Managed Services Communication Model

 

 

Service / Support Delivery management (as Project Management) and support communication are becoming more complex as multi-location support execution is coming into the picture. The challenge multiplies if it involves working with vendors and external contractors (at customer locations). Additionally, having vendors globally can make it even more complex. A robust communication model should be in place to handle communication for inhouse support services or geographically dispersed in-house support services or vendor executed support services. The goal of the communication model should be:

• To provide precise and concise project communication
• To involve all necessary stakeholders and maintain regular contact to keep transparency in all transactions
• To have clear communication channels with well-defined roles and responsibilities
• To facilitate review and feedback of the project deliveries and project performance internally and externally
• To clarify doubts, overcome challenges and avert risks that affect the project
• To built the trust and relationship between the parties
• To train, motivate and mentor the project teams

 

The purpose of this writeup is to seek inputs on how/what the service delivery managers should figure into their collaborative communication models beyond a mere reporting of the service statuses. Some of the challenges delivery manager’s faces today are:

• Multi-location support services involving people stationed (in-house, nearshore, offshore)
• Variety of processes (in-house, vendor specific etc)
• Short listing and proper usage of common tool

 

In order to facilitate this:

1. We need a system that enables online collaboration.
2. We also need consolidate our practices and come up with a standard Service Delivery Method/Process

 

How to have a Collaborative form of communication?

Often in my 11+ years of Managed services operationalization, I have felt that, not withstanding islands of success, the general take-up of collaborative communications has been lagging. Few online tools and portalized service may be too narrow a focus and the failure to share information internally across teams and externally (with customers, contractors and vendors) made promises of transparent service look a bit feeble.

Typical MS project communication flow is as following:

 Click Here to open the MS project communication flow

Historically, the use of emails, or isolated management solutions, made information (1) hard to find; (2) accessible only by a single person at a time, thus hindering collaboration; (3) not suitable for auditing and prioritization of tasks; and (4) not visible and transparent to all stakeholders. These are all inhibitors that prevent the delivery of service excellence.

The advent of SR Management systems helps in minimizing the above problems with email based systems. As the focus shifts toward service-centric SR’s, triggered by a variety of events, there will be greater demand for collaborative interfaces, business process management, and content management (see Figure below). Hence the need for ‘Collaborative Communications Management Framework’ is becoming more apparent rather then just using a simple SR handling framework. The building blocks of this ‘Collaborative Communications Management Framework’ in Figure below represent the information infrastructure that will be essential to streamline overall communication through collaboration, accurate resource planning, performance monitoring, compliance auditing, and visibility to all stakeholders; visibility will, in fact, pervade all components of collaborative management to ensure consultants and managers can monitor all workflows and speed them up while offering a window through which external stakeholders (customers / vendors) monitor transparency of processes.

Collaborative interfaces will provide workspaces to foster exchange of information among various teams working on the engagement, assessing, evaluating, and approving requests. Enterprise search capabilities will greatly strengthen the ability to find data across deliverables. Dashboards will ensure managers have continuous visibility into the status of each case and can audit anytime. Portals and email tools will greatly enhance accessibility, transparency, and accountability toward end users (announcing downtimes, system blackouts etc)

Process management will streamline workflows by automatically scheduling tasks to be assigned to team members who participate in the delivery of a service. Task assignment will entail time required for each operation and rules to follow for maximum efficiency and templates to be used and queue management. When changes in the process occur, process management will enable real-time adapting of the document workflow, the type of content that needs to be searched to complete the operation, and the levels of responsibility (thus authorization to access information) of the various members of the support / service team. Automation of workflows will also enable managers to complement reporting.

Content management functionalities will grant that data can be retrieved, added to the workflow, and examined in various formats, for comprehensive decision support, while maintaining control of versions and access. Archiving functionalities will be particularly important for rapid response by ensuring quick content retrieval. Managing rights and permissions to create, edit, post, or delete materials, and protecting intellectual property, we can ensure compliance with privacy, transparency, and other needs of the customers/vendors.

Figure: Collaborative Communications Management Framework

 Click here for the Collaborative Communications Management Framework

Collaborative Communication Framework implementation

There are many tools available for the required collaboration

-          Agile, PLM

-          IBM PDIF (Product development Integration Framework)

Taking Agile, PLM framework and creating a global delivery framework can give comprehensive support / services platform and it can also take into account the collaborative communication framework presented above.

This collaborative framework should provide a unified platform to collaborate and manage work/communication more effectively by enhancing:

Document Management

Code Management

    Change / Release Management

    Deployment Management

Confiuration Management

Automated Workflows

Project Tracking and Work Plan Management

Support / Project Metrics

Communication

Complete History and Archiving facilties 

Operationalizing the communication framework for Managed Service engagements

The framework operationalization can happen in the following way:

Stakeholder Related Communications
Planning  - Resource Planning  - Budget Planning   Governance Related communication  - Account Health  - Contracts / Renewals	People Involved	Tools	Ownership
	Customer Sponsors Vendor  Sponsors Vendor / Customer Service Delivery Manager Agile / IBM Collaborative portal Meeting Place	Agile / IBM Collaborative portal Meeting Place	Vendor Service Delivery manager
Communication with Customer / Vendor
Scheduled Meetings (Weekly / Fortnightly)   – Progress updates   – Escalation AAR’s   – Constraints (Time / budget / resource) updates   – SLM related discussions   Daily Activity Communication   – Updates on task uptakes   – Update on their progress   – Update on daily SR’s   – Change / Configuration Management updates	People Involved	Tools	Ownership
	Vendor / Customer Service Delivery Manager Vendor / Customer Service Leads Agile / IBM Collaborative portal Meeting Place	Agile / IBM Collaborative portal Meeting Place	Vendor Service Delivery manager
Daily Internal Communication
Daily Operations / Maintenance   – Task Prioritization / scheduling   – Task Intake   – Task completion   – Task updates to the respective teams   – Change / Configuration Management Knowledge Sharing / Management   – Sharing of learning’s within the team   – Building knowledge repository   – Intra team (formal / informal) discussions   – Skill building by sharing learning’s	People Involved	Tools	Ownership
	Vendor Service Leads Team Members Agile / IBM Collaborative portal Meeting Place Chat Tools	Agile / IBM Collaborative portal Meeting Place Chat Tools	Respective Service Leads

 

 

Conclusion

Collaborative communication can be a key differentiator in Managed services and also becomes extremely critical sucess factor in a multi-vendor managed services scenario. The on-going communication enables transparency across all parties and therefore acts as a key enabler for building trust and relationship.

Implementation of the above framework will involve a change in the tools and some education to Outsourcing vendor’s internal people and also customer team members.

The sucess of this will depend on the following:

• Framework familiarization and correct adoption both Internally (within the Outsourcing Vendors Organizations) and externally (Customers / Other Vendors)
• Correct usage of tools
• Having a collaborative mindset

Data Security

Most of the customers these days are seeking data protection in some form or the other. Data protection becomes more important for customers when they think of off shoring their production systems.

Especially they look at the following level of protection:

1> Protection of sensitive Data from the DBA’s
2> Scrambling of their data
3> Selective masking/deletion of data

To circumvent these requirements and provide customers assurance of opening up their production systems for remote support. Oracle’s Data Security products like offers a range of solutions. A solution towards these scenarios can be of great value add. The initiatives in these areas has the potential to become a new service offering and will help in improving services.

The value proposition of this solution are:

1> Increased assurance to the end customers that no one other then their authorized users are privy to their sensitive data
2> Helping customers with various compliance like SOX etc.
3> Grow offshore production support business
4> Reduced risk to data being backed up etc.

The approach to building the solution can be as following:

1> Develop a prototype using Standard Oracle Products
2> Create Test Scenarios, For example: – Check how the realms in Oracle’s Database Vault impact various operations like patching, cloning, logical backups, physical DR etc
3> Check How TDE can be applied while taking backups
4> Check on the scrambling process (encryption / decryption) in eBS
5> Once tested, create POC environments and keep them as reference points for demo etc.

Once the above is done, we can then complete documentation and create awareness amongst communities / customers for business oppourtunites and value creations.

Some FAQ’s:

1> Do customers ask for this from the point of remote production support or a general solution to data protection?

Yes, Customers ask for data security for production systems and also to provide overall secutiry solutions to their data / IT environment

2> What were the specific requirements for the customers & how the solution would have benefitted?

Specific requirements are: –

Data protection from the DBA’s who have complete access to the system
Data protection while taking backups on tapes
Selective data scrambling / deletion

The solution will go a long was in strealiming IT Security practices/compliances within an organization. It will help customers to have more trust on their outsourcing vendors as sensitive data will never be privy to anyone outside the access controled realm. It will also benefit the customers in securing their backups and also creating test environments with selective data.

3> Do we know how other companies do it (i.e. other companies that offer remote production support)?

These are new technologies, which didn’t have any alternatives earlier other than writing custom algorithms . Problem with such custom Algorithms was that they were rarely supported by the respective vendors. Techniques such as Oracle’s Data Vault, etc. are supported way of doing scrambling and seems like new area of interest for lot of companies who either wants to offer production related services or wants it to beocme part of the end customers various in-house security Strategy

DBA Services

 

Introduction

 

Increasing the mileage for a company’s financial resources is a prime concern for all IT executives. With IT budgets being cut and database technologies constantly evolving and becoming increasingly complex, IT / DBA managers have been forced to do more with less. The typical result of such a scenario has been an increase in workload and an inevitable strain on IT staff and resources. More than ever, it is imperative that no stone be left unturned which can directly or indirectly increase efficiency in a cost effective manner.

 

Remote Database Administration is one strategy that a growing number of organizations have implemented to improve coverage and lower costs. The following paper will introduce the concepts involved with remote database support and specifically how SSI’s approach to Remote Database Administration leveraging a mature on-site / offshore model offers a unique and innovative value proposition to dynamic organizations looking to cost effectively augment the existing DBA team.

 

A Closer Look at Database Administration

 

The safe and effective handling of corporate data is vital to the survival of any organization. Many critical functions of a company are dependent on the accessibility and reliability of data. While business strategists assume the responsibility of filtering out the kind of information to serve business interests and drive the business process, IT professionals must ensure that this information reaches the personnel concerned at a time and place and in a format of choice. Despite growing complexities, the databases must remain stable regardless of the resources available to support them.

 

The ultimate responsibility of ensuring the stability of the databases falls on the DBA, or Database Administrator. As seen in the table below (Mullins, Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures, 2002) based on organization size and setup, the DBA can be responsible for many tasks.

 

 

 

The broad spectrum of responsibilities given to a DBA directly translates into a broad spectrum of tasks.

 

The Challenges

 

The Reactive DBA Team

 

On a daily basis, a DBA is often pulled in different directions including daily maintenance, monitoring, and implementation of strategic projects. The nature of a DBAs day-to-day activity is such that the workload is often unstable and becomes difficult to plan and execute. Monitoring performance, performing upgrades, validating backups and recoveries, applying patches, checking alert logs, and tuning are just a subset of activities that a DBA may encounter on a daily basis.

 

The workload is often compounded by the fact that DBAs must also respond to requests and problems from application developers, system administrators (SA), as well as end users. Often, this inconsistency manifests itself into a reactive cycle in which a DBA team must compromise on strategic initiatives in order to handle emergencies. As databases continue to grow in size and complexity, this reactive cycle becomes a way of life.

 

A DBA team forced to operate beyond the bandwidth capacity may avoid strategic plans such as performance tuning, capacity planning, physical architecture, data modeling and data recovery planning. Ultimately, non-core functions such as these take focus away from core competencies and drastically slow the growth of the organization. In certain cases, this volatility can cause DBAs to be overburdened and the constant stress may result in turnover.

 

Cost reduction coincides with increased DBMS complexity

 

In recent years, in order to survive and compete in a difficult economy, many IT organizations have been forced to minimize costs without compromising productivity. When workload increases or a new project is being executed, the traditional option of hiring more full-time DBAs or contractors is seemingly becoming an expensive proposition.

 

Looking at the future of database administration, it is apparent that databases will undoubtedly grow in both size and complexity. Vendors consistently release new DBMS versions that add new features and functions that further complicate data management. Increased complexity, coinciding with pressure to reduce costs has become a double-edged phenomenon that organizations have been forced to contend with. Web based applications are becoming increasingly prevalent and driving an influx of data and an increase in the size of production databases. Round the clock support is gradually becoming an expectation by many companies. These challenges and the risks they pose have fueled a market demand for alternatives.

 

The Traditional Alternatives

 

The traditional alternatives that have been available for a number of years are to increase the fulltime DBA staff, or temporarily utilize consultants/contractors. The corresponding advantages and disadvantages to these methods are outlined in the following charts.

Hiring Additional DBA Staff

 

Advantage

Disadvantage

Proximity and Accountability   ·         A formal full time contract may build a closer relationship and warrant a high degree of accountability   Knowledge Transfer   ·         Direct interaction with in-house personnel allows for effective knowledge transfer on a ongoing basis

Cost   ·         Shrinking IT budgets are not compatible with an increase in hiring. A single DBA (including salary cost, hardware cost, office space cost) can easily exceed 100K   Work Load VS. Resource Imbalance   ·         There is a constant imbalance between in-house resources and workload. A full-time DBA may not be needed if the complexity and quantity of the workload is minimal. On the other hand, too heavy of a workload given existing staff can be detrimental to the team   Skill Set Variation   ·         The value a DBA brings is dependent solely on his/her experience level and skill set. Thus, based on this, it may not be a good fit for the needs of the organization.   Single point of failure   ·         If the DBA is the only one responsible of managing a critical database, there is a dangerous single point of failure scenario based on his/her availability   Turnover/Vacation Time / Absences   ·         If a DBA decides to leave the organization, the institutional knowledge leaves with him/her ·           ·         Contractors may be needed to back-up the full-time DBA’s when they are sick or on vacation

 

Dependency On Consultants / Contractors

 

Advantage

Disadvantage

Flexibility   Pay for service on as as-needed basis   Can be beneficial for short-term projects in a stable environment where on-going expertise is not required

Cost   IT Costs are preventing the hiring of expensive consultants. The cost of a single consultant can easily exceed $80-$100 per hour depending on skill set.   By virtue of the fact that consulting firms charge based on time and nature of emergency, there is no incentive by a contractor or his/her firm to lower cost and improve productivity via and automated process, better methodologies, or new tools.   Availability and requirement unpredictable   Appropriately skilled and experienced contractors may not be available during critical junctures.   Difficult to determine when assistance is needed considering volatility of DB environments and evolving business needs.   Learning Curve   Ramp-up period with a new contractor is usually high. Companies must bear the cost of such ramp-up (both direct and indirect costs).   Loss of institutional knowledge   Institutional knowledge that is secured is lost when a contractor leaves the organization. Thus, the ramp-up cycle has to begin again with the next staff member.

 

Remote Database Administration Solution

 

 

What is Remote Database Support?

 

A Remote Database support service provides all the functions of a full-time DBA including monitoring, maintenance, backup and recovery, and performance tuning. These are done via a secure Internet (VPN) connection. The Remote Database consists of a central operations center and a DBA team both of which are shared in order to support multiple clients on a 24×7 basis.

 

The Outsource vs. Offshore Factor: Myth and Reality

 

Where does database administration fall in the ever-growing dialogue of outsourcing and offshore potential?  Because of the criticality of corporate data, it is essential for organizations to careful assess and understand the nature of a remote database support relationship. Both the advantages and limitations must be clearly defined.

 

The table below (www.cio.com, 2004) illustrates the subset of IT functionality that can effectively be outsourced as well as sent offshore. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As outsourcing and offshore support has matured in the past decade, the areas of IT operations to consider outsourcing have also expanded. To fully understand the potential with respect to database administration, it is imperative to first understand the nature of tasks that consume a DBA’s time. 

 

The graph below <taken from web> plots the common tasks involved with DB Administration with respect to time consumed, frequency of execution, and risk. Looking at the number of low-medium risk tasks in the upper right quadrant, it is apparent that a substantial amount of time spent by a DBA is focused on low-level repetitive production tasks such as monitoring, backups, patching, and troubleshooting.

 

 

 

 

Considering a DBA is a competent and skilled individual, constant focus on mundane low-level tasks such as these is detrimental not only from an investment perspective, but also hinders the ability of a DBA to learn new and emerging trends and maintain a high interest level. This is one of the primary reasons that DBAs have an unusually high turnover rate as opposed to other IT professionals. By offloading such tasks, a DBA can invest time and interest in initiatives that plan for the future and, in turn, directly increase corporate value.

 

Thus, the key to a successful remote DB support model lies in pinpointing and offloading the subset of tasks that force attention away from core competencies. This concept has become known as selective outsourcing.

 

Selective Outsourcing: The Key to a Successful Remote Support Model

 

Unlike other processes that can fully be outsourced and handled by an outside vendor, database administration is different in several ways. Because of the heterogeneous nature of the systems and the uniqueness to each organization, it is difficult to fully outsource the DBA function.

 

Tasks	Remarks
Pro-Active Monitoring	Most common task that is outsourced in DB administration
Backup Monitoring	Task commonly outsourced
Space Management	Useful task to outsource
Patch Management	Various applications / Databases patches can be outsourced
Data Load / Unload	Can be outsourced, once an established process has been setup and automated. This also has some dependency on network latency, hence a robust network connectivity is also required
Troubleshooting	Can be outsourced
High Availability Management	Tasks preferred to be outsourced once High Availability infrastructure and processes have been set-up
Disaster recovery Management	Tasks preferred to be outsourced once Disaster recovery infrastructure and processes have been set-up
Database Performance Monitoring	Useful task to outsource
Database / SQL Performance Tuning	Can be outsourced
Applications Management <eBS, Peoplesoft, Seibel etc, >	Can be outsourced
Recovery	Limited, will depend on the complexity of recovery
Security and Account Management	Should be carefully assessed, considering being a highly sensitive task
Installation / Configuration	Maybe avoided for mission-critical production setup
Version Upgrades <DB / Applications>	Maybe avoided for mission-critical production setup

 

 

As the table suggests, regardless of the uniqueness of the organization, there is a substantial portion of DB activities that can selectively be outsourced without any considerable risk and without relinquishing control of the infrastructure. It is evaluating these and researching an appropriate vendor that will dramatically improve productivity and lower costs.

 

The Real ROI: Growing with the Extended Team

 

Similar to an in-house DBA, the extended team grows with the client’s internal DBA team. As the comfort level grows, and processes are clearly defined and executed, the nature of work offloaded will evolve accordingly. Thus, initial exposure to routine mechanical work will allow the extended team to have a clear understanding of the client’s databases. A constant knowledge transfer is ensured via a shared knowledge base for both the internal and the extended team. Consequently, based on the performance and execution of routine low-level tasks, the in-house team will gain the experience to offload a greater subset of the database activities. Thus, the true ROI of selective remote db support model occurs as the extended team fully handles any activities that distract from the core competencies of the internal DBA team.

 

Ensuring a Seamless Integration: Keys Points to Consider

 

As with any concept that deviates from the traditional solutions, there are a number of factors to consider in understanding the potential fit for an organizations needs. By carefully examining the potential, taking into consideration the challenges and benefits, the viability of remote support can be accurately determined.

Operational Philosophy

 

Database administration is a discipline in which the control factor has been solidified based on existing industry methodologies. Because of the heterogeneous nature of databases in each organization, many DBA teams are accustomed to managing all aspects of DB administration. As shown in the previous sections and tables, these tasks vary in time consumption, frequency, and expertise required.

 

Understanding the benefit of a selective remote DB support model entails assessing which tasks should be the core focus of a DBA team. This directly translates into realizing how a DBA team is spending its time. It is essential to understand that implementing a selective remote DB model does not require relinquishing control of the process. Installing a selective DB support model may allow a DBA team/manager to have an even higher degree of control with respect to future strategic initiatives. Essentially, as the relationship matures, the extended team should become an integral part of the existing DBA team.

 

Clear Communication and Pre-defined Expectation

 

The most important part of a successful remote DB support model is clear and effective communication. The criticality of a successful DBA team depends heavily on clear understanding of the needs of the company.

 

The success of the relationship must be measured via clear performance metrics and remedies if there is any deviation from these metrics. All responsibilities should be detailed and documented. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) should be mandatory and specify both the performance standards and the methods by which performance is measured.

 

Culture Fit

 

As with any other vendor relationship, a successful DB support model requires a mutual understanding of values, philosophies, and work ethic. All successful companies have a unique culture and code that is followed across the board. As such, any extension to the DBA team must make a concentrated effort to understand the values of the client.

 

PS:  Source of this article is collective research over the net

 

SOA (Service Oriented Architecure) A realy zing OR another Craze

The latest buzzword doing the rounds of technology geeks is SOA. What it really means and the differentiation that it can bring to ones business is a lot to ponder about. SOA commonly is referred as Service Oriented Architecture wherein the applications are being seen as service components (web services) interacting with other interoperable services hence creating a cluster of flexible, reusable and On-Demand contact points. These services are basically simple business processes detached from the tightly written legacy applications hence helping in modernizing the legacy applications. Why is SOA finding a plum space in the IT space today…the answer lies in understanding the business architecture prevalent. Today every major business house thinks of doing more with less, improving quality of service and as an end result get more on every $ spend. Over the years the business paradigm has only become more complex. Today’s business is being heavily dictated by Mergers and acquisitions, Data being spread all around the enterprise, heterogeneous systems and development standard being limited. The end result being a business situation becoming uncompetitive thick & fast and the residual problem of ownership / accountability surfacing again. 

So how will SOA help in solving these problems? Lets address this question with a real life example of Telco industry. Some of their major pain points are:

-         Time taken for Service activation (for number provisioning)

-         Infrastructure changes rapidly

-         Policies changes rapidly

-         Many systems involved

-         Real time process monitoring

SOA can help in doing the following:

-         Easily create and modify business processes

-         Be complaint to co-exist with any application server

-         Integration with existing legacy system using connectors / adaptors

-         Enablement of SLA monitoring

  

Some of the Key SOA related terminologies:

Service	A business functionality that can be invoked over the network
Web Service	A service created / used as per certain standards so that it can be ported to be used by anyone
Service-Oriented Architecture	A standards-based platform help develop, find, and combine services into flexible business processes
Orchestration	Combining and assembling services into a coherent business process – also known as business process management

  

Some of the Key Benefits that SOA extends are:

Increased Efficiency: The software components are services that can basically be re-used anywhere

Be more competitive: SOA helps in creating an environment that is more adaptable to change

Investment fortification: As SOA help integrating with legacy application hence the investment on this infrastructure is always protected

SOA Products available:

-         Oracle SOA Suite

-         IBM Webspehere

-         Microsoft .Net

-         BEA Auqalogic

-         SAP Netweaver

To conclude it’s important to understand that SOA is not an technology but a approach to bridge the gap between Business and IT. Another thought that may flash across is, will SOA also pass by as another craze, and in my opinion it may not. The argument here is with the emergence of various IT Standards like XML / Web services its more feasible for customers to adopt SOA.