A quick thought - and a possible explanation?

Well below is something I've seen written up before on various web sites & forums - so no credit to me - but it could certainly be a good explanation for a fair number of business projects, proposals, technologies and products I've been pitched over time :-

In The Beginning Was The Plan
And The Plan had Assumptions
And The Assumptions Were Without Form
And The Plan Was Without Substance
And The Darkness was upon the face of the workers

and they spoke amongst themselves, saying 
"It is a crock of st, and it stinketh"

and the workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth "It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odour thereof"

and the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them, "It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it"

and the Managers went unto their Directors and sayeth "It is a vessel of fertilizer and it has great strength"

and the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents and sayeth unto them, "It promotes growth and is very powerful"

and the Vice Presidents went unto the President and sayeth unto him, "This new Plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency of The Company"

and the President looked upon the Plan and saw that it was good and The Plan became Policy.

Certainly worth remembering that sometimes there is nothing better than clear and direct communication to the people at the very top, and never assume the people at the top understand what's really going on, or being done, or sold...

Some thoughts on little green men

No not the aliens that your typical tinfoil hat wearing nutter will recount in detail whilst drooling slightly - but as some of you will know I've been a user of Google Android for a couple of years now, on a number of different phones, versions and builds. Currently I'm using the native Android v2.2.1 on the Google reference Nexus One platform - and I have to say it's really rather good...

Naturally there are however some annoyances that I'd like to see tweaked :-

Memory Related

• More memory - the standard 512 MB ROM & 512 MB RAM (and in my unit an additional 32GB of SD card) might sound big compared to some devices, but the phone really would benefit from at least 1GB (but better 2GB) of RAM. With 160+ applications installed I find I'm now at the point of 'remove one to install one' re the dreaded 'low memory' warning...
• Cache management - with a number of common applications (eg Browser, Tweetdeck etc) I've started to notice that they consume RAM memory as cache but don't release it automatically, leading to applications having 10-15MB of RAM memory as cache (often triggering the 'low memory' warning)  until you manually clear the cache using the application manager.
• Not an Android core issue but some applications should handle memory better - for instance ChompSMS stores MMS images in RAM and not on SD storage, and refuses to receive text messages if the 'low memory' indicator is showing despite having GBs of SD card space free.

SD Card Storage Related

• There should be the ability to force any application to be moved or installed onto SD card storage - works fine on 'rooted' ROMs so should be a possible setting for standard ROMs
• Google to enable their applications to install on SD card storage, rather than the majority currently refusing to support it (for example gMail, Earth, Maps, Voice Search, YouTube, Listen, )
• To be able to 'partition' the SD card (or have a better USB driver) so that when the phone is connected to a PC via USB the applications & widgets on the SD card continue to operate.
• Fix the update bug that occasionally occurs (ie twice in 4 months for me) for applications installed onto SD card storage detailed here and fixed here

Application MarketPlace
MarketPlace improvements, for it to have :-

• Verified developers - ability for developers to get some for of 'tested & verified safe' certificate from a trusted authority, to ensure that the developer name shown in the MarketPlace really is from the perceived developer / company
• Verified applications - ability for applications to get some for of 'tested & verified safe' certificate from a trusted authority (eg to protect against malware & trojans etc)
• The application profile should be updated to show if the application supports move/install to SD card storage, and how much RAM the application uses after install (not just how much storage it needs)
• Ability to manage my phone's applications from a desktop PC browser - to be able to uninstall existing applications, browse & search the marketplace to install applications and upload my own APK applications for install. All of these changes to then be synchronised over-the-air to the device.
• To be able to do 'bulk backup/restore/installs' of applications onto devices - eg when I change device to be able to 'backup' all my existing installed apps and then 'restore/install' them onto new device in a single action
• To better align the various MarketPlace versions around the world - it's getting more than a bit irritating seeing applications that only exist in the USA version of the MarketPlace and not the international ones
• Sort out billing and payments to international developers - it's frustrating to only be able to get the 'lite' or 'free' version of an application via the MarketPlace, but then have to go to some other website to purchase a license key for the full featured version.
• It would be good to add-in age rating 'certificates' (eg as per films & PC games etc) for applications in the MarketPlace
• To be able to search and/or filter the display of applications in the MarketPlace by attributes (eg age suitability, support SD or not, size, release / update dates etc)

Miscellaneous

• Support for folders on the home screens (and more home screens - think a 5x5 grid of screens rather than current 1x5) - to allow applications to be grouped together into nested folders on any of the home screens
• Add back the WMA / WMV codecs that were previously in Android 1.x - yes MP3/MP4 are fine but support for WMx should also be standard as it was originally
• WiFi connectivity - now it might just by the CostlyCo utter junk that I'm currently suffering as a wireless router, but there does appear to be some fragility with working with wireless N based wifi networks
• Of course the topic of proxy servers and authenticated proxy servers via the wifi connection needs to be resolved in order to be able to use to enterprise networks properly
• Enable Live Wallpapers to work automatically upon reboot if they've been installed onto SD
• Full native OS / device backup/restore into the cloud - not just contacts and application purchases but all content on the phone. Yes you can purchase applications to do this but it really should be standard.
• To be able to completely uninstall some of the standard OS bundled applications I never use or want (eg Facebook & Twitter native clients etc)
• To be able to do remote phone location discovery/tracking and also secure erase management from a PC browser (ie should I leave my phone somewhere I can remotely discover where it is and issue a 'remote destroy' command etc)
• It would also be rather useful if they could 'fix' the Google 'Finance' application, as it spend more time failing to work or synchronise than it does working

For some of my previous posts re Android see here - as I said I'm a major fan of Android and what it's done to overturn a lacklustre & incumbent marketplace (anybody remember Symbian?). So for 2011 I'm looking forward to Android v2.3 & v3.0 to see just what of above gets done, and how far this real OS flies onwards past the competition...

Happy New Year

So I guess it's time for the obligatory 'Happy New Year' blog post...

Out with the old year - as frankly speaking it's pretty worn out now, and it's been a fairly mixed year with it's fair share of ups & downs both professionally and personally. Change is always good, but some losses are never good - John & JP you'll both be missed RIP.

But now we look forward and the bright star studded sky ushers in the new pristine year, which I guessing could be a pretty intense one given that it goes up to eleven :)

I could make lots of predictions, promises & resoltuions, but the only certainty among them would that they'd be wrong and broken! However given that I'll have finished my IT infrastructure tenders early in Jan 2011, I will try and update this blog much more often, and most definitely on IT Infrastructure related topics. Oh and of course I'll aim to be at each months #StorageBeers, and the other 'peer only' validation forums we'll be working on...

Right, I'm off to relax, have a take-away and a drink with family & friends to welcome in 2011, so I'll leave you with Nollaig chridheil agus bliadhna mhath ùr and spare you my rendition of a classic song...

Amazon - Masters of marketing or perfecting the art of customer dissatisfaction?

Now this blog is not about AWS (which I'm a big fan of) or cloud (which is being over-inflated by traditional IT vendor hot air), but rather it's about the Amazon online web retail shops and experiences.

To be clear I'm a big fan of Amazon retail, especially how they've defined, improved and driven online retail so well. Indeed in just the last 5 years I've place over 300 orders on Amazon.co.uk alone - frankly I dread to think how much I've spent but my average order value appears to be well over £50 each time....

But like all good things, over time you come to notice a few items that start to irritate and then eventually if not treated they annoy. So it has come for me with Amazon, thus below is a list of current irritants & annoyances from Amazon...

Deliveries
Clearly the recent farce with Amazon.co.uk Christmas deliveries hasn't done much to help things, no they couldn't help the snow that descended upon major parts of the UK & Europe - but they certainly could have handled it as least as well as other online retailers. I find it strange that despite 'the weather' orders placed with other retailers and also Amazon MarketPlace sellers can arrive next day, but expedited (at extra delivery cost) orders placed with Amazon still haven't arrived 10 days later...

Customer Services

Nor it has to be said has their handling of customer support over this time excelled - sorry but posting web messages saying "due to volume, we're having delays responding to your customer service phone & email enquiries" just isn't good enough, hire some staff (heck why not use https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome ?). This is especially compounded when the return date deadline remains fixed despite the inability for customer services to respond - do the decent thing and extend the deadline if you can't handle the workload.

One could also be forgiven for thinking that Amazon also do their best to hide their customer support contact details - yes it's easy enough to contact & give feedback to MarketPlace providers, but for orders direct from Amazon no such easy actions exist. You certainly have to dig for a bit to find the Amazon customer services phone number of 0800 496 1081 compared to the ease of contacting their MarketPlace sellers.

Have you to tried to 'leave feedback' about an Amazon order as opposed to a MarketPlace order? Have you tried to chase up on a late delivery of an Amazon shipped order? perhaps they could patent & then impliment 'one click customer service'? ;)...

Loyalty

It disappoints me that they still lack of any form of customer loyalty scheme - I've been using Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk for over 12 years, and yet I get no different an experience or pricing to a brand new customer.  Yes their recommendations are better tuned to the types of things I want & like, but some form of recognition (ie early releases, limited editions or exclusives, discounts, gift vouchers etc) of my past business would be good.

SmartPhone
It is very odd that there is still no Google Android application for Amazon one-click shopping in the UK - despite there being one in the USA, despite there being an Amazon MP3 download app in UK & USA and both of them for iPhone in UK & USA.

Information Management

Perhaps one of my biggest annoyances is that they still do effectively nothing with allowing customers to utilise the information about their orders & account history :-

• They really do need to embrace products like iMediaMan or Gurulib that allow customers to do their own catalogue and inventory mngt - in the age of increasingly digitalised assets (eg MP3, Kindle etc) it's essential for the customer to be able to manage & report on their assets.
• Ability for me to download an XML / CSV file re my order history and the products I've ordered? (useful for export into catalogue / library management tools, but also for keeping re household insurance records etc)
• An ability for me to 'tag' wish-list items and orders (& line items) against my own defined metadata categories (eg 'for work', 'for home', 'kids', 'gift' etc) would be useful for improving recommendations further
• Implement a simple warning if an order contains something you've previously purchased from them before, this is partially done in some areas of the site but certainly not complete or as a check prior to final order completion.

Yes their Personalisation, Preferencing & Profiling system is one of the best on the market, and having looked at this for VoD systems in the past I know just how complex and difficult this vital subject area is - and just how much IT infrastructure & data is needed to do this properly.

Some Enhancement Requests

1. Ability to have sub accounts that I can give an allocated spend allowance to - bit like gift carding an account but for sub-accounts that I can give an age rating and spend ceiling limit to, and to which I manage, review & approve orders on, with payment being fixed to being made by my one-click payment method. Thus allowing me give my children Amazon accounts whilst still being safe.
2. Capability to be able to place bids for products that vendors could then chose to accept, ignore or counter - a reverse auction if you like. This works on other sites, and Amazon use it well in their AWS business.
3. Of course the ability to give feedback, and contact support just as easily with an Amazon direct order as I can currently with a MarketPlace seller order

But despite these irritants and annoyances, Amazon is still the first place I go to buy anything, even before the real high-street let alone other internet retailers - so they must be managing my customer dissatisfaction fairly well I guess?

So whilst I'm looking at what Amazon recommends for me today I wish you, Happy Shopping...

2010 - Some more travel observations

I'm not travelling as much as I used to - but still too often - and I thought it was time for an update on my thoughts as a business traveller :-

1) It's certainly clear that economy class on flights is gradually getting worse - with less seating space, less catering and lower standards of staff

2) The frequent flyer schemes are getting tighter and with less benefits -hey @British_Airways just how many economy class (delayed / often late) flights in Europe do I have to make in a year to get anything above 'blue' frequent flyer status???

3) The standards of business lounges - even within the same airline - vary so much it's ridiculous. Take for example @British_Airways business lounges at LHR T5, Chavwick & Tampa.

• Heathrow T5 - full drinks selection, hot & cold meals, bacon butties, internet access, plenty of space
• Tampa - there are drinks and sandwiches, and somewhere quiet to sit with power for laptops
• Chavwick - there were cold snacks, cold drinks, an internet cafe and a dozen different alcoholic spirits (clearly a place where sadly alcohol is in more demand than bacon butties)

4) It's disappointing that a lot of long-haul Airlines have been so slow to add USB power points to seats - @Lufthansa_DE clearly have the lead here... Obviously it would also be good for the airline lounges to have similar power & USB charging points

5) Heathrow T5 has slowly improved with a lot of it's initial wrinkles now ironed out. But whilst the process & systems are getting a bit better there are still some material issues :-

• IRIS reliability - appears to be broken more often than working, perhaps a 3rd machine would help?
• Staff quality, engagement and care is still greatly missing
• The other Heathrow terminals don't seem to have improved at all (other than counting destroying parts of them as a well needed improvement)
• It continues to amaze me that BA staff buses operate at about 3 times the frequency of the buses for the business parking area

6) There are still some airlines that use a proprietary headphone connector - why? why? why? Oh and why put any type of headphone connector exactly where a person's leg goes - it's going to hurt their leg, break the connector or both...

7) Just how much easier flying was when only one bag was allowed on-board the plane, with no roll-on cases etc - really should make the rule one small item of hand-luggage and be done with it...

8) How very few hotels understand the need to provide :-

• Mains power points near the bedside table - to charge phones that are also used as alarm clocks
• Mains power points near to desk / table in the room - to charge laptops whilst they're used
• A clock in the bathroom
• A clock built into the TV (yes I'm always running late)
• A free bottle of water - water should not be a profit source!
• WiFi connectivity that's either free or reasonably priced (ie $2 a day)
• If we're on a wish list, a few USB charge points would be good as well!

9) With regards to in-flight entertainment systems :-

• It is rather surprising to see such small & poor selections of music given how little storage & bandwidth it consumes
• Given such a controlled environment and simple IT setup & requirements, I'm staggered as to how often the system fails and/or needs to be rebooted

So what do I regard as travel essentials nowadays :-

• Chanel Allure Homme a male aftershave with packaging designed for business travellers
• Dual USB worldwide travel adapter great for charging phones & devices without using laptop
• SlimPlug goes some way to reduce the bulk of the UK mains plug
• Battery powered phone & USB charger to charge the things you need when you're away from mains power
• Shure SE210 earphones for blocking out the rest of the world
• LiveScribe pen for taking all the notes and thoughts that spring to mind when you can't use a laptop or blackberry
• Micro umbrella

But I can safely say that the most off-putting thing that can happen to a traveller is to have a member of an airline's staff greet you happily by name as you wander mooching around a foreign airport's shops waiting for check-in to open - this happened to me not so long ago one Friday evening 2hrs before check-in opened, and a) totally freaked me out, and b) made me realise I clearly travel too often...

Churnalism - yet another evil in the field of benefits reporting

So @stevie_chambers decided to wind me up with this tweet yesterday morning :- 

Cisco Unified Computing System selected by Slumberland http://bit.ly/d1FDqd < saved $368k @ianhf :)

Now Steve is somebody that I regard as a friend and that I have immense respect for - despite us having differing views on the technology widget Steve's company sells I have more respect for Steve than the majority of his employers organisation put together.

So with that out of the way - I was simply staggered that he should choose to highlight such a terrible article & classic example of Churnalism to me - I can only put it down to 'new baby head', or perhaps a desire to see me off with ever increasing blood pressure? So let's just review the 'article' :) (note I'm not saying anything about the technology here at all - merely what & how 'benefits' are purported)

This is the kind of lazy, half arsed, factless, press release driven tripe that masquerading as 'reporting' that drives me (and I hope you) insane! So time for the usual list :-

• How long did this take to achieve?
• How exactly was it achieved, which how much effort & disruption?
• Re "saved" - where did they start from re SLAs, technology, organisation & processes?
• Compared to what & whom?
• Where is the before & after comparison of TCO and TTM?
• What was the investment required to achieve this?
• What was the ROI & IRR?
• What is the timeframe over which the benefit is calculated & reported?
• How much more would be possible with other ways, priorities & measures?
• What is the scale of the environment?
• What is the scope of the environment?

I'm not arguing that Slumberland haven't benefited, and that they haven't improved things for themselves - but as with all case-studies, customer references or benefits reports it is absolutely imperative to have full & total contextual disclosure of the before & after situations, the objectives, the success metrics and priorities.

As I previously blogged about here it really is time for the IT industry to grow up and get some simple quality & disclosure standards about reporting and marketing... This current level of information just doesn't help anybody...

Quick Thought/Rant - Storage Commodities

So just a rapid fire quick thought below :-

Now @chuckhollis make some good comments here about storage being a commodity - something of which I have some views on :)

Interestingly through the discussion Chuck still talks about the 'problem statement' from a storage technician perspective (with an introduction of diversity & complexity in the technology mix, which glosses over two major TCO cost elements - complexity & diversity of solution spaces) - until the closing section, which is where I agree with him.

You see, as far as I'm (and my CIO is) concerned storage is a commodity - however it's the physical storage that's currently a total commodity, the logical layer (software) still has a bit of a way to go to become a commodity. I think a lot of the sensible people have made the leap past caring about many of the internal storage service widgets & sprockets - and frankly, no longer care - 80% of storage products in data-centres are capable of supporting 80% of the requirements.

But I 100% agree that people around storage have to change - the processes, the eco-system, the value, the religion, the entrenched conservatism, the lack of transparency, the products, the "can't tell you in advance without a full PoC", the tools, the 'buy our magic beans' culture, the org structure, the "we're special, honest", the cost & value, the people, the sales model, the support model... All of this has to change in order to accept the fact that storage is now a commodity hygiene factor and no longer the king of the castle in the infrastructure space...

I just wish that more of the people involved would realise this!

(Oh and we'll leave the 'shiny new baubles' of mngt tool nirvana for an expensive (for anything re mngt tools is always 10x more expensive than you believe and always 0.3x the value you're told) rant another day...)

That's all for me for now - I'm still around building up a major backlog of rants, but current work (both volume and subject matter) prohibits me from posting much of it right now. Normal service should resume towards the end of the year.