By Emily Kay

A Virtual Laboratory for Supporting Business Strategy
To help CIOs support their organizations' business strategies, Deloitte & Touche LLP has created a development showcase lab environment in New York City that combines the firm's rapid-deployment approach and methodologies with CA's solutions.

This initiative, called Enterprise Business & Security Optimization (EBSO), demonstrates the use of CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) capability solutions. These include some of CA's most strategic technology solutions, such as CA Project & Portfolio Management, CA Application Performance Management, and CA Identity & Asset Management. Combined with Deloitt & Touche's industry leading Security & Privacy Services methodology, the EBSO initiative aims to help CIOs address complex business and compliance needs.

The lab offers comprehensive solutions by focusing on four key areas: packaged solutions, real-world use cases, third-party integration, and upgrade strategies, explains Deborah Golden, a Deloitte & Touche principal. In addition, the EBSO lab initiative helps configure, customize, prepare, transition and enhance software solutions.

Deloitte & Touche's rapid deployment method — which uses preconfigured, industry-specific solutions — can save CIOs months of development work, Golden adds. Also, EBSO's use cases let CIOs choose from a "playbook" of potential business scenarios. For example, a CIO could deploy integrated software to support compliance with several regulations at once, rather than implement a different solution for each regulation.

The EBSO approach includes third-party software and hardware working together to help CIOs leverage their existing investments to manage risk, integrate disparate business infrastructures, cut the cost of developing and deploying software to meet government and financial regulations, and align IT efforts with business goals. Later this year, Deloitte & Touche expects to demonstrate CA IT Asset & Financial Management and CA Incident & Problem Management solutions at the EBSO lab.

ITIL Update Focuses On Strategic Value
The IT Infrastructure Library, better known as ITIL®, isn't just for operations geeks anymore. ITIL Version 3, released this past spring, aims to help CIOs deliver strategic services and designs. "In the past, ITIL mostly focused on operations," says Robert Stroud, CA's IT service management and governance evangelist. "Now we're moving to what the strategic value of IT is — and how it's delivered."

Version 3 includes useful content from earlier releases of ITIL and an integrated, best-practices foundation for managing IT services. It offers "positive improvement" of ITIL's best practices, says Ed Holub, VP of IT operations research at Gartner Inc.

The five core books of ITIL — Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement — deliver a "cradle-to-grave" life-cycle approach to service management. They help CIOs deliver complete business-service processes — from determining strategy to providing ongoing improvements.

Version 3 also strengthens the integration of IT and business processes, which helps IT services "meet future demand with a solid strategy linking directly to business outcomes," says Sharon Taylor, president of consultants Apect Group. Because most companies need years to implement ITIL, experts suggest CIOs complete their original projects and incrementally add Version 3 components that make sense for their organizations.

Since its 1999 release, ITIL has become a de facto best practices framework. Nearly 1,900 of the Help Desk Institute's 7,500 members use ITIL-based processes, says Ron Muns, the institute's founder and CEO. In fact, Gartner predicts that in 2011, ITIL will be used by 30 percent of smaller companies and 60 percent of larger firms.

100 Days That Shook His World
New CIOs can jump-start their tenure by managing expectations, says Lewis Cardin, a senior analyst at Forrester Research and a former CIO himself, in his recent report, A New CIO's 100-Day Plan. Hit the ground with an IT plan and achieve "tangible, visible results," Cardin advises. At the same time, don't commit to long-term business, strategic and governance plans right away.

Cardin's report is one result of his consulting work with Maurice Chénier, an executive with one of Canada's Public Works and Government Services, one of the country's largest governmental departments. In 2003, when Chénier became the department's CIO, consultant Cardin knew the new CIO had to generate energy and validate his position immediately. "You don't get a second chance to make a first impression," Cardin says.

The two assembled a 100-day plan, and Chénier says he succeeded because "there were no big disappointments" along the way — not at the 100-day, six-month or full-year marks. In fact, Chénier recently became Public Works' director general for service management and delivery. That, in turn, leads consultant Cardin to add: "If it makes sense to change your role, then change it."