certifications in the new world

Gartner predicts that the current and emerging new hot skills are as follows:

1. Project Management
2. Service Management
3. IT Governance
4. Sourcing Management

These and several others.
I felt that a valuable way to indicate one's proficiency in atleast the knowledge about the same can be with the help of certifications. However, this is not to say that anything can replace practical experience. Theoretical knowledge and certifications (by passing tests) cannot substitute an experience.

I've listed the relevant certifications:

PMP - for Project Management
ITIL - for Service Management
CGEIT - for IT Governance
eSCM - for Sourcing Management

I hope this is helpful for budding IT operations management professionals.

which version of google are you on?

Fred Luddy, the CEO of Service-now.com, mentioned this phrase at the NYC Executive briefing as he was trying to emphasize the importance of flexibility in SaaS implementation for Service Management tools. I was invited for the event by VP, Strategy at the company, who is a good acquaintance of mine.

Truly enough, Google's version is not known to anyone. It is irrelevant for the front user as long as all his data in various dimensions is stored for future retrieval and analysis by back-end data storage.

My close encounter and the dialogues with Fred revealed me his persona of an architect, a researcher, a scientist - being dominant over his persona as a CEO. He was former chief software architect at Peregrine, which got bought over by HP.

Surprisingly enough, service-now.com has been able to come up with an on-premise deployment for clients who may be wary of data residing on service providers servers in a SaaS model. For instance, the event had a leading global investment bank indicating how they plan to rip off their older software of Peregrine for IT Asset Management and install service-now.com's suite.

Imagine the impact of this new paradigm - This nature of an on-premise deployment can help allay government's fears and make them a potential client for such services.

ITIL v3 talks about cost distribution of small proportion of fixed costs and large proportion of variable costs in order to make internal IT services' offerings competitive and flexible (to scale up and down based on business needs). Service-now's SaaS implementation ensures just that.

I see this company as a rising star. The product is awesome - way beyond what some of their competitors have to offer. The team is great. Finally, the timing is right - as US market starts ITIL adoption and we are reaching a point of inflexion for the same.

does ITIL v3 marginalize value of CMU's MISM program?

As I read ITIL v3 since summer this year, I realised that most of the techniques mentioned in the books (primarily Service Strategy and in general, all the five books) are taught in MISM and more. Also, based on one's interests, one can shape program to become an operations expert for IT operations or services' operations. I had a doubt whether this was all the information/knowledge I paid for at MISM? Does the release of ITIL v3 appreciate value for one of the alums at the cost of rest of the current students?

Well, ITIL v3 does not marginalize MISM program. In fact, it enhances the value of the program - by highlighting that one of the alumni (Majid Iqbal) from the program was one of the authors for the ITIL v3 set of best practices. This highlights that CMU MISM program's students are thought leaders.

The pure inter-disciplinary approach that the school promotes and adopts creates a rich culture which leads to innovations. As Bill Gates mentioned on the Charlie Rose show, the world is far more inter-dependent today and we have multi-lateral alliances everywhere. In such a world, it is essential to create these linkages between various disciplines.

In future, plenty of new problems will emerge with newer dimensions. Whoever solves them will have certain set of best practices - those can get recorded into ITIL v4, v5, v6, etc. What CMU teaches you is how to approach a problem from different dimensions and solving problems with effective and enduring solutions.

I don't intend to spark a huge debate here by assuming superiority. There are a lot of aspects that can be changed in the program dynamics. However, it is clearly a program that's unmatched. If you want people who bring business solution by leveraging technology then currently, MISM is the place to hunt such people from.

branded entertainment

Date: 10-18-2007
Venue: HBO office in midtown – 1100 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY.

Organized by – IRTS Foundation, a foundation that offers New York City based educational luncheons, seminars, and workshops which cater to a diverse range of media interests

Speakers:
Advertisers:

§ Robert Friedman – President, Media & Entertainment, Radical Media

§ Robert (Bob) Riesenberg – President & CEO, Full Circle Entertainment

Network folks:

§ Dan Longest – Sr VP, Integrated Marketing & Promotions, ABC

§ Linda Yaccarino – Exec VP & Gen Manager, Turner Entertainment, Ad Sales & Marketing

Hollywood Reporter rep, Gail Schiller was the moderator for the Q&A session.

Event description:

The event had response from 70-80 folks and about the same number of turnout. It was well-organized as it made the most optimal use of everyone’s time. A set of pre-chosen questions were asked for the large majority of time and then the podium was opened for the audience for about 15 mins or 2-3 questions

Audience:
Broadcasting and Publishing were the two prime domains of the audience.

Notes from the Q&A:

Branded Entertainment’s demand drivers:

§ Declining engagement power of the 30-second TV spot – however, its not going to go away

§ Fragmentation in the media industry – this leads to difficulty in reaching critical masses

§ Time-shift leading to use of devices such as the TiVo.

BE’s demand has increased by multiples but the supply is restricted. There are very few advertisers who don’t ask for BE. The networks cannot supply enough BE because:

§ Relevance: They want to have the right spot in the program for the right brand

§ Limited inventory: The networks want to ensure that the inventory does not lose ratings due to incessant brand-placements.

§ They may not be ready themselves (this was not discussed at all)

T&T has a focus on micro-series, why?

§ Mobility – multi-layered communication

§ The other means are not enough for the advertisers

Business models are one of the two:

§ Revenue sharing

§ Barter system

Mostly, it is the latter in case of large networks as they are not running behind the ad agencies.

Challenges:

§ Infancy stage of the industry

§ Impatience shown by the advertisers – Ratings, Retention, Recall become a challenge for the networks if they don’t turn down the impatient advertisers

§ Focus: Large project teams – cross-functional service areas within the networks and/or ad agencies. In order to address this issue, liaison groups are being formed (say Promo development group at Turner which liaisons between the ad sales group and the programming group)

§ Fit: Brand must fit naturally with the content, adding to the story in a relevant and a tangible manner. However, folks are bringing in money to get irrelevant stuff done. This may kill the industry in its pre-mature stage.

§ Scalability: Limited inventory and controlled environment by the networks leads to lack of scalability in the model. Networks have the control. They do exert it. However, they are undertaking initiatives for the same – such as staff augmentation and/or staff training in the BE direction.

New trends:

§ Pressure on “creatives”: Creatives are going to find themselves squeezed due to the huge demand for the BE content. Network sales folks have aligned themselves with the best interest of the network. For instance, for the network sales folks, the focus has changed from selling programs to selling “commercial pods”. This will further put pressure on creatives to align themselves with network’s objectives.

I think this can lead to inflation of wages or significant terms and conditions change for the writers. Writers’ guild has already asked compensation for brand placements in their scripts.

§ Cross-media: A new emerging trend is in the increasing demand for cross-media BE.

deck creation and consulting

CMU MISM instilled certain slides' deck-creation qualities in me which cannot be emphasized any more. My success at deck-creation and logical structuring have helped me quite a bit at my consulting job. Creating decks instantly with MECE, Mynto's pyramid principle, etc comes naturally to me - thanks to CMU MISM. These were directly or indirectly learnt in the CMU environment.

Also, the creation of POVs were inspired from the Telecom Management class of Dr. Sakir Yucel and the Managing Services Organizations by Majid Iqbal. This training has helped me develop some provocative POVs at the firm.

Ramayya Krishnan, the chief architect of the program, has well said in this video - how IT/IS interact with policies, how they interact with the business processes, etc is very important to leverage IT's capabilities. Business technology and IT Management are forte for CMU MISM students. Andy Wasser summarizes well in this video by saying "... the students who want to see a business opportunity and intelligently know how to apply technology !" CMU MISM is a business technology program.

Currently, only progressive consulting firms have realised this aspect. Sooner or later, the rest of the IT world will realize that and source their talent from this program.

network nyc

Network NYC is at 3 West Club this year - will look forward to meeting other CMU folks there. Thereafter, the event's organized to go to Connolly's for an after party. I plan to swing folks to Tonic (nearby) after that. However, let us see what will be the mood be like. We may end up going some other hipper place - Tonic's kindda lame for me.

However, I must have energy left. Too many assignments.
I have an early morning-long meeting till noon in midtown with an investment bank and a hospitality major. Later, I have to continue to work on the point-of-views that I've been working on. It's provocative and will be out soon on the firm's site. In the evening, there is a media sector special event on Branded Entertainment at the HBO office at Times Square. The prime part is that I have to present it later to the organization at the Quarterly event. Though I am an FSI major, I am a TMT minor. I guess that explains my choice for NYC - lol !

My cousin's coming - so, he will be my responsibility from tomorrow evening till Sunday morning. It will be great to meet him after almost 2.5 years.

I look forward to the coming days!

kalam @ cmu?

Check out this piece of news - Dr. Kalam getting an honorary Ph.D. from CMU !
He left the president's tenure this July.

I wish I could've been there to meet him ! This brings me back to the initial argument of whether I should go back to CMU or continue working at my workplace ? If I were smart I would go back eventually. The odds are stacked in my favor for my correct utilization. Here, the odds are not exactly stacked in my favor to make the best use of my knowledge - however, it aint a low probability - hence, still hanging around.

for all aspiring consultants

http://www.gettingdrunkinfirstclass.com/

This is a fairly hardcore site written by a consultant while exhibiting his feelings about the profession. I have no comments about the same.

communication in a geographically dispersed team !

A recent article at NYTimes indicates how email/calls can lead to more conflict and miscommunication at work. The article outlines possible solution for the same towards the end. I didn't know about the Asperger's syndrome until I read this email. You can read the article here.

I can relate this back to a course by Ed Barr at CMU on Professional Writing. Specifically, he had devoted one whole lecture (8% of course time) on email communications along with an interesting assignment.