HPSU 2009 - Part 3

BTO Mainstage - Robin Purohit

Discussion of Trends and Roadmap of Products

Robin took the BTO Mainstage to lead a discussion of trends and provide a roadmap products. First Robin discussed some of what he referred to as "Breakthrough Communities" which included

• User communities - Vivit
• Web 2.0 Collaboration
• Customer Advisory Boards

The next topics were around hot tech trends and how those affect HP Software.

Virtualisation

~ 15 M virtual machines shipped last year - expected to double over the next 3 years. Robin noted that there are improvements in data protection & virtualisation from the HP perspective. I'll be getting more information fro the show floor tonight & tomorrow.

SaaS

18% of biz apps are expected to be deployed via SaaS (Software as a Service). HP in the last 6 months has made the latest Service Manager & Asset Centre available via SaaS for customers who don't want to run the applications in-house.

Web 2.0

Robin noted that there is a hot trend seeing the transition of rich internet technology from the consumer world to the enterprise. These Web 2.0 apps power rich visuals, but have a huge impact to QA, Security, and support/performance

aspects of managing your datacentre.

Robin also noted that there is what he called a "regulatory tsunami" coming - indicating that if we think there's been a lot of work around SOX etc., just wait to see what the current US & International administrations will be annoncing in the next year. HP is preparing to assist customers in this area by way of their Tower software acquisition, and a focus on PCI compliance with that branch of HP Software. This also segued to the topic of "cloud governance" and how to know that when you are buying IT services on the wire & paying for use you are protected. This is where the HP services groups "Cloud Assure" steps in making sure that what you buy will work.

As always the lecture to the audience came around to the topic of quantifying the business value of IT. HP is making efforts to move beyond cost and show revenue related to IT services that IT delivers. Not a new message, but HP has tooled up more applications in this area. The release of the HP IT Financial Management Portfolio includes Financial Planning & Analysis which shows cost trends over time by different lines of biz, and provides a breakdown of labour vs. capital. This product integrates with 3rd party ERP & financial systems for single point of glass analysis. Robin also mentioned the upcoming release of PPM 8.0. The new suite also includes enhanced Asset Management with a focus on software licence management; Robin stressed the well versed point that licence compliance is the key use & ROI area for this tool.

The discussion moved on to the Application Security Centre with the free 21 day trail of App Sec Centre on SaaS. Robin informed us of HP's opinion that 35% of flash apps violate Adobe best practices, which is where the SWFScan tool comes into play. Apparently the tool is aware of nearly 4000 flash applications, and has had 13000 downloads so far, driven by the fact that 35% of all webstes run flash of some variety.

Data Protector was the next topic, and HP claims to reduce TCO of backups by 50%. This tool currently has 30000 installs and HP claims market leading growth for a product that is the leading solition for virtual servers & storage. Marketing figures, nothing of substantial intrest to me there.

The presentation came around at last to Application Lifecycle Management, and Robin showed the HP vision that outlines somewhat like this:

Vision - Roadmap - Release - Cycle - Daily

CMS - PPM - Requirements - QC - Compliance

HP flogs the use of their "Agile Accelerator", with it's inclusion of "best practices" to speed adoption, and the app lifecycle is being completed by a focus on app retirement. Pretty interesting that last part, but vague still. The numbers quote for ROI purposes were $200-300k hardware & other savings to be seen when you consolidate but I suspect those are average numbers from fortune 500s.

Robin then discussed HP Operations Orchestrator, and HP Configuration Management. Apparently this week they will be publishing a set of best practices for configuration management - I will read & review those once they're available.

Next Robin brought up some brief guests:

Jonathon M Gregory, Partner Strategic Effetiveness (SITE) @ Accenture - claims 5-30% savings by implementing Accenture's IT financial mgt solution. Jonathon spoke very briefly and basically made a commercial for how Accenture is the key player in finding the single version of the truth for IT. If you want to know more find your local Accenture rep! :-)

Robin mentioned RIM and HP Operations Manager on the BES solution was briefly plugged - I will get more info from the show floor and share it.

The last speaker before we were subjected to a 45 minute commercial for how wonderful HP software is was virtualisation - how do we do it right in the data centre. Brian Byun, VP of Global Alliances for VMware spoke quickly about VMware Vsphere 4. In short, it creates a private cloud architecture and supports cost transparency models by leveraging vCentre to implement shared infrastructure capacity planning, and allows customers to federate the infrastructure & include resources from external suppliers.

Lastly, before Brian left, he & Robin made an announcement: VMware will be launching integrated BSM for physical and virtual systems, HP DDM will be integrated in future releases of the vCentre suite, and there will be integrated virtual and physical client desktop management.

HPSU 2009 - Part 2

I helped set up the Vivit booth with other local chapter leaders and the board of directors, grabbed a really quick (but heavy!) breakfast, then squeezed into the mainstage room for the keynote presentations.

They kicked things off with some brilliant animated clips outlining the current challenges faced by IT - including IT business alignment, the current "new" economy, virtualisation, and cloud computing amongst other things.

Jake Johanssen was our host for the morning. A stand-up comedian which is a really different take but made things much more entertaining than they've been before at 08:00 on a Tuesday morning. The typical jabs at Canadians were made, but Jake threw in some other topical humour that was quite engaging. He really got the crowd warmed up well. The room was definitely smaller than previous years, but it was filled. We're waiting to hear attendance numbers overall. Some interesting trivia about the impact of the economy is that 27% of conferences in Vegas were cancelled this year.

Andy Isherwood VP & GM of HP Software Services
Andy started off thanking for people to come given the economic restraints - a message that brings home where things are at globally an across the US. His discourse started with a focus on budgets being cut between 0 - 40%, and a lot of uncertainty in HP's customers. Andy asked the audience to consider the situation as an opportunity to be innovative. The HP opinion is to try and get ahead of the economic recovery curve by aligning with business, reducing costs, consolidation, and increased efficiency.
Three examples were provided of 3 organisations that have achieved a quick ROI:

• JetBlue

73% decrease in testing costs, 80% reduction in post production failures, 3x increase in testing efficiency, 70% increase in test virtualisation.

• Altec

10% app downtime reduction, 20% faster response time, 15% increase in customer satisfaction

• T-Mobile (US-Washington)

Significant cost savings through efficiency improvements, 50% decrease in ERP group testting time, 75% reduction in ERP port-prod defects, greater application availability.

These three are the winners of the HP Software Solutions 2009 awards of excellence

It's always nice to hear that organisations have done wonderful things, but the key question is always "So where do you start?"
HP's keynote answer to this was:

• Operational focus to provide a transformational focus over time.
• Cost optimisation to move capital to fund innovation initiatives
• Focus on execution of automation, financial management, virtualisation, and consolidation.

This is to me really just new wrappings and graphics on an existing message. I have to wonder why we need to keep making this message heard - is it just not getting through to IT leaders or are those leaders hearing and getting the message, but unable to execute because of other factors - economy, difficulty in showing ROI, ? Sounds like this area needs exploring - future topic?

Andy followed up with the HP message that they are about solutions, not products. The delivery options they are flogging are in-house, EDS, Cloud Services SaaS, and HP Partners (oh yeah, them.) I'm still waiting to hear something positive about the EDS acquisition from a customer perspective - I'll be visiting their booth on the showfloor later today to see what I can learn.

Andy touched on what's new in the IT services offering from HP, which is "Cloud Assure", IT financial management, IT performance analytics, and IT resource optimisation.

The marketing branding from HP has changed this year to a new four words; Optimise (technology portfolio - IT Mgt Software), Leverage (biz info), Elevate (biz performance), and Improve (customer experience).

Andy discussed about HP support, and claimed that customer satisfaction is at an all-time high based on improvements made over the last two years. A big piece apparently was "in-sourcing" aspects of the HP support organisations - interesting. He did claim that he was under no illusions that things were ideal. He also commented that things need improvement with customers getting stuck at L1 when things don't get escalated timely, and at L3 when software changes that need to be made aren't happening fast enough.

The services organisation was discussed and that it has been tightly embedded into HP Software overall and is using optmisations like knowledge management to increase IP. Andy also noted that he feels this is not in conflict with the partner environment, but I think this statement is at odds with what is actually happening (actions speak louder than words) in particular the changes that have been made to partner status making it basically impossible for independent and small consulting organisations to have partner status (and benefits) with HP.

Andy closed by thanking the audience for their trust & confidence in HP, our time invested here at the show, and enforced his message that HP is proud to be a customers partner, ready to listen and act with the customers to see success for everyone.


Betty Smith VP of Process at John Hancock & President Emeritus with Vivit
Betty started with a discussion about the first HP software (Mercury) project around TestDirector to improve defect management on their internal web site and replacing spreadsheets and access databases with a centralised tool. They then migrated TestDirector to other software bases in a 6 week period once the initial pilot project had completed. SOme impressive numbers to be sure.

Betty discussed the complexities of the John Hancock/Manulife Financial organisation and the desire to drive efficency and competitive advantage.

She highlighted three main points of how this is done:

• Establish point solutions that provide value - JH does not support long implementations - any job must be finished between 2-6 months.
• Extend the solution to other areas - cross the silos & work across the organisation
• Create the longer term vision and focus on a match between IT & business goals. This provides JH an end state that is adaptable but stable, and leads to lifecycle management.

Products suites in particular that JH has implemented include Quality Management, Asset Management - (DDM, uCMDB). Betty claimed an increased efficiency for chargebacks from 3 weeks to one day using these new systems & processes. Performance Centre, and Business Availability Centre were also discussed, both of these are based out of centralised teams that work across all silos to support the business units.

Further, the discussion touched on Service Catalogue and Service manager being centralised and underpinned by uCMDB.
PPM started off as point solutions within numerous business units, but information wasn't being shared well. The PPM project consolidated and eliminated various applications to standardise on a single platform. Another key advantage of the project was that it defined centralised PM practices and processes.

Betty's main claim was that she works off of a simple end-state vision which she shared grahically with the audience. It had some interesting approaches illustrated in the diagram.

Betty discussed techniques that JH used to increase awareness and support including "show & tell" monthly meetings of internal SIGs cross-organisation, developed user forums in sharepoint, and allow for the solutions to be showcased. JH puts on monthly roadshows for the senior mgt level to validate direction and what si importnat to each of the BUs, allow an oppoortunity to adjust priorities, and these are run with individiaul biz units to really understand what is driving them and what areas they can help them improve in.

Betty discussed the regulatory requirements of a financial organisation and the abilities her successful projects have given to free up resources previously committed to audit compliance work - also this allows JH to demonstrate governance of off-shore vendors by having everyone use a centralised consistent solution. Engagement of governing bodies around risk management & expense management is another example of working across biz units. By engaging them in the use of the tools they contribute to the setting of policies and drive the use of the tools as a standard for the organisation.

Betty cited that process is over 50% of a project implementation; making the point that technology doesn't stand on its own without solid process that's oriented to your biz units & directions.

Betty summarised by emphasing that success is achieved by building incrementally focussing on low hanging fruit and creating an end-state vision.

HPSU 2009 Part 1

We spent the past two days (Saturday & Sunday) in my first Vivit Board of Directors meetings. Wow; marathon meetings! But productive. I can't spill the beans quite yet but there's a lot of changes coming fast to the members of the Vivit users group, and lots of positive things for the user community.

I'm just about to run out for dinner, but the post will start fast and furious tomorrow as I attend the keynote sessions with my laptop charged up & online! I look forward to bringing the followers of my blog the latest & greatest near real-time from the keynote presentation, breakout sessions, and tradeshow floor. This year those blog posts will be supported with podcasts as well.

Have a great evening, and blog you tomorrow!

Coming Soon - HP Software Universe

June 15 through 18 I'll be blogging and podcasting almost-live from the HP Software Universe in Las Vegas. Keep your RSS feeds tuned here for the latest news from HP and the various key speakers. Also any news from Vivit the official HP users group will make its way into my posts so there may be some good stuff there too. If there's something specific my readers want me to try and find out while I'm in Vegas at the conference, please email it to me at itmanagecast@gmail.com and I'll be glad to include it.

In fact, feel free to send your questions and comments via email or attach an audio file with your thoughts if you'd like to have it answered in the podcast.

HPSW - Part 3 - The Software Announcements

HP had three main announcements they were using Wednesday's mainstage session to make:

1. Application Lifecycle: The enhanced integration and development in the Portfolio, Requirements, and Quality products, providing for the ability to manage the application lifecycle from start through to go-live. Maybe I missed a memo, but I didn't think that this was so new to HP Software?
2. The Release Control product, and the claim that it helps with automating operations, and ties into that federated configuration management system; uCMDB. More detail around these includes that the tools have been revisited to accord with ITIL v3 in the sense of federating a Configuration Management System instead of gathering & replicating the config items across several barely linked data-stores. This is far more interesting of an announcement to me (as is the third one discussed subsequently) particularly with the time I have been putting into investigating vendor-based federated CMDBs and the mechanisms used to populate them.
3. Virtualization: HP announced that they have been working tightly with vmware to create better management & operation of virtual environments. This was interestingly reflected on the show floor later . An increasing number of software partners are flogging integrated or at least somewhat coupled virtualization-oriented offerings that connect one way or another to the HP Software Suite. Most offerings are around the management of your virtualized infrastructure or the leveraging of virtualization for the development and quality processes.
   

HPSW - Part 2 - Business Availability Center Announcements

HPSW is staking claim on the #1 spot in data centre automation and IT service management. We're introduced to Ramin Sayer, the Senior Director for BSM & uCMDB products. Ben continues to play the role of Dilbert's boss, which is ironic for someone as bright as he is, I understand it's intended to summarize facts for any "pointy-haired idiots" in the audience but it gets annoying after a while... but I digress.

Ramin walks us through the BAC suite of tools; none of this really that new to me having been on the BAC training already, but a good over-view. The discussion goes around moving from reactive application and infrastructure management to proactive root cause analysis. Honestly, this message has been re-iterated for a number of years now, but what they're focusing on is how integrating the new technologies acquired in the past year or so is giving better functionality to this end.

OpsWare tools, Service Manager, the "new" NNM8i (topic for another posting), and uCMDB are all shown integrated to match the process of change with the actual change release. Release Control 4.0 gives impact analysis pulled from the change management system & the CMS, to give the CAB a better picture of change impacts. Very cool idea, but I have to ask how long it would really take any organization to get to the point where this is functional? Again, a likely suspect for another posting, because as the guys continue talking my mind starts spinning ff on how to make this kind of implementation work optimally.

We're introduced to the ex-OpsWare product, HP Operations Orchestration Centre and how it underpins the change life-cycle through another medley of integrations to provide process-oriented change, incident, problem, and configuration management. Ramin discusses BAC being used in the NOC or Operations Centre and the Application Support groups. With focus on product integrations, HP shows us how we should really buy all of their software, by moving the incident into Service Manager, then Release Control, and Network Automation tools all underpinned by uCMDB.

uCMDB is definitely getting reviewed in an upcoming post so stay tuned for that one.

HP Software Universe 2008 - Las Vegas - Part 1

Wednesday morning rolls around pretty early in Las Vegas... It's day three of the "big show" for HP Software in the Americas. I'm sitting in the mainstage area waiting for this morning's keynotes:

• Ben Horowitz, Jonathon Rende, and Ramin Sayor to speak about Business Technology Optimization
• Christopher Rence to speak on HP Software at Fair Issac Corporation
• Caleb Sima to show us what the "newly acquired" web security tools are all about and discuss current exploits
• Jean-Michel Cousteau to educate the group on the true interdependance between mankind and nature
  

David Gee (VP of Software) kicked things off. A humorous vignette of David as Kevin Spacey's character from 21 and then David refers to today as "product day" which concerns me a bit in that we may be going down the road of sales pitches and not technology updates... but I'll be optimistic... as we go.

Ben Horowitz:

Two facts, three announcements:
1. HP stakes their claim as #1 in requirements management; segues to Jonathon Rende's talk. VP Products SOA, Jonathon introduces a virtual company called "Weeble Communications" and uses it to describe why HP SW is #1 in requirements management. PPM & it's integration with QC & other products is used as the starting point. Jonathon focuses on governing lifecycle processes. Ben keeps interjecting, and finally promises to stop the weeble puns, which is greeting by a trickle of applause. Content creation around workflows is pointed to as a differentiating factor, and how important it is to have their Out of the Box (OOB) content templates. Another factor Jonathon notes is the process of going from business priorities to project management and QC in parallel.

HP announced the Requirements Management module of the latest release of Quality Centre which puts requirements management into the same platform as the quality management tool set. The ability is provided for non-functional requirements (security, performance, etc) to be linked in early on in the project lifecycle. HP states that risk based decision making is available out of the gate and customizable to your organization - the announcement from Jonathon indicates that these can also be technical questions; and that this gives IT and the PMO the ability to create (and manage) contracts with the business areas around application project quality with most if not all vital decision points.

Continuing on about the features and functions , we're informed about agile quality practises that are being integrated into QC now, and that "lightweight out of the box" components are supporting this feature as well. Additionally Web 2.0 framework support has been added in Load Runner/Performance Centre, which seems an obvious mandatory in todays business space.

So, the marketing angle from HPSW on this topic discussing the solutions targeted at Project Portfolio Management, Quality Centre, Performance Centre, and Application Security Centre that provides for one application life-cycle vision across the organization. As I always say, great, but at what cost and how long would it really take to get this in place? As well, I'm not generally a big fan of "out of the box" processes and templates designed for your business processes, but without really rolling up my sleeves on this one I'm holding back a strong opinion on endorsement.

More to come in my next post...