OK I know the Oscars are long finished but I just saw 'The Hurt Locker' at the weekend and I've wanted to tie it into a post for ages.
My two cents worth - I desperately wanted 'The Hurt Locker' to be a worthy winner of six oscars, especially as it won out over 'Avatar'. However, I was disappointed. Whilst it is a good film, it certainly isn't a great one. Best Film and Best Director - I don't think so. But this just reaffirms what I've always believed about luck and timing playing their part in awards ceremonies.
At my last ever Oracle Consulting conference I was led to believe by my Practice Manager that the project team I had lead was up for an Outstanding Performance Award. We had just finished a difficult 4 month project that was a great success. The client was happy and referenceable, the systems integrator couldn't praise us highly enough and was lining us up for more work. And we had achieved all of this with the minimum of fuss. OK, we'd worked a few weekends and late nights but nothing out of the ordinary.
So there I sat at the dinner at the final night of the conference fully expecting my team to be one of those to pick up an award. You guessed it though - we didn't even get a mention. I have to admit I was desperately pee'd off. The project that claimed the prize we'd been promised, by contrast, had been classic car crash IT. Badly managed, poor quality, late, over budget, all hands to the pumps, client threats, the whole lot. Some hours later my Practice Manager came skulking over with some lame explanation that the award was given as recognition for all the 'above and beyond' efforts put in by the other project team.
So my advice to you. If you want to win awards and get recognition go ahead and fcuk up your project and then flog your staff for 18 hours a day to correct your mistakes. Don't, whatever you do, just run a successful project without drama. I left Oracle a few months after that and the irony was that I got a posthumous award for another penultimate project I'd been on. Too little, too late.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Cheap at half the price
Here at the Depatment of Hopes and Dreams we're having a lovely spat with one of our software vendors at present. The issue is that my boss is questioning the need to pay a quarter of a million dollars in annual maintenance fees when he believes we only use about $40,000 worth of the product.
The interesting thing is that the software supplier has recalcuted the maintenance bill twice now using different breakdown structures. Both breakdowns don't help clarify exactly what it is that we're paying for. In fact the only figure that remains the same is the invoice amount - $250,000. Funny that.
The wider question is that once you've implemented something and it is successfully bedded in why bother paying maintenance ever again? The software vendor will say that you're our of support and that you original software licence will be revoked but if you do the cost benefit anaylsis you might find witholding the maintenance over say 5 years might pay for the replacement software further down the line. By that time the software might be half the price anyway. It's certainly worth some consideration.
The interesting thing is that the software supplier has recalcuted the maintenance bill twice now using different breakdown structures. Both breakdowns don't help clarify exactly what it is that we're paying for. In fact the only figure that remains the same is the invoice amount - $250,000. Funny that.
The wider question is that once you've implemented something and it is successfully bedded in why bother paying maintenance ever again? The software vendor will say that you're our of support and that you original software licence will be revoked but if you do the cost benefit anaylsis you might find witholding the maintenance over say 5 years might pay for the replacement software further down the line. By that time the software might be half the price anyway. It's certainly worth some consideration.
How much should you pay for software?
I've always had a problem paying lots of money for software, which is odd when you think about it. I'll happily pay for hardware, or to see a movie or to listen to a CD. In fact, the only software I think I pay without much hesitation is a computer game.
Out of the twenty or so apps I've downloaded onto my iPhone the only paid one is the very successful game Flight Control which cost me the princely sum of $1.19.
So at Oracle I was working with a sales rep who was trying to land a $10m deal with a large australian multinational company for a global license I was surpised, given that this account made up about one third of his territory, that he was chasing a deal that would probably limit what he could sell in future years.
We had a discussion about what software was worth and it was illuminating to me. As he pointed out - to him the software was worth the cost of the CD - a few cents and nothing more.
The funny thing is that a few years earlier I worked for a mainframe software house who when the annual results we're due and the numbers looked bad had a dodgy practice of cutting a few tapes bunging them in a storage cupboard and reporting the software as millions worth of assets. (They were later censured by the Stock Exchange for this practice).
I guess the old marketing saying is true - something is only worth what somebody else is prepared to pay for it.
Out of the twenty or so apps I've downloaded onto my iPhone the only paid one is the very successful game Flight Control which cost me the princely sum of $1.19.
So at Oracle I was working with a sales rep who was trying to land a $10m deal with a large australian multinational company for a global license I was surpised, given that this account made up about one third of his territory, that he was chasing a deal that would probably limit what he could sell in future years.
We had a discussion about what software was worth and it was illuminating to me. As he pointed out - to him the software was worth the cost of the CD - a few cents and nothing more.
The funny thing is that a few years earlier I worked for a mainframe software house who when the annual results we're due and the numbers looked bad had a dodgy practice of cutting a few tapes bunging them in a storage cupboard and reporting the software as millions worth of assets. (They were later censured by the Stock Exchange for this practice).
I guess the old marketing saying is true - something is only worth what somebody else is prepared to pay for it.
Big time Brits to whom Apple are indebted
In a previous post I spoke of my amazement at how the UK was the engine of innovation during the industrial revolution. Whilst the UK is no longer the powerhouse it used to be we still probably punch above our weight in certain fields given the we make up 1 in a thousand inhabitants of Planet Earth.
In this post I just wanted to pay tribute to two world renowned Brits who both have connections with Apple and with where I hail from in the UK. One who was born twenty miles away from my hometown and the other studied at Uni some 14 miles away.
They are Ridley Scott (born in South Shields) and Jonathan Ive (who studied at Newcastle Polytechnic). The Jony Ive connection with Apple is obvious as he is their SVP of Design.
The other connection is that Ridley Scott directed the Apple's '1984 Big Brother' Superbowl commercial that is still regarded nearly twenty years after its broadcast as one of the most iconic and important commercials ever made.
The question I'm asking is where are Microsoft's or Google's Brit, and indeed North East, connection?
In this post I just wanted to pay tribute to two world renowned Brits who both have connections with Apple and with where I hail from in the UK. One who was born twenty miles away from my hometown and the other studied at Uni some 14 miles away.
They are Ridley Scott (born in South Shields) and Jonathan Ive (who studied at Newcastle Polytechnic). The Jony Ive connection with Apple is obvious as he is their SVP of Design.
The other connection is that Ridley Scott directed the Apple's '1984 Big Brother' Superbowl commercial that is still regarded nearly twenty years after its broadcast as one of the most iconic and important commercials ever made.
The question I'm asking is where are Microsoft's or Google's Brit, and indeed North East, connection?
Who would play Bill Gates in the movies?
I loved the movie 'Wargames' starring Matthew Broderick and always felt that the erratic and reclusive computer genius, Professor Falken, was loosly based upon Steve Jobs. I had much less time for the film 'Verical Limit' although the ruthless & driven US billionaire character in it reminded me very much of Larry Ellison.
The funny thing is that I've never seen a cinematic incarnation of Bill Gates portrayed on the silver screen. I suppose that this is something to do with a perceived lack of charisma. I don't pity Bill, however, as no matter what your thoughts on Microsoft's innovation, style or business practices he and his company have been hugely influential for the last 20 years.
People who try to ridicule him for the infamous quite about 640K of RAM or the failed Tablet PC just don't seem to get that he is probably the most successful opportunist who has ever lived.
The funny thing is that I've never seen a cinematic incarnation of Bill Gates portrayed on the silver screen. I suppose that this is something to do with a perceived lack of charisma. I don't pity Bill, however, as no matter what your thoughts on Microsoft's innovation, style or business practices he and his company have been hugely influential for the last 20 years.
People who try to ridicule him for the infamous quite about 640K of RAM or the failed Tablet PC just don't seem to get that he is probably the most successful opportunist who has ever lived.
The Beast in the East
The other night I was watching a TV show about Rivers (the BBC one with Gryff Rhys Jones) and apart from admiring the beautiful scenery a recurring point of the show is that rivers and canals were the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution, much in the way that roads were in the 20th Century and copper (for broadband) is in the Information Age. As such innovation flourised along these waterways. Indeed, something that always amazes me is just how much innovation sprang from the small island of my birth - the UK - and this is where the US picked up the during the early 20th Century.
The other day I was having a discussion at lunch with a friend who is an senior australian academic and the I questioned whether any of the emerging economic powers, namely India or China, was poised to pick up the innovation chalice from the US. For the record he has travelled and dealt with major research organisations in both the US and China. His answer was categoric and a little bit worrying.
Within a generation he believes that China will be the only engine of innovation that matters, something far removed from its current role as the world's factory. This makes me wonder what will become of Silicon Valley in twenty or thirty years time and I suppose bring the current spat between the US, Google and China into some perpective.
The other day I was having a discussion at lunch with a friend who is an senior australian academic and the I questioned whether any of the emerging economic powers, namely India or China, was poised to pick up the innovation chalice from the US. For the record he has travelled and dealt with major research organisations in both the US and China. His answer was categoric and a little bit worrying.
Within a generation he believes that China will be the only engine of innovation that matters, something far removed from its current role as the world's factory. This makes me wonder what will become of Silicon Valley in twenty or thirty years time and I suppose bring the current spat between the US, Google and China into some perpective.
Monkey See Monkey Do
I remember seeing a Rodney Dangerfield film in the 1990's which was pretty much forgettable except for one scene. The scene was set in a typical university ampitheatre with a lecturer and say 200 students. Over time as the weeks passed many of the students opted to skip the lectures but record them on a tape recorders, until finally even the lecturer himself failed to show and simply played an audio recording of the lecture to the non existant students.
So what's the connection with IT. I worked with some Oracle PreSales in the 1990's. They were always a pretty busy bunch responding to RFI/RFP's and doing demos. At the time Oracle has a graduate recruitment program and one of the grads I knew was on secondment to PreSales.
Chatting one day I asked what she was doing and she said that she was responding to an Oracle Financials RFP. I was impressed, actually more baffled, that given their lack of experience that they were entrusted with this work that would normally be entrusted to a senior Financials PreSales resource. Digging a bit deeper the answer became obvious. I found out that the grad was pretty much cutting and pasting answers from previous RFP responses into the new one.
How could they do this? Easily, really, becuase the RFP's at the time we being generated by grads sitting in the Big Six consultancies and contained a random subset of the stock RFP Financials questions they had.
The difference is that our grads were working for free (chasing new business). Somehow I don't think that the client would be paying the Big Six consultancy grad rates for their RFP work.
So what's the connection with IT. I worked with some Oracle PreSales in the 1990's. They were always a pretty busy bunch responding to RFI/RFP's and doing demos. At the time Oracle has a graduate recruitment program and one of the grads I knew was on secondment to PreSales.
Chatting one day I asked what she was doing and she said that she was responding to an Oracle Financials RFP. I was impressed, actually more baffled, that given their lack of experience that they were entrusted with this work that would normally be entrusted to a senior Financials PreSales resource. Digging a bit deeper the answer became obvious. I found out that the grad was pretty much cutting and pasting answers from previous RFP responses into the new one.
How could they do this? Easily, really, becuase the RFP's at the time we being generated by grads sitting in the Big Six consultancies and contained a random subset of the stock RFP Financials questions they had.
The difference is that our grads were working for free (chasing new business). Somehow I don't think that the client would be paying the Big Six consultancy grad rates for their RFP work.
Stuff I'd like to see in iPhone OS 4
There's lots of speculation about what's coming down the pipe in iPhone OS 4. Most of this is related to multitasking, which the current lack of I've never had a problem with.
Some minor features I'd like to see though are:
1) Location aware wi-fi setting. Unlike many world cities the wifi coverage here in Sydney, Australia is poor. For that reason I tend to have wifi enabled enabled at home and off when out or at work to improve battery life. This means that every day I toggle wifi on and off on my iPhone. Often I forget and am reminded when wifi asks me to join a new network when I'm using Safari. This is a minor annoyance. It would be great if I could make the toggling on/off of wifi automatic based upon a configurable location setting (using AGPS) to say my home or office locations for trusted networks only. When outside of those locations by say 500 metres it would be nice if wifi automatically switched off.
2) I'd like to see some integration between the Calendar and the Contacts in iPhone OS. For example, if I'm setting up an appointmemnt with my dentist currently I either have to enter a title or location but in reality that information I need for this appointment is already stored in my Contacts. If I could make a new appointment and just select a contact (or multiple contacts) rather than having to type in a title or location this would be great.
I don't pretend that either of these suggestions is radical but it is small eveloutionary steps like them that will keep iPhone OS ahead of the rest of the pack.
As previously stated longer term I'm obviously expecting the smartphone to morph into an identity based device that will integrate with my house and car security. I also fully expect it to morph into a credit/payment device. Long term I'd love for my phone to replace the wallet in my pocket (say within 10 years) but for now I'd be happy with the above.
Some minor features I'd like to see though are:
1) Location aware wi-fi setting. Unlike many world cities the wifi coverage here in Sydney, Australia is poor. For that reason I tend to have wifi enabled enabled at home and off when out or at work to improve battery life. This means that every day I toggle wifi on and off on my iPhone. Often I forget and am reminded when wifi asks me to join a new network when I'm using Safari. This is a minor annoyance. It would be great if I could make the toggling on/off of wifi automatic based upon a configurable location setting (using AGPS) to say my home or office locations for trusted networks only. When outside of those locations by say 500 metres it would be nice if wifi automatically switched off.
2) I'd like to see some integration between the Calendar and the Contacts in iPhone OS. For example, if I'm setting up an appointmemnt with my dentist currently I either have to enter a title or location but in reality that information I need for this appointment is already stored in my Contacts. If I could make a new appointment and just select a contact (or multiple contacts) rather than having to type in a title or location this would be great.
I don't pretend that either of these suggestions is radical but it is small eveloutionary steps like them that will keep iPhone OS ahead of the rest of the pack.
As previously stated longer term I'm obviously expecting the smartphone to morph into an identity based device that will integrate with my house and car security. I also fully expect it to morph into a credit/payment device. Long term I'd love for my phone to replace the wallet in my pocket (say within 10 years) but for now I'd be happy with the above.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
But you can polish a Turd!
A old friend of mine frequently uses the phrase "You can't polish a turd". Until this week I believed this to be true until today.
We're four years and $140m into a BPR project that has a major SAP implementation at its heart. The intesting thing is that ten days after Phase 1 go live, and 1,500 related service desk calls later, the message I'm getting in the crucial run up to the end of financial year is that large parts of Finance simply can no longer do their day to day jobs.
Funny that because the SAP Implementation Program Manager's status email today doesn't really correlate with what I'm hearing on the ground.
Oh well. I suppose someone's just found that special way of polishing.
We're four years and $140m into a BPR project that has a major SAP implementation at its heart. The intesting thing is that ten days after Phase 1 go live, and 1,500 related service desk calls later, the message I'm getting in the crucial run up to the end of financial year is that large parts of Finance simply can no longer do their day to day jobs.
Funny that because the SAP Implementation Program Manager's status email today doesn't really correlate with what I'm hearing on the ground.
Oh well. I suppose someone's just found that special way of polishing.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The OS of tomorrow
In my early days of computing at school, long before the dawn of Windows, most machines (Apple 2's, BBC Micros, Commodoore PETs, etc.) booted up directly into a BASIC interpreter prompt. This meant that you never ever had to interact with the computers operating system which was entirely hidden from view. Then I went to Uni and was introduced to the world of multiuser computer systems and compilers (namely VAX VMS and Pascal). Soon after PC's running MS-DOS and later Windows started landing on our desktops and the rest is history. The only thing is that I'm wondering if we didn't miss a trick here. For nearly twenty years we've been interacting with an Operating System (i.e. Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and a hierarchical directory filesystem and the question I'm asking is why?
I suspect that the reason is a legacy hangover. Devices like the Palm Pilot reverted back to the old model of hiding the working of the O/S from public inspection and this trend continues with the likes of iPhone OS, Android and Google Chrome OS. I guess that's one of the reasons why Microsoft are chasing clouds so much at the moment.
I suspect that the reason is a legacy hangover. Devices like the Palm Pilot reverted back to the old model of hiding the working of the O/S from public inspection and this trend continues with the likes of iPhone OS, Android and Google Chrome OS. I guess that's one of the reasons why Microsoft are chasing clouds so much at the moment.
The programming language of tomorrow
One programming language I never used was IBM's PL/1, which stands for Programming Language One. IBM billed this langauge as the only computer language you would ever need to learn. Obviously that never materialised but today's question is why PL/1 or another language has never become dominant?
For the record BASIC was my first programming language and all in all it wasn't a bad introduction. It had all the fundamentals that we still work with today (variables, constants, subroutines, expressions, loops, arrays, inputs, outputs, etc.). Then at Uni I learned Pascal followed by COBOL in the workplace. Since then there have been a plethora of 4GL's and GUI based IDE's and scripting languages have come and gone. The list almost seems endless with the only constant being native SQL.
I want to get back to my computing roots and learn a 3GL like language to start developing software as a hobby, but the choice of languages is bewildering. For example off the top of my head there's C, C++, VB .Net, Java, C#, Javascript, Perl, Python, PHP, iPhone SDK, Android SDK, etc. The list goes on. I suspect that just as the server and database business has rationalised over the last few years we are due for some pruning of computer languages. So long as they are archived for posterity - I'm hoping so anyway.
For the record BASIC was my first programming language and all in all it wasn't a bad introduction. It had all the fundamentals that we still work with today (variables, constants, subroutines, expressions, loops, arrays, inputs, outputs, etc.). Then at Uni I learned Pascal followed by COBOL in the workplace. Since then there have been a plethora of 4GL's and GUI based IDE's and scripting languages have come and gone. The list almost seems endless with the only constant being native SQL.
I want to get back to my computing roots and learn a 3GL like language to start developing software as a hobby, but the choice of languages is bewildering. For example off the top of my head there's C, C++, VB .Net, Java, C#, Javascript, Perl, Python, PHP, iPhone SDK, Android SDK, etc. The list goes on. I suspect that just as the server and database business has rationalised over the last few years we are due for some pruning of computer languages. So long as they are archived for posterity - I'm hoping so anyway.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Where did it all go wrong?
When asked about losing his fortune soccer legend George Best is quoted as replying "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered". I'd be asking similar question of a company called Palm Inc. right now - only I don't think the answer would be anywhere near as satisfying. Palm's recent results were below market expectations and according to reports they are in the red and burning through their last $500m at the bank.
Back in 1996 Palm introduced a revolutionary low cost PDA device - the Palm Pilot - and it sold like hotcakes. Palm OS was a revelation with its simple and intuitive gui and grafitti was a pretty good stab at handwriting recognition too. The Palm Pilots influence can still be seen in devices like the iPhone today (large screen, no physical keyboard, few physical buttons, downloadable applications, pc syncing, etc). In fact when you think about it the only real difference between the Palm OS and iPhone OS is the replacement of the stylus with multitouch.
Then things started to go wrong for Palm:
- The brains trust left, came back and then and left again.
- The Treo capitulated and added keyboards, aping Blackberry's success, instead of building on the Palm Pilots keyboardless form factor.
- Palm OS stagnated whilst a new Linux based OS churned in development hell. Palm even commited herecy and lisensced Windows Mobile on some of their devices
- The ill-conceived Foleo debacle
The real irony here is that after all the issues related to the stagnation of Palm OS is that they really do seem to have come up with a great successor in WebOS. I might have even been tempted by the Palm Pre it it had been sold here in Australia. I for one hope that Palm can survive and prosper but that seems an unlikely outcome. The best I think we can hope for is that one of the big handset manufacturers becomes disillusioned with Android and buys the company for its IP so that WebOS can live on.
Back in 1996 Palm introduced a revolutionary low cost PDA device - the Palm Pilot - and it sold like hotcakes. Palm OS was a revelation with its simple and intuitive gui and grafitti was a pretty good stab at handwriting recognition too. The Palm Pilots influence can still be seen in devices like the iPhone today (large screen, no physical keyboard, few physical buttons, downloadable applications, pc syncing, etc). In fact when you think about it the only real difference between the Palm OS and iPhone OS is the replacement of the stylus with multitouch.
Then things started to go wrong for Palm:
- The brains trust left, came back and then and left again.
- The Treo capitulated and added keyboards, aping Blackberry's success, instead of building on the Palm Pilots keyboardless form factor.
- Palm OS stagnated whilst a new Linux based OS churned in development hell. Palm even commited herecy and lisensced Windows Mobile on some of their devices
- The ill-conceived Foleo debacle
The real irony here is that after all the issues related to the stagnation of Palm OS is that they really do seem to have come up with a great successor in WebOS. I might have even been tempted by the Palm Pre it it had been sold here in Australia. I for one hope that Palm can survive and prosper but that seems an unlikely outcome. The best I think we can hope for is that one of the big handset manufacturers becomes disillusioned with Android and buys the company for its IP so that WebOS can live on.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Keep it Simple Stupid or Keep it Stupid Simpleton
There's an urban myth that says NASA spend millions designing a pen that would work in space whilst the Russians got by with pencils. This is a perfect example of KISS. In reality the pen was developed cheaply by an independent contractor and sold to both NASA and the Soviet Space Agency.This myth and its ilk often used to be quoted when comparing the Cold War forces pitted against each other. By all accounts the MiG 29 is very low tech when compared to the F-15 Eagle for example and there was a time in the 80's when supposedly F-15's were only serviceable every 4 days out of 10 because of their inherent complexity.
This phenomenon has parallels with some of the choices we face in modern day IT. During the internet boom I was engaged bya dotcom to define a server architecture for their new revised classifieds website. The brief was that it needed to be scalable and have a very high availability. I provided the client with three options at the time which were:
- simple - a single highly resilient server with no failover capacity
- moderate - a hardware based failover cluster which required a hardware reboot to failover between nodes
- complex - a hardware/software based load balanced cluster which could handle a gracious soft failover
Being accustomed to having to cost justify these options I fully expected the client to select the simple or moderate solution. To my utter surprise they didn't blink an eyelid as went for the most expensive and complex option. They perceieved that the risk of an unplanned outage was so serious that they would literally spend millions to guard against the risk. They also explained that the sort of kudos they would get in the industry by following the likes of Amazon and announcing an infrastructure purchase in excess of a million dollars would enhance their perceived market valuation pre IPO.
In hindsight, I wish I had never proposed the complex option or that I should have been more vociferous in opposing it. Previously I'd had great success in applying the moderately complex model at previous sites. However, these were heady times and so long as the client understood the risks I was prepared to give it a go. The result, despite all my best efforts, was a disaster. We had severe performance issues from day one and our reliability was worse than it would have been had we picked either of the simpler options. It was humbling for me and a great reminder to me to always apply KISS.
The interesting thing though is that if we don't ever try to stretch ourselves now and again we'd all be building Mig 29's. For the record the F-15 supposedly has a 104 to 0 kill ratio.
This phenomenon has parallels with some of the choices we face in modern day IT. During the internet boom I was engaged bya dotcom to define a server architecture for their new revised classifieds website. The brief was that it needed to be scalable and have a very high availability. I provided the client with three options at the time which were:
- simple - a single highly resilient server with no failover capacity
- moderate - a hardware based failover cluster which required a hardware reboot to failover between nodes
- complex - a hardware/software based load balanced cluster which could handle a gracious soft failover
Being accustomed to having to cost justify these options I fully expected the client to select the simple or moderate solution. To my utter surprise they didn't blink an eyelid as went for the most expensive and complex option. They perceieved that the risk of an unplanned outage was so serious that they would literally spend millions to guard against the risk. They also explained that the sort of kudos they would get in the industry by following the likes of Amazon and announcing an infrastructure purchase in excess of a million dollars would enhance their perceived market valuation pre IPO.
In hindsight, I wish I had never proposed the complex option or that I should have been more vociferous in opposing it. Previously I'd had great success in applying the moderately complex model at previous sites. However, these were heady times and so long as the client understood the risks I was prepared to give it a go. The result, despite all my best efforts, was a disaster. We had severe performance issues from day one and our reliability was worse than it would have been had we picked either of the simpler options. It was humbling for me and a great reminder to me to always apply KISS.
The interesting thing though is that if we don't ever try to stretch ourselves now and again we'd all be building Mig 29's. For the record the F-15 supposedly has a 104 to 0 kill ratio.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
The Big Six
I have previously worked as a Consultant and in both cases they have been for software houses. I always felt that if you were going to pimp out yourself then you might aswell have the inside track and worked for the company that wrote the software. Despite the supposed prestige associated with them I was never ever tempted to work for any of the then so called 'Big Six' (now known as the Final Four) consulting firms as I don't believe that our personalities would have been compatable.
Why? If you had witnessed some of the things I've seen the Big Six get away with you'd understand. Some classics include:
- A 'Big Six' female PM lodging a sexual misconduct complaint against a male client PM who sought to challenge the success of a major project. I can't say whether the complaint had any grounds but it was clear that it would never have seen the light of day had the client PM kept his mouth shut.
- A Big Six firm getting a project I was working on shutdown because we were close to delivering more in 3 months than they had in two years and promising to finish out Project within a month. This one ended up in litigation I'm pleased to say.
- Rigging RFI scoring to pick the most expensive packages to implement rather than those that best fit the client requirements.
- Attending onsite training courses with the client staff and then advising the client on configuration against the advice of the consultant trainers.
- An Big Six 'oracle development practice' that was running around Sydney in the 90's developing applications. Only was that they'd never discovered what an Index was!
- Big Six consultants sitting onsite doing a online SQL training course whilst billing a grand a day.
I'm sure there are lot smore examples out there and I'm not saying that the consultancies I worked for were whiter than white but there's a long way between them and what I've seen of the Big Six.
Why? If you had witnessed some of the things I've seen the Big Six get away with you'd understand. Some classics include:
- A 'Big Six' female PM lodging a sexual misconduct complaint against a male client PM who sought to challenge the success of a major project. I can't say whether the complaint had any grounds but it was clear that it would never have seen the light of day had the client PM kept his mouth shut.
- A Big Six firm getting a project I was working on shutdown because we were close to delivering more in 3 months than they had in two years and promising to finish out Project within a month. This one ended up in litigation I'm pleased to say.
- Rigging RFI scoring to pick the most expensive packages to implement rather than those that best fit the client requirements.
- Attending onsite training courses with the client staff and then advising the client on configuration against the advice of the consultant trainers.
- An Big Six 'oracle development practice' that was running around Sydney in the 90's developing applications. Only was that they'd never discovered what an Index was!
- Big Six consultants sitting onsite doing a online SQL training course whilst billing a grand a day.
I'm sure there are lot smore examples out there and I'm not saying that the consultancies I worked for were whiter than white but there's a long way between them and what I've seen of the Big Six.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
More jokes at Larry's expense
Don't get me wrong - I think Oracle are a great company and I enjoyed working for them immensely. It's just that if you're going to work for them you need to develop a pretty thick skin. Besides which I think Larry can weather a joke or two.
So here are the best two jokes that used to do the rounds when I worked at the Big O.
"What do you call an optimistic Oracle Sales Rep?". Somebody who irons five shirts at the start of the week.
"What's the best platform that Oracle runs on?". Powerpoint.
So here are the best two jokes that used to do the rounds when I worked at the Big O.
"What do you call an optimistic Oracle Sales Rep?". Somebody who irons five shirts at the start of the week.
"What's the best platform that Oracle runs on?". Powerpoint.
Thin is the new Fat
Back in the mid 90's and arguably towards the end of the client server period there was a debate still being had on the relative merits of Thin versus Fat Client.
At the time Oracle Apps has just introduced 10SC (a gui fat client) replacing the previous green screen block character interface. I remember one PreSales technical slide from an Oracle Applications presentation in particular extolling the virtues of Fat Client over the three-tier Thin Client model that was used by SAP. The thin client was even given the derogatory label as a 'screenscraper'.
The funny thing is that just a short while later after the IT world had taken the browser to its heart I saw the same Tech PreSales giving the same presentation and giving exactly the opposite message with regard to Thin client after Oracle Apps has adopted the model.
So how do you know when an Oracle PreSales presenter is lying? Probably when their lips are moving.
At the time Oracle Apps has just introduced 10SC (a gui fat client) replacing the previous green screen block character interface. I remember one PreSales technical slide from an Oracle Applications presentation in particular extolling the virtues of Fat Client over the three-tier Thin Client model that was used by SAP. The thin client was even given the derogatory label as a 'screenscraper'.
The funny thing is that just a short while later after the IT world had taken the browser to its heart I saw the same Tech PreSales giving the same presentation and giving exactly the opposite message with regard to Thin client after Oracle Apps has adopted the model.
So how do you know when an Oracle PreSales presenter is lying? Probably when their lips are moving.
My Year of Living Dangerously
For exactly one year I gave up being technical and concentrated on the client relations side of the IT business. I remember the year exactly because FY96 (mid 1995-1996) was possibly the worst year of my professional life. FY96 was going to be Oracle's year of Customer Service.
I was picked out as having the prerequisite soft skills to work as one of twelve ambassadors within the customer base with the aim of improving overall referenceability. I was flattered as it meant reporting to a Director and I saw it as a great opportunity. Ultimately, however, the role came undone because:
- Halfway through the financial year it looked like Oracle Australia wasn't going to make its country numbers. Customer focus was dropped like a hot potato and sales targets re-emerged as the only real measure of success. My Director was given another portfolio related to Support Sales and given targets.
- Support and Sales could never agree on what our role was supposed to be about. Support (my organisation) wanted to us focus on the Tier 1 accounts and Sales wanted us to work as a Tier 3 Account Manager.
The long and the short of it was that whilst it was a poor year for me professionally I did gain a valuable insight into the inner workings of the sales organisation of a very successful software house.
It's easy to write of Salespeople as low, unscrupulous, pond life but that would be a generalisation and incorrect in many cases. The really successfull account managers were smart, driven and hard working. Were they honest? Well that's the 64 million dollar question. I prefer to think that they inhabit a world of greys rather than black and white. After a year of swimming with the sharks let's just say it was a relief to re-enter my technical world again. Binary, after all is pretty much a black and white sort of thing.
I was picked out as having the prerequisite soft skills to work as one of twelve ambassadors within the customer base with the aim of improving overall referenceability. I was flattered as it meant reporting to a Director and I saw it as a great opportunity. Ultimately, however, the role came undone because:
- Halfway through the financial year it looked like Oracle Australia wasn't going to make its country numbers. Customer focus was dropped like a hot potato and sales targets re-emerged as the only real measure of success. My Director was given another portfolio related to Support Sales and given targets.
- Support and Sales could never agree on what our role was supposed to be about. Support (my organisation) wanted to us focus on the Tier 1 accounts and Sales wanted us to work as a Tier 3 Account Manager.
The long and the short of it was that whilst it was a poor year for me professionally I did gain a valuable insight into the inner workings of the sales organisation of a very successful software house.
It's easy to write of Salespeople as low, unscrupulous, pond life but that would be a generalisation and incorrect in many cases. The really successfull account managers were smart, driven and hard working. Were they honest? Well that's the 64 million dollar question. I prefer to think that they inhabit a world of greys rather than black and white. After a year of swimming with the sharks let's just say it was a relief to re-enter my technical world again. Binary, after all is pretty much a black and white sort of thing.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
What no disk?
At the tail end of my time working for the big O Larry introduced the Network Computer. From memory it was the talk of the town at Oracle Openworld 1997. I remember being in a client briefing with a senior Oracle Marketing VP telling the client that in two years time they would have replaced their PC's with NC's.
I have to say that I bought into the concept of the NC and so did Sun and IBM (with their respective Javastation and Netstation). I'd recently finished a site visit for a large telco who had basically locked down their SOE PC build so that the PC barely used the local C: drive anyway. The logical extension of this was to produce a computer that would boot directly from the network and store eveything on network drives.
Funnily enough it wasn't any theoretical limitations that did for the NC but more than when it was released the price of PC's dropped from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars undermining any potential cost savings that Network Computers may have introduced. Shame really becuase I still think the idea had legs.
I have to say that I bought into the concept of the NC and so did Sun and IBM (with their respective Javastation and Netstation). I'd recently finished a site visit for a large telco who had basically locked down their SOE PC build so that the PC barely used the local C: drive anyway. The logical extension of this was to produce a computer that would boot directly from the network and store eveything on network drives.
Funnily enough it wasn't any theoretical limitations that did for the NC but more than when it was released the price of PC's dropped from thousands of dollars to hundreds of dollars undermining any potential cost savings that Network Computers may have introduced. Shame really becuase I still think the idea had legs.
Electic dreams
The early days of personal computer in the US may have been dominated by the likes of Apple II, the Tandy TRS-80 the Commodore Vic-20 but in the UK there were a number of other suppliers that preceded the days of the IBM PC. These were the likes of the Sinclair, Atom (BBC Micro), and Research Machines (making early CP/M based PC's).
Of these the first computer I ever owned was a second hand Sinclair ZX81 and I wish I had perhaps persevered with it a bit more. My problem was that I had no way of storing any programs I'd written, something at the time which was normally done on cassette tape. This meant that I had to type each and every program in fresh every time and anyone who ever struggled with the ZX81's rubbery keypad would understand just how frustrating this could be and just how limited the results for 20 minutes of typing could be. Having said that I still have fond memories of the old ZX81 and plugging away writing simple BASIC programs.
The most remarkable thing about the machine was it's low cost - about fifty pounds. Just imagine if the personal computer had evolved more along the lines of the ZX81 instead of the expensive beiges boxes costing thousand of dollars than invaded our desktops and homes instead.
In a recent Guardian article it came to light that Sir Clive Sinclair, the UK's personal computing pioneer, does not actually use a PC as he believes that they are wasteful (in memory and CPU cycles), take ages to boot and that he'd rather pick up the phone than communicate via email. Funnily enough these are thoughts I've already expressed in previous entries in this blog.
Anyway, hat's off to Sir Clive. A real thinker and a guenuine innovator.
Of these the first computer I ever owned was a second hand Sinclair ZX81 and I wish I had perhaps persevered with it a bit more. My problem was that I had no way of storing any programs I'd written, something at the time which was normally done on cassette tape. This meant that I had to type each and every program in fresh every time and anyone who ever struggled with the ZX81's rubbery keypad would understand just how frustrating this could be and just how limited the results for 20 minutes of typing could be. Having said that I still have fond memories of the old ZX81 and plugging away writing simple BASIC programs.
The most remarkable thing about the machine was it's low cost - about fifty pounds. Just imagine if the personal computer had evolved more along the lines of the ZX81 instead of the expensive beiges boxes costing thousand of dollars than invaded our desktops and homes instead.
In a recent Guardian article it came to light that Sir Clive Sinclair, the UK's personal computing pioneer, does not actually use a PC as he believes that they are wasteful (in memory and CPU cycles), take ages to boot and that he'd rather pick up the phone than communicate via email. Funnily enough these are thoughts I've already expressed in previous entries in this blog.
Anyway, hat's off to Sir Clive. A real thinker and a guenuine innovator.
Madness in the Method
In the UK there was a famous 80's TV commercial for British Telecom starring Maureen Lipman (http://centuryads.blogspot.com/2007/01/you-got-ology-1987-launch-of-bt-beattie.html). She plays a stereotypical Jewish grandmother who upon discovery that her gransdon has flunked all his exams except Pottery and Sociology replies "He gets an ology and he says he's failed... you get an ology you're a scientist." Maybe, just maybe, Andrew (the grandson) didn't become a scientist but got another ology ... a methodology instead.
This would tie in with how many methodologies are used (and abused?) in today's IT. From what I seen methodologies are used as a crutch by below standard IT consulting organisations/individuals to present a veneer of professional competency and mask the lack of any real ability.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with a good methodology as far as they go, but don't for one minute believe that an ology will somehow replace common sense, experience and good judgement.
This would tie in with how many methodologies are used (and abused?) in today's IT. From what I seen methodologies are used as a crutch by below standard IT consulting organisations/individuals to present a veneer of professional competency and mask the lack of any real ability.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing inherently wrong with a good methodology as far as they go, but don't for one minute believe that an ology will somehow replace common sense, experience and good judgement.
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