thoughts on business, service and technology operations and management

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ASG Business Service Platform (BSP) for BSM

I would like to talk to someone who is experienced with, currently uses (or has used) the Allen Systems Group (ASG) Business Service Platform (BSP) for BSM.

Please contact me via this blog post or direct.

Tks,

Doug

July 30, 2008   No Comments

Barriers to BPM, SOA, BSM, BAM Success

In an repost of an article from a couple years back, Robin Bloor provides some updated color on the state of BPM and SoA. It’s apparent that some of the other “B” buzz words have the same challenges that exist on the BSM front.

Things to ponder…

  • How can these projects with such touted value to the business or IT be successfully implemented?
  • Where are vendors falling short in helping “solve the organizational problems” that often cause these “B” projects to fail?
  • Is throwing technology/product at the problem the best place to start?
  • What should a next generation organizational structure look like? Can IT and Business organize around end-to-end business service/process delivery and support?
  • How can organizations be incented, encouraged, mandated to have an end-to-end business service/process focus?
  • Where success stories for BPM, SOA, BSM, BAM, etc. exist, how have these technologies been operationalized, organizations changed, workflow/process/procedure modified to reap the benefits?
  • Is it foolish to think that any of these organizational challenges can ever be solved or at least minimized?
  • Do we have generational issues here that will change as Baby Boomers retire and Gen X/Y/Z move up the ranks in IT and Business?

Give the post a read, I found these two very applicable to all of the things I’m seeing with BPM, BSM, BAM, etc.

Question 5: What are the most difficult steps within a BPM project – and what makes a SOA project tedious?

Answer: The most difficult steps within a BPM project are the early ones. The problem is cultural. As a fact of business history and IT history, all organizations are siloed. Hell, I know it’s a cliché and a platitude, but its also true. The siloed nature of organizations is ingrained. You have to get people to think end-to-end rather than silo. This means everyone, the business folk and the IT folk and any other folk who happen to be around. The IT folk are siloed too, you know. You need to “get their minds right” because with BPM you need cross-discipline teams who don’t indulge in turf wars.

As for SOA projects, I don’t believe one should even think in terms of implementing SOA as a project. SOA is a road and it’s a road that everyone will ultimately have to take, because it’s the road that the IT industry has already taken.

Is there anything tedious on this road? Yes there is; turf wars and inadequate technology.

Comment: It’s still true. It’s still the case that the cultural problems are the biggest block to SOA.

Question 6: What best practices do you recommend to organisations looking to initiate a BPM / SOA project?

I could write a book about this, in fact we did write a book; SOA for Dummies. So let’s just pick two things that I believe to be critically important:

Answer: Get sponsorship right from the top. There are many reasons why this is necessary, because SOA and BPM usually cause significant changes to an organization.
Also pick an easy first target. Make sure to go for low hanging fruit on the first project. You know what I mean, low risk, high benefit. You really don’t want the first project to stall in any way.

Comment: Now I would add, that you should look to implement comprehensive Identity Management as soon as possible and also go after coherent Asset management. The big note on the wall should read: “It’s the plumbing, stupid.”

July 30, 2008   No Comments

links for 2008-07-30

July 29, 2008   No Comments

links for 2008-07-29

July 28, 2008   No Comments

Christmas in July? IBM acquires ILOG!

While I’m sure that TBSM’s use of ILOG wasn’t in the business case for IBM’s announced purchase of ILOG today, I am getting my hopes up that this is the Christmas present that anyone using TBSM is looking for.

TBSM makes extensive use of ILOG under the covers for the core of the canvas and visualization. We barely scratch the surface in capabilities (see demos below) in how its used, but it is the foundation for all of the data driven widgets used in the canvas, custom dashboards, etc.

Let’s face it, we have a long way to improve in our dashboarding and visualization capabilities. The acquisition and product convergence focus has been a significant impact on new innovation in this area within TBSM. With the upcoming release of TBSM v4.2 soon to be behind us, I hope that we can finally make investments where they are desperately needed within the data visualization, user experience, widgets, real time charting/graphing and general sex appeal areas for creating the dashboards expected of products in this price point.

TBSM 4.2 will give us a new platform to build upon, but it WILL NOT MAKE SENSE to develop other components (widgets, charts/graphs, analytics, rules, visaulziation, workflow, etc.) in the buzz word of the day (AJAX, Dojo, Python, RoR, PHP, TCR/BIRT) when we may have this ILOG portfolio at our disposal. (my opinion only, I ack the biz side of these decisions)

I strongly encourage you to voice your thoughts and requirements for improvement of TBSM’s capabilities in these areas via appropriate channels.

ILOG has a log of powerful capabilities to offer should we choose to take advantage of them. Better yet, equipping you to take advantage of them with self service designers, SDKs, APIs, etc.

For example:

ILOG Visualization Portfolio
ILOG Diagrammer (TBSM uses this)
ILOG JViews Demos
ILOG Elixer
ILOG Elixer Demos AWESOME! Look at Gauges & Dials Demo!

I hope this is the Christmas present we’ve all been waiting on for TBSM this time next year!

July 28, 2008   1 Comment

links for 2008-07-24

July 23, 2008   No Comments

Compuware’s Bold BSM Statement

Compuware announced their Q1 earnings today and made a couple interesting statements on the call:

From Seeking Alpha:

As a fellow Compuware shareholder I think you should be pleased not just by our strong Q1 but by the opportunity Compuware has to help IT organizations around the world optimize their performance and get the most value out of their IT operations. The fundamental difference between us and our competition is we believe the category in which we participate of Business Service Management should be about proactive monitoring of IT performance rather than about capturing and resolving IT issues after the problems have occurred and the damage has been inflicted.

We will make the current positioning of the Business Service Management category obsolete in the years to come. So our success this quarter came through some important operational improvements implemented by our Compuware 2.0 initiative but the best is yet to come.

July 23, 2008   No Comments

links for 2008-07-23

July 22, 2008   No Comments