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I have a laptop, wireless mobile device, and a raft of productivity tools that I use to document, design and communicate with. Interestingly but unsurprisingly, I’m using email less and less to exchange documents and ideas but I am using it more for one liners and a means to receive updates from various systems that connect me to clients, colleagues, family and friends. I’m a huge fan of easy to use collaboration tools, by this I mean a clientless (web browser based) central point that my project team, client and 3rd parties can exchange documents, ideas and all things project related. The trouble is you still have other systems that play a key role in keeping the wheels of your business going round which means the team that’s focussed on delivering a project are distracted from time to time, flicking between different systems, signing in with a plethora of usernames, passwords and pin codes. The other issue is that your projects might run over such short periods of time that it appears (from the outside) that it’s not a top priority to invest in bringing all your systems together into one central ‘portal’ The fact is that it should be a top priority because if an ROI was put together on centralising all your systems you might think differently. The end result of doing so is typically an Increase in user efficiency (wasting less time on accessing multiple systems), increased user adoption (the ‘I want to use this system’ sort of feeling) and a decrease in duplication through centralising your assets. Most importantly, financial benefits are made because a typical working day is spent working without the hassle and time wasting of juggling multiple systems. Things start to get interesting once you’ve created a central portal. You can begin phase 2 which is to look at each system and the possibility of decoupling it from your enterprise. Take your CRM system for example and imagine putting it in a new home that runs on a platform that’s not your problem with a pricing model that reflects how much you use it. Forget about the hardware, software and running costs that affect you right now. Because you’ve invested in the central portal that acts as a mediator between you and all your systems, you can now start to move them about without impacting your end user. Obviously this idealist model will need a well designed portal that plumbs your systems together in such a way that means moving it doesn’t result in a poor user experience and a new set of addresses or pointers. This is all very nice but for the realists out there, you know that this is no small feat, but you are thinking this is possible if we produce a long term roadmap to get us there. How many more upgrades, replacements and maintenance windows do you want as your company grows or shrinks. Shrinking is a particularly poignant thing right now. A number of large organisations have shrunk by x% but they’re still footing the bill for infrastructure that supports the original organisation size. Food for thought and maybe more on this in a future blog...
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Are you building a new web site that's expected to receive high volumes of traffic? Do you own a large test rig for your web site that sits in your computer room or data centre burning fuel? Are you trying to scale down your IT infrastructure footprint where you can? If you or your clients answer yes to any of these questions then cloud testing services may be a good option. Old concept, new name Running tests in the cloud isn't a new concept; we've been able to use specialist companies that run web tests from their shared infrastructure for some time. What has changed is the understanding of what the cloud is beyond the technical community. Because senior management see the benefits of cloud pricing like the $ per hour model, they're more inclined to favour it. Large scale load tests for less If you've been involved in delivering a new web site, you may have had a conversation with your client or business head around the importance of load testing before go live. If you have, you've probably described the different test options but because of commercial or time pressures it can (mistakenly) be discounted as worthwhile. There is also the classic, 'I was told it will handle x concurrent users' conversation. When these estimations are given they can only be based on certain parameters such as the average page size, number of transactions, and a guesstimate of how many unique visits and page views are made. Now that we have a common understanding of the cloud's commercial benefits we can add this into the mix of options and run large scale web tests from multiple simulated users, IP ranges and regions on a PAYT (pay as you test) model. Two key players  UK Based (not branded as cloud testing, but their add hoc model is the same)
 US Based
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Winning new business based on a proven track record of delivering quality projects is admirable and something to be proud of. Being entrusted to deliver a project for a client is a big commitment for them to make and this is of course why contracts and legal's play an important part, but from an emotional point of view the client doesn't want to be disappointed or let down and project teams don't want to be seen as failing to deliver. Honesty and managing expectations improve everyone's chances of making it through unforeseen delays or issues. Delivering quality projects is about the final product which is achieved by having a team focused on delivery rather than pure design and never leaving the whiteboard. However, without detailed designs and the famously used whiteboard sessions your delivery is hampered. Delivering your project in iterations Putting methodologies aside for one moment, one way of achieving the right mix of design and delivery is to deliver your projects in iterations by: - Designing what you need to get your project off the ground
- Delivering what you need to demonstrate your competencies
- Delivering what you need to prove the initial concept works
- Delivering what you need to satisfy the clients' expectations
Fail fast How many times have you bought the perfect colour paint for your house only to find that with the light and other atmospherics it's way off what you envisaged? The same can be said for anything, like delivering a development project for example. Delivering in iterations allows you to (if necessary), 'fail fast'. This is a positive thing, you've avoided wasting excessive time and money and (from an emotional point of view) being a disappointment. Would your client prefer to know 2 weeks into a project that it's not forming as they foresaw or 18 months? Redesigning, amending and rebuilding causes delays and is hard work, not to mention expensive! The longer you leave it the worse it becomes. The A Team Lead specialists that share a common responsibility is one way you can ensure all bases are covered. Using overly complex and multi tiered levels of management on a project doesn't aid delivery. If you take lead specialists within each work stream on a project and give them the responsibility of simply communicating with each other and noting what dependences or blockers there are on each team, you can keep a project from losing momentum. These regular checkpoints mean impediments can be avoided or worked round before everything comes to a grinding halt. The client is also assured that the project team they've invested in is always moving forward and the 'down tools' nightmare doesn't become a reality! How do you sell the idea of delivering projects in iterations? - Featuring Zak Holdsworth Generally speaking, delivering projects in iterations isn't mainstream for everyone and can feel like a leap of faith for the client to buy into. The client needs time to adjust and trust you but how do you do this when the normal rules of bidding for new business apply? My colleague Zak Holdsworth is an Agile Coach and has put a timely blog together that takes you through his own experiences of how this was done successfully. Click here for Zak's blog. For more information about delivering projects in iterations, feel free to contact us: matt.mould@conchango.com
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...written in the context of when one plans for an Enterprise Scale Hosted Web Application The term Cloud Computing is probably mentioned as often as Web 2.0 was (back in the day) and with it comes the question of whether we need Managed Hosting anymore. I think its fair to say that it's never going to be a clear yes or no answer. Managed Cloud Services Will there be such a thing? We will start to see this come up in conversation more and more as people either start to develop serious green field projects in the cloud or include it as an extension to existing on premise services such as federation services or CRM. Managed Hosting can mean different things to different roles. If you're the head of IT being asked to provide levels of support for a system or entire enterprise that demand everything from 24/7 support to a meaningful SLA, you'll see Managed Hosting as a good option. If you're the head of a software development project you'll expect Managed Hosting to include a responsive service desk that can either troubleshoot an environment issue or assist in procuring additional services quickly whilst following a process. Co-Lo VS Managed Hosting Simply speaking, you would typically engage a Co-Lo hosting company to provide you with not much more than Power, Cooling, Networking and Rack space. You would engage a Managed Hosting company to (depending on your budget) do all the Co-Lo things plus the OS, Server Applications, Security, Capacity planning, 24/7 ITIL based service desk and much more. Cloud Computing and Your Responsibility I'm assuming that as cloud computing services mature or Managed Cloud Services enter the picture, the levels of support will start to increase and meet your requirements beyond just the hosting aspect, but for the moment you need to remember what you’re getting for a per £ per hour cloud model. Built for Operations You will need to 'bake in' monitoring to your cloud services application, you will need to select your preferred method of how to notify and report against application health, you may even need to pay an external party to monitor your application (outside in). Essentially you may find that cloud computing services feels a bit like Co-Lo. Another thing to remember is that your internal operations head count could increase with your newly freed cloud services application. So, back to the question – Do we still need Managed Hosting? For starters, you may want to consider asking yourself the following questions: - Does your hosted application need an external SLA that you can claim against?
- Does your hosted application demand outsourced monitoring and a 24/7 application focused ITIL service desk?
- Do you have the skills and know how to build hosted applications that will include monitoring, notification, reporting and self healing?
For more information about hosted applications, feel free to contact us: matt.mould@conchango.com
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Windows 7 was announced this week at PDC 2008 and I have to say that it's the OS we thought we were getting when Vista was launched way back when. The general public typically expect quite a lot from Microsoft when it comes to a new operating system and depending on how you look at it, you'll be getting a lot more for your buck this time! The key thing about Windows 7 is the amount of resource it needs in comparison with Vista. Even without programs like Outlook, Windows Live Messenger and Visual Studio running, my Vista build on a pretty good spec laptop consumes about 1GB RAM and is forever thrashing the hard drive for something. After installing a Pre Beta release of Windows 7 I was delighted to see that it booted quickly and used less than 512MB RAM. Great! thanks Microsoft for realising a sensible OS. All we ever wanted was a light weight operating system that doesn't need £2,000 of hardware to run the basic Windows things in life at a reasonable speed. In my opinion the future of Microsoft Windows has been saved by Windows 7. I know for a fact that there are a huge number of people that have put off an 'upgrade' to Windows Vista because they've been told it's slower than XP. Touchy Feely One of the BIG leaps forward with Windows 7 is the whole 'touch' thing i.e. (with the right touch screen bits and bobs) getting interactive with your applications is a real possibility. You might of seen Microsoft Surface in the press recently, Windows 7 bridges the gap and provides the 'readiness' for developers to start creating applications that are more interactive and tactile...picture a keyboard and mouse free life...as if - but I'm sure you'll start to see it at train stations, airports and all things kiosks based. HP have released a new 'all in one' touch PC that was used for the demo at PDC 2008, specs available here What does Windows 7 look like? Don't get too excited, as I said, it's a quick, more efficient version of Vista. Menu layouts and the use of libraries rather than My Documents etc are different but nothing to write home about. Search has been improved but you won't come away thinking that you're life has quite literally been changed by Windows 7. 
Windows 7 on the move If you spend a lot of time camped out in airports, hotels and conferences, you've probably noticed a new trend in ultra mobile laptops. I'm going to use the Asus Eee PC as an example, these cute 10" laptops don't have a lot of horsepower and currently only come with a scaled down Linux or Windows XP image. Now that Microsoft have addressed a lot of the performance issues that plagued Vista with the release of Windows 7 - it's probably going to become the operating system of choice for Eee PC's going forward When can I get Windows 7? Don't get your credit card out just yet! You need to wait till early 2009 for Windows 7 to become publicly available but the usual BETA programs will give you an opportunity to try it out. One thing that Microsoft have really focused on with Windows 7 is the customer feedback process. Whatever application you're running on Windows 7, there is a feedback button that when you click it captures what's running and what you were doing before you fill out a very easy to use feedback form. I've already sent about 5 individual pieces of feedback...but only because it's been so quick and easy to do so. More to come... I'll be posting more Windows 7 related blogs as I start to incorporate it more in my day-day life, so watch this space... For more info, please feel free to contact me at matt.mould@conchango.com
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It’s been said too many times...’we can save money with virtualisation this year’ It’s true you can, but let’s not kid ourselves into thinking it’s the answer to ALL our prayers. The cost saving buzz word for 2008 is ‘Cloud Computing’ clearly a very different concept and not (in all cases) comparable to servers running your organisations business apps, messaging and collaboration policies blah blah blah. Don’t forget about... Before I get onto the voodoo of licensing (more on that further down) in a virtual world don’t forget about the management overhead of the... - Physical hardware, Networking, Storage and backups
- Host server operating system (ESX/VMware and or MS Virtual Server or Hyper-V)
- Guest server operating systems
- Guest server products e.g. Exchange
- Monitoring systems
- Incident, problem, change and capacity management (to name 4 of the ITIL framework components)
If reducing rack space, power and cooling are the key goals of virtualisation, you’ve made the decision of virtualising your organisations systems for the right reasons. Consultancy and Migrations... If you think the migration of physical to virtual is easy then you could be right but to do it internally may result in losing a significant amount of the money you were to hoping to save with virtualisation in the first place. At a high level you’ll need to budget for training, proof of concepts, project management and risk mitigation! This is by no means a plug to use virtualisation consultancies but the decision of migrations (obviously) isn’t a light one, even for organisations with 100 mailboxes or a collection of documents that equate to less than 1TB. Like most things, outsourcing can give you an external SLA (service level agreement), contractual obligations, the use of certified system engineers and a formal hand over to your operations team. Here are just a few questions that you should be asking your organisation, IT project team and yourself: - What's the business purpose?
- What are the timelines for 'go live'
- Who will benefit the most from a new VM platform?
- Is the VM platform aimed at reducing existing physical infrastructure or a means to deploy additional servers?
- What Virtualisation options have you considered?
- Do you expect to use existing VMware and or Virtual Server/PC images?
- Number of expected VM guests?
- What are the guest OS requirements? (Linux, Windows 200x/XP/Vista)
- Are there any audit and compliance requirements?
Virtual Licensing Voodoo I’m going to concentrate on the Microsoft model for the moment – PLEASE NOTE: this is simply an example that consists of a SQL Server and BizTalk configuration. Operating system licensing in a virtual world is slightly different. 
A few examples of Microsoft products that fall into the ‘Per Processor Licensing’ category are Microsoft BizTalk® Server, SQL Server and ISA Server, etc. If any of the above server products are run in a virtual OS environment the licensing model is based on the number of virtual processors used by that virtual OS environment, rather than all the physical processors in the server. Regarding the guest operating system, by selecting Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition as the OS of each VM guest you’re permitted to run, at any one time, up to four instances of the server software in virtual OS environments on a particular server. I haven’t confirmed Server 2008’s model yet, so this is subject to change. Licensing Wrap up This is a pretty in depth subject and a tricky one (voodoo). Always ensure you get up-to-date advice from your software provider to avoid breaking any licensing laws!! If you want to learn more or speak to us about Virtualisation email me at matt.mould@conchango.com
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If you haven’t worked on an Agile project then your team or client will probably consider attempting to design the infrastructure that’s needed for the entire life cycle of your solution up front. Everyone tends to accept that even with a costly up front design phase you’ll be asked to squeeze another terabyte in or extend your UAT environment to cope with x thousand concurrent users. Question: was the design phase really worthwhile and are you being Agile without even knowing it? Agile will promote efficiency within your organisation because you’re limiting time and materials to what you need for the ‘job in hand’ and in infrastructure terms, you design, build and deploy what you need to get your project off the ground. For example, you have a team of developers and testers that have their tasks organised and need to get to work, so the immediate requirement is environments for both teams. This ensures your client is getting maximum value for money i.e. no one is sat around waiting to work while you spend time on a design phase with an unrealistic aim to include anything and everything you’ll ever need! Traditional data centre provisioning, server hardware, storage and operations is a timely and costly exercise for any company, so finding or building a shared environment is key to Agile Infrastructure. Virtualisation is probably your first choice for development and test environments with UAT, Staging and Production possibly being a hybrid of both physical and virtual. VMware is an excellent server virtualisation choice but not the only one, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and their new and improved Virtual Server platform ‘Hyper-V’ is an alternative if your Operations team aren’t skilled in supporting VMware estates or you’re on a tight budget. Short term hosting contracts are an ideal choice for organisations that don’t have an existing server platform. Agile infrastructure will also help to empower your development and test teams to manage their environments, therefore removing potential ‘blockers’ They need to be free to develop and change without the fear of any permanent damage. Giving your teams a ‘roll back’ point that they control will ensure their environment can be refreshed in minutes rather than hours and in turn give your client maximum value for money...again! 
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