Can you trust your VARs & Vendors ?

As I was eating a small dish of ice cream last night, I couldn't help but think that it is the simple things in life that are so enjoyable. And then I got to thinking about how the Information Technology industry works as a whole, and realized that while we all acknowledge that simple is better, we rarely achieve it. And I think I have a fairly good understanding of the reasons why...

As an IT customer, we are always looking for the solution that fits 100% of our need. Like a carpenter, we need tools that work well, are specifically suited for the purpose, and are straightforward to use. Whether it is a Customer Relations Management (CRM) solution, or an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, the common goal remains the same. We need tools that fit the purpose, while not costing a small fortune.

So we seek the counsel of our Vendor and Value-Added-Reseller (VAR) partners. Our mis-guided expectation is that they are motivated to help us, and have sold & implemented these solutions before. But in both cases, they are NOT motivated to sell us the right solution. Their motivation is to sell us a solution which provides them with the most profit margin !

Adding insult to injury, the VAR is also motivated by a second level of greed. Not only do they want to sell you the solution, but they also want the Professional Services revenue associated with implementing the solution. So they are, in fact, motivated to make the solution complex enough to insure that the customer HAS to get the VAR to implement it for them.

But it doesn't stop there. Smart IT VARs recognize that they need to have "streams"of revenue, not just a series of projects. So they layer in Support & Maintenance contracts, which insure that they get further revenue from the ongoing operation of the solution !

So much for acting in the customer's best interests ! Instead of acting on the customer's behalf, and shortening the Return on Investment (RoI) and lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), the VAR is motivated by greed to generate ongoing revenue by adding complexity into every solution they sell. The more complex, the better the revenue.

Many advocates of Open-Source Software (OSS) will tell you that OSS can help you avoid vendor lock-in. This is because they cannot sell the software itself, so all they can sell is service & support. And because anyone can access the code, theoretically anyone can support it. While this may be the case, it is also true that finding VARs with the correct mix of skill-sets to help support your OSS investment could be a challenge.

So be wary of Vendors and VARs bearing contracts. Not all of them are that interested in helping you. In fact, they are interested in helping themselves - to your IT Budget !

The opinions expressed are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one, and they are entitled to it !

Cloud - Is it really what you think it is ?

Do you remember SOA ? It was yester-year's buzz-word de jour... Service Oriented Architecture was a definition of a modular, pluggable architecture for building applications. It was a methodology, not a thing. And yet CIO's believed that they could trust their vendors to sell them some SOA ! I recall a bad TV commercial, where the cardboard cutout Sales Guy responds to all queries with : "Great, you'll take 500 !". *** Note: if somebody finds the advertisement in a YouTube video, I'll link it here ***

The new hype is all around cloud computing services. The idea is straightforward: a client consumes computing resources from any end-point, at any time, without caring about the infrastructure behind it. So let's use real terms... You can access Google Documents via the Internet (ubiquitous access), open a document stored somewhere (you need not know where) using an application provided by Google. 

This is called Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS represents the first real implementation of "cloud". That service can be free of charge (ala Google Docs), or have an associated costs. This fits into what makes Cloud appealing. CIOs are attempting to rationalize their budgets into business-consumable terms. They want to know the cost per month/per application/per user. Cloud allows them to follow that model, as that is how SaaS is sold.

But one of the key issues that cloud doesn't address sufficiently is governance. For almost every industry that might really benefit from cloud, there are stringent regulations which regulate the industry. For example in Canada, there are strict laws which dictate that Electronic Medical Records must stay inside of Provincial boundaries. How can a cloud provider guarantee that the data stays within the boundaries ?

Another source of concern is the Service Level Agreement (SLA). This is a contract between the provider & the consumer of a service, which dictates allowable downtime, problem resolution guidelines, and provides remediation should either party not meet up to its obligations. In the example above, Google Apps comes without a price-tag, and without an SLA. If they lose your data or are unavailable for an extended period of time, you got exactly what you paid for ! You can expect nothing more from them.

But what if you pay for your SaaS ? A good example is Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Solutions (BPOS) offering. It provides Exchange (e-mail & groupware), SharePoint (document repository on steroids), Office Communications Server (Instant Messaging & Presence Info), and finally LiveMeeting (collaborative real-time meeting space). As a service, it represents the vast majority of the software solutions that Mid-tier & Enterprise clients pay considerably for.

Microsoft recently admitted publicly that they had suffered some serious outages with their BPOS solution. In fact, they even went so far as to apologize for their poor performance ! And rather than scrap the offering as untenable, they re-brand it & call it a new product (Office 365) ! In my mind, that is little more than putting lipstick on a pig !

Companies like IBM and HP will suggest that they can help avoid these problems by putting the Cloud "on the ground", or a hybrid solution. This means the business pays for the cloud services by purchasing a combined hardware & software solutions & installing it in their DataCentre ! Huh ? Did you read that the way _I_ did ? How is that cloud ? The business remains responsible for hardware, software and access to it in their own data-centre. Who are they trying to kid ?

Now that is not to say that ALL Cloud offerings are suspect... I personally have started using more of the SaaS offerings. I like Google Docs, and have used it for a long time. I just make sure I have backup copies of all of my data ! 

But there are other "hybrid" offerings. Two that come immediately to mind (as I use them every day) include:

DropBox - this is a service which "shares" a folder on my local hard-drive. This data in the folder is "synced" regularly to the cloud, where it is kept as a "backup" copy. But what is exciting is that I can sync multiple devices to it. So I can immediately share documents between my iPad and my PC. And my smart-phone. And my wife's MacBook. You see where I am going with this - no matter where the update happens, it gets synced to all the other devices.

EverNote - similarly, EverNote syncs data to & from multiple sources. But its strength comes in the TYPES of data it syncs. I can take photos, web-clippings, text boxes & notes. Then I can tag them for later searching. This is especially exciting to use for researching my blog, as I can assemble tons of disparate data types to use in my blog. The notes can be shared or sent via e-mail. Very powerful indeed.

So don't get me wrong - cloud isn't bad. It just may not really be what you think it is. 

The opinions expressed are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one, and they are entitled to it !

Clean Drinking Water for Everyone !

In previous posts, I have spent considerable amount of time pondering socially-aware topics such as Open-Source and Renewable Energy. While these seem like divergent topics, here is one opportunity for Open-Source principles and Renewable Energy to collide, providing us with something the world needs - more clean drinking water.

As all fourth-grade students know, some 75% of the planet is covered in water. Unfortunately, it is predominately salt-water, rendering it unsafe to drink. As we move further inland, and away from the oceans & seas, we encounter fresh-water. But being the wasteful & destructive beings we are, we pollute our own sources of clean drinking water ! So while we have access to all the water we could possibly need, we need to find ways to make more of it potable & usable.

Recently, I have been reading a lot about self-styled "Permies". These are people who have created a sub-culture dedicated to permaculture. The ideas behind permaculture are to mimic the ways in which Nature does things to create a more sustainable means of living on the planet. So everything from building rocket-stove mass heaters, to filtering water is within the aims of the sub-culture.

Of course, all of these systems require energy of some form. We see the need to pump water or generate electricity for these systems to work. Remarkably, many of the best solutions to these problems are actually hundreds (or in some cases, thousands !) of years old.

Take for example the Solar Water Still. By using the power of the Sun, water is heated enough to evaporate, condenses on a collector, and is collected as potable water ! This exactly mimics the way the Earth herself evaporates water into the atmosphere, which then falls later as rain. Early stills were actually used as a means of harvesting salt from ocean-water !

We know that rain-water is typically much cleaner than ground-water. This is because the natural process of evaporation distills the water to near 100% pure, leaving the salts & other heavy impurities behind. So it would seem obvious that we should drink rain-water where possible. But the opportunity still exists for other pathogens to exist in rain-water. The collected water still requires pasteurization to insure the pathogens present are killed off.

A solar still provides both of these methods, and even adds a few more ! By incorporating a few methods into one system, extremely pure water can be created, with zero additional energy being required.

First the rain water is collected in a catch-basin. It is then transferred by "wicking" (capillary action) into a bed of sand, which helps with the first phase of filtration. Next, the bed of sand is covered in an air-tight container & exposed directly to the sun's rays. The clear plastic cover allows UVA radiation to break down the DNA of the pathogens, effectively killing them !

As the sun heats the sand to 160F or more, the water evaporates into the air of the chamber & collects on the plastic cover, which is tilted at an angle towards the sun. The water vapour then condenses & runs down the surface of the collector to a central container. Voila ! 100% pure, naturally-softened, pathogen-free water, suitable for consumption by one & all.


The opinions expressed are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one, and they are entitled to it !

Electric Vehicles are NOT Environmentally Friendly !

Lately, there has been a lot of attention being paid to Hybrid and Electric Vehicles. Frankly, that annoys the heck out of me. When people discuss the ecological impact of switching to a hybrid or electric vehicle, their thinking stops at the tailpipe !

Stop & think about the "solution" from end to end... The conventional wisdom is that if we switch a vehicle propulsion system from gasoline or diesel fuel to electricity, the tail-pipe emissions will drop to zero. That I won't argue. The carbon footprint of operating the vehicle drops. But you don't just buy the car ! You still have to run it.

Where do fossil fuels come from ? Iraq ? The Alberta tar-sands ? The Gulf of Mexico ? All "bad" places, which are purported to contribute to the ecological impact of running each & every  vehicle on the road. Since that's not really the point of this article, I will ignore the source. But needless to say, the ecological impact of fossil fuels is very heavy.

Where does electricity come from ? In the USA alone, some 65% of the electricity produced comes from the burning from the burning of fossil-fuels - specifically coal ! The CO2 emissions from a coal plant ARE way higher than the cars they could power ! So all an electric vehicle does is transfer the point of impact from the tail-pipe to the coal-fired plant. Until the sources of electricity are converted to a more ecologically friendly means, then the argument becomes a wash.

But wait ! Let's consider the end of the car's life-cycle. In a conventional (gas, diesel, etc.) car, disposal is as simple as sending it to the crushers. From there, the car can be smelted & recycled. What happens with an electric car ? How can we safely dispose of the batteries that store the electrical energy ? Frankly, the current methods are toxic, and disposal is quite expensive. Lead-acid & lithium-polymer batteries are made up of dangerous chemicals.

Equally as bad is the fact that when involved in accidents, the chemicals in the batteries are extremely flammable & dangerous. When (not if) they leak in a collision, they become a haz-mat nightmare. The chemicals burn invisibly, endangering the lives of the occupants, fire-fighters & other nearby people.

I am a firm believer in doing everything we can to examine alternate fuel sources for our vehicle, but let's try to use our heads, shall we ?

The opinions expressed are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one, and they are entitled to it !

Harnessing the Coolth !

In renewable-energy circles, the holy grail is solar energy. It can be harnessed to capture its electrical potential using photo-voltaic cells. You can harness the sun's energy in the form of heat. Since a large portion of our daily household energy consumption typically goes into heating water - to heat our living spaces; to bathe; to clean dishes and clothing - this is the area that gets the most attention.

But in many climates - unlike my own in here Southern Alberta - there is often great value in disseminating heat, and storing the "Coolth" - sorry, I just love that word ! We know that we can capture solar radiation and heat a body of water to over 200 F, but what if we wanted to cool it instead ? And once it is chilled, can we store it in an economical way for later use ?

Over at the BuildItSolar web-site, Gary Reysa has assembled a large collection of articles and HOW-TO's for the Do-It-Yourself crowd. An article caught my eye that showed a simple means of trickling water down the slope of a roof at night and capturing it again at the bottom. Gary demonstrated that this simple method could cool the water by about 1.9 degrees F each hour ! This is accomplished using nothing more than evaporation. By exposing the water to cooler night-time air and then transmitting it across a large surface area, the water is chilled in a reasonably short period of time.

While this doesn't sound particularly awe-inspiring, Gary points out that it is roughly the equivalent cooling in terms of BTUs as running a half-ton air-conditioner for 6 hours. That IS very impressive !

Interestingly, at the time the cooling is happening, we don't need the chilled water. So it is stored in a highly-insulated 500 gallon container, so that the chilled water can be used in a simple heat-exchanger later. Whether through an in-floor heat/cool system, or combined with some form of blower to send cool air throughout the living space, the coolth can be used later. As the returning water's temperature raises over time, the temperature in the storage tank also rises, but one would presume that the cooling effect is really only required in the mid-day heat.

I love the idea of being able to collect both warmth and coolth. I believe that one of the barriers to widespread adoption of renewable energy sources is complacency. People simply don't want to have to change their lifestyles. I have never owned an air-conditioned home, as I have never lived anywhere that required one. So for me, it was never a consideration. But imagine if I lived in California or Florida ! I suspect they care an awful lot less about heating their homes that I do !

But that's a topic for another post...

The opinions expressed are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one, and they are entitled to it !

W.W._I_D ? - Part 2 :: The Quest Continues !

So I have been continuing my research into the "Utlimate" DIY, low-cost Home-Automation and Media Centre configuration. As you may recall, I am a little envious of my friend's installation, but do not have anywhere near the budget he had. So I have scoured the web, and I think I have come up with my solution.

You will further recall that I tend to swing towards the Open-Source side of the software world, and am keen to do as much as possible for myself. But, I also want commercial-level support where possible. Trust me, the ability to call up a 1-800 number and ask "OK, what did I mess up THIS time ?" is of great value to me. Further, I would think any reader of this post would also be appreciative ! ;-)

On the Audio/Visual (A/V) side, I am quickly settling into a free (open-source at its best !) software package for Mac OSX called Plex. It provides an overlay to ALL of your digital content, including iTunes, NetFlix, etc and creates its own master index & streaming capabilities. So from the one gorgeous interface, I can play back HD Video, Music & Photos. Finally, content can be streamed to remote TV devices, using Apple's new AppleTV.

But then I also have some other interests... I am keenly interested in Home Automation. In being able to control ambient lighting, and to set "scenes" - automatic pre-sets for watching a movie, or hosting a party, or being away on vacation.  Also the ability to control climate - like setting the thermostat remotely - would be most valuable.

For this, I have settled on another Mac OSX application called Indigo. It is another native Mac application which can interface with either X10 or Insteon control devices. It understands the concepts of security and event-triggering. Imagine a guest has entered your driveway. The system could turn on the porch light, ring a chime & flash a video image onto a monitor - perhaps even the TV itself !

Especially interesting is that these two solutions are compatible with each other ! This means you can control BOTH applications from within one interface. Both applications take advantage of the Apple App Store to publish remote-control applications for iPad/iPhone/iPod. Amazingly, the same Apps allow you to stream the A/V content to both the iPad and the iPod/iPhone platforms !

The next component I am settling onto is the new Apple Mac Mini. It can run OSX-Server, meaning it can also serve as the house E-Mail, DNS, and Web-Server. It can interface with a TimeCapsule and turn it into an industrial-strength firewall, securing us from the Internet. But I would be sure to buy the non-server version - it comes with a DVD built in, meaning you can play DVDs on your system as well - and purchase OSX-Server separately. It is a nice-to-have for me, but not required for this project.

It will also serve as the Media Centre, being directly attached to the main TV via HDMI. Using a product called eyeTV-HD from elgato, you can watch live TV from their video capture device. It sits between the Set-top cable Box and the Mac Mini. Then the content is delivered by the afore-mentioned HDMI cable. Since it stands in between the Cable box and the Mac Mini, the Mac Mini can become a Digital Video recorder, allowing you to record any broadcasts for later viewing - kind of like a TiVO, but without the monthly subscription, and supporting High-Definition video in Canada.

So the one media centre can centrally manage & store content for the entire house. Further, it becomes the nerve centre for the Home Automation project. My first estimate is that the whole project will cost ~ $3500 CDN, which includes all of the Insteon/X10 modules ! An order of magnitude less expensive than my friend's system, and all running on Apple equipment. Muy bueno !

The opinions expressed are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one, and they are entitled to it !

Employment Insurance ? Who are YOU trying to kid ?

Every morning, I wake up at about the same time, pour my wife & I a cup of coffee and watch the news in bed. Usually, I get a synopsis of local, National and International news. A little fluff & feel-good news & I am off to the shower to start my day...

This morning, something happened that hasn't happened in a long time - a news article stopped just short of infuriating me. It turns out that some third-party wrote a report recommending the Canadian Government RAISE the EI premiums ! For those non-Canadians, Employment Insurance is kind of like a step between being employed & welfare. If you are briefly out of work, you can receive a bi-weekly cheque from the government, to keep you afloat while you seek new employment.

Unfortunately, this has become somewhat of a cash-grab by the Federal Governments (I put it as plural, because both the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives are guilty). The rules are such that if a wage-earner:

1. Quits his job voluntarily, they are ineligible for EI
2. Is fired from his job with cause, they are ineligible for EI

The only reason you can receive EI is if you are "laid off", and there is a very short list of reasons for being laid off that makes one eligible for EI. Worse, if you make too much money, you are ineligible for EI, or you risk having it clawed back !

So in effect, Canadians are mandated BY LAW to pay an Insurance Premium that they can (almost) NEVER collect on ! And yet this third-party & the Government see fit to raise the premiums - again ...

When I was in grade school, the common description was "Of the people, for the people, by the people". Which people are these elected buffoons representing ? Certainly NOT the wage-earner who would need the help from EI the most.

I wonder when Canadians will stand up and tell their Government - YOU'RE FIRED !

The opinions expressed are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one, and they are entitled to it !