Steve's Seaside Life

Tagged: IT-Infrastructure

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Linux models the IT desktop

I have worked in desktop computing for many years and promoted the need for different desktop capabilities to meet the needs of different user communities.  I have always sought to address this with my corporate customers, whilst also trying to ensure some common enterprise application delivery capability was shared by all, in my company we call this a WorkStyle.  I was therefore greatly encouraged to see that The Open Source Development Lab last week released four specifications for its Desktop Linux Capabilities document, which outlines what requirements a Linux distribution should have to meet the needs of certain desktop Linux users.  This document describes the topic in more detail.

File Attachment: OSDL_DTL_Capabilities 1.0.pdf (281 KB)

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The future of support

Me and some of my friends have been debating the subject of “how to” support, which represents a significant amount of a service providers costs.  We have tried the approach of centrally managed knowledge bases, but they only take us so far.  My view that the virtual Internet community and the internal intranet community of peers will become increasingly important.  Also the richness of the support experience will increase as well.  Eric Mack provides a great example with his pod cast on delegated task management, and even better a discussion thread has started that refines his advice.  Others are going beyond the podcast to video and screen-casting.  The progress in this area can be tracked monthly, which is really quite amazing.

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The future of technical architecture

I work in a group that works a lot on technical architecture.  Having just watched this video I now see the potential of the next generation of design tools.  Its a Microsoft centric view but its compelling viewing none the less. 

Even better it makes the physical server configuration of your deployed service just as easy.  Combined with utility computing automated provisioning model it makes many technical architecture activities almost point and click.

I guess the next step is to do the same for configuration and instrumentation of the applications themselves.  The IT world starts to look a lot simpler.  Just makes me pleased that my focus is on how to use and exploit the IT and not how to deploy it!

 

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Way to go Adobe!

Adobe Acrobat v7 release is really quite astounding, with most if not all of the key infrastructure functionality from the full V6 product now bundled into the new version of the FREE Reader.  It’s a perfect split of the features needed by content creators and content consumers/reviewers.  Microsoft look VERY VERY hard at this and learn the lesson that Adobe is teaching you here and OpenOffice.org will teach you when they build X/Forms support into OOo, and make OOo an essential part of everyones desktop Infrastructure and destroy the market for InfoPath and possibly MS Office XML documents in general.

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Way too many portals

Its seems that everyone has a solution on the way for inter-enterprise collaboration.  Use their portal and only their portal or application!  The problem is that OpenText, Microsoft, IBM, Groove etc all want you to use their solutions, for example:

Workplace creates a unified front end for technologies facing suppliers, customers, and employees, according to Larry Bowden, vice president of the Workplace division at IBM. Each of those users has different roles, but they are tapping the same back-end information sources through Workplace, he added. ?Collaboration among peers within an organization is moving toward organizational productivity, which shifts toward [collaboration] between organizations,? he said.

Well that’s not my vision of collaboration!  I want something more along the lines of POP3, RSS and Trillian (a bit of a mix of standards and products I know but hopefully you get the idea).  All you enterprises out there can use whatever collaboration solution you want, but when I connect to you and integrate all your portals into my Personal Knowledge Management environment I want to aggregate you using bog standard protocols and the clients of my choice.  Of course these enterprise portal applications could be aggregated by portlets as well for people who don’t have the …

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Simply does it

Adam Bosworth has posted a nice talk on the importance of simplicity:

I gave a talk yesterday at the ICSOC04. It was essentially a reminder to a group of very smart people that their intelligence should be used to accomodate really simple user and programmer models, not to build really complex ones. Since I was preceded by Don Ferguson of IBM and followed the next day by Tim Berners-Lee, it seemed especially wise to stick to simple and basic ideas. Here is the talk

I could not agree more.  One of my observations is that simple protocols used to access well defined services lead to explosive innovation.  HTML/HTTP, POP, IMAP, RSS etc are all great examples.  Hopefully someone will figure out how to achieve the same innovation when things get just tht little bit more complex.  For XML/Web Services in general we are not there yet – too complex – and we are still waiting to see the widespread adoption of innovative clients and servers hopefully that’s where tools like the Infopath/Office XML/Longhorn Shell/WinFS, Indigo and Haystack  and OOo/XForms etc will come in.

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Many layers of virtualization!

I have mentioned before how much I like VMWare and how I have been using it not only to support my Labs requirements for years, but also as a secure client to my company network, ala VMWare ACE.  I have also been looking at other application Virtualiszation technologies and Server Based Computing approaches, so it was nice to see a couple of the ideas nicely presented in this article on using VMware ACE combinted with SoftGrid, here is an extract:

What is perhaps less well known is that VMware can also provide an important service for desktop hardware. This is partly because its desktop capability is still evolving. The VMware desktop capability, VMware ACE, is currently in beta release. It provides a standard virtual hardware configuration for the desktop, including the OS, web browser and all the applications – all of which are distributed from a central point. VMware ACE solves a major desktop support problem by enforcing standardization and thus making local software installation of any kind unnecessary. It is not the resource utilization that is the issue here, but manageability.

However, on its own VMware ACE does not solve all the support issues. This is where Softricity’s SoftGrid …

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What does he do? The importance of top down Journal keeping to programme communication, coordination and team spirit

This is the first in a series of articles about Programme Management.  Many of the things I am going to say apply to project management and to management in general but Programme Management is my focus.  I need to start by setting the scene. 

My experience is enterprise IT infrastructure programmes, so that’s what I will be talking about.  By Programme I mean a collection of projects with many dependencies between them.  By IT Infrastructure I mean all the common IT services that a business needs, desktops, portables, file, print, directory services, communication, collaboration and coordination services, systems management etc, you get the idea.  On my biggest programme, we had approaching 90 different server types so I won’t list them all.

Anyway onto the first topic:

“What does he do? The importance of top down Journal keeping to programme communication, coordination and team spirit”.  

Why you may ask did I pick this topic first?

·        because almost no one does it

·        because it can make a huge difference for very little cost

·        because communication and collaboration and coordination are key to any programme and journals help with all three

·        because I happen …

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Microsoft – Inremental innovation as well as integrated innovation

Microsoft has made much of its “integrated innovation” value proposition.  But for many enterprises its incremental release of feature packs is probably of more interest.  This is evident when you look at both XP and 2003 Server, but 2003 server is the more impressive of the two. 

So far Microsoft have released the following feature packs:

Automated Deployment Services (ADS). Available as a download, ADS for Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, includes a new set of imaging tools that enable you to automate the deployment of Microsoft operating systems.

Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM). For organizations that require flexible support for directory-enabled applications, ADAM is a breakthrough in directory services technology based on the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).


File Replication Services (FRS) Monitoring Tools. A number of tools are available for managing FRS, the replication engine that keeps Distributed File System (DFS) shares synchronized, including both continuous monitoring tools, such as Ultrasound and Sonar, and snapshot troubleshooting tools such as FRSDiag.

Group Policy Management Console (GPMC). GPMC simplifies the management of Group Policy by making it easier to understand, deploy, manage, and troubleshoot Group Policy implementations.

Identity integration. Identity Integration Feature Pack for Microsoft Windows Server Active …

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Citrix Previews Future Technologies

As usual Brian Madden has all of the latest information on Citrix, this time it’s the main features in Metraframe Presentation Server 4.  Pretty interesting stuff if you ask me.

Citrix’s future technologies include:

  • Smart Access

  • ActiveSync via ICA

  • TWAIN imaging device ICA redirection (scanners, cameras, etc.)

  • Performance management technology licensed from Aurema and RTO

  • Audio enhancements in preparation for VoIP

  • EMF-based Printing

  • Windows 64-bit support

  • Application Isolation Environments

  • Virtual IP addresses

  • GoToWebinar

  • ICA Session Recording, Archiving, and Surveilling

  • Hardware Appliances

For a more detailed list of each feature check bout Brian’s web site