Um dos desafios com que me deparo no dia a dia na gestão de serviços de TI é a sustentabilidade dos mesmos. E quando falamos das TI de uma associação sem fins lucrativos como a Solidariedade Imigrante, a palavra sustentabilidade é chave.

Se tivermos em conta o caracter não lucrativo da associação, é fácil entender que todas as iniciativas que são desenvolvidas, devem ter em conta o valor que vão trazer para os associados e o custo das mesmas.

Colaboro com esta associação desde 2001 e tenho representado o papel de gestor da infra-estrutura e serviços de TI. Os objectivos para as TI são, disponibilizar:

• Internet para associados e colaboradores da associação;
• Acesso a office, internet e impressoras aos colaboradores;
• Políticas de segurança que garantam o acesso e integridade dos dados;
• Recursos para formações de introdução à informática: office e internet;
• Bases de dados;
• Ferramentas de design gráfico.

Infelizmente não tem sido fácil atingir estes objectivos, ou pelo menos com a qualidade que seria desejável! E manter estes serviços disponíveis, sem incidentes, 2 meses consecutivos, é uma vitoria da qual não nos podemos orgulhar, mas faz parte do quotidiano.

Mas questões operacionais à parte e tendo claros os objectivos das TI, surge a questão financeira e aquele que aparenta ser o maior desafio, fornecer estes serviços a custo mínimo para a associação. E para este custo devemos contemplar:

• Hardware: pcs, routers, switchs, impressoras, fotocopiadoras
• Software: Sistema Operativo, Office, Base de Dados, Antivirus, Photoshop
• Comunicações: Serviço de voz, dados, sms
• Recursos: Manutenção de infra-estrutura, instalações, upgrades, etc.

Embora não seja contabilizado como um custo actualmente e uma vez que tirando a iluminação, os equipamentos informáticos são os únicos consumidores de energia da associação, talvez seja importante incluir o custo com a electricidade para estas contas, mas descartando esta questão para outro fórum:

Se para hardware, comunicações, recursos e também para a electricidade estamos dependentes de fornecedores e da sua boa vontade para reduzir o custo, quando chegamos ao software temos à nossa disposição um vasto leque de opções disponibilizadas a custo zero.

Nestes termos, podemos ser levados a olhar para o freeware como uma solução sustentável uma vez que facilmente encontramos software free, com qualidade semelhante ou superior à dos fornecedores tradicionais.

Mas não é só o custo que temos que ter em conta na nossa equação rumo à sustentabilidade, e por exemplo, quando falamos em sistemas operativos e ferramentas de produtividade – área onde o freeware tem muitas cartas para dar – convém ter em conta que para a iniciação à informática é importante dar aos associados ferramentas semelhantes às que vão encontrar no mercado de  trabalho, nomeadamente, Windows e MS Office e consequentemente pensar duas vezes antes de adoptar OpenOffice ou Linux.

Por outro lado, quando falamos de editores de imagem é difícil convencer alguém a optar pelo GIMP quando existe o Photoshop. E antivírus? Alguém realmente confia num software gratuito para garantir a segurança da infra-estrutura?

Correndo o risco de não estar a ter em conta todas aplicações gratuitas de antivírus que existem no mercado, as que tive oportunidade de analisar sugeriam-me uma manutenção manual, que comprometeria a segurança dos dados, levando-nos mais uma vez para o mercado tradicional e com custos associados.

Pelo menos até surgirem soluções como o MS Security Essentials que embora não possa ser encarado como uma solução free, estritamente falando, sai a custo zero para todos os que cumprem o requisito “Your PC must run genuine Windows to install Microsoft Security Essentials.”.

Tendo em conta que fomos agraciados com um generoso apoio da Microsoft, que disponibilizou licenciamento gratuito de sistemas operativos e ferramentas de produtividade, ao abrigo do programa NGO Connection, podemos adoptar esta solução e reduzir nas contas o custo anual de subscrição de actualizações do antivírus.

Com este artigo não pretendo desvalorizar a importância do freeware e software aberto, que muito valor têm trazido para muitas organizações permitindo simultaneamente reduzir os custos, mas sim mostrar a importância de orientar os nossos serviços às necessidades das organizações e de encontrarmos formas de os disponibilizar ao menor custo possível, o que no caso descrito, passa por adoptar uma solução que á partida implicaria custos elevados.

Se não soubermos que custos temos, que valor trazem, e como nos vão ajudar a cumprir os nossos objectivos, não estamos a fazer a melhor gestão dos nossos recursos nem a garantir a sustentabilidade dos nossos serviços.

Outra característica elementar do Cloud Computing é o serviço medido pelo uso, um sistema bastante conhecido para serviços de utilidade pública, como a energia e a telefonia.

Em “A Grande Mudança”, Nicholas Carr continua a tese do seu texto/livro anterior “What Does IT Matter?” e compara a evolução dos serviços de TI com os sistemas de energia. Antes de Thomas Edison e seu império oferecer esse serviço como utility e cobrar pelo uso, as industrias do início do século XX e final do século XIX tinham cada uma os seus próprios geradores.

Muita gente torce o nariz para essa comparação. Eu aceito e incorporei radicalmente esse conceito dentro do business plan que desenvolvi pra minha empresa. Penso que é um caminho sem volta. As empresas irão deixar de realizar investimentos em TI (capex) e passar a usar verbas de custeio (opex) para usar os serviços de TI.

A mudança deixa em “xeque” conceitos que estamos acostumados a usar há mais de 20 anos, como ROI (Return of Investiment) e TCO (Total Cost Ownership). Isto porque ao vender uma solução de cloud é necessário que o cliente separe verba de custeio e não investimento para a TI.

Um exemplo que gosto de citar é o de uma empresa de Contact Center. O objetivo dela é ser o mais eficiente em termos de custo e ao mesmo tempo prestar um bom serviços aos seus clientes. É um mercado competitivo e complexo, pois atender pessoas não é algo simples.

Mas o cerne da questão é o custo e eficiência. Tipicamente, se quiséssemos vender uma solução de Service Desk, por exemplo, iríamos usar ferramentas para calcular o ROI e o TCO para justificar a venda, que daria o retorno em “x” tempo para empresa.

Mas pensando em Opex, precisamos compreender que o custo de Posição de Atendimento (PA) é por hipótese R$ 20 mil por mês. Então quando vender a solução de cloud computing, você estaria cobrando por hipótese R$ 5 mil por PA por mês. Ou seja, você aumentou substancialmente o valor (25%) do custo da célula de atendimento. Para justificar isso, você precisa identificar quão eficiente se tornou essa célula.

Parece banal, mas não é. O cliente irá racionalizar em como esse custo que entra direto na operação é indispensável ou necessário para ele se tornar competitivo, produtivo ou mesmo como lhe dá vantagem competitiva. Isso é o que qualquer solução de informática desde sempre se propôs ao seu cliente, a diferença é que o cliente irá desejar esse retorno imediatamente, sem longo prazo de “payback”.

Por isso que para explicar esse conceito, usei uma figura do Wikipédia que gosto muito. Ela também deixa de forma bem evidente que os custos gerais vão ser bem menores, cada vez mais tendendo a zero, devido a constante propensão dos produtos em se tornarem commodities, assim como os serviços de energia e telecom.

By Robert Gelinas

© 2009.  All Rights Reserved

Outcome-Based Business Models synchronize vendor and client goals, eliminate adversarial dynamics, and create the best opportunity for a true “win/win.”

Allies Not Adversaries

When Ross Perot left EDS/GM and founded Perot Systems, one of the first market segments his new company sought to serve with IT Outsourcing services was the data center operations of State Governments.  What was unique about his approach was that his pricing model wasn’t based upon traditional man-hour rates, headcount, flat project fees, etc.  Instead, he simply asked to be paid as a percentage of the current operational cost savings he created with his services.

In effect, if Perot could reduce an organization’s existing IT operating costs by, say 30%, and he took a percentage of that, then the net savings was still a good deal for the client—with no “breakeven point” that had to be achieved at some theoretical point in the distant future before appreciating the savings, plus the cost of the operation was coming from existing budgets, and therefore already funded.  Plus, the more Perot was able to save them, the more he made.

A scenario like this puts both the vendor and the client into a business model of mutually compatible and synergistic goals.  The client values the tangible and desirable goal of lowering their costs/expenses, whereas the vendor believes their value proposition could genuinely result in major new operational efficiencies.  But rather than the vendor telling the client that they have to pay X in order to receive benefit Y, i.e. direct cause and effect, in Perot’s case, instead they made X a factor of Y.  If Y (benefit produced), then X (payment).

This logic effectively takes off the table the notion that the client could potentially end up paying X cost but maybe not receiving Y benefit as promised, essentially having to bear all the risk of the relationship and financial investment alone.  But the synergy of this approach goes further, creating the opportunity that the vendor might even deliver results superior to Y, and thereby increase their own ROI (2X?), by virtue of the business model structured to be in the vendor’s best interests to do so.  More value delivered to the client means the greater the vendor’s reward.

Fees for service as a percentage of savings isn’t the only example of this principle.  In some instances, direct costs savings might not be a practical objective – e.g. where an incremental investment is what is required to achieve a greater business goal.  That doesn’t mean that an Outcome Based Business Model is precluded.

For example, what if the goal for the client is to generate a specific revenue goal; or to achieve a certain degree of Gross Margin, Net Operating Income (NOI), Profitability, or Earnings Per Share (EPS); or perhaps to bring a deliverable product or service to market by a specific target deadline that gives the client a competitive advantage in their own market.  What about an Annual Growth Rate (AGR) target?  All of these goals can have a compensation component for the vendor who is able to make them happen.

Shared Risk

The obvious downside to the above thinking is that there exists the potential to shift virtually all of the risk of success over to the vendor, away from the client.  If the proposition is purely – “We’ll guarantee your success, Mr. Client, and after we do, then you can pay us” – who wouldn’t want that deal?

Sure, there’s always the inherent risk of operational disruption arising from any significant change to an environment or process, but one would think that after some proper due diligence, if you are talking about a credible vendor relationship that you would consider using anyway, if all other considerations are equal, and the only difference is a pricing structure that puts all the performance obligations on the vendor with no advance financial risk to the client until the success has been achieved – that’s a very compelling business proposition.

To be clear: the extreme interpretation of this idea here is analogous to the home contractor who tells you that their labor and materials are free until the job is done, when you’re 100% happy, and then you pay.  Unfortunately, the only vendors/contractors who offer such “deals” are those who are supremely confident in what their work will produce, the carrying cost of the job is not cost-prohibitive, and the risk of the client not being happy when done is highly unlikely.

This approach may be reasonable for small-scale endeavors.  But what about large, enterprise-class undertakings that might be months or even years in scope, involving many fulltime personnel and resources, where the ability to defer vendor compensation to the very end isn’t a financially viable strategy? Is an Outcome-Based Business Model still an option?

Yes.

When You’re Lost, Buy a Map

Embarking on a year-long or more, six- or seven-figure project, or multiple overlapping projects long-term, and doing so starting from scratch with a brand new third-party vendor, can appear to be a very risky proposition in terms of having any reasonable assurance of long-term success—regardless of how well-reputed or experienced a vendor is that you may be considering using.  The vendor may do everything right themselves, but a client’s own organization may have idiosyncrasies and nuances that just don’t integrate well with outside parties that create stumbling blocks and potential risks.

Plus, as noted above, it might be completely unreasonable/unviable for any outside vendor to be willing to take on most or all of the financial risk of a major, long-term endeavor prior to the execution and production of all deliverables and results.

In all likelihood, the client has some idea of what they wish to achieve, even if the roadmap to achieving it working in concert with an outside party isn’t fully understood.  The client may, indeed, have some idea of what it would take if they did it all themselves, hired and deployed all of their own resources, obtained all the requisite tools and implemented all the necessary best-practice processes, etc.  But knowing those facts is what likely prompted the client to seek out third-party help in the first place – i.e. in an effort to reduce costs, accelerate time frames, and produce a stronger result.  But the exact parameters of what it would take for a third party to achieve the client’s goals in terms of time and money and operational process are completely unknown.  And even if these variables were fully known, i.e. coming in the form of a traditional bid, a budgetary figure and target deadline does nothing to mitigate any of those risks and concerns associated with assuring long-term success.

So how can this dilemma be resolved?  Enter the expert Business Analyst.

All the pertinent variables in the “master equation” in terms of what needs to be accomplished and what it will take to do it successfully can be quantified.  Moreover, the business drivers that served as the catalyst for initiating and approving the project(s) themselves can be identified and quantified – i.e. in terms of the goal of increasing revenues and/or productivity, producing better margins, lowering operating costs, generating higher EPS, etc.  All of that data can then be synthesized into a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) / Return on Investment (ROI) model.

That TCO/ROI Model can then serve as the foundation for an incremental Project Plan, broken down into phases/milestones, whereby “Success” can then be defined and quantified, not in terms of a single end result, but in terms of sequential achievements that a vendor can then potentially viably shoulder, taking on a measure of that risk and/or make an investment with sufficient confidence that their own operating costs are neither cost prohibitive nor is the outcome of the incremental deliverable uncertain.

For the client’s benefit, the production of this Gap Analysis, TCO/ROI Model, and Project(s) Development Roadmap is a relatively small investment in terms of both time and money – which is an investment that needs to be undertaken regardless of who ends up doing some or all of the work. That’s Key to understand.

Thus, the risk mitigation strategy becomes simple and clear:

1)     A client should first invest in a Development Roadmap, predicated upon objective and highly quantitative Business Analysis within the context of Client Defined Business Objectives

2)     The Roadmap then provides the Basis/Foundation for Incremental Win/Win Outcome-Based Business Model Transactions, with Shared Risk and Investment

3)     Vendor Integration and Partnering can then be evaluated moving forward based upon Pilot/Test projects to establish effective communication and collaboration processes, and the trust and confidence necessary to proceed with the execution of the full Development Plan

The Best of All Worlds

Outcome-Based Business Models, with shared risk and investment, is the most financially advantageous and lowest risk scenario for a Client-Vendor relationship – for both parties.  It is possible to enjoy such a business model, even in the context of large-scale business objectives if approached with the proper strategy and an incremental and evolutionary development process.

Robert Gelinas is the President and CEO of JPE Inc. Consulting (www.jpeincconsulting.com). He has spent over 20 years in the IT industry as a senior executive and sales and marketing leader, having built many national and international Enterprise IT sales and marketing organizations.  He has both an extensive Fortune 500 background as well as a wealth of successful Start-Up experience. He is also a published novelist, writer, publisher (www.archebooks.com) and frequent public speaker on both IT marketing and the writing and publishing industry.

“How will your IT solution help me sell more pizza?”

That was the opening question from one COO recently when he met with a team of software salespeople on their first sales call at his company.

The team could not answer his question because they had prepared for a different discussion. The PowerPoint they brought, but never showed, included lots of technical information, along with charts and graphs showing ROI (Return on Investment) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)—none of which offered insight about how to solve COO’s strategic challenge. The meeting was terminated and rescheduled for a later date. The final outcome? It’s described toward end of this blog.

No doubt their ride back to the airport didn’t include much jovial banter. The pain of that interaction underscores why one of my clients, a large software developer, initiated a worldwide program to help their resellers shift from selling mainly small $20,000 Information Technology (IT) projects—which are frequently vetted using ROI calculations—to selling larger enterprise projects that require sales teams to prove strategic value along with financial returns. As enterprises adopt governance policies and “balanced scorecards” designed to promote alignment between IT investments and corporate strategy, the need to adopt a sales process that proves value beyond the achievement of simple financial calculations or Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) has never been stronger. The project I’m currently working on provides me the opportunity to facilitate this metamorphosis.

But what’s wrong with talking to prospects about ROI and TCO?

Nothing, other than the fact that many marketers and salespeople simply fail to put these metrics in any context. Case in point: This week, RFID Solutions Online sent me an e-newsletter with the subject “Find The ROI In Your Asset Tracking Initiatives”. But the accompanying article summary doesn’t connect the value of asset tracking to financial or operational strategy.

And it’s not that there isn’t a connection. There is, but I couldn’t find it anywhere in the email. So the over-worn statement “Find The ROI . . .” isn’t visceral to C-Level executives who live and breathe strategy. This example is the tactical equivalent of a quarterback leading an offense to the opponent’s 10-yard line, and on third down saying “I think we’ve gone far enough.”

Why does ROI/TCO alone fall short? Because the “heavy lifting” in sales is in enabling prospects first to [i]believe[/i] the facts about an issue, then to care about the issue, then to act to solve it. ROI and TCO are reasonably helpful for the belief stage (“We used the numbers the client provided for our ROI calculations!”), but marginally effective for answering the question “Why should I care?” And, if no influential individuals in an organization care about a given issue, would anyone wager that they would act to solve it?

So, beyond ROI and TCO, how can a company gain a sales advantage?

To answer that question, let’s look at how the sales team managed its setback with the pizza company COO. After returning to their office, the group took the time to formulate a set of questions about the growth strategy for the pizza company, including questions about finance, supply chain logistics, CRM, and human resources. They reformulated a presentation and met with the COO about two weeks later. Their project was approved and they won the opportunity.

What did the team figure out?

First, the team realized that positioning their offering to enable growth was mission critical for both vendor and prospect. By making the shift from a purely financial appeal to a strategic appeal, the sales team minimized the risk of “no decision.” In addition, another important outcome occurred. Because strategic growth impacts every operating unit in an organization, the sales team opened relationships with a cross-functional team of senior executives. Prior to that change, the vendor’s sales team networked only in the IT department. Finally, the sales team was rewarded with an unintentional benefit: they faced fewer competitors. Before changing their approach, the sales team competed with every vendor touting high ROI—some of which were selling IT solutions. Now, only two vendors offered a path to the strategic growth the COO required.

How did the sales team realign to address the COO’s problem, and what steps did they follow from beginning to end?

The team leveraged the competencies they already had, but had never effectively combined. They used empathetic listening skills, systems analysis techniques, and business acumen to convert what could have been a certain loss. All of these competencies rarely exist in one individual, so collaborative processes and effective team leadership were also required. The specific steps the team used will be covered in another blog, Strategic Questions Will Uncover Strategic Opportunities.

Сервисный подход и учет затрат ИТ-службы

Кирилл Скрипкин

Если результат деятельности ИТ-службы представляется в виде набора ИТ-услуг, оказываемых бизнесу, затраты ИТ-службы необходимо учитывать также в разрезе ИТ-услуг. При любом другом подходе затраты и результаты ИТ-службы оказываются несопоставимыми. Основой данного подхода выступает совокупная стоимость владения.

Управленческий учет затрат должен привязать затраты к тому, что явилось их причиной, — к объекту затрат. Учет затрат необходимо вести по нескольким статьям — оборудование, расходные материалы, заработная плата службы поддержки, ремонт и т. д. При покупке, например, принтера, следует учитывать средства, которые уйдут на замену картриджей, оплату определенного объема работ службы поддержки, ремонт и т. д. Все перечисленные затраты обусловлены решением о покупке принтера. Он и становится в приведенном примере объектом затрат, а привязка этих затрат именно к принтеру — задачей управленческого учета.

Модель оценки совокупной стоимости владения (Total Cost of Ownership, TCO) — одна из первых попыток привязать затраты ИТ-службы к надлежащим объектам затрат. Исторически она рассматривалась как модель учета затрат на активы вообще и учета затрат на ИТ-активы в частности. Объектами затрат в этой модели были рабочие места, оборудование, программные пакеты и даже ИТ-инфраструктура предприятия в целом. Для актива рассматривалась вся совокупность связанных с ним затрат, в том числе затраты на оборудование, программное обеспечение, администрирование, техническую поддержку, внешние услуги, потери от простоев пользователей и т. п.

Такой подход позволяет решать целый ряд задач, прежде всего бенчмаркинг (соотнесение TCO организации с другими организациями), сравнительный анализ структуры TCO, сопоставление различных программных и аппаратных платформ. Пример решения одной из задач — сопоставление программных и аппаратных платформ — изображен на рис. 1, где ИТ-решение с минимальными первоначальными затратами проигрывает по критерию полных затрат.

Рис. 1. Выбор платформы на основе модели TCO

В то же время модель TCO ИТ-актива оказывается беспомощной в сопоставлении затрат и выгод использования информационных систем. Основная проблема в том, что ИТ-актив как таковой выгод бизнесу не приносит. Выгоды бизнес получает от ИТ-услуги, для которой ИТ-активы выступают лишь в качестве ресурса. Следовательно, здесь необходимо учитывать затраты в разрезе ИТ-услуг, а не ИТ-активов.

Еще одна проблема. В состав затрат модели TCO входят потери от простоев. Эти потери — обязательный компонент модели в той мере, в какой она используется при принятии решений. В противном случае оценки смещаются в пользу решений с меньшими первоначальными затратами и более высоким временем простоя.

В то же время модель TCO ИТ-актива не дает экономической основы для оценки потерь от простоев. Они, а также связанная с ними упущенная выгода зависят от того, какие именно ИТ-услуги обеспечивает данный актив.

Вот пример семилетней давности. В организации X система SAP R/3 внедряется в качестве инструмента ведения бухгалтерского учета по GAAP. Необходимые операции по подведению баланса выполняются в таблицах Microsoft Excel и затем переносятся в R/3, где в полуавтоматическом режиме перекладываются в отчетность по стандартам GAAP. В то же самое время в организации Y система R/3 внедрялась для планирования закупок. В системе учитывались все запасы на складах, заявки на списание материалов и заявки на их закупку, причем объем информации не позволял вести такой учет за пределами системы R/3.

Итак, TCO ИТ-актива определяется не только свойствами самого актива, но и тем, для поддержки каких ИТ-услуг использован актив, а также требованиями заказчиков к этим ИТ-услугам. В то же время сам подход TCO — учет всех затрат, связанных с приобретением и эксплуатацией, в равной мере применим как к ИТ-активу, так и к ИТ-услуге. Поэтому следует рассмотреть TCO ИТ-услуг как совокупность затрат на приобретение и сопровождение ИТ-услуги.

TCO ИТ-услуги и метод прямых затрат

ИТ-услуга — конечный результат деятельности ИТ-службы. Соответственно, задача определения TCO ИТ-услуги — классическая задача костинга (от английского слова costing — определение издержек), то есть задача определения себестоимости конечного продукта или услуги.

Суть задачи костинга в следующем. Затраты в организации обычно фиксируются по статьям, определяемым видами расходов (сырье, материалы, оборудование, заработная плата и т. д.). В ИТ-службе к этим статьям относятся оборудование, программное обеспечение, заработная плата, внешние услуги, помещения, командировки и т. д. Эти статьи в дальнейшем будут называться элементами затрат. Если одна и та же статья распределяется на ИТ-услуги различными способами, то в пределах этой статьи выделяется несколько элементов затрат. Решение задачи костинга состоит в распределении всех элементов затрат на конечный продукт, то есть на ИТ-услуги.

Простейшая модель костинга — метод прямых затрат, подробно описанный в книге Service Delivery, London: the Stationary Office, 2001. Согласно этой модели, все затраты делятся на прямые и косвенные. Прямые затраты относятся на ИТ-услугу непосредственно. Например, амортизация выделенного сервера электронной почты относится на услугу электронной почты. Также к прямым затратам можно отнести амортизацию специализированного программного обеспечения, например серверного ПО электронной почты или информационных терминалов Reuters, Bloomberg, РБК и т. д. Затраты на поддержку такого программного обеспечения или пополнение информационных баз данных со стороны внешних поставщиков также относятся к прямым.

К косвенным относятся затраты, которые невозможно непосредственно отнести на ту или иную ИТ-услугу. Таковы, например, все затраты, приходящиеся на Service Desk (в их числе — зарплата сотрудников, амортизация оборудования и программного обеспечения, оплата внешних услуг по поддержке оборудования и ПО), поскольку они относятся ко всем услугам, поддержкой которых занимается Service Desk. Аналогично к косвенным затратам относится амортизация оборудования и программного обеспечения, поддерживающего несколько ИТ-услуг одновременно. К таковым относятся компоненты информационных систем и аппаратная платформа, на которой они установлены. Обычно они поддерживают несколько ИТ-услуг, например ведение главной книги, учет входящих и исходящих платежей, учет закупок и др. Поддержка и обновление этих активов также относятся к косвенным затратам. Косвенными обычно бывают и затраты на канал передачи данных, обеспечивающий услуги электронной почты, учетные услуги, видео-конференц-связь, IP-телефонию и т. д. Данный список не исчерпывает все косвенные затраты, но, как правило, включает в себя большинство затрат ИТ-службы.

Прямые и косвенные затраты относятся на услуги различным образом. Прямые затраты связываются с определенной ИТ-услугой, оказанию которой они соответствуют. Косвенные затраты распределяются в соответствии с критериями, установленными ИТ-службой или ее заказчиками. Вот несколько примеров критериев. Затраты на Service Desk могут быть распределены между ИТ-услугами пропорционально числу пользователей каждой услуги. Затраты на канал передачи данных могут быть распределены пропорционально трафику, связанному с каждой из использующих его ИТ-услуг. Такой критерий требует применения специализированных программ — мониторов трафика, эти программы в большом количестве представлены на рынке. Затраты на заработную плату системных администраторов могут распределяться пропорционально числу обслуживаемых серверов.

Среди косвенных затрат есть и такие, для которых адекватного критерия распределения подобрать не удается. Например, затраты на заработную плату директора ИТ-службы, на аренду помещений, в которых она находится, на СКС в офисе организации, в равной мере относятся ко всем ИТ-услугам, потребляемым организацией. Такие затраты обычно и распределяются равномерно по всем существующим ИТ-услугам.

В рамках модели прямых затрат решение задачи костинга в целом состоит из следующих шагов:

1. Разделение всех элементов затрат на прямые и косвенные. 2. Среди косвенных затрат выделение затрат, распределяемых по критерию, и затрат, распределяемых равномерно. 3. Для прямых затрат — непосредственное распределение на соответствующие ИТ-услуги. 4. Для затрат, распределяемых по критерию, — определение значения критерия для каждой ИТ-услуги и исчисление соответствующих этому значению затрат. 5. Для затрат, распределяемых равномерно, отнесение на каждую ИТ-услугу 1/N величины элемента затрат, где N — число ИТ-услуг. 6. Суммирование всех затрат по каждой ИТ-услуге.

Таким образом, для каждой ИТ-услуги рассчитываются прямые затраты на сопровождение. Подход TCO требует также определения потерь от простоев. Для расчета этих потерь простои делятся на четыре группы: «невидимый» простой, сбой операции, сбой процесса и сбой организации (рис. 2).

Рис. 2. Денежная оценка потерь от простоев

«Невидимым» будет называться простой, который воспринимается как снижение производительности ИТ-услуги, а не как перерыв в обслуживании. Примеры таких простоев: кратковременная недоступность Internet-сайта, кратковременный (менее пяти минут) перерыв электронной почты и т. д. Простои, приводящие к отсрочке исполнения определенной операции бизнес-процесса, относятся к сбоям операции, например, перерыв электронной почты на 10-15 минут, перерыв бухгалтерской системы на такое же время и т. д. Сбой процесса — это простой, препятствующий достижению результата бизнес-процесса. Например, в Internet-магазине сбой системы длительностью 10-15 минут может вынудить клиента отказаться от сделки и закупить товар в другом магазине. Наконец, крупные простои важных ИТ-услуг могут иметь значимые последствия для организации в целом. В частности, длительный простой услуг по передаче электронных платежей может привести к перерыву в расчетах, простой услуг планирования потребностей в материалах — к несвоевременному формированию заказа на закупку и простою производства, простой услуг главной книги — к несвоевременной сдаче налогового отчета.

График на рис. 2 описывает зависимость потерь от простоя ИТ-услуги от длительности простоя данной услуги. Наряду со временем простоя на величину потерь влияет приоритетность ИТ-услуги и момент, в который случился простой. Например, для ИТ-услуг главной книги простой в момент подготовки бухгалтерской или налоговой отчетности имеет значительно более серьезные последствия, нежели в любое иное время. Исходя из этих факторов — длительности простоя, приоритетности услуги, момента простоя — выделяется несколько (обычно три-пять) категорий простоя, общих для всех ИТ-услуг организации. Например, если выделены категории простоя от A (наименее важный) до E (наиболее важный), то простой услуг Internet может относиться к категории A, простой электронной почты — к A или B в зависимости от длительности простоя, простой электронных платежей — к C, D или E, также в зависимости от длительности простоя.

Для каждой из таких категорий простоя устанавливается денежная оценка. Итоговая сумма потерь от простоя в этом случае составляет сумму произведений оценки часа простоя и времени простоя в часах по всем категориям простоя.

Таким образом, модель прямых затрат позволяет распределить по ИТ-услугам всю совокупность затрат на приобретение и сопровождение ИТ-услуг, включая прямые, косвенные затраты и потери от простоев. В то же время данная модель не позволяет выделить факторы, влияющие на величину TCO ИТ-услуги, в частности используемые программные и аппаратные платформы, достаточность ресурсов службы сопровождения и т. д. Для выявления такой зависимости необходимо выделить затраты не только на ИТ-услуги в целом, но и на отдельные работы ИТ-службы — функцию Service Desk, устранение инцидентов, обработку изменений и т. д., причем в разбивке по видам используемого оборудования и программного обеспечения. Такой анализ возможен в рамках более сложных моделей костинга, которые будут рассмотрены в одном из ближайших материалов рубрики.

Затраты на ИТ-проекты и их распределение на ИТ-услуги

ИТ-услуги могут быть приобретены двумя способами: в рамках либо текущей деятельности, либо ИТ-проектов. Приобретение в рамках текущей деятельности полностью укладывается в схему рис. 3. Зато ИТ-проект требует более сложного учета затрат.

С данной точки зрения ИТ-проект — временный центр учета затрат (далее — центр затрат). Он аккумулирует все затраты, связанные с реализацией ИТ-проекта. Если проект сдан в эксплуатацию, временный центр затрат закрывается, а затраты распределяются по ИТ-услугам, созданным в ходе проекта. Если же проект закрыт без сдачи в эксплуатацию, временный центр затрат также закрывается, но затраты списываются на убытки, а в модели прямых затрат — как косвенные затраты. Если неудачный проект был попыткой создания новых ИТ-услуг, затраты обычно распределяются равномерно, если попыткой усовершенствования ИТ-услуг, то затраты распределяются именно на эти услуги. Тот и другой варианты также вполне вписываются в схему рис. 2. Итак, специфика учета затрат в ИТ-проекте проявляется во время выполнения проекта (временный центр затрат) и в ходе распределения затрат на ИТ-услуги при успешном завершении проекта.

Метод временного центра затрат означает, что пока проект выполняется, затраты на него не распределяются по ИТ-услугам. Все элементы затрат, связанные с проектом (приобретение оборудования, программного обеспечения, заработная плата, внешние услуги, помещение проектного офиса, командировки и т. д.) учитываются на отдельном временном центре затрат. Сумма затрат ИТ-службы при таком подходе равняется сумме затрат на ИТ-услуги и затрат на открытые проекты. Есть и различия в методах учета. Затраты на ИТ-услуги приводятся к единому временному периоду, обычно к году. Как следствие, для основных средств и нематериальных активов (оборудования, программного обеспечения, инженерной инфраструктуры) учитывается годовая сумма амортизации, а не общая стоимость актива. Напротив, в учете на временном центре затрат фигурирует общая стоимость всех приобретаемых активов, амортизация рассчитывается лишь при закрытии временного центра затрат. Это связано с неопределенностью статуса последних в ходе выполнения проекта — затраты могут быть как инвестициями в приобретение ИТ-услуг, так и прямыми убытками. Именно в последнем случае важна общая сумма произведенных затрат, а не затраты, приведенные к году.

Отдельно следует рассмотреть закрытие временного центра затрат при успешном завершении ИТ-проекта. Примеры таких проектов: внедрение системы электронной почты, системы электронного документооборота, беспроводного доступа стандарта Wi-Fi. В этом случае распределение затрат зависит прежде всего от числа вновь созданных или модифицированных ИТ-услуг.

Если результатом проекта стала одна ИТ-услуга, то распределение затрат сильно упрощается: затраты следует лишь привести к единому временному интервалу, обычно, году. Для основных средств и нематериальных активов рассчитывается амортизация. Работы и внешние услуги распределяются по основным средствам и нематериальным активам и включаются в расчет амортизации. Для накладных расходов проекта, которые не могут быть связаны с конкретными ИТ-активами (работы по планированию, управлению и контролю, затраты на аренду помещения и т. д.), используется расчетный срок службы, например минимальный из всех ИТ-активов.

Если в проекте созданы две и более ИТ-услуги, необходимо также распределить затраты проекта между вновь созданными или модифицированными ИТ-услугами. Пример такого проекта: в ходе внедрения ERP-системы часто приобретаются услуги ведения главной книги, учета платежей, учета закупок. Распределение затрат на оборудование и программное обеспечение производится аналогично описанному выше. Работы по проекту для целей распределения делятся на три группы: работы по ИТ-услугам, работы по бизнес-процессу в целой, работы по проекту в целом. К первой группе относятся работы по реализации ИТ-услуг средствами информационной системы: настройка, программирование, написание пользовательских инструкций. Эти работы относятся на конкретные ИТ-услуги как прямые затраты. Вторая группа — это работы по созданию нового бизнес-процесса в целом: разработка моделей бизнес-процесса, подготовка регламентов и технологических инструкций. Эти работы могут относиться как к прямым затратам, если данный процесс поддерживает одна ИТ-услуга, так и к косвенным, если таких услуг несколько. Наконец, работы третьей группы всегда относятся к косвенным затратам.

Таким образом, предлагаемая модель позволяет обеспечить полный учет затрат, связанных с приобретением и эксплуатацией ИТ-услуг. Эта модель не учитывает все тонкости и нюансы, но может служить отправным пунктом для управления затратами в разрезе ИТ-услуг.

Кирилл Скрипкин — директор департамента ИТ-планирования и взаимодействия с бизнесом компании СУАЛ, k.skripkin@sual.com

We mostly use debian linux at the monkey house, but some ubuntu for an Pentium 2 (very old) and a remix based on ubuntu (this will become debian though) on a rather nice netbook.

Since the netbook is moving from ubuntu that only left the pentiom 2 pc to upgrade.

Being that this machine is very old it did take 12 twelve hours (on a slow net connection doing too much other stuff) but you could not run windows 7 on it (windows nt, or windows 98 was what the maker supplied it with ten years plus ago.)  Before i resort to some low power distro like damm small linux it still makes a good x host and is ok for spreadsheets and basic tasks.

I’d go use latest debian on it except the sound card isnt supported and to get that back into the kernel requires some plain damm strange magic linux backport stuff that never works when i do it (early etch worked fine)

So the machine does struggle a bit with 9.04, and things do take a bit of time on this old machine but it still has a use in it still with a rather good flat screen display.

Testing of 9.10 indicated most things working except than the x test card test, I had to re-enable the switches on cups to get remote printers to be seen and printed too. That took a minute to fi

The only mickey mouse feature in 9.10 is no gdm screen (on first look)  anyhow quite sure i can live with that for a while until i fix that.

So when people say it karmic koala sucks it does not – try running windows 7 on a Pentium 2, it was pretty awful with windows xp and how long ago did xp come out ?

One happy koala user here.

I mean whats the fuss about ? Im happy with it. Humans sigh

Raekwon Show @ Toad's Place - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx Tour

Raekwon Live Performance @ Toad’s Place in New Haven, CT on November 8, 2009 at 9 p.m.

Raekwon
feat. Sean Price, TCO (The Chosen One)

Tickets – Advance: $20; Day of Performance: $25

General Admission/All Ages

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Doors Open @ 8 p.m.
Show To Start @ 9 p.m.

Toad’s Place
300 York St. – #1
New Haven, CT 06511
+1.203.624.8623
Toad’s Place

To Buy Tickets for the Raekwon Show in New Haven, CT on November 8, 2009

For More Information about the Raekwon Show at Toad’s Place in New Haven, CT

Risk is a personal matter. Some of us hold tight control over our lives and finances while another may skydive and use all of their resources to start up new ventures. Risk, for all intents and purposes, is a matter of tolerance and understanding.

The same is true within the enterprise. Financial institutions looking to adding new products created credit swaps and made lots of money. The assumption of risk was present, but without a real understanding of how much the risk was inherent in these devices. No one believes in total downside, until it is too late to respond.

This appears to be the current situation with global supply chain risk. Supply chain disruption can and will occur, a condition executives live with– they tolerate the risk because they understand that the individual risk factors are small. The error in this mindset, like that in the financial markets, is that when any one or more of these events become reality, the resulting impact is catastrophic.

When it comes to quantifying supply chain risk, most companies believe the task unrealistic and far too expensive to justify. Fortunately, the data does exist for every possible scenario. The real trick is how to turn the data into manageable, real time information, for thousands of SKU’s and possible millions of part number/supplier scenarios. Lucky for all of us, applications exist that can manage these calculations in real time.

One of the applications that can be used to managing the supply chain data is Kinaxis Rapid Response. Rapid Response allows you to bring in data from multiple sources, anything from ERP systems to desktop spreadsheets. If all commodity managers are using TCO to manage suppliers, the TCO data from every location can be loaded into Rapid Response workbooks.

The next step would be to have the risk managers model the risk components then use the generic TCO calculations as your baseline costs. In Rapid Response build workbooks with weighted multipliers for each of the risk categories.

Services are available that provide a risk rating for a country. These ratings combine political risk, economic risk into a single rating. Country risk should be viewed both nationally and locally as regions of a country may have different levels of risk. Using sovereign risk to cover country issues may skew the risk as economic conditions weigh heavily on the sovereign risk number. The weighting based on published sovereign risk levels should be carefully constructed.

Financial risk and to some degree Workforce risk is supplier specific. Financial information availability can vary from very detailed (public company filings) to non-existent, but commodity managers must account for the financial stability of each individual supplier (or sub-suppliers). The basis for these ratings can be generic or  created from audited results.

Most risk numbers can be set once a year or when the simulation indication a revision is required. The tool, once constructed, would allow you to run critical “what if ” scenarios that allow you to look at trends in industry such as freight costs due to oil price fluctuations, currency rates, or proposed regulatory changes. By refreshing the model monthly you can determine if the TCOr projections are the actual performance you are getting. Risk mitigation policies can then be developed that initiate an immediate response when the TCOr exceeds a predefined limit.

Summary

CFOs are and should be concerned about the potential for supply chain disruption and the impact that a major disruption could have on results. They are finding that managing and mitigating risk in a supply chain is one of the most difficult tasks for a global business. One of the key reasons for the inability to monitor and manage this risk is that, unlike any other area in the supply chain (on-time delivery, quality, inventory), risk has no metrics associated with it. Disparate reports on individual events and the risk of disruption do not provide a complete view of exposure in the supply chain that includes all risk mitigation costs and action required.

Integration and quantification of supply chain risk into current risk management policies and procedures is mandatory for globalization. A TCO model that includes a risk component (TCOr) can be used by senior management as a signal that action may be required. The combination of optimization and simulation tools with the TCOr model can provide real visibility to management and a preemptive mitigation response. It provides an additional level of transparency and compliance to Sarbanes- Oxley, allows you to discuss the risk in the supply chain out in front of an event and your response plans.

I had an interesting conversation with a CIO the other day about cloud computing. He had a simple question: I have an relatively old application and I want to move it to the cloud. How do I do that? I suspect that we will see a flurry of activity over the coming year where this question will be asked a lot.  And why not — the cloud is the rage and who wouldn’t want to demonstrate that with the cloud all problems are solved.  So, what was my answer to this CIO? Basically, I told him that all workloads do not belong in the cloud. It is not because this technically can’t be done. It can. It is quite possible to encapsulate an existing application and place it into a cloud environment so that new resources can be self-provisioned, etc. But, in reality, you have to look at this issue from an efficiency and an economic perspective.

Cloud computing gains an economic edge over a traditional data center when it supports a relatively small simple workload for a huge number of customers. For example, a singular workload like email or a payment service can be fairly optimized at all levels — the operating system, middleware, and the hardware can all be customized and tuned to support the workload. The economics favor this type of workload that support large numbers of customers. The same cannot be said for the poor aging Cobol application that is used by 10 people within an organization. While there might be incremental management productivity benefits, the cost/benefit analysis simply doesn’t work.

So, the answer is pretty simple. You just can’t throw every workload into the cloud. It is not a panacea for all IT problems.  Organizations that are trying to figure out what to do with these pesky old workloads need to look at three options:

1. Decide if that workload is still supporting business objectives in a cost effective manner. If it does the job, leave it alone.

2. That old workload might be better supported by traditional outsourcing. Let someone else keep the application alive while you move into more mission critical tasks.

3. Think about rebuilding that old workload — either by encapsulating key elements and placing them within a modular flexible environment. You might even discover that there are components that are actually useful across the organization. When you discover that sharing components across divisions/department is a productive and pragmatic approach, you might be ready to move those workloads into the cloud.

Inget har väl upptagit så mycket tid för den politiska klassen på sistone som hur man fångar medelklassen, det politiska landskapets heliga graal som ingen vet riktigt vad den är eller vad den vill. Men på ett seminarium på den socialdemokratiska partikongressen lämnar TCO:s samhällspolitiske chef Roger Mörtvik några ledtrådar till vad den vill. (Låt vara att den ganska otympliga medelklassen får representeras av det otillräckliga TCO-kollektivet.)

Mörtvik presenterar en svensk medborgare som är välutbildad, men med rötterna i arbetarklassen. TCO:aren bor i villa med make/sambo i en mellanstor kommun och har en årsinkomst på över 250 000 kr per år och på det stora hela ganska nöjd med sin inkomst.

TCO:aren läser både morgontidningar och böcker mer frekvent än befolkningen generellt, och använder också datorer och internet i större utsträckning. TCO:aren är också mer föreningsaktiv än svensken i allmänhet och känner också ett stort samhällsansvar. För att citera Mörtvik, TCO:aren är en person som inför föräldramötet lovar sig själv att inte ta på sig något uppdrag. Men ändå finner sig vara mötessekreterare eller klassförälder.

Man är nöjd med sitt jobb och vill inte byta arbete. Men känner samtidigt att arbetsbelastningen och kraven har blivit hårdare, och stressen har ökat. TCO:aren satsar på jobbet, men känner också att tiden inte räcker till. Man upplever att jobbet tär på hälsa, sömn och familjeliv.

TCO:aren tycker att det är samhällets ansvar att varje människa har en god livsstandard. Men samtidigt tycker man att begåvning, flit och skicklighet ska lönas med en bättre inkomst än genomsnittet.

Man är mer negativ till fler privata alternativ inom offentliga verksamhetsområden än befolkningen generellt, upplever att det inte satsas tillräckligt på välfärden, och föredrar bättre välfärd framför lägre skatter.

TCO:aren har större förtroende för samhället och är mer positiva till hur det sköts. Man litar på sina medmänniskor och tycker att man ska göra rätt för sig.

Man vill ha starka trygghetssystem, men gillar inte kravlösa bidrag. Man gillar inte heller EMU, NATO och svartjobb. Man är för en generös flyktingpolitik och ökad jämställdhet. Men den viktigaste politiska frågan är sysselsättningen.

TCO:aren upplever att klyftorna i samhället har ökat de senaste åren och oroar sig över det. Man tror på välfärdsinstitutionerna, men är alltmer missnöjd som medborgare.

När man som socialdemokrat läser det här känner man sig inte främmande. Den där medelklassen som tas för intäkt för behovet av diverse kursändringar verkar ju vara som folk är mest.

Hur röstar TCO:arna då? Sett över en fyrtioårsperiod har majoriteten oftast röstat borgerligt. Men om man ser på de val som bar upp den tolvåriga socialdemokratiska regeringen 1994-2006 så ser vi att en tydlig majoritet (54-58%) av TCO-kollektivet röstade rödgrönt. Förmodligen kan man tolka det som en effekt av ett missnöje/misstroende med regeringen Bildt i början av nittiotalet. Ett missnöje/misstroende som höll i sig fram till valet 2006.

2006 sjönk stödet för det rödgröna blocket från 57% till 45%. Den viktigaste frågan för TCO:aren var i det valet sysselsättningen. Samma fråga som jagat bort dem från de borgerliga partierna i krisvalet 1994.

Om man ska tro Roger Mörtviks presentation borde nyckeln till den så eftertraktade medelklassen vara en aktiv krispolitik som investerar sig ur krisen, presenterar välfärdssystem som är inkluderande och generella, men samtidigt fokuserar på skapande av arbetstillfällen och förbättrandet av möjligheterna att balansera jobb och fritid. Det borde väl inte vara någon omöjlighet för en socialdemokrati som struntar i 2006 års hopplösa mantra att jobben kommer (av sig själv) och gör det socialdemokrater gör bäst?

Här kan du läsa Roger Mörtviks PowerPoint-presentation Välkommen till TCO-landet s-kongressversion.

Intressant?

Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om jobb09, socialdemokraterna, tco, roger mörtvik, välkommen till tco-landet, medelklass, medelklassen, solidarisk individualist, marknadsliberal välfärdskramare,

The potential cost of a global supply network needs to be viewed as more than the standard TCO, it needs to assign a risk assessment cost component. A second model, a TCO risk model, is needed. This TCO model provides a basis for the initial selection and ongoing management of suppliers. In managing suppliers, additional costs (and potential costs) can come from activities with little management visibility. The TCO model attempts to capture all costs associated with a purchased part or product. 

Unfortunately, there is no standard TCO model. The generic TCO model that is used by most companies contains cost drivers including price, transportation, storage and distribution, cost of capital, product quality and reliability and any tooling costs. 

Companies using detailed supplier scorecards capture and analyze these costs monthly and have some ability to react at least at the site level. The scorecard allows them to determine when it is time to move to an alternative source or re-open negotiations with their current source. 

TCO and Risk Assessment 

What is not covered by the current TCO model is the risk in global networks that incorporate suppliers in low cost countries, particularly single source suppliers. CFO’s must get engaged and integrate all risk assessment and mitigation programs to assure management has visibility to all risks and that all risks are accurately reported.  

Some of the issues are easy to capture and analyze. Contractual obligations, as a consequence of negotiating favorable pricing and terms can result in off balance sheet inventory obligations (take or pay agreements with Contract Manufacturers) and MOQ agreements (E&O risk resulting from contractual requirements). These situations can be monitored by operating groups and reported to senior level management. Disclosure of these obligations is required for compliance to SOX. 

Capacity and financial constraints can result in constant delivery delays. Operating groups respond by adding safety stocks beyond what would normally be carried. When lead time extends pursuant to supplier constraints, individual sites respond by expediting deliveries, often using air freight services to maintain their production schedules. These costs can be lost when inventory numbers and freight costs are rolled up for management reviews. 

What is needed is a TCO algorithm that will take the probability of disruption into account. The risk model would not be used for supplier selection metric. The risk TCO would be used as part of the supplier management reporting process. It takes the standard TCO model (material, transportation, inventory carrying costs, quality, etc.) and a risk multiplier to get to a Risk TCO for an individual supplier facility. The TCOr includes the costs of mitigation (additional inventory, capacity reserves, currency hedges) plus the cost of reserves that are required to offset potential disruptions. 

Key risk factors that make up the TCOr include:

• Financial risk (Rf) – the risk that a critical supplier will run out of cash and be unable to deliver products in the agreed upon quantities or on time. The worst case scenario is financial failure and bankruptcy.
• Country Risk (Rs) – the risk inherent, particularly in under developed countries, of political, economic and infrastructure instability. A coup may result in the short term shut down of all products leaving the country, and may result in economic sanctions.  In some countries fraud and counterfeiting can increase the risk component.
• Risk of a catastrophic event (Rc) – earthquakes, major storms, flooding and fires can cause a major disruption in material receipts.
• Currency (R$) – inflation resulting in the rapid increase or decrease in exchange rates
• Workforce Management (Rl) – strikes can cause disruptions in supply. Escalating labor rates can impact future results if not managed.
• Transportation (Rt) – actual and potential terrorist attacks can impact ports and port procedures, slowing the receipt of material.
• Sustainability Impact (Re) – environmental regulations, such as “Cap and Trade”.   

These are decision support tools for the SCM and CSCE. The TCO is a tactical decision, one that should be made by Commodity Managers, while TCOr is a strategic issue, one that should be reviewed by an appropriate level of senior management. It is the combined probabilities of all the potential disruptive events that give management an analytical view of risk. When viewed as a ratio of the standard TCO, each component can be monitored. An escalation point is set for each component based on its potential for impact to the company’s results. When the ratio hits or exceeds the “tipping point” it triggers an automatic escalation to senior management.  

The TCOr provides a single number that can be used as a signal within high level dashboards to provide visibility to C-level management that would be more visible than multiple reports. The immediate, rapid response to any supplier that hits the escalation level becomes the driving force for risk mitigation and advanced response planning.

Po sześciu latach “klejnot w koronie” twórczości The Cinematic Orchestra, album “Man With A Movie Camera” doczekał się wznowienia w postaci wydawnictwa DVD. Nad albumem pieczę trzymała oczywiście słynna wytwórnia Ninja Tune.  Materiał “Man In A Movie Camera” powstał po koniec lat 90. do radzieckiego filmu niemego pod tym samym tytułem, w reżyserii Dziga Vertova. Pokaz obrazu z 1929 roku wraz z muzyką TCO miał uświetnić obchody nadania miastu Porto miana Europejskiego Miasta Kultury 2000.

Wznowione wydawnictwo można zakupić poprzez sklep intrnetowy wytwórni Ninja Tune, oraz Amazon.com.

The CEO of a small company in central Asia is arrested for fraud. He has completely drained all the cash from his business and effectively shut down all the production lines. They make ferrite cores for your supplier of inductive coils, who in turn supplies to your contract manufacturer who is assembling the product. Your supplier informs you that it will be 8-10 weeks for the second source to “turn on” but they cannot deliver the full requirement. It will be 16 to 20 weeks before they can get all the cores needed for the inductors from a new source. Last week you loaded the new forecast which showed a 15% upside to the former schedule. Now is not the time to find out that a single, tier two or three supplier can do this much damage to your financial plans. 

Fire, earthquakes, fraud, war, run away inflation are all risks associated with managing a global supply chain. The Sarbanes- Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) makes it a legal requirement for companies to assess and report potential risks within their supply chains as part of full disclosure. How each company manages compliance varies throughout the industry. 

The analysis and mitigation accountability generally belongs to the supply chain organization. There are supply chain organizations capable of accessing and quantifying supplier risk and can provide analysis, mitigation planning and therefore, full disclosure.  However, while most companies acknowledge the risk in their supply chains, only a few quantify supply risk in terms of probability (the probability an individual supplier could impact results) and cost (the cost to eliminate or reduce risk). 

The TCOr, or Risk TCO, is a scenario modeling algorithm that combines the standard Total Cost of Ownership components with a risk component. It provides senior management with metrics and visibility to changing risk conditions within the supplier network, and therefore the ability to implement mitigation plans faster than their competitors.

Supply Chain Risk of Disruption 

 Until now few C-level executives believed that supplier risk management analytics had value. Risk Managers offset operational risk by purchasing insurance and financial instruments that allow them to hedge against fluctuations in foreign currencies, interest rates and inflation. Within Operations, Supply Chain Executives set up second sources, monitor supplier capacity and performance and run network simulations that provide them with “what if” scenarios. As the network expands to low cost countries, it is supply chain risk and risk mitigation that is becoming the top concern for both the CSCE’s and the CFO’s. 

A major disruption in the supply chain, particularly one that catches a company by surprise, can have a devastating, long term impact on your balance sheet. The disruption can be the result of a natural catastrophe, a national labor strike, a terrorist attack, or a coup. To a lesser extent the rapid rise in the price of oil, runaway inflation, and the potential for changes to trade agreements could impact both revenue and expenses. 

These various risks must be assessed for, event probability, potential for business disruption, the cost of correction, and costs of mitigation. The analysis tends to be assigned to personnel in multiple departments, and for the supplier network, across lines of business. The result is a large number of disparate reports generated for review, all of which represent some level of risk. Since no single event represents significant risk, companies proceed with decisions, that when viewed as a combined set of events and in comparison to alternatives, may not be the optimal selection. 

Because of the complexity, they tend to analyze one time events, with little or no understanding of the total risk for any individual component or supplier. Visibility at senior management, and therefore, stakeholders, is limited to non-existent. 

Over the past couple of decades, I’ve seen the storage industry boom into a gynormous (a word my 9-year-old loves) industry. While some storage vendors have grown by selling their products directly to companies, others have grown by selling their products via a network of channel partners or a combination of both. I believe that there are two key ingredients necessary for channel-friendly storage solutions: a user-friendly product and an easy-to-understand value proposition. So why should whether a product is channel friendly matter to customers like you?

Let’s look at the concept of user-friendliness first. Consider these statements on simplicity from two men of science separated by five centuries:

Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance inventor, artist and scientist: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Alan Perlis, computer scientist and recipient of the first Turing award: “Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.”

In short, complexity should be the means to an end and simplicity the end goal in product design. And product simplicity, or user-friendliness, delivers real value to your organization – from the systems administrator to the CIO – by requiring less upfront time to install and integrate and being easier to manage on an ongoing basis.

Now let’s examine value propositions. Why should an easy-to-understand value proposition be as important to customers as it is the channel, particularly customers who can appreciate a complex story?

Generally speaking, a clear value proposition – such as a TCO based on hard, quantifiable numbers or an ROI of short duration – has two benefits for customers. First, it will be a lot easier to get buy in and sign off from superiors if you can easily explain what benefits a solution can provide your organization in the near term. (For an example of what I’m talking about, check out the Avere Systems savings calculator – once you input your numbers, it’s clear what our value proposition is.) And second, clarity allows you to make before and after comparisons and hold vendors accountable, something that isn’t easy to do with a vague or complicated value proposition.

So, the next time you hear a vendor’s products described as channel friendly, tune in. The very same attributes that make a product good for the channel make it good for you as well.

SharePoint has unquestionably garnered a lot of attention from CIOs worldwide and has been called “nothing short of a phenomenon” by Toby Bell, Gartner Inc.’s research vice president. Now with advent of its new version Sharepoint 2010, the business collaboration platform, interest in Sharepoint has increased manifold.

However, most of the organizations are still struggling to calculate the TCO and ROI for the sharepoint.

Total cost of ownership can be calculated by including various costs like Software licenses, Server and SQL Server Licenses, Hardware and Infrastructure, IT staff for Planning, designing, Development, testing and Support, user training ,  Antivirus, 3rd party products and last but not the least indirect costs like having other MS products like Office, AD, Exchange, Live meeting, OCS, Groove, Performance point as part of your IT stack.

Calculating Software Licensing costs for Sharepoint itself is quite a tricky business. Only if your Solution Architect and stakeholders can answer the following questions with confidence, you can be comfortable calculating the license model:

1. Do you understand the difference between the feature set of WSS, MOSS 2007 Standard and Enterprise Version and Internet version?
2. How many users are going to use MOSS 2007 Standard/ Enterprise version? How many users will be using after 2-5 years?
3. Do you want Sharepoint to act as ECM/ Collaboration tool for your public facing/ internet site?
4. What is the existing content size in your organization? What is the content size expected in 2-5 years?
5. Do you want to automate your business process? If yes, answer following sub questions: What is the complexity level of your business processes? Do you want to use Inforpath forms? Do you want to use 3rd party Workflow tool?
6. What are the search requirements? Do you want to index more than 5,00,000 items?
7. Which shared services do you want to use? Have you identified them?
8. What are your integration points?
9. Do you want to use Loadbalancing for your WFEs? Do you want clustering for the DBs?
10. Do you want to manage Indexing in a separate server apart from Application server?

If you cant answer to one or more questions, I would suggest that you do your homework first and come up with the Logical and Physical Architecture. Calculating a ballpark figure for licenses would then be a cakewalk.

Next step would be to go the Bamboo solutions site and use the calculator. For your quick reference I am posting the following table for 3 scenarios

Option 1:100 users, 2 WFE, 2 SQL, 1 App Server

Option 2:500 users, 2 WFE, 2 SQL, 1 App Server

Option 3: 1000 users, 2 WFE, 2 SQL, 1 App Server, 1 Index Server

Sharepoint Licensing Ballpark estimate

 The scenarios assumes that you would need to search more than 5,00,000 documents, all users would need Enterprise CALs, you need  minimum of 2 WFEs and 2 DBs and you don’t want to have a public facing site.

Not to mention, if you are good at negotiating and if you are already into Microsoft infrastructure, you can get yourself a good bargain.

I will be talking about calculating ROI for Sharepoint in next post.

Till then have fun exploring the new features of Sharepoint 2010

For years we’ve been hearing that sales of laptops have been outpacing desktops, and that our workforce is becoming increasingly mobile. For laptop manufacturers, this is obviously good news – the demand for our products is growing and will continue to grow.  Unfortunately, for the end user, laptop reliability is not growing at the same rate as demand. 

A recent PC Magazine article highlighted the embarrassingly high number of business laptops that require repair each year.   According to the publication’s 2009 report, industry-wide, an average of 22 percent of business laptops require repair on an annual basis.  Oddly enough, brands that have recently touted their heightened durability seem to be at the top of the list – with Dell showing a 26 percent failure rate, Lenovo a 25 percent failure rate and HP at 22 percent.  These numbers show little improvement from previous years (this is the 5^th straight year where the average fell between 22 and 24%) and are consistent with data found in reports from major analyst firms.

Even more unnerving, the Dell, Lenovo and HP laptops are likely failing in device-friendly environments. They are being challenged only by the rigors of going from the office to the conference room, or from the airport to the hotel.

What I can’t understand is why so many people have come to view these high failure rates as acceptable.  There is a lot of technology we rely on every day – our cars, cell phones, televisions.  Would you buy a cell phone if you knew that 26% of those sold would need repair every year?  Probably not.  Yet, many major corporations invest in these high-failure laptops because the focus is on the upfront acquisition cost versus long-term value of the investments.  This focus comes with significant consequences to the bottom-line.
 
A recent VDC report showed that a whopping 70% of mobile device costs come after the acquisition.  CFOs with mobile workforces and an eye on profitability need to start taking a much closer look at the TCO for mobile technology, and not just the acquisition price. 

Fortunately, there is hope on this front.  A recent “Cash-for-Clunkers” story on Economist.com had this to say on the topic of TCO in America:

“Car dealers are now advertising the ‘total cost of ownership’ of vehicles, not just the purchase price, drawing the attention of consumers to differences in fuel efficiency between vehicles and estimating how much it would cost to fill them up with gas each year. This has long been a part of European and Japanese car culture…but until now Americans have never looked beyond the sticker price.”

People need to apply this TCO mentality to mobile technology, especially considering the critical role it plays in profitability, employee satisfaction and productivity.

At Panasonic, we have our failure rates audited by an independent third party, publish the information on our website and make it available to both existing and potential customers.  Across our entire Toughbook product line – a line that is designed to work in much harsher conditions than those our competitors are failing in – we show an average failure rate of under 2.5%.  This low failure helps to increase the return on investment and deliver a low TCO.

Why don’t you know about the lack of laptop reliability?  Well, laptop manufacturers don’t want you to know.  Obviously, they know. This is information they need in order to run their businesses.  As someone that has been in the industry for decades, I can say that this information is so closely guarded that often even the sales force is not allowed to know it.  Ignorance is bliss; until it costs you far more than you bargained for!

We challenge individuals and corporations to think about TCO and to demand third-party verified failure rate numbers when making mobile computer purchases. 

As for our competitors and their “ruggedized” and “more reliable” mobile computers, we would like to suggest a new category of rugged – “Marketing Rugged”.  PT Barnum would be proud.  

I was speaking with one of Diskeeper’s Channel Partners at SMB Nation last weekend during lunch and we were interrupted by a VAR that said he was familiar with Diskeeper but wasn’t sure why it was necessary to install the software on his clients machines.

The Channel Partner I was with did a double-take and politely asked the VAR if he was kidding. (Truthfully he wasn’t all that polite).

So, by request, I will provide a number of facts that will help to  keep your clients systems running smoothly, increasing their TCO.

Extend Your Clients System Life

This is the one investment that pays for itself many times over. Keeping systems fragmentation-free can extend the life of your hardware up to 3 additional years. Even extend- ing system life an additional six months or a year, the savings are phenomenal. The elimination of defrag scheduling and administrator attention saves time and money, while keeping performance at peak levels throughout the day. The Help Desk traffic reduction is wide ranging. Your client’s IT department (if they have one) suddenly has more time to spend on those projects that needed to be finished yesterday.

-Anthony

Não se procede. Para poder dizer que alguém cometeu infração de menor potencial ofensivo é necessário que ela estivesse apta a cometer o crime, ao qual caberia o auto de prisão em flagrante delito. Ora, o menor de dezoito anos não comete crime, mas ato infracional.

É bem verdade que o ato por ele cometido, pode está tipificado em lei, contudo ele é considerado inimputável, o que venha acarretar de sua conduta infratora, não estará na esfera penal, mas sob normas da legislação especial, tudo segundo o artigo 228 da Cosntituição Federal. Por isso a Lei 9.099/95 e o que ela disciplina sobre conduta dos agentes da lei referente ao momento pré-processual penal não incidirá nos menores de dezoito anos.

Sempre é válido lembrar a divisão etária entre os menores de idade: criança e adolescente.

Criança, menor de doze anos. Ela comete ato infracional, mas não cabe nenhum tipo de detenção. No artigo 101 do Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente estão listadas as medidas cabíveis à criança infratora. Entre as medidas previstas estão: I – encaminhamento aos pais ou responsável, mediante termo de responsabilidade; II – orientação, apoio e acompanhamento temporários; III – matrícula e freqüência obrigatórias em estabelecimento oficial de ensino fundamental; IV – inclusão em programa comunitário ou oficial de auxílio à família, à criança e ao adolescente; V – requisição de tratamento médico, psicológico ou psiquiátrico, em regime hospitalar ou ambulatorial; VI – inclusão em programa oficial ou comunitário de auxílio, orientação e tratamento a alcoólatras e toxicômanos; VII – abrigo em entidade; VIII – colocação em família substituta. Essas medidas também podem ser aplicadas quando elas forem vítimas de abuso ou omissão seja dos responsáveis ou do Estado.

No caso da flagrância do ato infracional cometido por criança, a Polícia Militar pode recorrer ao Conselho Tutelar que de pronto pode tomar a medida do inciso I, entregando a criança aos pais. As demais medidas são de carácter específicas do Conselho Tutelar e do Juizado da Infância e do Adolescente.

Adolescente, maior de doze anos, menor de dezoito. Segundo o artigo 103 do ECA: “Considera-se ato infracional a conduta descrita como crime ou contravenção penal.” Dessa forma para os tutelados pelo Estatuto, os crimes são denominados de forma diferente e as medidas coercitivas cabíveis são os por ele enunciadas. Já vimos o que se pode fazer à criança, agora vejamos com o adolescente.

Faço uso das palavras do Major PMSP Azor Lopes da Silva Júnior, ao explicar sobre a necessidade da condução imediata à polícia judiciária, nos casos de flagrante de ato infracional:

“[...] convém gravar que se o autor, co-autor ou partícipe, da infração de menor potencial ofensivo for menor (criança ou adolescente, nos termos do Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente) ela será tratada como ato infracional, adotada a providência de registro pela Polícia Judiciária prevista nos artigo 173 e 174 do Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, não sendo caso de registro por Termo Circunstanciado.”

Esta condução imediata, nada mais é que o cumprimento ao artigo 172 do ECA:

Art. 172. O adolescente apreendido em flagrante de ato infracional será, desde logo, encaminhado à autoridade policial competente.

O adolescente deve sempre que possível ser conduzido à delegacia especializada, mesmo que seja co-autor com outros maiores. Por isso mesmo que estejamos falando de infração de menor potencial ofensivo para os demais adultos, convém que a própria delegacia especializada ou a de plantão assuma a ocorrência como um todo.

Para os policiais é importante destacar que esta condução não deve ser um motivo de constrangimento ao menor. No artigo 178 do Estatuto, determina-se que o menor não pode ser conduzido em compartimento fechado da viatura, ou seja, no xadrez, ou de qualquer outra forma que atente a sua dignidade, ou implique risco à sua integridade física ou mental. Caso essas observações não sejam vislumbradas pelos agentes policiais, caberá a eles pena de responsabilidade.

O policial deve ter em mente que o espírito do legislador, absorvido por vários segmentos de representatividade, assume o cerceamento de liberdade como medida extrema, mesmo no caso dos adolescentes, que poderão de liberados após um registro de um boletim de ocorrência circunstanciado. O que não cabe a Polícia Militar, diante da legislação atual, fazer. O adolescente só será realmente detido, com o cumprimento do rito do auto de apreensão em flagrante de ato infracional, caso o delito tenha sido cometido mediante violência ou grave ameaça a pessoa.

Oportunamente concluímos expondo um resumo extraído dos tópicos de aula da Professora Maria Aparecida de Bastos:

“Assim, a criança (pessoa até 12 anos incompletos), se praticar algum ato infracional, será encaminhada ao Conselho Tutelar e estará sujeita às medidas  de proteção previstas no art. 101; o adolescente (entre 12 de 18 anos), ao praticar ato infracional, estará sujeito a processo contraditório, com ampla defesa. Após o devido processo legal, receberá ou não uma “sanção”, denominada medida socioeducativa, prevista no art. 112, do ECA.”

TCO redovisar i en ny rapport uppgifter som tvärtemot argument som anförs i debatten från regeringsföreträdare, visar att turordningsreglerna i LAS har liten betydelse på ökningen av ungdomsarbetslösheten. TCO:s beräkningar utifrån Statistika Centralbyråns arbetskratsundersökning visar att bara 2,5 procent av de arbetslösa ungdomarna, dvs var fyrtionde arbetslös 15-24-åring, var arbetslösa på grund av personal- eller driftsinskränkningar. I gruppen 15-19-åringar var andelen så liten att SCB inte ens kunde beräkna den.

Akademikerförbundet har tidigare skrivit om detta.

Enligt arbetsförmedlingen i Västerås har ungdomsarbetslösheten ökat med 75 procent det senaste året. Orsakerna till det är med andra ord inte LAS utan här har regeringens bristfälliga politik spelat en betyligt större roll. Så bäst verkan har förmodligen ett byte av regeringspolitik.