Analysing 12000+ IT Environments

This was a great session, full of lots onf information about how the Micrsoft Operations Framework and the Infrastructure optimisation surveys have helped companies do their deployments and move from Basic-Standardised-Rationalised-Dynamic.
There are some self assessments online
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/cits/mo/mof/moftool.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/business/peopleready/assessment/launch.mspx
however, when we met with the NYC Account team they said they would get us the full survey.

Further info on the Infrastructure optimisation can be found here > http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/infrastructure/default.aspx
They follow ITIL and COBIT too.

They have been running these surveys for 3 years and realised certain problems:

• Purchasing products does not always mean implementing
• Utilisation of products is usually around 0-10% of their feature set, some go up to 25% but virtually no one is ever above 50%. An obvious example the presenter said was Calendaring. All email has them and the ability to share, however the majority of employees are unaware/untrained etc.

The secret to service excellence is often pitched as people, process, technology. However it should read People+Process+Technology. Having one of two clearly does not make up for a lack elsewhere, the framework should help companies understand what they need to do.

There are 3 Infrastructure optimisation models that have been developed with Gartner and MIT. These are:

1. Core Infrastructure Optimisation Model,
2. Business Productivity Optimisation Model
3. Application Platform Optimisation Model

Each of the above have the four stages of development - Basic-Standardised-Rationalised-Dynamic.

A nice metaphor was used to describe businesses that are trying to progress their IT without dealing with each stage in turn - like a ship with 40 anchors, buying a bigger boat wont make you go faster.

As much as you try to go faster/ more dynamically by implementing new technologies, if you do not deal with the problems you are facing at each stage, all you are doing is introducing more complexity and instability and actually making this worse.

Their research has shown that if in any of the 3 optimisation models a business is still at the basic level, they will never be above standardised in the other 2.

It was interesting to ave a bit more of an in depth look at the MOF and IO models, I had only really skim read them before. It is certainly worth us having a chat about our areas and where we think we are and what that means. Maybe a team meeting topic?