Up in the clouds

One of the hot topics in IT at the moment is “cloud” computing. Effectively, outsourcing your hardware to a dedicated data centre. A lot of people try to convince me that this is the way forward, that everything should be put “on the cloud” and that this will save astonishing amounts of money. I’ve seen some of the calculations and I am not sure that they always stand up to scrutiny.

For example, I looked at a Dell PowerEdge unit – the cost to buy outright (£1,200) was a bit higher than the cost to rent in a data centre for a year (£700), but obviously over a longer period such as 4 years, it would work out cheaper. There is an advantage to the cloud offer in that they would replace the equipment (probably with newer equipment) at a set point, but then it doesn’t appear on the asset ledger in the company accounts, which upsets the beancounters.

Of course the purchase price doesn’t include the Operating System, whereas the cloud offer usually does (but not always); and there is the cost of electric to run the item and to provide cooling which have to be factored into the equation. There is also a need to provide anti-virus protection, patch updates, data backups etc. Again, that is not always included in the price of the hosting contract and so might need to be added to their quoted price – something that is always clear.

In addition, there is the cost of managing the unit – and they don’t always provide all of the management services that might be needed. In most cost comparisons, they show a figure for on-site management (and I sometimes feel that these figures are inflated a bit) - but then they don’t include similar values in the cloud offer even though it would be appropriate to do so, making the comparisons meaningless.

Suppose the 4 year basic cost of renting the server in a data centre would be £2,800 – reading the small print of some hosts, adding in the other items could take it to as much as £4,500. My calculations show the internal cost of the device for keeping it on site could be about the same, perhaps just a little more. Certainly the outsourced system might still be cheaper, but not by that much.

Then there is another point – what happens when things go wrong. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, the PTB want to know that someone is working on the problem. They like to be able to go into the server room, and for staff to point out flashing lights, explain what is happening – it gives them enormous comfort to see that someone is on the job and that the problem will be resolved evetually. This can’t happen with an outsourced system – even with numerous phones calls, they just don’t get the same level of reassurance, and you cannot put a price on that.

Now I will accept that I have used very generic figures – and to be blunt, most numbers can be manipulated to show pretty much anything that you want. Ultimately, it should be down to each individual case to be decided on it’s own merits. If it makes sense to keep it in house, then do so; if it is cheaper to host outside then that has to be the right decision.

For example, we have our company websites hosted externally – the cost is far cheaper than we could do it for as we don’t pay for a whole server box, and in addition, we don’t have to provide 24 x 7 support which would really rack up the support cost. However, we maintain our own CRM system – we checked it against SalesForce.com and our internal system works out at half the cost over 2 years. We also maintain our own ERP system – we were offered the chance to have it outsourced, and the cost of the management fees per year alone was more than the wages of our entire IT department.

So I suppose my advice would be to look at the numbers very carefully – make sure that you are really comparing like for like. Then think about the importance of the systems to the business and what would happen if the external system failed and how much of an issue it would be. If the risk is acceptable and the figures check out, then by all means outsource it. But I would strongly suggest that for many people, cloud computing is not the great panacea that it is made out to be, and that it would be appropriate to think carefully before rushing headlong into a situation just because it is the latest, greatest thing.

Temporarily offline - working from home

I went up to London to a training session on Monday of last week. It was a really good session (better than I had hoped for) and I thought it well worth while. Unfortunately on the Tuesday afternoon, I started to feel a little unwell - shivering, shaking and sweating. By the end of the session, I was feeling really bad, and the trip home was a real struggle. I eventually got home very late (almost midnight) and I literally collapsed into bed.

It was a rough night - hot & cold sweats. The next day I felt more ill than I have done in a very long time. I had thought about grabbing my laptop to do some work, but I couldn't get up the strength to go downstairs to get the bag. It wasn't until the Thursday that I actually felt well enough to do more than stagger a few steps. When I did get back online, I quickly cleared a small backlog of emails, dealt with some enquiries over access permissions, and processed some internal items.

For most people in IT, this is actually quite a straight forward situation - there really is nothing particularly unusual about it. Within our company, most senior managers, departments heads and the sales people are more than capable of working from home for several days, perhaps even a week or two. We have also started putting together some processes to allow some of the other staff the option to be able to work from home - driven partly by a need to ensure business continuity, but also to allow a more flexible working pattern.

However, when you look at a lot of companies they just don't have the faciltiies for this. There is still a real antipathy towards the idea of remote working, and it is seen as less than desirable. Yet there are so many benefits - reduced travel costs / environmental impact, better work / life balance, the opportunity for staff to cover a longer working day, more productivity and the option for some people to hold a job when otherwise it might not be possible due to family committments or health issues.

Will this situation change? I think it will as many of these companies will start to find that they have to adapt to these new patterns of working. But I suspect that it may still take many years before everyone gets the option. A real shame - but I suppose that is just a reality of life.

In the meantime, I'm now back to work and it's almost as if I hadn't been off.

Microsoft Data Protection Manager Server 2007

I written about this software before, but my staff and I think that it is such an awesome utility, I’m going to post some more comments about it. Quite simply, it is the best product that Microsoft have produced in quite a while, but for some strange reason, they just don’t promote it. As we are using it and it works so well, I thought that it would make sense to share some of our experiences.

So what is DPM Server 2007 and what does it do? Essentially, it allows you to backup servers and workstations using a disk-to-disk process, then a disk-to-tape process for longer term storage. In days gone by, almost everyone used a tape backup process as standard – but there are some serious issues with this.

Tapes stretch, or suffer degradation which makes them less reliable. Add to that, people have to change the tapes over (and sometimes they get tapes mixed up) and if you have to rely on non-technical staff on remote sites to change tapes (as we do), then you’ll know that they often forget to do it. Regularly, the backup software throws a wobbly so nothing gets backed up; and they don’t know how to check this or correct it, so they change tapes without anything being written to them.

Even if all has gone well, the recovery process can be awkward. First you have to make sure that you have the tapes (or even the right ones), someone has to change them back over, and sometimes you have to then inventory the tape to find the relevant file before you can recover that. Add to that, if it is a database, then you have to try to work out which bit you are going to receover – the actual file, the transaction log; it can get quite complicated.

The problem is of course that people do delete or over write files – this happened this morning with one of the design office guys at one of our remote sites deleting some drawings that another person had worked on yesterday. To recreate them would have taken probably the best part of a full day, and they are actually needed for a meeting with a customer, so they were keen to get them back as quckly as possible.

The recovery process is so simple with DPM Server, that it is almost embarassing. In the recovery console, point to the relevant server, open the drive and navigate to the file / folder. Click on it and select recover – then choose the options, such as restore to new location or overwrite, original permissions or new permissions, etc. Click start and wait for a about 1 minute while it starts the recovery process, then watch as the files are recoved. In our case, about 18 Mb of data restored in just over 2 minutes to a remote site. No need to panic, no swapping of tapes, no need for staff to run around like headless chickens.

As you may imagine the staff at our remote site were pretty greatful – we’ve told them that they owe us a few drinks the next time that we are up there (and you better believe we intend to collect!). But in all seriousness, the DPM Server makes the backup and recovery process so straight forward that our lives are considerably less stressed as a result. Anyone responsible for the data integrity of a business should really consider looking at using this product – you will make your life a lot easier.

BCS South West

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an event organised by the BCS South West (but forgot to post this write up!) – it was a presentation entitled “Towards Onlince Safety” given by Ken Corish, an Education Advisor. Although primarily intended for parents of school children, I felt it had a lot to offer those of us working in other areas such Commerce or Industry, and thought that many of the points made by Ken were highly relevant.

The presentation notes can be downloded from the BCS website: http://www.bcssouthwest.org.uk/server.asp?page=pastevents (Towards Online Safety). These give a really good overview of the current situation and how the issues are being tackled. However, watch out for a couple of the pages as they contain some really bad language – just bear in mind that the screenshots are of real pages created by children on social networking sites and you might be a bit surprised.

In addition there were a couple of short videos shown that were created by CEOP as part of the process of educating young people about the potential problems – these have been shown in many schoools and I would suggest that if you are a parent, you might want to see these for yourself. They can be downloaded from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOOn2wR8bU (Where’s Klaus?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp5nScG6C5g (Think U Know: Girls)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4vyRBMjEv8&feature=related (Think U Know: Tom’s story)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w4_Hrwh2XI&feature=channel (Think before you post)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE2Ru-jqyrY&feature=related (Once posted, you lose it.)

Ken made the point that many adults don’t understand some of these issues, and so how can we expect children to. However, it’s also clear that many adults know little about online safelty or think that it is someone else’s responsibility. Whatever your view, it is important that the message does actually get around to everyone.

The Internet can be a great place – there is a lot of really good information available, you can achieve a lot and make great friends particularly if you are reasonably savvy. But it has its darker side and sadly, there are some really nasty people out there. However, that reflects real life and we should make sure that the more vulnerable people (and not just the youngsters) are properly educated to make sure that they stay safe.

I don’t know what I want – but I want it now!

Anyone that has had young children or has worked with them will know the feeling. Children can’t articulate what it is they want, and because the adults around them don’t understand them, they don’t get what it is they think they want (and often if they do get it, it turns out not to be what they really do want!).

Sadly this is often the case with many business people as well. They don’t understand the technical side of technology, and can’t use the right terminology to explain what they need (and often don’t actually know what it is they want). This can cause enormous frustrations on both sides – IT people are expected to be mind readers and business people are surprised that their simple requests seem to be so hard to fulfill.

We’ve had an example of this just recently – Sales wanted a report that would show some sales figures. However, they assumed that it was just a case of “output sales figures”. When it was then identified that there are a large number of fields in the database that hold different figures showing different things, they simply couldn’t understand this. As a result, the report produced is meaningless because it produces the wrong values for what they need. After several rewrites, it still doesn’t give what they want, and we appear to be nowhere near getting a satisfactory output.

Another issue has been some data that was used in a system that is not part of our remit to look after. That system has failed and they cannot get access. We’ve taken on the challenge of recovering the data, and we were getting phone calls every hour to ask how we were getting on. Fortunately, we have found a way, but it is irritating to have to keep explaining that the interruptions are delaying the process and as we are not psychic, we don’t know how long the process will take.

This is not a new problem, nor is it just confined to specific areas of the business. I’m sure that everyone has had to explain to senior managers that just because they have one copy of Office 97, they can’t install it on every single PC. Similarly, they are very keen to block access to web sites that they think are inappropriate for work, but it then turns out that they were the ones going to those sites!

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of discussion about future developments within IT; a lot of this focuses on the development of cloud computing. I’m not entirely convinced that it is the best way forward for everyone, although I can see some major advantages in certain circumstances. However, the problem is that some of those concerns are of a technical nature – the business people don’t understand the potential problems, and therefore can’t see the risks involved.

The problem is of course that many of the individuals concerned simply don’t want to learn the technical side of things – it then falls to the more technically minded to try to educate them in an appropriate way so that they can appreciate the problem. However, to do that, we have to be able to understand what they need so that we can provide the correct response, and in a way that they will appreciate the message. Basically, we need all IT staff to develop a certain level of business acumen (or to enhance their parenting skills!)

The Sad, The Mad and The Bad.

A while ago, I was asked to take part in the Microsoft Technet Community Council. We had a meeting a few weeks ago and it was really positive – from comments made on the day, I think that Microsoft are serious about listening to people and taking their views on board.

Whilst I was at the meeting, I met several of the Technet staff, including James O’Neill – I’ve followed some of the stuff that he has done in the past, and it was really good to see the person behind the writing, so to speak. He’s really driven by his passion for technology and has written eloquently on several topics which I have found of real value. Catch it here at: http://blogs.technet.com/jamesone/

So I was saddened to read his latest piece - it turns out that he has been the victim of a theft, and has lost many treasured items that were in his laptop bag. No top of the range gizmos, but none the less, things that mean a lot to him. His blog shows the anger and frustration he feels – it’s a terrible thing to become a victim and although several other people have offered their condolences, I know that he will still feel the pain of the loss.

Many people have their lives in the mobiles or on their laptops – contact details, names, addresses, numbers. Many others keep other ID details and some even keep credit card or other bank information in their devices. Losing the device is bad enough, but then these people are unable to run their normal lives until they can replace the missing information. And if that information falls into the hands of bad guys, then they really have major problems.

People are generally trusting; we assume that other people will behave in a way that is similar to the way that we ourselves would behave. It’s a terrible blow when we realise that some people are not as trustworthy as we would like. It’s even worse when the people concerned are people that we know or trust. In this case, it was a public event organised by Microsoft for technology specialists - in other words, probably one of our own.

For many years, I worked as a manager for a number of the bigger UK retailers, some of whom are still around, a couple long gone. At the start of my training, I attended a security session – the trainer was the company CSO, a former senior officer with the Metropolitan Police. His first words to our groups of trainees were, “There are only 3 types of people in the world; the Sad, the Mad and the Bad. Everyone falls into one of these 3 categories – and that includes all of you”.

His cynicism was the result of many years dealing with the public – no doubt, he had heard every excuse, every sob story, met people that had suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and met many, many people that were just no damn good. But everyone? And he then made the statement that we lost more through staff theft, than through pilfering by customers. I argued with him, but to no avail; and his response was that one day I would understand. And I hate to admit it it, but yes he was 100% correct.

Sniff, sniff.

I woke up yesterday feeling a bit ragged around the edges – sneezing / sniffing, coughing, eyes watering. No it’s not flu (not even Man flu) just a bit of a later summer cold. No aches, pains, shivering etc.

However, it did make me think again about our Business Continuity planning. I did some work on this a couple of years ago and we actually have a basic outline plan of what to do. I went through it earlier in the year with the HR manager as they were concerned about the possibilty of the swine flu epidemic causing us some issues.

Although nothing much happened at the time, going on past experience of influenza pandemics, there will be another bout of it over the winter months, and possibly a third wave later next year. Although it seems that swine flu is not as virulent as other strains, it could still cause some staff to take time off work.

As we are a manufacturer, production is likely to be affected by a reduction in staff available. They do have the capacity to run some light shifts, but it may be necessary to move production between the different sites. Fortunately possible as we have standardised methods – we don’t yet have a single system to control this, but that is a longer term project that is underway.

For office staff, we currently have a number of key people that work with laptops; these people have a remote access facilty that allows them to connect to internal systems and continue working. We are currently looking to replace a number of those laptops and the older ones will be kept back, cleaned down and issued for use in an emergency situation.

We also installed a new telephone systems a while back – we still have some more modules that could be added to this, but we hope the new system will aslo improve the way that staff can communicate with customers and suppliers in the event of some issues.

But one item that I did discuss with management hasn’t been fully implemented yet – a scheme to encourage better hygienic practices. Anyone that has worked in food production or in the health service will know that considerable resources go to training people to take more care over preventing passing on germs. I worked with some people in a lab for a while and the level of bacterial infection found in some of the swab tests could really put you off your lunch! And I’m sure everyone has stories of what they have found under the keys of a keyboard!

It’s strange how people that are so careful to wash their hands after relieving them selves, don’t bother to give their work surface even the most cursory of cleaning. And how many telephone handsets get a wipe with a cloth that looks dirtier than the surface it’s being used to clean? Perhaps we need to have a new certification – the correct sanitisation and cleaning of Personal Computers!