Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 1

NEWSLETTER

MARCH 2015

Why Platform Managed Services May Be the Right Solution for Your Business By Jim Cantin, President, Leveraging Technology

Anyone who's ridden the London Underground is familiar with the iconic graphic and the expression, "Mind the Gap". Since the late 60's, it has warned passengers to step carefully

across the space between the many old rounded platforms and the straight door of the train car. Passengers getting off hear the recording, "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform." With a slight modification, it would make a perfect tagline for how Leveraging approaches Managed Services, with a warning to system support managers: "Please mind the gap between the applications and the platform." There's no way to avoid the complexity of today's solutions; heterogeneous servers, multiple languages, middleware, and high expectations around performance and availability. There are many potential gaps to be filled between the applications and the platform, but most have to do with a lack of resources with the necessary experience and expertise. Another is the service gap when fixed resources either cannot meet clients' fluctuating needs, or are queued up unproductively awaiting requests. We understand the challenges and have built our Managed Services offering to address those gaps within a flexible model that leverages the extensive expertise of our consultants - a model that may generate a better cost/benefit return than your fixed-staff administration model. Or help you implement a new technology, including those for big data analytics. Please consider the following articles by Wayne VanNewkirk and Mark Haeger - and call us to discuss how our services can meet or exceed your needs.

In This Issue

Managed Services: Don't Let DIY Become DOA

Software Technologies We Support

Data Warehouse Appliances: Implementing and Managing Big Data Processing Tools

A Strategy for Managing Enterprise Mobility Needs

Leveraging Technology Hosts IT and Analytics Leaders at "Carpe Datum" Event

Integration Requirements and a "Factory" Approach

Application Tool Lifecycle Analysis

IBM InterConnect Conference Recap

April 23: Save the Date for Virtual Enterprise Mobility Talk Show

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 2

When DIY Becomes DOA: What's Your "Plan B" for When the Demand for Application Support Overwhelms Your Capacity to Deliver? By Wayne VanNewkirk, Executive Director and Consultant There's no doubt that companies depend on technology to operate efficiently and to compete effectively. Certainly any system outage results in pain and suffering. In a perfect world, every update would be made, every patch would be applied and your internal and external customers would be happy. But IT platforms become more complicated every year and require more expertise to maintain. In the real world, you also have to keep pace with complexity while allocating finite resources against your customers' expectations. Many organizations struggle to find cost-effective staffing models that can flex to support application infrastructure that grows like a weed. Some clients have trouble hiring and retaining the needed skill sets. Others are paying high rates for consultants that are project-based only. Others try to manage on-staff resources to cover all their different technologies with fluctuating capacity/need levels, resulting in a cost/benefit ratio that's out of whack. Staffing when needed can = lower cost. With on-staff resources maintaining and administering your platform, your capacity is flat. But timing of backups, patches, security issues and special projects are not flat. There are periods of higher and lower level resource demands. You may be using contractors for the peak times and special projects, but what about the lows? Consider this cost model: By lowering the level of on-staff resources and outsourcing a fixed but flexible level of the admin services, you can gain a partner with a much higher level of up-to-date software-specific expertise than can be maintained internally. A partner who is ready with additional staffing for peak times and special projects - at a discounted rate when part of a Managed Services engagement. Read More

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 3

Is a Data Warehouse Appliance the Right Fit? And How Do You Implement and Manage it? By Mark Haeger, Practice Lead, Information Architecture Most data warehouses face similar problems:

• Load windows are growing beyond practical bounds.

• Complex queries are taking too long to run.

• Time to market for new analytics does not meet business requirements.

• Administrative costs are consuming a lion's share of the operation budget.

If any or all of these challenges describe your data warehouse environment, you are not alone. The solution that many turn to is a data warehouse appliance. For some, this means a wholesale replacement of the current DW. For others, a simple augmentation is all that is needed. Adding an appliance and offloading only the most troublesome performance issues could prove to be the best solution. This is also a good, low risk, first step, even if the eventual goal is a wholesale replacement. Leveraging Technology is a Premier IBM Business Partner, certified in IBM's PureData for Analytics (powered by Netezza), data warehouse appliance. We help clients assess current needs to find the right fit for an appliance. We help transition new and existing workloads to the appliance. We deliver Managed Services that ensure SLAs are met, and keep organizations out of fire-fighting mode by staying ahead of the curve. Rather investing in these very specialized skills, some companies are looking outside for help with the support

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 4

functions for these data environments. Outsourced Managed Services is a cost-efficient way to access high-end skills to ensure data platforms, appliances and corresponding applications run at ideal capacity and processing speed. Managed Services can monitor platforms, make recommendations, and implement modifications to keep the analytic functions running smoothly with fewer glitches. If you already have a Netezza appliance and are not sure if it is performing optimally, are new to Netezza and looking for an experienced partner to help transition, or want to understand the right fit for an appliance given your unique challenges, give Mark Haeger a call at 585.454.4250 x132

What's in Your Users' Pockets? An Introduction to a New Mobility Managed Services Strategy By Scott Azwell, Lead Consultant Mobility started with a single seemingly innocuous device (remember the Blackberry?) that enterprises provisioned and managed, and has now evolved to include a multitude of smartphone and tablet devices owned by a rapidly growing user base. According to Apperian's 2014 Executive Enterprise Mobility Survey:

1. The main benefits of enterprise mobility are: - Increased employee satisfaction (60%) - A competitive advantage (55%)

2. Respondents with the highest amount of satisfaction with mobile adoption rely on these strategies to drive adoption among employees: - Help desk (66%) - BYOD policy (60%) - App management software (60%) - Promoting apps internally (40%) - Offering enterprise app stores (31%) - Using leading-edge tactics like gamification (11%)

3. Issues with managing mobility programs are one of the top concerns: - 37% citing how to determine ROI - 35% citing lack of management tools as important challenges

4. More than 70% of respondents plan to equip more than 1,000 users with mobile apps and 33% of respondents are deploying mobile apps to more than 5,000 users in the next two years.

5. 77% of executives noted that security issues are the top concern for achieving their mobility goals.

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 5

- Yet 70% of respondents are still unable to detect data or device loss - highlighting a lack of mobile security initiative despite the key concern.

As a fellow IT manager, I'd like to call your attention to the items 3, 4, 5: mobility management concerns, the sheer volume of users to onboard who will then need services and the huge security exposure issues that go with this population. Chances are the skills and capacity to deal with these demands fall outside of your organization's normal scope. Explosive growth and the complexity associated with mobility is driving enterprises to seek help, paving the way for managed mobility services. Resource-challenged small and mid-market enterprises are increasingly turning to managed service providers to manage their mobility operations. Read More

Leveraging Hosts "Carpe Datum!" A Morning of Ideas, Insights and Opportunities By Carol Sullivan, Marketing Manager Exploring the new frontiers of analytics was the theme of the conference hosted by Leveraging Technology's President, Jim Cantin, on March 10th at the Woodcliff Hotel and Spa. While it sometimes seems as though everybody's talking about Big Data but not getting traction, our four guest presenters took us beyond the hype cycle from the perspectives of academia, industry, science and technology. Scott Steele, who directs the Rochester Center of Excellence in Data Science, gave us an overview of how the U of R is investing millions in Data Science across its scientific, medical and business campuses, creating new degree programs and opening the door to collaborations with private industry. John Walsh, Chief Architect for Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, shared the challenges facing his company as it makes a huge cultural shift to data-driven business management while investigating how to leverage member data in pursuit of better healthcare outcomes and improved financial efficiency. Bob Kremens, Research Professor at RIT, traced his 12-year adventure of developing data-collecting sensor systems in the course of investigating the propagation of wildfires.

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 6

Stewart Hanna, of IBM's Big Data Group, gave us the perspective of the people investing in the technology that enables data science, including a variety of international use cases in which companies are using data to disrupt their markets. Both John Walsh of Excellus and Stewart Hanna of IBM shared a similar recommendation: you need to sort out the architecture and integration bits required to capture and discover the data before you can perform meaningful analysis.

With that thought in mind, Leveraging Technology offered conference-goers access to complimentary Roadmap Workshops to evaluate the state of their information strategy, enterprise architecture or integration. We are extending this offer to our followers for a limited time. Click here for workshop details and email info@leveragingtechnology.com to request a call to discuss. Read a more detailed recap of the conference here.

More Efficient Integration Requirements - With a "Factory" Approach By Sandy Kleinberg, Business Architecture Practice Leader Just as management of application systems and platforms can benefit from standardization and repeatable processes to alleviate staffing needs, the other parts of the IT lifecycle - design, build, deploy - can leverage those same practices. Take the requirements and design process, for example, which includes requirements engineering. This process is made more efficient by utilizing a repeatable, standard "factory" approach to developing integration project requirements. The integration factory is a pattern-based, iterative approach to requirements and design that delivers very high quality results in an extremely efficient way. (The factory process can also be used in the build and deploy phases.)

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 7

Activity Sequencing

• Iterates between requirements and design in a way that potently connects them.

• Allows us to look at needs (requirements) and solutions (design) as two perspectives of the same thing: the gap.

Resolving this basic understanding leads to...

Better Relationships

Factory approach allows roles (business analyst, architect) to participate in both phases (an approach I call "co-design").

• SMEs develop more trust in the architect because they are present from the beginning of the project and truly understand the needs and drivers behind the needs.

• Architect is now able to produce designs in a friendlier environment and can more easily frame the design in a way that can demonstrate it's optimized for the organization vs. what the SME assumed would be built.

Results

Most telling benefit: The outcome – Higher quality requirements and reduced timelines Starting from a known set of patterns helps produce more consistent results.

• Architects know what to expect, which is directly aligned with their design patterns.

• Timelines are drastically reduced because we aren't starting from a blank whiteboard.

Call Sandy Kleinberg to discuss the Integration Requirements Factory at 585.454.4250 x145 or read his article about requirements engineering and the factory.

The Secret to Lower Labor Costs May Be Hidden in Your Application Portfolio By Jerry Weimar, Enterprise Architect Reactive management is a fact of life in complex IT environments. Maintaining production is always going to take priority over big picture perspectives. IT application portfolios usually evolve over time, developed on a piecemeal basis rather than through holistic design. The inevitable results include redundancies and inefficiencies tied to aging technology that limps along past its useful lifetime. Left unchecked, these invisible factors will siphon off a

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 8

disproportionate share of your resources. This insight is supported by research that consistently finds that when companies take the time to actively manage their application portfolios, IT expenditures decline by 15-20% -- with no significant side effects. The fact is that these unrecognized redundancies and inefficiencies represent a very significant opportunity for IT cost savings and quality improvements. The question is: how do you get there? Introducing a fast, low-cost path to savings: Leveraging Technology's Application Portfolio Assessment Methodology. Because few clients have a process - or indeed the organizational structure in place - to assess their portfolios, we piloted and proved our own Application Portfolio Assessment Methodology. We now offer it as a service to help clients determine how to optimize their application portfolio as a path to reducing IT costs and improving IT quality and freeing up resources for high-value strategic initiatives.

Part of the power of Leveraging Technology's Application Portfolio Assessment Methodology service offering is how it identifies wasted IT support. Along with reducing

unnecessary expenditure due to redundancies and inefficiencies in their application portfolio, this enables companies to invest more in strategic programs.

Zero out your perspective with a reality-based, stakeholder-driven process. Read More

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 9

IBM InterConnect 2015: It's Just the Start By Jim Cantin, President

I recently attended IBM's Interconnect 2015 conference held in Las Vegas from February 22 - 26. This year IBM combined a number of their annual conferences into one large event attended by 20,000 people made up of customers, IBM employees, and Business Partners. Having attended the IMPACT conference over the years, I learned to expect that IBM would use the event to issue major press releases and product announcements. There seemed to be less of that this year. Instead most of the emphasis was a few key marketing messages. Sunday was a day set aside for IBM Business Partners like Leveraging. From the first session I attended, the talk was always related to CAMS. CAMS stands for Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, and Social. Every session discussed CAMS or emphasized a connection to at least one of them. There are many reasons for this: one way or another, Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, and Social are disrupting the traditional role of Information Technology. The word is that the needs of business have changed and yet IT has a significant role to play. Change is taking place in IBM's portfolio of products as well. The traditional software pillar brand names are going away and being replaced with logical groupings of capabilities with new names. The new names are: Systems Middleware, Analytics, Cloud, Social, Commerce, Security, and Watson. I look at this as a start with more changes yet to come. It's a good time to better understand both the disruptions caused by CAMS and the reworking of the portfolio of IBM products. If you'd like to discuss the trends and the product implications, contact us to schedule a time to meet. -- Jim

Save the Date: April 23, 2015

Virtual "Enterprise Mobility Talk Show" This one-hour live webinar - sponsored by Leveraging Technology, IBM and Streebo, Inc. - will be a new format technology show that will feature industry stalwarts, thought leaders and researchers from the Mobile and Digital world. The panel will highlight and discuss trends, technology breakthroughs, customer success stories and challenges they or their customers face on their 'Mobile journey'. Watch for an invitation in early April; and check the news page on our website www.leveragingtechnology.com.

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 10

When DIY Becomes DOA: What's your "Plan B" for when the demand for application support overwhelms your capacity to deliver? - Continued The right skills at the right time at the right price. Leveraging Technology created a Managed Services offering in response to what we saw as an emerging customer need. Managed Services work on the same principle as tool rental shops; sometimes it makes more sense to borrow than to own, especially when the capability is expensive to buy or you only need to use it now and then. With our Managed Services Engagement Models, you can borrow our expertise in the form of a share of a certified expert or experts on terms that complement your staffing strategy. We set things up to make it easy to leverage our ongoing investment in staff expertise, specifically on IBM WebSphere, Sterling and Netezza software. Clients are discovering that this approach is particularly cost-effective if IBM software is only a minor part of their infrastructure. Alternatively, the numbers may show that an ongoing service engagement is a better allocation of cost than hiring and continual recertification. In business terms, we can offer you an affordable cost of entry because we are able to amortize our high-value talent across multiple client engagements. It's a win-win. Interested in investigating a "Plan B" to support your production? You can learn much more about our Managed Services Engagement Models, which range from incident-based service to 24x365 support, by downloading our fact sheet. Back to Top

What's in Your User's Pockets? An Introduction to a New Mobility Managed Services Strategy - Continued Managed mobility services can encompass part of or the entire lifecycle of a mobile solution. With this model, a service provider is either helping with some or all of the deployment and management aspects of a solution, or they may be hosting the solution or taking an active role doing everything on your behalf. At the very least, managed mobility services (MMS) include some or all of the following, as part of an enterprise mobility management suite.

• Mobile device management (MDM)

• Containerization

• Application & security management

• Enterprise application store management

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 11

We offer just this sort of solution through our partnership with Streebo, Inc., a leader in enterprise mobility, multi-device solutions and enterprise portal enablement for mobile. Together, we can take the mobility load off your shoulders with a range of professional services, consulting, management, and support in terms of device integration, testing and deployment. Please contact Scott Azwell, our Lead Consultant, for more information. Back to Top

The Secret to Lower Labor Costs May Be Hidden in You Application Portfolio - Continued A key tenet of Leveraging Technology's Application Portfolio Assessment service offering is that it meets clients where they are, as opposed to where they aren't. We understand that most companies do not have detailed, documented, quantitative information about all of their applications. However, your company has excellent SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) that have detailed knowledge of their applications. Our methodology pulls together a small team of your SMEs and applies their subjective inputs in a structured environment facilitated by an experienced Application Portfolio Architecture to fast track a meaningful portfolio assessment. Get actionable answers in hours, not months.

Methodology

• A process and tooling for assessing the business value and technical value of each application.

• The team evaluates each application and places it in one of the four quadrants (see illustration)

Assessment Quadrants

• Assessment of applications is based on how its technical value compares to its business value with a good-to-poor rating on each value.

• Quadrants identify which apps to 1 - Grow; 2 - Need Technical Remediation; 3 - Require Detailed Business Re-evaluation; or 4 - Retired.

Leveraging Technology Newsletter – March 2015 Page 12

Roadmap

• Prioritized plan for executing on the quadrant recommendations for all applications (For example, the team will decide on and document which applications should be retired first, second, and third, along with associated retirement plan specifics.)

Deliverables

• Quadrant Recommendations for each application

• Associated rationale and application attributes in a "dashboard"

• Portfolio Roadmap encompassing all of the applications under consideration.

Seize Your Opportunity The bottom line is that by engaging Leveraging Technology and investing a few hours in preparation and a facilitated team assessment, you can apply our exclusive Methodology to transform your application portfolio. To learn more, contact Jerry Weimar or call 585.454.4250 x100. Back to Top

SHARE WITH A FRIEND

FOLLOW US

Leveraging Technology | 4 Commercial Street - Sixth Floor | Rochester | NY | 14614