One of my most, and least, favorite topics is budget planning and I realized that I have had very little to say on this subject here.  While I mentioned in an earlier post that having an efficient and flexible process is key to successful planning, I failed to mention something I find equally important.  So how, some way you need to find time for creative and fun things.  This doesn't mean corporate boondoggles or huge somes of money for research or things that may have no business impact.  I'm talking about some small amount of time or money set aside - as an organization, not just IT - that is used to help your company to be a better place.  Maybe that through a more creative onboarding process, maybe it's to simplify employee's lives by having fewer passwords or maybe it's creating a process that let's people in your organization pilot new programs or activities that they feel will make life more interesting, fun or efficient.  All of these things have real business value and a while back Chris Pratley (Office and OneNote team) posted an article entitled "1% for art". The idea is that 1% of a budget - any budget - should be for "art". Without that you might well survive but that's all it will be, just plain survival. It's that tiny investment that really won't have an adverse affect on your other plans that makes things exciting, fun and more interesting.  So next time your trying to figure out you're corporate or department budget try to find a way to invest in the creative side - the payoffs might not be obvious at first but they have significant cultural benefits that ultimately help you survive.

This week I am in London meeting with members of our IT Executive Committee, a group that represents IT from all of our various global firms.  Over a few pints - well after working hours, of course - the topic of remote and virtual meetings came up.  When I asked what kind of initiatives others had started or even thought about in the virtual space I was surprised to hear that not a one of them had even considered it.  As I described some of the things we and our parent company had looked at or done on a small scale there seemed to be some interest but certainly not anything to write home about...and yet here I am doing just that.  I also shared a recent post about Microsoft's use of Second life and suggested that we might want to try something similar for some of our meetings or annual conferences.  Maybe it's the industry we are in but there didn't seem to be much enthusiasm.  I'm not done trying but I'm curious to hear if anyone else out there has compeling stories - for or against - using virtual events.

Specifically, the electric bill.  There was an interesting article posted earlier this week by John Soat of Information Week that demonstrated just how far reaching IT is becoming within corporate America.  The basic message in the article was that more and more the CIO is being looked to as the person responsible for the energy usage in an organization.  I suppose this shouldn't come a a huge surprise to anyone since the amount of electricity used by data centers today is one of the leading costs for organizations today.  The seemingly never ending server sprawl and associated network and storage gear eats up more and more power and generates more and more heat causing more need for cooling which of course uses more electricity. 

Let's face it, being "green" is definitely one of those things that not only should be appealing to companies from a good social citizen perspective but also from a financial perspective.  If you can cut your costs while being ecologically responsible that's a win-win situation that should be exploited as much as possible.  And one of the first things that data center managers should be looking at, if they haven't already, is the use of server virtualization.  No matter which virtualization vendor you look at, it's a pretty safe bet that you should be able to get statistics and claims that easily show how you can achieve a consolidation ratio of a handful to 1.  In many cases, depending on the applications involved, you may find that you can consolidate 10 or 20 to 1.  Now obviously not everything will lend itself to this kind of savings but even if you take the extremely conservative ratio of 3:1 that's still worth doing.

Naturally, my favorite for server virtualization is Microsoft virtualization suite of products.  Virtual Server 2005 was certainly a big step forward but the new Hyper-V that is built in to Windows Server 2008 is head and shoulders above that.  There is still a lot of debate between the VMWare and Microsoft user camps regarding who has the better product but clearly the gap has closed greatly.  I believe even Microsoft will admit there are some things that are missing from the current Hyper-V product but they are on the roadmap and the timeframe for delivery is very short.  I have been involved with the Hyper-V product since its early inception thanks to a Microsoft TAP program (customers can sign up to participate in early technology preview and usage) and it has been a great experience to see the evolution of the product from pre-beta to it's current iteration, RC1.  We have used the product in our development and test environments and I have converted my personal data center from 6 servers in the basement to a single machine.  Combine the capabilities of Hyper-V (or VMWare) with Microsoft's Virtual Machine Manager and you have a real powerful tool to help reduce your data center and support costs.

Another way we have reduced costs in our development and testing teams is the use of Virtual PC.  Like its bigger sibling, Virtual PC allows users to have multiple machines running on their desktop.  This has been a huge benefit to our testing team because it allows them to have multiple versions of our standard deployment desktop and then apply new software for testing with the ability to roll it back and start over.  Prior to using Virtual PC the testing team required either numerous devices sitting in their cubes or they ended up spending a lot of time building and rebuilding their own machines during the testing process.

And of course one of the best features of both of these virtualization products from Microsoft is...they are free!  Okay, you can argue that Windows Server costs something and the price is baked in to that but the point is if you are planning on using Microsoft Windows Server in your data center then you will already have this technology.  And while it might not be the Cadillac of server virtualization technology (yet) its more than likely that for the large percentage of your virtualization needs you don't need anything more than what it can deliver.

 

Just a quick break from the normal business and technology stuff for a short personal note.  Just over 48 hours ago I was minding my own business on a beautiful Friday afternoon here in the Twin Cities area when I found myself debating whether that slight twinge in my stomach was just a bad piece of pizza from the night before or possibly something a little more serious.  Turns out I didn’t have long to wait to find the answer.  Within a few hours I was doubled over in pain and slowly making my way to the ER over at the Woodwinds Health Campus.  Well, after some scans and tests revealed almost nothing they admitted me to keep an eye on my appendix (which was only slightly larger than normal).  Being the technology hound that I am I kept myself business checking out all the systems and asking any of the staff that would listen about how well the technology helped them do their job.  Despite some possibly older hardware in a few places it looked like a highly technical environment with all kinds of handhelds, tiny portable printers, scanners, etc.

Well, after a long sleepless night – someone has got to make a quieter IV machine – I was set for a second round of testing, which, as you might have already guessed, leads to a discovery that my appendix was now almost twice its normal size.  A mere 4 hours later I was out of surgery and online again back in my room letting people know I would making some changes to my schedule this coming week.  The people over at Woodwinds are absolutely fantastic.  A big thank you goes out to all my new friends on the staff who put up with my jokes and sarchasm.  They kept me smiling and comfortable through this little adventure which was a first in many ways for me.  Being fortunate to have lived a very healthy life (none of which I can take credit for, just good genes I guess) this entire hospital stay thing was new to me.  That environment has changed a great deal since my early career where I worked for nearly 14 years and ushered in the PC era.  Now it was WiFi all around even for the patients.

I am back at home now, less than 48 hours after I left.  So for the next few days I will have a chance to catch up on some reading and hopefully get a few more posts out.  Thanks to all the well wishers for your thoughts.

I'm sure that many of you have been faced with the buy vs. build decision at some point if not many times over.  As a developer at heart this discussion is always one that is a little bit of a struggle for me as I wrestle with business half of my brain.  On one hand there is almost nothing that can bring the same level of satisfaction as designing and building a really good piece of software that makes your life better.  But on the other hand, just because I might enjoy that process doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.  I have to ask does the act of building it from scratch really add value to my business or more specifically add value that I can't get from buying something that already exists.  Since for most of my career I have not been employed by pure software development firms the answer many times is that we have been better of buying and then focusing our efforts on integration.  I have always liked to think of the "buy" decision as one that gets me the 80% of what I need and then allows me to spend precious corporate resources focusing on any portion of that remaining 20% that's really needed to make it a complete solution.  Oh, and it's rarely been the case that I needed that entire 20% but that's a different topic.

Larry Clarkin recently posted an article that shares many of these same views and I think he does a great job of pointing out one very important aspect of the "buy vs. build" equation that is often overlooked.  don't forget that usually after that "buy" decision" there is still some "build" let to do and many times its not trivial.  So that 20% I was referring must still be a part of the equation when making your decision.  But, like Larry I still believe that buying is many times the best thing an organization can do when it comes to non-differentiating things (he uses an accounting system as an example of something that rarely distinguished you from your competitors).  I also think that many times we sell the build exercise short especially when you consider the cost of ongoing support and maintenance as well as the opportunity cost - if you're working on non-differentiating things you are most likely giving up time on something that could be used to set you apart.

In my current role as an architect, and for that matter throughout my entire career, I have and will continue to spend a great deal of time in meetings.  These might be meetings with business leaders, external contacts, project managers and developers just to name a few.  The purposes range from general business strategy to technical design sessions and everything in between.  But one thing I have discovered over the years is that all these meetings have something in common, something I think occurs with more and more regularity these days.  What am I talking about?  People doing a lot of talking and even agreeing with each other but in reality saying completely opposite things.  Somewhere along the way I think people are losing their listening skills.

I'm not sure what's causing this but I can tell you that part of being good at what you do, especially if you are looking to take on a role where you will be giving guidance, setting strategy or creating a plan, requires that more than anything else you understand exactly what it is you are trying to solve or where you are trying to go.  And this involves listening far more than talking.  I'm not sure why in these conversations it seems so obvious to me that these two other people are saying completely different things yet agreeing or disagreeing while saying the same thing but it happens a lot.  Maybe that's why it's good to have others in the discussion that may be more objective or have less of a stake in the item at hand - it’s easier to listen without having to worry about forming your rebuttal.  In my post of (un)written rules for business I touch on a couple of points that can help you avoid this situation. 

First, as a speaker make sure you are not adding to the confusion by using acronyms or terms that others might not understand.  You need to be absolutely sure that what you say is being understood so if you really need to use these phrases it might be worth your while to ask if people understand them the first time you use them.  If you have to create a glossary for participants then you have taken this too far and need to speak in a more common language.  It’s hard to listen if you constantly have to be looking up terms. 

Secondly, especially if you are dealing with complicated or often misunderstood processes or systems start your discussion at a high level focusing on gaining understanding of the typical scenarios or cases.  Don’t keep interrupting your train of thought with all the rare exceptions; that just makes it harder for others to follow you through.  Once people know how something is supposed to work it’s easier to explain the situations in which it fails or start digging in to the nuisances of the issue at hand.

Lastly, keep notes or minutes of these discussions.  Put things in writing and then distribute to those involved afterwards to give people one last chance to look at the discussion to make sure they really understand the issues and the decisions if you got that far.  Sometimes just the act of writing it down or reading it helps to crystallize an issue.

As anyone who knows will me tell you, I certainly don't shy away from speaking.  I'm happy to give you my opinion or give advice - I'm even right some of the time.   But when I'm not speaking I really enjoy listening - its amazing the things you can learn! 

This is really cool stuff.  Recently announced at the Microsoft CEO Summit, Touchwall looks like the tool I have always wanted to have and had hope Surface would be (but turns out may be way more than I need and for now too expensive).  I'm a complete nut when it comes to whiteboards - I love to be able to draw as I speak especially when talking about system design.  I even use OneNote to do this some times when I have remote teams involved but the thought of being able to have huge touch sceen surfaces for interfaces really gets me thinking of the possibilites.  While still early on in the development process, in fact Microsoft admits they don't even have any plans for this at the present, I think the potential for this kind of product is fantastic. 

Denny Boynton recently posted a great article regarding the role software architect with a little humor thrown in for good measure.  A good architect has to understand the business problem that is to be solved, the technologies that can and should be applied and have the ability to present that vision and guidance to the team tasked with actually building the solution.  Having a coherent team of people that represent all aspects of a project is crucial to its success.  We are currently undergoing positive changes within our organization to ensure that not only that the technology team is focused on a project but also all of the various aspects of the business as well.  This includes, marketing, training, corporate communications, HR as well as the actual service lines for which the solution is being produced.  These are all areas where the architect needs to interact to ensure that the best solution, or perhaps more accurately the most appropraite solution, is successfully delivered.

I'm a big fan of virtualization in the data center (a subject of a future post) but I have to admit I really don't understand the draw of the virtual worlds such as Second Life.  Sure, I've been known to have a video game or two loaded up on my home PC and I've even tried some online multiplayer games but just can't get in to wandering around - or flying around - the meta worlds of Second Life.  A little over a year ago I was convinced to set up an account and go check it out, I was even warned that the experience will be very different than anything I had ever done in any game.  Sure enough, I saw people with wings and other animal parts, strangely dressed people (even more strange than casual Fridays during the summer) and even inanimate objects that, well, were animated.  I discovered you could own property and that many real world companies had even set up virtual store fronts within this crazy world.  I discovered even more odd things outside this virtual world such as the debate as to whether or not people could be taxed on their virtual possessions.  I started to wonder if this virtual world, and others like it, might be the future on the web.  After all there were some similarities.  Stores that weren't physically there but you could buy things at, conversations with people that you would never meet in real life, advertising and general social interaction of a kind.  Thinking back 10 or 15 years ago I remember how odd it seemed at the time when I first started seeing URLs on TV commercials and wondered if normal people would really latch on to this phenomena called "the Internet".  So how could I use this new virtual world in my business?

But after a few sessions I kind of gave up and while I now had at least a small understanding of the virtual world I just couldn't see anything special here.  Sure you could have store fronts in this virtual world but I already had that out in the "real world" of the Internet and people were still learning to deal with that.  Having them come to this special place only to be greeted at the door by a floating ball of fire or some other mythical beast just didn't inspire confidence.  Nonetheless, not wishing to be left behind some companies did set up shop including H&R Block.  So, there was interest from the business community after all - but it all still seemed a stretch.

Then, I read an post by Dave Bost on a recent Visual Studio Launch event where Microsoft decided to host a launch event in the Second Life world.  They combined the participation of SL with the power of Live Meeting for demos and presentation materials and discovered a unique way to get people to interact.  Just as when attending a real conference attendees could mill about, talk to others and come and go as they please.  It was more than just a web cast, it was a gathering of individuals for a common purpose and a chance to exchange ideas and interact just like the real world.  Okay, so why not just live in the real world?  What did they or anyone who attended gain by not physically being there?  Well for starters, no one actually had to travel to some single location which meant it was really free.  Depending on the company you work for and where its located these "free" events can sometimes be costly to attend.  The rising cost of gas, airfares and maybe even an overnight stay all begin to add up or just make it impractical to actually attend.  Could this be a way to hold corporate events or user conferences?  While I still enjoy the interaction at a "real event" I think there might just be something here.

My current employer has an annual event for the leaders within the firm - about 900 people in all.  The event usually takes place at the beginning of our fiscal year, lasts several days and consists of the usual corporate things such as speeches from our president and other CXO types all designed to get people fired up and on the same page for the next year.  the cost of this team building exercise - millions of dollars.  Think about it, 900 people each spending 4 nights in a hotel (let's call that about $800), airfare (say $500), meals (figure $100 a day so $500 easily).  That's about $1.6M right there and that doesn't even take into account the cost of the facilities and the soft dollar costs.  What if instead of actually going to this event we all virtually went?  That's $1.6M we could save right off the top.  Sure, we would still have to invest the time, people would still need to create the slide shows, demos and other content of the event but we're doing that already.  Maybe there is something to this virtual world after all.

Do I see this as a replacement for all conferences?  Absolutely not.  Is it an alternative for some during these cost-cutting economic times?  You bet.  What do you think?