RAPID Value Management for the Business Cost of Ownership

Readiness, Architecture, Process, Integration, Deployment

Andrew Wigodsky

• Publisher: Digital Press
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9780080492223
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Intelligence
• Index: Business

The model presented in this manual for the IT professional helps managers work with tech workers and their customers to make a clear and well-substantiated argument for IT service investments. In order to validate and fully explain this model, Wigodsky presents an overview of the "why" behind technology investment for any organization, and combines this with detailed real-world solutions that maximize BCO efficiency. By eliminating the "futz factor" commonly associated with system ownership costs, the book provides a glimpse of the next generation IT architecture, a repeatable process for identifying organization-wide system costs, and a customizable model for integrating BCO management with your people, processes, and technology.·Provides detailed technical architectures, processes, and integrated solutions using common computing technologies
·Helps the reader build a customized model for reviewing the long-term potential costs and benefits of interrelated IT investments
·Includes observations of HP thought leaders, experienced consultants, and customers on past projects

1

Taking a Razor to Information Technology (IT)

Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate. (Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.) (William of Ockham)

There is a problem with IT; no matter who you are, from CEO to parent, the problem starts at the first moment you think about buying a new computer. If you are anything like me, it starts with an unconscious suggestion by myself, to me—usually in response to a particular challenge for a particular subject—that something out there compels enough to get me to spend money on it. This event (a stimulus, subsequent processing, and my eventual response) continues until I look in my pocketbook and decide to pull out a little plastic card or some cold, hard cash. Similar individual events, strange as it may seem, are the primary difficulty at the core of managing the modern IT department. This book explores the upcoming challenges of technology change for IT decision makers (from investor to CIO), to help each of you understand what you buy, every time you purchase a computing device. To do this, however, requires you to use a Razor to slice up IT.

Where do you start?

If you are a business decision maker, this book encourages you to consider trying a model called RAPID. Although very complicated for me to explain, in practice this methodology is rather easy. The next time you buy a computer, start with readiness. List the things you think you need, based on the event that started you looking in the first place. Look carefully at the demonstration models and Web write-ups. Notice the things that distinguish the PC. Each of these objects—a substantive form or useful feature—from keyboard and mouse to software to printer, modem, and Internet, does something to supplement the architecture or process of the PC itself, creating features (architecture or form) and benefits (process or function) that you find valuable. In fact, the price you are willing to pay is ultimately the value of any product or service. If you already have at least one other PC, think about the integration of this new investment. Find each of the components that make it valuable to you. Take a glance around you on the physical or virtual shelves. Look at the many similar models that are available on the shelf, and compare the features and proposed benefits of each item. Build a picture in your mind of each of the PCs in terms of your current reality, and think up a few scenarios for possible deploying the new solution.

In summary, ask yourself a few questions:

Why did I want a new computer in the first place?

What structure of PC features will be most important to meet your needs in step 1?

How will this PC help you improve your own processes?

Whom will you call for support when you are integrating the structure and processing capabilities of this PC with the nuances of your work structure and processes?

How will you maintain your investment; what decisions should you be prepared to make to support this investment in the future?

Why is technology so challenging?

Nicely tucked inside every computing device, technology surrounds you every moment of every day. It is on every streetcorner pedestrian light and in every digital wristwatch, bearing the signature of nameless millions. Based on ideas only decades old, information technology has been powerful enough to propel our bodies to the moon and our eyes and minds to the edge of the universe. It is reshaping the world, in ways we cannot yet begin to understand. We have information technology because of the countless features and functions invented by millions of stakeholders: investors, inventors, vendors, and customers. Information (and communications) technology (IT) is both hardware and software. Only if we learn the right ways to use IT will we be able to see the fruits of our collective passion for technology:

Technology is powerful. No one can avoid the potential of technology. In 50 years time the computer grew from a device only in research labs to one common in every form of business and government. In 20 years time, the PC revolutionized the technology industry and simultaneously became a major market for the global economy. In 10 years time, the Internet has changed the lives of nearly every citizen of every developed country of the world. Most dramatically, in 2 years time the popping of the dotcom bubble dented our investment plans and pocketbooks.

Technology affects each of us. The technologies of the Internet boom have affected everyone—but surprisingly very few organizations have yet accepted and pursued the underlying importance Internet founders placed on building and enforcing internal standards and processes for maintaining the value of technology. Every organization has designed, purchased, built, and operated internal technology systems that—by Internet standards—are disorganized and very sensitive to the changing needs both within and outside of the organization. The uncontrolled growth rate of technology purchases in the late 20th century—likely caused by the perceived benefits of technology on business processes—has created a mêlée of rapidly depreciating technology systems and solutions.

Technology and business can work together. IT executives and managers, vendors of technology products and services, governments, and others have recently begun to look very closely at the long-term costs, benefits, and most importantly, value of technology. It’s not that these leaders have never before questioned technology value, it’s simply that the 1990s assumption “If we build IT, they will come” has recently fallen, in concert with the market cap of the NASDAQ. People are concerned about technology—we want to be comfortable in buying new devices, and we need to feel justified in the investment. Sure—computers are cheap, but what headaches are you really purchasing?

Technology changes us all in real time. We live in a real-time world. Images of war are as old as the ancient writings of ancient peoples. Images of the first world wars took weeks or months to reach only a small portion of the human race. By 1991, most of the world watched as satellite technology brought us ever so many reruns of the massive firepower that rained down on Baghdad. Twelve years later, technology brings us live global coverage from scores of individual embedded journalists—at the same time humanity “monitors” and mobile intelligent battle-damage assessors. At the same time, bloggers (authors of web logs or diaries) in Baghdad post their personal views of the situation. Moments later, video of protests throughout the world brings us each closer to those who fight both for and against a seemingly constant part of the human condition: war.

The first authors of the world’s religions did not see this future; founders of the United Nations could never have predicted the ultimate extension of our new global integration: real-time coverage of conflict, protest, battle, and war. You cannot avoid what we have created. Every time you watch TV or use the Internet—in fact, each time ...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Wading Through Acronyms
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Taking a Razor to Information Technology (IT)
• Chapter 2: On the Classification of IT Components
• Chapter 3: Using RAPID to Identify Relationship Between Architecture and Process
• Chapter 4: Readiness: Solution Strategy
• Chapter 5: Architecture: Foundation Services
• Chapter 6: Process: Best Practices
• Chapter 7: Integration: Coherent Infrastructure
• Chapter 8: Deployment: Questioning Change and Decision Making
• Chapter 9: Business Cost of Ownership
• Chapter 10: Shaping RAPID IT Solutions
• Chapter 11: RAPID IT Components
• Chapter 12: Beyond Cost of Ownership
• Hewlett-Packard ITSM Activities
• HP Infrastructure Operations
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Figures and Tables
• Index
• About the Author