Freeform Comment

IT financing is not a deal saver

2012-03-08T15:36:00.004Z

But it is a great sales tool if introduced early enough

The idea of IT financing is anything but new. Leases and loans for IT equipment have been around for years. The financing game has moved on considerably in recent times, however. The options available to customers today are more comprehensive and flexible. Want to finance your whole project - hardware, software, services and all? No problem. And it often doesn’t matter which brands of hardware and software are in the mix.

The biggest problem with financing is that it is too often overlooked as an option. While it’s not right for everyone in every situation, many who could benefit from it are unaware of what’s on offer. Even if they think of it, financing is frequently perceived as complex, limited and costly.

I was discussing this state of affairs recently with Bill Harmer, Marketing Manager for IBM Global Financing (IGF) in the UK and Ireland. IGF runs as a discrete business within the IBM group, and has access to a huge chunk of capital to support leasing, loan and other financing arrangements.

IBM is not the only vendor offering financing services - Microsoft, HP, Cisco, EMC and others do too, to name but a few. Harmer’s perspective on how the financing business has developed is particularly interesting though as IBM has been in the game longer than most, from the early days when computers were hard to buy outright because they were so expensive.

Asked about the scope of what’s possible, Harmer confirmed what we have heard from other vendor financing arms, i.e. that deals have become very inclusive: “While we expect a reasonable amount of IBM product or service in the mix, it’s not a problem if other branded products or third party services make up the bulk of the investment. IGF regularly finances projects that include an element of software from other vendors, ISV applications, and even bespoke development and integration services from partners”.

But why would anyone be interested in financing anyway?

For the customer, a common motivation is cash flow management. This doesn’t take much getting your brain around; rather than pay for everything up front, you spread the cost out over a number of years. This has broad relevance in the current economic environment, but is particularly attractive to growing or more dynamic organisations, who would rather put cash to work elsewhere than lock it in IT assets. Whether it’s a lease, loan or combination of the two (e.g. lease the equipment, and put a loan in place to spread payment for software and services), the basic motivation is the same.

Financing also has the advantage of allowing investment and business benefits to be better aligned over time. A typical IT project is ‘front end loaded’ in terms of cost, and ‘back end loaded’ with respect to delivering anything useful to the business. By smoothing out the cost curve, you minimise the commercial overhead on the business during the development and implementation phase, thereby removing what can often be a significant financial burden.

Financing can also make securing funds for more ambitious projects easier, though it’s important to acknowledge that the organisation is still committed to the contract, and that the ultimate amount to be paid becomes a binding commitment. Financing is therefore not suitable if your business is not inherently sound.

So what’s in it for the partner, i.e. the VAR, reseller, integrator or ISV?

The most obvious benefit for a partner is that you get paid immediately, once the customer accepts the solution, thus avoiding the normal 30,60 or 90 day terms - this can include future committed services. You might even get a commission on the finance deal itself.

Financing then helps with the selling process. The focus is switched from the funds available in this year’s budget, to the budget that needs to be allocated per year over a 3-5 year period. This can broaden the scope of deals and assist when articulating the business case. Expressing savings or contribution versus costs on a quarterly or annual basis can often be appreciated more easily by business stakeholders than assumptive lifetime ROI calculations.

Leasing in particular also helps create a ‘stickier’ and more profitable ongoing relationship with the customer. Options often exist to upgrade during the contract term, and older kit can obviously be replaced for the modern up to date equivalent at renewal time. This allows upgrades and replacements to be sold without relying on the customer finding huge chunks of capital. And when the contract comes to an end, there is an automatic ‘compelling event’ for the customer to do something rather than ‘sweat their assets’.

It’s also worth saying a few words about fees. As Harmer explains, “We reclaim old equipment at the end of the contract, and it’s refurbished and reused through our Global Asset Recovery programme. Lease rates can therefore reflect the cost of asset depreciation more than the inherent capital value of the equipment per se.” This principle translates directly to an upsell opportunity for partners as higher end equipment often keeps its value better than low-end commodity kit.

Coming back to the question of financing being complex, rigid and hard to understand, Harmer dispelled this myth pretty convincingly by demonstrating an incredibly easy to use IBM portal for rapidly getting a quote, which is accessible from the IBM Global Finance web site (http://www-03.ibm.com/financing/uk/index.html). This can be used by partners to put financing options on the table with very little hassle.

Such facilities are important as the trick to making finance work is to introduce it early into discussions with customers as a way of smoothing and enhancing the sell. Contrary to popular belief, financing is not the best way to save a deal at the 11th hour when you are losing it for cost related reasons – that almost never works.

Originally published on CRN

Big data storage technologies

2012-02-27T11:13:00.002Z

“Rip and replace” or “Complementary”?

All too frequently the IT industry gets caught up in a whirlwind of marketing stories indicating that the next revolution bringing answers to peace, happiness and world hunger has begun. Freeform Dynamics recently published a report looking at this year’s ‘must have’, namely big data and how this will influence various storage technologies as things move forwards.

One of the biggest challenges with big data hype is actually defining just what the expression means. Indeed after ‘cloud’, big data has become one of the most hyped terms in use in the IT world, but the reality is that it applies to a two quite different things: dealing with the sheer weight of data growth; and being able to understand the information hidden within different data sources to guide business decision.

When we look at managing the data explosion, we can boil it down to three core elements that are commonly referred to as the ‘Three Vs’ - namely Volume, Velocity and Variety. The ‘3Vs’ makes for a nice marketing phrase, but it needs some explanation. More importantly it doesn’t take account of the fact that much of the value in the data being generated by IT systems today has a low ‘signal to noise’ ratio, making it difficult to locate the nuggets of valuable information amongst the huge amount of data. A more complete discussion can be found here http://www.freeformdynamics.com/fullarticle.asp?aid=1419.

The real value of big data comes from the rapid analysis of data sources to provide information the organisation can exploit to generate new value or make better operational choices. This value is enhanced when this can be achieved in close to real time. Whilst our survey results highlight that the crown jewels of organisational data are still held in structured sources, many organisations recognise that they are holding rapidly growing volumes of data in other forms, much of which is not exploited to anything like its fullest extent. This is the challenge that big data is attempting to address.

In essence big data seeks to dig valuable information from the large amounts of data organisations are now generating every day. The data to be analysed may utilise feeds from both structured and unstructured sources, but the key point is that the value of information to be mined may not be found in rich seams, but rather needs to be sifted from very large volumes of data.

To analyse these large volumes of data, possibly taken from multiple sources, a number of information management technologies may be employed. It is worthwhile noting that very few, if any of the new data management technologies coming to market today and that have surfaced over the past few years are targeted solely at the big data space. Indeed, almost all data and information management solutions are likely to be utilised in big data projects as well as other, more ‘mainstream’ business uses.

In this context, the figure below is interesting, revealing as it does both current usage levels of a variety of such tools and platforms along with expectations for changes in usage levels expected to occur in the next three years. It should be noted that the self-selecting nature of web surveys makes it likely that both the usage levels of ‘new solutions’ as well as projections for their future usage are likely to be over-represented as people interested in the area being surveyed are more likely to take part.

As can be seen, apart from legacy databases and file systems there is an expectation that already well-established information management technologies such as relational database management systems will continue to enjoy growth in usage in the coming years. These will increasingly be complemented by less well-established, but long available solutions such as in memory database systems, WORM databases and OLAP multi-dimensional databases, which are expected to expand considerably from their smaller foundations.

The more specialist platforms that are now frequently associated with ‘big data’, but which are by no means exclusively utilised in this context, are starting from much lower installed bases. Of these, a range of scale-out storage solutions enjoys the strongest adoption so far, but these are still clearly in their infancy in enterprise use, never mind in big data solutions. Stream processing, distributed indexing and distributed analytics engines are only just starting to be rolled out.

But like their well-established information management solutions, the expectation is that all such systems will enjoy wider usage in the coming years. It can also be argued that should the business value of ‘big data’ solutions garner wider recognition, that that take up of the various information management systems could expand even more rapidly, especially as the generation of data as a whole shows no signs of abating.

What is clear is that neither ‘big data’ itself nor the use of any new information management or storage technologies are likely to mean an end to the use of established data management solutions. If anything, the reality is just the opposite. The study also shows that the knowledge levels amongst IT professionals as a whole of many new storage and information management systems today is still very low, especially of the newer technologies. This lack of knowledge is acting as a brake on take up of many new data management solution offerings. But the adoption of new solutions, whether related to big data projects or to meet other business needs does not mean the end of most established storage platforms nor the end of tried and trusted database management solutions.

Originally published on DCS UK

Time for a fresh look at Disaster Recovery?

2012-01-24T15:40:00.000Z

Insights and tips for small and mid-sized businesses
by Colin Beveridge, Principal Analyst, Freeform Dynamics

Not many people read IT Disaster Recovery plans for pleasure but these documents are often far more insightful than the organisation’s Annual Report. That’s because the quality and scope of the DR plan instantly reveals the company’s relative priorities, levels of resource investment and commitment to business continuity planning.

At the very least, a robust, up-to-date and proportionate IT disaster plan shows not only that somebody cares enough to try and keep the wheels of industry turning but has also put adequate measures in place to minimise the risks of unexpected IT failure.

Of course, the interpretation of ‘adequate measures’ will always vary from organisation to organisation, according to local needs and resources, because there is no cookie-cutter model (one size fits all) for disaster recovery.

Nevertheless some fundamental principles do apply, regardless of organisation size and scale, which means that Small and Mid-Sized Businesses (SMBs) face very similar DR challenges to those of their larger counterparts. Even the smallest SMB needs to take some steps to protect the integrity of its business systems when things go wrong.

A Freeform Dynamics study focused on organisations with between 50 and 1000 employees shows that SMBs generally care about IT disaster recovery and proactively establish DR measures, even if they don’t always describe them in such terms.

However, the research also highlights some gaps and shortfalls in disaster recovery capability, which respondents readily acknowledge. Having said this, only 20% of SMBs indicated that investing in DR improvements would be considered as high priority spending:

The chart above is one of a number from the aforementioned research which tell us that a good proportion of SMBs are well aware of their DR challenges but most can’t afford to throw money at the problem areas, particularly in a difficult economic climate.

But that shouldn’t stop them taking a fresh look at their disaster recovery plans, not only to see if there are any affordable opportunities for incremental improvements in key areas, but also to check that any previous plans remain properly aligned with their systems portfolio and infrastructure.

Chances are that some re-alignment may be necessary, particularly if business systems, IT infrastructure or services have been changed or introduced since the last DR review. It’s also vital to pay specific attention to any changes in business priorities, working practices (such as growth of remote/mobile working), service delivery models or service providers, because these will all directly affect the business continuity and disaster recovery requirements.

Likewise a previously suitable mix of DR tools, techniques and technologies might now benefit from a rethink. SMBs may find that the falling cost of storage, the mainstream readiness of virtualisation technology and the maturation of third-party hosting services (including Cloud) offer real benefits of cost and timeliness, in terms of better IT resilience and recovery, when compared with a ‘traditional’ DR approach, such as offsite tape backup and recovery.

Perhaps, though, the biggest challenge for a smaller business is in knowing what ‘effective’ DR and good business continuity planning looks like in practice. This is where awareness of what works well elsewhere can be invaluable.

In an attempt to flush out some of the ‘best practices’ for SMB disaster recovery, our analysis of the research sample divided the interview respondents into two groups: a) those with comprehensive/ good IT DR, and b) those with inadequate/ poor IT DR capabilities.

On comparison of the two groups we saw some significant differences, with seven specific characteristics, or behaviours, that appear to stand out as ‘enablers’ of better DR performance.

Some of these enablers, such as inclusive planning (i.e. ensuring that IT disaster recovery planning is fully co-ordinated with general business continuity plans for people and process) and the prioritisation/ funding of DR investments, are hardly surprising because they represent the fundamental points of entry to effective DR anyway.

However, other enablers identified in the research may be less obvious to an SMB hoping to improve IT disaster recovery capability. These include the use of alternative storage media and advanced DR solutions, such as Continuous Data Protection (CDP) which facilitates rollback or recovery to a particular point in time – extremely useful if a key data store has become compromised, or otherwise invalidated by application or user error.

For a full discussion of the effective DR enablers and more information on this topic, you can download the full research report here

(originally published on computing.co.uk)

RIM changes its leadership, but not its course

2012-01-23T22:41:00.007Z

On January 23rd, 2012, Research in Motion (RIM) announced Thorsten Heins as President and CEO. Mike Lazaridis, former Co-Chair and Co-CEO becomes Vice Chair of the Board, and also Chair of the Board’s new Innovation Committee. Jim Balsillie remains a Director. Barbara Stymiest takes on the position of Independent Board Chair. Prem Watsa joins as a new Board Director. All with immediate effect. The complete press release can be found here: http://press.rim.com/release.jsp?id=5358

So what’s new, apart from the personnel moves summarized above? Based on the official press release and what was said during the company conference call, the answer is: not a lot.

Thorsten Heins stated that the top priorities for his first 100 days in office would be – in that order - improved marketing (with the appointment of a Chief Marketing Officer), and the strengthening of processes and execution.

He also made it abundantly clear that the emphasis for the new CMO (to be brought on board asap) was going to be very much on the consumer market, with a particular emphasis on making up lost ground in the US. By contrast, nothing was really said about RIM’s enterprise customer base, and how to shore it up in the face of increasing competition.

Those who were looking for a change in overall company or product strategy were disappointed. Thorsten very firmly stressed the company’s commitment to BB10 (described as not simply a new operating system, but a new platform) and PlayBook 2.0, and hailed the technical superiority of both. He also made it clear that RIM was not going to hive off any parts of the business, as having an integrated approach (hardware, software and services) is seen as a key competitive differentiator. Requests to license BB10 would be considered on a case-by-case basis, but hardware-only deals were firmly ruled out.

Improvements to resource planning and program management will no doubt be a positive move, if they lead to fewer product delays and more stable early releases of new software. And better marketing can’t do any harm, provided the product and service are right. But there is little sign as yet that RIM is bringing the developers round to its vision of the future.

In the near term, urgent action is needed to address the enterprise part of the business. Despite having lost market share in some countries, RIM still has a large number of enterprise customers. If it wants to retain these, the company must spell out very clearly the reasons why these customers should stay loyal. While RIM may still have the edge when it comes to certain corporate requirements, such as security and central management, the gap is closing, and RIM has to move fast.

The big questions remain: Is this management change too little, too late? And how much room to manoeuvre will Thorsten Heins really have, should he decide a change in strategy is required after all, with the shadow of Mike Lazaridis continuing to loom large?

New analyst at Freeform Dynamics

2011-11-14T21:17:00.003Z

It is my great pleasure to announce that Colin Beveridge joined Freeform Dynamics a week ago as Principal Analyst. And he's off to a flying start, as you can see from his blog post below. To say that Colin brings a wealth of experience to the role is probably the understatement of the day, and we all look forward to working with him. Find out more by looking at his profile here.

Metadata: the Jumbo Data problem?

2011-11-14T13:53:00.007Z

A chance conversation about Big Data led me to think about the importance of metadata to effective information exploitation.

Of course, we have long recognised that we create actionable business intelligence and information by attributing meaning and context to data.

We also know that recording our thought-process and rationale for creating information from data can provide valuable insight for future decision-making. That's why metadata is so important.

And yet descriptive and contextual metadata is too often the metaphorical elephant in the data center, because our systems and databases still tend to be heavily biased towards transactional data capture, consolidation and transformation.

This makes me wonder, do we put sufficient effort into metadata management, or is it a Jumbo problem that we put in the "too difficult" box?

Spreading iTunes beyond Apple equipment

2011-08-04T18:57:00.003Z

This is a story of my experiences of using non-Apple equipment to expand my use of digital media stored in an iTunes library. How this library came to be is a long story, but back in the dark ages of digital media (late 90’s and into the early part of the naughties), I was holding out against moving to iTunes. I’d started building up my library in the 90’s and didn’t want to get locked into a particular vendor.

For a while it worked – Windows Media Player was pretty good at managing the library, while there was a range of hardware available to sync to. However, it all came to a head when Microsoft made changes to the workings of Media Player and hardware. This had the effect of removing support for syncing to many recent devices, rendering my Toshiba Gigabeat to the role of an expensive doorstop (in reality it found a second life as a very expensive USB hard disk drive with a screen).

In combination with the rapid drop in hard disk drive prices, this set me on a course to get a high quality media library in place and I moved to iTunes and the iPod and AirTunes to do this. I ripped my music library in Apple Lossless format to maintain full CD quality, while I created digital copies of my DVD and now Blu-Ray libraries to have available on the move and to protect the discs from the prying and very destructive hands of my small and very technology aware daughter.

Gradually, more iPods were acquired, and then iPhones, Apple TVs and iPads until eventually there was a sprawl. Things started to become a bit of a headache, as streaming content off one PC, and a notebook at that, left the Wi-Fi saturated. Content availability was quite patchy due to the limited ability to sync iTunes libraries (content, playlists, playcount, favourites etc) between different PCs and also devices.

At this point, I thought it would be good to see just how easy it would be to be broaden out beyond iTunes and iDevices and look at how easily third party solutions could integrate and extend the experience. At about this time, I was approached by Western Digital to try out a few of their consumer storage, networking and media devices for feedback on how they worked. And so the two came together and the result on the whole was very positive, although there were a few gotchas.

This is not meant to be an in-depth review of total features or technical competence, but rather a laymans approach to how simple and easy it is to branch out beyond iTunes, and as such is my personal experience and observations of using the kit.

So to kick things off, here is a summary of the Western Digital home computing and media devices, and my top level view of how they rate (for more about them please read on):

• LiveWire data over power adapters – 8/10 (easy to setup but could be faster)
• MyPassport 500GB USB 3 hard disk drive 10/10 (small, quiet, fast)
• 1TB LiveHub Network Attached Storage box 7/10 (No USB or Wi-Fi)
• TV Live Hub with 1TB of internal storage 6/10 (No Wi-Fi, no lossless audio, large file transfers >4GB can be an issue)

Moving off Wi-Fi helped performance and predictability

Looking first at the LiveWire data plugs, these were extremely easy to set up. I literally plugged the first box into the switch port on the router, and then into the power socket. I then plugged the second box into a power socket in my study and the two connected seamlessly. The Mac in my study is the iTunes library and is responsible for streaming a lot of content. This used to hammer the Wi-Fi, as clients would be streaming via the Wi-Fi access point too. Shifting the streaming over the LiveWire devices has really helped alleviate the pressure. Streaming videos in particular are now much more reliable, particularly the hi-def ones, and it has also helped when we stream things like BBC iPlayer HD content where freezes are noticeably less.

The downsides is the plugs really have to go straight into the power socket and not an extension with surge protection, and the speed of connection is around 100Mb/s – which while still very good compared to 802.11n Wi-Fi is still slow for wired Ethernet these days. Fast file transfers of very large files still require copying to an external USB hard disk and using the good old sneakernet.

An added bonus was solving a longstanding Wi-Fi and BlueTooth conflict on my Mac. I had reverted to using a wired Mighty Mouse because heavy use of Wi-Fi would cause BlueTooth on my MacBook Pro to get jittery and as a result the BlueTooth Magic Mouse was unusable. Switching off Wi-Fi and using wired Ethernet over the LiveWire plugs solved that and means I am a happy camper again with a multi-touch mouse.

Fast, light and small – ideal to transfer large files

Which brings us to the My Passport USB 3 hard disk drive. Unfortunately I don’t have any new PCs with USB 3 ports to really push the drive, but using USB it transferred files at 35 to 40 MB/s which is comparable to my larger 3.5 inch USB 2.0 drives and a noticeable boost on my 2.5 inch portable drives which usually top out at around 25 MB/s.

Very small and very light, it ran cool and quiet and enabled large media file transfers to be done very quickly and easily. I’ve not doubt this drive could provide somewhat more performance when connected to a USB 3 interface, but it will be with the emergence of lower cost SSD drives that I expect USB 3 to really shine.

NAS boxes with Media Servers still have niggling troubles

I then set up the MyBookLive NAS box. This was very easy to do, with an intuitive graphical interface and an easy administration routine. Part of the attraction of the device was the ability to do Time Machine backups, which was the first thing I set up.

It was also the first thing I turned off a week or so later, as I couldn’t find a way to limit the size of the TimeMachine backups to a set limit for each machine. What I found was that with 3 Macs backing up constantly the disk was just filling up and not being all that useful as a general NAS storage box. With a single Mac without too much changing this would be useful, but in my case with lots of big files changing regularly across multiple machines, it was pushing it a bit.

As a file server, everything was pretty easy to set up, especially the ability to set up shared public directories that are accessible on the local network, as well as creating secure private shares for individual users. A peculiarity I had was a difficulty connecting by a Windows drive mapping to a secure share. Using the supplied SmartWare software enabled this, but it was a bit strange.

While performance is adequate, the unit did struggle as a shared file server. This is to be expected with a single disk setup, and although more advanced caching may help there is a limit as to what can be expected.

As a media server, things are generally pretty simple to set up and share, but there were some issues.

Getting the bad news out the way first, accessing the iTunes server proved a bit problematic. The embedded ID3 information in the iTunes files got misread and so finding the artist was a headache as it was giving the composer. Then iTunes itself would not play the tracks themselves. They were listed, but when double clicked would not play, and yet the same files copied to the TV Live Hub iTunes Server would play in iTunes.

The other issue is that the iTunes server is not capable of streaming to the newer Apple devices that depend on Home Sharing being set up, such as the Apple TV 2. For me this would make a world of difference, as I would no longer have to run iTunes constantly on one of the Macs to feed the Apple TV local content.

It was a different story with the Twonky media server and Windows Media Player on my PCs – the tracks, artists and albums were listed properly, even bringing in the embedded album art and the tracks could be played without problem provided it was converted from Apple Lossless format to iTunes+ format.

The content could even be seen by my networked Sony Blu-Ray drive, although it doesn’t seem to like music ripped even in iTunes+ format (256kb/s variable bit rate) which is what my “converted” lower quality mirror library is ripped at.

At the end of it all, I ended up removing the media content from the NAS drive and hosting it on the TV Live Hub, both to free up space and because the TV Live Hub is the natural place for the media to sit, rather than having to stream from NAS to media player all the time.

There were two limitations that I would like to see addressed. The first is the lack of a high speed USB 2 or 3 port for fast loading of files and content, and the other is the omission of Wi-Fi, resulting in having to place the router and NAS device close together. I was hoping to put the NAS device in an inconspicuous place, which I could do by getting more LiveWire plugs but it would be good to have the option at least.

TV Live Hub has good capabilities, but needs broader media format support.

The TV Live Hub was straightforward to set up, although it did require about 3 sequential firmware updates to get everything fully up to date.

As a music library, setting everything up was a doddle. I must admit though, I was rather surprised that the player could not handle the Apple Lossless format. The player will import the lossless files happily, but is not able to play them. I solved the issue by just converting my main library to iTunes+ quality - but that did take 4 days to complete and is not all that convenient to have to do.

I copied my iTunes+ version of the library to a USB HDD, and then connected it to the TV Live Hub and it did the rest (although I ended up arranging the folders neatly for ease of folder browsing). The interface for choosing music is straightforward and logical. However, it does require the TV to be on to browse for music. Providing a remote application to select what to play from a browser or phone would be a good step here.

When it comes to video, things are a bit more complicated to get up and going. For smaller files such as rips of DVDs, it is easy enough to copy the files to a USB key or HDD and have them import simply. Or you can copy them across the network in a short period.

However, when playing HD content such as MKV versions of Blu-Ray discs which are 10’s of gigabytes in size, copying them to a FAT drive is not possible as they are too big. exFAT can handle file sizes this big, but the TV Live Hub does not yet support this very useful media format. The reason it’s so useful is that it is supported on Windows and Mac, and so is pretty universal.

Instead I found myself having to copy from Mac to exFAT USB HDD, then go to a Windows PC and copy again to an NTFS USB HDD to copy the content. Or else copy the file over the network, but 35GB files take the best part of a day to copy even over the LiveWire. The leftfield option may be to also support, even if read-only, Apple’s HPFS file system for easy copying.

Playback of HD format files is clear and good. When streaming there was a tendency for stuttering, but this was helped by moving the streaming server onto the LiveWire data plugs to free up some Wi-Fi capacity. I did have issues, however, playing a number of standard definition DVD rips from Handbrake which were set to the original Apple TV format.

On the usability front, things are pretty clear. The remote is sensible if somewhat odd shaped and could do with a little more tactility. What stands out is a lack of volume control over HDMI when used with a PC monitor that has no easy way to change the volume without touching buttons on the monitor. This is not a problem with a TV with remote volume control although it does require using two separate remotes.

It is nice to have integration with the iPhone, where a WD app allows photos and videos to upload directly to the TV Live Hub. This works seamlessly and is in use often more convenient than connecting the iPhone to iPhoto and importing them there first. The only issue I had was a rotation problem on videos, where depending on the orientation of the phone when recording the video had a tendency to play upside down as it did not recognise the orientation setting in the file data.

Again, the lack of Wi-Fi, particularly in a media player that will likely have to live in a very specific location in living rooms or bedrooms / kitchens etc, is a major omission in this device, and one that should be easy to rectify in future versions or else this should be bundled with LiveWire plugs to enable use in rooms without data ports.

A good start with minor niggles

Overall the experience has been a good one – both of broadening my view beyond the iTunes experience and of having an alternative way of organising my media that does not rely on either Apple or Microsoft. The downsides have been that the capabilities do not yet match an enthusiast’s expectations, although they would suit many casual users’ needs.

Not supporting Apple Lossless for me is an issue, and could be overcome by building in support or allowing seamless conversion to another lossless format. I don’t really want to have a library at lower quality, not have the headache of maintaining and synchronising a second library. Even building in an automatic converter to iTunes+ would be a good step forward.

Time to get serious about managing security

2011-07-07T12:27:00.002Z

Do you know what’s running in your network?

In this time of ever increasing security threats and hacking attacks, a recent meeting I was at brought home the old adage “If you can’t manage it, you can’t secure it.” I was talking to a major web services company that provides large scale hosting (no prizes for guessing who). Because of what they do, security naturally plays a massive role in their service architecture.

A large part of the success of their security implementation comes down to a combination of knowing what to protect and how to protect it. Knowing what to protect comes naturally, because they have to bill customers for resources or services used. As a result they know - to a very high degree - what is running on their infrastructure at any point in time, and can also flag up when unauthorised or suspicious services attempt to run.

When it comes to the how of protecting applications and services, they have invested in developing security policies and frameworks – based around standards such as PCI DSS, ISO 27001 or HIPAA - that are regularly – and independently - assessed and audited.

This type of investment in management and security is natural for service providers because it is core to what they do (although some do this far better than others). Yet when it comes to internal IT, our research shows that security and management are often areas that are a struggle.

A recent survey indicated that a large proportion of companies never have their security capability independently assessed, and even fewer undergo external auditing. Our on-going research into systems and service management continues to highlight that effective service and asset management – the foundations of good IT practice - are the preserve of the few rather than the domain of the many.

When it comes to improving the situation, one option of course could be to start to move applications into the Cloud. But for many, this is not really a viable strategy in the short or even medium term. This means that any improvements needs to made to internal IT policies, processes and tooling.

Lessons can be learned from how the service providers approach security and management in service delivery to improve the situation internally. If we consider this at the fundamental level, this is really the right way to secure and run IT. This means that getting serious about investing in management. Too often management is neglected and the fallout is dealt with as an IT operations overhead. But with the changing and ever more serious threat landscape good management it is no longer an IT option, it is a business necessity.

Originally published on Computing.co.uk

Operating System Selection

2011-06-24T09:35:00.005Z

Open Source and Proprietary – The Decision Criteria

The selection of operating systems was once one of the major decisions IT managers had to face when considering their options for service delivery, be it for servers or desktop systems. Until a decade or so ago, such choices were limited to choosing one from a range of proprietary operating systems supplied by vendors. But the last ten years have witnessed a new option take hold in the form of open source operating systems. What drives the selection process when choosing between open source software and operating systems supplied by a vendor?

When deliberating whether to use open source operating systems software or that supplied by a commercial ISV the factors influencing the decision-making process are, essentially, the same as they have always been. Some eight or nine characteristics form the major items to be taken into account, including license models and costs, application support, skills availability, operational support options, performance requirements and risk analysis. Of these, three or four tend to dominate the selection processes. When looking at PC solutions it is also important to remember that the user’s experience of the solutions and their comfort can be major selection factors.

At the top of the selection process when picking between operating systems, there is one factor which has absolute importance. Does the application run on the OS or will someone have to port it over to a new platform? After all, no one runs an operating system because they want to run the OS for its own sake. It is there to anchor an application, database or some other service and make it available to users.

When open source operating systems first came to prominence, few commercial business applications were supported on the platforms available, thereby severely limiting some choices. Today, this has changed with many commercial ISVs now more than happy to support operation of their software on major open source platforms, frequently in addition to Windows, Unix or another of the major server operating systems. Unless the application does not support a particular OS this factor alone may not be a major selection bifurcation point between an open source and commercial operating system.

If the application under consideration is compatible with both open source and proprietary operating systems, other factors come into play. Amongst these, though our research indicates them rarely to be the most conclusive elements, are the matters of licensing model and costs. For commercial ISVs, everyone understands that there are license fees to be paid, potentially with associated support and maintenance / software upgrade charges to be accounted for.

The same cannot be said of open source operating systems, where in some minds the perception exists that “open source” equates to “free of charge”. In point of fact, many of the major distributors of open source software in general, and of operating systems in particular, struggle to explain the terms of the use of the solutions they make available to customers. The confusion becomes particularly acute when the Linux distributors, such as Red Hat, SuSE etc., supply the base software for no fee but offer support subscription services to help organisations keep the operating system functioning effectively and to provide assistance when problems are encountered.

Given that open source software is, by its very nature, readily available to inspection and modification (from the perspective of a source coder), with active communities working to develop, enhance and resolve problems when they arise, it is theoretically possible for IT staff within the business to fix any problems they encounter without paid services from the supplier. But few organisations have the skilled staff available in house to resolve problems, at least to do so within the very short time frames on which service problems must now routinely be resolved, never mind having the capabilities to test them. Furthermore, support and maintenance of platform software per se is generally considered to be a distraction in a mainstream IT environment where resources are already stretched.

This is where the vendors of open source operating systems offer support contracts. In truth, simply from a risk perspective, few organisations would consider using software to deliver mainstream business services without having some form of external support contract in place unless they are extremely confident in their own capabilities to resolve, rapidly, any problems encountered. And here’s the rub, because once you sign such a contract, for open source software, you will often find yourself as constrained as you are with commercial solutions. In some cases, for example, you may be required to pay a subscription for all instances of the software used in your organisation, whether you want support for them or not.

On the matter of “cost”, it should also be recognised that whilst the acquisition and support costs, when all terms and conditions are understood, may be straightforward to calculate, over the lifetime of such systems, it is likely that it will be the management overheads that account for the majority of the Total Cost of Ownership. With this in mind, it is therefore important to understand just how well the management and administration tools the organisation has available can handle the operating systems under consideration. Whilst many management frameworks are now able to integrate, at least to some degree, with open source operating systems, the exact capabilities must be examined to ensure that additional costs for acquiring administration facilities do not arise unexpectedly.

As with commercial operating systems, the contracts for open source operating systems must therefore be read with care and diligence, potentially backed up by engaging professional advice to ensure the terms and conditions of support and business usage are understood. The subject of license costs differentiating between open source and commercial software may not be quite as simple as can be assumed.

Of even greater importance is to ensure that the skills the IT management team has available match the needs of the chosen platform, and/or any cross training or recruitment requirements are taken into account. In many organisations, the familiarity with open source software, especially Linux, is now reaching similar levels to that for the longer established commercial operating systems, but this is not the case everywhere, especially amongst smaller organisations. Also, skills to handle advanced capability such as fault tolerance and clustering should not be overlooked where relevant.

In the end, all of this may be academic, though, as open source software is so often chosen on the basis of unqualified perception or even personal interest and/or preference. Assuming you are making an objective decision, however, we hope our discussion has been of use to highlight that choosing between the options is seldom straightforward, and requires careful consideration.

Originally published on computing.co.uk

RSA hack demonstrates need for proactive security and multi-layer protection

2011-03-22T09:41:00.006Z

The recent news that RSA Security suffered a security attack and breach that resulted in the theft of sensitive and confidential Intellectual Property relating to SecurID should be a cause of concern for many.

The good thing is that RSA Security had agressive security measures in place that detected the attack and allowed it to take proactive steps to limit the scope of the attack and to quickly identify what had been accessed and stolen.

The downside is that the source code to the technology behind a good proportion of multi-factor authentication solutions is now most likely available for inspection to aid the creation of cracks or subversions. We can only hope that the information was limited in scope, and that RSA has been thorough in developing the code in a Secure Development Lifecycle approach that will limit the attack surface and potential vulnerabilities.

The event once again raises the issue of how to tackle security, and in particular the protection of the core information assets of a company. We've written on this is the past, particularly on the need to protect data across the company, and not just on devices such as laptops, tablets or smart phones. There is a prevailing mindset that because servers are located within a secure environment such as an access controlled data centre, the data on them is also secure and access can be controlled by security policy such as Access Control Lists.

The reality is that this only works for employees, and particularly those employees who follow policy. Protecting data on servers needs more than this, and encrypting the data is a proven method for doing this. If crackers do gain access to the bits and bytes, making sense of it is rather more difficult. Coming back to the RSA attack, it is somewhat ironic that a company that started out as the leader in encryption has itself fallen foul of having the stolen data potentially able to be exploited because it was unencrypted.

Getting to grips with software licencing

2011-03-18T14:49:00.004Z

Building a solid platform for licence management

Andrew Buss, Service Director, Freeform Dynamics

We are told time and again that software licencing and management is a major headache. The situation remains a problem, and far from improving it is often getting progressively more difficult to manage. IT is becoming more embedded within the business, with more use of IT for business processes and communications.

Things are changing more quickly too. Virtualisation is now well established and accepted and there is a small but growing movement to dynamic IT infrastructure such as resource pooling or internal private cloud.

On the client side, desktop and application virtualisation are adding another layer of complexity. This is all putting pressure on companies to comply with licencing terms, but contrary to many other areas of IT management this area for many remains a ‘black art’.

When it comes to licencing, there are three main areas to consider. The first is the basis on which licencing takes place, whether it is by server, socket, core on the physical side, or per seat, concurrent or subscription on the user side, never mind any limits to enterprise or site licenses. This would also take into account things like support and maintenance.

The second aspect is the terms and conditions that govern the use of the software. This affects aspects such as the term of usage, resale potential, the flexibility of deployment for allocation or reallocation, and the ability to ramp up or down as demands dictate. It can also determine how independently different software licences ‘pools’ can be negotiated, whether as a single block or as independent groups.

The third, and the focus of the discussion in this article, deals with the real foundations of licence practice - and how that is management. This covers what has been purchased, what is actually in use or duplicated, what comes under support, how everything is audited or verified and whether licencing meets the requirements of the business.

It would seem obvious that in this day and age that something as fundamental as the building blocks of IT infrastructure would be moving towards commoditisation. This has been steadily happening in terms of the industry standard servers and to some degrees also the networking. But when it comes to software, problems abound.
Software procurement may seem less about buying and managing IT and more about qualifying as a lawyer. Things are made even more complex because every vendor seems to have a different take on how to do things. The end result is that licencing for end-to-end service delivery that takes in operating systems, databases, middleware and applications is a massive challenge and far more difficult than it needs to, or should, be.

Given the complex constraints that many IT buyers and managers work to, it is little wonder that licence management is frequently cited as a major issue. This is not helped by the fact that in a recent survey we ran, IT asset management and software licence management tools were cited as the tools that IT managers were most unhappy with. When it comes to licence management, there is a lot of manual work going on trying to keep on top of things with very little formal policy. With IT operations staff often overstretched, having up to date records is difficult to achieve and things fall through the cracks.

The end result is that many companies take a conservative approach to licencing in order to achieve compliance with licencing terms. Rather than buying from a position of strength with solid information on actual usage, they instead compensate for uncertainty by buying more licences than necessary to cover all possible use cases rather than what is needed. Gaps in knowledge also mean that shelfware (software no longer in active use) keeps being renewed and support costs remain higher than necessary. Others may just run what is needed and wait for an assessment to bring things into line, potentially putting themselves at risk of fines or damages for non-compliance.

So what can be done to improve the situation? Given the costs of licencing overall, simplifying and rationalising the approach can pay big rewards. Getting started is often the hardest thing, when there is little structure in place. The potential rewards are high, so it will be a good strategy to dedicate some resource to it.
The best path for many will be to try out or purchase discovery tools to get a feel for the licencing situation, then choosing the best plan of action. This may involve further investment in training and tools.

It may even lead to bringing in some of the increasing number of licencing specialists to do an audit. They can help to establish a baseline and advise on ways to manage, optimise and negotiate licences. Longer term, if the benefits are good enough, it may justify implementing dedicating resource to optimising licencing and putting in place a management infrastructure keeping in mind the difficulties associated with the current generation of tools.

In it’s own way, the difficulties of managing software licencing is a wake up call for the industry at large – for how much longer can this ‘last-century’ approach to licencing persist? Vendors are making it much harder than necessary for companies to buy and implement software. Predictability, commonality and transparency are needed to build a management practice that works reasonably practically. In most cases it could be argued that all of this is lacking. For all those vendors talking about the journey to the cloud, it’s time to put the money where your mouth is.

Originally published on Computer Weekly

Desktop virtualisation: Myths jar with realities

2011-03-15T13:01:00.003Z

Vendors have been pushing desktop virtualisation hard over the course of the past year. So to give IT professionals a better picture of what’s really going on in this field, Freeform Dynamics recently published a report looking at the overall state of desktop virtualisation adoption and how far expectations measure up to the experiences of those who have already undertaken projects.

Over recent months, each of the major approaches to desktop virtualisation has continued to mature, especially in terms of reliability and usability. The same cannot be said for the overall level of understanding among organisations of the options available and their suitability for deployment to support various user requirements.

Desktop virtualisation is not a point solution or indeed a single architectural approach. That fact has not been well communicated by vendors and their channel partners to the IT community. It is fair to say that organisations have a poor grasp of the possible approaches and their suitability.

But while the overall levels of understanding remain low, it is interesting that the views of IT managers with practical experience of the technology are strikingly different in some important areas from those who have yet to deploy any virtualised desktops to end users.

Overestimating associated challenges

The research highlights that in the absence of practical experience, IT professionals tend to underestimate the relevance and value of desktop virtualisation while often overestimating the associated challenges.

In particular, those who have never deployed systems are more likely to discount it as an option for demanding users, even though experienced adopters have often made use of desktop virtualisation in those same scenarios. This finding complements another that suggests organisations yet to undertake projects consistently find it more challenging to make acceptable business cases than those who have already begun to use the technology.

Obstacles to desktop virtualisation

That finding may sound obvious but a deeper look shows that among the inexperienced, the perception is that desktop virtualisation involves significant investment in upfront infrastructure systems, especially servers, storage and networking. The perception is also that the benefits deliverable may be difficult to value in monetary terms. Together, these obstacles can make it difficult to move forward at all with any degree of confidence.

Conversely, organisations that have started to deploy desktop virtualisation have faced these challenges head on, many by seeking to extend the debate. Factors to consider include the impact of enabling modern working practices, such as hotdesking, efficient home and remote working, perhaps coupled with the ability to provide secure access to corporate systems for mobile users.

These factors can have a significant monetary impact when translated into direct savings on real estate and travel, as well as an increased contribution through the associated boosting of end-user productivity. Because these benefits typically surface over extended periods, they can pose challenges when capital budgets are tight.

With so many options available, organisations considering desktop virtualisation, perhaps as part of projects to roll out new desktop and laptop hardware along with Windows 7, have considerable upfront work to undertake beyond that normally associated with desktop refresh projects.

Varying requirements for desktop service

Chief among this work is establishing which types of user exist in the business and how their requirements for desktop service vary. This requirement in turn necessitates having an accurate knowledge of their use of applications and business services, as well as an in-depth understanding of how and where users work and need to access systems.

Only with this core information can managers identify appropriate desktop virtualisation approaches for each class of user. Attempts to roll out inappropriate systems to any group of users could well endanger, or at least significantly delay, the widespread adoption of desktop virtualisation.

Bad news travels fast and discussion of poor initial experiences will spread like wildfire, making further rollouts problematic.

Desktop virtualisation holds great promise, but it adds complexity to the ongoing management of systems and makes it more challenging to ensure that each user group gets appropriate systems. Effort expended here will pay dividends in the short and long terms for the whole business.

SaaS suppliers are no black box, evaluation is key

2011-02-15T13:47:00.002Z

Don't short-cut your due diligence

An aspect of cloud computing that is often overlooked is supplier evaluation and management. We spend time considering the pros and cons of new delivery models, but just like any other area of IT, the vendors and service providers you choose to work with have a huge bearing on the outcome of any investment or contract commitment.

This is particularly relevant in the area of Software as a Service (SaaS), the flavour of cloud computing that from an enterprise perspective is typically aimed at delivering business application functionality as a hosted service. Offerings here range from full blown ERP and CRM, through comms and collaboration solutions, to more tactical services aimed at workgroups or even individual users. Some would characterise online backup, security and other systems level capability as SaaS too, but for the purposes of our discussion, let's stick to the business functionality layer.

The first point to make is that it is still relevant to consider pretty much all of the criteria we would normally apply when selecting a piece of traditional on-premise application software. The solution must meet immediate needs in terms of business functionality and allow configuration around policies and processes as necessary. It will also ideally be flexible and expandable enough to deal with evolving requirements over time.

Stating such things may seem obvious, but all too often the seductive immediacy of SaaS, with many providers promoting a 'subscribe and go' approach to adoption, leads to short-term thinking and short-cutting of the important needs assessment and gap analysis process. If anything, the requirement to ensure a good functional fit with room to grow is even more important with SaaS.

While most organisations nowadays try to minimise the degree to which they customise core parts of application packages, at least it's an option with on-premise solutions should it be necessary. With SaaS, the software installation is not yours to tamper with, beyond standard configuration facilities, so there is a limit to how much you can work around supplier imposed constraints.

This brings us onto another area of common misconception. In the context of larger scale enterprise computing environments, the chances are that SaaS solutions are likely to have to integrate with other systems and technology.

The technical architecture therefore really does matter, at least insofar as it manifests itself in terms of application programming interfaces (APIs), support for industry standards, and interoperability with existing management tools, security systems, desktop software, mobile devices, and anything else that is important to you.

Thinking of SaaS offerings as black boxes is generally a mistake, especially when we consider that so much cost, risk and general frustration and inefficiency in IT is as a result of fragmented and disjointed systems.

Turning to providers, we clearly need to consider the basics. It's important to consider how stable the organisation is financially, how well it is tuned in to different customer requirements in terms of industry and size, and how capable it is of providing the kind of support needed in the places it's required.

On this last point, there is a specific consideration with SaaS around the support process. Some providers are comfortable with and capable of supporting end users directly, while others require the customer's IT department to deal with front line interaction.

There is no absolute right or wrong model here, but mismatches between requirements, expectations, capability and processes can cause significant issues if they arise.

It doesn't help, for example, if the provider is offering end-user support but works on the basis of strict demarcation of responsibility, resulting in users being handed off too frequently to other parties because the problem is not proven to be associated with the service.

Neither is it helpful if in-house support staff are taking calls about the service, but don't have the visibility or tooling to troubleshoot problems effectively. In today's IT service delivery environment, the need for end-to-end service management, and therefore end-to-end visibility, diagnostics and troubleshooting capability, is becoming ever more critical to meet business expectations.

Another practical area to consider is the supplier's policy on software release and implementation. Some providers trickle out a constant stream of updates in the spirit of continuous improvement. Others have one or two major releases per year, with very little happening in between.

There is then the question of whether you will have a choice of if or when you take a new release on board, with some providers allowing a degree of customer control, and others forcing new updates onto all subscribers unilaterally. Again, there is no right or wrong, but again, mismatches can lead to issues.

The areas we have discussed are just some examples of what matters when it comes to SaaS supplier selection. We could extend the discussion to include pricing models, contract terms and a number of other areas. The bottom line though is that due diligence is just as important with SaaS as it always has been with any key IT related decisions.

Originally published on cio.co.uk.

Next generation systems management

2011-02-08T10:06:00.003Z

Strategic enabler or survival tactic?

The IT environment is complex, and undergoing continual upheaval. For many businesses, although the IT infrastructure is felt to be modern and generally fit for purpose, many challenges remain, especially around operational issues. One of the most common headaches we hear about in our surveys is just how difficult it is to keep up with the day-to-day operations, let alone optimise IT to face new challenges.

A big part of this is down to the lack of investment in management tools that are able to deliver joined up IT services to the business. Our research shows that most of you are probably sitting on management environment that is not really performing as well as you would like.

Historically, IT has evolved in a fragmented manner, resulting in an equally fragmented management environment. As you look to the future at where the business is going and how IT needs to support this change, you will need to take a more joined up view of systems management.

This doesn't mean that you need to go out and spend money straight away — if at all. Instead, the place to start is to have a good look at what you do, and how you do it. You may well find inefficiencies, overlaps and conflicts, as well as gaps and hidden costs.

Organisations of all types can benefit — from those where IT is a core part of the company and funded to enable innovation — to those where the least amount possible is spent to keep things ticking over.

Let's consider a couple of scenarios.

If you are working in one of those companies that invest heavily in IT, the challenge is not getting systems to work together. Management processes tend to be well defined with many formal processes and policies, and integrated tool sets enable joined-up IT services to be delivered to the business.

Instead, the issue is likely to be scalability and responsiveness. The big problem is that much of the management is still reliant on people to make changes. Unfortunately, repetitive tasks are limited by the productivity of individual staff, adding massive overhead. People also take time to prepare and travel, and to make and test changes. The end result is that change is slow and costly, although very well managed.

The reason this issue is being felt more keenly is that IT is becoming more dynamic. Virtualisation is taking hold, and dynamic IT is starting to have an impact. Doing things the manual way is not really viable in this new virtual world, and change needs to happen. This means that it is time to look at automation.

You may have looked at this in the past and felt it too risky to be practical. Time has moved on, and you may well find that to ignore automation is the risky option. Modern tools are able to integrate many more applications and automate much of the routine management activities while still allowing manual control where required for dealing with exceptions.

Implemented properly, it can also greatly aid the implementation side of change management once decisions have been made – although arguably the whole approach to change management will require significant changes too to deal with a more dynamic business.

Moving to automation will be a long arduous process. Politically, there may be fears of job losses, but the most likely outcome is that operations staff are freed from mundane, low impact tasks to dealing with much higher value and more interesting work.

If you are having to manage an IT organisation that is not valued by the business, investment in management tools may not seem at first glance to be an obvious way to save money. Indeed, just making the case for investment in modern management tools will be a challenge all in its own right as we are told repeatedly that senior management do not recognise the link between better management and the services delivered to the business.

But consider the alternative — a patchwork of tools that have evolved as various systems and services have been put in place that add overhead and complexity to the on-going operations. Ask yourself how many different tools you use for troubleshooting problems or for day-to-day systems management.

Each additional tool adds time and cost, while also requiring investment in training and support.

It also makes it more difficult to implement any form of structure and process around systems management, as difficulties in working with different management systems is often cited as a problem. This is important because end-user satisfaction then also tends to be low, resulting in a chicken and egg situation where expectations of IT are low, and therefore the willingness to spend more on IT remains low.

In this situation, the most pressing problem is to consolidate and simplify the management environment. The feedback we've had is that moving to lightly structured management processes works well in combination with a single main management suite. The reality is that the management processes are likely to be attempted initially, with difficulties in implementation prompting investment in the tools a little later on.

You don't have to go all out for completely integrated IT systems management. Starting small and implementing changes a step at a time can go a long way towards increasing the value of IT to the business.

Identify which issues are having the greatest impact on management, and tackle these with investment in updated or new tools where possible, rather than slapping structure on areas that have a minor role to play but that are easy boxes to tick.

Whichever situation you find yourself in, investment in improving your systems management capabilities is likely to generate big results. The problem is that it is often realised too late in the cycle to have the most impact.

If we can leave you with an opening thought for the New Year, it's to put management at the heart of all new projects.

Originally published on CIO - Registration required

The channel impact of cloud computing

2010-11-21T22:16:00.002Z

Will the domino effect undermine traditional business?

(Thoughts for Distributors, Resellers and System Integrators)

The writing is on the wall. As cloud computing steamrollers across the market, on-premise infrastructure will be the first to go. And with nothing to implement or look after, there’ll no longer be a need for in-house IT staff. Then, of course, the traditional channel business will collapse, as there will be no one left to buy anything. Oh yes, and after all of the dominos have tumbled, Amazon, Google and the like will inherit the earth.

Well that’s the line we hear from cloud evangelists and suppliers trying to drum up business for hosted services of one kind or another. If you subscribe to this view, then you’d better stop reading now, as we are not going to entertain such nonsense in the remainder of this article. Instead, we are going to apply some common sense and take a more grounded look at how cloud computing in its various forms will co-exist with more traditional approaches to solving business computing needs.

Given the ambiguity around the meaning of cloud, for the purposes of our discussion we are going to consider two categories of offering. Firstly, ‘private cloud’, which allows organisations to aggregate server and/or storage equipment in their data centre or computer room to form pools of virtualised resources. Compute power or disk space can then potentially be allocated flexibly on-demand, boosting overall efficiency and enabling IT to respond more quickly to new requirements and change requests from the business.

Private cloud is an evolution of the activity we have seen around virtualisation. At the moment, it is the form of cloud computing in which mainstream customers are most interested. With equipment and software running on-premise, the opportunity for resellers and SIs is clear, especially those targeting mid-sized and large organisations. As we are still in the early market, however, exploiting the opportunity will require more of a consultative/educational approach. Fortunately, key vendors are now well geared up to help channel partners with cross-sell and up-sell techniques and collateral.

The second category of cloud we shall consider is on-demand hosted services. Within this, we find a range of offerings such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). If you want an explanation of these, and other forms of hosted service that fall under the cloud banner, then check out our recent paper ‘Applied Cloud Computing’. Suffice it to say for now that similar technology advances to those underpinning private cloud are allowing service providers to deliver more flexible and cost effective hosted services of all kinds. This, in turn, is shifting the line in terms of what is feasible or attractive for customers to outsource to a third party hosting company.

Despite the possibilities, the demand for hosted cloud services, whilst growing, is still relatively small compared to the overall activity in the IT marketplace. Furthermore, rightly or wrongly, a general lack of trust in the model continues to act a brake on mainstream progress. With a deep cultural dimension to this, the situation is not going to suddenly change. We are therefore unlikely to see a wholesale shift in emphasis from on-premise to hosted solutions overnight.

Even as the comfort level grows, the market can only shift so far. For all but the smallest customers, the notional ‘move to the cloud’ would typically involve subscribing to many services from many different providers to meet the wide and varied needs of the business. The integration, maintenance, support, accountability, and supplier management issues that arise when dependencies cross many different operational domains are daunting. So too are the practicalities of coordinating security and compliance policy across jurisdictions.

Things will get less scary over time as interoperability and service assurance standards emerge, and as the service provider community matures beyond the current ‘every provider for themselves’ mentality that prevails. The continued evolution of monitoring and management tools will also help to keep things working as smoothly as possible across a distributed on-premise/provider landscape. All of this will simply reduce rather than eradicate the risks, however – hence there being a natural limit to how much of a shift to cloud services will take place in most organisations.

Having said this, as we discuss in the aforementioned paper, cloud computing is creating both choice and complexity for customers, so it cannot be ignored by those in the IT channel. Skilling up will therefore be necessary to maintain account control and exploit the spin-off business. There may also be some incremental margin to be gained from hosted service resale or referral. For small customers in particular, it may be possible to meet needs through hosted services in areas such as messaging, collaboration and CRM that would otherwise not be feasible for commercial or practical reasons through the on-premise alternative.

The bottom line is that there is no need for resellers and SIs to panic about the rug suddenly being pulled from under them by the emergence of cloud. However, doing nothing about it could represent an increasingly high opportunity cost over time, especially as more service providers figure out the importance of the channel in reaching and supporting customers. There are therefore definitely advantages to embracing cloud computing proactively.

Taking advantage of the Windows 7 migration

2010-11-19T13:52:00.003Z

After almost a decade of service, the end-of-days is drawing near for the long-lived and very widely used Windows XP. It has entered legacy mode with the end of mainstream support. The extended life of Windows XP was partly due to economic conditions hampering spend on desktop upgrades and partly down to Windows Vista failing to get off the ground successfully in the business sector; it never really recovered the confidence that was lost in the early days because of compatibility, performance and usability issues.

Nevertheless, we are where we are, with many organisations relying on a desktop operating system designed over a decade ago that is facing obsolescence, with all of the direct and third party software support and maintenance implications that come with that. It is a position that is not sustainable for much longer, unless you are willing to live with escalating cost and risk [link: http://www.freeformdynamics.com/fullarticle.asp?aid=848 ]. Every day extra spent running Windows XP adds additional risk to the business as support costs increase, security issues escalate and software vendors target their products and support at newer Windows releases.

With this in mind, while other options exist, the most obvious way forward that most organisations are considering is a move to Windows 7. This has been pretty well received and represents a massive turnaround. It is Microsoft’s fastest selling operating system and has become widely adopted by consumers and also small businesses in the year since its release. Now we are seeing signs that mid and large sized companies are preparing to make the move too.

Windows 7 is a derivative of Windows Vista, albeit a much improved one, so benefits from a lot of the ground work done in terms of compatibility, interoperability, security and manageability. While it has only been around for a year, much of the componentry and core feature set has been road-tested and optimised for significantly longer than that.

So is it just a case of out with the old and in with the new? Well clearly not. Despite the general level of comfort with Windows 7, there are many practicalities to still consider.

Doing a straight switch from Windows XP onto Windows 7 may seem like a simple approach, but migration in practice takes extensive planning, testing and remedial work, which is costly and time consuming. This work needs to be performed on legacy applications as well as new ones, as well as looking at the underlying hardware. Beyond this familiar territory, if you think a little bit ahead and consider also other changes that are happening to the PC, it may help to alleviate or avoid issues that if retrofitted at a later date could increase risk and costs and decrease the capabilities of the solution.

On the software front, the Windows 7 migration is a good opportunity to evaluate, test and introduce up-to-date versions of software. This is true for specialised software as well as more general productivity suites, and particularly Office. Many of the companies that we have surveyed are still running Office 2003. Although it is still reasonably functional, it is showing its age with a lack of support for new document features and standards, less capability to support mobility and a higher incidence of security issues.

Like Windows Vista, many companies avoided the big change that was Office 2007. Office 2010 continues the evolution of Office, and enhances much of the interaction with back office functions such as Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint. After the upgrade licence costs, testing and user training are some of the biggest expenses involved in upgrading Office. As extensive training and testing have to be done as part of the Windows 7 migration, it makes sense to take advantage of the activity to support an Office switch.

Looking at the underlying hardware, there are a couple of big changes to consider. The first is whether to move to 64-bit support or not. Windows 7 has a 64-bit version that can perform much better with increasing memory capacities. The beauty of it is that, from an end-user perspective, it is almost indistinguishable from the 32-bit flavour. So the issue is – is it best to jump straight to 64-bit at the same time as adopting Windows 7, or to wait and only migrate when applications demand it?

The advice here is to leave your options open. As applications and hardware may behave differently, it is definitely worth testing them on both 32-bit and 64-bit for compatibility. This will identify any issues that may cause problems when moving, and allow workarounds to be considered – for example using the built in Windows XP mode of the business versions of Windows 7.

Ultimately, most applications are likely to lag the operating system by a number of years in moving to 64-bit. This may seem like a compelling reason to stick with 32-bit for the time being. However, without moving the platform to 64-bit there will be no opportunity to run applications that have been updated to take advantage of the extensions without a time consuming and costly re-installation of the operating system.

Beyond performance and compatibility, the ever-increasing move to mobile working and the more sinister nature of threats and malware means security is high on the agenda. An upgrade presents the opportunity to introduce additional security in the shape of encryption for data and information. The encryption functionality can add significant overhead, so the introduction needs to be carefully managed. It may need to be implemented in conjunction with hardware upgrades – particularly modern CPUs with encryption acceleration or Solid State Disks (SSDs) - to maintain performance.

Whatever your migration plans for Windows 7, it is important to look at the wider view to take advantage of the biggest transition in years to improve and optimise the capabilities of the PC pool as retrofitting at a later date may be expensive and time consuming to implement.

Originally published on CIO (registration required).

Taking it to the n’th degree

2010-11-09T14:11:00.003Z

Why you should upgrade to 802.11n

The notebook market started to gather steam in the early 2000’s with the launch of mobile initiatives such as Intel Centrino in 2003. This spurred the development of an installed base of Wi-Fi clients where previously uptake had been low. Although some companies took a proactive approach to building out Wi-Fi networks, many companies either reacted to demand with a piecemeal infrastructure or were surprised to find that they had many unauthorised access points installed by ‘enterprising’ users.

The performance of Wi-Fi, particularly in the early days, could be characterised as sluggish at best, and the wired network was preferred in most instances where possible. With the Wi-Fi network as a convenience, the approach to integration, management and security was often treated as an afterthought.

The introduction of the second generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11g, was good in that it lifted performance a notch, but this in itself was not compelling enough to encourage proper joined up investment in infrastructure. The pressure to upgrade was tempered by the presence of legacy devices that could not run faster, or would interfere and result in general slowdowns on faster networks.

In the meantime, network connectivity has become so ubiquitous that it is now a critical element that many applications need in order to achieve full functionality. On the PC front, user expectations of performance have escalated as gigabit networks have become widespread, while the big swing to notebooks means that many employees are using them away from the desk and default to wireless.

On the mobile side there has been an explosion of new devices such as Smartphones and Tablets that rely entirely on wireless for connectivity. These devices are capable of running sophisticated applications and consuming rich media, just as the traditional PC is. This need for Wi-Fi as an equal partner to wired connectivity is driving the development of the blended wireless edge network.

All of this, together with the escalating costs and risks that trouble existing installations, brings the 802.11n, the latest and greatest version of Wi-Fi, to the top of mind. Unlike its predecessors, this version is both fit for purpose - with a throughput comparable to Fast Ethernet and increased coverage to support more devices with fewer access points - as well as future proof as it has only recently been ratified and no successor is immediately around the corner to wait for before splashing out.

Another aspect to consider is that although the standard has only recently been ratified, devices based on the draft specification have been in the market for years. This has resulted in a large pool of 802.11n client devices that can benefit immediately from an updated infrastructure. At the same time, many of the devices with legacy Wi-Fi (802.11b and g) are approaching the end of their life and being removed from the active client base.

With up to date hardware and software that is being actively developed and supported, 802.11n is also easier to integrate from a security and management perspective. Older Wi-Fi kit suffers from security that is less than robust, with WEP in particular being easy to crack. With modern Wi-Fi infrastructure, access and encryption are far more secure with WPA2, especially when 802.1X is used for authentication.

Now is the time, if your Wi-Fi infrastructure is based mainly on older standards, to consider updating to 802.11n. Upgrading the Wi-Fi network on its own will bring many advantages, but there is also the opportunity to reconsider how the wireless and wired networks should work together, with increasing integration and compatibility.

Whether you choose to integrate the two or operate Wi-Fi as a standalone network is up to you. Integrating the management and policy across the two may not be a trivial matter to undertake, especially in multi-vendor networks. However, the demands on the wireless network may mean that developing separate management or security tools and policies, such as Network Admission Control (NAC), for each network would be cost-prohibitive. The initial pain and cost of integration may well be worth it for the longer term benefits. In some cases, the wireless network can help to develop the wired one, as in the case of 802.1X which is in widespread use on Wi-Fi networks but has yet to gather momentum on wired networks.

Whichever path you choose, the time is right to do something for all of the above reasons. If you do it right, you’ll not only be ahead of user demand for once, but will also position yourself well for the future.

Originally published on Computing.

Unified Communications: Coming of age?

2010-10-19T13:33:00.006Z

Time to put it on the agenda?

Unified Communications (UC) is a term that has long been bandied about, but has yet to really gain the serious attention of businesses. Its slow uptake has not just been hampered by dire economic conditions, although this undoubtedly has had a negative impact on rate of adoption. Confusion around exactly what UC is has been a major barrier for companies when looking at it. The term Unified Communications was originally coined by the market in an attempt to encapsulate exactly what it was about. Unfortunately, it was an over-simplification that served to confuse more than convey, as many companies did not really grasp what UC included. In fact, UC, rather than being a broad, difficult to define solution set, is actually made up of a number of quite distinct components (such as Unified Directory, Unified Messaging and Presence Awareness, to name but three). And when businesses think in these more specific terms, then it becomes much easier to understand what UC involves.

Beyond this, however, companies often struggle with making the business case for UC – seeing it more as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘need to have’. And while there are various case studies of successful UC implementations that they can call on as collateral, on the flip side, there is enough anecdotal evidence around implementations that have not proved so successful, to make them think twice about taking the plunge. So are the success stories the exception rather than rule. And can UC really deliver? According to recent research carried out by Freeform Dynamics UC can deliver very real benefits into the business. The chart below shows how what we have termed 'aggressive adopter' – companies - that have adopted UC more broadly across their business, and with a broader component set - report much better levels of communication and collaboration, which they attribute to their UC implementation.

It is important to note that this positive outcome is not solely down to broader adoption of UC. Simply implementing UC will not automatically result in a workforce that collaborates better, can carry out enhanced decision-making, and so on. UC is an enabler but only if it is implemented and worked into the business in the right way.

This is precisely what more aggressive adopters have done. They understood from the outset what they wanted it to deliver, how it would fit into their business, and, how it would be rolled out, including what support was required. There is clear recognition in this group of respondents that UC was essentially a new system that brought with it new capabilities, and this is where the real benefits lie. Companies often don't recognise and plan around this, and hence fail to realise the genuine benefits of UC.

Consider, for example, a technical call centre that handles customer queries. In a non-UC environment, the details of calls that can’t be handled straight away will be taken by a call centre operator, and followed up later with relevant technical support experts. Once a query has been resolved, the customer will be contacted by the call centre operator with (hopefully) a solution to their problem.

Coming at the same issue with a UC-enabled call centre can involve a completely different approach, with the call centre operator assessing the problem immediately, and then reaching out to a number of experts simultaneously, based on suitability and availability. Depending on the nature of the query, the call might be handed directly to an expert to resolve, or be dealt with by the operator directly, based on feedback from the expert.

The whole process can be geared towards first-call resolution, in a way that wasn’t possible before. While this might seem obvious, if a company implements UC, but carries on working in exactly the same way, then very little will change from a first-call resolution perspective, and any potential efficiency savings will be missed.

The story doesn’t end there. While the benefit of UC is that it enables staff to work differently, they will only do so if the change process is made relatively painless, and this is exactly what companies that succeed with UC have ensured. This translates into providing not just the usual technical support but also more process-based help. This might include step by step guides on topics such as setting up a videoconference from a given location, including where people can go for help if they get stuck. To assist people who are more reluctant to access such resources, locally embedded help, in the form of nominated ‘experts’ - people within the same department, for example - can work well. Getting this right goes a long way to ensuring that UC ‘delivers’.

So is UC coming of age, at last? While it is unwise to get caught up in the UC hype, it is at least worthy of consideration, even in the prevailing economic conditions. As the way that people work changes, UC becomes ever more relevant. Cross business collaboration, mobile workers, virtual workplaces, the 24x7 workforce and global teams are areas that can be assisted by UC. The caveat to this is to ensure that, like any implementation, there is a clear understanding about what it will deliver, and enough support in place to make sure it happens.

Originally published on http://www.cio.co.uk/ (registration required).

Is there a case for encrypting backups?

2010-10-08T09:42:00.001Z

For most organisations, backups form an essential part of the day to day activities of IT operations. They keep users happy in the short term, as individuals can recover files lost due to accident, incompetence or system failure. They keep the business moving, as systems and services can be protected and recovered. And they help get things going again, in the case of ultimate disaster.

In all of these scenarios however, what we really mean is that it is the flipside of backup that is important. Backups are essentially a doorstop unless the systems or information can be restored to functional use. This is an area that all too many companies neglect to test regularly, and can be a significant business risk if not addressed. Tapes can, or more likely will, fail. Equipment such as the tape drive, once out of production, will rapidly become obsolete. While the backup may be tied closely to the physical system, even if the backup is good, a suitable system to restore to may not be available – although eBay may help in some cases! Even if one moves to use online or hosted services, there is no guarantee that the provider will remain in business, making backups even more important.

So, both backup and recovery are an essential element of business function and continuity. However, they are also a source of risk from a data protection point of view. Backups contain the low-level about the company – not just data, but entire systems, configurations and raw information. In addition, bnd backups tend to move about a lot. They move inside the organisation, they are transported outside and are frequently stored in multiple locations. Keeping track of backup media is hard, even for the best companies. We frequently hear of lost backups that cannot be traced.

Now, why should companies worry if the data on backups go missing? Surely we can just take another backup? That might cover the business risk internally, in terms of having something to restore should a failure or similar happen. However, it doesn’t cover the external aspects of the data loss, which is an area that is already under increasing scrutiny from regulators. Regulations surrounding the loss of data already have had sanctions increased while individual industry regulators may take their own view. With new regulations coming that will require any losses to be disclosed, the cost in terms of notification, compensation, reputation and brand will only go up and up.

The most effective method for reducing the level of risk associated with a backup is to encrypt the data it contains. This ensures that should the backup be lost or stolen, it is not feasible to access and restore the data without appropriate pass codes or decryption keys. Achieving this should be relatively straightforward, Many IT managers agree that backups are vital to protect, but few do so.

So if encryption of backups is so important, why isn’t everyone doing it? While not every organisation is aware of the risks of data loss through unprotected backups, there will also quite a number of companies that will have quantified the potential cost implications and decided to ignore the risks rather than doing anything about them.
Near the top of the list of challenges are also technology hurdles which get in the way of practical encryption implementations – software encryption has its own limitations such as loss of compression capability (increasing the number of tapes required), and higher processor requirements to encrypt the data. Hardware encryption may tie the backups to individual drives, resulting in complexities when recovering data.

Key management is another concern that has been talked about for years but still remains a bugbear. In many cases, different systems will have independent key management systems and processes. Bringing these together will be challenging, but necessary, with firm control of process, documentation and management tools. In many cases, key management for backup encryption will need to fit in with the key management systems across the business. Regular testing to ensure that nothing gets broken accidentally, particularly as systems are upgraded or keys are rotated. Crucially, testing should cover not just verification of recent backups which are top of mind in most cases, but should also cover the old information which is sitting in archive libraries, which many IT managers may have never touched.

Encryption on backups should be considered in the light of what it is that really matters, namely the successful restoration of systems and data, over a period of not only years, but potentially many decades given regulations regarding data retention for regulatory purposes. Perhaps the biggest mitigating factor is that encryption is not yet a seamless part of either process or infrastructure, leading to complex trade-offs and tactical decision making which fails to take the longer term issues into account.

Given the problems involved, it is no wonder that many companies choose to skirt the issue. As the shadow of compliance and legislation creeps ever closer, IT managers will have less and less wiggle room, so plentiful planning now will help to achieve a much better result at the end.

Originally published on InfoSecurity (www.infosec.co.uk)

The hidden benefits of UC

2010-09-27T11:59:00.007Z

Take a closer look and you’ll find them

Whether businesses like it or not, the likelihood is that Unified Communications (UC) in some form or another will work itself into many workplaces at some point in the not-too-distant future. And this isn’t just fanciful analyst thinking, ‘bigging up’ the UC story. Recent research into UC carried out by Freeform Dynamics in December 2009 with 544 enterprises confirmed that UC is increasingly on the enterprise agenda in some shape or form. This is well illustrated in the chart below, which shows the extent to which enterprises have adopted, or are planning to adopt the different components of UC.

While businesses increasingly recognise the benefits that UC can potentially deliver, around improved collaboration, process streamlining, reduced travel costs etc, implementing a solution that actually does deliver is not without its problems. A key concern is the whether the benefits will actually be achievable in practice, and if so, will the benefits outweigh the costs associated with a UC implementation. And unfortunately, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence to support these concerns.

While there are a number of reasons why UC doesn’t turn out to deliver the expected benefits into the business that it was heralded to do, one of the main downfalls that companies make when moving forward with UC is that they expect it to bring about change in the organisation simply by the fact that it is there. The reason that this won’t happen, and why UC implemented in this way is doomed to fail, is that UC, rather than being designed to fit in with the way people work in a non-UC context, is a new system that delivers new capabilities. If businesses fail to recognise and address this, then this is where things can start to go wrong. What this translates to in practice is that, to get UC to work properly within the business requires companies to revisit how they do things currently, in a very systematic and detailed way, and look at how they can be done differently to maximise the benefits of UC.

An example of this is the process around call-handling within a call centre. In a non-UC environment, a call centre agent will take a call and if they are unable to deal with the query directly, they will note down the necessary details, with a commitment to call back the caller once they have the information they need. They will then contact the relevant experts within the company on an iterative basis, until they have the required information, and only at this point can they go back to the caller. If the caller has a follow-on query, the whole process begins again. As well as impacting on how the company is perceived by the caller, the process has to be carried out in a number of steps, and is extremely time-consuming and resource-intensive.

In a UC environment, the process is essentially condensed. For the same call coming in, the agent would try to resolve the call directly, and at the point where other people needed to be involved, would identify which experts to deal with the query, determine their availability, reach out to experts in parallel, and connect directly with the most appropriate one to obtain a response to the query. They would then either feedback the necessary information to the caller, or hand the call over to the expert to complete. And all this would appear seamless to the caller.

This example illustrates that UC brings with it the need to approach things differently. So if a company implements UC but does not change how it does things in any significant way, the likelihood is that, a few months down the line, it will be closely questioning the investment and upheaval it has endured. But changing the way that things are done in terms of communications and processes in a company needs to be dealt with properly. Failure to provide the necessary support around this, particularly in the early days, can ultimately leads to the failure of UC within the business.

Of course, part of this support is about ensuring IT staff are properly trained and have enough time allocated to deal with the uplift in helpdesk calls that are likely to follow implementation. But more importantly, businesses need to look beyond this, and proactively consider the processes that people will need to follow to make the most of UC, and communicate this effectively throughout the business.

Moreover, this will need to be done in a very specific and straightforward way. So, if someone wants to set up a videoconference meeting, what processes will they need to follow? What variants to these might exist, e.g. involving home-based workers, or individuals from outside of the company? And what is available in terms of help when things come unstuck?
Help desk is an obvious port of call, but as some people tend to avoid this route if possible, other options need to be made available, such as online resources, or even a nominated ‘friendly face’ on the same floor or in the same department, who can help out with low bandwidth queries.

It makes sense to extend this to cover what people shouldn’t be doing with UC, and putting together a set of guidelines around good business etiquette. UC by its very nature makes people more available. However, just because someone is available doesn’t mean they are open to constant interruption, particularly for trivial requests and queries.

Rather than looking at UC though rose-coloured spectacles, and believing that it will transform the workplace simply by virtue of the fact that it is there, it is vital to take the time to define exactly how UC will play out in the business, and how to make it easy for people to actually use it. Most of them will not be real proponents of UC - many may not even know what UC actually is, so the transition will need to overcome their natural resistance to embracing it. The more they see it being used around the business – particularly by senior management, and the more ‘best practice’ guidance they are exposed to, the easier, and more importantly, the more successful the transition will be.

The Time has come for “Chargeback”

2010-09-10T15:44:00.001Z

Ever since the industrial revolution there have been periods when businesses have prospered simply on the back of the general growth in the economy. Equally it is true that there are periods when life isn't so simple and organisations have to retrench in an attempt to prosper on their own merits in spite of prevailing economic conditions. This is where we are today: Certainly market conditions are not good but the fact that the market is difficult should be something with which organisations can cope, even when banks appear to be doing little to make life less awkward for businesses.

The pressure is on IT to demonstrate that it is delivering value to the business. Whilst this sounds simple, it is usually extremely complex. With few exceptions, most organisations do not have established models indicating exactly how the use of IT systems correlates with “business value”. In truth not many organisations posses even a high level view of how IT resources are consumed by different business services. This is a matter which the increasing usage of virtualisation tools, if left unchecked, is going to make even more difficult. In many scenarios this is a task that would be considerably simplified if some form of internal chargeback modelling based on IT resource consumption were to be used to help set and monitor IT budgets.

Whilst the basic concepts around chargeback reporting have been around in IT for a long time, there is strong evidence that chargeback is not viewed as important internally within the business. This clearly poses a challenge as IT may have to push the chargeback concept strongly to help position the associated “value proposition” to the business. Perhaps one example of how this might be achieved would be to use chargeback tools as a reporting mechanism for the efforts currently underway to align IT resource usage with front-line business requirements. (link: http://www.silicon.com/management/cio-insights/2010/08/03/how-can-it-shake-off-the-negativity-get-feedback-from-the-business-39746147/) Such a move away from simply utilising chargeback as a throttle on IT consumption could garner a positive reaction from front-line business managers.

The fact that trading conditions are difficult obviously poses a few challenges for IT departments as they seek to deliver good service whilst maintaining at the same time a very strong grip on costs. One thing that has become clear over the course of the last five years is that IT departments are now expected to show exactly where money is being spent and to provide unprecedented degrees of transparency on such expenditure.

Alongside this, increased levels of sophistication are being sought. IT needs to be ready to support new business operations that may emerge or evolve dramatically overnight. There now often seems to be an inbuilt expectation from the business (however unreasonable that may be) that IT must be ready quickly to support any business change, frequently without having much latitude to assess or manage the potential impact these changes might have on the underlying infrastructure.

Just how can IT demonstrate to the business where the money is going and how effectively the IT infrastructure is being utilised to support key business services? Consideration of this subject naturally leads to the obvious requirement to be able, at the very least, to report on which IT resources are consumed by which applications during certain periods of time. Even in relatively traditional IT solutions where virtualisation plays little or no part, getting hold of this information usually requires considerable manual time and effort.

The ever-expanding use of virtual systems makes such reporting even more necessary, particularly if organisations wish to get themselves into a position whereby they plan to share core infrastructure resources such as server, storage and networking platforms in order to dynamically provision, run and support different applications based on changing business needs.

This scenario is simply crying out for the use of chargeback modelling, despite the likely resistance, or at least indifference, from business users. After all most business people are extraordinarily familiar with the concepts of money and budgets within their own departments or areas of responsibility. On the other hand they may be very uncertain of quite how IT actually supports their daily operations. A simple way out of this dilemma is to employ some form of chargeback modelling which allocates costs to the users of IT services based on the percentage of the infrastructure resources that those services actually consume.

Today some organisations already use a primitive chargeback model based simply around the numbers of users of a service and the “assumed” costs of delivering said service. These models are by their nature usually very simplistic and do not take any effort to allocate costs based on actual usage, which will become much more important as systems become virtualised and the allocation of physical resources varies over time.

Such resources could also expand to include electricity costs as well as building related costs such as floor space, land costs, building depreciation etc., whatever makes sense for the business to measure. Alas whilst this sounds easy in principle it can, in fact, become extremely complicated in practice.

I believe that we have now entered an era when the use of chargeback models will become prevalent in a majority of IT organisations, certainly those where the IT systems number more than a few tens of servers and where flexible virtualisation is employed to pool physical resources together rather than running individual servers and back end systems to support a single application or service. Chargeback models provide transparency in a format which is acceptable to the majority of business users since it operates using concepts of money spent for each service delivered. For line of business managers this approach should be easy to get grips with.

However from the IT perspective this places a degree of burden on the infrastructure in terms of monitoring resource consumption and then reporting on what resources each business unit is actually consuming. This reporting must be in financial and business operational terms rather than IT centric metrics. The challenge is to find a model that the infrastructure can sustain that is politically acceptable to the business users and economically acceptable to operational IT. Get it right and hopefully everybody will be happy, or at least recognise where there may be IT / business conflicts that need to be resolved.

In addition so called “Cloud solutions” are being marketed by many as being inherently lower cost than in house IT solutions, and these comparisons are causing some IT departments considerable challenges. This is especially the case as few cloud services exactly replicate specific conditions around the security of services or service level commitments. It is very easy for business managers to not realise that potentially they may be comparing a very bland apple with a specific variety of the fruit grown in house to meet very tight taste requirements, and one that it is tightly integrated into the overall business menu. The fact that there is considerable activity amongst the vendors of cloud solutions to appeal directly to business users is likely to cause them to have to defend the costs of running their own services as compared to whatever external solution is being marketed. This task becomes more straightforward if IT has a good idea on how much each service costs rather than a purely theoretical model.

So the question becomes which forms of chargeback modelling will be acceptable along with how are such models to be built, monitored and reported on? Then there is the challenge of how to sell the idea of charge back modelling it to both the business and a sceptical IT team? The answer is for both sides to recognise the opportunity charge back reports provide to monitor service levels, decide on service change requests and to report on IT / business alignment but IT is likely to have to drive things.

The Mainframe Extends its Reach

2010-07-30T13:36:00.000Z

Over the course of the last decade there has been considerable discussion about the future development and use of the revered Mainframe platform, usually now to be found under the IBM System z banner. At times much that has been written has not flattered the mainframe but that may be about to change. Whilst the platform is still by no means cheap in absolute Dollar, Sterling or Euro terms there is usually an array of financing options available to help meet most potential scenarios. Beyond that, the platform usually manages to compare favourably when its scale, management, power / space efficiency and overall TCO estimates are calculated.

There is absolutely no doubting IBM’s commitment to the platform. The company continues to invest large sums of money and resources developing the mainframe in both the hardware and software platforms. Equally it is important to recognise that there is a very active community built around the mainframe and it is clear that the majority of these are also committed to developing their offerings further. To see that this is the case one has simply to look at how companies such as CA and BMC are developing their complementary management tools as well activities by application ISVs such as ACI who are now robustly promoting mainframe based solutions. The mainframe vendor ecosystem is large and active.

Clearly there are challenges that organisations using the mainframe need to address. Perhaps the most visible of these concerns the age of those currently administering these enterprise workhorses. In many cases these highly skilled professionals are in the age bracket where considerations of retirement are not far away. Given the skills required to run mainframes this is causing some concerns but there is now an active education programme in place to tempt students and those new to IT to acquire mainframe skills. At the same time the overall management workload is easing as CA, IBM and other vendors deliver new tools to the market to help reduce the workload burden further. In some ways this is somewhat ironic as several studies have indicated that mainframe administrators can already handle far larger workloads than administrators of other platforms.

But the debate on the future of the mainframe should not be focussed so much on the development of the technology itself or how to ensure that skilled administrators are available to run the systems. Instead it should now focus on what role the mainframe has going forward to deliver business services? To understand this it is important that people understand just what type of system the Mainframe is today and what business operations it can assist. In some places this “understanding” may be several years behind reality and is often linked to out of date perceptions of where things fit.

Recently the importance of meeting this challenge head on has become even more important, partly as a consequence of recent system z announcements by IBM, but even more so as business requirements for secure, cost-effective, flexible and resilient business services continue to grow. The announcement in July of the release of the IBM zEnterprise 196 System has huge potential to cause a major rethink on where the mainframe is perceived to play, if IBM can wake organisations up and educate on the system as it exists today rather than where people, many IT professionals included, think it sits with images of times long past.

As well as offering all of the now well-established offload engines, such as the IFL, zIIP, ZaaP to run Linux, DB2 and java workloads, the new system promises to allow organisations to add zBlade extension systems running IBM’s Power platform or x86 workloads. When used with the new Unified Resource Management software it will become possible for administrators to manage services composed of workload elements running on any of the mainframes multiple operating systems and IBM’s AIX or Linux platforms on the special blade extensions as single environments with all of the control functionality and flexibility for which the mainframe should be well known.

Challenging peoples’ out of date perceptions takes time and effort and can be extremely taxing. The challenge for IBM and its ecosystem of suppliers is to assist in perception resetting, especially helping to update the understanding of the potential use of mainframes amongst both the wider IT community and, more importantly, amongst business managers. The new IBM zEnterprise 196 offers IBM a great opportunity to reposition the mainframe and to actively seek out new customers rather than to simple continue to grow amongst its well established user base.

It is clear that the platform has the capacity to deliver a greatly expanded range of IT services cost effectively and the challenge for IBM and the wider mainframe ecosystem is to ensure that organisations understand where its capabilities can be most effectively deployed. This will take considerable effort by IBM and its ecosystem partners like CA and BMC. But the platform has never been better positioned for a major market re-education and the wider economic and regulatory environment make now the time for the undertaking to begin. The major questions are thus will the market see these developments as defensive measure to protect the established mainframe base or as moves to encourage others to take up the platform and will IBM aggressively seek to educate potential new customers on the extended modern mainframe’s capabilities?

Martin's flying the nest

2010-07-12T09:11:00.003Z

It is with some sadness that we say goodbye this week to Martin Atherton. After a lively three and a half years with Freeform Dynamics, he has decided to fly the nest to give himself the space to capitalise on some of his core talents. Those of you who know Martin will be familiar with his articulation, presentation and relationship building skills, and it’s in this area of ‘outreach’ that his heart really lies.

In the meantime, I believe Martin will be taking some time out over the summer to explore the opportunities that are out there in the industry. He’ll be a good catch for someone, and we look forward to Martin remaining a close friend of Freeform wherever he lands.

I'd like to add my personal gratitude for his broad contribution over the years - thanks Martin and all the best!

Jon

2010-07-07T14:24:00.003Z

Sugaring the pill

The iPad signals the start of a new wave of tablets. Supporting users that wish to work on these devices will be difficult, but existing technologies can help.

Originally published on CIO.co.uk

Apple, as a computer company, has been focused on the consumer market. It has paid lip-service to trying to tackle the ‘bread and butter’ corporate market, instead relying on niche departments to decide on Macs in order to run specific applications, or for professionals with the budget and freedom of choice to make their own choice to purchase, run and support a Mac.

But Apple is, by its own admission, no longer a computer company. The launch of the iPod in 2001 started the shift, but now Apple derives more than half of its revenue from the sales of the iPod and iPhone. The iPhone has tremendous traction, selling more than 8 million units in the first quarter of 2010, with many going to business users.

Now Apple is tackling a market that has always promised great things, but never really delivered. The new iPad tablet has already seen sales of over two million units in less than two months, and Apple is on course to ship more iPads this year than the entire sales of Windows Tablet PCs since it launched in 2002.

Arguably, the failure of the Tablet PC to reach critical mass lies in the name. It is a PC, with all the drawbacks that entails for extreme mobility. The success of the iPhone demonstrated the potential of devices with limited capabilities but sophisticated and polished interfaces, and this has translated into the success of the iPad.

Apple is far from alone in sensing the opportunity. HP acquired Palm for its WebOS which it intends to deploy on a range of devices including tablets, while Google is also making moves, with partner Dell launching the Streak Tablet based on the Android platform.

While it is not yet clear what the long term picture will look like, it is certain that there will be a sizeable market of ultra-portable computing devices that do not run Windows. These will employ a variety of operating systems, form factors and user interfaces. Each will be accompanied by their own security and management issues.

Many of these new tablets will be purchased by business users. Much of their use will be an extension of what smart phones are used for today: communications, such as voice, texting and email; web browsing; content consumption, such as music and video; and amusement or productivity through native applications.

Tablets enable a much richer environment than smart phones with larger screens, potentially better performance and longer battery life. This will enable tablets to make the switch from being content consumers which smart phones are quite good at, to content producers at which smart phones are not very good. And this will mean that business users increasingly will want to use the tablets to do work. The difficulty is that the whole environment is new and alien to IT.

Getting the software vendors that provide business applications to produce and support applications for so many device types will be nigh on impossible. It will be difficult enough to persuade them to do so for one or even two leading platforms. This will make it tough enable tablet users to work with business systems natively on the devices. And while it is fairly easy to locate reasonably good document viewers, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find a workable editor that can preserve the document formatting and structure, making sharing, distribution and document flow problematical.

It may be possible to provide access to applications through the use of Web or Cloud systems, although the use of advanced scripting tools and languages for rich application environments could pose compatibility or usability issues for tablet users.

The best solution, especially in the short to medium term as the market matures and develops, will be to avoid custom solutions as much as possible, and make use of tried and tested and widely implemented technologies. Virtual desktop solutions may prove to be an ideal way to deploy applications and services to these new tablets. This type of infrastructure, from the likes of Citrix, VMware and Microsoft, is already being used to provide remote virtual access to systems across many companies, supporting many users including mobile workers with laptops.

In this scenario the applications run in the data centre, and the tablet accesses them though a dedicated virtual desktop application, which provides the ‘window’ into the virtual desktop and business applications. The applications would run unmodified, ensuring full compatibility and features, while requiring minimal additional training and support as the results would be the same as running the applications on a small-screen notebook.

Although desktop virtualisation is a ‘silver bullet’ for running business applications on the new wave of tablets, it is not perfect. Continuous connectivity will be essential to productivity, as the applications run externally, as there is not yet the ability to cache the applications and work offline. If there is no connection, then the applications will not run. This will be fine if users can locate coffee shops or other locations with Wi-Fi services. It may even be suitable to run virtual desktop applications over 3G connections. But in many situations where users may wish to work, such as on trains and planes, or even automobiles, connectivity may be patchy and unreliable. Cost may also be an issue if the user is highly mobile and travels internationally as roaming charges mount.

How can Organisations be helped to exploit Storage Management Solutions?

2010-07-05T10:50:00.010Z

The amount of data stored by organisations continues to grow at a very fast rate. Indeed, as the figure below illustrates, the growth of data to be served has become one of the most important drivers impacting both the architecture and operation of IT systems. It is also clear from our work in this space however, that managing storage is not an area where many organisations excel. This begs the question, how active will the channel be in taking new storage solutions to market?

We know from conversations with IT professionals that most of the architectural attention is rightly focussed on the server side of ‘service delivery’, with storage utilised simply to support what is happening on the server. One reason for this is that, especially in small and mid-sized businesses, IT professionals tend to be generalists rather than specialists. The result is that expert storage knowledge can be at a premium.

It is also fair to say that until very recently in many organisations, storage has not been that high on the agenda, but this state of affairs is changing. The rapid growth of data being stored, coupled with the expectations of users to be able to access all data without limitations, is putting the storage infrastructure under stress. In addition wave upon wave of new legislation is compelling organisations to retain more data, or indeed delete information according to set rules. As a consequence the costs of data storage and management are becoming more and more visible elements in the IT budget.

Thus many companies are faced with the key questions of how to keep the cost of their storage use under control whilst the data volumes generated ramp up, and how to ensure that users can find key information in a convenient and timely manner. Against this background it is not surprising that many of the recent developments in storage management solutions have become increasingly prominent. For storage management, the ‘do nothing’ era is coming to an end.

The exact moment for a company to revisit its approach to storage management will vary by organisation. The balance point at which making changes becomes economically favourable is hard to judge, given that the breakdown of storage costs, especially operational costs, are still somewhat opaque. More strategic storage decisions are likely to be taken as part of a bigger review of infrastructure spending unless some outside, usually regulatory, factors intervene to stimulate a change of approach.

So what solutions could be of interest? Clearly storage virtualisation and thin provisioning, archiving and data deduplication are all tools which may be useful in certain scenarios. The challenge for many small and midsized enterprises will be to work out which solutions fit their own circumstances, particularly given the aforementioned lack of storage skills in house. If the basics of storage expertise are not present, it becomes quite a leap to expect such organisations to have the knowhow to adopt more advanced storage solutions.

Consider storage virtualisation for example. Whilst many mid-market organisations may have adopted x86 server virtualisation to some extent, the same cannot be said of storage virtualisation. In many ways if organisations already have a level of understanding of server virtualisation it will be easier for them to relate to the potential benefits of storage virtualisation. These include consolidation, resource usage optimisation, increased availability and resilience coupled with the ability to manipulate and protect data more flexibly and effectively.

However, given the limited understanding in the general IT community regarding such capabilities, a major hurdle to their adoption is clear to see. Who is going to educate the markets? So far the majority of the storage management solution vendors have done a less than effective job marketing and evangelising their tools, especially with respect to highlighting potential usage cases and achievable business benefits.

Until the vendors get better at such primary education there is an obvious space for the channel to step up to this particular plate. The need for sophisticated storage management is growing in small and mid-market companies, but they are crying out for “someone” to explain, position and deliver such solutions. While firms of storage specialists exist, it will be interesting to monitor how the broader channel community tackles storage management in the coming months and years.