Keystones and Rivets

Auditing IT systems

“Yip, I’ve been promoted and I’m off to New York in a few weeks”, said Big D.

The other day I was chatting online with a former colleague who now works for a business process outsourcing company specialising in corporate information solutions.  He told me he is going to be a new Director for the US, focussing on Strategic Solutions for the Americas.

I made the critical mistake of shouting this news down the corridor to my business partner Fergus.

“Start spreeeeading the nyoooosss, Haaam leevin’ tooodaaaaaayyy...”, he wailed.

Throughout my career, in each office or location, there has always been at least one person who was convinced, despite the reactions of their ‘audience’, that they are a good singer.

Fergus is very convinced.  And very loud. 

The window in my office was open.  Outside, I could see squirrels throwing themselves off the oak trees.

The Pebble grimaced, and, above the racket, cried that it sounded like, “someone smothering a crow with a whoopee cushion.”  Mercifully, he forced shut a couple of doors and calm was restored.

“The guys say ‘well done Big D’”, I typed back.  Our chat continued.

“Thanks to all...what are you up to today...when’s the next blog coming out, what’s it going to be about?”

“I’m working on it now.  It’s about systems... how traditional functional systems don’t fit with the business process view of an organisation.”

“Really?  I was just in a meeting about that very subject.  We take a look from the business process perspective, and it always spans lots of IT systems. The boundaries round processes are completely different to the demarcation between IT Systems...So why are you doing that one?”

I went on to explain that I’d been following a series of posts by bloggers Dennis Howlett and Francine McKenna about IT systems, auditing and the Big Four…

IT (still) exists for one reason

The Pebble groaned.  “Another big 2.0 conference is coming up...I’ll be reading about it for weeks.” 

My non-tecchie colleague, who freely admits that the average pebble possesses more IT knowledge than he does, spends a few hours each day trawling various media for news and information of interest to our company.

Something he hates is anything ‘2.0’.  “Who comes up with this junk...is the pen the pencil 2.0?”, is a rant I’ve heard on more than one occasion.

The other day he was scanning a few blogs and I could tell he was going he let rip once again.  It was like watching and listening to a volcano in the hours leading up to an eruption. 

“All the usual rubbish”...‘uber’...‘paradigm shift’...‘3.0’...“THREE point oh?!! - you have to be kidding me!”  At this point various items of stationery went into orbit.

After I’d stopped laughing and he’d calmed down he said, “Why don’t we set up a 2.0 Skeptic blog?”

“One blog is enough to be getting on with, thank you very much” I replied.  But I could see his point. 

The name The Pebble chose for his proposed blog was inspired by the blog of the IT Skeptic.

The Companies Act and IT

How often has your business committed to an initiative and made announcements in the press about it, only to find that IT hasn’t managed to get its house in order in time for you to deliver?

Hopefully not very often.

Unfortunately, that was the situation that faced the UK Minister of State for Competitiveness, Stephen Timms, last November.

Significant parts of the new UK Companies Act were due to come into force on 1st October 2008.  However, Timms was forced to announce that the starting date has been put back by 12 months to 1st October 2009 because the government IT systems at Companies House needed to implement the changes would not be ready in time.

As you might expect this did not go down very well in some sections of the business community.

Cloud Computing

LUNKWILL:  Are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest, most powerful computer in all creation?
DEEP THOUGHT:  I described myself as the second greatest …Deep Thought… and such…
LUNKWILL:  Yes yes but…
DEEP THOUGHT:  …I am.
LUNKWILL:  But, but, but - this is preposterous! Are you not a greater computer than The Milliard Gargantu-Brain at Maximegalon, which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?
DEEP THOUGHT:  The Milliard Gargantu-Brain, a mere abacus. Mention it not.
FOOK:  And are you not a more fiendish disputant than The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler? Which can destroy -
DEEP THOUGHT:  The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler can talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey but only I can persuade it to go for a walk afterwards. Molest me not, with this, pocket calculator stuff!
LUNKWILL:  Then what's the problem?
DEEP THOUGHT:  I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me.

(The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Nick Carr recently commented on IBM's new initiative called Project KittyHawk, which sets out to use their Blue Gene technology.  The project aspires to create a “global-scale shared computer capable of hosting the entire Internet as an application”.

There have been a range of online discussions on the back of the article as, once again, Nick Carr manages to hit more than a couple of raw nerves.

The premise of the article is that IBM Blue Gene technology is creating computers of such power that data centres can offer vast amounts of  computational power that businesses can plug into and use according to need at a particular time.

These supercomputers can emulate many individual smaller servers (virtualisation) so businesses can migrate their IT services to this new model.

Rather than data centres just offering a place to put your own servers, they can start to offer virtual servers or services, enabling new business models to be adopted.

The IBM technology is so fast that Project Kittyhawk can emulate the entire internet. 

Understanding and Valuing Data Flow

My business partner, Fergus, and I were on our travels last week around the UK.

We used a couple of planes, a few trains and an automobile.

For a change, the journeys on the trains and the planes were smooth and on-time.

The car was a different matter though.

We hit a number of traffic jams that delayed us quite a bit.  The worst was on a motorway near Leeds where we sat without moving for well over an hour.  A truck had over-turned and stopped the flow of traffic.

During our fifth game of “I Spy” we got a call from The Pebble, and explained our situation.

“You know what?  That reminds me of our discussion the other day about network routing”, he said.

“The motorway is just like a cable and you are sitting there like little packets of data when a server goes down.”

I could tell he was taking a little pleasure in our predicament.

“Well, networks don’t quite work like that...”, I began to reply.  Mercifully, another call came to my rescue before I had to go into the intricacies of communication protocols between hosts.

Eventually we got going again and during the next couple of days met a few companies, each working in different industrial sectors.  A regular topic in our discussions was how data flows through and across an organisation – and more importantly, how it is documented and portrayed to non-technical stakeholders of that data.

To investigate, analyse and communicate the data flows, some of the companies had Systems Analysts who used formal Data Flow methodologies such as Yourdon/DeMarco, SSADM and Gane-Sardon.  Others had only basic Visio diagrams to try to document how applications and functions within those applications interfaced with other applications.  Some companies, however, had no documentation at all.

Trying to cross No Man's Land

The Pebble and I work well together.

But he is an Arts graduate, so I have to humour him from time to time.

This entails having to listen every so often to one of his “stories” about history or politics. 

Today, for some reason, he decided to explain why the Red Army initially collapsed during the German invasion of Russia during 1941. 

“Barbarossa”, “Lebensraum”, “OKW”,  “Timoshenko”, “Smolensk”, “Stavka”…

The Pebble often talks about interesting things but occasionally he uses too much terminology.  As is sometimes the case, after a few minutes I felt my eyes glazing over.  My mind started to drift into that strange state where you feel conscious and unconscious at the same time.  The lights were on, but there was definitely nobody home.   

His talk about matters military must have had some impact though.  Through the haze I began asking myself - when did IT last go into battle with a genuine understanding of what the business was trying to do?

When did Business and IT last plan together strategically, agree tactics, and march together with clear objectives?

How about ten years ago...?

Understand Value to Enable Communication

Last week FT.com and Techworld quoted some research from Micro Focus into the financial value IT systems provide to business.

Many companies have managed to control IT budgets by ensuring spend is focused through authorised procurement channels, consolidating supplier lists and rationalising software and hardware assets.  Others have gone the extra step of outsourcing to gain even greater visibility of IT spend.  There are plenty of techniques documented on cost management.

A nut which is more difficult to crack is how to value IT and quantify how this spend contributes to business performance, so the figures quoted in the research made for interesting reading:

Micro Focus research, carried out in companies with revenues from $100m up to over $1bn, shows that less than half of all CIOs & CFOs (48%) ever try to quantify the financial value of their IT assets. Only 37% of CIOs have tried, compared to 60% of Finance Heads. Less than a third of all respondents (29%) from both groups, ever try to quantify the contribution all their IT assets make to the business' performance.

Just over a third of CIOs have tried to find out the financial value of their IT assets.  And that is in an industry with a spend of over $1 Trillion per year.  Are there many other industries which could get away with that?

Feature: IT exists for one reason

Never underestimate the degree of clarity that a fresh pair of eyes can bring to a complex situation.

Late one Sunday night a few years ago, my business partner and I were discussing the Oil & Gas markets our new IT company could service.

In particular, we were discussing how to best use IT to maximise the financial value of a) the oil and gas products flowing through a refinery belonging to one of our clients, and b) the huge quantities of data used by the business.

We had many ideas about creating applications to provide a joined up view of how the exploration and manufacturing businesses interacted, but we were struggling to define an appropriate methodology that would put IT in a business context.