Dec 04

Free Equals Nothing in the Services Industry

Enterprise Technology No Comments »

The last time I was genuinely excited about ‘free’ was when Google sent me 100 bucks of free advertising on Adwords. The time before that was when EMC hooked me up with a nice little USB stick at the EBC.. Thanks again Joe, I still use it constantly. Free gadgets are one thing (more!), but free services is another. EMC USB

Through the course of the global financial crisis, there’s been a vapid shift in the IT infrastructure consulting market to provide ‘free consulting’. The loss leader approach to winning business has been around forever, but the more the ‘free consulting practice’ proliferates in IT infrastructure the more you have to wonder what is really being provided. Various books and management articles expound the brilliance of free, and possibly the absolute requirement for free to compete in our new global supersonic economy.

Makes sense if the bench is warm, pipeline is light, yet you don’t want to see 10 years of talent vanish due to P&L pressures for short-term gains and long-term painful rebuilding.  For hardware vendors, you have a magic pool of ‘marketing development funds’, which are applied feudal style to strong upside product win opportunities (competitive accounts, account salvage ops, etc.).  But for pure consultancy, you might have bench cycles to apply, or you might take an opportunity loss to deliver ‘free’ services.

A couple challenges with free consulting services:

  • Free means no budgeting approval, therefore no real effort on the part of the buyer
  • Free results in little to no emotional commitment from the buyer or the business
  • Free diminishes stakeholder involvement (often related directly to issues that need the most attention)
    • This sets an ugly stage, since the underlings then have zero interest in playing-ball
  • Free devalues the work being done and casts a cheap light on the deliverables, no matter how well crafted

Any way you cut it, Free Equals Nothing in the services industry. You must have skin in the game at some point, some time, some where, with somebody in the food-chain. Otherwise, free is nothing more than a LOST leader, a waste of time and talent.

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Oct 10

São Paulo – A Glimpse into the S. American Mega-Market

Industry No Comments »

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting São Paulo – SP for a week of work. In spite of what my colleagues thought I’d be up to, it was a full-on work week and great experience. The 15 hour overnight trip from Boston to Sao Paulo definitely is a grinder, even with the modern-day luxuries found on economy class (such as the coveted 2-seat rows in the back of the 777).house speciality at bar astor

On the whole the experience working in Sao Paulo was brilliant. People are good to work with, the economy is blazing, and the scale of the business and cultural terrain is mind-boggling. Some observations in general:

  • Relationship is central to business, a requirement for business
  • Lunch is a significant part of the day (working hours are long, but a big lunch rounds out the 9-7 or 8 routine
  • Excessive rations of expresso are not only tolerated, but encouraged in the workplace
  • Being on-time is important, and the average trip ‘across town’ requires 90 minutes lead time with traffic being unpredictable
  • Delays are common, and every schedule is subject to change at last minute
  • Delays are accepted, but regardless #4 must be closely observed
  • IT infrastructure is generally the same as in the US market, however IT infrastructure services are relatively new, and emerging technologies are roughly 18 months behind the US enterprise market in terms of adoption (and that’s a good call given the regional vendor architect designs)
  • Hardware/software vendors have a great deal of  command over customer decisions and architecture
  • The market is ripe for advancement of IT infrastructure services, mainly due to accelerated growth of industry and business

All this points to a great market for IT services, but there are most certainly economic barriers to entry for non-national firms. Coupled with the regular currency differences, Brasil levies >40% tax on any imported services. I appreciate the concept, in comparison to the US market with there have been virtually no incentives for retaining local/regional IT services and few if any barriers to offshoring. It’s not an outrageous levy, but provides a basic incentive to look within before shopping globally.  This bears the question of whether or not long-term labor arbitrage in the US will create a skills shortage in IT that could persist for a generation. So as the US IT skills base is being bartered against the lowest-common bidder for many multi-nationals, Brasil in comparison is in a high-growth mode, has an abundance of talented young resources, has a government advocating both offshore trade of in-country services, and in parallel advocating skilled labor development.  Not bad policy for a developing economy, maybe we should take some notes in the US.

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Jun 28

Legends and Realities

Enterprise Services No Comments »

How many times have you loaded up the charter boat, got a client excited about a grand vision, gone to sea, and returned home with no catch? When customers have large complex problems, presenting them with large complex stories doesn’t help. It’s the worst thing you could do.

In the services business, if a customer is giving you air-time, the reality is they know they need help and direction from an outside source. By presenting a vision of the destination, without illuminating the path, you’re skipping the opportunity to create focus. If you can’t create focus at the onset, what kind of mess are you going to create in an actual engagement? This is why a lot of high level strategy engagements require massive ‘remediation’ efforts in the aftermath – all style and no substance.

Customers are going to pay for outside services if you can make complex problems simple, and provide results in dramatically reduced times. This is where the ‘smartest guy in the room’ can accomplish negative selling, by weaving a complex tale of end-results, yet leave the customer without any idea of how to get there or tangible next steps. Free advice, which usually is worth every penny and is exactly what drives good services opportunities into the ground.

You have to make it easy for the customer to contract and make decisions. People no longer have time and won’t make the time for a complex services sell. The business world and people’s personal lives are moving too fast and are too chaotic for 1985 style ‘how can I help you, and what can you pay me’ consulting services. That model is not only worn, but it’s dying a slow painful death.

Bottom line, if you spend hours with a customer giving free advice and don’t identify focused initiatives and next steps, you’re wasting everyone’s time and worse you’re delaying the opportunity to get work done. So what’s the alternative?

1) Lead with a clear position on the industry and technology.

2) Take a clear stand: even if you run the risk of alienating 20% of your potential prospects, the other 80% may be better clients anyhow since their looking for outside help, versus a debate. Tire-kicking is non-productive.

3) Play it straight and practical, and focus on getting things done.

4) Make progress real-time. Create focus, lead with results instead of theory.

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Jun 25

Why This, Why Now?

Industry No Comments »

The mission?

To research, spot, and explore trends and their real world impact as they apply to the next generation of IT infrastructure and enterprise computing.phase shift

Why this blog?

Because there aren’t many independents covering this space in a holistic way. Plenty of ‘company blogs’ but not so many IT infrastructure people. There are plenty of niche bloggers and evangelists who are super deep in various specialities, such as virtualization, storage, deduplication, data protection, and cloud, but few who are looking at the wholesale change underway for IT infrastructure. At first I thought I was late to the party but upon further inquiry realized the party is just starting…

why now?

There’s a lot of hype in IT, it keeps the spending and budgeting up.

Cloud is hype city without a whole lot of focus or clarity yet. I just look at the vast inefficiencies in classic IT infrastructure versus the radically innovative core infrastructures of Amazon, Google, etc and think the cloud gateway to these architectures will crush IT as we know it for some data types, some types of companies, in many different situations. Labor arbitrage for enterprise infrastructure management could become irrelevant over time if next generation architectures flatten out skill requirements.  Why now? It’s timing.

WAN Network architectures are fatter and cheaper. Cheap petabyte scale infrastructures are do-able and you don’t necessarily have to hack together custom built gear and code to make it work. And most importantly you have base of technologies for virtualization, grid, deduplication, all rapidly becoming commoditized, and now cloud emerging as the gateway to super efficient architecture. This is more than just the next wave of Moore’s law and new feature sets or gadget buzz. This is a phase shift.

Why should people read it?

To keep up, to contribute, to challenge ideas, to address a plethora of good questions. Because the whole idea we are used to and for many of us the basic paradigm of distributed computing “as we learned it” and is staple to our entire careers, may in fact be changing. Were talking about 20 years of one model and entering into the next 20 years of the new new new thing. And the practical impacts to us, well that’s really yet to be seen but it’s a fair bet certain roles, functions, and technologies will begin to disappear in the next 5 years as we shift gears into the next 20 year cycle of IT infrastructure.

Who should read it?

Technologists, engineers, architects, entrepreneurs, strategists, designers, scientists, researchers, and thinkers who share a common curiosity of what is going to happen to IT infrastructure as we know it.

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Jun 15

The Problem with a One Hit Wonder

Enterprise Services No Comments »

legend

A large project can make good people go deaf in the echo chamber, in many ways due to the sweat equity put into a project and the amount of attachment to the project most people can’t shake. Sometimes it temporary, other time’s it can derail entire careers. It’s human nature. In the services business, a bare necessity is to re-leverage your work and experience where possible. But where do you separate the valuable service offerings from a one-hit wonder, and how do see the difference?

The last big project often creates a fixed paradigm that all things future will fit the mold. Once you’re in the echo chamber, new opportunities take on similar characteristics. I can say this, because I’ve been there and have over time figured out some of the self-check warning signs of a one-hit wonder project:

1) The project took ‘all hands’ to deliver

2) Minor miracles and acts of God were instrumental in pulling it off

3) Majority of the work was custom

4) The customer dictated deliverables

5) The customer was ‘pleased’ with the work but can’t figure out what to do next

The problem is that the last big kill, may be a one off and if you try to repeat the experience, you run a good chance of alienating your customers and wasting a lot of time pushing the wrong solution to market. The good news is that you can sill harvest goodies from a one-hit wonder (like experience, intellectual property, consulting methods, lesson’s learned).

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