The problem with Virtualisation

Working with leading Systems Integrators has led me to an interesting conundrum around the whole area of virtualisationl. I was reminded of the problem by listening to another “Virtualisation Panacea” the other day. In my time with my previous company we did a study – Gartner have done the same – to determine whether a virtualised and thin client estate is more cost effective than a well managed thick client and discrete estate. The resounding answer was Yes BUT … marginally!

The problem centres around the fact that the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) takes into account the effort involved in managing the desktop or virtual server estate and that cost is often rooted heavily in manual effort. We all know that labour intensive operations are expensive, hence the desire to automate desktop builds, desktop updates and patches and fixes.

Theoretically the whole Virtual Server concept is a great idea – harvest the unused CPU cycles in machines that are only 20% utilised. The software (such as VMWare) and the Hardware (such a BladeFrame) solutions provide a convincing argument to go down this route and run more than one virtual server on a single physical server. Clearly this should be a benefit, however, problems begin to surface when you start looking at the costs of patching all these virtual servers.

In other words, the problem is deeply rooted in the Operating System vendor space. If all operating systems required no patches, no updates and no security fixes, then virtualisation would be a much more enticing option. I dare say that the choice of operating system will make a difference even in the current environment especially if the choice is based on the amount of patches and updates that must be applied on a regular basis.

Critically, automated software update techniques require the servers involved to be up and running at the time that they poll to find which servers need updating. Since there will be “live” servers that are “dormant” at the time of polling then they will get missed in that patching process.

Another issue is that since the operating system clearly needs the most manual intervention and attention, then software vendors should be looking at ways of de-coupling their applications from the underlying operating system as much as possible. We all know that most pieces of software that run on Windows make use of DLLs that are resident in the System and System32 directories which means that they are tightly coupled to the OS. There was a time when an application would load its own DLLs into its own directory but that caused conflicts and doesn’t really look like an elegant “re-use” type of environment.

Damm Small Linux (DSL) has come close to creating this type of de-coupled environment, but then most of the current business applications don’t run on Linux! With DSL you can configure applications to run on the desktop from special image files that could be held on a USB key. That means that the desktop can be standardised and then each user would have a USB key with their own applications loaded onto it. The Desktop OS build is now de-coupled from the applications and all of a sudden a level of automation can be built into the OS patching etc.

So virtualisation is not the panacea that we all expected it to be although some brave souls have been out and started down the track claiming some success. I think the Gartner assessment was correct that a thin client estate was almost as cost effective as a well managed thick client estate. The key is that those organisations that have claimed success in the desktop space have potentially had a less than well managed estate.

Where do we go from here … I think de-coupling is going to be key to this, except that OS vendors need to make this happen in the way that it used to happen in the mainframe world. Call me a dinosaur, but why is that world still considered to be resilient, robust and reliable?

Polystyrene Tiles

So .. what is the easiest way to get Polystyrene Tiles off a ceiling?

The reality is that apart from a Mr. Bean-esque explosion in the middle of the house – it is very hard work. The key is to understanding how it was put up in the first place. The tiles that I was dealing with had five blobs of adhesive, one in the middle and one on each corner. This led to the use of a fairly substantial burger flipper from my BBQ set. I needed a flat bladed utensil that allowed me to reach right across the tile from corner to corner. Anything less and I ended up damagin the tile.

Now … I know that I am trying to get the tiles down and therefore I don’t care if they get damaged, but I do care about having to clean up after myself. The Burger flipper was an old one, and I sharpened the end so that it would cut into the adhesive between the tile and the roof. As with serving cake, the first one is always a mess, but from there on it becomes easier. Start at the nearest corner and slide the burger flipper in to release that corner. Next release the other corner nearest to you, then slide the flipper under the central blob of glue. Finally the back two corners can be attacked and you should get the whole tile down in one piece.

Once you have completed removing the tiles there are two options with the rest of the ceiling.

1. Getting a sharp flat tool, scrape the adhesive off the ceiling trying as much as possible not to gouge out great holes in the plaster or leave lumps on the ceiling. A 16m squared area to about 3 person days to tidy up. Alternatively …  
2. The simplest answer is to get a plasterer to “overboard” the ceiling. This means putting plasterboard up and covering the ceiling and re-plastering the ceiling. In the words on my plasterer – “It took you 3 person days … I can have it overboarded in less than an hour!” – sold to the man in the overalls.

Those are your options and that’s what I did!

Business Value

I think that, way too often, we get bogged down in the technology and don’t spend enough time taking a good long hard look at the value to the business community.

Another pet hate and therefore analagous to the above … Accountacy for Accountancy sake! I have just spent the last few days working on the budgets and forecast for the rest of 2007 until the end of the calendar year as well as the forecast for 2008. The problem I particularly face is that I have inherited a budget in my new role that wil lnot reflect what my new organisation structure should be. Having designed the way I want the organisation to work, I now need to tailor it to fit the money that I have. I accept that I don’t have a bottomless pit to work with, but it is a constraint I would rather not have. I guess the next issue becomes the internal negotiation for funds and the inevitable intra company transfers.

I have always thought that accountants have managed to pull off an incredible stunt in terms of making themselves indispensible to business. No longer do they worry about the money that is going out of the company and accounting for that in minute detail, they now have manufactured a role where they track every last penny that moves within the company as well. If I want a resource who is already paid for (ie: a salaried employee) to come and do some work for me whether for a short or long period of time – I have to find some virtual money to pay for them with. Instead of focusing on the business that is transacted we focus on the cash that is exchanged between departments.

It’s a gravy train!

Where is the business value? I have to justify doing a piece of work to my internal stakeholders even though no actual money will be spent! I take the people that I already have, assign them to the particular task and away we go. Somebody somewhere will of course question this and ask me who is going to fund the work.

Ford used to call them “Blue Dollars”, I’ve heard them referred to as “Wooden Dollars”, either way they don’t really exist and we need an ever expanding army of bean counters to count virtual beans!!

OK – I know the rhetoric … I just wanted to get that off my chest.

More importantly I do believe that, as technologists, we need to be able to justify what we are doing in terms of Business Value. I sat through a presentation the other day when I was shown some very cool interfaces to web-sites (no names, no packdrill etc). The problem is that most of our customers accessing our sites from home are disadvantaged and therefore probably don’t even have a computer of any sort. They were taken aback when I asked if their software was backwards compatible with Windows 95. Some people out there have never upgraded and don’t see the need. I digress … again!

Business Value … Technology can be cool, exciting and enthralling, but the rest of the world don’t see it like that. technology for technologies sake is a complete waste of time and effort. I need to justify my spend on staff and equipment etc. New technologies are going to have to prove to me that they can provide a direct business benefit before I will even entertain them nowadays.

Enterprise Information Management

Enterprise Information Management is a term that is increasingly being used to describe the process and management of the Information mountain that corporations globally are building. With the falling price of storage and ever larger storage arrays, the question of limiting the amount of data that we store continues to be a non-discussion. The business increasingly tells us that they want to store ever more data and the IT can support that storage.

Having just moved house I think the problem is that the bigger the house the larger the amount of clutter that you keep in it! I seem to have moved house (and country) fairly regularly in my career and lifetime and it is always a surprise as to how much of what is moved to a new home remains in boxes, untouched, for many months and sometimes years. In our last home we had downsized and ended up paying for 100 sq feet of storage. After 18 months of paying for the storage we decided that we really needed to get rid of everything that we had in the lock-up because we hadn’t even been to look for anything in any of the stuff that we had there.

Admittedly this is not really a direct analogy to what is happening in business but I am convinced that many organisations are storing more data and yet not making the best use of it. We still get situations where data is not joined up.

With the move to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) I think it is imperative that the next step is taken by businesses to get a grip on their data mountains. Charlie Bess in his blog entitled “Is the need for Enterprise Information Management a symptom of success?” suggests that “As we move into having a more service based approach to the IT environment … it will require more than just common data.” I can wholeheartedly agree but I would expand on the thought to include the concept of a Service based Business. The IT part of a business is working towards being a service to the rest of the organisation and has always been seen in that light. I think the next stage of evolution is that the business needs to see itself as providing services to the rest of the organisation and being part of the SOA initiative.

The data element of the landscape has been missed in the past and the need to manage the information tree is crucial to future success in managing fraud and customer service. Data is the bulk of the iceberg – images of the Titanic flash in my mind. Leave this uncontrolled and the business will be wrecked. Manage the data mountain, control the information headache and then start building the Business Intelligence and finally the Knowledge tree and the groundwork has been laid to begin to control data costs and become more outward looking in your approach to services.

Setting up the Organisation

Week 4 and I am getting to grips with the current and a future organisation structure. I think there is a key driver here and I am keen to ensure that I am not just another one of these managers that insists on changing an organisation structure just for the sake of it.

The key thing is to understand what it is that your organisation is trying to achieve and then ensure that you have people in the role that will enable that to happen and can take ownership of that piece of work. In my current role there is a natural point of change due to a major programme coming to an end for which the current organisational structure was designed to support.

I want to ensure that the organisation is built to meet the new challenges of Business As Usual and that is something which, suprisingly, needs thinking about quite carefully. Not only does it need careful consideration of the various roles, political sensitivities and structural semantics, but there is the requirement to handle the whole financial constraints as well.

Fortunately, there is an excellent team behind me that I know are going to be superb as we move forwards and I think everybody recognises that changes need to occur to ensure that we meet the new challenges. I am still impressed with the calibre of people that we have on the account and the sheer quality of work that I see. I know I am still digging under the covers but what I am currently unearthing has all been good.

The budget that I have to work within seems reasonable and for the moment it looks as if I will be able to manage the changes that I want to make relatively easily. The real key is to ensure that my management are comfortable with the changes and are ready to sign up to the new structure and the new emphasis.

The next piece is to understand who and how we engage with the customer. The new structure is going to have to support and match the new structure that the customer has implemented and ensure that we have the right level of engagement and relationship.

I have to say that it has been coming along really well and I am very encouraged by the way that all of this is working.

The First Flight

Here is a picture of the aircraft that I flew today as part of my move to the Northwest of England. G-BJWW is a Cessna 172 and was a very pleasant aircraft to fly. The club that runs it is called Westair from Blackpool Airport (EGNH).

Having moved up to the Northwest of England I needed to join a new club and get back up in the air again. I have been remiss in getting up in the air due to having to get the new home in some form of order. Needless to say, the home is still being renovated although we are beginning to get to a point where we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

It was a lunchtime flight and was more of a flight to confirm to the club that I could actually fly and was competent. My own opinion? I made so many mistakes because I was nervous including almost lining up on the wrong runway. I couldn’t believe some of what I did.

However, we took off on Runway 25 heading out towards the Irish Sea over the Pontins Holiday Camp. At the usual 600 feet we turned north towards Morecambe bay and the Lake District. G-WW performed effortlessly, getting us up to 3000 feet in good time – pretty much over Fleetwood.

MA (the Instructor) wanted me to do a stall so he asked me what I needed to do to prepare for that. In pilot speak – he wanted me to go through the HASEL checks;

H – Height – High enough to recover by 3000 feet
A – Airframe – Check whether we have the right configuration (flaps etc)
S – Security – Hatches, Harnesses anything loose in the cockpit
E – Environment – There is an ABC acronym which means to check for other Aircraft, Clear of Buildings and away from Clouds.
L – Lookout – perform a scan of the area by turning through 90 degrees left and right checking underneath as well.

So … we needed to get to 3,500 feet to satisfy the first piece of the acronym. Once there we executed the Stall and recovered easily. After that MA wanted to do a couple of turns (just dropped 100 feet in the left hand turn) and then we headed back to Poulton which is a Visual Reporting Point for Blackpool airport.

We did a few circuits after that and I wasn’t happy with my performance at all! However, I managed to perform a standard touch and go, a flapless touch and go and finally a glide approach.

My flight path

The final landing (on Runway 28) – the glide approach went well although I needed to take some flaps off as we were coming down too soon.

Once landed we took the second right (D1) taxiway from runway crossed runway 25 and then back to the Westair hangers.

It was only 35 minutes but it did show me that I need to get back up there again fairly soon.