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Sometimes ingenuity leads to alternative uses of new products in ways the original designer never imagined. The classic business school example is 3M’s Post-It note which was originally conceived as pressure sensitive adhesive – a novel idea with few practical uses until someone slapped the adhesive on a piece of paper and found utility in a reusable bookmark. 

When I saw the Yammer present (and subsequently win) at Techcrunch 50 earlier this month, I immediately signed up Managed Objects and sent out invites to the people I communicate with most, including the rest of our management team.

What’s a Yammer and why was I all over it? If you use Twitter or other microblogging services user, skip the rest of this paragraph – the short version is that it’s a communication platform that allows for the exchange of short messages between individuals as well as broadcasts. You can have threaded conversations as well as topic-focused ones using hashtags (e.g. #marketing, #myCMDB, or #competition). The idea is that instead of status meetings, or reading email threads, I can tap into a river of quick updates on various topics.

Everyone I invited recognized the inherent value of Yammer, largely because we have a few Twitter users in-house such as myself and Frank and we’ve talked it up. So why didn’t more people sign up and start using it right away? After stripping away the usual objections about another site to use, maintaining another social graph, luddite like fears of another Enterprise 2.0 fad and so on, the core issue turned out to be security, and more specifically trust in the cloud.

What it came down to was that everyone was concerned that we would adopt a communication system that although very valuable, resided outside of our firewall, in a service that was new, with no clear references to indicate that we could entrust our company’s confidential data. For the record, Managed Objects subscribes to a number of SaaS applications including Salesforce.com so we’re not averse to the model, we just need something to get over the Trust Hump (new term?).

Although it would be a great place for everyone to keep track of and discuss topics like our myCMDB product development activities, tips on handling specific competitors, partner/channel news, industry news, key sales activities and more, I don’t have a good answer on the Trust Hump. The testimonials on the Yammer website are great and reinforce the value side of the equation but don’t help with my issue.  The mashedlife approach to answering this question is a great start.

What's the solution? An inside-the-firewall Yammer solution would be great. Having it hosted in a trusted cloud (is there one that is recognized as such?). Or integrating it with a service that we already use. For example, a Salesforce.com + Yammer combo where account names are automatically used as hashtags? That would be awesome. If you have suggestions on handling the Trust Hump, alternate solutions, or ideas about other integrations, leave a comment.

- Abbas

IT governance is a main motivator for corporate entities in their decisions to create compliant IT systems that include CMDBs. The CMDB is supposed to model (as closely as possible) a "vision of the truth" about those corporate entities’ IT systems. To that end I would like to discuss the governance of how a CMDB is constructed. By CMDB governance I mean: the performance, risk assessment and compliance of a CMDB to the actual true state of the IT system being modeled; I might also add to this the confidence in that CMDB as it relates to its accuracy in modeling the IT system.

How then are CMDBs constructed? The best way is to tie together existing data and complement that data with discovery tools and old fashioned data-entry. The latter may be done through the use of various scripts or the mining of databases that hold certain aspects of the system, but in large part these would be grouped under ‘formal methodologies.’

At this point the CMDB construction is already fraught with danger, for example holes in the data, or data that is inaccurate or stale. The confidence factor of such a CMDB may be quite low, which makes it rather useless. This problem is exacerbated by that fact that building it can be a very time-consuming and difficult procedure. There is a very well known decision matrix called the ‘Impact/Effort’ matrix. The idea is that if an activity has a high effort, but a low impact, then that activity is not worth doing.

This is a major problem in creating a useful CMBD. What to do?

Well, before I attempt to answer that question, let me introduce a different way that CMDB’s can be created: social networking tools.

The idea is that the IT systems knowledge (at least on a high level) is contained in the heads of many human beings. The raw data can be managed by the discovery tools and formal tools, but the structural knowledge and ability to correct or fill in knowledge requires constant, dynamic human intervention.

That’s why tools like Managed Objects myCMDB that allow ‘Wiki’ like intervention into the construction of a CMDB are so useful. This works by taking the view that the CMDB is a dynamic living entity that never really attains a static ‘state of truth,’ but instead has major portions that are basically static, and ‘outliers’ that are being dynamically changed as network needs change, as virtual machines are created and destroyed, and as complex applications go into and out of existence. The truth in a complex IT system is a living, breathing, and most importantly, changing beast. This is why the traditional methods of creating a CMDB always seem to end up with something that is out of date with the real thing.

To make sure that the data is maintained in the CMDB correctly, a ‘governance’ policy needs to be instituted between the ‘gathering’ of the data, and the ‘structuring’ of the data within the CMDB itself. Obviously there will be many things that can be instituted as boiler-plate within this policy, but there will be many aspects of this policy that will be unique to the corporate entity that is instituting them. The policy is itself stored within the CMDB which introduces an aspect of feed-back that will help to tailor this policy to better capture and structure the dynamically collected data that ultimately forms the CMDB model.

The feedback loop is essentially a human interaction activity and could be compared to idea of domain experts who edit an encyclopedia (or a Wiki).

These experts examine the current structures of the collected knowledge within the CMDB to the real world, and modify the policy so that the collection and structuring of data more closely fits with, and changes with, the real world. The ultimate hope is to get to a policy that produces the closest possible CMDB model to the real world.

As the policy improves within the enterprise, the confidence factor rises and, of course, the usefulness of the CMDB within the enterprise also rises.

- David

Daily updates keep rolling in and all indicate that our Early Evaluation Program (EEP) for myCMDB continues to progress nicely. We have been contacted numerous times by both customers and internal employees with feature suggestions, questions and bug reports. A handful of folks with whom we have never spoken with previously have even sent inbound requests to give the software a try.

In many ways, the EEP has also become an extension to our QA department. Many people find that it is fun to find a bug and to report these to us. While we don’t necessarily “like” having to fix these bugs since we would rather be working on features -- we know this is a vital part of the process and are very happy to find them early in the development process where the overall cost to fix is dramatically lower.

We have been following standard practice by categorizing the enhancement requests and bugs and placing them into our ticketing system so that they can be reviewed and addressed by the proper personnel during the proper time in the schedule. We are working to manage these fixes in between preparation for our next “formal” code drop for the EEP. We have been updating the code periodically during our maintenance periods for a few fixes we deem necessary, however, we are not delivering additional major features to the product until our next code drop in August.

Currently we are aggregating overall usage data and it will be interesting to see if there are significant trends: What type of user logs in most frequently? Who uses it less frequently? Who is leveraging the community aspects? Are the CIM standard for CI’s useful or have they constructed their own classes? Stay tuned. 

- Adam

Yesterday was a big day for the myCMDB team. We launched our initial code drop for the myCMDB Early Evaluation Program. The team is eager to get some feedback from our participants.

Overall the launch has gone very well. We had very few problems with user account setup, DNS problems, or any other technical issues. In fact, we have been surprised (and pleased) by the number of people that are already using the application.

We are eating our own dog food for this program so we can easily monitor statistics and auditing of the system: we can watch as people login, logout, and perform other activities. This was vital to our program so that we can monitor usage accordingly as part of our feedback.

We also setup myMO -- our  Web-based portal framework -- as the front end web site for all communication to the participants of the myCMDB EEP program. The site contains an overview of the program, instructional movies, beta documentation, a Blog site, calendar of events and other cool stuff to provide an easy means of communication between the participants and the myCMDB team. Personally, as the project manager, I am interested in hearing feedback on both the product as well as the Early Evaluation Program in general.

So far, my favorite thing about this program has been watching the community feeds as people register CI’s, update attributes, join communities, etc. In fact, it looks like a bit of competition may be brewing between the participants to see who can register CI’s the fastest. Interesting thought for those wanting to foster usage and coverage with a CMDB.

- Adam

We’re thrilled to see the buzz gathering around our newest announcement - analysts and media alike seem to agree that we’ve added something new and noteworthy to the market. We think this kind of innovation is especially welcome in a market that has little confidence in those larger competitors.

With myCMDB, we’ve really unleashed the power of the CMDB by adding the community features that should logically be part of any project that requires the input from so many different people within an organization. Heck, using email and voicemail for CMDB communication is like using a rotary dial for a smartphone.

Instead, we’ve brought CMDB communications and process into the 21st century, by adding a combination of Facebook interactivity, Wikipedia information quality management, and Google’s searching model. Basically, these features make it easier to get more users involved in its creation and maintenance, which means the CMDB quickly becomes a more accurate representation of the infrastructure, relationships, and services. This allows organizations to use the CMDB to better control the impact of change and move it into a decision support role.

Stay tuned as the buzz continues to build!

Few that would argue that rolling out a business service management approach to an organization is highly valuable and beneficial. One of the biggest challenges, however, continues to be what this BSM solution should look like to its consumers. Is it a dashboard with a stoplight like layout? Is it speedometer tracking how quickly things are moving along on a production line? Is it information laid out on a world map highlighting contributions from various regions to a global marketplace?

Consider this analogy to highlight just how important this look and feel really is – I like eggs and toast for breakfast, as do a lot of other people. The raw contents of this breakfast are the same for everyone but preparation and layout will absolutely determine how successful breakfast is on any given day. It will determine how likely I am to recommend the meal to other people, how much satisfaction I gain from eating it, and how much value I associate with it as an everyday exercise. For the record, I like mine prepared as two eggs over hard with wheat toast cut in half on either side of the eggs, almost like a face. How many possible permutations are there? A lot.

Building dashboards at the presentation layer of a BSM solution is arguably the most important and most difficult task during any deployment, akin to making breakfast for a group of people all of whom agree that they want eggs for breakfast but can’t always articulate how they want them prepared or presented. This is exactly why in selecting a BSM vendor, it is absolutely crucial to evaluate flexibility in presenting information and also being able to change it very quickly to look like something completely different. In addition, the ability to quickly add/modify/delete the data feeds allows for new ingredients to be added to the mix so that the presentation layer can truly take on the shape that the BSM user community needs.

All this flexibility comes with its own challenges, the most significant of which is soliciting user feedback and building in mechanisms for comments, suggestions and approval from the user base. It’s one that is certainly reflected in the feature development cycle of a lot of companies, in particular ones with varying types of users. MySpace’s SVP of Product Strategy described their approach of soliciting feedback using blogs along Tom Anderson’s profile. A similar approach was described on CIO.com's blog.

These approaches can be creatively applied to building and maintaining a relevant presentation layer for a BSM solution by allowing communities of interest to provide feedback and suggestions on what they would like to see. It is then up to the administrators of the system to extract themes and concrete ideas from the feedback stream and construct new views. These should then be promoted in Beta form to further distill them, and then brought to the full user community. Sound like a BSM group inside of a larger enterprise social network? You bet.

It's not surprising to us that analyst firm Forrester has predicted that companies will spend nearly $5 billion on Web 2.0 technologies – blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc – over the next five years. Social networking has become the next generation of knowledge management, but it is one where user adoption is driven by the end user: think Wikipedia.

Social networking has dramatically changed the media landscape in North America. Blogs enable individual consumers to change corporate behavior and have taken the limelight for breaking political news by framing election issues on cable networks. In fact, during live coverage of the presidential primaries, CNN often runs segments reviewing the latest buzz in the blogosphere.

The Economist magazine says that blogs have affected Britain differently, as most of the major news networks rather than Web savvy upstart pundits have been the dominant force However, the government in London may have been faster than its Western siblings to grasp how Web 2.0 can involve the populace in more effective policy making.

With the ability to capture knowledge, interact more closely with constituents, shape viewpoints, and ultimately influence behavior, its no wonder Forrester foresees sizable corporate investment in Web 2.0. Enterprise social networking is, in essence, $5 billion worth of industrial strength fun.

Managed Objects has been no exception. Internally, the company uses Twiki to easily and rapidly communicate about support issues, software development and generally share tribal knowledge. Externally, we’ve launched our own blog with the intent of contributing to public discourse on BSM with other blogs engaging in discussions on future directions of IT, and inviting interaction from the ITIM community, including our customers. We’ve also been quick to innovate our product line – as a long time provider of role-based dashboards, we launched myMO (my Managed Objects) last fall as a Web 2.0 front end for BSM.

And there’s more to come, we can promise that!

- Dustin

There were a lot of acronyms and keywords being bandied about at Gartner ITxpo this year. A Google search on the minds of the attendees would have generated a lot of hits on SOA, Globalization, Sourcing, Enterprise [Web] 2.0, “Free” Software, SaaS, and Cloud Computing. Social Networking was also an interesting thread that passed through all the other topics that attendees were abuzz about.

A large majority of the exhibiting vendors of course tagged their displays, demonstrations, and 30 second pitches with these terms to ensure that they too garnered as much attention as possible. I had a number of discussions with existing Managed Objects customers as well as parties interested in BSM about these trends and how to incorporate them into a cohesive strategy.

The BSM approach to dealing with these varied (and sometimes opposing) technologies is to focus on the service as a whole vs. individual moving parts and silos. As a customer of the power company, I expect that a flip of a light switch produces a predictable outcome every time – the lights come on. If they don’t, I don’t expect to hear details from the power company about all the potential issues that they are looking into ranging from failures in relay stations, downed power lines, problems with grids in neighboring states, etc. I count on them knowing the scope and source of the problem very quickly and getting it resolved. Electricity is an essential service and that level of understanding of what’s going on in the various moving parts of the power business is crucial.

Translating this type of operational model to IT management is what produces an effective BSM strategy. With IT becoming more complex (SOA, Enterprise 2.0, open source) and diffuse (Globalized, xSourced, SaaS, Cloud Computing) simultaneously, it is crucial to provide the best-of-breed management solutions for SMEs in each of these areas. Stopping here, however, leads to the all too common trap of too many tools and not enough answers. The key ingredient is a federated system that combines KPIs from each of the specialized solutions and allows a business level view to be constructed from it, that is, a true Manager of Managers with customizable dashboards for all parties with a vested interest in service availability and performance.

Implementation of this BSM strategy requires access to data connectors that span multiple vendors’ management solutions, expansion opportunities for the next generation of platforms, and most importantly – an analysis engine that can handle the complexity of the combined data feeds and make it available to a flexible presentation layer for the users of the system.

Although there were many different solutions to these challenges presented at ITxpo, a successful BSM deployment should offer a simple and personalized iGoogle-like experience for managing and viewing content of underlying IT infrastructure and the applications that run on top of it, and that’s one thing that everyone agreed on.

-- Abbas