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Friday March 11, 2005
| ITSM: Transforming IT | Computers |
Here are two recent
letters I sent to customers following workshops designed to map out a
strategy to transform their IT organization thru the assessment
of their people, processes, and technologies and the application of
best practices. I thought that these might be beneficial to others who
are attempting to do likewise. There are no great pearls of wisdom
here, but it might get you thinking about having the conversation. ITSM
= IT Service Management.
One client is attempting to synthesize several frameworks (ITIL, Sigma, ISO, and CMM-I) into a multi-year strategy to uplevel their operational capability. They asked for a mapping between ISO and ITIL, to which I replied in the 2nd letter (below).
Hi <--->,
I'm glad to see you
are moving forward with this. As we mentioned during our workshop, some
clients choose to perform the SunTONE assessment by themselves. Others
seek assistance from Sun or a partner. Still others do both...
performing an informal survey themselves and then requesting a formal
evaluation from Sun. Either way, since I'm just down the street from
you, I would like to keep tabs on your efforts and help ensure you get
the assistance you need and the results you desire. If you find there
are areas that you'd like to target for improvement, I can also help
suggest services and/or technologies and/or best practices that will
help improve your "score". Of course, it isn't about the score - but a
firm's ability to deliver a quality service and experience that meets
documented SLOs at a desired level of security and cost.
As I've
mentioned, your operational capability is already (it appears) at a
higher state of maturity than most. A SunTONE "stamp" will certify this
capability and is a badge of honor. You'll join hundreds of other firms
that have attained this status, and will differentiate yourselves from
the other hosting centers.
If you have a standing meeting to
discuss status and actions and gaps associated with this effort, and if
you think I could add value to this meeting, I would be more than happy
to attend and provide insights and suggestions where appropriate.
Hi <--->,
I'm
more of a Sigma guy than an ISO guy... But from my investigation of
ISO, it seems clear that a clean mapping exists between ISO and Sigma.
These are initiatives to create and document and control processes to
ensure a high degree of quality and predictability and continuous
improvement/refinement. These are wonderful tools to ensure a process
continues to be aligned with expectations and goals, and is as
efficient as possible.
ITIL and SunTONE, on the other hand, DEFINE best practices and processes.
See
the difference? ITIL is a set of practices/processes, whereas Sigma and
ISO are mechanisms to ensure any process is (and continues to be)
optimized.
So, in that sense, they are HIGHLY complementary, but
orthogonal. I don't believe there is overlap or mapping between ISO and
ITIL. You really need both the processes (ITIL) and the means to define
and measure and analyze and implement and control (Sigma/ISO) those
processes.
Note that both ITIL and Sigma/ISO are
systemic/intrusive frameworks that, if done right, will infiltrate the
whole organization and will be embraced and promoted from the highest
levels. It is a culture change that takes more than a training
campaign, MBOs, and a tiger team. You already know this, but many
clients fail because they are not prepared to endure the multi-year
evolution that this kind of change requires. But, for those that
succeed, there are great rewards all along the way... incremental
quick-hit benefits that don't require huge time or resource investments.
Many
IT shops, I believe, will be outsourced and/or be "consolidated" over
the next few years because they can not control their costs, security,
and service levels. ITIL+Sigma/ISO is the path to survival and
excellence.
Hope this helps!!
March 11, 2005 04:50 PM EST Permalink
| Java Jingle | Computers |
Java Jingle from 1997: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/Java.mp3
I think Sun employees wrote and recorded
that song. Anyone recall who? A verse near the end states: "Nobody can
tell you what the future may bring...". Well, that was 8 years ago.
Check this out!
As Java technology enters its 10th year, the Java Brand is a one of
the most powerful technology brands on the planet. You'll see it on
your Java powered mobile phone from Sony Ericcson, Motorola, etc or
your Palm PDA, on a variety of new PCs from the factory, built into
various printers from Ricoh, baked into mobile games, and a part of
slew of websites from our partners like Borland, Oracle, and others.
Java technology is on over 2 Billion devices and counting!
The Facts
In
our most recent study we found that 86% of consumers and 100% of
developers and IT recognize the Java brand. In addition we have seen
the association of Java and Sun grow by 15% year over year. Over 80% of
Developers and IT professionals know that Java comes from Sun. In
addition 1 in 3 consumers will buy a product with the Java brand over a
comparable product, this is up from 1 in 5 just a year ago. Java.com
just blew past 10 Million visitors per month, which is more visitors
than Nintendo.com, Wired.com, Playstation.com, Time.com,
Businessweek.com, and many others. Here are some facts and figures:
- 2 million downloads of J2EE 1.4 - the most popular release ever!
- 4.5 million Java developers, up 7% from June 2004
- 2 billion Java-enabled devices, up 14% from June 2004
- 750M Java Cards, up 25% from June 2004
- 579M phones, up 65% from June 2004
- 650M PCs, up 8% from June 2004
March 11, 2005 02:09 PM EST Permalink
| Power Hungry Grids!! | Computers |
I find it ironic that our industry uses Power Generation and Distribution Grids as a metaphor to describe the utility based computing model that is being promoted by vendors and demanded by an increasing number of customers. Actually, it is a reasonable and appropriate analogy. You don't build your own unique power generator for your home or business, and you don't hire a Chief Electrical Officer. Instead you plug into the Power Grid(s)... and leverage standards and scale economics and the variable cost structure of a reliable shared service provider for which you pay for what you consume at a predictable cost per unit. Being a commodity adhering to standards, you can easily switch providers with little or no impact to your operation. You demand a level of service quality, and know what you are willing to pay for that service.
I find it ironic simply because it will take a main artery from the Power Grid to, well, power the Compute Grids being designed. There are plans on drawing boards to increase the compute density of future servers such that a standard 19" datacenter rack will (fully populated with the most dense compute servers) consume up to 25KW of power!! That's huge. Consider a data center floor filled with these racks. You can imagine the engineering challenges associated with extracting that much heat from these blast furnaces. And then, of course, it's up to the datacenter to do something with that all that heat. One customer measured hurricane force chilled air speeds underneath their raised floor tiles! To make matters worse, according to p.20 of this report (see the table below), computer equipment accounts for less than half of the power demand for a typical data center.
The good news is that you'll have an unprecedented amount of compute power on each floor tile, so in theory, you won't need as many racks. Of course, we all know that the demand for compute capability exceeds the supply. On the other hand, the ultimate realization of the utility model suggests that you might not even have your own datacenter. Like your gas, water, electricity, cable, and phone services, the cost of the building, of powering, cooling, and administering the equipment, of security, insurance, disaster recovery, etc, will all be absorbed by the utility provider. You simply pay for the service at a known rate per unit of consumption.
That sure sounds great in theory (unless you are the Chief Integration Officer, or Chief Infrastructure Officer). It'll be fun to watch this play out. And watch IT earn the title: "Information Technology".
March 11, 2005 10:03 AM EST Permalink
| 24 Skidoo | Puzzles |
This problem is as easy as it sounds. No tricks at all. You must use all four integers exactly once [1, 3, 4, 6]. You may use each of the four basic arithmetic operators [add, subtract, multiply, divide], and parentheses, as many times as you wish (zero or more times). No other operators are allowed. You should end up with a simple formula that results in exactly 24. Integer math isn't allowed (eg: 6*4 + 1/3), where 1/3 is truncated to the integer: zero. Good luck!
March 11, 2005 06:09 AM EST Permalink
This is a personal weblog, I do not speak for my employer.