Monthly Archives: October 2016

#IaaS for Christmas!

The client is struggling. Current IT staff is not capable and are wasting valuable cycles. Competitors are nipping at their heels and IT leadership is whistling by the graveyard. What is one to do?

This is the call I received last week and I immediately sprang into action. I quickly assembled the team and we converged on the client site. The initial meeting was tense. I looked at the Executives assembled before me and boldly claimed: “Your business is dying and IT is to blame”.

As heads nodded in the affirmative, I started with the proposal in a few steps:

Step 1: Offshore the entire IT department by Christmas. In a bold move, I told the customer to perform the layoffs on 12/24 so that tax savings would be maximized. But I told them to keep the layoffs a secret so we could pump all the information out of the current staff as possible.

Step 2: Allow me to staff a massive IaaS offering with self-service, cloud-bursting, load balancing, auto-tuning, agility, flexibility, pervasiveness, and ROI. Center of innovation would be Bangalore with secondary center of innovation in Russia.

Step 3: Sign a 10 year commitment with my firm to manage the resources.

The client agreed in short order. We celebrated at a fine steakhouse, with the pre-requisite leather chairs and all. #IaaS for Christmas is what the client wanted and what they will get!

Sincerely, TCC

How #MachineLearning and #BigData Saved the Day…

Let me be clear: my team is made up of rockstars. When a client knows they are in trouble, when they realize that revenues are down, that the end is near they call us in. Like superheroes, we swoop in and save the day.

Recently, a customer engaged my firm to save them from impending doom. At first glance, it was the typical customer deal. Incompetent leadership, poor staff, and bad lighting in the conference rooms. However, a more detailed analysis revealed the real problem: the lack of a comprehensive Big Data strategy and no ability to adopt machine learning.

I asked them, do you realize your competitors are miles ahead of you? Do you realize that without Big Data you cannot aggregate and disseminate the colossal troves of data you have? That without an ability to capture this data and analyze it that your data services have failed? By the end of the meeting, the entire staff was scared stiff. I also casually informed them that my firm was told to look for significant salary savings and that most of their positions were 100% dependent on helping me to launch this project.

Once the proper cajoling was completed, the client signed on the line which was dotted. I claimed a spot bonus for my fantastic sales ability while the customer now has access to my team to help them save their business.

Chalk it up as another win for the good guys!

Sincerely, TCC

The art of the Conference Room

One of the most holy places at the client site is the Executive Conference Room. This is the epicenter of power. Unlike conference rooms used by the traditional employee, the Executive Conference Room has a feel of power and financial gravitas that lends itself to critical decision making. LED TVs are just a little bigger, the projector just a little better.

Today we had a meeting with several client executives. Like I always do, I booked the room 2 hours early and took that time to get the feel of the room. Like a fine thoroughbred who runs the track to prepare for the race, I always test the conference room to get a feel for its power. I try to sense past decisions made in the room. If I focus hard enough, I can almost feel past meetings that had occurred within the room. I then go through a dry run of my presentation. I practice my spontaneous jokes and hand movements over and over again to make sure they are right. I test the acoustics to make sure my words are clearly heard. I adjust the shades to get just the right ambience. I make sure the hard candies are positioned perfectly so that they can be easily reached by all attendees.

My meetings are world famous. I hope the description above inspires you to take your meetings to the next level.

Sincerely, TCC

#MachineLearning, a tale of success and conquest

Many times I am asked to help with Requests for Proposal from customers. One such customer was visited this past week. The client is a large producer of industrial equipment. They are trying to capture all kinds of data from the millions of sensors they deploy in their equipment. As a #BigData and #IoT guru, I am often called in to save the day.

I don’t like to brag, but my aura often leads to me completely taking over a conference room. When the discussions get real and the stakes are high, I GRAB the projector and go into full PowerPoint ninja mode.

When we arrived onsite, I got down to brass tacks. The client was looking for a solution that would allow them to proactively replace faulty sensors and provide better insights to their customers on how they were using their equipment. After carefully listening and stroking my chin, I immediately went into a detailed explanation of how #IoT, #BigData, and #Hadoop were critical.

Now one of the tricks is to give the customer JUST enough to make them realize they need you and cannot survive without you. I immediately went into use-case examples of other successful clients who had allowed me to save their businesses. I used terms like agility, robust, cloudburst, starburst, fog computing, and wage arbitrage to force the client into a total state of salivation at their ability to use my services.

This week I am going back onsite with a full team of experts to seal the deal. The goal: get the client to sign on the line which is dotted. I will keep you posted.

Sincerely, TCC

#CloudComputing Saves The Day

Today my client was worried. Profits were decreasing and customers were not happy with service in their retail locations. I immediately convened a panel of experts from my firm to come in and listen to their issues.

There was Charlie, who is a major superstar in business process engineering. We brought in Pauline who has a list of consulting conquests that are too numerous to list. I flew in our most Senior Project Manager (Allan) to start planning work-streams.

As the customer went through their challenges, my team anxiously awaited the opportunity to present them a Statement of Work. We knew the solution before we even heard the problem. Cloud computing was required.

Below is an example of some of the dialog. Again, I am taking you into the conference room to experience the deal going down as it happened:

Customer: How does cloud computing address our product deficiencies?

Me: It provides efficiencies and agility while decreasing TCO and increasing ROI

Customer: Yes but the products are not popular with the market. How will cloud computing help?

Me: If you are not in the cloud, you are already behind. Fix your IT model and the products will follow.

Customer: When can you start?

There you have it. The net result: $10MM for my firm and several years of work at the client site.

Sincerely, TCC

Client needs #IaaS, I deliver

One of the things I love about my career is my ability to make a difference in the lives of my customers. I have a saying that is tried and true:

“It not how you play the game, it’s how you change the rules to win at the game”

Case in point. I was with a client a few weeks back holding a massive strategy summit. I had my team bring in poster-sized PostIt notes so that we could cover the walls with brainstorming and diagramming. During the meeting, it was determined that the company was losing money and market share due to the inability of their current IT team to work at the speed of business. Sensing an opportunity to go for the kill, I asked leading questions such as:

  1. Does your IT team utilize the latest and greatest DevOps and Cloud Computing methodologies?
  2. When hiring IT leaders, do you look for thought leaders or deep technical skills?
  3. Is IT growing as a cost and, given the failure of the current staff, are you looking at an offshore strategy?

The answers were what I expected. The IT team did not practice DevOps and Cloud Computing. Why? Because there were no funds made available for it and there had been a hiring freeze in IT for years. I confidently noted that lack of investment was not an excuse for the IT department. Truly agile thinkers should be able to get creative. After all, fire was not invented by a company that made lighters! It was discovered through sheer will by rubbing sticks together.

IT leaders were not really hired, they were promoted from within. I noted this is a tremendous mistake as those who work for the company already are part of the problem and should never be allowed to move up the ladder.

Finally, IT was growing as a cost but an offshore strategy was never looked at. I quickly mentioned wage arbitrage as THE strategy to follow as it was a way of saving money while also freeing the client of any and all obligations to their IT employees.

Given my deft navigation of the meeting, the client begged me for a solution. I came back with a multi-point program focused on an offshore strategy and IaaS. I pointed out the following benefits:

  1. My consulting firm would take over IT from the client. We would do this for 6 years at a total cost of $100MM.
  2. The current IT team would provide knowledge transfer and would only receive their severance packages if they stayed through the entire period of 4 months during transition.
  3. I would fly to our offshore location (first class round trip) and assemble an army of IaaS gurus who would combine agile IT with orchestration, business process, and Six Sigma.
  4. ROI and TCO calculations would be done on a quarterly basis. If we under-performed we would try harder but if we over-performed, we would receive a bonus of 5% of the quarterly invoice.

The client gladly accepted my proposal and has engaged with us to start the process. For all of those in the same position, I highly advise you to look into wage arbitrage and IaaS as the elixir to cure all that ills you.

Sincerely, TCC

 

Welcome!

This is the first official post of the Town Car Consultant Blog! I welcome everyone to this site. Please click on the “Who I Am, What I Do” page for some insights into what this site is about. On a personal note, I am really excited to be kicking off this blog. For a year or so now, I have become concerned that Joe Q. Public is missing the boat on the merging of Cloud Computing, Big Data, Analytics, and IoT. This blog is meant to capture the dreams, goals, and imagination of everyone who reads it! Welcome!

End of week status report

Nothing excites me more than the end of week status report. It is a chance for me to show the client just how much was accomplished this past week. I want to give you a glimpse into this week’s report. Note the nuance I use to explain difficult concepts to the client in terms they can easily understand:

Status – Week Ending 7 Oct 2016

Ladies and Gentlemen: It is with great pleasure that I present the following activities for your review. This was a great week for the Team. We had several fruitful discussions and I really believe we moved the ball forward and maintained excellent momentum as we embark on project “Luna”:

  • Met with the Board of Directors (BOD) to discuss future state plans, with particular emphasis on current state challenges. Used Schwarz-Zigfield methodology to highlight how your current state is similar to industry peers. Recommended a thorough review of last year’s plans and how they were executed from both a financial and HR perspective. Action Item: Client to meet with my project manager to discuss meeting.
  • Technical assessment team came onsite and began program. Team will be here for the next several weeks. Although local resources were requested, I did not feel the local resources had the expertise to execute on our plan and vision. Therefore, the entire team will fly in each and every week. In order to maximize time onsite, told team to fly in on Sundays and leave on Friday afternoon. Expenses will roughly average $12,000 per week for the team.
  • Held offsite strategy review with Executive Team members. Discussed priorities for the next year. Significant discussion and high energy from all involved. Decision was made to hold another offsite next month. Each group will present their Top 5 priorities, with full financial ROI and TCO models based on Aggregate Valuation Models.

As you can see, this was a very productive week. I feel we are moving the ball forward each and every week while gathering confidence from Team members. Ordinary staff may still be nervous about pending resource actions, but I feel we can keep them at-ease by continuing to talk up opportunities for diversification.

Sincerely, TCC