The Power of the Monthly External R+2 Reports

The R+2 monthly external reports provide three capabilities that will enable all senior IT managers to better manage their IT organization. Those capabilities are:

1. The ability to once a month look outward and see where their IT organization ranks in the industry.
2. The ability to once a month look inward to see how their various data centers compare to each other.
3. The ability to once a month focus on which vendors’ products and services enhance the stability of the corporate network system and which ones don’t.

For fifty years IT organizations as a whole have gone virtually unmeasured with the result that senior corporate management and senior IT management have no idea where their IT organizations rank in the industry. Conventional wisdom has historically considered IT organizations too complex, too multifaceted, too technical and too fast changing to be measured. But RPI believes that there is one IT function that can be measured and, depending on the data used, becomes a microcosm of the IT organization or a microcosm of any of the data centers managed by that IT organization. This means that both the IT organization and its data centers can be compared and ranked externally among all major IT organizations. It also means that each of the IT organization’s data centers can be compared and ranked internally.

To qualify as a microcosm of the IT organization a function would need to have four important characteristics. The function would need to have a high percentage of the traits of what it is representing, in this case, the IT organization. It would need to be a function that was associated with all IT organizations. It would need to require most, if not all, of the management skills to manage, as managing the IT organization does. And lastly, this function would need to be capable of being measured in such a manner as to allow for comparisons across extended time periods and across all major IT organizations.    

The IT function that meets all four of these characteristics is the function of managing the stability of the corporate network system, which also happens to be the function of managing the stability of the corporate server machines.

Managing the stability of the network is nearly as essential to the success of the IT organization as managing the organization itself. Managing that stability is a responsibility that all major IT organizations share. Managing that stability requires a level of management skill approximating that required to manage IT, which includes the ability to select hardware, application software, operating systems, hypervisors, operating procedures, monitoring software, backup procedures, and security software. And lastly, managing that stability can be measured in such a way as to be comparable over extended time and across all major IT organizations. 

                                      Using this measurement to improve managing the IT organization

R+2 enables senior IT managers to look outward from their organization and see where the stability of their corporate network ranks in the industry and, by extension, where their organization ranks in the industry. A senior IT manager can see how large the stability gap is between his organization and the best organization in the industry and how large the gap is between his organization and the worst organization in the industry.

Because R+2 also measures six component parts of the network, senior IT management can see how these components contribute to its network stability and see how the different vendors’ products and services support the stability of the network and these six component parts.

Because R+2 is designed to be used by hundreds of IT organizations in the industry, how it ranks the stability of the network, the six component parts of the network, and the products and services used on the network will influence what those IT organizations acquire. That means that it will encourage vendors to maximize their efforts to produce products and services that enhance network and component stability. With no other effort than participating in R+2, IT senior management will cause platform vendors, operating system vendors, hypervisor vendors, hardware vendors and maintenance vendors to improve their offerings or risk losing business.

Many IT organizations claim they use “Best Practices” in support of maximizing network stability. However, they do so with no apparent knowledge of where the stability of the networks of those IT organizations that use those practices rank in the industry. It would seem logical that the “Best Practices” are the practices of the organization with the best stability. IT organizations can both learn what to do from the best organization and what not to do from the worst organization. R+2 facilitates this learning process by examining what makes the best network the best and the worst network the worst and then sharing those findings (without revealing those organizations) with all participating organizations including the organizations that have the best and worst network stability.  

The first half of the R+2 monthly reports enables the senior IT manager to look outward from his organization to see where his organization ranks in the industry and to learn from those organizations whose stability ranks higher. The second half of the monthly R+2 reports enables the senior IT manager to look inward to see how his different data centers and their managers compare in terms of their contribution to corporate network stability and their contribution to the IT organization as a whole.

Many major IT organizations operate multiple data centers, each with its own manager, its own history and shaped by its unique geographical influence. The inward looking report provides the Interruption Rate and the average downtime minutes of the server machines for each of those data centers. It then compares and ranks those data centers against each other on the basis of their Interruption Rate. It also ranks each of the six components (platform, virtual versus non-virtual, operating systems, hypervisors, hardware, and maintenance options) of each data center based on their Interruption Rate. This enables the senior IT manager and the data center managers to see the strengths and weaknesses of each of the organization’s data centers as they compare internally and then see how those data centers compare against the data centers of other major IT organizations in the industry. For example, if there are 300 participating IT organizations in this month’s R+2 reports and those organizations average 5 data centers each, then each of the data center managers in all of these 1,500 locations are ranked from first to last so that each knows how well he is doing in comparison to his peers, and so that each senior IT manager knows where the managers of its data centers rank in the industry.

The two views (looking outward to the industry and inward to their individual data centers) offer each senior IT manager a unique view of its management challenge never before available. It motivates and enables that senior IT manager, its data center managers, and all vendors to do a better job. RPI believes that R+2 will be as important to the way IT is managed as email is to the way IT communicates.