Amuyu

in this I pose the right answer. The question is, why not run Windows all of the time?

here’s a hint

So, the first person to announce the right answer is….. parallels. Real virtualization for the Intel Macs. BootCamp is an answer, but it doesn’t let you do the real thing – keep the right os running while you jump to play with the not so good one. Now all I need is for the the 17″ dual chip / quad core MacBook Pro to come out. Then me, my bank account, and my mouse will fly to apple.com as fast as possible.

Come on, MacBook Pro 17″ dual chip/ quad core/200GB hd/.,….. Come on!!!!

This is cool (and it hurt like a mother)..

This is an amazing video of Jobs demoing NeXT3.0 in the early nineties.

The apps and many of the features are cool even today. It’s truly amazing how far ahead they were.

I want to know who’s doing this kind of crap now. The crap that we are going to look back on 10 years from now and say “It’s truly amazing how far ahead they were.” Any ideas?

The much vaunted revamp of the Microsoft Office system includes a ton of new changes. One of the most important (as far as I can tell so far) is the complete revamp of the user interface. This link goes to a video where MS walks us through a high level overview of this change.

I’m excited about this, not for personal use, but because I might finally stop getting calls from everyone I know. Many of the features that make Word, Excel, and PowerPoint presentation look good are very difficult to figure out. The learning curve for all of these products is extreme, to say the least. To illustrate this, look at the size of this book. This 1172 page tome attempts to cover the features of this set of products. BUT, the Word only version is 912 pages by itself. Excel is 936 pages. No need to go on. What Office is missing is not features, but accessibility.

I hope that once we finally get our hands on this, the calls will stop (well actually, I expect a slew of calls when it first comes out because it has changed).

I ranted and raved before on Dvorak’s prediction. One of his big arguments was that Microsoft agreed to “only” a five year office extension. Well, I found this:

Listen to the RDF on this one. Not so much distortion.

One of the most interesting things about this is how Steve acted like a patient parent explaining to children (the audience) that we need to coexist in order to survive. I wonder how much of that feeling is still there. I’d imagine it’s quite a bit.

Extremetech just published this article on why Vista won’t suck. It’s a good read because:

1. It looks like it might actually be kinda cool.
2. It’s cool to see the Redmond marketing machine giving technology sites data to include in their “unbiased” reviews (Read all of the Why’s It’s Important entries – only the best marketing could have written that).
3. The new software features are basically a description of iLife + Aqua in almost a feature for feature basis

And, not to mention that all of these cool things won’t be available for all of the Vista users. There’s going to be SIX different flavors: extreme rookie, rookie, usable, cool, over priced, and why-not-just-this-version-at-a-reasonable-price. All of these features make this article all the more relevant. Why would Apple drop an ahead-of-the-curve OS for something that is very obviously playing catch up? Call me a fanboy, but I’m in for OSX for a while to come.

Recently, I had a customer ask for further clarification on a proposed storage assessment. They, wisely, had asked third parties (Gartner) to give them perspective on the value of doing a storage assessment. The third party, expensive, consultancy came back with four major areas that should be addressed:

1. Proper provisioning of storage
2. Maximize ROI by devising Data Lifecycle tiering strategy
3. Capacity planning for future purchases
4. Validate disaster recovery strategy and intra-company SLA’s

The customer, again wisely, asked us and the two other bidders to explain how our proposals would address the above. My response was very targeted, but had some insight that I think should be thrown to the aether. I’m also expanding it a bit since the original response did not address all of the points (they were out of scope for what we were trying to do).

So without further ado, here’s my thoughts on this:

1) Proper provisioning of storage

Gartner identifies this as an issue because most organization do not have a good understanding of what storage they have and how it is allocated. In addition, most organizations allocate storage as a “knee jerk” reaction to demand. By that, I mean that most allocation is done either by satisfying the customers requests (“I need 400GB of disk for my SQL database”) or by including storage in the acquisition of servers. These types of allocations do not consider the true cost of data management or even the true storage requirements. Provisioning is also typically looked as a one way function: storage allocation. However, there is a flip side to this: storage reclamation. As you well know, most users will over request storage because it’s easier to go to the well once. Very rarely, if ever, will they tell you “I asked for too much – you can take back 200GB.”

So, the first step in establishing a provisioning strategy is to understand what storage you have, how it’s allocated, and how well it’s being utilized. Once you have that understanding you can start making more informed strategic decisions on how your business should operate the storage infrastructure. With that in hand you can then start creating policies and procedures regarding your storage allocation and de-allocation. Only then will you be able to design a technology architecture to support your business requirements.

A good star for an assessment, internal or external, should give you: and understanding your current policies, procedures, and infrastructure. Additionally, it should make some broad recommendations as to the direction to take for your next step. However, determining a complete storage provisioning and management policy should be a project of it’s own right.

2) Maximizing ROI by devising Data Life cycle tiering strategy

Similar to point #1, the first step in understanding your data life cycle is to map your current storage. Any strategy needs to consider the results of #1 and do exactly that for both your unstructured and semi-structure data (files system, and email). An analysis of the data should give you the ammunition necessary for you to determine what tiering structure makes sense for you. Careful consideration should be given to the results to match them to industry best practices. However, those best practices should only be a guide as each business is different. The ultimate strategy will be a blend of best practices and targeted site specific practices.

3) Capacity planning for future purchases

This, again, ties to point #1. Capacity planning is part and parcel of a provisioning strategy. Because storage, systems, and growth in most companies varies drastically, a plan should be developed for the projected requirements for the subsequent 18 months. This will assist you in planning for the current, expect growth. However, as is the nature of any assessment like engagements, the recommendation are created only with data that identified during the duration of the engagement. If your business changes unexpectedly or grows faster than the projections created during the engagement, the recommendations will probably not be accurate. This is where you would need to have a capacity planning process that accommodates for changes. This process would, but it’s very nature, need to be something that is on-going and self monitoring. Typically, It is outside the scope of and assessment to device this capacity planning process. However, it is something that you should be able to device, albeit with some minor help, after this type of engagement.

4) Validate disaster recovery strategy and intra-company SLA’s.

Storage provisioning, allocation, and capacity planning is part of a properly maintained DR strategy. However, many companies fall into the trap of believing that a data protection or data replication plan is the DR plan. They neglect to consider the people and non-IT processes that are required to implement disaster recovery. While it’s true that these data based protection mechanism can help in the case of minor or even major disasters, a DR plan should be primarily based on managing the business processes in the case of an “event.” A good storage protection strategy would be used to accelerate the recovery process, but not be the recovery process. Any assessment engagement that addresses this element, should be focused on either how to implement a data protection methodology, or how the current or proposed protection systems map to the larger DR plan. The only way to drive these results is to create or validate SLA’s amongst all of the business units or stake-holders.

Speaking of which, that is the other most common failure amongst many of my customers. Data protection mechanisms are created based on perceived needs rather than any measured or clearly defined business requirements. As an example, it’s very common to encounter sites that use backup technologies to capture nightly incremental backups and once weekly full backups. These are typically implemented across the board without considering that some applications require more frequent, or even less frequent backups. Often, secondary protection mechanism are implemented by application groups, DBA’s, or even non-storage system’s administrators. These secondary schemes are in place because the system wide protection mechanisms are perceived as either in-adequate or not realistic to their needs. These are clear indications that the overall DR strategy is flawed, and needs to be addressed.

The first I heard of this was from John C. Dvorak on TWIT. Dvorak basically said that he has a theory that Apple is going to go all hardware and quit using OSX. So, earlier in the week came the article he talked about on the podcast. Now, Dvorak is quite the guy, and has some deep thoughts from time to time, but I have to take the exception to this. Let’s enumerate the points he makes:

1. Apple Switch is over – with no-one switching
2. iPod FireWire giving over to USB
3. iPod didn’t get people on the Mac
4. Intel switch
5. Freak-out over the breakout box
6. 5 years of Office, wtf?
7. Adobe for x86
8. IBM dropping AIX and OS/2 for Linux and Winblowz
9. Intel platform is wide open
10. Devices that don’t run on the Mac or Linux
11. Compete directly with Dell, HP, etc on a hardware only basis
12. Layer Mac OS services on top of winblows

Well – my counterpoint:

1. I switched. Not only I, but many many good technical people are doing it. They are also recommending that their friends and family’s switch. For good reason too. My record uptime on my laptop is over 52 days. Try that on a winblows machine while traveling all over the country, installing tons of software, visiting tons of open access points, etc.
2. FireWire – ok cool tech, but there’s tons of other samples of good technology loosing to cheaper, mass produced stuff. I can’t imagine that firewire chip sets are anywhere near as cost effective as the ubiquitous USB. I just call that smart cost control.
3. So, iTunes runs on winblows. Good for Apple. It means that they have a cash cow that is funding the rest of the strategy. I just went to the Apple store yesterday to pick up a new batter for the laptop. Guess what, there’s a buzz. Kids there want their iPod’s on the Mac. The important thing to note is that they already have an iPod. Now the Mac is the thing to get. Maybe the parents aren’t getting them this year, but they will soon. I take my daughter as a prime example of this. She has an iPod. She loves it. She has a nice winblows laptop, but would gladly chuck it for a Mac, because she knows it works better. A 12 year old knows.
4. Now, given all the rumors about the why of the switch, one thing can be said for sure. Those nice Intel processors are much faster, consume less power, and probably cost Apple less. Once again we get into some smart hardware cost savings thing.
5. This is a strange one. However, having been part of the corporate world, it doesn’t surprise me that someone in the legal department of a multi-zillion dollar company got their panties in a wad about something. And then, to save face, they went wild and took it too far.
6. Of all the things he talks about this one is the one that bothers me the most. Why say five years, unless Ms. Ho is just not so good at the presentation thing. There’s ample evidence of that. Lookup any of Steve’s keynotes where she presents. It’s like watching paint dry. Besides that though, is it really in M$’s best interest to say they will support office on Mac beyond a five year window? What will the landscape be then? Are they really setting a stage that is that far out? Now, how about the Mac being able to run winblowz native office directly on OSX through something like Wine? There’s many rumors floating around that the next iteration will be able to do this. Do you really need a native app at that point? I know that I’d much rather run the "real" thing and not have to worry about the compatibility issues that creep up.
7. Isn’t this the same as what happened during the Classic to OSX transition? Why’s everyone freaking out about this? It sucks, yes. Does it mean we change the everything to support one set of, admittedly, kick ass applications? Hell no. Even my newly instated Mac addiction would be kicked out just out of principle of the matter.
8. There’s no real cheese on the moon. What the hell is this got to do with it? Yes, other people switched OS platforms, but there’s no real correlation here. True enough, OS/2 was a kick ass platform, but look at who was pushing it – IBM. Other than in the corporate world, they have no real marketing savvy. There’s no RDF there. There’s no one that makes people want to buy their stuff in the mass market space. Dvorak argues that this same technology would be used to convince us that we can do without OSX, but I doubt that one (hence the whole point of this diatribe).
9. Come on! Dvorak! McFly!?!? Intel platform is wide open because there is no PC standard. There is a Mac standard. The hardware is under control. Only apple is making this platform. This is so true that they didn’t even use decrepit PC BIOS.
10. Other than things that are on the edge, I’ve had a hard time finding things that don’t work on a Mac. There’s always going to be something along those lines. Maybe now that the USB thing is settled and the Intel thing is settled the stragglers on this this will go away. From what I have been able to gather, writing device drivers for the Mac is actually not that hard of a thing.
11. Would you want to go against Dell? Really? Why? They are happy with 5% margin. I mean really happy. Unless you have all of their processes patents and are willing to duke it out for little to no margin, why the hell would you put yourself on this space? I mean – come on. Apple has a captive audience willing to pay top dollar for hardware that is supper slick and just works. But it just works because it’s a tightly integrated software and hardware platform. There’s no way I would pay over $3k for a Dell laptop to run winblows. I did for a Mac, so I could run OSX. I did this even knowing that I was paying a performance penalty and that my work stuff was going to require some extra attention. Why? Because I knew that the rest of the time it was going to work. Not so for a Dell.
12. Nope. Won’t do it. Won’t really work. Although I do trash winblows, they do, finally, have a stable OS platform. However, layering the Mac "executive" on top of that is going to fritz crap up. This is thinking is not much different than what drove Microsoft’s to spawn Bob. Besides, what impetus would M$ have to make that work well? Remember that little word processor WordPerfect? Remember how much Microsoft helped that "partner?" Enough said on that.

As you can tell, this Dvorak thing has me fired up. I don’t really know why. Is this an example of that rabid addiction he talks about? Probably. Is this an excuse to post on my blog? Yep. Will this be read by anybody? Probably not. But, I feel better.

-Juan