Green IT? Not yet

IBM has just released the findings of a study “examining the practices and attitudes of large Australian enterprises towards Green IT”. IBM deserves credit for helping drive this agenda.

The findings are that 36% of respondents (IT managers and directors in large Australian enterprises) believe that the reduction of carbon emissions from their IT infrastructure is a high priority for their business.

While it would be great if this were higher, I wonder if the results would be different if the audience was management in manufacturing, logistics or finance? In other words, carbon emission is becoming a factor for business, but is not yet a high priority.

In IT I suggest we can take a lead in 3 ways:

- Specify lower power consumption and lower heat output in all devices, and make this an important buying criterion. This will drive vendors to constantly improve design in this area, which I sense is happening.

- Introduce back-end technology that reduces power consumption and heat output. One of the most high-profile technologies, which makes sense on multiple levels, not just carbon emissions is Server Virtualisation. Fewer servers, each working at higher capacity drives down cost of acquisition and cost of ownership, which includes power consumption from operation and cooling.

- Introduce technology that increases effective collaboration without the need to travel. The reduction of travel only works if the meetings can still be effective and in my experience, with technologies such as Adobe Connect and WebEx they can. These are great tools which are available on demand, to virtually bring people together which saves the carbon emissions from travel – both ground and air.

While the reduction of carbon emissions from their IT infrastructure may not be a high priority in all businesses today, it will become more important and IT can take a lead now and be ahead of the curve.

The worst that will happen is that IT will help the business save money!

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?

Taking Care of Business - 2

A week ago, I posted a question on Linkedin (www.linkedin.com), which asked

“What do you want from your IT Department? Are you getting it?”

I got only 8 answers in a week, which is low, particularly when compared with the 100+ answers to the question “If Vincent ran out, would you buy him some paint?”.

So, on a site with a massive number of professional members (quoted at 12 million), only 8 people had the interest in IT to answer. Of the answers, 7 of the 8 related to the IT Department as a service organisation, which goes to the topic of my Blog, posted a couple of weeks ago. Both of these facts should be slightly concerning to the IT community.

Of the answers, I thought the cleverest answer, (and it made me smile) was from Melodie Neal
“Do not ask me if I've tried rebooting to solve a problem: I tried all the routine stuff before I called you. Try to think outside your comfort zone: the answer to every technical problem does not come in a box with Microsoft's logo on it.
Warn me when you plan to disrupt services, and let that warning be at least 1 business day before the outage. I work to deadlines, and I can only manage my customer's expectations properly if I know what level of service I can expect from systems you run. 
If you know that something is on the fritz, such as the mail (again), try to let people know promptly.
Try to understand the business we are in, and what tasks we have to perform regularly. Ask a few staff to describe their working day. Spot the gaps where people are using their own equipment to make up the short falls in yours. Try and make the gaps smaller”

I received an answer that I thought summed it up, so I chose it as the Best Answer - from Stuart Ali
“Ability to make decisions based upon organisational need rather than constrained by purchasing policy, current process and budget. Isn't ICT about building capability? ... but isn’t that a mistake of most service providers... focusing on the here and now, believing they are just a "service provider"... then are struck down with bewilderment when a new competitor takes the market by storm!”

Taking Care of Business

Information Technology can empower a business. So, why, in many organisations is it seen as a basic service?

There are many theories. Perhaps the CEO is not a supporter of investing in technology.

Perhaps IT has over-promised and under-delivered in the past. There are many stories of over-time and over-budget ERP implementations that disrupted the business and resulted in very little business improvement (we don’t read too much of the quality implementations that have delivered value).

Perhaps also, the fact that IT is a service organisation confuses the role of IT. The IT Group supports the systems we all use, which is a challenging role. When a system or PC goes offline, end-users get frustrated and nothing short of instant restoration is seen as “quality service”.

While there are many factors like these, I believe the core issue is language. IT people speak IT.

Running an IT operation is complex, and most business managers don’t understand it. Yet, there is too little effort from IT to demystify the acronyms and explain what is going on.

Equally, IT people don’t have day-to-day exposure to the business so are not in a position to offer technology solutions. IT isn’t a magic wand, but it will add value if properly engaged.

IT needs to take the lead.

The IT group needs to lead a planning process where their activities are explained to the business, and the business challenges and drivers are explained to IT. As the IT group get closer to the detail of the business issues, the more likely it is that good solutions will emerge.

This happens in many successful organisations, and the results contribute to the success.