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Promoting Your Technical Career by Leveraging Business Results and IT4IT
- 1. Promoting Your Technical Career by Leveraging Business Results Session #18109 David Morlitz – dmorlitz@us.ibm.com Patrick Stanard – pstanard@us.ibm.com Insert Custom Session QR if Desired. NOTE: PDF format posted on SHARE web-site has both slide view and speaker-note view in the same file
- 2. Standard Disclaimer • The contents of this presentation are the personal ideas of the presenters and does not represent the official view of any commercial entity or organization, including SHARE, The Open Group or IBM 2
- 3. Yesterday’s finance conversation 3 • Finance systems simply show costs and revenue • Direct linkage between costs and revenue are not always possible • Creates an inability of management to set strategy based on efficiencies and KPIs • Decisions are made with incomplete understanding of overall business environment.
- 4. Yesterday’s line of business conversation 4 • Business was required to work with IT organization • IT organization acted like a monopoly – to successfully service multiple lines-of-business • IT processes have been standardized to serve a large audience – not customized on an as needed basis
- 5. Yesterday’s IT conversation 5 • IT organizations primary concern is service delivery and SLAs • Strong cost focus • Limited active collaboration with LOB developers and architects • Limited stake in success of projects at an application level
- 6. Without intervention, business leaves IT 6 • Business now has options • IT organizations are being marginalized and left out of important planning discussions • If this continues, IT organizations may become irrelevant to larger organization • IT organizations can no longer act as a monopoly fashion – but need to act entrepreneurial
- 7. IT can create tomorrow’s conversation 7 • IT has knowledge and access that no other provider can ever hope to have • IT can become competitive and WIN, if they learn to: – Demand generation – Create innovative offerings – Price fairly • IT can create ideas and products for the future.
- 8. IT leads a valuable business conversation 8 • Lines of Business and IT can create partnerships that can never be rivalled by service providers • Internal partnerships can lead increase flexibility, improve agility and lead to more efficient services. • Technologists who can see the entire picture lead can create better solutions – Service providers only see a portion of the business
- 9. Tomorrow’s finance conversation 9 • Giving executive leadership direct revenue to cost linkage will lead to strategies based on profitability and efficiency. • New products can be quickly and accurately assessed based on standard metrics. • Better information leads to better decisions. • Economies of scale can be easily recognized.
- 10. Business moves at supersonic speed... 10 • Business speed has only increased over time • Decisions are made based on visible and instruments need to be updated quickly • Outdated or incomplete information leads to sub- optimal decisions • Data you provide from your applications and systems are shown on these instruments.
- 11. Failure is (sometimes/not) an option 11 • Business moves fast • Trying to hit a moving target • LOBs forcibly bring IT along for the ride • Information is used to aim for the target – or deciding use the parachute • Failure (with information) leads to future experiments – if you didn’t hit the ground first • Failing fast leads to innovation and acting entrepreneurial Business IT US Army Golden Knights tandem parachute team
- 12. IT-as-a-Service enables supersonic response 12 • IT-as-a-Service is an operational model • IT assumes competition and tries to win business • Results oriented model • Improved financial transparency • More direct association of costs to consumption Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT_as_a_service
- 13. IT4IT by The Open Group one model 13 • IT4IT is one implementation of IT-as-a- Service • Documents the “IT Value Chain” and “Reference Architecture” • Actively developed by The Open Group – Over 43,000 members in 480 organizations across 131 countries • The Open Group creates industry lead standards Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission
- 14. IT4IT provides a continuous model 14 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Traditional IT only focused on their own area (Plan, Build, Deliver and Run) • IT4IT enables decisions to be made across all IT domains • Creates 4 value streams – Strategy to Portfolio – Requirement to Deploy – Request to Fulfill – Detect to Correct
- 15. IT4IT is based on a Reference Architecture 15 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • IT Value Chain has 3 major components – Value Streams – Supporting Activities – Reference Architecture • Reference Architecture and Supporting Activities are used by all Value Streams • The end goal is an Operational Model which provides efficiency and agility
- 16. Value Streams in the Service life cycle 16 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Each Value Stream has several phases • Definition of each phase goes much deeper than this chart or presentation will show • A “service” is defined as you would expect an IT service to be defined • Each Service does not need to be an entire application • Notice no discussion of hardware or software technology comes into play yet
- 17. S2P is Architecture, Strategy and Priorities 17 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Strategy to Portfolio Value Stream has elements of architecture, strategy and priorities • Strong focus on reusability of overall process • Sets organizational standards to ensure consistent implementation of services • Sets the groundwork for the remaining Value Streams
- 18. R2D is developing, building and deploying 18 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Focus on building services • Quality of service is important • Making sure the service meet business requirements is pivotal • Schedules service deployment and ongoing maintenance • Enables versions of services to be maintained going forward
- 19. R2F is about deploying services 19 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Customer focused automation in service deployment • Tracks usage of services and costs appropriately • Customer experience is primary focus – automation ensures quick delivery • Transparency is important • Frequent status checks to ensure customer satisfaction
- 20. D2C is about solving problems 20 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Solving problems before they become problems increases customer satisfaction • Make sure that problems are fully resolved and linked to proper change control and run procedures • Prioritize fixes based on business impact • See the entire system and avoid “finger pointing”
- 21. Business is all about money 21
- 22. Strategy to Portfolio in the new economy 22 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Notice major business speed increase – from 2 year planning window to 0.25 (quarterly) planning • Focus on KPIs to make strategic decisions • Top-down goal specification • Metrics are generated in real- time via automation • Customer loyalty can be directly measured in terms of revenue
- 23. Requirement To Deploy in the new economy 23 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Services are composed into applications • Services are available in “just enough” quantities with the ability to quickly add capacity • Agile development instead of monolithic • Entrepreneurial • High level of focus on reuse
- 24. Request to Fulfill in the new economy 24 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • “Pay per drink” costing models • As much transparency as possible • Self-service is the preferred method of customer interaction • All services are cataloged in a common way • Goal is to increase consumption • Customer satisfaction is continually measured
- 25. Detect To Correct in the new economy 25 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • Changing from a reactive problem determination model to predictive • Services are designed to co- exist • Repeatable change control • Collaboration between users, operations and developers • Failures are handled automatically, as much as possible
- 26. Where to go for more information on IT4IT? 26 Material inside green box is Copyright The Open Group – presented at SHARE San Antonio with permission • If you want more details about IT4IT, please ask the presenters • Your organization may already be a member of the Open Group, which would provide you access to additional resources • Feel free to ask the presenters for additional information – if you want
- 27. Great info - but does it promote my career? 27 You ALREADY have the necessary tools
- 28. z/OS (OS provided tools - a simplification) Windows (OS provided tools – a simplification) Financial Transparency: Usage tracking 28 SMF, RMF, JES spool, well defined logging Windows Task Manager, unified loosely defined system logging • z/OS is well positioned to provide data to directly link costs to revenue provided • Applications can be prioritized with WLM policies based on business value • Usage tracking allows detailed “pay as you go” billing • z Systems have a “shared everything” architecture – as specified by the “Detect To Correct” Value Stream • You can directly prove the business value of systems you work with.
- 29. z Systems*Distributed systems Financial Transparency: Economies of Scale 29 Vertical scaling avoids build-outs without affecting throughput DR services are also simplified Google data center (Council Bluffs, IA) Would you be surprised to find out that the DR site looks almost identical? • Which do you think is more efficient per dollar of revenue received? • Optimizing costs in terms of revenue directly affects profitability. • Top-down decisions are made based on overall efficiency. • Efficiency can be achieved through economies of scale • You can show data to the business value of your systems and scaling characteristics GDPS *NOTE: I am not suggesting 2 z Systems can replace the entire data center shown – but it would be smaller.
- 30. z SystemsDistributed systems Financial Transparency: Virtualization density 30 IBM Wave screenshot 124 Linux VMs (11 groups on 1 system) VMware HA architecture Each box is a physical server? How many virtual servers per physical system? • Virtualization density is a direct indicator of economies of scale • Which system do you think has a higher density of virtual machines? • The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) can be directly linked to revenue • Economies of scale directly affect profitability. • You can prove higher virtualization density lowers costs and is more efficient. *VMware topology taken from http://blogs.vmware.com/apps/files/2015/03/VC6_fig6.png
- 31. z Systems Problem detection and correction 31 RAIM memory (purple) Spare CPUs Sysplex
- 32. • ETL is resource expensive – Think CPU/MIPS, networking, disk, decreased value of “stale” data • Moving data does not always create business value • Forcing applications to pick most efficient path does not always achieve the desired result • Current data leads to better business decisions • You can provide real-time access to data that differentiates your company while guaranteeing business SLAs are still met. Use data where it lives for higher efficiency 32 Leverage the data where it lives Always current. Most efficient path always chosen without application specifying. Data moving across the enterprise Multiple copies of data are difficult to control, keep current & do not create business value Data on z ETL Magic Result Magic Other data sources Data Warehouse Mart Excel Macro
- 33. • “Controlling the environment” (yesterday) is not the same as “controlling the data & access” (tomorrow) • Ease of access provides direct business value and allows for increased agility. • Proactively enabling or facilitating APIs increases your business contribution. • Applications on z are typically differentiators • You can promote the API Economy and open access to data while retaining control The API Economy is here….embrace it!!! 33 Welcome new users with open arms Provide access to anyone with a good reason…using any programming language Well protected Mainframe Mainframes used to be tightly controlled assets due to their high business value Photo of Beaumaris Castle in Wales taken by David Morlitz* (*LinuxONE digitally inserted into photo)
- 34. • Management exists to set strategy and direction for an organization • Don’t sit and watch everyone around influence the strategy • Be proactive and prove your value. • You have the applications and data that differentiates your company and provides business value – use it to LEAD. • You can prove business value, differentiate yourself, be the 800 pound gorilla, and lead the pack. Management sets direction and keeps order 34 Everyone moving in the same direction Yields better overall business results and everyone gets recognition – a WIN/WIN Management with a lot of options Leadership without strong data does not always result in the best business outcomes z z$$
- 35. Great info - but does it promote my career? 35 C O S T S E F F I C I E N C Y $ $ P R O F I T A B I L I T Y $ $ $ S C A L E You ALREADY have the necessary tools • Provide metrics for the “new economy” to executives • Show your value and costs in “revenue terms” • Always challenge others to prove efficiency • Be innovative to win against service providers • Maniacal focus on customer satisfaction • Your innovation creates business value D A T AAPPS LOGS R E V E N U E $
- 36. Great info - but does it promote my career? 36 C O S T S E F F I C I E N C Y $ $ P R O F I T A B I L I T Y $ $ $ S C A L E You ALREADY have the necessary tools Questions??? D A T AAPPS LOGS R E V E N U E $
- 37. Great info - but does it promote my career? 37 C O S T S E F F I C I E N C Y $ $ P R O F I T A B I L I T Y $ $ $ S C A L E Sources for all graphics is included after this chart. D A T AAPPS LOGS R E V E N U E $
Editor's Notes
- I am sure that this is the first time you have ever seen a disclaimer on a presentation, right? Please remember to fill out your session evaluation. If you do it right now, and the results are good, the presentation will get better. We want the KPI of this presentation to be a “Best of SHARE” vote. This presentation contains 3 parts: A discussion of how management style (not just for IT) is changing or has changed An overview of an operational model called IT4IT by The Open Group – which is an implementation of IT-as-a-Service How to leverage your understanding of these new management models to promote your career and show your value to the business
- Let’s start by talking about how management makes decisions about overall strategy and direction. We will do this by showing some fictional – albeit representative – discussions that might happen in various departments within your organization. For this section, there will be a “conversation of yesterday” and a “conversation of tomorrow” as we try to explain how the world is changing. Our first example is a FINANCE department. This group of people is focused – at the simplest level - on comparing revenue with costs to determine overall profit. This provides the data that all levels of management use to make all of their decisions. Notice in this conversation that the finance department is unable to directly link costs and revenue – so they start finding ways to make assumptions and create linkages. These linkages might not always be correct but they provide the best available information. Without being able to analyze costs at a granular level – the finance department resorts to “BIG ANIMAL PICTURES”
- Now, let’s move on to a “LINE OF BUSINESS” conversation. These are the teams that create new offerings, determine your company’s go-to-market strategy, and directly understand their competition every day. To these teams, IT departments are service providers. They want to be leading the discussion, setting the vision for products, and (to them) IT is a function that they should be in control of. They want everything to be about their specific product or solution, because that is the most important thing in the world. IT organizations, however, have been formed over a long period of time trying to provide common services to a larger group of business teams. This means that IT organizations have developed procedures to create and manage standards, work to provide consistent levels of service to everyone, and might not provide as much flexibility to one LOB team to ensure that they can serve LOB teams with equal qualities. This has led IT organizations to be viewed by LOB’s as monopolistic and inflexible. This believe may or may not be correct – but it is the view that many LOB have.
- Let’s move on to discuss the IT departments “conversation of yesterday” As I said before, IT organizations have yielded savings to their enterprises by consolidating services into a single group. The benefit of this consolidation is in reducing the inefficiencies of having multiple teams providing the same capability. The negative aspect of this consolidation is that when 1 team has to support multiple teams, they tend to find the “lowest common denominator” of service that will make everyone happy. The other common weakness in a consolidated model is that IT organizations are funded through cost-recovery (or taxing) the LOB that uses these services. This causes IT organizations to have a very strong focus on cost reduction, SLAs and operational efficiency. Not that these are bad characteristics to be focused on – but they might not be optimal for providing a flexible service that impacts the overall profitability of the enterprise. THESE ARE THE CONVERSATIONS OF YESTERDAY. WHAT HAPPENS IF NOTHING CHANGES?
- This conversations is what happens if nothing internally in the enterprise changes. The world will change around the enterprise and this conversation now becomes possible. As you all know, there is never a situation where the entire world stands still and truly nothing changes. This change in conversation is brought about by the rise of cloud service providers. Where there used to be only 1 provider (internal IT) of services that an LOB can choose – now there are multiple choices. The LOB is also now free to choose their service provider to ensure optimal use of resources (money, in this case) INTERNAL IT NOW HAS COMPETITION – which has never been there before. Internal IT needs to learn to compete AND WIN against other service providers. This requires a change in the way that IT operates. There is also a risk that IT decisions can now be made by LOB’s WITHOUT TELLING IT. If this happens, then traditional IT organizations start to become marginalized and left out of important strategic discussions and decisions.
- The good news is that IT can easily prevent the conversation on the previous chart from happening. As an internal organization, IT and the LOB can create a partnership that no service provider could ever hope to have because: IT understands the business IT has access to all of the data – not just what is necessary to provide a specific service IT is with the LOB 24x7 IT has the same motivational goals (market share, success of the company) as the LOB – while a service provider only wants to grow their hosting business. IT can bring forward ideas with business value – because they can see the entire enterprise The conversation on this chart is meant to illustrate that IT can create ideas and become proactive with creating new offerings.
- Once IT creates new ideas – then they can easily bring them to the LOBs – which: Creates business value for the enterprise Strengthens the partnership between IT and LOBs Improves the LOBs perception of IT – bringing IT more to the forefront of their business Results in a more flexible and responsive organization across the board
- Now we return to the FINANCE discussion. Now, with appropriate data and a stronger partnership between IT and LOBs, both organizations can provide better financial data to their finance organization. This more granular information will allow management to make decisions that are better for the enterprise as a whole.
- The reason that all of this financial information is important is because management uses the data to make decisions. Businesses are always moving faster, decisions are made quicker, and the timeliness of information becomes more important. Consider the analogy of an airplane cockpit. The top-level management are the pilots of this craft. The financial data provided appears on the cockpits instruments. We all know that there is a lot more detail underneath each instruments readout – but there is only time to see the high level information. What would happen if you are flying and the gas gauge updates are delayed by 30 minutes? That could be a real problem. Failing fast is Photo https://pixabay.com/en/aircraft-cockpit-aviation-machine-461909/ (See Appendix for Public Domain license)
- Since the business is moving quickly – guess what – you are going along for the ride – whether you want to or not!!! You have the very impossible mission of hitting a moving target while being guided by an someone potentially outside your organization that you are not used to working with. Both of you need to steer together. This might be difficult for an organization that is used to controlling their own destiny. Traditional IT shops like to have everything fully planned out, tested, and then re-tested prior to going live with a new system. This isn’t the way that business will operative going forward. The only good news is that either person gets decide when to pull the ripcord – if you know when to pull it. This is where information comes into play. Notice the dark goggles on the IT guy? That is because their data is not as current as the clear goggles in front. Now…….if you can provide better information to the business, you become much more valuable on this rapid trip to your moving target. While this is a rather extreme analogy, it is not that far off from where the industry is really going. To increase the timeliness and detail that goes into these cockpit readouts and what the googles see, the management of many organization are changing how they capture data. This is changing the type of information that management expects from everyone in their organization. This new operational model is called IT-as-a-Service Photo https://pixabay.com/en/tandem-skydivers-skydivers-teamwork-603631/ (See Appendix for Public Domain license)
- IT-as-a-Service has a definition. Some of the key points from the Wikipedia article on IT-as-a-Service are highlighted above, including: 1) ITaaS is an operational model 2) ITaaS seeks increase the overall competitiveness of internal IT when compared to external service providers 3) A significant focus on financial transparency throughout the model 4) Directly link revenue to costs ITaaS IS NOT A CLOUD SERVICE MODEL – we are focused on the “business of IT” and how to best manage the services provided. These IT services could be provided by any IT model – including a cloud based model ITaaS is a high-level idea. There are several implementations of ITaaS – but they all have these common elements
- As we move into the second section of this presentation, we will quickly discuss IT4IT by the Open Group. This is 1 implementation of IT-as-a-Service. Some statistics about the Open Group are provided above. Please remember, this is an operational model. When you see terms like “Reference Architecture” – this is about how organizations work together, roles and responsibilities, etc……this is NOT a technology architecture.
- One of the major changes in this ITaaS operational model over more traditional IT models is that ITaaS seeks to provide a continuous view of IT. Traditional IT might have unique phases like Plan, Build, Deliver, and Run. Each of these phases operated independently and the results were “passed over the wall” In IT4IT, all of the phases of service delivery are connected. The viewpoint for all of the KPIs is across all 4 phases – not individual in each phase.
- This is the overall IT Value Chain – as defined in IT4IT. You will notice that the 4 phases are across the top in darker blue. Then there is a Reference Architecture that is common across the entire service delivery timeline – as well as 5 common “Supporting Activities” By constructing the IT Value Chain in this fashion, you can create an end-to-end operational model that focusses on efficiency and agility.
- In IT4IT, the Value Chain is composed of 4 Value Streams. These Value Streams are defined above – with some additional detail about the sub-elements of each phase. We will go through a “high-level” discussion of each phase over the next few charts. Again, please remember, we will be talking about the business of IT and not the underlying technologies……..but we will talk about technologies when we get back to “how does this help me???”
- The Strategy to Portfolio (S2P) value stream is (as you would expect) all about strategic innovation. Some of the important elements here are: Defining objectives Setting standards Enterprise Architecture Analyzing impact Ensuring governance This Value Stream sets the ground work for the remaining 3 Value Streams.
- The Requirement to Deploy (R2D) Value Stream is all about building services. Major factors include: Creating necessary project plans Actual development work Testing the outcome Making sure the results match the business requirements
- The Request To Fulfill (R2F) Value Stream is about creating initial offerings of services, creating offerings and demand generation. Some of the key elements include: Publishing services in a way that others can find your service easily Creating as much self-service provisioning and maintenance as possible (operationally speaking – NOT cloud speaking) Making services available quickly – so your LOB customers can move at the speed they require Finding appropriate ways to measure and charge for the services (again, operationally – NOT specifically cloud – but giving the LOB metrics to understand their costs per business transaction)
- The Detect to Correct (D2C) Value Stream is all about ongoing operations, including: Alarms, outage alerts and the relationship of services to each other Proactive root cause analysis Change requests Resolving problems before they are noticed This is your traditional “operations” team – but approached from a perspective of each service. This means that you can directly trace the operations of a service back through the Value Chain all the way to the original plans made in Strategy 2 Portfolio. KPIs are generated through all of the Value Streams – and are the data which appears in the pilot’s cockpit. The Value Streams all discuss operational goals, plans and how people interact.
- Talking about the Value Stream phases from a project perspective is interesting – but we also need to talk about how all of this directly affects the bottom line. As I am sure you realize, the bottom line is what all of this is about. https://pixabay.com/en/dollar-money-us-dollar-arrangement-1071788/ See Appendix for Public Domain license
- The IT4IT operational model came into existence because executive management has started looking differently at how they run their business. This is not just an IT statement – but an across the board statement. Some of the changes in the “new economy” that lead to the value of IT4IT in the Strategy to Portfolio (S2P) Value Stream include: Planning cycles changing from years to months More customization and catering to business needs – due to changes in customer expectations Trying to get more value out of the same budget Driving innovation faster (remember the supersonic speed???) Enterprise goals being driven in a top-down fashion based on KPIs that are gathered quickly
- The economy has also changed in how users want to request services. This has led to the creation of the Request To Deploy (R2D) Value Stream. Just think about how long customers are willing to wait for new IT services compared to a decade ago. The services don’t have to be as well defined now as they used to be. Developers are happy to orchestrate various services and make enhancements on their own rather than waiting 6 months for a complete application to magically appear. Users want services to be available for quick provisioning in minutes in a just-in-time fashion. There is a lot of innovation and speed that customer demand now. Not addressing these needs is not an option.
- Similarly to the way that developer needs have changed, the requestors of your services have also changed. This is represented in the Request to Fulfill (R2F) Value Stream. Some key elements here include: Consolidated service catalogs Automation Self-service Clear cost models based on usage (again – at a policy level – not a specific implementation) Insight into usage Orchestration across multiple services
- The Detect To Correct (D2C) Value Stream should be a pretty obvious one for all of us in IT. Outages lead to lost revenue and decreased customer satisfaction. Users are more likely to switch to other providers in instances when outages or mistakes happen. The cost of changing for consumers is pretty low – in most cases. Proactive failure detection is key to maintaining customer satisfaction – which maintains or builds profit.
- We have just discussed an operational model and how those metrics are used by management to make decisions that affect the enterprise. BUT HOW DO I USE THIS INFORMATION TO PROMOTE MY OWN CAREER? Once you accept the fact that the “world has changed” – you can see that your organization will value: Profitability Overall efficiency Increased service qualities Directly linking revenue to costs If you have not already been asked to provide this type of information, you probably will be soon. Do you know the best part of this??? You ALREADY HAVE THE TOOLS necessary to provide all of the information you need. You can actually use these tools to: Show the value of your technology Prove overall cost efficiency – and show how this affects the bottom line Challenge others to provide the same information – this is KEY Bring more usage to your technology – because you are the most efficient to the business Let’s talk about some of these tools that you have.
- One of the first tools you already have available is around usage tracking. This goes directly into financial transparency. I understand that this chart is a simplification of available tools – and I am only looking at tools provided directly by the operating system. On Windows, you have the Task Manager. This can show you the current CPU usage of applications (at a high level). There are some other tools that show historical usage and a common logging facility. Without adding external tools, however, there is really no way to determine exactly how many times each transaction is run and tie that directly to CPU usage. On the other hand, z/OS provides extensive usage tracking in the from of SMF data and RMF for analysis. Again, there are other tools available here, not even counting what application developers build in. You can very easily show how many times a specific transaction ran and how much resource it used. You can directly link these transactions to the revenue generated, in many cases and you can express your costs in “revenue terms”. When I say “revenue terms” I mean expressing costs in the same measurement unit of your business. For example, if you work for an insurance company, your business knows that for every $xM of insurance underwritten and issued, you expect to receive $Y in revenue. If you can isolate the IT required to do that underwriting and to maintain the account, you can directly show your impact on profitability ($Y - $costs) In this case, the business understands revenue in terms of insurance policy underwritten. If you express your costs in the same form (policy underwritten) you can show your impact on the business. If you don’t use those “revenue terms”, then you only have a “BIG ANIMAL PICTURE” across a large amount of policies. WHERE DO YOU THINK THE BUSINESS WANTS TO INVEST??? Systems that can prove their value directly – or systems where you are guessing what your actual profit is???
- The picture on the left is a Google data center in Council Bluffs, IA. It is actually a portion of the total photo – because I had to trim it a bit to make it fit on the chart. I wanted to show you this photo to talk about Economies of Scale. When you look at the Google data center, what do you see? Is this the most efficient environment possible? Do the costs associated with running this facility best use Googles limited (although it doesn’t seem limited) financial resources? Would you be surprised to know that their DR center looks pretty similar? NOTE: I am not suggesting that 2 z Systems can replace the entire Google data center. I just didn’t have a photo of a data center full of z Systems…….. I am suggesting that with a system that allows for “taller” vertical scaling is overall more efficient – and would result in a smaller data center. When you combine this information with the usage tracking from the previous page – you can now see how your costs in “revenue terms” might be lower than other technologies. This leads directly into enterprise level profitability. Where do you think the business should invest? You are working on one of the most efficient platforms AND YOU CAN PROVE IT. Now, challenge others to prove their technologies? http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_1024/CBF_009.jpg
- In a similar fashion as on the previous chart, virtualization density goes directly into efficiency. The more systems that you can get onto a smaller footprint, the more efficient the environment is overall. I think most everyone would agree with that statement. The chart above shows an HA environment as described in a VMware environment. The diagram was taken directly from a VMware blog. In this diagram, each blue box is a different physical device. In the middle of the chart, you see a screenshot of an IBM Wave environment on an IBM test system. You will notice that there are 124 Linux virtual machines (users) defined on a single system. The virtual machines are placed into groups. A solid green icon indicates that all virtual machines in the group are running – and a half green icon means that some of the guests are powered on. This chart does not have enough information to directly compare the z/VM and VMware environments. The hypothesis of this chart is that per physical environment, you will get a higher level of virtualization density on z/VM. This can be easily proven with current reporting tools – and you can challenge the other platforms in your environment to provide the same data. This goes directly into profitability. You could easily fight the notion of “x86 is a commodity – and we only want commodity environments” when you provide the proper financial KPIs. AT SCALE – z Systems CAN BE A COMMODITY ENVIRONMENT
- Customer satisfaction is directly connected to SLAs. As you will recall from the IT4IT Detect to Correct Value Stream, customers expect you to find problems before they do. They will gladly go to another provider if your system is unavailable, and they aren’t as willing to tolerate outages as before. (You can thank mobile phones for that) As everyone in this room already knows, there is no system that is more reliable (when properly configured) that your z Systems. Everything is replicated, including: Spare CPUs RAIM memory Power supplies Network adapters Batteries built-in Sysplex – for hardware level clustering etc….. I would like to thank “Mr. Happy Business Executive” for providing the outstanding quote you see here. While the quote is, of course, fictional – the point is still true. Outages happen – but customers don’t have to see them. If a customer doesn’t see the outage, then it didn’t happen and the customer remains satisfied.
- For any enterprise that has a z System, chances are that a good percentage of their total Systems of Record reside on that z. This means that in many cases, the z environment is actually a competitive differentiator in the marketplace for each enterprise. Now, with all of that data on z, how do you think most companies do most of their analytics??? Of course, they ETL it off, create multiple copies, work to ensure that the copies are in sync and the data is “fresh”. Each time a developer needs a piece of information, why not copy the entire data set to another system so that they have full control over the data? This seems like an efficient decision, right? The savvy business person would ask why all of this data movement needs to happen. Why should resources be spent pushing data around for no additional business value? Why can’t we process the data where it lives, avoid all of the pitfalls, and get access to “fresher” data? With z Systems, you can make this happen. The best part – the application doesn’t even need to know that it happened. This means that you get the best of every everything……your applications can do what they need, your business data is always current, the environment selects the most efficient path to choose and overall customer satisfaction goes up. Leveraging data where it lives is the most efficient choice and provides the most efficient enterprise and directly affects profit. Picture of Flow Chart taken from https://pixabay.com/en/mark-marker-hand-leave-516279/
- With all of that important, differentiating and customer sensitive data traditionally mainframes were tightly controlled business assets. They were installed in data centers, placed behind locks, with access readers, security cameras, and then (for good measure) another set of locks. Typically for a developer to get access to resources on z took many steps, required layers of approvals and was very difficult. There is a good reason for all of these security precautions. The mainframe held the most important corporate data – the System of Record. This data is what differentiates your business from anyone else and your customers have placed their trust in you to ensure that the data is safe. Well, then comes the API Economy. There is still the same requirement to secure the data and protect your customers. However, we can now secure the data without having to go through the process of securing the environment. Through the use of APIs you can securely enable access to data while retaining control. If the data gets copied in it’s entirety to another platform, then you have Picture of Welcome sign taken from https://pixabay.com/en/welcome-sign-calligraphy-modern-976277/
- We have talked about the characteristics of z that will allow you to prove your business value to the organization. This information is valuable as the management style of organizations change and seek to get better data about business operations. As I am sure you know, management’s purpose in an organization is to set the overall strategy and direction and then to try and get everyone moving in the same direction. This results in the best business results overall – as well as for individuals. Clearly, everyone moving in the same direction improves efficiency and increases overall profit. Once you understand how management makes their decisions (or will be making them – if they are not already using the IT-as-a-Service model) and you leverage the characteristics of the z environment, you will be in a wonderful position to advance your career by proving business value. See Appendix for photo credits – all taken from Pixabay in the public domain
- These are just some of the tools that you have available. Once you realize that the business world is changing – and you adjust your perspective to match – you can demonstrate your value to the business. This change is WONDERFUL for z Systems. Statements like “z is too expensive” and “it is old and stabilized” will be “conversations of yesterday” If you represent your efforts in “revenue terms” and prove your direct effect on profitability, then you will be in the strategic IT leadership seat. The mainframe doesn’t have to be off in a corner and ignored – you can directly link your impact to the business……… …….and REMEMBER TO CHALLENGE OTHERS to do the same. When the numbers all fall out and the pilot in the cockpit looks at the gauges, you will be in the green while everyone else will be in the red.