Dale Harper on I.T. strategy in the real world

Your I.T. Service Provider should know about your business I.T. issues before you. We thought that is a pretty good premise to start with when increasing the value of our outsourced I.T. services proposition.

We try to perform based on a very sound principle - application, computer, network, and internet downtime is a bad thing for your business. So how do we get better at avoiding downtime for you in the first place, and if it does occur, how do we reduce time to restoration for your I.T. systems?

To answer this question, the capabilities of BIGDY I.T. professional services has taken a dramatic step forward into the world of managed services. Automated, proactive, remote monitoring and management of your entire network. “Managed services” is a term currently making its way through the Gartner hype cycle, but is certainly and genuinely the best way forward in describing the overdue generational leap needed to improve the value of your I.T. to your business. For example 24×7 Server and Network Monitoring for Performance and Availability is a core promise of managed services.

This type of service capability is no longer reserved for the big end of town. BIGDY now offers a suite of monitoring, management, notification, and reporting managed services now, with our N-able relationship. None of this sounds like the familiar age-old break fix reactionary service delivery model, which is a very good thing.

We’ve started on an exciting path, and right now our (supremely ironically named) dedicated managed services company Bunch of Cowboys is managing businesses delivering the benefits right now.

It was only a couple of years ago I.T. managers kicked off their spiraling anxiety about the encroachment of consumer applications into the workplace.

Unsettling for a few reasons, not least of which is the new phenonenom of consumer software products “trickling down” into the enterprise. Allow me a little sarcasm, as it used to be business that traditionally innovated in I.T. first, with consumers as eventual beneficiaries of technological advances with origins in business.

Now applications designed initially for personal use are influencing software architectures and use in business. Critical distinction to make here. One thing for I.T. managers to tolerate personal use of consumer software applications, and entirely another for same I.T. managers to come to terms with the productivity enhancing valid business use of the very same consumer software. Examples include instant messaging, Facebook, and Second Life.

By neccessity (defined as facing up to reality) then it looks like I.T. policy needs to change. Allowing (selective, filtered, monitored, and reported) greater access to more web based consumer applications certainly improves the quality of our personal lives while at work - given we are all at work for a considerable percentage of our lives. 

Now these same consumer applications are used in business, and are the templates today for the business applications we’ll be using tomorrow.

More factors at work here to fundamentally undermine your desire for blanket “deny” rules in your Internet perimeter firewalls. The big one that will play out over time is simple. Up and coming generations are cozy with consumer  web applications like you and I are cozy with our TV remote control. More to the point they depend on personal web apps to run their lives. Even more to the point these web apps now provide “meaning” to their lives! Get that.

You really think they can drop their utter dependence on these web apps when they walk in the door at work? Nope. As current and future generations gain positions of power the I.T. manager will be revisiting I.T. policy. By the way your I.T. manager will also be hitting you up for budget for bigger unified threat management, and more sophisticated web filtering reporting capabilities.

Right now of course the “Millenium” and subsequent generations are fleet of foot when it comes to choosing compatible organizations to work for. So getting the balance right between “allowed” and “denied” on the web is more critical than ever in attracting and retaining the best.

You already understand this. Over the next few years you will transition to using mostly web-based applications to run your business. Your e-mail, and most other software - word processing to CRM, to accounting software. Hardly news to anyone already familiar with web-based applications such as Google Apps and salesforce.com.

It has to happen. Time travel into the near future, look back, and you’ll see the historical fact of your own corporate computer room as quaint and as unnecessary as your own corporate electricity generator. Don’t worry about when exactly, although Eric Schmidt is still right about what he said in 1993 while at Sun Microsystems. “When the network becomes as fast as the processor, the computer hollows out and spreads across the network.”. Its about bandwidth ultimately. I’ll bet it is a daily exercise for all the large scale potential “cloud” players like Google (now with same Eric Schmidt at the helm) and Microsoft to monitor broadband penetration country by country. All the while muttering “how long …?” while shelling out crazy money for their massive data centre builds.   

As for who, the web is a great engine for the displacement of existing behemoths of the I.T. software industry, and there are no certainties the short list of top tier of application vendors will be the same as today. Microsoft should never be underestimated, right now their strategy to have a bet both ways with its software-plus-services approach. Look closer, it is all supporting strategy for Microsoft to play the monopolist’s game of delaying any fundamental business model change for as long as possible to maximize their returns on their current dominant market share. For a monopoly it is the classic move, Oracle is no different. Anyone remember how long Telstra pushed slow and expensive ISDN while ADSL ramped up around the world? 

For your business I.T. budget this is not about your client access devices (desktops, notebooks). Call me heretical, but no savings here I’m afraid. The notebook you hand out to your staff very quickly gets personalized, and in the world of increasing online social networking becomes an important media player for all invariably rich channels of communication. So the client device stays powerful. Rather, the impact on your I.T. budget is about your servers, network, and Internet, hopefully a reduction in corporate I.T. infastructure expenditure - your computer room assets - in favour of subscriptions to web-based services.

The costs of web-based data centre located infrastructure and services provision get bundled into your recurring fee, and you get to save on corporate server infrastructure procurement, security, backup, and admin/support resourcing. They become the service provider’s problem, as does their ability to convince you how wonderfully safe and secure it is to store your critical business information with them.

The key message is understanding the changes occurring around you. I’d be further honing the ability to scrutinize service level agreements, contracts, and financial statements. As more and more of your applications and business information become dependent on external services and external data storage, you want to be extremely confident of web-based “cloud” service providers capabilities and staying power.

Check out my personal blog is over at daleharper.com.au

No topic of the day is safe. Recently I’ve been wondering why we need business web sites at all. 

The big reason in my opinion? Bootcamp, Vmware Fusion and Parallels products for Mac genuinely work, fast and reliably (improving rapdily with each release). All of a sudden its one of those rare technology circumstances where having cake, and eating it, is doable in the workplace every day.

Let them eat cake I say.

Lets face it, business needs Windows, and the exceptions only prove the rule. For all the Mac business users that attempt to depend on the cloud, well the cloud is happening, but a significant mass migration to online applications from desktop stalwarts is years away. 1-2 years? 5 years? I digress.

End result is Macs with excellent Windows performance means can do, and over the last 2 years there is a 40 per cent increase of business users who have done so.

Key facts relayed by Gregg Keizer at Computerworld, and discovered by Laura DiDio, a Yankee Group research fellow who conducted a survey of over 700 senior IT administrators and C-level executives.

• That is twice the penetration of Macs into businesses from 2 years ago, more a sustained trend than a revolution, but very significant nonetheless.
• IT departments are formalizing the introduction and deployment of Macs, in contrast to previously where they “snuck in” often under the radar.
• Bootcamp, or virtualizing Windows XP and Vista on Macs with Parallels and Vmware enables those who need to run business applications on Windows to now do so.  
• Lack of Mac management tools are not the showstopper they used to be, compensated by a perception of better reliability. Mac OS X features such as Spotlight, Time Machine (and my nomination of Remote Desktop) are softening the stance of I.T. management.

 Lets sum up. The facts picked up by Yankee Group are all good, but wait a minute, are’nt business users all just buying Macs cause they want one? With Windows on Mac now a reality, now they can. I’m done here! Almost.

Business users want a Mac based on brand, coolness, design, the Apple clubsters smug superiority, the insiders circle - all the to die for brand attributes that Apple got down cold (my grip on vernacular is slipping but stay with me).

This means that Apple can build customer base with latent demand (unleashed by Windows capabilities) on operating system flexibility today. Looking forward, position themselves for the cloud based applications as a service era, moving into a time when operating systems purportedly matter much less. If most everything you do is sourced from the Internet through a browser, who cares what operating system you choose? So the theory goes.

It matters more than ever, only for different reasons. When we start buying computers based on fashion because utility is less important, who is going to win?

Congratulations to BIGDY I.T. Senior Infrastructure Consultant Jeff O’Connell for becoming a VCP (Vmware Certified Professional).

The server operating system and applications managed by BIGDY I.T. are often virtualized with Vmware, so as with Microsoft and Cisco certifications, the VCP certification is another important way of declaring BIGDY I.T.’s commitment to enhancing trust levels and our capabilities with customers. As with any certification, this proves nothing without deep experience and skills!  However, with them, the VCP in particular as the current “benchmark certification”, is a formidable inclusion to the BIGDY I.T. story, and a great achievement for Jeff. Now to find a flattering photo of you Jeff to put in this post!

How do you measure your I.T. service provider’s performance?

Given I.T. service providers are demonstrably I.T. experts and you perhaps are not, there is plenty of room to hide any lack of skills and experience. Without referrals and relevant I.T. industry certifications, it is a scary gamble when establishing a relationship with a new I.T. service provider. To be comfortable you are in good hands, experience based I.T skills are most important, but are the most difficult to prove. So referrals and certifications help with comfort levels when considering introducing any new I.T. service providers to your business systems.

 OK the relationship kicks off, they are keeping your technology humming, backed up, secure, and vulnerability free. Near as you can tell, they are Pros. Lets apply some heat.

Pull out some knowledge of I.T. services best practices and principles (see below). Bandy them about with your I.T. services professionals and look for at least a glimmer of recognition of subject familiarity, and preferably a delighted reaction that you and your business are clued up, and on their case.

Beyond the basic core I.T. services - your business should expect fluency in the following (a short incomplete list to demonstrate best practice expectations) -

Documentation

Record all aspects of your applications, technology, and infrastructure configuration, licensing, support contracts, operational instructions, and inventory/audit.

Event Management, monitoring, and notification

Management applications which monitor noteworthy events (errors,warnings, information) and notify support contacts in a reliable and timely manner.

Risk Management

Specifically disaster recovery planning. How do you plan to restore services if your entire I.T. infrastructure is destroyed?

Service desk best practices

Roles assigned to I.T. professionals based on their allocation to 1 to 3 tiers of service and support functions. Help desk at level 1 as the initial point of contact and ticket assignment based on priority and business impact. Levels 2 and 3 ramp up the skills brought to bear on tickets not resolved by previous tiers. 

Change Management

Standardized approach to controlling changes to your I.T.

Once your I.T. service provider understands you have a clear understanding of truly professionally planned, delivered, and operated I.T services, they’ll add a whole new layer of valuable services very quickly (if they are any good!). You’ll reap the benefit of getting much improved processes, therefore results, not to mention vastly greater insights on the value of I.T. to your business. 

For further reading on world class I.T. services, check out Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) 4.0, and ITIL for IT Service Management.

A relevant issue for all businesses is the way documents and files are stored and organized.

Document management. Sounds well, dull. However, no way of avoiding this subject, with the extraordinary growth of documents and other file types accumulating on your servers and staff computers.

The premise for document management is excellent - consolidate all business information into a central repository from the chaos of unstructured folders scattered across server and staff computer shares / mapped drives / network “places”. Enable all the essential features against this central repository - an organization wide consistent categorization, enterprise search, create metadata against documents to improve the value of search, appropriate security measures, and the fundamental document versioning and check in /check out controls.

Here is the kicker. Your staff are’nt in the least bit interested in actually using your expensive carefully planned deployment.

Does this sound familiar? Staff sat through your internal document management system training, smiled in response to your sincere plea for “buy in”, and made the appropriate noises in response to whatever carrots or sticks you brought in to force compliance. They then went off and recreated their own private document management system (yep bunch of files and folders) on the sly.

The pragmatic approach then is absolute focus on user adoption. I believe the document management solution has to be easy to use, and similar to current day to day activities. Check out what Microsoft are saying in this regard. I’m not setting my sights too low! I’m saying that initial project phases only take small steps with rolling out easy to use processes. For example enterprise search is a clear winner, as is alerts for who has accessed / modified documents - clear advantages for your staff. Focus on the benefits to the user with core document management best practices that integrate as tightly and as naturally as possible with how they currently work.

In fact the most sophisticated aspect of your project should be the canny way you gain user adoption, and key user champions. The benefits of superior information management will be appreciated, and will be sold to peers by peers.

The principles of document management are here to stay. Permit yourself some nostalgia as you fondly recollect the simpler days of files and folders, then start planning your document management strategy.

You need to dig through reams of Cisco web based product information to get a summary view of Unified Communications and what it means for your business. BIGDY is a Cisco certified Select Parter, so allow me to break it down - what is Cisco Unified Communications?

For SME businesses, when Cisco say “unified”, they certainly meant it. All network, voice, video, security, and mobility requirements for small business go into an integrated (unified) all-in-one solution. For example the UC500 series in their Smart Business Communication System range, and of course the ISR product range.

That is it! - thats the whole idea. You get security, firewall, VPN, mobility (remote/teleworkers), networking (including wireless), and a PBX with IP/analogue/BRI/PRI telephony - all in the one box.

Compelling stuff when you think about the effort you expend choosing, procuring, deploying, and managing all of these currently separate pieces of infrastructure - your PBX, your phones, your cabled and wireless network, your security, your remote access VPN, all with multiple vendors and multiple service organizations.

Small to medium business can look forward to a greatly simplified future, where your phones and your computers are all on the same network, with all capabilities built into an single box such as the Cisco UC500 solution, with a unified management approach. Integrating seamlessly what were previously separate “islands” of voice and data.

Unified voice and data communications examples include - your voicemail in your Outlook inbox, calling someone directly from your Outlook contacts, “presence” indicators that show customized states of colleague’s availability,  and PBX extensions that follow you home or when you travel.

The biggest deal? Its all just so much simpler. Under the hood you are getting a generational leap in feature set from the integration of voice and data that has a direct positive impact on your productivity and your business competitiveness. Yet from a management point of view it is easier.  

I trust that helps with a quick introduction for SME businesses to unified communications the subject, and Unified Communications the Cisco product. My objective as always - the right advice for I.T. in the real world.

For you - server virtualization is not so much a question of if, but when. Every business should be looking at how virtualization improves ROI on server investment with higher utilization, saves server sprawl, improves management flexibility and business continuity, and reduces space, heat, and power requirements.

The real story is Microsoft getting serious in light of a profound realization. Increasingly the default server deployment method will be virtual, not physical. No more toying in this space with Virtual Server 2005 R2. Microsoft 1st pass at getting real is with HYPER-V, competing with (to borrow a phrase) ”noone got fired for buying” - vmware. Microsoft is intending HYPER-V to go head to head with vmware ESX Infrastructure solutions.

What does that mean for your business today ? Right now it is still vmware or… actually, just vmware!  The first version of Microsoft’s HYPER-V is still months away. Way too early to consider for production until service pack 1, plus feedback from early adopters. Early adopters are not like you and me. They are blessed with an unflinching dedication to the bleeding edge, to hell with the consequences.

The rest of us will play with HYPER-V in our labs, skill up, certify on it, and wait for early adopter HYPER-V comments and stories to stream back to us on the web through peers, the community blogs, forums and reviews.

HYPER-V signals Microsoft’s awareness that virtualization is what servers will look like in many infrastructure decisions. My view is Microsoft will achieve product competitiveness over several product cycles. This takes time, however we’ve seen them do it before, in markets ranging from RDBMS (SQL Server) to web browsers. Microsoft does get there, and it gets there based on merit while changing the game on price. You can bet vmware won’t be standing still, I’m hoping there is some proactive attractive pricing / bundling coming out of vmware to take on the advantage Microsoft has on that front.

Verdict? vmware is the right choice today and in the future, the rest is (pretty well informed, and positive) conjecture about HYPER-V.