Jon Greaves: Service Science, Gadgets and BBQ (not necessarily in that order...)

Its with very mixed feelings I am posting this blog entry.  I'll be leaving Sun at the end of September to seek out some new challenges.  Its been an amazing three and a half years since joining as part of the SevenSpace acquisition, during this time I've had the privilege to work in many areas of Sun Services and get to know and become part of the Sun services family.  Services is unlike any other place I've worked during my career, the drive of the services team to provide world class support to our customers and the amount of innovation that takes place every day is staggering. 

So I bid you all farewell from this blog and look forward to the next adventure.  To keep in touch or to see where I land please tag me on linkedin or facebook (see below for direct links)

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jongreaves  (linkedin)
http://profile.to/jongreaves/ (facebook)

Please check out http://www.sun.com/service/servicescience this is a new section of Sun Services presence on the internet.  Really great video interview with Kevin Ellis and Alok Rishi providing an overview of the discipline and how service-science is evolving the way we think about and create new services.  Already some great content posted including a presentation from Andy Ma called "putting the science in service" which I would highly recommend.

Expect to see a lot more content as these webpages evolve into a services-science community.

Alok Rishi who is our Chief Technologist for Services Science forwarded over a very interesting reference to Hillary Clinton's innovation initiative (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=3656)  while the political landscape has changed since this was posted (10/10/07) the section on services science I found particularly interesting and to the point.

"Create the Services Science Initiative. The services sector now accounts for approximately 80% of the U.S. economy. Nevertheless, innovation is rarely associated with the generation and delivery of services. Companies are increasingly carrying out service R&D, but there is no discipline that promotes innovation and productivity in the services sector in the same way that electrical engineering, for example, has led to technological advances in the development of the computer chip. Accordingly, Hillary will create a Services Science Initiative. Modeled on the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the federal government will help support R&D in services; support and encourage cross-disciplinary research that draws on fields such as computer science, management, operations, and organizational behavior; and also facilitate the dissemination of knowledge. The Services Science Initiative will help improve the competitiveness of American business, and in the process, create jobs."

Its been interesting watching the US political process and seeing increasing references to services science related topics and expanding NSF's reach to tap these areas.  I'm hopeful no matter who ends up in the oval office the services science agenda will move forward.

-- update 6/26/08 -  Alok just created a blog at http://blogs.sun.com/alok/ i'm for one are looking forward to learning more.

Now the warm weather is here, well in Colorado one day snow to two days warm :-) I thought it time to share my BBQ sauce recipe I mentioned in the past.  This is based on one of Steven Raichlen base BBQ sauces (I think from Ribs, Ribs, Outrageous ribs) I've tweaked it a little.  Works really well for chicken and pork dishes either by basting for the last part of cooking or as something to dunk.

Ingrediance:

- 6 slices of good cold smoked bacon (needs to be cold smoked i.e. uncooked)
- 1 dried chile de arbol broken in half (add a second if you like more of a kick)
- 1 cup diced onion
- 2 gloves of chopped garlic
- a few good glugs of worcestershire sauce (probably 2 tablespoons)
- one cup ketchup
- one cup of orange juice
- juice of half a lemon
- fresh cracked pepper
- 2 or 3 peaches diced
- 2 table spoons of molasses

making the sauce.
Start by roughly cutting up the bacon then rendering out the pork fat goodness in a large saucepan, add onions and chile and continue to cook for about 5 mins. Add the rest of the ingredients putting the peaches in last.  Cook down for about 30mins until everything thickens up.  You will need to stir the sauce as you go.

The final stage is to strain out the sauce.  I found a really nice strainer thats shaped like a beer tankard but has a fine mesh towards the bottom then a handle you turn that drives two metal arms pushing forcing the contents through the mesh.  A quick google didn't come up with a name for it.  Nice thing about the strainer is it hold three cups so and does a good job at forcing the content through the mesh.

Once strained put in a bowl to cool.  The original recipe says it stores for a week in the fridge, I normally struggle to keep it around for more than a day. 

Note, a couple of times I've not been able to find cold smoked bacon and substituted regular thick cut, uncooked bacon and a few drops of liquid smoke.  Real deal does taste better.

A few months ago I really started to dig into to agile software development methodologies. Services Engineering were moving down this route and I thought it would be good to be at least fluent in the terminology. Most of my development experience and code (which thankfully for everyone is no doubt been retired :-) was using a very traditional waterfall methodology, even if we called it something else it basically was requirements up front then after a period of time (which ranged from 6months to 1year) a test cycle (normally compressed because the development overran) then customer got to see a result.  Very hit or miss.

Services Engineering now is in high gear with scrum as our agile methodology. We are working on 30 day iterations or sprints and using all the trappings such as scrum meetings, sprint reviews and carefully managing backlogs. Below is a good graphic I borrowed from Wikipedia that describes the process very well.

So far we have used scrum on a handful of projects. The results have really been truly astounding. I'm now addicted to sprint reviews, its almost like Christmas every 30 days. The progress we are seeing has been fantastic and what's more our customers/constituents like the more "show and tell" approach where they get to see, help correct requirements/course mid flight. I remember clearly with the waterfall style the heated arguments about scope creep and requirements change. Scrum takes this in its stride and assumes this will be the case.

6 months in and we are really reaping the benefits for software developments.

Now comes the punch-line. When I look at the way we and to be honest most of the industry define/build support services its basically a waterfall approach. Through Sun's interaction with the Services Research and Innovation Initiative (http://thesri.org) we have come across several organizations pushing these boundaries.

One of my favorite concepts was presented by Walter Ganz from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering. This was the idea of servicescape. Where services could be built, tested and iterated within a virtual world. The best link I could find for this is at www.rhsmith.umd.edu/ces/frontiers/presentations2007/Fisk.pdf checkout the servlab examples. This is concept I'm keen to embrace for Sun Services and will be looking for some opportunities in the coming months to try out this approach. Keep an eye on Kevin Ellis' blog as we take this journey... should be a fun ride :-)

Technorati Tags: Service Science

I've always been very passionate about security and privacy, even more so when customers trust you to run IT infrastructure/data centers. Over the years we often heard (both my time at sevenspace and sun) why are you not certified with xyz certification. I also hear a lot of "well competitor-x has SAS70, when will you get it?".

My view has always been lets find a certification that makes sense for our customers for the services we are delivering. Statement of Auditing Standards (SAS70) was always one that I had difficulty looking at the relevance for our managed services. When you consider its developed and administered by the American Institute of Public Accountants and its focus is on organizations performing/providing financial transactions it really doesn't fit well with the discipline of running data center infrastructure. Its also not widely acknowledged outside of the USA where ISO and formally British Standards dominate customer requests.

What is really needed is a certification that embodies the operational processes/disciplines along with controls required to run a datacenter. Which is the reason for the post.

Sun's Managed Operations team recently earned ISO27001:2005 certification for our US operations, with plans to cover APAC and EMEA operations centers in the near future. This is fantastic news on a number of levels for our customers. I'm also very excited for the team who drove this certification, I believe Sun is one of only 50 US companies to be certified to this standard.

So congrats to the managed ops team, I'm sure this will open even more new doors for sun to deliver managed services. To learn more about managed operations check out http://www.sun.com/service/managedservices/index.jsp

We have big plans for the managed operations solution over the next 12months, this certification underlines the commitment to deliver what customers really want. I cant wait to start sharing (and showing) more...

Technorati Tags: ISO27001, ManagedOperations

So far so good. I'm very pleased with the air. Performance has been great, i've had parallels fired up a couple of times and doesn't feel a whole lot different to my first generation mac book pro. Battery life seems around 4.5hrs with normal use.

I had planned on using the migration assistant to move over core data then reinstall apps. I didn't see a way of moving just data files from apps like the address book etc so gave up on that idea and reverted to selecting the apps and exporting/importing files. I had also assumed that the migration assistant on the MBP (from the leopard install) was current, if you do want to migrate over a network then you need to use the OSX disk 1 shipped with the air.

The remote disk works great and i've remotely used the MBP's dvd a couple of times to install.

The wireless-N doesn't seem to be happy with my linksys router. I've not had a chance to debug this yet and dropped back to using G. Hopefully its something small and not an incompatibility with the draft spec.

Couple of gripes

1. I'm getting a tick/tock noise every few seconds, almost sounds like a disk parking. Going to check more into that today
2. I dont get the benefit of the extended multitouch that was so hyped. Maybe when more apps can take advantage of this it becomes useful, for now it doesn't make my life any easier
3. The keyboard while fine to use brings back memories of the sinclair spectrum from the 80's. My mind is telling me those keys should be little black rubber things.

I'm traveling for the next few weeks so should have a good chance to take it on the road.

-- update

After spending some time on the phone with applecare the product specialist wants my current air back to investigate the ticking noise (the engineer seemed quite excited that the fault was constant).  They agreed to swap out for a new air, I need to head over to the applestore to swap later this evening.  Will then get a chance to try a timemachine recovery (fingers crossed). 

Technorati Tags: macbook air

I'm not sure how I can write this without sounding like an apple fanboy (I'm not honest!) but wow...

The air just arrived. My unit was shipped from Shanghai, looks like the air is assembled in china. Interestingly i've got the USB network adaptor and super drive ordered, these come in from California.

Packaging is up to apples usual standards. I was slightly alarmed to feel how heavy the box was. According to the packing slip it weighs a little over 7lbs. The good news is when I pulled the computer out of the box it really is incredibly light, the size also looks great. I've been a huge fan of the sub notebook previously owning a sony tr2. This seems to be just the right set of trade off between size and function.

Its sitting quietly in the corner charging up, more to come later once I have juice...

When I first moved to the US I became mesmerized by infomercials. The idea of a 30 minute slot advertising a product, not being afraid to name competitors and the final pull of "doubling the order for no additional charge" really hooked me. This is so alien compared to the UK television I was used to. Also the good ones seem to have an englishman doing the pitch so also feeling a little national pride! I'm sad to say several purchases including a "set it and forget it" rotisserie and a steam cleaner (long story!).

Back in November I was flicking channels and came across a product called the grill daddy. Its basically a grill brush with a small water tank that leaks water onto the brushes. The commercial was amazing, turning a dirty grill into a spotless "good as new". My sister purchased this for a christmas present and I must say I've been super impressed. This thing really works as well as advertised!

Just crank the grill up really high and burn off, then run the grill daddy across. Lots of steam and hissing and the grill really comes up as good as new. I'm using a built-in vermont castings grill that I found a lot harder to keep clean compared to my old stainless grill. This makes it a pleasure to use and I'm now getting the benefits of those porcelain covered cast iron grill grates.

Two thumbs up from me :-)

I've also added a rib rack (stacks up five ribs vertically) and another favorite (and crowd pleaser) the beer can chicken roaster.

Technorati Tags: BBQ

I mentioned 6 months or so ago taking over a new gig, we basically combined the chief technologist positions for services delivery (GCS) and Services Group (product management). We also consolidated the services engineering function and organization with this new role.

Within services engineering we have core engineering teams that focus on the lines of business such as

• managed services
• support services
• professional services

each core team has a portfolio of applications they support and work closely with the business teams.

As we implemented these changes we also built out several new functions. The first of which we call the Services Innovation Office (SIO), this group focuses on service science, collaboration with internal/external organizations and new service concepts. Kevin Ellis who leads this group has posted his first blog http://blogs.sun.com/sio.

The second group works who works very closely with SIO is our innovation engineering team. This group focuses on building/engineering new innovations for services. We are working on our first batch of projects - more to come on these over the next quarter as we start releasing. Vidhya Srinivasan who leads innovation engineering also just started blogging. Check out Vidhya's blog at http://blogs.sun.com/vidhya/

Welcome to both Vidhya and Kevin to the blogsphere, I'm really looking forward to hearing your views...

Technorati Tags: service science

Time really has flown for the last week here in Beijing. I think its a combination of many good meetings with my team and getting to explore some of the local attractions. Some of the highlights include

• Attending the ERI new years party, this was a really great evening. Some very impressive acts and some great talent, my favorite was the band playing Bon Jovi's "its my life". I think I volunteered Tae Kim and myself to do Karaoke at next years party, Sin-Yaws only comment without blinking was you better be good. So Tae, you and I need to practice :-)

• Visiting the great wall, and climbing (a small) section. This really was breathtaking both in terms of the wonder of the wall and also making the climb. Truly amazing sight. Sarah Yin acted as our guide (thanks Sarah), I learned many new things. I even was asked by a complete stranger to have my photo taken with her. That made my day :-) Amazingly my blackberry decided to go crazy and pull in a bunch of email while on the wall. Sarah was kind enough to translate some calligraphy from Chairman Mao - " He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man"

• A tour of Tiananmen Square and the forbidden city, the beauty of the forbidden city was stunning and since the weather was so cold very few ventured our so was not so busy as the summer time. In Tienanmen Square I learnt about the "hello, hello people", street vendors who are looking to sell everything from fake rolex watches to Olympic games merchandise.

• The Temple of Heaven - Sandy Gong was kind enough to take us on a tour on Sunday morning, again another amazing place. In the morning many retired people gather to dance, sing and practice martial arts and calligraphy. The calligraphy was written on the pavement in water and evaporated before your eyes.

• Learning about tea, I think I first tasted english tea when I was about 7. My reaction was "why would anyone drink this?", i've not tried tea since that time. Sandy took us to a tea shop that also teaches the history and origins, we tasted 5 kinds of tea and much to my surprise I found that I really enjoyed Oolong tea. I can see myself drinking this regularly.

• The many great meals during the visit, my favorite was hot pot which is similar to fondue.

I would like to thank the managed services engineering team and Sin-yaw/eri for taking such great care of me. I'm already looking forward to my next opportunity to return to Beijing.

Technorati Tags: beijing, eri

I arrived safely if not delayed in Beijing yesterday evening.  The flight from San Francisco was 7hrs late departing due to "ramp maintenance", not exactly sure if thats the ramp was broken and needed to be fixed or the repair was on the aircraft on the ramp.  Anyhow, the flight landed a little after 10:30pm in Peking international airport.

Today I spent a little time catching up with my team, its really good to put a face to a name/voice.  Then meetings with Sin-Yaw Wang and then a session with global customers service engineers and managers on technical leadership programs in Sun Services.  Thanks to all who attended in person and dialed in, appreciate the interaction/questions.

The drive from the hotel to the office was very interesting, the traffic in Beijing seems completely chaotic with a lot of horn honking and very few turn signals, looking out from my hotel window at a busy intersection its almost like watching a mechanical ballet.  But add in some snow and the drivers seem to lose their mojo, we probably have less than half an inch on the ground but the taxis nearly wiped out two times and passed several accidents.  I'll never complain about colorado drivers in the snow again :-)

We passed the olympic stadium on the way to the office, amazing structure.  Its nick name is the birds nest for very good reason.

(image courtesy of wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_National_Stadium)

I'm really looking forward to tomorrows engineering and research institute new year celebration.
 

I'll confess, i've been a car guy since before I could walk (or talk). So when I had the chance to visit with a partner in Detroit I was very keen to go, although with other travel plans this was somewhat of a compressed visit, just 5hrs on the ground.

Detroit was really not what I expected, after hearing the stories from various people of a city thats core industry is in a slump and receiving little investment - I was surprised to see what appears to be a busy and modern downtown and after having what turned out to be a very knowledgeable and friendly taxis driver take me back to the airport learned a lot of the new investment heading into casinos, stadiums and hopefully the water front. Detroit really felt like a more laid back Chicago with a huge potential for growth.

I'm embarrassed to say that I failed to spot the worlds largest tire (8 storeys high) when I exited the airport, but did catch a view on the way back. The uniroyal tire seems to have an interesting history of its own, starting life as a ferris wheel for the 1965 worlds fair (amazingly powered by a 100 horsepower motor), then being relocated to I-94 outside the airport. Since its move its had a large nail stuck into it to show nailgard sealing a puncture, then most recently a more modern hub cap. Although I must admit I liked the pictures of the original spoked wheel vs. the more modern look.

I hope I'm able to return in the future when I have more time.

Next week I'm very excited to be heading to Beijing...

(pictures courtesy of uniroyal corp website www.uniroyal.com/about/gianttire.html)

Back when I lived in the UK I spent a lot of time (and money) on my photography habit, a really good friend got me hooked on the photography bug. We spent a lot of time taking pictures of aircraft at the local USAF bases. At the time autofocus lenses were really not fast enough to shoot high speed objects so the camera of choice was a Nikon 301 body with a selection of lenses, the two most used were a 300mm zoom and a really nice 500mm fixed (mirror).

Now fast forward to this century :-) i've had several point and shoot cameras, currently have a nikon coolpix (with built in wifi). I've never made the transition to a digital SLR. Santa has been good to me this year and I have some bestbuy dollars on a gift card thats burning a hole in my pocket.

With the recommendation of Doug Toombs I'm leaning away from Nikon and looking at the Cannon Rebel XLT + a nice 300mm zoom. Seems to get very good reviews and has enough settings that I can have some fun both using the camera and post processing.

These days living in Colorado there is so much opportunity to shoot with a good camera, both in terms of getting some time in the mountains and also (see below) some of the surreal sunsets we get just from the back garden. I'm guessing these amazing sunsets are a result of reflective light hitting the mountains then bouncing into cloud formations. You really do get a little of the end of the world feeling when you see them.

So, looking for some community wisdom. Should I take the plunge with the Cannon setup? Unfortunately I can not reuse any of the glass from my Nikon setup, or seem to be able to sell on ebay so I need to start from scratch.

Technorati Tags: digital photography

Andy Ma has a really great post on service science over on his blog mamafufu following on from a presentation which took place at the ICICA'07 event in Chengdu, China. Many thanks to Professor Li and the ICICA committee for allowing Sun the opportunity to present.

This is a subject I am very passionate about. With 57% of the global GDP now being services driven its clear an area that needs more investment and research.

During the next couple of months I'll describe how Sun Services is investing in services science both directly in the way we build solutions and indirectly with some very interesting collaborations.

Watch this space :-)

Technorati Tags: service science