So I’ve been behind on my thoughts about BSM, web 2.0 etc per a comment from Steve Cotton over at Firescope. I love the name and really like the technology and vision for their product, but I’m not yet convinced their product achieves BSM from the definitions I’ve been reading (more on that in a second).
My quick take on Firescope, it is what happens when IT Operations meets an internal deployment iGoogle technology (e.g., all the cool widgets, mashup, collaboration capabilites). I love the concept! Where iGoogle is your personal dashboard for what you like to learn about on the internet…this is the same concept for aggregating together various developed widgets that obtain their metrics/data from other IT Operations Management products in your intranet. Sweet idea indeed, the only question is who builds all those widgets, how long do they take, etc. Where on the internet software developers build them for self consumption and then share, who will do this for the FireScope product? Large IT Operation software vendors aren’t going to build them, customers may have the skills to build them but most likely until critical mass is achieved it will need to be Firescope themselves or professional service vendors. There are some other creative approaches due to the mash-up like abilities that could inspire a build-out community; maybe offering a free lite version virtual appliance or even standing up an outbound facing version open for “mashing.” Some fun challenges for Firescope to have with what appears to be some smart guys working to solve it. Good luck!
Now, back onto BSM. Research from various analysts are defining BSM as taking business data and coupling it with IT operations data in a manner that shows the true impact of IT operations on the business and vice versa. Now with that said I would expect as a CIO to be able to bring in a single reports that answers business questions using analyzed IT data.
Not how many major outages did we had last week or how many intrusion attempts were foiled but instead answer questions around employee productivity, risk exposure and cost savings. Let me throw out some more details in an attempt to explain.
Let’s say I want to understand employee productivity of the business, if all goes well IT should go unnoticed. An example of this could be if any employees, outside of IT, when attempting to do their job that relies upon part of IT (e.g., process an order, call a customer, ring up a transaction, perform manual data entry), get disrupted or delayed in any way? For example; if the inability to process an order cost “x” amount of paid employee time then IT cost the business “y” money. This is a metric that at the “BSM” level I would want to know, not that we had 99.5% availability with only 3 outages and 2 instances of “brown-out” performance slow downs. I want to know how much money my previous IT investments saved the business today or unfortunately cost the business today. These availability metrics or performance metrics are fine for IT managers and executives to manage up and down, but they aren’t truly top-down or aligned with the business goals.
Let me try to explain with a random analogy. Thinking more along the lines of baggage handlers at the airport. If your bag shows up in a timely fashion your productivity continues and you virtually don’t even notice a thing. Before you know it your in your car on the way to your destination. But, when you lose a bag or it takes longer then normal to get your bag you have a productivity issue (e.g., something that impacts you personal life). You get frustrated, stressed, takes away time with loved ones or maybe an already short weekend vacation, your late to your son’s soccer game, etc. I think you get the point. In a perfect world for most enterprises, IT is invisible and otherwise they are working miracles by putting things in place to making things happen more efficiently and faster…again saving more time, money, frustration, etc.
Another quick IT related one off the top of my head is how much employee productivity is lost when getting “set-up” or transitioning between laptops or computers. I hear colleagues or friends talk all the time about how it took then days to get transitioned or set-up. I know this is not core to what we view as IT Operations duties but it is a service offered by IT. I dread this transition process, but I know it’s worth my time to make it happen as for the next 18-24 months I’ll have a faster, better PC. Think of the productivity gains and money savings IT could have here. Another topic to ponder some day.
To to wind this down for now, as I’m reading about BSM this is the level of metrics I assume CxO’s would want to watch, maybe I’m wrong here…but this to me is true “top-down” IT management where business metrics are aligned with IT metrics.
Flame away if I’m off base or please chip in and brainstorm these type of BSM metrics. Let’s not be thinking yet about “how” to get the data or from where it is collected. Let’s truly start from a “top-down” perspective and answer questions like we are at the executive staff meeting trying to run a business. Once we’ve done that we can apply all the amazing technology we have on the market these days (e.g., firescope) to architect the solution.
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