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Loading ...When an after-hours BlackBerry leads to overtime demands
If IT managers could get paid overtime whenever they’d had to check their BlackBerry outside of office hours, a lot of them would be rich by now.
A story is making the rounds about how ABC News was trying to put a clause in their writer’s contracts that they would not be compensated for checking e-mail on a company-issued device after 5:00 p.m. The employee’s union lashed out, saying that it’s trying to avoid a 24/7 workplace for its members and that mobile computing shouldn’t “shackle” people to their jobs. Technology professionals everywhere probably got a good laugh from that one. Reportedly, things have since been resolved, although the details weren’t made public, and we don’t know if either side was really satisfied. For at least three days, though, some writers at ABC News had their BlackBerry devices taken away. Not a good sign.
Although it may sound like an isolated incident, the story indicates a looming problem for organizations that are using technology to improve productivity. The long-promised anytime/anywhere access of mobile computers quickly translates into work always/wherever, and as such it could have a big bearing on how some applications and tools are adopted by users. If workers feel technology is keeping them on a short leash, life won’t get any easier for the IT departments who are helping to keep the leash properly fastened.
In the case of ABC News, the BlackBerries were company property, but it’s not hard to imagine similar conflicts arising over the equipment purchased and used by individual employees. If they want access to the network, for example, overtime may become the hidden cost of connectivity. Already there are bosses who expect employees to be reachable via cell phone at all hours. What happens when more of those cell phones integrate PC-like functionality that would give them the ability to access work-related data and applications?
This speaks to a detail in the ABC News story that probably went unnoticed in the hysteria over the always-contentious issue of overtime. The writer’s guild said checking e-mail was one thing. It was when that e-mail led to scripts being written or guests scheduled for the show. This is when the issue gets thornier. Should knowledge workers be paid overtime merely for awareness of information, or only for awareness that leads to immediate action?
These aren’t IT issues, of course. They are HR issues, but HR isn’t always in the room when senior management authorities access to information to workers in the field, or when the successful deployment of a Web-based tool is marred by the poor morale of sleepless employees. For actual technology professionals, the probability of overtime should be worked into the contract or the bonus structure, as is already done in many organizations. But the overall goal in most enterprise companies is to reduce the amount of IT department overtime by engineering a better application and hardware infrastructure. It’s everyone else’s overtime that, if the infrastructure scales well, is bound to keep going up.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...YouTube Fridays: Meanwhile, back in Nortel’s data centre . . .
This was another sad moment in Nortel’s history, with its former senior managers, including one-time CEO Frank Dunn, charged by the RCMP for alleged accounting fraud. The company itself is not on trial here, which is easy to forget amid all the coverage.
It’s also difficult for Nortel in that these alleged crimes happened a couple of years ago, and its current management is trying desparately to move on. This clip is a good example of that. In an interview, the CIO of Nortel’s Asia operation, Eric Lauzon, takes us behind the scenes to discuss the way he and his team are trying to improve the way it runs its own IT infrastructure….
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(1 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...What laptop reviews won’t tell you
If the doctor is to be believed, our first child will arrive on time in about two weeks. That means we are officially late setting up the nursery, which involves throwing out almost everything in the second bedroom and replacing the desktop PC that’s housed there now with a laptop.
Browsing the aisles of Future Shop yesterday with my eight-and-a-half-months-pregnant wife, I realized to my chagrin that I was somewhat at sea making this simple purchase. It’s not that there isn’t adequate selection, and even in our price range. But like any good IT manager I keep thinking about the user, and her particular use case scenarios.
Although she’ll be at home with the baby for a year, I know my wife won’t be housebound for long. She’s even considering a course in Web design at a school that provides on site day care. That means a light, compact 13-inch would probably do, but what she really wants is a desktop replacement. A 17-inch then. But is it feasible to ask her to lug something of that bulk with a baby and everything else that will come along with one? The whole point of this laptop is to eliminate the need for dedicated “office” space, which means wireless is important, but that raises some security issues, depending on the hot spots she chooses to connect to when she’s out on the town. And maybe, given the nature of newborns, we should think about some kind of spill-resistant keyboard.
Then, of course, there are the software decisions. Microsoft’s sneek previews of Windows 7 suggest Vista is not long for this world, but is anything in it worth adopting even as a transition move? With only two weeks left before Micrsoft pulls the plug on Windows XP (and we submit the names from our Save XP campaign) should I pressure the Future Shop staff to give me the OS while I still can? We’re mostly simple users of word processing and Web surfing, but both of us have an interest and need for content management, which could require more grandiose graphics rendering than we have traditionally enjoyed.
At this point, I’d rather be in charge of purchasing something a little easier. Like a family car.
Not long ago, this would have all been the IT manager’s problem. When more companies supplied laptops to their employees, the trick was coming up with something that balanced a custom configuration with a standard instance. Then, the laptop became the de-facto household PC, whether companies liked it or not. Although some companies still foot the bill for a laptop, there are employees who opt out in favour of greater autonomy (as a friend put it to me recently, “They got me a new PC in my office, but my laptop is mine.”).
Now that consumers are in charge of the procurement, IT managers are saddled with either providing network connectivity and application compatibility, or simply forbidding the devices outright. It would be so much better if, before they put down their own cash for a laptop, more users did a check-in with their IT department to get a second opinion. I’m sure this happens, but probably not unless it’s someone who has a quasi-sociable relationship with the IT manager or CIO. As odd as it sounds, the future role of technology professionals may be more about helping to make decisions about equipment the company doesn’t directly purchase. As important as it is that IT provides insight and counsel to the business, the senior executives aren’t the only ones who need the advice.
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(1 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Imagine an iPhone built for business
She’s been treated as a hopeless case, but I had some sympathy for Carrie when, faced with a crisis during the Sex and the City movie, she needs to make a call and is baffled by the iPhone handed to her. “I can’t work that,” she says, handing it back. When you’re under pressure, you don’t have time to learn a new interface.
As Apple prepares to launch version 2.0 of its popular product, the SITC scene is a good reminder that not everyone is able to keep pace with the way smart phone feature navigation is changing. Among the most likely changes to the device this week, observers are making predictions about its weight (possibly fatter, to accommodate a better battery); 3G capabilities, the better to compete with established players; and, overall, something much more affordable and available internationally. It’s too soon to expect Apple to change the look and feel. But I can’t stop dreaming.
Apple has a unique position in the market because it crosses the boundaries between consumer and corporate users. More precisely, it reaches the technology-savvy consumer who probably works in a corporate environment (although Toronto Life magazine would not agree; a feature in its latest issue suggests business users are BlackBerry loyalists). Therefore it is in the best position to build on the interface it pioneered in iPhone 1.0 and offer something that helps customers balance their varying use-case scenarios more effectively.
What I’m dreaming about, for example, is a set of icons on an iPhone that specifically tie into business applications or at least bring them to the forefront. Instead of text/calander/photos/camera, for example, users would be greeted with buttons linked to ERP, CRM, BI and productivity applications. Even better if these could be customized around the branded services, whether it be MySAP or Salesforce.com. It already does this with Safari and iPod default icons. Much as OS defaults in Windows became a political battlefield among its OEM partners, Apple now owns the kind of real estate that will govern how users operate one of the most likely successors to the PC.
I’m not suggesting this set of icons and menus would displace what iPhone users are accustomed to. It’s a matter of allowing people to set up the device based on what they need the most, and making it easy. I’m sure some developers and IT professionals could roll their own iPhone, but it’s not something the average business user will be able to do. Much better than the Apple should offer a business version (a “suit skin” versus a “life skin”) and allow users to toggle back and forth according to the activities on which they are focused.
As I write this Apple is poised to introduce a number of features for business users, and that’s great, but it’s not the same as creating an environment in which those users will want to live and breathe. Maybe that’s a project for iPhone 3.0, but this product got its hype in part from its design. That’s where Apple’s greatest innovations will likely remain.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...YouTube Fridays: Computex 2008’s big-ass computer case
Of all the trade shows I’d like to attend but never have, Computex has to top the list. This is where you see practical product approaches thrown out the window and novelty items like gold-plated keyboards sitting around the exhibit hall. Computex may be one of the last places in the industry where innovation in hardware design is freely explored.
This clip is a case in point: a massive chassis from Foxconn Technology Group that looks like it’s trying to be the Cadillac of IT hardware. Don’t expect to see this hitting the enterprise anytime soon, but you’ve got to love a company that turns the conventional wisdom about ever-smaller form factors on its head, boldly declaring that big is still occasionally beautiful. Proof that Computex’s role as an OEM brainstorming session is alive and well.
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(3 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...YouTube Fridays: Bill Gates lookalike explains cloud computing
If you don’t have the time (or patience) to explain to a CFO or CEO how hosted data and applications over the Internet works, this five-minute overview by Christopher Barnatt, author of ExplainingComputers.com, gives a pretty thorough look at the key services, benefits and issues associated with this concept. Includes discussions of software- and hardware-as-a-service, too. But seriously: Am I the only one that sees the resemblance to a certain software CEO here? Take away the British accent and this guy could be running the show at Redmond.
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(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10) Loading ...Curse of the data centre drones
You can’t really blame people for not wanting to work in a data centre. They’re often cold, full of malfunctioning equipment and thisclose to being outsourced anyway. No wonder staffing costs are such a bitch.
I was talking earlier today with Venkat S. Devraj, CTO of run-book automation firm Stratavia in Denver, Col., which recently released the results of a survey conducted on its behalf by Enterprise Management Associates about problems in the data centre. Staffing was the biggest issue, followed by low skill sets, the burden of manual tasks and lots of errors.
According to Devraj, good data centre help is hard to find because running such facilities well often depends on so-called “tribal knowledge” that wouldn’t be available to someone new coming in.
“If you have 10 admins in a group and say, ‘How to do you do task ABC,’ you get 10 different answers,” he says. “What we do is help standardize that. Maybe there should only be three ways of doing these things.”
It’s not that the admins have personal preferences around IT infrastructure configuration (though some do, of course). It’s that patching a HP-UX machine can be a lot different than patching a Windows of Solaris box. Stratavia’s product includes a metadata layer which abstracts all the hardware platforms from the physical servers and is designed to make it easier to patch across the entire data centre without a lot of fiddling around. There’s a certain amount of integration involved – Devraj points out that the software won’t know which systems are production servers or test servers, for example – but there are a number of auto-discovery capabilities.
Like Toronto’s Opalis, Stratavia is trying to take advantage of the surging market for data centre automation even as firms like BladeLogic and Opsware get scooped up by larger players (BMC and HP, respectively). Devraj says run-book automation firms traditionally focused on what he calls simple process orchestration – checking what’s going on, issuing a service ticket to the right team, etc. – and providing a glue to enable technologies from Opsware or BladeLogic.
“The way we differ is by offering intelligent process automation, or decision automation,” he says. “We’re offering an expert engine that leverages that metadata layer to automate more complex tasks. These are not just help desk tasks. These are tier 2, tier 3 problems like systems administration, database administration. Those are the areas that are a huge greenfield.”
This is no doubt true, but whether an expert engine is enough to keep Stratavia from being swept up in the industry consolidation is another story. For now, its products and those of similar firms might make enterprise data centres a bit less stressful work environment. Now if someone could just take the next step to make them into a fun environment. After all the data centre automation is over, we could use a little data centre inspiration, too.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...AMD offers breathing room with Business Class PC
AMD’s decision to move into the business PC market this week reminds me of the first line of Shopgirl, a novella by Steve Martin, which points out that working in the glove department at a large retail store means “you are selling things that nobody buys anymore.”
Of course, someone has to be buying new PCs somewhere, but with more people concerned about software licence terms and the ability to save the Windows XP operating system, updated hardware seems kind of beside the point. It’s intriguing, then, that AMD would not only move into such a saturated segment but that it would offer absolutely no innovation. The company’s Business Class line includes its Phenom quad-core X4 9600B for US$230, the Phenom triple-core X3 8600B for US$175, and the Athlon dual-core X2 5400B and 5200B for US$120 and US$110, respectively. There is also the Athlon X2 5000B and 4450B for US$95 and US$80 and the single-core Athlon 1640B for US$50.
In place of enhanced features AMD is pitching stability. The company is and guaranteeing that processors will remain available for two years and is extending warranties from one to three years. Forge about good enough computing. This is peace of mind computing, and, much like Oracle’s pledge for lifetime support in the software space, it’s not a bad strategy.
I’m not sure how well this competes with Intel’s processor lifecycle, but given that its product roadmaps often seem to stretch from Toronto to Vancouver, something tells me it’s more focused on moving customers to the next generation of technology than preserving their investment in the previous one. AMD admitted its Business Class line will probably resonate with small businesses first. That’s because corporations, if they’re big enough, are probably able to wrangle the lifecycle they need with Intel’s product line.
Although all the major business PC makers leapt on the announcement, the big beneficiary might be Dell, which is trying to regain its No. 1 position and could nicely piggyback its traditional reputation for quality service onto the longevity of AMD’s platform. Remember that three years ago, former Dell chief exec Kevin Rollins caused major upheaval in the market by considering AMD-based Dell servers. It’s a sign of AMD’s progress that an OptiPlex 740 with AMD inside is almost a foregone conclusion.
Intel’s own business processors and chip sets, Vpro, is not that old, and AMD hopes to win with features like out-of-band management, which allows IT staff to access machines even if the OS doesn’t boot. Although Vpro’s Active Management Technology allows this, AMD is touting an open standards approach. That may not make much of a difference, though, when the proprietary option, Intel, owns more than 80 per cent of the market.
Perhaps the biggest issue of AMD will be its own financial performance, which has been dismal lately. Although Intel has had its own operational screwups, missing product deadlines has been an ongoing problem since AMD’s early days. It may be difficult for IT managers to think of AMD as a business-class PC provider if it can’t keep its own business running smoothly.
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(1 votes, average: 6 out of 10) Loading ...Microsoft’s Live Mesh: The IT department implications
Even though it seems to signal a shift from its PC-centric corporate philosophy, I wouldn’t call Microsoft’s Live Mesh offering a disruptive technology. If anything, it’s an accommodating technology.
Released this week at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Live Mesh allows users to share data folders across different PCs and devices, storing information both on the hardware and on the Web. It’s not pure cloud computing. It’s kinda-cloud computing. Which may give cloud holdouts the peace of mind they need.
Much like Adobe’s Apollo project (which morphed into AIR last year), Live Mesh is about moving data between the online and offline worlds, which is the real “last mile” of mobile computing. As much as vendor promised anytime/anywhere/any device access, Internet connectivity is not ubiquitous and probably never will be. Nor would all users necessarily want everything stored in a single place. Live Mesh would avoid that problem by synchronizing changes made to information in folders and updating them every time the user downloads them to a client device or links back to a portal. Good for customers, good for developers. Not necessarily good for businesses.
So far Live Mesh has been restricted to a private group of beta testers, and in the earliest iterations Microsoft seems to be targeting consumers. There have been vague mentions of security features to be offered to corporate users, but nothing of any substance. And that kind of thing was fine in a world where businesses took their sweet time migrating to new platforms and environments, but not in a world where consumers buy their own devices. Microsoft suggests this doesn’t matter.
The issue is not the technology – sharing folders between devices and the Internet is undoubtedly useful. The issue is the data, or more precisely, the information that might make its way through Live Mesh. If we’re talking about sharing and synchronizing your recipes, no problem. It gets trickier when we’re talking about sales data, expense reports, marketing materials or other content that may be more vulnerable when it’s moving back and forth from a Web site to a cell phone.
Microsoft is also, oddly enough, behaving with Live Mesh as though it were a dot-com startup in the late 1990s, in that it has not revealed any ideas around the business model it will use to support the service. We can assume that users will be stuck looking at ads in their folders and businesses will be charged subscriptions, but the details are as important as the technology itself in determining how well Live Mesh will be accepted.
Online file storage, file sharing and remote desktop technologies are not new, but a combination of them in a package from the world’s largest software firm make for an important launch. I don’t think it’s a question anymore of whether Redmond “gets” the Internet. The task now is to prove it gets how customer adoption patterns and the subsequent IT management headaches are changing, too.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...YouTube Fridays: Not-so-service-oriented architecture
Users always complain that the IT department is hiding when they really need them, and finally we have video evidence. This brings back good memories of building forts as a kid, although it looks a more like a cardboard igloo. Love how this little laptop-box sanctuary is the neatest thing in this otherwise garbage dump of an office. I just hope no one in this particular company was in a hurry for their Dell notebook.
