BI and the Chicken Pot Pie - Everyday Recipes for Business Intelligence and Performance Improvement

So today it is rainy and gray here in Cary and I ran into two stories today with recent
survey findings I found interesting. Those "quick snacks" or pulse points about what folks are thinking in our industry brighten a dreary day.

CIO Top Priorities: The Society for Information Management released their 2009 CIO priorities survey this week and some interesting tid bits can be gleaned from it. This year the number one priority of CIO's is business productivty and cost reduction followed by IT and business alignment (#1 in 2008), business agility and speed to market and business process re-engineering.

The top four CIO technology investments in 2009 were business intellignece, server virtualization, ERP systems and customer/corporate portals.

The survey shows that CIO's are focused on productivity and cost reduction which knocked last year's IT and business alignment priority to #2. Projects that suport those objectives should continue to see an uptick in receptiveness and execution. In addition I thought the top software investment of business intelligence (BI), followed a few priorities later by portals (often part of a BI initiative) interesting. The need for basic reporting capabilities is still rampant but since I didn't see a definition of BI in connection with the survey I would have to ask "how did you define BI?"

It's a "Cloudy" term: Proofpoint (a SaaS vendor) partnered with a research firm to approach more than 200 IT professionals for a cloud computing survey. The key survey summary is that general confusion over cloud computing may impact the rate of adoption by enterprises. For example, among IT professionals 33% believe cloud computing is more hype than substance and 24% aren't sure. That's more than fifty percent of IT professionals in this survey standing on a fence.

These survey respondents are not alone. For example, I was at The 451 Group's annual client conference last week where cloud was a VERY hot topic - and because of the confusion in understanding the term, The 451 Group has provided a framework of definitions and architecture they call the Cloud Codex. Other analysts and consultants are doing the same just to try and get a level set on definitions so we all have consistent expectations.

However we also work with customers and talk with IT leaders that are actively embracing aspects of cloud strategy - definining it for themselves and their organization. This survey is just a good reminder to make sure you are starting out with a good definition level set when having a conversation on cloud strategy. I'm not sure I believe more than 50% of IT is still on the fence... I think there are a lot of other priorities and issues pulling them in different directions to perhaps take a stand.

Positive thinking from the Chicken Pot Pie on this rainy day!

Yesterday afternoon The 451 Group’s analyst Chris Hazelton hosted a panel on mobile applications that was a great overview of his research and went beyond the iPhone versus Blackberry banter I have heard at other conferences.

I thought Hazelton’s point that “mobile is a certainty in uncertain times” was very true – we are going to have our smartphones. It’s the crack of business. Just ask any husband or wife who has looked in frustration at their significant other checking work email on vacation – your smartphone can be an addiction.

We see tremendous benefits from mobile. Effectively leveraged mobile devices reduce employee downtime, provide a hub to share information, improve market perception of companies by reducing response times, decrease desk phone footprint and many more benefits.

Mobile devices are here to stay and as the market evolves we see use cases for netbooks, smartphones converge. So what were the highlights from this interesting panel?

This morning’s great content at The 451 Group client conference continued with a timely panel on The Rewards of Virtualization. The 451 Group analyst Rachel Chalmers moderated the discussion with Dan Stross, CIO, Genesys Regional Medical Center and Jeremy Sherwood, VP Sales & Ops, Opus Interactive.

Chalmers did the usual recap of the obvious rewards from virtualization such as decoupling hardware and software, better capacity utilization, etc. However she pointed out the “non-obvious” rewards.

Chalmers pointed out that these unexpected benefits include HIPAA compliance, operating systems migration and license management costs and that virtualization can be leveraged to put IT in a service provider role.

Every analyst organization is talking about the fact that the role of IT is evolving but I thought Chalmers effectively emphasized that IT can use the emergence of virtualization to their advantage.

Ever hear a keynote that made you want to go up to him afterwards and start to pick his brain? That was what I was thinking during Dan Kusnetzky, VP of Research, keynote at The 451 Group client conference today.

Kusnetzky was providing a high level overview of the sectors and themes that The 451 Group sees as key going into 2010 and not only that, he provided some excellent commentary.

The key themes he touched on included anyplace/anytime computing, changing datacenter infrastructure, open source acceptance, security for applications and data, and the grand illusion of virtualization.

There is a ribbon that runs through our industry just as in nature. Kusnetzky shared a John Muir quote that pretty much sums up why we (IT, vendors) are required to see the big picture. "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."

I am live from the bustling and quite packed The 451 Group 4th Annual Client Conference in Boston. Not only am in one of my favorite cities and I get to learn new things which totally energizes me! My schedule for today will be the following so if you see me - say hello! Also, I'll try to post some quick summaries as time permits.

- Analyst Keynote from Dan Kusnetzky, VP Research Operations

- Innovators Showcase Overview - we get to look at the contenders and then tomorrow we vote on most innovative technology so I am extremely interested in this overview of the vendors and applications

- Fireside Chat with The 451 Group CEO Martin McCarthy and Kenneth Brill Founder of Uptime Institute

- The Rewards of Virtualization: A panel to discuss advantages and best practices of server virtualization

And then I will take a break to get something to eat for lunch and gear up for a long afternoon.

I enjoyed reading Computerworld's article "Information Overload: Is it time to go on a data diet?' As the article states we are in a digital information deluge that IDC estimates by 2011 will be 10 times the size it was in 2006. Ten times more digital information and it is hitting us all at once in every conceivable way.

Blogs, Email, RSS feeds, instant messaging, social networking sites and Web sites soak up time - not to mention the plethora of video, podcasts and other digital media. Disruption to our productivity is one thing we deal with daily - do I stop work on this project to answer an unimportant yet quickly answered Email? Is it going to offend the team if I turn my instant messaging status to "not available" so I can get some work done?

Or how about the other questions we face like what data sources should I pay attention to? What content REALLY matters? What actions being requested by instant messages or Email are really deposits in my professional bank account?

There are two strategies the article suggests...