A successful recurring revenue business requires a focus on monetization across every aspect of the customer relationship, not just billing or payments. Monetization is an end-to-end process from activation through cancelation. While traditional billing systems are designed to manage one-time sales, modern systems are designed to support recurring revenue management with the functionality and integration capabilities necessary to coordinate and manage business processes and customer touch points.
Monthly Archives: March 2015
Agile Release Management By @Plutora | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
Over on the other side of the fence IT ops are screaming at the various portfolio dev teams for releasing highly risky functionality way too frequently but since the Agile dev adoption production has only had a couple of low priority P4 incidents caused by bad code releases. Things must be looking good with the new dev process but then a few months down the track BAM a P1 incident the Monday morning after a agile delivered release is deployed. Highly important business functionality is broken in one of the downstream systems. It’s all hands to the pump and both IT dev and IT Ops team are getting frustrated with each other trying to resolve the incident holding back blame on which side of the fence caused the incident. A few hours later all fixed and the communication goes out to the business that prod incident is resolved.
Calculating Your Incident Management ROI By @PagerDuty | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
Outages are typically expensive for your business, not to mention a headache for your team. Improving your processes and tools for responding to critical incidents can generate a lot of business value. However, you may be wondering how to prioritize projects and investments, or you may be asked by business stakeholders to justify the costs of new initiatives. Return on Investment (ROI) is one way to do that, but it can be difficult to determine. While the answer is unique to each company, we’ll share a few different approaches to calculating your incident management ROI.
5 Tips for Effective Communication with IT Stakeholders
There is often a business cultural dynamic and belief that because Project Managers (PMs) don’t perform the work, they don’t understand the work; that if a PM supports multiple con-current projects across various disciplines, they’re unable to comprehend the inner workings of the technology design or implementation. When it comes to technology, a Project Manager’s goal is the same as the engineer’s: to exceed customer expectations and enable organizations to compete successfully and efficiently. Effective communication between the engineering team and the PM team is key. Here are five “Be’s” to keep in mind:
1) Be a Comrade: Some engineers may view PMs as micromanagers who get in the way of getting the job done. Keep in mind that each team’s goal is to meet the needs of the client and the project stakeholders.
2) Be Honest: It’s true that Project Managers aren’t the absolute technology experts but effective Project Managers should understand the solution the engineers are solving. A well-informed and knowledgeable PM takes the time to request in-depth overviews of specific initiatives so they can better address any issues or concerns that may arise if a project hits a snag. (As all project do!)
3) Be Consistent: Engineers have scheduled deadlines to deliver on task. Effective Project Managers make sure they’re working collaboratively to ensure timely delivery. For instance, tracking project plans with engineers before updating clients, touching base with engineers on a scheduled basis (e.g., daily, weekly), or consistent follow-up with internal staff, as well as the external client. These are all critical to managing a successful project.
4) Be a Client Champion: Every project, no matter how meticulously planned or designed, can sometimes hit a rough patch., Effective Project Managers anticipate these speedbumps and work to coordinate the necessary support needed to successfully overcome any challenges. Being a client champion is one of GreenPages’ most important corporate values. The strength of the team comes from everyone working cohesively to resolve problems in the best interest of the client.
5) Be an Active Listener: Effective Project Managers ensure they’re clear on direction and feedback from both engineers and clients. By striving to nurture mutually-beneficial relationships with frequent, honest, and open communication, overall project success (from scope to closure) is ensured.
When a group of engineers, client stakeholders, and project managers achieve true working synergy, the team becomes more than just a collection of people; the results achieved together are greater than the results any of us could achieve alone.
By Stacy Robinson, Project Manager
Highlights of Mobile World Congress 2015
Mobile World Congress has begun! And the fun has already started for the Parallels team at #MWC15—here’s a few highlights of some of the action so far: Samsung’s “Relentless Innovation” and Beauty in Barcelona One of the events at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is ShowStoppers, a conference-within-a-conference. Attendees at the ShowStoppers event […]
The post Highlights of Mobile World Congress 2015 appeared first on Parallels Blog.
Poll Results: Kafka Version Distribution By @Sematext | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
The results for Apache Kafka version distribution poll are in.
Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote!
The distribution pie chart is below, but we could summarize it as follows: It’s great to see Kafka users being so quick to migrate to the latest version of Kafka!
We’re extra happy to see such quick 0.8.2 adoption because we put a lot of effort into improving Kafka metric, as well as making all 100+ Kafka metrics available via SPM Kafka 0.8.2 monitoring a few weeks ago, right after Kafka 0.8.2 was released.
APM Technology Needs to Provide More Joy By @Nastel | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
So, I’ve been at my new role for about a month now and I’d like to share with you some observations that I’ve made with respect to the APM marketplace. In my conversations with many of the leading APM providers, I’ve seen some improvements in product integration, scale and in some cases, usability, since my earlier foray into this market several years ago. There is some new thinking about the need to support a broader range of users and environments. And in a few cases, some new pricing approaches are being introduced that no longer incorporate disincentives for wanting to use more of the product.
WSO2 To Present “Docker and Apache” at @Cloud Expo NY | @WSO2 [#Cloud]
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is a technology designed to make DevOps easier and allow developers to focus on application development. The PaaS takes care of provisioning, scaling, HA, and other cloud management aspects. Apache Stratos is a PaaS codebase developed in Apache and designed to create a highly productive developer environment while also supporting powerful deployment options.
Integration with the Docker platform, CoreOS Linux distribution, and Kubernetes container management system brings more scalability and flexibility to Apache Stratos PaaS.
In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Lakmal Warusawithana, Director of Cloud Architecture at WSO2 Inc., will discuss installing and deploying sample applications using Docker, CoreOS and Kubernetes, and walkthrough how it can be extended to support new application containers. He will also demonstrate app deployment, provisioning, auto-scaling, and more.
HP to Acquire @ArubaNetworks | @CloudExpo @HP [#Cloud]
HP and Aruba Networks on Monday announced a definitive agreement for HP to acquire Aruba, a provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise, for $24.67 per share in cash. The equity value of the transaction is approximately $3.0 billion, and net of cash and debt approximately $2.7 billion. Both companies’ boards of directors have approved the deal.
“Enterprises are facing a mobile-first world and are looking for solutions that help them transition legacy investments to the new style of IT,” said Meg Whitman, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of HP. “By combining Aruba’s world-class wireless mobility solutions with HP’s leading switching portfolio, HP will offer the simplest, most secure networking solutions to help enterprises easily deploy next-generation mobile networks.”
David Frost Appointed Vice President at @Skytap | @DevOpsSummit [#DevOps]
Skytap Inc., has appointed David Frost as vice president of professional services. David joins Skytap from Deloitte Consulting where he served as Managing Director leading SAP, Cloud, and Advanced Technology Services. At Skytap, David will head the company’s professional services organization, and spearhead a new consulting practice that will guide IT organizations through the adoption of DevOps best practices. David’s appointment comes on the heels of Skytap’s recent $35 million Series D funding announcement, and record growth in 2014.