Closed Loop Lifecycle Planning: A Complete Guide to Managing Your PC Fleet

by Bruce Michelson

Overview

BETTER SUPPORT, LOWER COSTS: OPTIMIZE YOUR PC HARDWARE LIFECYCLE, FROM ACQUISITION TO DISPOSAL

It typically costs four times as much to support a PC as it does to purchase it--often, even more. The solution: Closed Loop Lifecycle Planning®, Bruce Michelson’s comprehensive, proven, best-practice methodology for managing client hardware. Drawing on decades of experience working with Hewlett-Packard’s largest and most complex clients, Michelson shows how to monitor and manage lifecycle tasks systematically and coherently—improving efficiency and driving out cost at every phase of your hardware lifecycle, no matter what that hardware is. Michelson shows IT managers how to segment users to provide the right equipment and support at the lowest cost and offers in-depth guidance on controlling the cost of change. His pragmatic approach fully reflects IT’s business context and addresses crucial related issues, ranging from service delivery to security and risk management.

 

Coverage includes:

• The core concepts of closed loop lifecycle planning and transitioning to lifecycle management for the first time
• Effectively managing all three client lifecycle management “suites”: commodity, value, and economic
• Addressing the business and political challenges associated with PC lifecycle management
• Optimizing upfront tasks: hardware/software acquisition, interoperability, prototyping, staging, integration, image management, and installation
• Managing deployed PCs: moves, adds, changes; warranty/maintenance; asset management; help desks; networking; and program management
• Refreshing technology and securely disposing of hardware at end-of-life
• Minimizing user downtime and ensuring business continuity
• Reducing existing costs, avoiding new costs, and learning the broader lessons of closed loop lifecycle planning

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780132702102
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	06/27/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Bruce Michelson is the National Lifecycle Manager for Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group (PSG). In this role, Bruce is responsible for engaging with Hewlett-Packard’s largest and most complex accounts in developing continuous process improvement plans and cost-savings strategies. As a subject matter expert in lifecycle and the total cost of ownership, Bruce’s credentials include industry recognition for his independent research. Bruce has been appointed and recognized as a Distinguished Technologist by Hewlett-Packard. Distinguished Technologist is a title reserved for an elite few individuals who have met a rigorous standard within three performance criteria: impact and continuity of technical contributions, leadership, and breadth and depth of knowledge.

 

Bruce is the author of more than 200 industry/customer white papers. He holds multiple copyrights for the research and publications he has developed. Bruce has participated as an adviser on two management textbooks. From a subject matter expertise perspective, Bruce holds multiple certifications. Prior to assuming the role of National Lifecycle Manager, Bruce held regional positions in the high technology field, gaining expertise in the utility business model, lifecycle services, and cost management. A frequent keynote speaker representing Hewlett-Packard, Bruce has presented various lifecycle topics to a diverse group ranging from colleges and universities to senior executives. Bruce has more than 30 years of experience in high technology, cost management, and total cost of ownership across multiple industry segments.

 

Bruce earned a Bachelor’s degree in business accounting in 1974 from Indiana University.

 

Read an Excerpt

IntroductionIntroduction

Lifecycle management has been in existence as a concept for many years. As early as the 1990s, lifecycle management was touted as an IT strategy that would streamline operations and reduce costs.

Along the way, the marketing messages (some would say hype) were confused with the actual discipline of lifecycle management. The maturity level of lifecycle management was in its early development. The needs of IT managers were not yet fully defined and articulated. There was an abundance of providers, all of whom had similar marketing messages with a wide array of core competencies and definitions at a detailed level of what lifecycle management represented. However, in all this confusion began to rise a conceptual vision of what lifecycle management could be and an operational definition of what it would comprise.

Two clear steps were required make that vision become reality: define the requirements, and then organize to deliver the service levels that the requirements addressed. This proved to be more complicated than many IT professionals believed because, in the vacuum of definitions, silos developed organizationally for the delivery of the services. Around these silos, cultures and a "comfort" level developed; the challenges to consider and implement lifecycle management had become political, too. To adopt lifecycle management, the organization would need to become more flexible.

About the same time, other significant breakthrough developments occurred that facilitated how businesses would perceive lifecycle management. The first development was the widespread acceptance of the total cost of ownership (TCO). As both aconcept and a deliverable, the TCO message convinces IT professionals and executives that the cost of a client device (PC) can in fact be measured and tracked.

Whereas TCO measured and reported the costs specifically, areas of potential impact were generally identified. The measurement and reporting, however, was not a plan to execute a strategy to impact the cost and service structure; that is the role that lifecycle management plays. TCO highlighted the need for IT organizations to have a defined lifecycle strategy. After all, it has become clear in the industry that the acquisition price of an access device represents a small percentage of the overall costs to support that device.

The TCO became a primary justification for the need to define a plan. From the 1990s through today, many (if not most) large businesses have had some sort of TCO validation. At times, the TCO was both a validation for change and a validation that a business was already optimized.

Y2K had many interesting long-term impacts that were not clearly understood at that time. During Y2K, end users discovered that they could add, change, or modify certain parameters including the image and software to access device configurations. In many cases, end users also discovered that IT involvement was not required (and in some cases, IT didn't even need to be notified of the changes).

Because of the scaling of Y2K remediation, end users felt empowered as competent users of access technology to enable the technology on a more personal level. This heralded the end of the casual end user. End users suddenly felt "comfortable" making changes and were not concerned with implications across the enterprise; their concern was to make the access device more adaptable for their own use.

Through all the evolution of technology of personal computing for the enterprise, lifecycle has remained constant. Interestingly, the definition of lifecycle depended on who was asking the question and from whom the response was sought. The belief of businesses was that if you asked six consultants the same questions regarding lifecycle management, you would get six completely different answers. Although this might seem a bit humorous, it happens to be quite true.

What businesses now seek is a practitioner's point of view and an industry definition of lifecycle management, which is the primary objective of this book. Just as with a cookbook recipe or a manufactured product, a bill of material can be defined to represent the requirements to support access devices across the enterprise. This book should be viewed as the "cookbook."

To be clear, lifecycle management is vendor neutral. A simple definition is that lifecycle management is the set of deliverables required to support access devices in an enterprise. Many businesses truly believe that lifecycle management is not "rocket science." I would agree. Lifecycle management represents a combination of business, political, and economic considerations. It is the combination of all these agendas that make lifecycle management challenging to deliver in the marketplace.

Closed loop lifecycle planning offers a methodology that provides businesses an opportunity to objectively assess and improve the entire lifecycle environment. Looking at lifecycle management from a practitioner's point of view yields the clearest possible insight into optimizing the client lifecycle portfolio.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I               Lifecycle Management

1 Closed Loop Lifecycle Planning Methodology 7

2 Overview of Closed Loop Lifecycle Planning 21

3 Acquiring Hardware 37

4 Acquiring Software 51

5 Staging and Integration 71

6 Installation 85

7 Moves, Adds, and Changes (MACs) 95

8 Warranty and Maintenance 105

9 Asset Management 119

10 The Help Desk 139

11 Program Management 159

12 Disposing of Client Devices at the End of Life 171

13 Technology Refresh 187

14 Service-Delivery Strategies 207

15 Security and Risk 233

16 Global Lifecycle 249

17 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity  261

18 End-User Downtime 267

19 Lifecycle Management: Business Observations 275

Index 529

 

ONLINE CHAPTERS

Part II             Additional Detailed Lifecycle Management Content

20 Interoperability and Prototyping 287

21 Image Management 295

22 Networking 307

23 Management Tools 315

24 The Quantification of Benefits and Value of Closed Loop Lifecycle Planning 323

25 Closed Loop Lifecycle Planning for Servers 359

26 Industry Profiles: Lifecycle Considerations 367

 

Bonus Section            User Segmentation: A Complement to Closed Loop Lifecycle Planning

27 Overview of User Segmentation 381

28 Technologies in User Segmentation 399

29 Expanding the Technologies Under a User Segmentation Strategy 427

30 End-User Segments 453

31 User Segmentation and the Closed Loop Lifecycle Planning Model 505

Preface

Introduction

Lifecycle management has been in existence as a concept for many years. As early as the 1990s, lifecycle management was touted as an IT strategy that would streamline operations and reduce costs.

Along the way, the marketing messages (some would say hype) were confused with the actual discipline of lifecycle management. The maturity level of lifecycle management was in its early development. The needs of IT managers were not yet fully defined and articulated. There was an abundance of providers, all of whom had similar marketing messages with a wide array of core competencies and definitions at a detailed level of what lifecycle management represented. However, in all this confusion began to rise a conceptual vision of what lifecycle management could be and an operational definition of what it would comprise.

Two clear steps were required make that vision become reality: define the requirements, and then organize to deliver the service levels that the requirements addressed. This proved to be more complicated than many IT professionals believed because, in the vacuum of definitions, silos developed organizationally for the delivery of the services. Around these silos, cultures and a "comfort" level developed; the challenges to consider and implement lifecycle management had become political, too. To adopt lifecycle management, the organization would need to become more flexible.

About the same time, other significant breakthrough developments occurred that facilitated how businesses would perceive lifecycle management. The first development was the widespread acceptance of the total cost of ownership (TCO). As both a concept and a deliverable, the TCO message convinces IT professionals and executives that the cost of a client device (PC) can in fact be measured and tracked.

Whereas TCO measured and reported the costs specifically, areas of potential impact were generally identified. The measurement and reporting, however, was not a plan to execute a strategy to impact the cost and service structure; that is the role that lifecycle management plays. TCO highlighted the need for IT organizations to have a defined lifecycle strategy. After all, it has become clear in the industry that the acquisition price of an access device represents a small percentage of the overall costs to support that device.

The TCO became a primary justification for the need to define a plan. From the 1990s through today, many (if not most) large businesses have had some sort of TCO validation. At times, the TCO was both a validation for change and a validation that a business was already optimized.

Y2K had many interesting long-term impacts that were not clearly understood at that time. During Y2K, end users discovered that they could add, change, or modify certain parameters including the image and software to access device configurations. In many cases, end users also discovered that IT involvement was not required (and in some cases, IT didn't even need to be notified of the changes).

Because of the scaling of Y2K remediation, end users felt empowered as competent users of access technology to enable the technology on a more personal level. This heralded the end of the casual end user. End users suddenly felt "comfortable" making changes and were not concerned with implications across the enterprise; their concern was to make the access device more adaptable for their own use.

Through all the evolution of technology of personal computing for the enterprise, lifecycle has remained constant. Interestingly, the definition of lifecycle depended on who was asking the question and from whom the response was sought. The belief of businesses was that if you asked six consultants the same questions regarding lifecycle management, you would get six completely different answers. Although this might seem a bit humorous, it happens to be quite true.

What businesses now seek is a practitioner's point of view and an industry definition of lifecycle management, which is the primary objective of this book. Just as with a cookbook recipe or a manufactured product, a bill of material can be defined to represent the requirements to support access devices across the enterprise. This book should be viewed as the "cookbook."

To be clear, lifecycle management is vendor neutral. A simple definition is that lifecycle management is the set of deliverables required to support access devices in an enterprise. Many businesses truly believe that lifecycle management is not "rocket science." I would agree. Lifecycle management represents a combination of business, political, and economic considerations. It is the combination of all these agendas that make lifecycle management challenging to deliver in the marketplace.

Closed loop lifecycle planning offers a methodology that provides businesses an opportunity to objectively assess and improve the entire lifecycle environment. Looking at lifecycle management from a practitioner's point of view yields the clearest possible insight into optimizing the client lifecycle portfolio.

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.