Weighing Options

I am blessed for the opportunity to take up a fourth major chapter in my career.  Most people don't have the fortune of being a participant in so many substantial waves of change.  

In 1982 I worked for a company called BBN that was building today's Internet.  I was fresh out of university, and soaked up the wisdom of the brilliant minds who conceived, develop, and deployed the foundation of connectivity among computing machines and their users.  We deployed the revolutionary capabilities for government uses first, and then for the first commercial email service - MCIMail.  I learned about the power of networking devices.  Wave 1.

In 1989 I joined CSC and had the opportunity to lead business development activities take up substantial general management assignments.  This was a lesson in leadership, planning, and risk management.  It was also my introduction to global business operations, financial services, and the economic model called outsourcing.

My three years in Seattle as Chairman/CEO of a small publicly-listed consulting company was my lesson through failure.  It also taught me the power of alignment among colleagues around relevancy and purpose.  During this time, the internet wave accelerated and busted ... and I was frustrated by the fact that I didn't find a way to participate more substantially in this euphoric period.  Then again, I didn't take the losses that many experienced when things blew up.  The lesson here was around economic fundamentals and markets ... if things seem too good to be true, they likely aren't true.  Wave 2.

From 2001 thru 2007 I was privileged to serve alongside a cadre of remarkable colleagues in the outsourcing advisory firm of TPI.  I took the role after we sold the Seattle company, and purely as a way to stay connected in the industry while I figured out what I really wanted to do next.  The eight-year run was invigorating for one principle reason.  We served some of the most accomplished companies in the world, providing advice and structure to their contracting strategies for business process and IT services.  

The eighteen months that I spent helping Procter & Gamble with their business process sourcing strategy was the most memorable and influential.  I learned about corporate culture, leadership traits, executive decision-making styles, "moments of truth" in marketing, and the sell-side tactics of major service providers.  The lessons here were life-changing for me.  From P&G to McDonalds to Disney to JPMorgan to UBS ... some of the biggest brands across industries.  Make-vs-Buy trade-offs in the allocation of capital, the engagement of employees, the leverage of intellectual property, and the hedging of risk.  Wave 3.

My most recent 3.5 years at CSC as leader of global sales & marketing leveraged the experiences of all three of the waves I had experienced previously, and flavored my worldview through the spices of transformation in a large-scale setting and the power of cohesiveness in terms of message/purpose/mission.  I am still internalizing the take-away lessons from CSC, but I am most influenced by the talented people and their commitment to their Clients.  There's much to be said about the value earned through transparency, candor, objectivity, and personal engagement.

That brings us to today.  What to do next?

I have a few months to refine my thoughts, but the leanings are around a central thesis:


After all of these incredible experiences, the one thing I have learned above all others is that true innovation is brought to life through the combination of information technology and commercial services constructs. Why? It is clear to me that the expectations of consumers and businesses are converged. Both are looking to leverage technology as holistic services, rather than as discrete parts. Innovators who are developing the next-generation of technologies recognize this reality and are seizing the opportunity to create services-based offerings that will scale. I have studied and practiced in this realm for my entire career, and the market circumstances are ideal for creating tremendous new service offerings in an “As a Service” fashion.


My expertise is earned in multiple disciplines through leadership positions for outsourcing/offshoring management consulting, IT services sales and marketing, and service delivery management:

• Architect of technology-enabled managed services ... creating service-based relationships
• Emphasis on distributed/networked business models through global operations
• Strong marketing and sales orientation, including extensive public speaking and digital marketing techniques
• Track record of building high-performance teams through strong engagement and personal commitment
• Passion for innovation in scale-based practical application of technology solutions and commercial models
• Reputation for partnerships/alliances for maximum leverage in solutions
• Expertise in commercial contracting terms for complex and risk-oriented propositions
• Excited to take ambitions from conceptual to operational

My next position will allow me to leverage and apply this unique combination of practical experience and market awareness to drive growth, scale, and shareholder value through high-energy and passionate leadership for capitalizing on the “As a Service” economy.  Wave 4 ... ahead.

Restarting the Engine

Greetings to all who find these words ... I am restarting my blog.

When I joined CSC in 2009, I sustained the blog for a few months but ultimately elected to place it in hibernation.  The reason was simple: as an officer of a Fortune 150 company, it was just too risky to express the sort of opinions for which I had become known.

Time has passed and circumstances are changed.

Over the coming weeks I will be re-framing the orientation of this blog.  I am inclined to share the process of considering new opportunities while I simultaneously outline the thesis I am developing around our services-based economy.

More to follow.  Thanks for visiting.

Peter

If you believe ---

So, here's the skeleton of my thesis on why the IT Services market has entered a phase of truly different growth/innovation characteristics.

If you believe ...

• Virtualization of computing/storage/communications resources is real. Enabling ...
  • capital expense avoidance
  • higher levels of operational efficiency
  • greater resilience of infrastructure services
  • material improvements in enterprise flexibility
• Business functionality is increasingly able to be fulfilled via off-premise, built-for-purpose platform offerings.  Such as ...
  • Software-as-a-Service delivered via public cloud architectures (e.g., salesforce.com)
  • Ecosystems of specialized managed services providers (e.g., ADP for payroll)
  • Modular extensions to ERP foundations (e.g., SAP and Oracle)
  • Interfaced with proprietary business process applications
• The requirements for confidence & integrity in business operations are dominant. To encompass ...
  • Resilience of services in response to threats to availability and continuity
  • Confidentiality of information
  • Assurance of correctness in business transactions
• And, that successful enterprises will achieve optimal leverage in its allocation of investments. To wit ...
  • Make-vs-Buy tradeoffs for non-core aspects of the business
  • Industry partnerships/ventures

Then, you require ...

• Vertical Integration among infrastructure, applications and operations.  Ensuring ...
  • Efficiency and accountability for distinct business services
  • Alignment between business strategies and enabling services
• Service Integration among the ecosystem of internal and external service participants.  To include ...
  • Operational linkages among and between service elements
  • Congruency for Enterprise Data used by all parties
  • Trust-enablement of business services

Deliberations ...

Many have asked:  "What's up with the lack of content, Peter?"


So, the long gap in postings has not been for lack of thoughts, opinions, perspectives, or ideas.  Rather, I am debating the merits of continuing to host this personal blog.


Friends such as Phil Fersht have shown that one can represent a company and still maintain a personal line-of-banter with industry colleagues.  I admire him for that.  As for me ... I'm not yet sure.


In the interim, while I wrestle with this question, please know that I am more engrossed in the machinations of the IT Services industry than ever before.  I spent this past week in India - Delhi and Mumbai - with colleagues and industry acquaintances. The annual NASSCOM conference in Mumbai was bigger than ever, and full of the customary bravado about growth of outsourcing and offshoring. 


I gave a speech as part of a panel on "non-linear business models."  The essence of my opinion/perspective was that we're entering a period that has the potential to equal that of the dot-com era in terms of innovation and value-creating business models.  And, I think there are better chances for sustainability of growth today than we saw in the 2000-era.


Why am I so optimistic? I see a confluence of events/trends that seem to be coming together at just the right time - if the recession is truly over.  


I guess I ought to explain, huh?  OK ... I'll post that logic thesis tomorrow.  


Tally ho.

For the Weary Travelers ... The Year in Twelve Posts

This from The Economist ...





THE YEAR IN 12 POSTS
It may not have been the worst year ever for business travellers, but 2009 had its unpalatable moments. These 12 episodes make us wonder whether we shouldn't just stay at home in 2010.


Read more:
http://news.economist.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eB6cS0bxhbJ0Mo0GJLC0Eh
 

Seeing Through the Cloud

Doesn't it seem that every dozen years or so, some "revolution" changes the way we use information?  The convergence of computing and communications services, the availability of "appliance"-like devices, the proliferation of online services ... these are just manifestations of the latest wave of capability.

In the 1960s (not that I am old enough to remember) there was the advent of monolithic mainframe computers. The 1970s was the era of the minicomputers.  The 1980s saw personal computers and the introduction of wide-spread communications services. And, the 1990s can generally be called the first era of true internet services.

So, what of the first decade in the 21st century?  What did 2000-2009 bring to us?

Well, the iPod (arguably one of the more significant game-changers of recent time) was a product of this era, as was salesforce.com and countless other enabling services. I tend to think of the past ten years as being more transitional than definitive, but then again weren't each of the decades in the information era merely a segue to the next?

The decade ahead is setting up to start out with an emphasis on things relating to "The Cloud."  I have no idea who coined that phrase, but it's been around for a few years now - at least among the smart folks developing network-enabled services.

The Cloud is the idea of computing on demand.  And, it's changing the possibilities for computing by giving individuals and businesses alike access to an array of powerful applications and services. All of these will be available "over the net."

In The Cloud, applications are accessible anywhere, anytime, and storage becomes, for all intents, infinite.

Enough about that - there are many better-informed sources of technican jargon about The Cloud than me.  What I can tell you is this: The Cloud is introducing material changes to the sourcing strategies of companies - small and large. 

Despite the predecessor "false starts" around "enterprise computing" and "utility computing" ... this Cloud thing has legs.  I am seeing CIO after CIO take very aggressive positions around the need for capital to build ones own computing and communications services. Intend, they are looking to the industry to show that the asset-light virtues of Cloud computing are real. 

While I don't know whether this will play out at the dominant theme of the 2010s, I can tell you that the new decade is starting with The Cloud as the top big idea.

The Third Leg: Component-oriented Sourcing

It's been a meandering journey, but we've arrived at the final dimension of today's IT Services and Outsourcing marketplace. This is the aspect of the industry for which I sense the greatest level of energy and activity among the CIO community and the service provider universe. I call it component-oriented sourcing.

• There continues to be a tempo of larger integration-oriented sourcing strategies coming to market by CIOs that are looking for holistic change of their operating models.
• We also see a moderating pace around wage-oriented sourcing. This was the rage over the past few years, but the runway of improvements is limited by virtue of the form of relationships conceived around the lower-cost delivery models.
• Things brings us to the current hotbed of sourcing - CIOs looking to leverage discrete solutions to achieve the benefits of consumption-based costing for commodity-like services.

Perhaps the task at hand is email services, or server administration.  Perhaps it's network - ubiquitous, mobile, secure connectivity.  And, what about storage?  Of course, there's also the poster child of cost/quality improvement targets:  desktop support.

Along comes the various tools to enable virtualization - of computing, communications, storage, and even some business applications - and CIOs look to reap the benefits through the IT Services industry.

Just as the promise of wage-based cost improvements gave rise to offshoring (and it's use as an avoidance mechanism for more holistic outsourcing), I sense that component-oriented sourcing is today's way to drive near-term cost improvements without the burden of a "traditional" outsourcing initiative.

What's different?  No transfer of staff when you're buying a standardized/industrialized service and little/no outlay of precious capital.

In my view, it's this third leg of the sourcing stool that has prompted some of the recent M&A activity and which is causing great concern among the wage-oriented providers in the industry.  Generally speaking, they don't have a dog in this fight.

Today's IT Services market is leaning decidedly towards component-oriented sourcing.  It's relatively quick to implement, discrete in scope, leveraging delivery models that have been "built for purpose", and bringing the promise of complete variability.  What's not to like?

Well ... history has proven that what a CIO buys today may not be what s/he needs in 3-4 years' time.  That's why so many of those wage-based contracts are dead-ends as the CIO tries to achieve broad transformation or even tap into component-oriented solutions. The wage-oriented providers can't sing those songs.

The recipe for winning as a provider in the emerging IT Services & Outsourcing market is to bring a transformational spectrum to the CIO - one that can deliver component-oriented benefits with confidence, can leverage lower-cost sources of labor when needed, and can step up to the broad transformation agenda that is surely a matter of time.

CIOs today are looking at the industry and seeing these three very different camps of eager providers.  Very few are positioned as a leader in all three.  

Source on.