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Loading ...Competitive Edge
I have the honour to work with some amazing people with ITAC, the Information Technology Association of Canada. In a recent meeting, discussion ensued about maintaining Canada’s ability to compete globally. We also heard from industry speakers on the challenges that they are facing hiring people into IT roles.
This clarified for me a couple of points I’d like to share with you. While our tendency to be conservative can protect us against unpleasant surprises, as a business IT has changed fundamentally. Software and hardware companies share customers amongst ourselves and promulgating a homogeneous model doesn’t work. Nor does a heterogeneous environment where making the components work together is difficult. It’s impossible to achieve scale and return if it’s too hard.
In order to be competitive and to increase our odds, the Canadian IT community needs to think differently. We will not be able to hire new workers if all we present to them is the same old static desktop, static applications and death by email surge. New workers expect and demand the same kind of framework they see in their private lives, where in addition to documents, there is new media, there are blogs, wikis, discussion forums and simple web based access points. A telephone should not be a completely separate and unintegrated system. These new hires understand the differences between synchronous and asynchronous interactions and expect a full set of tools to facilitate interaction.
People don’t have to be in a specific place to get work done, or even in a particular time structure. The success of the Blackberry and some of the new concerns about being always on have proved this. If we expect the future to look like a commute to an office, 9-5 on static infrastructure, followed by a commute home, we are doomed to a nasty surprise. This isn’t how emerging markets are building and it’s not how our new employees want to work.
Business Social Networking has turned into an industry buzzword, and not in a good way. Most of these end up looking like the same old proprietary infrastructure with a web front end stuck on with duct tape. We as an industry need to get outside our comfort zones on how we actually help people be productive and happy. If we don’t the hiring problem and the IT gap is only going to get worse.
The second point I want to review is the subject of gap. Don’t believe for a minute those who tell you there is no IT gap. They are engaging in fun with stats, what I call Jolly Numbers. Post secondary IT admissions are down, in some schools by a factor of 10. While we increase immigration of skilled people to fill jobs, we also need to look at the jobs that are going to need filling in the short to medium future and we need to be enabling those future role leaders today. And that means we have to make IT fun and exciting.
As a speaker recently pointed out, the sciences got a huge influx when John Kennedy made his put a man on the moon speech. We need to create that sense of excitement in IT. Adding twenty new functions to a spreadsheet that already has nine hundred that most people never use creates neither excitement or innovation.
I don’t think the sky is falling, but Canadian IT is at a crossroads. We can keep doing what we’ve been doing and get the same (at best) results we’ve always gotten, or we can choose to think differently and strive together to make Canada an innovator in IT development and practices. In my opinion, the first option isn’t one.
Until next time, peace.
Ross
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(5 votes, average: 9.4 out of 10) Loading ...Legacy Modernization in Government
A previous era saw the shift to legacy mainframe systems designed, developed, installed and maintained by a then new generation trained or self-educated in these technologies. We are now facing a major skills gap in maintaining these technologies. The Baby Boomers who are retiring in large numbers are leaving with their knowledge. It is essential that the new generation of IT professionals be cross trained… new, younger people in the legacy technologies hand in hand with Web 2.0 (see Mainframe computing jobs vacant as the Baby Boomers who set up systems begin retiring with few educated to fill the spots http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sat-tech-jobs-ibmapr05,0,2110029.story).
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. We are seeing the same thing today with the rise of Web 2.0. There is a new generation of people who understand and have been trained in Web 2.0 in all its facets – wikis, Facebook, blogs, RSS feeds, online communities, crowd sourcing and more are going to conceive, install and build the new Web 2.0 environments that will change the way the world works.
It is inevitable that Web 2.0 environments will support or displace the legacy mainframe systems. I’d like to highlight some of the issues that will be important in that transition.
I remember ‘back in the day’ when business started to move from paper-based accounting systems to computerized systems running first on mainframes and later on smaller computer systems. The migration path from one system to another involved keeping both going in parallel until the new environments proved stable and the organization adapted around it. I would suggest that conceptually both environments can be maintained in parallel during the move from legacy systems to Web 2.0 environments, as was done in the past, yet at a far faster rate now. Also it is important to understand that Web 2.0 requires organic growth that can take time in order to build the requisite communities. So the task is to plant seeds, nurture them and allow time to see them grow.
Citizens will increasingly expect more personalization, as well as a more responsive and agile government. Web 2.0 will create healthy competitive tension in government capable of democratizing a sector, meaning giving it back to the citizens, including them in its various processes. As citizens are experiencing major shifts in personalization, data control and accessibility through use of Web 2.0 technologies, businesses will also demand the same from government.
The recent earthquake in China and the use of social networking tools by citizens and their government during the crisis demonstrates the potential for change (see: http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_THE_QUAKE_ONLINE?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-05-18-13-00-37).
Watch for security issues. Web 2.0 sites are vulnerable to attack by ‘enemies of the state’ and other malicious interests
The move from legacy to Web 2.0-based systems will minimize, rationalize and make things more transparent, which will enable everyone to see the inefficient work of the public sector. e-government is capable of democratizing a sector, meaning giving it back to the citizens and including them in various processes
Governments, like every other employer, are desperate to attract and retain quality staff and ensure that employees work in an environment that is socially and technologically similar to their existing experience of the world. Therefore, instant messaging (IM) and wikis are must-haves for these new workers.
Public servants will increasingly expect a work environment that reflects their interests, networks and ways of communicating with their colleagues and peers. Web 2.0 technologies will influence the internal processes and cultures of agencies as much as interactions with citizens.
Engage stakeholders – citizens, internal users, and IT staff – with standardized Web 2.0 environments using well-founded change management tools to guide the transition out of legacy systems.
The ultimate destination of this transition will support the public interest by preparing citizens for a world of plentiful (and sometimes unreliable) information, and help excluded groups to take advantage of this information.
Envision government agencies with a high level of confidence regarding the identity of the online user. They will be able to place people in control of the transaction and protect their privacy. This is the online approximation of a person presenting a passport or other proof of identity document in-person to an agency.
(http://psnetwork.org.nz/blog/2007/04/29/5-principles-govt20/)
Several ideas were advanced from http://blog.executivebiz.com/government-web20-trends-for-2008/:
Due to the application of Web 2.0 in government, there will be increased interactions among users internal to the government and with citizens. Every interaction is an opportunity to learn of an unmet need, which is an opportunity to fuel innovation.
Enterprise mashups based on enterprise data are already an expectation among the workforce, but the deployment of this capability in government has been slow to take effect. As government organizations see how others do it, the deployment of secure enterprise mashup capabilities should accelerate.
Knowledge workers need ad-hoc and situational data, which is dynamically integrated in small amounts. As more government enterprises deliver secure mashup capabilities, the ability of the government workforce to efficiently and effectively accomplish their mission should increase, which should have a positive impact on retention, fueling additional benefits to the government’s mission.
It is well known that John Kennedy’s vision of getting to the moon was accomplished through the mobilization of thousands of engineers in a huge program using large mainframes. This can be done through the massive increases in computing power woven together with Web 2.0 collaborative tools. Imagine what could be achieved? Tackle something big to harness the power of Web 2.0, such as reinventing provincial health care delivery systems.
This article was written with the assistance of Howard Oliver, CEO of What If What Next™, he is an expert in Web 2.0.
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(5 votes, average: 9.6 out of 10) Loading ...Putting the Cart before the Horse
Cisco has come forward with a new vision for the data center. This may really be what I have maintained for the last 15+ years. The future will happen when the “computer is really in the network.”
This is Cisco’s first big shot in a war to control the data center of the future. This strategy, Cisco’s Data Center 3.0, envisions switches at the heart of the architecture with service regulated commodity status for the underlying technology. Essentially, the switches become the epicentre for running and controlling all IT decision-making. Cisco envisions the orchestration of infrastructure services from pools of servers, storage, and network resources over Gigabit Ethernet networks.
Cisco’s comments about the data center can be found in “Transforming Your Data Center One Project at a Time.” The following is a direct quote: “The emergence of the human network is raising individuals’ and organizations’ expectations about how technology, and their IT organizations, can support their objectives and evolving work styles. The data center IP network, as the platform that integrates, protects, and scales other IT resources, is central to the fulfillment of the human network’s promise. A process evolution from transactions to interactions is leading to the emergence of data centers built on network-based service-oriented infrastructures (SOI). SOI softens traditional server, storage, and network operation silos and allows well-integrated IT departments to treat their data centers as single functional units composed of interdependent, virtualized pools of storage, network, server, and application resources to better support applications and meet the challenges introduced by a more distributed interaction model across and between organizations.”
”Why is the network so integral to service-oriented infrastructure? According to IDC (Abner Germanow, “Why Is Networking Growing Faster Than the Rest of IT?” June 4, 2007), “Server virtualization, storage virtualization, and the federation of software applications, to name three examples, are all enabled by the network… As trends in computing evolve from consolidation back to scaling out and scaling up, the potential for the network to participate in the security, reliability, and management of that scale will rise.
”It’s not a bad vision, say industry analysts, and it is shared by server and storage manufacturers. Thanks to virtualization, the server’s role in the data center is increasingly being diminished. Virtual storage, virtual processors, and virtual memory, and maybe even virtual networks, are coming. The major server makers acknowledge that this is the future.
Cisco is saying that because everything converges on the network, network architecture will make the overarching decisions on resource allocation. In other words, the control plane is collapsed onto the network.
Here are some reference points. This announcement can be found at Data Center - Cisco Systems: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns708/networking_solutions_solution_segment_home.html
This announcement shows that Cisco is committed to a full virtualization strategy, which I wrote about in my blog post “Does Virtualization Equal ‘Bullet Proof’?”: http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/insights/2008/01/
Essentially, we are moving away from the era of computing just being an amalgamation of devices in the network. This has been a big break from the status quo for the last 50 years. Cisco’s move is a clever attempt to avoid being displaced and relegated to commodity status.
Other major vendors are following suit. For example, today Nortel released the announcement “Nortel Virtualization Solution Simplifies Network for Instant, Secure Launch of Unified Communications”: http://www2.nortel.com/go/news_detail.jsp?cat_id=-8055&oid=100239954&locale=en-US Nortel is trying to capture control of the virtual data center. Here is a quote from that release: “Nortel’s network virtualization solution enables enterprises and service providers to simplify their communications infrastructure by allowing resources to be made available in a collective manner and to be allocated as needed,” said Cindy Borovick, Research Vice President, Data Center Networks, IDC. “This maximizes the capabilities of their network, decreasing wasted resources. It also limits the equipment that needs to be deployed, delivering savings over the life of the solution. The integration with a server virtualization solution gives new options for end-to-end virtualization deployments.”
It will be interesting to see how all these initiatives play out. In later posts, I’ll cover how Microsoft, IBM, SUN, HP and others want to play in this space.
I have to apologize for not posting in the last few weeks, as I have been commuting back and forth from India. It is a very exciting place to work. My experiences there will be the focus for some Enterprise Insights in the future. Once I’m back from my next trip and recovered from another round of jet lag.
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(5 votes, average: 9.2 out of 10) Loading ...Software as a Service: My Own Story
I have a great example of using Software as a Service (SAAS) from my own day-to-day experience. One of the complexities that I have faced in doing consulting work has been the coordination between my desktop PC (which is used for most of my industrial-strength analysis and report writing), my laptop (which I travel with), and my Blackberry (which is with me all the time, much to the chagrin of my partner).
For the last few years, I have been using ISPs and getting my mail via POP services. Using an ISP with a POP service has been prone to breakdowns in getting my mail. For several years, I used Plaxo to synchronize between my desktop and laptop with limited success. Plaxo required me to synchronize my contacts, tasks and notes when I was back at the office through cradling my Blackberry. Normally I made changes to my schedule ‘on the fly’ and would not often get back to my office to do the necessary resynchronization between my Blackberry, desktop and laptop. So managing this whole thing was a real pain! Changes have to be done in real time across my desktop and mobile device to ensure reliable control over my activities.
Recently, I spent some time looking at other solutions: Google calendars, IMAP and other services. None of these approaches really meet the bill for me, particularly with the now-basic requirement to have real-time synchronization with my Blackberry, reliability and extreme ease of operation. None of those solutions offered real-time updates between my three work tools.
Well, I’ve finally found a solution that meets the bill in the coordination between my technologies that I use in my far flung and frenetic advisory work – a hosted exchange server.
Microsoft announced recently that it is launching into hosted exchange server services (reference http://www.microsoft.com/online/exchange-online.mspx). Microsoft Exchange Online is a hosted enterprise messaging solution that provides: “…capabilities to your users with a single sign-on, including e-mail, shared calendaring, and contacts. And it works with Active Directory to ensure that information is synchronized between your local and online directories, allowing your IT department to support a mix of hosted services and on-premise software. Additionally, Exchange Online supports business continuity and disaster recovery with cloud-based antivirus and spam filtering and high data center security standards.”
But the service does not offer a connection to my Blackberry. So after looking at this offering, I did not choose the Microsoft service and elected to go through one of their partners who provide services not only for hosted exchange, but also for BES (Blackberry enterprise server) (http://na.blackberry.com/eng/solutions/types/enterprise/ ).
There are a number of excellent service providers that deliver hosted exchange for a very low price with integration with Blackberry and all the security, backup and support needed. In addition, you can use services from these best-of-breed providers for SharePoint and other software services. Suggested vendors include 123Together, Intermedia and Rogers.
I have been very pleased with this switch from the problematic use of a POP3 and the constant hassle of trying to synchronize, many times unsuccessfully, between my own work and personal technology. One of the really great things is that it is a no-hassle solution at a reasonable price! Basic price is $9.95 per month for 500 MB of storage. For a small additional fee, I get full integration with my Blackberry.
This is a real boom for the SME sector. Individuals or small or medium-sized companies, who are contemplating using an exchange server and setting up a BES server should seriously think about using a hosted Exchange solution. It makes working on the fly economically possible.
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(3 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...Feeling the Heat
Predictions are that the IT security situation in Canada will worsen
‘Canadian companies are over-confident and lax when it comes to their IT security. Business leaders aren’t taking it seriously and IT leaders aren’t providing best practices’. This is a recent stunning comment from Vito Mabrucco who is responsible for managing IDC’s U.S. based global consulting. In an uncertain world, there is bound to be an unexpected event or failure that will bring it back to ‘top-of-mind’ status for IT and business executives for 2008. I predict a sudden surge in growth managed security services because the security function can now be outsourced. IDC also sees this potential for growth. (Source: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=46737&PageMem=2)
Why this hesitancy to evolve security strategy? Why are business leaders not taking security seriously? In Canada, legislation has not yet mandated security as a governance issue, except obliquely through privacy legislation. The same holds true in the US. We have Bill C-198 that has legislated reporting compliance for the private sector and has set the tone for quasi-public organizations in reporting, operational, and financial controls. These rules (except for privacy legislation and some security policies) do not apply to the public sector.
Leaders have not woken up to the fact that their organizations use their systems as the backbone for these reporting and control processes. Any major breaches and damage to their IT operations will taint the integrity of their organizations. Many ill informed executives are building walls around their organizations as an afterthought rather than building security throughout all of their procedures, databases and processing.
Should security be outsourced if not properly done in house or if there is a lack of confidence in IT by senior management? The answer is yes! Boards of Directors, Executives IT leaders and auditors must assess the competence of their teams to be absolutely sure they are effectively managing a rapidly changing landscape of IT security. If they cannot afford or do not have a team that can protect them they need to go outside and hire some real talent to manage their IT security. Managed security service providers are a real answer.
What criteria should be used to select a managed security provider:
- Does the IT security managed services vendor understand your business and all its’ risks?
- Are they ‘on top of their game’ to proactively protect and manage you environment?
- Are they cost effective?
- Can they work with your executives and team?
- Do they have offerings that will fit into all of your environments and be proactive in averting all reasonable treats?
- Do they have a good range of products and services?
- Can they communicate well on what they are doing and what counter measures they are taking?
- Can they lead you and your organization through appropriate transitions and changes to make this effective not just around your systems and process, but embed proper security in all that all you and your organization ode?
- What are their best practices for the security domain?
- How are they evolving on a day-to-day basis to protect the information assets of their client organizations and their vital information assets?
Who are the up and coming managed security providers? The telecommunications carriers are now offering good managed IT security offerings. These are telecommunications companies, like Bell, Telus, Allsteam , SIs, ISPs, ASPs, security software companies like CA, Symantec, HP, IBM, CISCO, the big 4, offshore providers and specialty IT security firms.
IT security is a high stakes game. Zero day threats require immediate action and there must be constant monitoring of the external and internal environments to be sure there are no intrusions. It is now a fact we have to manage our information assets like ‘Fort Knox’. If it is not done properly you could have huge operational, reputation and financial losses.
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(4 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...Trying to Throw the Brick through the Cloud – Microsoft/Yahoo vs. Google
There has been much press and discussion about the potential merger between Microsoft and Yahoo (the brick) in an attempt to become a formidable force against Google (the cloud). Yahoo management does not want to be taken over and they have recommended rejection of the offer, turning this into a potential hostile takeover. The hostile takeover of Yahoo seems to be somewhat probable based upon market reaction and the premiums offered by Microsoft to Yahoo shareholders. Microsoft certainly has the capability, with its’ multibillion dollar ‘war chest’ for huge acquisitions. I am sure Yahoo will put up quite a fight. There are reports that Yahoo is trying to align with AOL and even Google to fend off the Microsoft bid.
Whether the deal does go through or not, as would be expected, Microsoft is laying plans to integrate Yahoo effectively. The word is out that Microsoft’s executive and product teams are mandated to do the integration/mash-up between Yahoo and Microsoft quickly. The integration will be a challenge because Microsoft and Yahoo have very different styles and very different philosophies. Let’s take a moment to explore just how different they are.
Microsoft invented software for the PC as an engine for empowerment. Microsoft enabled the next step in ‘islands of automation’ beyond the glass house of the datacenters. They went on to dominance of the shrink wrapped products (bricks) selling operating systems and suites. Along the way, Microsoft built a reputation for a style of slow development with security loopholes – something that does not work in the security sensitive and integrity sensitive world. Microsoft admits it was late to see the vision of the PC being really more trivial than the power of the network or ‘cloud’. The cloud is really the power of the network connecting all those PC resources and media together into the collective of the web and more importantly Web 2.0.
Yahoo really defined the meaning of the internet portal as a landing and jumping off place to the web and has built a large following for instant messaging, as has Microsoft. Yahoo has not been able to get unstuck from where it was and is not as innovative or creative as Google. So in fact Google is not a leader in Web 2.0 either. Let’s look at Google for a point of comparison. Google’s philosophy works for the impact on People, not for money. That is one of the reasons why Google is so successful. Google has been able to keep up with the redefined web to stay on the curve. There is a great write up about this at: Google - Our Philosophy ‘Never settle for the best’ - http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html . They have also published “Ten Things Google has found to be true” which are:
1. ‘Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.’
This Google mantra is great, but how does it really fit into the enterprise computing world, is this just another security threat or way to defeat the integrity of our information assets?
So what we see is a binary with Microsoft and Yahoo on one side and Google on the other. What about the customer here? It is the CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CIOs and CTOs who are ultimately going to pay the freight for this acquisition. They are going to ask the Microsoft account people, if the deal goes through, ‘what are the new solutions?’
Based on my experience those senior IT people will be asking: ‘How does this fit to my enterprise IT operation?’ How will these merger ‘mash-ups’ fit back into our operations and large complex enterprise databases which we rely on? How does this empower my users and employees, while still integrating into the greater whole of our enterprise safely with integrity? How will Yahoo/Microsoft/Google applications or portals talk to my enterprise platforms? What is empowerment anyway? Is it really a codeword for lax security and impulsive undisciplined behaviour or real breakthrough creativity? Will this end up like herding cats? Does this belong in the enterprise?
If these questions are not answered correctly, Microsoft will be facing a cool reception and that high per share price for the hostile takeover will be a great misstep. The result could be as impactful as throwing a brick though a cloud.
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(3 votes, average: 8.67 out of 10) Loading ...Does Virtualization Equal ‘Bullet Proof’?
Virtualization has been available to the IT world for more than four decades, yet it has still not really taken off in the multi system environment. Many vendors are pushing this approach to deploying ‘flexible technology’, yet it still has not emerged beyond the ‘glass house’ of the data centers or server closets. IBM invented this technology 40 years ago and Microsoft is pushing this ‘old wine in new bottles’ with their ‘Dynamic IT’ moniker. The Microsoft approach is laid out in “Harnessing the Power of Virtualization for Dynamic IT”, January 21, 2008 by Bob Muglia, Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft Corporation at http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2008/01-21virtualization.mspx. Still this technology has not taken off for the enterprise. What are the reasons for this deployment stalemate? Some of the reasons and aspects of deploying these virtual technologies are:
- Complexity: This technology is too complex for IT architects, development or operations professionals to understand. They are used to developing systems that provide tangible functionality in a tangible way in environments that can be measured and managed. There are not many adequate tools to manage virtual and physical environments together.
- Security: Whenever anyone says the environments are very flexible and unconstrained, I know there is going to be a security and control problems. Today, it is so difficult to keep the ‘hatches batten down’ against security, compliance or confidentiality breaches in tightly controlled rigid environments. All the senior IT executives that I work with are under the ‘Sword of Damocles’ to keep their organizations safe and sound. Why would they want to move to this still to be proven technology that can potentially move their computing from the mainframes and servers to across their networks to all the desktops in their organization? Don’t you think there will be some ramifications if a major chunk of confidential client data gets mixed into some ones instant messaging or email stream?
- Unified Communications: A large part of this technology relies on unified communication systems. These are most often managed by telecoms without the full integration, and bandwidth and hardening required for industrial strength IT operations and consolidation of all the virtual resources across the organization. This represents a huge loss of control for IT.
While is true that there is great promise for virtualization, its’ time is still not quite here, except for data centre rationalization, storage farms and server consolidation. The dream of running all resources in a ‘big basket’ is not ready for prime time.
Again there is much promise in this technology that will make IT more cost efficient, responsive and flexible… More work is required to assure the IT buyer that this technology is very robust and secure. The underlying complexity and security management issues require better unified management, security and control technologies systems to make virtualization ‘bullet proof’. Enterprise customers really need something that can be taken for granted to make it feasible to run across their large operations.
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(2 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...Content is not king. It’s fodder
And you thought they were busy parsing Excel spreadsheets and doing OLAP queries. Actually, survey results that were published by the U.S. Online Publishers Association probably won’t be a shock to most IT managers, but they should give them some food for thought the next time they set up something new to help their users.
Read the rest of this entry »
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(2 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Blogged down – Why blogs aren’t yet a business buzzword
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
“To blog or not to blog.”
That isn’t the question – to die-hard champions of corporate blogging it isn’t.
To them, the query would seem superfluous and silly, and the answer self-evident.
“Duh,” they would say. “Of course they should?”
If pressed further, they would recount for you all the business benefits offered by this Web 2.0 tool – from brand recognition and insight into stakeholder needs, interests and concerns, to market intelligence for better product development et al.
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(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...Mindmapping as an enterprise strategy
Last night a friend and I went to see A Mighty Heart, based on the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and the subsequent book written by his wife, Marianne. As she and the police tried to trace her husband’s journey into a network of terrorists they frequently updated a whiteboard, drawing all kinds of arrows and pasting headshots next to relevant sources and contacts. It looked confusing to me, but mindmapping applications sound like a similar (though obviously electronic) approach.
