This is just a link, because I think it’s worth one.
I’ve read the report and it’s really good at tracking the change in the IT industry that is occurring because data is now available everywhere and for everything.
Category: Collaboration
WinFS – it's a big deal and now it's a Beta 1
Channel 9 has a great video showing some of the early power of WinFS. This is a big deal and the demo’s look great.
Although the file system is as basic a filing system as you could imagine I know loads of people who simply do not think in that type of structured manner. They think by tags and categories and types.
WinFS will make it possible for these people to get the visualisations they require without compromising the safety of the data, or their productivity. Whilst the Beta 1 looks great in terms of the foundation, it will be the different UI experiences that make it a truly big deal.
Multiple paths to the same end make for an absolute nightmare for support though. Image that someone is used to getting there in a particular way and the support person tells them a different way; what will they do?
When is it time to wait for Exchange 12?
As part of a recent project I have been asked the question of whether to wait for Exchange 12 or not. The choice being to architect for a deployment now on Exchange 2003, or whether to delay until the architecture could be made for Exchange 12.
Here are my thoughts on this specific question and also on the generic issues with making this kind of a choice.
Dealing with the generic issues initialy:
- Risk averse, mainstream or leading edge – customers tend to fit into one of these categories especially with a mission critical solution like Exchange.
- Level of third-party software complexity – the complexity of the architecture can be significantly influenced by the level of third-party software integration. Exchange environments always have at least two third-party application integrated in at the server infrastructure level and they anti-virus and backup but there is also a long list of other integration requirements; Fax, Blackberry, Archive, Anti-Virus, etc.
- Complexity of the existing infrastructure – is the current infrastructure standardised and all at a specific level. In the case of Exchange; is the environment to be upgraded all at a certain level of Exchange or is there still a mixed environment.
- Current Equipment – what you buy now, won;t be what you will buy in 12 months time, or even 6 months time.
Specific to Exchange 12.
The current feature set looks something like this:
- Edge Services – Gateway protection, incorporating current IMF technology
- Outlook auto setup of profiles
- Redesigned ESM UI
- Scripting for all ESM components
- Continuous Backup – Replicate changes to another database
- Improved search functionality
- Web Services API
- OMA will be removed (probably because of the wide adoption of ActiveSync)
- Policy compliance – verify client configuration
- Enhanced mobile device support
- Access Sharepoint and other application through OWA
- Unified messaging – voice mail and faxes in your mailbox
- Improved Calendaring functionality
- 64-Bit version
So the considerations from this are primarily:
- The release dates for Exchange 12 are still not available, although likely to be some time late in 2006 it may slip into 2007. Until these dates become clearer it would seem that delaying a migration would be a little dangerous.
- Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 is delivering an amount of incremental change, particularly in mobility that many customers will take a good while to adopt.
- Microsoft is increasingly linking the capabilities of the client to the capabilities of the server; Outlook and Exchange. Though they talk a good talk on backward compatibility my experience has not been all that good.
- Exchange 12 does not change the database technology, so the things that constrain the architecture are unlikely to go away.
- Continuous Backup becomes available in Exchange 12, but from my perspective will only be used to protect the ‘really important’ mailbox in most organisations, it’s too expensive to do much more. The architecture that is required to support this will involve a lot of testing.
- The move of Exchange back to the centre of all messaging will require others to release their control. Most large organisations that require a Unified Messaging solution, in my experience, have already done it. I really see Exchange 12 Unified Messaging capabilities fitting into the smaller organisation context.
- Not sure on the background to this statement but a quote from a TechEd session – “migration from Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 will be the easiest migration to Exchange 12”.
- The changes to Exchange edge-services is going to be adopted in slow time, people will want to be sure of the benefit before moving such a critical part of the infrastructure over.
- The improvements in Calendaring will not be compelling to many customers. Calendaring is still something that hasn’t quite got there, and it still won;t quite get there in Exchange 12.
I have some questions though:
- What on earth is 64bit support giving. Is this being used to break the 3GB limit on memory usage?
- Will Outlook auto-configuration require Outlook 12?
If someone gave me some money to invest in a messaging infrastructure I, personally, would invest it in establishing a clean Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 environment and start to drive the adoption of SharePoint as the ultimate replacement to Public Folders (Public Folders will still be available in Exchange 12, but with little change and a statement that they won’t be in Exchange 13 (unlucky for some)). I’d also push the adoption of Office Live Communication Server. Each of these three things will encourage people to regard presence as central to their working, once they get this mind-set change all sorts of behavioural changes start to occur. In this context productivity training will become a massive need.
Some links, although most of my information came from a TechEd session that was held much more recently than most of these articles was published:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/45880/45880.html
http://www.msexchange.org/ExchangeNews/February-2005-Exchange-12-Features-Announced.html
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/07/07/28OPenterwin_1.html
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/31/HNexchange2006_1.html
Longhorn (heart) RSS
I love to watch enthusiast people – it’s infectious, and this team are certainly enthusiastic.
The RSS team at Microsoft demonstrate what they have been doing in this Channel 9 video. They do a great job of talking through the importance of building subscription right into the bedrock of the platform.
We are going to have great fun as Infrastructure people working out how that impacts on the infrastructure that we deliver. Content providers are also going to have to consider the impact of their actions, and that could be fun. Imagine the corporate environment where a huge number of individuals have chosen to automatically download enclosures and someone decided to add a 200MB file into the enclosure set. Within a very short period of time those enclosures are on there way down to every device.
It has to be the way to go, though. The challenge is dealing with the human behaviour changes that will be required.
Personality Types and When Processes Go Bad
Sometimes it’s great when two articles come together on different subjects, but providing a wonderful intersect.
While I was on holiday Steve highlighted an article by Andre on Personality types and today Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users has really gone to town on the whole issue of change, particularly process change.
- Builders – At the front of every train you typically have the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are all about ‘what could be’. They envision the world the way they want to create it and then set out to make that vision a reality. Entrepreneurs are typically described as both visionary or charismatic.
- Executers – In the middle car you have those that were born to execute. Executers might not brainstorm your next innovation, but once an idea is hatched, they can execute the heck out of it.
- Protectors – At the back of the train you have the protector. Neither innovation nor execution mean anything to a protector, who is motivated only to protect and guard what’s already been won in terms of assets. Protectors are better at saying “no” than anything else, for fear that any movement might somehow diminish or dwindle what’s been harvested by those before them.
And Kathy’s comments:
Too many times I’ve heard “upper management” assume that when employees (or users) insist that what the company is doing makes no sense (e.g. a policy that punishes customers or pisses off employees), it must be because the employee just doesn’t get it. The employee doesn’t have all the facts and doesn’t see things from the “higher” perspective of management. The employee doesn’t see the Big Picture.
Sometimes… sometimes that’s bullshit.
Sometimes the employee or user is the only one who DOES “get it”. Sometimes it’s the lower-level (or at least more user-facing) employee who really knows how damaging a company’s policies can be, or where the points of leverage really are. Sometimes it’s the user who has a basis of comparison — who hasn’t bought into the company’s worldview so long that they can’t see any other reality.
Personally I’m not sure quite where I would fit in Andre’s list; somewhere between Builders and Executers. I do know what I’m not though, and that’s a Protector. So Kathy’s comments have me cheering along; but at the same time I wonder what a Protector feels. Do they think “Yes!” to Kathy’s comments or do they think something more like “well I’m sure there is a perfectly good reason”.
Today I am reviewing a problem situation which I predicted about 18 months ago. At the time I didn’t manage to persuade the Protectors to part with their money, now they don’t have any choice. Who’s issue was that. Did the situation arise because I couldn’t communicate in such a way as to move the Protectors, or because the Protectors were too protective.
Is it up to me to learn to communicate better, or is it up to me to learn how to be patient?
Is it my lack of patience that drives me to care?
Does it matter that I care?
Is there ever a happy median where I can believe that I have done all that I could do and that there is no point in worrying anymore?
Does any company have the balance of personality types correct?
Does the fact that I ask the question make me a Builder?
Should anyone who has only been back from Holiday for a day really be asking these questions?
Do I need counselling?
Stu: Career Direction and the Impact on End Users
Stu makes a load of really good comments on the way that technical people move further and further away from the end-user experience as they move through there career – the the detriment of the end-user:
What I see from my position as a Lotus collaboration specialist is the way enterprise support, design and engineering teams are structured. Everyone clammers for technical progression up the career ladder and to get away from 1st and 2nd line helpdesk calls (“I’ve forgotten my password”, “I’ve deleted all my emails” etc.)
But what I also see is that once up that technical career ladder there is then little attention paid to the end user tools but much attention paid to the back end server performance and functionality.
This has started to worry me somewhat as the main impact we have with our users is through the software on their desktop, they don’t care what the server is at the back end as long as it delivers what they want. I’m not putting the argument that back end engineering is trivial and unecessary but I am saying that more attention needs to be paid to the user.
Personally I’m on a journey back to the end-user experience. I’m trying to get to a position where I expect the server infrastructure to do what it should do and enable certain user experiences in a way that is usable and intuitive. Getting people to change the way they work is so much harder than changing the technology.
The 5 Pillars of Connected Systems – Rethinking Infrastructure
On of the most interesting sessions for me at Tech-Ed in Amsterdam this year was one given by Gianpaolo Carraro in the 5 Pillars of Connected Systems:
I’ll let you read his site for more details on what he means by this and the move to a Service Oriented way of looking at things. I might even comments on whether I think he is right (or not). For me, though, it set off a whole load of thoughts about the Infrastructure/Platform v Application split. If something is a pillar then surely it is Infrastructure and at least part of the Platform, but I don’t know any businesses who regard work-flow as an Infrastructure Service available to all to consume, likewise for Identity and the other pillars.
This is a huge mind-set change that our industry needs to go through if it is to come to fruition. In most of the businesses that I know and deal with there is a huge divide between Application and Infrastructure and the thought of the Infrastructure organisation handling services which directly relate to the end delivery of an application would make most Application Architects go into a right old tis (as we say in these parts). That kind of interdependency on organisation is a real problem. Many of the challenges we face are not technology ones – they are people ones.
It's Friday – End of Tech-Ed
Well it’s Friday and soon I will be on my way home from Tech-Ed Europe. Has it been good, yes. has it been exceptional, no.
Steve Lamb asked me a if there were some sessions I would recommend: yes, definitely. I need to think about them and digest why I would recommend them first though. David Vaskevitch’s keynote was a great keynote, for instance.
For us Infrastructure people this year definitely lacked a big theme though. It all seemed a bit too incremental. That’s just the life-cycle problem, but I think that a theme could have been made of collaboration rather than the bits and pieces approach.
I’m not complaining, I’ve had a good time, I just felt something was missing.
Fred Wilson Says it Better Than Me
Last week I had a bit of a go at the way that we build online communities in exactly the same way we build real communities.
One of my issues was the need to for the ‘Top 100 Lists’. Why is it important how many links a person gets?
Seems I wasn’t the only one having the same thoughts Fred Wilson who probably appears on most of the Top 100 Lists has made his views very clear.>
To paraphrase from the famous Treasure of Sierra Madre line, we don’t need no lists and I don’t want to be on any stinking lists!
He then goes on to say:
And if everybody is directed to read the “A list” bloggers, we’ll miss all the best stuff which is being blogged by people who get maybe 100 to 1000 readers.
But there is an interesting thing here; because he is on the list, people link to him, and in so doing drives the thoughts of the entire community. His list of trackbacks is impressive.
Back to my whole point of the last blog though, why do we need to build hierarchy? Do we hope to get a greater standing in the community if we can demonstrate how popular we are? Our human need to be popular is strong, and so is our need for position.
Productivity through Training (and Technology)
Yesterday I spent some time reading through a couple of Microsoft articles:
Both of these papers point towards a welcome change in the IT industry; one that drives us away from features and towards exploitation. In Enabling the New World of Work the author(s) write:
Today, the primary challenge is not about IT departments conquering the technology, but rather training and educating the workforce to adopt the technologies that IT deploys. This shift toward an information-worker-centered IT model focuses on the people who render information into action, rather than the technology itself.
And also:
In a recent study conducted by Gartner Research, it stated that the successful CIO will make a strategic transformation, through 2010, from a manager of IT resources to a business leader who uses IT to enable and empower the business. By 2010, 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies will have an integrated business and IT strategy.
In Helping Employees Use Technology More Effectively at Microsoft they outline the new approach that Microsoft are taking towards training. They call it the Employee Productivity Education (EPE) program and it’s aim is to “to provide Microsoft employees with scenario-based and prescriptive information about Microsoft products and IT technologies.” They then go on to talk about how they are going to do this in a number of different scenarios.
The other day Ernie the Attorney talked about a scenario he had found himself in where the simple use of very old technology made a significant difference to a lawyer friends personal productivity. Ernie goes on to make a valid point:
Figuring out what’s possible is the hard part for most people, especially those who resist technology. People resist technology because they’ve learned that it’s too hard to deal with.
Productivity and effectiveness have become burning issues to me and have written about it a few times (here and here and here). I’ve also been undertaking a semi-scientific assessment of my personal productivity when in my different working environments.
Having worked on many IT infrastructure programmes that have undertaken dramatic changes in the technology base for large corporate customers words like these leave a bitter-sweet taste in my mouth. Having been involved in the initial creation of many of these programmes I have always sought to include significant budget for training in and exploitation of the technology that we were about to deliver. But in every one of the programmes the first victim of programme issues has been the training and exploitation budget. I recoil at phrases like “we’ll deal with that once we get it out there”; “this isn’t that different from the technology we have today”. For each of these programmes the stated requirements may have been met, but the objectives of the business have been severely curtailed.
Perhaps Microsoft have started down a path that others will seek to follow – scenario based training.It’s not that the training ‘information’ isn’t available to all; the issue we need to contend with is connecting people with the necessary information in a way that is relevant to them. I really like the scenario idea because it’s a metaphor that people can connect with – it’s also technology agnostic. It answers the question that is being asked rather than telling someone how a particular piece of technology could contribute.
Yet again the biggest challenge facing IT is the people challenge.
- How do we teach adults to learn like children? Children love to find new ways of doing things. They love to compare what they do with their friends. They love to learn and learning brings change. They don’t worry about the change. They don’t worry about breaking something.
- How do we teach business leaders that their role has changed to be one of exploitation rather than one of features?
- How do we help people to realise that learning IS work?
- How do we help people to realise that THEIR productivity is THEIR challenge?
- How do we help people to realise that the productivity of the TEAM is also their challenge?
The Portal is a Failure
I can’t imagine there are many people out there who disagree – but I wanted to pin my colours to a mast. The portal as a technology idea is a failure – now move on.
The portal as a view on the world and the place where you go to for ‘everything’ doesn’t exist and never will. I have worked on a number of projects where an organisation had a grand goal of providing a place and portal where everyone could get to everything. Each of these has been lead by a corporate centre and each one has been a failure. This, in my opinion, has not be a technical failure, although the technology has a good way to go. It’s another soft-skills issue. Just because you want to see the data in this way doesn’t mean Sue does, or Jonathan does, or Emily does.
Anyone who does any software development knows this. Write an application and some people will think it is brilliant and another set of people will think it really sucks. This is not because the application is either good or bad – it’s because we humans are massively complicated things and we don’t approach things in the same way.
I personally use hundreds of different bits of technology and will switch between them all day, Sue uses a different set, Jonathan another, and Emily another. So why would I want to dumb down to a single view of the world. I use different technology because I relate to the way it is working. I have a personal thing with the particular portal that my employer uses, it just doesn’t make sense to me. But I know others in the company who think it’s great.
You can’t even say that the desktop is he portal – because I use other interfaces.
lease, please, please find the proper place for the portal – as a point of aggregation and connection.
Search Vanity
It’s great having a name like Graham Chastney, once you get noticed on the Internet you are search-able. In the last two months I have become discovered by all of the major Internet search engines and now you can go to any of them; type in Graham Chastney; and you get ME. It’s great. But not only am I there, I’m there at the top. Of course it would be easy to get big headed about that, but I didn’t choose my name I was given it. Still, it’s nice to exist.
Graham Chastney 