Is it just me or does this happen to everyone in IT? I was once call a PDTA or Permanently Designated Technical Advisor by an ex girlfriend and from that day it seems to fit so perfectly. I think this is worse than being a mechanic or a Doctor. The get ask only things related with the car or the body, but me? I get hit with every thing in the book, from how to get that old VCR to work, or how to set a watch, to how to buy some thing on the internet. It just never ends. This is with family and friends, but at work!? Help me Lord!
Apart of knowing how all the computers, FAX, Xerox machines, work, I some how have to know how all cell phones work, how to program the Satellite Dish, how the A/C units works, or why the coffee machine is not working!
Don’t get me wrong, its nice to be the one that everybody comes to…. But come one……are IT the only ones what can figure things out?
I would love to hear some stories or what you think and deal with this “super hero” status.
George.
The Captian
My view from the Captain's Chair. 16 years in IT gives me a bit of view how things are in IT. So here we go!
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Project Management 101 : The Need
The Need: It doesn’t mater the size of your IT shop, users will always need your services, if it’s a simple macro for a spreadsheet or a full blown system.
In order to satisfy the “customer” you need to understand his needs and this obligates you and your team to know the business. If you are unable to have a good understanding of the business then you can’t understand the need and most importantly, you can’t understand the impact this new development will have.
As an example, I was once approached because an application was needed to help reduce the time it took to create a given report. The solution was simple, take the original spreadsheet, dump it in SQL and then run the report with the filters in the SQL. But knowing the business, the real problem was not the report, it was the data itself. So the real solution was to take the original data source, the one that was used by several people for reporting and load this data into SQL.
This solution not only helped the department that came to me, but also helped two other departments.
You need to take time, understand the problem, what it means, who and what it impacts, is it a real problem? Or is the problem the way things are done? Is this a simple isolated thing? Or is it part of a bigger problem and need to be taken care of as a department/company wide application.
The other detail regarding the “customers” needs is that there is a big difference between WANT and NEED. Users rarely know what they need, but they are convinced of what they want. The trick is to turn the wants into needs. To do this, you need to spend some time understanding the requirements of the project.
The next post will cover the requirements.
George,
The Captain.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Project Management 101
I have read my good set of books regarding project management in college and at work to know most of the text books are just that. Oscar Soto a Microsoft Professional that owns his own company (ActiveTainer) that I work with on special projects gave me the idea to write a book. I am not sure if this book material but at least it might help resolve the Project Management dilemma.
So what I propose is to in several posts touch each important subject that covers Project Management and most important, using real life examples.
Step 1. - Form a Team: No mater how many people are in the development side of your IT department, you must have a team well defined. It is very important that you define your team, you need to know who to talk to on your side, and your internal customers need to know who to talk to and your own people need to what their role is in the project. This may seem obvious, but it is not. If your internal customer doesn't understand the structure of the team, the will start talking to everybody, and that will cause confusion, changes to the specs without proper documentation, and at the end this will put and jeopardy the project.
As an example of this, when my Development team was working on a project some time ago, it was clear for me that one of the developers was the team leader but the internal customer would every so often talk to the other developer. This would create problems in the team it self, things that where not in the original specs would get in the project and therefore the timeline got bumped without an official acceptance by the customer and at the end I would get the heat from upper management for the delays, delays that up to some point I was not total clear why they had happened.
So, if the team that will be working on the project has more than one member it must be very clear to everyone what their roles in the project are.
George.
The Captain.
So what I propose is to in several posts touch each important subject that covers Project Management and most important, using real life examples.
Step 1. - Form a Team: No mater how many people are in the development side of your IT department, you must have a team well defined. It is very important that you define your team, you need to know who to talk to on your side, and your internal customers need to know who to talk to and your own people need to what their role is in the project. This may seem obvious, but it is not. If your internal customer doesn't understand the structure of the team, the will start talking to everybody, and that will cause confusion, changes to the specs without proper documentation, and at the end this will put and jeopardy the project.
As an example of this, when my Development team was working on a project some time ago, it was clear for me that one of the developers was the team leader but the internal customer would every so often talk to the other developer. This would create problems in the team it self, things that where not in the original specs would get in the project and therefore the timeline got bumped without an official acceptance by the customer and at the end I would get the heat from upper management for the delays, delays that up to some point I was not total clear why they had happened.
So, if the team that will be working on the project has more than one member it must be very clear to everyone what their roles in the project are.
George.
The Captain.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
IT’s role in internal projects
This could be a tuff one to cover, but I am going to “impose” my vision.
When it comes to Internal projects, IT has a key role. Why? It’s because IT is omnipresent in the organization. IT should be aware of all (or most) of the business process and therefore is the “guardian” of the business.
So if your organization has decided to migrate to a new Sales Application, or a new financial package, IT must be the leader of this project, even if this migration is done by a third party.
The steps should be these:
Requirements: IT Should talk with the users and understand what they need (not what they want) and create a draft document that will serve as the basis for the project.
Find a partner: IT should “shop around” and find a third party for this project. The draft will be the foundation for this. The first meeting should be IT only, remember you are shopping around.
Involve the customer: Once you have narrowed down to 2 or 3 partners, get you internal customer involved. There should be ONE official project leader from the customer’s side. Try the find the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Supervise: Never leave the customer and the partner alone! If you do…. you will pay for it. Because the user has no clue what he needs and you can end up with a white elephant.
Feet on the ground: Your job is at all stages to keep the feet on the ground.
Make sure testing is done correctly: Once the project is “done” there must be a well-designed testing phase where “everything” must be tested and checked and signed off by the team leaders and until every business unit that is touched by the project has given the written OK you CANT NOT go live.
There are more details to this but this is the bulk of the steps. I am open for comments or debate.
George.
The Captain
Monday, June 7, 2010
Keep your Hardware updated
It’s very important to keep you hardware updated. Why? Well, every now and then, the hardware integrator will upload updated to the firmware and to the drivers for the OS.
Some would say why fix it if it’s not broken, but in general the updates fix problems that can bring down your Data Center. Let’s check what happened to me this weekend.
Scenario: 4 DELL R610 (Intel 5520s) running “the latest” DELL build of VMware ESXi 4, all connected to a DELL MD3000i.
The problem: Every 30mins (give or take) one of the Virtual Machines (VM) would loose connectivity for a few seconds.
During all Friday night and the entire weekend, I got alerts every 30mins that this VM was off line. This was driving me nuts. Once I connected to the office, I could ping the VM, I could login via Remote Desktop, I could view logs.. all normal… so what was wrong?
A bug in the “latest” build of ESXi. If you delete a LUN from the MD3000i and you do not refresh the Storage Adapter in ESXi, you will get a strange error. Every 30min, ESXi checks the LUNs and if it cant find one, it will check the other path (if there is one) for the LUN, and because its not there, it brings down the server for a few seconds and this will make some VMs disconnect from the NIC.
The solution: Update ESXi to the real new build from DELL. This update avoids the NICs to disconnect.
So the real question is how to deal with this dilemma. How do you keep up to date with your updates? To be honest? No idea……
Today was a “fix the problem” day. Tomorrow will be “avoid this to happen again” day.
George.
The Captain.
Some would say why fix it if it’s not broken, but in general the updates fix problems that can bring down your Data Center. Let’s check what happened to me this weekend.
Scenario: 4 DELL R610 (Intel 5520s) running “the latest” DELL build of VMware ESXi 4, all connected to a DELL MD3000i.
The problem: Every 30mins (give or take) one of the Virtual Machines (VM) would loose connectivity for a few seconds.
During all Friday night and the entire weekend, I got alerts every 30mins that this VM was off line. This was driving me nuts. Once I connected to the office, I could ping the VM, I could login via Remote Desktop, I could view logs.. all normal… so what was wrong?
A bug in the “latest” build of ESXi. If you delete a LUN from the MD3000i and you do not refresh the Storage Adapter in ESXi, you will get a strange error. Every 30min, ESXi checks the LUNs and if it cant find one, it will check the other path (if there is one) for the LUN, and because its not there, it brings down the server for a few seconds and this will make some VMs disconnect from the NIC.
The solution: Update ESXi to the real new build from DELL. This update avoids the NICs to disconnect.
So the real question is how to deal with this dilemma. How do you keep up to date with your updates? To be honest? No idea……
Today was a “fix the problem” day. Tomorrow will be “avoid this to happen again” day.
George.
The Captain.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Presentation 101 or how to make a good powerpoint!
I am not an expert in makeing presentations, but I have seen to many bad ones to know by now what to do and what not, so here are some tips that might help you on your next presentation.
Format:
Use the company’s newest presentation format. Normally companies have a standard presentation format and you should always use it.
If at a special meeting, us this meetings format (if there is one). There is nothing worse than showing a presentation with a different format. The message you are sending is that you are not part of the team.
Audience:
Always know your audience. This makes a tremendous difference when it comes to your presentation. Not everybody understands your lingo, therefore you may not come across. You must talk the audience’s language.
Know what you are talking about:
This may seem a no brainer, but I have seen so many presentations where the slides are simply read. That is a big mistake. You must explain with your own words what is on the slide. The text on the slide is a guide for you. You are the presentation. If for some reason the projector lamp dies, you must be able to deliver the same presentation, so you must know it.
Slide content:
A spreadsheet with 40 columns and 20 rows is impossible to read so why show it. Just show the important parts and if all is important, divide into several slides, use animation to make “zooms” to different sections.
Images:
An image speaks for itself. If you use a good image to represent an idea or concept do it. It will save you time and effort to explain your point. Today the web is full of images or clip art you can use, but pick wisely.. it is so easy to make a cheesy presentation, remember this is business, not your sons 4th grade dissertation.
Spelling:
Wouldn’t it be obvious? It’s not. With today’s spell checkers, some things are spelt correctly but it’s the wrong word, and if you are making a presentation in a different language than your native one…. You need to double check.
Test run:
I am sure that very few people test their presentation on a projector. What looks nice on the computer screen not always looks the same on the big screen. Contrast can play a big surprise, colors can be off, so if you can, test your presentation.
Last minute = poor presentation:
If given sufficient time to make the presentation, use it. If you rush at the last moment to make your presentation people will notice. Common errors are all the above plus your number will not be right, most likely things will sum 102%, charts will have the wrong year.... Take your time!
If you keep all of this in mind for your next presentation you will be fine, and as you go it will get to be part of you.
Again, this is all based on to many bad presentations I have seen over the years. Keep it simple and fun and the most important thing know what you are talking about!
George
The Captain.
Format:
Use the company’s newest presentation format. Normally companies have a standard presentation format and you should always use it.
If at a special meeting, us this meetings format (if there is one). There is nothing worse than showing a presentation with a different format. The message you are sending is that you are not part of the team.
Audience:
Always know your audience. This makes a tremendous difference when it comes to your presentation. Not everybody understands your lingo, therefore you may not come across. You must talk the audience’s language.
Know what you are talking about:
This may seem a no brainer, but I have seen so many presentations where the slides are simply read. That is a big mistake. You must explain with your own words what is on the slide. The text on the slide is a guide for you. You are the presentation. If for some reason the projector lamp dies, you must be able to deliver the same presentation, so you must know it.
Slide content:
A spreadsheet with 40 columns and 20 rows is impossible to read so why show it. Just show the important parts and if all is important, divide into several slides, use animation to make “zooms” to different sections.
Images:
An image speaks for itself. If you use a good image to represent an idea or concept do it. It will save you time and effort to explain your point. Today the web is full of images or clip art you can use, but pick wisely.. it is so easy to make a cheesy presentation, remember this is business, not your sons 4th grade dissertation.
Spelling:
Wouldn’t it be obvious? It’s not. With today’s spell checkers, some things are spelt correctly but it’s the wrong word, and if you are making a presentation in a different language than your native one…. You need to double check.
Test run:
I am sure that very few people test their presentation on a projector. What looks nice on the computer screen not always looks the same on the big screen. Contrast can play a big surprise, colors can be off, so if you can, test your presentation.
Last minute = poor presentation:
If given sufficient time to make the presentation, use it. If you rush at the last moment to make your presentation people will notice. Common errors are all the above plus your number will not be right, most likely things will sum 102%, charts will have the wrong year.... Take your time!
If you keep all of this in mind for your next presentation you will be fine, and as you go it will get to be part of you.
Again, this is all based on to many bad presentations I have seen over the years. Keep it simple and fun and the most important thing know what you are talking about!
George
The Captain.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Know your CPUs
I remember the days when all your needed to know if your 486 was SX or DX. Now? You have Dual Core, Core Duo, Pentium, Core 2, and bla bla bla.
Why is it important to know your CPUs? I will use another example that happened to me!
While on medical leave we bought 4 DELL R610 (Last week of March). During the first week of April I was invited to a breakfast hosted by Intel Chile. At this presentation Eduardo Godoy did a fantastic job in explaining what was new at Intel. One of the new things was the new 5600 family of CPUs.
The next day, I went to another breakfast but this time hosted by DELL Chile. It was in part the same sales line. The new CPUs that were available in Chile as of March 18th. I was then very happy because we had purchased the Servers after this date so I had the new 5600s! This was perfect because the Servers were for the new VMWare Farm and according to Intel the new 5600s had a 29% better performance with Virtualization!
But to my surprise we were sold the 5500s! Sniff!
What was the lesson? Find out what is in the pipeline so you can plan your purchases, and if you can wait a few weeks or months do it! According to Intel the policy is to launch the new CPU at the same price of the retiring CPU.
Also! Go to all your vendors events (even if they are not your vendors or the band you buy), you will be up to date with Technology and Software, you will know what the trend is and best of all, you will have all the tools you need to make better decisions.
Just to mention, this week I am attending a Microsoft event (where my friend Oscar Soto from ActiveTrainer), a Symantec event and Novared a local vendors event.
Have fun!
The Captain.
Why is it important to know your CPUs? I will use another example that happened to me!
While on medical leave we bought 4 DELL R610 (Last week of March). During the first week of April I was invited to a breakfast hosted by Intel Chile. At this presentation Eduardo Godoy did a fantastic job in explaining what was new at Intel. One of the new things was the new 5600 family of CPUs.
The next day, I went to another breakfast but this time hosted by DELL Chile. It was in part the same sales line. The new CPUs that were available in Chile as of March 18th. I was then very happy because we had purchased the Servers after this date so I had the new 5600s! This was perfect because the Servers were for the new VMWare Farm and according to Intel the new 5600s had a 29% better performance with Virtualization!
But to my surprise we were sold the 5500s! Sniff!
What was the lesson? Find out what is in the pipeline so you can plan your purchases, and if you can wait a few weeks or months do it! According to Intel the policy is to launch the new CPU at the same price of the retiring CPU.
Also! Go to all your vendors events (even if they are not your vendors or the band you buy), you will be up to date with Technology and Software, you will know what the trend is and best of all, you will have all the tools you need to make better decisions.
Just to mention, this week I am attending a Microsoft event (where my friend Oscar Soto from ActiveTrainer), a Symantec event and Novared a local vendors event.
Have fun!
The Captain.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Dealing with Corporate HQ Guidelines.
Ok, this is a tuff one, because the nature of the subject and because HQ is reading!
To illustrate this I will use as example my own reality.
As of 2004 I am working in Santiago Chile for the second largest container shipping company in the word and they have their HW in Geneva (GVA). In the begining of my days in the company we did this the best way we could. Our Data Center was a closet with PCs as servers. HQ was not much in the picture. We had our yearly IT meetings where the guidelines where talked about but that was about it.
In 2005 hell broke loose. We were in the middle out our AD migration when due to a communication problem between the GVA and Chile IT team GVA got the impression that we did things without consulting, disregarding guidelines and at the end….. the way we wanted. The result was a redeye flight to GVA. The two day trip was an intense crash course in the GVA way of doing things, and you know what? It made sense. So much sense, that just three years we made a turn back, from “terrorists” that could bring the network down, to an example for the region.
Why did the GVA way make sense? Here are the points that were the basic guidelines.
1- Standardized HW: We are only allowed to purchase 2 brands of PC/Servers and within the brands just a handful of models. This may sound very restrictive and it is. For some a local vendor with a local brand may be very cheap regarding the corporate standard. But the benefits are tremendous. We now have no more than 5 images for all 220 users PCs making deployment a 1 hour deal.
2- Standardized Security: We are only allowed one brand of Firewall. Again, restrictive, but at the end of the day, when there is a problem, HQ can intervene with little effort.
3- Standardized OS: More then the OS, it’s the settings. All OS (PC or Server) has to be in English. This makes HQ support easier.
4- SW Licenses: This is a big one. We get most licenses via HQ because HQ has global agreements for several vendors. Not sure if we same money or not, but it is easy just to deal with one supplier.
5- Update infrastructure data: We have to keep at HQ an up to date diagram of our infrastructure. Again, for us, no use, but for HQ? Tons of help when something happens. And things do happen.
6- Unified email system: We all should be running the same version of Exchange, this is very useful, it takes out a lot of the guessing when there are problems.
So why comply with all of this and with so much effort.. taking the heat locally from other Managers?
No I am not sucking up. It just makes sense.
And I can prove it. Our Bolivia Office depends from Chile commercially and in IT, and for me to have our office in Bolivia with the same standards as our Chile office has been a huge help. Since we did the project on getting Bolivia up to date the amount of time spent assisting has gone down! Way down!
We now even have time to assist other countries. At the end this helps HQ! We absorb a bit of the load.
At the end this is a tricky subject, I think there is no real rule here, you have to play it by hear, each organization is different, but I would say, if you can, follow the guidelines.
George.
To illustrate this I will use as example my own reality.
As of 2004 I am working in Santiago Chile for the second largest container shipping company in the word and they have their HW in Geneva (GVA). In the begining of my days in the company we did this the best way we could. Our Data Center was a closet with PCs as servers. HQ was not much in the picture. We had our yearly IT meetings where the guidelines where talked about but that was about it.
In 2005 hell broke loose. We were in the middle out our AD migration when due to a communication problem between the GVA and Chile IT team GVA got the impression that we did things without consulting, disregarding guidelines and at the end….. the way we wanted. The result was a redeye flight to GVA. The two day trip was an intense crash course in the GVA way of doing things, and you know what? It made sense. So much sense, that just three years we made a turn back, from “terrorists” that could bring the network down, to an example for the region.
Why did the GVA way make sense? Here are the points that were the basic guidelines.
1- Standardized HW: We are only allowed to purchase 2 brands of PC/Servers and within the brands just a handful of models. This may sound very restrictive and it is. For some a local vendor with a local brand may be very cheap regarding the corporate standard. But the benefits are tremendous. We now have no more than 5 images for all 220 users PCs making deployment a 1 hour deal.
2- Standardized Security: We are only allowed one brand of Firewall. Again, restrictive, but at the end of the day, when there is a problem, HQ can intervene with little effort.
3- Standardized OS: More then the OS, it’s the settings. All OS (PC or Server) has to be in English. This makes HQ support easier.
4- SW Licenses: This is a big one. We get most licenses via HQ because HQ has global agreements for several vendors. Not sure if we same money or not, but it is easy just to deal with one supplier.
5- Update infrastructure data: We have to keep at HQ an up to date diagram of our infrastructure. Again, for us, no use, but for HQ? Tons of help when something happens. And things do happen.
6- Unified email system: We all should be running the same version of Exchange, this is very useful, it takes out a lot of the guessing when there are problems.
So why comply with all of this and with so much effort.. taking the heat locally from other Managers?
No I am not sucking up. It just makes sense.
And I can prove it. Our Bolivia Office depends from Chile commercially and in IT, and for me to have our office in Bolivia with the same standards as our Chile office has been a huge help. Since we did the project on getting Bolivia up to date the amount of time spent assisting has gone down! Way down!
We now even have time to assist other countries. At the end this helps HQ! We absorb a bit of the load.
At the end this is a tricky subject, I think there is no real rule here, you have to play it by hear, each organization is different, but I would say, if you can, follow the guidelines.
George.
Friday, May 28, 2010
To V or not to V, is it a question?
Virtualization (V from now on) has been around now for a bit and is here to stay. So the question is way are you not “Ving”?
I am not going to talk about any given product (today) because the idea is the talk about the concept.
V is great, it lets you accomplish several things, such has lower your Hardware investment, lower your Heat output, and therefore less A/C and finally less Electricity! You can also have some type of Disaster Recovery with V, you can set up a test environment quickly and as many times as your development team messes it up. And the best part is that all of this in one way or another can be done for “FREE” I say it with “” because depending on if you go down the Bill’s route you pay for the OS the Hypervisor runs on. The rest of the providers are Free in a limited set of features. To archive what I mention for “Free” you need a considerable amount of manual tasks, but again, it’s Free.
So again: To V or not to V, is it a question? (you should hear it in Klingon) I say NO! The web is full of step by step PDFs, blogs and videos on how to archive what you need, so if you have some deasent HW sitting around… go for it…. Play with Virtualisation. Once you go V, you will never go physical again!
Next week I will go over a few things with VMware in detail, and I can almost assure that for some VMware posts there will be a kind Hyper-V Pro that will post an equivalent!
George.
I am not going to talk about any given product (today) because the idea is the talk about the concept.
V is great, it lets you accomplish several things, such has lower your Hardware investment, lower your Heat output, and therefore less A/C and finally less Electricity! You can also have some type of Disaster Recovery with V, you can set up a test environment quickly and as many times as your development team messes it up. And the best part is that all of this in one way or another can be done for “FREE” I say it with “” because depending on if you go down the Bill’s route you pay for the OS the Hypervisor runs on. The rest of the providers are Free in a limited set of features. To archive what I mention for “Free” you need a considerable amount of manual tasks, but again, it’s Free.
So again: To V or not to V, is it a question? (you should hear it in Klingon) I say NO! The web is full of step by step PDFs, blogs and videos on how to archive what you need, so if you have some deasent HW sitting around… go for it…. Play with Virtualisation. Once you go V, you will never go physical again!
Next week I will go over a few things with VMware in detail, and I can almost assure that for some VMware posts there will be a kind Hyper-V Pro that will post an equivalent!
George.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
IT's day to day nightmare!
Ok... what is every IT Infrastructure team’s day to day nightmare?
No... not that.... nope.. not close.....think McFly....
YES! Users! (If any users read this... please don't feel bad, it's just the way it is).
Every day no matter if it’s just a one man show (Alex?) or a multi-tier, multi-office IT shop..... the problem is the same.
How do you deal with user's request.
Well I have the answer (ok not "The" answer but "an" answer). It's called Helpdesk. Yes... a helpdesk. There are several ones out there but there is one that caught my attention in Jun of 2007. SpiceWorks. It’s a few words it’s a Network management software, helpdesk, PC Inventory tool and IT Reporting solution.
I use it manly as a helpdesk and since Jun ’07 and some 7,700 tickets later I can’t be any happier.
This tool gives my team an easy way to manage users requests. All users have to do is just send an email to helpdesk@mycompany.com and all the IT team gets an email with the request. Then you can view a nice web dashboard with all new tickets, my assigned tickets and all open tickets. From there is all downhill.
As a Manager I can run reports to see how many tickets each tech has, how long it takes them to close the tickets, what are the most comment categories of tickets (Printer, Phones, Mouse, etc)
But Spiceworks is more than a helpdesk. It can scan your network and make a complete inventory of PC, Servers, switches, Printers, almost anything with an IP. It has a bunch of tools that for each PC (running Windows) it will show CPU, RAM, I/O usage. If it’s a DELL you get service tag and therefore warranty. This is neat when you want to know out of your 200 PCs witch are close to renewal.
This is just a small snapshot of Spiceworks. Check it out. Oh… did I say it’s FREE?
If you decide to install, let me know… I can help with its install (NNNF) and configuration.
Here are a few screenshots
Have fun!
No... not that.... nope.. not close.....think McFly....
YES! Users! (If any users read this... please don't feel bad, it's just the way it is).
Every day no matter if it’s just a one man show (Alex?) or a multi-tier, multi-office IT shop..... the problem is the same.
How do you deal with user's request.
Well I have the answer (ok not "The" answer but "an" answer). It's called Helpdesk. Yes... a helpdesk. There are several ones out there but there is one that caught my attention in Jun of 2007. SpiceWorks. It’s a few words it’s a Network management software, helpdesk, PC Inventory tool and IT Reporting solution.
I use it manly as a helpdesk and since Jun ’07 and some 7,700 tickets later I can’t be any happier.
This tool gives my team an easy way to manage users requests. All users have to do is just send an email to helpdesk@mycompany.com and all the IT team gets an email with the request. Then you can view a nice web dashboard with all new tickets, my assigned tickets and all open tickets. From there is all downhill.
As a Manager I can run reports to see how many tickets each tech has, how long it takes them to close the tickets, what are the most comment categories of tickets (Printer, Phones, Mouse, etc)
But Spiceworks is more than a helpdesk. It can scan your network and make a complete inventory of PC, Servers, switches, Printers, almost anything with an IP. It has a bunch of tools that for each PC (running Windows) it will show CPU, RAM, I/O usage. If it’s a DELL you get service tag and therefore warranty. This is neat when you want to know out of your 200 PCs witch are close to renewal.
This is just a small snapshot of Spiceworks. Check it out. Oh… did I say it’s FREE?
If you decide to install, let me know… I can help with its install (NNNF) and configuration.
Here are a few screenshots
George.
The IT Dilemma : Where to focus your resources
Today numerous IT departments worldwide face the this problem….. Where to focus the resources.
After the world economic crisis, companies rapidly focused on cutting costs, and at the end it falls on IT.
For the infrastructure side of IT it’s “easy”:
Lower your energy bill, A/C costs, communication costs, maintenance costs….. All this is done via virtualization, VoIP and talking to your vendors.
But how do you optimize the company's processes? That is what is killing IT today.
If you look around your office you will find that “Mike” as a super worksheet that does “everything”. It takes Mike 2 days to gather all the information he needs and then takes him about 2 hours to crunch the numbers. The worst part is that you have no clue about this super worksheet (by the way, it’s not on your backup plan) and his manager also has no clue.
So how you help the business be more efficient with your limited IT resources?
Well, after going through the same process that cost me some very ugly consequences….. I think I have the solution (open for debate)
1- Communicate: Create an IT steering committee whose members are other managers or key players in the organization. The idea is that in the committee all IT projects are talked about. This will help you show to your organization what is IT doing all day long.
2- Strong Foundation: In order for IT to prevail, it must have a strong foundation, and that means your infrastructure must be stable. If you want to help the business processes as a manager you can’t be worrying about massive PC failing, out of date Antivirus, bad backup plan, etc. that has to been taken care of before you can help the business. Why? What good will it do if you create this nice intranet but your old servers can’t take the load, or the new application you created runs slow as a turtle because half of your network is still at 100Mbit.
3- Be realistic: It’s nice to say yes to everyone…. But sometimes you just cant. Not all things are doable with your resources. When you commit to a deadline, always consider Murphy and your actual work load, and remember the more applications or systems you deliver the more support you need to give, so now your developers are also doing helpdesk support.
4- Be a socialite: The more you mingle with the other managers the more you can explain your day to day problems and that way they will understand you better.
5- Lobby: If you need something make others help you get it. Let’s say you need a new developer but company policies say no more new hires. Get the help of the other managers. If they all talk to upper management on how they feel if IT had just one more developer things would be easier…. You may find it easier to get that new developer.
6- Communicate: Yes its rule #1 and it so important you have to do it all the time. In meetings, at lunch with other managers, at the company BBQ, etc. Never stop communicating.
This is my view of this dilemma…. I am open to debate…..
George.
After the world economic crisis, companies rapidly focused on cutting costs, and at the end it falls on IT.
For the infrastructure side of IT it’s “easy”:
Lower your energy bill, A/C costs, communication costs, maintenance costs….. All this is done via virtualization, VoIP and talking to your vendors.
But how do you optimize the company's processes? That is what is killing IT today.
If you look around your office you will find that “Mike” as a super worksheet that does “everything”. It takes Mike 2 days to gather all the information he needs and then takes him about 2 hours to crunch the numbers. The worst part is that you have no clue about this super worksheet (by the way, it’s not on your backup plan) and his manager also has no clue.
So how you help the business be more efficient with your limited IT resources?
Well, after going through the same process that cost me some very ugly consequences….. I think I have the solution (open for debate)
1- Communicate: Create an IT steering committee whose members are other managers or key players in the organization. The idea is that in the committee all IT projects are talked about. This will help you show to your organization what is IT doing all day long.
2- Strong Foundation: In order for IT to prevail, it must have a strong foundation, and that means your infrastructure must be stable. If you want to help the business processes as a manager you can’t be worrying about massive PC failing, out of date Antivirus, bad backup plan, etc. that has to been taken care of before you can help the business. Why? What good will it do if you create this nice intranet but your old servers can’t take the load, or the new application you created runs slow as a turtle because half of your network is still at 100Mbit.
3- Be realistic: It’s nice to say yes to everyone…. But sometimes you just cant. Not all things are doable with your resources. When you commit to a deadline, always consider Murphy and your actual work load, and remember the more applications or systems you deliver the more support you need to give, so now your developers are also doing helpdesk support.
4- Be a socialite: The more you mingle with the other managers the more you can explain your day to day problems and that way they will understand you better.
5- Lobby: If you need something make others help you get it. Let’s say you need a new developer but company policies say no more new hires. Get the help of the other managers. If they all talk to upper management on how they feel if IT had just one more developer things would be easier…. You may find it easier to get that new developer.
6- Communicate: Yes its rule #1 and it so important you have to do it all the time. In meetings, at lunch with other managers, at the company BBQ, etc. Never stop communicating.
This is my view of this dilemma…. I am open to debate…..
George.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
My first post
Ok.... Never done the blog thing before.... and yes... I am IT... I should have done this before.... But I didn't.
The idea behind this blog is to talk about IT stuff. I must confess there will be a bunch of MS, VMWare and DELL content.... but there will also be some Trekie stuff.... digital photograph... and what not.
So please stick around and bear with me until this is "fully operational" (as the death star was going to be before Obi-Wan touched it).
Thanks!
G.
The idea behind this blog is to talk about IT stuff. I must confess there will be a bunch of MS, VMWare and DELL content.... but there will also be some Trekie stuff.... digital photograph... and what not.
So please stick around and bear with me until this is "fully operational" (as the death star was going to be before Obi-Wan touched it).
Thanks!
G.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)