We just completed a whirlwind few days of candidate assessments.  This stuff is easy.  Why do people with their canned questions want to make it hard to hire good people?  The problem for us is just finding all the talent we need.  The last thing I would want to do is piss them off or waste their time with questions like “what’s your biggest fault?” or “if you were an animal…”

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Pete,
I have a client that wants to explore IT transformation and maybe move to a cloud or “As a Service” model but the managers keep throwing up this objection-

At this point the writer inserts one of a half dozen or so common roadblocks getting in the way of improving the client’s lot in IT.  With that in mind, I bring you a series of challenges and some responses.  Whether you’re a consultant or an employee trying to influence change the next few posts are for you.  If you disagree, let it rumble in the comments.  There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. 

So you are trying to build a Cloud/XXXaaS model for delivering IT more effectively and you want to accelerate your transformation, but you just can’t get over the fact that…

“Our current provisioning time is too long to meet the new, aggressive targets “XXXaaS” or Cloud will set for expectations.  We’re doomed to fail before we start!”

I feel for these folks.  On the one hand, they are getting hammered by their clients for taking months to fulfill basic resource provisioning requests.  The clients don’t understand the purchasing cycle, only “my project goes live in a week!”  On the other hand, consultants are promising provisioning turnover in days or hours, not weeks or months; they are right to ask if even the consultants understand the purchasing cycle, requirements gathering, or how obtuse internal clients can be at times.

I could sell you a magic potion in the form of orchestration and automation tools, combined with a real services catalog as the solution but they are only part of the answer.  The odds are that you need to get your IT Operations processes in order, first.  Many service delivery problems that plague us with long provisioning cycles are the result of too little (or too much) process control over our activities.  The bonus prize in fixing the process piece is that we can streamline the provisioning cycle today.  The future state cloud or XXXaaS model just gets that much closer.  Can I reduce a certain number of my requests to standard templates?  Can I fit what looks like a custom request into a standard package and clone it out with minimal detail work on the back end?  Can I effectively determine the standard/custom fit in just a few minutes with a client?

Probably.  At one global media company for which I ran Enterprise Data Storage 10 years ago we cut provisioning times 80% simply by standardizing the requests into 32GB chunks.  No custom sizing, thank you.  Everything from provisioning to capacity management got easier overnight and we all learned our multiplication tables up to 32*32.  If you did not need 32GB of enterprise-class data storage, we’re sorry, but it is not cost effective to parcel out 1GB chunks when Fry’s has pallets of disk on sale.  The same thing works for compute and network resources.

Assessing the effectiveness and not just the existence of your IT operations processes, rationalizing their use and overhauling them if necessary allows IT to build standard adds/changes that can later be automated or scripted.  If it is cookie-cutter enough, you can get more productivity from your junior resources and more training/experience to them.  Marketing/sales call centers have this figured out; why not IT?

As far as I am concerned this objection isn’t a roadblock to Cloud, it’s the first step to getting there.

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With all the gnashing of teeth around securing “The Cloud” I figured the fact that someone can send an e-mail or steal a printout would be front page news.  Something like “old-school heists still king in the information age”.  Bonus points for posting a how-to manual.  Maybe I should reconsider letting my Wired subscription lapse.

- Tip o’ the hat to Fark.

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Challenges:

Tools, methodology, measurement and cost allocation/financial parameters are all fundamental issues to resolve for which I believe there is a general approach we can frame up but with no “one size fits” solution.  The details associated with specific infrastructure like Storage or Compute requires expertise which I believe EMC Consulting brings to bear (things like rational or logical resource breakdowns and technical allocation or consumption metrics).  The subtleties here surround the blended costing necessary for service-oriented chargeback.  That aspect of chargeback demands a deeper look at what clients include with their as a service consumption model, whether Infrastructure, Platform or something else.

But the Problem is Already Solved Elsewhere:

Other service providers outside of IT have had this problem licked for decades.  Telco, media and even pizza delivery companies have it figured out so why can’t we use those lessons to guide IT?  The biggest roadblock is the inconvenient focus finance has on the zero-sum cost recovery approach.  IT should be looking to add business value just like other business units.  Why can’t we charge for that value and use that “income” stream to drive innovation directed at the bottom line?  Example: when I worked in IT for a toy manufacturer, I determined we had a huge demand from the marketing department for image processing services.  They spent $25K per year simply converting and duplicating image formats (this was in 1998).  The IT team was well versed with image processing, conversion and mass disc duplication.  We were able to “help out” (offer a service to) marketing and ultimately slashed their image processing costs to a dozen boxes of Thin Mints.  Think about that: we took costs from $25,000 down to $100 and some goodwill.  I thought then as I do now: If IT is unable to make a profit off the business value they deliver then they will never be incented to deliver value through the provision of services.  Finance needs to step out of the way and allow business to do business.  I want IT to run as a business, providing defined services that are priced with a fully burdened cost that includes “profit” IT can use to fund innovation and loss-leading services, like e-mail.

In the end, we stopped providing those value-added services at the toy company.  Why?  Because while we saved Marketing $25K per year, our budget was always slashed and compensation constantly under pressure; delivering measurably valuable services was not our core mission.  The same decision makers who cut IT budgets under such circumstances are often quick to complain that IT doesn’t deliver them any value.    Does anyone see the irony here?

The Solution:

To do “as a service” solutions right we need to have four factors addressed:

1. Tools to capture the true costs of our assets, consumables, labor and other expenses without expending excessive horsepower
2. A consumption model that allows for a blended cost per unit of service (a quanta, some arbitrary metric) and that is enabled through those finance tools (among the other tools IT leverages)
3. A finance approach that allows for chargeback based on value, not on cost
4. An IT department willing to break out of the mold and actually TRY for once to deliver more than just bits and blinking lights to the business

I believe the only part of the solution we cannot solve in IT is the third: finance.  That has to come from executive leadership.  Finance needs to get out of the way.

I do not believe the right way to charge back a service involves microscopic analysis of the component part costs.  The solution can be found in pizza.  I believe Dominos has it right: they charge you for an average amount of toppings, the convenience of delivery and consistency in quality on an SLA (remember the 30 minute guarantee?).  They don’t count grams of cheese or slices of pepperoni for every pie, they take some samples on occasion and roll with the averages, always seeking the target without overburdening the pursuit.  They charge the same to deliver next door or 4 miles away but they compensate their drivers based on those variable costs (mileage).  The stores are profitable and their customers (and the franchise brand owners in Detroit) are happy to allow them that profit.

Dominos is not typically recognized as an IT innovator, but the secret sauce is in that model.  It’s embarrassing they have the answer to the most important question in IT today, but IT’s not listening.

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That is all.

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What would be awesome is to see this study repeated with a mix of locked and unlocked, encrypted and unencrypted phones.  THAT would tell us what the real risk profile looks like.

UPDATE, 4/11/2012: Marketplace.org published A plan to stop the rise in stolen cell phones.  I was caught a little dumbstruck, since I presumed this simple solution was already in play.  My favorite quote:

Chester Wisniewski of computer security firm Sophos says the new anti-theft policies could encourage thieves to go after the data on your mobile phone instead.

Instead?  They’re already going after your data, just not effectively if the Symantec study is any indication (I expected the nosy phone finders to probe for personal data 100% of the time) .  All this means is that the data miners might be the only ones in the business of stealing your phone going forward, which is to say if your mobile/handy/smartphone goes missing you can rest assured anything unprotected is going to be in the hands of the the bad guys.  If you’re not already doing it on your mobile: password protect your device, encrypt your data and set the darned thing to wipe if it receives too many incorrect password attempts.  I’d rather lose a piece of hardware than the data any day.

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I think we need to be much more precise in how we talk about Cloud because all of this squishiness is not only misleading, but it distracts from how we should be designing and adopting solutions that use this service delivery model. And let me once again beg for a new moniker for this service delivery model, I’m so over Cloud.

Cloud is often conflated with filesharing and collaboration in the consumer marketplace, take a look at Apple and Microsoft’s work in this space. At least with iCloud you could say it is a collection of services delivered via the Cloud service delivery model, varying from information synching across devices to device finding. I never could figure out what Microsoft was selling with it’s commercials.

Maybe I’ve just spent too much of my life as a service management bigot, but looking at Cloud as a service delivery model, while not perhaps the best answer, is one of the more clean ways to think of it. It’s stuff like the conclusion to Andrew McAfee’s quite good piece in the Harvard Business Review, “What Every CEO Needs to Know About the Cloud” that causes confusion: “Cloud computing offers advantages in, at a minimum, productivity, collaboration, analytics, and application development”. What?! How does Cloud computing do that? Cloud as a service delivery model can make consumption of collaboration services, or analytics services, or access to application development environments easier thereby leading to enhanced productivity, but someone needs to design the services that deliver that. Those services are finally showing up in the wild, but many of them aren’t enterprise strength yet. It’s comments like these in management journals C-level executives read that set a huge expectation gap and are adding to the tension between IT and the Business.

The expectation on the business side of the house is that Cloud holds the answers to solving many problems or concerns that companies are facing today: flexibility; agility; time to market; time to value; and lower costs. These are huge expectations, and the business is looking at IT and are wondering why they aren’t delivering all of these things now, pointing to articles and commercials promising that these benefits are already here. I firmly believe that IT needs to become a Service Provider to the business or the business will find new Service Providers to replace them, but hype and imprecise language does not a Service Provider make. EMC IT has spent the last two years transforming itself into a Service Provider and transparently publishing its services and comparable services available from other providers, an informed consumer is much more likely to make a good choice.

For Cloud to succeed as a service delivery model there must be services readily available, not just consumer strength ones, we need enterprise strength. They are being built, and as McAfee noted and EMC IT has shown companies should be building some of these services themselves and leverage the delivery model to drive out cost, improve adoption, and increase agility. There are many upsides to Cloud as a service delivery model, let’s not muddy the water by conflating Cloud with the benefits that services delivered via Cloud can provide if properly designed, implemented, priced and delivered.

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My Celestron C6-NGT is not a big light bucket but it is reasonably portable and that means I can plant my eyeball on her at a moment’s notice. I don’t need to invest a whole evening to enjoy a cup or two of coffee while gazing; I just drag the gear out to the back patio and viola, I’m entertained! The simple design of this Newtonian with a rack and pinion focuser makes the gear accessible, unintimidating and a big hit at parties. At our annual Christmas blowout in 2011 we had a line of people 10 deep for 4 hours waiting to check out Jupiter. For some, this was their first time looking through a “real” telescope.

While my scope gets a lot of use, Celestron did not count on me abusing this equipment when they designed the focuser. After about 10 sessions connecting a digital camera to my scope I began to notice rocker in the focuser draw tube. I must admit that I hung the afocal adapter off my Baader-Hyperion glass hand grenades, wrecking this focuser pretty good, as you will see below. I could calm the movement somewhat by clamping down on the focuser lock but that created more problems. First, it only stopped the movement in the N/S direction. E/W was still full of play unless I really tightened the lock like an animal. Second, this worsening condition effectively meant I could not collimate the scope. There was enough play in the assembly that the centerline of the draw tube moved each and every time I turned the knob. When fully extended the eyepiece was wiggling at the top almost an eighth of an inch from side to side! After 3 nights of blurry vision I decided to fix the focuser myself. Let me take you through the process. If your rack and pinion focuser is anything like mine you should be able to breathe new life into your eye for the sky.

Figure 1: The Culprit, two screws removed

The Story:

Figure 1 shows the focuser almost fully extended and with 2 of 4 screws holding the rack and pinion assembly removed. The silver piece is the draw tube with the rack (the gear teeth screwed to the tube). To remove the draw tube I need to remove those last 2 screws and the knob shaft with the pinion gear attached. That will allow the draw tube to slide out completely. Before we do that, let’s take a peek at just how much play this draw tube has inside the housing. I wouldn’t want you to think I was exaggerating:

Figure 2: .020″ Shims fit loosely in the gap, but there is even more gap below the housing rim

My concern at this point is growing exponentially. This is a serious problem and I am worried there is just too much damage I cannot see to attempt a repair. The aluminum tubing shows no sign of wear from the outside and the gap at the top of the assembly is a mirage. The “lip” at the top of the housing is about 1/16″ deep and thicker than the rest, meaning the gap is actually wider below the surface than what you can see here. So how the heck did Celestron fit these parts snugly at the factory? To find out I removed the remaining screws, then carefully separated and placed all of the parts in a dust free container. The tricky part was avoiding the thick grease Celestron uses on the gears to minimize slop. It sticks to everything and the grease needs to remain clean.

Now for a look at the inside of the housing:

Figure 3: Focuser Housing is Cast Aluminum with 2 Nylon Shims- Only One Visible Here

Bottoms up! Two nylon shims are employed to keep the draw tube centered in the focuser housing. The other one is opposite the shim you can see. A closer look reveals the extent of the problem:

The nylon shims have raised ridges that are nearly worn flat and the bottom of the housing is showing damage where the draw tube is moving laterally in the assembly. This is NOT COOL but it does explain the problem. The solution, however, still eluded me. Understanding WHY Celestron might choose two cheap nylon shims to center the draw tube helped me craft a fix. Ease of assembly and low material costs are only part of the equation. Friction is the enemy Celestron is up against. The draw tube is currently too loose in the housing so I want to tighten the works by reducing the gap between housing and draw tube. But…if there is no tolerance between the draw tube and housing the focuser will be impossibly tight and any material expansion or contraction (heating/cooling) could seize the mechanics completely. These nylon shims have ridges to minimize contact with the draw tube wall, thereby limiting friction, but they are sized thick enough to keep the draw tube reasonably centered in the housing. The problem is, I’ve worn down those ridges and begun to tear into the housing wall.

The solution has to balance smooth operation while minimizing play. Ordering replacement shims was a non-starter; they have already failed once. Why set myself up for failure again with a half-solution?

To find a permanent solution using the proper materials required a call to an expert. I have a buddy, Chris Larsen, who designs spas for these guys. Chris took Mr. McGuire’s exhortations in “The Graduate” seriously when it comes to plastics; the man breathes polymers and can wax poetic about PETE. It took him 5 seconds to solve this one-

Me: HELP!
Chris: I have one word for you. (ha!) Teflon.
Me: Huh? I’m not making eggs here, we’re rebuilding a telescope focuser.
Chris: Consider making eggs on your scope a side benefit. Seriously, get some Teflon/PTFE and then show me some stars. It’s an incredibly durable substance, has a very low coefficient of friction (nothing sticks to it, right?) and has nearly zero deformation with wild temperature swings. All that, and you can buy it in sheets at almost any thickness you need with an adhesive-ready side.

Chris directed me to his favorite supplier, McMaster-Carr. These guys were AWESOME. I had “Virgin Teflon” delivered in less than 36 hours to my door. This is what we got:

Figure 4: Teflon/PTFE Sheet, Front

Figure 5: Teflon/PTFE Sheet, Adhesive-Ready Back

I ordered a 12″*12″ sheet of 0.020″ thick Teflon. A quick check with the calipers reveals the material is spot on and consistent. After tax and shipping I was all in for under 20 bucks. So far, this is looking better than spending $300 on a new focuser for a telescope that runs about $150. Let’s get fixin’!

First, I need to remove those nylon shims and rough up the inside of the housing, particularly where the shims once lived. This prepares the surface for glue and insures no bumps on the surface. I did not want to take any material from the housing as the wall thickness needs to remain consistent; I needed to be careful here. My Dremel wire brush on low speed and some hand sanding with steel wool did the trick nicely. Here’s the result:

Figure 6: Focuser Housing, Prepped for Repair

Before I started sanding I masked off all of the channels and grooves with 3M Long-Mask tape. This is important as dust must NOT get embedded in the grease used on the gearing. Long-mask tape is designed to pull off without leaving any adhesive behind, even after sitting for a few months. I finished the roughing, cleaned out the dust and removed the tape. Now the fun begins. I cut a piece of the Teflon roughly to size for a test fit and to practice negotiating it into place. Once glue is in the works your fingers may not be nimble enough to position the material on the fly. Practice was definitely helpful here.

Figure 7: Teflon Inside Housing for Test-Fit

Notice the sizing of the Teflon sheet is not perfect. It is a little big, so it covers the interior completely but it is still small enough to avoid overlapping ends. Pi times diameter is your friend. I made a mistake in the first cut but I had enough material in the 12″*12″ sheet to cover this housing 5 times over. If you make a mistake, just cut another piece. Since the Teflon is roughly the right size, I pulled it out and applied spray glue to the adhesive-ready side of the Teflon and negotiated it into position. This was easy, really. I just rolled up the Teflon so the ends overlapped a little and was able to slide it in without contacting the housing walls. Once fully inserted, I popped the Teflon open with my fingers and pressed it against the housing wall. Don’t worry about glue on the Teflon side, we’ll clean that later.

Now we need to work fast for about 10 minutes.

The draw tube will not fit at this stage because we still need to trim the Teflon to the contours of the housing. Note there are two major grooves in the housing. The one on the left in these pictures is the slot for the rack and pinion gears. The dado on the right is for our focuser lock. The first cut needs to be on the left, to accommodate the rack. I whipped out the Exacto and trimmed just enough Teflon to allow the rack to pass through. For safety, I then inserted the draw tube to both test the fit and press the Teflon evenly around the housing while the glue firmed up. I let it set up for half an hour while I brewed and enjoyed some coffee (Colombian Supremo, fine grind), then came back to finish the trimming.

Figure 8: Teflon Glued In, Trimming 75% Complete

Figure 8 shows the Teflon about 75% trimmed in the housing. The loose bits on the left are all that remain. Negotiating the razor knife inside the housing was no trouble at all. I have special blades for wacky angles but I did not need them. Remember, Celestron used two half-inch wide nylon shims here so cutting away more material on accident is not a problem at all; you will still have 15 times more shim surface than your focuser started with. Also notice that my Teflon is now in two pieces. Finished, it looks like Celestron designed it that way. If only.

One last test fit with the draw tube tells the whole story. Without the pinion gear and spring to press on the rack and tube wall, the draw tube gently slides through the housing and will slide out (slowly) if I hold it vertically. This is perfect. I have no unneeded friction. How about the rock/play? Fully inserted, there is no rock at all. Fully extended, the draw tube moves less than 1mm laterally at the top. So far, this is success!

After carefully reassembling everything this solution works like a charm. I no longer have 2 nylon shims in my focuser, I have a Teflon bearing.

Fast forward 3 months:

The action is smooth night after night, the draw tube does not stick in the housing and I seem to have inherited some unanticipated benefits:

1. The image no longer shifts when I lock the focuser in place
2. I can adjust the tension on the rack and pinion more finely with those four screws now that the draw tube has more surface contact with the housing (well, with my Teflon, anyway). That means I can adjust the focus more finely without risking a runaway eyepiece.
3. If the focuser expands and the action gets a little stiff, no worries. The Teflon simply will not stick. That, and the Teflon does compress by .001″ or so if there is sufficient pressure. My focuser is rock solid.
4. The leftover Teflon makes for some awesome furniture foot pads!

In all, this was a major upgrade for me, not just a repair.

Some follow-up and opinion:

Celestron, I’m looking at you. I will reiterate that it was me, the owner, who abused the focuser by overloading it with gear. I am also well aware a rack and pinion focuser is pretty much the bottom of the barrel for the purpose I employ the scope but seriously…two nylon shims? What the heck? Yes, they’re cheap. Yes, they can be assembled by untrained workers in an anonymous factory somewhere. But you can do better. You make some ridiculously awesome gear. With the right tooling (which I already have in mind), this fix would cost no more than $0.50 per focuser to implement and it has already improved my satisfaction with the C6-N by leaps and bounds. Think about it. I hereby give you permission, nay, encourage you to use this modification in your future designs. All I ask in return is a nod, a shout-out, or maybe a 10″ Newt for my CG-5.

One has to dream, right?

Detailed Instructions:

First off, doing any of this is likely to void any warranty you have and may or may not solve your specific problem. While rack and pinion focusers are generally similar in design you might have a hangy bit here or pokey bit there that precludes this approach. Use your head and remember: this is a one-way street. Once you remove the factory shims they will probably be destroyed and your options will be limited. Second, while the rack and pinion is simple, you should already have some ability to turn a screwdriver and re-assemble the parts later. I therefore take no responsibility for you destroying your focuser.  This guide assumes you are already past the point of living with the problem of rack and play.

Tips:

• Of all the things you need to succeed a set of calipers is the most crucial. Buy or borrow some but do not even begin unless you can get hold of this measurement tool. They’re under $20 at Harbor Freight.
• The grease is annoying but don’t lose or contaminate any of it, it’s important.
• If you are aggressive and really want a perfect fit, buy the Teflon a couple of thousandths of an inch thicker than you need. Teflon can be sanded down with ordinary sandpaper. Sure, it takes a while and you need to constantly measure with the calipers but perfection can be had with some elbow grease.
• If you aren’t aggressive and just want to go from horrible to passable, buy the Teflon as close to your required thickness as possible without going over. This is the simpler route.
• Did you screw it up? Start over. You’ll have plenty of material to try 3 or 4 times.

What you need:

• Calipers (dial calipers capable of measuring .001 inch or less)
• Teflon sheet at the required thickness, 2-3 times what you will actually use
• Small razor knife, thin handled
• Screwdrivers and a wrench for removing the focuser
• Long-mask tape (go with 3M, you will thank me)
• Spray glue
• Dust free containers for your parts
• 200+ grit sandpaper or 000 steel wool

Step-By-Step:

1. Carefully remove the focuser from the scope. Don’t drop anything on the primary mirror!
2. Disassemble the focuser starting with the 4 screws holding the pinion gear to the rack and immediately separate each piece in a dust free container. Don’t touch the grease or allow it to become contaminated in any way.
3. Remove the draw tube from the housing.
4. Use your calipers to measure the inside diameter (ID) of the housing and the outside diameter (OD) of the draw tube. Take many measurements (at least 4) and average them out. Measure the inside of the housing BELOW the entrance bead or lip to get an accurate reading. If you use the scope under the same temperature conditions night after night, warm or cool the tube and housing to that temperature before measuring for the best accuracy.
5. Subtract the OD of the draw tube from the ID of the housing. Now divide by 2. E.g., if your housing ID is 1.600″ and your draw tube OD is 1.550″ the difference is 0.050″ (five hundredths). Dividing by 2 gets you to 0.025″ (2.5 hundredths). This (0.025″) is the maximum thickness of the Teflon shim you need.
6. Order some Teflon. A 12″*12″ sheet should work, but make sure it is-
   1. Adhesive-ready on the back side and…
   2. At least 3 times as much material as you need to cover the housing (Pi * ID” * Length” = Square Inches to Cover) and…
   3. No thicker than your calculation from step 5. Less is better than more.
7. Using your long-mask tape, cover and seal off any grooves in the housing where grease is present or through which gears may pass.
8. Carefully remove the original nylon shims and smooth out the area beneath them, removing burrs and glue without removing any of the housing material (aluminum or plastic). Fine grit sandpaper or 000 steel wool is perfect.
9. Thoroughly clean out all of the dust from the housing. Compressed air works great. DO NOT use a painter’s tack cloth. You don’t want residue left behind.
10. Remove your long-mask tape.
11. Cut a piece of Teflon slightly longer than your housing barrel and a hair shorter than your housing’s inside circumference (Pi * Diameter is your friend).
12. Test fit the Teflon, sliding it in from the bottom and stopping flush with the bottom of your housing’s top bead or lip. This will mean the Teflon stops short of the top of the housing against the bead and will stick out of the bottom before trimming.
    1. The ends of your Teflon strip should line up with your housing’s rack groove or dado. This will make fitting and trimming easier later.
    2. If you are careful and trim the Teflon closer to its final length you can test fit the draw tube now, too. This is a good idea.
13. Trim the Teflon as needed so it can be rolled up fitted in place with the least amount of dexterity. Re-test the fit.
14. Apply spray glue to the adhesive-ready side of the Teflon, edge to edge.
15. Insert the Teflon to the right depth (flush with the bottom edge of the housing “bead”) and press to the housing sidewalls with your fingers. Don’t worry about glue on the Teflon face. It will come off easily later.
16. With your razor knife, trim the excess Teflon away from the groove where the focuser rack will slide and insert the draw tube.
    1. Check the action. It should be smooth. The draw tube should want to slide out slowly if you hold it upright.  If the draw tube sticks look for bubbles, overlaps (etc) and eliminate them.
    2. Leave the draw tube in place for 30 minutes to let the glue set.
17. Remove the draw tube and carefully trim around all the inside and outside housing edges with your razor knife.
18. Gently clean any glue or grease from the Teflon. It should rub off easily.
19. Re-insert the draw tube, reassemble the focuser and attach to your scope.
20. Collimate your scope like it got dropped from a moving truck. It just did.

Clear skies!

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Getting the business to buy in to ubiquitous virtualization and cloud technologies and services requires marketing to them in terms that are meaningful. The message for too long has been, “Allow us to virtualize your tier 1 apps so we can continue to consolidate the environment and drive down cost”. That’s not a particularly compelling message to the business, and in fact you may not always drive down cost for that particular mission critical application. What most business process and application owners do find compelling are improvements around agility, service provisioning, availability, performance, transparency of costs and other service level attributes. It just so happens that these benefits are realized by virtualizing infrastructure AND implementing other cloud hallmarks like automation, orchestration, process redesign, self-service, aggregated service definitions and so on. Virtualizing workloads and consolidating infrastructure solves IT problems, making it easier to request, consume and predict costs for IT services solve business problems.

Being able to deliver on these promises to the business requires a program at an enterprise level with full executive sponsorship that will mature people, processes and technology at roughly the same pace. Metrics need to be defined and agreed upon at the outset and a dashboard or marketing campaign needs to be put in place to drive workloads to the target architecture. Another key sticking point is taking the Field of Dreams approach to Cloud implementation, just because you build it doesn’t mean they’ll come. We’ve all experienced something like designing what we in IT think will be the killer app or service to offer to our users only to have it launch and fizzle because there was no compelling reason to use it. It’s not enough to build the baseball diamond, you’ve got to build it, turn on the lights, put up some billboards on the highway, make sure that people who’ve been there tell their friends how great it is, use some incentive pricing, give out some free tickets, set up a bus service to the field and so on. Marketing, incentive pricing, service definitions that are compelling to the business, overhauling how they interact with IT, and implementing self-service where appropriate helps to drive workloads to that new target architecture.

There are plenty of benefits to IT to this approach as well. You can make that new interface to the business look highly flexible and have lots of choices, there could be three or four selections plus a custom service, lots to choose from as a business or application owner. The difference between those services might be that the highly commoditized cloud delivered ones are provisioned in a day and the custom one is provisioned in 6 weeks. Suddenly the desire for that highly customized architecture gives way to “good enough” and wicked fast. It may not always be their wallet you’ll have to appeal to, and that actually gives IT more options. So, what are you waiting for? If you’re going to change, Go BIG or go Home, your customers and your staff will thank you for it.

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No.

“But- why?”

Because my bullshit filter is set to “reality only, please”, while science and technology reporting tends to be some of the worst fantasy in the business.  My clients rely on me to give them real-world advice they can run a business on, not high-level perspectives on the latest vaporware.  My vision of IT Service Management is a lot more Henry Ford than Michio Kaku.  Two examples are all I need to get you to tighten up your Twitter.

First: Physicists Did NOT Break the Light Speed Barrier
Maybe.  Or maybe they did.  This is one of those stories that would have been better off not having been reported at all.  To their credit, Science Magazine does put it in perspective by book-ending the article with the right sentiment; I cannot say the same for the rest of the media frothing over this astonishing breakthrough, that isn’t.  The paper, which is still being peer reviewed at conference, is pretty clear to say “yeah, this doesn’t make sense…can someone smarter than us check our math?”  If this is true, buy stock in textbook companies.  All of them need to be rewritten.

Second: This.
PC Mag needs to ask someone check their math.  I’m sorry that the 24-hour news cycle just doesn’t keep with the pressures of running a monthly rag.  That’s got to be tough when things change so quickly, but Leo Apotheker was fired on 9/22/11, this article was posted to the web on 9/26/11 (when I read it) and has a dateline of 9/30/11.  The whole second paragraph in this article about the worst tech blunders is all about Leo’s activities as the CURRENT CEO of HPQ.  Do they not have proofreaders and editors on staff?  I cannot possibly take the remainder of the article seriously when they passed up a perfect opportunity to lambaste the HP board’s replacement choice.  Thankfully, the remainder is a slide show and is about 50% crap.  The other half is a slide show.  Which is also crap.

I don’t follow the latest breaking science and technology news because fact-checking what’s hot off the press takes a LOT of time and my clients’ IT shops don’t turn on a dime anyway.  Most of what’s hot is just noise, lots of distracting noise.  If a game changer comes along (say, the speed of light just changed by 1%) it is worth developing a thoughtful perspective before shooting off your mouth.  No matter how fast technology moves, the real impact of change still takes years to settle in and be felt.  I have no need to read up before my coffee gets cold.

Still, I’m encouraged.  Maybe I’ll get to visit Betelgeuse right after Leo announces Q3 earnings this year.

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