Archive for the ‘Digital Fuel Product Info’ Category

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!

Had a great conversation the other day with Milind Govekar at Gartner. Conversations with him are always a pleasure – he knows the industry and is exposed to tons of customers, which obviously brings lost of value to me. OK, enough with this – I am losing credibility promoting Gartner.

Millinad nicely put it that at the heart of what my company does, IT Cost and IT Financial management, is usage-based IT Cost allocation.

At the core of it is the fact that as IT becomes more centralized and based on shared and virtualized resources, one must easily allocate costs based on actual usage. Why? Simply because if you can’t do that, then you can’t accurately and predictably know your operating costs and therefore your P&L reporting is going to be all wrong, inconsistent, unjustifiable and unpredictable and that is simply unacceptable.

I love those moments when you have a great revelation in understanding something. I had one of those today.

For some time now we’ve been trying to figure out why Business Unit Visibility into IT Cost, or IT cost show back, is one of the main drivers for our business.

We are of course aware of the opportunity to optimize IT costs by gaining visibility. We also know that visibility to business units creates responsibility and ownership over IT spend – we have seen it happen many times with our customers who are using our IT Cost Management solutions.

But there was something else we were unaware of. The type of functionality our customers were looking for – what-if analysis, IT forecasting, re-forecasting – these all drove us to feel there was something additional, a need of our customers that we were missing.

Well we found it.

Profitability Predictability!

IT is highly unpredictable when not managed correctly. IT spend is a small but a growing part of operating costs, and it is the most unpredictable part. The result: IT is an area of risk and surprises for business units who must be able to predict their profitability.

This core need of a Business Unit for predictability is driving the need for easy-to-use IT cost transparency solutions and analysis, such as those offered by Digital Fuel.

I love it when it all becomes clear!