SaaS PPM from HP Helps Deloitte-Australia Streamline Top-Level Decision Making

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a BriefingsDirect podcast on Deloitte-Australia, and how their business has benefited from leveraging the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for project and portfolio management (PPM) activities.

We spoke to Deloitte-Australia at a recent conference to explore some major enterprise software and solutions, trends and innovations making news across HP’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers.

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions and I’ll be your host as we learn more about Deloitte’s innovative use of SaaS hosting for non-core applications. First, please join me in welcoming Ferne King, director within the Investment and Growth Forum at Deloitte-Australia in Melbourne. Welcome.

It’s the only solution that we found in the marketplace that would help us support and have visibility into the investments we were going to make.

Ferne King: Thank you.

Gardner: Tell me, Ferne, what led up to the use of SaaS for PPM? Why did this particular model seem to make sense?

King: The SaaS model made sense to us, because we had a strategic direction in our firm that any non-core application’s strategic intent was to have them as SaaS.

Gardner: What is it about PPM, in particular, that made this a leading candidate for that initiative?

King: It’s the only solution that we found in the marketplace that would help us support and have visibility into the investments we were going to make for ourselves internally around the growth and the maintenance of what we did internally within our own firm.

Gardner: Perhaps for our listeners’ benefit, you could explain a little bit about what you do there at Deloitte in Australia and the extent to which you went with this PPM solution. How far and wide?

King: Deloitte-Australia is approximately 5,000 practitioners. In 2010, our revenue was A$850 million. We provide professional services to public and private clients, and we are now globally the largest professional services firm. We utilize PPM internally within the firm, and that helps us to understand that portfolio and prioritization. Deloitte-UK practice and Deloitte-America practice in their consulting areas use PPM to go to the market and help manage deliver investments with their client base.

Gardner: From a high level, what have been some of the benefits of PPM in general, but furthermore, the SaaS deployment method?

Three benefits

King: The three benefits of PPM, primarily for us has been understanding that portfolio and linking that to our strategy. For example, our executive will have a series of business objectives they want to achieve in the Australian practice.

By utilizing PPM, we can understand what is going on within the firm that’s meeting those objectives, and then, more importantly for them, with the gap, and then they can take the action on the gap. That’s the number one priority. The number two priority is being able to communicate to our people within the practice the particulars of change.

For example, over the next quarter, what will our practitioners in the firm see as a result of all of these myriad of initiatives going on, whether it’s a SaaS service HR system or whether it’s a new product and service that they can take to market. Whatever change is coming, we can better communicate that to them within their organization.

Our third priority which the PPM product helps with discipline is our area of delivery. So, in our project management methodology, it helps us improve our disciplines. We had a journey of 18 months of doing things manually and then we brought PPM to technology enable what we were doing manually.

From a SaaS perspective, the benefit we’ve achieved there is that we can focus our people on the right things. Instead of having our people focused on what hardware, what platform, what change request, what design do we need to be happening, we can focus on what our to-be process should be, what our design should be. Then we basically hand that over the fence to the SaaS team, which then help execute that.

We don’t have to stand in a queue within our own IT group and look for a change window. We can make changes every Wednesday, every Sunday, 12 months of the year, and that works for us.

Gardner: Great. Now you described how you’ve decided on the prioritization of moving to SaaS as non-core. But, forgive me, PPM, the way you described it, it sounds rather mission critical. How was it that you decided on this, even though it seems so pertinent and perhaps it forms mortar to other types of business processes?

King: We would say it’s non-core, but high value. Just because it’s non-core, doesn’t mean that it’s not a top priority. Our firm has approximately 2,500 applications within our Australian practice. PPM, at our executive level, is seen as one of our top 10 applications to help our executive, our partners, the senior groups of our firm register ideas to help our business grow and be maintained.

So, it’s high value but it’s not part of our core practice suite. It doesn’t bring in revenue and it doesn’t keep the lights on, but it helps us manage our business.

Gardner: Could you give me a sense of the timeline? Is this something that is relatively new, something that you're well into, something that you're looking at through the rear-view mirror and assessing? Where are we within your roll-out of this PPM for SaaS?

The roadmap

King: I’d answer that in the question of where are we in our roadmap of strategic enterprise portfolio management. In that journey, we're four years in and we are two years into technology enablement. We undertook the journey four years ago to go down strategic portfolio management and we lasted about 18 months to 2 years, manually developing and understanding our methodology, understanding the value where we wanted to go to.

In our second year we technology enabled that to help us execute more effectively, speed to value, time to value, and now we are entering our third year into the maturity model of that.

Gardner: When you describe this as something that doesn’t directly impact your bottom-line, it certainly sounds as if it’s impacting the users within your organization. What’s been the feedback from the front lines, those who are involved with are actually using this? Has this been something that they’ve embraced or something they needed to learn to embrace over time?

King: Fantastic results, particularly at the executive levels who are the ones who pay for us to create the time to work on this. Deloitte itself has taken the transformation over the years, If anybody in the market follows the professional services, industry group areas, Deloitte globally is 160,000 practitioners and over 250 billion of revenue on FY10. We're coming together and have been taking a journey for some time to be as one.

So, if you're a client in the marketplace, you don’t have to think about what door you need to enter the Deloitte world. You enter one door and you get service from whatever service group you need.

PPM has enabled us to help the executive achieve their vision of firm-wide visibility of the enterprise investments we are making to improve our growth and support our maintenance.

If I take the example of three years ago, our tax group would only be interested in what’s happening in their tax group. Our consultant group would really only be interested in what’s happening in the consultant group.

Now that we are acting as one, the tax service line lead and the consulting service line lead would like visibility of what’s happening firm wide. PPM is now enabling us to do that.

What I would summarize there is that PPM has enabled us to help the executive achieve their vision of firm-wide visibility of the enterprise investments we are making to improve our growth and support our maintenance.

Gardner: Tell me if you could, Ferne, a little bit about how you came to the HP solution. What was it that you were looking for in a solution and what requirements did you feel were most important in leading up to that choice?

King: First of all, probably, 27 years experience with project delivery, coming from an engineering construction background, getting very detailed knowledge over the years about the one-on-one delivery components and dealing with a lot of vendors over the years in the client marketplace.

So, well-versed in what we needed and well-versed in what was available out there in the marketplace. When we went to market looking for a partner and a vendor solution, we were very clear on what we wanted. HP was are able to meet that.

I actually took my own role out of the scoring process. We helped put scripts together, scenarios for our vendors to come and demonstrate to us how we were going to achieve meeting our objectives. Then, we brought people around the table from that business with a scoring method, and HP won on that scoring method.

Gardner: With you being fully into this project and for those listening who might be considering moving to a more holistic PPM approach and perhaps evaluating the different sourcing options, is there anything in hindsight that you could offer in terms of advice when beginning such a project?

When we went to market looking for a partner and a vendor solution, we were very clear on what we wanted. HP was are able to meet that.

King: Understand the method or the approach that you want to use PPM for. You cannot bring PPM and expect it to answer 80 percent of your issues. It can support and help direct resolution of issues, but you need to understand how you are expecting to do that. An example would be if you want to capture ideas from other business units or groups or the technology department on what they'd like to do to improve their application or improve product development, any area of the business, understand the life-cycle of how you want that to be managed. Don’t expect PPM to have preset examples for you.

Gardner: Very good. We’ve been discussing how Deloitte-Australia has benefited from leveraging SaaS as a model for delivery of project and portfolio management activities. I’d like to thank our guest, Ferne King, Director within the Investment and Growth Forum at Deloitte-Australia. Thanks so much.

King: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: And I’d also like to thank our listeners in joining us with this BriefingsDirect podcast, coming to you from a recent HP conference.

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2011. All rights reserved.

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Case Study: How McKesson Develops Software Faster and Better with Innovative Use of New HP ALM 11 Suite

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11 from the recent HP Software Universe 2010 conference in Barcelona.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect podcast series, coming to you in conjunction with the HP Software Universe 2010 Conference last month in Barcelona.

We're here to explore some major enterprise software and solutions, trends and innovations, making news across HP’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers. [See more on HP's new ALM 11 offerings.]

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and I’ll be your host throughout this series of Software Universe Live discussions. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Our customer case study today focuses on McKesson and how their business has benefited from advanced application lifecycle management (ALM). To learn more about McKesson's innovative use of ALM and its early experience with HP's new ALM 11 release, I'm here with Todd Eaton, Director of ALM Tools and Services at McKesson. Welcome, Todd.

Todd Eaton: Thanks, Dana.

Gardner: I know you've been involved with ALM for quite some time, but what is it about ALM now in your business that makes it so important and beneficial?

Eaton: In our business at McKesson, we have various groups that develop software, not only for internal use, but also external use by our customers and software that we sell. We have various groups within McKesson that use the centralized tools, and the ALM tools are pretty much their lifeblood. As they go through the process to develop the software, they rely heavily on our centralized tools to help them make better software faster.

Gardner: Is ALM something you use within the groups -- and then also to bind those groups; that is to say, there is a tactical ... and then even strategic benefit as well?

Eaton: Yes. The ALM suite that HP came out with is definitely giving us a bigger view. We've got QA managers that are in the development groups for multiple products, and as they test their software and go through that whole process, they're able to see holistically across their product lines with this.

We've set up projects with the same templates. With that, they have some cohesion and they can see how their different applications are going in an apples-to-apples comparison, instead of like the old days, when they had to manually adjust the data to try to figure out what their world was all about.

Gardner: At this point, are there any concrete benefits, either in terms of business benefits, or in the IT application development side of the business that you can point to that these ALM innovations have supported?

Better status

Eaton: There are a couple of them. When HP came up with ALM 11, they took Quality Center and Performance Center and brought them together. That's the very first thing, because it was difficult for us and for the QA managers to see all of the testing activities. With ALM, they're able to see all of it and better gauge where they are in the process. So, they can give their management or their teams a better status of where we are in the testing process and where we are in the delivery process.

The other really cool thing that we found was the Sprinter function. We haven't used it as much within McKesson, because we have very specific testing procedures and processes. Sprinter is used more as you're doing ad hoc testing. It will record that so you can go back and repeat those.

How we see that being used is by extending that to our customers. When our customers are installing our products and are doing their exploratory testing, which is what they normally do, we can give them a mechanism to record what they are doing. Then, we can go back and repeat that. Those are a couple of pretty powerful things in the new release that we plan to leverage.

Gardner: How would you describe the problem that we need to solve here? Is this a problem of communication, of measurement, perhaps workflow management, or all the above? How would you characterize what's wrong with how application development has been done? I don't mean to point to you as falling short on this at all. This is a general issue, but what is the problem that you think ALM is really addressing?

Eaton: That's a good point. When we're meeting at various conferences and such, there's a common theme that we hear. One is workflow. That's a big piece. ALM goes a long way to be able to conquer the various workflows. Within an organization, there will be various workflows being done, but you're still able to bring up those measurements, like another point that you are bringing up, and have a fairly decent comparison.

They can find those defects earlier, verify that those are defects, and there is less of that communication disconnect between the groups.

With the various workflows in the past, there used to be a real disparate way of looking at how software is being developed. But with ALM 11, they're starting to bring that together more.

The other piece of it is the communication, and having the testers communicate directly to those development groups. There is a bit of "defect ping-pong," if you will, where QA will find a defect and development will say that it's not a defect. It will go back and forth, until they get an agreement on it.

ALM is starting to close that gap. We're able to push out the use of ALM to the development groups, and so they can see that. They use a lot of the functions within ALM 11 in their development process. So, they can find those defects earlier, verify that those are defects, and there is less of that communication disconnect between the groups.

Gardner: It sounds like it’s beginning to quicken the pace of how you go about these things, but in addition to that, are you exploiting agile development practices, and is this something that's helping you if you are?

Eaton: We have several groups within our organization that use agile development practices. What we're finding is that the way they're doing work can integrate with ALM 11. The testing groups still want to have an area where they can put their test cases, do their test labs, run through their automation, and see that holistic approach, but they need it within the other agile tools that are out there.

It's integrating well with it so far, and we're finding that it lends itself to that story of how those things are being done, even in the agile development process.

Gardner: You're a large organization, a large healthcare provider and insurer. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about McKesson, where you're based, and the size and extent of your application development organization.

Company profile

Eaton: McKesson is a Fortune 15 company. It is the largest health-care services company in the U.S. We have quite a few R&D organizations and it spans across our two major divisions, McKesson Distribution and McKesson Technology solutions.

In our quality center, we have about 200 projects with a couple of thousand registered users. We're averaging probably about 500 concurrent users every minute of the day, following-the-sun, as we develop. We have development teams, not only in the U.S, but nearshore and offshore as well.

We're a fairly large organization, very mature in our development processes. In some groups, we have new development, legacy, maintenance, and the such. So, we span the gamut on all the different types of development that you could find.

Gardner: Well, that's interesting, because I wanted to explore the size of the organization. It sounded a moment ago as if you were able to support different styles, different cultures, different maturity levels, as you have mentioned, among and between these different parts of your development cycle, all using the same increasingly centralized ALM approach. Is that fair?

Eaton: Yeah, that's fair. That's what we strive for. In my group, we provide the centralized R&D tools. ALM 11 is just one of the various tools that we use, and we always look for tools that will fit multiple development processes.

They have to adapt to all that, and we needed to have tools that do that, and ALM 11 fits that bill.

We also make sure that it covers the various technology stacks. You could have Microsoft, Java, Flex, Google Web Toolkit, that type of thing, and they have to fit that. You also talked about maturity and the various maturity models, be it CMMI, ITIL, or when you start getting into our world, we have to take into consideration FDA.

When we look at tools, we look at those three and at deployment. Is this going to be internally used, is this going to be hosted and used through an external customer, or are we going to package this up and send it out for sale?

We need tools that span across those four different types, four different levels, that they can adapt into each one of them. If I'm a Microsoft shop that’s doing Agile for an internal developed software, and I am CMMI, that's one. But, I may have a group right next door that's waterfall developing on Java and is more an ITIL based, and it gets deployed to a hosted environment.

They have to adapt to all that, and we needed to have tools that do that, and ALM 11 fits that bill.

Gardner: So, it's the benefits of decentralized and the benefits of centralized in terms of the system-of-record approach, having at least a metaview of what's going on, even though there is still flexibility at the edge.

Eaton: Correct. ALM 11 had a good foundation. The test cases, the test set, the automated testing, whether functional or performance, the source of truth for that is in the ALM 11 product suite. And, it's fairly well-known and recognized throughout the company. So, that is a good point. You have to have a source of truth for certain aspects of your development cycle.

Gardner: Of course, your industry has significant level of regulation and compliance issues. Is ALM 11 something that's been a benefit in that regard?

Partner tools

Eaton: It has been a benefit. There are partner tools that go along with ALM 11 that help us meet those various regulations. Something that we're always mindful of, as we develop software, is not only watching out for the benefit of our customers and for our shareholders, but also we understand the regulations. New ones are coming out practically every day, it seems. We try to keep that in mind, and the ALM 11 tool is able to adapt to that fairly easily.

Gardner: You've been an early adopter. You've implemented certain portions of ALM 11, and you have a great deal of experience with ALM as a function. Looking back on your experience, what would you offer as advice to someone who might just be getting their feet wet in regard to either ALM or specifically ALM 11?

Eaton: When I talk to other groups about ALM 11 and what they should be watching out for, I tell them to have an idea of how your world is. Whether you're a real small shop, or a large organization like us, there are characteristics that you have to understand. How I identify those different stacks of things that they need to watch out for; they need to keep in mind their organization’s pieces that they have to adapt to. As long as they understand that, they should be able to adapt the tool to their processes and to their stacks.

Most of the time, when I see people struggling, it's because they couldn’t easily identify, "This is what we are, and this is what we are dealing with." They usually make midstream corrections that are pretty painful.

Gardner: And your title is interesting to me, Todd: Director of ALM Tools and Services. This is an organizational question, I suppose. Do you think it is a good policy, now that you have had experience in this, to actually devoting an individual or maybe a team to just overseeing the ALM tools, which in fact oversees the ALM process?

They look to us to be able to offload that and have a team to do that.

Eaton: That's an interesting point, and something that we've done at McKesson that appears to work out real well. When I deal with various R&D vice presidents and directors, and testing managers and directors as well, the thing that they always come back to is that they have a job to do. And one of the things they don't want to have to deal with is trying to manage a tool.

They've got things that they want to accomplish and that they're driven by: performance reviews, revenue, and that type of thing. So, they look to us to be able to offload that, and to have a team to do that.

McKesson, as I said, is fairly large, thousands of developers and testers throughout the company. So, it makes sense to have a fairly robust team like us managing those tools. But, even in a smaller shop, having a group that does that -- that manages the tools -- can offload that responsibility from the groups that need to concentrate on creating code and products.

Gardner: Well, great. Thank you for sharing your experiences. We've been hearing about ALM best practices and the use of HP's new ALM 11 by an early adopter and his experience, Todd Eaton, Director of ALM Tools and Services at McKesson. Thank you, Todd.

Eaton: You're welcome, Dana. It was nice talking to you.

Dana Gardner: I want to thank also our listeners for joining the special BriefingsDirect podcast, coming to you in conjunction with the HP Software Universe 2010 Conference.

Look for other podcasts from this event on the hp.com website, as well as via the BriefingsDirect network.

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this series of Software Universe Live discussions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11 from the HP Software Universe 2010 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2010. All rights reserved.

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Case Study: Automated Client Management from HP Helps Vodafone Standardize in 30 Countries

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11 from the HP Software Universe 2010 conference in Barcelona.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Learn more. Sponsor: HP.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect podcast series, coming to you from the HP Software Universe 2010 Conference in Barcelona.

We're here in early December to explore some major enterprise software and solutions, trends and innovations, making news across HP’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers. [See more on HP's new ALM 11 offerings.]

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and I’ll be your host throughout this series of Software Universe Live discussions. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Our customer case study now focuses on Vodafone and how they worked toward improved client management and automation of client management. I'm here with two executives from their IT organization. Please join me in welcoming Michael Janssen, the Manager of Deployment Automation with Vodafone group in Düsseldorf. Welcome.

Michael Janssen: Thank you.

Gardner: We're also here with Michael Schroeder, also Manager of Deployment Automation at Vodafone. Welcome.

Michael Schroeder: Hello.

Gardner: Tell me first, Michael Janssen, what is the nature of the problem? How big was the issue you had, when it comes to PC client sprawl?

Janssen: The problem within Vodafone was that Vodafone had independent countries that operated their environments by themselves. So, we had 30 countries worldwide with all the solutions in place. That meant 30 times software deployment, 30 times application packaging, 30 times Active Directory, and so on.

Vodafone decided in 2006 to go for a global IT project and centralization in terms of client automation. It came down to us to evaluate the current solutions in place in all these countries and then come up with a solution which would be the best solution for the new global environment. That was our main problem.

Gardner: And what was the major solution? How did you think about what you needed to bring in, in order to solve this major problem?

Standardization and reducing cost

Janssen: If you're starting a centralization process, then it’s all about standardization and reducing cost. That meant reducing cost by reducing effort of the solutions and make as much as possible automated and self-service. That was the main reason we started this exercise.

Gardner: Michael Schroeder, any thoughts from your perspective on what was necessary, an important ingredient for the solution?

Schroeder: As Michael Janssen said, the most important thing was that administration should be very easy. It shouldn’t be too complex in the end and it should fit every need in every country.

Gardner: Give me a sense of the scale, the scope of what you were dealing with? Were there many different types of devices and platforms? What was the sheer scale of the effort?

Schroeder: At that time, we had a whole zoo of hardware and software products. We had about 8,000 different software applications in place at that time. We tried to reduce that as much as we could.

The most important thing was that administration should be very easy. It shouldn’t be too complex in the end and it should fit every need in every country.

Gardner: And, how far through this effort are you. Is this complete or near completion? To what degree have you progressed?

Schroeder: The overall number of clients in Vodafone is 65,000, and at the moment, we've finished the transition for 52,000 clients. Nearly 80 percent is done after four years. Of course, there is a long wait with the smaller countries, and we need to migrate 15 other countries that are still in the loop.

Gardner: You mentioned that cost savings were an important factor in this. Do you have any metrics of how well this has gone and how well it’s benefited you?

Schroeder: In the past, in each of these 30 countries, we had one to four people working within the client automation environments. Today, we have five people left doing that globally. You can imagine 30 times a minimum of two persons. That was 60 people working for client deployment, and that's now reduced to five for the global solution.

Gardner: Has this had any impact on the end users? Do you feel that there is a productivity benefit as well?

Always pros and cons

Schroeder: Of course. There are always pros and cons with standardization and with centralization. The consensus takes a little bit longer, because there are no strict processes to bring new applications. But, the main advantage is that much of the applications are already there for any country. We test it once and can deploy to many, instead of doing this 30 times, like we did that in the past, and we avoid any double spend of money.

Then, of course, with the global environment, the main advantage is that now we are all connected, which was not possible in the past, because all the networks were independent and all the applications were independent. There was no unified messaging or anything like that. This is the major benefit of the global environment.

Gardner: Had there been any security or other benefits, aside from the strictly technical and productivity? Are you able to better enforce policies across all of these devices and has that therefore meant a more secure, more managed and governed environment?

Schroeder: Security is one big thing we're now dealing with. For example, if we are talking about client automation, we're talking about patch management as well. We're able to bring out patches -- for example, security patches from Microsoft -- within two days, if it’s a real hot-fix, or even within 24 hours, if it’s a major issue.

Countries that used HP Client Automation had much higher success rate, 90 percent or higher, in deploying application and patches, than the others.

Gardner: Back to Michael Janssen. Now, we have heard about what you did. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how. How did you make this happen?

Janssen: First, there was the evolution phase, where we studied all the countries. What were the products that they used in the past? Then we decided what was the best way forward. For us, that was a major split between countries that already used the HP Client Automation solution and the other countries that used other deployment suites.

That was also one of the major criteria for the final decision. Countries that used HP Client Automation had much higher success rate, 90 percent or higher, in deploying application and patches, than the others, where they were on average at 70 percent. So, this was the first big decision point.

The second was countries using HP Client Automation had less operational staff than the others. It was mainly one to two full-time employees fewer than in countries that operated with other tools.

Gardner: And Michael Schroeder, any other thoughts about the HP solutions and why they seem work well for you?

Policy-based technology

Schroeder: If we're talking about the Client Automation Suite from HP, we're talking about policy-based or a desired state technology. That is one of the criteria. Everything is done every day. For example, if you're trying to deploy applications to clients, this is done every day. It's controlled every day, managed every day, and without any admin or user interaction. That’s a great point for us.

Gardner: Okay, Michael Janssen, tell me what you might recommend, having done this now 80 percent through, for those other organizations that might be considering more of a managed client and an automated client management capability. What lessons did you learn that you might share with them?

Janssen: What I can recommend is that there are two main issues that you need to overcome. First, you only can deploy what you receive from the business. We already were experienced in the Vodafone-Germany organization, where we did the same exercise five years ago. You need to have a strict software standardization process in place. There is one main rule for that.

Also, in the global environment, that means that if there is a business application, then the business needs to have an application owner for that. Otherwise, the application does not exist in the whole company.

We gave that function or that responsibility back to the business, and now they're all responsible and they finally approve before application goes live.

The application owner is responsible for the whole application lifecycle, including describing the application installation documents, doing the final testing and approval after packaging, his responsibility is to look after security issues of the application, look after upgrades or version or release changes, and so on.

It's not not the packaging team, the client team, or the central IT team that is responsible for all the applications and their functionality. We gave that function or that responsibility back to the business, and now they're all responsible and they finally approve before application goes live.

Gardner: It sounds as if there are both benefits of centralization vis-à-vis standards and policy, but also some benefits of decentralization in terms of how self-use, self-help can work. Maybe you could share, Michael Schroeder, a little bit about that self-use from the end-user, when they could get applications and manage them on their own. How effective was that?

Schroeder: Very effective. We got a thing in place called self-service, which is a web application. You can go to a store and choose different applications to install on your machine, depending on your needs. You can choose an application, just click a box, and the application request goes to your line manager who has to approve the license costs, if there are any. Then, the policy will go back to your machine and the installation of this specific application goes straight to your machine. The user experience with it is very good.

Gardner: So, there are workflow and business process benefits that you can now exploit or leverage as a result of having this baseline set of client automation and management capabilities. Would you agree with that, Michael?

Janssen: The self-service web shop is not only for software. We use that also for other user needs, like access rights, permissions on some projects, mobile device management and so on. This is a global web shop solution, but very effective. It avoids any help desk calls for new applications, paperwork to approve licenses, and so on. It’s very efficient and, of course, one of our main parts of this new global solution.

Gardner: Wonderful. We've been hearing about client management and automation through the experiences of Vodafone. I want to thank our speakers, Michael Janssen, Manager of Deployment Automation with Vodafone Group in Düsseldorf. Thank you, sir.

Janssen: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

Gardner: And also Michael Schroeder, also a Manager of Deployment Automation at Vodafone Group too. Thank you.

Schroeder: Yeah, thanks.

Gardner: Great. I want to thank also our listeners for joining the special BriefingsDirect podcast, coming to you from the HP Software Universe 2010 Conference in Barcelona.

Look for other podcasts from this event on the hp.com website, as well as via the BriefingsDirect network.

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this series of Software Universe Live discussions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Learn more. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11 from the HP Software Universe 2010 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2010. All rights reserved.

You may also be interested in:

• HP rolls out ALM 11 in Barcelona to expand managed automation for modern applications
• HP's new ALM 11 helps guide IT through shifting landscape of modern application development
  
• Dave Shirk details how HP's Instant-On Enterprise initiative takes aim at shifting demands on business and governments
  
• New book explores automating the managed applications lifecycle to accelerate delivery of business applications

Jonathan Priestley Recaps the News and Events at HP's Software Universe 2010 in Barcelona

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11 from the HP Software Universe 2010 conference in Barcelona.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect podcast series, coming to you from the HP Software Universe 2010 Conference in Barcelona.

We were here last week to explore some major enterprise software and solutions, trends and innovations, making news across HP’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers. [See more on HP's new ALM 11 offerings.]

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and I’ll be your host throughout this series of Software Universe Live discussions. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

To better understand HP’s latest vision and strategy for software and solutions, we're now joined by Jonathan Priestley, Director of Marketing for HP Software and Solutions, Europe, Middle-East, and Africa (EMEA). Welcome, Jonathan.

Jonathan Priestley: Hi, Dana. Thank you.

Gardner: Well, we’ve had quite a few very interesting developments. We’ve had news. We’ve had presentations on the stage. Pulling this together from those main stage or keynote announcements, how would summarize? How would you put this together for those who didn’t have a chance to attend?

Priestley: Well, we’ve had two great results to start with. The first is the weather. We got very lucky this time of the year. We have sunshine and blue skies out there, which is very good. The second is that we’ve got 3,500 attendees here, which is a super result. We exceeded our goals. I'm absolutely delighted, and the whole team is really excited, as you can imagine.

But, let me tell you about main stage, because we had some really good presenters on main stage this year. We started out with Anton Knolmar. Now, Anton is a veteran of this event. For 10 years now, he has been presenting here. He started out with a traditional flamenco dance, and you really had to be there to see that, in all his glory, as he came out with a rose between his teeth. It was a super start to the event and very appropriate here in Barcelona.

We moved on to Robin Purohit, the Vice President and General Manager of the R&D organization within software, to take us through the new strategy and vision for HP software. This was a really big one for us, because it’s the first time that the whole strategy and vision has had a public airing. It was exciting to see customers’ reaction to that.

We followed Robin with Jonathan Rende, Vice President and General Manager of our Application Solutions. This was really the news point for our main stage, the launch of Application Lifecycle Management 11 (ALM 11). This is probably the biggest news point we’ve had in the last six months or so. And we saved it especially for the show.

Gardner: Now, you mentioned the new strategy that Robin aired. Maybe you can encapsulate that for our listeners. What is this new strategy and why is it so important?

Priestley: It’s really important for us because, for the first time, we've got a really good story that ties together the history of our organically built technology, as well as the acquisitions that we’ve made. We’ve constructed this around those areas that we see our customers working with in their IT organizations today, as they deliver the solutions that drive their businesses. We see that breaking out into these areas.

Supporting services

Build -- how you actually put the applications that support the services out there. Operate -- how you supply the infrastructure that supports those applications. Secure -- how you make sure that you’ve got the right kind of security in place. Store -- how you make sure that this enormous information explosion we're all dealing with today is capable and managed. Finally, analyze -- how you take the business data that you're collecting in real-time and get decision-making data and information out of it.

Gardner: And, ALM 11 consists of a number of parts. How does that aid and abet that vision? How does it fit in? Is it a hub, a spoke, the foundation? How would you relate ALM 11 to this larger strategy?

Priestley: This is the culmination of two years worth of engineering time. This is a massive innovation for the marketplace and for us.

For the first time, you’ve got something that goes not just across the traditional software lifecycle, as we know it -- develop, test, deploy, and manage -- but across the entire lifecycle of an application.

This includes one of those things that we don’t like to talk about in IT, which is retirement, when we actually get rid of something, because we are not real good at that in this industry. Of course, it is a key part as we go forward. One of the fundamental reasons organizations can’t reduce their data or application load is because they never get to the point of being able to retire anything.

One of the key benefits of ALM is that we’ve unified a complete view, a single view, of that whole process.

One of the key benefits of ALM is that we’ve unified a complete view, a single view, of that whole process. Now, the people who are responsible for each of those siloed areas -- the business analysts, developers, testers, and operational people -- who have to support and maintain the applications can actually see, from one place, how each of those areas hand off to each other to ensure that they can manage it effectively.

And, of course, the final piece is how I make sure I’ve got security engineered into the application before I deploy it. That whole piece fits together under ALM. So, you can see why we're so excited about it.

Gardner: Obviously, yes. Every day we're hearing about new impacts on the enterprise and governments. We’ve got cloud computing, mobile computing, social networks, and social mobility.

You’ve just come out recently with some Instant-On Enterprise initiatives, and I understand that we need to try to factor how IT can get involved and help the business better serve this imperative around Instant-On. So, maybe we could come back around full circle. How does ALM 11 help IT provide an Instant-On Enterprise?

Priestley: If we go back to the strategy and vision I just described, we talked about that in terms of the areas in which we see the IT people within an organization working. But, if you take that up a level and think about the challenges that these large enterprising business and government are facing, we see that breaking down into five core areas, something we call Converged Infrastructure. This is all of the elements of the infrastructure working together.

Working together

Enterprise security -- not just thinking about the individual components, but looking at it from across the entire delivery mechanism.

Application transformation -- something that all our customers are telling us they are facing today, and obviously, that’s one of the key areas where ALM fits in.

Information optimization -- another key, when we talk about the information explosion and the challenges with that. This ensures that you can manage not just data, but the information you want to get out of that hybrid delivery.

It addresses probably the hottest topic in the industry, if I want to put my enterprise resources on premise, running locally, versus putting it somewhere in a cloud, which I am running privately, or putting it in a public cloud. Our expectation is that all large enterprises will be facing those kinds of sourcing decisions and we call that "hybrid delivery."

Gardner: We understand that you're hearing some new and interesting things here from the users. We're in EMEA, so they are from far and wide, many different cultures and languages, many different types of markets. You created a new executive track. Tell me a little bit about that and what you're hearing from this large and varied audience?

It’s very difficult for them to figure out how to put innovation into their own organizations, but particularly how to remove the barriers to innovation.

Priestley: We put a lot of effort into the program and I am calling it a program, versus a track, this year, because instead of thinking as a single standalone event, we're thinking of it as a program that runs across the entire year. The launch point has been here at Software Universe.

We started out by taking an agenda from what our CIOs have told us are the key things that they are looking to try and get some help with.

The first is innovation, how they actually put innovation into their own organizations and how can they remove the barriers to that innovation. This is a key one, because it’s very difficult for them to figure out how to put innovation into their own organizations, but particularly how to remove the barriers to innovation. We’ve done a lot of work around showing them how to go through a discovery exercise to look for those opportunities.

The second thing is that the CIOs themselves are always measuring themselves against their peer groups, and that’s something else we’ve helped them with today. We're bringing in some expertise from outside to look at what are the skill-sets that make the perfect CIO, because we see that role changing.

We talked a bit about hybrid delivery and sourcing options. The actual skill-set roles of a CIO could very well change, and that’s one of the things we’ve tried to explore with them today.

CIO annual report

And as we go across the rest of the year, we'll be looking at something like an annual report. Every company or business today delivers an annual report on how they perform. CIOs are looking for the same kind of the thing themselves. How do they produce an annual report that shows how IT is performing and what kind of service it’s delivering back to the business? That’s something we will be taking that journey with them through the whole year.

So we're really excited about that program, and we’ve had some great feedback from the CIOs, that this is really hitting the hot spots for them, particularly on innovation and how they plan themselves going forward.

Gardner: Moving back to the main stage and some of the themes we’ve heard, we saw a great vibrancy around the follow-through for many years now on this fictitious enterprise. It encapsulates a lot of the issues the folks are dealing with. So being in EMEA, being inclusive in many markets, tell me about this presentation and why, in a sense, it illustrates a lot of what we've been talking about so far?

Priestley: This is our live-action main stage event. It’s just fabulous. It’s been running for 10 years and it’s a great showcase for us. It’s built by our own pre-sales organization, and over the 10 years we have taken our solutions and we demo'd them live. That takes pretty serious confidence in your own technology to demonstrate anything live on a main stage.

But, today, we were celebrating our ten-year anniversary by showing just how the HP software solutions can help with ALM, of course -- that was our focus for the show -- but also how to use the solutions in a cloud environment, which is also a big message we're trying to get across today.

We were celebrating our ten-year anniversary by showing just how the HP software solutions can help with ALM, but also how to use the solutions in a cloud environment.

Ulrich Pfeiffer, our CTO in EMEA, who sets up the whole main stage event, pulled together pre-sales people from across the region. You could hear all the different accents and nationalities working together, and it was the perfect example of what our customer organizations face in working with multi nationalities across the geography.

We even had a bouncing Volkswagen Beetle out there today, Dana, which was pretty interesting for us, because in rehearsals last night, if I can share a little backstage secret with you, it managed to smash through the main stage. So, we were up until quite late last night repairing the main stage, but, as ever, the show went perfectly on the day.

Gardner: Very good. We've been hearing more about the vision and strategy for software and solutions here in Barcelona. I want to thank our guest Jonathan Priestley, Director of Marketing for HP Software and Solutions, EMEA. Thank you Jonathan.

Priestley: Thanks very much indeed, Dana.

Gardner: I want to thank also our listeners for joining the special BriefingsDirect podcast, coming to you from the HP Software Universe 2010 Conference in Barcelona.

Look for other podcasts from this event on the hp.com website, as well as via the BriefingsDirect network.

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this series of Software Universe Live discussions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11 from the HP Software Universe 2010 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2010. All rights reserved.

You may also be interested in:

• HP rolls out ALM 11 in Barcelona to expand managed automation for modern applications
• HP's new ALM 11 helps guide IT through shifting landscape of modern application development
  
• Dave Shirk details how HP's Instant-On Enterprise initiative takes aim at shifting demands on business and governments
  
• New book explores automating the managed applications lifecycle to accelerate delivery of business applications

Case Study: AIG Insurance Group Leverages ALM to Attain IT Performance Architecture Advantage

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11 from the HP Software Universe 2010 conference in Barcelona.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect podcast series coming to you from the HP Software Universe 2010 Conference in Barcelona.

We're here in the week of November 29, 2010 to explore some major enterprise software and solutions, trends and innovations making news across HP’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers. [See more on HP's new ALM 11 offerings.]

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and I'll be your host throughout this series of HP sponsored Software Universe Live Discussions. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Our customer case study today focuses on AIG-Chartis insurance and how their business has benefited from ongoing application transformation and modernization projects.

To learn more about AIG-Chartis insurance’s innovative use of IT consolidation and application lifecycle management (ALM) best practices, please join me in welcoming Abe Naguib, Director of Global Performance Architecture and Infrastructure Engineering at AIG-Chartis in Jersey City, NJ. Welcome to the show, Abe.

Abe Naguib: Hello, Dana. Nice to be here.

Gardner: Abe, tell me a little bit about the scope of your organization and the type of applications activities that you are undergoing and why moving toward some newer products made sense?

Naguib: Let me step back for a second, Dana, and give you a background on AIG and its applications. AIG is a global insurance firm, supporting worldwide international insurance of different varieties.

We're structured with 1,500 companies and roughly about eight lines of businesses that manage those companies. Each group has their own CIO, CTO, COO structure, and I report to the global CTO.

What we look at is supporting their global architecture and performance behavioristics, if you will. One of the key things is how to federate the enterprise in terms of architecture and performance, so that we can standardize the swing over into the Java world, as well as middleware and economy of scale.

Gardner: Given the breadth and depth of the organization, where are you in terms of your applications? What are some of your goals in terms of improving how things are done?

Proliferation of middleware

Naguib: I started about 10 years back, when I came on board to standardize architecture, and I saw there was a proliferation of various middleware technologies. As we started going along, we thought about how to standardize that architecture.

As we faced more and more applications coming into the Java middleware world, we found that there’s a lot of footprint waste and there’s a lot of delivery cycles that are also slipped and wasted. So, we saw a need to control it.

After we started the architectural world, we also started the production support world and a facility for testing these environments. We started realizing, again, there were things that impacted business service level agreements (SLAs), economy of scale, even branding. So, we asked, how do we put it together?

One of the key things is, as we started the organizational performance, we were part of QA, but then we realized that we had to change our business strategy, and we thought about how to do that. One key thing is we changed our mindset from a performance testing practice to a performance engineering practice, and we've evolved now to performance architecture.

The engineering practice was focused on testing and analyzing, providing some kind of metrics. But, the performance architectural world now has influence into strategies, design practices, and resolution issues. We're currently a one-man or one-army team, kind of a paratrooper level. We're multi-skilled, from architecture, to performance, to support, and we drive resolution in the organization.

Gardner: What is your role in that team?

Naguib: I manage the organization in terms of deliveries. We hold internal best-practice discussions. We catch trends and metrics in our knowledge base. We influence design. We even influence vendors that come in. We partner with a lot of the products that come in.

So, we meet with IBM, HP, and Oracle products, and as we influence and capture trends, we work back with the product development teams to figure out how to first resolve internal development, as well as the product that we build on.

Gardner: And as you were making the transition to this performance architecture, what were some of the important considerations you had in terms of making that more holistic, more managed, and more comprehensive?

Naguib: One of the biggest things was the time to market. We also saw that resolution had to happen quickly and effectively. Carnegie Mellon did a study about five years ago and it said that post-live application resolution of performance issues was seven times the cost of pre-live [performance application resolution].

In other words, we realized that the faster we resolved issues, the faster to market, the faster we can address things, the less disruption to the delivery practices.

Too many people involved

In normal firefighting mode, architecture is involved, development is involved, and infrastructure is involved. What ends up happening is there are too many people involved. We're all scrambling, pointing fingers, looking at logs. So, we figured that the faster we get to resolution, the better for everyone to continue the train on the track.

We built a practice with architectural engineers and DBAs to get to issues and resolve them faster.

Gardner: So, when you've got multiple teams and then fairly large numbers of people involved with these teams, they're probably distributed as well. What’s the overall umbrella concept? What did you need to pull that all together and to give you that view into these activities to make that performance, integrity, and speed come together?

Naguib: The key thing is that we started working with the CIOs at that level, and figuring out a strategy to develop a service-level target, if you will. As we went along, we began working with the development teams to build a relationship with the architectural teams and the infrastructure teams.

We became more of a team model, building more of a peace-maker model. We regrouped the organization, so that rather than resolve and point fingers at each other, we resolved issues a lot faster.

Now, we're able to address the issue. We call it "isolate, identify, and resolve." At that point, if it’s a database issue, we work directly with the DBA. If it’s an infrastructure or architecture issue, we work directly with that group. We basically cut the cycle down in the last two or three years by about 70 percent.

A lot more CIOs have started bringing in more applications. We see a trend growth internally of roughly about 20-30 percent every year.

Gardner: And as you're increasing your goals of speed and integrity are you also able to handle more applications at once? Does this improve the volume of applications going through your pipeline?

Naguib: Absolutely. Because there is a change in our philosophy, in our strategy to focus more on business value, a lot more CIOs have started bringing in more applications. We see a trend growth internally of roughly about 20-30 percent every year.

I have a staff of nine. So, it’s a very agile, focused team, and they're very delivery-conscious. They're very business value-conscious, and we translate our data, the metrics that we capture, into business KPIs and infrastructure KPIs.

Because of that metric, the CIOs love what we do, because we make them look good with the business, which helps foster the relationship with the business, which helps them justify transformation in the future.

Gardner: Can you share with us any of those KPIs, what’s the report card that you could bring back to your superiors in a business sense? What’s the business case and rationale you can provide?

Footprint is key

Naguib: If you look at ITSM model, Service Level Delivery, one of the key things is the footprint of applications. One thing that organizations are starting to realize now is that software drives the hardware. For example, the cost of IBM WebSphere on hardware is much more expensive than actually buying a server.

In traditional firefighting mode, people tend to hire consultants, bring in hardware, and end up increasing their cost. What we found is that, if you address the software angle of it, then you can improve your TCO and ROI.

By taking a looking at correlating business transactions to a footprint on a server, and improving those transactions and their consumption rate, you're actually effectively improving the consumption of that application particularly. And as you improve that, there is more room for capacity. When there's more room for capacity, your economy of scale goes up. So, if TCO improves, ROI improves, and your technical debt actually gets resolved a lot faster.

Gardner: It sounds as if managing the development, test and deployment cycle effectively really is almost like the head of a pyramid -- and affects the entire IT economic equation.

Naguib: Absolutely. There is a new paradigm now, they call it the "Escalator Message." In 60 seconds or less, we can talk to a CIO, CTO, COO, or CFO about our strategy and how we can help them shift from the firefighting mode to more of an architecture mode.

In 60 seconds or less, we can talk to a CIO, CTO, COO, or CFO about our strategy and how we can help them shift from the firefighting mode to more of an architecture mode.

If that’s the case, the more they can salvage their delivery, the more they can salvage their effective costs, and the more they can now shift to more of an IT-sensitive solutions shop. That helps build a business relationship and helps improve their economy of scale.

Gardner: We're hearing a lot here at Software Universe about ALM 11, a new launch by HP. You've been a beta user of at least some of the components of that. Tell us how that started and what you experienced?

Naguib: Sure. My background is that I dealt with the Mercury products back in the late 1990s. I have experience with Quality Center and the improvements that have gone on over the years. Because of our focus, we built our paradigm out of QA and into the performance world, and we started focusing on improving that process.

The latest TruClient product, which is a LoadRunner product, has been a massive groundbreaking point solution. In the last two years, frankly, with HP and Mercury getting adjusted, there’s been kind of a lag, but I have to give kudos to the team.

One of the key things is that they have opened up their doors in terms of the delivery, in terms of their roadmap. I've worked extensively for the last roughly year with their product development team, and they have done quite a bit of improvement in their solution.

Good partnership role

They have also improved their service support model; the help desk actually resolves questions a lot faster. And we also have a good partnership role, and we actually work with things that we see, and to the influence of their roadmap as well.

This TruClient product has been phenomenal. One of the key things we're seeing now is BPM solutions are more Ajax-based, and there are so many varieties of Ajax frameworks out there than we know how to deal with. One of the key things with the partnership is that we're able to target what we need, they are able to deliver, and we are able to execute.

Gardner: So, trying to fit that into our larger equation, the test and development deployment scenario is very important to the overall IT equation economically. How does this product, TruClient, fit into that in terms of aiding and abetting your goals?

Naguib: One of the key things is how to build partnerships across the organization, internally and externally. LoadRunner and TruClient allow us to get in front of the console, work with the business team, capture their typical use cases in a day-in-the-life scenario, and automate that. That gets buy-in and partnership with the business.

We're also able to execute a test case now and bring that in front of the IT side and show them the actual footprint from a business perspective and the impact and the benefits. What ends up happening is that now we're bringing the two teams together. So, we're bridging the gap basically from execution.

Frankly, nobody really cares as much about the footprint cost, until they start realizing the dollars that are spent.

Gardner: And as an early adopter and user, is there any 20-20 hindsight advice that you might offer to others who would be going down this trail as well?

Naguib: I would definitely send the message out to think in business value. Frankly, nobody really cares as much about the footprint cost, until they start realizing the dollars that are spent.

Also, now, business wants to see us more involved from the IT side, in terms of solutions, top-line improvements, and bottom-line improvements. As the performance teams expand and mature and we have the right toolsets, innovative toolsets like TruClient, we're able to now shift the cost of waste into a cost of improvements, and that’s been a huge factor in the last couple of years.

Last, I would say that in 8,000+ engagements -- we're actually closing in on now 10,000 events this year -- we've seen roughly $127 million in infrastructure savings that we have recouped. Again, that helps to benefit the firm. Instead of waste, now we're able to leverage that into more improvement side.

Gardner: So, the unfortunate reality for IT is they often have to do more with less. You've found a way to actually make that happen and perhaps continue it on an ongoing basis.

Naguib: Absolutely. I am excited about what I do. We have a great team and a great strategy. The support from my CEOs is fantastic. And again, we are seeing that just the whole partnership model across both the vendor side and internally has been a super benefit to the organization as well as the industry.

Gardner: Well, great. We've been discussing IT consolidation, applications lifecycle best practices with Abe Naguib, Director of Global Performance Architecture and Infrastructure Engineering at AIG Chartis insurance. Thanks so much, Abe.

Naguib: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Gardner: We're here in Barcelona at HP's Software Universe 2010 Conference. Look for this podcast and others on the HP.com website, as well as via the BriefingsDirect network.

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this series of Software Universe Live discussions. Thanks for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11 from the HP Software Universe 2010 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2010. All rights reserved.

You may also be interested in:

• HP Software GM Jonathan Rende on how ALM enables IT to modernize businesses faster
  
• HP rolls out ALM 11 in Barcelona to expand managed automation for modern applications
• HP's new ALM 11 helps guide IT through shifting landscape of modern application development
  
• Dave Shirk details how HP's Instant-On Enterprise initiative takes aim at shifting demands on business and governments
  
• New book explores automating the managed applications lifecycle to accelerate delivery of business applications