Welcome to B & M Bulletin, produced specifically for IT specialists. In this issue:
• The importance of being technical
• Tech View: The rise of the Silver Server
• Specialist Profile: Moira Langley
• B & M staff member profile - Account Manager, Tracey George-Jones
• B & M TechConsult
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The importance of being technical
Jerry Smart, MD of B & M, considers how technical expertise can help align business objectives and IT deliverables
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"backed up by measurable benefits.."
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According to the Gartner report Creating Enterprise Leverage: The 2007 CIO Agenda (February 2007), CIOs are looking for new sources of enterprise leverage, including technical excellence, agility, information and innovation. In particular, they want their IT functions to be more market-aware, building new strategic capabilities that use information to attract and retain customers. Yet despite this apparent desire at the top, there remains a gap between what the CIO and the Board want, and the way that IT is perceived.
In a survey of 75 global CEOs, Forrester found that only 28 per cent see IT as a proactive leader in innovation in their organisations and only 30 per cent see IT as a proactive leader in process improvement [source: My View: The CIO and the CEO by George F. Colony]. Given that the Board is increasingly expecting the IT organisation to play a significant role in improving business processes, controlling enterprise costs and raising workforce performance, these results are extremely disappointing.
The most expedient way to fix this disconnect is for organisations to use experienced, external technical consultancy - at both a strategic and operational level - to identify the gaps between IT and business objectives and to suggest ways to align these. External consultancy delivers independent innovation and insight, backed up by measurable benefits to productivity and RoI, in line with clearly-defined objectives that meet real business needs. Technical consultants can help ensure that the Board has a realistic expectation of what IT can achieve and that the IT organisation understands the market realities of what it needs to deliver.
To find out how you could help plug the perception gap in large, complex IT functions, contact people@bmeurope.com.
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Tech View: The rise of the Silver Server
Paul Smith, Technical Manager at B & M, believes that IT specialists with good mainframe skills can be the saviours of today's enterprises - irrespective of age
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Legacy applications are often cited as the only reason for the continued existence of the mainframe, as transferring these mission-critical applications and their data from one platform to another takes time and resource.
There is a belief in the IT world that most of the support and technical staff responsible for maintaining mainframes are 'Silver Servers' over 50 - and mostly due to retire next week! This comes as something of a surprise to those of us who are somewhat younger - although it has to be said that there is some substance to this belief. Whilst there are indeed younger people coming into the mainframe world, they often don't have the breadth of experience of their older colleagues. When mainframes (mainly IBM and ICL) were the only training ground, every mainframe specialist had to have the skills to work on a variety of systems and tasks. Distributed systems have increased the number of business applications and operating systems from hundreds to thousands, which means that people now tend to specialise more, as not everyone can be good at everything.
Any business running mainframe systems therefore faces four choices:
- Carry on running their mainframe and try to recruit and train staff to support it themselves
- Re-write all their legacy applications and transfer them to distributed systems, for which there is a greater pool of skilled people
- Outsource and get rid of the mainframe problem completely
- Rely on a trusted supplier of IT services to source and deliver the necessary resources
An experienced IT specialist with a skills profile that is wide (but not too wide) could be one of the saviours of a large corporation.
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Specialist Profile: Moira Langley, Senior DB2 and IMS Database Administrator
Moira Langley explains how a love of the French language was the impetus for her starting her contract career
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Moira Langley has recently started working on contract for a global automotive company in Belgium as part of the DBA team, supporting a variety of projects in DB2, IMS, CICS and MQ for the corporate, sales and manufacturing functions across Europe.
Moira began contracting in early 1999, and has been with B & M since August 2006. But what is it that keeps this expert with an impressive 31 years experience in IT committed to contracting? "It's difficult to know where to start!", she explains, "On a personal level, the impetus for me to move into contracting was very simple - it was the chance to work in a French-speaking country. I'd been attending French evening classes for a number of years, had fallen in love with the language, and was determined to reach a level where I'd be able to live my life in French".
It was this desire to improve her French that initially inspired Moira to apply for a DB2 DBA contract in Luxembourg - although her aim was to get to France eventually. Since then, she has achieved her goal, living and working in Luxembourg, Belgium and France and becoming completely French/English bi-lingual.
Moira believes that a major benefit of contracting for her has been gaining the confidence to know that she can work in virtually any mainframe environment and make a contribution from day one. Working as a contractor over a number of years has given her an ideal opportunity to see different ways of doing things, to gain experience in different software products, and to broaden her existing experience in DB2. She also believes that there are huge benefits to the customers from her contract experience too. "They get someone who's adaptable, experienced, who knows how to fit into an existing team and who can bring lots of new ideas to the table", she explains.
There are no plans for Moira to leave her current assignment in the short term, but she says that logically, the next step for her would be a move to a multi-platform support environment handling, for example, database support for both mainframe and Unix.
Moira says that historically, she has always tended to keep agencies "somewhat at arm's length", but this has been different with B & M, where she has developed a genuinely friendly relationship with Account Manager Amanda Spencer. "She's very straightforward to deal with, she tells it how it is, and when I was looking to move from my last placement she found me a job which matched exactly with what I was looking for. It's the first time since I started contracting that I've gone out of my way to stay with the same agency for two successive placements".
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Real People, Real Skills
This month we profile new Account Manager, Tracey George-Jones
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Tracey joined B & M in April 2008 as an Account Manager having spent nine years as a senior account manager at Black Box, a worldwide network services company. After studying Biology at Manchester University, followed by a spell working as a chalet girl in a Swiss ski resort, Tracey began her career at 3M as a sales administrator.
Tracey enjoyed working in a sales environment, and moved into her first sales role in 1987 working for a small IBM and Compaq reseller called Combro, which by 1992 had become part of the ICL Fujitsu group. This was an exciting time in the IT industry as technology was moving rapidly and networks were just starting to be implemented in many organisations, leading to a growing demand for computer resellers to provide more specialised services.
Tracey later worked for Computacenter and SCC before moving away from the IT industry to join Sub-Contract UK, a business services company, as contract renewals and customer services manager. After five years in this role Tracey missed the challenges and pace of the IT industry and moved to Black Box.
In her spare time Tracey enjoys family life, cycling, tennis and working on a major family project to design and construct a garden from what was a large bare patch of earth.
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B & M TechConsult. authoritative technical consultancy
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B & M TechConsult is a specialist technical consultancy service for large enterprise systems, delivering strategic advice and recommendations to enable projects to be implemented in a timely and cost-effective manner.
We offer authoritative technical consultancy services for z/OS, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris and Linux environments and network connectivity, with consultancy projects typically including:
- Strategic Reviews
- Feasibility Studies
- Audits
- ICT Health Checks
- Process development
- Technical assurance services
B & M TechConsult is undertaken using best practice standards and objectives and deliverables are agreed in advance. If you have the skills necessary to deliver B & M TechConsult, please contact people@bmeurope.com.
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B & M has specialised in delivering skilled ICT specialists to meet the needs of leading organisations throughout Europe since 1992. We focus exclusively on providing consultancy, technical services and support for z/OS, UNIX and Linux enterprise systems, including third-party systems software, open systems and networking connectivity. We add real value for HR and IT professionals by taking the time to understand their needs and applying best practice methods to deliver results. To find out more about our approach to providing the best skills for each business, go to www.bmeurope.com B & M Europe Limited
www.bmeurope.com
+44 (0)118 981 1880
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