IT Service Week

Yesterday I attended the first day of the ITSM Cruise to Excellence put on by the Local Los Angeles ITSMF group. This year it was held at the Westin in Long Beach rather than on an actual cruise boat like last year’s event. The conference featured guest speakers discussing ITIL v3, the federated CMDB, Service Catalogs, and how to measure ITIL performance. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of effort that the vendors made on their booths at the event. CA, IBM, Column Technologies, ASG, BMC, Frontrange, EXIN, Newscale, and Managed Objects all had well designed booths at the event. Two of the noted sessions were discussing the federated CMDB by ASG’s CTO John Conner and a workshop discussing how an actionable service catalog can benefit the business by Newscale’s founder and CTO Rodrigo Flores.

In Conner’s session, Federating Configuration Management Databases, he discussed some of the importance placed on a CMDB to describe what parts of the business are managed by IT. Conner stressed that IT organizations should push forward to become integrated components of the business rather than a cost center. He also stated that companies will always federate there data sources. Using the analogy of the United States governing it’s states in showing how a Master CMDB governs the underlying data sources.

In Flores’ workshop, an Actionable Service Catalog, he discussed some of the benefits an enterprise can take by putting forward an IT Service Catalog for the business users. He likened the IT Process owner to that of a product manager. Someone that describes the framework and develops requirements from the business to hand off to the delivery team or “Engineering.” One of his keynote take aways for the workshop was that, “We have to set expectations because if we don’t they will.” In this message he was referring to the end-users of the catalog and how Web 2.0, Google, Amazon, and other technologies will shape expectations placed on the business’ IT department in the coming years.

Overall, I was impressed with the vendor displays, however, since it was a smaller conference I think they could have pushed all of the sessions into one days rather than two. Most of the sessions seemed to be more of a pitch for their vendor’s products, although, it was good to get their perspective on the future of IT Service Management.

Yesterday CBS announced that it as agreed to buy CNET for $1.8 billion dollars or $11.50 a share. I heard a number of the stock analysts regard the deal as bad for CBS. They were arguing that CBS should have purchased a YouTube-like company that engages in online video rather than a conglomerate of techie review websites. I disagree. As I was mentioning in my last blog, Microsoft Looks Past Yahoo, I mentioned that the next hot buys for those companies looking to get into the advertising space will be internet content providers. CNET is one of the premiere content providers available on the internet. It has been around for quite sometime and has developed a large loyal base that trust CNET for news and reviews on products.

When CBS buys CNET they aren’t just getting a bunch of unique hits from new users of the site, they are getting a loyal fan base that has used the network of sites for 5-10 years. Content providers provide a medium for online advertising that surpasses the search advertising providers. Search advertisers focus on placement of banner sized ads whereas a content site maintains a visitor for a longer exposure and advertisements can be embedded within the articles or as splash pages. CNET was bought by CBS and more companies in the space are certainly left to be bought.

The buzz going around on enterprise blogs this week has been about this weekend’s retraction of the deal that would give Microsoft the popular search engine at $33 dollars a share. Today a few analysts discussed the deal on CNBC’s Squawk Box and 2 of the 3 analysts stated that Microsoft will move on past the Yahoo deal and look for other purchase opportunities.

A recent Tech Crunch Blog Article stated that AOL might be on the map for software giant. The article goes on to tell that Time Warner is looking to sell the ISP and that the corporate culture of AOL would match Microsoft’s culture better than Yahoo. I argued in a comment that Ask.com might return a better return on investment for Microsoft. Ask has a Search Advertising department that has not been able to compete with Google or Yahoo, however, many unique hits utilize the search engine along with it’s content network on the About.com network. I feel that Microsoft should make a move to acquire not only just a search engine but also a content network that will engage the audience and produce better return for search advertisers. AOL would make a good fit as well, however, Microsoft may have to pay a premium.