IT analyses blog

Financial comparison of IT services delivery models

2016-06-20T16:25:00.000+01:00

Preparation

All details and related context should be taken in consideration before any comparison takes place. If you do not have the experience and in order to avoid incorrect evaluation, it is better to hire
independent business and IT consultants. Some documents ought to be created or if they are in place, to be updated, before you start the process. The consultants will help you to finalise the documents in the required depth and scope.

1. Business Strategy. Every business has a development plan. However small business managers keep that plan only in their heads. While managers combine multiple roles and juggle with various operational activities or they simply under-valuate the importance of the business plan, it will be fated not to be a structured document. Its purpose is to describe development intentions and expected changes in the business model and organisation. Most of the companies maintain a 3 years’ plan.
It is recommended to revise it every 3 months, to find out what has been achieved in that time, the lessons that have been learned, what the further plan will be and set priorities.
Just remember! There is no consultant who can look directly into your mind and extract your business strategy from there. What would happen if you try just to story tell it in brief? Are you sure that a key piece of information won’t be missed?
It is even more dangerous to accept unquestioningly the best practices for your sector from well-reputed consultancy, as they will provide common and widely adopted practices which will lead to average results. Do not sow the common unless you are happy to reap the average. The example with the stock market index is indicative – it is a measurement of the value of a section of the stock market. It is computed from the prices of selected stocks (typically a weighted average). I am sure you are looking for more than average, aren’t you?

2. Business Services Catalogue. It includes functions (think of it as departments) and their activities. There is a description for each service, required activities, availability, disaster recovery, recovery time and point objective and underpinning services. Business services are split in two main categories – vital and underpinning. Small business usually outsource accountancy, unless the small business is not an accountancy practice itself. It is the same with the other business services. The old rule is to keep vital business functions and activities within the organisation. You can easily recognise them – they generate income. All the rest of the business services can be outsourced and it is a question of analysis and informed decision to do so.

3. IT Strategy. This is a plan with all current and those in the pipeline IT services. It ought to have an expert selection of all known and at the same time potentially beneficial for the business organisation technologies processes and systems. There are two approaches. The first is a rear-view, where IT strategy follows Business strategy. While there is nothing wrong with it, the approach is passive. The active approach is constantly looking for positive impact of the business by implementing new technologies, even if the business model should be changed. The “fancy” word is Digital Transformation and the idea behind is technology and IT specialists to participate actively in business model development in order to achieve competitive advantages, market share extension, or even entering new markets. The digital age assumes that IT specialists have to be engaged actively in business planning and strategy discussions. The managers, who do not do this, have to read Charles Darwin’s “The origin of species” theory as soon as possible. It’s applicable to companies too.
Why not even Digital Disruption? The constantly emerging and evolving technologies could transform the business model in a way, where the whole sector can be turned upside down, making new joiners the leaders. Is it hard to imagine? Ask Uber or Airbnb.

4. IT Services Catalogue. It should dynamically keep information about all IT services as description, SLR (Service Level Requirements), SLA (Service Level Agreement), context and relationships between services. One IT service can be consumed by more than one user group. This would dictate to have different SLRs and SLAs, urgency and impact on the business. If there is an inconsistency in the documentation it is easy to conduct internal interviews and to fulfil the gaps. Your IT specialist would be of great help when putting in order all the documents.

Cost models

Every single IT service can be provided internally or externally or a mixture of both. There is a need of a unified comparison model of all available proposals.

1. Invoicing. As this is the only one viable model applicable to external IT organisations, it can be applied to the internal one, only if it is split from the mother company. This approach would lead to new external IT organisation even though it is owned by the mother company. The finances are under strict control, the customer is fully aware about expenditures and the details depend on preparation quality. The incomes of newly formed IT organisation are coming mainly from the parent company. In rare cases more customers are being attracted and this finishes the transformation of the internal to external IT provider. The disadvantage for the business is that it has invested in the development of IT provider and has to use his services, regardless of price and quality. Instead of a quick change of the provider, additional investment in marketing, sales and all other business functions is required. In case of growth, saving due scale could be expected, which lead to a more competitive price and better quality. In theory at least.

2. Chargeback. It is analogical to the invoicing. However the invoices are dummy and the IT organisation remains internal. The model is handy to the business management in order to keep an eye on the IT expenditures and to be able to compare with alternative providers. Presumably the vital IT services for the business remain in-sourced, while the rest are seeking the best quality and price from both, internal, external or a mixture of providers. The reasons are described in the "Why small business outsource IT services?“ post. The dummy invoices are provided from the internal IT organisation and usually this is new activity. It consumes significant resource and time, moreover in the case in which there is only one IT specialist within IT organisation.

Cost components

The price usually is based on time. Unfortunately the service is not something material and it cannot be produced, packaged and left on the shelf, waiting for a customer. The consumers’ expectations are to have it when they need it. Instant delivery on demand. All conditions have to be in place as availability, reliability, fault tolerance and disaster recovery.
What is necessary to be taken into account to provide IT services internally?

1. IT specialist(s)
- Hire costs, HR management, leave costs
- Salary, social and health insurance, indemnity, bonuses, company shares, etc.
- Annual leave
- Sick off, time off, etc.
- Substitution
- Learning (Induction period, knowledge development)
- Contractors hire to supplement headcount in peak times or simply to expertise

2. Workspace
- Rent/mortgage interest (4 to 5 sq.m/per person on average)
- Workplace utilities costs (electricity, heating, cooling, water, etc.)
- Equipment and tools
- Licenses
- Office consumables and office maintenance

Your financial department can provide you with the information about the components mentioned above. Usually the report covers a period of one year. All expenses are divided by the effective working days (all working days without the annual leave and all other time-offs). The result is the price of the IT organisation per hour. In case where more than one specialist is present, the result is divided by the number of specialists. Let’s assume that all IT professionals have the same cost for the purpose of analysis simplification. In practice all of them have different levels of skills, experience and knowledge and costs differently to the all others.

(IT specialist costs per year + Workspace costs per year)/(Effective work days per year)/7.5 hours per day = Total cost of and IT specialist per hour

What portion of the time your IT specialist is utilised? What tasks is he charged with? Are they within his responsibilities? Is he/she too expensive for some tasks?

In order to have the correct assessment, we have to know in quantitative and qualitative terms the demand for every single IT service and task. The ticket system is widely used. For every single request for IT services a ticket has to be raised. The ticket itself is a record in an information system, which provides an interface to IT users, IT specialists and business managers. Once the IT specialist is notified he will start the work on the ticket, based on the priority. All parties kept communication in the same information system until the resolution and closure of the ticket. No work is allowed to be carried out without track of record in the system.

Business management will benefit from consolidated reports from all or filtered incidents, user requests, resolutions, recommendations, workarounds, etc. It is easy to analyse which are the most frequent incidents, the ones with most negative impact and where IT budgets are spent.
The IT specialist will rely on the information system for prioritisation on all raised requests when it comes to prove why he/she decided to work on one task while put on hold another. It is useful to show evidence of how efficiently and effectively he/she used his/her time, and competence. Business management would be surprised how positive IT specialists are about implementing a ticket system.
The current post describes just the rough outlines of the picture for wise IT governance, based on informed choices and decisions. You cannot manage without control and you cannot control without measurement.

In case you have met the problems described in "One man as an IT department", it’s likely you have asked yourself about your current model. Is it the right fit for you? Does it require some changes?
Do not forget the internal IT specialists work within the organisational frame created by the business management and that any change should be initiated by the management.

Back to the title – Have you switched off the autopilot for IT services management in your organisation?

Да върнем управлението на ИТ услугите към бизнес ръководителите

2016-06-14T08:54:00.004+01:00

Икономическо сравнение на модели за предоставяне на ИТ услуги

(stay tuned for the English version)

Подготовка

Преди да се прави сравнение трябва да се вземат предвид всички детайли и техните взаимовръзки. За да се избегне некоректно сравнение, ако нямате познания по точките по-долу, можете да се обърнете към независими бизнес и ИТ консултанти. Преди да се обърнете към тях е важно да бъдат създадени или ако са налични да бъдат осъвременени няколко документа. Консултантите ще Ви помогнат да ги изчистите в необходимите детайли.

1. Бизнес стратегия (бизнес план). Малкия бизнес също има такъв план, но той често е само в главите на ръководството. Фактори от типа на голяма динамика, липса на време или просто поради подценяване на значимостта му го обричат да не съществува във вид на структуриран документ. Неговата цел е да опише плановете за развитие и очакваните промени в бизнеса. Обикновено се създават такива с период 3 години напред и е препоръчително да се отчита на всеки 3 месеца какво е постигнато и да се нанасят корекции ако има такива за следващите 3 години от новият момент напред във времето.

Запомнете! Няма консултант, който да надникне в съзнанието Ви и да отгатне Вашата бизнес стратегия. Ако само го разкажете, дали няма да пропуснете нещо ключово?
Още по опасно е да приемете за чиста монета, външен консултант да Ви разкаже „добрите практики“ от индустрията. Не залагайте много на общоприетото, защото то дава осреднени резултати. Примерът с борсовият индекс е показателен – той е средно аритметичното представяне на всички компании листнати там, а Вие търсите повече, нали?

2. Каталог на бизнес услугите. Това включва обикновено отделите и тяхната дейност. Описанието е за всяка отделна дейност, необходими поддържащи услуги и какви са изискванията за непрекъсваемост, срок за възстановяване, максимален период в който можем да допуснем неработоспособност. Бизнес услугите се делят на две основни категории – жизнено важни и поддържащи. Счетоводството често е изнесена услуга при малкия бизнес, освен ако малкият бизнес не е счетоводна къща. Същото е и с останалите бизнес услуги. Дейностите осигуряващи приходите по правило не се изнасят извън организацията. Всички останали е въпрос на анализ и бизнес решение.

3. ИТ стратегия (ИТ план за развитие). Представлява план за действие, комбиниран с текущи и планирани за стартиране на нови ИТ услуги. Съчетава експертен подбор от налични технологии, процеси и системи. Има два подхода. Първият е огледало за обратно виждане, при който ИТ стратегията следва бизнес стратегията. Той не е грешен, но е пасивен. При активния подход непрекъснато се търси начин за усъвършенстване посредством най-новите открития и технологии. Модният термин е Digital Transformation. Идеята е ИТ технологиите и специалистите да подпомагат активно промяната на бизнес модела с цел по-добри или нови конкурентни предимства, навлизане на нови пазари, разширяване на пазарен дял и дори създаване на нови пазари. В дигиталната ера ИТ специалистите трябва да вземат активно участие при дискусиите за бизнес плановете и стратегиите. Ръководителите на компании, които не го правят, нека прочетат теорията на Дарвин, час по-скоро, за оцеляването на видовете. Приложима е и при компаниите.

А защо не и Digital Disruption? Понякога трансформацията на бизнес модела, предизвикана от технологиите може да обърне с главата надолу цял сектор и да направи едва влезлите лидери. Не Ви се вярва? Питайте Uber.

4. Каталог на ИТ услугите. Всички ИТ услуги – описание, SLR (рамка на изискванията към услугата, така, че тя да носи полза за бизнеса), SLA (договорени нива на услугата) за непрекъсваемост, срокове за възстановяване, максимален период за загубени данни, план Б и т.н. Една ИТ услуга може да се ползва от различни групи потребители и това да налага тя да има различни нива и приоритети за различните групи.
Ако документацията е непълна, можете да направите вътрешни интервюта и да откриете липсващите детайли. Вашият ИТ специалист със сигурност може да Ви помогне в структурирането на документа.

Модели на ценообразуване

Всяка една отделна ИТ услуга може да бъде предоставяна от външна, вътрешна или съвместна организация. Необходим е единен модел за сравнение на предложенията от различните организации.

1. Фактуриране. Това е единствения модел при външните ИТ организации, но за да се приложи при вътрешната, следва тя да се отдели от голямата организация и фактически да се превърне във външна (макар и собственост на компанията майка). Разходите и приходите в ИТ организацията са под строг контрол. Клиентът е наясно с разходите за ИТ, макар, че две взаимосвързани лица фактурират едно на друго. Детайлността зависи от качеството на подготовката. Приходната част на ново сформираният ИТ доставчик се формира основно от голямата организация. В редки случай се привличат допълнителни клиенти и с това завършва трансформацията на вътрешния към външния ИТ доставчик. Недостатъкът за бизнеса е, че е инвестирал в създаването на ИТ доставчик и трябва да ползва неговите услуги, без значение на цена или качество. Вместо бърза смяна на ИТ доставчик се налага допълнително инвестиране в маркетинг, продажби и всички останали бизнес функции, които да позволят растеж на доставчика. В случай, че има растеж, то може да се очакват икономии от мащаба и съответно по-добра цена и по-добро качество за бизнеса. Поне на теория.

2. Псевдо фактуриране (проформи фактури). Аналог на предходния модел, но с тази разлика, че фактурите са фиктивни и ИТ организацията си остава вътрешна. Подходящ модел при желание, от страна на бизнес ръководството, непрекъснато да се следят ИТ разходите и да се прави сравнение с алтернативни доставчици. Предполага се, че има основни услуги, които си остават отговорност на вътрешната ИТ организация, но допълнителните ИТ услуги, често рутинни, могат да бъдат предоставени, както на външна, така и на вътрешна ИТ организация. Причините са описани в "Защо малкият бизнес изнася ИТ услуги към външни доставчици?" Докато услугите са предоставяни вътрешно се прави фиктивно фактуриране. При външен доставчик има реално фактуриране. Фиктивното фактуриране отнема сериозен ресурс на вътрешната ИТ организация и бизнес ръководството следва да бъде внимателно, особено при наличие на само един ИТ специалист.

Компоненти на ценообразуване

В повечето случаи цената на услугите се формира за време. Услугата не е материална, следователно не може да се произведе, пакетира и сложи на рафта, чакайки за потребител. В същото време очакването на потребителите е да я получат, когато им е необходима. За целта трябва да се осигурят условия за наличност, надеждност, отказоустойчивост и възстановяване при прекъсване.
Какво е необходимо да се вземе предвид за ИТ услугите предоставяни вътрешно?

1. ИТ специалист(ти)

- разходи по наемане, управление на човешки ресурси и освобождаване
- заплата, осигуровки, застраховки, бонуси
- годишен (платен) отпуск
- отсъствия по болест, инциденти, семейни причини и т.н.
- заместване при отсъствие
- обучения
- наемане на външни ИТ специалисти при недостиг на експертиза

2. Работно място

- наем/лихва по ипотека (средно 4 до 5 кв.м./човек)
- режийни разходи за работно място
- екипировка и инструменти необходими за осъществяване на дейността
- лицензи
- офис консумативи и поддръжка офис
Вашият финансово счетоводен отдел може да Ви предостави информацията от горните два компонента. Обикновено справката обхваща срок от една година. Всички разходи се разделят на ефективно отработените дни (всички работни дни без годишният отпуск и всички отсъствия), а след това на 8 часа (при осем часов работен ден). Резултата е себестойност на ИТ организацията на час. В случай, че има повече от един специалист този резултат се разделя на броя на специалистите. Нека приемем, само за улесняване на анализа, че всички ИТ специалисти струват еднакво на организацията. В практиката всеки специалист е с различен опит, умения и знания и е различно заплатен от останалите.

(Разходи за ИТ специалист/г. + Разходи за работно място/г.)/(Ефективно отработени дни/г.)/8 часа (при осем часов работен ден)= Себестойност на ИТ специалист на час

Каква част от времето е натоварен ИТ специалиста? С какви задачи е натоварен? Влизат ли в неговите отговорности? Не е ли прекалено скъп за някои от дейностите, които извършва?
С цел по точна оценка е необходимо да знаем количеството търсене на съответните ИТ услуги. Широко разпространена е така наречената тикет „билет“ система. При всяко обръщение по нов случай на ИТ потребител към ИТ специалист се „вдига тикет“. Тикетът е запис в информационна система, която предоставя интерфейс на ИТ потребителите, техните ръководители и ИТ поддръжката. ИТ специалистът е известен и започва работа по съответния случай. Всички страни записват комуникацията си до решението на случая. Не се допуска работа по нерегистрирани в системата случаи.

Бизнес ръководството има възможност да следи обобщени доклади от всички инциденти, събития, консултации, помощ и т.н. Лесно се анализират кои са най-често срещаните, кои са най-негативно въздействащи върху бизнеса и не на последно място – колко точно струват ИТ услугите.

ИТ специалистът(тите) ще може да ползва система за приоритизация на всички случаи, чакащи разрешаване и ще бъде в състояние да защити твърденията си доколко ефективно е използван той, колко е ефикасен при изпълнението на задълженията си, колко е търсенето на неговите услуги и в коя област е то. Бизнес ръководството ще остане изненадано, колко позитивно са настроени ИТ специалистите за стартирането на тикет система.

Всичко описано в този пост показва в груби щрихи пътят за мъдро управление на ИТ услуги базирано на набор от информирани избори и решения. Не може да има управление без контрол, а контролът е невъзможен без измерване.
В случай, че срещате проблемите описани в "Човекът ИТ отдел в малкият бизнес", вероятно сте си задавали въпроси дали сегашния модел е правилния, дали няма нужда от промяна. Не забравяйте, че ИТ специалистите работят в рамките на организационната структура създадена от бизнес ръководството. Промяната трябва да се инициира от същото бизнес ръководство.

Обратно към заглавието - изключихте ли автопилота при управлението на ИТ услугите във Вашата организация?

Why small business outsource IT services?

2016-06-07T09:15:00.000+01:00

In the latest post "One man as an IT department" we have discovered the most commonly met
problems of all three parties – the internal IT specialist, the business and the IT users. Now we will progress to figure out what the main reasons for outsourcing IT services are.
The scale of the market participants dictates their behaviour. Every business, no matter how small it is, needs almost the same IT services as large corporations do. The difference is that large players have got a scale and ability to establish and maintain internal IT organisations, while smaller ones have no option, but to use shared resources. Firstly they do not need those resources at all times and furthermore they cannot afford to pay for the resources full time.

So what should the small businesses do?
How can you get the same services with the same or even better quality and all of that at a better price?!
How would it work, bearing in mind, it is cost prohibitive to hire an IT specialist on a permanent basis?

The small business can barely utilise his time… But is that really true?! In a previous post I said the sole IT specialist is overwhelmed with various tasks and he works more than 9 to 5. I am right here and I was back then, too. While an IT specialist is busy all the time, he perform various tasks. Most of these tasks are routine ones and do not require all his knowledge, experience and skills. Controversially he has to be knowledgeable to all technologies employed in the business he is working for. The business is well aware that hiring an overqualified permanent employee is not making sense for a long term.
The small business in Europe represent 92% of all businesses and most of them rely on external IT service providers. Managed IT service providers deliver shared resources and opportunities with a variety of customers. There are numerous reasons for the transition of one, several or all IT services to external service providers. The list below does not claim to be exhaustive, but sheds a light on the motives in making such decisions.

The 6 main reasons of IT services outsourcing

1. Insufficient or lack of IT personnel.
Expectedly you already have some or all problems described in “One man as an IT department”. In addition to your internal IT specialist you can extend the workforce on a temporary basis by hiring a contractor. If you do that only in case of a raising problem, you have to expect for a solution focused in just the current problem. Obviously there is a lack of strategic approach and consideration of the big picture and inter-related factors. Usually the long-term contract with an external provider of IT services, who’s interested to solve problems effectively and efficiently, due to pursue of its own interest, significantly reduces the risk of recurring incidents. The services move from firefighting to proactive approach with great decrease of negative impact on the business. Is that mission possible? Yes, it is a matter of accurate allocation of responsibilities between internal IT specialist and long-term strategy.

2. Lack or at least insufficiency of necessary knowledge, skills or experience.
We live in a world of dynamic competition between many emerging and evolving technologies. The differences in two generations of the same technology are commensurable to the technology progress in the sector. Otherwise it will be outperformed by another technology and will die silently on the shelf of the oblivion. The continuous updating of knowledge is the new status quo. Outsourcing of IT services allows you to take advantage of the collective knowledge and experience which is dynamically updated within the external providers’ teams.

3. The cost to value ration.
The external IT services provider offers a lower price for the same or better quality and reliability of the services. While paying for external IT services actually you have got on top of that tested processes, real life proven models and consistent approach for integrating the most beneficial in the world of technology for your business. The provider sells services in various sectors to various customers. The mixture of sources to collect knowledge and experience, not only in IT is much faster and in a larger spectrum rather than working within one business only. An unexpected bonus could be the exchange of contacts between customers of one provider, usually expressed in new sale opportunities. Remember that the growth of the customer is one of the fundamental interests of its suppliers.

Does your IT services provider help you in that way?

4. Focus on the core business activities.
Hybrid model – the widely used approach is to export mainly trivial and routine IT services, while line-of-business ones are kept under responsibility of the internal IT specialist. IT services that do not support core business functions can easily be delegated to specialised external supplier. All the rest IT services are supported by your IT specialist. Already focused, he will have more time to optimise and automate IT processes and services. Last but not least there will be time for meaningful communication with the business management and IT users in order to improve services and speed up implementation of new projects.

5. Your business sector is seriously influenced by the technologies.
Not long ago we have entered the digital age. However, the technologies evolve exponentially and constantly. Only in the case, where business’s main focus is not on the IT, it is desirable to reduce resources and time spent in the management of IT services and to concentrate the effort on the core business functions. The fast growth of the reliance on technologies by the business is inevitable. The new generations would become the new customers, new partners and new competitors. They grow up surrounded by technologies and have set up high expectations about how they can be employed in any area of the modern life.

The main aim of every business is growth, isn’t it?

6. Business flexibility and adaptiveness.
Every single business is as adaptable as it is capable to do more successful projects for a less time. Can you think of any business project without IT services involved? Starting from correct interpretation of the business strategy to unlock and make possible simple and sustainable design and followed by the rapid and successful implementation are key success factors of the project.

What business would survive without flexibility in responding to constantly changing business environment?

The cloud computing evolved enough for the last decades and liberates the market of enterprise locked expensive technology to be shared among many users and the lower price. The customer’s infrastructure shrinks every next year at the expense of cloud services in one form or another. Your internal IT specialist migrates maintenance of hardware and software to Managed IT Service providers. The unexpected side effect for the business when outsourcing the infrastructure is that some services are also being outsourced.

Why are the infrastructure and services bound? The managed IT services providers are lending their infrastructure not just for the profit, which is very low and comparable with the distributors’ one. The difference between the two types of suppliers is that the provider has to make capital expenses for equipment and to maintain operational payments for qualified IT experts and running data centre in order to keep the services available during the ROI period. Unfortunately all risks are owned by the managed IT services provider according to how efficiently resources are utilised. The equipment ages quickly which adds up to the fact that in case of insufficient utilisation and related income it is possible to extend the period for ROI. The worst case scenario is when income cannot support even the operational expenditures. The distributors on the other hand sell the equipment and receive the payment in full.

The symbiosis when pursuing the interests of both the customer and the infrastructure lender could coalesce best when providing additional services. This might be management of back-ups, archives, disaster recovery, system administration, etc. The provider can realise additional income from the same customer, with larger margins of profit, since he is more optimal when it comes to using his IT specialists’ time. To keep it short and clear – there is no increase in operational costs. On the other hand the customer is outsourcing the infrastructure, its management and the base services to a highly specialised in this provider, at a lower price, while not compromising quality.

Do you know which of your IT services make sense to outsource, economically-wise?

How to do review of the IT services and business analysis… stay tuned for the next posts or contact us - www.primaconsult.co.uk

I will leave the discussion open and would appreciate comments and proposals from all parties – IT specialists, IT users and their managers. If you are totally agree or you do not have an opinion you are still welcomed to share the post so it can reach more of your colleagues, friends and contacts.
It will be beneficial to collect more opinions.

Thank you in advance!

Защо малкият бизнес изнася ИТ услуги към външни доставчици?

2016-06-06T08:43:00.000+01:00

(stay tuned for the English version)

В продължение към предишния пост „Човекът ИТ отдел в малкия бизнес“ тук ще разгледаме
основните мотиви за изнасяне на ИТ услуги. Малкият мащаб на пазара в България и неговите участници предопределят необходимостта от споделен ресурс. Всеки бизнес, колкото и малък да е той, има нужда от почти същите услуги, аналогично на големите корпорации. Разликата е, че големите имат мащаба и възможностите да създадат и поддържат вътрешна ИТ организация.
А какво да прави малкият бизнес? Да получи същите услуги със същото или дори по-добро качество при това на по-ниска цена?!?! Как е възможно при условие, че дори наемането на един специалист трудно оправдава разходите от гледна точка на това колко и с какви задачи е натоварен той?
Основният виновник е мащаба.
Малкият бизнес представлява 92% от целият бизнес в Европа и в голямата си част той е доверил ИТ услугите на външни доставчици. Последните предоставят на разнообразни клиенти ИТ услуги и по този начин споделят ресурса си и възможностите си с тях. Има многобройни причини за изнасяне на една, няколко или всички ИТ услуги към външен доставчик или доставчици. Списъкът по-долу няма претенциите да е пълен, но дава обща картина за мотивите при вземане на подобни решения.

6-те основни причини за изнасяне на ИТ услуги

1. Нямате никакъв или достатъчно ИТ персонал
Вероятно срещате част или всички проблеми описани в поста „Човекът ИТ отдел в малкия бизнес“. В допълнение към вътрешния ИТ специалист можете да се обръщате към външен специалист само в случай на възникнал проблем, но решението е само на този проблем. Липсва стратегически подход и съобразяване на всички останали и взаимно свързани фактори. Дългосрочен договор с външен доставчик на ИТ услуги, пряко заинтересован да реши ефективно появилите се проблеми за да не се налага да пилее ресурси отново, значително понижава риска от повтарящи се инциденти. Правилният подход е разпределение на отговорностите и дългосрочна стратегия.

2. Липсват необходимите знания, умения или опит
Технологиите са много и в непрекъсната конкуренция. Дори да мигрирате към по-новото поколение на същият продукт, то разликите в технологиите са съизмерими с напредъка в сектора. Непрекъснатото обновяване на знанията е новото статукво. Изнасянето на ИТ услуги позволява да се възползвате от колективното познание и непрекъснато осъвременяващ се опит на външния доставчик.

3. Съотношение цена/стойност
Външният доставчик Ви предлага по-ниска цена при същото или по-добро качество и надеждност на ИТ услугите. В повечето случай, плащайки за външни ИТ услуги, всъщност получавате освен тях и проверени процеси, работещи модели и подход за интегриране на най-полезното от света на технологиите за Вашият бизнес. Външният ИТ доставчик предоставя услуги в различни сектори, към разнообразни клиенти. Събирането на знания и опит, не само в ИТ, е много по-бързо и в много по-голям спектър. Неочакван бонус може да се окаже размяната на контакти между клиентите на един доставчик, обикновено изразяващо се в нови продажби. Не забравяйте, че растежа на клиента е един от основните интереси на неговите доставчици.
А вашият ИТ доставчик помага ли Ви в тази насока?

4. Фокусиране върху основната дейност
Хибриден модел – изнасяте основно тривиалните и рутинни ИТ услуги, докато жизнено важните за бизнеса остават отговорност на вътрешния ИТ специалист. ИТ услугите, които не поддържат основни бизнес функции, могат лесно да се поемат от външен доставчик. Останалите ИТ услуги се поддържат от Вашия ИТ специалист. Вече фокусиран, той ще разполага с повече време да оптимизира и автоматизира ИТ процесите и услугите. Не на последно място ще има време за ползотворна комуникация с ръководството и ИТ потребителите за подобряване на услугите и внедряване на нови проекти.

5. Бизнес секторът в които работите е сериозно повлиян от технологиите
Отдавна сме навлезли в дигиталната ера. Технологиите еволюират експоненциално. Само в случай, че основната дейност не е в сферата на ИТ, бизнесът е желателно да редуцира ресурси в управлението на ИТ услуги и да се концентрира върху основната си дейност. Зависимостта от технологиите расте с не по-бавни темпове. Новите поколения са новите клиенти, новите партньори и новите конкуренти. Те растат заобиколени от технологии и очакват да им бъдат в помощ при всекидневните задачи.
А задачата на всеки бизнес е растеж, нали?

6. Адаптивност на бизнеса
Един бизнес е толкова адаптивен, колкото повече успешни проекти може да реализира за същото или по-кратко време. Идва ли Ви наум поне един нов бизнес проект, който да не се нуждае от ИТ услуги под някаква форма? Правилното интерпретиране на бизнес стратегията, отключващи прост и устойчив дизайн и допълнени с бързата и успешна имплементация са ключови фактори за успех на проекта.
Кой бизнес би оцелял без способността да отговори на постоянно променящата се бизнес среда?

Появата на облачните изчисления позволи скъпите технологии да бъдат споделени между много потребители и това да понижи цената. Инфраструктурата при клиентите намалява с всяка изминала година за сметка на облачни услуги под една или друга форма. Вашият ИТ специалист мигрира от поддръжка на хардуер и софтуер към управление на доставчици на ИТ услуги. Важна особеност, но често подценявана от страна на бизнеса е, че изнасянето на инфраструктура в една или друга степен изнася и услуги.

Защо инфраструктурата и услугите са свързани? Доставчиците на външни услуги предоставят своята инфраструктура далеч не заради печалбите. Те са изключително малки и съизмерими с тези на дистрибуторите на същите устройства и софтуер. Разликата между двата вида доставчици е в това, че доставчикът на инфраструктурни (облачни) услуги трябва да закупи цялото оборудване и софтуер, да поддържа квалифициран екип, условия и разходи в дейтацентъра за да бъде налична услугата. Остават всички рискове дали ще бъдат натоварени ресурсите в необходимият обем за да се покриват оперативните разходи и да се изплати оборудването, което старее морално доста бързо. Дистрибуторите продават „стоката“ и получават заплащането напълно в момента на продажбата или след договореният период.
Симбиозата при преследване интересите и на клиента и на доставчика на инфраструктура, като услуга, могат да съвпаднат най-добре при предоставяне на допълнителни услуги. Това може да бъде бекъп, архивиране, възстановяване в друг дейтацентър при авария, системна поддръжка и т.н. Доставчикът може да реализира допълнителни приходи от същият клиент и с по-голям процент печалба, като натовари по-оптимално своите ИТ специалисти. На бизнес език - без да увеличава оперативните разходи. Клиента от своя страна изнася инфраструктурата, нейното управление и базовите услуги на тясно специализиран в това доставчик на по-ниска цена и при по-високо качество.

А Вие знаете ли кои ИТ услуги е икономически обосновано Вашата организация да изнася към външен доставчик?

Как се прави преглед на ИТ услугите и икономически анализ… следете следващите постове.

Оставям темата отворена и приветствам коментари и предложения, както от колеги от ИТ бранша, така и от консуматорите на ИТ услуги - ИТ потребители и техните ръководители. Ако сте напълно съгласни или пък нямате мнение за коментар, то също споделете поста с Ваши колеги, приятели и познати. Ще е интересно да съберем повече мнения.

Благодаря Ви предварително!

One man as an IT department

2016-06-05T11:42:00.000+01:00

The challenges for small businesses

What are the 10 most frequent issues affecting the solely working IT specialist?

1. No one to bounce ideas off of.

It sometimes helps to think out loud, to speak, and get some feedback from someone who actually understands what you are doing. Without someone like that around, IT guys might start talking to themselves! The business risk is suppliers often are collocutors for the IT specialist, however they are in between the two roles – trusted advisor and sales force. They will provide the best advice, for sure, but the question is - who would it be best for. It is a little ambiguous – the company that the IT

specialist is working for, the IT specialist himself or the supplier. Obviously suppliers have to push their sales.

2. No time for R&D

If the IT specialist is overwhelmed with support requests and new implementations, it is highly unlikely that he will have the time to research on a new technology to develop better tools for you.

3. Slow response to business change demand

The market is extremely dynamic and business is pushed to react, adapt and proactively move forward. Implementation of new technologies is not as quick as the management would like it to be. New projects require additional resources from the only one existing IT specialist.

4. No replacement for the IT specialist during days off

What about being sick off or on annual leave? Should he do remoting from the bed whilst ill? Or just try to picture yourself in his family’s shoes during that dreamed vacation! Needless to mention “quick calls” during the weekend for consultancy and help.

5. Company knowledge is in IT specialist’ head

What would happen if the IT specialist leaves the company? It is stressful due to poor to nil level of knowledge transfer and handover. “Business as usual” operations do not leave room for maintaining up-to-date documentation. It is extremely difficult and in most cases impossible for an overwhelmed IT specialist to help himself by moving from firefighting to proactive approach, since he has no time to do it.

6. Keeping high ROI in the IT left IT specialist behind his fellows

The business has expectation to get maximised return on investments made in technologies. Usually the technology vendors provide 3 years warranty and support contracts, expandable to 5 years as an option. The small business uses one technology 7 to 8 years on average. However every next generation of the same technology is introduced to the market on every 2 to 3 years. How one internal IT specialist could possibly be up-to-date with all this new information, if there are no changes for this period? If he is made redundant for any reason, how could he be competitive against other jobseekers? Probably he would be, if the new employer still uses the same old technologies. But then, the same question comes up again - what would happen if he loses his job again…? Do not be surprised if salary raise is not enough to keep him!

7. Being on call at any time and any case

It’s hardly doable in case of incidents that impact big groups of users. The Hamlet’s question – “Do I have to answer all the users’ calls explaining one by one what happened and when I anticipate to fix it, or to start immediately fixing the problem and to reduce the time and negative impact on the business?” raise every time.

What about 20 calls, most of them sparkling of emotions? Sending an e-mail just raises a new storm of questions. When IT maintenance require one or more services to be temporarily unavailable (or at least with decreased performance), businesses demand this have to be performed out of business hours.

At the other hand new technologies allow business hours to be stretched due to remote access. Some employees can finalise the PowerPoint presentation or to catch-up with the analysis during the weekend. Time windows left for maintenance are constantly squeezing and pushed to small hours.

IT maintenance and help desk 24/7 by only one IT specialist?

I would leave aside the questions about labour law and humanity, but what about the performance and the mood of your poor IT guy?

8. Wide profile IT specialist. Really?

How anyone could state he is an expert in a certain technology, if he implements it by skipping three to four generations? On average every two to three years a new generation of the same technology appears. Sometimes during a major incident everything should be implemented from scratch before restoring the data. IT specialists reveal that they struggle to recon how exactly they did it last time, since it’s been a few years ago. What about not only one, but multiple technologies? Even if he is positive and eager to learn, he can be good at only few of them in theory and not in practice.

9. Blending IT expertise with understanding business model and processes?

It might take the IT specialist 5 to 10 years to understand in depth the business he is working for. He can play a reactive and support role till then as it takes time and depends on the business’s complexity. The added value rarely includes proactively enable entering to new markets, increase of the current market share or completely new competitive advantages.

10. IT specialists with plain English are required

Unless the business is not an IT itself, both users and managers are not IT specialists and all of them require simple business and jargon free language. This is a significant challenge and effort requirement for the IT specialist, bearing in mind the overbooked calendar, while his phone is constantly ringing. To be polite, he thoroughly explains every step or process undertaken with obvious examples for comparison, leaving him failing to accomplish most urgent tasks as he has no time.

All the examples above are not pretending to be the exhaustive list, just fragments from the whole picture. However only the mentioned ones are self-sufficient to raise passive behaviour or worse – “burn-out” of the IT specialist. It is not acceptable for any business to have an IT specialist who shrugs his shoulders or wildly expresses his emotions which sometimes ends up with him leaving the company, denial to perform knowledge transfer, handover or even to provide credentials.

The IT service value is based on fit to purpose (utility) and fit to use (warranty). The first factor means capability of the IT specialist – knowledge, skills and experience. Second, but not least factor, means reliability – IT users to have access to the IT specialist when they need it. Both hypothesis – largely capable, but not reliable (i.e. cannot be found when required), or always responding, but not capable of doing the job are simply not acceptable.

What business management should do?

I will leave the discussion open and would appreciate comments and proposals from all parties – IT specialists, IT users and their managers. If you are totally agree or you do not have an opinion you are still welcomed to share the post so it can reach more of your colleagues, friends and contacts.
It will be beneficial to collect more opinions.
Thank you in advance!

Човекът ИТ отдел в малкия бизнес

2016-05-30T09:12:00.000+01:00

Предизвикателства пред бизнеса

(stay tuned for the English version)
Кои са 10-те най-често срещани проблема струпани върху самия ИТ специалист?

Няма с кой да сподели и обсъди идеите си. Сверяване на часовника, но с кого? Най-често с доставчиците, но те са в опасното съчетание на роли – търговец и съветник. Те със сигурност ще го посъветват най-доброто, но оставя неясен въпроса за кой е най-доброто. За компанията за която работи ИТ специалиста, за него самия или за доставчика.
Тестване на нови технологии е почти невъзможно поради липса на време и в повечето случай на ресурси. Винаги с приоритет е поддръжката на текущите ИТ услуги за потребителите.
Внедряване на нови технологии обикновено е бавен процес. Новият проект изисква допълнителни ресурси, но ИТ специалистът е само един.
Няма кой да го замести при отсъствие, болест или отпуск. Това налага той да се включва дистанционно и да отговаря на обаждания дори когато е болен. За кратко се поставете на мястото на неговото семейство по време на отпуск! Подминаваме обажданията през уикенда за кратки консултации и помощ.
При напускане прехвърлянето на знания е незадоволително или клонящо към нула. Оперативната работа не оставя много време за поддържане и обновяване на детайлна документация. Изключително трудно е за един човек да пренесе поддръжката от реактивна (реагиране на инциденти) към проактивна (пълно наблюдение и автоматизирани реакции при определени условия и събития), а с гасене на пожари е трудно да се поддържат процеси по управление и документация на ИТ услугите.
Трудно се поддържа ниво по отношение на новите технологии. Очакването на бизнеса е да оползотвори в максимална степен инвестициите направени в технологиите. Производителите обикновено дават 3 години гаранция, разширяема до 5 с допълнително заплащане. Малкия и среден бизнес обикновено използват технологиите около 7 – 8 години. Как един ИТ специалист ще си поддържа нивото не само на осведоменост, но и на опит, ако той работи с едни и същи технологии толкова дълъг период? Ако остане по някаква причина без работа, дали ще бъде конкурентен със знанията си за старите технологии? Вероятно да, но само за компании със също толкова стари или дори още по-стари технологии. И ако още веднъж остане без работа ?!?!
Да бъде на разположение на всички потребители по всяко време. Никак лека задача особено в случаите на инциденти с услуги засягащи цели групи от потребители. Вечния Хамлетовски въпрос – Да отговарям на обажданията на потребителите и да обясня какво се е случило и кога ще го поправя или да се заема с поправянето и да намаля времето на престой и негативното въздействие върху бизнеса? Ами ако получа 20 обаждания, често част от тях емоционални?!?! Известяването с е-мейл поражда нова буря с въпроси. За ИТ дейности, налагащи спиране на услуги, бизнеса налага да се извършват извън стандартното работно време. От друга страна новите технологии, позволяващи на служителите да работят дистанционно, правят работното време доста разтегливо понятие. Могат да си довършат кореспонденцията или презентацията след вечеря или да наваксат с анализа през уикенда. Времевия прозорец през който ИТ специалиста може да извършва профилактики, бекъп, инсталиране на кръпки по сигурността, ъпгрейди и всичко налагащо спиране на услуги или поне намаляване на тяхната производителност става все по малък и все по-изместен към малките часове на нощта. ИТ поддръжка 24/7 ?!?! От един човек ?!?! Оставям настрана дали е законно и хуманно, но на следващия ден каква би била работоспособността на този ИТ специалист?
Широк ИТ специалист. Как би могъл някой да твърди, че е експерт в определена технология ако му се налага да я внедрява през две, три или дори четири поколения, при това веднъж? Средно на 2 до 3 години се появява следващото поколение на същата технология. Много често при сериозен инцидент се налага всичко да се внедри отначало и се оказва, че ИТ специалиста не си спомня това което е правил самият той преди няколко години. Сега сложете накуп всички технологии, които му се налага да поддържа. При най-добро желание той може да е тесен специалист само в няколко от тях.
Да разбира в дълбочина бизнес процесите и как може да допринесе ИТ услугите да носят повече стойност за потребителите. Обикновено това се получава след поне 5 до около 10 години работа за конкретна компания. Добавената стойност изключително рядко включва навлизане в нови пазари, разширяване на пазарен дял или нови конкуренти предимства.
Комуникация с ИТ потребители и ръководството… Общото е, че те не са ИТ специалисти и имат нужда от обяснение на език изчистен от термини и жаргони. Нелека задача предвид натоварената програма, постоянно звънящият телефон и необходимите усилия да се намират правилни сравнения извън цифровия свят.

Изброените примери по-горе са само част от глобалната картина, но дори и само те са достатъчни да предизвикат пасивност или по-лошо – състояние познато, като „прегаряне“. Няма бизнес, който да се задоволи с ИТ специалист по поддръжката вечно вдигащ рамене или изразяващ бурно своите емоции, понякога завършващи със скандално напускане – отказ да предаде работата на следващия колега или дори самите пароли за достъп.
Стойността на ИТ услугите се базира на два фактора – капацитет и надеждност. Първият фактор означава ИТ специалиста да има капацитета да изпълнява задачите си, а вторият – да бъде наличен, когато има нужда от него. Вариант с компютърен експерт, но неоткриваем по телефон, електронна поща и т.н. е абсолютно равнозначен на вариант с некомпетентен специалист, който винаги се отзовава, но не е в състояние да реши проблемите.
Какво да предприеме бизнес ръководството?
Да подмени сегашния ИТ специалист с друг ?!?! Колкото по-опитен експерт се наеме, толкова по-голям разход има за заплата, но всички останали проблеми остават. Обикновено това е краткосрочно решение и по-скоро трябва да се мисли за временно нает експерт по определени и много добре дефинирани проекти. Все пак експертите не са широки специалисти.
Да увеличи персонала в ИТ отдела ?!?! Разделението на труда винаги води до по-добри резултати. Необходима е организационна йерархия, т.е. кой ще поеме ролята на ИТ ръководител и как ще бъдат разделени отговорностите и дейностите. Разходите тук растат не само с размера на заплатата, но и с новото работно място и необходимия инструментариум. Допълнителен негатив е проблема с изоставането от новите технологии и трудностите при тяхното тестване.
Изнасяне на ИТ услугите към външен доставчик ?!?! Обикновено е очевидното решение, освен ако няма специални регулаторни изисквания ИТ услугите да се доставят от вътрешна ИТ организация. Но… това, следващия път.
Оставям темата отворена и приветствам коментари и предложения, както от колеги от ИТ бранша, така и от консуматорите на ИТ услуги - ИТ потребители и техните ръководители. Ако сте напълно съгласни или пък нямате мнение за коментар, то споделете поста с Ваши колеги, приятели и познати. Ще е интересно да съберем повече мнения.
Благодаря Ви предварително!

Digital Disruption

2016-05-25T11:14:00.000+01:00

Very short survival guide

Digital Disruption in the last years marked a shift in the collective consciousness of businesses. No longer was disruption a mythical buzz word concocted to stir up fear, but a general state of business reality in world governed by technology.
It’s like a democratization of experience. If you look at Uber, it allows everybody to have a limo service at a relatively inexpensive rate. Things that perhaps only the one percent could afford, are now being moved to the broader base through technology. You can call it disruption, give it different words, but what it’s doing is allowing everybody to purchase experiences that traditionally would have cost a lot of time and money. It’s not the same way of doing business, it’s certainly exciting times.
The term digital disruption has become
something of a cliché in recent years and is often misused to describe any product involving digital technology or the use of digitization to better compete against marketplace peers. It is often confused with the term disruptive technology, a term coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen to describe a new technology that displaces an established technology.

Disruption isn’t about technology, it is about the velocity of change. In other words a change of a business model.

We have to focus on the velocity of disruption, setting up our organisations for the new state of business and how we can leverage disruption to grow. And the key to staying ahead of the curve, depends on keeping up with the pace of change.

How to achieve the above?

The following list is not pretend to be exhaustive, but is good starting point:

Start from the scratch: Rethinking Value Creation
Miners wanted as Data is the new Gold: Leveraging Data to Build Competitiveness
Cultural shift: Anticipating and Preparing for Future Disruption
Entrepreneurial approach: Eliminating Siloes and Collaborating for Disruptive Innovation
Evaluation in time: Desirability, Viability and Feasibility of Innovation
Unlimited opportunities: Building partnerships to foster innovation
Creating a culture for innovation and empowering employees to be entrepreneurs
Organisational change: Rethinking Existing Processes and Structures
Identifying the Best Placed team to Drive Disruptive Innovation within Organisation
Rethinking Product Design to Improve Value Creation
A CDO (Chief Digital Officer) role: Acquire and Promote an Effective Digital Leader
Identifying Benchmarks and Measuring Success of Digital Transformation
Navigating Diverse and Complex Technologies and Identifying the Best fit for the Business
Embedding Agility to Improve Speed to Market
Social Capital Management: Building and Maintaining Deep Relationships with Customers, Partners and Stakeholders
AI is not part of the future anymore: Exploring the Scope and Impact of Machine Learning
Anywhere, anytime from any device: Creating a Collaborative and Creative Work place

Still not sure how to achieve that? Call me for a free digital disruption health check.

Small businesses’ challenges consultants can help to overcome

2016-05-20T10:04:00.000+01:00

Ready for a flight?

We live in interesting times, especially for small businesses. Consider that, in just less than 10 years, businesses have had to adapt to entirely new marketing channels through Internet as social networks, decide how to invest in and utilize new technologies, and compete on a local and now on a global stage — things that were barely imaginable to just a half generation ago. The small business yesterday is the new big online business today.
Obviously the rapid changes and growth is that no single
small business owner, manager or any employee, for that matter — can be an expert in everything.
Qualified consultants are potentially able to address some of the biggest challenges small businesses face today. Bringing a consultant on-board helps managers add the expertise and skills they need to address specific issues at particular times, and can provide the best possible outcomes.
Where consultants can help:

How to predict the sector/market trends?

You need a subject matter expert in your sector and someone experienced in developing Business Strategy. Again go back to data-information-knowledge-wisdom model to be able to predict customer trends, market trends, globalisation or localisation. All of that is crucial to a changing economic climate, but not every small business manager has Oracle’s predictive powers. Bringing in a consultant trained in reading and predicting those all-important trends could be the difference between a success and a failure.

Manage your finances wisely

Expectedly managers have to be great at the big picture and disruptive thinking. However small business managers are usually business owners and they have significant expertise in their technical domain. Unless the domain is not within the finance/accountancy, they are less good with things like cash flow, profit margins, reducing costs, financing, etc. Small and medium businesses may not require a full-time CFO, but would do better to employ a part-time financial consultant who can step into the role as needed.

Monitor – Control – Manage your business

The world around us is full of events. We do not pay attention to almost all of them. We take care only to meaningful ones. In order to measure performance we have to define what we have to measure, how to measure it, what instruments and tools we have to have. Using a meaningful set of rounded performance indicators that provide the business with insights about how well it is performing is key. Most people know barely how to develop KPIs, how to avoid the key pitfalls and how to best communicate metrics so that they inform decision-making. In most cases small businesses rely on overly simple or even assumption of indicators that just clog up the reporting channels.

Information Technologies

As technologies change practically at the speed of light, it’s vital for companies to innovate or be left behind — but many managers started their careers and businesses before many of these technologies even existed! IT consultants can be vital for converting Business Strategy to a IT Strategy, (re)design of IT Services road-map, unlock competitive advantages by integrating new technologies, in particular mobile, app development, and cloud computing.

Big data

Your grandma’s generation certainly didn’t have to deal with petabytes of data or worry about what to do with it. 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years and managing, keeping safe and extracting insights from the ever-increasing amounts of data your business produces needs to be in the hands of a qualified professional who can help you get the most return from that data. You have to be able not just to collect, but to apply data mining, business intelligence, performance management, predictive analysis and risk management. This will increase the revenue/profit from existing customers by up-selling and cross-selling, plus will uncover new market places and opportunities.

Talent factor

Again, a small or medium-sized business might not need full-time human resources or recruiting staff, but during peak growth periods, finding the right people and developing the right skills and competencies is the key to a sustainable future. Look much more for a passion and starve to learn rather than experience, skills and knowledge. Everything is possible with ambition and passion. Bringing in a consultant with the expertise to find exactly the workers you need would be a wise investment.

Regulation and compliance

As markets and technologies shift, so do rules and regulations. Depending on your sector, it can make much more sense to bring in a consultant to help with these areas rather than trying to understand the complexities yourself — and risk fines or worse for non-compliance.

Why customer is a king?

In a world of instant gratification, customers expect instant customer service — and can take to the web to share their displeasure at less than satisfactory service just as quickly. You have to be quick in responses and here consultants and technologies can help

Maintaining reputation

Once built your business credibility is like a live creature. You have to take care not just to show testimonials and certificates from third party organisations, but to allow positive word of mouth to flow amongst you prospective customers. Experienced reputation consultant can help you to manage this for you.

Ride the wave of changes

Early adopter or late to the game? What is the right time to embrace change and when to stay the course? Rarely everything new is better, yet eschewing every change runs the risk of becoming obsolete and I have bad experience with that. Definitely this should not be stopper. A professional outside opinion can facilitate the informed decision and will make all the difference.
I have started the post with our life in interesting times. They are quick and stormy due to a constant change for the foreseeable future: change is the new normal. Preparing for the changes and extracting the real value can be achieved by investing in the right kind of advice is the best way to meet these challenges head on.
Do you have your very trusted advisor?

Small Business Survival Guide

2016-05-17T13:38:00.000+01:00

Only 10% of small businesses survive first five years, and again 10% of them will survive between next five years period. This data underscores that small business ownership is no cakewalk.
Beyond the classic entrepreneurial challenge of making and sustaining a profit, small business owners now struggle to find time and resources to adapt to new technology, say experts.
The pace of technological development is as staggering as the ever-changing ways that consumers engage and utilize it. To stay competitive to consumers and to employees,
small businesses need to adopt and incorporate online technology into their everyday business operations.

To help entrepreneurs navigate new technology and embrace the evolving business operations landscape, I recommend six tips for small business success:

Be visible: Even if your business is farming, the importance of having an online presence cannot be overstated. It’s not enough to simply have a website, you need to be discovered. Google frequently changes the way it determines search results rankings. Invest in search engine optimization (SEO) not once, but periodically, to conform to Google’s make-or-break formulas. A solid social media strategy and mobile capacity for your site will also positively impact your search ranking. Put the marketing books away and lean on digital marketing experts to audit your current online presence and build a strategy that works for your budget and grows your customer base.

Keep in touch: You may be the one pulling the trigger on big decisions, but that doesn’t mean you are expected to know it all. Seek advice from trusted industry peers or a local mentor through LinkedIn, Business Networking and or any social media. Make time for webinars and networking events. Most importantly, stay connected to friends and family during times of stress. Ask various people about their perception of your services/products.
Protect your data: Small businesses are often targets of identity theft. Create sophisticated passwords to protect sensitive information. Consider investing in a protection service with round-the-clock threat monitoring and recovery support in case of fraudulent activity. Think about restore of your data.
Make your sales efficiently: The sale process happens between human beings. You have to know as much as possible information for them. The secret is to add context to your collected data and create valuable information. Adding experience to information enables knowledge.The wisdom as a last stage after knowledge will enable prediction of trends, behaviour and creation of new market places. On the other side it enables up-sales and cross-sales. Cost of sale is approximately 10 times less compared with sale to a new customer.

Get smart about taxes: Set up a legal entity for your business online. This will allow you to hold on to more of your income and increase your asset and liability protections. Business taxes can be more expensive and complicated than personal filing, so find an accountant that gets your business. You can greatly benefit from the assistance of online accounting experts. They will help you take advantage of deductions and tax credits and assist you in filing your frequent, varied deadlines on time to avoid penalty.

Speed up workforce: New mobile and tablet apps make tedious tasks easier and more efficient. Save your employees’ time and yours also by continual improvements in optimisation, automation and collaboration.

Not sure how to achieve all of the above? Simply give me a shout.

Remote Workplaces and the Cloud Technologies

2016-05-09T05:00:00.000+01:00

Remote employees are no longer a future project – they are a reality for the last two decades. Despite an abundance of scepticism (and a few outright bans like Yahoo), researchers keep finding that remote workers are more productive, less likely to quit, and generally better at their jobs. While some still find it hard to cut their ties to the office, the trend toward more remote work is clear. You can save commuting time and costs and spend with a family instead.

Let’s look at remote worker average profile. He or she is 42 years old on average, at least college educated, payslip is showing more than £45K salary and head count at the company is above 100 employees. There are a lot of exclusions of course and it depends more on the sector plus business specifics.

There is a specific kind of a remote worker and this is Road Warrior. We have been all on odd conference call with the guy or gal sprinting through an airport terminal or parked on the side of a noisy free-way. The road warrior is rarely ever in one place for long but constantly on the move visiting prospects and clients, inspecting sites or attending seminars in different cities, connecting from whichever device is handiest in the moment – laptop, tablet, smartphone or all of the above.
From a CIO’s perspective, however, the benefits of remote work are not quite as obvious. Those remote workers are saving the company quite a lot when it comes to the real estate, utilities, and other overhead costs associated with a physical office. But CIO who look at the cost per employee may actually see a higher bill when workers are outside the office. It is true IT expenditures could be a little bit higher.
Everyone who works from home requires an end user device as computer, tablet or mobile, after all. Those devices can’t be quickly and easily supported when they’re dispersed. Remote workers can’t just pop into their neighbour’s cubicle for some impromptu support, although that may be an advantage for beleaguered IT-savvy workers.
Most issues and support requests can still be dealt with remotely in many instances, particularly as more and more applications are being moved to the cloud. Remote workplaces also have to cope with loss of equipment. The devices of remote workers are more likely to get lost in transit or stolen from coffee houses than their in-office counterparts. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend is accelerating quickly and maintenance cost is reduced for the end user devices as long as they are able to access cloud based applications.
Infrastructure quality can also be an issue. In an office, IT operations can assure the same standards, or at least create a solid baseline that everyone can count on. But out in the wild, there’s a huge difference in what infrastructure employees are plugging into. Remote workers may be relying on shared Wi-Fi or are using blazingly fast connections of mobile operators. A dispersed IT infrastructure has to allow for both possibilities.
There’s also an increased cost for keeping remote workers connected to each other. A dispersed workforce means that more money goes to remote meeting technologies – negating at least some of the gain from getting rid of those physical conference rooms.
Do these potential disadvantages add up to the end of the remote workplace? Not really, even the answer isn’t very clear in the end. However remote workers can do the job around the globe/clock and this includes low cost destinations at any time around the clock.
Calculating the costs and benefits of a remote workplace isn’t necessarily about comparing hard numbers. The impact of remote work on employee morale, retention, and productivity can be difficult to measure against stolen computers and the cost of a videoconferencing system. The company expansion and business growth acceleration powered by remote workplace may be just as important as overhead introduced by more complex technical architecture. You can grow your business as a multinational company easily without burden of physical offices and without limits of your current physical location simply by relying on technologies.
Want your office(s) to work remotely, but not sure how you can make it work? We can help.

Business value in IT outsourcing

2016-05-02T18:29:00.000+01:00

In simple language, outsourcing is the contracting out of a business function to an external supplier, involving the transfer of people as resources and capabilities, processes and assets. This contracting out can be undertaken at either an on-shore or off-shore location, and to one (single-sourced) or more (multi-sourced) outsourcing partners. Outsourcing is most mature in the Information Technology sector although it is increasingly developing to include a wide range of business processes.

From the early 80’s last century IT Outsourcing has evolved into a sophisticated global market and most companies, no matter how traditional their business model is, have outsourced one or more layers of their IT function. Outsourcing IT has always been a complex programme, in part due to the requirement to bundle IT into ‘services’ combining hardware, software, people and processes. These services often contain data centre, end-user computing, service desk, application development and maintenance, and voice and data network packages.
For traditional IT outsourcing there are intricacies in transferring staff, novating contracts and assessing the financial impact of selling physical assets. These complications have been recently compounded by on-demand IT offerings, the evolution of offshore centres, and the advent of cloud-based offerings.
Outsourcing success is dependent upon how well the process will be managed before and after the outsourcing contract is signed. Many companies award the outsourcing contract to the lowest bidder without understanding the consequences and without performing a complete vendor selection process. Some companies blindly go for medium to higher outsourcing contract bidder relying on the assumption if it is more expensive it should be good enough. When things start to fall apart, like missed delivery targets, quality issues occur or inconsistent service, the blame-game starts and everyone runs for cover.

Fit for purpose

Outsourcing an IT process simply because it is not working well only makes the problem worse. Without a doubt, an outsourcing vendor should add value to customer business, but should not be relied upon to fix the problems inherent in the business itself. The best approach is to re-visit the process design by to applying Deming Cycle – Plan, Do, Check (Study), Apply or simply to hire external consultant organisation to do the job. Once the process is clarified and cleared from unnecessary workflows and elements all activities can be re-visited.Still not satisfied by the outcome? Look around for an outsourcing solution. Now it is clear what is required and you will compare apples with apples.
Unfortunately I have been approached many times in my professional career by business managers to “compare” their IT department outcome with outsourced IT service. The pity part is only numbers are usually compared without real understanding of the services, pros and cons of both models and pricing/chargeback models.
Why not to outsource the comparison to experienced organisation and enable an informed decision?

Thorough Vendor Selection

The vendor selection process can be a very complicated and emotional undertaking if you don't know how to approach it from the very start. First discover what is required. Before start to gather data or perform interviews, assemble a team of people who have a vested interest in this particular vendor selection process. The outcome of the team work is to define, in writing, the product, material or service that are in demand and to be transferred to a vendor. Next step should involve defining the technical, business and the vendor requirements. Finally, the document shall be visible and accessible to the areas relevant to this vendor selection process and seek their input.
Did you started with mentioned above? If not it is time to do it. Not sure how to follow properly the Bid Management process? You can outsource it also.

Make It Measurable

Is this measurable? If not, do not include it in the SLA(s). How good is good internet? Only measurable units should be used in conjunction with measurement systems. This will provide information about outsourced process or service performance. If you don't analyse and define quality measurements and/or service levels, how will you know if your outsourcing vendor is performing to your standards?

Risk Mitigation

The list below is not exhaustive but is good starting point to address some of the risks:
1. Company legacy/politics are jeopardizing the success of the project – Establish a dedicated team with strong organisational and board level support.
2. Poor Selection of Vendor - Consider a detailed Study about vendors including current processes, customer references etc., rather than blindly believing the track record.
3. Scope Creep - Scope of the project getting wider with new requirements to be addressed. Phased approach with milestones and trade-offs at various stages.
4. Process and Quality standards incompatible with vendor. - Agreed upon standards and processes must be part of the binding contract.
5. Security breach including Confidentiality, IP and trade secrets. - Require vendors to meet security standards and monitor with effective auditing.
6. Infrastructure breakdown, could be a software/hardware/network failure that may or may not be directly in vendor's control. - Review and approve Business Continuity and disaster recovery plans of the vendor. Audit data from simulated disaster drills.
7. Poorly designed disaster recovery systems/processes. - Review and approve Business Continuity and disaster recovery plans of the vendor. Audit data from simulated disaster drills.
8. Reduced Employee motivation as outsourcing is perceived as loss of job. - Establish Employee retention strategies such as retention bonus, performance map etc.
9. Political/Cultural unrest. - Be sensitive to cultural issues.
10. Process non-alignment and differing governance model. - Establish compatible and agreeable processes and include them as part of the contract.
11. Increased labour rate as the project progresses. Vendor might try to justify the increase with reasons such as Inflation, currency conversion fluctuations. - Binding document should contain appropriate forecasts and waivers wherever applicable.
12. Legal and Regulatory risks. - Increase awareness about region specific laws and regulations to better plan for incompatibilities and allowable trade-offs.
13. Non-alignment of Management and Reporting Structure with vendor. - Expect Governance model to be included in RFPs.
14. Lack of control or insight into vendor progress. - Well planned milestones, immediate deliverables along with appropriate documentation plan.
15. Country specific issues such as differing laws, educational systems. - Increase awareness of all stakeholders.
16. Higher Project Transition cost. - Factor in a detailed transition cost to overall project cost.
17. Response time not within the acceptable/required limits as the vendor is spread across time-zone. - Flexible shits to respect time-zones and increased frequency of meetings.
18. Project members of vendor lack project knowledge or technology know-how. - Review vendor team selection process.
19. Knowledge transfer issues such as inability to capture tacit knowledge. - Recorded videos, tutorials, web casts to transfer knowledge.
20. Dependence on a single vendor for all outsourcing needs. - Core processes, deliverables designed to be loosely coupled with vendor's technologies, processes.
21. Cultural differences. - Increased cultural awareness through specialized trainings.
Always is good idea to find an experienced advisor or consultant if your outsourcing project’s complexity exceeds your organisation resources and capabilities.

Control It

After the newness of the outsourcing relationship wears off, it is human nature to sit back and enjoy the ride for a while. Unfortunately, this leads to complacency and attention to performance can be forgotten. In order to avoid these symptoms, set a timetable to review your outsourcing vendor's performance. A manager should held the responsibility to follow up. If needed, send your staff to be trained in vendor management skills and techniques. This strategy will also yield the ability to deal with unforeseen circumstances on a timelier basis and mitigate the risk associated with outsourcing.

Outsourcing of IT Managed Services

2016-04-24T20:34:00.000+01:00

Challenges and Solutions

Threat to Security and Confidentiality
The vital asset of any business is the information that keeps it running. Whatever you have as information assets, intellectual property or any other confidential information that would be exposed to the outsourcing organisation, there is a risk that the confidentiality may be compromised. If the outsourced function involves sharing proprietary company data or knowledge, this must be taken into account. Evaluate the outsourcing organisation carefully and prepare NDA to make sure your data is protected and the agreement has a penalty clause if an incident occurs.
Do you have action plan and implemented process prior of the incident? Communication plan?

Service Level Agreement
The outsourcing organisation will be motivated by profit. Since the agreement will fix the price, the only way for them to increase profit will be to decrease expenses or ask Prima Net Consult why strategic approach introduce best value. As long as they meet the conditions of the agreement, you will pay. Conditions must to be described into SLA document for each particular service. In addition, you will lose the ability to rapidly respond to changes in the business environment as cheap service and quick response to a changes are self-excluding. The agreement usually will be very specific and you will pay extra for changes.
Do your SLAs use measurable services? Are you use strategic approach in IT Managed Services?

Covered Costs by the agreement
Signing an agreement with the outsourcing organisation that will cover the details of the service that they will be providing. Anything not covered in the papers will be the basis for you to pay additional charges. Obviously, this is the outsourcing organisation's business. They have done this before and they are the ones that write the template of the agreement. Expectedly, you will be at a disadvantage when negotiations start.
Do you have clearly defined services and service levels? Do you have an option to “burst” in demand for the service or quickly add/remove new services?

Transfer of Managerial Control
Whether you sign an agreement to have another organisation perform the function of an entire IT department or single task, you are turning the management and control of that function over to them. True, you will have an agreement, but the managerial control will belong to external organisation. Your outsourcing organisation will not be driven by the same standards and mission that drives your company. They will be driven to make a profit from the services that they are providing to you and other businesses like yours.
Do you have a governance framework prepared?

With all these pros and cons of outsourcing to be considered before actually approaching a service provider, it is always advisable to specifically determine the importance of the tasks which are to be outsourced. It is always beneficial for an organization to consider the advantages and disadvantages of offshoring before actually outsourcing it.
As the list above is not exhaustive, what do you think is the most dangerous disadvantage of IT Managed Services outsourcing?

MailStore Home - Tips and Tricks - Part 4 - Manual repair corrupted MailStoreFileGroup.fdb files and .fdb backup

2013-08-14T09:09:00.001+01:00

Problem:

"The problem occurred when moving my back-up to a new location. Somehow the MailStoreFileGroup.fdb file got corrupted. To cut to the chase is there a way to manually repair the file for my latest database back-up is to old for my comfort. I would rather repair the database and have excess to all my archived mails including the including the possibility of it going wrong. Then on forehand back up from an older back-up and missing those essential mails."

Resolution:

Thanks to MailStore Community powered support:

"First of all, close MailStore Home. Then open the cmd.exe by using the Start -> Run.. function in Windows. Now go on with the following instructions. We assume you are already in the directory containing the MailStoreFileGroup.fdb file.

1. Define the following two variables, it makes life easier, in that you do not have to type in the user name and password every time you issue a command.

SET ISC_USER=SYSDBA
SET ISC_PASSWORD=masterkey

2. Always make sure you work on a copy of the database, not the production database. Use the operating system to make a copy of the database. You must have exclusive access to the database to do this.

copy MailStoreFileGroup.fdb MailStoreFileGroup.fdb.bak

3. Now check for database corruption. You must have exclusive access to do this, but since you're working on a copy of the original database, this is not a problem..."

S ee full post here

Useful links:
- Firebird Gfix
- Firebird Gbak

MailStore Home - Tips and Tricks Part 3 … in the Cloud

2013-08-12T20:50:00.001+01:00

Problem:

Actually there is no problem just considering the possibility and ways to move/sync my portable MailStore Home folder to the Cloud Drive

Resolution:

The idea is again related to symbolic links. That’s why if you missed previous article - MailStore Home - Tips and Tricks - Part 2 should be helpful to read it because there is nothing different only symlink path and target directory must be changed.

Sync MailStoreHome folder to SkyDrive and Dropbox

So I have SkyDrive folder located at D:\SkyDrive and I want to sync my mailstorehome folder located at F:\my_mailstore_portable to my SkyDrive account folder without moving it.

Create symlink by elevated cmd prompt:

C:\Windows\system32> mklink /j D:\SkyDrive\my_mailstore_portable f:\my_mailstore_portable

symbolic link created for D:\SkyDrive\my_mailstore_portable <<===>> f:\my_mailstore_portable

After link creation, you’ll see the \my_mailstore_portable folder inside of SkyDrive folder with a shortcut icon.

Thus you can use the application from either location and both will have the same contents since it’s actually one folder.

In this way, you can use your cloud MailStore Home from different locations where you have installed SkyDrive application.
Symbolic link creation for Dropbox is the same.

Sync MailStoreHome folder to Google Drive

There is a little difference because it doesn't support syncing of symbolic link folders. How to do symlinks?

In order to do this, we first have to move the \my_mailstore_portable folder to the Google Drive folder. Then we create symlink to where we want (for example I want to create symlink/shortcut to F:\) that points to the \my_mailstore_portable folder in the Google Drive

Create symlink by elevated cmd prompt:

C:\Windows\system32> mklink /d F:\my_mailstore_portable "C:\Users\milen\Google Drive\my_mailstore_portable"

symbolic link created for F:\my_mailstore_portable <<===>>"C:\Users\milen\Google Drive\my_mailstore_portable"

That’s it! Use it with caution because some guys notice for problems with DropBox syncing and possibility of data lost. I use Google drive without any problems.

Please do not use MailStore Home for commercial purposes. This is illegal and violates the license agreement. If you need a solid email archiving solution suitable for all size businesses - MailStore Server offer much more valuable features, flexibility and ease of use for users and IT staff!

MailStore Home - Tips and Tricks Part 2 - Multiple Home users

2013-08-05T14:38:00.001+01:00

Problem:

Аll of my family use email services and mail archiving by MailStore Home. My desire is they to have personal mailstore archive located in their private folders on our home NAS. If you try to install or run portable MailStore Home from network share you will get the error:

Resolution:

Have you ever tried to install a software on a network drive or use a network drive as application directory. In such cases the installer checks for the drive type and refuses the installation on network drives. A workaround which will help you to read the riddle is a symbolic link in Windows.

Symbolic links (symlinks) are actually advanced shortcuts. You can create symbolic links to individual files or folders and then these will appear like they are stored in the folder with the symbolic link even though the symbolic link only points to their real location.

There are two types of symbolic links - soft and hard. Soft symbolic links work essentially the same as a standard shortcuts. When you open a soft link, you will be redirected to the folder where the files are stored. However, a hard link makes it appear as though the file or folder actually exists at the location of the symbolic link, and your applications won’t know any different. Thus, hard links are of the most interest in this article.

For example, the application wants to put its data in the local disk drive but you want the data to be stored on the mapped network drive X:\NAS-Share\application, you can use the mklink command in Windows 7 command prompt to symlink the directory. The general syntax is:

mklink /d symlinkpath targetdirectory

Run Windows Command Prompt -> cmd.exe

C:\Users\user1> mklink /D e:\ms-user1 \\nas\personal_folders\ms-user1

You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.

Oops! We need to use elevated command prompt - cmd.exe (Run as Administrator) ... do it again ...

C:\Windows\system32> mklink /d e:\ms-user1 \\nas\personal_folders\ms-user1

symbolic link created for e:\ms-user1 <<===>> \\nas\personal_folders\ms-user1

As you can see I don't need to create the ms-user1 folder manually, the mklink will do that for you.

Now the application detects E:\ms-user as valid local path and uses the symlinked path to store its data on the network share \\nas\personal_folders\ms-user1

For privacy reasons is better to create a symlink in corresponding user folder

Repeat symlink setup for additional home user folders:

Мy wife’s laptop:

C:\Windows\system32> mklink /d d:\mailstorehome \\nas\personal_folders\my_wife_folder/mailstorehome

symbolic link created for d:\mailstorehome <<===>> \\nas\personal_folders\my_wife_folder/mailstorehome

Мy son’s workstation:

C:\Windows\system32> mklink /d f:\mailstorehome \\nas\personal_folders\my_son_folder/mailstorehome

symbolic link created for f:\mailstorehome <<===>> \\nas\personal_folders\my_son_folder/mailstorehome

etc.

For Windows 2000/XP, you would use a NTFS junction point or Windows Resource Kit, or Ln - Command Line Hardlinks tool

If you do not like command line and prefer graphic interface then try Link Shell Extension (really very useful and convenient tool)

Once you have done symlinks the next is MailStore Home installation, configuration an so on.

Coming soon: MailStore Home - Tips and Tricks Part 3 - ... in the Cloud

Please do not use MailStore Home for commercial purposes. This is illegal and violates the license agreement. If you need a solid email archiving solution suitable for all size businesses - MailStore Server offer much more valuable features, flexibility and ease of use for users and IT staff!

MailStore Home - Tips and Tricks Part 1 - Scheduled Tasks

2013-08-01T21:49:00.000+01:00

MailStore is awesome mail archiver. The Home edition is free for personal use. It’s a small, portable and easy to use software designed to make backup, restore and email migration. MailStore supports many different types of mailboxes such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Exchange Server, Office 365, .EML files and more. It also supports a variety of internet based mail services such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail.

MailStore is well known and proven software and my goals are not to make advertisements or yet another product review because such materials you can find enough in the Internet. I’ll show you how to make your life easier despite some restrictions and lacks in Home edition.

Problem:

Automated backup feature is missing in Home edition so I wouldn't have to manually run it every day or week.

Resolution:

- Let's assume that you have already configured archive profile.

- Create a Desktop Shortcut to run the archive task - right click the newly created profile -> Create Shortcut on Desktop...

- Open Task Scheduler, from the Control Panel -> Administration and create new task.

- Give it a name and description

- Under Actions tab - click New

- Select Action: Start a Program

- Program/script: copy path to application ending with MailStoreHome.exe

from shortcut above - right click the shortcut -> Properties -> Target

- Add arguments: /c archive –id=”1″

- Start in: E:\ms-user1\Application

- Select Trigger Tab and schedule the task at your choice (everyday, few times weekly or monthly)

- SAVE and test the event - right click the archive profile -> Run
- If you have additional profiles - repeat configurations.
- After finish you should see the message in Progress View window:

Every time when task is completed you need to close the window manually - thus force you to ensure that archiving process is successful. If you want to close MailStore windows automatically - there is a lot of solutions, but the easiest way I think is just hidden within Settings Tab in your scheduled task.

- Check option “Stop the task if it runs longer than: “ and set the required time. How to determine? Get the time required for archiving all profiles and round it to above. Be aware that the first archive task will take longer but not for the next run because the process is differential. If the values from the drop down menu does not satisfy you and want to set the time in minutes - write by hand "minutes"

That's it!

Coming soon: MailStore Home - Tips and Tricks Part 2 - Multiple users

Error in the RPC receive loop: RpcIn: Unable to send

2013-07-30T08:20:00.000+01:00

Problem:

Error message above is flooded in Event Viewer on a MS Windows VM guest when vmtools upgrade is performed to 5.1 but I encountered the same error recently after fresh installation of VMWare tools on new VM guest.
Error message for Linux guest is the same. According to KB2036350 - this should be fix the problem, however the tools.conf sometimes is not created.

Resolution:

The RPC errors mentioned above is caused because of missing vmtools configuration file (tools.conf) within VMware Tools directory. Once you put the configuration file in place and restart the VMTools service, everything seems to be OK.
This procedure is preferred in production environment because guest reboot is not required. You may resolve the problem by simply uninstall/install vmtools but you must schedule VM guest restart at your convenience.

Create tools.conf in the location for:
- MS Windows 2K/XP2K3
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Tools\tools.conf

- Windows Vista/7/2K8, and 2012:
C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Tools\tools.conf

- Linux:
/etc/vmware-tools/tools.conf

Put the following into the file:

[logging]
log = true

# Enable tools service logging to vmware.log
vmsvc.level = debug
vmsvc.handler = vmx

# Enable new “vmusr” service logging to vmware.log
vmusr.level = error
vmusr.handler = vmx

# Enable “Volume Shadow Copy” service logging to vmware.log
vmvss.level = debug
vmvss.handler = vmx

Then restart VM Tools

- Windows command prompt:
c:\Users\user1> net stop VMtools && net start VMtools

- Linux:
$sudo /etc/init.d/vmware-tools restart

I've used this simple VBscript below to copy tools.conf to the appropriate location and restart vmtools service. Use it standalone, for mass deployments - by MS Group Policy, VMware Guest Console or whatever you decide.

'Copy file: source - destination
Dim FSO
Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
FSO.CopyFile "\\NAS\PATH_TO \tools.conf", "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware Tools\"

' Stop & Start Service'
Dim objWMIService, objItem, objService
Dim colListOfServices, strComputer, strService, intSleep
strComputer = "."
intSleep = 10000
' Caution -> strService is case sensitive!
strService = " 'VMtools' "
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" _
& strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colListOfServices = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Win32_Service Where Name ="_
& strService & " ")
For Each objService in colListOfServices
objService.StopService()
WSCript.Sleep intSleep
objService.StartService()
Next
WScript.Quit

The Performance Overview tab fails to display into vSphere Client and VCSA 5.1

2013-07-27T23:50:00.000+01:00

Problem:
I cannot view the Performance Overview tab when connecting to vCenter Server Appliance using the vSphere Client 5.1 on MS Windows XP / 2003.

Variations of the error message in the Performance Overview tab:
- This program cannot display the webpage - more often seen
- Navigation to the webpage was cancelled - rarely viewed

Resolution:
Usually the problem is ciphers attribute in the VCSA Tomcat config file - server.xml

1. Log in to console of VCSA as the root user
2. Locate file under /usr/lib/vmware-vpx/tomcat/conf/
3. Make file backup (for your peace of mind)
4. Edit file - Find and replace "ciphers" attribute in the server.xml with following value:

ciphers="SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5, SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, SSL_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA"

4. Restart the vmware-vpxd service:

via console
vcsa-lab:~# service vmware-vpxd restart

or via web management:
https:/"VCSA-IP address/:5480

Jumbo frames in virtual FreeNAS 8.3.1 on ESXi 5.X

2013-02-24T20:33:00.000+00:00

... and how to setup vmxnet3 vNIC and Jumbo frames

Problem:

When I set jumbo frames (MTU=9000) on em0 vNIC in virtual FreeNAS I can't get frames bigger than 1500 between the peers, even configuring mtu=9000 in all network elements between end points. Do not be fooled if you see this:

[root@freenas] ~# ifconfig em0 mtu 9000
[root@freenas] ~# ifconfig em0 em0: flags=8843 metric 0 mtu 9000 options=9b
ether 00:50:56:87:xx:xx options=9b ether 00:50:56:87:xx:xx
.....

I did some unsuccessful tests with em0 (in my case vnic is recognized as intel 82545EM) and MTU=9K. Eventually I could not get real jumbo frames between FreeNAS and other vm even inside vSphere host. Probably exception is being in the E1000 driver used by FreeNAS virtual machine though this also depends of physical NICs. em(4) supports variations of the hardware - some do jumbo frames, some don't. It could easily get a lot quirks in a VM, depending on how the VM emulates the card and the mode of networking used. This should show which of the Intel cards is being emulated.

# pciconf -lv | grep -A3 em0

Resolution:
FreeNAS 8.3.1 comes with preinstalled 3rd-party/independent vmtools. Unfortunately VMXNET3 isn’t included. If you want to make the most of your virtual network adapter, there is a way to set up vmxnet3 in your freenas.

- mount the vmware tools CD image to the vm freenas

Go to shell and:

- Create mount point for CD

# mkdir /mnt/cd
# mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /mnt/cd
# ls /mnt/cd
./ manifest.txt ../ vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz

- Mount root rw (read/write)

# mount -urw /

- Copy file vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz to /tmp , change file permission and gunzip

# cd /mnt/cd
#cp vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz /tmp
#chmod 777 /tmp/vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz
# gunzip vmware-freebsd-tools.tar.gz/tmp
# tar -xf vmware-freebsd-tools.tar

Look for vmxnet3.ko file in FreeBSD8.1 subdirectory (path below) and copy to /boot/modules

# ls /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/lib/modules/binary/FreeBSD8.1-amd64
./ ../ vmblock.ko vmmemctl.ko vmxnet.ko vmxnet3.ko

- Add vmxnet3 driver in loader.conf

For loading additional kernel modules (such as drivers) - GUI Tunable is preferred method because your changes will persist across upgrades.
GUI - System - Tunables - Add tunable

... or by manually edit /boot/loader.conf (but you risk losing your config if you upgrade)

# nano /boot/loader.conf

GNU nano 2.2.6 File: /boot/loader.conf
#
# Boot loader file for FreeNAS. This relies on a hacked beastie.4th.
#
autoboot_delay="2"
loader_logo="freenas"
#Fix booting from USB device bug
kern.cam.boot_delay="30000"
#VMXNET3 driver
vmxnet3_load="YES"

Save the corrections by Ctrl+O
Exit nano - Ctrl+X

Shutdown FreeNAS and goto vSphere Client - Edit settings - and add VMXNET3 adapter (I’ve added 2 more)

Start FreeNAS and login - Network Interfaces - Add Interface

Now you can utilize VMXNET3 adapters from drop down menu and well functioning 9K jumbo frames!

Automated backup for Cisco UCS instances

2013-02-24T17:23:00.001+00:00

Prerequisites

1. For each UCS cluster instance logon and create dedicated user with admin rights for backup purposes.

2. Enable HTTPS port on UCS cluster instance

3.   Password for user “backup” out of Cisco UCS should be kept in secure string. It is already created and saved at file D:\UCS_SCRIPT\CISCO_UCS_BCKP_PWD.txt as secure string.

Note:    If there is a need for new password for new Cisco UCS instance different from currently used you have to create new text file for storing new secure string, otherwise you will overwrite D:\UCS_SCRIPT\CISCO_UCS_BCKP_PWD.txt and logon will fail for all previously setup instances.

4.   Create new secure string from plain password.
   i.   Logon with local admin user to Windows box. Keep in mind this user should start scheduled job later so you have to setup it with same Windows credentials.
   ii.   Open Cisco UCS PowerTool or MS PowerShell.

iii.   Copy following command

Read-Host -AsSecureString | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File D:\UCS_SCRIPT\CISCO_UCS_BCKP_PWD.txt

paste at OpenTool command line, change name of text file CISCO_UCS_BCKP_PWD_NN.txt, where NN is next available number and click Enter.
iv.   Command will wait for input of plain password for backup user. Click Enter when finished.

5.   Prepare folders for backup files.
i.   Go to L:\UCS_BACKUPS (change to your backup destination) and navigate to appropriate datacentre or create new one if it does not exist.
ii.   Go to appropriate UCS instance within chosen datacenter or create new one if it does not exist.

6.   Copy existing script to new one
i.   Example: Cisco_UCS_[datacenter]_[UCSinstance]_Backup_Script.ps1”, where [datacenter] is your site and [UCSinstance] is name of UCS instance.

UCS instance backup script

1.   Backup script should have independence from others and batch file ran from scheduler. This involves each particular script to Load Module: Cisco UCS PowerTool on top of MS PowerShell.

2.   Static parameters

Set-Variable -Name ScriptDir   -Value "D:\UCS_SCRIPT" -Scope Local
Set-Variable -Name BackupPath -Value "L:\UCS_BACKUPS\[datacenter]\[UCSinstance]" -Scope Local
Set-Variable -Name BackupTypes -Value ('config-system','config-logical','config-all','full-state')
Write-Host "`nStatic parameters`n-----------------`nScriptDir = $($ScriptDir)`nBackupPath = $($BackupPath)`nBackupTypes = $($BackupTypes)`n"
$UCS = "[FQDN of your UCS instance]"
$errmailTo = "you@yourcompany.com"
$errmailFrom = "UCS_[name of currnet UCS instance]_backup@yourcompany.com"
$errmailSMTP = "smtp.yourcompany.com"

i.   BackupPath should correspond to your newly created backup folders – previous chapter, article 5.
ii.   BackupTypes describe all possible backups for UCS.
iii.   $UCS should correspond to name of your new UCS instance.
iv.   $errmailTo should correspond to your addressee of error messages.
   v.   $errmailFrom should be descriptive which UCS instance sent messages and why.

3.   Start PowerShell transcript and point output to $BackupPath\backuplog.txt. This file is unique for each Cisco UCS instance and keeps logs for last backup job until is overwritten from next start of backup script. Its purpose is only for troubleshooting.

4.   Read credentials, logon to Cisco UCS instance and define error on connecting

# Get the credentials setup
$password = Get-Content D:\UCS_SCRIPT\CISCO_UCS_BCKP_PWD.txt | ConvertTo-SecureString
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential “backup”,$password
# Login
$login = Connect-Ucs [IP aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd or $UCS] -Credential $cred -ErrorVariable errConnectingUcs | select Ucs,UserName,Version

i.   Pay attention you get secure string from correct text file.
ii.   Modify IP address aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd to correspond to your new UCS instance.
iii.   If connection fails an error message will be send to predefined addressee.

5.   Get one of each type of UCS backup and send an e-mail if backup job is failed.

6.   Disconnect Cisco UCS

7.   Retention policy for backup files - delete all files within backup folder older than 30 days from now, but keep at least last 3 sets with all types of backups (3 daily backups) even they are older than 30 days. This will ensure you will have all type of backups for last 30 days in normal operation, but in case of backup failure you could rely on latest 3 backups.

P.S. If there is a need to take exclusive backup for UCS instance start appropriate script at D:\UCS_SCRIPT\ with extension .ps1 within MS PowerShell or Cisco OpenTool console and keep in mind to evacuate backup files from backup folder if you have intention to keep them more than 30 days. Otherwise create one .bat file containing as many rows you need as following one:

%WINDIR%\System32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe "D:\UCS_SCRIPT\Cisco_UCS_[datacenter]_[UCSinstance]_Backup_Script.ps1”, where [datacenter] is your site and [UCSinstance] is name of UCS instance.

And backup script:

#------------------#
# Preparation work #
#------------------#

#--- Import Cisco PowerTool Modules ---#
if ((Get-Module |where {$_.Name -ilike "CiscoUcsPS"}).Name -ine "CiscoUcsPS")
    {
    Write-Host "Loading Module: Cisco UCS PowerTool Module" -ForegroundColor "Green"
    Import-Module CiscoUcsPs
    }

#--- Static parameters ---#
Set-Variable -Name ScriptDir   -Value "D:\UCS_SCRIPT" -Scope Local
Set-Variable -Name BackupPath  -Value "L:\UCS_BACKUPS\[datacenter]\[UCSinstance]" -Scope Local
Set-Variable -Name BackupTypes -Value ('config-system','config-logical','config-all','full-state')
Write-Host "`nStatic parameters`n-----------------`nScriptDir = $($ScriptDir)`nBackupPath = $($BackupPath)`nBackupTypes = $($BackupTypes)`n"
$Ucs = "[FQDN of your UCS instance]"
$errmailTo = "you@yourcompany.com"
$errmailFrom = "UCS_[name of currnet UCS instance]_backup@yourcompany.com"
$errmailSMTP = "smtp.yourcompany.com"

#----------------------------------#
# Start doing the real backup work #
#----------------------------------#

#--- Start collecting logs for last backup job ---#
start-transcript $BackupPath\backuplog.txt

#--- Get the credentials setup ---#
$password = Get-Content D:\UCS_SCRIPT\CISCO_UCS_BCKP_PWD.txt | ConvertTo-SecureString
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential “backup”,$password

#--- Login ---#
$login = Connect-Ucs [IP aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd or $UCS] -Credential $cred -ErrorVariable errConnectingUcs | select Ucs,UserName,Version

#--- Send an e-mail if error occured while connecting to UCS ---#
if ($errConnectingUcs -ne $null) {
        $errmailBody = @()
    $errmailBody += "$(Get-Date) - Error connecting to UCS`n`n"
    $errmailBody += $errConnectingUcs
    Send-MailMessage  -From $errmailFrom -To $errmailTo -Subject "Backup-mUcs Error-- Failed connecting to $($Ucs)" -Body ($errmailBody | Out-String) -SmtpServer $errmailSMTP
        break
}

#--- Get one of each type of UCS backup and send an e-mail if backup job is failed ---#
ForEach ($type in $backuptypes) {
        Backup-Ucs -Type $type  -PreservePooledValues -PathPattern ($BackupPath + '\${ucs}-${yyyy}${MM}${dd}-${HH}${mm}-' + $type + '.xml') -ErrorVariable errBackupUcs
        if ($errBackupUcs -ne $null) {
                $errmailBody = @()
                $errmailBody += "$(Get-Date) - Error running backup of type $($type)`n`n"
                $errmailBody += $error[0]
                Send-MailMessage  -From $errmailFrom -To $errmailTo -Subject "Backup-mUcs Error-- On $($Ucs) backup of type $($type) failed" -Body ($errmailBody | Out-String) -

SmtpServer $errmailSMTP
        }
    else
    {
    Write-Host "`nCisco UCS instance $Ucs created successfully $type type of backup and saved it at $BackupPath `n" -ForegroundColor "Green"
    }
}

#--- Don`t leave a stale session on the UCS ---#
Disconnect-Ucs

# ----------------------------------------------#
# Define parameters for Backup Retention policy #
# ----------------------------------------------#

#--- Define today ---#
$Now = Get-Date

#--- Define retention amount of days ---#
$Days = "30"

#--- Last 3 backups (4 per day) should be kept even they are older than $Days + backuplog.txt file ---#
#--- Example: Keep last 3 backups i.e. 12 files / 4 files per day = 3 days ---#
$OldBackupsFilestobeKept = "13"
$OldBackupsDays = ($OldBackupsFilestobeKept - 1)/4

#--- Define extension of backup files to be deleted ---#
$Extension = "*.xml"

#--- Define LastWriteTime parameter based on $Days ---#
$LastWrite = $Now.AddDays(-$Days)

#--- Get files based on lastwrite filter and specified folder ---#
$Files = Get-Childitem $BackupPath $Extension | Where {$_.LastWriteTime -le "$LastWrite"}

#--- Determine how many files are currently in folder ---# 
#--- Please keep in mind UCS has 4 separate xml backup files per day ---#
$NumberOfFiles = Get-ChildItem $BackupPath $Extension

Write-Host "`nExecuting retention policy for backup files - delete all files older than $Days days, but keep last 3 daily backups `n" -BackgroundColor "Gray" -ForegroundColor 

"Black"

if ($NumberOfFiles.Count -le $OldBackupsFilestobeKept)
    {
    write-host "`nCan not delete last $OldBackupsDays backups even they are older than $Days days, as they are only 3 last full sets of backups`n" -ForegroundColor "DarkRed"
    }
    else
        {
        foreach ($File in $Files)
            {
            if ($File -ne $Null)
                {
                write-host "'nDeleting File $File 'n" -ForegroundColor "DarkRed"
                Remove-Item $File.FullName | out-null
                }
            else
                {
                Write-Host "`nNo more files to delete! `n" -foregroundcolor "Green"
                }
            }
        }

stop-transcript

Small scale markets

2013-02-24T09:13:00.001+00:00

Every business needs up to date information technology. Bulgarian companies also. They are pressured by increasing competition in business environment, but opening of Bulgaria to international markets, direct relation with the country’s entry into the European Union.
Dealing successfully with challenges, they increasingly depend on the collaboration tools. Access to shared resources is the key. It may be common accessed information, applications and devices. They should rely on the reliability and accessibility at any time. This is the birth of naturally need a computer, which can store and process the most important information about the company – especially developed by the manufacturer system, called server.
With the rapid and headlong development of industry – all high class servers with 4 and 8 processors technology are available for the lower class machines, designed for small and medium businesses. With attractive prices of course. However, companies limited by their own IT budgets are often hesitate – server or PC?

Servers are offered more widely, and most consumers begin think that it will be useful for managing files and printers, for hosting e-mail services, better network securing or even making more things than it could be made with desktop PC.
Its ok, but realizing the need for a server and actually revealing the exact model they need are two different tasks. It is obligatory to understand what a server is, which of its capabilities are useful for them, and decide whether they need a server and how to find right model.
Most of Bulgarian companies are micro, assuming international understanding of company size. So, companies here start with one server, but with all of required form business services up and running. It seems well from financial point of view, but not from maintenance and support perspective. Microsoft for example, presumes dedicated server for each service as a best practice. This is not applicable for small scale markets. One option was Microsoft Small Business Edition. Main reason was customer gets most of frequently used services in a box solution. Even using a virtualization this model is the same. For most dedicated services on separate servers customers must purchase separate licenses for operating systems. So for most of Bulgarian companies best practices are consolidating services, not so much consolidating servers.
Situation is that most of Bulgarian mangers are owners of their business. They started little company and because of their professional experience at specific field, the beginning has been successful. Later they meet “problem of growth”. Micro company must become mini. It means more employees, collaboration tools and team work. There is no problem to hire more specialists. It’s quite easy to learn most of them how to work in team.

Main question is how to work together in better way?

Yes, with new technologies, but very often business managers do not know anything about them. They must determine future of the company, but there is no company’s management know how.
Regular micro companies owns between 0 and 3 servers. For first group without server is important to realize the benefits from e-collaboration. Companies which have 2 and more servers may be useful to consolidate servers utilizing virtualization.

How to do this without company’s internal knowledge?

Obviously, you will say: External consultants, of course. Most of Bulgarian IT companies can best do box moving. They work with micro clients and doing only sales of hardware or software licenses. So this type of IT companies does not have expertise for implementing solutions. Main reason is lack of place and time to earn experience. It’s magic circle. Fortunately there are big players already developed well their portfolio of professional services.

How market can adopt new technologies?

This could be facilitated hiring well-rounded with hands-on experience specialists. They must provide technology knowledge to customers. This might be starting point of strategic planning for IT development. Most important is providing knowledge for solving a business problem, technical problem and then – how to take advantage over competitors.

VMware VM - changing the MAC address

2013-02-23T21:18:00.000+00:00

The conversion of physical to virtual machine is related to change of the MAC address of the network interface. In some cases this can be a problem when software is installed where the licensing is bound up to the MAC address. To avoid the automatic change of MAC address, you should not move the machine (configuration file of VM) to another host or different datastores on the same host.
If the VM is a member in a DRS cluster and automatically or manually movement between different hosts is needed, then we must set up MAC to static and we can achieve this in few ways.

Method #1. vSphere Client

If your attempt failed with the error below - go to method 3
“The MAC address entered is not in the valid range. Valid values are between xx:xx:xx:xx:xx”

Method #2. MAC address change from within the network adapter settings in Windows.
First of all ensure that vSwitch (virtual port group) security settings MAC Address Changes and Forged Transmits are set to
Accept. Go to your network adapter properties (see the picture below)

Select Locally Administered Address -> Value and enter the MAC address without the colon (:).
Restart the virtual machine to ensure that the change takes effect over the network.

If not succeed run command getmac from Windows command prompt
If the option Locally Administered Address (for Intel Pro/1000MT) is unavailable and can not change the MAC address - go to method 3

Method #3. Edit the VM's config file .vmx manually using plain text editor. Download the .vmx configuration file for the virtual machine to your desktop using the Datastore Browser. Open with text editor and delete the following from the vmx file

ethernetN.generatedAddress
ethernetN.addressType
ethernetN.generatedAddressOffset

To change the MAC address to a non-vmware address (in my case MAC address of h/w NIC) add these lines to the .vmx:

ethernetN.checkMACAddress = “false”
ethernetN.addressType = “static”
ethernetN.address = “address here”

Save the configuration file and upload with Datastore Browser

Need to know notes for manual editing process :
- Never edit vmx file while virtual machine is running (power off vm)
- Always make backup copy before editing – you need a plan B if something goes wrong.
- ESXi with vCenter Server - manual changes are overwritten by the entries stored in the vCenter Server database, therefore remove virtual machine from inventory before editing.

FreeNAS -8.3.0 UPS control via SNMP

2013-02-21T12:39:00.000+00:00

UPS Service configurations to MGE Galaxy 5000 with WEB/SNMP Network Management Card Transverse 66074 - firmware version GG

This card acts as an SNMP agent and as a HTTP/Web server. It enables UPS supervision from the Network Monitoring System using SNMP and traps or simply from a web browser.
FreeNAS communicate with this card by NUT - Network UPS Tool. It would be helpful to read man page for NUT snmp-ups.

- Identifier - name of your UPS
- Driver - From the drop down menu choose the appropriate driver for snmp-ups:
MGE UPS SYSTEMS ups 5 Pulsar / Comet / Galaxy (SNMP) SNMP/Web Transverse card (ref 66074) (snmp-ups)
Many of the choices listed are in fact the same driver as you can see below
(ups.conf -> driver=snmp-ups). Don’t worry if you select one, save it, and when you come back later to UPS Services menu to discover that a different option is selected - FreeNAS change your choice with the first device driver in drop-down menu with common snmp-ups driver.
- Port is the second most important setting in this configuration - in that case port is IP address of UPS Network Management Card.
- Auxialiary parameters - All other settings are optional and can be omitted, but beware for correct snmp setting if you use different community and snmp_version. pollfreq is polling frequency in seconds with default value = 30. I made several tests with lower values, but this unnecessarily increase network flow in management VLAN and causes gaps in ups.log data logging.

[root@fnas] ~# cat /etc/local/nut/ups.conf

driver = snmp-ups
port = 192.168.96.41
desc = "UPS1 - MGE Galaxy 5000 60kVA"
community = public
snmp_version = v1
mibs = mge
pollfreq = 30

Freenas message log:

Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: Detected GALAXY on host 192.168.96.41 (mib: mge 0.5)
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: Network UPS Tools - UPS driver controller 2.6.5
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: Starting nut.
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: fopen /var/db/nut/upsd.pid: No such file or directory
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: listening on 127.0.0.1 port 3493
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: Connected to UPS [ups]: snmp-ups-ups
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: nut_upsmon not running? (check /var/db/nut/upsmon.pid).
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: Starting nut_upsmon.
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: kill: No such process
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: UPS: ups (master) (power value 1)
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: nut_upslog not running? (check /var/db/nut/upslog.pid).
Feb 18 11:10:36 fnas notifier: Starting nut_upslog.

Pool the status of UPS

[root@fnas] ~# upsc ups@localhost

ambient.humidity: 0.00
ambient.temperature: 0.0
battery.charge: 100.00
battery.charge.low: 30
battery.runtime: 4860.00
battery.runtime.low: 180.00
battery.voltage: 494.00
device.mfr: Eaton
device.model: GALAXY
device.serial: 1P2J1XXX
device.type: ups
driver.name: snmp-ups
driver.parameter.mibs: mge
driver.parameter.pollfreq: 30
driver.parameter.pollinterval: 2
driver.parameter.port: 192.168.96.41
driver.parameter.snmp_version: v1
driver.version: 2.6.5
driver.version.data: mge MIB 0.5
driver.version.internal: 0.68
input.L1-N.voltage: 400.00
input.L1-N.voltage.maximum: 400.00
input.L1-N.voltage.minimum: 398.00
input.L1.current: 12.00
input.L1.frequency: 50.00
input.L2-N.voltage: 400.00
input.L2-N.voltage.maximum: 400.00
input.L2-N.voltage.minimum: 398.00
input.L2.current: 12.00
input.L2.frequency: 50.00
input.L3-N.voltage: 400.00
input.L3-N.voltage.maximum: 400.00
input.L3-N.voltage.minimum: 398.00
input.L3.current: 12.00
input.L3.frequency: 50.00
input.phases: 3.00
input.transfer.reason:
outlet.desc: Main Outlet
outlet.id: 0
output.L1-N.voltage: 401.00
output.L1.current: 15.60
output.L1.frequency: 50.00
output.L2-N.voltage: 401.00
output.L2.current: 12.70
output.L2.frequency: 50.00
output.L3-N.voltage: 399.00
output.L3.current: 9.50
output.L3.frequency: 50.00
output.phases: 3.00
ups.beeper.status: enabled
ups.delay.shutdown: 20
ups.delay.start: 30
ups.firmware: V1.GDENA7S300IC303
ups.firmware.aux: GG (SN 49EH5XXXX)
ups.L1.load: 13.00
ups.L2.load: 13.00
ups.L3.load: 13.00
ups.mfr: Eaton
ups.model: GALAXY
ups.serial: 1P2J1XXXX
ups.start.auto: no
ups.status: OL
ups.test.result: no test initiated
ups.timer.reboot: -1.00
ups.timer.shutdown: -1.00
ups.timer.start: -1.00

Check ups.log

root@fnas:~cat /var/log/ups.log

20130218 111656 100.00 NA NA [OL] NA NA
20130218 112157 100.00 NA NA [OL] NA NA
20130218 112657 100.00 NA NA [OL] NA NA
20130218 113157 100.00 NA NA [OL] NA NA

Default format of ups.log -
[DATE] [TIME] [battery.charge] [input.voltage] [ups.load] [ups.status] [ups.temperature] [input.frequency]
,i.e. I’ve got info for battery charge (100%) and operational status - OL - (OnLine)

List available commands can be invoked in MGE Galaxy 5000 UPS hardware

[root@fnas] /# upscmd -l ups

Instant commands supported on UPS [ups]:
beeper.disable - Disable the UPS beeper
beeper.enable - Enable the UPS beeper
beeper.mute - Temporarily mute the UPS beeper
load.off - Turn off the load immediately
load.off.delay - Turn off the load with a delay (seconds)
load.on - Turn on the load immediately
load.on.delay - Turn on the load with a delay (seconds)
shutdown.return - Turn off the load and return when power is back
shutdown.stayoff - Turn off the load and remain off
test.battery.start - Start a battery test

View the read/write variables inside mine UPS

[root@fnas] /# upsrw ups
[battery.charge.low]
Remaining battery level when UPS switches to LB (percent)
Type: STRING
Value: 30
[outlet.desc]
Outlet description
Type: STRING
Value: Main Outlet
[ups.delay.shutdown]
Interval to wait after shutdown with delay command (seconds)
Type: STRING
Value: 20
[ups.delay.start]
Interval to wait before (re)starting the load (seconds)
Type: STRING
Value: 30
[ups.start.auto]
UPS starts when mains is (re)applied
Type: UNKNOWN (unrecognized)

Notified applications setup in NMC transverse card via WEB:

Unfortunately my attempts for shutdown test from Notified Applications in WEB interface (picture above) were unsuccessful. General test is when I brake input circuit of the ups:

[root@fnas] /#

Network UPS Tools upsmon 2.6.5
…..
Broadcast Message from root@fnas.hbc
(no tty) at 18:59 EET...
Executing automatic power-fail shutdown

*** FINAL System shutdown message from root@fnas.local ***
System going down IMMEDIATELY

Final e-mail status report:

M-tel VMC Prima комплект - как да ползваме модема K3565-Z със SIM карти от други оператори

2010-03-12T06:51:00.061+00:00

.
Преди време купих M-tel VMC Prima комплект за "спешни случаи". В рамките на страната съм го използвал рядко, като няколко пъти наистина ме е спасявал, а варианта без обвързване с договор е много подходящ за такива цели - плащаш, само когато е нужно. Цената на пакета и услугата, както и относително по-доброто покритие спрямо останалите оператори беше причина да не търся други оферти и решения за използване на "чужди" SIM карти. Излизането ми извън страната и нуждата от мобилен интернет обаче промени това.

Като цяло в чужбина най-лесно достъпната алтернатива за временно ползване на интернет е през GSM оператор (изключвам работното място, интернет кафета и всякакъв подобен род обекти с безплатен WiFi, както и по-скъпите WiMax пакети, които обикновено са с обвързващи договори).
В началото стартирах с използване на телефон като 3G модем, но bluetooth връзките с лаптопа, смяната на SIM картите (voice/data) и ускореното изтощаване на батерията започна да ме уморява и реших да намеря начин за употреба на "резервния ми интернет" - VMC 3G модем K3565-Z, забутан някъде из джобовете в раницата на лаптопа.

С този пакет на цена от 99 лв. получих модема К3565-Z (буквата Z е важна и показва, че производителя е ZTE. Huawei има модел със същото обозначение, но
забележете K3565-H. Двата модема нямат нищо общо като хардуер и firmware, защото K3565-H всъщност е Huawei E160X.

Най-важния факт, който трябва да отбележа, че VMC K3565-Z, НЕ Е SIM/NETWORK LOCKED!!!

Това означава, че модема може да се ползва с карти на други оператори, ако се използват следните методи:

Вариант 1. Промяна на конфигурационните настройки в софтуера Vodafone Mobile Connect

Vodafone конфигурира предварително настройките на всички оператори, с които работи в своя софтуер за улеснение на потребителя. Тези настройки са във вид на xml файлове и "живеят" в директорийната структура на приложението по оператори и държави. Тъй като инсталирания VMC не ми даваше възможност за запис на новосъздадени от мен връзки с други оператори, то се наложи да преработя съществуващата конфигурация на Мтел, като изнамерих съответния xml. Процедурата не е "висш пилотаж", но определено не е user friendly, защото освен популярните параметри като AP, user name, password, phone number, се променят няколко други като Operator ID например, който не може да бъде видян през телефонните настройки (поне не през моя Sony-Ericsson) и ми отне излишно много време за ровене в интернет през алтернативната и скъпа GPRS/3G връзка на voice картата ми.
Тази проба направих единствено от спортна тръпка, защото нито съм влюбен в GUI-то на VMC, нито мислех да го използвам при условие, че има доста по-лесен и бърз начин, подходящ за масовия потребител.

Вариант 2. Windows Dial-up

Разполагаме с инсталиран VMC, но не го стартираме (ако деинсталираме - губим драйверите). Създаваме dial-up връзка през Windows, асоциирана с нашия модем на съответния COM порт. Необходимо е предварително от Device Manager - Modem - ZTE Proprietary HS-USB Modem - Advanced / Extra command - да се въведе следната АТ команда за избор на APN:

AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet.vivacell.am"

,(някои оператори не изискват изрично указване на APN, т.е. AP се открива автоматично като при dhcp. За арменския Vivacell например - APN се оставя празно, а за BeeLine - AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","APN")
За dial-up връзката въвеждаме username/password (ако е нужно и зависи от оператора, в моя случаи - празно) с номер *99#

Единственото неудобство на Windows Dial-up връзката е липсата на статистика и невъзможността да се следи трафика, което никак не е фатално, но зависи от нуждите на конкретния случай.

Вариант 3. Инсталираме друг мениджър на връзките

Приемаме, че вече имаме инсталиран VMC и следва да го махнем. Инсталираме ZTE Join Air.

В Интернет открих множество други универсални мениджъри - безплатни и платени, но ZTE Connection Manager, освен free, ми хареса с това, че е максимално опростен и лек.

* При деинсталация ще загубим драйверите, затова ползваме тези(32 и 64-bit - изтегляме K3565-Z drivers)

Ако решим да се заиграем с модема е възможно да "убием" autorun-a на VMC при първоначално свързване с компютър, както и да "мушнем" ZTE dashboard на мястото на VMC - било във външна microSD или във вградената памет. Ето как може да се случи това:

- За конзолна връзка с модема използвам Putty (може Hyperterminal или аналогична), като предварително трябва да разберем на кой COM (serial) порт се е закачил модема от Device Manager - Modem - ZTE Proprietary HS-USB Modem - Port
Конфигурация за серийната връзка е следната:
- bit per second - от 9600 до 115200 (без значение)
- Data bit 9
- Parity None
- Stop bit 1
- Flow Control None

- Забрана на вътрешния flashdrive, съотв. autorun-a
AT+ZCDRUN=9
(разрешаване на flashdrive - AT+ZCDRUN=8)

Други интересни AT команди:

- Stay online
AT+ZOPRT=5

- check network/SIM lock
AT+ZSEC?
answer: ,

< SEC_STATUE >:
0 Initializing the encryption (Insignificant SEC_ITEMS)
1 Network Lock error. (Insignificant SEC_ITEMS)
2 Network Locked
3 Unlocked or correct MCC/MNC

:
0 No action
1 Network lock
2 (U)SIM card lock
3 Network Lock and (U)SIM card Lock

- Unlock - Тази команда се използва в случаите, когато разполагате с unlock-code и отключвате lock-нат модем. Процедурата е валидна и за GSM апарати, освен ако няма друга препоръчителна процедура за конкретния модел. Unlock-code съм купувал/генерирал за два други модема на Huawei срещу 10$ на парче от www.xorox-team.com, който ми беше препоръчан и смятам за читав, защото кодовете бяха ОК.

AT+ZNCK="unlock-code"
AT+ZNCK?
Unlock residual time 0-5

Безболезнен начин за премахване на VMC, без да правим каквито и да било промени по вградения flash на модема е като използваме външна microSD.

1. Забраняваме вградения флаш по указания по-горе начин чрез АТ команда: AT+ZCDRUN=9. Ако получите съобщение за грешка в конзолата, тогава предварително трябва да се "разкачи" флаш паметта (unmount) чрез "safely remove hardware" и спирате "USB Mass Storage Device"
2. Слагате microSD картата, предварително форматирана на FAT32
3. Изтегляте това и екстрактвате съдържанието му на флаша. (съдържа ZTE dashboard, драйвери и autorun)

По така направения начин при свързване на модема към компютър ще се стартира autorun на ZTE (само в случай, че ауторъна на removable device не е забранен на ниво Windows)

Нека да поровим в internal flash memory

Рисковия начин за премахване на VMC е чрез физическо изтриване от internal flash memory и замяната му с ZTE Join Air. Процедурата не е сложна, но ако не сте сигурни, какво точно правите - сега е подходящия момент да умъртвите модема си.
Използваме QPST - Qualcomm Product Support Tool - много сериозен инструмент за мобилни телефони, който предлага file explorer, factory test tools, low level communication settings, RF calibration tools, roaming list editor, service programming tool и др.

1. За начало ни трябват всички необходими драйвери и инсталираме VMC, ако не сме го направили до момента

2. Изтегляме QPST и инсталираме.

3. От пакета QPST стартираме "QPST" Configuration" избираме "Ports" tab

4. Добавяме порт от "Add New Port"

5. Избираме порт обозначен като "USB/QC Diagnostic" и после "OK".

6. "Start Clients" от менюто и избере "EFS EXPLORER"

7. От появилия се прозорец виждаме "Unknown" phone, маркираме и потвърждаваме с ОК.

Сега QPST прочита EFS файловата система на модема

8. Виждаме файловата структура на internal flashdrive. Добре е да направим резервно копие на ZTEMODEM.ISO. Става с десен бутон върху файла и "Copy File from Phone"... и избираме дестинацията.

Отиваме да пием кафе за 25-30 минути и точно след толкова приключва на процедурата. Вече може да затриете файла.

9. Изтегляме това, разархивираме и копираме новия ZTEMODEM.ISO в модема.

10. След приключване на процедурата по копиране излизаме от QPST configuration. Следва запитване за ресет на устройството и потвърждаваме с ОК.

Вече вашия модем е с ZTE Join Air и ползваме SIМ карти от всякакви оператори!

Старите сървъри и десктопи

2010-02-18T14:11:00.001+00:00

В България се натрупаха доста остарели компютри и сървъри. Голяма част от тях вече не са натоварени. Често съдържат стари счетоводни или складови ( и не само) системи, които се ползват само за справки за минали периоди. Техния хардуер е в достатъчно напреднала възраст и вероятността за отказ не е никак малка. Ремонта и подмяната на дефектирали компоненти е скъпа за старите устройства, а често и невъзможна.

Има ли решение този проблем?

Отговора се крие във
виртуализирането на тези машини върху един единствен нов хардуер. Поради независимостта на виртуалните машини една от друга, те могат да си съжителстват безпроблемно, няколко на брой върху една единствена физическа машина.
Ползата за крайния потребител е, че разделя операционната система и приложния софтуер от хардуера, а добрата новина е, че за това може да се ползва безплатен продукт за виртуализация. Единствения разход ще бъде покупката на нова машина с необходимите параметри за да може да държи в себе си нужните виртуални машини. Впредвид, че повечето от тези виртуални машини ще съдържат в себе си софтуер, който ще се ползва само за справки, а не за оперативна, текуща работа, то параметрите на новозакупената машина не е задължително да бъдат високи.
Следващата стъпка е мигрирането на данните от физическата към виртуалната машина. Процеса не е деструктивен за физическата машина и едва след, като се убедим, че виртуалната машина е създадена и функционира успешно, можем да „пенсионираме” физическия й първообраз.
Обикновените (физически) сървъри и настолни компютри работят с много на брой отделни файлове. Те могат да бъдат както от операционната система, така също драйвери, приложен софтуер или просто потребителски данни. Виртуализацията разделя софтуера от хардуера, вмъквайки един допълнителен слой между тях и поставя данните за всяка виртуална машина (VM) в един единствен файл на физическия диск (или масив). VMware използва VMDK файлов формат. Такъв файл представлява пълна и независима виртуална машина под VMware продукти или други платформи, които поддържат VMDK файлове като XVM, QEMU или VirtualBox.

Основните предимства са простота и удобство. Един файл (*.VMDK), например, е лесно да се премести между физически сървъри, чрез студена или жива миграцията в платформа за виртуализация. Лесно е да се постигне защита на информацията чрез снимки на състоянието (snapshots). Преди въвеждането на специализираните софтуерни инструменти, беше невъзможно да се възстанови само част от VM, като например обикновен потребителски документ. Налагаше се да се възстанови цялата VM, обикновено на резервен сървър, вместо на оперативния сървър, като едва тогава архива на повредения файл можеше да бъде извлечен. Днес, възстановяването на отделен файл от виртуалната машина не е проблем. Това не изключва задължението на администраторите да разработят планове за възстановяване след авария.

Файлoвият формат VMDK се конкурира с Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) дисков формат, използван в Hyper-V платформата. Дисковите формати не са директно съвместими и от това следва, че съществуващите виртуални машини не могат да функционират върху различен Hypervisor. В много случаи, виртуални машини трябва първо да бъдат мигрирани върху физически сървър (V2P) за ефективното премахване на предходната виртуализация. Новият Hypervisor тогава ще създаде нови виртуални машини, като се използва нов формат на диск. Съществуват и инструменти на други разработчици за преход от един формат в друг.
Процеса на виртуализация на стари физически машини носи спестявания от опертивни разходи и повишава сигурността на данните при минимална инвестиция.
Примери за виртуализиращ сървър ще намерите в следващия пост.