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Eracent Products tackle CIO initiatives

Making my IT department a profit center

Who moved my computer?

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

CONTACT THE PRESIDENT WALTER SZABLOWSKI

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From The President's Desk

WHY IT PROJECTS FAIL.

In the past few months I have attended a number of conferences. One of the main topics of discussion was: "Why do IT Projects Fail". The consensus was that about 70% of projects fail. The speakers all had suggestions for improvement. Suggestions included: better project management, obtaining more "corporate buy-in" forcing better alignment with corporate objectives simplifying and managing expectations.

I found the discussions interesting because in my 30 years of experience in engineering, no projects failed. A project may have been cancelled, but I never experienced a failed project. Research projects fail, of course. In research, failure is a part of the development process. But once a process is developed, it's successful implementation is virtually assured. IT appears to be quite different, what should be successful is usually delayed, runs over budget or is abandoned.

I believe that IT projects fail because of poor metrics. In most organizations, the IT infrastructure is poorly defined, the scope of IT hardware is unknown. The software inventory is undefined. Essentially, the IT department cannot define a starting point for a project or a conclusion, primarily because of poor or no IT Asset Management processes. Most CIO′s would be embarrassed if the extent of their lack of network definition, inventory and status were known and understood. At the same time most organizations state that although IT Asset Management is important, they have more important projects to implement. In my opinion, without a proper and successful IT Asset Management process in place, all of the "more important" projects will fail as happens to be the case.

The current hot CIO projects include: server consolidation; virtualization; and security compliance. These projects assume that the enterprise actually understands what applications are being used and by whom, which patch levels of software are correct and inventories are defined. In reality, most organizations rely on incomplete and approximate network data. Their starting points and end points cannot be defined and as a result success can neither be defined nor measured. All IT projects are defined by successful hardware and software deployments since you must first reduce a concept into a physical infrastructure. If you cannot define the infrastructure, the project will result in failure.

Eracent has always understood that accurately and fully defining the enterprise hardware and software IT Assets is the key to successful IT project implementation. Accurately defining the starting point and defining the successful end point is the key to project success. Having a process in place that provides metrics and measurements will guarantee success. Only Eracent's products are proven to meet those standards for success.

I am attending the Technology Executives Club presentation on "IT Project Management Best Practices" in Chicago on February 14 and will report back on it in the next newsletter.

Walt

How Do You Keep Track of a Software Product...

...that is Really 3 or 4 Separate Products?

In the ever more complicated world of software licensing you would think software vendors would try to simplify your life. However, it always seems to go in the other direction.

When you purchase software, the vendor often compresses a lot of information into that product description. The reason for that is to help the vendor track what and how their products are being purchased, not necessarily to make it easier for you. Suppose you had this as your product description: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition 5 CAL's w Maint. Now we're talking about a single item description that expands to:

And you are charged with keeping track of your software licensing. What do you do?

With Eracent's License Entitlements solution, you can actually expand a single product description out to multiple items, each capable of being tracked, counted and reported separately, including whether the maintenance is current or expired. All of this is easily accomplished through an easy to use Graphical User Interface. Now, you can easily split products into multiple entries, as well as associate those descriptions to a common naming convention.

For more information on how our solutions can help simplify your life, go to www.eracent.com, and see for yourself.

Eracent is proud to welcome its newest Customers: Marks & Spencer and FirstGroup plc.

Marks & Spencer (M&S) is a British retailer with 760 stores in more than 30 countries around the world. It is one of the most iconic and widely recognized chain stores in the UK with 520 stores, and is the largest clothing retailer in the country, as well as being a multi-billion pound food retailer. In 1998 it became the first British retailer to make a pre-tax profit of over £1 billion.

FirstGroup plc (LSE: FGP) is a Scottish transport company operating in the United Kingdom, Ireland and North America, with headquarters in Aberdeen. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. FirstGroup plc is Britain's largest bus operator running more than one in five of all local bus services. A fleet of nearly 9,000 buses carries some 2.9 million passengers a day in more than 40 major towns and cities. FirstGroup also runs passenger and freight rail services in the UK. Passenger rail franchises consist of First Great Western, First Capital Connect, First TransPennine Express and First ScotRail. They also operate Hull Trains, a non-franchised open access intercity passenger train service and provide rail freight services through FirstGBRf. First operates the Croydon Tramlink network carrying approximately 24 million passengers a year on behalf of Transport for London.

Customer question of the month:

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Please explain why Eracent's Software discovery process is superior to competitors like Altiris.

Eracent's Software Discovery process is significantly superior to the Altiris process. In the most basic terms, Altiris only discovers what it is requested to find. Therefore if the administrator does not know what software is on the user's computer, Altiris will not show it. This makes supporting IT Software Asset Management difficult, since with Altiris, you really need to know the answer before you ask the question.

Also, a "rule" has to be written to discover the software. Since the administrator has the responsibility to write the rule, proper discovery is subject to writing the proper rule. Correct "Rule writing" is a difficult task without proper training and testing. Different administrators can write different rules to try to discover the same application and they will get different results. As a result, it's difficult to trust the data and to produce accurate data.

Eracent takes full responsibility for the accuracy of its software discovery process. As a result, clients can trust the data and save significant administrative expenditures. In practical financial terms, using ERACENT's product will save more money in administrative costs than the actual cost of Eracent's software. The resulting data will lead to further cost savings. Using Eracent tools actually turns ITAM into a "profit center".