Well, there’s now some meat behind the announcement of a new three year makeover plan for Compuware. Dubbed Compuware 2.0, the CEO announced the intention to re-brand his company. I questioned whether the new Compuware 2.0 play would mean a more improved focus on Business Service Management. Based on some of the recent (ex)employee(?) comments on my blog, things aren’t all peachy in Compuware 2.0 land.
The COO stated Vantage was key to their new strategy and that more more investments in the Vantage suite to “further distance themselves from the competition”. Now the big question is where would those investments be? Resource monitoring, service monitoring, user experience monitoring, transaction monitoring, BSM?
Launch site:
http://www.wemakeitrockaroundtheworld.com/en/
Of interest:
http://www.motorcityrocks.com/2008/05/comuware-employeees-to-recive-gift-of.htm
http://www.wwj.com/pages/2196498.php?
http://www.businessreviewonline.com/blog/archives/2008/05/#000663
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080516/BIZ/805160344
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080517/BIZ/805170345
One of the goals is to “establish a communications protocol that’s consistent and transparent” appears as a blog. One post, only from the COO at this point and the feeds didn’t work for me. I’d like to see product managers, developers and delivery services folks active and encouraged to discuss how they’re going to adopt Compuware 2.0 in their products. How they’re going to enable Business Service Management and ultimately alignment between business and IT. Heck, the doors open for you to join the conversation on my blog here and share on these topics anytime, just ask!
Comments on this entry are closed.
Doug,
I appreciate the interest you’ve shown in Compuware. However, I’d like to clear up a couple of apparent misconceptions.
First, I wouldn’t generalize the state of Compuware based on a couple of disgruntled (ex)employee(?) comments. While I’ve only been at Compuware for a year and a half, I have a pretty good sense that the overall mood of employees is more positive than it’s been in a long time. Are there some unhappy people at Compuware? Sure, just as I’m sure there are a few unhappy current or ex-IBMers, BMCers, etc. running around out there. I do think the majority of Compuware employees are genuinely enthused about Compuware 2.0, the new brand, and the leadership that Bob Paul, our new president and COO, is providing.
Second, in an earlier post you referred to the products acquired from Adlex and Proxima as stand-alone non-integrated products. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Let me start with Adlex. Adlex has in many ways become the core of the Vantage suite. It is the basis for our agentless end user experience monitoring solution (ClientVantage Agentless), which is the best selling and fastest growing solution within the suite. It is already integrated with the other Vantage solutions, and that integration will continue to evolve to the point where end user experience monitoring is foundational. Our view is that end user experience is core to both effective BSM and effective application performance management, and as such it’s firmly positioned at the heart of Vantage. To further clarify, Vantage Service Check is indeed a separate stand-alone product that we also acquired from Adlex and focuses exclusively on Broadband Service Providers.
Proxima (now called Vantage Service Manager) is also a strategic element of the Vantage suite and will be tightly integrated as well. The first level of integration was launched a few months after the acquisition and allows customers to leverage existing Vantage information to build an initial service model and to incorporate server, network and end user experience metrics from other Vantage products into the service views provided by VSM. The best in class capabilities VSM delivers (e.g. service model, business rules and calendar, etc.) will be leveraged across all of the Vantage products. Our goal is for VSM to become a natural progression from end user experience monitoring.
Finally, I have to set the record straight regarding your comment “Will they reinvent the Vantage suite to make it competitive?” The fact is, Vantage has been growing at a tremendous pace over the past several years and is highly competitive. In particular, our agentless end user experience monitoring has an outstanding record in competitive situations. And I would argue that our BSM offering is one of the few BSM solutions that is actually proven, with companies like EDS and Sun achieving significant value.
Thanks for the opportunity to clarify these points, and thanks for helping to facilitate the conversation!
Rich Bentley
Director of Marketing, Compuware Vantage
Thank you so much Rich for joining in the conversation. I hope that this is the first of many that the community can participate in with the “new” Compuware. I was wondering if I’d ever get a response.
From my perspective only seeing what Compuware chooses to put on their website, I can not see any changes. Sure, I see the sales and marketing messaging, but little to no substantial technical content is available for me to change my opinions.
I was a customer and had a substantial deployment of your Vantage software. I intimately knew of the strengths and weaknesses it had during the time I was using it. I also was intimately familiar with Adlex and Proxima as a perspective customer and now a competitive vendor. For example, the messaging for Vantage Service Manager looks nearly identical to what Proxima used. Again, I see no technical content to help me assess that Proxima is doing anything other than consuming data/metrics/etc. from other Vantage products. IMO, it needs to become the core platform and user interface, replacing the technically challenged VantageView component.
I’d like to see the new, honest and transparent Compuware 2.0 start to open up technically. I’d like some technical folks from your teams to join the conversation. Folks who are out there implementing your software, supporting your clients like EDS and Sun. Please don’t limit their voice and only have the normal “talking heads” contributing.
Thanks again for commenting Rich, I do want to learn more and I will obviously correct anything I’ve said here or in the past based on my ability to make a more informed comment. At this point, I just don’t have enough visibility to do that.
Hope the 2.0 re-branding pays off!
Doug
Did you just call me a talking head???
Just kidding, thanks for the additional feedback. Agreed, we still have a ways to go in fostering the type of open technical communication you speak of, though I think we’re heading in the right direction.
Rich
@ Doug
Well – I’m one of those guys – doing sales support (pre- and post sales) as wel as implementations. Below, I will share some of my views/opinions.
As far as Compuware 2.0 is concerned:
I think it’s to soon to tell about results – the changes have just begun. For now, any discussion on the results is just guessing. And sure, if looking for proof on the possible outcome – good or bad – it can be found – no worries…
But lets face it – having a mind-change from selling features of Compuware products to selling solutions for real people/customer problems based on Compuware products (and maybe even combined with others!) may take quite some time – to say the least. Some people are quick learners. While others are much, much slower – but they will get there! And some will never make it and will propably leave joining HP, CA or IBM… 😉
As far as products are concerned:
Over the past 7-8 years, I’ve seen IT management products from Microsoft, BMC, Compuware, CA/Concord, Lucent/VitalSoft, HP-OpenView, Oblicore, DigitalFuel and Netscout.
And from what I have seen, the Compuware technology may not be the best in all area’s – depending on the point of view.
But they certainly are covering most of the IT management area’s in a fairly descent matter compared to their competitors.
However, typically, people who sell technology like to tell about the technology and the product features. As a result, customers are most likely to respond with something like ‘just another tool’.
And I think this really need to be changed. Because the amount of customers that are buying just because of the product features is decreasing rapidly.
So based on my experience, it’s not so much re-inventing Vantage (or any other suite for that matter), it’s ‘just’ a matter of listening to people/customers, listen to the problems they are facing. And what I/we can do for these people to solve their problems to the best of our knowledge and our honesty.
Because by the end of the day, if people/customers feel that I’m really listening to their concerns/challenges, I’m convinced that I will sell – one way or the other!!!
I never, never won any person/customer trust based on “the concepts of Business Service Management (BSM), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Business Process/Performance Management (BPM), Information Technology Service Management (ITSM), IT Information Library (ITIL), reference architectures, implementation strategies, templates, wizards, engagement practices”….
To me, these are all ‘just’ buzz words! And are meaningless by itself. Specially given the fact that business is still about people!!!!
Will
Will,
I’m not sure what your point is by repeating what my mission is for this blog. I think you’ve missed the point somewhere about what this forum and all of the conversations are intended to do.
I’d encourage you to share more about your day to day experiences helping solve your customer’s problems with the Compuware technology. How did you apply Network Vantage to solve a complex network problem? How did you deploy Vantage Service Analyzer to implement a value oriented BSM dashboard for a LoB executive? These are transparent, technical and people/problem focused discussions I’d love to hear you share.
Making the “Sales and Marketing Slicks” come to life through real practitioners and real customers is what I’m trying to do here. I’m certainly not about the hype, buzz words or other propaganda that we as vendors put out every day. I want to know what can be done to bring the “buzz words” and TLA’s to life and provide real value to our customers.
How will you become a Compuware 2.0 employee? What will you change about yourself, how you sell or implement Compuware software for your clients?
Thank you for commenting on my blog Will!
Doug
Ok – clear.
I guess due to the amount of details the message gets a bit fuzzy.
The point I tried to make is, in my experience, it’s all about people.
What I do is listen to them. Try to understand what it is that they are trying to accomplish. And why that is important to them. I do that by asking a lot of ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions.
I also present other options – other then buying one or more products.
All this has one goal: building the relationship and increase trust.
From there on it appears to be fairly easy doing business. If I look at my track record over the past 8 years, I can honestly say that my hitrate is 80-90%. Meaning that out of the 100 real oppertunities, I end up with 80-90 real customers and somesort of a deal.
And in terms of doing things different:
I hardly ever talk about products and features during the first- and (sometimes) second apointment. Well – maybe the second – just a little bit to keep attention. Because the people I talk to are mostly IT people.
And if I do product demo’s, I will focus on the context of the day-to-day work of my audience.
Why I think this is different?
Well – most people start talking about the great products they can deliver.
And when they do product demo’s, they show all the nice features and graphs.
They then assume that their audience is able to translate this as:
“Yes, with this product and featureset, my problem is solved.”
But as I learned the hardway over the years, this translation is often not made.
Or is made but not validated. Which may lead to expectations that are never met.
And even when they do make that translation with the right expectations, it may not be that important for whatever reason.
Does this clarify things? And does it make sense?
As far as BSM (and all the other ‘business’-buzwords) is concerned:
Managing IT from a business perspective requires a different set of metrics. Despite what most people think: these metrics are not at all IT related. In my opinion BSM is really BSM if you talk about metrics like:
– insurrance company; the amount of insurrance claims per day that can be processed
– banking; being able to handle a minimum amount of ATM requests per hour
– tax department; processing a certain amount of income tax forms per hour
– ISP; the maximum amount of phone calls that can be started by their customers (i.e. subscribers)
In my opinion, currently, all BSM discussions are actually about fault- and performance management from an IT perspective (technology and/or process).
The ‘only’ value-add is translating and correlating different IT related metrics into a ‘business process’-related view.
But still – all the collected metrics are the same and all are IT related. Either from a technology perspective. Or an ITIL process perspective.
Which by itself can be a good thing. Because it helps IT people being aware of the real goals for a certain combination of hardware, software and ITIL processes.
Still with me? I hope so! Because now I have a challenge for you:
How would you position and implement BSM in a company who doesn’t have at least some ITIL processes in place? Or at least have something comparible?
Why I ask?
Well – it’s my believe that in the US, ITIL is real hot. And BSM is too. How can BSM be used in an IT environment where there is a very limited set of formalized processes in place.
Will,
Yes, thanks. You and I are on different sides of the fence being that you’re in a sales role and I’m in a consulting/architecture/delivery role (but we all “sell” right 🙂 ). More often than not I’m faced with correcting the wrong expectations set by those on the sales side. It sounds like you’d deliver happy clients with the correct expectations to someone like me if I were on your team! 🙂 I wish there were more folks out there like you!
You’re opinion is in line with mine and what I see personally in my day job and via the discussions and relationships I have via this blog. Business Service Management (BSM) is the goal, but what gets delivered is in line with an IT centric, CYA implementation with all sorts of IT centric pretty pictures. This is where some of the topics recently discussed on this blog and those of my peers have recently become very interesting (search for “BSM Lite”). I’m not convinced that BSM is impossible due to the difficulties with technology. I am convinced that most organizations struggle and ultimately fail with BSM because they can’t solve the organizational problems (org structure, people, process, relationships, politics, etc.). The vendor community in general is letting their clients down because they’re not helping them in these areas.
I do not believe that ITIL is required to be successful with BSM. It may offer an organization many solid suggestions that may make the IT and organizational challenges easier to work through in the future, but most can be addressed outside of an ITIL or other best practices framework discussions.
I think there are numerous components of what I envision BSM to be that are capable of being implemented in organizations that are willing to change the way they do things today and have some maturity in terms of established processes, workflow or dialog with other groups within IT or the business. As you mentioned above, business is about relationships. If IT/Business could establish relationships and have open, honest and transparent dialoge with other IT and business units, this would go a long way in meeting some of the tenants of what I think BSM is all about.
In my opinion, ITIL centric processes (change, config, release, etc.) as enablers to a BSM strategy fall to the very mature, value centric side of my BSM maturity model. Time to value is very long if you’re going to wait for these ITIL processes (and the organizational change requried) to be successful first before you get benefits from a BSM strategy. I’d much prefer to see clients starting with something smaller, perhaps simpler to get value quicker from BSM than trying to take a “boil the ocean” appraoch (which some ITIL initiatives can feel like!).
ITIL v3 apparently introduces the concepts of BSM. We’ll see how my opinion changes down the road as I migrate my certifications from v2 to v3. Clients are just not interested in any ITIL – BSM discussions at this point from what I can tell. ITIL discussions are in one group, BSM discussions are in another. Not saying that’s right, it’s just what I see (a bit part of the organizational problem mentioned above)!
Thanks for commenting and keeping the conversation alive! What can we as vendors do to change things? Can we make a difference from where we sit? Are there opportunities for collaboration, extended dialog, joint customer initiatives, etc.?
Tks,
Doug
Well – what we could do as vendors is take responsebility for our claims. If we state an ROI of 1 year given this-and-this assumptions, why not commit to this ROI?
In other words, the customer will get a (partial?) refund if the ROI wasn’t met.
Or the vendor will get a bonus of the ROI was exceeded.
Grtz – Will
That’s a bit above my paygrade I’m afraid. I’m most interested in the technology and methodologies that should be in place to equip the groups who have to try and get close to that expected ROI. If we do not equip, train and mentor them, we’re not doing everything possible to help them be successful.
So, if you can send some folks from the Compuware team who’d be interested in working and collaborating within the Vantage space specifically on BSM and enabling technology and products, this is where I see the best opportunity for traction.
Tks,
Doug