I'm sitting here at 31,000 feet above Australia writing this blog entry on my new Apple iPad and realising what an evolutionary device it is. The iPod touch was a half way point, not suitable for serious use but great for testing the waters of what can be done with the touch screen format with a solid operating system.

While in Los Angeles this past week I decided to either purchase a MacBook Pro or an iPad, the iPad won out for several reasons for which I'll explain in further detail. My initial feeling after purchasing a new 64 gb iPad was a little muted due to the requirement to upgrade iTunes, a huge download over a slow connection and then the difficulties of getting software for it without a US account which I was able to sort with some friendly help from my friend and colleague Dmitry Kagansky.

Observations:

Instant start up, the device is always ready to go, admittedly my MacBook at home sleeps and wakes easily within a few seconds and gives me a solid experience of what an appliance is (my terminology for devices that simply work as they should and don't impose kludge and restriction; toaster, kettle, MacBook).

iTunes appstore applications available cover every imaginable idea / requirement I have of a mobile device in this form factor, many are free too which is even better, including some very good note taking applications which are ideal with a larger screen 'iPod Touch'.

A single device for flights etc, I read tech PDF data sheets now wherever. There are many books available to read while flying or travelling.

Its small, the size of a Net book, but has more application for a traveller than a Net book due to the design and typical 'use case' of these types of devices.

iTunes ecosystem managing the Apple family of portable devices( I want to come back to an area of the iTunes ecosystem that I'm not happy about too!), makes purchasing and installing music, movies, TV shows, iBooks, audiobooks and applications easy and the choice is vast.

Games, games that are being released for the iPad are becoming very professional, with visual appeal well above the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DSi. It's my view that those platforms are going to disappear over the next few years; Development costs are high for what is arguably an inferior experience to what I can get on Apple devices now. Games on iTunes are priced accordingly to the likely usage on a portable device which tends to be jump in and jump out, as opposed to home consoles, whereas Sony and Nintendo and third parties still have to price their software and take account of marketing, packagings and the studio development costs.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple don't rerelease an Apple TV based on the Arm A4 used in the iPad within 12 months, Apple are a very smart company with a series of successful launches now (some failures too; Apple TV, MacBook air etc) and will design a UI and control scheme that fits the market. At this stage in the 'game' Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo should be very worried! They are all companies with a lot to lose in the casual gaming market and living room and minds of consumers.

Onto iTunes, I have some reservations on what iTunes is becoming; it's too big and tries to do too much. Apple are controlling the experience and the revenue opportunity through the devices that use iTunes; I think there is a place for an independent mechanism for applications to be supported, or at the very least allowing access to the shared data locations on the iX devices (iPod, iPhone, iPad) as each application I have installed has it's own data area for Pages docs, PDF files, photos etc - not the best way to address user data by maintaining independent silos of information.

On top of this iTunes seems to be becoming too much! If I want to sync data to my iPad then why do I need to have the device connected and work through the iTunes menus to get to a dialog that allows me to copy data across unless I use iWork online! I should be able to configure a folder and share data through that folders or series of folders just as I do with my folders on my Mac.

Disclaimer; I am a long time Mac user but this doesn't get in the way of my understanding of where I am being taken my continuing to support the Apple ecosystem of DRM and micro transactions restricting my freedom to choose devices on what is best rather than who makes it

Systems administrators and Solutions Architechs

How many people have inflated their role within a company? I'm sure many of you have. I have called myself different titles with 'Senior' being the most common, Why? Nowdays I don't know - what was the impact of the title change? no one came to me with enhanced expectations because now I was a 'Senior Janitor' and no longer a mere 'Janitor'?
In IT there is a tide of self fluffing through role enhancement, from Senior Systems Adminstrators to Assistant IT Director through to the current favorite 'Solutions Architect' which may be the most mis-representative title to date for many self appointed 'Solutions Architects'.

Lets break out what an IT Architect is? someone who develops, designs, plans and understands the broader picture, an IT Architect can relate technology to anyone within a business; this role is not typically a detail person, rather a high level thinker that understands concepts and plans and relates them to technology.

The Architect fragments into various titles from Technical Architect (shouldn't an architect be technical anyway?) to an enterprise architect (high level person who recommends centralising systems and minimising application stacks?) to my favorite, the Solutions Architect.

What is a Solutions Architect? does a Solutions Architect look after one solution or many? what is the solution that an SA manages? for all I know this role works with Water and Aspirin and creates a solution by dropping aspirin into water?
Curently a Solutions Architect is the favorite title for an IT administrator to take and what does it mean? above you clearly see no customer is going to take you any more seriously than they would as a Systems administrator? its the proof of experience that makes a person suitable for a title not the title.

Personally I've given up, no longer will I be Senior (no grey hair), or will I be a Solution Architect, I am a Consultant (talk to customers and relate my experience to their requirements) and proud of it.

Microsoft Web platform Installer

I happened upon the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta today: http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx and am very impressed by what I found. Recently I started looking into Ubuntu as a web server for delivering a website I wish to develop, the website would contain forums and wikis etc and Linux seems the ideal platform for web dev due to its native open source support from database engines to application platforms.

Wow is all I can say about the effort from Microsoft on the Web Platform installer, it’s very integrated, I installed Wiki’s and blog sites with a click ‘next’ ‘next’ and ‘finish’, my first surprise was seeing a MySQL installer for a product being promoted with the Microsoft Platform installer. All of my requirements were met by products recommended by the installer and couldn’t be easier to install.

On the linux side I have installed Alfresco and a php based forum site but its just not as integrated.

Over the next several weeks I plan to work out what platform I use to provide a web server for my new business project. Linux or Windows, only one can prevail, licensing costs are only a small part of the price to pay so a server license is almost negligible in the greater scheme of things.

Just as a clarification - Alfresco by itself is a great product and a viable competitor to SharePoint server for many tasks, I tested it to determine whether it could deliver what I require and have the look and feel I desire.

Apple Mac mini breakdown

Just found an interesting breakdown of the Apple Mac mini pricing based on the components included: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Apples-600-Mac-Mini-Costs-It-Nearly-400-to-Make-Says-iSuppli-163404/?kc=rss

This gives me some belief in Apple as a company, we all know companies are there to make money for shareholders, the fact that an external company can provide information to indicate that Apple's pricing is fair based on the hardware is great news to me.

Cloud computing to fly?

Cloud computing simply becomes another way to fragment and further complicate an already complicated IT infrastructure unless it is done properly and the organisation moving to hosted infrastructure understands exactly what they will receive.

I see Cloud computing being excellent for the SME market where their internal IT resources may not be experts on subjects such as Exchange, Office communications server, Sharepoint etc or the SME has no expertise at all and relies on IT expertise as required from SME IT specialists.

For large companies who are likely to have experienced Windows Server administrators and who maintain very high availability figures for their customer; the benefits of hosted infrastructure are diminished.
Unless there is a cost saving, the larger the company is the better their economies of scale are already and there is more reason to keep systems inhouse with internal IT staff.
Cloud vendors have to make money and as margins tighten, their internal staff to end customer ratio drops; or the vendor offshores the support of the infrastructure, where quality may diminish to the point where the original reason for migrating to the Cloud becomes a moot point.
Once a customer is at this point, what is their return path? Which Cloud vendors are offering data export services? My experience is a vendor will not help a customer migrate from their platform (it is not in their interest to) so what do I do as the data owner?

Desktop applications as they are currently licensed and used are often not suitable for cloud computing and while a user still has a local PC or Laptop with the ability to run all the applications they require locally, the transition to cloud based apps will not be easy.
An OS license may already be consumed by the client pc and if running local applications another license for each application is required, ramping up the cost of providing an economical solution.
If history teaches anything, Citrix was the last great money saver for IT departments and its adoption was not high, many customers had small Citrix implementations inhouse for particular users and applications but very few rolled it out as it was intended - to save money on hardware refresh and desktop management as new PC's still needed to be purchased.

Maybe a hybrid approach will prevail where a customer will purchase hosted email for example with the Outlook client published using Citrix Presentation server or Quest vWorkspace, the Outlook application never actually belongs to the end user but the full functionality of Outlook is available. Specialist Applications like http://www.xero.com or http://www.salesforce.com are well designed for hosted platforms not Visio or a Enterprise Discovery application.

Lastly I believe that only certain tasks are suitable for hosting, hosting a managed desktop for the majority of users I can't see being a viable long term option unless the hardware providing the solution is provided inhouse as some hybrid hosted solutions are now doing.

Organisational Storage considerations

This week I had a chance to spend two days with a proactive and
forward thinking Storage team within a large organisation (I can't
provide the customer name unfortunately).

This customer had over 750 Terabyes of San storage across four EMC
Symmetrix Sans, covering production and BCP copies of all configured
storage.
A real eye opener was the level of duplication inherent in a modern
High Availability (HA) system. In this particular case 4 times the
storage was required - for every Terabyte of usable storage, 3
Terabytes are standing by ready for a disaster. The cost overheads to
maintain 75% more infrastructure must be huge for any company.

Leaving Systems administration five years ago, Sans were just becoming
affordable, NAS devices weren't really featuring and my organisation
was still relying on Raid 5 for most data types and Raid 1 for
databases (including Exchange). HBA's were so expensive that only
selected applications would have been candidates for a direct
connection to storage.

In that scenario, 33-50 percent overhead was required for redundancy
of business systems, granted that no secondary site was configured
with a DR copy of production data; how much is no downtime worth to an
organisation?

Any opinions are welcome, I want to learn more.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Microsoft Bing vs Google

Microsoft Bing was released recently to limited fanfare, some tech sites raved about the quality of results while others had a more of a ‘We’ll see’ attitude. Interesting is that Google appears to be very worried about Bing, not ‘just’ standard worried but really very concerned http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42847/140/ and I understand why; http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ runs comparative searches across Google Search, Bing and Yahoo and the results are very interesting; the site results are anonymous though it is an Microsoft employees web page.

The searches I ran gave one vote for Bing and one Yahoo and none for Google, which leaves me wondering what formula Microsoft has finally got right in their search algorithms. Onsite with customers earlier this week I had the opportunity to see other IT professionals using Bing search and augmenting the results with a Google search for comparison so Bing is making its way across the tech community.

Personally I believe Microsoft have not got the UI sorted yet, Google search is basically a text search page and contains no distraction, the images decorating; Http://www.bing.com don’t appeal to me, but then Microsoft have a history of over the top images and colours. I prefer the bland Google experience as I go to search - I know exactly where the search box is.

I find the Google search window to be less intrusive, I am not sure of the reasons but the Bing search frame below, jumps out as not being ‘Clean’. The feeling to me as a layman seems to be that Bing is pushing me somewhere (There is no advertising), odd?

Maybe the background image will become Prime advertising real estate, Coca-Cola anyone?