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How does cloud affect the storage infrastructure?

// November 16th, 2011 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

Surely everywhere you venture these days, there is talk about Cloud. A year or two ago, it was limited to the Enterprise, but now it seems that its found its way onto the consumer space as well (eg; iCloud).

I’m not the foremost expert in cloud, but I think everyone’s got a definition for it today. You decide if what I’m saying makes sense.

Is cloud a product?
I don’t think so. Its almost like asking if Internet is something you can buy.

Is cloud a technology?
Hmm… in some ways, but not completely accurate.

My definition is really that Cloud is more of a CONCEPT (for providers) and SERVICE (for users).

Think about it for a second, all you ever hear about cloud is really about a service you can buy or provide. Example being, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and etc. So don’t be completely fooled when vendors trys to sell you Cloud…

I think in-terms of storage, what vendors are really selling would probably be better termed “Cloud-Enabled“.

Features such as thin provisioning, wide striping, data resiliency, storage virtualisation, dynamic tiering and charge backs tools are some of the key features that makes sense to a cloud deployment. How so? I’m not gonna deep dive into the details but hope you will get the drift…

If you ask me, Cloud is just another buzz word in recent times that describes the evolution of the IT industry… Lets take a stroll back memory lane…

1. First there were built-in hard-disks. We realised that utilisation was low, so we built SAN’s for “sharing” storage.

2. We built the PC, but we wanted to communicate with the next PC. So we hooked them up. We realised then, we needed to “share” data with more PC’s, thus we built the LAN, then later the WAN, then the Internet.

3. Servers were great functioning as physical boxes. Again, low utilisation meant that we wanted to “share” to better utilise the resources. Tada… Server virtualisation!

4. Now we have SAN’s, NAS’s and etc. We realise that every vendor talks their own language. EMC doesn’t link with HDS and vice versa. So we have pockets of storage that is not properly utilised. If you don’t already know, this is now happening, and its called Storage Virtualisation, where all storages are consolidated into a single pool regardless of vendor. So we can “share” more efficiently.

5. What’s next on the roadmap? Not too sure if you have heard, FCoE and CEE is around the corner. In a nutshell, that is again, consolidation of SAN and LAN, so the networks can “share” a single common infrastructure.

So, if you look at the 5 points above, the common word amongst them is really sharing (in the enterprise, it’s better known as “cost saving” ).

Looking at cloud again, we combine all of the above, and again look at the possibility of further reducing costs and/or sharing. And the Cloud is born. Use the existing infrastructure in its entirety and share it out at a higher level.

So when shopping for your next enterprise purchase, be it storage, software or servers, make wise decisions as to how its features can be shared. Do not just take the vendors word for it, cause some just don’t quite make sense.

Sales Organisations vs Delivery Organisations

// June 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Blogroll, Technical Know-It-All

Have you ever had experiences where colleagues draw boundaries as to where their work responsibilities end?

Well, to a certain degree, I suppose we can’t expect everyone to do above and beyond their responsibilities and this is sometimes true in super-large MNC’s (not generalising here) where we are just another employee in an organisation of 20,000 people.

However, what if you are in a small team of say, 10, 20, or even 50? Would you do it differently?

I used to work in an organisation of 50 where we would have the usual sales division and consultancy division. The sales folks will work their butts off making the sale, and once that’s done, the buck gets dropped to the consultants to deliver it. The consultants were usually charged out by the hour. Some were extremely particular about drawing boundaries of our scope of work because additional work would potentially mean additional hours that don’t result in additional pay. Fair enough…

While there were constant bitching internally from our end about unrealistic timelines and expectations that were promised to customers and etc., we always, always fronted the customer as a team despite our differences. Whatever banter, issues or incompetency were put aside, when we faced the customer.

As my career progressed, I moved closer to the sales organisation, and I slowly began to understand the difficulties on the sales side. Sales folks don’t always get to sell the perfect solution. It’s more of the best solution for the budget. The mindset of a consultant of “why didn’t they sell this, this would have made our life’s easier”, is very different from a sales mindset of “how can I do good with his/her limited budget”. For sales, its simple, its either you win something or you lose it all. But what consultants don’t always understand is that, if sales didn’t have a solution that met the budget and end up losing a deal, consultants have nothing, zero, nada to deliver. So winning partial or half the requirement is better than a loss most of the time.

Looking back at my consulting days, I think I have always understood this (while not in depth). I guess I kinda always knew it was just as tough for the sales folks to close the deal. So did I draw boundaries when delivering services? I don’t think I ever did. In fact, whenever I had the opportunity to upsell or present additional value, I believed I fulfilled it. And because of that, I felt more like part of the team, working towards a common goal. A sales win is a win for the consultants as well, so there were no reason why I wouldn’t do it. When they won, we celebrated together!

In my short career till date, I cannot believe the amount of consultants that I have met that defied everything that I just wrote. They drew lines at every juncture, communicated gaps in a solution to the customer, jeopardised a potential sale and more. Consultants often also bitched about the after hours and weekend work they put in, and how sales folks just golf all day and enjoy themselves. Having been there and done that, you either love what you do or you don’t… I enjoyed every minute of my days as a consultant, but then, I made a choice that I didn’t wanna do crazy hours and possibly wanted to golf too.

So my advice is simple, suck it up as a team player, or just make a choice and move on.
The fundamentals are simple, we rely on each other… no 2-ways about it.

I once discussed this with a colleague as to why consultants never get it? Is it so hard to comprehend?
She gave me a simple answer.

“This is why you have graduated to be in the sales organisation and they haven’t…”

Expensive Printer Ink

// May 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

Have you ever fallen into the trap where the printer that you bought was such a steal, only to find that when buying replacement cartridges that the cost of the replacements would potentially have bought you a new printer?

Today I came across this article explaining why HP printer inks are expensive and it is a very interesting justification from HP about how ink is expensive to develop and etc.

But seriously, like everything else, technology improves! And as it usually is, you get more for less. You don’t see mobile phones getting bigger with lesser features? You don’t see laptops getting smaller with lesser processing power. And you don’t see hard disks sizes larger and prices increasing exponentially? It is just the way it is with technology. And while I don’t know the exact numbers/dollars involved in developing new laptop, mobile phone or hard disks technology, I’m sure it is not cheap.

So how is that printer ink is still so expensive? I’m sure they sell buckets load of ink every year, so volume is not a good enough excuse either.

So for now, I suppose we shall all stick to writing on paper. Oh wait, do we still use lead pencils? 

Does staff loyalty still exist?

// April 22nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Technical Know-It-All

Before I joined the work force many years ago, I never quite understood why employees these days rarely stay beyond 3-4 years in an organisation. Are those days where employees work for 10 years or so in a company gone, or is there something that either the employers/employees aren’t doing right?

Now, after being in the industry for a while and experiencing it first hand, I think I’m beginning to understand more. Here are my views from a techies standpoint.

1. Technically sound professionals are usually very loyal to an organisation if treated right. For techies, 2 key factors play a part in this. The opportunity to learn or upgrade their skills and their relationship with their reporting managers. While monetary returns are usually important, it is probably not the most important element when it comes to techies. Techies like to be challenged and need to stay sharp, that is why training is essential. Being stingy on training because of cost (economic conditions) is not exactly the best of excuses because cost is usually easily allocated to other departments that are perceived to be more important than the IT teams.

2. Relationship with the manager is probably the key factor behind staff loyalty that applies to all fields. If you can’t get along with your managers, no matter how much you like your job, it is always gonna be a challenge. Truthfully, there are only 2 ways around it. Live with it or just leave. Many experienced techies usually leave an organisation for greener pastures but lesser experienced techies will just live by it. I used to be in the “live by it” class, but I have come to realised that change might not be such a bad thing. I guess if its already bad, it can only get better right?

3. Company loyalty = Staff loyalty. Organisations these days are so much about dollars and cents that they forget that it is the people within it that drives the business. A happy staff equals a profitable company. Why don’t organisations realise this? Google isn’t up there because they slave drive their staff. Imagine programmers dragging their feet to meet a dateline, and marketing staff slacking off. How is that gonna help Google? Many companies are getting rid of the junior staff in favor of senior staff with the reason being, “bad economic conditions”. How many junior staff does it take to equal the salary of a senior director (that has potentially led the organisation into this mess)? Staff loyalty only exist if company loyalty exists. Period.

4. Cronyism is another big factor that deters many from staying in an organisation. While it is more discreet in Western work force, it is exceptionally prevalent in Asian organisations. Everyone likes to be boot-licked. Yes, I do agree. But we must be wary that it does not become a dominant culture. I’m not saying that all brown-nosers are incompetent, but the majority of them are. This will severely impact the organisations performance, not to mention that you will potentially lose valuable staff because of this. Techies like myself, just despise cronyism. Why? I suppose we are just geeky and we like to stand for whats right I suppose. .

Re-Training Technical Staff

// April 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

“We have a new product and you need to get up to speed with it. Please make sure you learn it up”

Sound familiar? I suppose it is something that we get all the time as techies. I do understand that, we are paid to be techies because of our ability to grasp technical concepts and understand them easily. But sometimes, I feel managers should understand that technology is not generic. There is a significant difference between the skillsets of an IT Engineer and a NASA Engineer. Agreed?

While it may be possible for an application engineer to be a database engineer overnight, it is usually very very difficult. Even if they were to achieve it, they are usually not going to be as good as someone who has been working with databases all their lives.  It is becoming so common these days with the various mergers and acquisitions in the industry, that tech staff have been asked to learn various contrasting disciplines and given little time to get up to speed on it.

I always believe that in order to convince a customer to purchase your product, you will have to first know and believe in your product. Obviously, that is not the case. Tech staff are constantly blamed for not knowing the product well enough and not enabling the sales team to perform better.

Bottom line is this. Give your techies time to get there, and provide significant investments to get there. Do not expect to have your techies learn a new skill without providing training and equipment. You don’t get good at riding a bicycle without a bicycle now, do you? If speed is of essence, invest in a new headcount. Contrasting disciplines are not easily attainable overnight. For example, don’t expect a Storage Area Network (SAN) expert to be a Wide Area Network (WAN) in 1 week. The only thing common between them is the word “network”.

Horses for courses!