Analysing technology portfolio of an IT consulting company

Maintaining a technological portfolio of an IT company a similarly complex task as extending the portfolio with a new technology : Extending the technologycal portfolio.

Let we assume that we assume that a company has got the following technological portfolio: {t1,t2, .. tN}. Each technology in the portfolio has got a a certain cost to maintain and the maintaining the whole technological portfolio has got a cost as well. The cost of a certain technology depends on many factors, like the complexity of the technology, the available experts, how fast the technology is changing and so on. Cost of the whole technological portfolio depends on the cost of the individual technologies and the synergy effects of the different ones. As an example, maintaining a windows operation team and a .NET application operation team in a company has got a lot of common attributes, both due to the similar activities and due to the similar activity of operations. Let we assume that maintaining the technologies one by one would cost: {C1(t1), C2(t2), .. CN(tN)} and let we assume that cost of maintaining all of the technologies together would cost: Call (t1, t2, ... tN). A good technological portfolio has got the following characteristic:

ΣiCi(ti) > Call (t1, t2, ... tN) 

In other words maintaining the whole technological portfolio cost less than maintaining each of the elements one by one due to the synergy effects.

From the other perspective each technology brings some kind of a benefit, the most simple one that each technology or technological knowledge can be sold for a certain price. In this sense we can define benefit for each technology and a benefit for the whole technological portfolio. Let we assume that if we have the technologies one by one, the would bring the following benefits: {B1(t1), B2(t2)...BN(tN)} and let we assume that providing the whole technological portfolio together brings the following benefit: Ball(t1, t2, ... tN). A good technological portfolio has got the following characteristic: 

ΣiBi(ti) < Ball(t1, t2, ... tN)

In other words selling the whole technological portfolio together worth more than selling just the pieces one by one, As an example offering complex services ranging from SQL development via maintenance, operations and project management can be usually offered higher than offering these services only separately. 

Let we define the rentability of our technological portfolio as 

R(t1, t2, .. tN) = Ball (t1, t2, .. tN) / Call (t1, t2, ... tN)

Based on these definitions, there is a possibility to analyse out technological portfolio:
- at a rentable technological portfolio : R(t1, t2, .. tN) > 1
- at a nonprofitable technological portfolio : R(t1, t2, .. tN) < 1
- at introducing a new tN+1 technology in the portfolio, we make the optimal decision if : 
   R(t1, t2, .. tN) < R(t1, t2, .. tN, tN+1)
- Similarly by dropping out or outsourcing a technology, for example t1 from our technological portfolio we must be sure that :
   R(t1, t2, .. tN) < R(t2, .. tN)

Let we define benefits of alternative technological portfolios, that are manifested as we miss one technology from the portfolio, like if we skip only the t1 technology from the portfolio, we would get the following benefit function: 

Rt1 = R(t2, ... tN) 

- A ti technology is the strongest in the technological portfolio if missing the technology from the portfolio would cause the most loss in rentability : max ti (Rti)

- Similarly a ti technology is the weakest in the technological portfolio if missing the technology from the portfolio would cause the less loss in rentability: min ti (Rti) 

Extending technology portfolio of an IT consulting company

Working with small or medium IT consulting companies, it is always a question how exactly the technological service portfolio look like. What should be the major and what are the side-technologies that are covered. The situation is especially interesting as the whole IT world is changing each year, new technologies are emerging and others are getting old fashioned. 

The question that I try to analyse how is possible to make a decision about extending the current technological portfolio with a new one. For that question we investigate the market situation with the help of four different dimensions:

a. Cost of a technology: Every technology has got a cost. On the one hand, it depends on the complexity of the technology itself. The more complex it is, the more difficult to build up the necessary knowledge for that or more expensive to get the necessarily qualified expert for the given field. On the other hand, some technology are changing pretty fast, that means that simply keeping up with the everyday changes is itself a huge effort. 

b. Risk of a technology: The second big dimension is the risk of a given technology. It depends among the other on the technological life cycle. As an example if the technology is at the beginning phase in research and development, or it is practically used only by early adopters than the risk factor is pretty huge. On the other hand, general market situation should be taken into a consideration as well, like factors about competition and competitors or factors like general entry or exit strategy of the market.

c. Benefit of a technology: Certainly, the most important question, is a technology good for anything, does it provide value directly or indirectly for an end-user, is it possible to sell at all, or is it perhaps only a fashion trend or technological bubble.  

d. Combination of technologies: Last but not least, a new technology should not be considered only alone, it is usually an extension of the existing portfolio. As a consequence, it is an important question if there are any possible synergy between the new choice and the existing portfolio, either from a pure technological or from a rather market oriented point of view. 

The four big dimensions are summarized on the following picture.

Figure 1. Dimensions of a technology.

Based on the dimension there is a possibility to analyse certain technological choices or typical situations.

1. Successful portfolio extension: A typical characteristic of a successfully new technology can be seen on Figure 2. It must be good integrated with exiting technological knowledge,introducing the new technology should be easy and it should bring strong benefits. As an example, let we consider a company who mainly deals with windows server operation, choosing Skype4Business to extend the portfolio can be such a good extension: It can be good integrated both with the existing technological knowledge and with the typical customers as well, in this sense there are a lot of synergy effect on the market and the introducing cost is low as well. As it is a standard Microsoft product, the general risk factor is not too high; how much csutomer benefit does it exactly bring is certainly an open question.

Figure 2. Successful portfolio extension

2. Wrong portfolio extension: On figure 3 there is a typical example of a wrong portfolio extension. let we assume for instance that we have an SAP consulting company, that wants to offer Skype4Business for the customers. Well, firstly SAP is a totally different technological world, in this sense there will not be too many synergy effect, neither in existing knowledge nor on the market. It is again a question how much benefit Skype4Business offers for a customer.

Figure 3. Wrong portfolio extension

3. New strategical service: Figure 4 demonstrates a typical extension situation for introducing a brand new technology in the portfolio. It has got a huge cost and risk factor, the possibility to integrate with the existing portfolio is not so big, however hopefully it brings a lot of benefit as well. As an example, considering a company that mainly deals with .NET custom development, introducing Dynamics into the services portfolio can be such a direction.

Figure 4. New strategical service

4. Extending existing portfolio: Last but not least minor extension of the portfolio is a general case use-case as well. As an example consider a company that mainly deals with SharePoint, taking Office 365 into the technological portfolio is a trivial choice. The synergy effect is basically huge, the know how must be more or less exist, so setting up the new technology is pretty much straightforward. Such minor extensions are usually not result of a detailed analysis, rather a result of an indirect evolutionary process. 

Figure 5. Extending existing service

Notes on self adaptive SharePoint Environment

Recent trends in Data-Mining software solutions are going in the direction that data-mining and intelligent analysis solutions are getting cheaper and cheaper. It actually does not only mean the price of the software, but the ways of integration the different solutions are getting easier and easier as well. This provides new possibilities in the classical software and application development as well.

Having the possibility of collecting data about a running application, like application usage, logs, infrastructure data, and having the possibility to analyse them with data-mining tools, provide eventuelly the way of proposing a application improvmenet. Based on data measured and cheap data-mining possibilities a general SharePoint application development process can be defined as follows:

0. Analyse: This one is a classical requirement engineering step, analysing the requrements to set up an initial application. However, the requirements should not only be collected by interviewing the stackeholders, there is a possibility to analyse existing documentations or data, that might also be supported by data-mining. 

1. Setup: This is the classical step for setting up the system, planning and installing infrastructure components, developing and delivering custom solutions.

2. Collect data and usage: SharePoint collects pretty many data out of the box, like standard log files, search or usage and health data. As most of these pretty much infrastructure oriented it is important to measure data about certain application usage as well.

3. Analyse: The collected data has to be by different data-mining tools analysed.

4. Propose new structure: based on the data and analysis new application structure can be proposed. The improvement might be only infrastructure oriented to achieve a better performance, however completely modified use cases or business processes can be defined as well.

Repeat from step 1: The process can be actually repeated from the beginning, the new structure or can be again set up and the application usage can be again measured and analysed.

On the economy of server operation

From the economical point of view creating a new software is just like building a house. The only question is how fast, how cheap and which house is possible to build. The situation is pretty much different at classical server operation tasks like ensuring performance, having backup recovery or disaster recovery plans and concepts. This market is much more similar to the insurance market: One does not pay for getting a new service, but for ensuring that in case of disaster there is some recovery, backup or just simply the people who are capable of getting the system back. 

Notes on ERP and productivity increasing software programs

ERP and Productivity Increasing software programs were meant to help people on an everyday basis and increase the working productivity. Surprisingly the role of these software have been being slowly changing. As more or more business processes are defined and hard-coded by different software programs one usually has got the feeling that the company is basically managed and lead by these softwares and not anymore by humans. Perhaps in a not very far future companies will not be anymore defined by the people, by the employees, only by the used softwares and process. 

I always hated to say for people: human resource. However in this sense, it makes sense: human resource is just a resource among the others that is used by the company and probably not the most important one.