IT Operations and keeping the lights on.....

As the IT Manager for a geographically dispersed organization, I spend much of my time “keeping the lights on” - meaning making sure that the voice & data networks are up & running. A better way to refer to this is IT Operations and that is what I spend the majority of my time on.

Now the cloud computing proponents out there would tell you, “Hey, with the Cloud you have nothing to worry about” but that is not actually the case. All the Cloud does is make computing resource available over the Internet (via web services). End users must still get to the Cloud and most folks still work in an office building which means a Local Area Network (LAN) so people can share local computing resources. And Local Area Networks, just like Wide Area Networks (WAN), mean Identification & Authentication (IdA) plus don’t forget Authorization. Because I manage a geographically dispersed network, I deal with LAN and WAN networking as well as Cloud issues – has anyone heard of DNS (aka Domain Name Services)? If you have, good and if you haven’t, do a bit of homework because it’s important. Both internal & external DNS must be managed so whether the SoA (Start of Authority) for your organization is your ISP or a third party vendor, someone within your organization still must be in charge. There is always a person responsible for the important things.

How about Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Cloud-based applications? Your company is still responsible for the customer & client data in the databases that are the backend systems of all SaaS solutions. It is immaterial whether the server housing your confidential customer data resides locally (meaning “on premises”) or in the Cloud – you are still responsible for protecting it. Who administers the user accounts of SaaS applications? The Cloud vendor’s responsibility is to make sure “the lights are on” – meaning the application is up & running and nothing more. Your firm must still decide which employees get access to what data and that is an organizational decision. What doesn’t have to be done is the maintenance work on the individual servers that would house the application software if they were on premises. That is one advantage of the Cloud that is undeniable and a reduction in the amount of work the internal IT staff has to do by about 10%.

So your organization has moved its critical systems into the Cloud (public, private, or hybrid it doesn’t matter – all that matters is that the systems are not on premises). Ensuring that the end users have access to these systems is IT Operations and still the responsibility of the internal IT staff. Teleworkers working remotely from their homes, sales people on the road, and employees spread out among branch offices all represent the different kinds of access required for an organization to function. Oh, did I forget to mention phone service? Well, these days with simple VoIP solutions such as Skype or more complex telephony solutions, phone service is just another form of data – getting access to your phone is the same as getting access to your applications.

A good principle to remember is C-I-A which means Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability. Integrate these principles into your IT Operations so that regardless of where you compute from (locally or in the Cloud), you can feel confident in your systems.

Rob

'Cloud Computing' and how it has affected my job as the IT Manager for a small business

I’ll keep my example focused on a single piece of software, CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

When I joined my current firm, they used an on-premises CRM that required a fat client to be installed plus a network drive mapping in order to work. I was responsible for the server hardware (including warranty coverage), the application itself (purchase of the initial product + ongoing support), backing up data on the server, backing up the server itself (which is different), and keeping the server powered up and cooled down.

The positive was that we weren’t being nickel & dimed for every user account. A negative was that the old CRM didn’t work well across a wide area network (WAN) because it was never designed to be used in such a way.

Because the server that housed the CRM sat in a room in an office building, it was vulnerable to any ‘event’ that might affect Houston. A prime example is 2008’s Hurricane Ike.

The new CRM is software-as-a-service (known as SaaS) and thus has business continuity built into it. A SaaS CRM works well across a wide area network because it was designed from the ground up to work in a distributed environment (i.e., the Internet).

A negative aspect of a SaaS CRM is that we are getting nickel & dimed by the vendor when it comes to per-user licensing.

Running reports from the SaaS CRM is painfully slow and as the vendor adds more customers to their shared environment, things get even slower. SaaS vendors only make money by adding more & more customers while not adding additional resources to support their growing environment. It’s the old adage of, “Let’s see how many people we can fit in a telephone booth.”

I still must take backups of my firm’s data from the SaaS CRM (via FTP) just in case something happens to the vendor. Always have a backup plan, whether it’s a cloud based application or on-premises software. That will never change.

I still have to create new user accounts, disable old user accounts, and set access rights to the SaaS CRM just like I did with the old on-premises CRM. That aspect of my job has not changed. What the SaaS vendor provides is the environment and it’s up to the customer to determine who gets access to what.

Overall, I still must administer the CRM, it has built in business continuity features, it works well for all of my office locations, but the SaaS CRM can be slow and is affected by not only your connection to the Internet, but the traffic patterns of the Internet itself.

Something to think about are the “peering agreements” between the major Internet Service Providers. My firm experienced a “peering” issue. What happened? My firm was caught in the middle of a dispute between ISPs. I’ve had real experience with this problem and the most frustrating part was that all the vendors pointed their fingers at the other vendors and said it was their fault – it was like a Three Stooges routine but with terrible consequences. I remember telling the ISP that provided access for my office that when I used my wireless broadband card, I could access the CRM just fine. This stunned the technical support folks and made them realize the problem was larger than they’d first thought (that plus they had dozens & dozens of complaints from other customers of our specific SaaS CRM who experienced the same issue).

So what is the take away from all of this? A SaaS CRM is a mixed bag just as the old on-premises CRM was a mixed bag. I still spend as much time administering the new SaaS CRM as I ever did on the old CRM.

Rob

What I do at my job.........

I've been thinking lately about what I do (it being a New Year and all). To boil it down, I'm a Windows System Administrator with Network Engineering, PBX/phone technician, and IT Management responsibilities (due to the fact that I manage the data & voice systems of four offices spread across a wide area network). And layered on top of that is Project Management - Budgeting, Proposal Writing, Planning, Management and Execution. That's it, that is what I do.

Rob