Service Catalog 101

Citrix Systems Self-Service IT Storefront Improves End-User IT Efficiency

Consistent and cost-effective IT service delivery for Citrix worldwide is at the heart of this company's IT strategy. To support this effort, Citrix recently implemented newScale RequestCenter to manage end user service requests for their internal IT operations.  Anton Systems, Inc. assisted with the implementation project for Citrix.

Example of how newScale RequestCenter^® provides end users with a personalized view of the Service Catalog.

"Citrix is focused on flexibility and responsiveness to ever-changing market requirements.  To meet this challenge in today's economy, our IT organization must be more productive and efficient than ever," said Guy Desautels, vice president of IT at Citrix Systems, Inc. 

Citrix's new Service Catalog initiative - as well as its recent Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) program - are examples of Citrix's commitment to providing a self-service IT environment and consumer-like experience for its more than 5,000 employees in locations around the world.  For more details on the announcement go here.

newScale at Pink Elephant Show Las Vegas

IT Business Integration: Good Vibrations is the theme at Pink Elephant's 14th Annual IT Service Management Conference & Exhibition. The event kicks off in Las Vegas February 21st and newScale will be there in Booth #404. We'll have our Wheel of Fortune up and spinning. Stop by to give it a spin and enter the drawing to win a Blu-Ray DVD player.

While you are there, visit one of the following sessions to hear the latest on Service Catalogs:

• Hey, You! Get On To My Cloud with newScale CTO and Founder, Rodrigo Flores – Monday, February 21, 3:00pm – 4:15pm (Session #407)
• Ask The Technology Experts: Q&A Panel Discussions - Cloud Computing  with George Spalding of Pink Elephant, Moderator, Bill Fine, Panelist – Tuesday, February 23, 10:20am – 11:35am (Session #507)
• Service Catalog:  How Did We Ever Get Along Without It? with Mike Sparks of Allstate – Tuesday, February 23, 1:25pm – 2:40pm (Session #706a)
• How To Use The Service Catalog To Achieve IT Business Integration   with Rodrigo Flores of newScale and Troy DuMoulin of Pink Elephant – Wednesday, February 24, 10:20am – 11:35am (Session #901)

Data Center Haiku Contest Winners!!

JUDGING IS HARD. I'm glad I'm not handing out gold medals for figure skating because I'd be there all night whining through my nose, why can't they ALL get a gold?  I just can't decide on one. Because seriously? You all deserve a gold. Well, most of you. Some of you crushed it on the syllable pattern. You got 5-7-5 confused with 7-5-7, but your effort and creative form ranked right up there with PURE GENIUS.

There were over 50 haiku entries, and they were pretty much all brilliant. You can see about 30 or 40 in these post comments.

My favorites were those that folded seamlessly together a seasonal reference with technical vocabulary, making the haiku smooth and funny. And some of you made me think you have a special relationship with your server farm and all I can say is GET HELP. No seriously, those were among my favorites.

And since we couldn't pick just one, we picked three plus a distinguished honorable mention. 

Congratulations to the winners of our Data Center Haiku contest!  They are:

First Place: Mike Kelleher

Second Place: Elisheva Leybovitch

Third Place: Tom Lannelli

Honorable Mention: Kevin Timmons

 

  
 

For the winners, email us and I'll get back to you to confirm the spelling of your name and get a mailing address.  Thanks to all of you for participating!

Three Minutes that COULD Change Your Life - newScale Explainer Video

Wouldn't it be great if we could concatenate everything worthwhile into 3 minute chunks?  College would be over in a week, shuttle missions would last a half-hour, and Cricket might actually be a marketable game.  But alas, it is rare indeed when anything lasting only 3 minutes is educational, relevant, AND entertaining all at once.

So I guess that's why we in the hallowed halls of newScale are a-buzz about our new 3-minute explainer video.  The flexible nature of enterprise software as a whole makes explaining it in ways my Mother-in-Law can understand as challenging as explaining PC registries to - well, my Mother-in-Law.

But I think we're on to something with this fun little video.  Give it a look-see and see if you can figure out where newScale is going and why we're excited to be going there.  It may not actually change your life, but you may just find that this is 3 minutes you were happy to invest.

By the way, my Mother-in-Law LOVES it.

In the News - newScale 9 All Shiny and New

The latest Service Catalog software release from newScale is making the news. Check out this article on the highlights of the release in The Register. 

This release -  newScale 9 - includes a brand new solution that goes by the name of newScale LifecycleCenter.  To learn more about what's new in newScale 9 go here. 

Data Center Haiku Contest!

It’s time to boot up the cerebral right side and balance those cortical hemispheres!

For global fame, peer recognition and a beautiful coffee mug featuring YOUR winning Haiku, simply submit your best haiku and win!

We’ll keep the rules super simple:

• No more than three lines.
• Make at least one seasonal reference*.
• Keep it data center relevant.

*a seasonal reference can be about weather, colors, or artifacts of nature like "tree", "sand", or "breeze".

Examples

You need it right now

Spin up, oh white fluffy cloud

Virtual Machine

------

Not finding instance

Hundreds - a virtual sea

Expensive, this sprawl

------

Yesterday it worked

Today it does not, black cloud

No one hears your screams

------

Be strong, blade server

Stay in your rack and burn hot

You are beautiful

Got it? Easy!

How to Submit

Before February 15, 2010 tweet your haiku to @CarolDirig, email it to us at marketing@newscale.com, or simply add it in the comments of this blog post.

We promise not to publish, sell, or in any way use your email address except to tell you you’ve won.

Prize

The winner will be announced the last week of February. If your haiku is chosen as the winning entry we’ll send you this coffee mug. Not just ANY coffee mug, a mug featuring your winning haiku for all your friends to admire and be reminded of your poetic brilliance. 

 

 

Webinar: Using a Service Catalog to Achieve IT-Business Integration

Why is the Service Catalog a must-have in your strategic management tool kit?  If you want to hear how the experts from Pink Elephant and newScale answer this question, attend the upcoming webinar titled "Using a Service Catalog to Achieve IT-Business Integration".

Join the Pink Elephant and newScale authors of the popular practical guide "Defining IT Success Through The Service Catalog" as they explain the strategic importance of a Service Catalog and how to use it to strengthen IT’s capabilities and achieve IT-business integration.

So, don't miss out.  Register today for this popular on-demand webinar available at http://www.newscale.com/pink10/blog

Holiday Office Party Klingon Translation Guide

Or, How to Speak Business in your Published Service Catalog

My prized possession is a coffee cup from Star Fleet Academy, where I graduated Summa Cum Last.   Well, that and my space heater which I’m not supposed to have under my desk. Let’s keep that secret between us.

Among the many useful things I learned at the Academy, including how to prevent Tribble repopulation, play 3D chess, and look intensely sexy feigning a Vulcan mind meld with attractive men in jumpsuits, is the mastery of the Klingon language.

Quch QI’lop!

That roughly means HAPPY HOLIDAYS. Rough, because both Happy and Holidays have no place in the Klingon culture, so I improvised with Pidgin Klingon.

While working with IT organizations around the world I have found fluent Klingon to be quite useful. There is a hidden society among our ranks. You know who you are. You with the glue-on ears and burning desire to huskily say, MAKE IT SO.  (Note the boldly intentional split infinitive.)

When I hear my IT friends talk to their business customers, they are essentially reverting to their Klingon comfort zone. We cannot underestimate the importance of communication in the success of your Service Catalog project. If your business customer doesn’t understand what you’re saying, you might as well retire your thrusters and settle into a lonely existence on Caldik Prime.

I have prepared a useful guide to help in these situations.

Holiday Office Party Klingon Translation Guide		Handy IT to Customer Translation Quick Reference
The thing you say you do	Klingon	What your business customer is thinking	Consider framing it this way
Clustering	Ghom	Cluster Frack. Whatever it is, I want it now.	Scaling When it Counts As part of this valuable service we make sure our servers can handle the highest volumes of data to accommodate a growing business.
High Availability	Availability ‘Itlh	Hi yourself. I want it now.	There When You Need it. Our processes are designed to provide minimal interruptions to service during critical business hours.
Evenly distributed infrastructure costs	Jech nob may infrastructure costs	I’m not paying for it.	High Value Services Because you share common costs with other business units, we are able to keep our rates below market while providing  quality services.
99.99% Availability	Availability vatlhvI’HutHut	It’s always available.	Reliable Access to Your Applications For this Tier 1 service we guarantee that your applications are available when you need them, minimizing down time to .876 hours in a calendar year.
High Performance	Haq ‘Itlh	That’s nice. I’m not paying for it.	Highest Performing Server Available Ideal for production applications, our servers provide the fastest end-to-end response times of any servers on the market today.
24x7 Support	Support cha’loS x soch	If you do not answer my call immediately I will hunt you down and sit on you and THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. And, I’m not paying for it.	Critical Support for Critical Needs Sometimes you need the extra coverage of 24 x 7 support provided in this premium package. Service requests and incidents are acknowledged within 1 hour during local business hours.
Backup and Restore	Chach ‘ej tI’	Can I get the restore option without the backup bit?  I’m not paying for it.	You Deserve Peace of Mind We perform nightly backups and store data up to 6 months. Restoration is guaranteed within 3 business days.
Secured System	Pat ngaQ	Seriously? I want it now.	Full Protection We employ the most advanced data encryption tools available, ensuring that all data entering and leaving our network are in compliance with regulatory standards.
Continuous Improvement	taH Dub	Good for YOU!!	Getting The Job Done We take our service seriously, and are constantly monitoring and managing to the highest standards in service delivery and excellence.

 

And might I suggest this lovely Star Trek Engineering and Security t-shirt as a gift for your favorite IT peson?

 

Happy Holidays!

-Carol

PS. Check back next week for our New Years Data Center Haiku contest!

 

Thud !

One Way to Shatter IT Silos

 

If you’re a fan of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe or Lord of the Rings, you should read novels by Terry Pratchett, who ingeniously combines the best of humor and fantasy in his hysterical books. I recently read Thud!, which puts comic relief around ethnic tension. In this book, vampires and werewolves dislike the very smell of each other, and trolls and dwarfs most definitely do not get along. (I can’t really blame the trolls, what with all those miniature dwarf horses and carts stuffing up morning traffic.)

The story reminded me of an insightful experience I had with a large IT organization in the great American heartland.

They hired us to consult on their project to put their static Service Catalog online, into advertised services that could be (1) orderable and (2) tracked and charged back to consuming business units.

How hard could THAT be?

Well, turns out anything is impossible when you get a group of people together.

Our first step was to take inventory of existing services and flush out the details of one (hosted SAP Financials) as a team, so they could learn a repeatable process to define the rest of their Service Catalog. Witness the day-1 tension between IT silos: application support (the Dwarfs) asked their customer, “How quickly do you need the application ?”

“Um…”

“Ok, well, let’s just say 3 business days.”

“Um….I…”

And then the infrastructure team (the Trolls) started getting excited, “ I don’t think we have a server ready for that application. I mean, what if we don’t? I don’t know how long it will take me to get this ready.”

Now the IT finance guy (the Vampire) chimes in with a 30 minute monologue on why they have to CHANGE (no!!) how they allocate infrastructure costs ….blah blah blah THUD. Everyone got very angry, reverting to a vocabulary of very short words. I’ve seen better communication between rival high school linebackers.

In Sir Pratchett’s novel the characters play a chess-like game called Thud, which is a symbolic replication of the Battle of Koom Valley – a historic battle between Dwarfs and Trolls. The game requires that the player think as both sides;  you can only win if you understand what’s motivating and driving the other players. (You can, of course, play the on-line board game. After hours. With your team. Under full supervision.)

What we applied among our collection of collaborators (er, saboteurs…) that week was like playing Thud. Each silo had to understand the other players, while putting definition around their own limitations.  I won’t go into the details (blog posts are supposed to be short!), but at the end we had a very successful week.

Success means we got various silos to coordinate their efforts to define one full end-to-end service. In the process we learned some valuable lessons about working across silos:

· Don’t underestimate the value of an IT Product Manager or Relationship Manager. These roles are critical to building a successful Service Catalog. Short of hiring a therapist (“how do you feel about a 3 day SLA?”) these guys take responsibility for understanding the requirements of the business, and marrying that to the availability of products and services that span IT groups.

 

· Present options to narrow choices, even when you’re “just brainstorming” with your business customer. Prepare with definitions of achievable service levels and tiers of packages. When structured around defined choices that everyone can understand, the conversation is more efficient.

 

· Focus on Phase 1 for faster success.  Although it helps to understand your intended cost structure as you build a framework for your Service Catalog, don’t force cost accounting into phase 1. Phase 1 should result in the definition and publication of services, which wins you immediate success and introduces dialog across delivery and infrastructure teams. 

 

· Think like a Marketeer, or contract with one. It is difficult, but critical, to describe your services to your customer so they grok the value you offer. Saying, “We support high availability” is not heard as “We guarantee that you have access to critical applications. Always.”  Your customer is another kind of silo – learn to communicate with them.

 

So at the end of OUR story, the Trolls, Dwarfs, and Vampires broke their communication barriers and learned to understand one another, living happily ever after in Service Catalog bliss. 

 

And if you know someone who enjoys a good fantasy, check out Thud! on Amazon.com for holiday gift giving.

 

Happy Holidays!

 

pictures © Wizards of the Coast (WotC)

 

 

 

Service Catalog Project 101: Getting Started

Ten years of experience with organizations implementing Service Catalogs has taught us a few things about putting together one of these things. And without doubt there is ONE QUESTION everyone has in common – how will I ever start this thing?

 

Every project starts off with excitement and stress, but there’s something about pulling together a successful Service Catalog project that makes even tough guys sob under their desks.  I've seen it. IT'S NOT PRETTY.

 

What we typically see is that you’re on point to get it done fast and the boss wants a progress report every week, but you got a little voice in your head telling you to DO IT RIGHT. Lay some groundwork to succeed.

 

So, how DO you kick start your first Service Catalog project and avoid the crying-under-your-desk fate?

 

If you’re in the beginning stages of your Service Catalog project and need help getting off the ground, there are a few basic practices to jump start your project. For example:

 

1. Define: Inventory the services you have, or need to have to support the business.

 

2. Create: Standardize the supporting services and components.

 

3. Describe: Explain the tiers, packaging options, and the value of your services.

 

4. Publish:  Show the value of your services in professional, modern, on-line brochures.

 

Before you make your Service Catalog alive and orderable, you need to set your project up to succeed. Your long-term goal is to get to an actionable Service Catalog as quickly as possible, so your immediate goals might look something like this:

 

• You want to champion your Service Catalog project. You need to get funding or recognition of your project.

 

• You want to immediately improve the image of IT.  You want a more modern look and feel, or just need help articulating the value of what your team does.

 

• You need to make (and show) immediate progress in your Service Catalog project.  The pressure is on to show that you’re making strides in building an operational Service Catalog.

 

• You want to invest wisely, creating a platform you can leverage for years to come.

 

This isn’t a product pitch (really!), but if you want to try a tool that walks you through those initial four steps, check out this free two week trial from newScale.  It lets you assemble service offerings from standardized, reusable components and publish them in on-line service brochures.  Later, those service offerings and their components can be made orderable for your end-users through the Service Request Catalog.

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I worked on the product with my friends and co-workers here at newScale so I am (a little) biased. J  But it’s free, so it’s worth a look.   The trial is hosted, so you don’t need to download anything. You’ll get usernames and passwords with a custom URL within 24 hours of qualifying, so you can start poking around right away. You’ll quickly get to a point where you can use this platform to champion your own ideas for your Service Catalog project.

 

Ok, that did sound like a project pitch. But it’s hard to resist sharing good things that are free, especially in the holiday season.

 

Good luck!

 

InformationWeek crowns newScale "Editors Choice" and it feels GOOD

There's nothing like that GREAT feeling that ensues when you get indisputable feedback that all the writing, all the coding, all the travel, the meetings, late nights, presentations, and offsites are actually worth it.

newScale was found to be the "Editors Choice" in a recent Service Catalog rolling review by InformationWeek which compared offerings from Service-Now, CA, PMG, and newScale.

Says InformationWeek:

“We liked newScale based on its easy workflow development, incorporation of both business and technical services, massive number of templates, and ITIL v3 roles already built into the tool.  newScale did well based on our criteria, which included ease of use, administration, and integration capabilities. Its architecture and design also would let it scale and change along with a business.” 

There were many other reasons InformationWeek liked us in the areas of Service Catalog templates, service design and workflow, reporting, and pre-defined ITIL roles, and if you're interested you can read those details HERE. 

We at newScale have been doing the Service Catalog thing for going on 10 years now, and we feel like we offer the most options and the biggest boat load of value to our customers. But hearing it from a respected research periodical in a Service Catalog bakeoff is really inspiring.

And it feels really good!

 

Service Catalog vs. Spreadsheet Webinar

Are you struggling with the perennial ITSM question: “What’s a service?” Trying to document all your service definitions in a Word document or Excel spreadsheet? Don’t have the infrastructure to publish your catalog cost-effectively? Then have we got a webinar for you!   

Join Third Sky and newScale in this webinar to find out how the new Service Catalog Quick Start Program  can help you launch a successful Service Catalog with rapid time-to-value and immediate results.  To learn more about this webinar go here.

Case Studies Highlight ITIL Best Practices Benefits in Today's Economy

Significant cost savings and productivity improvements are just two of the types of benefits real companies, like Wachovia, a Wells Fargo Company, and Barclay's Global Investors, are experiencing using ITIL best practices. To learn more take a look at an ITIL case study article on searchCIO.com. The article is called: ITIL case study: ITIL best practices at two financial services firms. Other benefits cited include improved service delivery to the business and increased IT transparency. 

ITIL provides a framework of best practices for the entire service lifecycle - from initial Service Strategy and Design, to the Transition and Operation of those services, to Continual Service Improvement. To leverage the  ITIL version 3 framework and its best practices to achieve benefits like those highlighted in the article, the Service Catalog is the first place to start. To learn more, take a look at the video link to the left.

 By the way, did I mention that both case studies are about companies are newScale customers? To learn more about newScale Service Catalog solutions go to http://www.newscale.com/solutions/overview.html.

 

 

Virtualization, Cloud Computing Webinar w/ Gartner Analyst A Must See

Virtualization and cloud computing are the two highest-impact technology issues facing enterprise IT today. Are you ready?  Questions that you need to address today are:

	Is virtualization doomed to be another IT science project, or will it deliver the expected ROI?
	Will cloud computing put IT out of work, or can internal IT become more cloud-like?

To learn how an IT Service Catalog can help you achieve the promised virtualization benefits of cost savings and  agility, while paving the way for an internal cloud - join Cameron Haight, Gartner research vice president, and Scott Hammond, president and CEO of newScale, for this on-demand video webcast.

Taming the Virtual Data Center

It goes without saying that virtualization is a phenomenally attractive discipline in the data center.  But with innovation comes risk: 

• The risk of suddenly realizing that you have more virtual servers up than you know about.  And, perhaps more importantly, the risk of not knowing how to FIX your virtual server sprawl problem when you realize you have it.

• The risk of not having pre-determined task orchestration than manages the entire stack of service workloads surrounding your virtualization (storage, network IDs, security, disaster recovery/backup, etc.), and linking that whole process back to the requesters that asked for them in the first place.

• The risk of not being able to leverage your virtualization operating model to include other hosting solutions like physical servers and cloud computing in a visible, controllable way that ensures consistency to the business while staying compliant to IT policies.

Many of our customers have discovered the additive value of having a Service Catalog provide the "operating model" for their virtualization technology.  That's why it's so exciting to us that one of our partners, Anton Systems, Inc., is spreading the word about Taming the Virtual Data Center in a mid-day seminar at the prestigious Doral Resort and Spa in Miami, Florida, this Thursday, October 1, 2009, from 11:00am to 2:00pm. 

A solid line up of virtualization and technology partners including newScale, VMware, and NetApp will present their perspectives on virtualization best practices, ending with yours truly presenting on how newScale's FrontOffice Suite for the Virtual Data Center solution gives you that elusive "operating model" that is extensible and flexible without customization.

Come learn from the industry's best and brightest; click on the link above for more information or to register for the event.  Hey, we're giving away shirts and they're throwing in lunch with the deal so you really can't go wrong.

Service Catalog as Self-Service IT Storefront

Recently the Federal Government announced an initiative out of the General Services Administration called Apps.gov.

The focus of this initiative is to provide a self-service 'storefront' portal to order business applications and cloud services.  It's essentially an IT Service Catalog (although clearly still a work in progress).  

To learn more about Apps.gov and its impact, take a look at the CNET article Five ways that Apps.gov is a trendsetter. 

Trend #1?  It's the IT Service Catalog.

Service Portfolio Management for CIOs

Today's lead story on SearchCIO.com highlights the Service Catalog and Service Portfolio Management.

The article is called Service Portfolio Management: Helping IT Get Back to Business 

It does a nice job of defining what Service Portfolio Management (SPM) is, its role in ITIL v3, the difference between project portfolio management (PPM) and SPM, and the importance of the Service Catalog in running the business of IT.  

One of my favorite quotes from the article is pictured here to the right, from Forrester analyst Craig Symons.

The article also cites newScale customer Nilesh Patel at Barclays Global Investors (BGI). 

For more on the BGI case study, check out the on-demand Webinar at: www.newscale.com/bgi

Steve the Server Guy - Will Provision for Food

The VMworld 2009 conference is over but everyone’s still talking about Steve the Server Guy and “Will Provision for Food”. We had some fun with this theme at this major event put on by our friends at VMware.

But to get a feel for the serious message behind this visual - the need to track VM requests, enable self-service IT and to enforce standards that control demand - take a look at this informative video starring "Steve the Server Guy" - also known as newScale's own Steve Watkins.

To learn more about  what all the buzz was about regarding the newScale Service Catalog for VMware - just go to www.newscale.com - you can even request a free trial!

newScale and Steve the Server Guy Featured at VMworld 2009

From August 31st to September 3rd, an estimated 11,000 attendees will converge on San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center for the virtualization event of the year: VMworld.

newScale and our market-leading Service Catalog solutions will be there with bells on, showcasing our newScale FrontOffice Suite for the Virtual Data Center.  We're really looking forward to telling as many system administrators, enterprise architects, server operations managers, and application development project managers how our "VDC" solution provides the perfect "operating model" to complement VMware's market-leading virtualization technology. 

No longer do users or project managers have to guess about where to request servers and how to track those requests over time.  No longer do server delivery teams need to kill themselves with relentless "back-and-forth" to capture all necessary user requirements.  And when app dev starts going through VMs like candy, server ops no longer has to feel like PEZ dispensers without knowing SQUAT about who wants it, why, and for how long -- and how this can create an unmanageable VM "sprawl" problem that costs real money and poses real business risk. 

BUT WAIT . . . THERE'S MORE

When you thought it couldn't get any better, now newScale is allowing interested parties to try the Workgroup Edition of this solution for FREE FREE FREE!  Stop by the Innovators Pavilion in the Solutions Exchange Expo and request one as fast as it takes to get a free wad of PEZ from our giant PEZ dispenser.

And you can learn even more about newScale's Service Catalog for VMware solution by looking for Steve the Server Guy.  Yes, poor Steve had a dickens of a time managing his overworked and under-managed virtual data center.  He'll be at the show in many places, looking a lot like he looks below: 

So if you see him, make sure you say "Hey Steve the Server Guy, how are you doing?"  And he'll tell you and will invite you to come by the Solutions Exchange Theater at 4:30pm on Wednesday, Sept 2nd -- for a 30-minute multi-media presentation entitled "newScale and Steve the Server Guy:  A Journey from Virtual Chaos to Virtual Stardom". 

You'll hear about Steve's plight, the outcome of his journey was, and you might just win a Flip Video HD Camcorder or other great raffle prizes - if you, of course, you are present to win.

If you aren't going to be at VMworld this year but want to learn more about newScale's Service Catalog for VMware free trial offer, set a spell right HERE and you'll learn all you need to know.

Hope to see you in San Francisco!

Secrets to Service Catalogue Success Seminar at PinkWeek UK 2009

Pink Elephant is hosting PinkWeek from 14 to 18 September in the UK.  It's a week-long series of ITIL and ITSM events for IT professionals focused on service improvement.

newScale is pleased to co-present a unique one day seminar entitled "The Secrets to Service Catalog Success" during PinkWeek.

The Service Catalogue seminar will be held on Tuesday, 15 September, from 9:30am to 4:30pm. 

This information-packed event will feature “How To” advice from leading authorities in Service Catalogue Management - including newScale founder and CTO, Rodrigo Flores.

According to ITIL version 3, “The Service Catalogue is an important tool for Service Strategy because it is the virtual projection of the service provider’s actual and present capabilities... It serves as a service order and demand channeling mechanism... It acts as the acquisition portal for customers, including pricing and service-level commitments, and the terms and conditions for service provisioning.”

Wherever you are in your ITIL initiative, a Service Catalogue is the foundation for defining services and communicating with business customers and users. Yet to be effective, the Service Catalogue must be understood, embraced, and used by the business.

Attend this seminar to hear a step-by-step approach to designing and rolling out a successful IT Service Catalogue based on ITIL v3 principles. You'll learn from real-world Service Catalogue examples and walk away with tools, templates, and practical advice you can use in your IT organisation.

If you're working on an IT Service Catalogue, it's a great opportunity to learn from the experts. More details about this exclusive seminar are listed here or on the PinkWeek UK site.

Click here to register and reserve your seat before the seminar is sold out!

 

Q&A: "How to retrospectively create a Service Portfolio?" Discussion ensues

Interesting discussion in the community

How to retrospectively create a Service Portfolio?

Hello All, Over the past 3 yrs we have run a program of change to transform our internal IT division into a "Service Oriented" organisation. We have created new roles and knocked down the boundaries between divisions to create more effective and efficient ways of working. One of the outputs of this program is our service catalog, which now contains 51 services providing the business with complete transparency regarding the total costs of the IT division and all of the service attributes you would expect in a service catalog.

...more of the question at the site.

To which my very smart and talented colleague Carol, answers:

1. Take inventory of business priorities. I found there are a few ways to approach this. We circled in on critical business process (for which we include several as out-of-box content) and business initiatives (or objectives) to define value. Arriving at that inventory is often (not always) the responsibility of Relationship Managers or IT Product Managers.

I ran a series of interviews with CIOs several months ago and asked pretty much the same thing you’ve asked here. I came out of that with some ideas about how to organize a service portfolio with the angle of business value. Before I continue I’ll point out that I do work for newScale, but I’ll try to avoid a blatant product pitch here. There were several things I learned from those interviews that we subsequently designed into our Service Portfolio product, but I’ll just mention some general learnings here. (Feel free to contact me separately if you’re interested in more info.)

2. Create relationships. Once your inventory of business value is online, we link the business value to service offerings in the portfolio. You can tie many service offerings to one or more business initiatives and business processes. This linkage can persist throughout the lifecycle of the service. It’s used to make critical decisions about the health of the service portfolio, in addition to simply showing that a relationship does exist between the specific services and, for example, your critical supply chain processes.

.... continue reading....

Control Self-Service VM Requests

Exciting news today: Now you can try newScale's market-leading service catalog for free!

In the words of every shameless infomercial promoter, "But wait, there's more!" The trial version is packaged specifically to address the growing number of management challenges surrounding virtual environments.

Check it out and request a free trial: Control Self-Service VM Requests and Reduce Virtual Sprawl with newScale for VMware®.

We interviewed VM admins and heard a number of painful stories; too many of them over and over again.

• Not sure who owns what
• Can't keep track of new requests
• Too many "temporary" VMs
• Too many custom VMs
• No idea what's running on VMs
• ... and so on...

It just so happens that a service catalog is perfectly positioned to solve these problems. And while we'd like to take all the credit for this idea, the fact is that we've had customers putting our service catalog solutions in front of their data centers for years. All we did was listen closely and package up a free trial. Oh, and we developed an integration to VMware that ships out-of-the-box and ready to go.

So what does the solution look like? To touch on a few points:

• Highly configurable self-service portal
• Capture business-centric and other meta-data
• Link VMs with owners
• Automate approval/authorization process
• VMware integration to create, modify and manage VMs
• Import data from existing VMware environments

The great thing is that you don't have to believe me at all. You can download a free trial and check it out yourself. The trial includes a virtual machine with our service catalog pre-installed and configured. "But wait, there's more!" It also comes with a series of self-paced guided activities to walk you through everything you need to know to get started. There's also an online community if you're one of those quick-learner types; and I suspect most of you are.

View the official press release here: newScale Announces New Virtual Appliance and Free Trial of Service Catalog Solution for VMware

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Official ITIL v3 Certification for Service Catalogue - What does it mean?

APMG, Pink Elephant and newScale recently announced the new ITIL v3 Service Catalogue training qualification - approved with independent review by itSMF International. (see my post on this for more details)

What does this new qualification mean for you? How will this help you attain ITIL v3 credits and achieve ITIL Expert Certification? To learn the answer to these questions and more,  APMG, Pink Elephant and newScale will host a live Webinar.

To attend the webinar just register at http://www.newscale.com/ITILv3/blog to learn first-hand:

	Why this new ITIL v3 "complementary guidance" training course is important;
	How to prepare for a career path in the new Service Catalogue Manager role;
	When the certification will be available, how ITIL training providers will be accredited, and much more!

Is the fed's IT budget more transparent than your company's?

As seen on the WSJ blog, The U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra launched an IT Spending Dashboard today.  Visually and technically, the site seem well designed.  It presents the projected spending and actual expenditures from various departments, the ability to drill through to the details and dissect the data by different time dimension values. 

I am impressed that the federal government is able to pull together data from so many departments to show how your tax dollars are going into IT spendings.  In contrast, many IT departments in the enterprises are still struggling with this idea of managing IT services as a portfolio.  Fewer yet have started reporting their IT spendings and making the results available to the stakeholders.

It is true that implementing reporting and BI in IT costs money, but shining the light on your IT spendings, starting with your Service Portfolio and Service Catalog may actually save you money.  You might just find some dollars that you can reinvest into ares that are more critical to the business, e.g. virtualization or improving customer retention.  newScale CTO Rodrigo Flores recently called this No 8 of out of the 10 best practices for the service request catalog in his blog. 

Do we run this risk of private enterprises falling behind the federal government in using the technology to run "business" better?  What are your thoughts?

Begin from the beginning - IT Continual Service Improvement

This week I attended a well attended talk by Gary Case, an author of the ITIL v3 Continual Service Improvement book and a consultant for Pink Elephant.  The itSMF folks in the San Francisco Bay Area have staged some pretty high quality talks and they don't charge for admissions.  Definitely worth checking out if you consider yourself an IT professional.

Having been involved on the operational as well as the product side, the topic of continual  improvement is dear to my heart.  As Gary pointed out during his talk, there are quite a few hurdles in the implementation of IT CSI with the clients he worked with.  I have also heard similar sentiments while pitching the value of visibility, reporting and executive dashboards for Service Catalog implementations. 

Here are a few that I thought might be interesting for you too:

1. There is nothing to measure or report on until the system is in production - Not true.  You need to consider the metrics and measurability as you design your IT services.  Only then you will have a well-considered service that provides metrics that are meaningful to the business.
2. We already generate tons of reports; we don't need more - There are different audiences to different reports.  If you send 50 pages of reports to everybody, chances are nobody will read any of them.  Figure out what's important for each role, e.g. IT executives, director of IT groups and service managers, then give them only 2 or 3 pages of relevant reports.  When you talk to your stakeholders, chances are you'd realize you can get rid of most of what you are generating and create a few new ones.
3. We don't want to report now because our metrics are really bad - You DO want to start reporting now and institute an improvement process.  In fact, showing the poor metrics now enables you to report improvements and good ROI for the CSI process down the road.  Look at your problem as an opportunity!
4. It costs too much to measure - That maybe true.  In fact, I heard anecdotally that it cost some organization 10 working days each month to generate reports.  I think the solution boils down to better service design and better reporting tools.  Measurement and report generation should be automated and audited periodically.  You want the metrics to guide the organization towards its business goals instead of consuming massive resources for its own sake.  

When you consider a Service Catalog or any other service management tools, put a premium on its ability to support a rigorous CSI process through a robust reporting capability.

In fact, after making an initial post on this topic, I found a good discussion thread by some folks on the IT Skeptic website.
 

Service Catalog and Service Portfolio Selection Criteria Resources

Despite the title, the "Portfolio of Confusion" postings by Bruce Campbell go a long way to help sort out the differences and overlap between a Service Catalog and a Service Portfolio.  With more and more organizations deploying a Service Catalog as the cornerstone for ITIL – as well as leveraging it across non-IT functions including facilities and HR – the Service Catalog is well on its way to becoming the next “killer app” for the enterprise.

If you are ready to go to the next step, here is the link to a web seminar download that will help you avoid failed investments in Service Catalog tools with limited capabilities, maturity, flexibility, scalability or performance – and ensure a successful Service Catalog deployment to drive down costs and increase the business value of IT.

As an added bonus, when you register for this On Demand Webinar, you will receive a new White Paper written by the IT analysts at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA): Service Catalog and Service Portfolio – Criteria for Selection.

The official webinar title is "Service Catalog & Service Portfolio – Criteria for Selection" and access to the webinar and bonus white paper can be found here.

A Lesson from the Downturn

I won't speculate about where we are in the current economic downturn except that it's safe to say that we're no longer in the beginning. With the continued focus on IT aligning with the business, it's fair to ask: How is IT supposed to align with the business when the business isn't sure what it's doing?

CIO magazine published an interested article a while back, called "The Complexity of Reduction" in the print version and linked here on CIO.com:
Plant Closings and Layoffs Mean Heavy Lifting for IT Departments - CIO.com

...there are the obvious chores, such as blocking outgoing employees from corporate networks and redeploying computers. Often, when a facility is closing, IT has to set up new equipment at the remaining offices, such as a bigger data network to handle an increased volume of transactions that a now-closed location used to process...

The article describes how closing or shrinking facilities usually isn't as easy as the business thinks. IT needs to be heavily involved and consulted up front - as the costs involved may factor into the decision-making process.

But how do you have a productive conversation about pulling wires from a raised floor with a director of a business unit? You don't. Instead, keep the minutiae to a minimum and roll the costs into a single project fee with layered levels of detail to support the discussion. If you're going to leave some variables in your plan (always a good idea) make sure you can discuss them in terms that the business understands. For example, instead of explaining the difference between leasing a T1 or T3 line to transfer data, discuss the impact to the project time line.

When it comes to layoffs, it is even more critical to have the proper IT processes in place to properly control the flow of information. The timely disabling of building access, network accounts, email, blackberry, etc. must all be managed along with physical asset recovery. Losing information can have a huge impact on the business, especially when compliance regulations like SOX, PCI, and HIPAA are concerned.

The article in CIO did a great job of explaining what needs to be done but it didn't really cover the how. Given another paragraph I'm sure they would have pointed out that a Service Portfolio is perfect for aligning (and re-aligning) with the business and that an actionable Service Catalog can orchestrate and enforce even the most complicated off-boarding processes.

-Jamie

The Birth of A New Profession - Service Catalog Manager

I've worked at newScale for six years and it was very exciting for me to see a recent press release announcing that a new ITIL Service Catalog Certification Program meant the beginning of a new profession - the Service Catalog Manager. As the market leader for Service Catalog solutions, this validated the hard work put in by a lot of people - in particular, newScale employees and customers.

What is the news? APM Group, with the support of newScale, Pink Elephant and endorsed by the International Qualifications Committee of itSMF® International (itSMFI), announced the development of a new, stand-alone certification for IT practitioners interested in the creation and maintenance of a best practice Service Catalog.  This will become a new international certification based on IP from newScale and Pink Elephant. 

In short, Service Catalog education now is a formal part of ITIL qualification. Taking the course will count towards Expert certification.  (APM is the certifying authority for ITIL under license from the OGC.)

In the journey to today, newScale saw that people wanted to better understand what a Service Catalog was about before venturing further. So in 2005, we started the first service catalog course and encouraged other training organizations to do the same.  Pink Elephant took the call and co-developed a course they offer; it also led to co-authoring our book, Defining IT Success through the Service Catalog. 

Other training and consulting organizations followed.  Yet many of them, as well as the practitioner community, asked how this course fit within the ITIL qualification scheme. With this week's announcement, Service Catalog now becomes a first class citizen along side Change, Incident and other older processes.

This summer, a full and rigorous accreditation process will take place, involving independent trial deliveries of a Service Catalog course that will cover the key learning requirements Pink Elephant and newScale have identified. Once the Service Catalog certification scheme is finalized and released in September 2009, authorized training organizations (ATOs) may then develop and submit their own training materials for accreditation.

Excerpt from the APM press release

The APM Group (APMG) High Wycombe, UK announces the release of a Certification Scheme for Service Catalogue. The Scheme initiated by market leaders newScale, headquartered in San Francisco and Pink Elephant in Toronto, Canada, and developed over the last several months is the second complimentary scheme for the ITIL Qualification Portfolio.

The Certification Programme was subject to independent review and scrutiny by the International Qualifications Committee of itSMF International, the leading Service Management movement with 52 different Chapters.

Colin Rudd, itSMFI Director of Professional Qualifications and Certifications said, “Service Catalog makes an important contribution to the effectiveness of the organization. Candidates can now gain a recognized qualification in this discipline whilst working towards their ITIL Expert Certification.”

Sharon Taylor, ITIL V3 Chief Examiner said, “This initiative supports a more operational approach to create the service catalogue as an important tool in the alignment and delivery of IT services to the business. Candidates will find this qualification hugely beneficial to their real working environment.”
Service Catalogue is a new qualification that looks at new ways to control demand, publish and track service pricing and cost, and automates service request management and fulfilment. Service Catalogue also looks at ways to help reduce cycle time. Implementing workflow can reduce the time it takes to fulfil services, saving numerous hours per request. Organizations can thus reallocate precious staff time to more strategic initiatives.

Further, the new course will qualify for 1.5 ITIL V3 credits, and will become only the 2nd course recognized in ITIL V3’s Complementary Guidance, a selection of best practice courses intended to supplement the content that currently exists in ITIL V3’s core portfolio of examinations and certifications.

The detailed Certification Scheme will be developed over the next few months and the qualification will be trialed by Global Knowledge, headquartered in Cary, N.C, and PINK Elephant. APM Group will be inviting training companies to apply for accreditation from September 2009 and, having gone through the rigorous assessment process for which APM Group is known, they expect to have a number of training providers active in the market place in the last quarter 2009, first quarter 2010.

Richard Pharro, CEO of APM Group is quoted as saying, “We are thrilled to have been chosen by New Scale and PINK to take over the Service Catalogue Certification and to create an international standard for one of the key tools in service management.”

The newScale press release is here, and the Pink Elephant press release says, "APMG Approves Development of New ITIL Certification; Accepts Proposal from Pink Elephant & newScale Inc." 

Congratulations to all those involved with the birth of this new profession and this major milestone!

Marketing IT

Is marketing a frivolous activity for IT organizations?  Does IT need to market itself? 

Evelyn Hubbert of Forrester thinks so.  She released a paper on this subject a few months back.  Yes, the IT budget is under pressure and yes, there is already more work to do than the team is able to handle, so carving out resources to do IT marketing is a non-starter!  Or is it?

I would argue that all the hardware, software and process investment will yield little if IT does not focus on customer need and customer relationship management.  The perception at the end of the day would still be that IT does not get business and IT costs too much.  IT really needs to start thinking about the services that it provides through the 4P's of marketing - Product, Position, Price, and Placement to communicate with its business users.

If you already have a Service Catalog, that might be the place to start.  After all, it is the face of IT!  Why is that important?  I have spoken to customers who have Service Catalogs that showed their services in a professional manner but still suffer from adoption and customer satisfaction issues.  It turned out that the services were described from IT's point-of-view.  There was a good amount of information but it didn't speak to their end users.  They would have benefited from applying   marketing principles to their Service Catalog management!

If you are interested, especially if you already have a newScale solution in place, the newScale Service Catalog Marketing Library is targeted at helping customers embark on this journey.  It includes templates, best practices and technologies that you can use to make your newScale Service Catalog come alive for your customers.  It still wouldn't slice bread and cook breakfast - but you'd be amazed how a different mindset can do for IT.

A Portfolio of Confusion (part 1)

I must admit that before my career landed squarely in the middle of the Service Catalog and Service Portfolio world, I was a bit confused by the definition and realistic application of Service Portfolio Management.

The concept of a "portfolio" was certainly easy enough for me to understand.  But how ITIL v3 defined a service portfolio, how the analysts were defining it, and how it was put into practice by vendors in the industry was difficult for my feeble mind to grasp.  And based on some of the things I've heard from customers, industry pontiffs, and vendors alike, I think the concept still has the capacity to be interpreted in many different ways, sometimes creating confusion in the marketplace.

ITIL v3 defines the service portfolio to be the group of services that includes all services in production, in retirement, and those that are currently being built or transitioned to production.  In contrast, the Service Catalog is defined as the subset of having all services that are available now and all services that are in transition from the drawing board to user availability.  So when pundits say "the portfolio IS the catalog", they are a little off and clarification should be sought. (See diagram below.) 

 

And there can also be confusion with "PPM" applications - that is, Project and Portfolio Management solutions.   While they could be a distant cousin to Service Portfolio Management, they are really about helping the Program Management Office assess, prioritize, and monitor IT projects as an aggregate.  (story continued in part 2)

A Portfolio of Confusion (part 2)

Regardless of these various definitions, the rubber really hits the road when processes that manage what's IN the Service Portfolio are applied.  Loosely translated, *Gartner defines the process of IT Service Portfolio Management as:

• Documenting the service portfolio of standardized IT services
• Decomposing those service "offerings" into an actionable service catalog of specific service request items including pricing and service level objectives
• Automating the fulfillment of service requests and approvals
• Reporting on service request actuals vs. forecasts, service delivery, service level performance and service financial management

    *Gartner research note IDG00150537 10Sept2007

These chosen offerings (example:  PDA mobility) can be identified, priced, forecasted, saved, and then can determine what entitled end users will actual see and be able to order in the request management portal based on their specific roles (example:  basic PDA for administrators, mid-level blackberry for directors, uber-featured smart-phones for executives). The business leaders can then see how much these users have selected the services they've chosen, compare them to forecasts, and modify their offering selections as required, automatically updating what the users see in the request portal. 

So what I've learned is that a Service Portfolio approach that focuses on providing a common platform for IT operations to communicate and interact with its business customers — addressing the needs of both business executives and end users — is what true Service Portfolio management value is all about.  It ensures that the service request and fulfillment processes are populated with the service request items that are driven from BUSINESS priorities, not IT priorities, marketed to the business in THEIR terms.  This business-driven "single service model" that powers the Service Catalog is the real benefit of bringing a Service Portfolio approach to a Service Catalog practice. 

We had some fun at a recent sales meeting with the concept of Service Portfolio Management, as well as those of Service Demand Management and Service Financial Management and created some videos that feature yours truly and my wonderful colleague and partner in crime, Carol Dirig.  A sample is embedded above and you can see more HERE. 

And yes, the eye glasses are props.  :-)

7 things ITSM vendors don't want you to know about their Service Catalog tools

With a title like "Don't Be Fooled By Service Catalog Imposters" you would expect this on-demand webinar from newScale to have a list like this, wouldn't you?  And you won't be disappointed.

With ITIL version 3, the Service Catalog has become a must-have priority. So now many ITSM service desk vendors offer add-on modules they call a "Service Catalog". But are these self-service request portals really a Service Catalog? Attend this Webinar and learn the truth about these so-called Service Catalog tools. 

Join fellow blogger Bruce Campbell and newScale Vice President of Corporate and Product Marketing, Jason Schroedl, as they discuss the list of 7 things ITSM vendors don't want you to know about their Service Catalog tools - as well as learn why the Service Catalog is now a "must have". 

Bruce and Jason also very clearly explain the connection between ITIL version 3, the Service Catalog, and the IT Front Office. Just go to http://www.newscale.com/itsm/ and you are on your way to making sure you get what you need for your organization.

Until next time....Mary

Would you use your telecom company as your Cloud provider?

For folks who are providing computing resources to the rest of the company, virtualization through VMware or Citrix Xen is already a familiar topic.  Virtualizing the computing resources in-house allows you to run multiple virtual servers on a single piece of hardware, which results in cost savings.  However, that means you still have to make capital investments in servers, data center infrastructure and have people to manage them. 

In a climate where CAPEX is hard to come by, public and private clouds can be compelling alternatives.  Some people are concerned that public clouds like Amazon’s may not be secure enough but what do people think about Computing as a Service (CaaS) offerings from large telcos?    See this article on VON about the Verizon offering: http://www.von.com/news/verizon-business-launches-cloud-caas.html. 

What’s interesting for me from this article are some of the value propositions cited:

The portal, which includes extensive reporting capabilities, can also provide management access to any physical servers they may have, and to resources from other providers – a critical differentiator considering that many companies will have physical data center resources in place they may want to retail for various reasons. For example, a business may want to use a virtual environment for staging and development. For business-critical applications, such as database servers, businesses may choose a physical server infrastructure that lets them customize servers as well as select from a range of server configurations.

What’s great there is these are exactly the messages we at newScale send with our newScale FrontOffice Suite for the Virtual Data Center^TM offering.  To be fair, Verizon’s offering looks compelling, hitting many of the same value points.  If you are planning to outsource most if not all of your computing infrastructure, it is worth taking a good look.  However, if you are going to be running a hybrid environment which may include cloud and a couple of in-house virtualization solutions, you may be better off owning a platform neutral solution such as a Service Catalog.  It may provide you better control over the implementation plan and a greater chance of success. 

 

What do you the reader think?

To Cloud, Or Not To Cloud - Do You Have A Choice?

To cloud or not to cloud; that is the question. But do you really have a choice? There is a recent article by Cindy Waxer on CIO.com that outlines a number of potential benefits and pitfalls. The bottom line is that there is no single one answer for everyone. Yes it's certainly cheaper but what happens to your business if Amazon S3 or Google Apps goes down for several hours (again)?

"At this point, the cloud remains too leaky
In the end, it's up to each company to decide how much risk it is willing to take on -- and whether the damages accruing from a service disruption might offset the savings and convenience promised by a cloud computing service."

Is the Cloud Reliable Enough for Your Business? - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership.

Defining a cloud strategy as a company is a daunting task but what about rogue cloud use? What are people doing to prevent or limit individuals within the company from jumping the gun and using cloud computing before the corporate cloud strategy is defined? Are people at your company using cloud systems right now? How do you know?

One strategy for IT to maintain control is to embrace the cloud early - not 100% - but on a smaller, trial basis. Be clear about compliance and governance: what are the recommended uses, what are the limitations (especially concerning sensitive data), etc. Also clearly communicate the value-add of IT: which cloud provider to use, system support, back-up, monitoring, etc.

Of course when it comes to marketing IT services, a service catalog is a great solution. But if you're reading this blog you probably already know that.

-Jamie

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Welcome to Service Catalog 101

As the statement at the top of this page indicates, we excited to share best practices and examples on how an actionable IT Service Catalog can make an impact in your company. 

We'll cover topics ranging from strategic Service Portfolio Management and IT Demand Management to more tactical Service Request Management and Request Fulfillment.  Learn things like how to leverage a Service Catalog for greater cost transparency, for streamlining employee onboarding, or even for managing virtual server sprawl.

The bloggers in the photos to the right here all have a different point of view. They are ready to jump in and write about a variety of Service Catalog topics, so stay tuned! 

Until next time.....Mary