The Silo Effect

Over the last few years a term has crept into business and managerial circles for a condition that we've being especially feeling the effects from within technology. It's the Silo effect.

The name comes from farm silos which house different types of grain. Analogous to political divisions within large organisations which represent the departments. Each department has its own clearly defined internal structure. Communication flows from the lower level staff to the department head. In larger organisations there may be several levels of management within each Silo. Communication between departments or silos only occurs at the top level and then usually only during formal meetings with all department heads present. 

Abandoned Grain Silo

This deficiency of communication causes departmental thinking to lack ideas and information from other departments feeding off only creativity from within the silo. It propagates feelings of self importance and keeps the power of synergy from working; the idea that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Each silo comes to believe that it is the dominant structure bidding against other silos for shares of capital with which to further its empire. Often without realising it the organisation is in competition with itself which leads to a self destructive spiral driven by insular thinking of self preservation. Viewing the organisation as an organism it as if its own immune system has turned on it.

The Silo effect for IT systems and services of the organisation is often pronounced and one with which I've had first hand experience on a number of occasions.
Going by a many different nomenclatures, the IT support / services teams role is to provide the Information Technology services which the organisation can utilise to conduct its business. Depending upon the type of organisation these services can be seen as little more than tools to help get the job done or in the case of businesses like Amazon are integral to the very business model they rely on.
In any case these services and systems are becoming exponentially more complex and interconnected as we take advantage of the acceleration provided by Moore's law.
Staff within the IT support / services team are the most qualified and experienced with all aspects of IT hardware and software and should be the team that chooses which platforms and applications etc. to adopt for the good of the business.

This however is often not the case. The Silo effect causes elements within each team to dictate which IT tools they require. Little regard if any is placed upon how that requested platform or application will interoperate with existing technology in other departments which ultimately must share and access similar data.

Usually it goes something like this, the finance director requests a new application at a senior staff meeting. They've recently hired a new finance exec and he informs them that this software offers features which their current one doesn't and besides he's used it for many years and most of their competition use it. They have already been in touch with a sales partner for the application and only require paperwork signing to complete the purchase. The IT support team will be provided with the application when it arrives and will be expected install, manage and support this new product.
At no point were the IT support team called in to consult with the finance team on whether this new product was the best way to go, whether the partner outlet was the best place to procure or how it would interoperate with existing technology.

The result is often a mix of software systems demanded by different departments which are not designed to talk together leaving the IT support team to hire additional specialist staff, train existing staff and spend significant amounts of time ensuring that data can flow from one app to the next often by writing their own code to ensure it does. Of course it never works properly, is in a constant state of flux and the IT services team get a bad name.
Occasionally it works in reverse with IT services wanting to deploy new innovative technology across the organisation which will reduce TCO but the silos respond with claims that work they do requires existing systems and it would be impossible to change.

In my experience more often than not an analysis of benefits gained by adopting new requested software against the TCO over a measured period is not undertaken.
There is no disputing that the new software requested by xyz department will benefit the organisation because it offers new features which will increase productivity for that silo. But there is a case to be made that in enabling this new software to be interoperable with the rest of the technology in terms of how it is deployed, secured and outputs its data within n-tier platforms, we incur a greater cost than can be gained.

Until organisational structures are changed and silos broken, IT service teams will never be able to provide the best end-to-end solutions to take their businesses into the next era and many organisations which are not agile enough and working together at an inter-departmental level simply will not survive.




Evolution - Lync 2013

Lync 2010 was the first credible attempt at a Unified Communications platform by Microsoft. Although OCS has been with us for many years it never managed to elevate itself above a corporate version of MSN messenger for most.

Six years ago Microsoft looked at the PBX and saw an isolated system with it's own directories and infrastructure, it was unable to take advantage of existing user groups and policies for the desktops and mobile computers already in use. As Smart phones became popular corporate tools it gave three separate ecosystems for an organisation to support just to use the most common forms of communication. Realising a chance to capitalise Microsoft have built Lync as a complete unified communication platform providing the functions of an enterprise wide IP-PBX with the best features of OCS and including mobile phone devices with desktop and mobile PC platforms as end-points.
Aside from providing common features seen in PBX's such as auto-attendants, hunt groups, IVR's, call parking, extension dialling and voice mailboxes, it integrates with Exchange to provide unified messaging: Voice mail to e-mail transcription and all the benefits of the Microsoft Exchange infrastructure. Being a Microsoft application it makes use of Active Directory negating the need to manage a separate directory. But it's trump card which no other system can claim to match is the way its Presence elements permeate into Office applications; open Outlook, read an e-mail from a few days earlier, decide you need clarification on a few key points, and you can see instantly whether the sender or indeed any of the other recipients are online with their Lync clients. Choose one that's available and you've got all forms of synchronous electronic communication just a click away.

There's no question that Lync can and is replacing PBX driven systems around the world and goes beyond anything they can offer despite the occasional cry to the contrary from telecoms engineers allied to other vendors that specialise only in VoIP systems. It's hardly surprising, a software giant is positioning to take their market away from them.

Interestingly, in my experience of board room meetings discussing Lync with business executives there's strong initial resistance to the idea of replacing a tried and tested system, largely unchanged for decades, which has never let them down and always existed as a separate entity, with a piece of software. And the idea of not needing that plastic box we call a telephone on our desks anymore just seems too strange for many.
Migrating from a traditional IP-PBX system to Lync is a huge leap for both end users and IT support personnel, it's pushing a complete new line of technology and services into their already complex ecosystem.

Although the real benefits of Lync are only seen when using its full potential especially Enterprise Voice, as shown in the Forrester report,  many organisations are opting to retain their existing IP-PBX's to handle EV and adopt Lync for it's messaging and Presence facilities in the short term at least.

Microsoft have played a master stroke with Lync and the upcoming new release, 2013, only builds on what is already a great UC platform. Some of the most awaited new features are:

• H.264 replacing the proprietary RTV codec. This is a clever move to standardise HD video streams.
• Persistent chat replacing group chat. Create chat rooms, hold on-going discussions with co-workers. Create topic feeds. And no separate client needed.
• Lync Web App. Now a full featured browser based client allowing those without Lync client to enjoy the full conferencing experience.
• Skype Integration. Lync federates with Skype users to provide, IM, voice, video and presence.
• Lync Online: Create hybrid deployments with a mix of on-premises and Lync Online servers. Microsoft calls this "hybrid voice". 
• High Availability with each front-end server storing a complete copy of all the databases in the SQL back-end, if the back-end SQL database server is unavailable, the front-end will still function. Also, Lync 2013 supports SQL mirroring on the back-end databases reducing hardware costs associated with clustering SQL.
• Co-location of AV conferencing and Archiving/Monitoring roles on the Front end servers and the Director role is optional (was it not before?)
• VDI plugin which allows full Audio Video support for virtual desktops.
• New Lync Mobile clients releasing first for Windows Phone, then Fruit and finally Android supporting the full voice experience.

So is Lync a replacement for the PBX? Maybe we should be asking if a PBX could be a replacement for Lync.

Microsoft Certification - MCSE is back

In 2007 Microsoft released a new certification framework which replaced the well known and respected MCSA and premium MCSE with a pathway of technology based and role based certifications. According to Microsoft this was in response to concerns by hiring managers that the MCSE; Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, was too vague. The new framework featured MCTS certifications, TS for Technology Specialist, and each product or technology had it's own. Microsoft added job role linked MCITP's, IT Professional certifications. Often called the Pro series they required one or more TS's and the professional series exam to gain the certification.

Industry response to the change was mixed, although the new certifications provided clarity over skill sets, there were too many ITP's and many job roles required a combination of two. Whats more there was no direct equivalent to the much loved MCSE. The closest match being MCITP: Enterprise Administrator which required a total of five exams, four TS's and one pro series to attain. This certainly made the certifications more accessible as the old money MCSE required a minimum of six exams. We also saw a shift in exam style removing the "many answers may be correct but choose the one we think is best" format and introducing a much less vague and assuming "here's a list of answers select the only one that works" system.

MCSE Built for the Cloud

The idea was to provide a larger global skill base of certified personnel. However five years after its introduction I frequently see the MCSE asked for in tech job advertisements.

It's not that Microsoft got it wrong, the MCSE was too vague, but understanding this new framework was asking too much of hiring managers.

With the surge in cloud based technologies Microsoft have re-launched their certification framework again. Demand for “cloud-ready” IT workers will grow by 26 percent annually through 2015, with as many as 7 million cloud-related jobs available worldwide, according to an IDC White Paper sponsored by Microsoft. However, IT hiring managers report that the biggest reason they failed to fill an existing 1.7 million open cloud-related positions in 2012 is because job seekers lack the training and certification needed to work in a cloud-enabled world. (Climate Change: Cloud’s Impact on IT Organisations and Staffing (November 2012)).

This re-launch coincides with new releases of many front line applications and platforms in the latter part of 2012 and early 2013; Windows server 2012, Windows 8, Exchange Server 2013, Lync Server 2013, System Center 2012 and SQL Server 2012 among them. All share common management interfaces, are extremely interoperable, designed to be virtualised and as their catch phrase says, built for the cloud.
Microsoft are certainly positioning to capitalise more than anyone in the Cloud revolution and their new certification framework is designed to assist this.

The new framework has three primary levels, from bottom to top:

2012 Certification Pyramid

The Associate: MCSA (Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate). A starting point for job seekers and those wishing to formalise existing skills. This is the foundation level and represents a pre-requisite for the MCSE. Currently five MCSA's are offered: Windows Sevrer 2012, Windows Server 2008, Windows 8, Windows 7 and SQL Server 2012.

The Expert: MCSE (Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert) and its developer equivalent, MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer) are Microsoft’s flagship certifications for individuals who want to lead their organization’s transition to the cloud. Eight MCSE's are currently offered: Server Infrastructure, Desktop Infrastructure, Private Cloud, Data Platform, Business Intelligence, Messaging, Communication and SharePoint.

The Master: MCSM (Microsoft Certified Solutions Master) certification is for the select few that wish to validate the deepest level of product expertise, as well as the ability to design and build the most innovative solutions for complex on-premises, off-premises, and hybrid enterprise environments using Microsoft technologies. In addition to the MCSE certification pre-requisites candidates must complete a Knowledge and a Lab practical exam. Certification lasts for three years and can be renewed by completing a re-certification exam.
Currently there are four MCSM's available: Data Platform, SharePoint, Communication and Messaging.

On closer inspection many of the MCSE and MCSM levels require exams which are not yet available primarily as the technology upon which they are based is not yet released to manufacture.

Having completed three of the new MCSA's and two new MCSE certifications to date; Private Cloud and Server Infrastructure I can report that there is indeed an emphasis placed upon virtualisation and cloud based management, however this is a thin veil over what is basically another release of Windows Server and System Center exams cleverly spun by the silk weavers at Microsoft's marketing department.

Something unexpected was seen when I downloaded my certificates from the Microsoft secured site, in the top left corner of each were the words "Charter Member".
Apparently this status is awarded to the first 5,000 completing certification requirements, an incentive to attract early adopters, as the more certified professionals there are, the more software licenses Microsoft will sell.

Microsoft will make this new certification framework a success, although it stands for something different, it's still the MCSE acronym we all came to understand as the gold standard for IT certs. And now with the technology more complex and interdependent than ever, for many corporations hiring certified staff will no longer be optional.

Office 365 - The future in the Cloud?



Microsoft's latest Office release, 2013 is available as a cloud service for those wanting to transition to hosted services but retain familiar products. Microsoft haven't taken the decision to offer their Office software as a service lightly, they made their empire selling software licenses. But under pressure from Google who believe software should not be a commodity to be sold but a service to be offered, they've had to evolve. The result is 365. A monthly subscription from $4 - $22 per user, per month depending upon the plan chosen buys you access to your very own Office infrastructure which goes much further than the usual applications housed within Office Professional plus, we also get SharePoint online, Exchange online and Lync online. That's office applications, e-mail, telephony including enterprise voice, messaging, presence, storage, anti-spam / anti-virus, and websites all in one neat package.

Microsoft Office 365

Its not just installed software that 365 is replacing, its the infrastructure required to support it; the fault tolerant and load balanced clusters of servers in our data centres running Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, infrastructure services on Windows Server such as DFS and WDS. And the end-points themselves don't need to have the hardware to support new Office apps, moreover we don't have the costly budget required to plan, deploy, manage and support the servers and applications. We also save on our electricity bill and can claim we are lowering our carbon footprint, going green as we have fewer servers to power and therefore fewer servers to keep cool.

At first look then, it seems that Office 365 is an obvious evolution of a well-established ecosystem which will replace the more traditional on-premise provision we are accustomed to.
However there are a few caveats to address. Firstly 365 hasn't been the amazing success many predicted, it has uptake just not a lot. Feedback from the CEO's and business leaders I meet centre around the issue of privacy. Looking after your data yourself seems a safer bet than handing it all over to some faceless company, location unknown even if it is Microsoft. There has been a lot of hubbub in business exec circles over just such matters. Secondly as a permanent Internet connection is required you lose almost all productivity ability if your line drops. Lastly even though Microsoft quote a 99.9% availability and SLA there seems to be a question mark over reliability.

On the first issue of Privacy, Microsoft have the capability and investment to do a far better job of protecting your data both confidentiality and integrity than most medium sized enterprises can. They simply can't justify the investment in the required technology and configuration costs. This also feeds into the final issue of reliability, everyone thinks are a better driver than the guy next to then on the freeway and every decenter manager thinks they can make their data more available than Microsoft can. This just simply isn't the case for most organisations who could not justify the expense ensuring no single point of failure and complete fault tolerance. Microsoft can and have.
For the issue of connectivity to the cloud services careful consideration needs to be placed on which ISP's are used, available bandwidth and physically how you connect to the cloud.

365 will appeal most to smaller organisations who cannot afford the infrastructure and support required to have access to some of the services such as those provided by Lync or SharePoint. This certainly levels the playing field for them and with fewer users to license can be very cost effective. Many smaller organisations will be taking advantages of these new tools for the first time.
For larger enterprises though there are barriers. Firstly they are likely to already own significant server infrastructure running older versions of the platforms in question so there is no immediate lowering of TCO. Also with a much larger user base to license it could end up costing them more than on-premise equivalents. The support cost savings may also not be as great as first thought because they'll have a fairly autonomous application deployment solution via System Centre and as for reducing required desktop footprints they probably have provision for App-V or VDI solutions.

Without a significant sign up from the larger enterprises out there 365 will remain a flop however Microsoft provide many routes and they all lead to 365 in some form.
For instance a corp looking to Migrate it's Exchange environment to a newer version on newer hardware has license costs to bear, new hardware to procure and staff training to source. The migration itself is a time consuming activity and that's more cost.
Exchange Online may be a solution, from just a few $ per user per month it offers a way to gradually ease into 365 retaining Lync, SharePoint and Office as on-site hosted solutions.
With a significant range of user plans available corps can choose which user group is suited to which plan, mix and match. Their periodic large Cap-ex will shift to a more frequent but lower Op-ex.

Another point in favour of Office 365 is the surge of execs requesting iPads as their business tools rather than a Windows based notebook or tablet. Never intended for this purpose the iPad / iPhone has become the tool of choice for many senior level staff. Why? They are seen as fashion accessories, form over function, they have them at home, everyone they know has one so they want one for work. Speaking from personal experience attempting to convince a board room of fruit users that an iPad isn't a suitable business tool for a whole range of reasons is a great deal more challenging that it may seem.
Well they can now have their cake and eat it as all that's required on the client is a web browser. It means that corps pursuing BYOD's now have a perfect platform to base it on.

In recent years Microsoft's tactics have changed, coincidentally this seemed to be around the time Bill stepped down as CEO. For those taking note, Microsoft ecosystems of desktop, server, messaging, telephony, collaboration etc. are gravitating toward each other, converging on identical management interfaces both GUI based and PowerShell with common goals and Interoperability between products and services is better than ever. It seems Microsoft have had a revolution and Office 365 is just one Lync in a much bigger chain. Conspiracy theorists be warned.

Office is dead, long live Office.

Microsoft Lync Returning us to 1973

It's the 70's, David Bowies Life on Mars is playing on the radio, on your desk there's a notepad, pen and a telephone. Your in-tray contains some memos which need your attention. A business workflow has just started; to complete it we require some information from Gene Hunt on the second floor. We can either pick up the phone and dial his extension, or walk up the stairs to his office. It's that simple. 

(Life on Mars, (c) BBC)

Let's assume we dial (literally) his extension, there's a busy tone. We could wait a few minutes and try later or walk up the stairs to his office. We go up the stairs and knock on his office door, we open it and see that Gene is on the phone still, he holds up his hand, come back in five. Ok so we now have a choice, go find someone else who might have the information we require, or wait five minutes to speak to Gene. We wait the five minutes, get the information required, go back to our desk and complete the workflow.

Now let's jump forward to 2012. Same office, same desk, only now we have a VoIP phone, a desktop PC connected to the corporate network, and e-mail. There have been other changes also, the mesh of Internet communication allows staff that were once confined to the same building because their workflows were connected and communication between them too difficult to achieve over distance to be spread around the globe.
So using the example above we require the same information from Gene, but he's no longer based in our building, his department was moved last year to the head office site.
We can still pick up the phone and dial his extension but he's on another call so we are redirected to his voice mail. We leave him a message. We are not certain when he'll check his voice mail we send him an e-mail also.
Now we wait, we can't complete the workflow without the information from Gene and as we've requested it we've done our job, right?

Although the modern "connected" office has brought an array of new tools designed to increase efficiency we have also introduced the issue of Human Latency; the induced delay as we spend time locating who to call, how to call them, and wait for our response. Our synchronous communications; telephone calls, face to face chat have been replaced with asynchronous systems via e-mail and voice mail.

Let's review the same situation from above but this time in an environment that has invested in Microsoft Lync unified communications. We need the information from Gene to complete our workflow. Maybe first we should ask how do we know Gene will have what we need? In the 70's departments occupied the same office space, we knew everyone, we had "presence". Today we may have never have actually met Gene and know little more about him than his job title. With Lync we search for all staff within a specific department, then hover over contact cards for details of who is likely to be best to ask, or use a skill search. There are three people in our organisation that can help, but which one to ask. This is where presence comes in, mirroring reality we can determine not only who is at their desk but from that list who is most likely to be available. In the 70's we just had to look up from our desk and scan the office, Johns not at his desk, no point in asking him, Bill is on the phone he can't help right now but Sally looks to be available. It is the same with Presence in Lync, only the fact that all of the above work at different locations presents no issue to us.
We see that Gene's presence state is green  meaning he's at his desk and not on the phone. Now we need to get his attention, before we would have knocked on his door, in Lync we send him a toast, usually an IM "Hello Gene, can you spare a minute?" Once we get the reply we can choose how to continue, if its simple we may handle the whole exchange with IM, or we may swap to a voice call. If theres written information to be seen we may send him a file, or paste it into an e-mail. With Lync we can alter the mode of communication without ever leaving the client. Everything is very ubiquitous.

So we've returned to 1973, but it's improved, we have mobility. Our communication end points can be our smart phones, tablet PC's or any computer using Lync Web App.
If Gene is not at his desk he can still receive our IM, we can still one-click call his mobile from his contact card. If he's at his desk when we call but needs to go elsewhere he can move the call to his mobile. We can receive our voice mails as e-mail transcriptions with Lync / Exchange unified messaging. Voice driven auto attendants allow us to check and book meetings, or room resources, reply to e-mails and reschedule appointments from our cars hands free, on the move.

There are many reasons why Lync is a worthy investment, application level integration being up there among the top but its ability to diminish human latency is a key selling point as it's this statistic which we can easily show a positive change to ROI. Lync really is a credible replacement for IP-PBX driven telephony but it offers so much more than that it is a true end to end integrated communications platform and in that regard it stands alone.