Making the Cloud, Microservices, and Enterprise IT work!

While I was working as a senior manager in a Fortune 500 IT department, we went through a recession, and a few years later through the U.S. outsourcing offshoring trend. During the 2001 recession, management reacted with reasonable downturn planning. Business management requested a certain level of cutbacks (say 7%) and IT listed projects that could reasonably be cancelled. Things difficult to cut back (without very serious planning) such as operations - keeping the lights on, normal systems maintenance & support operations, planned regulatory system work, and required upgrades (due to vendors end-of-support-life), these were all off limits. New development and system enhancements were on the line. IT management also reacted in a normal downturn mode. Middle IT management had gotten a bit fat, so they trimmed middle management. For the remainder, they turned to their managers and instructed them to lifeboat. Those employees who weren't considered key - who weren't a subject...

Dr. Jimmy Schwarzkopf (IT analyst) wrote... Today I visited a client whose IT budget is no more than 1.6% of its revenues. His boss asked him to cut 20% of the capital investment and 10% of the operational budget (a total of 10% compared to budget 2008). In order to do this the company will stop projects that could have increased revenues, some that could reduce costs and some cuts would increase the risk of IT failures. Now my thoughts: By cutting 0.16% of revenues (as expenses) the company lost much more. Does it make sense to cut IT without a real analysis??? Clearly this company has designated IT as a pure expense center and utility service provider. As far as the business management is concerned, IT is no different than: Facilities Management - Tell them to cut and they can eliminate the office plants and cut back on window cleaning. Cleaning Service - Tell them to cut back and have a somewhat less clean office. Security Service - Lock a few more doors inconveniencing how peopl...

One of the repeated topics of the Innovation World conference was the world economic downturn. As a vendor, Software AG is looking at customers and prospects across the conference table that have scaled back IT projects, cut IT staff, and are hunkering down in survival mode. During the conference, Software AG worked hard at building a marketing case that SOA is the way to go during an IT downturn... BPM lets IT and the business whip up new business functionality with a few clicks. BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) lets IT create a window for the business to see key operating metrics in a dashboard like setting (with the potential for detailed drill down). Sounds good in theory, though they struggled a bit as they haven't yet clearly formulated their message. What's the reality? BPM relies on a platform of services and functions which can be readily tapped to drive the process. Further, and this is the failing in many a BPM installation, it relies on the processes being w...