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.

Paralysis by Analysis

It is important not to fall victim to “paralysis by analysis.” Information technology professionals by nature are very analytical and by nature want to analyze everything before taking action. This is clearly important up to a certain point. Sometimes, it is actually beneficial to not see an option and save a tremendous amount of time by not analyzing an option that turns out to be a “rat hole.” As they say “ignorance is bliss.”

More important than avoiding time wasting activities is just having the personal power to make a decision and take action. The joke on these lines is “He won’t take action because that would require a decision.” This problem becomes amplified in larger organizations where there is a culture of zero tolerance for mistakes. Sounds great in theory but when no one is willing to make a decision and take action for fear of making a wrong decision you have “paralysis by analysis.” Everyone starts taking cover on all issues and using CYA as their mantra! There will be meeting after meeting with many planning discussions and meeting notes and maybe even some action items but nothing is really happening.

Being decisive, making decision and then moving forward is absolutely a key for long term success. So how do you handle failure from making the wrong decisions? Mitigate risk and learn from mistakes. Embrace failure! “Fail early, fail often and fail cheap.”

Here is a quote by Charles Bosk, a Sociology Professor at University of Pennsylvania, who spoke with student surgeons and his observation of how they handle mistakes:

"When I interviewed the surgeons who were fired, I used to leave the interview shaking," Bosk said. "I would hear these horrible stories about what they did wrong, but the thing was that they didn't know that what they did was wrong. In my interviewing, I began to develop what I thought was an indicator of whether someone was going to be a good surgeon or not. It was a couple of simple questions: Have you ever made a mistake? And, if so, what was your worst mistake? The people who said, 'Gee, I haven't really had one,' or, 'I've had a couple of bad outcomes but they were due to things outside my control' -- invariably those were the worst candidates. And the residents who said, 'I make mistakes all the time. There was this horrible thing that happened just yesterday and here's what it was.' They were the best. They had the ability to rethink everything that they'd done and imagine how they might have done it differently."

Nicholas Carr: The Internet is Hurting Our Brains

I read an article by Bill Snyder “Nicholas Carr: The Internet is Hurting Our Brains.” The article is discussing the idea Nicholas Carr wrote about in his book “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” The concept is that we are highly distracted on-line jumping around from site to site and this is causing us to lose the ability to focus. I am not sure this is isolated to Google either as it seems to me we are generally in a more interrupt driven society. If you are not running from meeting to meeting, reading through emails and then on the phone pretty much the entire day then what are you doing?

I do find the time to think, read entire articles and write this blog. At the same time I often feel highly distracted and this creates a sense of anxiousness. I often arrive at the end of the day feeling somewhat apprehensive. 5:30 rolls around and I am thinking, “I can’t go home for another couple of hours because I just need to accomplish more to have a productive day.”

Clearly there are plenty of distractions and challenges to staying focused on accomplishing tasks. Is this actually damaging our brains? Maybe it is damaging… and besides it is not great being distracted. So how do you combat this? Here are a few ways to attack this:

1. Schedule time to work on items and do not look at email or take calls.
2. Read emails only once and either take action, delete, file or move to an action folder.
3. Designate a certain amount of time for reading online articles.
4. Participate in activities that do not involve technology – leave the mobile phone behind.
5. Take vacation and don’t check email for a few entire days.

Ok, enough - This is not actually brain surgery. It is an important point and it really goes back to life balance. In this case it is a technology and technology free balance. Nothing really changes – Use to be we worried about the TV frying our brains and now it is the internet!

On that note, I am ready for some technology free summer vacation.

Article in CIO Magazine by Bill Snyder “Nicholas Carr: The Internet is Hurting Our Brains”:
http://www.cio.com/article/597350/Nicholas_Carr_The_Internet_is_Hurting_Our_Brains

General George Casey on Leadership

Last week, I attended a presentation by General George Casey, Army Chief of Staff. General Casey discussed his current role and their goal of restoring health to the Army. He shared the challenges around the kind of warfare we are involved with today versus the past.

General Casey discussed Strategic Leadership. He said “Strategic leaders guide the achievement of their organizational vision within a larger enterprise by:

1. Directing policy and strategy
2. Building consensus
3. Acquiring and allocating resources
4. Influencing organizational culture
5. Shaping external environment
6. Communicating

“They lead by example to:

1. Build an effective organization
2. Grow the next generation
3. Energize subordinates
4. Seek opportunities to advance goals
5. Balance personal and professional demands; a. Read, b. Sleep, c. Exercise, d. Think, e. Personal passion (Hobby, sport)

On reflection, I think this is good stuff. I prefer building commitment to a plan rather than consensus but I suppose this could be semantics. Acquiring and allocating resources is probably more significant in large government organizations. At Nortec we focus more on saving and reducing resources consumed. Culture should probably be at the top but not sure this is supposed to be in order of importance. In business, shaping external environment, I would relate to front line selling and this is clearly key to business success. Communicating the vision is necessary so everyone knows the right direction to be going and this is where clear metrics come into play.

I am a big believer in leading by example and inspiring the team. I enjoyed the presentation and I think General Casey does a great job highlighting the key components to successful leadership.

Now, if I can track down that photo they took of me with the General...

CEO2GOV Summit Event Information:
http://tiny.cc/gycph

It Is a Great Time to be an IT Leader

A challenge for IT leadership has been aligning technology with senior management the CEO, CFO, COO. Historically the IT leader has not always had a position on the senior executive team and reported often to the CFO, sometimes the CEO or COO. This has changed with most companies now having a CIO and at the same time the other executives have become more IT savvy. This creates a great environment for the inspired, entrepreneurial spirited IT leader.

The IT leader now has direct access to the senior management team and the senior management understands more about technology. This can be a double edged sword as the CIO has to listen to other executives who “know how to do the CIO’s job.” Taking this into consideration it is still better having a senior team that understands technology and the value it brings to the organization. It may require more interaction to agree on what can be done but at least the conversation is seen as important and something senior management is interested in discussing.

It is time for the IT leaders to run with the ball and create creative ways to take advantage of technology. IT leaders need to build the vision of what can be accomplished with technology from operations to marketing such as social media and web 3.0. The technology vision needs to be drafted into a brief well written and understandable technology plan. This vision needs to involve the entire leadership team and be a plan that they all agree upon and are committed to implementing. This plan can be further reaching and more powerful today because the senior teams understanding of technology will assist in seeing the value.

An article in CIO magazine “What CEOs expect form CIOs” by Richard Pastore, that inspired this post:
http://www.cio.com/article/596384/What_CEOs_Expect_from_CIOs?page=1&taxonomyId=3156

Evolution of Information Technology – Dealing with the Shift to the Cloud?

While still in early stages, Cloud Computing is definitely a growing area within information technology (IT). Hosted service and remote managed services are growing faster in some areas than others. Small companies are moving their entire information technology department to the cloud in some cases. Certainly new companies are looking at this strategy right out of the gate. Most companies and particularly large enterprise organizations are utilizing a hybrid model. When it comes time to purchase new hardware or migrate to a new version of software it makes sense to evaluate cloud computing.

How should information technology leaders deal with this shift? There is some resistance since ultimately as technology moves to the cloud, one might think that a company will need less internal IT staff. This is true to a certain extent; however it is true more so for those that do not embrace cloud computing than those that do. If the premise is true that more technology will move to the cloud (and I think it is…) than IT professionals that embrace this and become experts at dealing with it will be in demand. Companies will need troops on the ground to migrate, manage and support the cloud services.

Here is a related article “Cloud Computing Is An Evolution of IT, Not An Overthrow”:

http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/blog/archives/2010/06/cloud_computing_22.html

"Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

I read “Made to Stick” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. This book is written by the same authors as "Switch" that I read and reviewed on April 8th: http://andrewgrose.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html

I liked ”Switch” and I really liked “Made to Stick”. The main idea of “Made to Stick” is that there are certain criteria that make a presentation or story stick with the audience or reader. What will the audience remember about a presentation a day later? This is important for business leaders and for that matter everyone in order to make your ideas stick! It is well known that conveying ideas in stories is more effective than explaining bullet after bullet and this is one of the key concepts – So what are the other nuggets?

Made to stick discusses how to make the stories more compelling by drawing in the audience at the beginning. It discusses the gap theory which is essentially that we do not like a gap in knowledge and this is why we will sometimes watch a lousy movie to the end because “We just have to know what happens!” The book discusses several techniques and boils it down to an acronym SUCCESs: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Story. The book then walks through stories that reinforce these 6 key components to make ideas stick. It is a good check list when you come up with a marketing advertisement to check off each box to see how many you hit. The more you hit the more likely your ideas will stick.

One example that the book gives of a sticky story is the Subway story of Jared. The story is that Jared goes to Subway everyday and enjoys the food and looses 245 lbs. It is definitely simple! It is unusual since usually you gain weight eating fast food. It is very concrete and credible. Finally it is an emotional story about a guy going from 425 lbs to 180 lbs, essentially saving his life by eating at Subway! There is a check mark in every box so it is no surprise that this story sticks.

I recommend reading “Made to Stick.”

Desktop Virtualization

I read an interesting article in Forbes magazine: “Desktop Virtualization Tips for CIOs” by Elias Khnaser. The article points out that desktop virtualization does not always mean VDI as it may mean streaming a virtual application or running virtual machines on your desktop but I will stick with VDI – a virtual desktop implementation.

Virtual desktop implementation (VDI) is compelling from a management standpoint. It certainly saves money on desktop operational expenditure but not on capital expenditure according to Gartner. This is different from server virtualization. Server virtualization’s savings on Op Ex and Cap Ex made it extremely compelling.

The article points out that VDI must be planned entirely differently than server virtualization as the challenge becomes supporting many more applications than what is running on a server. This is where you run into problems of what applications will run on the desktops and who is in control. The technical team will like the control and ease of management – Will the users like it? VDI does create a great access anywhere and consistent look and feel.

The article is good – here is a link:

http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/24/virtualization-windows7-vdi-technology-cio-network-desktop.html

Solid State Drives

Solid State Drives (SSD) are growing at a rapid rate. The latest information states 510 Million and growing 50% over the next year. This is still a small number compared to traditional hard drives and Seagate just released a hybrid to enhance hard drive performance. Solid state technology is going down in cost and the controller technology is advancing to make SSD more attractive in more applications. Solid state technology does have a strong appeal as everyone knows that the more moving parts the more likely you will have a failure.

Here are a couple of articles on SSD Drives:

http://www.reportlinker.com/p0196489/Enterprise-SSDs-Technologies-and-Markets.html?request=news

http://hothardware.com/News/5Way-SSD-RoundUp-Sandforce-vs-JMicron/

Managing Cloud Computing

I read an article in CIO Magazine “Cloud Computing: What CIOs Need to Know About Integration” by Kim S. Nash. The article discusses the use of cloud based solutions and how they show up at companies the way a PC did in the 80s – often not through the IT department. IT departments role will be to integrate and manage at some stage. Clearly this creates an interesting challenge for the CIO.

The article also discusses running internal systems in parallel with cloud computing in order to accommodate peak requirement period i.e. between Thanksgiving and Christmas for retail and January through April 15th for accounting businesses. This appears to make a great deal of sense. The challenge becomes how to manage this! The business needs to recognize the savings and not consume them in management. It is still early days so it will be interesting to see the developments.

Nortec’s cloud offering is Nortec 24/7 and it includes hosted service including Exchange email, network monitoring and managed services. The cloud services are growing rapidly and going extremely well. In the hosted Exchange email solutions we implemented entirely cloud based solutions. On the existing Exchange email cloud services migrating premise to the cloud or from one cloud service to another is like any other migration and takes planning and time to implement. We are now working with Exchange 2010 in many clients and with this Microsoft offers a seamless passing back and forth to the cloud. Cloud technology is evolving without a doubt….

Link to article “Cloud Computing: What CIOs Need to Know About Integration”:

http://tinyurl.com/2cgl3b7

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!