Books

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Measuring ITIL: Measuring, Reporting and Modeling – the IT Service Management Metrics That Matter Most to IT Senior Executives

How do you measure and report your ITIL processes? Which ITIL metrics matter the most to Senior Executives? Finally, there is a book that shows you how! This is not a theoretical treatise, but a practical guide that shows you the operational metrics to use and how these can be calculated into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Critical Success factors (CSFs) that resonate with Senior Management. In this book you will learn about: Defining and building a comprehensive ITIL metrics program; Which metrics are the most important and how to calculate them; Dealing with staff resistance to a metrics program; Tips and suggestions for what to do if inadequate tools and reporting exist; Suggested work plan for how to build your metrics program step-by-step. In addition, this book contains a helpful CD with a helpful IT Service Management modeling tool that covers all 10 ITIL processes. Simply enter your key operational metrics and the KPIs and CSFs get automatically calculated! This is a comprehensive guide for building any ITIL metrics program with all the information you need in one place.

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

“The Long Tail” is a powerful new force in our economy: the rise of the niche. As the cost of reaching consumers drops dramatically, our markets are shifting from a one-size-fits-all model of mass appeal to one of unlimited variety for unique tastes. From supermarket shelves to advertising agencies, the ability to offer vast choice is changing everything, and causing us to rethink where our markets lie and how to get to them. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it, from DVDs at Netflix to songs on iTunes to advertising on Google. However, this is not just a virtue of online marketplaces; it is an example of an entirely new economic model for business, one that is just beginning to show its power. After a century of obsessing over the few products at the head of the demand curve, the new economics of distribution allow us to turn our focus to the many more products in the tail, which collectively can create a new market as big as the one we already know. The Long Tail is really about the economics of abundance. New efficiencies in distribution, manufacturing, and marketing are essentially resetting the definition of whats commercially viable across the board. If the 20th century was about hits, the 21st will be equally about niches.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design

This is a comprehensive tutorial that teaches fundamental and advanced SOA design principles, supplemented with detailed case studies and technologies used to implement SOAs in the real world. All major software manufacturers and vendors are promoting support for SOA. As a result, every major development platform now officially supports the creation of service-oriented solutions. Parts I, II, and III cover basic and advanced SOA concepts and theory that prepare you for Parts IV and V, which provide a series of step-by-step how to instructions for building an SOA. Part V further contains coverage of WS-* technologies and SOA platform support provided by J2EE and .NET.

Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices

This book spells out guidelines and strategies for successfully using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in large-scale projects. SOA represents the latest paradigm in distributed computing and middleware development. However,SOA is not a revolution, but rather an evolution in software architecture. SOA is a collection of best practice software construction principles accompanied by proven methodologies in development and project management. This book is unique in that it offers a pragmatic approach to the topic. The authors borrow from their more than forty years of collective enterprise experience, and offer a frank discussion of the challenges associated with adopting SOA. They also help readers ensure that their organization does not become too closely tied to a specific technology. The result is a detailed introduction to the topic and an architectural blueprint for implementing SOA.

Airline Confidential: Lifting the Lid on the Airline Industry

This book will lift the lid on the airline industry and the world of aviation, highlighting the humorous and the sometimes downright alarming business of air travel. It avoids the question of fatal accidents and concentrates on stories, trivia, and salacious gossip that will make it an ideal read for the seasoned air traveler and an indispensable handbook for anyone working in the industry.

Seeing What’s Next: Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change

When a disruptive innovation is launched, it changes the entire industry and every firm operating within in This book argues that it is possible to predict which companies will win and which will lose in a specific situation—and provides a practical framework for doing so. Most books on innovation—including Christensen’s previous two books—approached innovation from the inside-out, showing firms how they can create innovations inside their own companies. This book is written from an “outside-in” perspective, showing how executives, investors, and analysts can assess the impact of a new innovation on the firms they have a vested interest in.