While watching a WebEx about cloud functionality in Control-M from the folks at BMC Software, they used an analogy of a private fleet of airplanes to explain it. I thought they were onto something rather good, and decided to take that analogy and expand upon it. Having said that let me welcome you to…

Cloud International Airport (CIA, no relation to the other guys – maybe, perhaps, we’re not telling)

Imagine that you work for a company (I know, hard, huh?) and you take frequent trips for business purposes. Your company can either book your flight on the company fleet of planes or they can choose to use a public carrier, such as Delta, Southwest, etc. You don’t really care what method they use to get you to your destination, just as long as you get there.

This is analogous to the cloud in many ways – the private planes that your company maintains are the servers that exist within your organization today. There are only so many of them, and they can only carry so many people to so many destinations at a time. If you have 15 people who need to fly to 15 different destinations, and there are only 5 company planes then you have a problem. You have run out of capacity. Someone will have to wait similar to how when you run out of capacity on those internal servers some program or process is going to have to wait or the company will have to buy more planes or maybe figure out a way to optimize the flight routes.

Let’s say that you are one of the unlucky 10 that there simply isn’t any capacity for on the private planes (the private cloud or traditional server farm) your company owns. Instead you book your flight on Delta and arrive at your destination on time and ready to rock and roll. This is similar to how the public cloud works – you have a workload (yourself) that needs to complete a task (get to Denver by 10AM Tuesday) and you just need to the resources (plane) to do that. You go out into the public cloud (the airlines) and ask for capacity (buy a ticket) and they provide it (the ticket and the plane) and process the workload (get you to Denver). In fact you might fly on Southwest, American, Alaskan Air — you don’t care, you just want to get to Denver. All those different airlines are analogous to the public cloud providers out there today (Amazon EC2, Windows Azure, etc).

It may be that a group of 5 of you need to get to Denver, and the company has the capacity to fly 2 of you there on the company fleet, but the other 3 have to book through the airlines. This is similar to how a hybrid cloud environment works – some private, some public, but the results are the same. It’s fairly transparent to the end user. You all get to Denver, on time (the work gets done, the processes process!)

But wait, there’s more to an airport than just the airlines!

Take a look around CIA and you’ll see similarities to the cloud everywhere. As you walk into the airport the first thing you encounter in the ticketing counter and agents. They are there to figure out where you are going, find you a seat on a plane, and get you scheduled to get to your destination. This is similar to how products such as BMC’s Control-M for Cloud work. It helps direct the workloads (the people) to the appropriate servers (airplanes) and makes sure that we aren’t trying to put 200 jobs on a server that can only support 20 (number of seats on the plane). Just as the ticketing agent can help direct folks to the gate and get them on the right type of plane going to the right destination, workload management software helps make sure your workloads and business processes are getting to the right servers and completing on time. It also knows how to direct the workloads (the people) to the right type of servers (private fleet, public airline, cargo jet, etc.) and to make sure that all the resources that the data that is needed to run the workload is available for use (the luggage actually makes it to the same place you are going).

While the ticketing agents and gate folks at getting people onto the planes someone needs to make sure we get the planes fueled up, they have those tiny packets of peanuts fully stocked, and that your luggage actually gets on board. This is where our ground crew comes into play. Companies such as Zenoss play this role. They are constantly monitoring the resources available in the cloud (the number of planes at the gates, and the right plane is at the right gate), the right hardware is available (the peanuts are fully stocked, and for the 1^st class passengers the little bottles of wine) and that you can take the appropriate actions to help alleviate problems before they turn into critical outages (the planes get fully fueled so that they can safely make it to their destinations).

Security is big at airports, and it’s one of the first factors that companies should think about when considering the cloud. Just as the airport isn’t going to let just anyone walk in and get on a plane, companies have to make sure that when they use the cloud that their data isn’t just walking off. Like the security checkpoints in the airport that screen passengers and check tickets, companies like Anx help you to secure your data in the cloud and to make sure that your private business processes running in the cloud remain just that – private. As the airplanes take off and leave; luggage is loaded and unloaded; they are there to make sure that only the right people are on that plane and that nobody else tries to sneak off with your luggage when you aren’t looking. The same concept applies here – we want to make sure that your data gets to the cloud, processed, and back to your company without anyone rifling through it. Just like security is first and foremost the biggest concern at the airport, so should it be with your data and your move to the cloud.

As you stroll down the moving walkway to your gate you glance out the window and notice the air traffic control tower. These guys are making sure that planes are taking off and landing safely, and that each one of them has their own “lane” in the sky. They are the traffic cops of the air. In the cloud the air traffic controllers are the cloud providers themselves – the Microsoft’s and the Amazon’s of the world. They are making sure that servers and services get provisioned, you get assigned the right configuration for your needs and that if something should happen to the systems you are using, you can get rerouted around the problem (much like how planes get re-routed due to weather).

Of course we can’t leave our airport just yet without taking a stroll through the food court and all the shops. I mean, really, who needs a mall when some airports have shopping centers that make malls look quaint by comparison? We can get everything from fresh baked cookies, the latest book on cloud computing and a new laptop before we get to our gate! All these shops and vendors in the airport represent the concepts of agility and independence the cloud brings to services, software and processes that are running in the cloud. As we walk through the shopping areas our choices are so varied and many that if one shop is out of our favorite magazine we simply go the next one (if we no longer need a server we can re-provision it on the fly) or if we don’t like the selection of shops in this concourse we can walk over to the next one (if I don’t like the quality of service a cloud provider is providing me I can switch with relative ease to a new provider). When we finally get to Denver we can use that new laptop to get to our data and infrastructure regardless of our physical location. If my laptop runs out of power, I can use my tablet or smart phone.

Hopefully this has given you a little better idea of what the cloud is all about – and some features, benefits and uses it might provide for your organization. Now you’ll have to excuse me – I have to catch my plane to Denver!

So you might be thinking to yourself, “Wow!  I could access my photos and documents anywhere, anytime from any device?  Where do I sign up?”

No need to sign up – you’re already there.

Every day millions of people access their email through services such as Hotmal, Gmail or Yahoo Mail.  Thousands of photos are uploaded every hour to photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Facebook and others.  We tweet about what we are eating for lunch; we use services such as DropBox to store our files; and we upload our videos to Youtube.

And all the while, unknown to many, we are on “the cloud”.

You can upload a picture to Flickr, leave your laptop at home, get on a plane and fly halfway around the world, go into a coffee shop in Belgium and login to Flickr and your photos are there waiting for you.  Just like magic – except it isn’t, it’s cloud technology at work.  Your data (the photos) is being stored on Flickr servers that are located around the world.  You don’ t have to worry about how much space you are taking up, keeping the original backed up or carrying a USB stick around with you.

The same goes with your mail.  No matter where you are you can fire up a browser, use a smartphone or tap on a tablet and access your Hotmail account.  You don’t have to worry about how the mail gets there, just know that it does.  This is a far cry from years ago when checking e-mail meant you had to launch a mail program such as Outlook; and if you decided to switch computers it was a chore to get everything set back up again – and even when you got it right your old email was gone, or rather stuck on the old machine.

In fact this webpage you are reading right now is hosted “in the cloud”.  The data is kept on servers “out there” and I don’t have to worry about maintaining them, backing them up, etc.  I can access my blog from anywhere, using any device.  It’s just “there” and that’s the way it should be.

For end-users like ourselves the cloud represents the ultimate in freedom.  It allows us to finally break the chains that bind us to one particular computer, a single laptop or a mobile phone.  We can now switch devices instantly, access our data from anywhere and never have to worry about backing up our files in case something unfortunate were to happen (and let’s face it, how many of us actually backed up our data on a regular basis, if at all?)

So the next time you hear someone talk about the cloud pat yourself on the back – you’re already here.

For years I’ve been attending the CMG conferences and have always came back to work with information that was not just nifty to know, but was also useful and I could work towards implementing to help solve real-life performance, scalability and processing issues we face on a day to day basis back here in the office.  It’s one of those conferences that doesn’t tell you that you “have to use” this tool, or that you should run out and hire a consultant who preaches about “XYZ”.  Instead they focus on the theory, show you samples of how other companies have done it, and then provide you with enough information that you don’t have to worry about the “what” you just need to focus on the “how”.  Far too often we get so caught up in the “what” that we forget there are always multiple ways to solve a problem.  I go to conferences where its nothing more than a sales pitch for a vendor’s product – you learn a lot of stuff, but it only works with their particular product.  Not so with CMG which prides itself on being vendor-neutral.

I highly encourage anyone involved in e-commerce, retail, transactional processing, banking or mobile platform development to give serious thought about attending CMG.  I think you will be surprised at what you pick up and how much of it is relevant to what you do on a daily basis.  It’s being held in Washington, D.C. this year, so it’s not too far of a journey for a lot of you guys on the East Coast.

For you social butterflies out there, you can also check them out on Twitter @CMGnews and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/CMG-Computer-Measurement-Group . 

See you in D.C.!

~Rob

The holiday season is upon us — it comes earlier every year — and this year, thanks to the sour economy and double-digit unemployment retailers are nervously trying to get people to buy “stuff”. One of the ways they get you to buy this “stuff” is to disguise so-called gift guides and “hot item” stories as news. This trend started right around 1999 or so, and in the past decade retailers have found that they don’t need to write the so-called news articles anymore, the “news” sites will do it for them. Why you may ask? It’s all about the $$$.

Websites and online news sources quickly discovered that there was gold in those gift guides. Click gold that is. Through referral partnerships (whereby the merchant pays the referring website a percentage of the sale) and pay-per-click (the website gets a few pennies each time the story is displayed, or a link clicked) the money rolls in 24×7. Why report on any real news at all when you can post faux-news and collect that click gold?

Case in point, let’s take a look at MSNBC. They have been rolling out the gift guides for some time, but today I happened upon one called “Gifts for the hardcore techies” filed under science and technology news. Thank goodness there wasn’t any hard science news to report on instead — you know things like the radiation leak at Three Mile Island that happened yesterday or something like that.

A quick read of this gift guide leads me to ask two questions:

• Did anyone bother to tell MSNBC that we’re in the worst economic downturn since the Depression?
• How much money are they earning off this one?

So let’s take a look at what gifts they “recommend” we run out and buy our geek friends.  I’m sure they have personally used and tested each of these, right?  And by used and tested I mean for more than 30 minutes.

First on the list is the Android phone from Motorola — the Driod.  This will only set you back $199, but it also requires a 2-year contract.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t care how good a friend they are, I’m not going to sign into a two year contract for a phone for them.  What if they already have an iPhone or a Windows Mobile phone and love it?  This one sounds fishy right out of the gate.

So the phone is out, but hey they have a lot more “recommendations”.  You can get your friend a $1,800 laptop (I wish I had friends like that) or for a measely $2,000 you can get them a plasma TV.  Geez, I got to start hanging out with some better friends — I usually just get a free lunch or a card.  I feel like I’ve been cheated all these years!

Let’s just hope you don’t have a lot of friends who are into tech, otherwise you are going to have to ask Uncle Sam for your own personal bailout by the time you get done going down the shopping list that MSNBC and their “tech writer” have put together.  The cheapest thing on the list is an overpriced 2GB “designer” USB drive for $24.99 (which can be found for less than $9 as of this writing on Bing’s shopping site).

I don’t know what just upsets me more.  The fact that a news site is passing this kind of nonsense off as “news” (especially science and technology news) to fatten up their coffers (every product on the store had a link at where you could click off and buy it — click gold!) or that apparently they think that the average person on the street going to rush out and buy their friends gifts that cost more than a mortgage payment (or two, or three!)

Perhaps instead you can invite your friend out to a nice, long lunch or a special night on the town.  Maybe you could get a group of friends together and treat them to a movie and popcorn (ok, so I know that one can be pricey!); or give them all a batch of homemade cookies and fudge to enjoy.  Don’t fall for the hype that comes out this time a year — and don’t get sucked into the mindset that you have to buy expensive gifts for family and friends.  The best gifts I ever got cost less than $10.

If you still feel this burning need to spend money might I suggest you consider donating a few bucks to a food pantry or other charitable organization.  In fact, I know of a Food Pantry where I live that could really use some help and appreciates whatever small donation you can give.  And no, I don’t get any click gold whenever you click on that link.

Of course you’ll never see MSNBC put something like that into their “gift guide”.  No $$$$ — no coverage.  That’s just the way these guides work nowadays.  Buyer/Clicker beware.

Originally submitted at O’Reilly

This compact book offers the quickest path for Windows XP and Vista users to get started with Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. With Windows 7: Up and Running, you get the essential information you need to upgrade or install the system and configure it to fit your activities, along…

Windows 7: Up and Running

A Great Primer for Mom, Dad & Friends

Pros: Helpful examples, Concise, Easy to understand

Best Uses: Novice, Beginner, Intermediate

Describe Yourself: Sys Admin, Developer

Nowadays almost everyone from grandma to the kid who lives next door is online and has a computer. The digital age has meant that many of us know the basics of how to use a computer, get online and do basic tasks — but for many users they learn a particular way of doing things, and when software (or the OS) changes they find themselves scratching their heads wondering where things went and how they got changed. In this handy primer guide the author has done a fairly good job of helping get casual end-users up to speed on Windows 7.

The book walks you through many of the features that have changed and introduces you to some of the new functionality of the OS (for example, Libraries in Windows 7). It also walks users through common “gothcas” and things to be aware of (for example, why all sites don’t support the use of Web Slices in IE8). Sidebars and a generous library of pictures help to call the reader’s attention to specific items.

I was a little dissapointed in the Installation Chapter of the book, and thus took away one star. Though the author covers netbooks and dual-booting, the issue of upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 is never covered. So let me cover it right here: ALWAYS DO A FRESH, CLEAN INSTALL — NEVER DO AN IN PLACE UPGRADE! Given the brevity of of the chapter on installation, and the main focus of the book, I feel this chapter could even be taken out without taking away from the book.

This book would make an excellent gift for mom and dad, or that friend who just bought a new computer with Windows 7 on it. It’s a good primer for getting started with Windows 7 and making the jump to help keep your digital life a bit more organized and productive!

SCRUM can be thought of as project management for Agile environments, but I think its strongest point is that it helps teams and customers understand where the backlogs are and how they can work to avoid getting trapped in “idle” or “wait” time states. The so-called SCRUM Master works with the Product Owner to make sure that work gets done with as few barriers as possible. You can think of the SCRUM Master as the person in charge of the processes and the Product Owner as the person who is in charge of the product itself.

SCRUM also helps teams start addressing what their produce as releases. For example, I may want to have X, Y and Z in a project, but I’ll be happy to “roll the project out” with X and Y. Z is a “nice to have” but not something that will stop the project from going live to the customers.

It’s amazing how many “nice to haves” there are and how few “must haves” some projects can have. You find out quickly that customers love to pile a lot of “nice to haves” into a project request!

One of the final things that SCRUM helped me better understand was that iterations “are what they are”. Managing by the numbers may not be appropriate in an Agile environment, and things like velocity and number of stories per developer are not only useless for measuing productivity, but can actually hurt a team’s productivity.

I’m excited to continue to learn more about both SCRUM and Agile, and look forward to moving my team at work further down the Agile road. Sometimes change can be exciting.

Have you taken a look at who most of these loudmouths are who are disrupting the democratic process? It’s none other than angry, old, white men who want everything for themselves and nothing for anyone else. It is the same people who got a free college education courtesy of the GI bill; the same people who line up for free health care at the VA; the same people who are enrolled in Medicare and have their healthcare taken care of by you and I — the taxpayers. You see, this is the generation that got us into this entire economic mess. The selfish baby boomer generation that wants everything for themselves and nothing for anyone else. They want to continue to dictate to the rest of the country how we are going to live — whether we want to hear from them or not.

Now let’s be fair. It isn’t all baby boomers — I know plenty of older folks who think this is the right thing to do. The people who are causing problems are mostly the same group of folks who didn’t vote for Obama because of the color of his skin. As I wrote earlier, the underlying racism has a lot to do with what is going on here. A friend of mine pointed out that some Republicans and their roaming gangs are hell-bent on supporting anything that this administration tries to do because of who Obama is — it doesn’t matter whether it is right for the country or not.

I really believe we are at a turning point in history where this is the last stand for many of these angry, old, white men. People, especially those of us in the younger generations, are tired of hearing it. We are ready to move this country forward, not backward. It’s time for these angry, old, white men to just shut up. The rest of us will solve this problem just fine — and it won’t just be the younger generation, it will also be the open-minded older generation who will help as well.

The relevance of angry, old, white men long ago faded — and not a moment too soon. Just like the relevance of Rush Limbaugh — where the only people who listen to him anymore is the same angry, old, white men.

Please.

Lately it seems like every time I turn around its my bank, or a credit card company or some online retailer or site sending me an “Ooops, sorry” letter.  There was a time when this happened they at least offered to buy you a subscription to a monitoring service – but you don’t see that much nowadays, I guess they figured that it happens so often now that its just standard procedure to notify you and then ask for forgiveness.  “We really, really promise to try harder next time!”  Next time what?  Next time you put my private data up for grabs?

Please.

It’s time that websites stop collecting personal data.  Period.  After all, most websites (I’d argue well over 95% of them) have no need for personally identifiable information.  I shouldn’t have to share with you my home address and telephone number just to be able to browse your website.  In fact, for most websites out there all the information they need is a way to identify me (a username) and a password to make sure its me.  That’s it.  They don’t need my zip code, my birthday – nada.

To be fair, some websites have already seen the light and are heading in this direction.  Sears Holding Corporation, parent of Sears and Kmart stores, recently made it so you can login to their customer service sites using a plethora of identification services such as OpenID and Facebook.  Even blogs are starting to get in the act and allowing you to “authenticate” with your Twitter or Facebook id to post a comment.

Of course, that’s not to say we should automatically trust Facebook, Twitter or even OpenID with our personal information.  However, I’d rather take my chances with a small number of companies that adhere to strict data privacy guidelines than giving it to every Joe Six Pack on the Internet who starts his own blog.  We can hold companies who setup guidelines accountable when they misuse our data or abuse our trust a lot easier than we can anonymous strangers behind a website.

If anything it encourages more interaction because we don’t have to interrupt our train of thought to create yet another account we’ll forget about or have to write down somewhere and keep track of.  Ever since some blogging platforms started allowing me to authenticate using Twitter and Facebook I’ve noticed I’m more willing to jump in and participate instead of thinking about participating and then opting not to because “I have to create an account first <Groan>”.

It’s time we stopped giving out our personal data to websites and start asking questions about why they want it to begin with.  Heck, I won’t even give out my phone number to people anymore, instead I give my Google Voice number to folks – even my friends.  Heck, I’ll even give that out to you – complete Internet stranger – just look to the right of my blog for the link!  I trust Google to keep my real phone number private (perhaps I’m being a bit too trusting?)

The past 16 years on the web has been the wild, wild west – but there is a new sheriff in town, and a whole lot of townsfolk who have had it with privacy “breaches”.

“Instant Turnaround!  Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard” by Harry Paul and Ross Beck

I’m always on the lookout for books that focus on people as part of the business process — after all, you can’t have any type of successful business if your people are the last thought on your mind. In "Instant Turnaround!" the author walks us through a very easy to read fable about how focusing on the people in your company can have dramatic effects on performance and the bottom line. Through a fictional setup he walks us through a company that goes from an atmosphere of pure dread to work at to one where the employees and the CEO actually know each others name — and productivity soars.

This is the type of book every manager, supervisor and CEO should have tucked away for an easy read on their next plane trip. It’s such basic principles — focus on your people, take an interest in their lives and their work, and don’t be afraid to admit you are wrong — that you probably have heard them a thousand times already. If so, then as the author points out, why haven’t you acted on them and started putting some of them into practice?

Books like this are written for executives who have had enough of the old way of doing things and want to bring about change. They want to run their company with all the excitement they had when they were 21 again instead of acting like an 79 year old dictator from some 3rd world country.

It’s such an easy read and is packed with so many ideas and notes that there is only one question left — what’s your excuse for not reading it?

One of the things about most workplaces, and where I work is no different, is that employees are never really allowed to recharge their batteries.  Sure, you get a few weeks vacation each year – but as anyone can tell you (and studies have proven) most employees come back to work feeling worse than before they left because all they can think about during the week or two they take off is work, and all the work waiting for them at work when they get back!

Some companies do it right and offer employees sabbaticals every so often.  For example, a few companies offer employees one or two months off to do whatever they want (in addition to their regular vacation) for every 5 years of employment.  The employees get to really relax and come back to work energized and refreshed and ready to really contribute to the team and the company.  They have enough time to completely decouple their lives from work and enjoy the down time.

Other companies take it a step further and have gotten rid of the notion of vacation time altogether.  Employees are encouraged to take as much time as they need, whenever they want to – as long as they meet their expectations, they are treated like adults who can manage their own lives.  What a concept – being measured on your contributions and results instead of your ‘butt in chair time’.

For me, though, its a rush to do a thousand things in 7 short days so I can jump back into the rat race.  At least, if nothing else, I hope to be able to enjoy a few good books – and let my imagination soar.