Here at Salem, one of the biggest issues we find with SharePoint client strategy is the lack of clarity regarding the value of SharePoint enterprise services. We spell this out when we consult using the Salem Process with our clients. Imagine a partner simply asking "what would you like ?" and the a client simply provides an uninformed answer without actually understanding what is possible. It is then very easy for a partner to develop a custom solution without ever informing the client that actually this service already exists, often fully formed, within the SharePoint services - at an enterprise level. For many clients they simply do not understand the value of enterprise services until they are demonstrated from a real business-value perspective.
In simple terms, once an enterprise license is purchased, a range of exciting services suddenly become available within SharePoint that offer a huge range of new possibilities. Because many CIO's do not have a clearly-defined long-term SharePoint strategy, so they cannot inform their business audiences of the potential roadmap and potential solutions available and therefore excite the audience about SharePoint potential. Therefore a rather reactive situation occurs without relevant budget in place. A business division asks for a business service and the question is then pitched back to the internal SharePoint administrator/developer/architect - can we achieve this and how, and when? The next thing you know, either a partner is developing a custom solution with little view of the requirements of other business divisions or something is cobbled together that 'may suffice for now'. And things progress slowly and awkwardly and the business audience begins to think that everything in SharePoint land must be like this. No it isn't!
Very frequently business audiences will discuss requirements for management reporting, business intelligence, dashboards, scorecards, workflows, electronic forms and the 'electronicizing' of laborous paper-based processes. yet they are never shown what SharePoint can easily achieve with an enterprise license in place. Then we find quite extraordinary IT-driven conversations regarding the cost of enterprise licensing and how it doesn't make sense without ever working out that if one was to match the enterpise services of SharePoint through bespoke development the costs would be astronomical.
Microsoft have spent years developing the enterprise features and services of SharePoint with their leading international development teams - how could this possibly be matched by a single developer contractor - easy, it can't. What is really happening is often that an IT division itself is not aware of the enterprise services an the business value they bring. Therefore, the business audiences remain uninformed. Consequently it is absolutely essential that any client has a clearly-articulated description of the value of SharePoint enterprise services at the very start.
At Salem we absolutely understand the value of SharePoint as a development platform and we have stressed this in other articles. But we have also seen a number of custom solutions put in place that were clearly developed to work around enterpise licensing costs and are all the more inferior as a result. Short-cuts always show themselves in the long run and there is a reason why enterprise SharePoint services offer such great value for the business audiences.
If SharePoint offers a business audience a wide range of superb, richly featured, integrated SharePoint services then they key is to understand their value at the start, plan them into a sequenced business service plan and justify the cost as a longer term activity rather than simply stating - 'we will deal with that later'. Budget for enterpise licensing for SharePoint as part of the overall strategy and then harness and sweat the SharePoint assets one has purchased to demonstrate how much a business can truly achieve with the right tools.
A good workman should never blame his tools - but without enterprise services, the ambitious workman may well be right !
Thursday 2 June 2011
The SharePoint Cloud Strategy Dilemma
Whether you may like it or not, the cloud, in all its forms, is here to stay. Internet based services, accessed via a browser etc bring a huge range of technical, administrative, cost and business advantages. That is not to say that on-premise technologies are not relevant or necessary due to current laws, governance and Government/industry policies. But the co-existence of both cloud and on-premise services is certainly the pattern for the coming years.
At Salem we find it exciting how many clients (both large and small) are now positively looking at cloud-based services as part of their over-arching strategy and also how many business stakeholders are bi-passing IT to harness cloud services directly. Let us not forget that many business units and departments have their own budgets independent of IT and how many can adopt a business service in the cloud without any form of IT input. Now clearly this can lead to cloud sprawl and disconnected services driven by disparate business audiences. Therefore from an IT perspective it is now very wise and timely to consider developing an off-premise strategy that coordinates the fast pace of business change.
It is often cited that IT departments are too slow to react to ever-changing business practices or evolution. For example, a business unit wishes to share information with an external marketing agency, oh and they need to do it by next week. IT needs to have a cloud strategy to facilitate almost on request. If they do not, the business is likely to bi-pass IT and go straight to a service provider for cloud delivery. We have seen this very often as a scenario. We have also seen the scenario where IT uses 'security' as the method by which business adoption of the cloud, is restricted or prevented - whilst IT 'catches up'. This is no more than an excuse in most cases and simply pushes the business audience further away. It is no surpise therefore that business divisions simply buy a cloud-based service when and if they can as it frees them from the slow process of IT department (often frighteningly-slow) service facilitation.
We could even go as far as reminding IT audiences that, generally, they exist primarly to service business audiences, goals, targets, drivers and business ambitions - and do not exist for their own sake. Sadly this is not fully understood in some organisations where IT has matured into a practice that simply appears to exist for its own sake and has created a 'policy machine' around itself as a protective shell (change management and security being often cited as two common examples). This is now completely at odds with the dynamics of cloud-based services. If IT cannot cater to business requirements, the business may consider that it can do without internal IT altogether - we have already seen this stated in some very large organisations.
So cloud-based services free up a typical business division from the drawn out processes that traditional IT organisations have created. Business users are quickly discovering that service administration overheads are low, licensing is relatively cheap, costs are low, services are up and running within hours or days and that the services do what they say on the tin - they simply work. This is why cloud is being seen within business communities as they way to go.
Let us also not forget that the typical business user is surrounded by cloud-based services at home. They use Facebook as a part of daily life. Linked-in is now a necessarry business tool. They are accessing web based email and have been doing so often without any form of issue for more than a decade without suffering down-time. A typical business user does not fear losing data in the cloud and probably has cloud-hosted emails dating back years. Cloud upgrades are fully understood as a necessary evil (think how Facebook changes it's user interface periodically) but then again a business user does not need to worry about technology updatesc - they simply happen when they happen.
So back to SharePoint. For organisations now moving to SharePoint there are some very compelling reasons why cloud based SharePoint services are the way to go, particularly for collaboration with external audiences. From a cost perspective seat license costs make perfect sense, the services simply work and a business user feels emancipated from laborious IT processes. Better an It department identifies a cloud strategy than simply ignoring it. Tie SharePoint in with other Microsoft cloud service such as Lync, Office online and Outlook and it becomes difficult for a business customer to understand why one would wish to go any other route. They can sign up and within minutes the service is there, ready to go. When registering for Office 365 beta, we found we were up and running with a range of integrated services within 5 minutes. No IT department can beat that from a standing start!
However we know that cloud services for internal audiences is not always the number one choice for a variety of reasons. Unless one is considering a private cloud solution then the public services can feel restrictive due to a lack of support for developed custom services. However what we find interesting is that clients actually rather like and accept that public cloud service features are presented a certain (fixed?) way and in many ways adopt far faster due to the initial immediate recognition that this service simply works 'as it is'. In other words many business clients will trade off customisation for fast service feature-rich delivery.
With the advent of Office365 replacing BPOS, now is definitely the time to consider a cloud strategy and excite your business audiences with the prospect not only of on-demand business services, delivered almost instantly, but services that can be accessed on the move easily and services that fit in with the modern lifestyle of social-led services. A business user wants to feel inspired by the company they choose to work for and the latest technologies accessible quickly and efficiently is definitely one way to achieve that feeling.
SharePoint in the cloud - we say, bring it on !
At Salem we find it exciting how many clients (both large and small) are now positively looking at cloud-based services as part of their over-arching strategy and also how many business stakeholders are bi-passing IT to harness cloud services directly. Let us not forget that many business units and departments have their own budgets independent of IT and how many can adopt a business service in the cloud without any form of IT input. Now clearly this can lead to cloud sprawl and disconnected services driven by disparate business audiences. Therefore from an IT perspective it is now very wise and timely to consider developing an off-premise strategy that coordinates the fast pace of business change.
It is often cited that IT departments are too slow to react to ever-changing business practices or evolution. For example, a business unit wishes to share information with an external marketing agency, oh and they need to do it by next week. IT needs to have a cloud strategy to facilitate almost on request. If they do not, the business is likely to bi-pass IT and go straight to a service provider for cloud delivery. We have seen this very often as a scenario. We have also seen the scenario where IT uses 'security' as the method by which business adoption of the cloud, is restricted or prevented - whilst IT 'catches up'. This is no more than an excuse in most cases and simply pushes the business audience further away. It is no surpise therefore that business divisions simply buy a cloud-based service when and if they can as it frees them from the slow process of IT department (often frighteningly-slow) service facilitation.
We could even go as far as reminding IT audiences that, generally, they exist primarly to service business audiences, goals, targets, drivers and business ambitions - and do not exist for their own sake. Sadly this is not fully understood in some organisations where IT has matured into a practice that simply appears to exist for its own sake and has created a 'policy machine' around itself as a protective shell (change management and security being often cited as two common examples). This is now completely at odds with the dynamics of cloud-based services. If IT cannot cater to business requirements, the business may consider that it can do without internal IT altogether - we have already seen this stated in some very large organisations.
So cloud-based services free up a typical business division from the drawn out processes that traditional IT organisations have created. Business users are quickly discovering that service administration overheads are low, licensing is relatively cheap, costs are low, services are up and running within hours or days and that the services do what they say on the tin - they simply work. This is why cloud is being seen within business communities as they way to go.
Let us also not forget that the typical business user is surrounded by cloud-based services at home. They use Facebook as a part of daily life. Linked-in is now a necessarry business tool. They are accessing web based email and have been doing so often without any form of issue for more than a decade without suffering down-time. A typical business user does not fear losing data in the cloud and probably has cloud-hosted emails dating back years. Cloud upgrades are fully understood as a necessary evil (think how Facebook changes it's user interface periodically) but then again a business user does not need to worry about technology updatesc - they simply happen when they happen.
So back to SharePoint. For organisations now moving to SharePoint there are some very compelling reasons why cloud based SharePoint services are the way to go, particularly for collaboration with external audiences. From a cost perspective seat license costs make perfect sense, the services simply work and a business user feels emancipated from laborious IT processes. Better an It department identifies a cloud strategy than simply ignoring it. Tie SharePoint in with other Microsoft cloud service such as Lync, Office online and Outlook and it becomes difficult for a business customer to understand why one would wish to go any other route. They can sign up and within minutes the service is there, ready to go. When registering for Office 365 beta, we found we were up and running with a range of integrated services within 5 minutes. No IT department can beat that from a standing start!
However we know that cloud services for internal audiences is not always the number one choice for a variety of reasons. Unless one is considering a private cloud solution then the public services can feel restrictive due to a lack of support for developed custom services. However what we find interesting is that clients actually rather like and accept that public cloud service features are presented a certain (fixed?) way and in many ways adopt far faster due to the initial immediate recognition that this service simply works 'as it is'. In other words many business clients will trade off customisation for fast service feature-rich delivery.
With the advent of Office365 replacing BPOS, now is definitely the time to consider a cloud strategy and excite your business audiences with the prospect not only of on-demand business services, delivered almost instantly, but services that can be accessed on the move easily and services that fit in with the modern lifestyle of social-led services. A business user wants to feel inspired by the company they choose to work for and the latest technologies accessible quickly and efficiently is definitely one way to achieve that feeling.
SharePoint in the cloud - we say, bring it on !
Budgeting for SharePoint
At Salem we fret about why so many clients have no idea how to budget for SharePoint and in particular why so many aspects of a SharePoint programme budget are missed or left on the table. Clearly there is a very basic view that all a client needs to do is budget for the platform and architecture and everything else will fall into place. At Salem we witness a number of projects (fewer programmes) where the budget really isn't satisfactory and money runs out due to bad planning too early in the cycle. That is not to say a great deal of budget is required, but more about correct forecasting of potential costs from the start.
Of course there are many variables such as whether a solution is on-premise or off-premise, whether the client is looking for a simple single solution or whether there is a long term programme strategy, whether there are sufficient skilled resources in house and the level of licensing. If a client can anticipate potential costs and expenditure up-front and plan accordingly then the process becomes a great deal easier.
There are other issues worth considering. The first is that some partners do not like committing to 'cost guides' and refer purely to T&M (Time and Materials) which means a typical CIO has no idea how much a solution will actually cost until once all the requirements have become clear. This is extremely difficult to budget for, particularly in public sector organisations who typically work on annual fixed budgets, set well in advance. The second is that a business solution is very often offered to the client as a bespoke, custom or developed solution when there are increasing numbers of commoditized SharePoint business solutions on the market that often fulfill 80% of what a client requires without any real development at all. Also bear in mind that for some more traditional engineering-focused partners, offering cloud solutions doesn't (in their mind) perpetuate their established income route.
What is important to recognise for all clients is a value proposition in line with budgeting. For example a typical corporate intranet (forget the term 'digital workplace' as it lacks focus and definition) has certain core elements that are pretty standard. Therefore it is feasible to offer ball-park prfojections for the cost of an intranet based purely on experience. However for the client, it is very important to recognise that most partners will add in a margin to ensure they are covered against scope creep (which often happens) and unknown requirements early in the cycle, and this should be factored into a budget proposal. Ultimately, however, one cannot compare, say, the cost of a traditional html-driven website and a SharePoint intranet as one is not comparing like with like.
Finally we are yet to see any organisation truly budget for SharePoint adoption or training and frequently costs of this are dramatically under-estimated both in terms of expenditure and in applied costs via impact on business-time. It is essential to plan training costs up front and ensure they are budgeted for.
The following is a quick tick-list of elements of any SharePoint solution that should be considered in the budget planning cycle:
Of course there are many variables such as whether a solution is on-premise or off-premise, whether the client is looking for a simple single solution or whether there is a long term programme strategy, whether there are sufficient skilled resources in house and the level of licensing. If a client can anticipate potential costs and expenditure up-front and plan accordingly then the process becomes a great deal easier.
There are other issues worth considering. The first is that some partners do not like committing to 'cost guides' and refer purely to T&M (Time and Materials) which means a typical CIO has no idea how much a solution will actually cost until once all the requirements have become clear. This is extremely difficult to budget for, particularly in public sector organisations who typically work on annual fixed budgets, set well in advance. The second is that a business solution is very often offered to the client as a bespoke, custom or developed solution when there are increasing numbers of commoditized SharePoint business solutions on the market that often fulfill 80% of what a client requires without any real development at all. Also bear in mind that for some more traditional engineering-focused partners, offering cloud solutions doesn't (in their mind) perpetuate their established income route.
What is important to recognise for all clients is a value proposition in line with budgeting. For example a typical corporate intranet (forget the term 'digital workplace' as it lacks focus and definition) has certain core elements that are pretty standard. Therefore it is feasible to offer ball-park prfojections for the cost of an intranet based purely on experience. However for the client, it is very important to recognise that most partners will add in a margin to ensure they are covered against scope creep (which often happens) and unknown requirements early in the cycle, and this should be factored into a budget proposal. Ultimately, however, one cannot compare, say, the cost of a traditional html-driven website and a SharePoint intranet as one is not comparing like with like.
Finally we are yet to see any organisation truly budget for SharePoint adoption or training and frequently costs of this are dramatically under-estimated both in terms of expenditure and in applied costs via impact on business-time. It is essential to plan training costs up front and ensure they are budgeted for.
The following is a quick tick-list of elements of any SharePoint solution that should be considered in the budget planning cycle:
- Strategy - without a business aligned strategy for SharePoint, the plan may fail. Budget to put an effective SharePoint strategy in place with consultation costs for the required parties
- Infrastructure - the actual cost of hardware as well as installation, configuration, maintenance and support. In situ support vendors may increase their support fees due to the introduction of a new platform
- Cloud - the cost of cloud license services and administration and support costs as well as configuration
- Licensing - Don't forget to cosndier your current Microsoft license agreement, how many server cals and end user cals you need, whether you will need enterprise licensing and how many e-cals, and licensing for internet services
- User interface design - depending on the level of branding, there may be a requirement to budget specifically for detailed user design using a specialist desigh agency via a partner. Few partners have large in-house design teams. Also add in the cost of user experience analysis
- Cost of data migration - whether it is bespoke or migration tools that are required, or partner migration services and consultation data migration and current data analysis and cleansing costs should be considered and factored in
- Reduction through integration - if you aim to integrate into SharePoint, the cost of closing down other services can sometimes be substantial so take this into account. You may also have to support parallel environments for some time
- Partner consultation - SharePoint requires expertise and is not something that should be treated lightly. You may require the services of one or more expert SharePoint partners as well as sklills in supporting technologies. If you do not have this expertise in-house you may need temporary contractors and consultants as well as partner skills
- Delivery - you must factor for in-house cross skilling during the delivery phases and a range of internal support costs. You will also need to budget for partner services during delivery, cost the impact on business time and any cosst for UAT and testing as well as quality assurance.
- Role recruitment - if you need to recruit skills then there are higher costs for contractors or new fulltime staff and you may need to budget for agency fees and commission.
- Adoption - business and IT adoption of any new technology impacts business time and requires an overarching strategy. You should factor in these costs and do not ignore them or down play them.
- Training - training is often a mix of blended media that all costs money and time to prepare and deliver. Training requires expertise to deliver effectively using a range of media and these elements should be budgeted for.
- Communication - without a communication plan, your business audiences will be in the dark. You need to cost out the elements that will produce and deliver and effective communication plan.
- Content creation - almost always missed but when delivering a new SharePoint business services it is very plausible that fresh new content will need to be prepared and written. Who will be doing this, how long will it take and how much needs to be created - at what cost?
- Support - how much will you budget to cross-skill and retrain internal staff or even recruit new support skills. Perhaps your maintenance contracts will need to be re-scoped and you may potentially need to budget for a new support contract with your specialist SharePoint partner(s)
- Administration - consider the day to day costs of running your SharePoint server farms at both the front and back ends. Do you need administration software such as Axceler Control-Point too. Consider whether Cloud services make more sense to cut down on administration costs.
- Development - development is cheaper than enterprise licensing? No we suggest this is false economy! There are a wide range of enterprise services for SharePoint, which, out of the box, may provide fast feature rich business services that are far mor cost effective than individual developed bespoke solutions. Commoditised SharePoint services can bring the cost down from many excellent 3rd parties but you must remember that any developed solution must be maintained, supported, documented and amended, particualrly for platform upgrades. In other words there is a hidden cost of development that is frequently not budgeted for. Developers will need to be paid and what happens when they leave?
- Maintenance contracts - as suggested elsewhere in this list, maintenance costs should be considered from the outset at the strategy and planning stage
- Business impact - typically an IT department will forget or avoid placing a cost on the impact to business time in terms of UAT, going-live, a temporary drop in performance, training and adoption activities, new support processes etc. It is far better to forecast this up front.
- Process redevelopment - changing processes costs time and money irrespective of whether technology is easy to use. Business change should have a notional cost set against it per process change.
- Removal of other services - decommissioning costs money and you may be tied into legacy support contracts for longer than you had planned where co-existence remains a requirement
- Agile business services - consider how are you budgeting for the growth of ad hoc SharePoint services and the personnel who will be delivering them.
- Annual cycle - take on a programmatic plan for SharePoint, forecast the business service release-cycle annually and budget in advance. Even better look at a multiple year model and budget up front for multiple years
- Scaling - budget for growth and success. How much will you need to set aside for SAN storage growth and server capacity, and what tools are you going to use to measure the growth and how will you facilitate more space as it becomes required ? Also consider that you may move from one server farm to multiple server farms in international and large organisations as services bed in. This should be planned for early in the budgeting cycle.
- Integration with other technologies - you should consider how much it may cost to interface co-existing systems such as SAP or PeopleSoft and the ongoing costs of this process.
The Salem Process for the Cloud
One of the key features of The Salem Process is its agnostic nature of platform. Whether on-premise or off-premise, whether private cloud or Office 365, The Salem Process matches any business aspiration. The modularity supports a blended environment perfectly so core services can be retained in-house of necessary whilst Cloud services from Microsoft can be easily slotted in alongside to enhance and complement an existing solution, whilst still retaining ta very logical business framework.
Here at Salem we are very excited about the opportunities the cloud affords our partners and clients and we have been working steadily with the beta of Office365 to explore how the services can be best used. We look forward to the full commercial release coming shortly.
Here at Salem we are very excited about the opportunities the cloud affords our partners and clients and we have been working steadily with the beta of Office365 to explore how the services can be best used. We look forward to the full commercial release coming shortly.
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