PCs. Someday the memristor could spawn a whole new type of computer, thanks to its ability to remember a range of electrical states rather than the simplistic "on" and "off" states that today's digital processors recognize. By working with a dynamic range of data states in an analog mode, memristor-based computers could be capable of far more complex tasks than just shuttling ones and zeroes around.
When is it coming? Researchers say that no real barrier prevents implementing the memristor in circuitry immediately. But it's up to the business side to push products through to commercial reality. Memristors made to replace flash memory (at a lower cost and lower power consumption) will likely appear first; HP's goal is to offer them by 2012. Beyond that, memristors will likely replace both DRAM and hard disks in the 2014-to-2016 time frame. As for memristor-based analog computers, that step may take 20-plus years.
This was one of the 15 predictions listed in CIO Insider, Oct 31, and PC World, Oct 29. Others include Quad Core (multiple core CPUs), the Nehalem chip (Graphics Board GPU), USB 3.0, wireless power transmission, Windows 7, Google desktop OS, and cell phone GPS.
Sharon Solomon came armed with several predictions: Gartner’s Top 10 for 2009, as listed in CIO Magazine Michael Bullock blog, including virtualization, cloud computing, web oriented architectures, enterprise mashups, networking systems, BI and Green computing. Neal Weinberg, Network World, had 9 hot technologies for 2009, including 802.11n, which means that wireless LANs are now viable. Unisys rolled out 5 predictions for 2009 including 3 on IT automation, service delivery and infrastructure management. Apple also had 6 including iPod 3.6, iPhone SDK, Macbook Air and their new OS 10.6 Leopard.
Jim Sutter shared with us some of the following Tech Republic’s predictions:
IN: IT pros with business skills - OUT: Technical certifications
IN: Web-based applications - OUT: Build-it-yourself custom software
IN: Automating processes to save money - OUT: Long-term projects
IN: Macs in the enterprise - OUT: Upgrading XP machines to Vista
IN: Virtualization - OUT: Infinite racks of small servers
IN: Core i7 - OUT: The Pentium brand
IN: Thin clients - OUT: A laptop for every knowledge worker
IN: WiMAX - OUT: Metro Wi-Fi
IN: Ubuntu - OUT: Red Hat
IN: Business Intelligence (BI) - OUT: SNMP data overload
IN: Telecommuting - OUT: The 8-5 work day
IN: HP laptops and desktops - OUT: Dell laptops and desktops
IN: Multifunction server appliances - OUT: Best-of-breed network devices
IN: Smartphones - OUT: Desktop-replacement notebooks
IN: Video conferencing - OUT: Air travel for a single meeting
IN: More internships - OUT: Filling open positions
IN: Conserving energy - OUT: Building IT for future growth
IN: WAN acceleration - OUT: Dark fiber
IN: 3G broadband - OUT: Frame relay
IN: Netbooks - OUT: Desktop PCs
IN: Microsoft Office on the Web - OUT: Azure, Live Mesh, and Windows Live
IN: CIOs with minimal tech background - OUT: CIO as lead engineer
IN: IT/business integration - OUT: Centralized IT departments
Mitch, Jennifer and Sean were active in the discussion without presenting specific technology predictions. This was a fun session.
See you on January 8, 2009 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Friday, December 19, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 12-11-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
December 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Joel Manfredo, John Mooney, Subbu Murthy, Randy Farner, Andy King, Jeff Hecht, Jennifer Curlee, Jason Dedrick, Sean Brown, Paul Gray, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Jason Dedrick, UCI, to his first meeting.
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: Green IT
Joel Manfredo, County of Orange, started by showing technology trends as identified by Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, Gartner and Forrester, highlighting amongst others Cloud Computing, Consumers as Innovators, Mashups, Web Platform (SaaS) and Green IT. Another slide showed the hype cycle for technology trends with Green IT at the peak of inflated expectations (see Gartner slides in Joel’s presentation). He then showed the Wikipedia definition of Green computing – the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently, especially in power management and materials recycling. A Deloitte slide showed the influence of regulation over time, combined with economic and social pressures. An EPA Green Power Partnership slide showed the ranking of 53 Fortune 500 companies green power usage, led by Intel Corp at 1,300,000 kilowatt-hours per year. He touched upon renewable energy, green buildings and energy conservation. He defined the LEED building rating system – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, where you can be rated platinum, gold, silver and certified. He also defined the Energy Star program – a joint EPA and DoE program, which addresses both business and home efficiency guidelines, and showed an interesting projection of energy usage. He showed a complex Green IT taxonomy chart, and a chart showing technology enablers to Green IT. He listed Gartner’s10 key elements of a Green IT strategy, including switch it off when not in use, and move from “always on” to “always available“ in the data center. The Energy Stack slide was interesting. Joel ended with the Cisco connected workplace slide, showing the cost savings from the shared workplace design. A great presentation by a subject matter expert - I recommend that you take another look at his presentation slides. They are at : http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
We asked members to tell us what they are doing about Green IT.
John Mooney, Pepperdine University, said that he has been focusing more on IT sustainability rather than on Green IT. He belongs to a consortium called the European Center for Sustainability Leadership, and they had a meeting last week at the UN to define principles of responsibility. Green IT is one of IT management’s areas of responsibility as it influences technology, social and environmental strategies. He sees IT management becoming business practice leaders. He recommends that we switch paradigms from “reduce usage” to “do not use” in the first place.
Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said that he is involved with open innovation and invited Joel to meet with the group. In general, he found that CIOs tend towards empire building - bigger budgets, staffs and data centers, and were anti outsourcing and SaaS. CIOs are not graded on energy consumption, although he did note that the Dupont CIO is chief sustainability officer for the company.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, said that according to the Wikipedia definition he has always been green – most service for least cost. Business demands service. When business demands green, the CIO will change. It is a simple value proposition.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, agreed that from a corporate perspective, he has to align with the business, and he hasn’t heard anything about green from the business. Common sense tells you that green is good and you have to become conscious about what it takes to become more green, but it hasn’t trickled down yet. He complimented Joel on his presentation.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that it is all about ROI. He doesn’t have a mandate to be green – he has a mandate to provide service, and he brought in blade servers to be efficient, not green. He has been looking at software to shut down systems and PCs but building management is not interested in doing their bit.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they are a small company, and as such are always interested in saving $. She buys towers not stacks. They have a conflict between outsourcing and IP vulnerability. They keep the lights on because of security, and business continuity demands that they always have excess power for backup. Even so, they try to be green but are having problems with HVAC reliability.
Jason Dedrick, UCI, thanked Joel for a very interesting presentation. He is working in a new research area of carbon productivity, as it affects IT, the business as a whole, and the economy. They are studying any level of carbon usage, and on how IT affects energy usage, and not just at the cost side.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, was sorry that he was in and out during most of the presentation due to a conference call to a solar energy company. He found the pieces that he heard to be very interesting, and took note that the light in the conference room was too bright.
Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus), was working on the office hotelling concept in the early 90’s, and attended a conference on the subject in Orlando although he recognized that they used a lot of carbon just to fly there and back! With reference to Joel’s Cisco example and IBM reports, they showed that it didn’t and shouldn’t matter which office space one used when working in the central office and not at the home office. He and John Mooney agreed that to change behavior one needs incentives.
Thank you, Joel, for
December 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Joel Manfredo, John Mooney, Subbu Murthy, Randy Farner, Andy King, Jeff Hecht, Jennifer Curlee, Jason Dedrick, Sean Brown, Paul Gray, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Jason Dedrick, UCI, to his first meeting.
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: Green IT
Joel Manfredo, County of Orange, started by showing technology trends as identified by Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, Gartner and Forrester, highlighting amongst others Cloud Computing, Consumers as Innovators, Mashups, Web Platform (SaaS) and Green IT. Another slide showed the hype cycle for technology trends with Green IT at the peak of inflated expectations (see Gartner slides in Joel’s presentation). He then showed the Wikipedia definition of Green computing – the study and practice of using computing resources efficiently, especially in power management and materials recycling. A Deloitte slide showed the influence of regulation over time, combined with economic and social pressures. An EPA Green Power Partnership slide showed the ranking of 53 Fortune 500 companies green power usage, led by Intel Corp at 1,300,000 kilowatt-hours per year. He touched upon renewable energy, green buildings and energy conservation. He defined the LEED building rating system – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, where you can be rated platinum, gold, silver and certified. He also defined the Energy Star program – a joint EPA and DoE program, which addresses both business and home efficiency guidelines, and showed an interesting projection of energy usage. He showed a complex Green IT taxonomy chart, and a chart showing technology enablers to Green IT. He listed Gartner’s10 key elements of a Green IT strategy, including switch it off when not in use, and move from “always on” to “always available“ in the data center. The Energy Stack slide was interesting. Joel ended with the Cisco connected workplace slide, showing the cost savings from the shared workplace design. A great presentation by a subject matter expert - I recommend that you take another look at his presentation slides. They are at : http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
We asked members to tell us what they are doing about Green IT.
John Mooney, Pepperdine University, said that he has been focusing more on IT sustainability rather than on Green IT. He belongs to a consortium called the European Center for Sustainability Leadership, and they had a meeting last week at the UN to define principles of responsibility. Green IT is one of IT management’s areas of responsibility as it influences technology, social and environmental strategies. He sees IT management becoming business practice leaders. He recommends that we switch paradigms from “reduce usage” to “do not use” in the first place.
Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said that he is involved with open innovation and invited Joel to meet with the group. In general, he found that CIOs tend towards empire building - bigger budgets, staffs and data centers, and were anti outsourcing and SaaS. CIOs are not graded on energy consumption, although he did note that the Dupont CIO is chief sustainability officer for the company.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, said that according to the Wikipedia definition he has always been green – most service for least cost. Business demands service. When business demands green, the CIO will change. It is a simple value proposition.
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, agreed that from a corporate perspective, he has to align with the business, and he hasn’t heard anything about green from the business. Common sense tells you that green is good and you have to become conscious about what it takes to become more green, but it hasn’t trickled down yet. He complimented Joel on his presentation.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that it is all about ROI. He doesn’t have a mandate to be green – he has a mandate to provide service, and he brought in blade servers to be efficient, not green. He has been looking at software to shut down systems and PCs but building management is not interested in doing their bit.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they are a small company, and as such are always interested in saving $. She buys towers not stacks. They have a conflict between outsourcing and IP vulnerability. They keep the lights on because of security, and business continuity demands that they always have excess power for backup. Even so, they try to be green but are having problems with HVAC reliability.
Jason Dedrick, UCI, thanked Joel for a very interesting presentation. He is working in a new research area of carbon productivity, as it affects IT, the business as a whole, and the economy. They are studying any level of carbon usage, and on how IT affects energy usage, and not just at the cost side.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, was sorry that he was in and out during most of the presentation due to a conference call to a solar energy company. He found the pieces that he heard to be very interesting, and took note that the light in the conference room was too bright.
Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus), was working on the office hotelling concept in the early 90’s, and attended a conference on the subject in Orlando although he recognized that they used a lot of carbon just to fly there and back! With reference to Joel’s Cisco example and IBM reports, they showed that it didn’t and shouldn’t matter which office space one used when working in the central office and not at the home office. He and John Mooney agreed that to change behavior one needs incentives.
Thank you, Joel, for
Monday, December 1, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 11-13-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
November 13, 2008 meeting
Present: Andy King, Tina Haines, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, William Zauner, John Pringle, Dave Loomis, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Dave Loomis, ex-Barnes & Noble, IBM, and Siemens to his first meeting.
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: IT Policies
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, defined a policy as a statement of intent intended to influence and determine decisions, actions and other matters, for example: a company’s personnel policy. Reasons for having IT policies include prevention of abuse of IT resources, protection of owners and employees, provide guidelines for IT management decision making, integrate with corporate governance, and to meet regulatory, legal, and ethical requirements. Andy had a couple of slides defining where IT policies fit in an organization. Andy listed every IT policy he found - about 33 in total – and focused on the 7 major policies that Northwestern University have developed. These include policies on security, network/infrastructure, hardware, software, residential network, email and external vendors. Each of these can be expanded to multiple sub-policies. He showed us how the security policy expands into 9 sub-policies. I recommend that you refer to Andy’s presentation slides for detail listings. Andy also circulated examples that he gathered from organizations as varied as a mature indutrial (1 long legal 14 page policy document), several universities policies statements, and a government IT policy. He also listed reference items such as http://www.itgi.org/ (IT Governance Institute), and the British Standard ISO/IEC 38500:2008 on corporate governance of IT
We asked members to tell us what IT policies they have or would recommend.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, in the continuum of time, they have developed sets of IT policies, but they are not very well coordinated. The company has 35 IT groups which they are just now pulling them all together. The first step is to develop a common set of standards. They intend to develop policies regarding protection of data, security of equipment, email, etc. They are also attempting to install rigorous IT change control and DR. They do have accounting policies in place.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that they have a very limited set of IT policies in place. Customers have their own and their consultants have to abide by those policies. They find that it is quite difficult (3 or 4 days) to gain access to customer’s computing resources because of the access policies in place.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said his philosophy over the years has been fewer policies are better than too many, and if the current financial crisis is anything to go by, having policies in place doesn’t seem to guarantee proper behavior. Policies should capture a set of rules, and IT policies should be part of corporate policies, just like HR policies. When he was at Rockwell, he had the same person who drafted IT strategies in charge of drafting IT policies
William Zauner, JAMS, relating to the handout document, agreed that one paragraph could easily turn into many pages of legal policy. He had an outside council work with the HR department draft the HR policies. What he tries to do is fix behavior rather than define policies on things like password protection, and intellectual property protection when external contractors are involved.
John Pringle, ex-RCMT, said that they did not have many policies until SOX compliance became an issue. A manual was developed and they all had to sign a document to acknowledge having read the manual. To control internal usage of the Internet they use a content filter. They also have asset management policies. More and more customers are requiring their consultants to comply with their policies. The top security issue is access to data.
Dave Loomis said that when he worked with Siemens, they had to comply with the customer’s policies. They also controlled internal Internet access using technology, and were rigorous in controlling what you had installed on your computer, and in installing antivirus software. Quite often, the executives were among those who got caught. They insisted that new employees attended training as a condition of employment.
Andy King, Exemplis Corp., added that they also have all new employees sign a technology use policy as a condition of employment, which is tied into the corporate strategy.
Thank you, Andy, for a very good presentation and handout. A copy can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
See you on December 11, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
November 13, 2008 meeting
Present: Andy King, Tina Haines, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, William Zauner, John Pringle, Dave Loomis, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Dave Loomis, ex-Barnes & Noble, IBM, and Siemens to his first meeting.
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: IT Policies
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, defined a policy as a statement of intent intended to influence and determine decisions, actions and other matters, for example: a company’s personnel policy. Reasons for having IT policies include prevention of abuse of IT resources, protection of owners and employees, provide guidelines for IT management decision making, integrate with corporate governance, and to meet regulatory, legal, and ethical requirements. Andy had a couple of slides defining where IT policies fit in an organization. Andy listed every IT policy he found - about 33 in total – and focused on the 7 major policies that Northwestern University have developed. These include policies on security, network/infrastructure, hardware, software, residential network, email and external vendors. Each of these can be expanded to multiple sub-policies. He showed us how the security policy expands into 9 sub-policies. I recommend that you refer to Andy’s presentation slides for detail listings. Andy also circulated examples that he gathered from organizations as varied as a mature indutrial (1 long legal 14 page policy document), several universities policies statements, and a government IT policy. He also listed reference items such as http://www.itgi.org/ (IT Governance Institute), and the British Standard ISO/IEC 38500:2008 on corporate governance of IT
We asked members to tell us what IT policies they have or would recommend.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, in the continuum of time, they have developed sets of IT policies, but they are not very well coordinated. The company has 35 IT groups which they are just now pulling them all together. The first step is to develop a common set of standards. They intend to develop policies regarding protection of data, security of equipment, email, etc. They are also attempting to install rigorous IT change control and DR. They do have accounting policies in place.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that they have a very limited set of IT policies in place. Customers have their own and their consultants have to abide by those policies. They find that it is quite difficult (3 or 4 days) to gain access to customer’s computing resources because of the access policies in place.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said his philosophy over the years has been fewer policies are better than too many, and if the current financial crisis is anything to go by, having policies in place doesn’t seem to guarantee proper behavior. Policies should capture a set of rules, and IT policies should be part of corporate policies, just like HR policies. When he was at Rockwell, he had the same person who drafted IT strategies in charge of drafting IT policies
William Zauner, JAMS, relating to the handout document, agreed that one paragraph could easily turn into many pages of legal policy. He had an outside council work with the HR department draft the HR policies. What he tries to do is fix behavior rather than define policies on things like password protection, and intellectual property protection when external contractors are involved.
John Pringle, ex-RCMT, said that they did not have many policies until SOX compliance became an issue. A manual was developed and they all had to sign a document to acknowledge having read the manual. To control internal usage of the Internet they use a content filter. They also have asset management policies. More and more customers are requiring their consultants to comply with their policies. The top security issue is access to data.
Dave Loomis said that when he worked with Siemens, they had to comply with the customer’s policies. They also controlled internal Internet access using technology, and were rigorous in controlling what you had installed on your computer, and in installing antivirus software. Quite often, the executives were among those who got caught. They insisted that new employees attended training as a condition of employment.
Andy King, Exemplis Corp., added that they also have all new employees sign a technology use policy as a condition of employment, which is tied into the corporate strategy.
Thank you, Andy, for a very good presentation and handout. A copy can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
See you on December 11, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Monday, October 20, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 10-9-08
1993-2008
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Jim Pick, Paul Gray, John Pringle, Carmella Cassetta, Andy Stameson, Tak Fujii, Jim Sutter, Andy King, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
Paul Gray introduced our guest speaker, Professor James Pick, University of Redlands, as our subject matter expert and author of several books on the topic. We also welcomed Andy Stameson, ex-CIO at FileNet, to his first meeting.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.
Topic: GIS – Its time has come for business
Jim Pick, University of Redlands, defined Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a database of attributes, spatial information, and a linkage between the two. Jacqueline Tyrwhitt began using overlays for land use planning in 1950. Ian McHarg carried it much further and published “Design with Nature” in 1969. Also in the late 60’s, ESRI (HQ in Redlands) developed a software package, Arcinfo, and GIS was born. Military R & D eventually developed satellite systems for Global Positioning Systems (GPS). GIS moved into the business environment in the early 1990’s. Jim showed several examples, including a routing and scheduling application for a business fleet (see his presentation slides for other examples). The family of spatial technologies also includes RFID, sensors, handheld devices (such as PDAs), and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) for laser 3-D profiles. There are legal and ethical issues with using spatial technologies – including privacy and eligibility. GIS has moved towards web and mobile platforms, and almost everyone is familiar with Google Earth and Yahoo maps. Jim gave many other examples. GIS is starting to be integrated with ERP systems, especially with Oracle ERP, and in the energy (oil) value chain. It is also being used as a strategic business weapon (e.g. at Rand McNally) and it needs to be aligned with the IT strategy. Jim described at some length the use of GIS at Norwich Union. It is coming to the point where most companies should evaluate GIS and its potential. The management issues include cost vs. benefit (ROI). Should the GIS group be part of IT? In-house or outsourced? When should it be integrated into the ERP systems (not yet a smooth process)? Jim’s slides contain much more information and I recommend that you take the time to review them. They are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
We asked members to tell us what they are doing with GIS.
Paul Gray, Claremont, complimented Jim for a very comprehensive presentation. Paul’s knowledge is limited but he has reviewed favorably several of Jim’s books. Claremont is starting to get interested and have a few education projects – young Ph.Ds are good as missionaries. So far, it seems that people have problems viewing things spatially.
John Pringle, ex-RCMT, said that he is somewhat familiar with GPS tracking on boats as a component of marine technology. He has been thinking about the privacy implications when you start to link GPS/GIS to social networks.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, can see how this has implications for the transportation industry, tracking trucks and delivery status. She is less certain about its use in student related activities. One issue is what is the ideal background for people who want to go into GIS? Is it a background in IT, or government, or geography? ESRI alumni may be the ideal!
Andy Stameson, ex FileNet, said that they had started to look into these technologies at FileNet. They were trying to link Salesforce.com with GIS to get a better feeling for the ideal territories for sales and service.
Tak Fujii, Olson Company, said that since they are in housing development downtown, they have used GIS for years for mapping purposes. Now that Google Earth is readily available and very useful, they have started to use it in place of more expensive tools. They overlay demographic data and infrastructure data over the physical picture. Google is putting pressure on ESRI.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, recalled that Rockwell had an early contract to build the first constellation of GPS satellites. He remembers meeting Jim Pick years ago and taking him on a tour of Rockwell Semiconductor (which became Conexant). Gallo Winery is a big user of GIS in the vineyard to track application of fertilizers, etc., and in marketing to track selling demographics. Adding an RFID tag to each case is costly (50c)
Andy King, Exemplis Corp., expressed two thoughts – this was a very informative presentation, especially as he has been thinking about how to introduce it to his executives for personal navigation aspects, and to find where books are available. The second was to his Boy Scouts troop in place/addition to the map and compass exercise.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, also had two thoughts. He is working with a small company, which is thinking about going public, and they want to track drill bits, combining positioning and soil characteristics. GIS is also a plus for any CIO to present innovative ideas to his/her management where it might add value.
This was a very good presentation by Jim Pick, supported by a good handout and list of references.
See you on November 13, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Jim Pick, Paul Gray, John Pringle, Carmella Cassetta, Andy Stameson, Tak Fujii, Jim Sutter, Andy King, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
Paul Gray introduced our guest speaker, Professor James Pick, University of Redlands, as our subject matter expert and author of several books on the topic. We also welcomed Andy Stameson, ex-CIO at FileNet, to his first meeting.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.
Topic: GIS – Its time has come for business
Jim Pick, University of Redlands, defined Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a database of attributes, spatial information, and a linkage between the two. Jacqueline Tyrwhitt began using overlays for land use planning in 1950. Ian McHarg carried it much further and published “Design with Nature” in 1969. Also in the late 60’s, ESRI (HQ in Redlands) developed a software package, Arcinfo, and GIS was born. Military R & D eventually developed satellite systems for Global Positioning Systems (GPS). GIS moved into the business environment in the early 1990’s. Jim showed several examples, including a routing and scheduling application for a business fleet (see his presentation slides for other examples). The family of spatial technologies also includes RFID, sensors, handheld devices (such as PDAs), and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) for laser 3-D profiles. There are legal and ethical issues with using spatial technologies – including privacy and eligibility. GIS has moved towards web and mobile platforms, and almost everyone is familiar with Google Earth and Yahoo maps. Jim gave many other examples. GIS is starting to be integrated with ERP systems, especially with Oracle ERP, and in the energy (oil) value chain. It is also being used as a strategic business weapon (e.g. at Rand McNally) and it needs to be aligned with the IT strategy. Jim described at some length the use of GIS at Norwich Union. It is coming to the point where most companies should evaluate GIS and its potential. The management issues include cost vs. benefit (ROI). Should the GIS group be part of IT? In-house or outsourced? When should it be integrated into the ERP systems (not yet a smooth process)? Jim’s slides contain much more information and I recommend that you take the time to review them. They are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
We asked members to tell us what they are doing with GIS.
Paul Gray, Claremont, complimented Jim for a very comprehensive presentation. Paul’s knowledge is limited but he has reviewed favorably several of Jim’s books. Claremont is starting to get interested and have a few education projects – young Ph.Ds are good as missionaries. So far, it seems that people have problems viewing things spatially.
John Pringle, ex-RCMT, said that he is somewhat familiar with GPS tracking on boats as a component of marine technology. He has been thinking about the privacy implications when you start to link GPS/GIS to social networks.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, can see how this has implications for the transportation industry, tracking trucks and delivery status. She is less certain about its use in student related activities. One issue is what is the ideal background for people who want to go into GIS? Is it a background in IT, or government, or geography? ESRI alumni may be the ideal!
Andy Stameson, ex FileNet, said that they had started to look into these technologies at FileNet. They were trying to link Salesforce.com with GIS to get a better feeling for the ideal territories for sales and service.
Tak Fujii, Olson Company, said that since they are in housing development downtown, they have used GIS for years for mapping purposes. Now that Google Earth is readily available and very useful, they have started to use it in place of more expensive tools. They overlay demographic data and infrastructure data over the physical picture. Google is putting pressure on ESRI.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, recalled that Rockwell had an early contract to build the first constellation of GPS satellites. He remembers meeting Jim Pick years ago and taking him on a tour of Rockwell Semiconductor (which became Conexant). Gallo Winery is a big user of GIS in the vineyard to track application of fertilizers, etc., and in marketing to track selling demographics. Adding an RFID tag to each case is costly (50c)
Andy King, Exemplis Corp., expressed two thoughts – this was a very informative presentation, especially as he has been thinking about how to introduce it to his executives for personal navigation aspects, and to find where books are available. The second was to his Boy Scouts troop in place/addition to the map and compass exercise.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, also had two thoughts. He is working with a small company, which is thinking about going public, and they want to track drill bits, combining positioning and soil characteristics. GIS is also a plus for any CIO to present innovative ideas to his/her management where it might add value.
This was a very good presentation by Jim Pick, supported by a good handout and list of references.
See you on November 13, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 9-11-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Paul Gray, Omar El Sawy, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Reid, Kirk Minami, Randy Farner, Randy Miller, Rich Hoffman, Steve Wallace, Jennifer Curlee, David Mann, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, John Pringle, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Kirk Minami, Aviana Global, and Steve Wallace, Hansen Beverage, to their first meeting.
We reminded members about the evening event of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. on SaaS, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.
Topic: Analytics - Maximizing the ROI from the BI investment
Paul Gray, Professor Emeritus at Claremont Graduate School, defined BI systems as a combination of data gathering, data storage, knowledge management with analysis to evaluate complex internal and competitive information, and present quality results in a timely manner. See slide 5 for the relationship of BI to DSS/EIS, data mining, OLAP, data warehouse, Web 2.0, CRM/DB marketing, and GIS. It is not sufficient to look back at internal performance data, or past competitive results. It is important to provide analysis tools to produce “what if” scenarios and make the analytic tools and results available to many in the organization, not to just a few planners. Paul showed examples of Web 2.0 bashups, combining many sources of data. Web 2.0 user-friendly interface allows for widespread use of such systems. The challenges include data quality, common data definitions and having the right infrastructure. There are many implications for the CIO (see slide 17). CI (competitive intelligence) is a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing and managing external information about your competitors, which can affect your company’s performance. There are many sources of CI, such as government databases, online data, interviews and the media. The problem is not lack of information but the ability to use it effectively. There are many vendors of BI systems (see slide 25). There are many BI managerial issues – it’s about understanding your own position and performance, your customers and your competitors, and disseminating that knowledge to many people in the company. The technologies for BI and CI are getting better, as part of a better DSS capability. Paul attached a list of references, including “Successful Business Intelligence”, by Cindy Howson, and a review of “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning” by Tom Davenport & Jeanne Harris.
Paul's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked members to share with us their experiences with BI and Analytics.
Omar El Sawy, USC, thanked Paul for his presentation. He took a stab at defining the difference between BI (focused on presenting the data from various sources) and Analytics (trying to use tools to gain insight from the data). He saw lots of integration between process workflow data and intelligence, which changes the way ROI is viewed as more part of the process. The science of exceptions is becoming better, but there is a lot of skepticism out there on the ROI of analytics.
Joel Manfredo recalled when he was in the leasing business in 1996, he was focused on the long process, from concept to building to leasing and you could be dead before you knew it. He was focused on collapsing the cycle time, and used BI tools to help. He also was interested in analyzing demographic data, using Cognos for reporting, which is invaluable in retail, like Starbucks, although it didn’t seemed to stop them from opening a store on every corner!
Jeff Reid, Toyota Material Handling, said that they used the SAP tool to get at their data. So far they pull together data from 4 of the 7 or 8 processes, and intend to extend it to all the processes. Fundamentally, it’s about getting the right data at the right time to the right people, so that better decisions can be made.
Kirk Minami, Aviana Global, shared with us information about a project he is working on in manufacturing. It is an early warning detection system, analyzing data from customer problem call logs to spot problems with the manufacturing process that might be causing units to fail, and to indicate what early steps can be taken to solve the problems at inception. The payback is huge.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, recalled from his experience with the Auto Club and Mercury. They used data mining a lot to analyze data on their Terradata platform, and the results were very good for CA. The Auto Club used a rich array of tools to help them drill down.
Randy Miller remembered fondly his days at Toshiba ABS, where he worked with Steve Wallace’s wife on a BI project using Cognos. In that project, 85% of the sales were made in the last 3 days of the month, and so the reports were produced every hour and studied intensely. The CI tools produced reports on the competition but despite the forecasts, this did not seem to influence change.
Rich Hoffman said that DW and SAS seem to have been around forever. Maybe Analytics is a new wrinkle. In the auto industry they have used BI for many years, tracking things like real time comparison shopping on the web, customer retention, conversion, faster failure diagnosis, repair order tracking, etc. He has noticed of late that they won’t hire the necessary Ph. D’s to do the job properly, and won’t spend the effort to cleanse the data.
Steve Wallace, Hansen Beverage, said that this discussion was very timely as they are going through a maturation cycle, which will affect processes, systems, and their global reach. In the past, they only reacted to BI – now it is part of the equation, and they are developing lots of pockets of CI, which will enrich the reports.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they have just finished implementing an ERP system, with the help of a consulting company, which they hoped was going to push them into BI, document management, etc. Unfortunately, they have found that they products are only interfaced, not integrated with one another, and data definitions are not consistent. This turns out to be an opportunity to start a new DD project, and to drive that effort deep into the organization.
David Mann, Word & Brown, said that they too are starting a major initiative, including BI. The major challenge is to define the ROI, and this presentation and discussion will help. They are blessed with having12 to 22 years of data to mine
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, thanked Paul for his presentation and said that Paul forgets more about this subject than he will ever know. The focus of their initiative is to present data in a better way, one that adds value to the data, but it’s hard to get people to believe that better information with result in better decision-making. Our executives have a hard time believing that a computer will make a better decision than they can.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that his company is making a significant investment in BI, and in becoming experts with the SAP analytic product and tools. They are aiming to generate real time ROI from the use of these tools.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that his company has a customized BI system. Each of their judges is treated as a mini profit center, and they use analytics to their competitive advantage as part of their recruiting strategy. The next phase is to use Business Objects to do “What if” studies to change the business focus.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that the Gallo Winery used a host of BI tools, like Cognos, to help them with strategic pricing each weekend. They are in the process of moving to the OutlookSoft product, because of its Excel look and feel. They have also consolidated their BI efforts, and now have a director of BI in IT. He liked Paul’s mashups for CI and is helping start-up companies get a handle on their competitors by tracking contacts on Linkedin, etc. to find out who knows who in the other companies.
John Pringle, RCMT, said that he was the DSS manager in MacDonald Douglas many years ago. He now uses a tool called DIVA to track KPI, performance tracking by sales person, dashboards, charts etc – when you visit John’s office you see them posted all over the walls.
This was a very good session, thanks to Paul’s presentation and excellent handouts.
See you on October 9, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
September 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Paul Gray, Omar El Sawy, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Reid, Kirk Minami, Randy Farner, Randy Miller, Rich Hoffman, Steve Wallace, Jennifer Curlee, David Mann, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, John Pringle, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Kirk Minami, Aviana Global, and Steve Wallace, Hansen Beverage, to their first meeting.
We reminded members about the evening event of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. on SaaS, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.
Topic: Analytics - Maximizing the ROI from the BI investment
Paul Gray, Professor Emeritus at Claremont Graduate School, defined BI systems as a combination of data gathering, data storage, knowledge management with analysis to evaluate complex internal and competitive information, and present quality results in a timely manner. See slide 5 for the relationship of BI to DSS/EIS, data mining, OLAP, data warehouse, Web 2.0, CRM/DB marketing, and GIS. It is not sufficient to look back at internal performance data, or past competitive results. It is important to provide analysis tools to produce “what if” scenarios and make the analytic tools and results available to many in the organization, not to just a few planners. Paul showed examples of Web 2.0 bashups, combining many sources of data. Web 2.0 user-friendly interface allows for widespread use of such systems. The challenges include data quality, common data definitions and having the right infrastructure. There are many implications for the CIO (see slide 17). CI (competitive intelligence) is a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing and managing external information about your competitors, which can affect your company’s performance. There are many sources of CI, such as government databases, online data, interviews and the media. The problem is not lack of information but the ability to use it effectively. There are many vendors of BI systems (see slide 25). There are many BI managerial issues – it’s about understanding your own position and performance, your customers and your competitors, and disseminating that knowledge to many people in the company. The technologies for BI and CI are getting better, as part of a better DSS capability. Paul attached a list of references, including “Successful Business Intelligence”, by Cindy Howson, and a review of “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning” by Tom Davenport & Jeanne Harris.
Paul's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked members to share with us their experiences with BI and Analytics.
Omar El Sawy, USC, thanked Paul for his presentation. He took a stab at defining the difference between BI (focused on presenting the data from various sources) and Analytics (trying to use tools to gain insight from the data). He saw lots of integration between process workflow data and intelligence, which changes the way ROI is viewed as more part of the process. The science of exceptions is becoming better, but there is a lot of skepticism out there on the ROI of analytics.
Joel Manfredo recalled when he was in the leasing business in 1996, he was focused on the long process, from concept to building to leasing and you could be dead before you knew it. He was focused on collapsing the cycle time, and used BI tools to help. He also was interested in analyzing demographic data, using Cognos for reporting, which is invaluable in retail, like Starbucks, although it didn’t seemed to stop them from opening a store on every corner!
Jeff Reid, Toyota Material Handling, said that they used the SAP tool to get at their data. So far they pull together data from 4 of the 7 or 8 processes, and intend to extend it to all the processes. Fundamentally, it’s about getting the right data at the right time to the right people, so that better decisions can be made.
Kirk Minami, Aviana Global, shared with us information about a project he is working on in manufacturing. It is an early warning detection system, analyzing data from customer problem call logs to spot problems with the manufacturing process that might be causing units to fail, and to indicate what early steps can be taken to solve the problems at inception. The payback is huge.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, recalled from his experience with the Auto Club and Mercury. They used data mining a lot to analyze data on their Terradata platform, and the results were very good for CA. The Auto Club used a rich array of tools to help them drill down.
Randy Miller remembered fondly his days at Toshiba ABS, where he worked with Steve Wallace’s wife on a BI project using Cognos. In that project, 85% of the sales were made in the last 3 days of the month, and so the reports were produced every hour and studied intensely. The CI tools produced reports on the competition but despite the forecasts, this did not seem to influence change.
Rich Hoffman said that DW and SAS seem to have been around forever. Maybe Analytics is a new wrinkle. In the auto industry they have used BI for many years, tracking things like real time comparison shopping on the web, customer retention, conversion, faster failure diagnosis, repair order tracking, etc. He has noticed of late that they won’t hire the necessary Ph. D’s to do the job properly, and won’t spend the effort to cleanse the data.
Steve Wallace, Hansen Beverage, said that this discussion was very timely as they are going through a maturation cycle, which will affect processes, systems, and their global reach. In the past, they only reacted to BI – now it is part of the equation, and they are developing lots of pockets of CI, which will enrich the reports.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they have just finished implementing an ERP system, with the help of a consulting company, which they hoped was going to push them into BI, document management, etc. Unfortunately, they have found that they products are only interfaced, not integrated with one another, and data definitions are not consistent. This turns out to be an opportunity to start a new DD project, and to drive that effort deep into the organization.
David Mann, Word & Brown, said that they too are starting a major initiative, including BI. The major challenge is to define the ROI, and this presentation and discussion will help. They are blessed with having12 to 22 years of data to mine
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, thanked Paul for his presentation and said that Paul forgets more about this subject than he will ever know. The focus of their initiative is to present data in a better way, one that adds value to the data, but it’s hard to get people to believe that better information with result in better decision-making. Our executives have a hard time believing that a computer will make a better decision than they can.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that his company is making a significant investment in BI, and in becoming experts with the SAP analytic product and tools. They are aiming to generate real time ROI from the use of these tools.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that his company has a customized BI system. Each of their judges is treated as a mini profit center, and they use analytics to their competitive advantage as part of their recruiting strategy. The next phase is to use Business Objects to do “What if” studies to change the business focus.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that the Gallo Winery used a host of BI tools, like Cognos, to help them with strategic pricing each weekend. They are in the process of moving to the OutlookSoft product, because of its Excel look and feel. They have also consolidated their BI efforts, and now have a director of BI in IT. He liked Paul’s mashups for CI and is helping start-up companies get a handle on their competitors by tracking contacts on Linkedin, etc. to find out who knows who in the other companies.
John Pringle, RCMT, said that he was the DSS manager in MacDonald Douglas many years ago. He now uses a tool called DIVA to track KPI, performance tracking by sales person, dashboards, charts etc – when you visit John’s office you see them posted all over the walls.
This was a very good session, thanks to Paul’s presentation and excellent handouts.
See you on October 9, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 8-14-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
August 14, 2008 meeting
Present: Mike Allen, Joel Manfredo, Larry Godec, Tina Haines, Bob Houghton, Randy Farner, Jeff Hecht, Mitch Morris, Carmella Cassetta, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Mike Allen, The Irvin Company, as our guest speaker, and new member Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, to her first meeting.
We reminded members to reserve the evening of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. for the SaaS special event, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.
Please check Attachment A for the list of topics chosen for the rest of the year, the dates of each meeting and the person who has volunteered to prepare the introduction.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.
Topic: IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
Joel Manfredo, ex-CIO at the Irvine Company (TIC), introduced Michael Allen, Director of Process Excellence, and described the context for the ITIL initiative at TIC – poor change control. Mike described ITIL as a framework of 11 common sense, service oriented principles – it is the What, rather than the How. Created by the British Government in the ‘80s to address inefficiencies with providing IT services, it is now at Version 3, which was released in June 2007. There are 5 core books entitled: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement. ITIL Service Strategy is about the practice of service management, principles, strategy, economics (IT financial management, ROI, service portfolio management, demand management), organization culture, technology and operations. ITIL Service Design is about service design principles and processes – service catalogue management, service level management, capacity management, availability management, service continuity management, information security management, supplier management, application management, data and information management, requirements engineering, and design considerations (organization, process and tools). ITIL Service Transition is about transition principles and processes – transition planning and support, change management, asset and configuration management, release and deployment management, validation and testing, evaluation and knowledge management. ITIL Service Operation is about principles and processes - event management, incident management, request fulfillment, problem management, access management, monitor and control domain management. It is also about functions like service desk, technical management, IT operations management, and application management. ITIL Continual Service Improvement processes include the 7-step improvement process, service reporting, measurement, ROI for CSI, and SLA management. To operate IT like a business, it behooves you to embrace ITIL principles to provide reliable, available and serviceable IT services and infrastructure. It leverages Deming’s PDCA model. Widely accepted in Europe, it is quickly moving into the US market. Mike recommended starting with one aspect of your IT operations that needs improvement. TIC started with change management to add structure to a somewhat chaotic environment by dedicating resources in 2004, and the metrics show the value. Mike’s handout lists what they have done – self-assessment, 5-year plan, incident and problem management, configuration management and IT service continuity. I recommend that you read his entire handout to get a better sense of all that they have accomplished. The slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked members to share with us their experiences with ITIL.
Mitch Morris, IAMPO, told us that his environment is still very immature with respect to IT. He is evaluating ERP systems with the intention of replacing custom software. He is also trying to educate both management and users in the need for IT policies and procedures. In past positions, he has implemented many ITIL concepts.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said before listening to the presentation, he would have said that they did nothing with ITIL. He now realizes that they do a lot in areas like demand management. The need for availability is increasing, and they need predictable procedures to handle change management. The business is still very immature, as it grows from 200 to 1000 employees, and they tend to be sloppy about a lot of things. But the business is starting to be more demanding so his first step will be to do a self-assessment.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, said that at the Auto Club and Mercury, they have implemented many ITIL procedures in name, but not in spirit. Problems keep reoccurring, and there is little route cause analysis. What he likes about ITIL is that it gives you a checklist of processes and procedures that one should implement to run IT as a business.
Bob Houghton, DDI, said that at Western Digital, with 26,000 all over the world, the need for such a process was recognized so that they could communicate the cost of poor IT practices. Implementing IT services based on the ITIL model brought the cost of IT per drive down from 26 cents to 6 cents. At DDI, they are coming out of bankruptcy, and had just failed a SOX audit in change control. They had to use ITIL to get some structure.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, initial reaction to ITIL was “what’s in a name”. But since she has been working with her new division in the last 18 months, mostly in the UK, she has came to see that ITIL is very much accepted as a body of work which is supportable. Their problem today is that they are in a very profitable aerospace industry, and have tended to become lazy. So it is good to have a foundation for providing IT services. ITIL is in demand by both the government and their customers. She complimented Mike and TIC for doing a really good job of relating process maturity to the business.
Larry Godec, First American, is a big fan of ITIL. They have implemented many ITIL concepts and find that it is an excellent foundation for IT service provisioning. With the demand for high availability, it has become absolutely necessary to control changes, and manage demand. Unfortunately, with the budget cuts due the real estate crunch, he has had to reassign his ITIL full time resource. He is contemplating bringing him back to do another assessment.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that they are not ITIL compliant. It would seem to him for this to be critically important for all CIOs to know how compliant they were to the ITIL principles in all aspects of providing IT services. If they don’t know, then they need to do at least do a self-audit, if not hire a company to do one, like TIC did.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said the first thing they did was address change management. They were able to show $ savings from implementing ITIL principles. When she joined Corinthian Colleges, they had multiple years of failed SOX audits. After implementing change management, they have moved to address incident management. Listening to Mike, she realizes that there is another whole level that they need to address. They are at best at 50-60% of where they should be.
This was a very good session, thanks to Mike’s presentation and a very lively discussion.
See you on September 11, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260
August 14, 2008 meeting
Present: Mike Allen, Joel Manfredo, Larry Godec, Tina Haines, Bob Houghton, Randy Farner, Jeff Hecht, Mitch Morris, Carmella Cassetta, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Mike Allen, The Irvin Company, as our guest speaker, and new member Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, to her first meeting.
We reminded members to reserve the evening of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. for the SaaS special event, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.
Please check Attachment A for the list of topics chosen for the rest of the year, the dates of each meeting and the person who has volunteered to prepare the introduction.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.
Topic: IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
Joel Manfredo, ex-CIO at the Irvine Company (TIC), introduced Michael Allen, Director of Process Excellence, and described the context for the ITIL initiative at TIC – poor change control. Mike described ITIL as a framework of 11 common sense, service oriented principles – it is the What, rather than the How. Created by the British Government in the ‘80s to address inefficiencies with providing IT services, it is now at Version 3, which was released in June 2007. There are 5 core books entitled: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement. ITIL Service Strategy is about the practice of service management, principles, strategy, economics (IT financial management, ROI, service portfolio management, demand management), organization culture, technology and operations. ITIL Service Design is about service design principles and processes – service catalogue management, service level management, capacity management, availability management, service continuity management, information security management, supplier management, application management, data and information management, requirements engineering, and design considerations (organization, process and tools). ITIL Service Transition is about transition principles and processes – transition planning and support, change management, asset and configuration management, release and deployment management, validation and testing, evaluation and knowledge management. ITIL Service Operation is about principles and processes - event management, incident management, request fulfillment, problem management, access management, monitor and control domain management. It is also about functions like service desk, technical management, IT operations management, and application management. ITIL Continual Service Improvement processes include the 7-step improvement process, service reporting, measurement, ROI for CSI, and SLA management. To operate IT like a business, it behooves you to embrace ITIL principles to provide reliable, available and serviceable IT services and infrastructure. It leverages Deming’s PDCA model. Widely accepted in Europe, it is quickly moving into the US market. Mike recommended starting with one aspect of your IT operations that needs improvement. TIC started with change management to add structure to a somewhat chaotic environment by dedicating resources in 2004, and the metrics show the value. Mike’s handout lists what they have done – self-assessment, 5-year plan, incident and problem management, configuration management and IT service continuity. I recommend that you read his entire handout to get a better sense of all that they have accomplished. The slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked members to share with us their experiences with ITIL.
Mitch Morris, IAMPO, told us that his environment is still very immature with respect to IT. He is evaluating ERP systems with the intention of replacing custom software. He is also trying to educate both management and users in the need for IT policies and procedures. In past positions, he has implemented many ITIL concepts.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said before listening to the presentation, he would have said that they did nothing with ITIL. He now realizes that they do a lot in areas like demand management. The need for availability is increasing, and they need predictable procedures to handle change management. The business is still very immature, as it grows from 200 to 1000 employees, and they tend to be sloppy about a lot of things. But the business is starting to be more demanding so his first step will be to do a self-assessment.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, said that at the Auto Club and Mercury, they have implemented many ITIL procedures in name, but not in spirit. Problems keep reoccurring, and there is little route cause analysis. What he likes about ITIL is that it gives you a checklist of processes and procedures that one should implement to run IT as a business.
Bob Houghton, DDI, said that at Western Digital, with 26,000 all over the world, the need for such a process was recognized so that they could communicate the cost of poor IT practices. Implementing IT services based on the ITIL model brought the cost of IT per drive down from 26 cents to 6 cents. At DDI, they are coming out of bankruptcy, and had just failed a SOX audit in change control. They had to use ITIL to get some structure.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, initial reaction to ITIL was “what’s in a name”. But since she has been working with her new division in the last 18 months, mostly in the UK, she has came to see that ITIL is very much accepted as a body of work which is supportable. Their problem today is that they are in a very profitable aerospace industry, and have tended to become lazy. So it is good to have a foundation for providing IT services. ITIL is in demand by both the government and their customers. She complimented Mike and TIC for doing a really good job of relating process maturity to the business.
Larry Godec, First American, is a big fan of ITIL. They have implemented many ITIL concepts and find that it is an excellent foundation for IT service provisioning. With the demand for high availability, it has become absolutely necessary to control changes, and manage demand. Unfortunately, with the budget cuts due the real estate crunch, he has had to reassign his ITIL full time resource. He is contemplating bringing him back to do another assessment.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that they are not ITIL compliant. It would seem to him for this to be critically important for all CIOs to know how compliant they were to the ITIL principles in all aspects of providing IT services. If they don’t know, then they need to do at least do a self-audit, if not hire a company to do one, like TIC did.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said the first thing they did was address change management. They were able to show $ savings from implementing ITIL principles. When she joined Corinthian Colleges, they had multiple years of failed SOX audits. After implementing change management, they have moved to address incident management. Listening to Mike, she realizes that there is another whole level that they need to address. They are at best at 50-60% of where they should be.
This was a very good session, thanks to Mike’s presentation and a very lively discussion.
See you on September 11, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260
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