Information Technology Consulting

This post may shock you... the Java Rocker is going to talk about legacy iSeries and AS/400! Before you panic, and call it the end of the world, let me continue. This post is about running all of the cool new Web 2.0 things on your IBM hardware. Really! Even in Cincinnati! Many people, (myself included) thought the old IBM hardware was only for RPG and COBOL (shudders). It turns out that IBM has been adding functionality to run Linux on the box. That means Wikis, Ecommerce, blogs, and web applications are now there for iSeries-AS/400 people. The catch is that your iSeries needs to be up to date, which sadly for most organizations is not. My IT consulting colleagues at STAR BASE are good with taking your tired old hardware and doing the maintenance necessary for the modernization piece. They get your hardware and software cleaned up and ready, so I can help you with all of the cool new application development projects that I have been talking about.

Happy New Year!!!  Welcome to a new year, new decade and a new beginning. 

As the recession recedes and recovery takes hold, IT executives are looking at their project lists and trying to decide what their priorities are.  Should we do application development in house or bring in an IT consulting company?  Should we consider an open source application?   What is the ROI?  What’s a company to do?   It doesn’t matter if your company is in Cincinnati, Dayton or Katmandu, the questions are the same.

Last month we did a pulse survey to see how IT leaders are managing ROI measurement.  The results were surprising and sparked a lot of conversation here at STAR BASE, Inc.  The thing that surprised us the most was the number of companies that did NOT look at ROI before doing a project.   Most of our respondents (58%) do not.

Some of conversations we have had revolved around the idea of doing a project or installing an application just to stay in the game.   Could you imagine a company of any size today functioning without email?  I could argue that there is negative ROI with amount of time managing my email in box takes! 

For those that measure ROI, only about half see the actual ROI align with the projected ROI most of the time.  The other half report that they see the actual ROI align with the projected ROI less than half the time and most said seldom or never.  I have often said that if management knew how much it was really going to cost to install that new ERP system before they started, they probably wouldn’t.

Since most of our respondents don’t look at ROI and of those that did, half said the ROI did not align, my question is this:  How do you decide what projects to do?  Are most companies spending money on IT because they need to “keep up with the Jones’ “?  Is it because installing that new ERP will look good on everyone’s resume?

Get your copy of our ROI Survey results by going here.

I was reading this article and as a Cincinnati based IT consulting firm owner, found it interesting.  Social networks are influencing our everyday lives more and more each day.  This research was conducted by Don Bulmer from SAP and Vanessa DiMauro  According to them, there were six key findings:

1. Professional decision-making is becoming more social - enter the era of Social Media Peer Groups (SMPG).
Professionals want to be collaborative in the decision-cycle but not be marketed or sold to online; however online marketing is a preferred activity by companies.
2. The big three have emerged as leading professional networks: LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter.
The convergence of Internet, mobile, and social media has taken significant shape as professionals rely on anywhere access to information, relationships and networks.
3. Professional networks are emerging as decision-support tools.
Decision-makers are broadening reach to gather information especially among active users.
4. Professionals trust online information almost as much as information gotten from in-person.
Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% - combined strongly/somewhat trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust).
5. Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years.
Three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions
6. Social Media use patterns are not pre-determined by age or organizational affiliation.
Younger (20-35) and older professionals (55+) are more active users of social tools than middle aged professionals.
There are more people collaborating outside their company wall than within their organizational intranet.

After reading this, a Bad Company tune came to mind, “Run with the Pack”.  There is certainly safety in numbers.  My question is this:  If everyone is doing the same thing, are they giving up any competitive advantages?

 

I recently read an article about the state of the IBM “i” and the amount of complaining by IBM application development and business partner folk. I know several RPG application development folk, and it sounds familiar. That made me think about my Java Application development and career. Are there things to complain about, and uncertainty about the future? Yes, but there are 2 reasons why the Java community is in a better place; the business model and the community. Before the IBMers call for a holy war, I said COMMUNITY! I am not talking about the strengths or weaknesses of the hardware or software. The business model for IBM is that they make the hardware and software, and partner for the sales and service. I think that is a viable model until IBM competes in the sales and services with their partners. If a lead is brought in by a small partner, they are awarded by giving the business to someone bigger. This sets up a confrontational relationship between IBM, the big partners, and the little partners. IBM can also decide whether or not you are worthy to be a partner. Why does this affect the software application development team? Because most consulting firm are selling SERVICES not HARDWARE. If they are not seeing business because of political fighting, they don't have to sell it. There are viable options on other platforms, where interference does not happen. IBM never fostered a community, they created a hierarchy with themselves as the head.

Certainly Sun has done some things that made myself and others unhappy. Besides, complaining, we actively pushed to remove barriers in our path. We do have an open source Java. Is there a IBM community that can work with RPG to make it work for them? I also think its about scale and timing. It's not like IBM software developers have their own AS/400 at their home. It's easy for me to create and use nearly any kind of application at my home in Cincinnati, and pretty cheaply. It makes it fun to tell non-technical people about my application development. Nobody but accountants want to hear about accounting programs. Java, and newer languages have grown up with the Internet. I have friends from all over the globe that have similar interests. If I have a problem, I can go online to a forum, friend, or web page to find what I need. I can read and write blogs to voice my opinion (like now). These things are not ingrained in the Legacy community, and in fact, have been actively campaigned against. It is my belief that any software, hardware, or service will die when there is no vocal community to support it.

As a consultant and application development person, I have to learn new things all the time. Take for example, my work with JavaFX. The language does have some familiar aspects, but there is a lot new there too. How do you go about learning something new? I have come up with some guidelines that I use in learning new things (in this case a language):

• Read as much about it as you can first. No one wants to wade through tomes of technical information, but that is where you learn. I try to get a feel for what problem the new thing is trying to solve first.
• Understand the core elements. Whether it's a programming language, a car, or a philosophical construct, knowing how it works is the first step. I know it's time to go to the next step when I have some ideas on how to use the item, and I start formulating a project.
• Examine and breakdown examples, if you can. You would be surprised at how many application development people think they're “smart enough” to figure out how things work just by following a few examples. I don't know about you, but I don't figure out a complex things just from a few simple “Hello World” examples. That being said, seeing how things works is the quickest to way get a basic understanding. Couple that with knowledge you acquired by reading the manual, and you get the “why” of how it's put together.
• Create your own knowledge base. I like to Google more than most people, but things do need to get done. I will create a separate folder to contain links to examples, other application development team members' blogs, white papers and other documentation. If you can, create a “how-to” WIKI. Having a centrally located repository makes it simple to answer questions.
• Create a test project. I do this especially for languages. I create a test project where I can test specific “how do I?” questions. It keeps you from removing code, adding unnecessary functions, and commenting and uncommenting code in your main project. Figure it out in its own project first, then transfer the code and knowledge to your main project. It is always good to revisit it after a period inactivity.
• Write or teach what you learned. As application development people, we tend to get blinders on when doing something. Having a different set eyes, or different questions being asked makes you examine what you actually know.

   

So there's my “Secret Sauce” for learning. You still have to come up with ideas on how to utilize you knowledge though.

In part one; I talked about some of the IT Strategies and business strategies that were discussed at the Techserve Alliance conference we recently attended.  I’ll admit I’m a sucker for quaint sayings and one of the speakers had a good one:  It’s time to take the Basset hound to the farm.  So what does that have to do with IT Strategy or business?

Plenty, takin’ the basset hound to the farm means it’s time to re-think what you are doing, why you are doing it, and who is doing it.  It’s time to eliminate products, services, processes or people that are not delivering value to the business.  This is not just an IT strategy, but an important business strategy as well.  It is critically important to make sure both business and IT are aligned. 

The trick is to figure out what your basset hound(s) are.  Every business that has been around for any length of time has one or more of these.  It may be a line of products that are kept in stock because it “rounds out the product line”, when the reality is the items are not that important.   It could be a service that our “customers really want”, but in reality  the service does not deliver value or it could be that “special process” that you do “because we have always done it that way”.  Then there is Bob.  Everybody likes Bob. Bob has been around forever and knows everything.  The problem is Bob doesn’t really do anything.

It’s always better to take the basset hound to the farm on your own terms rather than be forced into it by circumstances.  Take for example the company in New England that manufactured parts for submarines.  When the ship yard closed a few years ago, they were forced to change.  They redeployed their manufacturing expertise and now make parts for the medical industry.  What could they have accomplished if they had manufactured both parts for submarines and medical devices?  Could the business have been double the size?

That’s where an outside consultant can help.  They can be objective and bring an outside perspective to your current business and IT strategy.  STAR BASE is in a good position to teach old dogs new tricks”.  (Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?!)

People outside of Cincinnati may be shocked to know that I work with languages OUTSIDE of Java! I don't know any application development person, especially one who does web application development who doesn't use several languages. I have recently been working on Magento. What is that you say? Magento is an Open Source PHP ECommerce application based on the Zend Framework. You don't need to download Zend, just the Magento PHP files. We actually have Magento internally setup with a LAMP package, but I already have MySQL and Apache on my local machine, so I thought I'd tackle and individual install. The verdict? Well after a couple of small hiccups (don't use the Windows install for PHP, just unzip, and localhost needs to be a virtual host), setup was a breeze!  Fortunately, STAR BASE, Inc. has enough experience to over come these issues.  Magento is easy to customize products and catalogs, and would be a good choice for organizations to create their own ECommerce site. Magento is easy enough to implement without an IT Consultant, but an experienced consultant can save you time and frustration.

Seems like it has been a while since I have had a chance to do a post.  For the last 3 weeks things have been absolutely crazy in our IT consulting world, but in a good way.  We had a chance to go to the Techserve Alliance national conference in Las Vegas.  I have heard all the jokes, including the one about it staying in Vegas.   We did learn that just because you are pre-checked with the airline, does not mean that your bags are.   We got our bags checked with literally a minute to spare and fortunately all made it back to Cincinnati.

Upon return, we signed a support contract for a new customer.  They trust us enough to outsource their entire IT applications support to us.  We have a real life example of an IT Strategy that was discussed at the conference (See #3).  Not only was IT strategy discussed but business strategy as well.  Here are some highlights:

1. Market Differentiation - customers have lots of choices, how will you stand out?

2. Improve Systems and methodology for delivering service- excellence, efficiency, depth of service.

3. Outsource what you can-eliminate the busy work that does not add strategic value.

4. Deal with the economy being slow to recover till 2012, spend your money wisely, hire wisely, fire quickly, and refine what is working, stop what is not.           

5. Build Alliances with like minded providers in different industries and sell collaboratively to serve the customers' need.

My favorite of these five is number four.  Said another way, its takin’ the basset hound to the farm.  I’ll expand more on that in my next post.

Its good to see Cincinnati and Dayton area companies starting to embrace open source as an alternative to custom application development.  As an IT Strategy consultant, I can say there is a place for both.

STAR BASE, Inc. just landed another Magento project.  I have written about Magento before and this post has links to several others.   These are not your father’s shareware packages. The packages we are working with are what I’m calling Commercial Open Source. 

I’m curious, why have you or your company not implemented an open source option?  Is it because the light at the end of the tunnel looks more like a train?  Maybe we’re just ahead of the curve again and I need a little bit of Patience.

 

Come on, come on, come on, come on now Touch me, babe!  Can't you see that I am not afraid? ....... Yea, I have been listening to The Doors again.  See the complete lyrics here.  Actually we are trying to decide how, when and what to do marketing wise or as we say internally, how many times to “touch” the client.  Even a Cincinnati based Information Technology Firm is not immune to the FUD Factor.  What’s an IT Consulting Service firm to do?

One of the things that has stuck with me from my marketing class at MIT  is when the professor said that the quickest way to burn through a million dollars and have nothing to show for it, was to start marketing and advertising. We certainly need to be marketing, but if companies’ are not in a position to buy, are the marketing dollars wasted? 

Having been around for 19 years, this is the 3rd economic downturn we have experienced.  We have come out of each one a little wiser and a little stronger.  We have been positioning to leap frog our competitors during this one.  We have seen an up tick in activity, just like everyone else.  This is the 64 dollar question:  Is now the time to spend the marketing dollars?

Since today I have more questions than answers, I invite you to leave comments on How?, When?, How often?  What means?  You would like to be marketed to.  Comments will be posted following this blog, so contribute and check back to see what others think.  

 

• Network security specialist: A person familiar with intrusion detection systems.
• Penetration testers: Someone who can assess a system's potential vulnerabilities.
• Incident handlers: People who understand attack methodology and can apply critical thinking skills to respond to incidents.
• Forensics Analyst: The person who looks for evidence after an attack.
• Research Analyst: The person to keep abreast technological advances in incident response activities.
• Team Leader: Leads the team through crises and communicates to the business incident activities and cost to the business.

• Preparation and Training: for both prevention and incident response.
• Identification: fast identification of an occurring attack and its impact on the IT infrastructure can help in minimizing the duration and cost of clean-up.
• Containment: Once an attack has been identified, steps must be taken to minimize the effects of the attack.
• Recovery and Analysis: The recovery period allows analysis and lessons learned of What happened? Why did it happened? Was the response effective?

A couple of weeks ago, I made the trek to Columbus and attended the Ohio chapter meeting of TechServe Alliance of which STAR BASE, Inc. is a member.  In talking with other owners and corporate executives, everyone is pretty much saying the same thing: “We are seeing more sales activity, just no commitments.”   Seems like everyone involved with Ohio Information Technology firms is in the same boat.  In Cincinnati, things might not be quite as bad as Columbus because there is less state government work.

So why is there a lack of commitment?  There could be many reasons, but it all boils down to what I call the FUD Factor.   Never heard of the FUD Factor?  We would not be a real IT Consulting firm if we couldn’t use a TLA (three letter acronym) and it’s not what you’re thinking!  FUD is short for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. 

When the FUD factor is high, people tend not to make commitments, changes or decisions.  Doing nothing seems like the safest choice.  A high FUD factor equals RISK and as a society, we have become very risk adverse.   When the FUD factor is low, decisions are much easier to make, less risky. 

With the economy down and so much uncertainty, the FUD factor is definitely high.  So is doing nothing really a good choice?  Things tend to move in cycles or patterns, it is the way of the world... Losers become winners. Winners become losers. Day yields to night; nights divide the days; summer gives way to winter. Life goes on...always as it always was...but never the same.

Will you be ready?
 

As I wind down from my client in Cincinnati, I have been reflecting on the job of technical consultants. In my previous posts, I have reviewed my knowledge and understanding of code. But there’s more to my job, and really all application development members’ jobs than code knowledge. A technical consultant needs to know the internal political climate, the processes in place, and the personnel. The client may be risk averse to technology change, or open source software. It could be a corporate edict, or it could be that your client doesn’t know the benefits of the new technology. The processes may be flawed, but are flawed for a reason. A good consult needs to work within the existing process, move that process to a better one if needed. People are always initially wary of technical consultants, because they fear that they will be replaced. Conversely, technical consultants are keenly aware that they are replaceable, and that they should be replaced, if they have done their job right. A good technical consultant knows the trends, but also knows to read people. Which ones need assurance that their job is not in danger, which ones should focus more on their job, and which ones are ready to pick up new ideas. A good technical consultant has confidence in his abilities, but isn’t afraid to learn new ideas from others. I consider an assignment a success if I have left my client in better shape than when I arrived. I am many things, including an application development person, but my job is more than code.
 

In part one, I introduced the concept of “quantum superposition” and in part two I talked about qubits.  One of the things an IT strategy consultant should do, is make things that can be really quite complex and turn them into something practical.  Today I’m continuing the topic of Quantum computing.

Quantum computing also offers the means of making our communications and business transactions far more secure than they are today. Quantum cryptography exploits several remarkable effects of “quantum entanglement.” One of these is the ability to generate pairs of utterly unique and unbreakable keys. Basically, two random but identical particle keys can be created using entanglement. Since reading a quantum particle alters it, any effort to eavesdrop on communication is detected and that communication is either disrupted or ended.

Using this technology, we can create completely secure communications networks. Recently, Toshiba’s R&D labs announced the successful testing of quantum cryptography over fiber-optic networks.

IT Solutions based upon Quantum computing will not only change Cincinnati and Dayton, but the entire world.  How is this going to happen?  I wish I knew exactly how it is going to play out.  I’m still waiting on my flying car!

 

In part 1 of this post, I talked about the 80’s television show Quantum Leap, that wasn’t the point of the post. It is fun to imagine traveling around in time; but then again, I digress.   In part one, I introduced the concept of “quantum superposition”; big words, even for an IT strategy consultant.

Have you heard of the particle wave theory? In practical terms, it means that bizarre and counterintuitive effects occur on very small scales, and they can be harnessed.

This “quantum superposition” effect will, for example, will transform how we do “computer math.”  Currently, everything done by computers is in binary. The smallest piece of information a computer handles, the bit, is either a one or zero. A quantum computer, though, would be able to store and work with number systems other than binary.

This means computers would become exponentially more powerful because each “quantum bit” (qubit) could store a much greater range of numbers than the two that binary math restricts us to. Imagine a laptop with the computing power of the world’s 10 most powerful supercomputers. Then you begin to grasp the potential of quantum computing.

Designing chips and IT infrastructure to take advantage of “higher level” math than binary is years away.  The more immediate impact will be in storage.  Most application developers know that 8 bits make up a byte or 1 character.  What if a qubit could hold many bytes or characters?  

Next time, I will share another quantum idea.

 

For several years now STAR BASE, Inc. has been delivering open source IT Services in Cincinnati and Dayton.  I don’t know, but maybe we are IT consulting trend setters for Cincinnati.  Seems I have seen quite a bit in the last week about open source.

This is not the first time I have written about open source. In a previous post, I talked about Magento e-commerce.  I just saw this article about Magento.  As my fellow STAR BASE, Inc. IT strategy consultant, Matt Warman says, "come on in, we’re open."

Open source can substantially lower your cost of application development services.  You know what?  “It don’t get better than this”.

If you have seen one of my previous posts, you know that I have a new cell phone and new wireless provider.  We are Lotus Notes / Domino mail users here at Star Base, Inc. and we have installed the Lotus Notes Traveler plug in on one of our Domino servers  This gives us the ability to get two way, email, calendar and contacts over the air.  Since we have this capability, I’m in the process of updating my contacts in Notes. 

One of the things that I don’t like about the Nokia 5800 phone is if the person calling is not in the contacts, it shows the city and state of the caller and not the phone number.  I have not found an easy way to display the phone number, so hence my updating of the contacts. 

With that as background, I am using the add to contacts feature from emails that contacts have sent me in the past.  I’m surprised at how many people don’t use an signature block at the end of their email.  If you don’t, you are missing out on a great way to promote your business.  Its also a really convenient way to make sure your email recipients have your up to-date contact information.   My signature block is below.  (Note: I have left off the phone, fax and email because of spammers.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2a8TRSgzZY

Check out this video, it’s so dead on.  Many of us in the IT staffing industry have dealt with this first hand.  “I can get <fill in IT skill> resources for $20 an hour less from XYZ".  Companies’ sometimes act like they are buying a commodity product like copier paper, rather than skilled IT consultants. 

No manger would ever dream of going to one of their employees and saying, I can get Bob to do your job for $10,000 less per year, yet it’s becoming more prevalent in the IT staffing business. 

One of the huge issues facing our industry is the use of H1-B IT consultants.  Our leaders in Washington are looking legislation specifically targeting IT consulting firms that use H1-B consultants to limit our ability to do so.  This is in the interest of saving American jobs.  Unfortunately, the bill currently being debated does not limit multi-national companies, so only the smaller companies will be hurt. 
 

I would love to use local IT consultants for all of our engagements, but the price pressure dictates we do things we normally wouldn’t chose to do.   But then again, we’re really just hurting ourselves.