Looking from the outside in

Southern California tech veteran Ian Clayton talked with me recently about his three decades of work in IT as well as his secrets to making a great personal presentation.

After starting at Ross Perot's EDS International not long after the On Wings of Eagles rescue mission in Iran, Ian went on to do consulting work with clients around the world like Caterpillar, American Express and Australia Telecomm. In the 1990's, he helped to bring the ITIL framework over from the UK as one of the cofounders of itSMF-USA.

More recently, he has been among the first to anticipate information systems as a service, even before the term cloud technology came into vogue. Ian's presentations are most often around a table of technology executives interested in a new way of looking at things. Which is what he provides them.

Here's Ian's recommendation for applying new perspective to delivering a remarkable presentation:

"Instinctively my idea of a best habit in making a presentation is being able to take an outside-in, you-based position. Speak to the problem or challenge and needs of your audience using their language. Start by making the leap of translating your own views into theirs, and connect with them right from the get-go. A habit I've seen that needs breaking is leading off with a description of the 'what' and the 'how' before explaining the 'why.'" Those are the presentations that seem to take longer, get less stakeholder buy-in and don't help the audience."

Read the full ten-question discussion on "Viewing IT service management from the outside in" in today's TechRepublic. Also watch for Ian's second book, Outside In Service Management, to be coming out this summer.

12 Questions with Sharon Taylor on ITIL V3

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which has become the best-practices standard in managing technology, has just come through a much-anticipated revision ("refresh") which effectively transforms it into a new kind of animal. I had the opportunity to talk with ITIL's key contributor Sharon Taylor about the impact of the new version and how it changes the best-practice landscape and the role it now plays in the business of technology. Here's a link to the interview in TechRepublic magazine. Feel free to digg, vote, forward...

ITIL In the USA

What a great presentation by Malcolm Fry yesterday at the Westin in Chicago -- put together the affable nature of Gromit's companion Wallace with the spontaneous contemplative vision of Yoda, and throw in a bit of John Cleese for good measure and there's Malcolm Fry.

He claims Jimmy Buffett "stole his life" (see photo), but he seems to have a pretty good life traveling around the world talking about configuration management databases and the best-practice guide called ITIL. Not a bad gig for a poor British kid who hails from a family of longshoremen and Romany gypsies.

Talking with Malcolm earlier this week, I was struck by how well-traveled and well-read he is and his ability to put his own not-entirely-occidental perspective on things. Outside the speaking tour he's on perpetually, his latest (anniversary) trip with his wife was to the jungle temples of Angkor Wot at Siem Reap in Cambodia, but you name anyplace in the world and he's likely to be able -- and glad to -- talk with you about it.

Malcolm is also quick to expand your list of reading requirements -- his latest recommendations being "The Devil in the White City" and "Civilization One" (about the "megalithic yard,") and anything by James Michener. He's also got his own book out recently which is a part of the current tour - Step-by-Step to Building a CMDB, (say-em-day-bay in Britspeak) which follows up a series of booklets he wrote on ITIL and a DVD series with the Help Desk Institute.

If you're in southern Wisconsin or Central California, Malcolm will be in the states for another briefing at the Milwaukee itSMF this week and then at the Hilton in San Francisco for a briefing next Wednesday. Drop me an e-mail if you'd like details.

BSM (IT For Business): The Next Big Thing

"Business Service Management" -- viewing IT processes purely as a business facilitator and not an independent function -- is on the cusp of IT-analyst Gartner's latest hype-cycle for operations management tools. It is making the critical transition from the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" to the "Trough of Disillusionment," (which sounds more like something from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress than typical IT-lingo). Computerworld chimes in with their own agreement that Kool-Aid style BSM is "the next big thing."

BSM is being followed over the expectations peak by the CMDB (database to track IT environments) which IT Week said yesterday is "set to double in the next year," and web services management. The CMDB is at the heart of BSM, so its catching up over the curve is essential to BSM's success and it has made quite a jump from last year's report, in which Gartner projected its productivity at ten years out. In Gartner's assessment, BSM now follows the spread of the IT Infrastructure Library, which provides the foundation of best practices necessary for BSM to work effectively.

Women's clothing manufacturer Coldwater Creek says it has saved more than $1.8 million and gained another million in profit using BSM to speed the opening of new locations, as well as another $700 thousand in licenses and software negotiations, which should help to assuage at least some of their disillusionment.