The IT Skeptic - operations

An important DevOps word: toolmakers

skeptic — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 23:30:20 +0000

The word "toolmaker" has great explanatory power to help IT people understand how their world is changing. Those who come from the Run domain of IT (as compared to Build) are becoming toolsmiths.

Who owns the system during the go-live warranty period?

skeptic — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 23:11:59 +0000

Transitioning a project into Production is a complex process. One of the trickiest parts is transitioning responsibilities.

"Go-live" is sometimes seen too simplistically as a handover to Operations, as if Ops will magically run it from Day One without help. Or DevOps sees it the opposite way, where Operations plays a minor role forever.

There needs to be a transitional phase.

How Operational Readiness should be done

skeptic — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 11:10:19 +0000

I've written before about Dead Cat Syndrome and the importance of having a specific Operational Readiness function (i.e people). I saw this at a client site:

IT operations must beware inappropriate automation

skeptic — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 14:51:29 +0000

Being technical folk, we are far to quick to leap to technical solutions to non-technical problems. Automating operations tasks is one of those cases.

Operational Readiness

skeptic — Thu, 05 May 2011 23:26:03 +0000

There is a whole activity or function or ITIL-would-say process that gets neglected: Operational Readiness.

Virtualization: the black box bomb

skeptic — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:06:07 +0000

It lurks in the corner of many data centres these days. Actually, no, it used to lurk in the corner. Now it lurks on a virtual server. If it don't start we're screwed. What is it?

Cutting the cost of IT Operations

skeptic — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 20:16:26 +0000

Once Development was the epicenter of IT, then Operations was. Now it is Service. Soon it will be Governance.

Operations is a commoditised domain now: people increasingly buy on price.

Operating the Cloud: the people and process questions

skeptic — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:18:11 +0000

Cloud computing is a popular topic right now. Some see it as a saviour technology for cost cutting but there is too much thought given to how you will connect at a technical level with a Cloud service provider. Just as important is how you will connect at a process level and at a business level. IT development and solutions staff are prone to waving these considerations away as an issue for the operations people and the “suits”, but the process and business considerations are more important than the technical ones.

5 questions for John M. Willis

skeptic — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:14:46 +0000

John M. Willis, a.k.a. Botchagalupe, or possibly a close associate of Botchagalupe, asked me to answer five questions which he posted on his blog, and to ask five questions in return. Here are my five questions for John. He works on Tivoli with Big Blue but if you can get past the vendor thing :-D John is a battle-scarred warrior of IT operations with a suitably hard-bitten view of the world that aligns well with my skeptical outlook. Enjoy his responses:

Open source systems management tools: an informal directory

skeptic — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:15:58 +0000

Operations is a commoditised domain now: people buy on price. Antivirus is a commodity. So is backup. So is much of the hardware. Watch what open source software does to systems and network management, media management and a bunch of other software types. CIOs want to spend their money on an ITIL project, ISO20000 certification, SOX compliance, COBIT audit, Project Management Office, CMDB, and a Balanced Scorecard Dashboard. Funds for IT Operations are limited: it is all about cutting costs now, or soon will be.

[Update: This directory is now maintained as part of Ops4Less This page will no longer be updated]

The most important IT monitoring tools are those that measure the end user experience

skeptic — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:16:20 +0000

It has always seemed to me that most IT monitoring and measuring tools are very self-serving. They look at the world from the internal IT silo perspective. In ITSM terms they are mildly interesting diagnostic tools for incident and problem resolution, but in terms of service level measurement the only really useful tools are the ones that measure the end user experience.