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Mr. Strong you Arrogant Bad Boy!!

Over my cup of coffee this morning, I came across the following article http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/146181/vendor_goes_after_smbs_with_bsm_offering.html announcing FireScope's new BSM Business Edition products.  I was struck by the arrogance of one of our competitors who was quoted for the story.  Frank Strong from Managed Objects was quoted as follows:

"The idea of providing some BSM functionality to smaller IT shops is noble and an interesting idea, but I'd recommend being cautious about raising expectations. ... BSM doesn't lend itself to tossing cheap and cheerful code over the wall and hoping it will self-install and model critical IT services independently," said Frank Strong, marketing communications director for Managed Objects, via e-mail."

This quote says it all!  Here is an executive with old guard thinking – he obviously thinks he knows better than industry executives who were quoted just a couple days ago in this article http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/27818#comment-181935 .  The article explains why FireScope brought Business Edition to market:

"The world needs what we'll call BSM Lite--a simpler, less expensive, more responsive way of achieving BSM.  Remember that Doug McClure says BSM should be achieved at least as much through people and how they are organized and motivated as through technology. Enterprises can achieve BSM with a combination of modest tool investments and smart, properly tuned organizations. Although BSM Lite will not come easily or quickly, it should carry a smaller price tag.  It will start to show business/IT linkage using targeted views that grow into the big picture over time. 

We smell opportunity for smart vendors who recognize that there is a much larger market for a practical BSM Lite solution than for the BSM Heavy solutions available today."

Customers around the globe are looking for an easier way to deploy technologies; they are looking for lower cost solutions that scale with their business as it grows but most of all they are looking for companies that truly care about their business.  What they don't need is arrogance.   We are company that is trying to make a difference in BSM for the good of all – since Mr. Strong suggests that cheap and cheerful code does not solve the issue – here is my challenge to him:

1. Make Managed Object's products available for download as part of a free trial, publish your prices and the real cost of and the timeframe of implementing your products.  Then let the customers decide what solution delivers against their needs.
2. Please feel free to download our products and look at our prices.
3. Watch your rearview mirror because we at FireScope are not done listening to the customer – wait tell you see what we are going to do with CMDB. 
4. Have Fun J

We started FireScope to address your old guard thinking Mr. Strong – instead of lecturing all of us, perhaps you should go out and listen to your customers and address their concerns and pains.   FireScope for the People!!!!!

BSM Lite

This was a quote that I pulled from Network World story http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/27818#comment-181935 . I'm really glad to see this kind of story and in particular this quote from this story:

"The world needs what we'll call BSM Lite–a simpler, less expensive, more responsive way of achieving BSM. Remember that Doug McClure says BSM should be achieved at least as much through people and how they are organized and motivated as through technology. Enterprises can achieve BSM with a combination of modest tool investments and smart, properly tuned organizations. Although BSM Lite will not come easily or quickly, it should carry a smaller price tag. It will start to show business/IT linkage using targeted views that grow into the big picture over time. "

 

The FireScope team agrees that BSM should be "simpler and less expensive". This promise will be delivered, soon there will be an alternative to the big 4 and the company who claims they are BSM:

 

 

http://www.firescope.com/BE/Preview/

 

 

 

What’s Next

We have received overwhelming positive feedback on our engage product and how it makes it simple to use FrieScope's BSM products. We really appreciate the positive feedback; it fuels us to work even harder to make BSM simpler and easier for all. In a few days we will change the way many think about BSM, and if we are successful, maybe make a few lives a little better by simplifying their organizations IT operations. And for me and the team hopefully that translates to a few extra hours that IT operators can spend with their family and love ones, after all is that not what we all work for each and every day – our loved ones? Join me in a sneak peak at http://www.firescope.com/be/ .

 

All the best

 

Steve

Engage a Vision Starting to be Realized

My friends who know me have heard me talk about how frustrating it is to look at IT tools that are more focused on speeds and feeds vs. ease of use from and end users perspective. FireScope's vision; from the day we founded the company was to simplify IT operations and make it easier for all parts of an organization to understand the business impact of their IT infrastructure investment. In the past as both a CFO and a COO I always felt I could never get straight answers to simple questions like:

 

1. What is the cost for a service ( i.e. CRM, ERP, E-mail) that I provide to the organization. Can I look at it by user/dept/total Company? What is the cost of not having the service available?
2. What causes my services to not be available?
3. Can I understand the Impact without a 9 month project or consultants who become part of my organization?

You get the point, while technology is important it is equally important to understand how technology is impacting my business. To help managers and executives to see how their IT operations are impacting their business, FireScope, introduced the world's first touch screen user interface for BSM. The touch screen can be used with touch pads and other handheld devices such as I-Phones etc. But what I get excited about is how easy the UI is to use, you can navigate with a touch of your finger the entire FireScope' BSM solution through its touch user interface - check it out at http://engage.firescope.com/overview.asp . My belief is the easier you make it for folks to get to information, the more engaged they become with it and the more they become comfortable using the information to help make better business decisions.

 

I would love to know your thoughts….

 

Steve

 

Cool Blog

One of our partners shared this with me today! http://www.itskeptic.org/node/418 This page deals with metrics and how they are used and abused. Thought it was interesting….

 

Steve

Automated Operations 1.0 - Really

So I was reading about the BSM space today and came across an announcement about HP's new Automated Operations 1.0 software suite that was just released. The article I read talked about this offering this way:

 

"According to Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP, the offering integrates assets from the vendor's OpenView products, as well as those it has acquired through Peregrine, Mercury and Opsware, to automate IT operations across various technology and organizational domains. Beyond automating all IT processes, Automated Operations 1.0 also automates service deployment, change, configuration management and compliance, and monitors and manages business services.

"We are giving customers a better way to operate" in the IT operations realm, said Eric Vishria, vice president of products for HP software. "These three domains have been very siloed in the past ... and have not been linked together. Now you can actually consistently manage them throughout the operational life cycle," he said.

According to Vishria, Automated Operations 1.0 ties together IT operations in two main ways. First, it provides a common understanding of the business service. "You can deploy it with Business Service Automation (BSA)," a new offering which provides a single platform for driving change into IT operations across applications, servers, networks, storage and clients, and for automating IT processes and providing a central configuration management database (CMDB) for reporting. The functionality in BSA comes from Opsware as well as HP's previous client automation technology, he said. "

 

Can somebody explain to me what this means? I applaud and respect HP for trying to bring together their siloed products and make them work together – I just sometimes wonder if cobbling together a bunch of tools built on last generation technologies is really a model for simplicity. I love to get your thoughts……

 

Great Article on SOA

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/mgmt/66465FFD087DA621CC2573800011B1F0

 

"You're not going to throw the baby out with the bath water. You are going to continue to leverage your previous investments," Gardner says. In fact, Bloomberg adds, "[SOA] is not really that disruptive on the technology side. SOA helps leverage existing technologies. It has a heterogeneity story that says, 'Well, you don't have to replace. You can leave and abstract as needed."

 

This is a good article around how organizations will be challenged to break down silos and leverage prior IT investments across the organizations. SOA or BSM is not about reinventing the wheel its about getting more out of prior investments and aligning those investments around the business.

 

Steve

 

I’m Back

I have not posted for a few days, while building a great company is a lot of fun, sometimes other priorities take precedence. This last week I lost a member of my family unexpectedly and as you could imagine it gave me pause in my daily life. I paused to be with my family and reflect on what's really important in life – our loved ones, family and friends. One thing I do feel good about; I know the company we are building will help folks simplify their lives and hopefully give them more time with their loved ones. I hope you take time out to let the ones you care about know how you feel!!

 

Steve

Moving

One of the purposes of my Blog was to share the Journey of building a technology company (FireScope) that is focused on BSM and specifically how Web 2.0 technologies can be leveraged to simplify IT Operations. As most of you know FireScope is a Enterprise Mash Up that helps company's streamline their IT operations and reduce costs. We have been enjoying wide acceptance and success since we launched our company. With success comes the need for more room, so this last weekend we moved our headquarters for the third time – we doubled our space. This is cool; however, what I forgot was how much I hate moving – when you're a start-up CEO there is no facilities department to move you. I talked my buddy into waiting with me at 6:00am for the carpet guys to show up. We wanted everything carpeted prior to the team moving boxes, desks, phones etc – you get the point. There were many challenges during our move over the weekend; however, we got FireScope's third move in 12 months done. I hope this space lasts a little longer than the previous one – at least for now!

One of the points I try to stress to our team is to be frugal about what we spend, I stress that the capital we spend should be focused on our product and getting the message out – not on fancy offices (personally, I'm not a big fan of individual offices). Every company that I have been associated with that has done really well had an abundance of collaborative space and less emphasis on traditional office space. The ones that had office space to match a founders or a manager's ego struggled. So with this move we were able to keep our emphasis on collaborative space to allow our folks to stay focused on our product through collaborative teamwork. I'll keep you posted on how we like our new digs…

A Cool Blog

Doing my research this morning on how to reduce costs or drive your business model – I came across a very informative blog on Web 2.0 written by Dion Hinchcliffe, check it out and see what you think….

 

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=135