July, 2008

Migrating to a Mac?

A few years ago I spoke at an IT in the Advertising Business event, and I made the case that IT Directors in this business really need to live in both worlds. I suggested that we should have both Windows and Mac platforms on our desks, and that we should use them both on a daily basis. I still think it’s a valid point, but I haven’t been living up to it myself. In a recent review of the MacBook Pro, it was suggested that one of it’s target users should be the folks administering both platforms. That sounds like me, so when a fairly new MacBook Pro became available I decided to take the plunge. I’m right in the middle of the switch now.

Over the years I’ve moved back and forth between both platforms, and at times I’ve had both platforms on my desk. The single most significant change since I last used a Mac regularly has been the introduction of virtualization on the desktop, and that’s exactly what has brought me back to the Mac now. We’re running VMWare Fusion, and since I’m a glutton for punishment I’m running a Vista VM on my new Mac. Two or three days into this experiment I’m not so sure that was a good idea. My MacBook Pro has 4GB of RAM, and I’ve allocated 2GB to the Vista VM. I’ve heard the hype about virtualization turning Macs into the best Windows machines, but I’m not buying into it - at least not with Vista. The speed on this machine is ok most of the time, but when I’m running a lot of apps I can definitely feel the hit. My Dell laptop (running Vista with 4GB of RAM) definitely outperforms it when I’m multitasking. Still, I’m going to continue using this as my every day machine for a while. It does do a pretty good job running Windows for 90% of what I do, and it really is convenient having both platforms in one package.

I’m keeping the Dell close by for a few more days, but unless my opinion changes dramatically, it looks like I’m finally going to practice what I’ve preached.

Am I the Director of Electricity?

Ouch! It seems like I keep coming back to this topic, but I just received another e-mail in my inbox with yet another article about the end of IT as we know it. The article draws parallels between today’s IT Directors and a position which existed back in the early days of electricity – occupied by the person who ran the company’s power plant. The idea being that these company owned power plants eventually moved “onto the grid”, and that this may also be the future of IT as we move towards cloud computing.

While this is a topic which isn’t necessarily exclusive to the Advertising business, once again I’m going to make the case that those of us in this industry may provide a good place to observe this trend. First of all, there are many smaller agencies out there right now who don’t even have IT Departments, usually companies with fewer than 25-30 employees. These companies are great candidates for getting into hosted, cloud-based solutions for their IT infrastructure. The interesting thing to watch will be whether or not they decide to remain totally in the “cloud” as they grow – or will they still decide to add some of their own IT infrastructure. Also, in our multi-platform environment where we commonly run both Macs and PCs, web-based alternatives provide wonderful common ground for us right now.

I’m not overly concerned about this happening in the near future, and I’m not busy working on my resume, but the article was sent to me by the CEO, so I am paying attention to it. If he’s not already, he will soon be rubbing elbows with CEO’s of smaller agencies who are telling him how wonderful (or horrible) life is without their own IT infrastructure.

Anyone Else Notice an Anti-IT Movement?

Has anyone else noticed a growing trend in IT bashing? I don’t want to sound like I’m whining myself, but I do pay attention to what’s being written, and particularly about things like the iPhone and the Mac’s push into the enterprise. The articles generally have great relevance to our business, and I do like to keep tabs on what others in my position are doing.

However, what have really caught my eye of late are the comments posted on this and similar articles. There are definitely some folks out there who don’t like IT very much, and it’s interesting to hear the arguments. In this article those of us in IT are accused of using “technical mumbo-jumbo” to stall the entry of Macs into the enterprise and to defend our own staffing levels.

I realize that it’s only one individual’s comment in this particular case, but I’ve noticed quite a few of these comments being posted lately. It’s usually found following an article such as this, where the author is discussing Macs or iPhones in the enterprise, but I’ve seen similar comments with regards to IT getting in the way of other things the user wants to do – it might be installing software or bringing in personal hardware.

We face a tough-sell on this stuff. It’s not always easy explaining our policies and decisions without it appearing to be “technical mumbo-jumbo”. Don’t ignore the public relations element of our job, particularly inside our own companies. I’m lucky enough to be right down the hall from our PR folks, and I frequently tap into their expertise when it comes to selling what we do.

A Return to Dry Land (and a little bit about cellular coverage at sea)

Just got back from my vacation, and I’m pretty sure the batteries have been recharged, but I’m still trying to get geared back up. I really did manage to disconnect (for the most part) on this vacation, and as I said in my previous post – it is a good idea once in a while.

That being said, I did keep an eye on things while I was at sea, but mostly to insure that nothing major was melting down and also to keep my inbox from being a total mess when I returned. My phone never left the cabin during the trip, but I did check it once a day to clear things out. I left instructions to my staff to mark things urgent if anything earth-shattering did happen, but luckily we dodged that bullet. I’m a huge believer in the philosophy that a manager should be able to disappear without having things fall apart. There is very little that I do where I’m not “backed up” by a member of my staff. The only exception to that are things such as performance review and similar staffing issues.

One of the things which did surprise me during the cruise was the ability to stay connected. Our ship offered a service called Cellular at Sea, and it provided outstanding service for the duration of the cruise. The service works with just about every carrier, and being an AT&T customer I found that I had about 4 bars of 3G coverage in my cabin. The service shuts down while you’re in port, so you’re on your own in picking up local coverage if any is available.

You do need to keep in mind that you’re roaming while using the service, and costs can go up accordingly. This wasn’t a huge concern for me, because I didn’t use the phone for any voice calls. I did bump my kids’ text service up to allow for international text messaging, and I’m hoping that saved me a few bucks. They did limit their use of texting, so I’m hoping the hit isn’t too bad when I see next month’s bill.

Going Offline for a Week

I’ve been very delinquent on posting to my blog of late, largely due a crazy workload centered on our merger with another company. Office moves will do that to you. The growth is good, but it does take its toll.

In a couple of days I’m going to be taking off on a long overdue vacation, celebrating my 25^th wedding anniversary and also taking what is probably the last big “family vacation” with my two teenagers (one of whom will no longer be a teenager when we end the vacation).

One of the things I intend to do on this trip is to completely disconnect for a change. It’s not going to be one of those vacations where I sit in a beach chair and respond to e-mails as they arrive. You can never completely disconnect in this job, but sometimes it’s a good idea to try. This is one of those times. I’ve got an outstanding staff that I trust, and I’m completely comfortable allowing them to make some big decisions for a week. I’ll be just fine checking on urgent messages at the end of the day. At the end of the vacation, I’m also building in a day to decompress and ease back into work. I’ll also try to get caught up on the inevitable glut of e-mail on that day.

While I will be taking a laptop on the trip, I probably won’t be posting to the blog during this vacation (although it is kind of tempting to post something from the middle of the ocean just to prove that it’s possible). The primary purpose of the laptop will be to download and store images from my camera, and also perhaps watch a movie or two. See you in a couple weeks.

Sparking Innovation

I’ve always been in favor of rolling out new products to small groups of end-users, especially when a new app arrives and I’m a little unsure of how it might be used. I trust my users to come up with innovative ways of using some of these new products, and I’m not so sure that IT would ever be able to envision all the possible uses. Recently, we’ve done this with both Microsoft SharePoint and OneNote. One of those experiments has turned out well – one not-so-well, but both continue to be works in progress.

When we first began deploying SharePoint, we correctly suspected that it was probably too big for IT to figure out. I don’t mean that we couldn’t figure it out from a technical perspective, but rather that we simply couldn’t envision the twists and turns the deployment would bring. We were correct, and for the most part the deployment has gone very well. The original group “got it” with regard to the application’s purpose, and they were instrumental in helping us launch the product to the entire company. To this day, the twists and turns surprise me, but so far we haven’t run into any major issues or what I’d call misuse of the product.

We tried a similar tactic recently with OneNote – a product which I personally love, but unfortunately this one has taken an entirely different direction with regard to my test group. One of our users has proposed turning OneNote into our primary product for managing all of our workflow, and has even proposed that we utilize it for filing other documents – embedding Word documents and Acrobat PDFs into OneNote notebooks.

This is by no means a disaster. The problem for us is that many of these ideas for OneNote are actually running counter to ways in which we’re just beginning to use SharePoint. It’s certainly something which can be controlled. My bigger fear is creating a perception, especially with a power user, that IT is standing in the way of innovation and new ideas. The trick is keeping the user involved, and getting them to understand why you’re saying no to what they think is a great suggestion.

What’s the Plan?

Having just been through another merger, we’re just now beginning to see things settle down following a big move day last week. During 15 years in this business, I’ve been through about a dozen office moves, mergers, etc., Earlier this year, I had one of my new staff members ask me what the plan was for bringing his office online with the rest of our Agency, and I had to chuckle since it always seems as if we’re making up as we go along.

I certainly don’t enter into these things without a plan, but I honestly don’t think that any two of these moves have been the same. There are certain things surrounding moves which happen every time, but it seems like the differences far outweigh the similarities. For example, the biggest issues surrounding our move earlier this year involved telecommunications and actually turning up the connections between sites. In last week’s move, the single biggest issues involved the physical move itself. We actually had two moves to deal with, first an internal reshuffling of our offices, followed by the move-in of nearly 45 people a week later.

There are certain things you do for just about every office move, and I’d probably put communications at the top of the list. One of the keys is letting employees know what’s happening and when, whether it’s about who will actually be moving their computers to what their new phone number will be. We’ve also assembled a pretty good team of people who’ve been through this a few times, and that doesn’t hurt either.

Finally – flexibility is critical. You can’t get too hung up on that whole planning thing. As much as you may want to have a certain phase completed at a certain time, you had better be prepared for changes and schedules that slip. There are a lot of things surrounding moves which you can’t control, especially the vendors. Things will get delayed. You just deal with it. That’s part of the plan.