Archivo de la categoría: Featured

Featured, IaaS, Miscellaneous IT, Networking, Saas, SDDC, Storage, Virtualization

The 2013 Tech Industry – A Year in Review

By Chris Ward, CTO, LogicsOne

As 2013 comes to a close and we begin to look forward to what 2014 will bring, I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect back on the past year.  We’ve been talking a lot about that evil word ‘cloud’ for the past 3 to 4 years, but this year put a couple of other terms up in lights including Software Defined X (Datacenter, Networking, Storage, etc.) and Big Data.  Like ‘cloud,’ these two newer terms can easily mean different things to different people, but put in simple terms, in my opinion, there are some generic definitions which apply in almost all cases.  Software Defined X is essentially the concept of taking any ties to specific vendor hardware out of the equation and providing a central point for configuration, again vendor agnostic, except of course for the vendor providing the Software Defined solution :) .  I define Big Data simply as the ability to find a very specific and small needle of data in an incredibly large haystack within a reasonably short amount of time. I see both of these technologies becoming more widely adopted in short order with Big Data technologies already well on the way. 

As for our friend ‘the cloud,’ 2013 did see a good amount of growth in consumption of cloud services, specifically in the areas of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).  IT has adopted a ‘virtualization first’ strategy over the past 3 to 4 years when it comes to bringing any new workloads into the datacenter.  I anticipate we’ll begin to see a ‘SaaS first’ approach being adopted in short order if it is not out there already.  However, I can’t necessarily say the same on the IaaS side so far as ‘IaaS first’ goes.  While IaaS is a great solution for elastic computing, I still see most usage confined to the application development or super large scale out application (Netflix) type use cases.  The mass adoption of IaaS for simply forklifting existing workloads out of the private datacenter and into the public cloud simply hasn’t happened.  Why?? My opinion is for traditional applications neither the cost nor operational model make sense, yet. 

In relation to ‘cloud,’ I did see a lot of adoption of advanced automation, orchestration, and management tools and thus an uptick in ‘private clouds.’  There are some fantastic tools now available both commercially and open source, and I absolutely expect to see this adoption trend to continue, especially in the Enterprise space.  Datacenters, which have a vast amount of change occurring whether in production or test/dev, can greatly benefit from these solutions. However, this comes with a word of caution – just because you can doesn’t mean you should.  I say this because I have seen several instances where customers have wanted to automate literally everything in their environments. While that may sound good on the surface, I don’t believe it’s always the right thing to do.  There are times still where a human touch remains the best way to go. 

As always, there were some big time announcements from major players in the industry. Here are some posts we did with news and updates summaries from VMworld, VMware Partner Exchange, EMC World, Cisco Live and Citrix Synergy. Here’s an additional video from September where Lou Rossi, our VP, Technical Services, explains some new Cisco product announcements. We also hosted a webinar (which you can download here) about VMware’s Horizon Suite as well as a webinar on our own Cloud Management as a Service Offering

The past few years have seen various predictions relating to the unsustainability of Moore’s Law which states that processors will double in computing power every 18-24 months and 2013 was no exception.  The latest prediction is that by 2020 we’ll reach the 7nm mark and Moore’s Law will no longer be a logarithmic function.  The interesting part is that this prediction is not based on technical limitations but rather economic ones in that getting below that 7nm mark will be extremely expensive from a manufacturing perspective and, hey, 64k of RAM is all anyone will ever need right?  :)

Probably the biggest news of 2013 was the revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) had undertaken a massive program and seemed to be capturing every packet of data coming in or out of the US across the Internet.   I won’t get into any political discussion here, but suffice it to say this is probably the largest example of ‘big data’ that exists currently.  This also has large potential ramifications for public cloud adoption as security and data integrity have been 2 of the major roadblocks to adoption so it certainly doesn’t help that customers may now be concerned about the NSA eavesdropping on everything going on within the public datacenters.  It is estimated that public cloud providers may lose as much as $22-35B over the next 3 years as a result of customers slowing adoption due to this.  The only good news in this, at least for now, is it’s very doubtful that the NSA or anyone else on the planet has the means to actual mine anywhere close to 100% of the data they are capturing.  However, like anything else, it’s probably only a matter of time.

What do you think the biggest news/advancements of 2013 were?  I would be interested in your thoughts as well.

Register for our upcoming webinar on December 19th to learn how you can free up your IT team to be working on more strategic projects (while cutting costs!).

 

 

business continuity, BYOD, Cloud computing, CMaaS, Disaster Recovery, End-User Computing, Featured, IT Management, Journey to the Cloud, Miscellaneous IT, Storage and Information Management

Cloud Management, Business Continuity & Other 2013 Accomplishments

By Matt Mock, IT Director

It was a very busy year at GreenPages for our internal IT department. With 2013 coming to a close, I wanted to highlight some of the major projects we worked on over the course of the year. The four biggest projects we tackled were using a cloud management solution, improving our business continuity plan, moving our datacenter, and creating and implementing a BYOD policy.

Cloud Management as a Service

GreenPages now offers a Cloud Management as a Service (CMaaS) solution to our clients. We implemented the solution internally late last year, but really started utilizing it as a customer would this year by increasing what was being monitored and managed. We decided to put Exchange under the “Fully Managed” package of CMaaS. Exchange requires a lot of attention and effort. Instead of hiring a full time Exchange admin, we were able to offload that piece with CMaaS as our Managed Services team does all the health checks to make sure any new configuration changes are correct. This resulted in considerable cost savings. Having access to the team 24/7 is a colossal luxury. Before using CMaaS, if an issue popped up at 3 in the morning we would find out about it the next morning. This would require us to try and fix the problem during business hours. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone the hassle of trying to fix an issue with frustrated coworkers who are unable to do their jobs. If an issue arises now in the middle of the night, the problem has already been fixed before anyone shows up to start working. The Managed Services team does research and remediates bugs that come up. This happened to us when we ran into some issues with Apple iOS calendaring. The Managed Services team did the research to determine the cause and went in and fixed the problem. If my team tried to do this it would have taken us 2-3 days of wasted time. Instead, we could be focusing on some of our other strategic projects. In fact, we are holding a webinar on December 19th that will cover strategies and benefits to being the ‘first-to-know,’ and we will also provide a demo of the CMaaS Enterprise Command Center. We also went live with fully automated patching, which requires zero intervention from my team. Furthermore, we leveraged CMaaS to allow us to spin up a fully managed Linux environment. It’s safe to say that if we didn’t implement CMaaS we would not have been able to accomplish all of our strategic goals for this year.

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Business Plan

We also determined that we needed to update our disaster recovery plan to a true robust business continuity plan. A main driver of this was because of our more diverse office model. Not only were more people working remotely as our workforce expanded, but we now have office locations up and down the east coast in Kittery, Boston, Attleboro, New York City, Atlanta, and Tampa. We needed to ensure that we could continue to provide top quality service to our customers if an event were to occur. My team took a careful look at our then current infrastructure set up. After examining our policies and plans, we generated new ones around the optimal outcome we wanted and then adjusted the infrastructure to match. A large part of this included changing providers for our data and voice, which included moving our datacenter.

Datacenter Move

In 2013 we wanted to have more robust datacenter facilities. Ultimately, we were able to get into an extremely redundant and secure datacenter at the Markley Group in Boston that provided us with cost savings. Furthermore, Markley is also a large carrier hotel which gives us additional savings on circuit costs. With this move we’re able to further our capabilities of delivering to our customers 24/7. Another benefit our new datacenter offered was excess office space. That way, if there ever was an event at one of our GreenPages locations we could have a place to send people to work. I recently wrote a post which describes the datacenter move in more details.

BYOD Policy

As 2013 ends, we are finishing our first full year with our BYOD policy. We are taking this time to look back and see where there were any issues with the policies or procedures and adjusting for the next year. Our plan is to ensure that year two is even more streamlined. I answered questions in a recent Q & A explaining our BYOD initiative in more detail.

I’m pretty happy looking back at the work we accomplished in 2013. As with any year, there were bumps along the way and things we didn’t get to that we wanted to. All in all though, we accomplished some very strategic projects that have set us up for success in the future. I think that we will start out 2014 with increased employee satisfaction, increased productivity of our IT department, and of course noticeable cost savings. Here’s to a successful 2014!

Is your IT team the first-to-know when an IT outage happens? Or, do you find out about it from your end users? Is your expert IT staff stretched thin doing first-level incident support? Could they be working on strategic IT projects that generate revenue? Register for our upcoming webinar to learn more!

 

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, SDN, Solutions Architects

My 2013 Holiday Gift List for the Solutions Architects

By Chris Reily, Director of Solutions Architecture

Well, with the holidays upon us, I find myself in the position of having to figure out what to buy for the solutions architects this year to thank them for another great year in 2013. If you think buying gifts for Aunt Emily, Cousin Jimmy or dear old Dad is hard – try picking out gifts for one of the most exacting, technical, opinionated and outstanding group of guys you’ll ever get to know. I missed black Friday and Cyber Monday so here goes nothing…

Nick P – Practice Manager, Networking
A 48oz. bottle of Bluebeard’s Beard Wash AND some SDN (software defined networking) with Cisco Open Network Environment Platform Kit (onePK) so he can finally have comprehensive Cisco network intelligence.

Randy B – Enterprise Architect
A relaxing massage chair AND a smart phone that is truly smart, does email, contacts and a calendaring that works as well as a vintage BlackBerry. It need to hold a decent charge to last a full work day AND reminds Randy of important appointments not to be missed. Or maybe he just needs a copy of VMware View!

Harris H – Solutions Architect, Data Center
An industrial size vacuum sealer for packing homemade jerky AND a quality Cloud as a Service offering to distribute to all those in need of new technology. And it would be just wrong not to provide a great way to manage it all with CMaaS!

Randy W – Practice Manager, Data Management
A case (okay, maybe just a bottle) of 1989 Chateau Petrus Bordeaux AND some super-fast hybrid flash storage like Nimble’s C250G (oh how Randy loves 10 gig networking).

Mark H – Solutions Architect, Data Management
A St. Croix Legend Bass fishing rod AND an EMC VNX5400 array. Plenty of fast disc to store and access plenty of hi-resolution photos of all the fish he can catch.

Francis C – End User Computing, Practice Manager
A Max Brooks signed copy of The Zombie Survival Guide AND a high quality technical manual for Citrix Xen Desktop 7!

John D – XaaS Consulting Architect
Cross country saddle bags for a BMW R-1200GS motor bike AND a ticket to London to meet Sharon Taylor,ITIL Chief Examiner, for lunch.

Chris C – Solutions Architect, Data Center
A Gillette Mach-3 Razor AND a converged data center (virtual computing platform) courtesy of Nutanix. Chris is keeping it simple in 2014 by combining storage, compute and networking in a single platform.

Joel G – Solutions Architect, Microsoft Solutions
An Air Force Academy sweatshirt AND an Azure environment managed by System Center 2012 R2. Who doesn’t want infrastructure provisioning, infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, automation and self-service in the New Year?

Ralph K – Practice Manager, Unified Communications
A Harley Davidson leather jacket AND a Cisco Jabber Client. So when Ralph is ready to hit the open road, he can unchain himself from the office but stay in touch by video and voice.

Chris W – Our CTO
Front row tickets to see Metallica in Germany next summer AND a guest appearance on TLC’s NY Ink, on which a talented artist Megan Massacre will create and complete an original tattoo design incorporating the logos of VMware, Cisco and EMC on Chris chest. He’s one dedicated dude.

As an IT professional, what’s on your holiday wish list this year? My gift to you? Here’s a free ebook on how organizations can take advantage of behavior emerging in the market for IT services.

Cloud computing, Featured

Why Automate? What to Automate? How to Automate?

By John Dixon, Consulting Architect

Automation is extremely beneficial to organizations. However, the questions often come up around why to automate, what to automate, and how to automate.

Why automate?

There are several key benefits surrounding automation. They include:

  • Saving time
  • Employees can be retrained to focus on other (hopefully more strategic) tasks
  • Removing human intervention reduces errors
  • Troubleshooting and support is improved when everything is deployed the same way

What to automate?

Organizations should always start with the voice of the customer (VoC). IT departments need to factor in what the end user wants and what the end user expects to improve their experience. If you can’t trace back something you’re automating to an improved customer experience, that’s usually a good warning sign that you should not be automating it. In addition, you need to be able to track back to how automation has provided a benefit to the organization. The benefit should always be measurable and always financial.

What are companies automating?

Requests management is the hot one because that’s a major component of cloud computing. This includes service catalogues and self-service portals. Providing a self-service portal, sending the request for approval based on the dollar amount requested, and fulfilling the order through one or more systems is something that is commonly automated today. My advice here is to automate tasks through a general purpose orchestrator tool (such as CA Process Automation or similar tools) so that automated jobs can be managed from a single console. This is instead of stitching together disparate systems that call each other in a “rat’s nest” of automation. The general purpose orchestrator also allows for easier troubleshooting when an automated task does not complete successfully.

How to automate?

There are some things to consider when sitting down to automate a task, or even determining the best things to automate. Here are a few key points:

  1. Start with the VoC or Voice of the Customer, and work backwards to identify the systems that are needed to automate a particular task. For example, maybe the customer is the Human Resources department, and they want to automate the onboarding of a new employee. It may have to setup user accounts, order a new cell phone, order a new laptop, and schedule the new employee on their manager’s calendar on their first day of work. Map out the systems that are required to accomplish this, and integrate those – and no more. You may find that some parts of the procedure may already be automated; perhaps your phone provider already has an interface to programmatically request new equipment. Take every advantage of these components.
  2. Don’t automate things that you can’t trace back to a benefit for the organization. Just because you can automate something doesn’t mean that you should. Again, use the voice of the customer and user stories here. A common user story is structure as follows:
    1. “As a [role],
    2. I want to [get something done]
    3. So that I can [benefit in the following way]”
  3. Start small and work upwards to automate more and more complex tasks. Remember the HR onboarding procedure in point #1? I wouldn’t suggest beginning your automation journey there. Pick out one thing to automate from a larger story, and get it working properly. Maybe you begin by automating the scheduling of an appointment in Outlook or your calendaring system, or creating a user in Active Directory. Those pieces become components in the HR onboarding story, but perhaps other stories as well.
  4. Use a general purpose orchestrator instead of stitching together different systems. As in point #3, using an orchestrator will allow you to build reusable components that are useful to automate different tasks. A general purpose orchestrator also allows for easier troubleshooting when things go wrong, tracking of automation jobs in the environment, and more advanced conditional logic. Troubleshooting automation any other way can be very difficult.
  5. You’ll need someone with software development experience. Some automation packages claim that even non-developers can build robust automation with “no coding required.” In some cases, that may be true. However, the experience that a developer brings to the table is an absolute must have when automating complex tasks like the HR onboarding example in point #1.

 

What has your organization automated? How have the results been?

 

BYOD, End-User Computing, Featured, Unified Communications, VDI

Breaking Down a BYOD Initiative

An Interview with Matt Mock, IT Director at GreenPages Technology Solutions

Ben: What encouraged GreenPages to adopt a BYOD policy?

Matt: The biggest reason we implemented a BYOD policy was that it offered the ability to give users the flexibility to use the technology that they are most comfortable with. Our IT department was getting frequent requests for non-standard equipment. This forced us to do one-offs all the time and made support very difficult.

Ben: How was the policy made? Who was involved in creating it?

Matt: The policy was created after many months of research. We looked into what other companies were doing, researched the costs for hardware and internal support, and interviewed different departments to see what was needed. We involved people from the top down, getting buy in from senior management to start. In addition, we also worked closely with the accounting department to make sure BYOD wouldn’t cost more than traditional hardware refreshes would. Our department did a proof of concept, then a pilot group, and then a gradual rollout. This allowed us to tweak the policy as needed.

Ben: Who has access to the BYOD program?

Matt: Not all departments. The program is for those where it makes the most sense from both a financial and support perspective. We didn’t want to grant BYOD to someone who couldn’t handle the issues on their own that would in turn create more technical support. We rolled it out to groups with specific requirements that weren’t going to cause us to spend more time on internal support.

Ben: Can you describe some of the highlights of the policy?

Matt: Within the policy we specify eligibility for the program, provide exact cost and reimbursement methods, and outline user responsibilities and requirements such as how to get hardware support. We also provide more specifics around what is and isn’t covered in the policy.

Ben: How do employees go about getting hardware support?

Matt: The user assumes responsibility of hardware support and is required to get a warranty. IT will help facilitate support but will not be responsible for the device. This goes back to making sure IT doesn’t spend more time supporting BYOD than they would have previously.

Ben: Makes sense.

Matt: I should also mention that GreenPages’ VDI environment allows us to offer the flexibility of BYOD with multiple devices because everyone can get the same experience regardless of the device used. Utilizing VDI also alleviates concerns around corporate data loss. If a device is lost or stolen, a person doesn’t have access to corporate resources just because they have the corporate device.

Ben: What have some of the main benefits been of the program?

Matt: The main benefits have been employee satisfaction and a decrease in hardware support for internal IT.

Ben: Some people think there are immediate cost savings from BYOD, but Chris Reily (GreenPages’ Director of Solutions Architecture) recently wrote a blog post cautioning people not to expect ROI in the first couple of years. Is this true?

Matt: Correct. You end up spending the same amount on hardware but support costs go down and employee satisfaction goes up. Direct ROI is difficult to measure when offering reimbursements. A company can avoid offering reimbursements but then you are greatly effecting employee satisfaction. If you give reimbursements, you probably end up spending the same over all amount.

Ben: What is your overall opinion of BYOD?

Matt: BYOD is not for every company nor is it necessarily for every employee within a company. A key thing to remember is that your infrastructure has to be ready for BYOD. If it is, then it’s a great perk and a great way to reduce time spent on internal support. It’s also a great way to allow new technologies into the organization and not have to give strict guidelines on what is and is not allowed.  Our BYOD initiative has also helped save my team time so that we can focus on more strategic projects that will help the business.

If you have questions for Matt around his experience implementing a BYOD policy, leave a comment or email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com

 

Cloud computing, cloud management, Featured, hybrid cloud, IT Management, Journey to the Cloud, Saas

Cloud Spending Will Increase 1 Billion% by 2014

By Ben Stephenson, Journey to the Cloud

It seems like every week a new study comes out analyzing cloud computing growth. Whether it’s that Public Cloud Services Spending will reach $47.4B in 2013, Global SaaS spending projected to grow from $13.5B in 2011 to $32.8B in 2016, the public cloud services market is forecast to grow 18.5 percent in 2013, or cloud spending at Dunder Mifflin will increase 200% by 2020, the indication is that cloud adoption and spending are on the rise. But how is that relevant to you?

Does it matter to the everyday CIO that cloud spending at midsized companies west of the Mississippi is going to increase by 15% over the next 3 years? The relevant question isn’t how much will cloud adoption and spending increase, but why will it do so? It’s the “why” that matters to the business. If you understand the why, it becomes easier to put context around the statistics coming out of these studies. It comes down to a shift in the industry – a shift in the economics of how a modern day business operates. This shift revolves around the way IT services are being delivered.

To figure out where the industry is going, and why spending and adoption are increasing, you need to look at where the industry has come from. The shift from on-premise IT to public cloud began with SaaS based technologies. Companies like Salesforce.com realized that organizations were wasting a lot of time and money buying and deploying hardware for their CRM solutions. Why not use the internet to be able to allow organizations to pay a subscription fee instead of owning their entire infrastructure? This, however, was not true cloud computing. Next came IaaS with Amazon’s EC3 initiative. Essentially, Amazon realized it had excess compute capacity and decided to rent it out to people who needed the extra space. IaaS put an enormous amount of pressure on corporate IT because App Dev. teams no longer had to wait weeks or months to test and deploy environments. Instead, they could start up right away and become much more efficient. Finally, PaaS came about with initiatives such as Microsoft Azure.

{Free ebook: The Evolution of Your Corporate IT Department}

The old IT paradigm, or a private cloud environment, consists of organizations buying hardware and software and keeping it in their datacenter behind their own firewalls. While a private cloud environment doesn’t need to be fully virtualized, it does need to be automated and very few organizations are actually operating in a true private cloud environment. Ideally, a true private cloud environment is supposed to let internal IT compete with public cloud providers by providing a similar amount of speed and agility that a public cloud allows. While the industry is starting to shift towards public cloud, the private cloud is not going away. Public cloud will not be the only way to operate IT, or even the majority of the way, for a long time. This brings us to the hybrid cloud computing model; the direct result of this shift. Hybrid cloud is the combination of private and public cloud architectures. It’s about the ability to be able to seamlessly transition workloads between private and public, or, in other words, moving on-premise workloads to rented platforms where you don’t own anything in order to leverage services.

So why are companies shifting towards a hybrid cloud model? It all comes down to velocity, agility, efficiency, and elasticity. IT delivery methodology is no longer a technology discussion, but, rather, it’s become a business discussion. CIOs and CFOs are starting to scratch their heads wondering why so much money is being put towards purchasing hardware and software when all they are reading about is cloud this and cloud that.

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The spending and adoption rates of cloud computing are increasing because the shift in the industry is no longer just talk – it’s real and it’s here now. The bottom line? We’re past hypothetical discussions. There is a major shift in the industry that business decision makers need to be taking seriously. If you’re not modernizing your IT operations by moving towards a hybrid cloud model, you’re going to be missing out on the agility and cost savings that can give your organization a substantial competitive advantage.  This is why cloud adoption and spending are on the rise. This is why you’re seeing a new study every month on the topic.

Cloud computing, colocation, Featured, IT Management, Journey to the Cloud, Miscellaneous IT

Moving Our Datacenter: An IT Director’s Take

An Interview with Matt Mock, IT Director, GreenPages Technology Solutions

Journey to the Cloud’s Ben Stephenson sat down with GreenPages’ IT Director Matt Mock to discuss GreenPages’ recent datacenter move.

Ben: Why did GreenPages decide to move its datacenter?

Matt: Our current contract was up so we started evaluating new facilities looking for a robust, redundant facility to house our equipment in. We needed a facility to meet specific objectives around our business continuity plan. In addition, we were also looking for cost savings.

Ben: Where did you move the datacenter to and from?

Matt: Geographically, we stayed in a close area. We moved it from Charlestown, MA a couple of miles down the road into downtown Boston. Staying within a close area certainly made the physical move quicker and easier.

Ben: What were the benefits of moving the datacenter?

Matt: Ultimately, we were able to get into an extremely redundant and secure datacenter that provided us with cost savings. Furthermore, the datacenter is also a large carrier hotel which gives us additional savings on circuit costs. With this move we’re able to further our capabilities of delivering to our customers 24/7.

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Ben: Tell us about the process of the move? What had to happen ahead of time to ensure a smooth transition?

Matt: The most important parts were planning, testing, and communication. We put together an extremely detailed plan that broke out every phase of the move down to 15 minute increments. We devised teams for the specific phases that had a communication plan for each team. We also devised a backup emergency plan in the event that we hit any issues the night of the move.

Ben: What happened the night of the move?

Matt: The night of the move we leveraged the excellent facilities at Markley to be able to run a command center that was run by one of our project managers. In the room, we had multiple conference bridges to run the different work streams to ensure smooth and constant communication. We also utilized Huddle, our internal collaboration tool, to communicate as our internal systems were down during the move.

Ben: Anything else you had to factor in?

Matt: Absolutely. The same night of the move we were also changing both voice and data providers at three different locations, which added another layer of complexity. We had to work closely with our new providers to ensure a smooth transition. Because we have a 24/7 Managed Services division at GreenPages, we needed to continue to offer customers the same support during the move that we do on a day-to-day basis.

Ben: Did you experience unexpected events during the move? If so, what were they and how did you handle them?

Matt: With any complex IT project you’re going to experience unexpected events. A couple that we experienced were some hardware failures and unforeseen configuration issues. Fortunately, our detailed plan accounted for these issues, and we were able to address them with the teams on hand and remain on schedule.

Ben: You used an all GreenPages team to accomplish this, right?

Matt: Correct. We did not use any outside vendors for this move – all services were rendered by the GreenPages team. Last time we used outside providers and this time we had a much better experience. I’m in the unique position where I have access to an entire team of project managers and technical resources that made doing this possible. In fact, this is something we offer our customers (from consulting to project management to the actual move) so our team is very, very good at it.

Ben: What advice do you have for other IT Directors who are considering moving their datacenters?

Matt: Detailed planning and constant communication is critical, having a plan in place for every possible scenario, and having an emergency plan ready so that in the middle of the night you’re not scrambling with how to address those unforeseen issues.

Ben: Congratulations on the successful move. See you Monday after the Patriots crush your Steelers.

Would you like to learn more about how GreenPages can help you with your datacenter needs?

CMaaS, CTO, End-User Computing, Featured, IT Management, Journey to the Cloud, Miscellaneous IT, Network Infrastructure, SDN, Virtualization

Trick or Treat: Top 5 Fears of a CTO

By Chris Ward, CTO

Journey to the Cloud’s Ben Stephenson recently sat down with Chris Ward, CTO of GreenPages-LogicsOne, to get his take on what the top 5 fears of a CTO are.

Ben: Chief Technology Officer is obviously an extremely strategic, important, and difficult role within an organization. Since it’s almost Halloween, and since you’re an active (and successful) CTO yourself, I thought we would talk about your Top 5 Fears of a CTO. You also have the unique perspective of seeing how GreenPages uses technology internally, as well as how GreenPages advises clients to utilize different technologies.

Chris: Sounds good. I think a major fear is “Falling Behind the Trends.” In this case, it’s not necessarily that you couldn’t see what was coming down the path. You can see it there and know it’s coming, but can you get there with velocity? Can you get there before the competition does?

Ben: Do you have any examples of when you have avoided falling behind the trends?

Chris: At GreenPages, we were fortunate to catch virtualization early on when a lot of others didn’t. We had a lot of customers who were not sold on virtualization for 2-4 years. Those customers are now very far behind the competition and are trying to play catch up. In some cases, I’m sure it’s meant the CTO is out of a job. We also utilized virtualization internally early on and reaped the benefits. Another example is our CMaaS Brokerage and Governance offering. We recognize the significance of cloud brokerage and the paradigm shift towards a hybrid cloud computing model. In this case we are out ahead of the market.

Ben: How about a time when GreenPages did fall behind a trend?

Chris: I would say we fell behind a trend when we began our managed services business. It was traditional, old school managed services. It definitely took us some time to figure out where we wanted to go and where we wanted to be. While we may have fallen behind initially, we recognized change was needed and our Cloud Management as a Service offering has transformed us. Instead of sitting back and missing the boat, we are now in a great spot. This will be a huge help to our customers – but will (and does already) help us significantly internally as well.

Ben: How about fear number 2?

Chris: Fear number two is not seeing around the bend.  From my perspective as the CTO at a solutions provider, things move so fast in this industry and GreenPages offers such a wide variety and breadth of products and services to customer – it can be very difficult to keep up with. If we focused on only one area it would be a lot easier, but since we focus on cloud, virtualization, end user computing, security, storage, datacenter transformation, networking and more it can be quite challenging. For a corporate CTO you are allowed to be a market follower, which can be somewhat of an advantage. While you don’t want to fall behind, you do have partners, like GreenPages and others out there, that you can count on.

Ben: That makes sense. What about a 3rd fear?

Chris: Another large fear for CTOs is making a wrong turn. CTOs can get the crystal ball out and there may be a couple of things coming down the road…but what happens if you turn left and everyone else turns right? What happens if you make the wrong decision or the decision to early?

Ben: Can you give us an example?

Chris: A good example of taking a turn too early in the Cloud era is with the company Nirvanix. Cloud storage is extremely important, but what happens when a business model has not been properly vetted? This is one of the “gotchas” of being an early adopter. To be successful you need a good mix. You can’t be too conservative, but you can’t jump all in any time a new company pops up – the key is balance.

Ben: Do you have any advice for CTOs about this?

Chris: Sure – just because you can doesn’t mean you should!

Ben: I’ve heard you say that one before…

Chris: For example, software defined networking stacks, with products like Cisco Insieme and VMware NSX are very cool new technologies. I personally, and we at GreenPages, think this is going to be the next big thing. But we’re at a crossroads…who should use these? Who will gain the benefits? For example, maybe it makes sense for the enterprise but not for small businesses? This is something major that I have to determine – who is this a good fit for?

Ben: How about fear number 4?

Chris: Fear number 4 revolves around retaining my talent. I want my team to feel like they are always learning something new. I want them to know they are always on the bleeding edge of IT. I want to give them a world that changes very quickly. In my experience, most people that are stellar employees in a technical capacity want to be challenged constantly and to try new things and look at different ways of doing things.

Ben: What should CTOs do to try and retain talent?

Chris: Really take the time and focus on building a culture and environment that harnesses what I mentioned above. If not, you’re at serious risk of losing top talent.

Ben: Before I get too scared let’s get to number 5 and finish this up.

Chris: I’d say the fifth fear of mine is determining if I am working with the right technologies and the right vendors. IT can often be walking a tightrope between vendors from technical and business perspectives. From my perspective, I need to make sure we are providing our customers with the right technology from the right vendor to meet their needs. I need to determine if the technology works as advertised. Is it something that is reasonable to implement? Is there money in this for GreenPages?

Ben: What about from a customer’s perspective?

Chris: The customer also needs to make sure they align themselves with the right partners.  CTOs want to find partners that are looking towards the future, who will advise them correctly, and who will allow the business to stay out ahead of the competition. If a CTO looks at a partner or technology and doesn’t think it’s really advancing the business, then it’s time to reevaluate.

Ben: Thanks for the time Chris – and good luck!

What are your top fears as an IT decision makers? Leave them in the comment section!

Download this free ebook on the evolution of the corporate IT department. Where has the IT department been, where is it now, and where should it be headed?

 

 

Featured, Miscellaneous IT, Project management

How to Project Manage When it’s Not Your Job AND Everything is a Priority

By Melanie Haskell, Project Manager III

Over the years, we have heard customers repeatedly ask for tips on how they can manage their initiatives when project management is not their only job function and everything is a priority.  Before you can manage your time, you need to know what it is you must manage.

  • Create a list of what needs to be done. The first draft of your list should capture only high level items; don’t worry you will add more details later. At this point, you’re focused on what you need to get done, not how you are going to get there.
  • Prioritize the items on the high level list. In order to create realistic priorities, set aside the concept of “everything has to be done yesterday.” This is a first pass so prioritize the list based on what you know now. You can create any coding technique that works for you (for example, high, low and medium) – the only thing that matters that the coding works for you.
  • Now take the highest priority items and determine what needs to be done to complete the objective of that item (this is called a Task List). Eventually you will work through all items on your list.  This is an iterative process.  You might be able to create this task list on your own, or you might need to pull in other entities to flesh out the details. The more complex the item, the more help you may need. For example,  upgrading the firmware on your non-production SAN is a much easier item then moving your on premise email to a hosted cloud solution or embarking on hybrid cloud computing projects. When you start talking to people, you start discovering what needs to happen, and the picture becomes clearer.
  • Organize the task list conceptually – see if you need to pull in others just like in the step above. Since you did your due diligence during the discovery stage, now your objective is to chunk out the work.
  • Assign resources – ask for help if you do not have the ability to assign anyone.  You might end up owning all items, but if you can delegate tasks do so.  Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to do it all. You can be much more effective if you can delegate tasks as necessary.  Make sure individuals understand the overall goal and how it benefits the organization, as well as how their role affects the overall initiative. Gather feedback as much as possible as this will help identify risks, missed steps in the plan etc.
  • Determine if there is a tool you want to use to help you manage the task plan (i.e. the to-do list).  Some popular tools are Microsoft Project, Excel or Word. It does not matter what tool you utilize as long as it helps you with task management (i.e. what needs to get done, who is doing it and when will it happen).  Use technology to help you!
  • Set a communication plan – How will you know a task status?  This information can be gathered in many ways. Find what works for you and your resources.  Set schedules and follow up with people to make sure they are meeting their deadlines. Make time to monitor the task list to verify the team is in alignment with the committed tasks and timelines.

 

This all might sound like a lot of work, and you’re probably already over-tapped, but this will create efficiency and save a lot of time in the end.  It’s better to plan out how you will build your house before you pick up a hammer, nails and some wood and start building. Good luck and remember, if needed, our Project Management team is here in the wings to offer you professional advice any time!