introducing the operations director
Post on 21-Oct-2014
341 views
DESCRIPTION
Part of a series exploring enterprise IT decision makers. This presentation explores: Who are they? What are they responsible for? Who should be talking to them? What do they want to talk about?TRANSCRIPT
Part of a series taking a closer look at enterprise IT
THE (IT) OPERATIONS DIRECTOR
SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE THE ONLY ONE MARKETERS WANT TO TALK TO IS THE CIO.
BUT THEREâS A WHOLE LOT MORE TO ENTERPRISE IT.
INTRODUCING THE (IT) OPERATIONS DIRECTORâŚ
CONTENTS
What else might I be
called?Who am I? What do I do?
Whatâs my typical background?
Who is my boss and who do I manage?
The world I live in
What might my objectives look like?A day in the Life of the Operations DirectorWhat do I think about people I work with?
Whoâs targeting me (and who should be)?
Learn to speak âOps Dirâ
WHAT ELSE MIGHT I BE CALLED?
Thereâs a lack of consistency in naming for this job function. But some key words do crop up repeatedly:
Operations DirectorHead of Service Delivery / Service Delivery DirectorGroup Operations Director (larger organisations)IT OperationsHead of IT InfrastructureHead of Technology Services
WHO AM I? WHAT DO I DO?
Iâm responsible for: ⢠All IT infrastructure (data centres, network,
desktop)⢠Relationships with outsourcers if we use their
Infrastructure Service.⢠I report to the CIO and look after the IT
âplumbingâ.⢠I may be the person that people take for granted.
To them, IT capability is just there like water when you turn on the tap.⢠I like automation and I was an early exponent of
outsourcing.
WHO AM I? WHAT DO I DO?
I typically:⢠Run operations and manage the IT infrastructure⢠Keep the âlights onâ 24/7, from desktops to mainframes⢠Manage the availability of âthe plumbingâ to levels >
99.95%⢠Ensure the infrastructure is relatively up to date and
maintainable⢠Manage 3rd parties that I am dependent upon e.g. IBM or HP
plus various other outsourcers.⢠Probably take responsibility for the sound running of the
Help Desk⢠Am responsible for hardware security⢠Do all this with a tiny number of people.
TYPICAL BACKGROUND
Background and characteristics include:⢠I probably came up through IT Ops (data centre,
network ops, desktop).⢠I might have been asked to take this âsidewaysâ
management move as part of a longer term development.
⢠I may play a more strategic role in businesses such as Retail, or those with large IT dependent sales forces (Life and Pensions), Banking, Manufacturing.
⢠I normally have a good feel for customer service issues.
WHO IS MY BOSS AND WHO DO I MANAGE?
IT Strategy and
ArchitectureBusiness
Transformation
Application Developmen
tOperations
Governance and Risk
CIO
Data Centre Manager
Network Manager
Desktop Manager
Help DeskTechnical Support
And sometimes Print, Security & Mobiles
THE WORLD I LIVE IN â DATA CENTRES
Mainframes / MIPS
ServersStorage
Network Infrastructure
Disaster Recovery
Almost staff-less
Remote Operations
24 x 7 useShifts
100% availability Capacity issues and planning
THE WORLD I LIVE IN â NETWORK OPERATIONS
WAN
Private Cloud
LANs
Firewalls
Network resilience
Cabling
BYOD
ACDsPBXs
Routers Big suppliers like BT / C&W
SLAs
SecurityAssets Management
THE WORLD I LIVE IN â DESKTOP
LANs
Firewalls
Desktop Virtualisation
Cabling
Technology refreshes SLAs
BYOD
Anti-virus
User Experience
Assets Management
Security
WHAT MIGHT MY OBJECTIVES LOOK LIKE?
My objectives will typically include:⢠99.99% availability & maintain good app response times⢠Automation project delivery (data centre, network ops,
desktop)⢠BYOD project implementation (others design it, I
implement it and support it)⢠Meeting internal customer satisfaction ratings (in core
business units e.g. stores)⢠Reduce costs âby 10%â⢠Meeting Help Desk internal SLAs⢠Management of 3rd party SLAs
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE IT OPS DIRECTOR (IN A RETAILER)
Vendor Pitch â network automation
Interview â BYOD Team Leader
Planning Meeting â Roll-out of EPoS* system Planning Meeting â 2014 store opening
plansCapacity planning meeting
Monthly review with infrastructure supplier
Budget review
Review with Business Unit Heads (SLAs)
Security breach - reviewSLA review â with 3rd party outsourcer
* Electronic Point of Sale â stuff that allows customers to make a payment.
WHAT DO I THINK ABOUT PEOPLE I WORK WITH?
CIO â âTakes me for granted. Does not appreciate the complexityâ
Apps Director â âseems to forget how reliable the hardware isâŚâ
CTO â âmy closest ally / easy life as never has to implement anythingâStrategy/Transformation Director â ânever met him/herâŚâ
Compliance / Security â âthey design impractical policies to cover their backsâŚâ
BUT WHAT DO THEY THINK ABOUT ME?
âDoes what I tell them to âŚ.. eventually! Can be bound by process.â (CTO)
âJumps to conclusions. Maybe not the sharpest tool in the boxâ. (Apps Director)
âSolidâ (CIO)
âLeaky. Never follows what I specify 100%â (Compliance / Security)
WHOâS TARGETING ME? (OR MAYBE SHOULD BE)
Suppliers of all kinds of:Enterprise IT hardware, e.g. blades, servers etc.Connectivity and infrastructure: Fixed Line, Unify, PBX, LAN, Managed Wan etc.Systems softwareManaged infrastructure Managed ServicesSoftware tools to manage/automate infrastructure
GLOSSARY:LEARN TO SPEAK OPS DIR
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠BYOD â âBring Your Own Deviceâ, also known as âConsumerisation of ITâ. This is the phenomenon of people increasingly using their own private devices for work, and their expectations of service and usability rising accordingly. This is a major security and organisational headache for IT in general, especially Ops. Many still âjust say Noâ.
⢠Data Centre â where all the core mainframes and large servers are hosted in a secure environment, air conditioned, protected, where ideally nothing can fail. Usually involves mainframes, servers, storage and maybe some network infrastructure. Usually in remote/inexpensive buildings, run by a small number of staff.
⢠Mainframe â kind of like a supercomputer; one that will support thousands of users all running off a range of different core systems, like banking systems, retail systems, distribution systems. Dominated by IBM (the z series). This is where most big organisationsâ core databases are.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠Mainframe â kind of like a supercomputer; one that will support thousands of users all running off a range of different core systems, like banking systems, retail systems, distribution systems. Dominated by IBM (the z series). This is where most big organisationsâ core databases are.
⢠Firewall - a firewall can either be software-based or hardware-based and is used to help keep a network secure. Its primary objective is to control the incoming and outgoing network traffic by analysing the data packets and determining whether it should be allowed through or not, based on a predetermined rule set.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠MIPS â (Millions of instructions per second) This is a way of measuring the power of a mainframe, so if someone says we have a datacentre with 200 MIPS it gives you a sense of the processing power and the user base they may be able to store. Basically itâs a way of quantifying the processing capacity at your disposal in your datacentres. E.g. âWeâve got 200 MIPS, and weâre likely to need another 50 MIPS to take us through some growth, accommodate an acquisitionâŚâ
⢠Storage â simply means disk space. Storage farms, as they tend to be known are where all the databases are housed which all the core systems are run off, typically housed within a mainframe. When talking about capacity theyâre likely to mention storage in terms of number terabytes and gigabytes they have available.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠Disaster Recovery â Have to have plans for all aspects of IT infrastructure, in the event of a catastrophic failure e.g. plane crash into datacentre. Need to think about how a user goes through a network to core systems and mainframes if this happens. There are nightly processes to take copies off site to secure environments, so you could recover and reconnect your network as quickly as possible. In some cases, this doesnât just mean systems â it can include emergency office space too, and other facilities. But for Ops IT, itâs normally referring to the datacentre scenario â in terms of relationships with outsourcers, itâs almost like paying an insurance fee.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠Remote operation â this is really important. It means being able to remotely fix things on network to drive all the operational aspects of a data centre. For the Ops Director this can mean driving down staff. It can involve a lot of automation but not exclusively so.
⢠On a network there can be hundreds and thousands of devices that tell you thereâs issues on the network before they manifest themselves to users. This means that by the time the users notice itâs getting a little bit slow â youâve already got your supplier working on it.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠Capacity Planning â as an Ops Director I have capacity all the way from LANs, Local Servers, on the Network (traffic), and through to datacentres. I have to plan this capacity â i.e. what I need versus what Iâve got and what I need to budget. Ops Directors can have high availability targets (e.g. 99.5%) so this is a big priority. Availability will start to really suffer if I have too much traffic on the network â and this tends to manifest itself in problems downstream.
⢠Network Automation â This basically means having devices on the network all communicating electronically with the network centre or helpdesk, making me aware of problems (e.g. lines failing or degrading, routers going out etc.) The automation part is how you are told about this and in many cases the solution of the problem too.
⢠Desktop Virtualisation â easiest described with an example: ⢠If you have a few thousand people across some call centres all
using PC-based technologies, each machine has therefore got an operating system, lots of utility programmes and loads of applications.
⢠As IT Ops, I have to manage and maintain all those 1000 users. ⢠If I virtualise the desktop thereâs no change from the userâs point
of view, but all that software now runs on the server, not their PC.
⢠That means I can now update just one or two things rather than thousands. All Iâve got sitting on the âclientâ ( their individual PC or workstation) is some software which allows me to redirect everything to the server.
⢠A thin client = a client that is just running something like this software on each PC. So sometimes people use âthin clientâ to mean desktop virtualisation.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠Middleware â a piece of technology that allows me to develop applications. It sits in front of the mainframes (remember these could be 30 yrs old, and no-one wants to touch them. Sometimes they havenât got the skills to maintain them anymore so you stick in a modern middleware platform).
⢠You can build rules within that middleware layer: for example, one that says get me a full customer record and bring it all together at the front end.
⢠Itâs a way of making some rules for standard activity on core systems, but with a technology thatâs modern and flexible and shields you from the potentially expensive nightmares that are your core systems.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠Technology Re-Fresh â for example:⢠You have Windows NT 4 and itâs going out of support so you have to
migrate all the applications that are sitting on an NT platform over onto something else.
⢠Windows XP is also going out of service, so you can imagine if youâre a banker whoâs got a huge number of applications on these platforms it can be disruptive, expensive and risky to migrate them all across.
⢠Large organisations face many cycles of these disruptive technology refreshes.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠SLAs â Service Level Agreements between the organisation and its suppliers. Often based on core demands from the business (internal customers). Based on what levels of urgency are acceptable, (say for a user or multiple users not being able to work for a certain amount of time) and what the typical problems are that can cause inability to work, lost sales, or cause other business-critical issues.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
⢠ACD â Service Level Agreements between the organisation and its suppliers. Often based on core demands from the business (internal customers). Based on what levels of urgency are acceptable, (say for a user or multiple users not being able to work for a certain amount of time) and what the typical problems are that can cause inability to work, lost sales, or cause other business-critical issues.
GLOSSARY: LEARN TO SPEAK âOPS DIRâ
WHO ARE WE AND WHY DO WE CARE?
ABOUT THE MARKETING PRACTICE
With over 90 people and 10 yearsâ growth we are 100% B2B-focused and one of the UKâs top 10 B2B agencies
We integrate all the skills you need under one roof to plan and manage end-to-end programmes across EMEA (data, inside sales, creative, content, digital âŚ)
And we focus on working with a few select clients to deliver results and prove ROI
We live and breathe enterprise demand generation
TO TAKE A ONE-MINUTE TOUR OF THE MARKETING PRACTICE, VISIT:www.themarketingpractice.com/the-agency