Jakarta, Indonesia was an appropriate place to hold an executive discussion relating to an approaching economic recovery because it was one of the only Southeast Asian countries to have avoided recession in the recent global downturn.
The event was hosted by CIO Asia magazine and sponsored by BMC, the pioneer of business service management (BSM) which is a successful methodology for monitoring and measuring IT services from a business perspective.
Roundtable moderator, Ross O. Storey, the editor of CIO Asia and managing editor for Fairfax Business Media Asia, told the senior executives at the table that Indonesia’s economy had grown by an average five per cent per year, even during the downturn, and was expected to increase by up to seven per cent until 2014.
“Like everyone else, Indonesia has been hurt by the global downturn, but has certainly done better than many others,” Storey said. “There are good reasons to expect that 2010 will be a much more enjoyable experience for the global economy than the year that is soon to pass.”
Sigit Arnanto, vice president, IT delivery and services head, Bank CIMB Niaga, kicked off the roundtable discussion by outlining his successful use of BMC’s BSM approach in the largest IT integration in Southeast Asia—last year’s CIMB Niaga and Lippo Bank merger in Malaysia (see details in the earlier roundtable held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia).
A recent BMC survey found that large enterprises were taking advantage of the economic downturn.
Mainframe innovation
BMC’s recent annual worldwide survey of mainframe users found that these users have been “leveraging the economic downturn to re-tool and innovate in advance of the return to growth that will come with the economic recovery”.
The survey found that “even in the current economic climate, almost half of the respondents continue to project increases in their software spending, with the bulk of the remaining respondents projecting flat spending into the next year”.
The BMC survey found that the top priorities for IT in 2010 are application modernisation, disaster recovery and server virtualisation; “all indicators that mainframe users have high hopes for the platform’s role coming out of the downturn”. BMC’s vice president for the Asia Pacific, Chip Salyards, said BMC was always seeking to strengthen its BSM strategy and had recently acquired
IT discovery software developer Tideway Systems.
The acquisition means the BMS portfolio now includes a recognised IT discovery software system that makes it easier for managers to find and map all their disparate applications, network devices and servers housed in their data centres.
He said that as enterprise customers continue to embrace virtualisation applications to help consolidate their data centres and reduce operational costs, they need applications like the ones developed by Tideway, to track and identify all the moving pieces throughout the consolidation process.
Middleware specialist
BMC had also recently acquired managing middleware specialist MQSoftware, adding integrated messaging and monitoring management across mainframe and distributed environments.
“We are always listening to our customers about how we can improve our offerings and these acquisitions stem from this feedback,” Salyards said.
“The best approach to business services management is to start by addressing your biggest ‘pain points’. It is a comprehensive approach but doesn’t mean an enterprise has to take on everything at once.” Salyards said the key was automation and starting with an established and tested format, which was what was offered by the BMS approach. Compliance and automation was really pushing BSM adoption.
“BSM is all about integrating everything to connect IT and the business,” he said.
“The goal is to eliminate disparate systems because you have a loss of integrity and you have a lot of things lost in translation if they aren’t on that same platform; you get a jumble of information.
“I don’t think the market was really ready for business services management up until about two years ago with ITIL version 3 being prepped. Coming out now, it’s not just about solutions, it’s about lifecycle management. So, just as the ERPs came along about 15 years ago, this is where BSM is at now.
“It’s really a platform decision on how you handle your service support on the top end, how the business communicates with IT, how the customers communicate with the business through IT and the bottom layer of the blueprint is the infrastructure component. How does your infrastructure drive up changes that need to be done before you have problems?
“I recall playing golf with my boss,” Salyards said. “His technique was so good it was almost boring to watch him play, because he performed at such a high standard every time. That’s how it should be with your IT systems and that’s what a BSM approach can potentially deliver.”
Projects stalled
K. Srithar, IT director for the Busana Apparel Group, one of the biggest apparel manufacturers and exporters in Indonesia, said his enterprise had 15 state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, with more planned in India and Egypt. Srithar said Busana produces about 2.5 million garments per month and was so busy that several IT integration projects had simply stalled because there was not enough time to complete them while business was being conducted.
Busana seemed to be simply too busy working in the business to ‘work on the business’ and he was interested in exploring BMC’s business service management approach as a means to resolve this issue.
Media Interaksi Utama’s general manager, IT, David Kandou, said his business publishes magazines and newspapers, including the new English newspaper the Jakarta Globe, Globe Asia, Campus Asia and the Suara Pembaruanh, across many Indonesian cities.
Four-hour window
Kandou said his afternoon newspaper had a peak-hour window of about four hours each day when it was in demand, and any delay in production would shorten the sales opportunity.
“This is why we are interested in a ‘real-time’ system that can forecast and predict any problems before they happen,” Kandou said. “Any disruption to our production process could cut into our four hours, with expensive results.”
“This year we implemented an integrated editor system to make it end-to-end in a single platform and we have two editions, Bahasa and English. “Within five years, we will integrate the two newsrooms into one.” Nestle Indonesia’s head of IT, Eko Ryzananto, said globally, his company set a target of spending 1.2 per cent of its turnover as a budget for IT and this was possible by having a single platform across the enterprise.
“This target is set by the business and IT has to meet it,” Ryzananto said.
BMS investigated
Iwan Kurniawan is head of technical support, for Sierad Produce, which produces primary processed and poultry feed and chicken products for outlets such as KFC.
He said he had already investigated BSM. “Today’s topic is very interesting because last year, I already explored business service management and maybe, based on our five-year IT strategy, next year, we will implement BMC’s service desk system,” Kurniawan said.
Nick Lim, BMC managing director, ASEAN, said to get the best outcomes in discussions at the top level, IT executives needed to talk the language of business.
He cited the example of a logistics company which had many trucks moving in and out of the warehouse. The enterprise had about 25 printers that needed to be upgraded.
“The first time the IT manager went to his boss, he said he needed to upgrade all of the printers to save ink and maintenance costs because the printers were out of date and expensive to run,” Lim said. “Guess what? The budget request was rejected.
“So the IT manager went back a second time and asked: ‘Do you want our trucks to leave the warehouse three times faster?’
“Everyone said yes, that would increase our revenue and the IT manager followed up by saying ‘then we need to change the printers to print faster to make this happen’—and the budget request was approved.”
The message
“It’s important how IT communicates the message,” Lim said, “By putting the request in business terms, you have a much bigger chance of success.”
Salyards chipped in: “Once you talk like the business, the business says ok, you are here to help me, not to create another forum to help you manage IT the way you manage it.”
BOX1: Delegates at the roundtable- Sigit Arnanto, vice president, IT delivery and services head, Bank CIMB Niaga
- Arsyad Junaiddin, head of MIS department, Areva T&D
- Alex Sander Lo, head of IT development, Bank Bumi Arta
- K. Srithar, IT director, Busana Apparel Group
- Muljo Witono, IT director, GE Finance & Astra Sedaya Finance
- Richard Anthony, associate director, information systems and technology, Gunung Sewu Kencana
- David Kandou, general manager, IT, Media Interaksi Utama
- Eko Ryzananto, head of IT, Nestle Indonesia
- Surya Lie, head of IT services, Pamapersada Nusantara
- Iwan Kurniawan, head of technical support, Sierad Produce
- Chandra Hermawan, IT director, Universitas Bunda Mulia
- Krisna Nugraha, associates partner, Bellua Asia Pacific
- Chip Salyards, vice president, Asia Pacific, BMC Software
- Nick Lim, managing director, ASEAN, BMC Software
Moderator: Ross O. Storey, managing editor, Fairfax Business Media Asia
