The Business Case for Cloud-based Communications

Automating your data center is the easiest way to free up your IT department's time to work on more strategic projects. Tune in to this webinar as Jeff Hart from M2 Technology discusses how automation can be the key to increase efficiency while reducing your IT costs.

The mega-trends of SaaS, mobile and Big Data are converging, generating a new wave of business opportunity for enterprises. The convergence demands a new kind of platform – one that connects and takes advantage of the explosion of endpoints and data caused by organizations each choosing a uniquely diverse set of best-of-breed applications to power their business. Ross Mason will discuss his vision for this new platform and demonstrate how MuleSoft’s solutions are making it a reality.

Questions to be discussed include:

How will SaaS and mobility impact my business?
Is SOA really dead?
Does my business need an API strategy? Where should we start?
Can the Anypoint platform help me secure a competitive advantage?

In this webinar, learn about new innovations in IT collaboration and how they can benefit your IT Service Management initiatives.

In this session, we’ll cover the techniques used to properly and consistently assess the financial and business benefits of a technology investment. We’ll review the tools used to build a financial business case and examine the strengths and weaknesses of metrics such as ROI, TCO, NPV, and Payback. We’ll look at the challenges of credibly estimating direct and indirect benefits, and outline a straight-forward process for estimating indirect benefits.

Most people in IT entered the profession due to their interest and proficiency in technology. Not yet many IT practitioners set out to be accountants or marketers – although we constantly send out messages that state the need for skills in these areas.

There are more and more examples of accountants (or people from an accountancy, financial and other backgrounds) working in IT and there is a real need for commercial and financial skills and experience in this area.

The changing role and position of technology, the growth of managed services and the emergence of SIAM (Service Integration and Management) are driving the need for a new set of capabilities and competencies in IT and the management of technology. Clearly this presents a number of challenges for IT organisations and professionals alike – many of whom do not see themselves as being ‘bean counters’ or accountants…

This session examines the following:

What are the new challenges for IT?
What skills are needed?
What roles and responsibilities are required?
How can ‘traditional’ IT people and enterprise IT organisations adapt to meet these challenges?
What does the IT industry and e.g. enterprise of the future look like?

One of the significant changes resulting from the current economic climate has been the level of external scrutiny applied to IT initiatives. CFOs are demanding comprehensive business cases that can both articulate the value that IT brings to a business and withstand vetting by financial analysts. This session will integrate traditional financial models with business value metrics in order to provide an understandable vehicle for obtaining approval for IT Initiatives. Learn how to quantify financial costs and benefits in order to bridge the gap between what a CIO wants and what a CFO needs to justify the IT investment.

In a rapidly changing business climate, the allocation of resources and budgets are closely tied to a CISO's ability to selectively target and manage information security risk. The problem, of course, is that many organizations have little control, understanding or management of risks due to the traditional, reactionary nature of information security spending. Depending on company culture, information security budgets are usually controlled by the wrong metrics, often driven by prior year spending, audit findings, or through reactionary senior management decisions that ignore the stark reality of the organizational situation. In this webinar, Integralis discusses how to prioritize risk through a metrics-driven risk management process that is aligned with business objectives. Using this approach, organizations can experience an effective budgeting exercise while enabling business leaders to understand and accept the appropriate level of risk tolerance for the business.

In today’s business environment, CIO’s are facing enormous pressure to drive value from their IT budgets and maximize investments to drive innovation.

Any ROI or cost benefit analysis requires well documented use cases that are not summarized in a single report, but rather a series of steps outlined to capture value. ROI or cost benefit analysis should be a process that is prescriptive and proactive – not an afterthought.

This session explores the following four common use cases that justify the IT Financial Management Implementation and shows attendees where to find value and revenue as well as where there is waste and hidden cost savings.

1. IT Portfolio Optimization and Cloud – show me the value
2. IT Financial Management for Application and Support Rationalization – show me the money
3. Data Center Consolidation and Transformation – show me the waste & the big bucks
4. Servers, Storage and Desktops Delivers Tangible Savings – show me the hidden cost of savings

The Fab Four in use cases are key measures of success that demonstrate the value to both IT and the organization. The session will provide attendees with the framework to establish these key measures for success in their organizations and gain insight into a better process for data collection, synthesis of the data, costing and the planning that is required.

In the average organization, finances are typically tracked by functional groupings or IT units, for example server or network costs. This view may be helpful to a CIO or the head of those units but provides little value to the business. It contributes to the view of IT as a “black hole” – money goes in but nothing comes out. This webinar looks at service-based Financial Management and the benefits of accounting and budgeting that can be tied back directly to business outcomes. This form of financial management enables the business to understand the costs and value of a particular service, say Inventory Management services in a retail chain. It also enables IT to have meaningful service reviews with the business, by transforming bits and bytes into dollars and “sense”.

Technology Business Management (TBM) provides a practical, applied discipline for technology leaders and their business partners to collaborate on business-aligned decisions. Developed by thoughtleading CIOs and CTOs from The Coca-Cola Company, Goldman Sachs, DIRECTV, Microsoft, Cisco, Xerox and more, TBM defines core disciplines and decision-making capabilities, such as cost transparency, demand-based planning, cost optimization, and portfolio rationalization. In this workshop, Todd Tucker, Research Director for the TBM Council, will share how to use the TBM Index™ to benchmark your organization, compare it against industry peers, and create a roadmap based on your current state and business goals.

Attendees will learn:
* How innovative technology leaders leverage Technology Business Management to improve value delivery
* How to interpret TBM Index results, including peer group comparisons, to shape your roadmap
* The operational cadence for TBM, including key reports for sustaining and communicating optimizations