SDN: Software Defined Networking. This new technology is a sweeping change that organizations, such as yours, need to consider as a future direction. It is game changing and so simple.

You’ll save money, alleviate a lot of networking issues, increase security, and more.

At the very least, suggest that your IT professional, professionals, and/or third party firm look into this technology.

If you want to learn more, here is a short story intended to introduce the technology in plain English:

Meet the star of the story: Paul the pilot. He flies the newest passenger jets of your favorite airline.

Now, you become a part of the story. Imagine you paying an IT Professional to build a modern airport for your company using the latest technology. Think of Atlanta, DFW, Chicago, or the airport of your choice. The IT Pro creates a network of runways and taxiways for you.

When Paul lands safely at your airport, like at all airports, he uses the runways and taxiways to travel a dot-to-dot path from the runway to the terminal.

The way things work now: Imagine taking all the air-traffic controllers and placing them at intersections around the airport’s field. Then take away everybody’s radios and add fog so thick that nobody can see each other. There is your network! A disaster that is happening!

With this system, imagine this: A plane lands and then, at the end of the runway, there
is an aircraft controller standing on the runway that asks, “Where are you headed?”

Paul steps on the brakes, rolls down the cockpit window and says, “I need to get to Gate 23.” The controller has to think for a moment, then points to one of the taxiways and says, “Drive your plane that way!” Paul does as instructed.

After scooting down the taxiway for a while, Paul encounters another air traffic controller who reviews a table of best routes, and then points Paul towards the next step of the journey. This goes on, through all the intersections along the route, all the way to the terminal. Paul just cannot help it; he starts humming, “Do you know the way to SJO… (San Jose in the Caribbean)

Now think of dozens and dozens of aircraft moving along the taxiways and runways, slamming on the brakes, honking the airplane horns, traffic jams, and the inevitable crashes. No way, San Jose.

In this analogy, the airplanes represent packets of data. Imagine that Paul the pilot comes from (the) cloud, into your (network of) runways and taxiways, and eventually arrives at a (computer) terminal. In a similar fashion, he can leave the terminal, travel your network, and go back into the cloud, or at least into your file server.

Companies such as Cisco, D-Link, HP, Juniper, NETGEAR, etc. design, build, and sell these traffic controllers. Those switches and routers are expensive because each one has to be intelligent enough to know where next to send each data packet. They have to have good memories in order to remember where to route airplanes for best results. In addition, they are usually uncoordinated with the other devices on your network.

When a user connects to your network with their computer, an iPhone, or some other device, their information travels through your network cables of taxiways and runways to and from your servers, other computers, and the Internet cloud.

With this existing system, when someone starts listening to Internet music for peace of mind, it bogs down the whole network. Nobody notices the hacker or virus that is methodically looking for holes in your security by peeking into every computer on your network.

To top it all off, you pay lots of money for this archaic system! Drawbacks of this system, the one you use now, abound.

This is the happy conclusion: You, all the wiser after reading this story, tell your IT Pro to investigate the implementation of SDN: Software Defined Networking.

Then your wise IT Pro will move all the traffic controllers to a control tower, lift the fog so it is a bright sunny day, and provide radio communications so everybody can function as a team. Teamwork between your network devices is like striking oil! Synergy that is.

The key to all of this is the controller. The controller watches the traffic and tells the devices on the network what to do. Every step of the way, there is a signal that tells Paul where to steer next.

Faster – If Paul is carrying lots of music, then because music uses a great deal of data, he is directed to a special taxiway for music.

Prioritize Data – If a passenger is not feeling well, Paul gets priority and is expedited to the gate to provide a high quality of service (QOS).

Security – If there is an unruly passenger aboard, called a hi-hacker, Paul is directed to pull over so that the local S.W.A.T. team can storm the plane.

Save Money – Cisco, and other vendors may not like it, but your switches and routers
become inexpensive because they no longer have to be “intelligent.” They are generic, can be any brand, just as long as they listen to the controller.

Coordination – the seventh habit of successful people! Your devices now listen to an intelligent controller that has a clear view of all of the planes in the airport and can make things work right.

From an IT Pro point of view, this is perhaps oversimplified, but for an executive – I hope you found this very useful for understanding the next step in networking technology – and why you need to be planning for Software Defined Networking.

If you want to speak a little Geek, tell your IT Pros, who may already know all about this: The data pathways (the runways and taxiways) make up the Data Plane. The controller communication travels on the Control Plane using a protocol such as OpenFlow to send out instructions to the Forwarding Plane that contains routing information.

Moreover, all of those signals travel across the regular network connections that are in place now.

Are your IT Pros are aware of the emerging technology called Software Defined Networking?

Please post your comments below…

The post Know About this IT Networking Strategy Change appeared first on Foster Institute.

The Wall Street Journal released an enlightening article entitled “Six Subtle Signs You’re About to Lose Your Job – For Busy and Confident Executives, These Warnings Are Easy to Miss” by Joann S. Lublin.

Like executives, many outsourced IT firms are so incredibly busy that they do not catch the hints that they are about to lose a customer.

Many executives loathe considering the fallout of changing outsourced IT support companies. Sometimes they say, “I don’t want to fire our outsourced IT firm – it is so helpful that they’ve learned how our business works.”

Because outsourced IT firms have their finger on the jugular vein of your business, executives prefer to wait until the last possible moment, after making all the preparations, and sever the relationship without warning.

There are many wonderful outsourced IT firms out there. If you have one, keep them.

Technology is an essential component for most companies, and you must feel confident that you have excellent IT service providers. Moreover, most service providers want to be excellent. As Stephen Covey said, it is a win-win when your service providers exceed your expectations.

Next week, expect 3 questions to ask your service providers in order to see how well they are delivering.

Would you advise every executive you know to tell their outsourced IT firm what they do and do not appreciate about their experiences while working together? Please post your comments below…

The post Executives Give Clues Before Firing IT Firms appeared first on Foster Institute.

The reality is that you can have, contrary to what some people believe, both security and productivity at the same time.

Enforcing security policies that dictate strong passwords is a common problem and sometimes results in, understandably, executives responding something like, “That will make our salespeople angry and we can’t afford to slow down their workflow!  Let’s leave the passwords restrictions the way they are.”  As a result, some companies still allow two letter passwords that never have to be changed. Attackers love that!

The IT professionals are right about security being important. But the executives “have the final say.”

Sometimes the key is to discuss changes with the executives that meet two criteria:  First, the change will improve security, and second, the users may not even notice the change.

Here’s a common problem: Putting productivity too far ahead of security such that security gets nearly wiped out.

Password restrictions are a change that most users will notice. Hence, IT professionals may receive a great deal of push-back from users, including executives if the password restrictions have been lax for a long time.

However, users will never notice many, in fact the majority, of security settings.  An example may be, as long as your users aren’t  used to installing their own programs (which is a bad idea anyway), is making users “just plain users” on their own machine rather than having, (the most common way), users being something called “local administrators.”

That modification alone can make enormous improvements in security because it is more difficult for attackers to “trick users into installing viruses on their machines” since users can’t install anything on their machines anyway. And maybe the users won’t notice anyway.

The real issue: It is your role to talk with your IT professionals and ask them, “Are you implementing the protections that users won’t notice anyway?”.

Stay tuned for more about “What to ask your IT Professionals” so that you know the right questions to ask.

Please forward this to your friends and post your comments below…

The post Adding Security Makes Systems Unusable! appeared first on Foster Institute.

Last time’s message recommended that you ask your IT professionals to restrict users from being “administrators” on their computers: IT May Have Your Users Misconfigured!.

When you ask your IT professionals if any users are configured as administrators on their machines, a common explanation from IT to an executive is: “Yes, some users are administrators because some of our software manufacturers require users to be local administrators.”

This problem stems from the fact that you’ve likely tasked IT with keeping your systems up and running, and that includes configuring applications and systems the way manufacturers dictate.

IT professionals follow directions. They may do what the manufacturers tell them to do.

In case you wonder, the directives from the manufacturers to IT professionals are rarely issued as guidelines. They are closer to being commandments. Empower your IT Professionals to deviate from instructions from application vendors when the directions are suspect.

What if a software manufacturer instructs you to remove your network’s firewall? Of course you’d resist. Providing users with administrative access isn’t quite as bad as turning off your firewall, but it is closer than you think.

Your directive to your IT Professional needs to be: “Find out what permissions and rights that software needs, grant those rights, and make the users standard users, not administrators.” Your IT Professional is very qualified already and can do this.

Manufacturers who do mandate “give everyone rights to everything” are often warding off support calls about security permission errors.

Don’t let the poor choices made by software manufacturers harm your network security.

But, your IT person may wonder how on earth they are going to have time for this proactive task since they are putting out so many fires at the moment. That’s when you need to have a discussion about priorities. More on that next time.

Please forward this to your friends and post your comments below…

The post Software Manufacturers Sometimes Sabotage Your Company! appeared first on Foster Institute.

Be Realistic—You may want IT to totally revamp an old application or perhaps an old infrastructure that is left over from the other guys. Be sure you provide IT the time and resources to add this to their schedule.

Reward Properly—Rather than saying “good job” when IT fixes something, ask them, “What will you do to prevent this next time?” Stop paying outsourced IT consultants an hourly rate. How long it takes to accomplish a task or solve a problem is irrelevant. Paying them by the hour incentivizes them to learn on the job at your expense.

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Three secrets about managing IT pros appeared first on Foster Institute.

In this case, a diagram is worth a thousand words so please look at these examples:

• PERT chart one
• PERT chart two

The simplest form of a PERT chart is circles for each step, with the name of the step and the estimated duration. Draw arrows that connect the paths related to dependencies such as:

• This step must finish prior to the next step starting
• This step can start at the same time as another step
• Both of these steps must complete before the next step starts

For example:

The most useful part, to me anyway, of a PERT chart is that you can identify the critical path. To find the critical path, first identify how many paths you can take from the start to the finish. Then, for each path, add up the duration of the steps. If there are 4 paths, you may end up with durations of, for example:

• Path 1 duration: 12 days (Task 1’s duration plus task 3’s duration)
• Path 2 duration: 11 days (Task 2’s plus Task 3’ durations)
• Path 3 duration: 10 days (Task 4’s duration)

In this case, path 1 is the critical path because if there is any delay at all in path 1, the entire project will be delayed. The other paths contain slack time so they can experience delays if necessary.

Be sure to read my two most recent blog entries about the Work Breakdown Structure and the Gantt chart.

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Keep IT projects on schedule–part three appeared first on Foster Institute.

The first step is to add more information to the WBS:

• Estimated duration for each step.
• Dependencies such as “the prior step must be completed before the next step can start” since some steps can be started simultaneously.

Then, software can calculate the estimated start and stop dates for each step, and then overlay that information on a calendar.

Here are two examples of Gantt charts:

• Gantt chart one
• Gannt chart two

The third item in this three-part series will be about the PERT chart.

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Keep IT projects on schedule–part two appeared first on Foster Institute.

The first part of this three-part series, which you may want to forward to your IT professionals, discusses a WBS. In its most basic form, the Work Breakdown Structure is a list made up of steps needed to complete a project. The steps are listed mostly in order and there are designated milestones.

The next item in this three-part series will be about the Gantt chart.

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Keep IT projects on schedule–part one appeared first on Foster Institute.

The flow looks like this:

1. IT makes suggestions to senior executives, making sure the executives understand the benefits, drawbacks, risks, likelihood, and the extent of possible damages.
2. Then, the executives reflect a summary back to IT so the executives are certain they completely understand.
3. The executives make a decision and written policies are produced or adjusted as required.
4. IT will enforce the policies and act on them accordingly.

The key, once again, is that the senior executives make an informed decision.

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post Executives-are you making informed decisions? appeared first on Foster Institute.

When asked, it turns out that IT professionals have the attitude, “Well, they asked me to do it, so I did it. Why should I have to tell them it is done? Why can’t they just trust me?”

This is indeed a trust issue. IT expects the user or executive to trust that it is done, and the executive or user trusts IT to tell them when it is done. For an IT professional not to report back reduces or even destroys the trust the executives have in them.

When the user or executive has to ask if the task was complete, the IT professional feels untrusted.

I hope you have the IT professionals who always report back that a task is complete. If so, then they clearly understand trust is something you earn. If they have a habit of not getting back to people to tell them a task is completed, instruct them to do everyone a favor and start saying when they finish! You will break the cycle and start increasing trust right away. This will help you and your organization as much as it helps them!

Please post your comments on this blog.

The post IT professionals–tell us when you finish appeared first on Foster Institute.