Archive for May, 2010

We are seeing a growing trend of companies post-virtualization looking to understand TCO and unit cost of IT services as well as show back and chargeback for these services – tasks that are tough in shared virtualized environments.

In this regard, I enjoyed reading Building a VMware Cost Model, posted by Martin Thompson on The ITAM Review.

It is one thing when we brief writers and get articles written about us. It is something else entirely when someone we don’t know and did not brief decides to write about what we do.

Long live the Web and Web Marketing!

Yesterday we launched a new solution atop our V6.3 platform of applications. This solution is focused on helping our customers manage their IT costs in the fast growing cloud world.

The basic concept is to bring out-of-the-box reports, dashboards, templates and data connectors, specifically targeted at a CIO that needs to manage multiple IT services based on multiple technical capabilities which she can receive from multiple alternatives, in-house or external, public or private.

Making the cost-and-value-effective choices, as well as ongoing tracking of TCO and Unit cost of these services, is what we are bringing to the table.

This is already gaining great traction. It seems like the concept that software is not only functionality, but also content that reflects best practices and know-how, is the right way to go. We have seen the same very positive response to our out-of-the-box content in our 6.3 version and it takes a big part of our future releases roadmap.

Some good coverage from the press:

Managing the Costs and Complexities of a Cloud-Based Infrastructure (Read Write Web).

I like the analogy to Nimsoft

Putting a Cost on Cloud Computing (IT Business Edge).

Digital Fuel Debuts IT Cloud Cost Management Software (TechCrunchIT)

Your feedback is welcome!

Follow us all the way up to the CIO Executive Summit NYC:

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 7:30am – 6:00pm
New York Marriott Marquis
1535 Broadway
New York, NY 10036

Register here.

And to Forrester’s IT Forum 2010, Las Vegas:

THE BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION: MAKING IT REAL
MAY 26-28, 2010 • THE PALAZZO • LAS VEGAS, NEV.
The Palazzo Resort Hotel Casino
3325 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89109

Register here.

It took me some time to mention this blog post to you folks but its relevancy doesn’t fade away.

This post in the Wall Street journal by Jon Hilsenrath summarizes Fed Chairman Bernanke’s lecture about a Lesson on Happiness.

We hi-tech, especially Venture Capital based startup folks and specifically founders and CEO’s, tend to read only the first point and misinterpret it as “Money is the only thing that matters.”

Well, a small piece of advice: read through all the points and make sure you get to the 4th, 5th and 6th points – they are as valuable as money if not more.

Those of you who have founded a company or who run one or manage parts of a business, ask yourself how these points manifest themselves in your management style, approach and most importantly, in your actions.

The other day, the Boston Celtics took a 3-2 lead in the NBA conference semi finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers. First of all amazing basketball, second amazing fight, third admirable against all odds dig in deep by the Celtics, never say die and just go out there and make it happen.

I don’t know where it is going to end, but I am willing to gamble that the Celtics will take it all, not because they are a better basketball team but because they have character and character is what matters. LaBron and team have a chance to win and prove once and for all that they have it in them and don’t choke when it matters.

I like LaBron. He is no doubt a gifted basketball player and a true fighter, but something bothers me with the crowning of a king before he has ever ruled one day in his life, and even then crowning is not my cup of tea. All this talk about being great, winning championships, number 23 T-shirt, owning a basketball team etc. is way too much coming from someone who has yet to win a championship.

In business, like in sports, a good team never celebrates too early and never declares victory before its time. Winning a POC, being selected and even closing a deal doesn’t mean you are done. You still need to make sure the customer uses and gets value from your product and that your next releases stay ahead of the curve.

So when you lead a sports team, a business team or any other team, enjoy victories but never become arrogant, never think you are on top of the world, because the moment you do that, someone will come and topple you down.

LaBron has the opportunity to become a winning leader or stay just a very talented basketball player, time will tell.

Let the game begin…

At the heart of automation of IT business management tasks such as IT Cost Management, IT billing and chargeback, IT cost allocation, IT budgeting, and IT SLA & Performance management lies, in addition to the challenge of business process automation, the challenge of data handling.

This challenge includes:
♦An easy connection to multiple data sources.
♦Ongoing cleansing of data.
♦Association and correlation of expenses and performance data with usage data, asset data and services definitions and hierarchy, as well as organization hierarchies.
♦Easy processing of data via cost models as well as easy creation of and maintaining of these cost models.
♦Easy processing of data via business rules as well as easy creation of and maintaining of these business rules.
♦Easy reporting and analysis atop the data.
♦Easy access to data by third party solutions.

My team, despite me pushing them to release fast and only focus on value to business users, have insisted on building a software foundation that addresses all these challenges in an easy-to-use, visual, template-based and best practices approach, so you can significantly benefit from improved productivity and time to value.

As it turns out, what good engineers insist on proves to be right in the long run, even if the CEO thinks he knows it all.

It is working! Once again, we have overachieved our monthly new ARR (Annual Recurring Revenues) and our new SaaS customers goals. We’ve added customers such as Cisco, Hospira, First Horizon, Telus, SeaPass and many others to the mix.

There’s nothing that I like more than new customers using new solutions. The growth is in both of our traditional markets – the first is the core enterprises who are looking to manage cost and performance of internal IT as well as cost and performance of outsourcing and cloud providers.

The second market is MSP’s and Cloud Service Providers looking to manage the cost and performance of services they deliver to the enterprise. Am I an arms dealer, selling to both sides? I’m selling to both sides but not arms!

Service providers manage multiple customers while enterprises manage multiple vendors and Bu’s. The solutions we provide for IBM, Cisco Services, Siemens, TELUS, O2, Telefonica, Capgemini, PWC, Unisys, Xerox, Steria, Computacenter, Swiss Post, SciSys and other service providers are very different than the solutions we run for Cisco IT, Deutsche Bank, Capital One, Hospira, Koch Industries, ThermoFisher, P&G, Nationwide, BASF and VW – even if they receive services from one of the service providers who use our solution.

So yes, we provide unique value to each side. That is one of the secrets of our business!