From Woody Paige on ESPN – A man dreads fame as a pig dreads fat.
Words of Wisdom
May 8
Another Cloud Blog Post
Apr 11
Everywhere I look I see that people are supposedly turning to the cloud, to bundled hardware and software services with a fixed fee price as a way to cut costs. Please, color me skeptical.
I know there are a lot of advantages, for some shops, to cloud computing, but what I wonder about is the gut rationale for the rush to cloud computing that we see today. Everything that we do as human beings, of course, comes from some sort of gut reaction. Cost, for example, is certainly a gut reaction, but I can’t buy the adage that cloud computing is going to save us boatloads of cash. That just doesn’t seem reasonable. After all,Shirey’s First Law tells us that costs never really decrease, they just change category and become harder to categorize. So what is really driving the drive to cloud computing?
One of the key factors that drives people today is fear and the desire to avoid anything that might go wrong for which we could be blamed. That and avoiding any upfront cost. I really believe that most IT and business decisions can be explained using those to gut reactions. Simple fact is that I don’t want to be blamed for anything, however oblique. Doesn’t really matter what the monthly charge is as long as there is no upfront cost. And cloud computing satisfies both of those primal needs; if something does go wrong it’s really not your fault, it’s the provider, and they pay people to spin it OK so no problem. And there is no upfront cost, just a monthly charge and you can always make the numbers come out right.
Now, I’m not saying that cloud computing is bad. It is definitely worth looking at and is the solution of choice for many shops that are, shall we say, ‘talent poor’. But is it the way everyone should go, is it a rational way to structure every department because solid business benefits will accrue – or is it a reaction to primal forces that have nothing to do with IT?
What do you think? Are people, including CIO’s, rational or gut?
Today, many IT shops have two characteristics in common.
First, they tend to be reactionary; waiting until a problem occurs and they are contacted by an outside group (sales, manufacturing, finance, etc.) before getting involved in a situation.
And second, many IT shops have come to define themselves as overseers of the programs and infrastructure, rather than as guardians of the business system. The mental wall has been erected around the program libraries and hardware and our interest doesn’t range as far a field as it use to.
Part of the reason for this is that most shops are under-staffed, at least as compared to the olden days, and there’s just not as much muscle to go around looking for trouble. Another part of the reason is that we, for the most part, do not have pure analysts anymore, people whose job it was to live like a user and look for opportunities for system growth or improvement. Instead, what we pretty much have are programmers who have an extensive knowledge of the user situation but whose main orientation is still firmly grounded in IT. That sounds like a small, insignificant difference, but it is anything but small and far more than insignificant.
The end result is that many IT departments get looked at as a service unit, providing services to other, more forward thinking groups, rather than as the business system leader for information. And once you are seen as a service, rather than a strategic leader, then you are in jeopardy because anyone can provide a service. Strategic leaders are much harder to swap in and out.
The real question, of course, is how do you break out of that? How do you make your shop a strategic leader.
Seize the Initiative
The key is to seize the initiative by focusing on the business, not the IT structure.
There are a number of ways you can do this but my favorite (at least at the moment) is to look for the points of failure or the stress points in your business. Look at your business (or one segment of it; manufacturing, engineering, finance, order shipment, etc.) and define exactly what the stress points are. Another way to look at this is to find everything that is hard to do in the system or where a failure in that process (manual or computer) would cause problems that could not be trivially resolved.
This is a process that you would undertake in concert with the users and it shows you to be both proactive and supportive. You are looking for ‘their pain’. It is not the same as building a wish list although there may be some overlap. It is looking for the weak spots in your business.
This is also a process that needs to be carried out by someone with an analyst’s mind set which is quite different from a programmer’s. Yes, the person who does it might also code, they may even be your chief coder, but then again, they might not.
An analyst generally tends to think a little broader. They are not looking for a solution to a single particular problem, but rather a systems approach to an area that will be flexible over time and which will work well with other areas. There’s a lot of thinking that goes on and that may equate to no visible action. But it produces a design that will accommodate a great deal of growth in it as the business moves and changes in the future.
A programmer, on the other hand, can talk to users, and often has a good understanding of what they want, but their first interest is in getting back to their desk so they can start coding something. This is not conducive to producing a flexible design that can grow with the business.
End Result?
Pro-Active Strategic Design plops the IT group right in the middle of any strategic planning that goes on. It results in a design that is broad and flexible, that can be broken down into bite sized coding projects that can then be given to the people who just want to program. It also puts the IT group more firmly in the drivers seat for new development and limits the number of times that someone somewhere will see something in a magazine and start insisting that they need the same thing.
PASD is something that everyone should be doing. Yes, your resources may be limited but hunkering down and reacting as best as you can to what comes at you is the last thing you do before you are overwhelmed. You would be surprised at how effective even a little offense is as a defense.
For more information on how PASD can help you, contact SCS at support@shireyllc.com
Well, it’s official. Gartner says that by 2014, cloud usage will overtake PC usage.
Now stop for a minute and think about what that means. At first, just reading it with only part of my mind open, I thought they were saying that small screen devices would overtake desktop and laptop devices. Everyone keeps saying that will happen and if I were five years younger I would prepare for it by going to optometrist school. Yeah, like I’m going to do most of my surfing, much less my work, on a 3.5 inch screen. I’m at 15 now and still need glasses.
What they’re saying here is that cloud usage will overtake applications running within your PC, things like creating your documents and spreadsheets in Google Docs and other such cloud type things. Do you believe that?
I guess I do, at least I believe that Gartner believes it and if you can’t trust them who can you trust? The problem is, I don’t really know what they mean when they say ‘overtake’. I know we all keep our photos on the cloud, and our contacts, and other really marginal pieces of information, but what does that mean?
As I sometimes say to my son who uses his iPhone and iPad to set up lunch dates with his friends, I use my computer for ‘real work’. And so the question is, when the cloud overtakes the PC does that mean that organizations, especially big organizations, will be doing their heavy lifting in the cloud vice through their own corporate VPN? If that is what Gartner means, then I am skeptical. I know the cloud is bullet proof in terms of high availability and security (it is, right?) but I find it hard to believe that sometime in the next 800 days, everyone is going to deep six their copy of Office and instead start creating everything on the web.
No doubt about it, the cloud is here to stay. And it will play a big role in the IT infrastructure of the future. But the guiding principles haven’t changed. Proceed with caution. And don’t do anything because somebodies best friend says that everyone else is doing it. Do it because it really does make sense to you.
Just sitting here and noticed that Manning has given his agent permission to finalize things with the Broncos. Don’t have a major problem with that but I see that the first reaction out of the Bronco’s is to say they are going to trade Tebow once the deal is done.
And I just don’t get it. No one is surprised if it takes a DB or LB a couple of years to really hit their stride but everyone (including football gurus expects QB’s to step right in and be all world. Does that seem stupid to anyone else but me?
What I hear from the Bronco’s announcement is that they want five years of success followed by another ten years of trying to find ‘the guy’. I agree, Tebow is a mess of poor fundamentals (although it’s not like the Broncos have a set of receivers to rival the Giants). But you do have to admit the boy does try to find a way to win. Why not enroll him in a five year stint at the University of Manning and then see what he can do?
Football people are just as short sighted as business people. Why is it so hard for us, as a society, to look down the road? And the answer – because we are not taught to look for the long term, we are only taught to look at the here and now. And that is a perfect blueprint for long term mediocrity.
Things I Wish I Knew
Mar 12
Does anyone know what Ford’s Ecoboost does? I thought it was just a marketing phrase but someone told me it tied into a hydrogen fueled ram jet engine. Anyone know?
News from IBM
Feb 27
I know. I haven’t blogged in a while. So sue me.
First, there was the fact that Green Bay, New Orleans, and San Francisco all got knocked out of the playoffs. It was a bitter blow to me as those are three of my favorite teams.
Second, there was the Super Bowl. Last year (2010) Eli stunk. So, in the off season, I unloaded him from my fantasy team for Rivers and some other loser. Rivers sucks. I can’t stand that guy. Top level QB, my butt.
Third, and then there was nothing. I have long felt that when I die it will be in the meaningless days of February. Football is done, baseball hasn’t really started (I need more than the hope of pitchers and catchers reporting), and college basketball doesn’t mean anything yet.
But now it is almost March. The Spartans have already captured the Big Ten title (I root for UOM for football and State for basketball) and we are within spitting distance of the conference championship which is the jumping off point for the two greatest days of the year; the first two days of March Madness. So, like Punksatawny Phil, I have emerged from my underground hideout to take a quick look around.
And what I see is news from IBM.
First, IBM has decided not to charge for RPG Open Access, a package that opens up RPG. Not really sure what RPG Open Access (ROA) is? Understandable. Doesn’t it have something to do with accessing the web? Let’s take a minute and remind ourselves. And there is no better short description of what ROA is than that given by Aaron Bartell when it first came out back in 2010.
“The basic concept is that you now have the ability to override the processing of the various file/table op codes. So for example, instead of doing an EXFMT to the green screen you could do it to a web browser. You should note that the compiler feature is meant to provide an interface and NOT an implementation. What that means is you will either have to write your own RPG code to handle the communication with the browser or utilize a vendor solution who has taken the time to write an implementation of the RPG Open Access features.”
And so, it does have something to do with the web but it also has something to do with other things as well. If you have used Special Files in RPG then ROA can be a more powerful, flexible tool to do that kind of manipulation. What can you use it for? Well, the first thing mentioned was to all you to develop ‘handlers’ that would allow you to write to the browser from an RPG program. While the consensus seems to be that this is a very complicated project and one best left to third parties (many of whom have already developed such handlers), you can also much more easily use it to write an RPG report directly to a spreadsheet or browser, or to read/write to the IFS without requiring manual or CL commands to CPY files.
At the time that the product was released, just about everyone agreed that it’s major drawback was that it wasn’t free, that it was a special charge item. But now that has been removed and everyone can take a shot at learning how to use this. With all of the interest in integrating Office into your program output seamlessly, ROA seems like something well worth checking into, and now there is no reason why not to.
Second, IBM announced the maintenance cut off for 5.4. I have to be honest. I think this is a good move and long overdue.
There seems to be a real divide in the i community between those people who have drawn a line in the sand at 5.4, and those who have moved on to 7.1. There shouldn’t be. Yes, moving beyond 5.4 requires a program migration similar to what you had when you moved from CISC to RISC, but so what. Life is full of challenges and this will be one of the lesser ones you have to deal with. Again, the key fact here is observability. If the programs you are migrating are observable, then there is no problem making the move. If they aren’t, then you have to ask whether you really want to be running something that is so old and which, apparently, is not supported into the future (or they would have developed a module that was consistent with 6.1 and above).
No matter how you feel about these announcements, one thing is clear. If you want to remain on the i, and remain relevant (that is, not just on the i because your management doesn’t have the energy to do anything else), it will be necessary to move forward. The move up to 7.1 seems a no brainer. More functionality plus the maintenance support you are paying for. And free RPG Open Access should encourage more shops to begin to look at RPG oriented approaches to the IFS and the web.
So, where do you want to go from here?
It’s New Years resolution time again. I know that generally we think of doing that the last week of December but over the years I have decided that waiting until after the start of the year, and resolving to do whatever I seem to be doing anyway, gives me a much better chance of succeeding.
Most New Years resolutions revolve around self-improvement and I see no reason why the resolutions for your i shop should be any different. And the best improvement I can think of is to make this the year that you upgrade your i5/OS and get on 7.1. (For more information on just how to do that, stay tuned in January for a MC Press article (written by me) on what to watch out for in a 7.1 upgrade.)
I know, I know, your i which is currently running 5.4 (or 5.3) is running just fine and it will take a certain amount of effort to get up to 7.1. So why should you do it, what’s the point?
The point is that there are really only two types of i shops out there; those that are on the latest release and using it’s features, and those who are waiting for someone to come along and say it’s time to leave that old dinosaur and move to a Windows server environment.
And that brings me to the second resolution for 2012 – starting to use the advanced capabilities and features that 7.1 offers. (After all, it’s much harder to come up with a sensible argument for leaving the i if it is doing more than just running RPG programs.) That does require a commitment to learning and growing as a professional, but that shouldn’t be a problem. After all, that’s the definition of that term. It’s not just somebody who has been doing the same thing well for a long time.
So let’s make 2012 a year of growth. Upgrade to 7.1. And then learn how to use and implement what’s under the hood to help your company grow and to better protect the investment you have in the worlds best computer system. Let me know how it goes.
Did you ever notice how the week before Christmas work kind of slows down – and then stops completely for the week between Christmas and New Years? It’s not that your deadlines go away but rather, like Superman being exposed to Kryptonite, your will to work just slowly seeps out of you. And this year has been harder on me than normal.
I have a home office, of course, with a desk and a filing cabinet and all that stuff, but it is in the basement and so I generally end up sitting at the kitchen table where I have a nice window to look out. Even if the weather is awful, I love to be able to see what is going on. And normally that works out pretty well, unless my neighbor across the street happens to be out washing her jeep. That doesn’t happen all that often in the winter but I still have a big distraction this year.
For some reason, my wife has decided to stick a ceramic figure of a guy skiing right on the table. And the way she has positioned it, and given the height of my laptop screen, he actually has his face hanging right over my computer. The unfortunate part is that his face has the sappiest, dopiest looking grin that I have ever seen. Do you know how disconcerting it is to start work on a cloudy, rainy day at 8 AM and have some sap with a dorky grin staring you right in the face?
Oh I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t I just turn him the other way or even take him off the table altogether. Yeah, I could do that but there’s no way this creep is going to get the better of me. No sir, I’m not going to be the one to blink. So day after day we stand there and stare at each other; me scowling and him with this slap happy grin. What a moron. Doesn’t he know that his skies are molded together? He’s not going anywhere. Besides they look like a couple of 2X4s. What a jerk. And it’s definitely breaking my concentration. But like I said, I’m not going to be the one to blink. I am, however, looking forward to the end of holiday season.
Ok, it’s not like everyone has been asking for this, but I feel the need to provide some additional clarification to what I said in my last post. Unless you read it very carefully, it’s possible that you were left with the opinion that I don’t think the ERP system is very important to your business success. In fact, nothing (or at least not too much) could be further from the truth.
If your business has reached a certain size (not too small but not too big), you need some sort of business system, and for most types (not all, but most) types of businesses, an MPS/MRP style business system is a good fit. And the better your ERP system, the better it is for you.
At the same time, many companies today are laboring under the assumption that if they purchase an immensely expensive system that is practically impossible to implement successfully and then spend the first year (or two) after implementation desperately trying to explain to their customer base that everything was / is / will be fine in just a week / month / decade, then everything will be OK. You will have every feature you ever wanted and, get this, no matter how your business changes, this system will adapt and still be perfect.
If that seems reasonable to you, then you are in line with what many of the top managment in companies across the country are thinking. If, on the other hand, you think that sounds ridiculous, then you are in agreement with me. And if you think that sounds ridiculous, then you are normal. Congratulations.
All I was trying to say was that there is no perfect ERP system that you can purchase. And the more effort you put into installing an ERP system then the less effort you will have available for servicing your customers today. I know that companies love to say that they can do what ever needs to be done, no matter how many things are going on simultaneously. We’ll just do it. But some of us believe that’s not how the physical world works.
Want to have an above average ERP system; one that lets you up the level of service you are providing? Then start with a good ERP system, one that is easy to modify without having to tear it apart. Then carefully make modifications to that system so that it matches the way you do business. And when I say carefully, I mean carefully, thoughtfully, flexibly. It’s too bad that over the years modifications and enhancements have gotten such a bad rap. Mostly, of course, it’s because they are usually done clumsily, causing more problems than they solve, but it doesn’t have to be that way if it is done properly.
Anyway, bottom line – having the most expensive ERP system is not the goal. It’s having the ERP system that is easiest to change because your business will do that, and the one that is most closely attuned to how you actually do business. That’s all.
