Hiring the Best Technical Professionals

Nortec is an information technology (IT) company so having the best technical professionals is paramount to our success. We are currently recruiting and hiring senior and mid-level consultants so this is top of mind. Actually, we are always recruiting since finding top IT talent is very difficult but currently we are looking to add at least two consultants. We are also always investing in developing our technical professionals as it is often easier to grow our professionals than hire.

Since hiring the best is so important, we have invested in creating a solid process for hiring. We start by maintaining a mind set of never cutting corners. Unless all of the interviewers give a thumbs up, we do not proceed with the hire. Everyone has veto power! This is important because success on the job often involves the team getting behind the new employee and ensuring that they are successful. We don’t need someone on the hiring team saying “See, I knew they would not work out.”

Our process starts by finding resume’s with the key skill sets that we need at Nortec and this usually centers on solid network experience largely around Microsoft Windows Server and Exchange. We usually start with a chronological in-depth interview to determine if the prospective employee has a track record of success and is the right kind of individual for the role at Nortec. This interview is in person and can be an hour and a half to two hours long. We than have a technical interview and this is usually done by phone and lasts about an hour. If the first two interviews go well we run a background check on driving record and criminal record. We then do a second in-depth chronological interview. If everyone gives the thumbs up and the background check comes out, we make an offer! Hopefully we succeed at bringing on a great new employee!

Cloud Computing Hype

Last year cloud computing market was about 2% of IT market and now has grown to as much as 4%. Although it is still a small segment of IT spending it is in a high growth phase – “Green Fields." Cloud Computing is garnering a tremendous amount of attention considering it is less than 5% of IT market. Two weeks ago at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference just about every presentation somehow involved the cloud. I have seen it placed at the peak of the hype curve and recently seen articles suggesting that it may be the next bubble.

Cloud computing is getting a tremendous amount of attention because of the growth and more importantly it is a complete shift in the way that companies buy technology. Cloud computing presents challenges for the IT community as it is compelling in many ways but at the same time is extremely new to the customer and the suppliers. IT companies are scrambling to create models for the delivery of cloud services and how best to support the solutions. Nortec created our Nortec 24/7 suite of cloud services five years ago and we have been refining and working out the best practices. It has taken time to create the client reports, management processes and best practices on migrating and managing the cloud offerings.

There appears to be agreement among industry experts and IT business leaders that cloud computing will continue to grow at a high pace for the next few years. The real question is when will the growth slow and ultimately how much market share will be in the cloud when the growth flattens – Greater than 40%? We will see…

Brilliantly Simple

Shortel’s tag line is “Brilliantly Simple” and besides being an oxymoron, it speaks to what makes ShoreTel a great product. It is easier to put together an overly complex solution than it is to create a simple eloquent one. Some things are complex and complicated like calculus but the brilliant mind is able to take the complexity and create something that is simple. This is the essence of great technology. ShoreTel had the advantage of designing from the beginning an IP Telephony solution with a clean slate. The result is “Briliantly Simple.”

“Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Virtualization Challenges

Implementing a virtual infrastructure is extremely compelling from a cost perspective and management. There are four main challenges outlined in a recent survey "Strategies to Improve IT Efficiencies in 2010" by Forrester.

1. Assessing Server Sizes for Virtual Servers
2. Assessing Performance and workload needed
3. Major performance issues during peak loads
4. Managing the complexity of a virtual infrastructure

These issues are all tied in to the need for implementing a well planned virtual infrastructure. The complexity is greater than in a traditional environment so having the best technical experts do a comprehensive capacity plan and then design is paramount for success. The plan needs to go beyond standing up the infrastructure and include how the virtual infrastructure will be maintained.

Once you have the virtual infrastructure in place you will need to address:

1. Visibility – Where is the application and where is the problem?
2. How do you prove source of problem to the component owner?
3. Where will the next constraint or problem arise?
4. Planning for the next expansion
5. Dealing with applications resource contention
6. Over use of VMotion – simultaneous moves in same LUN can cause poor performance

Virtualization creates the most dynamic data center that IT management has seen - The mantra becomes “constant monitoring, modeling and planning.” Depending on the size and complexity of your virtualized infrastructure the technical management team should at least once a quarter and maybe as often as weekly do a capacity planning style exercise based on current utilization and planned expansion.

Here are the virtualization mistakes to avoid:

1. Racing to deploy and failing to plan completely
2. Configuration mistakes – check before using default settings
3. Not enough storage IOPs
4. Resource contention – not all applications work well together
5. CPU access – underestimate demands
6. Not understanding work loads
7. Not taking complete system into consideration
8. Lack of awareness of the dependencies
9. Lack of awareness of workload curves

Source Article: Datamation – “IT Survey Highlights Virtualization Challenges”:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3892601/

Investing in Information Technology

I attended a forecasting presentation by Tiffani Bova, “Reading the Tea Leaves” at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference yesterday. Ms. Bova spoke about the IT industry from the Microsoft Partner perspective and the presentation was excellent.

Ms. Bova stated that IT spending is about 64% on maintaining current IT systems and the other 36% is split between growing capability and implementing new technology. These ratios have been about the same for the past 10 years and this surprised me a little as I would have thought that through advancements in technology maintaining existing systems would have been reduced.

Not surprising technology spending is off from 2007 and 2008 and will take a few years to return to the peak levels. The cloud is expected to grow to about 20% of IT spending over the next few years so this is a high growth emerging market. Although traditional IT spending will grow slower, there will be 4% to 6% annual growth in most IT segments.

Ms. Bova pointed out that companies have been in the save money mode for several years now and are now trying to find ways to transform their business and take advantage of technology. Focusing entirely on ROI and saving money may not be the best strategy now. Clearly ROI is important but, “What technology can a business implement to drive success?”, is a more significant question today.

Cloud Computing

I attended a web presentation on SaaS / Cloud Implementation by Robert Kulhawy, Ken Powell and Kevin Nikkhoo. The presentation was from the perspective of developing a SaaS business from the software vendor perspective. Here are the pros and cons of cloud based solutions they outlined.

Pros:
1. Cost Effective
2. Allow businesses to focus on their core business
3. Ease of implementation and management
4. Operational cost instead of capital cost
5. Flexibility and scalability

Cons:
1. Perceived Security of information
2. What happens if the provider fails and you still want to use the software
3. Internal IT staff has empire threatened and gives up some control

The recommendation when developing a cloud based offering is to not over customize and to develop a multi-tenancy solution that scales in order to gain price advantage. The recommendation is to price the offering at an order of magnitude less than the traditional solution meaning not half the price but 1/10th the price.
The challenge for the provider is then to drive the volume and keep the transaction low touch and standard contracts. Historically, this takes a significant amount of time and the cloud provider needs to be prepared with great tenacity. The good news for the consumer is the price will be very compelling and if you are able to adapt your business to a cloud offering it will be a very effective solution.

Project Management Success

Project management is key to success in large projects as well as smaller ones. Nortec is closely aligned with Microsoft so we use Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) and this is effective. MSF is designed primarily around software development and we have made some modifications to adapt to infrastructure projects and thinned it out for our smaller implementations.

The project management methodology is not as important as choosing one and then having the discipline to follow the methodology. Clearly a project will flow better if everyone involved is familiar with the methodology. The challenge really is having a Project Manager who is familiar enough with the work that he is able to gauge how long certain tasks should take and then willing to hold the individuals accountable. Unfortunately, the Project Manager has to be the bad guy sometimes!

Here is a good article on Project Management in CIO Magazine “IT Project Management: 10 Less-Considered Keys to Success” by Meridith Levinson:

http://www.cio.com/article/597712/IT_Project_Management_10_Less_Considered_Keys_to_Success?source=CIONLE_nlt_research_2010-07-07

“Why are we happy?” by Dan Gilbert

Last week I watched Dan Gilbert’s Ted Talk “Why are we happy.” His main point was that we are happy because happiness can be synthesized, meaning we can learn to be happy regardless of our situation. He compared synthesized happiness to natural happiness, with natural happiness being the “feeling we get when we get what we wanted” and synthetic happiness being “the feeling we make when we don’t get what we wanted.”

When we synthesize happiness, we teach ourselves to be happy by realizing that we are in the best possible situation. Gilbert argues that synthetic happiness can provide the same feeling as natural happiness. We have the ability to synthesize happiness in any situation, as a type of “physiological immune system.” He provides some evidence of this finding in the full version of his talk.

He went on to explain that we tend to be happier when our choices are permanent. If we have the option to change our mind and switch, we often torment ourselves on the decision. Once the choice is permanent we grow to appreciate the situation, or item and synthesize happiness. As Gilbert put it, “The psychological immune system works best when we are totally stuck.”

Here’s a quote that fits well with this idea of synthetic happiness from the founder of capitalism himself, Adam Smith: “The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from overrating the difference between one permanent situation and another.”

You can check out the full talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

It might give you a new perspective, perhaps even put a smile on your face.