Symantec, Dancers and Hot Issues

I had the pleasure of attending the Symantec Vision Event in Sydney last week.

The event followed a familiar path. A loud Corporate video to open proceedings, followed by a troop of tap dancers. What tap dancers have to do with Symantec remains a mystery to me, so all ideas are welcome.

Then a senior sales exec presented corporate motherhood, while the audience waited for the real content to arrive. And arrive it did, with interesting keynote speakers from Symantec and a superb business keynote.

Glitz and glamour aside, my overall take-out was that Symantec has products that are at the heart of many of the big IT issues.

In 2006 The Council of Australian University Directors of IT (www.caudit.edu.au) developed a list of their Top 10 issues. They have updated the list for 2007 and it is

1. Staffing and Workforce Planning - Skills Shortage, Retention and Recruitment
2. Service Management - Support and Delivery: Availability, Capacity, Change Management
3. Project, Portfolio and Risk Management
4. Governance and IT Strategic Planning
5. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
6. Identity Management: Authentication, Authorisation, Access
7. Security
8. Information Management: Storage, Archiving, Records Management
9. Funding and Resourcing
10. Administrative Systems - ERP Upgrades and Enterprise Architecture

I think that Symantec has products in 5 or maybe 6 of these 10 categories.

I preach that any selection process should begin with a detailed understanding of the need, and then should include considerations of the other technology inter-relationships – both technical and commercial.

When that work is done, I am sure that in many cases, Symantec products will be worthy of consideration.

Projecting Success (or Failure)

In a couple of conversations recently I am aware that sadly, many technology projects still “fail”.

To use a cliché – the projects are “a dollar short and a day late”. A combination of over-time, over-budget and under-delivery, with the resulting frustration, finger-pointing and opportunity cost.

These examples were not trivial projects, but that said, they are they type of projects that many organisations have completed. So, I began comparing the similarities between the projects to identify trends – things to avoid.

Here are some;
- Poor Business Case Development which includes the Business Requirements, which in turn drive the technical needs

- Inexperienced Project Manager – projects which involve change need experience in change management

- Optimistic Project Plan – a mistake made in many projects is that the project plan has optimistic timelines that lead to the perception of over-time and over-budget.

- Wrong people on the Project Team – or put another way, are the right people on the Project Team? Right Departments? Right level for decision making?

- Poor vendor selection process – it is easy to blame the vendor but if the Business Case and Requirements were poorly constructed, then it is likely that the vendor has the wrong brief. Equally, has the vendor been selected based on clear, detailed criteria?

So, if the project will make a significant return to the business, isn’t it worth funding a Consultative phase to develop the requirements and select the right technology and vendors, and ensuring that the project is being managed by an experienced Project Manager?

This sounds like extra cost, but is it? Surely this is part of running a successful project?

Green for Go

I noticed last week that Terradata announced a new server and the promoted feature appeared to be low power consumption - it uses much less power than the unit it replaced. This is the first such promotion I have seen.

In addition, a week ago in Sydney there was a Data Centre conference with the major themes around building more sustainable Data Centres, consuming less power and thereby emitting less carbon.

This is exciting news and what is surprising is how quickly these "green" issues have become prevalent in IT. Were we trying to reduce power consumption and heat emissions 3 years ago? An idea who's time has come?