The Revolutionary Road

What is the Revolutionary Road?

"Knowing what you've got, knowing what you need, knowing what you can do without - that's inventory control." So muses Leonardo DiCaprio in the Sam Mendes film, Revolutionary Road. But maybe he has a point that we ought to consider when delivering IT services

Knowing what you've got
How many CIOs are certain that they have a good handle on what they've got? It's important to know what basic items are there, but also how they are connected and configured. Time and time again I have heard: "I don't know what that is" or "I didn't realise we had that". Robust IT Asset management is the foundation for knowing what you really have and how it works.

Knowing what you need
When you know what you have got, the next challenge is knowing how much of that stuff you really need. Over time, IT services move from machine to machine; new network connections are made; old ones are removed. So, is all the stuff you have really necessary to deliver the services you provide? That's not an easy question to answer in most cases. A good service catalogue mapped to infrastructure and network diagrams that are up to date and comprehensively annotated will help you here. Do you feel confident that you are in control?

Knowing what you can do without
OK, this is the killer point. If you want to save costs in your IT operation, it makes sense to cut out what you can do without. Why continue to pay for what is not necessary? But what if your cut takes out an essential business service as well? To switch metaphors, can you cut out your pound of flesh without touching any bone, blood, sinew or ligament? Only if you have a good picture of your IT estate and how it contributes to business services will you be able to make these cuts which are really "what you can do without".

Revolutionary?
So, is this all rather revolutionary? I don't think so. The discipline of managing your IT assets well, understanding your inventory, keeping things up to date, is hardly rocket science. And maintaining an up to date service catalogue, mapping services across your IT infrastructure so you understand which components are necessary for delivering each IT service, is not much newer as an idea. The revolutionary thing is that in spite of us all knowing that we should do this, hardly any of us actually bother to do it. It's too hard, too tedious, there's alway another emergency, the business isn't interested, there are other priorities. But if you want to ensure your survival and that of your business, maybe you should be a revolutionary.

In summary
Knowing what you've got - IT Asset Management is vital to understand properly what's really out there and what it's costing you.
Knowing what you need - make sure you have mapped your delivered services across your infrastructure and network. A well-managed IT Service Catalogue is essential here.
Knowing what you can do without - when you know what you've got and what you need, you will understand what you can do without. You can cut out unnecessary equipment, licences, maintenance, development while feeling confident you will continue to deliver vital IT services to the business.
So, start taking the Revolutionary Road today - don't wait for someone else to start the revolution.

Mean IT - what's it mean?

Well, it means cutting your costs of course: mean to save money; parsimonious so as to butter parsnips; careful to cut costs; extreme endeavours to even out expenditure.

But we need to be careful when we're playing Scrooge. He himself went through a number of different experiences before he got the point. The Ghost of Christmas Past wasn't enough; the Ghost of Christmas Present wasn't enough; it was only with the visitation of the Ghost of Christmas Future that he finally realised what he needed to do.

What's the parallel with the current day hard-pressed CIO? Well, it's all too easy to look at only one way of saving money: cut the budget - that will work; reduce TCO - that will make me look good; eliminate development - we can make do with the applications we have and no-one will notice.

This is slash and burn thinking. It's not Mean IT, it's Silly IT.

We need to think again - to look at the problem from a number of different angles - to examine things through a number of different lenses. So, we can think of various viewpoints that we might optimise:

• Total cost of ownership


• Finance


• Service portfolio


• Service levels


• Service improvement


• Innovation

It's the power of thinking through all of these different views, these "lenses", that means that Mean IT will deliver dividends.

The Ghosts of Christmas had a point: if Mean IT is to mean anything, we need to think of cutting costs from a number of different points of view.

Are you considering these points of view - right now?