Is IT Dead?

Folks just can't seem to let go of this idea that IT is dying or dead. "Write it off," they say, "don't tell your kids to go into IT." This recent opinion article in ComputerWorld cites the recently announced layoff of 9,000 HP workers as some sort of proof.

Well, I just don't buy it. It is simply too easy of an argument to claim the death of this or that. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that the IT industry is primarily about technology -- and that is in constant flux. If HP were to have laid off all of it's Novell engineers when that great empire fell, would we be having the same conversation? Every technology has it's day, but unlike the article, I argue that the mission of IT has not and should never change. IT has, as its core mission, the objective of providing IT services to enable the business to achieve its solutions.

There is no to me difference whether those solutions exist within the walls of the company or not. IT has managed vendors, outsourcing and relationships for decades. When's the last time a company hosted publicly facing stuff out of a branch office by choice? Instead that's all moved to (typically) a third-party data center. Most enterprises don't operate their own conference calling center either, preferring to have a dedicated enterprise or voice carrier do it.

This idea of the "cloud" is all the same idea, just wrapped into another term. I agree that the network has become the world in which we live. Whether you call that the cloud or not is up to your own semantic distinctions. But, nonetheless, the cloud will not live on its own, will not integrate by itself and applications will not magically appear to leverage these things. All of this will still require dedicated, intelligent IT staff. They will just need different technology skill sets. 

And that is nothing new.

Office 2010 - Not So Fast

I've recently spent some time with Office 2010. Because I have an MSDN account, I usually get access to a lot of stuff from Microsoft prior to public release. I think the actual release date is tomorrow, June 15th.

Today, June 14th, I uninstalled it.

Several of my issues were rather minor. I felt that the file ribbon was a bit freakish in all the '10 apps. It is a bright and overly vivid green. This is a petty complaint, but distracting nonetheless when you are trying to get work done.

Outlook 2010 also incorporated the ribbon approach to the user interface. That was no problem. But the UI has become a box, with a colored "borders" around the entire application. This leaves white space in the middle and the email content there. It's like you are looking through a whole in the wall. Again, it's not a very welcome UI for something you tend to work with all day.

The real kicker though became the fact that the combination of Outlook and Excel suddenly decided that they couldn't open Excel files from the 97 to 2000 era. That certainly became an issue for me - within hours. I don't recall when it started happening or if it always was, but that just made it a no go.

So I uninstalled it and decided to go back to 2007. That was also apparently a mistake. Outlook 2010 did not uninstall or remove the Mail setup it had created on installation. When I went to install Outlook 2007, it could not handle the fact that Outlook 2010 (jealous anyone?) had been there and apparently Windows still only supports one Exchange account.

The solution to that at least was a registry change. You'd think in this day and age, what with Windows 7 and so forth that we wouldn't still be stuck using regedit. Maybe that'll be in the next version.

In the meantime, if you are running 2007 I recommend you stick. You'll do just fine. I suspect folks looking at Sharepoint 2010 would find some benefit, but others not so much. I'll wait for the next version at this point.

Dual Drive Failure

I've always know that a solid backup strategy is important. In my roles as MIS Manager or LAN admin, I always knew that no storage model is without flaw. I've seen issues even with fully redundant SAN solutions where critical issues still impact the sanctity of storage. 

Last week, the issue hit closer to home. I was away on a trips and I returned to an array failure. At home, I like to run a RAID 1 array to protect my music, documents and video files. I like the security of having one drive be an exact copy of the other. That way if a drive fails, you still have your data. The only point at which this falls down, is if both drives fail at once.

About a month ago, one of the 1TB drives in the array failed. I contacted Western Digital and they quickly verified my drive's warranty and I was able to select advanced replacement shipping - all on their web site. It was great. I put the new drive in my computer and then the array rebuilt in about a day. After that, I was all set. However, after running the new drive for about 2 weeks, I came home from a trip and found that not only had the replacement drive failed, but so had the original drive.  I guess Google was onto something with their drive failure study. Clearly, this left me with a total data loss situation.

Luckily, my Windows Home Server backs up my computer every day. In addition, I have a subscription to Mozy which keeps my backups off-site.  The negative with the Windows Home Server is that it seems to only allow a restore to the same drive letter. Since that array had a total failure, that wasn't an option. Mozy, however, allows you to choose your destination. So, I began a restore from Mozy to one of my other 1TB drives. That was a week ago, and it's still running. I believe the restore I've requested is almost 200GB so I fully expect it to take awhile.

Why I am wasting so much time downloading this when the data is on my home server? I have little faith in redundancy right now, so even though the home server is using data protection, I'm feeling better getting a second copy. In the meantime, I've sent both drives off to Western Digital. I hope they get back quickly - as Advanced Replacement was inexplicably not an option when you have a problem with two drives.

ACORD 2010

Early last week, I attended the ACORD/LOMA 2010 conference. I had never attended one before even though I've been in the insurance industry for quite some time. What is ACORD/LOMA? In short, ACORD is the technical standards body for the insurance industry and LOMA is composed of the training folk who help technologists learn insurance domain knowledge.

This year, the conference was held in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay casino.The facility is top notch and Vegas is certainly a city that's all about the convention. The only negative is that it's a 15 minute commute by foot between the rooms and the convention area. Beyond that, the food was good and the staff pleasant.


As to the show itself, it was a nice blend of sessions for the agency, the carrier and vendors. While it had the tendency to become commercialized at times (what show isn't?), it still was chock-full of topics and issues that are helpful to me in my role as a product manager. The show didn't have an obvious theme, though I was surprised at how much the larger vendors have moved into the insurance space. I'm familiar with all the various insurance vendors, but now joining the effort are the household names such as Microsoft, Oracle and HP. Each of these were platinum providers and are clearly starting to pay attention to the insurance vertical.


Other items of note are a continued emphasis on the standards we know and love, such as ACORD XML, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the move of services to the cloud. Microsoft was intensely emphatic about the latter and freely mentioned their Azure platform, Sharepoint 2010 and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform.


I am not sure where all of this will lead, but I hope to attend next year's conference to continue to see how the industry looks to evolve.

Traveling with the iPad

Over the last 10 days, I've made two trips with the iPad. The flights ranged from an 23 minutes to 4 hours.

How did it do? In a word? Brilliant. Here are my observations in no particular order:

1. The battery was MORE than sufficient for a day of travel. On my first day, I had a 4 hour flight, then a layover, then a 23 minute flight. Afterward, I met up with my family who proceeded to monopolize the device for about 4 hours. I was still left with about 39% battery life at the end of all that.
2. The younger faction of my family was intensely interested in using the iPad, but then again so was my father and he is 30 years older than I. 
3. On the various flights, I used the iPad for reading, playing games and watching a TV shows. It was very easy to view in a variety of lighting conditions, including bright sunlight.
4. One one flight, there were at least 2 other iPads. The users of each were women and were aged about mid 40's and upper 50's.
5. It was great that I never needed to take the iPad out of my bag for airport security. It's enough work to take the work laptop out.
6. The Apple case continues to hold up well and makes it easy to prop the device up in a variety of angles. This was helpful for watching video. 

Overall, I think I've found my newest best friend for traveling. It still is a little heavy for pure book reading, but I suspect I'll get used to it. It is much for flexible as a device, especially since I was so used to traveling with either the laptop or the iPhone. This slots neatly in between.

The Downstream Effect

We have been making a lot of changes to our internal systems and software over the past month or so. And, it isn't hyperbole to say that there have been quite a few unintended consequences. They have ranged in severity from minor to critical and we have had a lot of challenge to get back on top of them quickly before there was customer impact.

I'm not pretending our planning and execution couldn't be better in some areas, but these types of issues are hardly unheard of in the midst of complex systems. We've built, in one way or another, most of our systems over the 30 years we've been in business. During that time, a lot of business, design and technological decisions have been made. And, no single person has a full understanding of how everything works together. In fact, most groups within the company are now specialized to one degree or another and have limited visibility that happens to the downstream side.

So what's the solution? There isn't just one, but the primary approach that we're trying to use is to leverage the power of teams and the group mind to view these changes in their own particular way. These groups aren't just technical in nature, they are also functional, operational and executive. There are business reasons to push for a particular time-frame, even though that can be difficult on the development, testing and operational teams. Likewise, it's important for Tech or Ops to report back to the Execs as to limitations in resources, systems and the resulting risk for that time line. 

As with most organizations, I'm finding ours to be a work in progress. There's nothing wrong with that at all though. It means that we keep reaching for continuous improvement, trying new and different things to get to where we need or want to be. At the end of the day, there's a lot worse situations to be in than that.

Home Server Upgrade Status

After over a week now of running on the HP MediaSmart Server 3.0 update, I can say the following. I notice very little difference. That's mostly a good thing. I rely on the device to back up my computers without complaint, hold my video and music files and pretty much be invisible. It has remained so. 

I had a few bumps along the way. I believe reinstalling the Anti-Virus software kicked off a full scan of multiple terabytes of data which made the user interface quite sluggish - though I didn't notice any issues copying to or from the device. The UI is a little easier to use, but the old one wasn't awful so that's not a huge issue. I will say that it doesn't seem to squawk about problems updating live domains any longer - but that really wasn't something that should have been affected by the update. Perhaps just reloading the OS did the trick on that one.

Overall it was a good move. I'm sure you're waiting for the "but" though, right? There isn't much of one, but my timing was off by a bit. Lo and behold, Microsoft just announced the public "Vail" beta for Windows Home Server. I'm sure it's based on the Server 2008 R2 platform which has a lot of stuff for Windows 7, etc. I wasn't likely to install the beta anyway, but I might have waiting on doing the upgrade at all if another upgrade was so immediate. I'm quite certain that I'll have to pay for this upgrade as well, but it may or may not be a good thing on this hardware so there may just be a device upgrade in my future. 

Technology marches on...

Weekend Project - Upgrade Windows Home Server

I saw the other day that HP released an update to its Media Server software. The 3.0 version had long been promised, delayed many times and now was finally available. While not every user who has a Media Smart server can or should upgrade, MediaSmartHome lays out a pretty decent decision tree. This is especially important since the upgrade isn't free. You are going to have to shell out about $30 with shipping to get this particular update.

Once you've decided to go ahead, I recommend this walk-through from the folks at WeGotServed.com. It provides a nice overview of the process with plenty of screen shots. And it works.

I will add a few items though based on my experience. After all, whether you're upgrading a server at home or at work, it still does and has a lot of information on it. You'll want to take care during that process.

• You may need to disable the firewall on your personal computer for the first step. The restore process uses some oddball ports that may create some trouble.
• I recommend documenting your current setup - at least slightly. You probably want to make note of the users you have on the system and what folders they have rights to. I'm sure a lot of people allow everything for everyone, but to those to don't...
• I also advise noting the add-ins you have and what settings they are set to. Make sure you have license files handy, etc. You don't want to restart everything and have a nice and shiny machine that you can't run your AV software on.
• Once you are complete with the restore make sure you re-enable your firewall and get AV installed on your server pronto!

I'll say the interface is much prettier, though slightly sluggish. The latter may have to do with the fact that the server is both currently backing up my computer and probably running its initial AV scan. I'll continue to monitor and see how this new version performs.

The Next Generation of Insurance Tool, or a Solution in Want of a Problem?

I read an article yesterday on Insurance Networking News about how a company felt that the emergence of the iPad would be a jump start to drive electronic or e-signatures with insurance agents. Now, I'm a huge proponent of technology sometimes for technology's sake alone, but in this case I couldn't disagree more.

First of all, the iPad doesn't support a pen interface. The article references the ability to "click to sign" but why would that be ok? If I'm sitting across from someone, why wouldn't I want to get an actual signature captured?  E-signatures have their place, but to me, they are a compromise. Why not do it right? The technology out there today, mostly PC tablets, already support a pen interface and can capture signatures just as you might do at millions of point of sale terminals all over this nation.

Second of all, the article cites limited internet connectivity as an issue that has limited acceptance of the tablet solution. How does the iPad address issue exactly? Sure, there are models with AT&T 3G built in, but  coverage on AT&T's network is hardly ubiquitous. On a regular tablet PC your choice of carriers are only a USB device away.

Third, the iPad, for all that I love it, is NOT a good device for heavy data entry. At minimum, an agent will want to create a quote or fill out an application and the iPad without a regular keyboard is not a good way to do that. Of course you can argue that you can add a keyboard to an iPad, but aren't you just buying a standard tablet in two pieces? 

I'm sure that there are other reasons for purchasing the solution mentioned in the article, but it seems like a solution in want of a problem at this point.

The iPad - Day 5

I wasn't going to post an update today, but then fate intervened.

I couldn't connect to WiFi at work. Uh-oh. Look at me, I'm one of those folks affected by the first iPad problem. As it turned out, I wasn't. The router was hung and needed to be rebooted. No harm, no foul.

The second reason, I felt it was worthwhile to provide an update today was that folks are hard at work to solve one of the significant complaints on the iPad - its lack of a camera. According to this PCWorld article, the solution is a mere dollar away for those who have an iPhone 3G or 3GS. This is pretty clever and I intent to try it out for the novelty if nothing else.

Lastly, I was working with an application that we use at work which is a web app and found something interesting. The iPad doesn't realize that every text box actually IS a text box. I was unable to work with the Rally software solution to edit some story descriptions because Safari on the iPad didn't understand what it was looking that. This one is a first for me, but it was disappointing since I was trying to leverage the small size of the iPad at the time. Oh well, maybe next release.

My Blackberry Buzzed for an Hour

I'm not actually exaggerating. Windows updates rolled through our network on Wednesday and hit one of a pair of our development servers. The second server, which had recently been spooled up and was just started to be configured had been unknowingly set in such a way that it was dependent upon the first system. Once that unit went off line due to the typical reboot required after most Windows updates, that second sever went crazy trying to find it. Email after email shot out of it as it retried and retried to contact the first unit. Over 6,000 emails later, the MIS team was able to catch it and silence the noise.

So what's the problem? Well information overload is clearly an issue. It's great to get one email when there's a problem or perhaps one every 5 minutes, but computers are capable of retrying operations so quickly that it becomes a nightmare to try to sort through that type of flow.

Secondly, a problem upstream, creates another one downstream. Our email server certainly isn't scaled to handle that level of traffic. We only have so much CPU and storage capacity on the system and other messages end up getting lost (in the worst case) or taking a back seat (in the very least) while the spasm of email continues.

What to do? Well, we can limit who gets the email. Formerly, it was an entire department. And that impacts fewer people on the notification, but still creates downstream problems for others. We can look to filter the information that gets sent through the development of triggers based on logged activity rather than application activity. This would be a significant architectural shift for our applications, but is probably something we're going to have to do in order to better deal with these issues on a long term basis. 

Life is pretty interesting sometimes.

It's the Training, Dummy

Are your users dumb? Or are you?

Software development firms love to believe that their products are "intuitive" and "easy to use." But, invariably, when those folks see how their products are used in the real world the are surprised how people are using them. They are shocked that some features are not being used. They are dumbfounded at the work flows that users have concocted. "There's an easier way!" they cry. But the users don't find it.

It has been an unwritten rule that the degree of complexity in a system dictates its ease of use. I challenge that statement. I believe that unplanned complexity creates systems that are hard to use because the design metaphor tends to change over time due to evolving requirements. These are the situations in which a clean start may be appropriate in order to make a more coherent system.

But, that's rarely possible on a regular basis. You can only rip out the foundation and start over so many times in a year or quarter. Instead, you need to be able to bring the tablets down to the people. We live in a time in which distance learning is becoming more and more effective. Products such as WebEx, GoToMeeting and Live Meeting are all ways that we can engage with customers that we couldn't before. That can save cost and allow you to reach more customers than we could before. But, is it effective?

There is a great deal of value in bringing people together in person, especially for training events.Trainers teach best when they can see the body language of their students. Students learn best when they aren't trying to take training classes in their offices with emails, phone calls and co-workers constantly interrupting them.

There's a time and a place for all the various training approaches. Webinars might be highly appropriate for your customer base or at least a segment of them. You probably will need to reach out in all sorts of ways: on-line help, on-line video training, appearances at industry events and conferences, in person group training, on demand training, etc. The important takeaway is to commit yourself and your company to ensuring that your customers have the opportunity to learn enough about your system to ensure that they can use it effectively. They will be much more likely to keep it.

So, next time your product isn't gaining share in the marketplace, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself, "Is it the training?"

Is 2010 the Year of Desktop Virtualization?

I've read a few articles that are declaring this the year when it changes. Desktops will wither and centralized virtualization solutions will begin to dominate. My take? Not so fast.

I'm certain large corporations that maintain large pools of computers that serve staff who all do extremely similar tasks will benefit from Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). However, we still need to remember that the marketplace is dominated by Small and Medium Businesses (SMB).

SMBs don't normally have that large of IT staff so they do not have a large amount of free time to experiment. While we always hope folks are researching things on nights and weekends and trying to get better and put in the extra time, the reality is that a lot of that time is already occupied by off hours projects and service and maintenance work on existing systems.

After the last year, budgets are still under a lot of pressure so they likely do not have a lot of free capital to try something new. IT Managers will want to pursue a tried and true course with their precious budget dollars. It is expensive to move everything to a centralized system. And when you do, you better have a hot option for redundancy. Because when a single desktop fails, that only affects one user - when a VDI server fails dozens of users are idle. And that adds up to a lot of lost productivity very quickly, even in an SMB.

Third, SMBs do not typically have large staffs doing identical tasks. In smaller organizations, folks tend to wear a lot of hats. It's harder to get your bang for the buck on highly customized Virtual Desktops. I haven't even mentioned the challenges with outside and roaming employees who need to take data with them. Classically, VDI isn't there for them yet without adding more complexity to their lives.

So, I think it will grow this year and the technology will get better and cheaper. But we are still a long way from ubiquitous VDI throughout SMBs.