Instead of doing the normal review, we’re going to embark on something different.

Cisco Press (http://www.ciscopress.com) was kind enough to send us a few of their latest books to peruse, and this is the first one that jumped at me out of the stack.

The Case for Virtual Business Processes. It seemed right at first to be something you wouldn’t initially expect from a technical vendor. In fact, the book is written by Martha Young, President/Founder of Nova Amber, LLC, a virtualized business, and Michael Jude, Ph.D., with only the forward being written by someone at Cisco, in this case Kevin MacRitchie, the VP of World Channel Operations.

The premise of the book is that it’s possible to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and focus on your core business by virtualizing some of the processes with the help of technology. It doesn’t focus only on the technology, but on some very large changes to the typical management views of Corporate America.

The format is straightforward. There are 8 chapters, and each chapter contains certain elements. There is a discussion about a particular facet of BPV (Business Process Virtualization), followed by a summary, and a case study of a company that actually put these ideas to work. The chapters range from the role of BPV in your business, to history lessons and things learned in the past, to outsourcing, with its benefits and drawbacks, up to Security and Financial Implications. Any chapter can be read or skipped, and you can focus on those essential to your business.

The greatest part about this book is that it just makes sense. And if something isn’t quite clear in the presentation of the idea, the case study usually brings it to light. There are a lot of ideas in this book that I’ve been thinking about, pondering, hoping to implement for the last few years, but haven’t been able to put a finger on the exact process or adequately explain the foundation to someone else. It lends a lot of credibility to some of the forward thinkers among us that want to buck some of the traditional management strategies in favor of more closely integrating the technology in the business processes themselves.

All of the case studies involve using Cisco hardware/software to solve a particular problem or push the company forward in a particular way, but they are written very clearly, and could carry over onto other vendor’s equipment and product lines.

I would recommend this title as a must read for anyone that owns their own company, is in executive management of a company, or works in IT in any capacity. For the latter, you may not be able to get these ideas directly integrated into your company depending on the size, but having a new way to look at things when management comes to you for ideas is a great asset.

The book is available from Cisco Press, Amazon, and other major retailers, and has a cover price of $39.95.

--Robert Hartley
Technology Editor