… then a detailed view of how that picture looked yesterday (and
why) is worth at least ten-thousand.
Sometimes I wonder how companies manage to get along with the constant
change in both technology and expertise that occurs in business these
days. With technology changing so rapidly, and customers demanding more
and more from their suppliers every day, the only constant in business
is constant change. Change is, generally, a good thing. It is even
better when managed appropriately with proper controls and planning.
Having seen both sides of the scale on proper management of change, I
can say that I believe appropriately applied technology itself is a
necessity in managing all but the most simple environments. Even in the
simple ones, technology could often be used to streamline the
environment, but nobody usually cares because the capacity of the
environments is so large when compared to their usage, that the
inefficiencies don’t actually hamper business processes. It is,
however, a dangerous venture to grow your environment without proper
management in place, no matter what the size or function.
It is for these reasons that organizations such as ITIL and CBIT exist,
and that legislation such as HIPPA, GLBA, SOX and others exist. These
organizations and laws exist to ensure that information, and the
environments that manage it, are controlled appropriately and various
types of risk are mitigated to the extent reasonable and possible.
Though many question the validity of such legislation stating that the
free market can and should be solely responsible for managing these
risks, I would state that prior to the enactment of these legal
measures, too often it was looked at as too expensive to care about
such risk mitigation practices. Even now, many organizations only
follow most of these procedures to the letter of the law, and not the
spirit of them, and do so only to satisfy the requirements of legal
authorities.
However, those organizations and individuals who take the time and
resources to follow the spirit of these laws and standards bodies
generally come to a realization that these rules and regulations are
meant to improve the overall quality of business and ensure a
continuing success in managing the various risks of doing business.
These organizations then use the functions provided by satisfying these
legal requirements to measurably improve business practices and cut
operational inefficiencies. These organizations quickly realize the
benefits of applying accurate business indicators and interpretations
of those indicators.
Now that I’ve written an essay, I will go on to my point. As a systems
engineer of almost 10 years now, I can’t count the number of times that
I have said “What JUST changed?” “What is different now that project X
is NOT working than when it WAS?” and “Who did WHAT and WHY?”
Sometimes, the blame falls straight on my shoulders. Other times, I
never can quite figure out what changed, due to complexity of
environments and the many concurrent projects that tend to run
concurrently in some networks. These questions are the very questions
that proper controls and indicators supply the answers to in a deeply
meaningful way.
Since it’s late, I will continue these thoughts in another entry…
Feel free to comment on any topics you might like covered… 
