Serena 2006 Global User Conference

On Sept. 10-13, 2006 I have been invited to the Serena eXchange conference in Las Vegas (Nevada), representing the "Computer Programming" magazine.
Serena is the market leader in the Change Management IT solutions or, as Serena itself prefers to call it, the Change Governance. Basing on this word, Serena wants to build up a new strategy, a new trend for all the companies investing nowadays in complex IT infrastructures, hopefully doing the same the some years ago Tom Siebel did with the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) acronym.
The key point anyway is the change (underlined by the word game of the event too) that in a competitive market never ends for anyone, and Serena is here to offer proper solutions.
In this sense, most of the event has been driven by the launch of the new platform Dimensions 10, a complete package solution for the Application Life Cycle Management.
But Change is also inside Serena that, first of all, has become a private company and has lately changed its logo; and they seem to manage everything very well. Could it be because they use themselves the software solutions they promote? After all Mark Woodward (in the picture with me), CEO of Serena, says that a way to promote software quality inside his company is that of using it first of all. I have had the lucky to interview this guy and all the directors from Serena and, honestly, it has been really interesting.
In the next days I will write more about this event and all the fantastic material I collected, I promise, as well as about all the rest of the activities I am conducting: I have been very negligent about my blog (mostly because of the same activities).. but I am going to put it right, as I am sure there are many things I can share and can be interesting for all the community.
Next days I will be in Nice, France, so I will be absent for just 3 days, but on Friday I promise to continue this and other stories.
Anyway, if you're reading these lines, challenge me.. I will answer.

Freelance Journalism

The IT world is fascinating and full of events! We collaborate with IT and PC magazines, writing articles about fresh themes and news as well as in-depth analysis, product-testing and presentations.
On the other side, some of our academic research has been presented and published in conferences and peer-reviewed journals.
We are always open for new collaborations, so if you are interested please contact us!

Published a special on ITIL

This month the Italian magazine "Computer Programming" is publishing an entire special dedicated to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, co-written with my precious and inseparable assistant Dr. Ioana Codoban.
The 20-pages special has the purpose of giving a general view to this wide area that is coming to organize and to define best practices in the IT projects management. Particularly the 3 books "Infrastructure Management", "Service Delivery" and "Service Support" have been describied in their peculiarities.
Going beyond the mere theory exposition, the special tries to exploit our international CRM projects experience to offer the reader a view on the real application of best practices in the IT scenario.
Too often the technical and the business counterparts of a company lack of communication and comprehension.
In this sense the reader is also introduced to the wonderful world of IT business analysis and to the importance of its role for a sane and profitable success of a project.
A particular attention has been put on a parallel comparison between the ITIL service orientation the Customer Relationship Management. Can be the in fact ITIL be seen as the IT department CRM? Or is the CRM a possible tool to promote the IT? Or, differently, ITIL could be used as indespensable support to CRM?
In fact, what would be of CRM, without the operational level? Nowadays.. just nothing.

ASSIMA - Wizard Training Suite

Today I had a vey interesting phone call with a Country Manager of Assima (www.assima.net). I was introduced to this wonderful and powerful Training toll which permits to generate in a very intuitive way, training material and real-time interactive simulations.

The Beginning of an ambitious project

This BLOG is just an open window to the huge world of Business Analysis in the Customer Relationship Management arena.
In particular our trip will cover the whole Europe, touching the main capitals, but not only. In fact many international companies have some departments in the nearby of the big cities, above all those whose business is not strictly related to the nearby area services.This possibility comes up from an international experience matured in a big pharmaceutical company which implemented a Siebel CRM solution in quite all the countries. So Reims in France, Lisbon in Portugal, Brussels in Belgium, Ingelheim in Germany were already touched by my activity.We can say this has been my first professional Gym, even if the scarce software engineering mentality and the limited approach inside that organization, have brought me to the decision of starting my own activity as freelance, but without all the problems of a company.
Another reason for this choice, is my love for applied research and study. I am attending in the meantime a Ph.D. in my previous engineering university; my target is to bind the research on UML, software enginnering best practices and e-business, with real industrial projects.