Social Business....the next BIg thing?

The world is still a buzz about all things digital, not the conference, the perspective that our world is fast becoming digital in all that we do.

Take Social Business, not a main stream phrase yet. Today you hear about Social Marketing, Social Media, or Social Networking. Form a business perspective they are relate to one thing, how do I reach out and connect with more potential customers. It's about building the bottom line.

While my focus is business I am not new to this world, I have a whole 9 months under my belt. In that time I have already been named by Network World as one of 12 CIO's who twitter. I am also ranked #26 out of 50 by Top 50 CIO and IT Leaders in the Social Media

So what does this really mean? and Why do you care?

For me the perspective is future customers. For each business the focus may be completely unique. If I am Apple and I have a hot new product called iPad, then social business is about securing more clients now. At least that is how Dell approaches it. Maybe you are in a food products business like Immaculate Baking who are creating a community for ongoing customer relationship, product development idea's and more. As I said for each company the why will be unique.

Depending upon your customer (the person not the business) and in general their age group, the younger they are the more viable this medium is today as a valid sales/customer service channel. These 20-30 somethings today are starting their careers and as they mature in their business roles, they will increasingly bring these tools they grew up with into the way they do business. So for us being ready to participate in future conversations about international trade is our reason for looking at Social Business as a viable channel to start investing in today.

The rule of thumb is that we do business with people we like and trust, not unknown - nameless business entities. So the question is what are you doing to be more personal with your clients and your future clients?

Thanks for listening...

Virtualization, beyond the hype...

Background

My team has been doing virtualization in the data centre since late 2001 using IBM's Power based technology. We were recognized by IBM and the Common User group with the very first ever Innovation award for Infrastructure Simplification.  I was lucky enough to help IBM in 2005 kick off their Power systems Analyst event in New York at IBM's Palisades facility.  Based upon what we were doing at that time, many analysts praised us privately for the work we accomplished and it was even indicated to us at that time that we were using IT to gain a leadership position and were amongst maybe the top 4% world wide for what we were accomplishing.  In 2005 we took that work and advanced it even further to consolidate systems and storage into a single IBM Power system, at that time running i5 OS, AIX, and Enterprise Linux from Novell as operating systems in their own hardware virtualized space in a single system (about 15 virtual machines using those 3 operating systems). We also had 4 Intel based blades in that system (IBM called them IXS  (Integrated X Series Servers) cards back then) running windows workloads with the disk storage virtualized into the internal disk in our IBM Power System. This internal disk was nicknamed "SAN in a can" because it was internal disk but for and IBM power system it treated it as though it was an internal SAN without all the hassle of fibre cables, switches, and licenses, etc.  It is from this perspective that I share this experience of inside virtualization beyond the hype.

Planning for Tomorrow

For the past 18 months we have been working on the 3rd phase of this journey. Taking into account all the leading edge gains we have made using IBM Power technology, looking at industry best practices in order to maintain a leadership position, looking to address all past concerns that were either marginalized previously in solution design or became new issues during the time since our last system was implemented. And to do so in a cost effective manner that was affordable to our business. That last one is always a challenge in solution design and usually creates trade off's between technology versus cost.

Today's World

Todays solution we are currently implementing consists of the following components

- IBM Power 7 server - inherent hardware based virtualization, 64 bit, supporting 3 operating systems (AIX, i OS, Linux)

- IBM (netapp) 3600 SAN - FC, SAS, & SATA disk arrays

- A pair of 3850 servers running VMware Vsphere 4 ESX, using Vmotion failover to each machine

- A single 3650 server acting as Manager/Console for all servers/tools

- All connected via Fibre 4gbs/8gbs on a Brocade switch fabric

We are using IBM director to manage the entire solution and monitor energy efficiency. This solution provides virtualized capabilities across all server platforms including network and storage. So now to the focus, what does this really mean to the organization having the environment virtualized.

Beyond the Hype

As I don't consider myself as a technical person this is not meant to be a technical debrief, but rather a review of the hype surrounding Virtualization and what it looks like when you begin to achieve the much talked about Panacea.

> Virtualization is Best Practise - while virtualization may be best practise it does not equal doing IT simply in every case. There is truth to the saying that not all solutions are created equal. IBM Power systems treat disk as internal disk but deliver all benefits of a SAN, while a traditional SAN we have learnt about fibre switches (SFP's, Licensing, Zoning), The SAN setup (Aggregates, Volumes, LUNS, etc.) to name but a few.

> Just because you can virtualize multiple operating system's into a single system, does not mean you do not need to know how to work with each of those operating systems. Management tools while better, still are not a panacea to mange an entire solution. So if reducing operating staff for each OS is a goal, you may make some limited headway by combining teams and sharing skills sets and responsibilities, but the real savings comes from reducing physical foot print as that is real savings through consolidation.

> Patching, a nightmare for most os us before, does NOT get any easier with virtualization. What we are finding that the more we leave the pure IBM power solution which truly embodies the art of simply regarding virtualization,and move to "mainstream" Intel based virtualization including storage virtualization through use of a SAN, that the task of patching is even more complicated. We now have to worry about managing multiple patching requirement's:  firmware, os, patch, fixes, Service Packs. This is not the world of an IBM Power solution, but it is today's answer to best of breed approach to data centre virtualization.

So while we have made forward movement with 100% data centre virtualization as an SMB, we are learning that the fine line between doing IT SIMPLY and Best Practise is a very fine one. You may be thinking that hey this guys hates virtualization, far from it, what I do hate is vendors creating complex solutions that take more effort than I know is possible. To finish this up let me share this one tidbit with you, I personally could in 5 minutes in a pure IBM Power environment, carve disk, create server, and boot. Now I need my SAN administrator to carve disk and create LUN's. Give those LUN's to an environment. Have my environment administrator carve me a virtual server space and associate the disk to the server, and then boot. Not a 5 minute task without multiple administrators involved, why has it gotten harder to achieve virtualization, I suggest it because vendors haven't learnt from those who lead, that's my iBM Power server and that's no hype.

Thanks for listening . . .

Social Media A CIO View

Social What?

Social Media, Social Networking, or Social Business as I prefer to call it. The name itself doesn't really matter but the end goal is clear, for business users the ultimate goal doesn't change, impact to the bottom line. The dot com era taught us that the models may change but the fundamentals of business remain constant.

The Stereo Typical CIO View

Many of my peers including myself took an initial approach to social media that because it was unknown, feared, or even considered just a waste of time that to protect our business organizations we must block and restrict access to it. While many still feel that way, some for very valid reasons beyond their control (think compliance reasons), the result is that what can be another valid channel for many things is being ignored.

We know based upon some of the latest stat's we hear that these networks are growing, Twitter only had 12 million users when I started, now there are over 50 million based upon statistics released last month at Twitters first developer conference. Of course the king of social media today is Facebook, with over 350 million users last time I heard any stat's.

Some where along my journey I felt that this couldn't be right and my goal this year is to reverse our current policy of fear and concern, with one of knowledge, awareness and access where appropriate.

What did you change?

This piece isn't about my views on the social journey, see my series on CIO to Marketing Guy!

So What is it Good for?
Also Known As: what do I use it for

Personally - I network with folks much smarter than I, I learn about things through chat exchanges, I find out about try before you buy opportunities, I keep up with friends

Business - it's all about connecting with future customers


Overall it is an interesting mix of: exposure, status, blogging, connection, IT support, knowledge sharing that drives me to see social media as a viable network we need to be engaged in and as such our corporate policies must match that vision as well.

Shifting the Mindset of IT to Cause Transformation in Business

The title for this post came from a speech presented by Steve Rosenthal, Vice President, Gap International, you can read his Bio here.

Shifting the Mindset of IT to Cause Transformation in Business

While I was at the east coast Midsize Enterprise Summit in Boca Ration, Fl. Steve presented this topic. Here is my perspective on his presentation.

Steve began by sharing that his goal for this session was for the IT leaders in the audience to discover at least 1 thing about themselves or their IT. The problem of course is that we need to be aware that we learned something which was a point that Steve addressed later in his presentation.


The Three Questions

To initiate this process Steve asked the audience three important questions. In order for the process to work you must think about each question and have answered before you go to the next question. The three questions are:

1. What is the specific value I provide to my company?

2. If I could provide greater value to my business, industry, community, planet: what would that be?

3. What barriers are in your way?


It was interesting to hear that during the session a lot of CIO's mentioned that others in their business are barriers, to which Steven confirmed that the goal will be to change their minds.


Changing a Mind

Steven went on to discuss what is a mindset and defined a mindset as a "Fixed mental attitude that determines responses....." I took some editorial license on that as Steve's definition was much longer.

So the key to changing ones mind was to change the fixed mental attitude.

Steve also let us all in the BIG secret, we Can't change anyone's mindset but our own.


Why Change, I like it the way it is

Steve presented a number of stories to reinforce his point that by being satisfied with the status quo can be dangerous for business and why then changing ones mindset was very critical.

One statistic that Steve shared was the fact that studies show CIO's spend about 20% of their time getting buy in from others. Or as I call it selling idea's

It was very poignant when Steve related the 10 year stock price fall of Kodak due to the fact that their business executives had a mindset that digital photography wouldn't hurt them for at least another 10 yrs. when the business executives did focus on digital photography and made millions upon millions of strategic investments, their stock price returned. A very hard lesson to learn.


Change your Own Mindset

Since Steve had already set us up to know that we must change our own mindset in order to be able to change some else's, he elaborated on that point. He explained his study of the brain with neuroscientists and the like. The brain is a system and must be tuned. Of particular note was the fact that each part of the brain had an ability to carry out instructions it had learned and using his own personal study of a bicycle accident when he was younger the fear part of the brain kicks in every time it is at the top of a large hill on a bicycle because of his accident when he was younger. BUT the secret is that the Frontal Cortex can override every part of the brain. But to make it work you must "Think about Thinking".


Break Through Performance

Steve shared that in order to create the ability to change your predetermined responses in your brain, you must use your Frontal Cortex to create new rules. The most effective way that Steve found was to "Think about Thinking" when you wanted to think about something new. It sounds very odd but being conscientious about the act of thinking, creates the ability to think new thoughts.

Not that strange if you agree with the premise that our current way of thinking gives us current results. If the current results aren't satisfactory then you must find a way to think differently. In order to get breakthrough performance you must have break through thoughts. Steve summarized the process this way:

In order to have Extra Ordinary Outcomes, they are derived from Extraordinary Actions. These actions originate from Extraordinary Thinking.

So the 3 step process to "think" about is;

> Extraordinary Outcomes

> Extraordinary Actions

> Extraordinary Thinking


Closing Thoughts

Wow, what a topic. To think that Thinking about Thinking will result in extraordinary outcomes is very exciting to me. I found his presentation powerful and uplifting knowing that we have techniques that can be used to help us advance our business and ourselves. What Steve didn't cover here were tactics to learn to think about thinking when we aren't used to it. Thankful the journey with Steve didn't end here as he invited all of us to join him for a webinar June 2, 2010 at 11:00am ET. Goto this link to get more information

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - A.Einstein


And as always, Thanks for listening . . .

Day Three (final) at Midsize Enterprise Summit

The third and final day has come to a close as I write this. This years event is wrapping up about a 1/2 day earlier than it used to, that is OK as it enables us all to travel home for some rest :-).

Day Three

The third and final day had many of the same dimensions as the previous day; large all attendee keynote sessions, private boardroom sessions to hear from vendors, and a sprinkling of trade show time to see those that may not have been in your boardroom or to see those who peaked your interest to learn more about their offerings.

The day began with a General session lead by Ellen Kitzis, Gartner who spoke to the audience about "IT Strategy for the Midsize Business". Like other mornings, my late night blogging left me little time for sleep but I did indulge in this case and missed most of her presentation. The key concepts she shared revolved around answering the following key issues:

1. Why do enterprises ned an integrated IT and business planning process?

2. How do you succeed at developing an integrated strategy?

3. What best practises can help you avoid the pitfalls of planning?

The next event was a product presentation by ca. internet security, or Computer Associates as we used to know them. George Kafkarkou from ca presented their product road map including some of the latest innovations.

Back to the Boardroom

Our next few hours were spent in a boardroom listening to vendors share their insights and we heard from;

Commvault - presenting their Simpana backup solution. The vendor walked away with an event award later in the evening for their efforts. This slick product impressed this blogger for many reasons including:

- Data Dedup built in, no extra licensing required
- They are already integrated to the emerging storage cloud architectures (Amazon S3, EMC Almos, Windows Azure to name a few)
- Java based even restore files from your blackberry
- Single level store for all data stores down to low levels such as a single email with an attachment in exchange or domino
- Remote management service that is inexpensive to allow for out tasking the backup role or for support during sickness or absence of your key staff

HP - a major sponsor of this event and also a multi award winner with their partner Intel. It is clear to me that HP has thought of this mid market category a lot and they are executing that strategy in a strong way based upon this event. Unfortunately for this blogger there still appears to be some holes as the execution at an event like this is stellar but I know first hand that follow through at the regional level fails. This is the last time I have offered HP an open door to talk with a firm like mine, lets see if they follow through.

Toshiba Corporation - I don't know why they are here. They have products that fit the mid market, but the under delivered their message and the potential of being here. Not once did any of their representatives ask if anyone was a client. It was clear after the fact that many of us use Toshiba laptops. The most interesting tidbit I acquired from this exchange was the fact they have acquired approximately 80% Fujitsu the hard drive manufacture. I know Fujitsu first hand as not only do we use their drives, we also use their imaging scanning products as well.

We took a break as lunch time was upon us and after lunch we had an amazing speaker, Steve Rosenthal from GAP International. Steve spoke about "Shifting the Mindset of IT to cause a Transformation in the Business". I will do a detailed blog posting later this week on Steve's presentation but he began by asking 3 questions I will leave you with to consider until I post the rest of his story.

1. What is the specific value you provide to your organization?

2. If I could provide greater value to my business, Industry, country, Society what would that be?

3. What barriers are in your way?

Watch for my posting on Steve's presentation.

By this time I am as water logged with information as a submerged log. There were 3 tracks to pick from for the next sessions, They covered topics in virtualization (desktop and data center), and technology in retail. They were presented by Carl Claunch & Charles Smulders from Gartner, and Brian Kilcourse from RSR Research. I didn't cover any of them. I continued to network with other peers.

Back to the Boardroom

The balance of the afternoon was spent with 2 more vendor sessions in the boardroom. Here is who we heard from:

Radware
A security solution that helps you manage many aspects of your networking world. Topics of interest they focused on in their presentation included Bandwidth management right down the traffic type. They also handle the live monitoring and reporting.

Tango04
A vendor based out of Spain with offices if South America and the USA. Their focus in life is also in the security and networking world, but they go way beyond that. I can generalize that they cover 3 main area's with their product:

- IT Operations
- Security and Compliance
- Business Service Management (application Business Services) - watching your business process is what I call it.

This is vendor to watch in future.

The Final Countdown
The last remaining piece of the event was to have a big Party, and they did. The Gala wind up with awards for vendors, great dinner conversation, and funny man Juston McKinney


A good time had by all as we wrap up another year at the MES event. If you want to learn more about the MES events, check out this link

Thanks for listening . . .

Day Two at Midsize Enterprise Summit

For any tweeters out there the hash tag to follow the live tweets for this event is #ecmes

Day Two

WOW what a full day, starting at 6am I needed to get my daily work out in, by 8am I was in the first keynote, by 10:30pm my day finally ended, here in summary was that day...

Morning Keynote

Carl Claunch and David Cearely from Gartner co presented a top 10 strategic initiatives

1.0 Virtualization
2.0 Cloud
2.1 Infrastructure
2.2 Services
2.3 SaaS
3.0 BI
4.0 Client computing
5.0 Social Computing
6.0 Mobile
7.0 Active Security
8.0 Reshaping the Data Centre
8.1 Lessons learnt about dedicated hot and cold aisles as one example
9.0 Greening IT
9.1 Support for remote communications
9.2 Teleworking
9.3 Content and Document Management
9.4 Transportation Analytics
10.0 Storage


The message was followed up By Kevin Hooper from HP, who made a short, yes a short presentation and then they invited a client, a fellow CIO, to come and speak. Very innovative for a vendor to allow their clients to speak for them on the big stage at this event. They also mixed it up with a message for MES attendee's from Mark Hurd the CEO of HP. Their message was very simple, it focused on 3 elements they boil it own to that they are focused on delivering.

1.0 Manage
1.1 Help their clients manage and simplify IT

2.0 Protect
2.1 Protect investments

3.0 Grow
3.1 Help their clients grow

A good presentation by HP.


The Boardrooms
A key element of these MES events is they are vendor sponsored so you MUST devote time to hear from the vendors, but before you get cynical about that, when a vendor paid to be in front of you they get very focused at delivering their true strategic value message, the ons who don't get that this is different try the usual sales pitch.

You will never hear from all vendors, but here is who I heard from today:

Information Builders, their web focus BI product is the basis for the IBM DB2 web Query tool we have

CA Arcserve Backup has many features that were interesting including:
- De Dup built in, no extra licensing to buy
- De Dup is an inline process
- They integrate with Hyper V and VMware
- They support windows, Linux, and AIX the environments I run
- They do support Intel based systems and Non Intel based systems

Cast Iron Systems - A data integration/normalizing/ process flow data appliance

Cognos - IBM's BI solution

Life Size, a division of Logitech, there very impressive video conference solution that not only does boardroom to boardroom but also supports boardroom to desktop user, via Skype, competitors system, Google Talk and so on.... a new benchmark in the video conf space. A desktop license costs $200 1X for their software based solution on your laptop.

Tri Geo - An innovative and leading SIEM (Security Incident Event Management) appliance, not only reporting but reactive abilities as well.

Shoretel - a evolutionary vendor in the VOIP systems market. One key differentiator was they have in all models of their products a fail back to POTS lines. Other key features of note;
- They support LDAP and AD
- The will in next release support natively running in a virtualized space.
- Pricing including handset starting in the $500/user range

Each vendor did a 30 minute presentation so a lot to absorb today.

I was fortunate enough to catch up with Abbie Lundberg, formerly Editor in Chief of CIO Magazine, and share some time chatting about my vision for social business as it relates to my firm, our plans are looking good. Thanks Abbie!! You can follow Abbie on twitter at @abbielundberg

By this time I was feeling pretty beat so I stepped out for a break while Gartner presented a detailed session on cloud computing.

The Trade Show portion of the event opened up around 6pm and that gives me a chance to stop by vendors booths and get more info and express any interest I have in having a conversation with. Some of those vendors who we already deal with that I say were:

- kaspersky - Desktop Security
- Microsoft - Seeing latest edition of Hyper V and first intro to windows 7 for me
- Numara Software - hep desk and asset management tool set

Time to wrap up day two, final day tomorrow

Thanks for listening . . .

Day One at Midsize Enterprise Summit

Day One from Boca Raton, Florida at the Midsize Enterprise Summit (MES) event.

The MES event is a unique event in that it has a number of unique characteristics that determine why I make room for this event each year on my calendar. The leaders on this list are an opportunity to network with 300-400 of my CIO peers from Canada or USA. From them I learn some of the best tips and techniques you don't read about elsewhere as they come from the trenches. The other leading factor is that analysts from major firms like Gartner are here to share there insights, giving you the other half of the equation in what may be happening that you missed because you were focused elsewhere. Together these two top issues provide

Day began early with a round of golf on one of the hotel's courses. A 6000 yard course that was very picturesque if not challenging at times. Played in a scramble format fun was had by all including the winners of the scramble with a 10 under who walked away with a HP mini netbook as their prize, The winners of longest drive ad closest to the pin also received the same prize.

The first official event for all attendee's was registration immediately followed by Peer Networking. While crowds who attended the Peer Networking were thin, they missed one of the first gems in this event and that was a chance to chat with other CIO's about topics as specified by the Peer roundtables, or chosen a topic of their choice.

After introductions and welcome remarks by our event organizers the keynotes began.

Abbie Lundberg, www.lundbergmedia.com, who is a twitter friend who kicked off the event talking about profitable growth and IT's role in helping their company change. She laid out a framework on how CIO's can resolve the conflicting roles of making IT more responsive while also helping the business run more efficiently. Her vast experience as former Editor in Chief at CIO magazine helped provide lost of content and quotable quotes of many leading CIO's in North America.

A technology demo was next from Life Size, a Logitech company presented their video conferencing solution. While video conferencing technology has become ever more popular and vendors in that space have been taking advantage of demand for their products and services, LifeSize differentiates it by full HD quality starting at a price point of $2400 and they see their role as driving the market price even lower. This approach not unexpected as Logitech already owns almost 70% of the personal video camera market.

Finishing it off for the formal part of the first evening, was a presentation by Randy Baklini, Enterprise Architect for HP. He shared HP's own story about how they transformed and it matched with Abbie's story very well, reinforcing the message she delivered.

The rest of the evening was a cocktail reception for more meet and greet.

If you would like to follow my live tweet feed you can either follow me on twitter @nfortlage or follow the tweets by others at this event using the hash tag on twitter of #ecmes

Thanks for listening . . .

My ideal iPad

So much has been written about the recently launched ipad I was reluctant to share this.

In my humble opinion, the initial iPad devices missed the mark. I am also confident that Apple will most likely release a version that does hit the mark

For me that mark is seeing the iPad as more than an advanced e-reader. I see it as a real device that could bring a revolution to web video conference capabilities such as Skype. By supporting applications like Skype which to my limited understanding it can not do currently, but also add a front facing camera to enable video conference features.

Whether it's Skype, iLinc, Live Meeting, Lotus Live, and so on the fact is there are already solutions out there that could be leveraged with the right device, the iPad could be that device.

If I could acquire iPads in this configuration it would make for easy roll out to branch office for a mobile video conference enabled platform.

If it had that, I will take 8 of them please.

Thanks for listening...

The Cloud, why do I care?

I was recently speaking at a Computerworld Canada event in Calgary and Edmonton, the focus was on Linux as the proper operating system for the cloud. While I brought over a decade of Linux in the enterprise experience to the discussion, my real focus was on the solution for business rather than the fact it was delivered as a cloud application or service.

The cloud, and why do I care?

When we think of the cloud it is clear that there are a number of different perspectives on what is a cloud, as well as offerings from the cloud. Basically as rule of thumb cloud offerings fit into these categories:

* Infrastructure
* Services
* Software
* Storage

Storage is the newest type of offerings in the cloud. My personal experience has been focused on the most popular category which is software. More commonly known as SaaS (Software as a Service). We use solutions for Payroll, HR, Sales and Marketing CRM, and our US Core Business suite so I have gone through this discussion and software selection multiple times.

It's not about the cloud!

The fact is that the solutions we choose were not about the cloud at all, they just happen to be delivered via the cloud. This again re enforces the the old axiom that you should select software based upon your business needs and not by the technology. The cloud is after all just an alternate delivery model, not some revolutionary new technology. In fact without divulging my age, I remember when you bought IT services (because computers cost too much for most business') in time multiplexed models. That was a cloud of sorts based upon the general definition used for a cloud today. The clouds of today though are uniquely identified because a key requirement for today's cloud is the use of the internet as a connection methodology.

So why do I care?

The fact is you shouldn't care. When I define a software need for our organization, I don't start or include the platform, the environment, or even the database that it MUST run on. I focus on the right solution for our business, how user friendly is it, does it deliver functionality that we can turn into a strategic advantage, does it meet the users needs, managements needs, and executive needs. After they are all satisfied I then take into account the IT part of the business. The fact is that IT impacts must be considered as part of the overall business decision to select an application, BUT they must not be the driver of that decision. Chosen a solution because of the technology is akin to chosen a car because of the engine.

In closing

The key message here reminds me of the dot com era were everyone starting believing that business fundamentals changed, they of course hadn't. With cloud solutions today there appears to be over enthusiasm that they are the new panacea, when in fact it is just another way to deliver very valuable solutions. As IT professionals it is good to consider new delivery models if the solution is the right one to start with. So keep an open mind when looking for new solutions, regardless of how it is delivered, but don't look at the cloud as a panacea for how you should be delivering solutions.