Data Centre Strategies Mauritius 2009 has been organised by the Board of Investment, in collaboration with Broadgroup consulting. The Agenda for the 2-day event can be found on broadgroup’s website.

Very nice atmosphere in the conference Hall. The giant screen broadcasting an underwater diving clip was wonderful!

My First impression: Waow, I learnt a lot during these 2 days. It was absolutely well organised, well disciplined and global experts on the topic present at the conference hall of Four Point Sheraton Business Hotel.

Mahen, the master of ceremony on day 2

A bit hats off to Mahen Govinda of BOI, who is the ‘Mastermind’ of organising this event very professionally.

Got the opportunity network also with a South African Hosting company – Hetzner, who have 10+ years in the hosting business.

Hetzner directors from South Africa

It was also great to talk business with the Director of a Mauritian Hosting company.

Secondly, it was also a very, very cool, jovial and happy atmosphere. With most of the professional speakers also having a good sense of humour.. There was also a Great Gala Dinner organised where we enjoyed a lot the Bollywood show.

Thirdly, my favourite presentations were on :

• Steve Wallage – his nice pace of presenting, I was absolutely amanzed by that. He knew his slides well..
• the presentation of the Mauritius Eco-Park Project (maybe the main reason why I wanted to
• come to the conf.),
• 

  Mr. Iqbal presenting the land based oceanic project

• Data Centres: New Trends  – Virtualisation and Cloud Computing
• 

  Nitin Shan presenting benefits of cloud computing

• Business Continuity Management
• European Commission Presentation on Code of Conduct for Data Centres (mainly because he was funny)
• Dr. Ian Bitterlin, the Specialist. was absolutely amazed by his expertise

It was a good experience to network with key IT professionals in the country and internationally. Opportunity cropped up to have professional discussion with them during lunch time or during the tea break!

I wish, the guys are right now, enjoying the Cocktail and Dinner at Ile aux deux Coco – Blue Bay!

This is a follow-up post from Sandwich and Olive Salad and which has been placed in the new category Practical Training 2009.

Well, I nearly had made up my mind to go for Olive Salad for the Practical Training 2009 and was preparing the form to be submitted to our Programme Co-ordinator. All of a sudden, we grabbed the attention of Orange! The latter was the third offer and the pending one.

At the last minute, there was the possibility of setting up an appointment at a very cool location Damn driving during the night is not fun and especially when there are Police Traffic people everywhere telling you to give priority to the damn VIP people going to Domaine Anna.

Finally we reached our destination (despite the small deviation to Albion Lighthouse , eihhh) and we were on time (pat on the shoulders)!

At the reception, we were welcomed by the Manager and we had a seat to start the meeting. Well, there was description of what is the role and function of the backoffice services and the intention to implant the corporate service in Mauritius. The key terms were: Corporate services, KPI, Business Intelligence, Availability, Best Practice, date warehouse, reporting, supply chain, inventory control, Nokia, Wal-Mart, competence, global company, Romania, Germany, France Telecom, Orange Business Services

There was a high level of business jargon being used (in French). The theory from Operations Management, which we learnt at University was applicable. Below are some videos related to the main topic of the meeting:

RFID in Supply Chain

Service Performance Mgt

The main stuff that impressed me was that the profile of the Manager was something that I am -> Business acumen complemented with knowledge in the IT industry. Having a look at my CV, he told me that for the setting up of the team, candidates with such profiles are required. Then my question: Are we expected to work with the technicalities of networking (CCNA stuff)? Happily the answer was No.

The decision

Now that I have all three very good Practical Training opportunities, I have to choose one. Its a choice difficult to make since each one would provide a different career path. I asked my ‘chauffeur’ : If you get three love letters from girlfriends which each one possess the required qualities that you desire, which one would you choose?

Today I joined IT Toolbox.com which is a community where professionals interested in IT connect and communicate to share knowledge. Browsing the interesting blog posts and articles, I found one very tempting to download and read:

IT excellence: Achieving optimised business outcomes -an Economist Intelligence Unit report, sponsored by SAP.

The article focuses on how leading companies enable IT to perform optimally.

Ms Mulders believes that IT excellence connotes different things to different companies. “You have to start with ‘What are we trying to do as a corporation?’” she says. Since Dow Corning is “focused very heavily on customer relationships,” she says, for her company IT excellence means “that IT and the businesses are marching to the same priorities and initiatives—that IT is partnering with the businesses to deliver value for our customers.” IT excellence simply means achieving the right balance between IT value and IT cost.

According to Applied Materials CIO Ron Kifer, the firm’s investments in IT are enabling business strategies and creating differentiation. “Our leadership is committed to the idea that IT is vital to business strategy,” says Mr Kifer. “But IT excellence is also very important.” At his company, he says, that means more than merely enabling business strategies—it also means “taking a leadership role” in business and process improvement, if not transformation.

Outsourcing

Using an outsourcing approach for enabling business is beneficial because it allows for a more flexible and cost-effective staffing model that can adjust rapidly to changes in the business environment. Outsourcing frees internalresources to focus on value-added core competencies such as change leadership, process optimisation and technology innovation.

What other interesting stuffs I’ve learnt so far concerning strategic use of IT is that

Today’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) must understand technology well, speak the language of senoir management, and involve their personnel in finding innovative ways of using IT to efficiently and swiftly deploying new business ideas.

As part of BCS Membership benefits, one amongst them is access to Forrester reports. While browsing for any interesting report on IT Service Management, I encountered one which I find interesting. Here is the excerpt.

Interesting questions were covered on the following topics:

• x86 Server Purchase Plans
• x86 Server Virtualization Adoption
• Cloud Computing Adoption
• Alternatives To Traditional PC Technologies
• PCs, Laptops, And Management
• Small Business Hardware Spending Plans
• Small Business Product Selection And Channels
• Reliance On IT And Support Services
• Information Sources And Influence In Purchasing

Sample questions:

• Approximately how many x86 (Intel or AMD servers — in some companies known as the Windows servers) are operated by IT that you know about?

• For approximately how long has your company used x86 server virtualization? a) Less than a year; b) about one year; c) about two years; d) about three years; e) about four years; f) five years or more; and g) don’t know.

• What is your company’s level of use of pay-per-use hosting of virtual servers (also known as cloud computing) for the following workloads at service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Savvis, or Mosso? 1) Not aware (includes don’t know); 2) not interested; 3) interested but no budget for it; 4) interested and planning budget for it; d) implementing in the next 12 months; and e) already implemented.

• For each of the following alternatives to traditional PC technologies, please tell me your highest level of awareness or interest based on the following scale: a) thin-client hardware or other terminals that access a server-hosted session (e.g., Sun Ray, Wyse, HP, Dell); b) blade PCs (i.e., HP CCI and ClearCube); c) hosted application virtualization (also known as server-based computing) (e.g., Citrix XenApp/Presentation Server and Microsoft Terminal Services); d) hosted desktop virtualization (e.g., VMware VDI and Citrix XenDesktop); e) local desktop virtualization (e.g., VMware ACE, Microsoft Virtual PC, and Parallels); f) local application virtualization and streaming (e.g., Microsoft Application Virtualization [Softricity], VMware ThinApp [Thinstall], and Altiris SVS); and g) Citrix XenApp with application streaming.

The survey results are very interesting as we get an idea of what are the emerging hardware trends 2008-2009 by North American and European Small and Medium Businesses.

Yes, its time back to work hard for the BCS modules. This time, I have enrolled for Diploma Modules amongst which features the module: IT Service Management. Honestly this is something completely new to me.  The lectures had already started and I missed them because the module, I did not consider studying it at that time (December). Now we decide to investigate a bit about the topic.

IT Service Management (ITSM) is a discipline for managing information technology (IT) systems, philosophically centered on the customer’s perspective of IT’s contribution to the business. ITSM stands in deliberate contrast to technology-centered approaches to IT management and business interaction. The following represents a characteristic statement from the ITSM literature:

Providers of IT services can no longer afford to focus on technology and their internal organization, they now have to consider the quality of the services they provide and focus on the relationship with customers.^[1]

No one author, organization, or vendor owns the term “IT Service Management” and the origins of the phrase are unclear.

Source: Wikipedia

Source: http://www.emacao.gov.mo/documents/14/10/seminar10a.pdf

IT Service Management is the Industries‘ best practices for the delivery and support of IT services
Applicable to small and large organisations of all kinds:
– Business
– (Non-)government
– Education
Applicable to centralised and distributed systems
applicable to in-house or 3rd party supplied systems

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a best practice framework

De facto Standard for IT Service Management

ITSM/ ITIL Process

Service Delivery
– Service Level Management

– Financial Management for IT Services
Financial Management helps determine and record cost, which is incurred on the management and delivery of IT services. Financial Management provides benefits that help perform various tasks, such as estimating cost and optimizing the performance of IT services. Financial Management involves various roles such as finance manager, who performs tasks such as creating budgets and managing the finance department of the company.– Capacity Management
– Availability Management

Availability Management is a process, which helps manage and provide resources to other Service Management processes, such as Change Management and Configuration Management. Availability Management ensures that IT services are functioning properly and sufficient resources are available to IT services. Availability Management also ensures that the resources are reliable and cost effective and that all the IT services are available to end users. The implementation of Availability Management helps improve the quality of IT services and prevent unauthorized use of the available resources. To implement Availability Management, the Availability Management team in a company designs an availability plan and an availability recovery plan.– IT Service Continuity Management

Service Support
– Incident Management

Incident Management enables a company to resolve the incidents and restore the functioning of IT services without affecting the quality of other IT services. Incidents can occur due to various known and unknown causes, such as a damaged cable or a printer error. When an incident occurs, a company can use either a work around or a Request for Change (RFC) to resolve the incident. A work around is a temporary solution for the incident, whereas an RFC provides a permanent solution, provided the Change Management team approves it.

The three types of incidents that can be resolved using Incident Management are:

• Application: Includes incidents that are caused by a software problem, such as a network server that is not available or a bug in an application.

• Hardware: Includes incidents that are caused by a hardware problem, such as network failure.

• Service requests: Include incidents that are caused by service requests such as retrieving and transferring information across the network.

– Problem Management
Problem Management enables a company to manage and deliver error free IT services. Problem Management helps reduce and control the number of incidents that occur while delivering IT services. To manage and deliver error free IT services, a company implements proactive Problem Management. After implementing proactive Problem Management, if a problem occurs, then a company needs to implement reactive Problem Management.– Configuration Management
– Change Management
– Release Management
– Service Desk.

Amongst good books, we find:

Managing Infrastructure using ITL, Skillsoft Press 2006

Overview of Service Management

Service Management is a management strategy of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) to manage the delivery and support of IT services provided by a company. A company needs Service Management to provide quality IT services to customers according to the requirements. In Service Management, a company implements Service Desk to provide support for IT services to customers. Service Desk is a point of contact for customers to provide solutions to the problems and incidents reported by them.

The processes and levels at which the Service Management processes are aligned with the business perspective are:

• Business Relationship Management (BRM) : Provides information related to business requirements of a company. This information helps align the Service Management processes with the business perspective.

• Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) : Provides information related to requirements of the suppliers. This information helps define the requirements for Service Management processes.

• Review, planning, and development of IT: Defines the process in which IT infrastructure is reviewed and plans for the development of IT infrastructure are created. In the review, planning, and development of an IT process, the IT infrastructure is also developed according to the plans.

• Liaison and planning: Defines the process in which the employees of a company are provided knowledge and training about the Service Management.

• Strategic: Defines the level at which the Service Management processes should map with the strategic level objectives of the company.

• Tactical: Defines the level at which Service Management processes should align with the tactical level processes of the company.

Operational: Defines the level at which the Service Management processes should map to the operational procedures of a company.

Benefits of Service Management include:

• Helps improve the quality of delivering the IT services and provides support for the business of a company by managing the delivery of IT services.

• Provides standard procedures for the continuity of IT services in a company.

• Provides better understanding of current functioning of the IT infrastructure.

• Provides more information about the current IT services including information about the IT infrastructure areas in which changes can be made. These changes provide benefits, such as increased flexibility and adaptability of IT services, to the company.

• Delivers the IT services that are required by the customers resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction.

• Provides benefits, such as improved security, accuracy, speed, and availability that are required to deliver quality IT services.