Chuck's Blog

Why IT Should Be Shamelessly Exploiting Big Data Analytics

The pattern is familiar: take any critical business question, and use big data analytics to come up with better predictive models.  The effect seems near-universal across a dizzying array of disciplines: marketing, customer service, finance, manufacturing -- and even IT.

What amazes me is that more IT groups aren't hiving off a small pool of resources to start to learn to apply big data analytics to *their* important business questions: not only for their own benefit, but to gain the domain expertise that the business will inevitable be asking for.

It's not expensive.  It's not particularly difficult.  The handful of people I meet who are actually doing some of this are finding the glimmerings of great potential, and appear to be having great fun in the process.

And there is obviously no shortage of interesting questions that need to be answered in the IT world ...

ITaaS -- Creating That Retail Experience For Your Users

ITaaS: a familiar topic to many of my readers. 

But there's a new (and interesting) perspective: when you go through all this transformation stuff, how does IT function appear to the average knowledge worker in a large organization? 

I'll give you a hint, and it's very familiar. 

We all know how to buy and use technology in our personal lives, why should our corporate lives be any different?  Sellers of consumer tech strive to create great online retail experiences, why wouldn't we import that idea  into the enterprise IT world?

We have an excellent example of this concept within EMC itself: our own "InfinIT"-branded one-stop shop for most of your day-to-day end-user IT needs.  It's slick, well-marketed and very representational of what happens when IT re-orients around making IT easy to consume vs. easy for the IT organization.

Perhaps you've done better in your own IT group, and -- if you have -- congratulations!  For everyone else, the tour might be very interesting indeed.

The Three Transformations of ITaaS

Because I work for a technology company, I frequently get asked to present on "the future of the data center".  I think the expectation would that I show up and start talking about shiny new technologies.
 
While I can certainly do that, I often decide instead to hold up a large mirror to the audience, and instead present on how the nature of enterprise IT is fundamentally changing: new mission, new measurements, new roles and new models. 

Collectively dubbed ITaaS (IT as a service), the idea is for IT to deliver IT services that business people prefer to consume vs. acting as a traditional silo'd technology shop.
 
From my perspective, the technology is moving very quickly indeed: far faster than the ability of most IT organizations to effectively consume it, providing yet another motivation for model change. 

I get to see it both ways.  On one side, I'm reasonably immersed in various technologies these days.  On the other side, I can point to literally hundreds of customer and partner interactions over the last year or so. 

And, for some, the gap is getting wider.
 
It's now gotten to the point where I have three distinct flavors of various talk tracks, depending where I think a customer might be: pre-transformational, transforming, or post-transformational.  Why?  EMC, as an IT vendor, has clearly started to put more investment into the needs of the post-transformational crowd, causing a certain cognitive dissonance with pre-transformational IT audiences, e.g. why the heck would you guys build something like that?
 
The more you work with a topic like ITaaS, the better you get at simplifying the core ideas down to their essences.  I and EMC have been discussing IT transformation now for several years, and -- predictably -- we keep getting better and better at getting to the core essence.
 
Today's example of extreme simplification comes from EMC's Global Services organization.  They've come up with three powerful graphics that boil a very complex topic down into into three largely sequential initiatives.  They're so useful, they're now part of my standard deck I use on the topic.
 
See if you agree ...

Information: The Third Pillar Of Business

You study a situation, you make assertions about what will likely happen -- and then you see real-world examples of those predictions becoming reality.

The big notion?  Traditional enterprises will be forced to recognize their aggregated information as a strategic asset, much in the way they think about money and people.

Enterprises with digital business models already view the world this way.  Traditional enterprises are evolving into digital ones.  Ergo, as they evolve, one of the visible markers should be a pronounced shift in how they view their information resources: from ancillary to strategic.

I now have enough observed examples at hand to claim at least partial validation of this effect.  And, as a benefit, I think I can now start to make more confident assertions about what more organizations will be likely seeing in the next few years.

What A Modern Factory Can Teach You About High-Performance IT

I'm not the only who's fascinated by high-performance IT organizations, and the transformations required to get them there.

In my travels, I've encountered others who share my fascination.  And -- each and every time -- we all inevitably gravitate to the same set of analogies: modern factories and how manufacturing works.

This should be no surprise.  In the digital economy, IT is the new factory -- it's responsible for delivering the organization's value proposition in the digital world.

So perhaps it behooves us to study modern manufacturing -- how it works today, and -- more importantly -- how and why it evolved.

You'd be surprised on just how many concepts and ideas can be carried across.

SDDC And The Elephant In The Room

Like many companies, we at EMC start our new year with a leadership gathering.  We gather to celebrate, connect, strategize and share.  They are *always* great events.

I found this year's gathering was particularly rewarding in terms of deep content.  The majority of the meeting was spent unpacking the depth behind  the core elements of EMC's strategy: cloud, big data and trust. 

We dove in from a product and technology perspective.  We came at it from a services view.  Another take from a services and skills viewpoint.  And, finally, the organizational and business model implications.

For me, it was like a wonderful meal that just went on and on.  Rich, detailed and exceptionally well-thought out -- although your head started to hurt after a while.

Underlying much of the discussion was the central notion of a software-defined datacenter (SDDC for short), representing the next generation of infrastructure and operational models.  All through the discussion, that was clearly the conceptual foundation for so much of what needed to happen in the industry.

And I started to realize we still have a lot of explaining to do: not only around the concepts themselves, but what they mean to IT groups and the organizations they support. 

I've now had some time to think and digest, and I wanted to add a few different perspectives to the mix.

Building A Executive Digital Literacy Program

Being perceived as a visionary is a relatively easy task.  All you have to do is identify a handful of clearly visible trends, extrapolate a bit, and then loop back with practical advice on what to do about it now.

Example: I have a friend who's currently looking at oceanfront property.  He showed me a place that was right on the water.  I suggested he might consider a house with a bit more elevation?  Sure, it might not be a visible problem now, but if you think out a few years ...

Here's the point: there's rapid and unprecedented climate change in the business world.  Our society is forcefully transforming to a digital world.

Our current business models -- designed for the physical world -- now have to be dramatically re-engineered to adapt and thrive in this new economy.  A palpable sense of urgency is at hand.

IT can supply the platforms and tools, but do our leaders and management teams have the necessary skills and context required to lead the way forward? 

If you can answer "yes", you're quite fortunate -- the rest of us have some heavy lifting to do.

Just like we had to learn to thrive in a global economy, and a sustainable economy -- we now have to learn how to thrive in a digital economy. 

And that's something they didn't teach us in business school.

I wish I could point to a proven body of knowledge and delivery mechanisms to achieve this important goal, but no such luck

I've been looking, and there isn't much out there at the executive level -- sure, there are pieces here and there, but they certainly don't fit together as I'd like to see.

At some point, this will surely change, but in the meantime, it's a roll-your-own proposition.

I've now been asked several times -- if I were constructing an agenda for mid-to-senior level leaders -- what would I put in it?

So, in an effort to kick-start the discussion, here it is:

Why There Shouldn't Be A Single Version Of The Truth

Legacy thinking can get you in trouble in so many ways.  The challenge is that -- well -- there's so much of it around.

Maxims that seemed to make logical sense in one era quickly become the intellectual chains that hold so many of us back.  Personally, I've come to enjoy blowing up conventional wisdom to make room for emerging realities.

I'm getting into more and more customer discussions with progressive IT organizations that are seriously contemplating building platforms and services that meet the broad goal of "analytically enabling the business" -- business analytics as service, if you will.

The problem?  The people in charge have done things a certain way for a very long time.  And the new, emerging requirements are forcing them to go back and seriously reconsider some of their most deeply-held assumptions.

Like having "one version of the truth".  I've seen multiple examples of it get in the way of organizations who need to be doing more with their data.

E&Y: Trust And The Cloud

I'm lucky to meet a wide range of IT organizations scattered across all sorts of industries.

Some are bravely charging ahead into the new world of cloud-based IT service delivery: transforming their internal operations, consuming more external IT services, and learning quickly as they go.

But others are holding back, and for what turns out to be very sound reasons. 

A tough set of regulatory concerns, for example.  Challenging security and data privacy laws.  Compliance and auditability.  High-risk IT applications that can't afford any sort of a bad day. 

These IT groups believe they can't move ahead unless *all* of this is sorted out -- ahead of time.

If you're reading this and nodding your head, you know who you are.

For these organizations, the move to a modern IT model has to be done with trust and confidence.  It's not an IT thing, it's a business thing -- and it's not optional.

Enter Ernst & Young

More known for tax, audit and regulatory consulting, they've developed an interesting set of IT transformation consulting services precisely targeted at these more risk-sensitive industries. 

While perhaps not known as a technology powerhouse, they do bring deep expertise in establishing the required "trust assurances" across the organization needed for a move to any form of cloud.

As I've started to work with their team, I've gained a new-found appreciation around a an entirely new path to the cloud. 

By focusing on a tough set of business concerns first and foremost, they may end up being far more successful in helping their clients get to cloud than us technology-focused types.

The Power Of Visual Thinking?

If you look at how our brains are wired, an enormous amount of capacity is dedicated to visual processing: recognition, pattern detection, etc.  While everyone's preferred thinking modes may differ, there's no arguing the appeal of a powerful visual image when you're trying to communicate -- hence the absurd popularity of infographics et. al.

Similarly, there's also a certain appeal to board games that involve journeys.  I spent a lot of time doing that when I was a young sprout, as maybe you did too.  Both notions are applicable here.

As some who spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about more efficient communication of complex ideas, I was immediately struck by this graphic, which came my way via Mark Lawson of EMC's Global Services group.

It's an interesting representation of the "IT transformation journey".  Mark's particular practice involves conducting workshops for transforming IT teams.  He needed some better tools, and here you have it.

While there are those out there who might quibble on the details, there's no argument about its communicative power.

In one simple graphic, it appears to be a very efficient tool to get a large number of stakeholders to conceptualize a shared set of concepts and sequences.  And, when it comes to IT transformation, job #1 appears to be getting everyone on the same page on what lies ahead :)

I wanted to share it (here in full PDF glory) as I've met many customers who are looking to communicate their vision more effectively to progressively wider audiences.  And I think this is defintely worth sharing.

And, of course, if you have any questions, we'd be more than happy to have a chat :)