2012 to 2013, old wine in new bottle

In November 2011 I wrote about predictions for the CIO. Because I did not want to stop at 10, the post had 11 predictions. This year I did not create a list of predictions or a wish list for Santa CEO/CFO to fulfil. I also gave it a decent amount of time coming to end of February thus 16 months have elapsed; now looking at the list, its efficacy and applicability to the current year and beyond, I realize that the world at large for the CIO has changed but not changed. So here’s the list and current scenario.

1.     CIOs globally will continue to be challenged on operating budgets. Capital investments will become relatively easier; operating expenses will need to be controlled very tightly.

Talking to many CIOs and CFOs in the last two months, this remains reality almost in its permanency

2.     BITA (Business IT Alignment) will fall off the priority list for many as it will no longer be an issue. Business will acknowledge IT contribution and will work with IT to plan business goals. There will be no separate IT goals.

This shift was also acknowledged this year by the premier IT research company and validated by CIOs

3.     Attrition will not be the problem, retention will be; with economic and political uncertainty, staff will hang on to their respective jobs. CIOs will have to take some hard decisions.

This trend is beginning to become a worry for a few CIOs; in the last 6 months there were many IT staff that were hit and were looking for opportunities.

4.     Clouds will be the first choice for deploying apps for the mobile workforce. The rest will continue to access applications behind the firewall. Hybrid clouds will remain experimental as CIOs figure out that it really does not save money. CIOs will no longer build data centres.

Reality is quite close to this; I have yet to see core apps moving off. ROI has eluded everyone thus far

5.     Lead by Consumerization, mobile devices will be out of IT control (for good) and the personal device will find a way to get inside; resisting CIOs will have to provide equivalent additional device, which eventually the Business will turn down. Managing multiple screens will become a pain for the Executive who will challenge IT to make it simpler. The phone as a corporate device will thus be replaced by the tablet over the next 2 years.

Tablets are making inroads especially with Win 8 stability curve round the corner. Everyone has 2-3 devices today with one of them rarely used but toted along nonetheless

6.     CIOs will or be forced to challenge the cost of sustaining big ERP (licenses, support, etc.) as it keeps growing; alternate support vendors will gain market share. Usage will shift out from the office to using marketplace supplied micro-apps thereby challenging the existence of big ERP in 5 years.

Now this is one that I was really hoping would begin to help the CIO. So far no luck though

7.     Social media fatigue will set in and even marketing teams will be asked to create ROI for expenses and investments on such initiatives. CIOs will need to manage expectations around social analytics while Consultants will thrive with maturity models and make loads of money.

Consultants did make money; the declining interest is evident though attention is shifting to another hyped technology below.

8.     The CIO will continue to be tasked with managing information security with the CISO reporting into him/her. A few cloud bursts (cloud security breaches) will make matters worse before things settle down over 2013 and beyond.

Well, security breaches are becoming business as usual; uptime has been a bigger headache. So the CISO continues to live in the shadow of the CIO

9.     Big Data will remain high on hype with vendors pushing and CIOs scratching their heads if it really gives the benefits promised.

Flowing from social media, the mushrooming industry is riding the hype curve while everyone is wondering if it is a key looking for a lock

10. Custom development of solutions will wane with ocean of micro-apps promising to enable business processes as effectively. At the same time appliances will replace generic hardware.

Custom solutions are slowing down though the micro-app has not replaced it as yet. Appliances are yet to get the required attention

11. Many CIOs and research analysts will not agree many with the above points.

When I published this list, many did disagree and some acknowledged it. This year I think I will stick to this for now.

P.S. This post appears to have some issues when opened in Internet Explorer; so please take the trouble to view in other browsers. If anyone knows how to solve this, send me a comment

The IT Orphanage, happy ending ?

Last week when I wrote about orphaned projects, applications and solutions that find no takers despite them having started life as perceived business critical process or need, many of the readers wrote back with their stories of orphanages within their companies. The problem has been around for a long time since the time IT departments started developing software for ever changing stated and unstated business needs. The idea of alignment between Business and IT thereby took shape and still remains the subject of discussion.

Rarely did the CIO bring this to the discussion table with customers or at Management meetings as the failure was largely attributed to insufficient business engagement and understanding; compounded by the fact that there were some broken systems and challenges that kept the IT departments busy just to run business as usual. So everyone worked in expectation of creating a better tomorrow driven by new and disruptive technology trends and new solutions that promised to solve the issues of the past and future.

The protagonist CIO in the earlier post (The IT Orphanage) had a big white elephant sitting on his lap and the enterprise had written off the project as a bad experience. More than a dozen man years of effort seemed a waste and the solution had no takers. The team was disheartened, the business indifferent, and the vendors wondering what next. The CEO was not interested in funding the project further and wanted to cut losses and move on. The situation seemed hopeless.

Undeterred, the CIO called the team together and captured the sequence of events from the initiation of the project. Step by step they analysed the methodology, the plan, the data elements, the solution pieces and the overall architecture, and finally the business need and benefit. Everything appeared to fit in; they could not find anything wrong with the technology. They went through the business objections and the critique of the results one by one and that is when they discovered the real cause.

The impacted business users were being challenged by the outcomes; they were feeling threatened by the results that expected them to give up their old way of thinking. The actionable insights that the solution proposed required the business to unlearn what had worked for them so far and approach their customers and the market differently. A consultant would have classified this as a change management failure; however this went a little deeper than just change management.

So the CIO farmed out his team to selectively target some of the empathetic users; they adopted a struggling business unit and worked with the business head to help her. Having been pushed to a corner and labelled as an under-performing unit, the business head was happy to use any help possible. She became an ally and agreed to work with the team. The team worked in their spare time, over weekends, to meet the new partner’s requirements. The vendor pitched in with no fee to recolor the elephant.

Over the next six months everyone toiled and sweated; the business started showing an uptrend and quickly turned profitable. The business head emboldened by the success redoubled the efforts embracing the new state of nirvana. In management meetings she started talking about the tools of her success and how it has helped them grow. She urged others to discard their cynicism and give a fresh look to the solution that was probably ahead of the evolution curve in the industry.

With the numbers speaking rather than perceptions, grudgingly the CEO endorsed the way forward and slowly other units came around. The ramp up was quick and the fire spread quickly giving the company a distinct leadership position and advantage. Fresh investments gave the project a boost and the team a great sense of achievement. Success has many fathers and soon everyone wanted to talk about how they had supported the project earlier. The orphanage had one less member now.

Soon after, the CIO quit !

The IT Orphanage

It had been a long search, far and wide, across the oceans; many able men and women working as teams traversed the globe in her quest. A few options were shortlisted but discarded very quickly when some deficiency was uncovered with deeper analysis. The rigour redoubled, the pursuit unwavering, the promise of reward for the long-term kept them going. Their leader encouraged the team though the journey especially when they appeared to falter and give-up.

Almost a year into the expedition, the quest finally came to an end with what appeared to be a perfect and made to order ending. The leadership team got together to discuss the outflow; she was expensive and required high maintenance. No one had the courage thus far to take such a risk. However the promise of the future convinced everyone that it would be worth the investment. So they all agreed to part with the precious gold coins and get her on board. High risk, high return said the treasurer.

She was welcomed with a lot of fanfare, the headman chose a name from the many suggested and the message spread across on the new unique acquisition. Everyone contributed to setting the expectations that rose in unison as if in a crescendo; everyone watched the future with euphoric anticipation. Smiths and specialists from all over the world got together to define outcomes that she would enable. Progress was slow and soon people started paying lesser attention focusing on their daily chores.

Life continued as usual with occasional reviews that highlighted challenges to understand and adapt to her whims. The workmen toiled day and night for many moons encouraged by their leader who did not give up belief. Two winters later the team broke off into a joyous dance; everything worked as designed, all the links delivered, the input validated, the outcome was as expected. Rushing to the leadership team they demonstrated the end result, chests puffed with obvious pride.

Celebration was called, everyone wanted to be associated with success; anecdotes of arduous journey spread with friendly banter.  After almost 18 months since the start day, the project had gone live and was churning out results that were unfamiliar territory but delivered business outcomes the leader had believed possible. The competitive advantage gained using the new technology was evident and accolades poured in locally and globally for the unique pioneering solution.

Too good to last, some of the naysayers found reason to challenge and doubt the results; conventional wisdom did not support the new solution; thus they were able to sow seeds of doubt which spread quickly through the enterprise. The initial success was passed off as stroke of luck and not sustainable. With no supporters, almost everyone went back to their old way and deserted the solution as a bad dream and mistake. The solution thus joined the IT orphanage.

Applications and solutions that the IT team developed bur no one really used; solutions that were bought by users only to be discarded with no one to support them; applications and reports that are always urgent for development but rarely complete UAT; and if they do, hardly anyone wants to use them, they all finally find their place in the IT orphanage. These have no owner, no user, and no parent to support them. Once relegated they rarely if ever find a benefactor who is willing to support them.

Every organization has a (un)labelled orphanage that sometimes gets very crowded especially if the CIO and the IT team is unable to assert themselves or if they collectively work to create solutions that are disconnected from business reality. The CIO needs to highlight such instances transparently and openly to either change team behaviour or improve chances of success; and/or change business engagement and ownership that rarely if at all any need to be assigned to the orphanage.

P.S. Within a year the project was revived by the CIO and has stayed a success now for over 2 years; that is a story for another time.

Feeding the Elephant

Recently I participated in a Big Data conference which boasted of speakers of all shapes and sizes (literally too) from government, global multinationals, large enterprises, to vendors and academicians rounding off the tail. The audience filled the room to the brim with expectations of gaining insights from the deliberations and debate. After all, according to IT research analysts, Big Data is one of the key technology trends on everyone’s agenda and priority list. It’s like if you are not doing it, then you are Jurassic.

The agenda comprised of speakers from all mentioned above; some had done it, some were selling wares with titles containing “Big Data”, a couple of consultants and service providers who offered their “expertise” on the subject, and finally a CIO to provide an enterprise perspective of how are corporates looking at it. All in all it was an eclectic mix which promised to give value for time invested to the organizers and participants. I took up a corner perched at the edge of my seat and watched the proceedings.

Setting the foundation the keynote speaker talked about the concept, progress made by IT companies, known deployments of Big Data by a few FMCG, internet companies, and government agencies. A case study of a potential big data application at a government initiative demonstrated the dimensions of Big Data, i.e. Volume, Variety, Velocity and Value. Everything was going well thus far with the audience – a mix of technology staff, IT students, and some service providers – lapping it up all.

Then events took a turn that changed the atmosphere in the room; everyone sat up awoken from their stupor and peaceful existence in the cushioned chairs. Like falling off a cliff was how a participant described it later; the turmoil changed the agenda and the utterings of future speakers who were cautious in their exultations of Big Data. The speaker exceeded his time; no one interrupted his thought train. He challenged everyone to challenge his hypothesis; none did. He was the CIO talking about relevance to the corporate.

Who needs Big Data ? Where does it fit into the maturity curve of an enterprise using Business Intelligence or Analytics ? How do you partner with business who is still swamped by reports or dashboards at best ? Actionable insights ? When does a data warehouse become inadequate and Big Data become necessary ? Is it about unstructured data only or volume of data or complexity of analysis ? Is analysis of social media tags or text Big Data even when volume is low ? So what is Big Data ?

Consultants and IT companies have developed models and tools respectively to hypothetically help companies mine the sea of data. They have been talking about uses and value across industries based on some assumptions. A few pilots with companies have not empirically demonstrated a correlation between the Big Data analytics and the benefit. Internet companies have used scalable models of their earlier working solutions as they grew; e.g. recommendation engines, product associations, etc. These are not new.

Is it just hype or a technology solution created for specific purposes now being touted as nirvana for all kinds of data problems or analytics that have historically belonged to the data mart or data warehouse ? The CIO challenged the audience to clear their vision, heads, and minds and think rationally on what is the business problem they want to solve before deciding on the tools and technology. The yellow elephant in the room cannot be ignored; its relevance however needs to be established before feeding it.

At the end of the session which led into the lunch break, the CIO was hounded for his contrarian views; everyone wanted a piece of advice and some wanted to debate their conflicts in private. The poor fellow was deprived of lunch with the next session being ringed in. I believe Big Data like any new technology trend needs evaluation in the context of the enterprise’s reality. Is there benefit to customers or employees ? If not why do it ? Like my old CFO friend said “If it makes cents, only then it makes sense !”