Posted by Shawn McGee on Thu, Apr 30, 2009 @ 10:43 AM
I was reading James Governor's blog today and he had an interesting link and discussion about premature optimization. The original link was a well written article where I quote "Donald Knuth, the renowned computer scientist, once said that 'Premature optimization is the root of all evil.'" (Emphasis from source.)
It's the same as a rule that writers need to remember constantly: perfect never finishes. In short, if everything is going to be too perfect, then nothing ever gets done. Most of us in IT know this as the 80/20 rule.
What I would like to discuss is how many companies are misusing this idea to make life harder for themselves. Most people who I have discourse with already know (at great length) how I believe appropriate processes are not a list or procedures that lock you into a set procedure but in essence are tools for optimizing, measuring, and validating performance. (It's not my idea - COSO, CobIT, and ITIL is where I learned these ideas.) I will not rehash these ideas in this blog.
However, I discovered another example of this yesterday at lunch. I was at lunch with John, a friend of mine. I won't use his last name, but John is a hard-working, dedicated, and intelligent IT executive at a large company. He is turning some IT fiascoes into reliable solutions.
He made a comment that struck me wrong. He said, "I want to be as far from bleeding edge as possible." John is not the only person who feels this way, but he is the first one I have heard articulate it succinctly.
What John does not realize that bleeding edge has changed in the past ten years. The newest solutions from Sun and HP have the sole purpose of providing 'predictable and sustainable performance.' Also, the goal of governance and compliance is to provide competitive advantages while giving predictable results.
So, my opinion is that John (and many IT executives like him) is suffering from premature optimization. In his goal to be perfect (in his case a goal of perfect knowledge before entering a project) he is taking away many of the technologies that would help him do his job. He is so happy using the procedures, processes, strategies, and technology that worked well in the late 90's and during the post dotcom era to get his job done that he is neglecting the advancements made in the last ten years that could make his life better.
If you believe that technology and business has not improved in the last ten years, I would like to hear from you.
For more information, please go to www.Unitiv.com.
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Tue, Apr 28, 2009 @ 03:54
Everyone here at Unitiv is pleased to announce the launch of our new website: www.unitiv.com.
We have designed the website to appeal to both the technical and business community alike. To achieve this we have added a direct feed from our company blog and a method to receive direct feedback. This website is meant to compliment our position as a professional provider of enterprise IT solutions and enhance the service we deliver from our headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia and our regional office in Iselin, New Jersey.
Our goal is to create and deliver cost-effective technical solutions to help our customers achieve their business goals. Please let us know how we are doing. We want to hear from you about our new site and how it can help you and your business.
Posted by Shawn McGee on Mon, Apr 27, 2009 @ 03:45
First, CIPA is the Child Information Protection Act. It is required for schools who want to maintain federal E-rate funding. CIPA has seven main points, but the point I am going focus on is "An Internet safety policy must include technology protection measures to block or filter Internet access to pictures that are: (a) are obscene, (b) child pornography, or (c) harmful to minors (for computers that are accessed by minors)."
Without getting too technical, we can see that technology that stops access to certain websites is beneficial for business for HR reasons and for productivity reasons. What could make this even a better use for business if it had an ability to just monitor activity and be able to report on it without blocking anything.
What could ruin this technology for business but leave it productive for education is if the technology limits bandwidth or slows down access to legitimate sites. It would also be a deal killer if the company did not list for profit companies in its portfolio since you would be unsure of the level of support you would receive.
As you may have guessed, I have found a 'best of breed' for web or url filtering. The Marshal8e6 R3000 is a hardware appliance that sits adjacent to your firewall and can filter or record your web traffic. The same company that brings the MailMarshal spam filter and endpoint security (as well as end point encryption) also is the company of the R3000.
The R3000 can monitor only or limit access to site based on active directory or ldap logins, it is a company already known and trusted for business security, and there is no slowdown by putting htis device on your network.
If you have any questions on this, send them my way and I can answer them for you.
For more information, go to www.Unitiv.com
Posted by Shawn McGee on Mon, Apr 27, 2009 @ 02:34
It is still too early for a formal announcement from Oracle and Sun about product offerings. This gives those of us who speculate time to see what the possibility is for the combined product line. While the combination of world class hardware like the T2 architecture and the Amber Road storage along with world class database and software solutions like PeopleSoft and BEA is intriguing, I am looking forward to the announcement about Cloud Computing.
To recap, Cloud Computing can be considered as Software as a Service, SaaS, Platform as a Service, PaaS, or Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS.
Sun's IaaS offering was already top notch. With the Qlayer aquisition in November, they were able to combine that technology with the open source Hypervisor technology to control the IaaS platform.
The SaaS offering will be increased dramatically. The potential to offer PeopleSoft, BEA, and other software solutions using the Sun hardware is an incredible increase in Sun's ability. Oracle can now make these solutions on the best of the hardware solutions for running Oracle and Oracle products.
I see the biggest possibility in PaaS. We already know about Solaris and Open-Solaris and the other cloud computing tehcnologies;
- Hypervisor (xVM Server)
- OS (Solaris Containers and Zones)
- Network (Crossbow)
- Storage (Solaris ZFS)
- Applications (GlassFish, Java CAPS).
Now, if we add Oracle's cloud technologies;
- WebLogic Server for Java,
- Tuxedo for C/C++/COBOL,
- Coherence in-memory data grid,
- JRockit Java runtime solutions
- Enterprise Manager with WebLogic Operations Control.
It becomes apparent how many more offerings we can develop. I am holding out a lot of hope that the Cloud Computing offerings take advantage of all these technologies.
One question for readers. I did not mention Sun's Zembly. This technology is so intriguing, but I do not see a role yet for business. How are you using or planning to use Zembly?
For more information, go to www.Unitiv.com.
Posted by Jef Allen on Mon, Apr 20, 2009 @ 03:25
After weeks of speculation about Sun's future and a failed IBM offer, Oracle has agreed to buy Sun for $7.4B, or $9.50 a share. After factoring out Sun’s cash and debt, the deal is valued at $5.6B. For this investment, Oracle gets Solaris – arguably the best OS platform for their industry-leading database, it gets Java – the foundation of the Oracle Fusion suite, it gets ZFS and DTrace, it gets MySQL off the street to use for whatever purpose it chooses, and it gets a massive portfolio of software development tools and expertise. All of this on top of a world-class server manufacturer. This puts them in a solid position to compete in the future cloud model with IBM.
One can only imagine the appliance possibilities that exist from this union, to say nothing of the optimization of the Oracle database around an OS and engine for data warehouse and BI applications.
The real beauty of this melding of technology giants is the synergy and minimal overlap in their portfolios. The anti-trust problems that IBM would have had in the Unix server and tape markets with their dominant shares of both are not issues for Oracle. Sure, the MySQL thing may be an issue, but it pales in comparison to the hurdles IBM faced. There will still be challenges, but Oracle has as much experience managing through difficult mergers as any corporation, and it usually gets what it wants at the end of the day.
The real need at this time is for Oracle to step up and show a clear direction to the existing Sun user community. Oracle has not been a hardware manufacturer, and the hardware market is very different. Their account executives are used to different competitive dynamics, pricing, margin and fulfillment models. They are not consistent in their leverage of the channel, and they often perceive the channel as competition, frequently preferring to negotiate direct contract discounts with their customers. That sort of business practice would be very disruptive to a hardware channel that has been asked to step up to an even bigger role in Sun's installed-base.
Even with the challenges, this looks like a winner. The market and the end user community had become convinced that Sun needed help to remain a major player in the data center.
For those customers who may have doubted Sun’s future impact and viability, this puts that issue to rest. It is time to move forward.
To find out more about Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, please go to www.oracle.com/sun/index.html or www.oracle.com/sun/sun-faq.pdf.
For more information, please go to www.Unitiv.com.
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Sun, Apr 05, 2009 @ 06:11
First of all let me just say that I do not own an iPhone (as of yet). However, like most Americans today, I have been reading about them, saw them on TV and know plenty of people who do own one. Since my Verizon contract is up in a couple of months I have been paying a bit more attention to them and as a techie I have started to do my own research. Of course, I talked to my friends who own them, read the online reviews and even went to the AT&T store to play with one.
As expected I have heard plenty of positives - like all the available apps and some even find the price semi-fair. However what I did not expect was the surprisingly growing number of articles and even websites devoted to people who HATE the iPhone!
Let me just say that people hating a new and cutting edge product is nothing new. Just a few examples off the top of my head include cassettes, CDs, DVDs and cell phones (I don't know why you would want to use a phone outside your house, it's unheard of).
However, some of the extent that people go to in describing their hatred of the iPhone is quite perplexing. One of the finest examples comes from an essay posted in the April 5, 2009 issue of the NY Times Magazine titled: "I Hate My iPhone." To quickly sum up the article, the author desperately wants an iPhone and eventually ends up with one. However when she starts using it and downloading the apps, she discovers that it isn't quite what it is cracked up to be. For example the keyboard is difficult to use and she finds it cumbersome to receive calls without accidentally hanging up on people. In the end, she has epiphany and ends up exchanging the iPhone for a Blackberry.
This previous example is not the only one I have come across in the past few days. Other fascinating sources such as 3 Reasons Why I Hate The iPhone and Top 5 Reasons To Hate The iPhone 3G (which actually came out a few days before the iPhone 3G) all make some valid points.
The most interesting source in my opinion is the website: ihatemyiphone.com. This site is basically a bulletin board where anyone can post anything (about their iPhone) and in most cases it is very negative and not for the eyes of children. The creators of the website claim that hating the iPhone is normal and telling the world about it will make you feel better. Instead of smashing it with a hammer or throwing it out of a window, express your anger through words - as so many try to teach their children.
After reading all of that negativity let's get back to reality. Love it or hate it, the iPhone is here to stay. Even those who own and despise the accursed item will most likely not get rid of theirs for one reason or another. Much like DVDs and music CDs (which are still around for those who do not know) I foresee a long and prosperous run for Apple's miracle cell phone. For every one who gets rid of theirs, ten will take their place as iPhone newbies.
In the end instead of hating the iPhone, is it possible one just needs to hold on to theirs until they get to love it as much as they hate it? Personally I am not sure yet, but I intend to find out!
Gabor is a Solutions Architect with Unitiv. For more information, go to www.Unitiv.com.
Posted by Anand Chouthai on Thu, Apr 02, 2009 @ 09:05
Sun's Healthcare Industry practice uses its resources to build architectures and solutions by partnering with the community to contribute value and to reduce overall cost and complexity with open-source-based technology.
The Healthcare Industry practice group defined a five-tiered area of focus. Description, Status, Examples for each area are provided below.
1) Health Information Exchanges "HIE"
"HIE exchanges allow data exchanges between various organizations and thus different information systems," said Schwartz.
Core elements of a HIE were defined as:
- Communication adapters
- Master Data Management (MDM) systems
- Record Locator Services
- Repositories
- Role management
- Identity Management (IdM)
- Consent management
- Clinical applications
2) Secure Data Management for structured and unstructured medical data
"SAM-FS in combination with our disk and tape products archives today medical image data in hundreds of hospitals and imaging centers around the world," said Schwartz.
3) Caregiver Mobility
"Especially in tough budgetary situations and long-term high energy costs, many CIOs are looking into ways to take cost out of the desktop environment, usually one of the big ticket items in every IT budget," said Schwartz.
4) Regulatory Compliance
"The FairWarning appliance makes configuration and implementation of comprehensive application level monitoring easy - check out the regulatory compliance exhibit in our booth at HIMSS'09," said Schwartz.
5) Consumer Centric Health management
"Two other solution partners in our consumer centric health portfolio are greenplum and OCIE," said Schwartz.
Posted by Greg Haney on Thu, Apr 02, 2009 @ 05:12
In every recession or downturn in the economy, there is opportunity to rise above the competition. In every downturn of the economy, there have always been leaders and innovators who succeed while the majority suffer many setbacks.
In my experience selling IT for the past 20 years, I've seen some IT Executives cut back everywhere, they trim out the fat, then the muscle and then down to the bone and then lay low in hopes that bad time will pass sooner than later.
However, there are some IT Executives who look at these tough times as an opportunity to be innovative in this time of chaos and rise to the occasion.
I'm curious to better understand the attitudes of IT Executives in our current economic environment? What's important today? What are the plans to survive today, and come out ahead of your competition? What steps are being made to control cost and maintain their infrastructure? Are IT Executives finding ways to be innovative in their decisions to control costs while at the same time implementing new technology and strategies in an effort to come out on top through the slow times and be soaring above the competition when the economy makes a turn for the better?
For more information, go to http://www.unitiv.com/.
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Wed, Apr 01, 2009 @ 06:04
Texas Instruments (TI) introduced the world's smallest projector last year at the Consumer Electronics Show. TI and Taiwanese projector company Optoma have developed the Optoma Pico. Currently hailed as "the next generation of handheld displays," the Pico Pocket Projector is being targeted towards traveling salesmen as a must have for on-the-spot presentations.
Imagine putting your PowerPoint presentation on your iPhone, Blackberry or PDA and only having to carry a projector the size of your cell phone that weighs a mere 4 ounces. The Optoma Pico claims to be able to enlarge images up to 60 inches in size (on any surface) and has a 2 hour battery life (enough for most presentations). It can be easily re-charged with an AC adaptor or a USB port.
This product can be useful for business needs. Now consider the entertainment value. Anything from TV shows, to movies, and to sporting events can be viewed on a cell phone, iPod, iPhone, etc. Of course watching an action flick or hockey game on your iPod Nano can be brutal on the eyes, however with the Optoma Pico it can actually become enjoyable! Using LED illumination and DLP technology, the Optoma Pico can deliver vivid images with a 1000:1 contrast ratio. The Optoma Pico currently retails for $399 and is available with a small, but growing list of accessories (such as an Interlink Remote and it's own 100" screen).
The potential for such micro projector technology is immeasurable. 3M has already countered the Optoma Pico with it's own palm-sized product. It is also in the rumor mill that Microsoft is also looking to develop it's own design to bring down the Optoma Pico. Much like the "now overcrowded" MP3 market, it is my opinion that one will eventually reign supreme a la the Apple iPod.
Since TI and Optoma are first to the party, the Optoma Pico has an excellent chance to end up on top of this relatively new market. Returning to the business aspect for a last word; imagine traveling across the country and instead of ending up at the hotel bar to pass the time, download the football game (or some other sport) you missed while being on the plane and watching it on the walls of your hotel room...and yes you can still order room service if you get hungry. To get some more information on the Optoma Pico, you can visit this site: http://www.optomausa.com/pico.asp