With PPM software, don’t always throw in the kitchen sink

Project and portfolio management (PPM) software is definitely not overlooked in the midmarket. According to a recent SearchCIO-Midmarket.com survey, 17% use some form of PPM software. But how many of those organizations are actually using all of what they paid for?

Time and time again, I hear the stories of the initial implementation process: Company purchases software, company implements relevant parts of the software in stages, company stops the process once it has implemented what it needs.

I once bought a 160-piece kitchen set. Out of the 160 “useful” kitchen tools, I use about 10 of them — the rest sit in my cabinets, waiting for the day I decide to make eight individual servings of crème brûlée or require a tool for removing my strawberry stem. At the time, I had big plans for my cooking skills and thought the new tools would inspire me to learn a bit more in the kitchen — maybe I really will try my hand at beef Wellington, I thought.

Nope.
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Project prioritization quandary: Will index cards do the job?

Whether they’re using formal project scheduling systems or informal index cards pinned to the wall, midmarket companies are taking steps to standardize project prioritization. But are these efforts enough to address the endless list of projects in their queues?

Seventy-five percent of the 236 respondents to a recent SearchCIO-Midmarket.com survey said they have project queues with three to 12 months’ worth of work in them. And most (71%) are maintaining only one type of project queue for all types of projects.

So if you’re a midmarket company facing a high demand for projects with limited resources, how can you effectively streamline the project prioritization process?

Some companies that still have money to spend are investing in project portfolio management (PPM) software to address the project prioritization issue. But not every one has the budget to purchase costly PPM software. Continued »

Business knowledge management helps boost offshore strategy

How important is business knowledge management to the success of your offshore strategy? Pretty important, one CIO who offshores to India told me recently.

Offshore workers are often at a disadvantage when providing services for U.S.-based companies. Sure – you can find a tech person in India who can code java without any detailed knowledge of your business. However, for other outsourced services, such as customer support or software development, the more knowledge your offshore workers have about your business, the better service they can deliver and the more productive they can be.

“How can they participate and anticipate, if they don’t know about our business?” said Cornelia Pool, CIO of San Jose, Calif.-based Covad Communications, a national provider of national provider of integrated voice and data communications. Pool, who outsources the company’s software development efforts to India, makes extra efforts to ensure her offshore workers are treated like company employees.

At the beginning of the outsourcing relationship, she involves team members from both the offshore group and U.S.-based team to review the project goals and determine the best ways to communicate on a regular basis – ways that are convenient for both groups. Regular communication regarding not only project deliverables, but also the company’s message and goals, are key to the success of working together. Continued »

Using PPM software to bring financial accountability into IT

The CIO, as the liaison between business and IT, needs to know exactly what’s going on in IT and then translate it into something the business side understands: dollars and cents. To do that, the project and portfolio management (PPM) discipline — and software — is becoming increasingly important, midmarket included.

At the 2009 HP Software Universe conference this week, I came across an attendee who stressed just that. Introducing himself as a “turnaround CIO” (who turns around failing businesses), this particular gentleman had a lot to say about the IT culture.

“It can be really difficult to get a data center manager, for example, to tell you exactly what he’s doing and when he’s doing it,” he said. “They turn to you like you have three heads — ‘I’m doing my job, what else would I be doing?’” Continued »

Five key questions about cloud computing

It seems every time I ask someone what they think about cloud computing, I’m asked five or more questions in return:

Isn’t what cloud providers offer pretty cookie cutter? Translate that as, “They might not support the particular platforms and configurations I have.”

What about licensing? Just the other day, someone at a business intelligence show said it wasn’t clear how database licensing would be handled. Would he license the database, or would the cloud computing provider?

Which led to a question many people have: If I host an application, such as a business intelligence application with a cloud provider, it would have to connect to my data sources. Wouldn’t that be a security risk?

How will that impact compliance with regulations?

And the most popular concern: Why would I want to expose my data sources like that? Continued »

Can startups get to market quicker via Amazon’s cloud computing model?

Amazon’s cloud computing model is allowing startup companies like Confidela to bring their products to market quicker and cheaper.

The company of 15, which recently launched WatchDox, a document and permissions product, decided to utilize Amazon’s Elastic Compute cloud infrastructure (EC2) rather than to invest time and money in a new data center.

“For a startup just launching, we get huge data center capabilities,” said Confidela CEO and co-founder Moti Rafalin. “It’s one of the benefits of this era.”

Previously, a small startup company like Confidela would need to invest tens of thousands of dollars into a data center. Now, Confidela and other small businesses can take advantage of the scalability and “buy as you grow” option available with public clouds like Amazon’s – a natural way to grow and progress over time. Continued »

Looming questions for managing your data protection services

Should midmarket companies consider using outside providers to manage their data protection services? For companies with smaller staffs and budgets, using a third-party provider to manage their data protection services can pay off, as long as certain issues, including security, are addressed up front.

For a story I did this week on a Houston-based nonprofit moving from tape backup to an online data backup and recovery service, I asked analysts to give me some sense of the enthusiasm out there on the degree to which companies are using outside providers to manage their data protection services.

The resistance to using outside providers for data protection services has fallen from near 70% a few years ago to 32% now, according to Gartner analyst Adam Couture.

Burton Group analyst Gene Ruth told me there are a number of “enterprise-ready” online backup and data protection service providers out there who are growing and are particularly suited for midmarket or small companies that may not have the staff or capital to handle automated data backup and storage and disaster recovery facilities. They include the IBM/Arsenal Digital solution used by the Houston nonprofit profiled in my story, as well as EVault, AmeriVault and EMC’s Mozy service.

As with any newish technology, however, there are lots of questions that don’t yet have standard answers. Let’s go through some of them. Continued »

Don’t be like GM: How a BPM strategy can help you avoid bankruptcy

Midmarket CIOs who think of a business process management (BPM) strategy in its basic form as a tool for putting processes around purchase orders, claims or employee onboarding and offboarding should re-consider the role it plays in business sustainability during a recession, according to one analyst.

“You look at all the businesses that didn’t survive the recession – some of them were in a bad market segment, OK, but some of them just couldn’t scale down fast enough,” said Clay Richardson, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “Look at GM, for example. That’s really the GM issue — they couldn’t scale down fast enough.”

Although a BPM strategy and scalability might seem like minor factors among the financial obstacles GM is facing, the expansive company has been unable to respond quickly enough to decreases in demand — GM has lost about $88 billion since 2005 — and as a result, was forced to file for bankruptcy protection.

As more and more businesses suffer the same fate (Chrysler, Circuit City, Linens ’n Things) how helpful can a BPM strategy be for companies in a rocky economic climate? Continued »

Update on move to Gmail: Cost-cutting measure a mix of sun and clouds

I checked in with early cloud adopter Jerry Hodge, CIO of Hamilton Beach Brands Inc., for an update on his pioneering migration from Lotus Notes to Gmail — the quintessential cloud app. The company, which started the project in January, is among the first ever to move to Gmail from Lotus, according to Hodge.

The backstory: Hamilton Beach was facing a mandatory upgrade of Lotus Notes that would have required not only the expense of the software upgrade, but also additional hardware and considerable staff effort. Hodge realized he could save about $500,000 in capital and operating costs over five years, and another $400,000 in labor if he went with the enterprise edition of Gmail.

In a year when his capital budget request was cut 60%, saving a million bucks seemed like a great idea, despite some trepidation on the part of his staff. He made the big switch the right way– gradually. He lined up a test group in the company’s Mexico City and China offices to try it first to work out the kinks, and he smartly waited until everything was working before the C-suite got it. People’s email would be maintained as @hamiltonbeach.com, which was important to the company.

So how did it go? Continued »

What IT executives are talking about at Forrester’s IT Forum 2009

My first day at Forrester’s IT Forum was filled with everything today’s CIO should be aware of — the changing role of IT, the need for constant innovation and the rapidly evolving workforce. By day four, attendees are still buzzing about what they’ve seen and heard while here.

Six Sigma process implementation has been mentioned a lot, especially together with Lean IT. Other trends in discussions have included how IT is changing, the introduction of millennials into the workforce, cloud computing, offshoring and Twitter.

I can’t say I’m too surprised by these points peppering almost every conversation — except for the latter. It seems every conversation I’ve had, regardless of who it’s with, has turned to Twitter at some point. CIOs, IT directors, performance managers, operational directors, analysts — everyone is talking about Twitter. But not many are actually using it. They’re just interested in it. Continued »