Archive for the 'Information Technology' Category

Do I Have a Future as a Futurist?

Published January 20, 2020 Information Technology , Uncategorized Leave a Comment

I’ve been to the year 3000
Not much has changed, but they lived underwater
And your great-great-great-granddaughter
Is doing fine
Doing fine

I took a trip to the year 3000
This song had gone multi-platinum
Everybody bought our seventh album
It had outsold Kelly Clarkson

 

That’s the chorus from a cover version of “Year 3000“, a song originally performed by British pop punk band Busted in 2002.  The Jonas Brothers released this cover in 2007 with some slightly cleaned up lyrics more fitting their clean-cut boy band image and their pre-teen fan base.  Fun fact, I have seen the Jonas Brothers in concert 4 times (the joys of fatherhood with daughters) but have never seen the pop punk band Busted.

Back in late 2012 I was asked by CenturyLink to contribute an article for an ebook on predictions for business technology in the year 2020. That was not as far out of the year 3000 but with the pace of technology changes, looking 8 years into the future of tech felt like 1,000 years. I have not been able to track down the ebook, but I did blog about my predictions so there is some records of my prognostication.  Now that we have arrived at the year 2020, I thought it would be interesting to take a look and see how my predictions fared over the past 8+ years.

Prediction #1:  My daughter will be close to wrapping up college and entering the professional workforce.

Well my oldest daughter is close to wrapping up college as she is in the middle of her third year at Ole Miss where she is pursuing a degree in Marketing with minors in Accounting and Management Information Systems.  In addition she has her first internship lined up for Summer 2020.  Feel free to direct message me if you need someone with the combo of educational background and skills in mid-2021.

Verdict:  Spot-on.

Prediction #2:  The cube mazes at many offices would go away because people would not need to be plugged into anything to do their work. Note this was the prediction of my then 13 year old daughter.

While there are still plenty of network cables running through office ceilings and walls, the proliferation of enterprise wireless networks has indeed happened.  There are many days when I am either at my official office or at a client site that I never plug into anything.  My device batteries are long lasting, wireless network access is available and through various screen casting technologies I can throw a presentation up on a monitor without the need for cables.  All of this lessened demand on being constantly plugged in has allowed for more open space offices with alternative lounge-like areas where employees can get things done without being tied to a desk or cube.  There are sadly still offices with the dreaded maze of cubes, but for the most part this has little to do with technology constraints.

Verdict:  Not too bad for a 13 year old kid.

Prediction #3:  There will be a continued growth in data still going strong in 2020, which means a continued demand for more and faster storage, faster network speeds, and larger data circuits.

Demand for data storage worldwide has certainly grown over the past 8 years.  Some estimates I have read show the 2012 demand hovering around 2,000 exabytes and the projected demand in 2020 to be over 30,000 exabytes.  That is crazy growth.  This demand for data and the explosion of cloud based solutions has also caused a major shift in the amount of bandwidth needed in the enterprise.  Gone are the days where you could nail up a couple of T1’s as part of an MPLS network for a small satellite office and call it a day.  Now even small offices have demands for connections with much faster speeds and need to implement things like software defined networks.  The corporate data network today looks much different than it did 8 years ago.

Verdict: Spot-on.

Prediction #4: A continued contraction in the size of corporate data centers and the continued expansion of computing capacity being delivered by third-party service providers.

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure Services, Google Cloud Computing Services, and just about any type of application now available on a “as a service” model have seen significant growth over the past 8 years.  While many companies still have data centers (and I am a true believer in hybrid compute) the need for larger data center footprints generally has decreased due to a combination of more compute and storage squeezed into smaller form factors and the above mentioned explosion of “as a service” technology offerings.  The corporate data center is nowhere near extinct, but I think the growth has certainly stopped.

Verdict:  In the ballpark, but not spot-on.

Prediction #5: The install base of desktops and laptops will be reduced substantially by 2020; Tablets and smartphones will be the standard devices in the workplace, and there will be some not yet thought of device form factor emerging as the hot new thing in 2020.

In 2012 the US market share mix between desktops/laptops versus mobile/tablet devices was somewhere in the 80-20 range, with desktops/laptops dominating that overall market.  Fast forward to 2019 and that mix has changed dramatically with desktops/laptops now accounting for around 40% of the market and mobile/tablets in the lead at around 60%.  However, from my perspective this has not been a shift driven by replacement, rather a shift driven by addition.   The mobile/tablet device has not replaced the traditional desktop/laptop.  Most people I see now use a laptop, a mobile device and in many cases also have a tablet. However for most organizations desktops/laptops still dominate the landscape as the go to workhorse device.

And on the device form factor front, I don’t think things have changed that drastically.  Yes laptops have gotten smaller and more powerful and the smart-phones from Apple and Samsung continue to add more whiz-bang features and advanced cameras, but they are for the most part not that different from what was available in 2012.  (Side note:  in my original predictions I said people would still be lining up for the latest iPhone 13, but actually we are only up 11 – but still lining up virtually.)

Some might say the smart speakers introduced during that 8 year span are a new and hot form factor, but again I see those as more additive devices.  Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to turn on lights, control TV remotes, set thermostats, stream my favorite 80s song or have Jimmy Fallon tell me an awesome dad-joke with a shout of my voice.  However, I have yet to really see those smart speakers adopted in the enterprise space.

Verdict:  Swing and a miss.

Prediction #6: For some businesses, the office as we know it today will cease to exist. The office will truly become wherever the employee happens to be, which will surely drive InfoSec professionals crazy.

While there have been ebbs and flows at major companies around embracing the true remote worker, there has no doubt been a continued move towards work happening outside the traditional office locations.  And this trend has certainly driven and will continue to drive InfoSec professionals crazy.  However, I have not seen any seismic shift in businesses doing completely away with the brick-and-mortar (or steel and glass) offices.

Verdict: Not a complete swing and a miss, more like a foul ball.

Overall Conclusion:  So for not having any mystical powers like the legendary Carnac the Magnificent (for those under the age of 50 go Google it), I felt like I did fairly well looking into the unknown of the future. However, I don’t think I ready to rely on my futuristic visions to support the family.  Fortunately, I think the CEO’s in 2020 realize they still need CIOs.

 

 

The Shadow Knows

Published January 10, 2020 Information Technology , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags:

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”

“The Shadow knows!”

These are the opening lines to the popular 1930s radio program “The Shadow.” While the Shadow may have known about the lurking evil, many of today’s CIOs are not so fortunate in knowing where IT lurks across their organizations. That’s right, I am talking about the evil called “Shadow IT.”

For those that do not know what is meant by “Shadow IT”, this is basically when employees within an organization are using systems, applications, software, storage solutions or other technology tools without the knowledge of the organizations designated IT department.

As a former CIO who had open, but properly approved and provisioned, access to the company’s financial transaction data and a background in accounting, I know firsthand that Shadow IT is real. I would regularly query the general ledger and accounts payable transactions looking for expenses or assets that looked to be technology related but were not recorded against the expected GL codes of the IT function. I don’t recall a single time I reviewed such data without coming across some kind of technology spend that was happening outside the corporate IT organization and without my prior awareness.

In addition to those financial transaction reviews, I would also found out about Shadow IT items just by listening and observing. When traveling to different locations around the company, I would make a point to decline to sit in a guest office, instead opting to sit out in an available cubicle or open area work space. This would give me a chance to see and hear how employees worked and in some cases see the use of technology-based tools that I knew were not acquired and provisioned through approved channels.

In all the cases of Shadow IT I came across, I don’t recall any instance where someone was trying to maliciously disregard policies or trying to intentionally put the security of the company (and data) at risk. In general, people were just finding ways to get their job done easier and to better serve their customers; and with the proliferation of applications, systems, storage, and platforms being offered as a service the ability to acquire and consume technology outside the purview of the IT function is becoming easier and easier.

So you may be thinking “what’s the big deal about having Shadow IT?” Two words come to mind: money and risks (specifically data security risks.)

Shadow IT can be expensive for an organization – much more expensive than acquiring the technology through formally established IT procurement processes. This increased expense can be in the form of poorly negotiated pricing, inadequate evaluation of alternative solutions and duplication of technology across the organization. In addition, the cost of Shadow IT solutions are often coded into miscellaneous expense categories or are not scrutinized due to the relatively small amount in the context of the non-IT operating budgets. This can result in unmanaged expenses and at time ongoing expenses for technology solutions that are not even actively used.

Shadow IT can also expose an organization to increased risk related to data security. Typically the core processes and controls an IT function have in place are not applied to solutions acquired and managed outside of the IT function. IT functions usually have established processes and procedures to manage access to technology solutions that ensure that new users are given access only to data that is needed to perform job tasks; that access is removed when employees change roles or depart the organization; and that access to systems is reviewed on a regular basis. Systems and applications managed by IT functions usually also have strict password policies that require complex passwords and require regularly changing of passwords. These strict password controls are often lacking or inadequate in Shadow IT environments. In addition, systems and applications managed by IT functions are typically monitored for patches and updates to address security vulnerabilities. The IT function typically also has processes to receive notices from IT solution providers about security incidents and to respond accordingly. These monitoring and response capabilities are typically lacking for technology solutions procured and managed outside of IT functions.

While I could continue on and on about the security risks introduced or amplified by Shadow IT, I think you get the idea. Shadow IT can also create other risks, such as the administrative access to an application walking out the door with a terminated employee (yes, I lived through that one) or having ownership of a company website domain registered under an employee and not the company and not finding out about until the employee has left the company (again, that happened to me.)

So what’s a CIO to do to try and stop or at least curb the evil known as Shadow IT?

  • It almost goes with saying, but have company policies that require IT solutions be acquired and managed through the appropriate IT function.
  • Create processes that make it easy for other function and their employees to request and consume technology that is managed by the IT function. People are normally like water and will follow the path of least resistance. The easier you make it to use the approved IT services, the less likely it is that someone will look for a different path.
  • Listen to the needs of employees and provide technology that makes it easier and more efficient to perform daily tasks. If you are giving employees the tools they need, the need to go find tools outside of the IT function are diminished.
  • Apply the same listening skills to external customers as well. If the IT function does not provide technology that meets the needs of customers, other functions within the organization that interact more closely with customers will find other avenues to meet the needs.
  • When you find Shadow IT, get the management of the technology in alignment with how other technology is managed. Even if the management tasks are not performed directly to IT staff, make sure it follow establish processes and procedures for the management of technology.
  • Do not be the CI-NO! This doesn’t mean you have to say yes to every request, but the answer shouldn’t always be an outright “No”; sometimes it may be providing an alternative that accomplishes the same goal. Shadow IT is typically a sign that the business, and specifically the IT function, is not providing employees with adequate tools to effectively and efficiently carry out their job functions. If IT is providing the business with the technology needed to be successful, other departments and individual employees will not feel a need to go seek out their own technology solutions.

There were times as a CIO that I got pretty worked up about Shadow IT and would start down the war path to go after those that created it. However, calmer heads almost always prevailed and  I tried my best to use every occurrence of it as a learning experience on where there were gaps in the services being provided to the organization. The learnings would then be used to shape and direct future investments in technology and to improve how IT services were delivered to the organization.  While the impacts of Shadow IT can be evil, the intention of those engaged in Shadow IT are usually good.

“Who knows what evil lurks in the shadows of IT? “ If an organization is lucky, the answer is “The CIO knows!”

Flashback: No Slam Dunks In IT

Published January 22, 2017 Information Technology , Risk Management , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , , ,

I was looking back through some of my early, circa 2012, musings and came across this gem. I can happily say that I survived my years of managing data centers without ever having to declare a disaster.  However, even with a constant focus on change management processes, I did see my fair share of self-inflicted outages.

I long ago learned that humans are fallible and that all the procedures in the world can’t prevent every mistake.  However, I still believe that following a structured change management process is critical to running a successful IT Operations function and that the key to a good change management process is communication.

While I am currently taking a break from being responsible for IT Operations, if I ever find myself back in that role, I for sure will subscribe to my: ” Plan –> Communicate –> Execute –> Test –> Communicate framework.

Here’s my original thoughts from 2012:

“There are No Slam Dunks in IT.”

That’s a saying I have thrown around for close to 10 years now. But one that I think too many people in technology fail to remember on a daily basis. They get caught up in the urgency of the moment, short cut change management procedures, fail to think about the downstream impact of what they see as a minor, isolated change. All too often the mindset of “the easy change,” “the lay-up,” or “the routine lazy fly ball” ends up as an unexpected outage. That break away slam dunk clanks off the rim and bounces out of bounds. That easy two points turns into a turnover.

As we kicked off 2012, a relatively new to the company network engineer noticed that a top of rack server switch had two fiber uplinks but only one was active. Anxious to make a good impression, he wanted to resolve that issue. It was an admiral thing to do. He was taking initiative to make things better. So one night during the first week of the fresh new year, he executed a change to bring up the second uplink. Things did not go well as the change, and I will not go into the gory technical details, brought down the entire data center network. It was after standard business hours – whatever that means in today’s 24×7 business world – but the impact of that 10 minutes outage was significant. A classic case of a self-inflicted wound from not following good change management procedures.

It was actually a frustrating incident for me, because as we put together the 2012 Business Plan for Corporate Technology Services, we were asked to list the keys to success for our operations and the actions we needed to take achieve success.

THE #1 key for success listed was: Avoid self-inflicted outages and issues that take away cycles from the planned efforts and cause unplanned unavailability of our client facing solutions.

So 30 days prior I had told our CEO, CFO and the rest of the executive management team that our #1 key to success in IT was to avoid such things, yet here I was four days into the new year staring at the carnage of a self-inflicted outage.

Outages are close to a given in the world of technology. Servers will crash, switches will randomly reboot, hard drives will fail, application will act weird, redundancy will fail, and there will be maintenance efforts that we know will cause outages. Given that, every IT organization must take steps to not be the cause of even more outages. Business leaders know that there will be some level of downtime with technology – have you ever seen a 100% SLA? Rarely. It is usually some 99.xx% number. But outages that are caused by the very people charged with keeping things running drives them nuts, and rightfully so.

The morning after that self-inflicted wound, I communicated out the following to every member of the IT organization:

We need to strive to make sure that we are not the cause of any unexpected outages. We must exercise good change management process and follow the five actions listed above. As our solutions and the underlying infrastructure become increasingly intertwined, we must make an extra effort to assess the potential unintended downstream (or upstream) impact as we plan the change.

When making a change we must always follow these steps:

Plan – make sure each change action/project we undertake is well thought out, steps are documented, risks are assessed. If disruption in service is expected, plan for when we make this change to limit the impact of the disruption.

Communicate – communicate each change action/project to the parties potentially impacted prior to executing the change

Execute – flawlessly execute according the plan developed

Test – test to make sure that the change executed resulted in the expected results and there are no unintended consequences from the change

Communicate – communicate to the potentially impacted parties that the change has been completed and tested

To keep this goal of avoiding self-inflicted outages top of mind, we implemented a ‘It’s Been X Days Since our Last Self-Inflicted Outage” counter. Basically taking a page out of the factory accident prevention playbook.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Getting Retail Back to the Future

Published January 22, 2015 Information Technology Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. 

Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. 

Wouldn’t you like to get away? 

Sometimes you want to go  where everybody knows your name, 

And they’re always glad you came. 

You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same

You wanna be where everybody knows your name. 

You wanna go where people know,  people are all the same, 

You wanna go where everybody knows your name

This is the theme song to the 80s TV show Cheers about a group of people that form a friendship centered on a bar in Boston.  The idea of people knowing your name at a bar is not that far-fetched even in today’s world.  There was a time when this same concept held true in American retail.  Back when most retail, even high-end retail, was mainly local single location family-owned stores. In that environment, store owners and professional salespeople had a true personal connection with their customers.  Customer were known my name and retailers had detail knowledge of each customer. However, as retail in the United States has evolved that feeling of connection between retailer and customer seems to have dwindled.

I have found myself on a bit of a book reading binge in recent months, mixing in insight from Harvey Penick’s books on golf with several books about various retailers.  My latest read is Minding the Store by Stanley Marcus.  It is the story of the founding and growth of specialty retailer Neiman Marcus.  While the book was filled with all kinds of anecdotes of unique customers and sales that have passed through Neimans over the years, there was one specific quote from Stanley Marcus in the book that clicked with me:  “As long as the customer is alive, you have a prospect.”  As the CIO for a team of passionate marketing professionals this notion resonated strongly with me.

The book also highlighted that back in the days before computers Neiman Marcus provided each salesperson with a clientele book.  The salesperson was required to record all purchases for each customer in this book, as well as birthdays, anniversaries and other information that might provide useful in contacting the customer by letter or phone.  The idea was that if properly used, the customer purchase history would make it easy to relate new merchandise to things the customer already owned.  This insight could then be used to directly contact that customer to drive new sales.  That sounds a lot like the direct one-to-one communication that we hear retailers say they want to achieve with their marketing activities today.

Sadly it feels like retailers, like Neiman-Marcus, have lost sight and/or proper execution of this simple concept.  I asked my wife, an occasional shopper at Neiman Marcus, if she received the same type of one-to-one relevant communications from that store today.  Her response that while the salesperson at the store usually asked for her name at the point of sales counter, she rarely if ever receives any kind of communication from the store and certainly nothing that she would consider one-to-one. Perhaps the lack of communication is due to her historical low (or so she tells me) level of total  spend at that store or perhaps it is just a lack of understanding of the value of the information possessed or how to use the information to establish a one-to-one connection that could drive more sales.  In any case, the result is retailers missing out on the value of that one-to-one relationship Stanley Marcus so wisely observed fifty plus years ago.

I am only using Neiman Marcus as an example because it was the topic of the book that got my mind thinking about this idea.  But there are retailers everywhere that fail to take full advantage of the information they possess on their customers. I think my wife is a member of just about every retail loyalty program ever created but rarely do I see what looks like true one-to-one communication from those retailers.  At best, I see messaging that has dropped her into some large segmentation bucket and even that is not done on a regular occurrence.  This perplexes me as I know these businesses have a wealth of information about her and her purchase habits; information that could allow them to create that same in-store (or online) experience of having a personal connection to the customer, much like that which customers must have felt at the Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas back in the 1950s.

The data are there; the technology is there; and there are smart marketers out there that know how to combine that data and technology to create that personal connection.  While some might find it slightly creepy, I for one can’t wait for the day to return when the salesperson at Neiman Marcus knows my name when I walk through the door – it will be a back to the future moment.

AM Radio……and Beyond

Published March 22, 2013 Information Technology , Life Leave a Comment
Tags: , ,

The VCR and the DVD – there wasn’t none of that crap back in 1970

We didn’t know about a World Wide Web

Was a whole different game being played back when I was a kid

Wanna get down in a cool way?

Picture yourself on a beautiful day

Big Bell Bottoms and groovy, long hair

Just a-walking in style with a portable CD player – No!

You would listen to the music on the AM Radio

Yeah, you could hear the music on the AM Radio

These are the opening lyrics to the song “AM Radio” from one of my favorite 90’s bands, Everclear.  I was a kid in the 1970’s and 80s, and I can very much relate to the picture painted by these lyrics.  While these lyrics are from the perspective of a kid growing up in the 70s, you could just as easily rewrite them from the perspective of a kid in 1990 or even 2010.

I still remember the excitement of getting an Atari, a “portable” jambox that weighed over 5 pounds, and cable TV.  The latter of which did not happen until I was in my late teens.  I remember feeling lucky to have a 12” black and white TV in my bedroom as a teenager, and it was a TV on which I had to use pliers to change the channel to pick up one of the 4 stations we could tune in over the air. I also remember going into debt when I was a junior in college to buy a Tandy (yes Tandy) computer so I could use a rudimentary spreadsheet program to help with my accounting classes.

I also remember getting my first laptop when I entered the  high flying world of Big 6 Consulting in the late 90’s – I don’t recall the exact specs of it, but my back to this day remembers that it was heavier than a brick.  And I recall connecting that laptop to pay phones (yes pay phones) at the airport so I could dial-into our Groupwise mail server.  And I can’t forget the awe and amazement when I was issued a cell phone a few years later.

Fast forward 15 years and I am now sitting on a plane writing this blog on a touch screen tablet that weighs less than 2 pounds and is connected via wireless to the entire world at 35,000 feet – all while listening to one of the 1000s of songs on a my iPod and thinking about which type of smartphone I want next  – smartphones that I am sure have more memory and horsepower than that first brick of a laptop I had and certainly much more than the Tandy computer that took me 2 years to pay off back in the early 90s.

As a kid, I never imagined we would have the real time interactions we have today.  To think that in my lifetime, I went from Polaroid picture to being able to stream real time video anywhere in the world from a 3 inch x 5 inch device in my hand is just crazy.  Just last week, I was riding in the back of car through the mountains of Colorado while having a conversation with a business associate in Australia via a tablet connected to a wireless hotspot.  While this is common place technology in today’s world, I couldn’t help but stop and think about how dang cool it was to do it.  And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

In the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to listen to people from Intel and Microsoft talk about what is coming down the technology pipe.  While many of us are amazed at the technology that is hitting the market now – all the touch laptops, tablets, phones and the ever increasing number of connected things – it sounds like what will become available in the next 18-24 months will rock our worlds – in how we work, how we learn and how we live.  The pace of technology innovation feels to be picking up.  The question is “Are we all ready to keep up with it?”

A few final disclosures:

1)      As a kid, my parent’s car had nothing but AM radio.

2)      We still have VHS tapes and a VCR to play them on at our house.

3)      I just recently took the very first DVD player I ever owned to Goodwill.

4)      I can now change the channel on my TV from my iPhone (no pliers needed)

5)      I still listen to AM radio on a regular basis.

Business Technology in 2020

Published March 5, 2013 Information Technology , Uncategorized 1 Comment
Tags: , , ,

I was recently asked by CenturyLink to contribute an article for an ebook on predictions for business technology in the year 2020. The ebook “Business Technology 2020″ can be found on CenturyLink’s ThinkGig blog. You can also view it using the following link/bitly: http://bit.ly/1149RVV Below is my contribution to the ebook.

I was recently asked the question, “What will business technology look like in 2020?”

My first thought was, “That’s so far out into the future; there is no way to think that many years ahead.” Then I looked at the calendar and realized it was almost 2013, and that 2020 really wasn’t far down the road. I also realized my oldest daughter will be wrapping up college around 2020 and entering the workforce for the first time. So I decided to ask her what she thought it would look like.

My daughter’s first response was one of shock that in seven years she would be starting a career. She told me she thought people would just be using some kind of tablet for work, but a tablet a little bigger than what we use today. One that lets you do multiple things at once: be on a video call, edit a document, and look at a Web page. She also thought the cube mazes at many offices would go away because people would not need to be plugged into anything to do their work.

Though the musings of the future in the eyes of a 13-year-old are interesting, I have my own thoughts on what business technology will look like in seven years. If the past decade is any indication, we are in for a wild ride. I have often said that if my company’s revenue and operating income had grown over the past decade at the same rate as our data storage and bandwidth requirements, I would have retired early. My crystal ball shows that growth in data to still be going strong in 2020, which means a continued demand for more and faster storage, faster network speeds, and larger data circuits.

I have said before that I could see being the CIO of a company without a data center. I don’t think that we will be there by 2020, but it will certainly be closer to a reality. I envision a continued contraction in the size of corporate data centers and the continued expansion of computing capacity being delivered by third-party service providers. I recall five years ago worrying about whether the main data center we built would be large enough to handle our growth and physical consolidation of smaller satellite centers. As I walk through that data center now, I worry about what to do with all the space where racks full of servers once stood — servers that have now been virtualized and take up a small fraction of the physical space. The worry of having a too small data center has been replaced with the worry of having one that is too large. As we march toward 2020, server virtualization and X as a service — X being software, platform, infrastructure, or application — will continue to change the shape of data centers. There will be fewer servers, more network hardware, and less energy consumption.

When I look back at how much has changed with end user devices since I entered the workforce in the early 1990s, I can’t help but think that we will see that same pace and innovation over the next seven years. They will not have gone completely the way of the typewriter, but the install base of desktops and laptops will be reduced substantially by 2020. Tablets and smartphones will be the standard devices in the workplace, and I am sure there will be some not yet thought of device form factor that will be the hot new thing in 2020. Rest assured: There will still be people camping out in June 2020 to buy the iPhone 13. Much like my daughter, I also see the use of the traditional office phone, hard-wired data drops, and the conventional office cubicle slowly being phased out as we approach 2020. I might even dare say that for some businesses, the office as we know it today will cease to exist. The office will truly become wherever the employee happens to be, which will surely drive InfoSec professionals crazy.

So in summary, how do I see 2020? More data. More mobility. Smaller corporate data centers. I just hope that CEOs in 2020 realize they still need CIOs.

The Day the iPad Died

Published February 14, 2013 Information Technology , Music , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , ,

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
And, I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance, and…
Maybe they’d be happy for a while
But, February made me shiver with every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep – I couldn’t take one more step
I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride
Something touched me deep inside the day the music died

For those under the age of 40, these are the opening lyrics to Don McLean’s 1971 song about the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in 1959 – also known as “The day the music died.” Years ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa and see the last place those rock-n-roll legends performed. If you love rock-n-roll and find yourself in Iowa, stop by and see it.

Today’s thoughts are not about the death of music. They are about, at least for me, the passing of a device that much like Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had an extremely bright but short flame.

I became an “i” guy out of necessity soon after the first generation iPhone hit the market. Our CEO at the time called me up and told me that he wanted an iPhone to use with his work email. I attempted to explain that the iPhone would not work well with our older version of Lotus Notes and that the experience would not be one he would like. As CEOs are apt to do, he did not want to hear that and insisted that I go get him an iPhone and make it work.

So off I went to the Apple store to buy one and set up an ATT wireless plan. With a few days of tweaking and testing, we were able to get mail flowing, but no calendar synching, no access to our corporate directory, no synching of his contacts, and no access to any of our internal systems. It was a far cry from what could be done at the time with Blackberry devices. I delivered the device to our CEO along with the long list of things it could not do within our corporate environment.

Three days later, the CEO called me and told me the iPhone was not what he expected – for all the same reasons I had tried to tell him before ever purchasing one. He told me he was sending it back. So there I was, with a $500+ device and a 2-yr service commitment on a personally-liable account. So for the next two years, I carried that iPhone as my main device and dealt with the pains of Lotus Notes in an ‘I” world. As technology progressed and we moved to a new email platform, the iPhone became a more powerful and useful device. While I flirted with other devices – various Andriods and even a WinMobile – I stuck with the “i” world.

Towards the end of 2011, I told people that the work laptop I was currently using would be the last laptop I ever used. As I became further immersed in the ‘i” environment, I set my sights on the iPad. I had a vision of the iPad being the end of the Windows-based laptop. I tried for over a year to make the iPad be THE work device for me. I bought “Office-like” apps for spreadsheets and word processing. I leveraged cloud storage to have access to needed files. I downloaded apps to enhance my Sharepoint experience. I forced myself to not take my laptop on trips so that I was solely reliant on the iPad.

While I was able to survive with the iPad, I never felt completely comfortable. The “Office-like” apps were not full featured and clunky to use. I yearned for my Excel and my Word. I was also apt to forget to send files to the cloud, so I was always looking for that one file that I really needed. Yes, I felt cool carrying the iPad, but I never could pull the plug on my trusty laptop.

That all changed in mid-January. As part of the CIO track at DellWorld, I was offered a free Dell Latitude 10 Windows 8 Professional tablet. My first thought when I was told I would be receiving the tablet: “here’s another toy to play with for a week or two.” I did not have any expectations that this device would be a game changer.

When my Dell account executive delivered the Latitude 10 to me, we opened up the boxes and I causally glanced at the tablet, but did not jump right in to firing it up. Hours later, I finally turned it on and the revolution was on. I had in my hands a one and a half pound 10” laptop in tablet form. I had the familiar Windows operation system (once I got past the tiles), my trusty Office apps, all my files that I shamefully keep on my local drive, and a long lasting battery in the palm of my hands. The next day I had our desktop team join the device to our domain. Soon thereafter, our desktop management tool was pushing down apps just like it does with any other Windows based computer. Finally, there was a tablet that could be managed with our existing tools. It also came with a handy docking station for easy connection to a full screen monitor, mouse and keyboard.

After three days of using the tablet, I shut down my workhorse Thinkpad laptop for the final time.

A week later, I had to ask myself where I left my cool iPad. It was right where I left it the day I got my hands on that Dell tablet. I had gone 7 days without using the iPad – a device that previously felt like I used every 7 seconds.

For me it was “The day the iPad died.”

Darrell Royal: An IT Visionary?

Published December 19, 2012 College Sports , Information Technology Leave a Comment
Tags: ,

I recently received a copy of DKR: A Royal Scrapbook as a gift. As you have probably figured out by now, I am a huge University of Texas fan and receiving a gift like this book is a special to me.

The book chronicles the life and coaching career of what I consider one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. It is a book I will certainly pick and read many many times. Darrell Royal was known for espousing words of wisdom and the book is full of his quotes. While the quotes were typically spoken in the context of football, many of them can be thought about in a much broader context.

During my first read through the book, I came across one particular quote that as soon as I read I knew it was the start of a blog entry.

“Climbing is a thrill. Maintaining is a bitch.”

The quote was said in the context of the thrill of building up a winning football program and the huge challenges that must be overcome to maintain that football program at a consistently high level. Recent football seasons have proven that to be the case – just look at the recent struggles of USC, Auburn and my beloved Longhorns. All three have gone from being National Champions during the past decade to having average or below average teams in the past couple of years.

However, when I read it I thought about the challenges faced everyday by IT organizations. On a frequent basis I read white papers about the percentage of an IT organization’s budget and resources that is spent on day-to-day operations versus spent on implementing new technology to improve and benefit the business. Many of these papers peg that breakdown at around 80% on “keeping the lights on” and 20% on moving the business forward. I recently heard the CIO at Dell proudly state that they run around the 70-30 mark.

When you see figures like 70-80% of IT resources being consumed on maintaining the existing environment, you can see how one could agree with the idea that “maintaining is a bitch.” I know I can relate to that idea.

Maintaining a complex IT environment is challenging. While many technologist want to ignore the existing and just focus on the thrill of rolling out the new technology, I think there is value in having staff that see the value in maintaining what is already installed. Especially when that staff takes the concept of maintaining to a different level of not just being content with the “as is” but instead look for ways to make the maintaining more efficient and more effective.

I have worked with many talented technology professionals that were consumed with just working on new stuff. They never wanted to spend time on maintaining what was built. It was build, build, build all the time. During my stint in the Big 4 Consulting world, the climbers were everywhere – me included. We were all about the thrill of the implementation.

However, as I moved out of the consulting world and into corporate IT, I started to appreciate the maintainers. This appreciation grew when the economy slowed down and then dipped, and then dipped again. While talented, many of the “I just want to work on new” employees in our IT organization were near the top of the list for staff reductions. Meanwhile the “maintainers with a twist of efficiency” types became the rock stars of IT. Even as business picks up, I still find these employees to be extremely valuable. In my eyes, employees that are finding ways to maintain the technology environment in more effective and efficient ways are not only brining stability to the business, they are also innovating. They are finding ways to reduce the cost of maintaining so that there is more capital available for pure innovation.

Now don’t get me wrong, businesses need technology climbers. The climbers take us to new heights through implementing bold new technology. However, once we reach those new heights, we need to the maintainers to keep as from tumbling back down the mountain.

Is maintaining IT a bitch? I think so. I am just happy that some people like dealing with the “bitch.”

Oh and one more thing: Hook’em Horns!!

No Slam Dunks – An Update on the Qwest for IT Perfection

Published August 27, 2012 Information Technology 2 Comments

You may have recalled that way back in January of this year, I started a campaign within my company to eliminate self-inflicted technology outages. The slogan for the campaign was “There are No Slam Dunks in IT.” After a rocky start in January and February, our team got on a roll and posted an impressive 190 days without a self induced outage.

During this time we made numerous changes within our environment. We added new locations; we upgraded major network infrastructure within our data centers; we replaced telephone systems; we virtualized servers like crazy; and we did a major email/collaboration platform upgrade. Through it all we followed our steps of good change management. We planned. We communicated. We executed. We tested. We communicated. It was a beautiful site to see.

But I noticed something as the days started piling up. Slowly but surely the confidence of the team swelled. Unfortunately it swelled to a point, where it felt like as a team we began to think that there were indeed “slam dunks in IT.” It seemed the more success we had, the more corners we cut. We slid in extras during maintenance windows. We stopped doing some of the double checks we were doing earlier in the year. Our communications lacked sufficient details. We were still following our change management steps, but to some extent we started going through the motions. We reached a point of being too confident.

After a few near misses in early August, our streak of days without a self-inflicted outage came to an end last week and two days later we stumbled again. While you never like to have outages, I was almost relieved that we stumbled. I wish it had just been one stumble and not two, but I think the issues brought our team back down to earth and reminded us that we have to continue to be diligent in following our change management processes. It highlighted that going through the motions doesn’t cut it.

We have reset the clock, but I am confident that we can once again get on a good roll of days without IT causing an outage. I just hope this time around the confidence does not go to our heads because Slam Dunks aren’t allowed on this court!!

Hey! You! Should You Be on That Cloud?

Published May 11, 2012 Information Technology , Risk Management 1 Comment
Tags: , , , ,

I said, Hey! You! Get off of my cloud

Hey! You! Get off of my cloud

Hey! You! Get off of my cloud

Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd on my cloud, baby

 I am fairly certain that Mick and the boys were not singing about today’s clouds – computing clouds that is.  I guess they could have been advocating private clouds, but I highly doubt it.   However, if any of the Stones were current day CIOs, they might be singing “Hey, you! Should you be on THAT cloud?”

It seems these days that everybody in business has a cloud, is on a cloud or wants to be on a cloud.  It feels like every tech article I read, every discussion I have with my technology partners, every request I get from my internal business partners includes the cloud word or one of the “X” as a service phrases – where “X” = software, platform, infrastructure. In fact I just read about a new company that has created a SaaS offering for farmers – not exactly an industry synomonous with leading edge technology.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love this cloud stuff.  I have even gone on record as saying I would love to one day be the CIO of a company that has no data centers and owns no servers.  But that day is not today – but its getting closer everyday.

There is still much to be sorted out with these clouds.  While I meet with company after company that wants to talk about sellling me a cloud, not one of them wants to talk about how to manage them.  How do you best evaluate the risks associated with cloud computing?  How do you keep non-IT parts of the business from jumping on every cloud that drifts by them without fully thinking through all the ramifications of doing so? Without strong governance you have cloud chaos.  In my part of the world, out of control clouds are called thunderstorms.  While thunderstorms can bring much needed rain, they can also cause a large amount of upredictable damage.

To avoid the thunderstorms of cloud computing, companies must implement comprehensive cloud management procedures throughout the organization.  The non-IT parts of the business need to include IT in the evaluation, selection and implementation of all cloud-based services.  At the same time, IT cannot be the “department of NO” in an effort to keep everything within the four walls of the corporate data center.  In addition, any ventures into the cloud need to involve those dreaded people in legal/contracts departments and whatever role(s) within the company responsible for risk management functions.

An easy place to start with cloud governance is to create and publish a simple “X as a Service” risk assessment form.  The form asks 15-20 basic questions about the proposed cloud offering.  The group within the company that is driving the effort completes the form and submits to the InfoSec or similar group within the company. The information about the proposed service is reviewed and where needed additional information can be requested.  Where needed, the Infosec team can engage other functions – legal, privacy, finance, etc. – within the company to obtain specific feedback.  It’s not an overly elaborate process, but it gets information about the use of cloud computing flowing through the organization and rasies awareness about potential risks associated with such services.  Once risks are identified, efforts can be undertaken to address those risks and beging enjoying the benefits of the cloud.

Not all clouds are created equal – so make sure you choose wisely.  If after looking at a cloud offering, there is a level of doubt about it, stop and ask yourself, “what would Mick do?”

//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 540 other subscribers