Pendulum Swings Back: Insource Your IT To Save Money
from the and-so-it-goes... dept
It's kinda funny how various "trends" in IT get taken so far that they reach the point where finally people realize the extreme might not have made sense. For years, "outsourcing" was all the rage and it made a few companies an awful lot of money. While many warned that outsourcing something as critical as IT could lead to unintended consequences, many execs swallowed the kool-aid and did deals without thinking through all of the consequences. This isn't to say outsourcing IT never works. In many cases, it does. But it seemed to be taken to such an extreme that that you knew eventually the pendulum would swing back the other way.So here we are with articles popping up about how a company has saved millions of dollars by "insourcing" its IT and taking it back from an outsourced provider. Of course, the more cynical among you might suggest that the trend towards outsourcing was pushed mainly by consultants who made their money making those deals work -- and the trend in the other direction may be equally pushed by those same consultants looking for new business. The real story, of course, is that depending on the business and what a company is trying to do, there are always pros and cons to outsourcing or keeping IT in-house, but the claims of miraculous savings in either direction tend to overstate the benefits while ignoring the downsides.
Filed Under: insourcing, outsourcing
Do IT People Hate Their Jobs?
from the they're-not-real-thrilled-about-them dept
A recent study suggests that IT people really don't seem to like their jobs very much. Apparently, only 4% of IT people found themselves "highly engaged" with their jobs -- a number that has dropped from the still low, but not as low, 12%, two years earlier. There are concerns, of course, for what this means for companies and their IT staff. It certainly raises some questions about whether or not this is a potential issue going forward, and how companies might deal with this. Are the problems caused by the way IT people are treated? Or does it have more to do with their own worries about the future of the IT profession? And given that so many people in IT aren't particularly enthusiastic about their jobs, how can that be dealt with?Filed Under: it, job satisfaction
Five Reasons Not To Get Swept Up In App Madness
from the apps-can-be-copied-too dept
One of the things I didn't get a chance to discuss in my recap of Midem was that there was definitely an undercurrent of people thinking that "apps" are the "answer." There were a bunch of app companies there, and they were swamped with interest, and lots of people seem to be looking at Apple's "success" with the iPhone app market as a chance to regain control, and with it, something to charge for directly. While I don't think many people were expecting apps to be "the answer," there was certainly an impression that apps are going to be a big part of the future. As I've made clear in the past, I'm pretty skeptical that this sort of app madness is really sustainable (or all that lucrative). There are a few reasons for this:- Very, very, very few apps make very much money. We've been suggesting this for a while, and the numbers seem to support it: there really isn't that much money being made directly on selling apps, even on the iPhone. Sure, lots of apps may be selling in aggregate, but very few individual apps make very much money.
- Apps are still loss leader/low-margin leaders for hardware makers, and they know it. Sure, Apple wants app developers to be happy, but first and foremost it wants to sell more hardware, which is where it makes its money. And it knows as well as anyone that the more powerful the device is, the more reasons there are to buy the hardware. That means the hardware makers actually have incentive to push the price of apps down (or encourage free apps). This pressure will only get stronger over time.
- Apps can be copied too. This is the one that seems the most obvious to me, but seems to get very little attention from those who believe totally in the app revolution. Apps are still digital files and they can (and are) copied regularly. Thinking that putting everything into an app is an easy response by itself to unauthorized copying is a bit short-sighted.
- Future standards will break down some walls. While it won't happen that fast, and probably won't happen in all areas where apps exist, things like HTML 5 will certainly break down the walled gardens found on various app stores. Yes, native apps give a better user experience for now, but web standards will get better and better and allow more to be done via the web, totally bypassing any app gatekeeper (and paywall), just like Google did with Google Voice on the iPhone. We've seen this before. The desktop used to be ruled by client-side apps, and then lots of those apps went (or are in the process of going) web-based.
- App overload. While there is a group of folks who constantly get new apps, an awful lot of people get a few apps, get themselves comfortable and then never go back to buy another app. There are really only so many apps most people need, and once they have them, there's little reason to keep getting more.
Filed Under: app store, apps, business models, control, mobile
Companies: apple
CIOs Jumping On The Free Software Bandwagon
from the good-for-them dept
For years, we've heard claims that, for all the wonders of "free software," the "real" CIO would never use free software, as they would need to have a clear monetary relationship with the provider to ensure things wouldn't go bad. Of course, that's pretty silly. Lots of IT departments have made use of all sorts of free software such as Linux and Apache, but a new study suggests that CIOs are quite comfortable with using free software, finding that "76% of CIOs surveyed say they use free software at the enterprise level and 88% said they have free software deployed at the department level."Now some of this may be driven by standard free utilities like Adobe Reader, but many CIOs reports using things like OpenOffice, Google Docs, Skype and others. In fact, the study found that 54% of the CIOs for large organizations admitted to using more than 10 free software products (if you drop it to six or more, the number goes up to 84%). CIOs seemed split down the middle in preferring open source software to proprietary but still free products, which isn't really a huge surprise.
Not surprisingly, the CIOs who use so much free software say it's not just the "free" part that makes this happen. They still put the software through the same testing they put fee-based software, but 81% also admit that not having to pay license fees is one of the "key benefits" to going free.
While this might not be all that surprising overall, it is a pretty good view of the general impression of "free software" in the enterprise, suggesting that it's hardly a taboo or something to be avoided.
Filed Under: cios, free, free software, software
Power Usage Effectiveness Is Just One Factor
from the more-data dept
Clearly businesses can't be judged by a single number. Would you judge a company solely based on its revenues? Its profit? Its market cap? Of course not! So hopefully we can agree that the popularity of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as a complete performance indicator for data centers is meaningless without context. Every IT organization should develop its own tailored metrics to determine what is effective. There is no magic bullet for optimizing performance, folks.With energy savings pretty high on the priorities list for most data center managers, though, you can't really blame marketers for pushing a simple, single number to try to make things sound like an easy fix. But as Albert Einstein once said, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." So of course PUE should be a factor that's included in evaluating IT performance. But so should things like: application performance, SLA adherence, profitability, operating expenses, and efficiency in terms of performance per Watt consumed.
So there's no easy answer, other than developing a set of metrics that work for your environment. And that will require on-going testing -- not a "set it and forget it" attitude that only gets checked once a year. Prioritize your metrics and optimize based on the data you obtain... and there's a growing amount of management software that will help with these endeavors.
Webinar On Data Center Productivity For ITInnovation.com
from the be-productive dept
As part of our ITInnovation.com website, we're hosting a webinar on data center productivity, on Wednesday, February 10th, at 9am PT/12pm ET, that should be a good discussion for those of you in the IT world. I'll be moderating, and we'll have short presentations from Chris Peters of Intel, talking about matching data center productivity to business productivity, and from Michael Rowan of Viridity Software, discussing productivity measurement from an energy management perspective (an increasingly important part of the equation). Following this we'll have a further discussion on these and related issues, including Q&A from attendees. You can sign up to attend here.Filed Under: data centers, it innovation, productivity, webinar
Apple's Secret Data Center Strategy
from the think-different dept
With all the excitement over the iPad announcement, Steve Jobs may be distracting everyone (like the magician he is) from noticing Apple's long-term strategy of quietly building cloud services. Apple can't hide its billion dollar investment in a data center in North Carolina. But Apple has certainly somehow made everyone forget about its MobileMe services and the possibilities of Apple creating a growing number of subscription services.The iPad will help drive Apple towards offering more cloud services, given that the device has limited storage and processing capabilities. Basically, the iPad will put a nice little thin client in the average consumer's hands. The "network is the computer" may live on as a tablet device. Who would have thought that? And Apple might not be alone. There's been some speculation that Google will release an Chrome OS tablet to offer a "big NexusOne" of its own -- using its Chrome OS (instead of Android) in order to take advantage of Chrome's security and minimal hardware requirements.
Behind the scenes, Oracle databases are supporting iTunes, iBooks and presumably more and more of Apple's subscription content services (and possible future web apps). So while Apple shows off flashy new devices, its data center plans are steadily expanding without much notice.
Categorizing Your Green IT Efforts
from the priorities-come-first dept
The Wall Street Journal is handing out some advice on "Green IT" management, telling its readers to categorize eco-friendly investments to help prioritize and assess potential plans. This advice proposes 4 categories, based on a model developed in collaboration with Prof. Leslie Willcocks from the London School of Economics.- No-Brainers. -- Obviously, if you encounter a cheap, easy and money-saving green technology. Do it. There's almost no downside.
- Promising but Pricey. -- There are technologies that might pay off, but there's some risk that being an early-adopter might be a waste of effort.
- Business Opportunities. -- Adopting some environmentally-friendly initiatives can provide new business opportunities. Be on the lookout for "two birds with one stone" shots.
- Distractions. -- Shiny new solar panels might get some publicity, but as we've seen, a solar-powered data center is not quite practical for many facilities.
The Feasibility of Solar-Powered Data Centers
from the ROI dept
With the DOE sponsoring all sorts of energy-saving projects for data centers, there is going to be some inevitable interest in alternative power solutions. Last year, Emerson unveiled a 7,800-square-foot rooftop solar array -- the largest solar array in the state of Missouri -- with 550 solar panels able to generate 100 kilowatts of electricity (apparently enough energy to power an average American home for over 3 days). While it's definitely a green way to generate power, it also generates publicity for that $50 million investment in solar power.But the real question should be about the return on investment. A recent report on Missouri's largest solar-powered data center discusses several factors in the decision-making process to deploy photovoltaic (PV) arrays. Obviously, sunny locations work best for solar power set-ups. And interestingly, very large data centers have a bit of an advantage since spacious rooftops make for nice PV arrays. But additionally, a data center designed to be 100% solar powered would require a PV array approximately 8 to 10 times the size of the data center. So at this point, solar power isn't exactly a silver bullet for all of a data center's energy needs. However, back to the ROI... it is not unusual to take 20 to 30 years to recover an initial investment for a solar power installation. Clearly, the long-term planning of a solar array really is a formidable task that requires quite a bit of dedication -- given that the payback might be a generation away.
