This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services.
Tony Pearson is a Senior Storage Consultant for the IBM System Storage product line at the
IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson Arizona, has been working in IBM storage for over 20 years, and is
author of the book
Inside System Storage: Volume I.
Thursday June 25, 2009
IBM
Fellow blogger Alex McDonald from NetApp brings back some
[funny mainframe humor] about the IBM "OS/VU" operating system from 1979.
Could this have been the motivation for Second Life as well?
Ideally, every airline would use the most experienced seasoned professional airline pilots money could buy, but some airlines, in an effort to compete on ticket price, may elect instead to have less experienced pilots.
Here's a great excerpt:
Airline history lesson 101: It used to be, up until the mid 1980’s, that a young pilot would be hired on at a major carrier, become a flight engineer (FE), and then spend a few years managing the systems of the older-generation airplanes. But he or she was learning all the while. These new “pilots” sat in the FE seat and did their job, all the while observing the “pilots” doing the flying, day in and day out.
The FE’s learned from the seasoned pilots about the real world of flying into the Chicago O’Hares and New York LaGuardias. They learned decision making, delegation, and the reality of “captain’s final authority” as confirmed in the law. When they got the chance to upgrade, they became a copilot. The copilot’s duty was to assist the captain in flying; but even during their time as the new copilot, they had the luxury of the FE looking over their shoulders — i.e., more learning. This three-man-crew concept, now a fond memory in the domestic markets but used predominately in international flying, was considered one more layer of protection. But it’s gone.
To become the public speaker I am today, IBM put me through a variety of speaking classes. I taught high school and college classes to practice in front of groups. But most importantly, I traveled with seasoned colleagues and watched them in action from the front row.
I learned how to handle tough questions, how to react to hecklers causing trouble, and how to deal with the unexpected before, during and after each presentation. In addition to speaking skills, I ended up having to learn travel skills, foreign language skills, and a variety of cultural social skills. All part of the job in my line of work.
Likewise, being a storage administrator is an important job, and for some data centers, not something to give lightly to a fresh college graduate. Unless they have had format IT Infrastructure Library
[ITIL] certification coursework, I doubt they would understand the processes and disciplines demanded by the typical data center. I have been to accounts where new hires are not allowed to touch production systems for the first two years. Instead they watch the seasoned professionals do their jobs, and are given only access to "sand box" systems that are used for application testing or Quality Assurance (QA). Sadly, I have also been to other accounts where people with no storage experience whatsoever were tossed into the admin pool and let loose with superuser passwords, all in an effort to save money during times of exponential data growth rates, only to pay the price later with outages or lost data.
The parallels between the airline industry and the IT industry are eerie.
As I mentioned in my post
[Moving Over to MyDeveloperWorks], those of us bloggers on IBM's DeveloperWorks are moving over to a new system called "MyDeveloperWorks" which has a host of new features.
Fortunately for me, I missed the note to volunteer to be one of the first bloggers on the block to volunteer to move over. I was traveling and decided not to deal with it until I got back.
However, fellow IBM Master Inventor, Barry Whyte, was not so lucky. It is safe to say he was stupid enough to volunteer, and is probably regretting the decision every day since. In case you lost his RSS feed, or can't find him anymore on Google or whatever search engine, here is his
[new blog].
As for my blog, I have asked to postpone the move until all the problems that Barry has encountered are resolved. That might be a awhile, but if you lose access to mine sometime in the near future, hopefully at least you have been warned as to what might have happened.
Jon Toigo has a funny cartoon on his post,
[As I Listen to EMC Brag on “New” Functionality…]. Basically, it pokes fun that many of us bloggers argue which vendor was first to introduce some technology or another. We all do this, myself included.
Recently, Claus Mikkelsen's, currently with HDS,
[brought up accurately some past history from the 1990s], which is before many storage bloggers hired on with their current employers. Claus and I worked together for IBM back then, so I recognized many of the events he mentions that I can't talk about either. In many cases, IBM or HDS delivered new features before EMC.
I've been reading with some amusement as fellow blogger Barry Burke asked Claus a series of questions about Hitachi's latest High Availability Manager (HAM) feature. Claus was too busy with his "day job" and chose to shut Barry down.
Sadly, HDS set themselves up for ridicule this round, first by over-hyping a function before its announcement, and then announcing a feature that IBM and EMC have offered for a while. The problem and confusion for many is that each vendor uses different terminology. Hitachi's HAM is similar to IBM's HyperSwap and EMC's AutoSwap. The implementations are different, of course, which is often why vendors are often asked to compare and contrast one implementation to another.
In his latest response,
[how to mind the future of a mission-critical world], Barry reports that several HDS bloggers now censor his comments.
That's too bad. I don't censor comments, within reason, including Barry's inane questions about IBM's products, and am glad that he does not censor my inane questions to him about EMC products in return. The entire blogosphere benefits from these exchanges, even if they are a bit heated sometimes.
We all have day jobs, and often are just too busy, or too lazy, to read dozens or hundreds of pages of materials, if we can even find them in the first place. Not everyone has the luxury of a "competitive marketing" team to help do the research for you, so if we can get an accurate answer or clarification about a product that is generally available directly from a vendor's subject matter expert, I am all for that.
This week, I have been presenting how to do important things without travel. Of course, there are times where you need some boots on the ground, while your support team remains remote.
Last month, fellow co-worker Liz Goodman reached out to me. She was part of a ten-person team that went to Tanzania as part of IBM's
[Corporate Service Corps]. Other teams went to Brazil, China, Ghana, Romania, South Africa, The Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam.
(I've been to half these other countries, but the closest I have ever been to
Tanzania was a safari I took in Kenya that included the Masai Mara national park which runs
along the border with Tanzania's Serengheti national park).
Liz was one of the lucky
[200 candidates chosen among over 5000 applications] IBM reviews each year for this program. IBM does business in over
170 countries, so learning to work in or with emerging growth markets requires a bit of
"cultural intelligence".
Liz and three others worked with the University of Dudoma [UDOM] to lead some students in adopting a
[Moodle] infrastructure based on
Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL [LAMP] platform. She noticed that I had experience with both Moodle and LAMP from
[my work with OLPC], and reached out to me for help.
I was able to provide some insight, things to watch out for, and how to tackle not just the technical challenges, but a few that many don't consider:
Educational content. Digitizing materials already available in hardcopy, or obtaining digital rights to existing content.
Business Process. Getting the teachers and students to adopt new process and procedures enabled by these new capabilities.
Project Management. Fortunately, Liz is already
[PMP-certified], and knows well the importance of managing even a small 4-person, 4-week project like this.
How well did her team do? Liz blogged before, during and after her trip. Read all about it
on her blog [Liz Goes To Tanzania]!
The event is sponsored by
[IBM, F5, NetApp, Panduit, and VMware] and features some top-notch executive speakers:
Jim Stallings, IBM General Manager for Global Markets, will explain why a smarter planet needs a dynamic
infrastructure. I used to work for Jim, when he was in charge of the IBM Linux initiative and I was on the Linux for
S/390 mainframe team.
Erich Clementi, IBM Vice President, Strategy & General Manager Enterprise Initiatives, will explain how to
best leverage opportunities with cloud computing.
Steve Forbes, Chairman and CEO of Forbes Inc. and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine, will present
Global Outlooks and the Challenge of Change.
Rich Lechner, IBM Vice President, Energy & Environment, will explain the importance of Building an Energy-Efficient Dynamic Infrastructure. I also worked for Rich, back when he was the VP of Marketing for IBM System Storage, and I
was back then the "Technical Evangelist". See my post
[The Art of Evangelism] to better understand why I don't carry that title anymore.
In addition to these presentations, you will be able to "walk" around to different booths and have on-line chats with subject matter experts and download resources. Don't worry, this is not based on
[Second Life], but rather using "On24" much simpler visual interface.
Of course, you can follow on [Twitter] or join the fan club at
[Facebook].
This is a worldwide event, with translated resource materials and on-line subject matter experts in six different languages (English, French, Italian, German, Mandarin and Japanese). Those in North, Central and South Americas can participate June 23, and those in Europe, Asia and the rest of the world on June 24.
[Register Today] and mark your calendars!
Continuing this week's theme of doing important things without leaving town, I present our results for
an exciting project I started earlier this year.
For seven weeks, my coworker Mark Haye and I voluntarily led a class of students here in Tucson, Arizona in an after-school pilot project to teach
the ["C" programming language] using
[LEGO® Mindstorms® NXT robots]. The ten students, boys and girls ages 9 to 14 years old, were already part of the FIRST
[For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology] program, and participated in FIRST Lego League
[FLL] robot competitions.
Since the students were already familiar building robots, and programming them with a simple graphical system of connecting blocks that perform actions. However, to compete in the next level of robot competitions, FIRST Tech Challenge [FTC],
we need to leave this simple graphical programming behind, and upgrade to more precise "C" programming.
Mark is a software engineer for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and has participated in FLL competitions over the past nine years. This week, he celebrates his 25th anniversary at IBM, and I celebrate my 23rd.
The teacher, Ms. Ackerman, and the students referred to us as "Coach Mark" and "Coach Tony".
This was the first time I had worked with LEGO NXT robots.
For those not familiar with these robots, you can purchase a kit at your local
toy store. In addition to regular LEGO bricks, beams, and plates, there are motors, wheels, and sensors. A programmable NXT brick has three outputs (marked A,B, and C) to control three motors, and four inputs (marked 1,2,3,4) to receive values from sensors. Programs are written and compiled on laptops and then downloaded to the NXT programmable brick through an USB cable, or wirelessly via Bluetooth.
In the picture shown, an image of the Mars planetary surface is divided into a grid with thick black lines.
A light sensor between the front two wheels of the robot is over the black line.
We used the
[RobotC programming firmware] and integrated development environment (IDE) from
[Carnegie Mellon University].
The idea of this pilot was to see how well the students could learn "C".
With only a few hours after class on each Wednesday, could we teach young students "C" programming in just seven weeks?
My contribution? I have taught both high school and college classes, and spent over 15 years programming for IBM, so Mark asked me to help.
We started with a basic lesson plan:
Week 1
A brief history of the "C" language
Understanding statements and syntax
Setting motor speed and direction
Compiling and downloading your first program
Week 2
Understanding the "while" loop
Retrieving input sensor values
Week 3
Understanding the "if-then-else" statement
Defining variables with different data types
Manipulating string variables
Writing a program for the robot to track along a black line on a white background.
Week 4
Understanding local versus global scope variables
Writing a program for a robot to count black lines as it crosses them.
Week 5
Defining functions
Perform left turns, right turns, and to cross a specific number of lines on a grid pattern to move the robot to a specific location.
Weeks 6 and 7
Mission Impossible: come up with a challenge to make the robot do something that would be difficult to accomplish using the previous NXT visual programming language.
At the completion of these seven weeks, I sat down to interview "Coach Mark"
on his thoughts on this pilot project.
Why "C"?
This is a practical programming skill. The "C" language is used throughout the world to program everything from embedded systems to operating systems, and even storage software. This would allow the robots to handle more precise movements, more accurate turns, and more complicated missions.
Can kids learn "C" in only seven weeks?
Part of the pilot project was to see how well the students could understand the material. They were already familiar with building the robots, and understood the basics of programming sensors and motors, so we were hoping this was a good foundation to work from. Some kids managed very well, others struggled.
Did everything go according to plan?
The first two weeks went well, turning on motors and having robots move forward and backward were easy enough. We seemed to lose a few students on week 3, and things got worse from there. However, several of the students truly surprised us and managed to implement very complicated missions. We were quite pleased with the results.
What kind of problems did the kids encounter?
Touch sensor required loops waiting for pressing. Motors did not necessarily turn as expected until more advanced methods were used. Making 90 degree left and right turns accurately was more difficult than expected.
Any funny surprises?
Yes, we had a Challenge Map representing the Mars planetary surface from a previous FLL competition that was dark red and divided into squares with thick black lines.
An active light sensor returns a value of "0" (complete darkness) to "100" (bright white).
However, the Mars surface had craters that were dark enough to be misinterpreted as a black line causing some unusual results. This required some enhanced programming techniques to resolve.
Did robots help or hurt the teaching process?
I think they helped. Rather than writing programs that just display "Hello World!" on a computer screen, the students can actually see robots move, and either do what they expect, or not!
And when the robots didn't do what they were expected to?
The students got into "debug" mode. They were already used to doing this from previous FLL competitions, but with RobotC, you can leave the USB cable connected (or use wireless Bluetooth) and actually gather debugging information while the robot is running, to see the value of sensors and other variables and help determine why things are not working properly.
Any applicability to the real world of storage?
We have robots in the IBM System Storage TS3500 tape library. These robots scan bar code labels, pull tapes out of shelves and mount them into drives.
The programming skills are the same needed for storage software, such
as IBM Tivoli Storage Manager or IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center.
The world is becoming smarter, instrumented with sensors, interconnected over a common network, and intelligent enough to react and respond correctly. The lessons of reading sensor values and moving motors can be considered the first step in solutions that help to make a smarter planet.
Spend twenty hours a week running a project for a non-profit.
Teach yourself Java, HTML, Flash, PHP and SQL. Not a little, but mastery. [Clarification: I know you can't become a master programmer of all these in a year. I used the word mastery to distinguish it from 'familiarity' which is what you get from one of those Dummies type books. I would hope you could write code that solves problems, works and is reasonably clear, not that you can program well enough to work for Joel Spolsky. Sorry if I ruffled feathers.]
Volunteer to coach or assistant coach a kids sports team.
Start, run and grow an online community.
Give a speech a week to local organizations.
Write a regular newsletter or blog about an industry you care about.
Learn a foreign language fluently.
Write three detailed business plans for projects in the industry you care about.
Self-publish a book.
Run a marathon.
In 2007, 51 percent of graduating college students could find jobs in their field, and this year it has dropped to only 20 percent. If you find yourself with some time on your hands, either recently graduated or recently unemployed, consider volunteerism.
Last year, I chose to donate my time and money to an innovative project called "One Laptop per Child" [OLPC]. It was one of my [New Years Resolutions] for 2008. I was actually "recruited" by folks from the OLPC after they read my
[series of blog posts] on things that can be done with their now famous green-and-white XO laptop.
Nepal
The first half of the year, I spent helping
"Open Learning Exchange Nepal" [OLE Nepal], a non-government organization (NGO) to help education in that country. XO laptops were provided to second and sixth graders at several schools, and my assignment was to help with the school "XS" server. This would be the server that all the laptops connect to. My blog posts on this included:
Rather than [Move to Nepal], I was able to help by building an identical XS server in Tucson, and provide support remotely. This included getting the "Mesh Antennas"
to be properly recognized, having an internet filter using [DansGuardian] software, and working out backup procedures.
Uruguay
For the second half of the year, I was asked to mentor a college student in
Hyderabad, India as part of the
["Google Summer of Code"] to develop an
[Educational Blogger System]
on the XS server. We called it "EduBlog" and based it on the popular
[Moodle] educational software platform.
This was going to be tested with kids from Uruguay, but sending a server
down to this country proved politically-challenging, so instead, I
[built
a server and shipped it] to a co-location facility in Pennsylvania that agreed to donate the cost and expenses needed to run the server there with full internet connection. I acted as "system admin" for the box, was able to connect remotely via SSH,
while Tarun, the college student I was mentoring, developed the EduBlog software. Twice the system was
hacked, but I was able to restore the system remotely thanks to a multi-boot configuration that allowed
me to reboot to a read-only operating system image and restore the operating system and data.
The students and teachers in Uruguay were helped locally by
[Proyecto Ceibal]. We were able to translate the system into Spanish, and the project was a big success, enough to convince local government to provide
XO laptops to their students to further the benefits.
In recognition of these efforts, I was awarded last week the bronze
[U.S. President's Volunteer Service Award]
through the USA Freedom Corps and the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation.
To learn more about these projects, see my [OLPC wiki page].
I get a lot of suggestions for what to put on my blog.
I realize that tweets are limited to 140 characters, so pointing to a video URL without much
explanation or warning can be dangerous. An email can at least add appropriate warnings,
such NSFW (Not Safe For Work) or "sorry if this offends you". The only warning I got for
a video posted to YouTube by "StorageNetworkDud" was this short email:
"Sorry about the language they have used in some translations, but not sure who put this. It was on twitter."
Fortunately, I have my browser set up not to automatically play YouTube videos. The title
helped warn me of the content, which turned out to be a
[fan-subbed] scene from a
World War II movie with brown-shirted
tyrannical leader of an evil empire talking to his top generals. He dismisses all but three
with "Hollis, Burke, and Twomey stay in here" followed by a lengthy recap of EMC's recent troubles
in the marketplace. At least in the video, the fuhrer correctly follows Tim Sander's advice:
"if you have to tell someone bad news, say it in person."
While I understand that many people don't like EMC, the #3 storage
vendor in the world, this type of "geek humor" hits a new low.
The video was posted over a
month ago, but in light of the recent [shooting in Washington DC], I felt it was just not
appropriate to post it here.
Readers, I appreciate all the suggestions, but give me some better warning next time!
This week, the [Global Language Monitor] announced that "Web 2.0" became the One Millionth word of the English language. The average American only uses about 10,000 word vocabulary.
One way to improve your vocabulary is to read my blook (blog-based book),
Inside System Storage: Volume I, which includes a 900-word glossary of storage-related terms. My blook is now available in hardcover or paperback at
[Amazon] as well as direct from my publisher
[Lulu]:
I have started working on a new book which I hope to have available for purchase later this year.
This week I am in Minneapolis, MN, so was hoping that the complicated process of moving this blog over to "MyDeveloperWorks" would happen while I was gone, but alas, that does not appear to be the case.
Meanwhile, my partner in crime, Barry Whyte, has moved his blog
[Storage Virtualization]
successfully over to the new server.
Perhaps next week. If all goes well, the URL links should redirect correctly, but those of you out there using feed readers might require you to re-subscribe to get the right RSS feeds.
Continuing my blog coverage of the
[Forrester IT Forum 2009 conference],
I finally catch up with some keynote sessions this morning. Here's my recap on the rest of the main tent general session keynote presentations from BP, Microsoft and CFIL.
Dana Deasy, CIO and Group VP, Information Technology and Services (IT&S), BP
Dana presented "The gift we’ve been given – reinventing the IT organization". He is the CIO of BP, an energy company that made over 360 billion dollars selling oil and gas. In fact, it is the fourth largest company in the world, with 92,000 employees in more than 100 countries.
Back in 2007, business was good but the senior management team felt that IT needed to be straightened out.
Dana was brought in as a "fresh thinking" outsider, managing a group 4000 IT staff composed mostly of contractors, dealing with more than 2000 IT suppliers and more than 60 versions of SAP.
Dana presented the results of their IT makeover. In the first year, he was able to cut out 400 million US dollars from the IT budget, including the reduction of 500 people from the IT staff. He increased the employee/contractor ratio to 40/60, with plans to bring this up to 65/35 over the next year. He was able to get 1800 IT employees to perform a self-assessment to understand their strengths and weaknesses. He was able to centralize the IT leadership team, and deploy a common
[ITIL] best practices implementation.
What did he learn from all this? Here were his top four "lessons learned":
No time to dwell but know your facts
Work in parallel to push the pace of change
Listen but in the end take your own counsel
Tell a compelling story to energize your employees and your leadership
Chris Capossela, Senior VP of Information Worker Product Management Group, Microsoft
Chris presented
"Uncovering Value in the Cloud and On Your Desktop", on
how Microsoft customers are taking advantage of the software they have already purchased.
For example, Jamba Juice was able to use Microsoft SharePoint to cut down locating documents from 15 minutes to just seconds, reducing 10-15 hours per week for more than 500 managers. More importantly, they were more confident that document they found was the right one. This is often referred to as "one version of the truth." In another example, Tyson Foods was able to connect Microsoft Word to their SAP application, and have that then connect to their Microsoft SharePoint.
Chris was amazed that many Microsoft customers don't take advantage of all that is available to them.
He gave four examples:
Planning Services: If you buy an enterprise license to Microsoft products, you get planning services, from either Microsoft's own Microsoft Consulting Services or from thousands of Microsoft Business Partners. Only 8 percent of customers take advantage of this.
Home Use Rights: For enterprise license customers, employees can purchase "home use rights" to use the Enterprise level of Microsoft Office software for only 10 US dollars, but only about 3 percent take advantage of this.
Training: Many enterprise licenses come with 2-4 weeks of training vouchers, but only 40 percent take advantage of these vouchers.
E-Learning: Microsoft also offers e-learning, which Microsoft customers can either have delivered from Microsoft's own hosted services, or they can get a copy of the E-learning materials hosted inside their own company firewall. Again, few take advantage of this.
Chris wrapped up his presentation by citing some examples of customers that migrated from in-house, on-premises collaboration software to Microsoft's "Exchange Online" and "SharePoint Online" cloud computing Software-as-a-Service [SaaS] offerings. The cloud versions of these software do not offer all the features as the on-premise versions, but Microsoft is working to close this gap.
(IBM offers similar cloud computing services for email and collaboration called
[LotusLive])
Gary presented "Tough Times: Opportunity for Innovation and Corporate Makeover". He had some great
quotes intended to help people become better leaders, like this:
“Leadership failures do not usually
result from leaders not knowing what to
do; rather these failures result because
leaders fail to do what they know full
well they should and must do.
Most leaders never get fully comfortable with
the changes that they wish for their
organizations.”
His recommendations:
Change the Conversation - employees want to have a compelling reason to change.
Create a compelling description of the future - employees want a vision of where they are headed.
Emotionally enlist employees in the cause - leaders are not remembered for their attributes, as much as the causes they stood for.
Help me understand the business - employees often do not have information in context to act accordingly.
Choose passionate - employees want to see leaders that are passionate and confident on the process and strategic direction.
Create a To-Stop list - we all have "to do" lists, but perhaps you need a "to don't" list. In other words, a list of bad habits and practices you need to discontinue.
Gary indicated that trust must be given before it is earned. If a leader doesn't trust the employees, how do you expect the employees to trust the leader? When asking employees to change their behavior, or self-assess their own skills, a leader must emphasize "I mean you no harm." Otherwise,
mistrust will undermine the intended results.
The keynote sessions the past three days have provided clear motivation to the CIOs and IT leaders in the audience to consider making the necessary changes, with impressive results and actionable advice.
Well, I am back from Las Vegas, and had a pleasant
[US Memorial Day] holiday yesterday.
Today is Tuesday, and that means more IBM announcements! IBM announced that the DCS9900 now supports an intermix of SAS and SATA drives. The DCS9900 is purpose-built specifically for the High-Performance-Computing (HPC) and Video Broadcasting industries.
The system is a combination of 4U controllers and 3U expansion drawers. The controllers handle either FC or Infiniband attachment to host servers. The expansion drawers hold up to 60 drives each. With the new features of intermix, the following drives are supported:
7200 RPM SATA drives in 500, 750 and 1000 GB capacities
15K RPM SAS drives in 146, 300 and 450 GB capacities
The DCS9900 groups the drives into sets of 10, in RAID-6 ranks of 8+2P. IBM supports either 5, 10 or 20 expansion drawers to make a complete system. The maximum configuration would be 1200 drives of the 1000GB SATA drives, for a total of 1.2 PB in two frames. Each rank must be all the same type and capacity drive, but you can mix different types within the entire system.
The DCS9900 supports "Sleep Mode", an implementation of
Massive Array of Idle Disks [MAID] technology, whereby each RAID rank can be either awake and spinning, or in energy-efficient standby mode. This makes for a more "green" storage system for data that is not accessed frequently.
Wrapping up my blog coverage of the
[Forrester IT Forum 2009 conference],
I will put the rest of the track sessions I attended under the broad
category of "market forces".
The track sessions were aligned by job role. Here are all the tracks:
Track A: CIO
Track B: Enterprise Architecture professional
Track C: Application Development & Program Management professional
Track D: Information & Knowledge Management professional
Track E: Sourcing & Vendor Management professional
Track F: Business Process & Applications professional
Track G: IT Infrastructure & Operations professional
Track H: Security & Risk professional
Track I: Technology Product Management & Marketing professional
As an IBM consultant, I deal with all of these different kinds of professionals, so I thought I would try to attend a variety of sessions this week. Here are my notes from a few of these:
Transforming IT for Lean Times: Organizational Structure
The Forrester analyst presented the concept of "Lean IT". This is not just a process to make IT skinny or marginal through commoditization. Rather, it is to meet business needs through differentiated services. Gone is the "one-size fits all" mentality. Lean IT can be used to streamline IT capabilities to enable employees to get their jobs done. Continuous improvement is done through a series of "Rapid Improvement Events" (RIE), a methodology known as "Kaizen Blitz".
The focus is to reduce waste, including rework, firefighting, meetings, unnecessary reports and paperwork, working groups, and task forces. A common mistake is to reorganize departments before understanding the fundamental requirements, or make every employee use the same PC just to simplify the job of IT.
Traditionally, IT departments had three jobs. The first is Utility, to keep the lights on and systems running. The second is Productivity, to enhance existing systems and applications. The third is Innovation and Business Transformation.
The problem has been that many IT leaders have been "IT Supply Managers" ensuring there is adequate supply of these. Instead, the Forrester analyst suggests redefining the role to one of "Demand Broker". Some companies have already done this. The CIO manages the demand for IT from Business Units, Business Processes, Information Workers, as well as suppliers, business partners and customers. As a demand broker, the CIO could then
use these demands to optimize and prioritize IT resources.
Why Tech will lead Economic Recovery
The current 5.7 percent drop in IT spending in 2009 during this global financial meltdown is actually similar to the drop in IT
spending in 2001-2003. However, the Forrester analyst anticipates that IT spending will bounce back in 2010.
His reasoning came from looking at past IT spending trends since the 1950s. He found four clear sequences
consisting of 6-10 years of growth and investment in IT, followed by 6-10 years of refinement and digestion
where business leaders try to make the most use of these investments. The four sequences of investment and growth are:
1976-1985 personal computing, empowering individual productivity
1992-2000 network computing, enabling e-business and the internet boom
2008-2016 smart computing, optimizing business results through flexible and responsive IT that incorporates awareness and analytics to solve new business problems.
He argued that this trend was already starting to show itself. There was an uptick in IT spending in 2008 before the financial melt-down, and he feels this is why the tech industry sector will drive the economic recovery in 2010. The top five industries that will lead the adoption of smart computing will be: Government, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Utilities, Education, and Personal Services. These represent 54 percent of IT spending in the US, and also represent a large portion of the US stimulus package.
Smart Computing can be summarized as the "Four A's":
Awareness - instrumentation like RFID chips, sensors and video surveillance
Analysis - intelligent recognition of patterns and finding anomalies
Alternatives - identifying alternative responses
Actions - dealing with threats or capturing opportunity
Smart computing in these industries reflects the need for more vertically-aligned industry-specific solutions.
IBM is well-positioned in this area, having both the hardware, software and services for smart computing, as well as deep industry-specific expertise. Other industry-specific vendors, like General Electric and Siemens, have the vertical alignment, and are working to adopt smart computing. Meanwhile, Oracle/Sun and Microsoft are also investing in smart computing, and have the potential to develop more vertically-aligned industry-specific solutions. Other IT vendors will have a choice to make: stay horizontal or go vertical.
ERP's Evolving Landscape: Impact for Application Professionals
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software vendors are consolidating, with
the average ERP deployment 10 years old, triggering many to re-evaluate how
well the promises of ERP match the reality. On the positive side,
ERP promised to reduce the total number of applications, provide some
financial stability and integration, and for the most part the Forrester
analyst felt these promises were mostly met. However, in deploying new
capabilities, lowering TCO or establishing a partnership between vendor
and client, ERP vendors got low marks.
Customers are now demanding more end-to-end solutions, especially with
more industry-specific functionality. Technology
advances should be used to boost the business value. For example,
ERP lags in SaaS adoption. Frequent upgrades to meet regulatory requirements
could drive stronger interest in SaaS deployments of ERP.
Customers would also like the end-user experience with the ERP to be
more role-based, with actionable insight and intelligent responses related to
the user's job responsibilities. Hybrid ERP solutions that span deployment
across on-premises, SaaS and managed hosting services might be needed
to ease this transition.
What You Should Know Before Signing a Contract with a Disaster Recovery
Services provider
This session was less about RTO or RPO, and more about broader considerations.
The leading disaster recovery service providers are IBM Business Continuity
and Resiliency Services [BCRS], SunGard, ICM/UK, and HP.
The Forrester analyst did not think HP was treating this as strategically as they could,
and often are behind the scenes through other business partners.
Will this [oligopoly] continue? The
analyst thinks there will be an increase in the number of disaster recovery service providers. Contenders include
Telcos like Qwest, AT&T, BT, and Verizon Business; SMB-focused firms like i365 and Venyu;
and cloud computing IaaS providers like SAVVIS.
So what should you consider when putting out an RFP? Here were a few suggestions:
Make sure there are schedules for all of your platforms (x86, Unix, System i and System z)
Identify all fees, including "declaration fee" and "occupancy fee"
Costs of Disaster Recovery test exercises, including how many, and their duration in days.
How quickly you can access their facility after you declare the disaster
Whether the provider has alternative Data Centers, depending on the scope of the regional disaster
Evolving the 4 P's of Marketing to Grow Revenue in Emerging Markets
I was in IBM marketing for seven years. For those without marketing backgrounds, the 4 P's of
marketing are product, promotion, placement and pricing. There is no "global" audience, each
country, region or locale has unique characteristics, and requires go-to-market (GTM) strategies
be tailored to each situation. For example, in Russia, decision makers are more influenced by
Web sites and Industry magazines; in Europe, they are more influenced by peers and word-of-mouth;
and in Latin America, direct sales force are most influential. In many countries, blogs are
more influential than they are in the United States.
Companies of all sizes can do the right things. For example, IBM translates its materials into 31
different languages. Meanwhile, 50-person
[LogMeIn] has 17 million users because they have localized their offering, and even allow online purchase in local currencies. Third party consultants that know
the local region may be needed to break into new geographies.
Certainly the opportunity is there. Worldwide, there are an estimated 9 million small businesses,
and another 630,000 medium size businesses. These SMBs employ 22 percent of the workforce in Russia, 55 percent
in Europe, and 80 percent in Japan.
To reach them, you may need to explore new channels,
such as government agencies, academia, non-government organizations (NGO), and trade associations.
The traditional supply chain of vendor, distributor and reseller may need be redefined as a demand
network, with co-marketing programs, peer-to-peer relationships and shared knowledge resources.
IBM collaborated with the International Finance Corporation [IFC] to
create the [SME Toolkit], a resource and online community
for small and medium enterprises, translated and localized into several languages. IBM also worked
with Chinese government to select Wuxi, China as the location for its Cloud Computing center as part
of the
[Wuxi Tai Hu New Town Science and Education Industrial Park].
This was a great week! Lot's to digest and think about.
Continuing my blog coverage of the
[Forrester IT Forum 2009 conference],
I will group a bunch of topics related to Cloud Computing into one post. Cloud Computing was a big topic
here at the IT Forum, and probably was also in the other two conferences IBM participated in this week in
Las Vegas:
The CIOs and IT professionals at this Forrester IT Forum seemed to be IT decision makers with a broader view. There was a lot of interest in Cloud Computing. What is Cloud Computing? Basically, it is renting IT capability on an as-needed basis from a computing service provider. The different levels of cloud computing depends on what the computing service provider actually provides. How do these compare with traditional co-location facilities or your own in-house on-premises computing? Here's my handy-dandy quick-reference guide:
Level
Facility
Systems
OS/Middleware
Application
Users
Cloud Software-as-a-Service [SaaS], Examples: SalesForce and Google Apps.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Cloud Platform-as-a-Service [PaaS], such as Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure, or IBM's own [Computing On Demand].
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service [IaaS], such as Amazon EC2, RackSpace.
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
Tradtional Co-Location facility, you park your equipment on rented floorspace, power, cooling and bandwidth.
Yes
No
No
No
No
Traditional On-Premises, what most people do today, build or buy your own data center, buy the hardware, write or buy the software, then install and manage it.
No
No
No
No
No
A main tent session had a moderated Q&A panel of three Forrester Analysts titled "Saving, Making and Risking Cash with Cloud Computing." Here are some key points from this panel:
Is Cloud Computing just another tool in the IT toolbox, or does it represent a revolution? The panel gave arguments for both. As a set of technology, protocols and standards, it is an evolutionary progression of other standards already in place, and an extension of methods used in co-location and time-share facilities. However,from a business model perspective, Cloud Computing represents a revolutionary trend, eliminating in some cases huge up-front capital expenses and/or long-term outsourcing contracts. PaaS and IaaS offerings can be rented by the hour, for example.
An example of using Cloud Computing for a one-time batch job: The New York Times decided to build an archive of 11 million articles, but this meant having to convert them all from TIFF to PDF format. The IT person they put in charge of this rented 100 machines on [Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)] for 24 hours and was able to convert all 4TB of data for only $240 US dollars.
Cloud Computing can make it easier for companies to share information with clients, suppliers and business partners, eliminating the need to punch holes through firewalls to provide access.
Since it is relatively cheap for companies to try out different cloud computing offerings with little or no capital investment, the spaghetti model applies--"throw it on the wall, and see what sticks!"
What application areas should you consider running in the cloud? Employee self-service portals-Yes, ERP-Mixed, On-time batch jobs-Mixed, Email-Yes, Access Control-No, Web 2.0-Mixed, Testing/QA-Mixed, Back Office Transactions-No, Disaster Recovery-Mixed.
Different IT roles will see varying benefits and risks with cloud computing. However, by 2011, every new IT project must answer the question "Why not run in the cloud?"
There were a variety of track sessions that explored different aspects of cloud computing:
Software-as-a-Server: When and Why
This session had three Forrester analysts in a Q&A panel format. SaaS can provide much-needed relief from application support, maintenance and upgrade chores. The choice and depth of offerings is improving from SaaS providers. However, when comparing TCO between SaaS and on-premises deployments, can yield different results for different use cases. For example, a typical SaaS rate of $100 US dollars per user per month, with discounts, could be $1000 per year, or $10,000 over a 10-year period. Compare that to the total 10-year costs of an on-premises deployment, and you have a good ball-park comparison. SaaS can provide faster time-to-value, and you can easily just try-before-you-buy several alternative offerings before making a decision.
The downside to SaaS is that you need to understand their data center, where it is located, and how it is
protected for backup and disaster recovery. Some SaaS providers have only a single data center, so it might
be disruptive if it experiences a regional disaster.
Cloud IT Services: The Next Big Thing or Just Marketing Vapor?
Economic pressures are forcing companies to explore alternatives, and Cloud IT services are providing
additional options over traditional outsourcing. Only 70-80 percent of companies are satisfied with traditional
outsourcing, so there is opportunity for Cloud IT services to address those not satisfied. Scalable, consumption-based billing with Web-based accessibility and flexibility is an attractive proposition. Ten
years ago, you could not buy an hour on a mainframe with your credit card, now you can.
Cloud technologies are mature, and there is interest in using these services. About 10 percent of companies are piloting SaaS offerings, 16 percent piloting PaaS offerings, and 13 percent investing in deploying "private clouds" within their data center. This week Aneesh Chopra, who is Barack Obama's pick as the first CTO for the US Federal Government,
[stated to congressional leaders]: “The federal government should be exploring greater use of cloud computing where appropriate.”
IBM is betting heavily on their Cloud Computing strategy, has already gone through the reorganizations needed to be positioned well, and claims to have thousands of clients already. HP has some cloud offerings focused on their enterprise customers. Dell is investing and reorganizing for cloud as well.
Network Strategic Planning for Challenging Times
While not limited to Cloud Computing, companies are seeing WAN traffic doubling every 18 months, but without
the corresponding increases in budget to cover it. The Forrester analyst covered WAN optimization management services, hybrid Ethernet-MPLS offerings to help people transition from MPLS VPNs to Carrier-grade Ethernet.
Who should you hire for WAN optimization? Do you trust your own Telco that provides your bandwidth to help you figure out ways to use less of it? Alternatives include System Integrators and Service providers like IBM and EDS.
Or, you could try to do it yourself, but this requires capital investment in gear and performance monitoring software.
New workloads like Voice over IP (VoIP) and digital surveillance can help cost-justify upgrading your MPLS VPNs to Carrier-grade Ethernet. The possibility of converging this with iSCSI and/or Fibre Channel (FC) over Ethernet (FCoE) and this can help reduce costs as well. Both MPLS and Ethernet will co-exist for awhile, and hybrid offerings from Telcos will help ease the transition. In the meantime, switching some workloads to Cloud Computing can provide immediate relief to in-house networks now. Converging voice, video, LAN, WAN and SAN traffic may require the IT departments to reorganize how the IT role of "network administrator" is handled.
Navigating the Myriad New Sourcing Models
The landscape of outsourcing has changed with the introducing of new Cloud Computing offerings. However, adapting these new offerings to internal preferences may prove challenging. The Forrester analyst suggesting being ready to try to influence their companies to adopt Cloud Computing as a new sourcing option.
Traditional outsourcing just manages your existing hardware and software, often referred to as "Your mess for less!" However, outsourcing contract law is mature and many outsource providers are large, well-established providers. In contrast, some SaaS providers are small, and the few that are large
may be fairly new to the outsourcing business. Here are some things to consider:
Where will the data physically be located? There are government regulations, such as the US Patriot Act, that can influence this decision.
Many Canadian and European customers are avoiding providers where data
is stored in the United States for this reason.
What is the service delivery chain? Some cloud providers in turn use
other cloud providers. For example a SaaS provider might develop the software and then rent the platform it runs on from a PaaS, which in turn might
be using offshore or co-location facilities to actually house their equipment.
Knowing the service delivery chain may prove important on contract
negotiations. Clarify "cloud" terminology and avoid mixed metaphors.
What is their contingency plan? What is your contingency plan if the system is slow or inaccessible. What is their plan to protect against data loss during disasters? What if they go out of business? Source Code Escrow has proven impractical in many cases. SLAs should provide for performance, availability and other key metrics. However, service level penalties are not a cure-all for major disruptions, loss of revenues or reputation.
How will they handle security, compliance and audits? Heavy regulatory requirements may favor dedicated resources to be used.
Who has "custodianship" of the data? Will you get the data back if you discontinue the contract? If so, what format will it be in, and will it make any sense if you are not running the same application as the cloud provider?
Will they provide transition assistance? Moving from on-premises to cloud may involve some effort, including re-training of end users.
Are the resources shared or dedicated? For shared resource environments, is the capacity "fenced off" in any way to prevent having other clients impact your performance or availability.
I am glad to see so much interest in Cloud Computing.
To learn more, here is IBM's
[Cloud Computing] landing page.
“The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of each author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.”
All postings are written by Tony Pearson unless noted otherwise.
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