Creating Smart IT Leaders by Susan Cramm

I attended a conference call presentation by Susan Cramm on Creating Smart IT Leaders. Here are a few take away concerns and concepts:


1. Users are frustrated with IT, “they stifle creative entrepreneurialism that is critical to advancing the state of business”
2. Users are younger, tech smarter, and demanding; If IT department doesn’t do something, they will do it without their help
3. 30% of what IT has planned to do is “stupid, dumb work”
4. IT needs to empower the users to self serve
5. Ensure IT can be managed and measured
6. Use fast-cycle, value driven deliver – i.e. Agile development and Scrum method
7. Only 10% of companies are IT Smart!

I enjoyed the presentation and now I need to read the book!

Virtualization: The State of Virtualization in Federal Agencies

I read an article in Channel Insider or should I say slide presentation on virtualization in the Federal Government. It appears the Federal Government is a little behind on virtualization. The Federal Government certainly has a tremendous opportunity to consolidate and save money so this should be compelling and does present a great opportunity. According to the survey education events look like the most important thing that can be done unless of course we can get a Federal Government mandate. Mr. Obama, it is time to make a Federal mandate on virtualization. Maybe something like “70% of all Federal Government computers must be virtualized by 2014! "

Article:
http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Virtualization/The-State-of-Virtualization-in-Federal-Agencies-703535/

The Servant Leader by James A. Autry

About a year ago I went to a presentation by James Autry about his book, “The Servant Leader: How to Build a Creative Team, Develop Great Morale, and Improve Bottom-Line Performance.” I thought his presentation was moderate, and I was not immediately motivated to read the book. The book sat on the shelf for about a year. I picked it up last week for no apparent reason and I read a chapter or so. I thought … this is a really good book!

The essence of “The Servant Leader” is to help everyone that works for you in an authentic manner. The command and control management style is not effective as it does not create an environment that is creative and has a positive morale. Mr. Autry also stresses the importance of balancing the human factors and the pure business side of things. He really emphasizes the importance of a manager being connected and engaged with their staff. The management method he recommends boarders on being over the top California new age style, and frankly I struggle with this a little personally and philosophically. I did like the book and I agree with most of what he is suggesting. He also drilled down on how to deal with each different scenario, sort of like a how to book. I am not sure this was necessary, but I suppose it helps drive the tactical details of the methodology. I would recommend the book, especially the first 100 pages!

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

The main concept of Outliers is that people are largely a product of their environment. The first example given is that of professional hockey players. The more successful players are likely to be born near the beginning of the year. The reason being is that they are grouped by the year they are born so the older kids are naturally more likely to be better and therefore get more attention and practice. The extra attention and practice builds upon itself. These four sentences take many pages in the book and the point is beaten to death. It is an interesting point, no less. The book builds on this point stating that to be really great at anything it is primarily practice and not talent. The number Mr. Gladwell comes up with is 10,000 hours of diligent practice to be great at just about anything. The Beatles it turns out spent several years playing in environments where they were required to play for many hours straight every day of the week. They went from being modest performers to being great performers. The book goes on to make interesting points regarding cultural backgrounds and many other examples to support the impact of environment on an individual’s behavior and success.

I thought Outliers had some interesting material however it seemed to over emphasize the importance of environment. Clearly environment is an important factor to success. It is no coincidence that there are so many successful people in America – It is an environment that allows individuals to forge out and become successful. However, often when you look at successful people you will see that they overcame many obstacles and usually through pure perseverance and passion not because of their environment.

Virtualization Impact

Virtualization is proven to reduce cost by consolidating servers on less physical servers. I read an article “Does Virtualization Increase IT Management Costs?” by Charlie Schluting in Enterprise Networking Planet. Charlie Schluting states, “Cisco started saying that virtualization doesn't actually save money due to increased management costs involved with running a virtual infrastructure.” The article goes on to discuss all costs associated with virtualization: management, training virtualization staff, virtualization consultants. However, I believe it still makes sense to virtualize corporate infrastructure and that these costs will continue to decrease as virtualization becomes more and more mainstream.

In the 90s there was promise of the paperless office as the typewriter died and the word processor took over. Companies were also able to scan documents and discard the paper. However, it turns out that businesses actually print more revisions of every document with a word processor than when using the old type writer. We print far more in general not less than in the past. I doubt anyone is going to argue that we should go back to typewriters and discard scanners. Clearly we are able to produce better quality documents and office automation makes the office worker more efficient and effective.

Will virtualization drive more servers and more applications? Applications you could not justify because of the cost associated with supporting another server can be quickly and easily launched on a new virtual machine. Will businesses then end up with more physical servers?

“Does Virtualization Increase IT Management Costs?” by Charlie Schluting:
http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/_featured/article.php/3876576/Does+Virtualization+Increase+IT+Management+Costs?.htm

“Switch: How to change things when change is hard” by Chip and Dan Heath

I read "Switch" by Chip and Dan Heath. The book is about how people behave and what drives their behavior. Essentially they describe three components to human actions and they outline them as the elephant, monkey, and environment.

The elephant is our instinctual, emotional drive and our habits. Essentially, the elephant describes our regular non thinking type behavior. Our monkey is riding the elephant. Steering the elephant to do the kind of things we rationally want to do. The analogy does a great job of creating the image of this poor monkey trying to control this very powerful willful elephant. When you see that bag of cheeses the monkey may want to pass and the elephant wants the wonderful orange goodness – who wins? The environment is the people you are around and the social acceptability of your behavior.

After explaining the elephant, monkey and environment, the book gives examples of these forces and how to flip the switch to change the behavior of yourself and others. How it makes sense to appeal to the elephant instead of the monkey in some cases. Sometimes to effect the change you are looking for you need to change the environment. Who do you hang with? Appealing effectively to one or more of these behavioral forces will cause the desired change in yourself and others. I liked the book because it is powerful, interesting and a short easy read.

“5 Virtual Desktop Pitfalls” by Jon Brodkin

I read “5 Virtual Desktop Pitfalls” by Jon Brodkin in Network World. According to Mr. Bodkin the 5 pitfalls are cost, storage, network, multimedia support and user experience.

The network requirements and user experience are probably the two areas that have improved the most over the last decade so I would say these are fading pitfalls. In fact the improvements in network infrastructure and the user experience are driving VDI adoption.

Multimedia support will continue to be a game stopper in some cases.

The cost pitfall surprised me. Mr. Bodkin quotes Forrester analysis finding that the ROI is 3 – 5 years if that. This contradicts acquisition costs that I have seen that were lower than the cost to replace desktops not to mention the lower operational expenses. Clearly a business needs to be in desktop refresh mode to have a rapid ROI.

The article is worth reading especially if you are involved or considering a VDI implementation.
Link to “5 Virtual Desktop Pitfalls” by Jon Brodkin:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/040110-virtual-desktop-pitfalls.html?page=1

“Virtualization Management and Trends” a CA Study by Forrester Consulting

I read “Virtualization Management and Trends” a CA commissioned study by Forrester Consulting. The study was to evaluate the impact, challenges, and requirements around the operational aspects of virtualization. The report had seven key findings:

1. Capacity management is top operational concern
2. Moving to internal cloud requires process and automation
3. Comprehensive domain coverage is critical
4. Need a top-down application approach
5. Cloud based offerings are in demand
6. Operational control moving to day to day administrator
7. Virtualization is very positive to operation

The study confirms the explosive growth of virtualization and the overall shift to management automation. The essence being, that as a businesses moves to a virtual environment it is extremely important to have well planned and managed infrastructure. This is clearly cutting CAs own grass as a supplier of virtualization automation tools but this is in line with industry best practices. Management software and tools have often been shelfware in the past. Virtualization is driving the adoption and implementation of management tools and is forcing a more efficient managed infrastrtucture.

“Virtualization Management and Trends” a CA commissioned study by Forrester Consulting:
http://www.ca.com/us/analysts/reports/collateral.aspx?CID=227749

Virtualization and Security

Virtualization continues to grow at a rapid rate as a result of the compelling ROI. Although the average consolidation rate is less than 10:1 the latest hardware and virtualization software enables companies to implement upwards of 20:1 and 30:1 consolidation. The challenge is getting the expertise to implement, secure and manage the virtualized infrastructure.

Most IT leaders recognize the challenge to grow virtualization skills. We are investing heavily in developing deep technical skills around virtualization. Gartner in their recent report is estimating that 60% of servers are less secure in a virtualized environment versus physical enviornment. This will continue through 2012 and slowly decrease to 30% by 2015. The reason they contribute less security in virtual environment is the lack of IT expertise around virtualization.

"Virtualization is not inherently insecure," says Gartner vice president Neil MacDonald. "However, most virtualized workloads are being deployed insecurely. The latter is a result of the immaturity of tools and processes and the limited training of staff, resellers and consultants."

We will continue to invest in growing and recruiting the best virtualization experts to meet the challenge head on. We are committed to implementing secure virtualized infrastructures. We are developing air lift programs to help our clients in later stages of their virtualization implementations to take their skills to the next level. The case for virtualization is extremely compelling and growing fast so it will demand diligence and commitment from internal IT and consultants.

Gartner Report "Addressing the Most Common Security Risks in Data Center Virtualization Projects":
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=clientFriendlyUrl&id=1288115

Leadership and Management Lessons from "Undercover Boss"

I read this article by Meridith Levinson in CIO Magazine about the new CBS TV Show “Undercover Boss”. The show takes CEOs of very large companies and has them go in the field and work as a helper with the front line workers. There is something intrinsically funny about the CEO of a very large waste management company getting in the field cleaning bathrooms! The article has some youtube videos of segments from a couple of episodes of the show and they are great. I think the show is interesting and reveals great insight into how some policies cause pain. It also demonstrates how taking genuine interest and appreciation of employees goes a long way.

Link to the article:

http://www.cio.com/article/565064/Leadership_and_Management_Lessons_from_Undercover_Boss_

2010 Prediction

I sense an increase in business activity. Personally, I have noticed higher levels of activity at Nortec as well as in office real estate that I own. The stock market continues to show recovery. Everything I read is pointing to 2010 being a growth year. The growth is predicted to be increasing from one quarter to the next starting slowly – at least that is the prediction in information technology industry. The only area that I think has not turned the corner is residential real estate.

Overall attitude of most people should improve. Recruiting and retaining top professionals will get harder – not that that ever seemed to get easier. Overall businesses and individuals will do well.

This is long needed positive news. Although the wave is not entirely upon us, I can hear the rumble and see some foam in front of it.

Quote of the Day - On Staying Focused

This is a quote from Tim Cook at Apple, I found on Seth Godin’s Blog:

“This is the most focused company I know of, am aware of, or have any knowledge of... We say no to good ideas every day.” Cook then pointed out to analysts that every single product the company makes would fit on the single conference table in front of him. “And we had revenue last year of $40 billion."

Symantec State of Enterprise Security

Symantec released their “State of Enterprise Security” Report. It is clear that security will continue to be a high priority in most companies since 75% of enterprises have experienced cyber attacks and 41% say the attacks were effective. The study found all companies experienced some cyber loss either by theft or downtime. Not sure how 100% can have loss and only 75% say they were attacked but I will let that one go….

Here is the full Symantec Report:

http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/about/presskits/SES_report_Feb2010.pdf

Time to Upgrade to Windows 7

It is time to upgrade to Windows 7. I have been running Windows 7 ever since it was released and I am very happy with the performance – It is quick to boot and snappy. The adoption rate is twice what Vista’s adoption rate and is now used by 9% of all users. Most users are still using Windows XP and it is time for those users to adopt the next generation technology. If you are still running Vista it makes very little sense not to upgrade to Windows 7 since Windows 7 solves the sluggishness of Vista.


Here is an article in Computerworld: “Windows 7 early adoption beats Vista's 2 to 1 -
Five months after release, Microsoft's newest OS owns twice the share of Vista at the same point” by Gregg Keizer

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9160538/Windows_7_early_adoption_beats_Vista_s_2_to_1

Symantec State of SPAM and Phishing Report

According to the Symantec State of SPAM and Phishing Report there continues to be targeted attacks. Spammers like to take advantage of current affairs – Haiti disaster or Valentines. The next one to watch for will be scams around tax season. Clearly we will continue to be under attack so do not click on those suspicious links in emails or unknown attachments especially form social media sites.

Here is a link to the full Symantec Report:

http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/other_resources/b-state_of_spam_and_phishing_report_02-2010.en-us.pdf

Understanding Microsoft Virtualization R2 Soluions

Microsoft Press has released a free 480 page ebook on Microsoft Virtualization - Here is the link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_press/archive/2010/02/16/free-ebook-understanding-microsoft-virtualization-r2-solutions.aspx

Virtualization Adoption

Companies are virtualizing their infrastructure at a rapid rate primarily to save money by consolidating servers. The savings are reported to be 50% - 60% on capital expenditure and 25% on operational expenditure. The industry’s leading in virtualization are education and manufacturing and this speaks to the savings.

Currently 20% - 30% of servers are virtualized on average. Most businesses are trying to get to 70% to 80%. The hurdles are controlling the VM sprawl and virtualization skill set within the organizations. The VM sprawl can happen so fast that it frightens IT leaders. This highlights the need for a well planned managed approach to virtualization. The virtualization technology has been growing and changing so rapidly the experts with competent skills have been scarce. Most companies are investing in developing virtualization skills to better manage their new agile virtual infrastructure.

Sources: VMWare, ESG Strategies Cornerstones

Virtualization Top 10 Initiatives for 2010:

I attended VMWare Partner Exchange last week. Virtualization is the top priority for most companies followed by security and storage hardware. Here are the top 10 virtualization initiatives:

1. Consolidation
2. Improve backup and recovery
3. Expand applications into virtual infrastructure
4. Disaster recovery
5. Secure virtual infrastructure
6. Improve operational process
7. Move from test to production
8. Storage deployment
9. High availability
10. Management software integration

Source: ESG Strategies Cornerstones
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/

Cloud Computing Shift in 2010

I read “CIOs See Big Cloud Computing Shifts In 2010” by Steven Burke. The shift is a result of the pressure from business leaders to reduce technology spending and drive profits. Peter Forte, CIO of Analog Devices had a good quote in the article:

“This is a matter of survival," Forte said. "In the last 20 years, I haven't seen this kind of dramatic cost cutting. Luckily, the good news here is technology has evolved to the point where it is helping us make this transition. We would never have been able to make a 25-30 percent budget reduction 10 years ago without an incredible fall off in service."

“CIOs See Big Cloud Computing Shifts In 2010” by Steven Burke:
http://tinyurl.com/yk8wryg

Working within a Team

I watched a documentary on Haskell Wexler an Oscar winning Cinematographer. He is highly regarded with multiple awards and worked on famous films such as American Graffiti. The interesting part to me was the dynamics and the egos of the teams producing movies. Mr. Wexler’s award winning success created challenges when he is working with directors. In the documentary, he basically says the directors usually don’t know what they are doing and he could do it better. Some directors described Haskell Wexler as having been a pain in the neck to work with and he was removed from working on “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for his failure to get along.

Haskell Wexler is of course a tremendously successful person and his strong ego is paramount to his success. No matter how successful someone is there will always be this balance of control and keeping ego in check. There is a fine line to navigate - if you give up too much control you risk failure and if you try to take too much control no one will work with you! It is a conundrum – the yin and the yang.