become a ciber thought leader
We are always seeking talented and innovative people. We have IT careers open all around the globe.
Ashu Bhatia
DIRECTOR OF DELIVERY
Ashu Bhatia is the Director of Delivery for CIBER’s Atlanta office and he has significant experience in IT and management consulting, solutions architecture, system design, and Lean Service Operations in the United States, Europe and Asia. A Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, he is currently doing IT Strategy, IT Transformation, Business Intelligence, and Supply Chain Management. An MBA from Carnegie Mellon, Ashu has held management positions with Accenture, Siemens, and American Express.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posts by this author
IT Capacity - Do more with less
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 23 February 2010 / 4:22 PM : 0 
I was talking to an IT executive and he was chatting about how difficult it was to raise awareness within the business side of what IT capacity he has and how much his organization can really take on. He mentioned that despite some IT demand management processes, it was tough to set expectations. I guess these days IT Operations faces a number of opposing priorities:
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 23 February 2010
Tagged: Business Architecture IT Planning IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment IT Value
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Master Data Management
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 08 December 2009 / 11:05 AM : 1
Master Data Management
Master Data is the fundamental business data in the company, typically long-lived and used across multiple applications, inherently including the subset of Master Reference Data.
Master Data, including Reference Data, is not to be considered “Metadata”. Metadata is data about data. It describes data content but it is NOT the content. There is no formal and universal definition of how deep to take the definition from a content perspective. Only those metadata whose management will bring more value to the enterprise than the cost of the labor nee...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 08 December 2009
Tagged: Business Architecture Data Architecture Enterprise Integration Information Management SOA & Data Architecture
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Shared Services and proper Chargeback is key for IT Operational Excellence
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 01 October 2009 / 9:37 AM : 1
There has always been much discussion and interest in creating Operational Efficiency through Shared Services - and today's climate is no exception. In particular, if a company is decentralized and the IT organizations are serving businesses in a disparate manner, there is some scope to optimize the IT spend, after bringing these silos under a common umbrella. But a Support Services business model typically used, whether as a cost center or profit center, has its pluses and minuses. However, in any case that this is set up, there are certain steps to be followed:
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 01 October 2009
Tagged: Business Architecture CIO IT Strategy IT to Business Alignment IT Value
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Competitive Intelligence – Evolution of BI to Analytics
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 11 September 2009 / 10:07 AM : 2
This is the way I see evolution of BI into CI:
As companies mature, their requirements for Business Intelligence become more sophisticated. Decision Support Capability may be deployed throughout an organization or Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 11 September 2009 Tagged: Application Architecture Business Architecture Business Intelligence Business Value CIO Information Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 20 August 2009 / 3:37 PM : 0 Based on the feedback from my previous entry on BI in Healthcare, I wanted to share some metrics that have been used to measure effectiveness in this industry.
Increase Evidence Availability and Use BI in Healthcare – Part 2
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 20 August 2009
Tagged: Business Architecture Business Intelligence Healthcare
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BI trends in Healthcare
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 28 July 2009 / 1:31 PM : 1
Having spent some time in the healthcare insurance space, I often wonder about the BI work still ahead in the Healthcare Industry – Pharmaceuticals, Medical providers, Payers, etc. I guess to define in simple terms here are what the stakeholders are looking at:
Provider
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 28 July 2009
Tagged: Business Architecture Business Intelligence Healthcare
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Taxonomy – Organize your data
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 20 July 2009 / 10:36 AM : 1
With all the WEO and search capabilities these days, there is still more emphasis on classification of endless data. It's as if they built twice the amount of roads, but the number of vehicles has gone up 4 times.
In such a setting, employees (and customers) are drowning in a sea of disparate data and content. The result is lost efficiency through time searching for information or from the complete lack of the right information.
...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 20 July 2009
Tagged: Application Architecture Business Intelligence Data Architecture Information Management Knowledge Management
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Legacy Modernization - New quart of paint or a new dry wall?
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 01 July 2009 / 4:44 PM : 0
In any company that has some history, there are typical IT systems that were used for transaction processing or otherwise that have now become the ‘legacy’ system. With SOA and web services, there is always that debate of modernization of legacy, renewal of legacy, retirement, etc. The debate goes on and on.
One often wonders if this is about putting up new walls in an old house and a fresh quart of paint. Or is this like what they did to the Louvre in Paris. Build a set of high tech glass and metal pyramids right at the entrance of renaissance age fort...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 01 July 2009
Tagged: Application Architecture Business Architecture CIO Enterprise Architecture Project Methodology Risk management
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IT Service Management is quintessential for the IT Organization
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 24 June 2009 / 11:10 AM : 0
At a BPM event recently in Atlanta, I was chatting with a colleague about IT and the BPM responsibility. This guy is the SVP of IT operations and handles Infrastructure for his company. When someone asked him who from the business was responsible for the BPM aspects in his firm from the business side, his response was “We in IT are actually responsible for the BPM aspects and optimization therein.” Another guys goes, “The only real applications the business is concerned about is e-mail”
That set me thinking about IT Service Management, etc. Having spent some tim...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 24 June 2009
Tagged: CIO Governance Risk and Compliance Risk management Service Levels
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
RFID Technology May Soon become Mainstream
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 17 June 2009 / 2:54 PM : 0
Having done a lot of work in the supply chain industry, I am so intrigued by RFID and its potential once the costs go further down. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify individual items. RFID technology is not new or complex; it has been around since the early radar systems in the 1940’s. What is new is how manufacturing advancements have reduced costs of implementing RFID systems (particularly tags). These silicon-based electronic identification tags, consisting of a tiny processor, memory, antenna and can be read and written wirelessly and can be m...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 17 June 2009
Tagged: Application Architecture Business Architecture Business Intelligence Enterprise Integration Multi-Channel
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lean and Six Sigma
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 08 June 2009 / 11:45 AM : 0
Recently I was on the panel of a CXO discussion around how to optimize costs and increases business productivity, when someone from the audience asked about Lean Six Sigma and its relevance, especially in today’s economy.
They asked is it Six Sigma that has been more effective or have Lean principles helped more? And how exactly do they differ? That set of dialog encouraged me to write this post. There is always debate about Lean and Six Sigma being so close that practitioners love t...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 08 June 2009
Tagged: Business Architecture Project Methodology
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Electronic Medical Records
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 04 June 2009 / 11:16 AM : 0
I have been reading about Google Health and have wondered about data quality and it's significance for Electronic Medical Records in the medical/healthcare industry.
hen this news from The Boston Globe does raise some questions where a misleading informatics approach led to a kidney survivor to read on Google that his cancer had spread to either his brain or spine. He was not aware of this and when he dug in...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 04 June 2009
Tagged: Business Architecture CIO Healthcare Technology Architecture
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Recent Web 2.0 Examples
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 01 June 2009 / 11:57 AM : 0
Examples from the myriad Web 2.0 tools
Since my post on Web 2.0, I got some emails about examples of where the new technologies are making waves in business. I wanted to share some with the readers:
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 01 June 2009
Tagged: Application Architecture Business Architecture Social Networking
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The EPM story continues…
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 26 May 2009 / 3:56 PM : 0
I guess on almost every EPM initiative the core questions lie around what metrics to use - “How much?”, “How many?”. Before we begin thinking in those terms, it is good to analyze why metrics are really needed. I had discussed this in another article Data Rich, Information Poor? Focus on the Right Metrics and I still believe that the mantra of all EPM efforts is what Six Sigma practitioners get their brains tattooed with:
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 26 May 2009
Tagged: Application Architecture Business Architecture Business Intelligence DW / BI Architecture
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Web 2.0 and its long tail
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 08 May 2009 / 11:02 AM : 0
Everywhere one goes these days one is bombarded with the XYZ 2.0 lingo – Sales 2.0, Business 2.0, Life 2.0. It’s like 101 of anything is so passé. But my eyes really opened up to the return of the fat clients on the Internet when I was chatting with one of my technology architects the other day. He asked me “Do you like using MS outlook or do you prefer the web mail client”? The obvious answer was I like MS Outlook because of the user interface - I can check mails to delete, mark multiple mails as ‘read’, and many other functions that I cannot in my web mail.
He goes “That’s what they are building these Rich ...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 08 May 2009
Tagged: Application Architecture Knowledge Management Social Networking Solution / System / Application Architecture
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Enterprise Performance Management
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 04 May 2009 / 10:27 AM : 0
Having been in the BI/ DW/EPM industry for so long, I keep reading with avid interest statements like “Less than 10% of strategies effectively formulated are effectively executed” from Fortune magazine.
Business executives at all levels constantly struggle to understand what drives performance and how to boost it. In all my discussions with executives they discuss typical challenges of Performance Management:
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 04 May 2009
Tagged: Business Architecture Business Intelligence Business Modeling DW / BI Architecture
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IT Spend Analyses
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 01 May 2009 / 3:04 PM : 0
A few days ago I was in a CIO roundtable discussion by ATP and one of the CIOs mentioned that despite the state of the economy their IT Organization was thinking of spending some if their budget on some innovative initiatives so that when we get to the bottom of the J-curve in the economy, they’d be ready to win over strategic goals. Really set me thinking – how are companies dividing their IT spending on keep-the-lights-on operations and strategic or innovative investment. Top executive management these days has two main q...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 01 May 2009
Tagged: Business Architecture Enterprise Architecture Technology Architecture
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Information Supply Chain - Turning Data into Action
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 30 April 2009 / 9:13 AM : 0
The way to think of information is the classic assembly line in manufacturing industry. Some data is received from outside the firm (suppliers), some data is produced from within, it is organized (metadata, taxonomy)for storage somewhere, it is distributed (aka reporting, etc.) to end users (customers) for consumption.
So information architecture includes reporting, portals, content management, and data integration applications (BI/DW) with following components:
Store
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 30 April 2009
Tagged: Business Intelligence Enterprise Integration Information Management
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IT Governance
Ashu Bhatia, Director of Delivery : 29 April 2009 / 4:04 PM : 0
Time and again for almost any strategic IT initiative, I run into this issue of IT Governance either missing or not being clear enough within the organization. Whether one is doing IT spend analyses, IT value targeting, asset rationalization, or strategic sourcing, the value of good IT governance cannot be over-emphasized. And even when it comes to IT operations and IT Service Delivery, Solutions Implementation, and resource management, IT Governance is an underlying theme that needs its focus.
Makes you think. What exactly is IT governance a...
Posted in Enterprise Integration & IT Strategy on 29 April 2009
Tagged: Governance Risk and Compliance
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
