Tag Archives | Ask the Service Assurance Expert

Hockey Lessons, ITIL and IT Operations Game Changers

By on January 23, 2012 in Service Assurance & ITIL

Recently, in Toronto, Canada, I had the pleasure of meeting a number of IT professionals from a wide range of industries who have a common passion, common challenges and a common opportunity to bring their IT organizations to the next level of excellence.

Their common passion? Hockey. And they played a lively CA Technologies-sponsored game on the Toronto Maple Leaf’s rink at the Air Canada Center.

Their common challenge? Juggling increased business demands and getting squeezed by tight IT budgets in a tough economic environment.

Their common opportunity? With a modest investment in new game-changing IT management technology, they can tweak their operational processes to get a huge uplift in IT efficiency and service quality.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Service Innovation Turns Threats into Advantage

By on October 19, 2011 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert, CA Technologies on APM

The IT landscape; the IT industry at large; the IT organizations over which CIOs preside: These are all rapidly being reshaped beyond recognition by transformative technologies and service delivery advances. As the pace of profound change accelerates on all fronts, CIOs simply must be more agile and flexible to react more quickly, creatively, boldly and decisively than ever before if they want to remain credible captains amidst this sea of change. The paradox is that because increased cycle-time is the key to doing IT at the ever-increasing speed of global business CIOs will no longer always have the luxury of time to formulate and adopt “copper-bottomed” strategies. However, the upside is that they now have a very rare opportunity to claim the true strategic value of IT and assert real influence by deploying the resources and cycles available to them to far greater strategic advantage. (Now that someone else will shortly be babysitting the datacenter in the cloud.) The true value of the hyper-disruptive nature of our technology-fuelled times can now be realized because all this is having a catalytic effect. It is driving the need to build more innovative business services around customers and employees and innovate in service delivery to differentiate as well as gain and sustain real competitive edge.

Carpe Diem

In particular, opportunities presented by the inexorable rise of smartphones, tablet pcs and the entire mobile ecosystem (including cloud) highlight the importance of rapid CIO adjustment and reaction to turn potential IT threats into a real business advantage. Mobile Economic Time (Twitter hashtag: #CA_MET) illustrates the power of the phenomenon by identifying and quantifying a new business opportunity in untapped time, which is worth billions of dollars to businesses across the globe. Those organizations that proactively react to this mobile-centric development in a timely fashion will tap into previously dead time – now actively used by smartphone users — and reap the benefits. Powerful as MET is — it is indicative of the existence of even greater opportunity to drive business benefit through service innovation. The fact is that organizations everywhere must maintain competitive edge in a highly dynamic and expanding business environment. They must do so whilst transformational technologies, delivery models and channels constantly emerge, evolve and converge to create unforeseen opportunity — of course there are unforeseen risks too. As a result, CIOs must continually drive IT to proactively assimilate new enabling technologies; embrace and leverage new service delivery models as they become available; and both connect and extend the value of existing investments. However, they must urgently build greater flex into their strategies to continue to adapt quickly to both untapped opportunities and emergent threats.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

The “X” Factor for Effective APM

By on October 11, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

I have a confession… I’m watching The X Factor (the American version). While I enjoy Simon Cowell’s brutal honesty and Paula Abdul’s colorful and somewhat unpredictable constructive criticism, I’m most intrigued by the concept of The “X” Factor. The idea that an artist offers something so unique and so special, no one else can legitimately claim it as their own – real star-power.

Does The “X” Factor apply in the Application Performance Management (APM) industry? In a fast-growing market with a crowd of vendors (the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring includes nearly 30), it can be challenging to separate the Vegas lounge singers from the stadium-filling rock stars.

To cut through the hype and wannabes, look for solutions that focus on transactions as the center of gravity. In today’s highly complex composite-application environments and hybrid-cloud infrastructures, transactions are the only consistent measure that can give you an accurate view of business service quality and the end-user experience. By monitoring all user Web and non-Web transactions across physical, virtual, hybrid-cloud and mainframe environments, you can identify, diagnose and resolve problems before end users are affected and revenue-generating services are put at risk.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }
Heidi Klum

DevOps is the New Black

By on October 3, 2011 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert, CA Technologies on APM

Last season, it was cloud computing. Then, it was Business Transaction Management. This season, it’s DevOps – the latest en vogue “IT” trend that has set the vendor community buzzing with excitement, empty promises and way too many press releases.

The goal of DevOps is simple – break down the silos between development and operations to improve IT service delivery and increase business value. It’s a modernization of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) to meet today’s requirements for fast cycle times that is being fueled by agile development and composite applications. Accordingly, DevOps has the potential to optimize the IT service delivery supply chain, enabling you to provide more services, faster, at a higher quality and lower cost.

In fashionista speak, to quote the always fashionable Rachel Zoe, “This is so major!”

Given the limitless potential for DevOps, it’s no surprise that so many vendors have jumped on the bandwagon, trying to shoehorn last season’s technologies into knock-off solutions. Much like a fake Fendi bag, these products are not authentic and they don’t deliver upon the promise of DevOps.

Case in point: Some vendors are touting load testing as a way to unify development and operations. While I give them style points for trying (and I don’t dispute its value in some customer use cases), the fact is that true DevOps is much broader and far more profound than legacy load-testing approaches. DevOps takes innovation to new heights, harnessing technology and culture to drive simplicity, agility, speed to market and greater business value.

What we need is a genuine game changer and trend setter – a completely different way to approach the opportunities and challenges of DevOps. That’s why CA Technologies acquired ITKO.

ITKO uniquely provides a simulation and modeling approach known as service virtualization, which replicates extremely complex and heterogeneous environments, from mainframe to cloud, without losing accuracy. By applying this approach to development and testing, ITKO gives you the agility to “mock up” at enterprise scale to build realistic test models that accurately reflect your environment to allow you to identify, isolate and resolve problems quickly – and improve quality at every level. This empowers you to accelerate time to market for new business services and achieve higher service quality, while improving IT productivity and reducing costs.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

APM-related Acquisitions to be in CA World 2011 Spotlight

By on September 14, 2011 in Ask the Service Assurance Expert, CA Technologies on APM

CA World 2011 promises to bring product information, technology education and peer networking to attendees, and with recent acquisitions closed, the conference will shed light on recently purchased technologies customers will need to speed applications to market and to manage apps in the cloud.

The CA World 2011 tagline, “IT at the Speed of Business,” really tells the story this year for many in IT. The business wants IT services faster and needs the infrastructure and application resources to enable the business to bend, grow and shrink with demand. That means IT organizations need to break down silos and start looking at the entire lifecycle of an IT service. For the team at ITKO, a recent CA Technologies acquisition, that means coupling application performance management (APM) in production environments with lifecycle management throughout the development and test stages of an application. Managing the entire lifecycle of the application will in essence speed apps to market, which is what the business needs now.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }
Mobile users on the go

Timing is everything …

By on September 12, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

I recently had the pleasure of working alongside Professor Chanaka Jayawardhena — Regional Chair at the Academy of Marketing, and a visiting scholar at a number of universities around the world — on a particularly interesting project. We spent a few weeks collaborating on a study — probably best described as a deep dive into the influence of the inexorable rise of smartphones on business at large. Whilst exploring the phenomenon we made an important discovery, which will prove increasingly significant as today’s customer attraction and retention challenges rapidly evolve in the Mobile Tsunami.

The New Business Accelerator
We unearthed the fact that savvy users of smartphones and tablets now use previously ‘dead-time’ far more effectively and re-claim much of it in gainful pursuits — from work-related tasks to online shopping, banking and networking. CA Technologies defines this as MET (Mobile Economic Time) — a new “Time Zone.” A conservative annual estimate of Mobile Economic Time (Twitter hashtag: #CA_MET) is calculated to equal almost 38 working days for every smartphone user. Mobile Economic Time illustrates that empowered smartphone and tablet PC users will be able to do more in their day-to-day lives. Here’s what some of these savvy users had to say for themselves when our camera crew caught up with them in London.

This is a wake-up call for businesses to be alive to both the challenges and the opportunities. Clearly consumers demand an engaging, captivating, responsive and secure experience in the MET zone. In fact, it would appear that they expect even better experiences when engaging with businesses via handheld devices. Great products may captivate customers, BUT it is flawless execution of innovative service that keeps them coming back and telling others.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

CA Technologies Announces Dawn of Mobile Economic Time

By on August 19, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

As mentioned in my last post, CA Technologies and Professor Chanaka Jayawardhena (accomplished expert in Services Marketing) have discovered “Mobile Economic Time” (MET) – a new phenomenon which reveals that the average savvy smartphone and tablet PC user is exploiting their ‘dead-time’ to re-claim an extra 38* days per year. This re-claimed time is increasingly used to engage with online businesses and boost personal productivity.
Here’s what some of these savvy users had to say…

Clearly consumers demand a secure and responsive experience as they re-claim that extra 38* days per year to engage with brands. Brands need to be alive to this. They need to understand and take the time to deal with the challenges.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Managing Service Assurance Services

By on August 10, 2011 in CA Services

With the economy taking another nosedive and some economists predicting a depression on its way, budgets will start tightening. With tightening budgets comes the inevitable “do more with less” mentality.

Your boss, however, still expects the IT projects and Service Assurance implementation be delivered on time, without hiccups or downtime. Having a virtual extension of your IT staff to deliver administration and management of your IT projects could be a solution to your mounting challenges.

You may want to consider a managed services offering to help alleviate concerns and assist in achieving deliverable goals. Managed services give you access to a team of highly skilled and experienced professionals with a depth of expertise in Service Assurance solutions. It allows you to meet operational challenges and get the most value from your Service Assurance solutions without the large upfront outlay or addition of IT staff.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

British ‘Rebalancing’ an Opportunity for Multichannel Retailers

By on July 29, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

In a recent article by the BBC’s business editor Robert Peston about how increasing numbers of UK retail brands are going to the wall, the migration to the Web of much of what the high street and small shopping centres do was cited among three major contributing factors.

UK e-Retail and m-Retail gather pace
As consumers flock to the Web in search of savings, there are signs of vibrant life on virtual high streets and shopping centres. Despite shrinking household incomes, fear of tax rises and an enduring gloomy outlook; online sales per capita in the UK are reported to be the highest in Europe at £730. Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) reports that the UK is Europe’s leading e-retail economy, with sales estimated to reach €81bn in 2011, almost 20% of all retail sales. In 2010, e-retail across Europe also grew by almost 20% to more than €170 billion. In fact, it is estimated that at current rates of growth online retail in Europe will be worth more than €202 billion by 2012. The ability to consistently deliver captivating consumer journeys online and across multiple channels will separate the winners and losers.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Service Assurance for SaaS

By on July 26, 2011 in CA Services

Challenging economic times in a global economy drive companies to cut costs and tighten IT budgets. Many CIOs cite the potential cost advantages of a Software as a Service (SaaS) model as a way to manage costs versus in-house operations. The refrain against a SaaS model includes a loss of infrastructure or application control and degradation of efficient operations.

The refrain will soon change. Which CIO will ever choose a large one-time outlay versus a manageable monthly expense when trying to squeeze pennies from a budget? Service Assurance for a SaaS model eliminates the infrastructure or application worries.

In addition to finding a Service Assurance solution that provides action-based workflows built on ITIL standards and years of best-practice knowledge, CIOs need a services provider that can deliver a flexible, quality-blended implementation and offer delivery options. Just because the infrastructure and applications will be in the cloud doesn’t mean the CIO’s head has to be there with them.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

APM Offers Smooth Sailing for Customer Transactions

By on July 14, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

This week I spent some time with one of our pre-sales gurus on an Application Performance Management (APM) Proof of Concept (POC). Despite a few non-software logistic glitches, the overall process was about as smooth sailing from a POC software install and configuration standpoint as one could want.

Sailboat's silhouette

It took a couple of hours to install and configure the software over an elapsed period of about six hours, which included a lot of commentary by our pre-sales guy to help people understand what was going on and more importantly why. While some of what was going on during the install was beyond my understanding of the underlying technology, it was apparent that our customer clearly “got it.” I lost track of how many times our customer contact made comments ranging from “cool” to “awesome” to “I really like this” and other similar indications. His statements let me know that what he was seeing was techno cool as we used APM to navigated previously uncharted application interaction.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }

Who’s wagging the dog?

By on July 8, 2011 in CA Technologies on APM

Here’s another of those Trojan horses that I like to roll into the virtual village square from time to time. Whilst these wanderings may not be about our technology, they are designed to help keep the big tech conversation anchored by broader world events relevant to our strategic direction. Every once in a while dramatic events on the periphery of our industry provide stark reminders that a fanatical focus on customer happiness and good market relations is vital for all business.

Yesterday the world’s second largest media conglomerate, News International (News Corp), finally realized that its defiant stance amidst a swell of allegations of journalistic misconduct was no longer tenable. U.K. customer outrage at revelations in the long running phone hacking and police bribery saga forced it to shut down its flagship U.K. publication “The News of the World.” Despite seemingly insatiable reader appetite for the salacious content it specializes in, the most read English language newspaper will shut its doors this weekend. When it emerged it had authorized hacking into the mobile phone messages of the families of teenage murder victims and soldiers killed in action to obtain information for stories, the nation was outraged. Public declaration of revulsion and swift withdrawal of advertising contracts did in a few hours what two police investigations and parliamentary enquiries had failed to over several years – get Murdoch to blink. A malpractice storm affecting “persons of interest” from the worlds of politics, movies, sports, music etc. had been raging unchecked.

Read full story • Comments { 0 }