Jon Wrennall “Technology does matter”11

Magazine. Vol. 08, Summer 2010.

Editorial: Italy is the latest jewel in the CIOnet network 3More than a hype: A fundamental cultural change 4Cloud computing: Already a reality 6The role of the CIO: Expanding beyond IT 10Hypes and trends: How do CIOs deal with them? 12The CIO of tomorrow: Bright and inspirational 15Talent Management: A focus for the CIO 18Column: Desperately seeking skilful expertise 20Generation Y: Über confident, entrepreneurial and assertive 21Column: The evaluation of information systems 22IT governance: Speed and quality 23SIMO Network and CIOnet España: A shared project 24Column: Demand - Delivery - Servicing 26

Nico Westpalm van Hoorn“I have never been fooled by a hype”13

Daniel Lebeau“I prefer many short projects”23

Juan Soto“Synergy SIMO-CIOnet a boost for networking”24

Sabine Everaet“Greater need for multi- functional IT professionals”18

2

BUSINESS PARTNERS

PREMIUM BUSINESSPARTNERS

The largest European CIO networkABOUT CIONET MAGAZINECIOnet Magazine is a CIOnet initiative sent directly to CIOnet members and as a supplement to Data News.

Produced by:Roularta Custom MediaPublishing Director:Hendrik Deckers (hendrik@cionet.com)Editorial coordinator:Kurt Focquaert(kurt.focquaert@roularta.be)Photographs by:Jan LocusPrinted by:Roularta Printing

Advertising: Erwin Van den Brande (erwin@cionet.com)

www.cionet.com

Vive la France. We are very pleased to announce that France is the latest country to join the grow-ing family of CIOnet. François Samarcq, together with his team, is putting together a strong adviso-ry board and networking programme for the IT leaders in Paris and beyond.

Benvenuta Italia. We are also very proud to an-nounce the offi cial start of CIOnet in Italy. Alfredo Gatti, Susanna Bigioni and Manuela Moroncini are working hard to develop CIOnet Italia into the largest and most active community for CIOs & IT managers in Italy.

I’m looking forward to the fi rst networking activi-ties in France & Italy and to welcoming hundreds of new members to CIOnet.com, Europe’s first and largest hybrid network for IT directors. We estimate to grow to 2000 members by the end of 2010 and to more than 3000 in 2011.

Next on our road map are Germany and Scandi-navia, where we are currently scouting to fi nd the best possible teams to launch CIOnet in these re-gions. Please email me if you could introduce us to some good people in these countries.

In this eighth issue of CIOnet Magazine a series of event reports give you a glimpse of the different member activities that were organised the last six months in the UK, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. You’ll read that the nature of the CIO role is all about Pride, Professionalism and Pas-sion, that Talent Management needs our focus, that Generation Y is ringing the changes and that Cloud is the topic of the moment.

Enjoy,

HENDRIK DECKERS MD CIOnet - hendrik@cionet.com

3

The Expo 2010 which has now opened in Shanghai has an Ital-ian touch. The impressive architectural envelop of the Italian pa-

vilion is designed by the Permasteelisa Group, the lights are by iGuzzini and Vimar, the internals and the furniture by Poltrona Frau, Mascagni, Faram, Matteo Grassi, Portalp, Cisa, Zucchetti, Cerami-ca Globo, Ucs and Calligaris. Five hundred different transparent chairs represent the best of Alchemia, 400 elegant hostesses are dressed in Prada, and a big Ferragamo shoe and a kaleidoscopic Vara’s collection are at the entrance to welcome all the visitors.

Actually Made in Italy is made up of more than 3,000 brands who are competing globally in design, construction, fashion, food, hospitality, machinery, automotive and other industries. Their paths for excel-lence and innovation are supported by reliable IT deployments and led by courageous CIOs. All of them have the same objective: to contribute to the results of their companies while overcoming the boundaries of their nationwide vision and action. All of them need to be proactive and risk-takers, quick in decisions and smart enough to provide preliminary results to their bosses who demonstrate the re-turn on investment of their projects. What better way for them to meet with their peers, share their ideas and opinions on issues and solutions, consider alternatives in a wid-er perspective, as is already happening in the business? CIOnet may be a big part of the answer and provides the international spirit they are looking for.

CIOnet Italia just started up on 22 June and most of the CIOs of the top Made in Italy companies have agreed to join the Advisory Board while others from the top industrial, fi nancial and public administra-tion organisations have put themselves forward as candidates. Introducing most of the top Italian CIOs to CIOnet is an exciting ex-perience. It is amazing how this new form of networking is informally encouraging everyone to participate. To take part as one of the Advi-sory Board is a genuine bid to offer time and competences to the network and to put aside most of the established patterns of the CIO role. It is a question of networking among like-minded people with common interests as well as providing inspira-tion to promote a more important role for innovation.… the right time for an Italian touch.

An Italian touch

ALFREDO GATTIManaging DirectorCIOnet Italia

Editorial

4

Event report

A fundamental cultural change

Companies often think in polarities,” says Drue Reeves, research director with Burton

Group, “either they want to move everything to the cloud, or they want no part of it.” Neither ap-proach is ideal, that much is clear. The success of the cloud exists by the grace of a good strate-gy and methodology. The company needs to de-velop an objective, repeatable process that it can use to assess if a component of the infrastruc-ture, application or process is ready for the cloud.

Burton Group has come up with a step-by-step plan to devise a good cloud strategy. “You need to start by identifying the objectives of the cloud strategy. Are you looking for agility? Or do you want to save on costs? Maybe other goals are al-so in play.” As a second step, the company should analyse the business processes or appli-cations that it wants to place in a cloud. “A busi-ness impact analysis can immediately show you

how critical the application is. Conduct a cost analysis too. It is generally not diffi cult to calcu-late how much a cloud service costs. But how much is the company currently paying for this in-frastructure or applications? More often than not, companies do not have a clear view of these costs.”

Once all preparatory analyses give a green light for the move to cloud, the time is ripe to seek out the right vendor. Once the selection has been made, considering the viability of the vendor among other things, risk management remains important throughout the whole process. The company needs to have an exit strategy, in case the vendor fails, for example. Drue Reeves: “We always recommend putting aside suffi cient time and budget to develop a good cloud strategy. Jumping to cloud on the spur of the moment does not lead to long-term sound results.”

The cloud is bringing about a new paradigm shift in IT. But how do we build up a healthy cloud strategy and which elements are best transferred to the cloud?

More than the biggest hype of recent years

New infrastructureIn 2006 the department for semiconductors at Philips seceded from its mother company. Up to that time the department had always relied on the corporate IT of Philips. Now as a new company, NXP Semiconductors, it had to build up a com-pletely new IT infrastructure. “We needed a global data centre for R&D”, says Henk Coenen, Manag-er Engineering IT Competence Centre at NXP Semiconductors. “To achieve this we consolidated the existing 25 data centres in three locations.” NXP built an internal cloud that gives the designers of chips access to 1,200 design applications. “Be-cause some of our design activities are carried out by external partners, we also have a private cloud that can be accessed by external partners.”

PICTURE Henk Coenen, Manager Engineering IT Competence Centre at NXP Semiconductors: “The internal cloud is evolving, step by step, into a fully fl edged private cloud.”

5

Event report

Cultural change“The cloud is being posed as the solution to practically everything today”, reports Kalman Tiboldi, CIO at TVH, specialist in fork-lift trucks and spare parts. The cloud is supposed to pro-vide high availability, scalability, fl exibility and per-formance, as well as being ten times cheaper too. “Instead of getting my head stuck in the clouds, I’d rather keep my feet on the ground”, he laughs. Nevertheless, TVH successfully em-ploys various cloud services. Thanks to shifting its e-invoicing to a hosted private cloud, TVH is anticipating an annual savings of 600,000 euros. The cloud model also looks interesting to TVH for its portfolio management and application testing. “It is not our intention to place truly critical IT components in the cloud, but we do expect a few more applications to follow. This will only succeed if proper attention is paid to change management. The cloud requires a fundamental cultural change. Security and privacy are two very important points in this process.”

Although the term cloud computing has attracted the biggest hype of recent years, what we are witnessing is merely the starting point of the ac-tual shift. “The concept of multi-tenancy is what is making cloud computing possible”, Jim Rivera, Chief Product Offi cer at Salesforce.com, tells us. “Before, each application had its dedicated soft-ware and hardware stack. In the cloud that is not necessary anymore. There is one stack on which everything runs.” This means enormous scale benefi ts for Salesforce.com – known as a provid-er of salesforce automation software through the cloud. “We have 75,000 customers who together

use approximately 200,000 applications. But we’re not using 200,000 servers for them. We can manage easily with 3,000 now.” This means great savings in hardware costs and speed of maintenance. On the long term, the social aspect of cloud computing applications will be very im-portant. “Today, there are already more accounts for social networks than there are for email”, says Jim Rivera. “Ten years from now cloud comput-ing will be all about social data, social apps, so-cial content and social platforms.”

VirtualisationConsolidation and virtualisation generally are the fi rst steps towards cloud shifting. Fedict, the gov-ernment service that is building a shared IT infra-structure for the federal government, was facing a major budget cut at the end of 2006. To ac-commodate the new budget, Fedict migrated its infrastructure, that was then with Accenture and Smals, to a new shared own infrastructure for the application owners. “Our budget is now only a third of what it was in 2006,” Peter Strickx, CTO at Fedict, reports, “while we are offering many more services.” Over a period of fi ve years Fedict has managed to save thirty million euros. But more applications are running in the two data centres of the government services than before the migration. A good preparation of the virtuali-sation transpired to be crucial for the success of the project. Peter Strickx: “Thanks to the virtuali-sation the maintenance of the server park is bet-ter than expected. There are only fifty physical machines, on which more than 200 virtual serv-ers are running.”

< PICTURE Kalman Tiboldi, CIO at TVH: “The cloud requires a fundamental cultural change.”

PICTURE Peter Strickx, CTO at Fedict: “Virtualisation is the fi rst step to the cloud.”

> PICTURE Drue Reeves, research director at the Burton Group: “Put aside suffi cient time and budget to develop a good cloud strategy.”

Event report

6

The year of cloud computing

The meeting had all the ingredients for suc-cess: a good combination of the most active

and knowledgeable service providers who are making signifi cant efforts to promote, articulate and consolidate cloud computing on the market, and the big companies who act as end users and have already started to implement this model in their respective organisations, anticipating big changes in the way the IT is positioned and inte-grating the new concepts in their business value chains. A perfect mix between current reality and medium- and long-term possibilities, and a bal-anced vision between the fundamental theory and its pragmatic approach, as one of the lectur-ers managed to demonstrate.

The wide and select audience that went to the Bokado Restaurant contributed to these objec-tives. Some of the Spanish Advisory Board mem-bers, including its President, Roberto Parra, Juan Soto and José de Rafael, hosted this event and managed to make it simultaneously exclusive and friendly.

Signifi cant growthThe first part helped to consolidate the cloud computing concepts, by the main IT service pro-viders, with a global reach. IDC’s keynote lecture, by Alberto Bellé, stated the context, opportunities and challenges that are linked to cloud computing and its adoption. He gave some representative hints, showing some statistics from the Spanish SaaS market, where cloud computing has al-ready been adopted by 27% of the companies, and is expected to grow signifi cantly in the com-ing years.

He was followed by three recognised experts, Pau Contreras, Senior Director Technology Solu-tions for Southern Europe, Oracle; Raúl Álvarez, Iberian Sales Manager, BMC; and Moisés Navar-ro, IT Strategy Consulting Manager, IBM; who all agreed and confi rmed the trend towards a future horizon where all public, private and hybrid clouds will coexist in one single company. All presenta-tions stated cloud computing’s main benefits: cost-saving and a pay-as-you-go model, and ca-pabilities – providing new solutions that were not technically or economically feasible with previous technology. Though the concept of ‘cloud’ is not new, it is undisputable that it has proven to be a major success in recent years and will play a large part in the IT domain over the next ten years or

Few topics are capable of raising as much interest amongst various audiences and industries as cloud computing. Even more if the debate is held in a select environment, different and original, like the event that recently took place at the Costume Museum in Madrid on 22 April.

PICTUREDebate on cloud computing at the Costume Museum in Madrid.

The transition of IT from product to service

more, as future systems continue to exploit the capabilities of managed services and resource provisioning. Clouds are of particular commercial interest not only due to the growing tendency to outsource IT so as to reduce management over-head and to extend existing, limited IT infrastruc-tures, but even more importantly because they re-duce the threshold for new service providers to offer their respective capabilities to a wide market with a minimum of entry costs and infrastructure requirements. These are the special capabilities of cloud infrastructures and this allows providers to experiment with novel service types whilst reduc-ing the risk of wasting resources.

Cloud is already a realityOnce we reached the end user experiences’ part, the presentation made by Joaquín Rincón, Lilly’s European IT Architecture and Innovation Manag-er, convinced everyone of the fact that cloud com-

puting is already a reality. After the definition of cloud, that he took from Simon Wardley (“Cloud computing is the transition of IT from product to service.”), Joaquín executed an IaaS application – with Amazon AWS – on protein calculations, leaving some of the audience astonished. After-wards, Enrique Laso, Technical Director of Ferro-vial, and Pedro Suja, BBVA’s European Infrastruc-ture Manager, shared their particular experiences in their companies, each of them recognised lead-ers in their respective industry segments, which apply global delivery models. Enrique, as a curios-ity, noted that the end user is normally less vul-nerable to change when applications are run in a cloud computing environment than when they are installed in the traditional way. Furthermore, Pedro Suja shared some real examples of external and internal clouds, as well as other services which this leading fi nancial institution is currently consid-ering to move into this format, like emailing.

< PICTURE Enrique Laso, Technical Director of Ferrovial: “The end user is less vulnerable to change when applications are run in a cloud computing environment.”

PICTURE Pedro Suja, BBVA’s European Infrastructure Manager, shared some real examples of external and internal clouds.

> PICTURE Joaquín Rincón, Lilly’s European IT Architecture and Innovation Manager: “Cloud computing is already a reality.”

Event report

7

‘The IT industry is currently one of the best performers in the Spanish economy.’

Advertorial

Spain, your Destination for IT Outsourcing

As José de Rafael (Managing Director of AEC and CEO of Value Shore) says: “Value Shore takes advantage of both labour arbitrage cost savings from off/nearshore locations and know-how, solutions and specialised capabilities of Spanish-based companies. It is real smartshoring.” Value

Shore is a two-layer delivery model for IT devel-opment, maintenance and for BPO. The near-shore layer is located in Spain pairing with typical offshoring locations mainly Latin America but al-so India, China, Philippines and other traditional ones. It is delivered by companies based in Spain and large global IT and outsourcing fi rms having remarkable capabilities built in Spain. “The indus-trial, functional and technological know-how are delivered through a number of specialised cen-tres most of them holding high CMMI Maturity Levels.

Centres of excellenceThrough those centres of excellence, companies delivering Value Shore have implemented high-quality processes that take advantage of previ-ous experience to build new industry or technol-ogy specif ic assets and solutions for the European market. This value layer delivered from Spanish centres of excellence can be further le-veraged by offshore factories to get a very effec-tive combination of quality and cost. Agile and fl exible governance models avoid your organisa-tion having to deal with the typical noise coming from geographical distance and cultural barriers”, clarifi es José de Rafael.

Why now? Why Spain?“The world has moved to offshore delivery to ca-ter for static IT budgets. Pure offshore ‘lift and shift’ approaches aggressively help return the typical daily rate savings but generally forget about innovation, fl exibility and agility to support business needs. Current perception on low ser-vice quality is not a matter of providers but rather choosing the right-balanced delivery model. Val-ue Shore brings European organisations the best

A recent survey (Feb, 2010) of 200 UK IT CIOs conducted by Vanson Bourn showed a tremendous lack of satisfaction (75% of CIOs were disappointed with quality) of service delivered from offshore outsourcing service providers. An increasing number of European companies are looking for ways to fi x issues on service quality and unmanageable governance models without losing the cost savings associated with offshoring. The Value Shore brand groups the member companies of the Spanish Association of Consulting Firms (AEC in its Spanish acronym) and defi nes a concept which offers a new delivery model for developing major European sourcing projects and for IT outsourcing.

Value Shore: the Best of Two Worlds

8

9

of all worlds: domain experience demonstrated by world class organisations, agility and minimal risk of nearshoring and cost effectiveness of off-shoring.”When José is asked about current Spanish eco-nomic threats he quietly points out: “There is no real risk due to the current economic situation. The IT industry is currently one of the best per-formers in the Spanish economy. The solid rea-sons that made Spain the most popular Western European country for building SSC, innovation/excellence centres and software factories have not changed: the highest ratio of technology graduates to population in Europe, signifi cant la-bour cost savings compared with Western Eu-rope and one of the most impressive figures in the world for CMMI appraisals. Spain has now become a recognised world leader in industries such as Banking, Telecommunications, Utilities, Transportation, etc. Companies including Du-Pont, BAT, EADS, Danone, Sara Lee, Adecco or Ericsson just to mention a short but representa-tive sample, maintain delivery capabilities in Spain to take advantage of these value services to European branches.

9

Advertorial

The right moment to think of a model shiftValue Shore has not forgotten about offshore. In fact a typical Value Shore engagement may in fact use existing relationships with Latin American countries to externalise commoditised activities. What Spanish capabilities bring to European organisations are better governance mod-els from cultural and geographical proximity, predefi ned solutions and as-sets for rapid implementation, elastic architectures to support business needs, delivered innovation, accessible domain expertise, etc. “This is what we call value layer”, says José de Rafael. He kindly opens the doors to everyone wanting to learn more about Value Shore: “You may contact our team through Value Shore website www.valueshore.org or our offi ces in London and Madrid. I will personally be very happy to arrange for a guided tour through Spanish capabilities and specialised centres (by in-dustry and technology) demonstrating the power of Value Shore delivery model.” If you feel the current quality of the services provided to your company is not good and/or your business needs more agility and inno-vation driven by IT platform, try a pilot experience with Value Shore.

PICTURE José de Rafael, Managing Director of AEC and CEO

of Value Shore: “Value Shore takes advantage of both

labour arbitrage cost savings from off/nearshore locations

and know-how, solutions and specialised capabilities

of Spanish-based companies.

It is real smartshoring.”

1010

Outlining his path to the VOA, Wrennall ex-plains: “I’m the son of a dairy farmer – and

used to getting my hands dirty.” Time as an engi-neering apprentice at BAE was followed by a Computer Science degree at Manchester Univer-sity and then 11 years at Accenture, working on major projects in the public sector, fi nancial ser-vices and energy sectors. A consulting career path as an Accenture partner was the obvious way forward, but Jon took what he describes as “a calculated risk”. He says: “The integration of the Inland Revenue & Customs and Excise was getting under way. With annual IT spending of over £1 bn (approx ! 1,17 bn), the CTO role was a compelling opportunity.” Wrennall applied, and spent three years as the fi rst HMRC (Her Majes-ty’s Revenue & Customs) CTO, before moving in-to the VOA CIO role.At VOA he has driven change, and not just of the technology employed. A comprehensive technol-ogy transformation has seen everything replaced – from desktops and their operating systems, through to rationalisation and virtualisation of servers, applications and stacks, VoIP, LAN, and even cabling. But bigger changes have accompa-nied this, with the move from paper-based pro-cesses to electronic. The VOA is responsible for maintaining up-to-date and accurate information on all residential and non-residential properties in England and Wales – more than 30 m in total. All domestic drawings have now been scanned, and surveyors update them electronically – a major change in business process. The VOA CIO role has been extended to include wider business in-frastructure, so Wrennall and his team are now re-

sponsible for the VOA’s own buildings portfolio and associated services. “Infrastructure is infra-structure”, he comments.

Both business and technologyGiven the broadening of his role beyond IT alone, and his time as acting CEO, does Wrennall agree with many that the CIO role is fundamentally about business rather than technology expertise? “Absolutely not” is the emphatic reply. “CIOs need both business and technology expertise, not one or the other. It really concerns me that it is so fashionable to be business-centric, and so un-fashionable to be technology-centric. It is almost as if the fear of being badged as a ‘tekkie’ leads to us hiding any deep technological skills and under-standing we might have. Certainly that’s what I see happening.”There is an irony here, not lost on Wrennall, that having persuaded our business peers that tech-nology does matter, IT leaders are shying away from pursuing and demonstrating technology ex-pertise. Wrennall worries “this communicates to our teams that we consider technology skills to be unimportant – certainly if you want to reach senior IT leadership positions. That cannot be good for the UK IT skills agenda.”

Why does this happen? Wrennall’s analysis is that it fl ows from right motives. We are committed to a key role for IT, and to representing it at board level. But, because other board members have little technology know-how, we think we have to avoid talking technology if we are to get there. The con-sequence is that technology decisions at board

Special feature

Jon Wrennall, CIO at the UK Valuation Offi ce Agency (VOA), and a member of the CIOnet UK Advisory Board, is passionate about his profession. This much is clear as we talk about the nature of the CIO role, and the demands it makes for business and technology expertise. In his two years as VOA CIO, Wrennall has led signifi cant transformation of the agency’s IT, seen his role expand beyond IT, and spent time as acting CEO – so he is well placed to comment on how IT roles integrate with the rest of the organisation.

Pride, Professionalism and Passion, at PaceThe nature of the CIO role

11

level risk being based on conversations in which technology does not feature. So, how does Jon Wrennall address this issue himself – ensuring that he sustains his own tech-nological expertise and promoting its importance within his VOA teams? He says: “It helps if you have an innate interest in technology, and I’m not ashamed to say that I do. At home for example I maintain a virtualised exchange server, VoIP PBX and recently built a Sharepoint server. It is not an enthusiasm my wife shares, but it has real bene-fits. It means that when I am talking with my teams, I have some recent experience on which to draw. This helps build credibility – and people are always more likely to follow leaders they see as understanding their own job. It can also be useful in discussions with vendors.”But Wrennall has gone much further in promoting technology expertise as integral to IT careers in the VOA. Leveraging the UK Civil Service’s values of Pride, Passion, Pace, and Professionalism, he has moved quickly to promote professional bod-ies and standards. So, from very little when he ar-rived two years ago, around 60% of his team are now members of the British Computer Society (BCS), with the majority of his direct reports having recently attained Chartered status. Perhaps further reaching is the use of the SFIA (Skills Framework for the Information Age) frame-work. Thus, as Wrennall explains: “Every role in the IT team now has a role description mapped to SFIA – highlighting the skills required, the levels needed, and what that means. Each person has undertaken a moderated self-evaluated gap anal-ysis against that role description. And each per-son then has a continuous development plan to close the gap. Organisation-wide, we measure progress against this as part of our balanced scorecard. So, at pace, we’re driving profession-alism in IT, endorsing passion about the technolo-gy, and taking pride in our progress.”Outside the VOA, amongst his peers, Wrennall is also a strong advocate for professional status. He

explains: “I want us to get to a position where those championing IT skills are themselves Fel-lows of the BCS, or equivalent – so we are pro-moting IT skills with credibility.”

Breaking down the boundariesWith all of this, we might expect that business ex-pertise was being downplayed within the VOA IT team. But that is not the case. Wrennall’s ap-proach here has adopted multiple strands. Mov-ing people among ‘engage’, ‘deliver’ and ‘sup-port’ teams means that a high percentage of his team will, over time, interface with those outside of the IT function. Taking on responsibility for non-IT infrastructure has made possible the creation of a delivery team responsible for the wider business infrastructure, exposing them to a wider range of business issues. Wrennall highlights too, that em-bracing ‘end user computing’ by the VOA’s sur-veyors is “a way of breaking down the bounda-ries. Working with them and their contributions again helps the IT team to understand the busi-ness issues they’re facing.”So, it seems that the CIO can be both a business leader and a technology leader – indeed that to focus on being one of these only is to risk under-mining the effectiveness of the unique role that IT leadership offers.

Special feature

PICTURE Jon Wrennall, CIO at the UK Valuation Offi ce Agency (VOA): “It really concerns me that it is so fashionable to be business-centric, and so unfashionable to be technology-centric. It is almost as if the fear of being badged as a ‘tekkie’ leads to us hiding any deep technological skills and understanding we might have.”

12

Event report

Every year CIOs are bombed with lists of IT trends from Gartner, Forrester, IDC and the like. Some prevail, others do not live longer than the hype cycle. How do CIOs deal with hypes and trends? Dutch CIOs discussed this subject on April 20 in Oegstgeest.

The value of past, present & future trendsHow CIOs deal with hypes and trends

I do not think that I have ever been completely fooled by a hype”, says Nico Westpalm van

Hoorn, until recently CIO of the Port of Rotter-dam, now retired. It is every CIO’s fear: embrac-ing a hip product, a promising technology or a groundbreaking method, which then does not survive the hype. That danger is always lurking. “The IT industry is like the fashion industry,” says Johan de Wit, “with a spring and an autumn col-lection.”De Wit, associate director of CIOnet and former head of IT Governance with ING Bank, opened CIOnet’s IT Trends meeting. He is supervising re-search into IT Trends by students Panagiota Georgiou and Dimitri Fragkos. They have found that any trend of note will linger for at least five years in the annual reports of IT suppliers. De Wit: “You can only establish the importance of a trend after the fact, by measuring to what extent it gen-erated successful products and services.”Westpalm van Hoorn is the fi rst to admit that the

Port of Rotterdam is not a sector that is particular-ly susceptible to trends. “We are about the long-term, not sensationalist consumer applications.” He prefers to leave the pioneering to others. That does not mean that he should not respond ap-propriately to new developments. “In the first place, to be able to talk to suppliers about them.” Supply management, in other words. He also thinks trend-watching is important for keeping up to speed with his architects and IT professionals, about what is up and coming. “I think a CIO needs to stay two years ahead of classroom knowledge.”Over the past decade, the new IT has fundamen-tally changed how they work in the port. These days a pilot takes his laptop on board a ship. Even more has changed with regard to the IT or-ganisation of the Port Authority itself. “Very impor-tant for us is the evolution of products towards services, from doing it yourself towards buying it in. Associated with that are such characteristic trendy topics as facilities management, outsour-cing and commoditising, with SaaS and Cloud in the mix too.”In terms of architecture, the port is moving to-wards SOA with everything associated with that; the company is actively switching to an all-IP net-work for communications and data exchange and is working on smarter data management (BI). These are trends that the Port Authority has em-braced with conviction this century.However, Westpalm van Hoorn still has a full drawer of ‘let’s sees’. That is to say: interesting, but not quite yet. Among those ideas is a possible choice for Microsoft alternatives on the desktop (“Quite frankly, I don’t dare yet”), the Cloud (“Yes, it will come, but when and how?”) and IPV6 (“We

PICTURE >Nico Westpalm van Hoorn, until recently CIO of the Port of Rotterdam, now retired: “I think a CIO needs to stay two years ahead of classroom knowledge.”

PICTURE Johan De Wit, associate director of CIOnet: “The IT industry is like the fashion industry, with a spring and anautumn collection.”

13

Event report

14

know it has to happen, but when?”). He sees no call for social media in his own organisation, and he prefers to turn a deaf ear to calls from person-nel to open up to all manner of cool smartphones: “I see the debate bearing down on me, but I am old-fashioned in that regard. I see no place for them in my business network.”

In a dilemmaSomeone who does love gadgets is Aart van der Vlist, CIO of ING Nationale Nederlanden. He is al-so the author of the book ‘Trends in IT’. According to the blurb, “for fi fteen years a guide for manag-ers who wish to form their own picture of the sense and nonsense of technological develop-ments”.He compares the rise of the computer with that of typography, railways and the electric motor: “Just as in the days of the fi rst bookprinting, the tech-nology is the dominant thing in the fi rst fi fty years. Then the technicians are the ones who earn the most. With automation that phase is pretty much over now. Just as with books in those days, it is now all about the content, using the opportunities that technology has to offer.” He advises CIOs to look around as much as possible and to rip off ideas: “Make your own trend funnel and keep it always up to date.”Nevertheless, CIOs of large fi nancial institutions like him have a huge problem: almost all the mon-ey and energy goes into maintaining existing ap-

plications and systems. “That is my biggest chal-lenge. I have to try to break away from it. The absolute cost per transaction must defi nitely be brought down, otherwise you can hardly do any-thing new.”Policies for security, compliance and privacy are also placing increasing demands on resources. That is certainly a trend in the financial world. “Legislators come knocking on our door every day. Much energy is likely to be involved in that. Furthermore, last year, banks had to deal with some serious security incidents.”Van der Vlist’s survival strategy consists of further process and chain integration combined with phasing out legacy applications. That ought to create more scope for innovation. On his wish list for 2010, we spot the usual suspects such as vir-tualisation, Cloud and SaaS, but also profession-alisation of his IT staff.

NonsenseSurely the CIO should be the enabler of business change. Van der Vlist: “That role is always being foisted on us, but quite honestly, I find it non-sense. I am making up lost ground. What I want to see is an infrastructure that will enable us to re-spond more quickly.” Like applications that fi t in with the paradigm of Anywhere, Anytime, Me Here Now. Van der Vlist sees a shining example in Albert Heijn. “They have done a great job with their iPhone App. They must have done a huge amount of work in the back end to make it possi-ble to suggest to a customer the best route around any Albert Heijn store based on his shop-ping list.”“However, we must also be realistic. Bringing business and IT together, raising their awareness of each other’s fi elds, is already yielding great re-sults. In practice, the ‘front end’ (the business) dreams up all kinds of things. And it still always turns out to be possible to link new ideas to exist-ing systems.”

PICTURE Aart van der Vlist, CIO of ING Nationale Nederlanden: “Almost all the money and energy in large fi nancial institutions goes into maintaining existing applications and systems. That’s my biggest challenge. I have to try to break away from it.”

PICTURE Dr Andrew Tuson of the Centre for Information Leadership at City University London: “The CIOs who really contribute at board level are bright and inspirational people.”

15

Special feature

The CIOs who really contribute at board level are bright and inspirational people – you

would want them on the board regardless of their role”, he continues. “So to develop these infor-mation leaders, we want to bring together fine minds, classic liberal educational values, and the professional expertise that underpins the CIO role.”Tuson leads the new Master of Information Lead-ership (MIL) programme at City University, and has a deep concern to equip the next generation of CIOs. Underpinning the MIL programme is a belief in the breadth of the CIO role – both within the organisation, and in a broader engagement with civil society. For Tuson, Jan Peter de Valk’s comment in CIOnet 7 that the CIO had to be a Renaissance-like homo universalis resonated strongly. Not surprisingly, therefore, the MIL pro-gramme is broad-ranging, encompassing not just business and technology modules but also legal and social science-related ones.Tuson explains: “The Information Law and Com-pliance module is designed to help IT leaders un-derstand not just what the law says, but how it works. We want CIOs to be able to engage with and shape legal frameworks, so they can truly work for and protect the interests of their organi-sations.” Similarly, the Information Leader in Soci-ety module aims at helping CIOs to understand the impact of what they do on wider society. Tu-son again: “CIOs will be more effective if they un-derstand how the decisions they make relate to issues such as digital exclusion or information overload. They’ll be aware of potentially unsought effects, and equipped to argue their case.”

Not theoreticalThis might all sound very theoretical. “Not so”, ar-

gues Tuson, “we design the programme around bringing together academic input with peer and expert interaction, pushing the participants to re-fl ect on the work they’re doing. Every time the co-hort comes together, they will leave with some-thing they can apply in their working lives – to ensure that they build their careers with the ability to both transform and deliver.”Time will tell how major a contribution to equip-ping the CIOs of the future is made by innovative academic initiatives such as the Centre for Infor-mation Leadership. Tuson believes passionately that academic excellence is not opposed to ca-reer success, but that the two are inextricably linked. His call to aspiring CIOs is “Use it, or lose it – the MIL programme will be as successful as the CIO community want it to be.”

For more about the MIL programme, contact Andrew Tuson

via CIOnet or see www.city.ac.uk/informationleadership

“We need better CIOs, not more CIOs.” That’s the view of CIOnet member Dr Andrew Tuson of the Centre for Information Leadership at City University London. Not surprisingly, he’s persuaded that academia has a real role to play.

Equipping tomorrow’s information leadersBetter, not more CIOs

Advertorial

Creating value through Partnership

Firstly, can you give us a brief presentation of Seidor? What is its portfolio of products and services?Alejandro Daniel: “Seidor is a group of compa-nies whose mission is to develop a broad range of IT services and infrastructure supply. We have 12 offi ces in Spain and 9 in Latin America, a glo-bal turnover in 2009 of 122 million euros and a total staff of about 1,300 people. “The structure of the group includes seven com-panies: Seidor Consulting, specialised in the dis-tribution and implementation of enterprise man-agement solutions based on SAP All-in-One; MSS, focused on implementing SAP Business One turnkey solutions in small businesses; SBS Seidor, dedicated to develop complete end-to-end solutions in the Extended ERP area; Micro-sistemes, specialised in infrastructure, consulting and maintenance projects; Saytel, focusing on systems’ integration and infrastructure based on IBM environments; Seidor Training, to provide training in Information Technologies area; and fi -nally Seidor Estrategias, developing strategic business consulting in the areas of organisation, operations, fi nances and IT. “Our portfolio is very rich, nevertheless our core business today is around the SAP Business Suite and SAP Business One implementations. We have 12 years of successful relationship with SAP, with 14 awards as Best Spanish Partner.”

What types of projects are you presently de-veloping in the ERP fi eld? “Our projects are currently split into two different categories: ERP deployment in new customers that migrate from some other obsolete or func-tionally limited ERP and, on the other hand, projects in existing customers enhancing the po-tential of SAP’s tools with the use of new mod-ules: CRM, BI, ECM, etc. In most cases, we offer fi xed price turnkey projects including all the nec-essary elements: hardware, software and ser-vices. Finally, we are also very active in rolling out international projects in subsidiaries of large companies.”

What is the position of Seidor in the ERP market, and particularly in the SAP ecosys-tem? “Seidor is Gold Channel Partner of SAP and is leading this segment with nearly 50% market share in Spain. We currently serve over 600 cus-tomers worldwide and have a team of 800 con-sultants specialising in this area, of which over 350 are in Spain. We are founders of the largest SAP network (UnitedVARs), present in 45 coun-tries all over the world, with a global taskforce of more than 3,500 consultants.”

What kind of integration with Extended ERP applications are you currently implementing (ECM, BI, CRM,…)?“In Seidor we have a strong commitment with our clients, we therefore strive to provide them with

For more than 25 years, Seidor has been working with its partners to ensure that all projects are completed on time, to the desired specifi cations, and that performance goals are met. General Manager Alejandro Daniel explains the secret of their success: a true partnership with the top Global IT leaders that showcases their ability to customise every facet of their business to fi t their client’s needs.

Seidor, more than 25 years a solid services supplier

16

17

the best possible solutions, and that includes the integration of their ERP with other systems. One of the most frequent is undoubtedly Business In-telligence (BI) platforms, especially after the inte-gration of Business Objects in SAP’s portfolio, but rapidly growing are CRM projects and solu-tions including enterprise content management (ECM) based on OpenText technology, a compa-ny Seidor partners with.”

Which sectors are you more focused on? What are the most active sectors in these hard times? “Seidor is neutral in terms of sector, we have cus-tomers in nearly all sectors of activity. And of course, customers most affected by the crisis are those where we have reduced the volume of our business. But overall this past year 2009 has been good for us in some sectors such as phar-maceuticals, distribution and consumer prod-ucts. We expect a more noticeable recovery in the second half of the year.”“By the way, Seidor has invested heavily in ‘verti-calising’ SAP, aware of the fact that customisa-tion reduces the risk, time and implementation costs. Today, we have 25 solutions covering 25 different sectors of activity.”

What are you providing in the infrastructure and related services area? “We hold strategic alliances with the main key leaders in information technology industry, both software providers and hardware manufacturers,

and distribute and implement their solutions in our customers. We also develop all necessary of services around the products: installation, confi g-uration, maintenance and support. In summary, we focus our activity on infrastructure integration and deployment of value-added IT solutions, aiming at increasing productivity and effi ciency of organisations.”

In what other areas is Seidor offering ser-vices to its customers? “In the area of Adobe, Seidor is considered a very strategic partner because of our lasting relation with them. We are the only Spanish Adobe Distributor Solution, we are an Adobe Certifi ed Training Centre and Adobe Licence Centre. Our offering is based on Adobe’s Server Solutions based on PDF and Flash technologies, and tar-geted mainly on fi nancial and public sectors. “Regarding Microsoft, Seidor has recently signed an agreement as Microsoft LAR Partner, in addi-tion to other certifications such as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Microsoft Service Partner Advantage. Based on the platforms sup-ported by Microsoft, we have developed a port-folio of products and projects in multiple areas (ECM, BPM, B2B, BI, Retail), as well as tailor-made applications and custom developments.“Our strategy in Seidor is to establish a rich portfo-lio of solutions in collaboration with the best possi-ble partners and providers (earning the highest level of qualifi cation) such as: IBM, HP, VMware, Dell, Citrix, EBD, to name just a few.”

17

Advertorial

PICTURE Alejandro Daniel, General Manager of Seidor: “In Seidor we have a strong commitment with our clients, we therefore strive to provide them with the best possible solutions, and that includes the integration of their ERP with other systems.”

18

Event report

These days IT relies on people more than ever, both direct employees and the employees of external partners. Supporting those people is gradually becoming an IT department’s primary task.

IT professionals need the requisite careTalent Management must be a focus for the CIO

Not every company correctly estimates the strategic value of the IT department. “The

recruitment of IT professionals is therefore not even really the IT department’s concern”, says Nils Fonstad, Senior Researcher of Research Bu-reau Insead. “It is the entire company’s concern. You see, the IT professionals are crucial to in-creasing the company’s competitive edge. It is vi-tal that the CEO and the CFO see how important e-competence is to their business.” De Post is a prime example of an organisation that has gone through a major transformation, with a key role being played by IT. Until ten years ago, De Post did not have a separate IT department. Today it has a team of six hundred staff with a budget of one hundred million euros. “We have a very di-verse mix of IT profi les”, says CIO Olivier Van der Brempt. “There are company and contracted team members. We also work with outside part-ners and have a nearshore site in Romania.”

Because IT has very specifi c HR needs, De Post’s IT department set up its own Resource Manage-ment Office. “For us, IT is heavily business-driven”, says Eric Goris, ICT Manager Application Services with De Post. “IT must be able to re-spond very fl exibly to the needs of the business, even if the forecasting is very diffi cult to get right.” At the same time IT must organise itself as effi -ciently as possible, because not only does the business demand fl exibility from IT, but also, in-creasingly, cost reduction and ideas for innova-tion. Olivier Van der Brempt: “The Resource Man-agement Office has mapped the IT staff’s skills and competence. We know what talent we have on board. It allows us to work more proactively, to build on a stable collaboration with preferred part-ners and to find the right balance between on-shore and nearshore activities.”

Lean ITCoca-Cola has also seen some major IT restruc-turing. Between 2000 and 2009, the company switched over to a European IT infrastructure. Over that period, Coca-Cola reduced its Europe-an IT budget by 60% to twenty million euros. To-day, Coca-Cola has a 44-strong European team of IT specialists. That is 80% less than in 2000. “The European IT organisation is very lean”, says CIO Sabine Everaet. “We are able to rely on a net-work of partners.” This transpires to be one of the most important results of the IT reform at Coca-Cola. “Sourcing and service management are now receiving far more attention. We have learned to negotiate better and we are paying more attention to benchmarking our contracts.”

The IT department’s reform focused more on cost reduction and productivity. Sabine Everaet: “That

PICTURE Eric Goris, ICT Manager Application Services at De Post: “IT must respond fl exibly to the needs of the business, even if the forecasting is diffi cult to get right.”

PICTURE > Sabine Everaet, CIO at Coca-Cola: “Sourcing and service management are now receiving more attention.”

19

requires robust processes and an approach aimed at the continuous improvement of IT ser-vices. In the context of the globalisation of the IT environment, it was also necessary to greatly sim-plify all processes.” The new strategy also had a major impact on Coca-Cola’s IT culture. “We are now rolling out global solutions. That really is a big change. Much attention went to change manage-ment.” The interpretation of IT jobs also looks very different today. “There is greater need for IT pro-fessionals who are multifunctional”, explains Sabine Everaet. “They have to know how to work well together on a global level. The focus has shifted. Our IT professionals have to be more ven-dor managers than people managers. They need to be more skilled at negotiating. It is certainly not easy to fi nd the right employees for this.”

IT professionals with business knowledgeING’s current IT portfolio comprises more than fi ve hundred projects. To keep these properly on track, ING has to take the requisite care of its existing IT talent. “In the next fi ve years about a quarter of our employees are due to retire”, says Myrjam Ver-rijssen, HR Manager for IT with ING. “It is a big challenge to come up with an appropriate solution to that.” The fact that, along with employees, a signifi cant portion of technological expertise will be leaving the company, is not even the greatest problem. “IT professionals with long experience often know more about the business than the ac-tual employees of the business side do.”These days that business knowledge is sorely

needed. At ING, compliance projects have top priority. Not surprisingly, given that the risk appe-tite in the fi nancial sector is lower than ever. In ad-dition, the bank is investing heavily in the internet channel and in marketing automation. IT manager Johan Smessaert: “These are areas in which we are helping the business to achieve a faster time-to-market. In the old Cobol-managed environ-ment that was not always so straightforward. Therefore we are now focusing mainly on pack-age solutions and on integrating them into the ex-isting environment.” Next year ING hopes to re-cruit and train a hundred new IT specialists. Johan Smessaert: “It is the technological environ-ment that attracts the candidates the most. Yet in addition we are naturally very attentive to the proper work-life balance and to the alignment of personal and corporate values.”

< PICTURE Nils Fonstad, Senior Researcher at Insead: “E-competence ensures competitiveness.”

PICTUREJohan Smessaert, IT Manager at ING: “These days the aim is to help the business achieve a faster time-to-market.”

> PICTUREMyrjam Verrijssen, IT HR Manager at ING: “IT professionals with experience often know more about the business than the actual employees of the business side do.”

Event report

IT IS PLAYING A KEY ROLE IN STRATEGYThe story of Procter & Gamble is a well-known case that shows how IT can drive a new strategy. In the fi rst place, IT was used to reorganise the company via shared services. This resulted in greater efficiency and lower costs. The company then invested the budget share it had saved in innovation. Nils Fonstad from Insead: “The example shows how IT helps enable a new and different approach to business management.” The CIO should also reconsider his own role in this. “He may no longer confine himself to traditional IT services, but should position himself more as a manager of enterprise processes.” A strong technological focus alone is not enough. The CIO also has to attract and train talent.

Column

20

PICTURE Louis Mahy (left), CIO at Record Bank, Geert Vercaeren, Director at Deloitte and Luc Hendrikx, Director at PwC are the authors of this article.

The results of the interactive voting at the CIOnet Talent Management Event (report see pages 18 and 19) clearly show that CIOs are in need of business knowledge and skills for their IT departments. Business architects and analysts are by far the most lacking functions in their departments (52%) followed by project managers (15%). Though, these two profi les are also considered the most diffi cult to recruit on the external job market today.

Desperately seeking skilful expertise

S till CIOs remain to seek their resources exter-nally instead of attracting the company’s

business expertise towards IT. The CIOs prefer good old ‘strong negotiation skills’ to manage their sourced contracts rather than having capa-ble technical SLA managers. Again they expect to fi nd those skills externally within their suppliers rather than re-skilling their own IT staff. On the other hand, no academic IT curriculum can fulfi l the talent needs of the CIOs. Today CIOs mainly try to attract people from the external job market and they focus on a rather im-portant but small segment of the IT population. Identifying and providing career paths for high potential is considered as the second biggest talent challenge. Retention of critical IT people, re-skilling and redeploying of the own staff or managing the talent of the external resources are considered less signifi cant.

Do CIOs really see the full potential of the talent spectrum? Do they differentiate enough in terms of talent strategy to deal with these challenges? Aren’t there more effective ways?

We think of building a distinct retention strategy or they could present clear career paths in IT. CIOs can offer IT professionals an engaging career. Why not implement well-structured business IT rotation programs or professionalise on-boarding for external IT resources? Most (57%) CIOs consider negotiation skills as most important. They think that these skills are best acquired through selling outsourcing ser-vices. Less important are architectural skills, understanding the systems development lifecycle and people management skills. Are people with strong negotiation skills also best qualified to develop solid relationships with the service providers? Strategic partnerships are im-portant to make outsourcing a long-term suc-cess. Research proves that most successful cus-tomers of outsourcing show good collaboration with service providers, and that good collabora-tors tend to be effective outsourcers.

Looking for ‘rare birds’ in the same external ‘pool’

rather than in the own ‘IT nest’.

PICTURE Dr Paul Redmond, Head of the Careers & Employability Service at Liverpool University: “Generation Y are über confi dent and entrepreneurial, assertive and more than capable of voicing their concerns.”

21

Event report

So what impact will this first ‘digital native’ generation have as they enter the work-

place? Redmond points to not only their ability to adapt very rapidly to new technologies, but also their inbuilt sense that computers are for social networking. The former means that instead of training new recruits to use in-house systems, existing staff have to be trained to keep up with the new recruits. The latter means that blocking access to social networking sites seems strange and perverse to Generation Y recruits.But, as Redmond highlights: “Timekeeping is an optional extra for Generation Y. They want fl exibili-ty and the ability to make last-minute commit-ments and adjustments.” As a result 9-5 ‘presen-teeism’ work patterns are not attractive to them and they will instead look for job opportunities with more fl exible work patterns.How should we attract and motivate Generation Y, into our organisations, and in IT roles. Redmond identifi es three factors key to any successful en-gagement with Generation Y. First is compelling story-telling rather than slick corporate presenta-tions: “simply having someone talk about why they are proud to work for that organisation al-most always beats the typical corporate presen-tation. Many organisations forget this – and it’s crucial in attracting Generation Y.”Second, excellent quality induction, repeated several times in the fi rst year, can make a big dif-ference. Redmond says: “Generation Y responds best to face-to-face communication. That way they feel valued and important. Ignore induction, or do it haphazardly, and prepare for empty-desk syndrome.”Finally, and integral to how Generation Y views the

world, is brand. As Redmond explains: “Gen Y is more focused on the brand and the brand reputa-tion than on an individual job function. Make the brand Gen Y-friendly and the job role will automat-ically gain more buy-in.”What will Gen Y CIOs be like? That remains un-certain, but Redmond is clear that “they will have a more developed global mindset, confidently leading teams comprising people located in diffe-rent time zones”.So, we have changes to make if we are to lever-age the potential of those we are recruiting now. But, in a parting shot, Redmond affi rms that we should also visit our primary schools to see the people likely to lead the next IT revolution.

Dr Paul Redmond’s new book The Graduate Jobs Formula

was published in May 2010 by Trotman.

“Generation Y are different”: that’s the view of Dr Paul Redmond, Head of the Careers & Employability Service at Liverpool University and a speaker at the fi rst CIOnet UK Annual Conference. Redmond continues: “As a whole, they are über confi dent and entrepreneurial, assertive and more than capable of voicing their concerns. And of course they are very techno-savvy.”

Generation Y – Ringing the ChangesÜber confi dent, entrepreneurial and assertive

22

Column

PICTURE Peter Schuurman, researcher at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, is the author of this article.

Somehow the supply of reports on the economic failure of IS projects seems to be inexhaustible. Given that evaluation should be about learning and improving, it makes one wonder whether or not we are becoming any better at assessing these aspects.

The evaluation of information systems

To answer this question, the University of Gro-ningen started a KPN-sponsored research

project on CIO perceptions of economic con-cepts in evaluation. In a joint effort with CIOnet, over 30 CIOs participated in interviews to identify these attitudes as well as current evaluation practices. Some of the preliminary findings are expounded hereinafter.

ObservationsBy now, it is apparent that basic business case practices have become pretty standard, as has the evaluation of (project) planning, budget, and quality at project closure. The general picture that emerges further indicates that business is starting to establish a long-needed position in assessing projects’ economics. However, directly after project initiation the attention for the economic foundations declines (a small revival at project clo-sure left aside). Their use turns into a method of

project control and revaluation of the business case’s validity is scarce. Some issues found espe-cially emphasise that there is a signifi cant need for improvement; among these are the following ob-servations:• Evaluation hardly takes place when things go

well, i.e. it is (solely) triggered by errors.• Often organisations are too tired of a project to

evaluate it, new things are so much more exiting!

• Once started, we don’t stop projects. Never. Never ever.

• Evaluations are project-centred as opposed to focused on the change.

• There is a lack of workable methods to incor-porate business strategy into evaluations.

Notable practicesThen again, throughout the sample some organi-sations seem to lead the way and make more headway compared to others. These organisa-tions show signs of more advanced evaluation habits. In addition, their activities are well-found-ed and in accordance with what the business can cope with. Although the evidence is mainly anec-dotal, these practices might provide guidance for the future. Some of the notable ones that repeat-edly emerge include:• Projects are actively cut into manageable pieces.• Some project categorisation is applied (e.g.

compliance, continuity, or commercial) to enable tailored evaluation.

• Initial evaluations are used as a conscious-raising element.

• Long-term road maps can be used to increase linkage with the business strategy.

23

PICTURE Daniel Lebeau, CIO with GSK Biologicals: “An IT project should never last longer than six months.”

Event report

Daniel Lebeau, CIO of GSK Biologicals, is unequivocal. He prefers many short

projects to fewer long projects. In a recently ac-quired biotechnology company, Lebeau set out to implement SAP in just six weeks. In the end, the project took seven and a half weeks. “The work took 25% longer than expected. Strictly speaking, the project should then be judged a failure, but in practice I still prefer that approach.”

Parkinson’s LawIt is all to do with Parkinson’s Law, which states that a job will take more time if more time is availa-ble for it. “We can see that very clearly in the IT business. A project is usually completed on time, sometimes too late, but never too early.”

The findings of the Stanley Group show Daniel Lebeau to be right. The research bureau found that four projects with a duration of six months have a much higher chance of success than one large project over two years. “An IT project should never last longer than six months”, said Lebeau. “If the period is longer, there is a risk that the initial business sponsor will go off to another job or that business priorities will change before completion of the project.”

Create more faith“Short projects with promptly visible results mean that you create more faith among the end users. Contrary to popular belief, speed and quality ac-tually can go together well in the implementation of IT projects. If, nonetheless, there is some delay, then we view that as a form of insurance policy for the quality.”

As a CIO, how do you ensure good governance of your IT projects? Do you opt for one project over a long period or several short projects with a rapid return?

Speed and quality go hand in handIT governance

FOCUS ON TRANSFORMATIONThe new structure of NMBS with three companies – the holding company, the operating company and Infrabel – led to the IT environment being restructured. For the implementation of SAP, NMBS chose for long-term planning. “In one company we had a major go-live after eighteen months”, says ERP director Patrick Dewilde. “Twelve months later we went live in the whole group with the fi nancial part of SAP. The deadlines that we used were very strict. Delay was not an option.” Instead of focusing on speed, NMBS put the emphasis in the project more on the changes throughout the three companies, in the various business lines and among the end users.

PICTURE Patrick Dewilde, ERP director with NMBS: “Long-term planning with strict deadlines.”

24

Special feature

24

This year SIMO Network will host the staging of the annual event organised by CIOnet España. Both trade forums are essentially aimed at promoting networking. In this respect, they will join forces and resources in order to implement a joint project in which heads of technological development are able to share know-how and experiences within the framework of a large sector event in Spain.

A shared project SIMO Network and CIOnet España

Juan Soto, the Chairman of the SIMO Network Organising Committee and a founding part-

ner of CIOnet España and member of its Adviso-ry Committee, explains the objectives of this ini-tiative.

How did the idea arise for this collaboration between SIMO Network and CIOnet España and what is its purpose?Juan Soto: “Basically, these are two initiatives that share a common goal: to promote valuable trade

links within an environment designed to boost the competitiveness of companies through the acqui-sition of know-how and the management of tech-nologies. SIMO Network, the grand annual meet-ing for the IT industry in Spain, has been developing this idea since last year, when the event’s organisers adopted a new fair model, one in which all contents and activities aimed at pro-moting networking are granted a leading role, whilst still promoting awareness of the latest trends and technological developments.”

“The trade network, CIOnet, has gained populari-ty over the last year in Spain, after booking con-siderable success abroad. Its aim is to create a community of CIOs in Spain, one in which the heads of leading companies can cooperate and share experiences, both at a national and an in-ternational level, with a view to promoting the use of technology in companies’ business strategies.”

“The common ground between the two initiatives is abundantly clear and, as an active participant in both events, I believe this collaboration will help to create synergy at both SIMO and CIOnet, bring-ing together large numbers of visitors and broad-ening the perspectives of all members of the in-dustry who travel to IFEMA. The event will also, of course, provide a boost for networking.”

What benefi ts will CIOnet España and CIOs gain from the fact that this event coincides with SIMO Network? Juan Soto: “In general terms, for CIOnet España I believe this will represent a step forward for an ini-

PICTURE Juan Soto, Chairman of the SIMO Network Organising Committee and founding partner of CIOnet España: “I believe this collaboration will provide a boost for networking.”

25

tiative that has already enjoyed rapid expansion throughout the country, in the sense that the stag-ing of its annual event coincides with SIMO Net-work and this will grant CIOnet a considerable de-gree of visibility, both among professionals and within the media. With regard to CIOs them-selves, in addition to enabling them to play an ac-tive part at the event alongside other prominent members of the industry, this joint initiative will provide them with an opportunity to discover the products and services on show at the exhibition, to view the latest new features and solutions, to obtain first-hand information and to attend the rest of the activities, meetings and conferences that have been designed to promote the use of technology in companies.”

What added value will the CIOnet España event contribute to SIMO Network?Juan Soto: “The CIOnet España event constitutes an extremely interesting activity that links up per-fectly with the philosophy and objectives of SIMO Network. Technological tools are presented as one of the foundations for the current business model and, from this perspective, the staging of events of this kind helps to widen our future pros-pects, based on the analysis and exchange of ex-periences that are facilitated among experts working within the same fi elds. These goals also correspond to those being pursued by SIMO Net-work and there is little doubt that CIOnet will con-tribute considerable value to the fair, helping to boost business links and to introduce Spanish and European CIOs to the leading point of refer-ence for cutting-edge technology in Spain.”

SIMO Network AREAS: ExhibitionCorporate Events Conferences and ActivitiesORGANISED BY: IFEMA

Organised by IFEMA, the International IT Services and Solutions Trade Fair, SIMO Network, provides a key point of reference for the information and communications technology industry in Spain. Its next edition will take place at Feria de Madrid from 5 to 7 October. The annual event organised by CIOnet España will take place on the fair’s open-ing day, Tuesday 5th October.

DATES: From 5 to 7 October 2010OPENING HOURS: from 10.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m. VENUE: Feria de Madrid

PICTURE SIMO Network is the grand annual meeting for the IT industry in Spain. This year, it will host the staging of CIOnet España’s annual event.

Special feature

THE KEY ASPECTS OF SIMO NETWORK

• SIMO is a leading point of reference for the IT industry in Spain, one designed exclusively for members of the trade.

• It is aimed at promoting networking: three days over which participants can establish valuable professional links and contacts.

• A forum for innovation and a setting in which to share experiences and know-how.

• An event at which to fi nd the technological resources and solutions that enable companies to boost their competitive performance.

• An exhibition that highlights the growing importance that IT products have acquired with regard to business development.

• Multiple activities aimed at the business world. • A setting designed especially to promote the latest trends in

cutting-edge technology.

Have you ever been frustrated by the way IT services are delivered today? Between clients who, for less and less money, demand

perfection in day-to-day servicing and speedy delivery of new function-alities, and IT professionals who consider themselves craftsmen, or even artists, more than industrialists, how do we deliver the predictability and repeatability that our industrial 21st century deserves?

While process-based methodologies exist in IT, it is important to position those processes in a context that can structure the whole business-IT relationship in any enterprise. ‘Demand-Delivery-Servicing’ is such a framework.

Start from servicing, where you deliver every day the services expected from you, relying on application and infrastructure assets. From an eco-nomic viewpoint, servicing includes what the IT world usually calls mainte-nance. I prefer the wording ‘IT asset management’, to highlight the neces-sity to optimise the quality/cost ratio of each asset across its lifecycle.

The portfolio of IT assets evolves through projects that create, transform and phase out assets. This is the world of delivery and should be clearly distinguished from servicing. Projects are meant to design, develop and deploy solutions to fulfi l needs expressed by business clients. Key phras-es here are predictability, time to market and cost effectiveness in non-recurrent activities. Because of a lack of business and system knowledge it is not obvious to everyone, but separating delivery from servicing is the key to achieving client satisfaction on two fundamentally different activities.

Ensuring that the IT organisation focuses on the services and projects that deliver optimal value to the business clients is the role of demand management. Continuous and structured interactions between IT and business must lead to relevant and effective portfolios of services and projects: ‘doing the right things’.

In a nutshell, such an operating model structures activities around three processes – demand, delivery and servicing – and is supported by three portfolios: services, projects and assets. The day that all IT managers can clearly present the elements of these three portfolios that they are respon-sible for, their organisation will be ready to enter the industrial age.

JACQUES GODETCIO of BNP Paribas Fortis

Jacques Godet passes the baton to Stefan Vanhelleputte, CIO of Solvay. Theme: Time to raise corporate IT at the level of the consumer smart devices and services.

Demand - Delivery - Servicing

Column

27

Column

CELEBRATE YOUR FREEDOM.

PAY LESS – GET MORE. VOTE FOR US!

FIGHT FOR THE ALTERNATIVE!

FIGHT FOR THE ALTERNATIVE!

WWW.FREETHENETWORK.BE

28EMC2, EMC, and where information lives are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. © Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

The private cloud and many related topics are sparking passionate discussion among your colleagues. Join the conversation at www.clusterofthoughts.com.