Real World Computing

I’ll admit that I'm generally not very kind to IBM on this blog. It's not that they're doing a worse job than their competitors, I'm still very impressed with some of the things they're doing.  It's just that after using Notes/Domino for over 20 years, I hold them, sometimes impossibly, to very high standards…. and, of course, any goofs on their part affect my systems a little too directly. The Quiet Migration to 24x7 One of our biggest frustrations in recent years has been the understated migration of our systems from a business hours model to a 24x7 one. It's not so much that our business became so critical that it needed to go 24 hour but more that changes in mobility and connectivity mean that people now expect to be able to connect to our systems at any time, anywhere. Almost imperceptibly, we quietly moved to a "zero tolerance for downtime" model. IT changed to suit the business needs in this regard but the change itself and the i...

Today's world is all about cloud.  We have email in the cloud, document storage in the cloud, data, applications and even development in the cloud. Why Cloud is Best From one point of view, cloud is an excellent choice. You no longer need to worry about; Physical servers which can suffer hardware failures. Storage and rack space for servers Local services, such as Air Conditioning and the Water Supply in the computer room. Local environmental factors, such as storms which can directly impact your infrastructure. Local backups, which can take hours and require special software Tape management (or streaming backup services) Server failover -- this is managed by the cloud sites. Hotfixes and patches to operating systems and applications. Most of the cloud systems offer some pretty good restore functionality too. For example; IBM Connections has some great version control tools which allow you to roll back to previous versions of your file.  This means that if...

IBM Connections.Cloud is a very powerful set of software and services but using the default settings will result in a community that isn't very pretty, has low usability and will discourage your users from participating. Luckily a few tweaks, some promises and a bit of work on engagement can make a huge difference. The Overall Plan Obviously you need to plan out what your guests and members will be doing in your community. It’s basic marketing. People don’t visit the site for nothing, they are there because of a basic need. You can’t begin to provide a solution until you've identified those needs. The needs could be as simple as, the need to obtain information or the need to collaborate with others . These aren't mutually exclusive needs but they do suggest vastly different requirements. Providing information is usually done via files and/or wikis while collaboration is more of a forums thing.  Understanding the needs will help you to build a community which satisf...

I'm finding myself being increasingly frustrated by IBM Connections.Cloud. It’s a great product, don’t get me wrong. Arguably the most full-featured of its kind. Unfortunately it’s mired by some terrible executive decisions.  In fact, the problems are so great that it’s pushing us to investigate other products which are “like” connections but are provided by other vendors.  I came away from an investigation of Microsoft’s Yammer system yesterday shaking my head and saying, “that’s it. Game over”.  Yesterday afternoon was one of the few times I've found myself in the uncomfortable position of recommending Microsoft over IBM.  Today of course is another day. I'm a dedicated IT professional, so when I can’t sleep because a system is overwhelming my thoughts, I get up and make a list of my problems.  So, IBM, it’s 3.30am and this one’s on you … and you owe me at least 2 hours of sleep. Overall thoughts I can’t fault IBM’s support teams ...

About this Post I'm a  big fan of Google Apps for work. Of the three major solutions I use on a regular basis (IBM Connections, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps),  it's easily the simplest to set up. In fact, I'd recommend it as the number 1 solution for small to medium sized companies.  I haven't tried it in a large company setting but I suspect it might be a pretty good fit there too. A Little about Timing In the recent past, getting established on the IBM ecosystem (IBM Connections), took about a week, while getting onto Microsoft's systems took more than two weeks (and it still causes a lot of daily pain). By contrast, you can get yourself established, without needing any help, on the google ecosystem in less than an hour -- yes, it's that easy. Here's How 1. Go to the Google Apps for Work Site ( https://apps.google.com/ - or in Australia, https://apps.google.com.au/ ) and click Start Here. 3. You'll be prompted to create your firs...

Recently we had a run in with the CryptoLocker malware, you can read about it here . The malware did a fair amount of damage across our file server but it was easily rectified by rolling back to shadow copies and traditional backups of files. Of course, in writing the inevitable incident report, I began pondering the future and posed the question, Given that traditional storage is giving way to cloud storage, does cloud storage in its broadest sense reduce or even eliminate the possibility of CryptoLocker, or similar malware in the future? - and -  in any case, what are our recovery options from the major vendors? More or Less Vulnerable? First, looking at the question of vulnerability, it very much depends on your access methods. All of the cloud services have web browser access to files, apart from general vulnerabilities in the browser itself, this is a pretty safe access method. If your password isn't compromised, it's unlikely that any of today's malware will ...

Disclaimer: I started writing a Domino-related post today but after a good opening paragraph, it tipped into Microsoft territory and got too long. As a result, I decided to cover the Microsoft stuff here and keep the Domino post for later. I've tried to keep this blog relatively non-political (computer politics) but sometimes it just doesn't work. Please forgive me if this comes over as a bit of a rant. If you're a big Microsoft supporter, it's possibly better if you don't read this one. For quite a while now, a lot of systems migrations have been driven by the adage " Nobody ever gets sacked for buying Microsoft ". I've always considered this to be a cowardly practice in the IT world driven by the fact that many mid to high level managers really aren't able to make technology decisions by themselves - and yet, they're often afraid to ask their own people for advice. Once, it may even have made business sense of a sort but the computing ...

Introduction Since the release of Google's new "web browser", Chrome yesterday the web has been buzzing with speculation about how Google will be hurting Mozilla. The funny thing is, that if you read the comic about Google chrome, you'll see that it is being positioned more as an operating system than as a browser. Cloud Computing The idea is that the Web browser will become the operating system of choice for cloud computing . The Google Chrome "browser" has certain advantages over the current generation of browsers, particularly in the area of robustness and multithreading. The browser changes are similar, in a way to the fundamental chanages from Windows 3.1 to Windows XP. Under Windows 3.1, all applications shared the same address space and one faulty application would result in the dreaded "General Protection Fault" message and would often pull the entire system down. I see that kind of behaviour all the time in Internet Explorer and slight...