Andres Carvallo to Speak at the Open Group's 15th Enterprise Architecture Conference

Service Orientation is now established as the leading style of Enterprise Architecture, delivering multiple benefits across the enterprise. SOA started as a technology-led phenomenon. Early implementers found that it can deliver improved information flow and enterprise agility. Others have learned from their example, and the initial trickle of SOA implementation has become a flood.

But SOA can mean many different things. For some, it is just the use of the service principle to define loosely-coupled software modules. For others, it implies an expensive infrastructure including a service registry, and enterprise service bus, a set of development tools, and so on. Are all these necessary? The consensus among SOA experts is that this depends on the needs of the enterprise in question. Different levels of SOA are right for different business organizations. Understanding this is the key to making the SOA investment that will give the best return.

Once you know what kind of SOA you need, there is a growing body of experience and expertise that can help you realise it. This is captured in architectural models and guidance that the professional enterprise architect can use in conjunction with an architecture development method such as that of The Open Group Architectural Framework, TOGAF.

http://www.opengroup.org/austin2007/

Andres Carvallo to Speak at Oil & Gas Exchange 2007

Over the last 6 years, Oil & Gas Exchange has attracted Heads of E&P, IT and Technology from across the globe to the UK. This year, the event is being held in Houston, Texas – the heart of US oil and gas activities. Innovation is the key to E&P progress. The race for new reserves and maximising profit has never been tougher. Faced with complex resources, lack of skilled talent and stringent regulations, true business leaders need to constantly innovate to keep their competitive edge to succeed.

Achieve business excellence through the seamless integration of: 1) Innovative people – Recruit, develop, nurture and retain innovative thinkers in the oil and gas industry, 2) Innovative technology – Ensure adoption of new technologies, embrace innovation and mitigate risk, and 3)Innovative processes – Utilise internal and external drivers to shape the process that cultivates innovation

The 7th annual Oil & Gas Exchange 2007 in Houston, will address challenges in each of these areas through insights from leading E&P executives who have been driving their strategies forward.

Why do I need Portfolio Management?

If your IT shop is blamed for not being responsive to the needs of the Line of Business, or getting in the way of progress, or saying no all the time, or not delivering all projects that are wanted, then you really need to push for the adoption of Portfolio Management in your company. It is the single most important practice in my RunITbiz Framework to manage demand. And managing demand is the key to having a successful journey in managing supply. Think about it...............managing demand is the key. In fact, if you could only master one critical elements out of the 12 critical elements that make my RunITbiz framework, Portfolio Management would be the one.

So What is Portfolio Management?

Portfolio Management are the processes, practices and specific activities to perform continuous and consistent evaluation, prioritization, budgeting, and final selection of investments that provide the greatest value and contribution to the strategic interest of the organization. Through portfolio management, the organization can explicitly assess the trade offs among competing investment opportunities in terms of their benefit, costs, and risks.

So why are so many companies today still not doing this methodically and with better tools?

Perhaps because the different interests of the status quo get in the way. It is amazing to me to hear the stories from so many of my peers of what goes on and how many investments get justified without any or little analysis in their companies. Billions of dollars are invested in the wrong priorities every day in the world. Can we fix that? Sure. All it takes is executive sponsorship, discipline, some investment, and work.

Successful Portfolio Management practice requires serious top down focus on the following:

1 - Optimizing the Business/IT Alignment Process
2 - Managing the IT Portfolio using a centralized governance process
3 - Maximizing interaction between budget officers, line of business managers, and IT managers

Many companies claim to do Portfolio Management, but they lack a well documented integration and decision making process with integrated tools that feed information from the ERP and project management tools. Hence, most companies never reach a true optimized portfolio.

How do you optimize the Business/IT Alignment Process?

If you don't have a process, you have a create one. But most companies already do have a process, albeit an informal one. It may be that the process managers across the Line of Business and IT already collaborate without a formal process due a good company culture. Or it may be that the senior managers do so and command their teams to do the same. Either way, there is plenty of room for improvement in formalizing a process that everyone is part of, agrees with, understands, follows, and/or embraces.

The key about achieving alignment is to collaborate in the creation of the purpose, goals to achieve, processes, and the selection of the tools. It is also fundamental to have corporate strategic goals to guide the criteria for your alignment and selection process. So, if the company does not have a strategic plan and it is investing millions of dollars every year, then how does the company know that it is investing in the right things to further enhance the well being of the company? Hmmmm...........................you get my point. Can you think of any examples? ..................Yes, I know that you can come up with too many examples.

How do you manage the IT portfolio using a centralized governance process?

Your company needs a centralized IT governance process that forces transparency and accountability to optimize the IT resources and investments with the desired technology needs of the Line of Business and customers.

See, I am yet to meet an IT executive that was against more work, more gadgets, and more projects. In fact, I have no problem with managing ten to twenty times more of what I manage today. The key question is, can the company afford it? Affordability is the right focus. Not blaming IT for not delivering on every not well thought out and justified project in the company.

So, the first thing to do is to centralize the IT purchasing processes to capture all requests into one coordinated bucket. Second, the company must incorporate its project management selection methodology to the budget approval process to streamline the investment activity process for the entire company. Third, the company must have a steering committee process where IT and Line of Business Executives come together to choose, justify, fund, and sponsor the right projects to invest in together.

One of the biggest learnings from this, over the last five years, for me was when I demanded that all IT projects needed to have a Line of Business Executive as sponsor or co-sponsor. This single act proved to be the most significant success element in our nationally recognized successful transformation. The business driving IT is the only way to go.

How do you maximize the interaction between budget officers, Line of Business managers, and IT managers?

Meeting regularly is key. We found that having by-monthly or monthly steering committee meetings helped to accelerate our progress. Especially, knowledge transfer and trust building among executives and managers. Having multi-channel platforms to achieve culture change on this topic are very important. Weekly reports, regular team meetings, newsletters, and visioning sessions are a few of the mechanisms that we use to achieve transparency and accountability. However, the most important of all is having executive sponsorship and championship, which provides top down focus on aligning resources to achieve the strategic direction of the company.


In my humble opinion, Portfolio Management is truly fundamental to the achievement of company greatness.

Green IT - The New Goal

What can be potentially more important than building the smart grid? How about building a Green Smart Grid? As I flew from Chicago to Portland to present at the Oregon Innotech Expo and Conference, I rehearsed my remarks on a presentation that I have been working on for several months. The fruit of over 3 years of work in the transformation that I lead at Austin Energy. The new goal is to turn data centers green. To deliver Green IT.

So why is this so important? Perhaps because the world has problems and we must assume the responsibility to fix them. For example, did you know that the average American use of transportation and electricity releases 10 metric tons of CO 2 per year? Or that the goods and services that the average American consumes create 14 metric tons of CO 2 per year? Or that South Asia is covered with a 2 mile thick toxic cloud that kills 500,000 people a year in India alone? Or that China generated 1.3 billion metric tons of trash in 2005? Or that 1 out of 5 people in the planet lack access to clean drinking water? Or that there are 300 million cases of malaria per year – 90% of them in Africa? O that by 2050 the melting of the poles will raise the sea level 23 feet impacting our coast lines? Or that by 2048 most fish species availability will decline over 50%?

So what does that have to do with Information Technology and Data Centers? Why should IT people care? Try this.......because $26 billion were spent in cooling and powering servers worldwide in 2005, which is the equivalent to being the 75th country in the world out of 183 countries. And it gets worst.

1.5 % of electrical power is used by all data centers
3.5 % of electrical power to be used by all data center by 2012
12 billion kilowatt hours were used by all data centers in 2000
23 billion kilowatt hours were used by all data center in 2005
The energy required to power and cool $1,000 worth of servers grew from 8 watts in 2000 to 109 watts in 2006.

So what can we do to reduce the use of electricity to run servers and cool data centers that get really hot from running more servers?

We can do many things. We at Austin Energy have been working on designing green data centers for customers for a long time and we have also been using new technologies internally to learn more on how far we can save energy. Here are a few proven methods that we recommend:

1.Buy 100% Green Energy first (Austin Energy has the #1 Green Energy Program in the US)
2.Buy more efficient servers with new CPU technology (IBM, Dell, HP, Sun, Azul Systems, others)
3.Temperature and Control Sensors (APC, Site Controls, others)
4.Virtualization (VMWare, Altiris, AppStream, Microsoft, Ardence, IBM, Tadpole, others)
5.Data Center Upgrades/Redesign (IBM, Sun, EMC, HP, others)
6.Information Life-cycle Management / ITIL (IBM, CA, HP, BMC, Sun, others)
7.De-duplication and Compression (Avamar/EMC, ExaGrid, Asigra, others)
8.Centralized DC Power Systems (APC, others)

The opportunities to save energy and propel IT to lead the thought process on conservation is also a money making opportunity for so many.

So what about the normal individual? Can you and I help from our humble positions the environment? Absolutely. We can do more than most people would let you believe. Think of this for a minute: There are over 232 million registered vehicles in the U.S. That's almost a car per person. 88% of Americans drive to work. U.S. cars and light trucks traveled 2.7 trillion miles in 2005. That's equal to 10 million trips from the earth to the moon. The average U.S. car uses 600 gallons of gasoline a year.

So what can us average Citizens of the Earth do to curb the pollution created by cars??? Here are some 'tips for driving' to cut global warming pollution from the Environmental Defense Fund:

Lighten up! Carrying around an extra 100 pounds in your car reduces your fuel economy by up to two percent. Take with you only what you need and be sure to place luggage inside instead of in the trunk or on the roof to minimize drag and maximize your mileage.

Take it easy. Nine out of 10 doctors and engineers agree—aggressive driving wastes fuel, not to mention increases stress and accidents! Rapid acceleration and braking reduces gas mileage and can burn an extra 125 gallons of gas per year. Even if the person driving in front of you hasn't seen our tips list, hold your horsepower and keep your cool.

Keep it slow. In highway travel, exceeding the speed limit by a mere five mph results in an average fuel economy loss of six percent. You're not on the NASCAR circuit. This is commuting, not racing.

Don't be an American idle. Idling for more than 10 seconds uses more gas and emits more global warming pollution than restarting your car! Also, the best way to warm up a car in winter months is to drive it. When the temperature is below freezing, give it 30 seconds—that's all you need.

Hot fun in the summer time. Air conditioning can decrease your fuel efficiency by as much as 12 percent in stop-and-go traffic, so consider cracking the windows. But at high speeds, driving with the windows open can decrease the overall efficiency of the vehicle. At higher speeds, you can use the vents to get a good air flow. On the hottest days keep your AC on low.

Don't be tune deaf. Keeping your engine properly tuned can save you up to 165 gallons of gas per year. Checking spark plugs, oxygen sensors, air filters, hoses and belts are a few examples of maintenance that can result in potential savings of over $400. (Energy Information Administration's U.S. Retail Gasoline Prices).

Keep up the pressure. Low tire pressure wastes over two million gallons of gasoline in the United States—every day! Save about a tank of gas a year by keeping your tires properly inflated. And make sure to have your tires correctly aligned to maximize fuel economy.

Go grease lightning. Thicker-than-required oil will reduce your gas mileage because it takes more energy to push through thick oil than it does through thinner oil. Check your owner's manual for the recommended viscosity, and ask for it specifically when you get your oil changed.
Combine trips. Cutting a 20 mile trip out of your schedule each week can reduce your global warming pollution by more than 1,200 pounds a year and save you over $100 in gas expenses.

Share a ride. Carpool and use public transportation when possible. If you share rides and use other means to get to work, you'll save yourself money, reduce congestion on the roads and cut your global warming pollution.

Just park it. And keep it there. If you’re going to several stores in the same strip mall, don’t move your car. Walk.

Gotta wear shades. In summer, park in the shade. Use windshield shades to keep summer heat from baking your car and to help keep frost away in the winter.

Move your feet. Walk, ride a bike or take the train when your car is not needed.

Avoid the rush. Plan trips during off hours when fewer cars are clogging the roads.

Wholesale sales. Buy in bulk when shopping, instead of making frequent smaller trips.

Spread the word. Be an ambassador for the Earth by sharing these tips with family and friends.