INFRARED360®

Avada Software has gotten quite a positive reaction to our Self-Service webcast: Productivity through SMART self-service for IBM MQ & IIB. We thank all those who attended and commented.  

I’d like to continue the thoughts of that webcast via this blog. One or two replies struck me as odd only because Avada Software has been evangelizing this theme since its inception in 2006, when the product was built to allow for “delegated administration”. The entire point of delegated administration “is” self-service. But that is not just for individuals, it is intended as a collaborative solution for teams of people. The idea is to delegate to a person, persons, team, project team, dept, etc. exactly what you want them to see and what you need them to do. It’s that simple.

Those particular replies were from people that were “looking for a self-service product”. Well, that term is not exclusive to anyone, but one of the primary reasons for Avada Software’s product, since day one, was to provide that ability. We’re glad that the webcast illuminated that “delegated administration” and “self-service” is synonymous. You can’t have “secure” self-service without being able to delegate to the End User exactly what you want them to see and do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t allow them to self- administrate because they’d be able to see any resource and perform any action! In this day of compliance adherence, that would be heresy.

And that’s the other message that comes up loud and clear in the discussion: Compliance and Security.

There are many types of security. Most people hear that and think about handshake security, like you need to do with SSL. There’s also authentication security, like you do with LDAP to allow users to Login to their workstation or applications. However, there is also visibility security! With Infrared360’s portal, what you can’t see, you won’t know exists, and therefore won’t be able to access. Then there is policy security: What you do access you can only perform certain actions upon – per your policy (per your role on that team, project, dept, etc.).

What compliance people like about this is that you can see all User access and permissions before anyone does anything. In good self service products, like Infrared360, you can look up or run a report on any User(s) to see what they have access to see, and what they have access to do.   Coupling that with an audit trail of actions that have been performed (even if they do have the permission to do so) gives compliance people a full 360⁰ view of the information they need to verify for the sake of corporate policies.

And that is really the basis of Smart Self-Service as noted in the webcast.

Is it the fear of spending money?

There’s an old adage of ‘pay me now or pay me later’ which references the fact that if you don’t fix something while it’s still possible to fix, it will cost you more in the long run to do either a bigger fix or replace. This one confuses me because I’ve worked with companies on ROI/TCO analysis (as an employee, a consultant, and vendor) and found enormous cost savings that can be attained by changing some static technology. Mostly, I use numbers collected by people already using the targeted technology – and that technology in some cases changed even their internal processes for the better!

Is the fear of spending money related to bad experiences?  Well, I’m sure we’ve all been turned down for a date at some point in our lives. Did you just stop looking? What if that bad experience was because of a certain vendor or product?  I remember having this coffee maker that I’d have to replace each year – sure the replacement was free of charge, but that was after I had paid for the warranty and the shipping fee each time. So I tried another vendor/product.  And you know what?  I’ve been happy with this new one for a long time now.  I didn’t lump the new vendor into the, “they’re all the same” bucket.  I just researched and found a better one offered by the new vendor. This was for something I used maybe once per day!  Yet in IT, people use tools a few times per day if not many times per day. 

Even if the current tools and solutions are slow, don’t give the proper information, are difficult to extend, and difficult to configure, we make NO change to overcome these limitations!

The worst part is when I hear someone say, “We can’t change it because what we have is kind of proprietary and we’d need to configure a new product to do the same”.  First, anytime a vendor puts you into that position, it’s not a good thing!  A loud warning signal should sound every time you hear that you can’t remove bad technology for good technology because you may be locked into the bad. Definitely take a look at your alternatives!  You may find that carrying over (migrating) core data to the new solution is NOT such a big deal anymore.  Most innovative vendors understand you need to MOVE stuff to their solution and have accommodated that with many features and utilities for just that purpose.  Maybe when you get to that point, you’ll find that “doing it the same way” wasn’t the most expedient or productive or cost effective method in the first place.

The bottom line is – if you don’t explore what’s out there, how do you know if it’s better or worse?  If you can’t initiate change, then how do you improve anything?  If your fears are based on old experiences, perhaps those experiences are no longer relevant?  Perhaps awareness of a better way is a good thing?  

Well, back to blog another day --- time to push an episode of ‘Last Ship’ from Hulu onto my 55 inch LED wall screen via Chromecast. And I don’t even have to get out of this chair to do it :)

In 1867 speech in Edinburgh, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said, “In a progressive country change is constant; ...change... is inevitable.”

Similar quotes can be found from progressive thinkers and scientists.

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." John F. Kennedy

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi

Some of the great thinkers in history embraced the idea of change, progress, innovation.  Perhaps not only because it spurred new ideas, but because like Disraeli said – it’s inevitable.

And that brings me to the IT world, specifically, enterprise IT.  This is the world of ‘if it ain't broke, don't fix it.’

I’m not sure where that mindset originated.  Of course if you don’t touch or change something, it will behave the same over and over.  But for how long?  When is something just old and useless? Most likely when it doesn’t meet the job requirements or expectations of your clients, employees, or company.

I got into IT because I believed, “innovation, automation, these are good things”.

And it is true.  Perhaps you haven’t noticed but you can do a heck of a lot more using a smart phone than you could with your wall tethered phone of 20 years ago!

  easy decision??       

But still – I’ve visited and done work at IT sites where employees are held back by old hardware, old software, or both.  This causes them to waste precious time, especially in solving problems.

The bottom liners cite ‘costs’ of upgrading. Well sure, but there is more significant costs in NOT upgrading. That includes not realizing new efficiencies and approaches. 

This includes, for example, the cost of someone doing something for hours and perhaps repeating that process many days per week, for something that should take minutes as a onetime task.  If a valuable resources is doing this task, then not only are you paying that person(s) a good rate to do mundane work, but you’re likely leading them to look for a different employment opportunity. 

Getting back to Disraeli --- he also said, “As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.”

So I’m kind of bewildered as to why Enterprise technology groups continue to struggle by using tools and products and solutions that don’t give them the ‘best information’ in the easiest way.   Solutions that force them to endure too much time to install, setup, configure, maintain, upgrade?  

Is it the fear of change? If you took that approach to the technology in your home, you’d be watching a 10 inch black and white screen with a manual channel knob, have a wall phone with a rotary dial, and be fishing for 8 track tapes whenever you wanted to crank up “Baba O'Riley “!          

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