Months Later

How did a year and a half go by since my last post? I chalk it up to a slew of developments at work, and to being pretty well out of business school. However, after months of tumult (I would say, tumultuous doldrums, ie hurry up and wait), I figure it's time to re-start this blog to talk about some of he business problems I'm confronted with these days.

First, to set the scene: In 2012, my employer opted to outsource nearly all of its IT engineering and operations. About 90% of my colleagues were given (and took) the option to continue in their roles under the outsource provider; a smaller number of us were retained within the new IT organizations within the companies.

Second, the Education division was going to be divested from the larger company, either on its own or sold to another party. Ultimately, McGraw Hill Education (MHE) was sold to a private equity firm in 2013, and it is with MHE that I now ply my trade.

Most of 2013 and 2014 have been and continue to be filled with divestiture and re-organization: spinning work off to the new provider, and separating our infrastructure from the former parent company. I've led efforts in both tracks for endpoint computing, which is essentially all workstations, mobile devices, and the services to support them. It's plumbing, but vital plumbing.

So what are this year's challenges:

Create an an IT support organization that provides forward guidance on emerging technologies as well as support for existing technologies.

Finish the creation and migration of endpoint services for a global enterprise of 6000+ employees and contractors, without disrupting existing services.

That's it. these are broad buckets, and the details will follow - to list them all now would beggar anyone's attention span. Some details I'll have to be coy about, but the larger processes I expect will be lessons applicable anywhere.