Monthly Archives: September 2011

Seats, Services, And Strategic Planning

Posted by on September 29, 2011 1 comment

Last week, I referenced a great article by Isaac Sacolick Writing at the Engineering News Record, titled; Tablets, Laptops and Virtual Desktops: Trends for CIOs to Watch. (The article needs registration now, I guess direct access was limited time only)

In my first post about that article titled; Software & Asset Management (or Butts in Seats) I wanted to lay a bit of groundwork for this follow up post by advocating the creation of roles for all of your IT assets. This includes software, and the computing resources, platforms and tools required for each – and including adding in the services required to support them. My reason for this is that this concept of roles becomes a powerful tool in managing your IT assets, from procurement, through deployment and into service and support. Each stage of the asset life-cycle can be greatly simplified if assets are kept together in ‘baskets’ of assets needed to support these various roles within your business.

Computing devices, which now can encompass devices from smart phones, to tablets and right on up to laptops and desktops are used to create, or consume information. As you defined the roles within your organization, it becomes apparent what levels, amounts and types of content are either created or consumed by each role.

With this information, your evaluation of new technologies is simplified, as the strengths, weaknesses and capabilities of each type of device or technology can be reviewed using your roles as baselines for evaluation.

The sample role I used in the first post was a role simply called ‘Mobile-Executive’ and to that role we attached a sample basket of requirements. To use that role as my example again, if that mobile-executive role requires extensive consumption (or display) of data, such as dashboards, enterprise software reports, and email access – your evaluation of tablets such as Apple’s iPad can be fairly straightforward.

Here is one case in point, an ITWorld Canada article about SAP AG CIO Oliver Bussman by Jeff Jedras titled; What’s on the iPad of SAP’s CIO?   

…a number of analytical and business tools he needs to run SAP’s IT organization and strategy. They include access to business information, financial data, human resources data, and a CIO dashboard.

There is one part where Mr. Sacoliks’ view of the future is farther out than mine, and that is his point that ‘power users’ are becoming more prevalent on alternative devices and technologies.

I cannot quite see that yet, in many cases power users spend most of their time in the creation of content. These power users may be creating complex documents, writing software code, performing computer aided design etc. These roles can requires significant computing resources, in some cases, such as software development they may also require application specific development environments etc. Many of these difficult to support (at this time) using some of these newer devices or technologies. (A review of one of CAD vendor Autodesk’s products in the September 5th print issue of eWeek with hardware requirements of 8 Gb RAM and dual processors with eight computing cores points out that difficulty)

 The SMB Takeaway

I believe that it is critical that we be looking at where new technologies fit into our businesses. And identifying the roles that create and consume information provides a powerful framework in applying these maturing technologies. We need to understand and exploit the strengths, and differences of each new technology or device.

As this article at Silicon.com states about tablets;

don’t consider it a laptop with no keyboard

@maritzavdh Sometimes the problem is not the problem. It’s that everybody has a different view of the problem. And everybody thinks they’re right

Think Your Small Business Can’t Use Tech?

Posted by on September 27, 2011 4 comments

I’m getting my roof re shingled. And not by some national coast – to -coast behemoth of a company either.

Just a small business local roofing firm. Let me ask you, are you this type of business? Are you a local small business firm? Now, how about you? how do you use technology?

Oh? You Are Too Small For Tech are You?

I’m getting my roof done! Roofing? And technology? Peel off and replace shingles? Isn’t that as low technology as you can get?

Not Necessarily!

Lets start at the top – (literally) – For smaller housing roofing projects, the sales team still gets on the roof of the house to measure the square footage of the major areas of the roof.

But harder jobs? For example, complex ‘McMansions’, Churches, or any roof with unusually steep and dangerous slopes? For a per roof fee, simply based on the street address, they have a service that uses satellite imagery to give them the full square footage of the roof. Period! Done!

Hours spent setting up harnesses or crawling around trying to get accurate measurements? None! They simply enter the street address, and receive an email with the result. The sales representative told me this could be done for every roof, but the ‘per roof’ cost of the service causes them just to use it for the ‘bad ones’. (It does not take a pundit to predict that as this service cost comes down, you will soon call your roofer for a quote, give your address, and you will get your quote by email)

I’m still with the sales team here; dormers or other points of your roof? An iPhone app that uses the camera and the phones leveling feature to provide full slopes and square footage. Again saving measurement time.

Now lets move to the installation team; Roofing is a weather sensitive business. So, the weather report said rain all day, and right now it is pouring. Do we send the crew home? or do we wait a half hour for it to pass?

It is a critical question, because if you guess wrong? Well, if you guessed wrong, you risk keeping six guys on payroll in bad weather with no revenue, alternatively, you risk sending them home and good weather appears in 45 minutes, and you’ve lost an entire day of revenue.

Enter another iPhone app that goes beyond the weather report, it actually uses local radar imagery to show real time rain bands as they move through a localized area. The crew supervisor told me it paid for itself in one wet Canadian summer by answering the question; send them home and lose an entire day of labour? Or wait it out and get more work done after that weather band passes.

 The SMB Takeaway

There is no limit to what technology can do if you think about your business processes. And do not think that you are too small to leverage technology.

Here is a true small business that is using technology to reduce its cost of sales, and improve its revenue and labour ratios.

That is win-win for any small business.

So let me ask you again; Do you still think you are too small to leverage technology in your business?

Photo Credit Elliott Brown via flickr

Software & Asset Management (or Butts in Seats)

Posted by on September 22, 2011 3 comments

I was going to try and cover the below referenced article in one post – length has relegated that to two! this is part 1….

A thought provoking article by Isaac Sacolick Writing at the Engineering News Record, titled; Tablets, Laptops and Virtual Desktops: Trends for CIOs to Watch

The era of planning a simple replacement of corporate computers every three years is over. Alternative devices and technologies need to be considered by IT leadership within their strategic planning processes – and soon. These devices have the ability to effect improvements in everything from productivity to employee engagement.

To contribute my own point of view, I actually want to start at the bottom of Mr. Sacolik’s work; at something many managers at the larger end of the small to medium enterprise rarely consider;

..it’s an ideal time to develop an application asset database, segment users based on usage patterns and then catalog platform requirements on the more critical applications

One Tech To Bind Them?

Within our business technology, one size does not fit all.  The technology assets required by engineering professionals, which could include development environments for software engineering or CAD (computer aided design) in other realms of engineering, is not the same as technology assets required by mobileiPad Device professionals, which again is not the same as the technology assets needed by administrative staff who may be using primarily office productivity software.

Asset And Service Catalogs…. & Roles?

If you catalog all IT assets, which includes software, and the computing resources, platforms and tools required for each – and then add in the services required to support them, you have now given yourself the ability to create workforce asset and service ‘seats’ or roles. And these roles can be a powerful management tool;

Ask yourself from a management and financial standpoint;

I have 400 computing devices scattered around? Or all my computing devices are managed via 6 roles, or seat types.

Which sounds easier?

From IT asset acquisition, deployment, through on boarding new employees, to supporting service levels, throughout your IT asset life-cycle, dealing with these roles or seat types can tremendously reduce time and cost.

To give one example; you have defined one seat or role as ‘Mobile-Executive’. Through your research and planning, you have determined that all persons that meet this criteria, or role, require ultra mobile computing power, general office productivity tools, secure remote access capability, general reporting from key corporate applications, cellular provisioning, and critical support turnaround for device failure while travelling.

The Seat

You are hiring a new executive to fill the Senior Vice President, Sales, seat starting in two weeks, which of the following most likely describes the current process in your business?

a) Sales and IT negotiate everything listed above one by one via meetings or email, hoping nothing is omitted or;

b) We usually perform the productivity loss method of trial and error, having our SVP spending his time on the phone with IT getting resources – versus on the phone with prospective customers or;

c) Our IT team receives an IT Service request that simply states; ‘..all requirements for role ‘Mobile-Executive’ for …….’

(as a side note, for organizations with a higher IT maturity level the services portion can support your IT SLA costing or billing initiatives as well.)

Defining your IT Asset catalog, and defining the roles required in your business, will let you improve your understanding of exactly what roles can be improved by the different assets or technologies Mr. Sacolik writes about, and will assist you in looking strategically where these assets would be most suitable for, as;

Each can open up several new options in outfitting the organization to do work faster, better and with fewer costs.

Note: this concept is not new – global IT outsourcing firms have used this concept for years, as ‘per seat’ margins would be totally devastated if for every one of 10,000 managed devices hours of meetings were required for configuration and deployment.

Update, Part 2  is here

Be IT Educated

Posted by on September 20, 2011 1 comment

In your role as an executive or general manager in the small to medium enterprise, here is a small story to demonstrate how critical it can be to understand the basics of technology. Not be an expert, but to be IT educated to the relevant level of detail.

One of our larger customers asked us to collaborate with another of their suppliers to work with some software code. The idea was simple enough, we supply software product ‘A’, the other business supplied product ‘B’. The general idea was that some of our customers data could be manipulated via our product, or the other organizations product.

A few hours of meetings and some more hours of research later, we identified a major issue that would cause a high level of risk, and excess costs. (and who knows what else)

And – as two independent suppliers to this customer, it took both of us to convince our “non tech savvy” customer of this issue.

A poor analogy

Anyone who has been following along with this blog will know that I try to use non technology analogies to explain technology, Although I confess that I am having a difficult time doing that with that in this post! (If someone has a better one, chime in here!)

As imperfect as this analogy is – imagine that you are handed a piece of paper, written in English and simply asked to re-type this document into a computer document. (assuming you are in an English speaking part of the world) That is easy enough – read the original and type.

Next, now lets also imagine being given the same document except that it is written in French, Italian or Spanish. and you cannot speak or understand any of these languages! This could be more difficult – you don’t speak the languages, but you realize that you can still type the document.  Because French, Italian or Spanish still use our familiar Latin alphabet, the letter ‘e’ or the letter ‘t’ is still on your computer keyboard, and if the original document has the letter ‘e’ in a word, simply typing it is not an problem.

So let me call this use of the Latin alphabet; a framework, or an engine.

Here is where a problem comes in, now consider; if I hand you the same printed document, except this time it is written in Japanese pictographs, Arabic script, or perhaps Cyrillic, or Hebrew scripts.  Now what do you have? You still cannot speak or understand the language, but as an added difficulty, now you don’t even have the appropriate characters on your computer keyboard!

The alphabet, or characters of these non Latin based languages use a different framework, or engine, that the Latin alphabet does not have. Sure, there are tools that would map our Latin keyboard to these characters, to be able to physically type these characters, but it won’t be easy, or fast!

Application Frameworks

Similar to my admittedly poor analogy, within the software development realm, there are different application code frameworks or engines.

And as suppliers to this customer, this is where our problem came in. And this is also where you as a small to medium enterprise general manager or executive have to be educated enough about technology to understand the risks.

As one supplier to this customer, our application development framework consists of a platform and servers running a framework called .Net (simply pronounced dot net) The other supplier was using a development and server framework called Java.

To each of these frameworks, or engines, software code written in the ‘language’ the other framework expects and understands is as alien as my analogy of trying to type a document with an alphabet that is not even on our computer keyboard. And as I stated earlier – sure you can find other tools or workarounds to force your computer servers to understand both frameworks, but again it is not fast, and not easy – and not fast, not easy means more time and expense in maintainability, management and software development time.

And time is money.

The SMB Takeaway

As an executive or general manager in the SMB space, you do not need to be a expert in understanding the plumbing of software code and the development life cycle, but you need to understand at the relevant level of detail. To be educated about technology to a level where when you are advised of this type of issue, you can go into it with your eyes open regarding cost, risk, and effort.

On Kilimanjaro And Leading By Example

Posted by on September 15, 2011 No comments

For most of us?

For most of us, there comes a time in our lives when we start thinking about retirement.

For most of us in the ‘snow belt’, there comes a time when we give serious second thoughts to abandoning frigid northern temperatures and being snow birds in Florida or Arizona for a few months a year.

For most of us, there comes a time when some father and son activities are thought to be good seats at a home game, or maybe 18 holes at a new golf course.

For most of us? While it may vary, I would think getting in the range of 60 years of age, – yes 6-0 – we are going to think these type of thoughts.

That is most of us

Then there are some others.

For some of those others, they ask; why not decide for the big six-zero birthday to do a father and son climb of the highest mountain in Africa at 5895 metres or 19340 feet – Mount Kilimanjaro?

For some of those others, they ask; why not consider raising the stakes and using that trek to gain sponsorship to commit to improving one school and drill one well for water in one of our worlds most impoverished nations?

For some of those others, they consider that while we are at it, heck why not go all in! and then write a book about it?

Barry Finlay and his son Chris Finlay did just that. Back in 2008 I mentioned Barry and Chris – they are not ‘most of us’.

They have now been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and have written the book.

They titled it; Kilimanjaro and Beyond( A life changing journey)Kilimanjaro and beyond

What I truly enjoyed about the book is that it rises above the basic itinerary of their climbing Kilimanjaro. It rises above the physical preparation, the physical challenge of climbing one of Earths largest peaks. What I truly loved was that the rhetorical questions I asked above are answered. The why? The how? What was the inspiration? The changes in both mental and lifestyle attitudes. The doubt, uncertainty, (What if I really can’t do this?) and challenge. The due diligence on ensuring that the work they where doing would be demonstrably completed.

Barry writes about the challenges we face in making those types of changes, which we all can face, both in a personal, as well as business contexts;

…I’m too busy. I’m too tired. I can’t afford it. Change is too much work. I don’t know where to start.

As readers, we follow along with Barry and Chris from moments that tug on our hearts, the joy on impoverished children’s faces at the gift of a simple soccer ball, to an amused chuckle as a North American young woman implies her doubt that this old geezer (Sorry Barry!) can do a hill trek on a trail that would not be a pimple on ancient Kilimanjaro’s backside – and after they had already climbed it!

The book also clearly explains and outlines their charitable goal, that goal being a direct, demonstrable change in some peoples lives versus ‘cut a cheque’ where you know that lives are being helped, but direct correlation is difficult or impossible. A goal to demonstrate that you and I, not being celebrities or billionaire philanthropists can indeed help make a difference.

As Barry writes;

None of these problems will be solved in a few days, but we become even more acutely aware that the clean water and education projects we are working on will help children of future generations and (dare we hope) create leaders who can lead them out of their current situation.

Leading by example? you bet. Inspirational? to me – most definitely. Although I will categorically state that Barry is 10 + years my senior, I won’t challenge him to an arm-wrestle let alone Kilimanjaro!

I’ll leave this with Barry – because I can’t top it;

The reward from what we are doing is the satisfaction of knowing that one day there will be a doctor or lawyer or politician helping his or her fellow Africans as a result of what we ordinary people have done.

Kilimanjaro and Beyond (A Life-Changing Journey)

Dog Ear Publishing | June 30, 2011 | Trade Paperback ISBN – 10:1457503921 ISBN – 13:9781457503924

Barry’s blog http://plankilimanjaro.blogspot.com/
Kilimanjaro – Johnny Clegg, Sipho Mchunu – Juluka about 1984

The IT Light Switch

Posted by on September 14, 2011 1 comment

I have been a fan of automobiles as long as I can remember. I love driving, and I love seeing the new ‘sheet metal’ roll out year after year. During the late 1980′s and early 1990′s a friend of a friend who worked for one of the major car manufacturers once or twice per year would give me a stack of ’hand-me-down’ copies  of the ‘insider only’ automotive engineering trade magazines. (one of these trade rags was Wards Auto World, I forget the names of the others) Like a kid with candy I read every word of those magazines.

In the late 1980′s, one of these magazines had an article I have never forgotten, the article described how each and every car manufactured in North America since 1980 had more computer processing power than the 1969 Apollo moon shot! That was amazing to me.1980

And today? That automotive computer processing is exponentially more, with some vehicles having hundreds of computer micro controllers installed.

To me it was apparent that computer processing technology would become ever more invisible and ever more embedded in the fabric of our lives. As a note, that was also about the time I decided to get into the technology business.

There was one huge way in which I was wrong though, and that was clearly pointed out in 2003 by Nicholas Carr in his seminal thesis; IT Doesn’t Matter. And later in his book The Big Switch. I have written extensively about that thesis so I won’t revisit it here – but what I had not seen was that while technology would become ever more ubiquitous, software was the big driver – not ‘stand alone’ one task computer chips. (note that the computer chips in cars today have millions of lines of software code)

The key point Mr. Carr wrote about was that IT resources would become invisible, consumed however, and whenever the were needed.

And we are almost there.

This trend started with structured data in software as a service companies such as Salesforce.com. To define structured data, consider a basic ‘contacts’ software tool, First Name, Last Name, Address – each of these ‘fields’ live in a relational database of some kind, and the information in them can be reported on, modified, or sliced up in various ways by simply manipulating the data on those fields.

Unstructured data is different – think of a presentation you have done, or a document or spreadsheet you have created, or an email you have written. These types of data don’t have predefined data models and don’t fit in relational data tables.

While businesses such as Salesforce.com, Bullhorn and others have proven that you can access structured data from any place, and almost any device – getting this anytime and with any device access to this unstructured data was a little harder.

But as Samuel Greengard writes in this Baseline article titled; Information-Centric Business Computing we are getting closer and closer. as he states;

…peer-to-peer capabilities, such as Dropbox, are looking like a game changer, though they remain more evolutionary than revolutionary

We are getting closer to being able to both share, or manipulate unstructured data across more than one device using hosted tools, as one example, I can create a new document using Google Docs on my Android cellular phone, and continue modifying it from my computer. But as Mr. Greengard states, one of the few remaining limits is;

….to turn on any computing device at any time and have access to everything in the exact same state.

Computer technology will continue to become invisible – by that I mean the ‘server’ or plumbing will be out of site and out of mind. Technology professionals will need to shift their focus to managing the experience of technology – becoming device agnostic versus trying to manage the end to end environment. Or as Mr. Greengard states – become ‘information-centric rather than device centric’

It is going to be challenging – but to me, it also incredible and exciting.

Heck that was why I got into the technology field.

Photo Credit Paul Lowry via flickr

Yes, Software Is Complex

Posted by on September 8, 2011 1 comment

No matter how much you try, occasionally things like this happen.

We recently purchased a new copy, scan and print multi-function device from a well known company. All of these devices use little pieces of software called a device driver.

You have to know – we also had some problems getting certain pieces of its driver software working properly.

After more than one headache we found that the issues only happen when;

a) You use Microsoft Office 2010

b) You print from Microsoft Excel or Project

c) And you print to legal or journal sized paper

Sigh….

Of course, we do all three -

Complexity………

When The Tail Wags The Dog

Posted by on September 6, 2011 No comments

I want to take a slightly contrarian view to an excellent article by Martin Davis at the Enterprise CIO Forum titled; Implementing new technologies for the right reasons

As a note, There is also a great peer review by Eric Brown in this post titled; Available does not equal best

In Mr. Davis’ post he clearly articulates the risk of IT teams pursuing technology, just for technologies sake. He also articulates that business needs to ensure that we return to first principles of business strategies as he diagrams with this graphic in his article.

In this I completely agree that the cart of technology must not, and cannot be placed before the horse of business requirements and strategy.

Where I wish to be a little contrarian is with another first principle.

And that is the first principles of adult learning.

The organization I am with provides learning and development programs for organizations. In the field of adult learning, first principles include the motivation, experience, and engagement that lead individuals;

This could encompass a change in (a) their skills, (b) behavior, (c) knowledge level, or (d) even their attitudes about things

The concept of adult education and learning – of ‘helping them learn vs. educating’ (Knowles) is what I want to look at, because I believe we neglect it too often.

As Mr. Davis states, the line between IT and business is becoming more blurred on a daily basis with the influx of consumer technologies. However, if we look at the first principles of adult learning, As IT leaders, I think we need to be finding ways to occasionally let the tail wag the dog.

By this I mean we need to find ways to inexpensively demonstrate new technologies or tools. To find ways to provide small prototypes or pilots. None of us can explain what we do not understand, none of us can explain what we do not know. By providing some method of for people to interact with, view, or manipulate new technologies, we may find that we create an ah-ha! moment for a line of business issue.

I am not advocating anarchy in IT with this, we must maintain the processes and structures required to keep IT focused on business outcomes, but I believe that as important as business first principles are, we cannot overlook the first principles of learning.

Because sometimes the best way to learn to swim is jumping in the pool.

Learning ‘Cloud Computing’ From Historical Microsoft

Posted by on September 2, 2011 5 comments

The Term  ’Cloud Computing’

Over hyped, often misunderstood, and definitely sensationalized in some cases. That being said – the concept of simply renting your technology needs is going to be a large factor within the realm of IT over the next few years.

Epitomized by Salesforce.com, this model of sourcing computing resources draws much debate, but I believe this debate often overlooks what I believe is one important issue. And we already have a road map that outlines how that issue was finally resolved. To see that road map, there is a lesson we can learn if we travel back in time to the early 1990′s to Redmond and visit Microsoft Corp.

The Bottom of the Pyramid

During a debate on twitter, Mark Thiele pointed out an article he had written describing what he describes as a pyramid concept in the business and technology context of small vs. large organizations. I won’t repeat the post, but as a summary, consider that Fortune 1000 sized business (the thin pyramid tip) have multiple persons dedicated to single roles and responsibilities, and that as you move down to the thicker base of the pyramid, in the Small to Medium enterprise we probably don’t have these dedicated experts.

I am going to borrow Mr. Thiele’s pyramid concept and paraphrase, that the closer to the bottom of the pyramid, the smaller the organization, and the more hats we wear.

Back to Microsoft

If you could travel back to the early 1990′s the leading organization for providing networking services (or LAN’s) to business was Novell with their Netware product. Novell Netware was the 800 pound gorilla of its day, but it had a weakness. Netware was a product that required dedicated specialists to do the the most basic configuration changes. To print your document meant arcane commands and menus to provide ‘captured‘ print queues. Lets not get into ‘binding‘ the network cards so your computer was actually connected to the network.

During this same period, the early versions of Microsoft Windows were not used in the same sentence as Netware when it came to LAN technology. With the release of Microsoft Windows For Workgroups, Netware Administrators laughed at what they considered a half baked product. In many ways it was half baked.

But at the same time, as half baked as it may have been, a person that wore more than one hat (not a Netware specialist) could put their computer onto the corporate network. A person could set up a printer without help from ‘Certified Netware Administrators’. Within a few years, the Introduction of Windows NT, and other Microsoft tools allowed the small to medium business to perform more, and then even more duties with a mouse point and click, and without the need for arcane expert commands by specialists.

In a classic description of a Disruptive Innovation Microsoft grew from the bottom of the pyramid along with may of their customers from a PC based operating system that needed certified experts to add networking capability to a position where they are now the 800 lb gorilla and the top of the pyramid.

But Cloud?

In our lesson, there is one thing still missing; ‘Big’ software was still different. What I call ‘Big’ software were those line of business or enterprise class tools that include Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Service or Supply chain management etc. For these products, you bought complex software and once again, needed dedicated experts to get the thing running. The larger the business, and larger the software, the more experts you needed. At the extreme, experts in the ABAP programming language used by SAP AG can pull in consulting contracts at a $1000.00 or more – and that is Per Diem….

Smaller organizations? Those of us closer the wide base at the bottom of the pyramid? Similar to those early versions of Windows for Workgroups, we are going to use these tools, because we can do it ourselves, while wearing one of our many hats. And as we grow? Yes, the tools will have matured a bit, and we are comfortable growing with them. As we grow larger? same thing. And each step of the way, we may not be wearing as many hats any more, but the tools improve, more people view the advantages and reduced costs and have progressed through the learning curves.

I will let the pundits continue to debate whether or not these ‘Cloud‘ or Software as a Service (SaaS) tools are ready for prime time, or ‘enterprise’ ready. Because as far as I am concerned the writing is on the wall to be read.

Today you are using these tools as a smaller business with no internal IT support, in a few years you are larger with perhaps limited IT support, and as you get larger, these tools are going to grow with you.

To me its simple, if you have grown from a 5 million business to a 100 million business using these tools, then you hit 900 million. the tools have matured, you have matured, and why in hell would change? why would you install racks of servers and software and spend millions to do on your own when you already  have it?

Like Microsoft vs. Netware circa 1993-94. I don’t believe you will.

 

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