BYOD: Why It Should Be The New Normal

Posted on June 26, 2012 by admin

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Bringing Your Own Device (BYOD) to work. It’s not a new concept. People love their smartphones, tablets, or laptops. They prefer using a particular brand for personal and work. They bring it to work because it’s convenient to carry just one device, and they can be productive with their own.

Traditionally, companies provide their own “certified” devices to retrieve secured Enterprise data. However, it’s difficult to stop employees from transmitting those data somewhere else, either via E-mail, USB drives, or Cloud Storage, potentially enabling others to see them. A strong privacy policy may be enough deterrent – at least in the beginning. As time goes by, employees will get complacent and too comfortable in taking their data everywhere, not realizing the confidential data may be leaked.

As an IT leader, one can imagine the complexity of supporting multiple devices and worries about zero control over securing protected data. Case in point, the biggest early adopter of BYOD was IBM. They learned valuable (and painful) lessons from it. Employees were not aware of insecure apps, not using secure channels to transmit data, and losing their unprotected/unencrypted devices. These security breaches could potentially cost them, or anyone else for that matter, millions of dollars to repair.

So, why is there growing trend to adopt BYOD? In this tough economic condition, company expenses have to be cut aggressively. The most obvious is to stop allocating budget for productivity machines. Having the cost shifted to the employees, it eliminates the need for company’s machines to be stocked, upgraded, and re-stocked.

Employees have also voiced their concern about the lack of productivity using company issued devices, such as a Blackberry, instead of their favorite iPhone or Android phones. It doesn’t make any sense to have a dedicated, company issued, device just to receive e-mails or phone calls for work, and another for personal use. It certainly becomes challenging to carry two devices, especially when an iPhone, for example, is more than enough to handle all of those tasks and be just as productive.

IT leaders are starting to embrace this BYOD trend because solutions are starting to appear, as the concept become widely accepted. Android and iPhone devices are now equipped with additional security to deter data theft or loss. Both Google and Apple are serious about Enterprise adoption and have updated their OS to be more secure. Now, it’s up to the IT leaders to trickle down the information to users on how to secure their devices, according to the companies’ need. Instead of preventing employees to bring their own devices, educate them on how to secure the content of their own devices. As Ronald Reagan would say: “Trust, but verify.” There is a level of trust on both sides, but both must remain vigilant.

It is time to stop believing the myths of bringing-your-own-device to work. BYOD is happening, whether or not IT is ready. It is the “new normal”.

Quality Visual Presentation

Posted on December 20, 2011 by admin

Ever sat in a meeting with slides and slides of presentation that showed nothing but densely packed text and confusing charts? Most people have. It’s no wonder many don’t look forward to going into meetings when their first expectation is a poor presentation.

However, there was one man who could present and held the audience captivated. He was Steve Jobs. During his keynote speeches, he managed to get the audience hanging on to his every word and anticipating that “one more thing” that would leave everyone in awe. It helped that he had great products to present, but in addition, he used visuals as one of the most important tool of his presentation. He used minimal words (and numbers) written using a giant font. He used graphical icons to represent the current topic. He used animation for impact. Very concise and to the point.

: Simple

: Multi-color Use

: Effective Icon

: Animation

So why doesn’t everyone follow Steve’s presentation methods? Perhaps it’s because of the old thinking: “More is good”. The more stuff written down, the more credible and complete it gets. Unfortunately, these days, people are busy and have a short attention span. They don’t want to be held up in a long winded presentation.

The best ways to present effective visuals:

Be simple
Use graphics, icons, and symbols to reinforce or communicate a concept
Use key words, not full sentences
Contain only one concept per slide or page
Contain only three to six ideas on each flip chart sheet
Use color where possible, but not excessively

Steve Jobs was known to obsess over design. He was also obsessed with simplicity. It showed in his quality presentations. One can learn a great deal from his obsessions. It would make sitting in presentations a much more pleasant experience.

Will Windows 8 Save the PC Business?

Posted on December 6, 2011 by admin

Predictions are in already: Windows 8 will be irrelevant. The clues seem to support the suspicion – the masses are already happy with Windows 7. Enterprise already made a substantial investment upgrading to Windows 7. Another migration in 2012 is just too soon.

But putting all that aside, the PC manufacturers need to support Windows 8 because it’s the platform that will finally bring integration of desktop PCs with Tablets¹ – especially in an Enterprise environment. There’s also a good list of new features that will ensure some to upgrade. Plus, there are millions of new PCs and Laptops to sell, every year.

Windows 8 is still relevant and it will save the PC business.

As demonstrated in Microsoft’s Build Conference 2011 [↩]

The PC is Evolving

Posted on September 4, 2011 by admin

Toshiba Portege Z830 Ultrathin Laptop

Taking the headline from Time Business article, the PC industry is certainly in a different place now. The PC, aka Microsoft based laptops and desktops, have always been the corporate standard for productivity machines. On the Enterprise level, corporate users demand Microsoft products (ie. Powerpoint) suites, VPN to access internal servers behind the firewall, Remote Desktop for Windows servers, and in some cases, multiple monitors for multitasking needs.

However, there’s been grumbling about the tablets taking over Enterprise issued PCs and Laptops – mainly due to juggernaut Apple’s iPad. In response, there are now many more tablet offerings from RIM, Toshiba, ACER, or ASUS. But such ventures do not always end up well. HP pulled the Touchpad after 6 weeks of production!¹ That’s just the start – who knows who else will quit the quest to quell the iPad.

There’s a glimmer of hope to revitalize the PC business: the Ultra-thin laptops are coming. Recently, Toshiba has just announced a good looking one called the Z830 coming this November. Lenovo has an offering. Even ACER is in the mix.

Just in time too. There’s a need the lightest portable laptop that will not break one’s back. It helps that it looks as cool as the Macbook Air.

One problem though: price. It’s understandable why Apple charges way too much for the Macbooks – they’ve historically done this since the Apple II days². But the PC should not cost as much. To be more competitive, there’s an expectation the PC Ultrathin laptops to be (much) cheaper than the Macbook Air, if they want to sell more of it. Kind of like the HP Touchpad fire sale.

So here’s hoping the evolution of the PC is towards something more useful, powerful, affordable, and highly portable. There’s still life in the PC world.

Like the old saying from Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca: “Lead, follow, or GET OUT OF THE WAY!” It’s easier to follow the leader. In HP’s case, they sure did got out of the way. [↩]
1980′s [↩]

Finding Team Success

Posted on May 26, 2011 by admin

Every companies have different departments.¹ Every departments have different goals and operating procedures. But to a customer, they don’t see these different departments – they only see one company. So, it’s very important everyone in the company work as a team. Finding the key for team work success can be summarized in the following steps:

Prepare to succeed.
State your positive intent.
Describe the issue fairly.
Facilitate the discussion.
Gain agreement on next steps.

It comes down to persistence and positive thinking. Refrain from blaming each other. Do understand what others are going through. Focus on helping the customer.

Most of all, follow through on the agreed next steps. Nothing is more rewarding than a happy (and returning) customer!

Some companies aptly call departments as “divisions”. [↩]

Listing Memory Usage by Process

Posted on March 11, 2011 by admin

A question asked to me often, “Which processes are using up too much memory?” I generally use top to figure them out manually. But there’s a better way to do it, using Solaris pmap command. I can get a good estimate on the memory usage. Brandon Hutchinson has a shell script that provides a nice output. I modified it a little bit to include a column for process owner.

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/printf "%-6s %-9s %-13s %s\n" "PID" "Total" "User" "Command"
/usr/bin/printf "%-6s %-9s %-13s %s\n" "---" "-----" "----" "-------"
for PID in `/usr/bin/ps -ef  | /usr/bin/awk '$2 ~ /[0-9]+/ { print $2 }'`
do
   USER=`/usr/bin/ps -o user -p $PID | /usr/bin/tail -1`
   CMD=`/usr/bin/ps -o comm -p $PID | /usr/bin/tail -1`
   # Avoid "pmap: cannot examine 0: system process"-type errors
   # by redirecting STDERR to /dev/null
   TOTAL=`/usr/bin/pmap $PID 2>/dev/null | /usr/bin/tail -1 | \
   /usr/bin/awk '{ print $2 }'`
   [ -n "$TOTAL" ] && /usr/bin/printf "%-6s %-9s %-13s %s\n" "$PID" "$TOTAL" "$USER" "$CMD"
done | /usr/bin/sort -rn -k2

Note, this script needs to run as “root” for pmap to have permission to examine each process.

Output looks something like this:

PID    Total     User      Command
---    -----     ----      -------
694    25240K    root      /opt/RICHPse/bin/se.sparcv9.5.9
696    5208K     root      /usr/dt/bin/dtlogin
613    4992K     root      /opt/CA/BABcmagt/caagentd
326    4512K     smmsp      /usr/lib/sendmail
260    4440K     root      /usr/sbin/syslogd
269    2440K     root      /usr/sbin/cron
196    2360K     root      /usr/sbin/keyserv
193    2352K     root      /usr/sbin/rpcbind
103    2336K     root      /usr/lib/sysevent/syseventd
235    2224K     root      /usr/lib/nfs/lockd
206    2184K     root      /usr/lib/netsvc/yp/ypbind

Problem Solving And Deciding On A Solution

Posted on August 30, 2010 by admin

Working in a team can be quite challenging. Deciding what to agree on for an outcome or goal is important for the success of a project. Some key actions to evaluate solutions and gain consensus on the decision to be implemented are:

Describe the decision and how it will be made.
Jointly establish decision-making guidelines.
Jointly evaluate options against the guidelines.
Gain agreement on the best alternative.

Keep it cool, civilized, and concise. Keep discussions on topic and on time. Most of all, communicate well!

How To Listen

Posted on August 24, 2010 by admin

Listening is an obvious skill everyone must have. In business, it’s especially critical. Companies must listen to their customers. Supervisors must listen to their subordinates. Peers must listen to each other. The key is removing the emotions and focus on the following actions:

Evaluate the need to listen.
Manage internal and external noises.
Demonstrate a curious and open mind.
Manage the flow of conversation.

Effective listening is critical to sorting through and keeping up with the information needed to get results.

Samba and Windows 7

Posted on May 18, 2010 by admin

Windows 7 has upgraded security. This will effectively cause trouble in making connections to legacy apps (ie. Windows XP supported). One of them is Samba on Unix.

Fortunately, there’s a solution to this:

Open Control Panel.
Choose Administrative Tools.
Click Local Security Policy.
Under Local Policies and Security Options:
1. Change Network security: LAN Manager Authentication Level to “Send LM & NTLM responses”
2. Change Minimum Session Security for NTLM SSP to disable “Require 128-bit encryption” into “No Minimum Security”.

Illustrations below:

: Samba and Windows 7 Lan Manager Setting

: Samba and Windows 7 NTLM SSP

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