Claymore Solutions Inc.

There has been a lot of news surrounding HP’s recent news to drop the TouchPad and sell off the PC business.  Is this good for HP or not?

The TouchPad was only on the market for 49 days, a new record for failed IT devices.  Leo Apotheker is no dummy when sales were not as expected he was faced with the decision to fish or cut bait. He did the right thing, the palm webOS still has value, but not if you can’t sell TouchPads. HP’s new focus on  higher margin software, services and Enterprise Infrastructure is the right way to go.  The PC business is continually losing margin and the Tablet business is owned by Apple.

As Jack Welch said “if you can’t be first or second, get out” and thats what Leo is doing.

The TouchPad was the last chance to save the Personal Systems Group at HP, Palm was a great acquisition, WebOS is a good OS and HP makes great hardware.  So what went wrong?  Tablets are not made of hardware and Operating Systems, the are an ecosystem.

Everyone wonders why the big computer companies can’t catch Apple in the tablet business, it’s simple, Steve Jobs built the ecosystem first!  It started with the iPod and iTunes, a device and a delivery method that was monitised. Then came the iPod Touch (iPad Beta!!)  and apps were invented.  Long before the iPad ever launched the developer network, an inventory of useful applications and a system to gain revenue was developed.  If you look back this took almost 10 years.  How can competitors jump in after the fact?

When IBM, Dell and HP were fighting over the corporate PC market Apple went after the executives of tomorrow.  They marketed to the students and teenagers with iPods, they learned all about iTunes and the AppStore.  They begged there parents for a mac to go to University, and now they will want a Mac and an iPad in the office.  Steve Jobs is a patient man, he did not go after the corporate market ten years ago, he went after the corporate market of today and beyond.

HP can pull this together if it concentrates on what it does well, get out of the loss leaders and exploit their software inventory, services (including the EDS acquisition) and Enterprise Hardware.  The recent storage acquisitions of Left hand Networks and 3Par have really strengthened this side.

Let each find the right market and do well!

As an IT consultant I am often engaged by enterprises planning major upgrades of Operating Systems, DBMS, Applications or Infrastructure.  In all cases my advice is to plan every detail and contingency, these often end up to be lengthy and costly endeavours in order to ensure success.In my own business  which I completely switched to Apple computers 5 years ago I preach the same diligence on upgrades.  Even with the new Mac OSX Lion, a plan was prepared and backups were completed on all machines prior to the first lion download.  Even after the first download a DMG was built on DVD of the new OS image.All this was just cheap insurance…. The new Lion installation from the Mac App Store was flawless on all the machines we own.  Even machines with boot camp partitions came through with out a hitch.  External raid arrays are all working, network connections are in place, no problems.The move to the App Store is brilliant, the work I advise my clients to do has all been pre done by Apple before the release of Lion on the App Store.  It is hard to fathom the amount of testing that must have been done before this release.  If only the other software manufactures would provide this kind of service.Can you imagine upgrading your ERP or DBMS at the click of a button!!!!  Consultants like me would be out of a job!Great job Apple but don’t tell the others how you did it!

My Open Source question has some great discussion in the Enterprise Architects forum on Linkedin.  If you would like to follow or contribute you can get to the discussion @http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=36248&discussionID=18703535&goback=%2Eanh_36248

I am seeing much more adoption of open source software lately.  Even in my own business I am using several open source tools (even this blog is open source).  I want to know what you think?  Please take 2 minutes and complete this simple survey (only 8 multiple choice questions). You can also leave your comments here on this blog.  I will post the results and write my thoughts on open source software very soon.Survey link  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QMTRR32ThanksTom

This year will be an interesting one for the outsourcing business and IT leaders alike. Most large corporations have outsourced at least some of their work to one of the big service providers, many of them did it 10 years ago during the Mega Deal boom right after Y2K. What makes this year interesting is that all if those huge $B+ deals are now coming to an end. CIO’s are now faced with the decision of what to do next. Trends are indicating that these deals are not being renewed, the single source mega deal is becoming scarce. CIO’s are now looking at strategically selecting multiple suppliers to fulfill their IT requirements.The monopoly of the mega deal is giving way to the open market of competing strategic service providers. IT leaders need to carefully choose who they want to deal with in their portfolio of service providers and put the correct governance structure in place to monitor, measure and manage multiple companies, services agreements and SLA’s. Even with the extra overhead of this governance layer companies that have ended their mega deal relationships are seeing increased savings and service satisfaction using this multivendor approach.To read the full article see Is the Mega Deal Dead?

Many of you will be reading this blog today due to the Grand Launch email that went out.  If so then I thank you for taking the time have a look around.  Please leave comments on this blog, what you agree with and what you don’t.  Also any topics you would like to see covered.Additionally the Articles that are posted here for you are being featured in an upcoming edition of the CEO refresherSo thank you for reading and come back oftenTom

It’s budget time again, and you’ve  been told to cut another XX%.  Sound familiar!  We have all been in this situation, we review our staffing, pare back on the project list, put off hardware investments but rarely do we review our software license portfolio.  Since we have already cut back on everything else this can be the place to find significant savings.  First you need the list, this may sound simple but I have found the larger the organization the more difficult this task is.  Take the time to analyse the list carefully, identify the top 5 most expensive licenses, identify duplicated categories (ERP, CRM, databases, office tools, monitoring packages, collaboration, middle-ware, web servers etc).  Next identify software with very few users, or no users.Once the analysis is complete you can put a plan together to;a) Eliminate infrequently used licensesb) Consolidate duplicated servicesc) Re-negotiate maintenance feesd) Replace with lower cost alternativese) Investigate Open-Source solutionsTry it, you may be surprised at what you find.

When I discuss Disaster Recovery Planning with clients the subject of High Availability always comes into the conversation.  Many executives fail to differentiate a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) with an Availability Target .An RTO is how long can your business afford to be without the use of an information system “While it is being recovered at a Disaster Recovery Site”.  The key concept here is a Disaster has happened (fire, flood, tornado, etc.) and the primary location where your information system used to reside is no longer serviceable.  An RTO is expressed as a length of time e.g. 24hrs.An Availability Target refers to how long can your business can afford an application to be unavailable to its users and is usually expressed as a percentage e.g. 99.9% available.  The key here is the computer room is still functioning, the reason for the outage is not a Disaster.  Another point to leep in mind with Availablity is fully understanding how it  is measured.  For example an Availabilty Target of 99.9% measured annually means your application can have a total unavailbilty of 526 minutes in a 365 day measurement period.  This could happen in many small outages or one large one whereas an Availabilty Target of 99.9% measured monthly would limit the maximum outage to be 44 minutes.With the use of Cloud Computing, Virtualization and Global Clustering technologies the line between DRP and Availability can be blurred even further.  Many companies have clustered their systems over two geographically seperate data centres and can move ther workload back and forth.The important thing is to think of RTO and AT as two separate concepts and define the values for your business.  Once the business defines these measures then the appropriate technologies can be selected to meet the business needs.

News releases are repeatedly stating that outsourcing prices are dropping.  I have read figures in the 10% to 15% range for the last couple of years.  Analysts are now predicting another 7% – 10% drop this year.  Sometimes things are too good to be true.Outsourcers are not lowering their margin (at least not this much), so how do they do it, you ask?  If we blow away some  of the smoke and mirrors, the price reductions are not across the board, they are only services that can be  provided remotely.  These services would include things like Service Desk, Remote Infrastructure and Remote Desktop management.  Outsourcers move these services to the lowest cost geography to maximize their return.  Poland and India used to be the preferred locations, they are now too expensive so the shift is to China, Bulgaria and Romania.The other way to accomplish these bargain prices is to change the service definition.  When desktop support is moved to China only items that can be fixed remotely (or automated) can be included, the technician that used to show up at your desk no longer exists.  In other words the price has dropped but the service may also have been reduced.Outsourcers are acting tactically to sell new business during this recession by offering attractive pricing for commonly needed services, however, they are also acting strategically.  The price for high future growth areas such as virtualization and cloud computing has not been reduced and in some cases it is increasing.Businesses looking at entering into an outsourcing agreement, or renewing, need to perform their own due diligence to be certain they understand what they are buying.   Each service definition needs to be fully evaluated to ensure it will meet the demands of the business.  Your strategic business and IT plans need to be consulted to anticipate which services you are going to need and make sure they are also included.

People are always asking me what I mean when I use the term “Insourcing”.  In the context of outsourcing, insourcing is the opposite.  It just means your are providing services to your business with resources you control (employees or contracts).Due to the recession we are seeing increased outsourcing activity especially with the off-shore providers.  Since over half of all outsource deals fail, desperate cost cutting deals awarded to the lowest bidder may not be the wisest alternative.President Obama, one year ago, voiced his concern over the volume of  outsourcing happening within the US government. Analyst predictions of this volume was over $180B for the top 20 contracts.  Congress has subsequently passed legislation that forces all federal agencies to develop “Insourcing” guidelines.In February 2010 the US Army announced in would Insource 7,162 positions in 2010 and another 11,000 jobs in the following 4 years.“The Army is recouping intellectual capital by insourcing former contracted positions,” Army Secretary John McHugh.I predict as companies start to realize they have lost vital Intellectual property, key capabilities and the ability to support the rapid pace of business change, more insourcing announcements will be forthcoming.For more thoughts on Insourcing see the article  What is Insourcing