February Monthly Meeting
February 17th, 5:30PM – 8:00PM
Topic: Value-Based Buying for IT Leaders: Winning the IT Pricing Game
Summary:
ClearEdge Partners President Jack Garrahan will share insights earned from
25 years in the field into the methodologies, strategies and techniques used
by IT vendor sales teams to win your business and grow profit margins.
Garrahan, a veteran deal maker with deep enterprise IT sales and marketing
experience, will advise IT leaders on how to drive out IT costs by
implementing a “value-based” methodology for their IT acquisitions. This
program includes real-world examples of how customers have dealt with these
challenges.
You’ll learn:
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The strategies used by the vendors during a sales campaign
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The methodologies sales teams use to forecast and close deals
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How vendor sales teams maximize profit from their customer base
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How to align internal teams to outmaneuver the sales teams
About the speaker:
Jack Garrahan and his ClearEdge team bring decades of independent, senior-level IT supplier sales expertise to help buyers take a more strategic approach to the IT Pricing Game. They help Global 1000 clients level the playing field with their large IT suppliers and capture immediate hard-dollar deal savings and maximum long-term value from their overall IT spend. Before launching ClearEdge in 2006, Jack served as General Manager of EMC’s Celerra and DMX business units, launched EMC’s global Total Customer Experience program and led EMC’s EMEA business unit in 28 countries. He is a graduate of Boston College and Harvard Business School.
Venue is the Westin Waltham
70 Third Avenue
Waltham, MA 02451
Click here to register
Technology Blog:
Is Open Source Essential for Cloud Adoption?
Andy Oram’s recent article on Open Source software and cloud architectures,
Reaching the pinnacle: truly open web services and clouds, sparked my
thinking on how the enterprise view of cloud architectures might be somewhat
different. While much of the public cloud infrastructure is built using
Open Source platforms, recent trends show enterprises are embracing a
private cloud model built on proprietary systems, such as VMWare, Azure and
IBM Cloud. Certainly the private cloud vendors are encouraging this trend,
but is this a temporary aberration on the road to cloud Nirvana or a
different animal entirely?
Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift that has been going on for a few
years. IT systems are no longer represent a competitive advantage for a
company — that is something to be horded, treasured and developed – but are
seen more like something that resembles a toaster, or a better analogy, a
phone system. It is expected it to work flawlessly for a reasonable cost,
and everybody needs to have it to function as a business. At the consumer
end — which is where cloud computing started, see my previous blog post,
Looking for Business Innovation in all the Right Places, for a better
perspective on my thoughts, people don’t care how it works, they want it to
be cheap and always available. If you look at Cloud Computing from that
perspective, using Open Source has a clear advantage over a proprietary
system.
Gmail and Facebook, as Andy notes, are perfect examples of this phenomenon.
These systems are built on Open Source, not because it is better, but
because it is cheaper. One thing that people often overlook, is that Open
Source is not free, far from it, just cheaper if you can live with its
idiosyncrasies and lack of a company to blame if something goes wrong.
Clearly larger companies with the technical resources can use that to their
advantage to build software on the cloud more cheaply. I would argue that
unlike the expected effect of democratizing software availability, Open
Source actual has the opposite effect. Amazon and Google and other large
Cloud vendors can take advantage of the Open Source community and resources,
while smaller companies are stuck with using more expensive and less
flexible commercial products, or they are purchasing downstream services
from Amazon and Google. To drive home my point, ask yourself, who is
supporting the Open Source projects and how are they actually getting paid
for?
Where does that leave Open Source? To my mind, it is an enabling
technology, pure and simple. It serves the cloud providers purposes. If it
were cheaper and more useful to build something proprietary they would do it
in a minute. In fact, Google Chrome and the iPhone OS is the latest in the
long history of proprietary software that gets turned into de facto
standards over time. As a business strategy it carries higher risk, but far
greater payoff. That is why both Apple and Microsoft have stuck with their
proprietary software strategy for so long. The cloud providers are using
Open Source simply because it is not what keeps potential competitors out of
the business. The high cost of building and maintaining data centers is
their real strategic advantage. Why do you think IBM, HP and other old-line
high end service providers are jumping on the private cloud bandwagon? They
already have the infrastructure in place, so they are able to take advantage
of their relations with the large corporations to build private clouds for
their customers.
About the Author
Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc. Moving companies’ IT services
into the cloud the right way, the first time!
Sharpen the Leadership Saw Roundtable
Topic: Leadership, Strategy and IT’s value.
Date: February 8th, 1:30PM
Location: iRobot Corp., Bedford, MA
Guest Speaker: John Larkin,
John Larkin, co-founder of TPP Global Services, will discuss
Leadership and IT Strategy. He has over 20 years of experience in IT and
General Management roles in industry and in professional services companies.
John specializes in “Billion Dollar Class Companies”… companies usually
smaller than $2b which have many of the complexities of a large company.
John’s client activities focus on the Office of the CIO, working with the IT
Leadership across all aspects of leveraging IT within the enterprise and
across the business ecosystem.
The book for the February SLS Roundtable is The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value, by Richard Hunter and George Westerman. The book explains how IT leaders generate three forms of value important to the CFO,
General Managers and other leaders throughout the organization. The three
forms of value are
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ROI from an efficient and effective IT department
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Improved business performance and profitability when IT helps divisions, business units and departments
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Leadership from CIO’s whose contributions go beyond IT
In this book, the authors also describe how to communicate these forms of value to non-IT leaders so they can understand how the company can benefit from including IT as a strategic partner.
Click here to register
Practitioners’ Roundtable
Mobile Computing – how it affects employers and consumers of technology
Your children, nieces and nephews have them. Your clients and vendors have
them and will soon expect you to, as well. Your customers all have them.
Your employees are using them. During work hours for things other than
work. Your competitors are reacting to them – perhaps gaining an edge on
you.
Not since the telephone and the printing press before that has a disruptive
technology created such a potentially giant shift in how people interact
with each other. Don’t miss this chance to meet with peers at the VP and
Director level to discuss this challenge (opportunity).
Date: March 3, 2011
3:15PM – 3:45PM: Networking and introductions
3:45PM – 5:30PM: Program and discussion
6:00PM: Dinner
Location: Babson College, Babson Hall room 320.
Dinner to follow at the Babson Executive Conference Center’s Sorenson
Commons Dining Room with cocktails and informal networking after that in the
Babson Bottom Line Lounge – like other Roundtables, is all included in the registration price.
Note – if there are any topics that you would like to see addressed in a
future Practitioners’ Round Table, please send an email to
Outreach Partner Spotlight
Recruitment for Summer ‘Tech Apprentice’ Program
Begins
SIM Boston continues its successful partnership with TechBoston
Norton, IT Vice President of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts will
host the Tech Apprentice Employer Breakfast. The breakfast kicks off the
recruiting season for companies interested in hosting a summer apprentice
from the City of Boston’s public high schools. Last summer, ninety-eight
high school students worked as Tech Apprentices in technology related
positions at 28 companies. A number of SIM Boston members participated as
host employers and provided opportunities that helped shape the educational
and career decisions of their Tech Apprentices.
Tom Barry, Service Desk Manager at Welch’s said he was impressed with the IT
talent of their Tech Apprentice, Torian Pope. “Torian’s timely engagement
at Welch’s provided the help needed to prepare, image, and initiate
deployments of approximately 80 notebook PC’s to our Local and Remote Field
Sales Force and internal customers. We were able to start this project
early with the additional resource. “ Torian is now a freshman at Hamilton
College studying Computer Engineering as Posse Scholar.
SIM Boston also financially supported the City of Boston’s Cyber Safety
fourteen high school students to work as cyber mentors who were responsible
for conducting Internet safety presentations throughout the City. This
motivated group of students instructed over 4,000 children ranging from
elementary to high school age in the benefits of safe computing practices as
well as the negative impact of cyber bullying.
If you are interested in hiring a talented and motivated Tech Apprentice for
this 7-week internship, please contact Cecilia Oyediran at
Sneak Peak at the March Meeting!
March 10, 2011 – Save The Date!Instead of our regular monthly meeting, Boston SIM and HMG Strategy LLC are sponsoring a special ½ day event:
The CIO Executive Leadership Summit
The Transformational CIO: Strategies for Success in a Reset World
March 10, 2011 – 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM
The Westin Boston Waterfront
Boston, MA
The CIO Executive Leadership Summit will attract over 200 CIO/IT leaders and C-level executives from the greater Boston Metro area. The Summit is designed to deliver world class thought leadership in an intimate setting. Attendees will receive unique insights into best practices and will hear success stories involving leadership, management, technology and career development.
Highly interactive sessions will provide many opportunities for attendees, speakers and panelists to be engaged in both learning and discussion. The objective for the day is to deliver high quality useful information that attendees can develop into an action plan.
Key Areas of Focus Include:
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Strategy, Process Improvement and Alignment
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Innovation and Technology
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Career Management and Leadership Development
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Key Topics Will Include:
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Transformational Leadership
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Creating and Maintaining Trust and Relationships with CXOs
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Career Management and Development
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The Cloud
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Social Enterprise
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Mobile Workforce
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Security
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Strategic Sourcing
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Business Analytics
Reasons to Attend:
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Learn What Companies are Doing to Innovate and Transform their Businesses
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Engage With Top Executives in an Intimate Atmosphere
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Hear from Leading Executives and Industry Thought Leaders on How to
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Leverage Technology for Competitive Advantage
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Expand Your Network of Peers
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Gain Key Insights to Help Your Career and Your Organization
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Leave With an Action Plan
