Companies, IT Departments and Workers Need to Get in to the Cloud





cloud computing (Photo credit: kei51)

The cloud is here and businesses that don't change to incorporate it in private, public or some sort of hybrid are in trouble.  They'll be at a terrible disadvantage going forward as their competitors engage resources in the cloud that are unavailable on-premises.

For instance, if your company uses Microsoft software pay attention...  Microsoft originally built their software for on-premises deployment.  The whole suite of Microsoft Office server were local-only apps.  They recently changed to a hybrid software development approach and now many of those apps are being purpose developed specifically as cloud services.  Primary development for Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and the Service Center apps just to name a few are in the cloud.  You'll see features appear there before they appear in the periodic major point releases for on-premises installation.

This means that those businesses that are "in the cloud" will have access to features and capabilities well ahead of those that are not.  It also means that IT workers that only work with on-premises software are going to be woefully unprepared to support the new cloud-based versions.  They simply won't have access to the new software and won't know it.

So, what should companies do?  Get cloud help!  That may mean supplementing their own staff with cloud architects or subcontracting to consultants.  Their existing IT staff simply won't suffice without additional training, however.  Often, existing staff is already taxed and the prospect of coming up to speed on a whole new platform (which it is, by the way) and converting existing business processes is outside of their availability and capability both.

There's a reason why cloud consultants and consulting companies are in such high demand right now.  Similarly to how users demanded smartphones and tablets, executives and users are demanding the capabilities of cloud computing now.  They'll try it in small ways like e-mail and instant messaging and cloud services will eventually penetrate organizations from the top down and bottom up.  IT departments that have not prepared and IT workers that are untrained will be caught in the middle, being asked to do something they have no experience with.  At that point their choices are to outsource, train up, or fall behind.

Cloud services do indeed represent a sea change in IT services.  However, cloud is no panacea.  Most services are still better handled in house, but the list is continually shrinking.  I was once a Microsoft Exchange consultant... a fairly highly sought after skill.  I certainly wouldn't consider that my most marketable skill any more, though.  E-mail consultants without cloud skills are like cars with engines that need leaded gasoline or Betamax tapes... they've had their time and now its time to enter the 21st century.

Many other disciplines are experiencing similar changes.  Developers and infrastructure workers alike will need to update skills if they have not already.  Companies are demanding they do so and going in to denial won't save your job when your company decides to outsource e-mail management or web development.  It's better to be part of the change and help direct how cloud services are implemented than to have them forced on you.

So, get in to the cloud or get left behind, change waits for noone.

Related articles

• Cloud computing? We don't get it, say Europeans
• When does the cloud become a utility?
• IT outsourcing firm or cloud provider? The line keeps blurring
• Cloud Computing - Who Gains and Who Loses?

Microsoft Store Coming to Kansas City Area?

Check out my updated article with pictures and my impressions of the Overland Park Microsoft Store!

If you're at all interested in retail or retail management it appears there are opportunities to work at a newly opening Microsoft Store in the Kansas City area!

While reviewing local Microsoft news I found several job openings via a web search.  If you check out indeed job search you'll see 9 open positions including Assistant Manager, Teacher, Product Advisor and even a Community Development and Events Specialist.  The Assistant Manager job is also listed on the Microsoft Career website.

According to the job postings it appears the store will be in Overland Park.  I've contacted Microsoft but have no confirmation yet.  All signs point to "yes" though.

I haven't had a chance to visit a Microsoft Store yet, so I for one am excited!  I'm glad to see that Microsoft is continuing to invest in their presence in the Kansas City area.

Related articles

• Microsoft Plans to Open Dozens More Microsoft Stores (pcworld.com)
• Apple Stores and Microsoft Stores by the numbers (tuaw.com)

Are You an IT Cave Man? - Part 1: Computer Servers

Are You an IT Cave Man? - Part 1: Computer Servers

What's Ancient, Tired and Wired in IT

If you've been in a cave for the last five years you've missed some amazing advances in Information Technology.  Yes, you are now an IT Cave Man!  Most IT people know about Moore's Law (approximately every 18 months microchip density doubles - increasing computer speeds) but microchip advances are actually one of the least important stories right now.

Five years is an eternity in IT and here's what you need to get caught up.  Reader beware... this is a long, but not complete list.  It would be difficult to impossible to cover all of the various IT advances in just the last year, let alone five!  If you have a favorite tech you feel I left out and should not have please comment to let me know.

I'll tackle this task in three chunks:

1. Computer Servers
2. Desktops, Laptops & Mobile Devices
3. Applications & Services

Here is what's ancient, tired and wired - Part 1: Computer Servers...

Computer Servers

Server Hardware

Servers have come a long way since 2006. Quad-core CPUs are now standard and you rarely see a server with less than 8GB RAM. Blade servers became popular and then virtual servers revolutionized the whole category when you no longer required one server for one operating system. Finally, through virtualized hosted servers - once the homes of websites and ftp servers - became popular destinations for running software applications (SaaS), started providing platforms for developing and deploying services (PaaS) and hosting entire server infrastructures for customers (IaaS).

Ancient	Tired	Wired
Rackmount	Blade	Virtual Server

Products to watch: Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESX

Server Operating Systems

Software and hardware advanced in lock-step with new features appearing to take advantage of the exploding CPU power, memory and storage on servers.  With Windows Server 2008, virtualization became a part of the O/S in the form of Hyper-V and tools got better and better, eventually allowing for "servers" to be virtually deployed at a whim, without configuring new hardware.  Cheap and easy virtualization from Hyper-V and VMware enabled the hosting of fully functional "servers" on the Internet, moving infrastructure offsite.  As internet speeds increased, reliability was enhanced and better tools were developed, "cloud" services began competing with on-site servers... are the days of buying Windows and owning your own servers numbered?

Ancient	Tired	Wired
Windows Server 2003	Windows Server 2008	Cloud

Products to watch: Amazon S3 / Microsoft Azure

Server Monitoring

Server monitoring used to be the work for system vendors like Dell, HP & IBM.  Their products are familiar to many and include OpenManage and Insight Manager.  More recently Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager (SCCM) has offered a standardized and easily accessible solution.  The latest trend however is to cloud-provided services.  Already widely used by managed IT service providers, hosted Remote Monitoring & Management (RMM) solutions provide most of the same benefits without requiring the hosting of dedicated monitoring hardware and hiring a new team of IT experts to run it.  Vendors like Level Platforms and N-able have mature products that provide onsite and hosted versions of their product suites.  They also offer integration with popular service automation platforms, e-mail and collaboration software.

Ancient	Tired	Wired
Alerts & Logging	OpenManage, Insight Manager, Nagios, Microsoft SCCM	Hosted RMM

Products to watch: LPI Managed Workplace, N-able N-central

Backup Systems

Storage has revolutionized the backup and disaster recovery industry.  Serial ATA hard drives combined with Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enabled high-capacity, low-access storage that has either replaced tape backups altogether or is used in a nearline or near-online function.  This has enabled backups to occur to intermediate, relatively high-performance media and then to be later archived to tape for longer-term storage if necessary.  Often, tapes are totally removed from the system and the nearline storage becomes the primary archival medium.

Backup software has also progressed.  New technologies have enabled high-capacity storage media to store even larger amounts of data through impressive compression and now data deduplication.  Through deduplication, similar or identical data is stored only once with changes being recorded only.  In this way, two backup copies with only one bit of data changed only store the change rather than the full data set.

Combining hardware and software in appliances, companies like Datto and Zenith Infotech started selling integrated backup systems that were remotely managed and would synchronize data to the cloud for an off-site copy. While these systems have proved popular in small and medium businesses (SMB), larger enterprises need higher-capacity solutions and the cloud-synchronization of data is as of yet too slow for larger datasets.

Ancient	Tired	Wired
Tape, Optical	Backup-to-Disk	Data Deduplication, Offsite Sync

Products to watch: Acronis, Datto, NetApp Syncsort, Storagecraft, Symantec

Watch in the next few days for Part 2: Desktops, Laptops, & Mobile Devices.

11 Ways Businesses Waste Their IT Investments

Here's a quick list of the top 11 ways I've found that SMBs misuse their Information Technology and waste their money:

11. Put your "server room" in the women's restroom. (Yes... I saw this at one small business)
10. Wait until your new hire shows up to call the IT guy and notify him you need a computer, network jack and cell phone.
9. When your printer dies go to Best Buy and pick a new one up without consulting your IT department first.
8. "Plan" for your servers to last 5 years or longer.
7. Always choose the value (cheap) option.
6. Treat your IT department like they're overhead that detracts from profit rather than an enabler for productivity and revenue generation.
5. Don't consider business continuity and disaster recovery - a little downtime never hurt anyone!
4. Build it and they will come.  Install a system for a need that doesn't exist yet and that nobody wants because it has "great features."
3. Don't provide ongoing technical training to your IT department.
2. Don't bother budgeting for equipment replacement and IT support.
1. Wait until your equipment breaks to fix it instead of monitoring, preventively maintaining, and replacing it on a regular basis.

So, if your small or medium business has fallen victim to one or more of these what should you do?  Think first, plan for growth & failures, treat IT as a valuable asset rather than a money sink, find a good trusted advisor (CIO/CTO/consultant) and USE them.  It's their job to think about this stuff.  If you need help finding a good consultant, just talk to other local business owners about who they use and interview three or four (or more!) before making your decision.

What is "Customer Service?"

If you asked most businesses, great "Customer Service" would be one of their primary goals.  But what is "Customer Service" really?

Over the course of my 15 years in Information Technology my definition of customer service has changed and expanded, but really, I learned the basic concept well before I built, sold and repaired my first computers.  I learned customer service at Pizza Hut and K-Mart.

At Pizza Hut I was taught to take orders.  Someone wanted a pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni?  I delivered one... and quickly, while it was still hot.  I couldn't wait for my first customer to receive their pizza before going on to the next though, so I also learned to multi-task.  I needed ALL of my customers to be happy if I wanted to earn my tips.  Also, if I provided bad service, people would remember and ask for a different server next time.

At K-Mart, I learned to sell.  Once upon a time, when Best Buy wasn't around, people bought TVs and VCRs and stereos at K-Mart.  I was on commission and quickly learned that the more I sold, the more I made.  I became positively eager to help anyone that happened by.  I learned to talk to my customers and understand what their needs were so I could help them purchase the right thing.  If I sold them too much they would bring it back and be unhappy.  If I sold them something too cheap they would be unhappy with the quality.  It was my responsibility to ensure they left with the right product and ensure they realized all of the value it had to provide.

So, that's Pizza Hut and K-Mart. But what do fast pizza and a discount department store have to offer an IT Professional?

Long-term customers are more profitable than short-term customers.

Good customer service is really that easy.  If you keep that one idea in mind all the rest will follow!  So how do you create long-term customers?  Don't over think it, it's simple:

1. Be genuinely interested in their success... yours will follow naturally.
2. Don't give them any reason to go somewhere else.

Is that it?  Really?  Yes.  If you can put your customer's success, happiness, and profitability ahead of your own and really help them achieve their goals their company will grow and require more and more of your products and services.  Don't go for the quick buck!  It just doesn't pay off.  When customers know that you enabled their success or helped them make more money or made their lives easier, they will think of you next time and look for you to do the same over and over again.  When you take them for a quick buck they WILL realize it sooner or later and they'll never be back.  That's part 1.

Part 2: Don't mess it up!  Once you have a good thing going with a customer, don't give them any reason to look elsewhere.  Make sure you have the products and services they want when they want them.  Know them well enough so that nobody else can provide the same value that you do.  And, don't ever, EVER, take them for granted.  It's as easy to lose a customer due to inattention as it is through competition.

I built a successful IT consulting business over the course of 7 years using the two rules above.  I built long-term customers that came back month after month and year after year.  They didn't use my services just because they had before; they came back because we had a relationship that they valued.  It wasn't quite personal but it wasn't just business either.  I really enjoyed working with them and helping them achieve their goals.  Both they and I knew that if they were successful they would require more of my help and I could ride their coat tails all the way to the bank.  Our goals were aligned and as long as I did my job and didn't mess it up I had guaranteed happy customers for as long as I wanted them.

I wasn't always perfect, and I became complacent and took a couple customers for granted.  I lost them.  It was, perhaps, the most painful lesson I learned during that 7 years and I learned it VERY quickly.  I built processes and procedures to ensure that even when customers were at a maintenance level for a long time I continued to actively add value to their business.  I learned to not mess it up.

So, it turns out that Pizza Hut and K-Mart really do have something to teach us about customer service in IT after all.  How did you learn customer service?  What does it mean to you?

Snips and Snails or Sugar and Spice? Just what are Consultants Made of?

"What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails
That's what little boys are made of!

What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and all things nice
That's what little girls are made of!"

Mother Goose Nursury Rhyme

Have you ever heard the phrase: "It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round?"  Well, it does.  Especially in Information Technology.  But, I'm of the opinion that IT people come roughly in two flavors.

1. Technicians (or Engineers)
2. Consultants (or Analysts)

What's the difference you say?  Well, here's my definitions:

Technician
Technicians are technical.  They understand the *how* of a technology, how to make it run, how to service it, install it, create it.  They're great with machines, coding, and complex troubleshooting.  Often they're the kind of people that just can't stand to *not* know why something broke and want to fix it no matter how long it takes.

Consultant
Consultants look at business process and are more interested in why and where and who and what rather than the how of a particular technology.  They may also be very technically capable, but they generally marry superior customer service, business analysis, and communication skills with that technical capability.

Here are some common questions I've heard about technicians and consultants:

Q. Can you train technicians?

A. You can give people knowledge about a technology, but it's much harder (if not impossible) to train the intuitive grasp of *how* technology works.  Contrary to what most people think, the creation, operation and support of technology is as much an art as it is a science.  It changes so rapidly and the complexity is so overwhelming that if all you have is book knowledge and you don't just "get it" you're not going very far.  This is one of the real advantages young people have in growing up with technology that their parents did not... they just get it since they've been dealing with it their whole lives.

Q. Can you train consultants?

A. You can train consulting skills for sure.  You can teach people to look at business process and to consider the business implications of using one technology or another.  You can train people to be good with customer service and you can educate them in the use of written and verbal language skills.  But, once again, there's a certain something that separates good consultants from technicians.  You have to not only "get it" the same way a technician does but you need an intuitive grasp of how people think and how they interact with technology.

Q.Can a technician become a consultant?

A. Certainly!  I did!  I think we all begin as technicians.  You only develop an ability to see the larger picture and the business savvy required for consulting over time and with experience.  It requires development especially of your communication skills, both verbal and written.  If you didn't learn to spell and your grammar depends on Microsoft Word's spell checking you're in for a hard ride as a consultant.

Q. What's wrong with being a technician?

A. Absolutely nothing.  We need both technicians and consultants.  Technicians do things with the actual technology that consultants just can't.  Someone has to make this stuff!  Someone has to code the applications and build the servers.  But would you put a technician in front of a client and ask them to deliver a presentation to C-Level management?  Definitely not.  It's not a good use of their skills and they probably wouldn't enjoy it.

So, which is better?  Technician or Consultant?  It depends on your business needs.  And since I'm a consultant, would you like a presentation on the topic?