Do you have a Healthy Daily Communications Diet?

Do you have a healthy daily communications diet? Is it well balanced and good for you? Like the “personal physical health” advice do you follow a 5 a-day plan for communications?

Like most people I try to stay healthy by having a balanced diet. I try to eat different things that all give me different health benefits. I try to avoid cutting out some types of foods or eating one specific type of food a lot because it tastes good. So far touch wood this seems to be working for me and physically I feel well on this self-regulated diet.

Recently I have been thinking about how such an approach would work to my “personal information health”, is a balanced communications diet important for me and what would my communication 5 a-day plan consist of? Let’s start with the why – why would a balanced communications diet be good for me?

Having a good communications diet would help me in 3 areas:

1. Perspective

An unbalanced diet would probably give me a false or inaccurate perspective on what is going on around me and how this might impact me. Being able to see things and understand things from different perspectives would help me normalise the information I am consuming and allow me to better see it for what it is.

2. Context

Getting the context right for the information I am consuming is important if I am to best act (notice I said act NOT react) on this information. Getting a balanced communications diet will help me put the right context on information that I consume by helping me interpret information relative to other related pieces of information from other sources.

3. Detail

It would be unrealistic to assume that I could get the complete picture from one information source. Like a jigsaw puzzle there are information pieces that I need in order to slot together and see the bigger or more detailed picture.

OK so what would a 5 a-day diet for communication look like?

Like any diet plan it needs to be tailored to the individual. There is a massive industry built on “carefully” designing diet plans for people based upon the physical characteristics, life style and personal goals so you need to think about these when putting a communications diet together.

As an example I will share with you my typical 5 a-day communications plan, this changes as I review my “personal information health”.

Note: In case you are wondering, I am a consumer and provider for each of these information sources.

1. E/Mail – I work for an organisation that is working on ways to reduce internal e/mail, but, most of my business communications is with organisations that only use e/mail, so, e/mail is still an important information source
2. SMS – Many of my colleagues, friends and family treat SMS as an information short circuit that gives them a direct path to my attention. I am lucky I still treat this as high priority since I don’t get too many SMS text messages so they are still rare enough for me to treat as “immediate information”
3. Twitter – I view Twitter as shouting into a big room to see if anyone wants to listen, occasionally someone might and a direct interaction is started. There is lots of useful information in Twitter which I won’t go into now.
4. Facebook – This mostly feeds my personal information needs relating to friends and relatives, it helps me keep perspective on what is happening with friends and relatives.
5. LinkedIn – this is the business balance to Facebook. LinkedIn helps me keep a perspective and context on current and past business and professional relationships.

This is not exhaustive list, there are numerous other information sources that come into my diet from time to time such as Web Sites, Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, Instant Messaging etc

The key takeaway from this article is that you should think about how you can maintain a healthy and balanced communications diet and resist the “sweet tooth” temptation to “pig-out” on one source that is your current favourite flavour!

Infrastructure Services Reference Model

Some time ago I created a (rather complex) model that describes what a typical IT infrastructure looks like. I recently needed to update this model to simplify it and expand it to show typical infrastructure services.

Here it is, I use this to (not an exhaustive list):

1. Describe to people what the Infrastructure Landscape looks like.
2. Explain the relationship and interdependencies between Infrastructure and Line of Business Applications.
3. Agree with clients what their priority Infrastructure areas are especially in these are problematic and need to be reviewed (this assumes that you don’t have the time or resources to do them all!)
4. Create a dashboard (or Heat Map) for infrastructure performance using appropriate KPIs for each area
5. Etc…

Key Principles – Why does IT need them?

Let me start by suggesting that every IT organisation should have a “Vision Statement”. I don’t just refer to a bland marketing phrase that serves no real purpose, I mean a short summary of what the organisation aspires to become. Something that attracts staff and customers to the organisation, sets direction and acts as a benchmark for decision-making. Here are a few example vision statements from familiar organisations:

Amazon:  Amazon’s vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. 

Apple:  Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.

Dell:  Dell’s mission is to be the most successful computer company in the world at delivering the best customer experience in markets we serve. 

Facebook:  Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

Google:  Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Microsoft:  Microsoft’s mission is to enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.

Skype:  Skype’s mission is to be the fabric of real-time communication on the web.

Twitter:  Twitter lists its mission as “a work in progress” as it has yet to be fully developed.

Yahoo!:  Yahoo!’s mission is to be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses

YouTube:  YouTube’s mission is to provide fast and easy video access and the ability to share videos frequently

So apart from appearing on some static page on a corporate website, these statements can be very useful in lots of different ways. One of the key ways that I use a vision statement is to create an organisations key design and operating principles.

Here are some suggested steps to follow:

1. Use these statements to create a set of Organisational Goals, statements of strategic intent.
2. Use the Organisational Goals to create a set of Operating Principles.
3. Use the Operating Principles to make decisions on certain key aspects of the organisation include the rationale and consequences for each principle.
4. Get the principles agreed at the highest level – no avoiding this step this has to happen.
5. Once agreed use these principles to inform not only the design of the organisation, but its ongoing business behaviour.

The Cloud Computing Layer Cake – What must you be able to do?

So what are the generally accepted characteristics of cloud computing, What must a private cloud be able to do?

I will summarise them here:

1.   On-demand self service

Users of cloud services can request and get access to the applications they want when they want with little or no provider intervention

2.   Ubiquitous network access

Users of cloud services should be able to exploit internet technologies to securely gain access to their applications and data wherever they are regardless of geography

3.   Metered use

Users of cloud services should be able to consume services knowing that they will only be charged for services and resources they have actually used

4.   Elasticity

The ability to anticipate, manage, measure and increase or decrease the responsiveness of an application based on the real time usage demands placed on an infrastructure using shared or pooled computing resources.

5.   Resource pooling

By their very nature, cloud computing environments should be based on shared environments that allow resources to be securely pooled in transparent way that allow elasticity and resource efficiency

You cannot think of private cloud computing just in terms of these higher order characteristics, you need to consider the deployment models, these ways of consuming cloud services are referred to as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).

The Cloud Computing Layer Cake – Is it really so easy?

The current media attention in cloud computing and wave after wave of product announcements from technology vendors has generated a lot of interest from organisations in how they can implement their own private cloud.

I was listening to the CTO of a software vendor describe his company’s product offerings and how the virtualisation capabilities these can bring to any organisation will help them implement a private cloud. The description of products was very interesting but I heard again from this CTO what I hear so often from technologists, “It’s just about buying the right technology and WE have the right technology”.

I found myself listening to this CTO and trying to imagine how some organisations would actually go about implementing a private cloud using the products from this organisation. I must admit that for some organisations that I have worked with in the past, I found it difficult to picture them with a private cloud deployed and delivering value to their business.

The reason I was having difficulty in visualising the end result was not due to a lack of available technology from the market, instead it was due to the often missing layers of infrastructure maturity that I know must exists in order to enable the higher order characteristics of cloud computing.

Without having a mature infrastructure baseline, embarking on a private cloud will result in a patchwork of hit and miss cloud-like capabilities that probably won’t deliver the expecting benefits and either become yet another endless IT project or fall away by the side after all of the initial hype has gone.

8 questions you should ask your current or potential Cloud provider.

Here are 8 questions you should ask your current or potential Cloud provider.

 

Who owns my Data while it is in the Cloud? – Key issue over ownership of data while in the Cloud.

Who can access my data while it is in the Cloud?- Given the componentised nature of the Cloud can I be sure that encryption and authentication is consistent across all component interfaces in the Cloud?

Can I find out who has had access to my Data? – If challenged, can my Cloud provider give me an audit trail of who accessed my data, what they accessed and when they accessed it?

What data gets left behind after I have finished using a service that was created for me? – Data persistence after service de-provisioning

Who am I sharing resources with? - Multi tenant data isolation especially in some of the more sensitive markets

Where will my Data reside and under who’s jurisdiction will that be? – Trans-border information flow. When information can be stored anywhere in the cloud, the physical location of the information can become an issue. Physical location dictates jurisdiction and legal obligation. Country laws governing personally identifiable information (PII) vary greatly. What is allowed in one country can be a violation in another.

Can I trust the automation and access policies that govern access to my Data? – Ensuring correct implementation of Subscriber policies including role based access control through Provider controls

Can I trust my Cloud provider, if so who says so? – Certification/accreditation requirements for a given Cloud service

Who is the end user when we talk about Cloud?

Most of the published articles and thinking on Cloud characteristics talk (quite rightly so) about user self service. BUT the user here is almost always the IT department.

People say things like …

“The user can purchase platform components and have them deployed in the Cloud which they can build into solutions…”

or

“The use can purchase the raw compute power in the Cloud that they need and then build …”

In the above two typical examples, the user is not your typical Head of Marketing, or HR Programme Manager or Transformation Director or CFO. Now don’t get me wrong, IT departments are of course themselves users of Cloud and they will design and build Clouds and Cloud services for them to use and for their business to use. But for me, the holy grail here is to allow the actual end user to interact directly with the Cloud so that they can buy and build (without needing a Master Degree in Computer Science) services to help them do their job better.

A CFO might talk in terms of “I need to RENT an expense authorisation system temporarily for project X which is starting next week and has a number internal and external staff working on it, it needs to interface into our mail systems for basic workflow authorisation and there must be a way of uploading the transactins into our own corporate accounting system at the end of the quarter so that we can run off the quarterly management reports.”

So the KEY Cloud characteristic that supports “average Joe” needs to have a layer of automation and lower level orchestration to allows the CFO (or any CxO) to design using a SIMPLE drag and drop interface the main features of the system he wants to RENT. He needs to be able to describe in plain English the characteristics of each process he needs and have these build automatically to his specification in the Cloud all ready to go.

Here is an example table (a bit simplified but you know what I mean) of the process characteristics for the expense approval system that the CFO wants to RENT in the Cloud, the CFO needs to describe..

What advantages do you think Cloud computing could bring to your business?

This is a very interesting question and as a consultant the first step is to understand what the business Strategy is including the Business Goals, Constraints & Business Context within which it operates.

I would use the diagram below to help position the different strategies that you will need to understand first.

From what some of myclients tell me today, the list below summarises some of the main capability enablers that will allow the delivery of the business advantages from Cloud that CIOs are are expected to provide.

• The ability to provide IT user self-service capabilities thereby helping to reposition IT as a transparent layer of underpinning capability instead of the all too common view of it as an obstacle and delaying factor when new services are needed by users.
• Remove some of the technical and cultural obstacles and enable better internal and external collaboration for employees and partners
• Boost IT responsiveness through the ability to provision and utilize a service in a single day (or less). This compares to traditional IT projects that may require weeks or months to order, configure and operationalise. This has a fundamental impact on the agility of a business and the reduction of costs associated with time delays.
• Moving to a Public Cloud often avoids the need for that long overdue capital investment in some of the aging infrastructure services (such as E/Mail, Document Libraries etc)
• Most importantly of all, a Privarte Cloud Strategy rep[resent a key milestone in the maturing of the IT organisation from that of an internal line function driven by technology to that of an internal services provider driven by business needs.

What does the “I” in IT really stand for?

I have been lucky enough to have spent 6 months working for an organisation where information was literally the lifeblood of how they worked. During my time there is was able to see the impact to an organisation and its staff of having (or NOT) information that you can trust available when you need it, where you need it and in the format you are able to exploit.

I have started to think about how I can get CIOs to really think about what the “I” in IT really stands for, for me its stands for the following:

Intelligence derived from Information

Information derived from Data whose quality you can Trust

Industrial IT enabled through effective delivery (in-house and/or Cloud and/or Outsourced)

Innovation to help the business adapt and be creative in what it does and how it does this.

This is all very easy for me to say, but, what does this actually mean and how would you measure your capabilities in these areas?

 

One way is to chart your progress against a maturity model for each of the above qualities, a maturity model that describes in a consistent business language the differing stages of maturity for the above qualities, a model that describes the characteristics at each stage of maturity and gave example KPIs to help you track your own progress.

I am in the process of developing draft models for these and I plan to post articles on each of them to invite ideas.

 

 

Cloud Definition.. Keep it Simple!

As cloud computing hits the “peak of expectation” what’s next – the “trough of disillusion”? What will really make a difference is getting some common and simple understanding of what Cloud Computing is if not literally then certainly the spirit of Cloud Computing.

I have seen a number of definitions, but I want to share a definition from The National Institute of Standards and Technology who present a Definition of Cloud Computing. Interestingly this is currently at version 15!

They propose five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models for Cloud Computing.

Essential Characteristics:

On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.

Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.

Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured Service. Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models:

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.

Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

Deployment Models:

Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise.

Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services.

Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load-balancing between clouds).