CIO

Open Source Lotus Domino

There is chatter in the Lotus Community about some people wanting IBM to open source Lotus Domino. There are two sides to this issue and I think that both sides have decent points. I fall on the side of NO, and IBM should do more to promote and sell the application server than they do now and make it really easy to get into small offices.

LINK :: Campaign to open source Domino

Cutting back IT fro the TOP

I ran across an article that points out the following premises: If you trying to cut cost start at the TOP of IT instead of the bottom.

“If you are managing an IT shop and can’t write the code to render “hello world” in C, html, php, and pull “hello world” from a MySQL database using a perl script, then YOU are in the wrong job.”

While I agree with this observation I don’t think anyone will implement this plan. Most companies think that getting rid of the workers at the bottom are a better bet. Case and Point. I worked for a Software company once as a Sales Engineer. While they kept on an aged IT manager and moved him from California to Georgia and his salary they let all kinds of people go at the bottom. I am sure he made well over $130K, while I was not pulling down that much. So they could have let him go and kept some people who worked for a living. I am not bitter about it, everything has really worked out well from then, but I got a chance to go back and work for the aged CIO and I can tell you he lacked the ability to do much of anything and should have been let go before anyone esle was.

“As I have written before, one of the great problems in IT management is that the big bosses typically haven’t a clue what is happening, what is needed to happen, and what it all should cost. There is a role for trust here, but if the Big Guy is signing off on a budget he can’t even read, much less understand, well something is wrong. Some IT departments like this, of course, just like my students liked it when class had to be cancelled (they liked getting LESS for their money), but in tough times, facing reality and speaking the truth is usually the best course.”

LINK:: Fire Your Boss: The best place to cut IT organizations is generally at the top.

OpenSolaris keeps making baby step and Jim Grisanzio is documenting every one

I am a fan of Open Projects and OpenSolaris all be a SUN product is still something to watch, and I do ofter from Jim Grisanzio’s Blog. I read Jim’s blog for two reasons, one he is interesting and is honest about the progress of the project and two he lives in Japan and I think I am living vicariously through him living there.

Hats off to Jim and make sure you stop by and read what he is up to.

“OpenSolaris keeps making baby step and Jim Grisanzio is documenting every one”

9 Reasons Why Application Developers Think Their CIO Is Clueless

Link to Article in CIO

“How Not to Be Clueless

“My CIO is clueless.” These are words you don’t want to hear if you want to earn the respect of your application development professionals. So how do you avoid being a clueless CIO? Steer clear of these behaviors:”

IBM i Power Blades not selling….YET?

COMMON 2008 announced the POWER platform. Which is of course just brilliant. The IBM i is now just an OS, and to beat all that IBM released some new blades that are POWER based, so in fact you could run any of the the greatest OSes on the face of the earth on them, IBM i, AIX, or Linux, so why are they not selling. I think it’s just a matter of time and IBM doing what they don’t do best, marketing.

I have tried everything to get the company I work for to replace some older System i units with Power Blades but they have the same fears that is pointed out by this article by Mark Fontecchio.

I would urge anyone who has a need for 515 and 525(520) based server to really take a long hard look at blades. I think over time you will see the blades are actually cheaper.

OpenSolaris released in time to die?

Sun has never been buddies with IBM and since I still bleed blue and like the company named IBM, most days, I have a bit of disdain for SUN and it’s not just because they are who they are I have tons of reasons not to like them. Sun has spent the past 8 years fumbling the ball and failing all over the place and even while they have poor financial performance and what I would consider average. It’s sad that the stock holders do call it quits and let them be purchased by someone who might pay half of what they think that are worth. Not sure who would touch them now that they are all over the place.

With that said I am an open source advocate, and I think Linux is doing pretty good, I do however have questions about OpenSolaris and the lack of WOW wrapped around it. I read daily the blog put out there by Jim Grisanzio and while it is the most popular blog at Sun’s site he reveals some of the problems with OpenSolaris and is always willing to air their dirty laundry to make a point.

I also have trouble with the Sun Open Source model, where some things are open and others are not. While I can’t keep track of any of it, the whole idea just seems very stupid to me. Plus the fact that the hardware they are selling on the “cheap” side of things is just that, cheap. It’s utter rubbish and should be avoided at all costs. Any IT person woth their salt would avoid Sun equipment until they get their act together. I have seen some if it and it’s not worth what they are charging.

While I would love to see some hearty competition between Linux and OpenSolaris I think the fact that OpenSolaris is out there supporting a company that makes a profit on the backs of the free help is a bit of an odd model to me.

Here are some interesting points:

“OpenSolaris has been released under an Open Source license,” it doesn’t have “an Open Source development community.”

“OpenSolaris’ biggest trouble is that while it’s taken three years for OpenSolaris to reach a point where general techie sorts will get it a try, the Linux distributors, especially Red Hat, Novell/SUSE and Ubuntu, has been moving in strength both to the public and to enterprise customers.”

While I wish the project luck I don’t see much future for it, the teams inside OpenSolaris fight constantly and there are some unsavory IT has beens on the board as well who have not done well in IT much less helping OpenSolaris.

I also think Sun and Jonathan Schwartz are really hanging on, and in the next four or five years unless they make something truly remarkable will be sunk. He is a pony tailed silicon valley chatter mouth and if we were to shake his head you could hear his brain rattle around in it. Sadly everyone at Sun likes his goofy know nothing smile and puts up with his poor performances and his blathering blog where he rambles on and on about nothing of significance.

This post is not an attack on Jim at all. I point out that Jim is one of the most well spoken and articulate people in the OpenSolaris community. I respect the work he does and know at the end of the day if OpenSolaris fails it would have more to do with Sun doing to much and developers arguing and belittling each other inside the project vs. anything Jim did. I just recently saw a video with Johathan on it talking about how Sun is going to make a comeback here in the next few years with their new server strategy. I still think Solaris is flawed in that it is not easy to deploy or use for the average business. It does not make computing easy at any point like the i does. I also read this which is just like to males getting out the yard stick. More does not always mean better, and in this case with all that hardware they still have run out of capacity?

Bill Gates has no idea what he is talking about

First of all I am no fan of Microsoft. I have proven that fact over and over again. I do however respect Bill Gates, he is a smart guy with good form who knows his place in life.

But . . . Bill Gates has no idea what he is talking about when he says there are no decent Americans in the US willing to work for Microsoft. I know plenty of strong IT people who would work for Microsoft today if they had a way for them to get in and interview. I think there are a couple of things here going on.

1. Bill Gates is turning soft and forgetting about the country he has built his empire on, the USA, and is thinking he will be a global shill and pander to other “not so lucky” countries that would do anything to get here even work for less and not have as much “house hold goods” to move. It all comes back to money.

2. I would have worked for Microsoft if they would ever call anyone back. In the past 20 years I have read the Microsoft jobs web site and have found many positions I would like but have never even got so much as a call back on anything in 20 years. Getting into Microsoft, unless you are an H-1B visa holder, then they seem to be able to find you just fine.

3. Microsoft is now pandering to the country that is the second or third country to steal the most software from them. Most H-1B visa holders Microsoft wants to hire are from India, not Japan or China, but India and also a country that steals more software from Microsoft than the US.

4. Indians from India will work like crazy because they don’t want to go back to India and they don’t want to leave. If they work for $50 and hour 17 hours a day they and are only half as skilled as a seasoned US developer getting paid $120 an hour and only working 8-9 hours a day which looks better on the books? I have seen H-1B visa holders come over without any skills but the project leader who is India or the same nationality has moved them to the US only to have them learn the skills they need while in the US. Some I have seen come into the country as say Java developers, having never seen Java and work with a good developer so they they are lost in the shuffle, only later to find out the hard way they know nothing about Java, the team lead has been writing the code after work for them and they hold a position in a company a good hard working US citizen could fill but can’t. This happens a lot. It’s the H-1B visa shell game.

SO Mr. Gates. I urge you to look all over the US, there are developers here who are hard working US citizens and are willing to work for you for decent pay with decent work loads. PLEASE HIRE ALL THE US CITIZENS YOU CAN BEFORE YOU GO OVERSEAS. Another reason to buy an Apple I say!

Two things from IBM today. UC² and Lotus Symphony

While I don’t see anyone covering this, I figured I would so that IBM gets some fair play on the old blogs.

IBM has launched a pretty funny little movie about UC² that is about Unified Communications. Using Sametime and other Lotus based products to collaborate. I can assure you Lotus does this much better than any Microsoft product.

Lotus Symphony is being shrugged off as another Lotus product meant to deliver nothing and complicate the Lotus offering. I have found since I have started using it to be neither of the two. Lotus Symphony gives you an office product in your Lotus Notes 8 client. It’s well done and can only get better over time. If your a Word or Excel power user I think it’s going to take time before it’s that fancy but then again Excel didn’t get there overnight either. I can remember when people were complaining about Excel not being as full featured as Lotus 1-2-3? Link to article

Do you want more OS/2?

My first moments with OS/2 came in 1992 when I started to work with IBM PS/2 that came with Windows 3.1 or OS/2 v2. Of course being the rebel I picked OS/2. I also ran PC Support for OS/2 conecting to my AS/400 at the time. A very large E95. I was then later exposed to more OS/2 fun when I worked at IBM in Atlanta. On our production desktops we ran OS/2 V3 and before I left IBM I was running Warp4.  Warp4 was in fact the best OS/2 ever. I was a huge fan of OS/2. I had found Linux but it was so hard to install.

So still being a fan of OS/2 it made me kind of sad to think IBM won’t OPEN SOURCE OS/2 for the rest of the world to use. We need Warp5 so bad. Linux is really making end roads but an new version of OS/2 would have made me happy. Let’s all hope IBM does the right thing and let the community have the source code for OS/2 and sooner rather than later.

Do you have any OS/2 stories and what do you think about IBM not making OS/2 open source?

System i Data Center Wish List

With Christmas fast approaching and I am still figuring out what I would like to have under the tree from Santa, I ran across an article that said what Enterprise Classed IT types were wanting for their data centers this year. I know if I had an unlimited budget, and don’t we all, I would want System i  Power6 and lots of it, V6R1, Lotus 8, Lotus Symphony to be GA and replace MS Office,Linux on System i to replace those costly Windows File Server and Print Servers, and the fastest robotic tape backup system money could buy, of course LTO4 would be in order. So past the things you might like if you could take the money out of the companies bank account or if money were not object. and read the Article I found and enjoyed reading.

LINK

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year, I will be moving myself and my family next week, the day after Christmas from Colorado to Charlotte, NC and will be rather busy. I have some posts lined up and will make sure you have something to read and enjoy!