Most of you will know that many topics can make me a tad irritated, however a reoccurring one that never fails to wind me up is the topic of "parter accreditation" programmes.
You know, the ones where ISV XYZ says they are a 'gold partner' of technology supplier ABC and all the world is going to be hunky dory. Of course this applies equally to SIs, ISVs & OEMs.
This irritates me for a number of reasons :-
1) Mainly because it's never 'hunky dory' and given the devil is in the details, all these partner schemes do is set certain expectation levels in top management's minds that can never be achieved. Indeed if it was all so 'hunky dory' why the heck do so many SI managers drive around in expensive cars paid for through 'change control additions'???
2) Often the one 'partner' insists on the use of another partner, either in the form of a direct statement, or simply through the use of limited partners on the support & interop list. Of course it most certainly would be interesting to better understand any financial relationships or transactions between these partners ('finders fees' anyone?)
3) However the main issue I have with these schemes is that 90% of the time they are little more than joint marketing and sales programmes, which whilst sounding nice in reality they do nothing to actually help the customer. Once in, their accreditation schemes are often so light & flexible its daft, and this leads to lazy practices - which may in fact be negative for the customer.
But the real point of this note was to call out one specific area that vendors really could use these programmes for some positive value, namely tacking the issue of "supported versions". What I mean by this is that far too often, companies that have these schemes ignore a key issue - which is that they allow 'accredited partners' to either require the use of older technology versions or that they allow partners to support subsets of the products.
A couple of examples of this are :-
a) Cisco SAN switch interop programme for SAN-OS/NX-OS - where Cisco allow their partners to certify & support against a specific minor version of the code that is effectively unique to the partner. Thus making it more than tricky to get a solution between server, HBA, OS, disc array, tape library etc that actually matches all of the partner's specific certification requirements.
b) Oracle partners & out date/support software - where Oracle allow their certified partners to 'only support' aged versions of the database products. In the last month alone I've had one major billing partner & one major ISV both say that they currently only support Oracle DB 10.2.x and it will be mid-next year before they have anything that supports 11.x! Remember that 10.2 ends premier support July 2010, and 11.1 was released in Aug 2007!!! (see here for details on Oracle support versions & dates)
So what do I want done about this? Frankly a simple starting point would be for these three items to added into the conditions of a partner scheme :-
1) If you offer a partner accreditation programme then mandate that members of the programme support the current version of technology within 90 days if it's GA release (after all they will have had plenty of notice & beta access as part of the programme) - this must also include providing upgrade routes
2) Partners are only permitted to do new deployment installs using non-current versions for up to 1yr of GA of the current version (and even then only n-1 release version)- thus allowing 'in-flight' projects to complete but preventing partners from proliferating aged technology deployments
3) If you allow partners to initially certeify against specific minor release sub-set versions, then require them to support the full major release version within 6 months of initial release (eg a 'terminal release' variant) - thus ensuring that the eco-system will converge on a common supported version within a period of time
Naturally companies that are not part of these partner programmes could carry on causing issues, but what this would mean is that those genuinely in such partner schemes would actually be helping their customer and have real differentiating benefits to offer.
Of course this would actually require companies to actively manage their partner programmes, and of course to remove those partners that don't adhere to the rules - something I doubt will ever actually happen. But you've gotta have a dream haven't you? :)
Friday, 9 April 2010
Monday, 29 March 2010
The Modern Meeting?
So being as nowadays my job description may as well read "professional meeting attendee victim" I though I'd pen some thoughts as to these timewarp marvels of the modern age...
If you're lucky the invite will arrive in your email inbox the day before the meeting, often however it will appear the same day - the concepts of planning and diary management being long lost in the digital age. As naturally, despite the widespread use of digital online diaries, nobody actually consults them when scheduling meetings - of course this is coupled with the statement "attend, send a deputy or it is understood you agree in advance to any of the possible outcomes"...
Regularly the invite will have been forwarded to other employees by an original invited attendee - this can be rather puzzling for the organiser who, having requested a 3 person meeting, suddenly finds 10 people attending (some of which they will have no idea who they are).
Equally rarely will an agenda have been published as part of the invite, let alone any objectives for the time & cost of the meeting. Now if by some amazing event there actually is a set of material for the meeting it will be circulated as an attachment to the meeting invite 10 minutes after the meeting was due to start - negating any possibility of pre-reading and making the time spent more useful & productive.
Sadly I often see the above used deliberately, as part of the "JTL ambush meeting" strategy.
The meeting itself will last between 45 - 90 minutes and involve at least 3 physical locations, most likely in at least 2 different time-zones, and at least 2 different natural languages. There will be a mix of people participation methods, some in person, some using video conferencing from a room, some using video conferencing from a PC, some via a phone call and others via a webex/livemeeting.
With regards to the attendees :-
The presenter will still be drafting & editing the inevitable powerpoint slides during the start of the presentation, but despite all the technology, the presenter won't be able to get their laptop connected & showing their presentation until 15mins after the meeting starts.
The slide-set will likely be one of :-
Either way if it's a vendor meeting you'll not be allowed a copy of the slides due to their lack of trust for you, if it's internal and you do get a copy the ppt with be 5MB+ in size as a result of meaningless embedded pictures.
Nobody will take a formal set of minutes, let alone any records of decisions, actions or questions. The only time minutes are ever published is when the publisher wants to 'adjust' the outcome of the session.
Of course you'll have such meetings back-to-back all day, and that will be your work pattern from 8am to 6pm at least 5 days a week - outside of these hours is when you can work on the actions collected or doing something useful. At least 'pre video conference' you got a chance to catch a breath and think uninterrupted when you had to use a plane/train for travel...
Some some thoughts re anybody intending to inflict their meeting on me :-
Oh and if :-
Meetings can be the ultimate time thief & value loser (think 'looking busy' time), especially if people have to travel. Spending an hour+ in travel for a meeting is not a good use of anybody's time, but similarly neither is still on a conference call, video conference or virtual meeting. It's time to get some basic meeting ethics back into the work culture, and respect other people's time.
People often wonder why I sometimes look exhausted and can be a little grumpy - technology & business culture eh? Nobody in their right mind ever said "I wish I spent more of my life in meetings".... Thank goodness http://www.brewdog.com/ has a few solutions :)
If you're lucky the invite will arrive in your email inbox the day before the meeting, often however it will appear the same day - the concepts of planning and diary management being long lost in the digital age. As naturally, despite the widespread use of digital online diaries, nobody actually consults them when scheduling meetings - of course this is coupled with the statement "attend, send a deputy or it is understood you agree in advance to any of the possible outcomes"...
Regularly the invite will have been forwarded to other employees by an original invited attendee - this can be rather puzzling for the organiser who, having requested a 3 person meeting, suddenly finds 10 people attending (some of which they will have no idea who they are).
Equally rarely will an agenda have been published as part of the invite, let alone any objectives for the time & cost of the meeting. Now if by some amazing event there actually is a set of material for the meeting it will be circulated as an attachment to the meeting invite 10 minutes after the meeting was due to start - negating any possibility of pre-reading and making the time spent more useful & productive.
Sadly I often see the above used deliberately, as part of the "JTL ambush meeting" strategy.
The meeting itself will last between 45 - 90 minutes and involve at least 3 physical locations, most likely in at least 2 different time-zones, and at least 2 different natural languages. There will be a mix of people participation methods, some in person, some using video conferencing from a room, some using video conferencing from a PC, some via a phone call and others via a webex/livemeeting.
With regards to the attendees :-
- At least one of the video conferencing participants will also be on another phone call, with the meeting on mute.
- Another one may well be using webcam chroma key software to 'simulate' the location that they really should be in (pay attention to hearing drinks orders, jukeboxes or cash tills in the background).
- At least one of the 'by phone' attendees will be at an airport, buying coffees or possibly both - and won't know how to mute their phone
- Half of the attendees will also be reading their email, a number will be 'handling' IMs, and probably at least one 'working' on a social network update
- At any only time only 3 people will be paying any form of meaningful attention, including the presenter
- There will be at least 2 people join the meeting 10+ minutes late, and a different 2 will leave 10+ mins early
- Normally there is at least one other 'back-channel' meeting going on between a number of the participants using IM/chat tools during the meeting
The presenter will still be drafting & editing the inevitable powerpoint slides during the start of the presentation, but despite all the technology, the presenter won't be able to get their laptop connected & showing their presentation until 15mins after the meeting starts.
The slide-set will likely be one of :-
- Corporate template style - far too many words and content compromised to shoehorn it into the 'house style', or worse the 'exec dumbed down' 5 slide version where the context is lost to such a point that the content has no meaning at all.
- 'web 2.0' style - a few slides, all of which are full screen photographs (located on flickr.com) with one or two words written in a 'cool' font
- An internal corporate 'message' presentation (eg HR, brand marketing, strategy etc) - which will look like is says a lot, but on closer inspection is just a collection of colours, letters and transitions that say very little.
Either way if it's a vendor meeting you'll not be allowed a copy of the slides due to their lack of trust for you, if it's internal and you do get a copy the ppt with be 5MB+ in size as a result of meaningless embedded pictures.
Nobody will take a formal set of minutes, let alone any records of decisions, actions or questions. The only time minutes are ever published is when the publisher wants to 'adjust' the outcome of the session.
Of course you'll have such meetings back-to-back all day, and that will be your work pattern from 8am to 6pm at least 5 days a week - outside of these hours is when you can work on the actions collected or doing something useful. At least 'pre video conference' you got a chance to catch a breath and think uninterrupted when you had to use a plane/train for travel...
Some some thoughts re anybody intending to inflict their meeting on me :-
- I will reject your meeting if it doesn't fit with my diary or time-frame
- Now that it's so easy to 'communicate' the value drops as more noise enters the system, no longer are meetings valued, prepared for or respected. Please, ask yourself whether throwing a meeting is really necessary, if what is being said can be detailed in a short e-mail then please just use email.
- Ask yourself if you are properly prepared for running the meeting, meetings disrupt others, interrupt their chain or work & thinking and their deliverables - is your meeting worth more than their work?
- I prefer communication that has structure, and that I can easily add into my own knowledge-base and records (as my memory can be poor), email & documents allow me to do that (increasingly so does my LiveScribe with it's audio recording matched to searchable handwritten pages).
- I prefer meetings run on content & quality rather than duration, if something needs 4hrs due to it's criticality then we won't 'squeeze it in somewhere', similarly if it only needs 10minutes don't expect me to help you fill your empty day
- If you move your meeting invite around often, or at short notice then expect me to decline
- If you're going to have a mix of attendee methods, remember to introduce the speakers & the slide changes etc to those participating in non-visual ways.
- I require a copy of any & all materials discussed, and a copy of session minutes issued by the meeting organiser within 48hrs
- I will mentally calculate the cost of the meeting & attendees and compare this to anything achieved during the meeting, I will charge this to your whuffie 'credibility account'.
Oh and if :-
- You schedule your meeting over my lunchtime, and don't provide lunch - or a break for me to locate some - then expect me to be fairly brief with my engagement
- You title your diary invite as a 'workshop' expect me to be decidedly miffed and grumpy if there is now light industrial machinery, hammers, welding equipment and sharp knives - you may indeed be part of me finding a new 'direct interactive feedback' use from my steel toe-cap boots!
Meetings can be the ultimate time thief & value loser (think 'looking busy' time), especially if people have to travel. Spending an hour+ in travel for a meeting is not a good use of anybody's time, but similarly neither is still on a conference call, video conference or virtual meeting. It's time to get some basic meeting ethics back into the work culture, and respect other people's time.
People often wonder why I sometimes look exhausted and can be a little grumpy - technology & business culture eh? Nobody in their right mind ever said "I wish I spent more of my life in meetings".... Thank goodness http://www.brewdog.com/ has a few solutions :)
Friday, 19 March 2010
Leaving... or just a wider circle of work colleagues?
Ok so this isn’t a blog entry I wanted to write, nor is it one that feels good but…
My long term manager @nicsut is leaving our company today in order to work both in a different company and country. The thing is that this location and new role is fantastic for Nick & his family, both personally and professionally - so you have to be happy for him no matter how sad you might feel.
Now over the years Nick hasn’t just been a colleague, then manager, but he’s been a mentor to me on both a personal & professional level. Certainly, and by no means least, Nick’s been a good friend, confidant, very very tolerant of my regular rants - I've certainly learnt something from him every day.
If you are lucky enough to meet or work with Nick, spend some time with him, listen, learn and enjoy – it most certainly will be worth your time!
So Nick, just remember, Paris is only a quick phone call or train journey away for me to ask for your advice, as your shoes really are very big ones to fill…
Bon Voyage, le vin est pour moi la prochaine fois!
ps Do you think below might be an acceptable excuse for me? :)
Bon Voyage, le vin est pour moi la prochaine fois!
ps Do you think below might be an acceptable excuse for me? :)
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Cloud "Everything As A Service" - the latest "abused by all, confuse all" phrase!
OK so there are many people abusing the word 'cloud' like crazy - sadly no new news there.
Personally I'm more aligned to the NIST definitions re cloud (http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/)- now these aren't perfect, but rather a common reference point. Sadly even those are being 'interpreted' conveniently by many now...
Couple of things I'm fairly clear about in my mind :-
Some of the questions I use as a litmus test for people telling me they are offering 'cloud services/technologies' is :-
What I am getting really cheesed off with is people marketeering classic data-centre technologies as 'cloud' simply because they can be used as a component within a 'cloud service' - if I were to follow that analogy would I be able to buy 'cloud screws' from http://www.screwfix.com/?
Personally I'm more aligned to the NIST definitions re cloud (http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/)- now these aren't perfect, but rather a common reference point. Sadly even those are being 'interpreted' conveniently by many now...
Couple of things I'm fairly clear about in my mind :-
- Virtualisation /= Dynamic Data Centre /= Cloud
- Virtualisation is often used currently for 'tin stacking' with existing provision & operations processes, nothing wrong with that but a short term capex and facilities opex benefit only.
- Dynamic Data Centre is taking virtualisation to the next step, embracing automation and dynamic integration with other infrastructure support and management toolsets, this could be related to 'private cloud' if combined with a service model & opex accounting/recharging to the business customer
- Cloud includes a wider set of topics relating to ownership, finance, roles/responsibilities, managed services, commodity and scale that are typically not address by the above points
- Shared Infrastructure /= Cloud
- 'pool' would be better term for shared infrstructure, and yes these are a good idea in enterprises (should be the default option for everything in the infrastructure stack)
- But having an array with 15 different applications using it isn't a cloud, it's an array with multiple consumers, yes this forces a service mentality but that's hardly anything new...
Some of the questions I use as a litmus test for people telling me they are offering 'cloud services/technologies' is :-
- Are the actual purchase prices (not RRP etc, but actual buy prices) made available publicly for anybody to access?
- Are the prices the same for everybody (other than consumption based tiers)?
- Are the SLAs published publicly for anybody to access?
- Does the supplier publish a full TCO/ROI model for the customer to examine / adapt etc?
- What type of standards does this operate with / under?
- What's different to the past? (eg 'outsourcing', 'managed service', 'HP UDC', 'Egenera BladeFrame & PAM' etc)
- What is different between this and classic enterprise IT usage?
- Is the minimum duration of engagement hours, days, weeks, months or years?
- What is the 'startup latency' of the engagement?
- What are the metric elements for cost?
- What is the level of granularity of cost (consumption & change)?
- Do I need to meet/talk with a human in order to setup, purchase & use the technology or service?
- Is the technology or service fully controllable by a published API?
Clearly there are different questions / relevance between consuming cloud services, and utilising technologies in order to provide cloud services - but I find above an interesting starting point for both. Similarly there is no defined right or wrong answer to above, but the combined answers help frame my understanding (I have a very long list of other questions but that's for another day & blog entry).
Naturally consumption of cloud services tends to have a very different financial model & aspects that need to be accounted for when comparing (but that's a subject for a much bigger blog entry). Whilst internal company recharging can alter the appearance of financials for some it doesn't for the company as a whole (other than help to drive behaviours).
What I am getting really cheesed off with is people marketeering classic data-centre technologies as 'cloud' simply because they can be used as a component within a 'cloud service' - if I were to follow that analogy would I be able to buy 'cloud screws' from http://www.screwfix.com/?Honestly, look its really simple, as usual quiet action & genuine cost reduction talks not hype, marketing or bluster - if you want to ride the 'cloud bubble' be clear how your technology genuinely relates to 'cloud' and in what context, or please I beg of you STHU and focus on what you're good at?
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Dell - Red card for green and environment!
So those who know me will realise I'm certainly no left wing, flower in hair, sandal wearing hippy - but I just had to write a complaint about a delivery one of our team had today from Dell.
So my colleague ordered a 14.1" privacy screen from Dell for his laptop on our internal purchasing system, guess how it was packaged for delivery :-
Utterly astounding! An A4 sized envelop that is featherweight somehow required a box slightly greater than 1 foot cubed in size, stuffed full of packing paper - just how many trees, polar bears & penguins were felled for this???
The final irony, despite the order being for a 14.1" Dell actually shipped a 12." filter - so the filter has to be returned in it's original packaging, now who wants to take a bet as to just how big a box Dell ship a real 14.1" filter in???
** Edit ** It would appear that The Register has a running theme on this here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/29/aboxalypse_now/
So my colleague ordered a 14.1" privacy screen from Dell for his laptop on our internal purchasing system, guess how it was packaged for delivery :-
Utterly astounding! An A4 sized envelop that is featherweight somehow required a box slightly greater than 1 foot cubed in size, stuffed full of packing paper - just how many trees, polar bears & penguins were felled for this???
The final irony, despite the order being for a 14.1" Dell actually shipped a 12." filter - so the filter has to be returned in it's original packaging, now who wants to take a bet as to just how big a box Dell ship a real 14.1" filter in???
** Edit ** It would appear that The Register has a running theme on this here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/29/aboxalypse_now/
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Management tools - command & control risk?
So those who know me, understand just how much I loathe FUD but here's a question I've been posed for some time, and have been asking each IT vendor I meet.
The more common silo'd IT infrastructure is (thankfully) rapidly consolidating and moving to a 'shared infrastructure' approach, with individual assets providing service to more and more concurrent application. Naturally there is a push to improve the management tools for such things (well lets face it they couldn't get much worse), to enable fewer people to manager wider logical estates, combined with a much more dynamic & agile configuration time-frame.
We hear lots about these management tools being based upon a role based access & security model (in effect domaining/sharding the size of the risk an individual can create), but :-
Think here about just how many SAN/LAN switch ports, LUN configurations, virtual servers or backup/recovery jobs can be impacted in 10 minutes with these centralised tools, by a lone sysadmin with legitimate password & authorisation?
Time for the technology to match the human issues and processes?
The more common silo'd IT infrastructure is (thankfully) rapidly consolidating and moving to a 'shared infrastructure' approach, with individual assets providing service to more and more concurrent application. Naturally there is a push to improve the management tools for such things (well lets face it they couldn't get much worse), to enable fewer people to manager wider logical estates, combined with a much more dynamic & agile configuration time-frame.
We hear lots about these management tools being based upon a role based access & security model (in effect domaining/sharding the size of the risk an individual can create), but :-
"How many of these tools allow for a 'peer approval required' model ('4 eyes better than 2') against certain actions?"The request here is to be able to restrict certain destructive and/or disruptive management configuration actions to require two (or more) administrators to 'sign' the change before the system accepting & enacting the action. Thus allowing a small quantity of administrators in a company to continue to have a very wide view of the estate, but to hopefully mitigate against the risk of a lone admin actions (malicious, accidental or otherwise). The role based approach appears to either drive up the overall quantity of FTEs needed or a significant compromise of the role segregation model.
Think here about just how many SAN/LAN switch ports, LUN configurations, virtual servers or backup/recovery jobs can be impacted in 10 minutes with these centralised tools, by a lone sysadmin with legitimate password & authorisation?
Time for the technology to match the human issues and processes?
Monday, 8 February 2010
TCO - Why is it so hard for some?
Now per as my previous blog entries show-me-money-information & tco-time-for-opensource-framework discuss, I have to make architecture & standards changes & decisions based upon tco & roi calculations. Accordingly we require vendors to be able to demonstrate to me that they understand the TCO/ROI of their products & architectures (I have my views but need to understand theirs and validate / align forecasts), and of course provide me with copies of their models & values.
Okay, so 4 months ago I renewed my simple request to EMC for a TCO model comparing DMX+CX with VMax (in essence to compare 'between box' vs 'within box' tiers). A simple enough request I thought - and one I made initially several years ago (at that time comparing DMX to DMX+CX), but never got anywhere. This time a specific project planning to purchase PB+ of capacity drove me to renew this request.
Now four months on and, despite me chasing, I still haven't received anything from EMC, nor have I even been given an estimate as to when / if I might see something. So I'm forced to conclude that Uncle Joe and the Elusive Mathematical Calculators are either: -
Now EMC aren't alone in this, to compare this with how some other companies have reacted to similar requests :-
Okay, so 4 months ago I renewed my simple request to EMC for a TCO model comparing DMX+CX with VMax (in essence to compare 'between box' vs 'within box' tiers). A simple enough request I thought - and one I made initially several years ago (at that time comparing DMX to DMX+CX), but never got anywhere. This time a specific project planning to purchase PB+ of capacity drove me to renew this request.
Now four months on and, despite me chasing, I still haven't received anything from EMC, nor have I even been given an estimate as to when / if I might see something. So I'm forced to conclude that Uncle Joe and the Elusive Mathematical Calculators are either: -
- Ignoring the request
- Don't understand (or care) about TCO & ROI, preferring to focus on leasing or 'regular technology refresh purchase justification business cases'
- Aren't able to explain the customer value of their different products and architectures
- Are hiding something
- Prefer slick & vocal marketing to facts
- Trying to hire somebody to work on the topic
Now EMC aren't alone in this, to compare this with how some other companies have reacted to similar requests :-
- Netapp are sadly still trying to understand the question for a couple of years ago.
- Cisco are still searching for unicorns to breed, and admitted at NetWorker2010 that it will be a couple more months before anything surfaces. I've been requesting the ROI & TCO of the California/UCS platform for over a year (yes well before it went public), so I'm mystified that nothing yet exists as a model.
- However on the positive front, HDS immediately answered, providing David Merrill and his team, how arrived with a variety of information, models and reviews. Lots of dialogue and transparency, and a variety of TCO & ROI models provided. So the request is possible and some do understand.
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