Category: Technology

Getting Technology into Perspective

RydalAny article which has a line like this in it has to be saying something:

“Yet all those technophiles out there, lusting after the latest nano-proportioned, polyphonic multi-megapixel wireless gizmo, would beg to differ.

The article in question is Future Imperfect from the BBC. The basic premise of the piece is that new technology isn’t as important as it thinks it is.

I have a lot of sympathy with this point of view.

Let’s face it, a technology can only regard itself as truly important if it has been around for a few hundred years .

Tabletizing your Desktop

Pointe de DinanCraig Pringle highlights the potential to get access to all of the Vista tablet features with a “graphics tablet” (i.e. not a tablet PC, but with a tablet plugged into a PC )

I think Wacom are in for a boost in sales once Vista becomes mainstream. I’d live to able to do some of the things I do on my tablet on a my desktop, and now it is built into the operating system I probably will.

(I suppose I should have tabletizing as a word of the day )

iPhone Reactions

I’ve been really intrigued by the changing iPhone reactions over this week.

It all started on Tuesday with the grand announcement. This was followed by a lot of people going – “wow”.

It’s now Friday and the stories are radically different:

Why Cingular by Omar Shahine

Chiming in on the iPhone vs. Treo vs. Symbian vs. RIM vs. … by Marc Orchant

Let OS X developers at the iPhone. Please. by Merlin Mann

The Five Biggest Issues with iPhone by Paul Kedrosky

I’m not actually going to comment here on the technology or political issues, what intrigues me is the predictability of it all. Many, many technology announcement are accompanied by a “wow” and then followed by a set of negatives. Why do we do it? Why do we listen to the “wow”? Why do we expect anyone to be able to perform miracles?

 

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Word of the Day: Real words and pseudo-words

DovedaleEvery now and then I create a post title “Word of the Day”. Most of the time it’s because I’ve come across some new word (or pseudo-word) in something I’ve read.

Sometimes these are real words that I’ve never come across.

More often they are pseudo-words, they look like real words but actually they are something that someone has invented.

Every now and then we I come across a word that I am sure is a pseudo-word only to find out it’s a real word, “burglarized” was my favourite example of this.

Dilbert summarised this phenomenon wonderfully this weekend:

 

Speaking as someone who is paid to think about how people collaborate I think there are many reasons why we see the use of pseudo-words.

I’m sure for some people they are an attempt to assert their thinking into a situation or organisation. It’s a demonstration of your influence within an organisation if you can invent a word, spit it out, and hove others using it. I once had a manager who invented a new phrase every week, he would use it for a week and see how long it took before it was said back to him. He would also see how obscure he could make it and see whether anyone had the balls to ask what the phrase meant.

I suspect for others that the issue is actually laziness. Rather than trying to construct a proper sentence they try to create a word for it. By creating a short-hand the concept becomes easier to communicate. The most recent example of this would be the pseudo-word “de-portalize“. Everyone within the IT architecture community knows exactly what it means, but it’s not a real word. It’s short-hand for something that those who need to understand will understand.

Once upon a time..ah no I won’t say that I’ll leave it for the 5 things that Stuart has tagged me for.

Is the Shared File Server Dead? (Part 2)

Mum evicts the cat from the sofaIn the dim and distant past of 2006 I wrote an article on the death of the shared file server, Steve responded.

It seems I was ahead of my time and I’ve seen a few articles on the subject recently.

Yesterday the Microsoft SharePoint Team pitched in. They seem quite upbeat about the level of penetration that they are going to be able to achieve. As with all of our posts they are realistic about the places where file storage is going to carry on being used. Their list:

  • Product Distribution (Product packages like Office)
  • SMS distribution point (desktop patches and hot fixes)
  • NT Backups, Backup Servers and Desktop Backups (backups)
  • Database Storage (.mdb, .ldf, ndf, .pst, .ost)
  • Large Audio/Video and Streaming Media and other large archive read only media such as DVDs, CDs storage (.iso, .wmv, .ram, .vhd)
  • Developer Source Control 
  • Batch, Command Scripts, Executables (.exe, .vbs, .cmd, .bat)
  • Application Server… Client Application Storage Linked Files and File Dependencies –  (.lnk, .lck)
  • Archives and Dumps (.arj, .rar, .zip, .dmp, .bak)

The challenge here is highlighted in their summary:

Collaborative file shares can be replaced with SharePoint deployments.  Product distribution and database storage will continue to persist as valid scenarios.  End users will need training to understand where to save their files.  With most file sharing scenarios for the most common file sizes SharePoint lists will be the Microsoft recommended way of sending files inside the corporation and with collaborative SharePoint site extranet deployments, it’s the way to share with partners.  Most non technical end users scenarios such as the most common HR, Sales, and Marketing teams can say goodbye to using file shares for file sharing.  Some groups and divisions like IT SMS/Product Distribution, Data Warehousing (SQL), Media, and Development groups won’t be saying good bye to file servers in Windows 2003 and in code name “Longhorn” with key scenarios leveraging cheap NTFS file storage.

Analyzing your current file servers by server or share or folder may allow you to group them by purpose.  Here are some examples of common classifications: Collaborative File Sharing, Historical Archive, Media Server, Dump/Desktop Backup, Source Control Servers/Databases, Personal Storage, Product Distribution, and Application Servers.

(Highlighting mine)

The challenge for most enterprises is this:

  • It’s incredibly difficult to change end-users working process.
  • It’s incredibly expensive to get a good understanding of the data that already exists.

While replacement of shared file storage with SharePoint requires these things it will happen very slowly.

 

Predictions for 2007

DovedaleI’ve read a few prediction for 2007 over the last couple of days and I’ve decided to make a few of my own.

  1. We’ll continue to try to deploy new technology in a way that adds to people’s technology rather than detract from it – and fail, but not as badly as we did 10 years ago.
  2. We’ll continue to try to remove old technology to make life simpler – and fail, but not as badly as we did 5 years ago.
  3. We’ll continue to try to cost justify thing that we know are the right thing to do – and fail, but not as badly as we did 3 years ago.
  4. Oh, and finally – I predict that Gartner are wrong.

 

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Talk to Santa on Windows Live Messenger

Skiing in Bansko, BulgariaYou’ve probably all picked this up already, but I thought I would highlight it anyway.

If you put northpole@live.com as a contact in Windows Live Messenger you can talk to Santa.

Emily spent half an hour talking to him this morning. It seems that Santa has too many Elves to count, it’s cold in the North Pole and Rudolph is eager to get going. He wasn’t giving anything away though when she started quizzing him about her presents. It’s a relief to know that you can rely on Santa to be discreet.

Can’t wait to see live pictures of Santa from NORAD as he progresses towards us from the East.

Microsoft Software Assurance Tipping Point

Acorns by EmilyThere’s no new news here, I’m just bringing together a number of pieces of information that I’m not sure many people have put together.

Microsoft released it’s Software Assurance licensing programme some time ago now. Many customers looked at it, but struggled to see the benefit in it. There perception was that it worked for people who were going to adopt every release of Microsoft software as soon as it came out, but that was about it. The thing is that many customers don’t upgrade quickly, nor do they take every release. Many enterprise customers skip versions of Office, taking every other one, many did the same with Windows, skipping Windows 2000 and moving straight from NT or 98 to Windows XP.

Microsoft is steadily changing the landscape on Software Assurance though. A number of recent announcements have increased the pressure on customers to take Software Assurance, or made it more valuable, depending on your point of view.

Desktop Optimisation Kit

Microsoft have made the Desktop Optimisation Pack available to Software Assurance Customers. This kit includes four interesting components:

  • Microsoft SoftGrid – formerly Softricity SoftGrid
  • Microsoft Asset Inventory – formerly AssetMetrix
  • Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset – formerly Winternals IT Admin Pack
  • Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management – formerly Desktop Standard GPOVault

As you can see, this is a bundling of recent acquisitions – and only available to Software Assurance customers. These products will be available for a period as separate products with perpetual licenses, but eventually the plan is that they will only be available to Software Assurance customers (source: Gartner).

Yes, that’s right, if you want these capabilities you need to have Software Assurance.

These products are the type of products around which you build a whole process, you don’t just deploy them for some added value. In other words, they are the type of products which you get locked in to.

If you have spent a load of money packaging and deploying applications via SoftGrid you aren’t going to change to anything else easily.

If you have invested a lot in getting a GPO management process which relies upon the capabilities a AGPM then you aren’t going to replace it easily.

The Desktop Optimisation Kit now puts a cost on exit from Software Assurance.

Vista Enterprise

There will be one edition of Vista which will only be available to Software Assurance or Enterprise Agreement Customers – Vista Enterprise.

The primary benefit of Vista Enterprise is the availability of BitLocker without all of the cost of Vista Ultimate. If you are an enterprise customer you probably don’t want all of the Media Center capabilities that Ultimate anyway, nor do you want the heavier hardware footprint that it brings because that just pushes cost up. As an enterprise customer you probably do want desktop hard disk encryption.

The need for a licensing agreement to use Enterprise Edition puts another cost on the exit from the agreement. How many customers would want to deploy clients as Enterprise Edition, to then downgrade to Business Edition. If you’ve made extensive use of BitLocker it’s going to be very expensive to change.

Conclusion

These two activities provide a benefit to Software Assurance customers, which will mean that it’s preferable to more customers, but it will also add a cost of exit from the agreement which will make them more cautious.

(I’ve also learnt that writing a complicated post while blowing into a tissue every 2 minutes is hard work . So if you saw an unfinished version of this post – sorry. If this post doesn’t make much sense – sorry.)

 

Amazing HD Videos to Download (BBC)

Grandad wonders whether the old computer will run VistaThe BBC is currently running a fabulous programme Planet Earth. As part of this campaign they have also made available a number of HD videos to download – they are amazing.

My personal favourite is the Angel Falls one.

It isn’t that long ago when we were all happy with videos that were no bigger than 320*320 and not very clear either. These files demonstrate what full quality video can look like in reasonably sized files – 1 minutes in 50MB. Having said that, there was a time when I would have thought that anything taking 50MB was completely unreasonable. 

If the programme makers continue to make stuff like this they have nothing to fear from the likes of YouTube.

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Will it blend – iPod?

Grandad takes a bathI’m sure this is sacrilege of the highest order to some of my friends but it made me laugh .

Gadgets Impact on the Family

Jimmy brings the dog foodIf you are addicted to your Blackberry, or any other gadget that you use outside the office you should really read this:

BlackBerry Orphans – Wall Street Journal

The refusal of parents to follow a few simple rules is pushing some children to the brink. They are fearful that parents will be distracted by emails while driving, concerned about Mom and Dad’s shortening attention spans and exasperated by their parents’ obsession with their gadgets. Bob Ledbetter III, a third-grader in Rome, Ga., says he tries to tell his father to put the BlackBerry down, but can’t even get his attention. “Sometimes I think he’s deaf,” says the 9-year-old.

These things all have one really important button – “Off”.

I haven’t fallen into complete addiction, yet, but I know what these kids are talking about. The other day I found myself at the dinner table with friends searching for something on my phone. Sue pointed out in very clear terms how rude this was, and she was 100% right. I won’t be doing that again.

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Exchange 2007 – 64-bit Impact

Jimmy tries to understand ironingStu asked a very interesting question in response to my last post:

The risk for any new product as you mention is that of the unforeseen critical bugs generally addressed within the first few months after wide scale deployments. For Exchange 2007 I’d be interested in reading your views on what the risks are, if any, in this new release from running on 64bit OS through to the new product architecture.

The move to 64-bit clearly has built into it a set of risks of bugs. The key question is whether they are Exchange 2007 risks, Windows 2003 64-bit risks.

If they are Exchange 2007 risks then they are very new.

If they are Windows 2003 64-bit risks then they have been around for a while.

Windows 2003 64-bit has been running 64-bit applications for some time already; SQL Server 2005 was released in January 2006 for instance. Windows 2003 64-bit has been around since the middle of 2005. So the risks of there being a show-stopper in the critical memory and storage subsystems are likely to be quite. They should have probably been uncovered already. Although, having said that, I would be surprised if the Windows 2003 64-bit systems already deployed support anything like the 130 million existing Exchange population.

It is the interaction of the Jet database with the memory and storage subsystems that have given Exchange the biggest problems in recent times.

So if we can have some level of confidence that the memory and storage subsystems are sound, what about the database itself?

I don’t know, but I suspect that the development team have been in the process of removing code here, rather than adding it in. The Exchange database had to perform all sorts of tricks to operate within the constraints of the 32-bit platform, a limitation that is not longer there. If the code has become simpler then it can probably be relied on even more, but now I sound like I’ve taken the cool-aid.

My perception is that overall the move to 64-bit will make life a lot simpler, it does however have a significant set of risks associated with it.

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