Dear friends,

some of you probably were out wondering where I had disappeared to. Well I can tell you that I was completely under water and finally surfaced again. And I have been writing articles all along that I will share with you in the coming days. Glad so many of you did write to me – thank you very much

So, now I am back and I will give you some interesting perspectives of things happening in technology, crisis times and of course whatever happened during last summer…. Hope you stay tuned and write just as much feedback as you did.

Talk to you soon
Chris

After blogging some months about automation, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about the definition of automation. Nearly everyone seems to have an “Automation solution” in place. So what is that Automation-hype all about?

The word Automation is derived from the ancient Greek language and means that something is operating or moving self dictated, which gives quite a good idea about what we are looking at.

Automation might have started with the invention of the wheel decades ago, is omnipresent in many branches and industries and a substancial factor for producing any kind of goods and services today.  Robots and Automated Manufacturing systems and During my journey through the world of IT Service Management, I encountered various kinds of Automation. From my point of view most vendors will agree to the following categorization:

Automated IT-Service Management / ITSM Process Automation

This is a umbrella term for solutions focused on supporting Service Management workflow, usually based on best practices and standards like ITIL or Cobit. Subordinated terms are Support Automation or Run-Book-Automation.

Support Automation

Support Automation refers to software packages are focused on supporting the routine work of help desk personnel. Think of it as a kind of script integration in existing Service desk, CRM application or even in Knowledge Base Applications for Automated Self Service. Examples for this category are products like CA SupportBridge or mValent Integrity, which is focused on Change Management Automation.

Run-Book-Automation

Products belonging to this category are very popular nowadays. They allow to define a set of ITSM-Workflows through a Graphical user interface. Good products offer a multitude of connectors and interfaces to existing ITSM suites like OpenView, Tivoli or Unicenter. Examples for this kind of products are Opalis Integration Server, BMC Realops or HP/Opsware/IConclude Opsforce.

IT-Workload Automation

These concepts stem from early (mainframe) days of computing, where batch processing or job Scheduling were a big improvement, allowing operator to “automate” recurring tasks. Though modern products are highly evolutionized through offering multi platform compatibility, event-triggering, policy-based execution and configured to smart coloured visual GUIs. These products are gaining ground in modern service oriented environments and are represented through products from big vendors like CA/Cybermation and IBM Tivoli or smaller competitors like ASG and UC4

Data Center Automation

This is the hottest topic today, as companies have started to deploy myriad of servers into an extremely fast growing number of data centers all over the world, bringing high demand for automated tools to provision, change and manage vast numbers of components. Any of the large vendor offers such a tool or suite and - you guessed it - here is place, where the bucks go. HP know that story. Products in this category are former Opsware Server Automation System, BMC BladeLogic, IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager and to bring in some cloudy haze modern and cool products/players like Elastra or 3Tera/Applogic which allow to mix data center and cloud offerings.

Roland

Turns out, supporting Mozilla’s firefox project wasn’t good enough for Google: they’ve got their own shiny new browser called Chrome now. It was all over the newspaper headlines today. Most commentaries featured it as “The return of the browser wars”. Funny as it seems that Web 2.0 finally brought us browser war 2.0, my prediction is that we will look at it from a different angle in retrospect: It’s another important step to kill our old fashioned notion of an operating system. The interesting thing about Chrome is the new virtual machine included. It’s called V8 and has been developed by guys who already created the the Java virtual machine for SUN.

So don’t compare Chrome to Internet Explorer – compare it to Midori.

Midori is a rumoured strategic project at Microsoft –a serious operating system beyond Windows. It seems to be more than a research study, though there is little official information. SD Times claimed that “Midori will introduce a higher-level application model that abstracts the details of physical machines and processors.” An operating platform rather than operating system, allowing us to make use of all those multicore-processors, multiprocessor-machines and multi-machine computing clouds.

In the old days, there was a single hardware, a single CPU, and a single operating system. On top of that, many applications could be executed. Things started to change with the Java virtual machine (JVM). Now the Java software effectively ran on the JVM, ignoring the underlying OS. Then there was virtualization: today, you can easily run several OS on a single computer using vmware. Sometimes, virtual machines are already used to eliminate unexpected interactions between applications: We got enough computing power to deploy less trusted applications into their own virtual machines – so we do it and eliminate hard to locate side effects. Who knows – we might just as well end up with each application running within its own VM. Now Google gives us V8 – the new operating platform included in their browser. Applications like Google Apps will use it as their operating platform and ignore the underlying OS. Others will continue to develop Flex application running on Adobe’s Flash-plug-in. Different platform, same thing.

And parallel computing on the desktop has just begun. It will add to the trend. In the future, a single hardware will have multiple CPUs with even more cores, and any number of operating platforms layered on top of it. It’s going to solve some compatibility issues and create a number of new ones: keeping all those layers of operating platforms up to date, for example.

Chrome’s V8 will be one of those operating platforms. Thus, Google moves from controlling the entrance to cyberspace to controlling the entrance to the V8 operating platform. It’s the next step beyond cyberspace.

“Burning Chrome” is a collection of short stories by Sci-Fi author William Gibson. It was published following his novel “Neuromancer” in which he coined the term “cyberspace”. So yes, Chrome is the logical next step after cyberspace.

I promised to give some free advice on how to select your Application Management provider. We’re talking about outsourcing maintenance and continuous improvement of custom applications here. Of course, selecting an appropriate provider is crucial if you want to achieve the desired ROI. And unfortunately it will take time to measure the actual improvement. So I tried so compile the known criteria that make a provider a match for you. Meaning: the criteria you can check before you make the deal.

Here’s the list:

• Select an Application Management Provider. Not just any outsourcer or software development supplier. Even if you know them and trust them. The reason: It takes a very specific approach to be successful at Application Management. One that is different from the economies of scale known by typical outsourcers. And it’s different from managing software development projects, too. Go ask for what you need and don’t stop short of it: an Application Management provider.
• Find a provider that understands your business. Of course, that still doesn’t mean the provider knows your application, which is unique. But it will eliminate a considerable amount of communication overhead and possible misunderstandings. After all, the provider will have to make changes to the application as required by your business departments. So he/she’d better known what they business talks about.
• Technology matters as well: there are different technological ecosystems (AJAX/Java/Unix vs. DotNet vs. SAP vs. Host …) and not all providers know how to optimize all kinds of applications. Development tools may be important, too, in some ecosystems where they are not standardized.
• Make sure the provider’s operating processes can be matched to your own. Nowadays, nine times out of ten that comes down to: you both speak and live ITIL. That will help to fit the provider in nicely.
• Check the provider’s methodology for setting up application management for your app. At the very least,  check that there is a methodology. As with any project, the success of application management is determined largely by how it begins.
• Check the contract offered to you:
  • Define the application and its interfaces. It should be obvious that a clear definition of the scope is necessary. However, sometimes boundaries of an application become fuzzy and their definition non-trivial.
  • Define the service levels you need (no less but also not more: high quality service is expensive – buy it only where it is needed)
  • How do you participate in the efficiency gains achieved by your provider? There should be a perspective for reduced costs for you.
• For those of you who still wonder how this blog entry got its headline, here’s the answer: before you outsource an application to an Application Management provider (“marry”), make sure you will always be able to source it back in (“divorce”). That requires an up to date documentation and the use of common development environments. Among other things. Make sure your Application Management provider offers you that – without you having to ask for it. Because if you have to ask for it, it is not common practise with this Application Management provider. And it will not become common practise just because of you. Instead, when you need it, you will find out that it never really worked. Insourcing will still be possible, but tiresome then.

This is my list of general rules for selecting an Application Management provider. Plus, there always are your specific circumstances to take into account.

Got more points to add to the list? Let me know! (info@syngenio.de)

Despite the fact that the new Google competitor Cuil is considered to be more energy efficient (because the black page background seems to be a big energy saver - if they get as big as Google of course <LINK>), Google is cutting edge when talking about the energy revolution. Sites like http://www.blackle.com or http://www.ecofree.org/ which claim to provide a more energy efficient Google search interface (at least on CRTs), by having had the black background idea ahead of cuil, are a minor issue to this revolution.

Google committet to be carbon-neutral by end of 2007 <READ HERE>, a goal, which they just missed, but as you might guess, they are working on that issue. Google needs to do somethink, as long as some of us believe that one Google search consumes as much as a 11-watt light bulb <READ HERE>.

There are rumours/news that Google buys large chunks of land (800 acres in Oklahoma <LINK> and 1000 acres in Iowa <LINK>). So what to build on a site being 4 kilometer long and 4 kilometer wide? A fancy new datacenter with some Hi-Tech, sophisticated cooling facility? Housings and facilities for an army of human taggers to annotate the whole earth? A theme park?

Nope, my I guess is the big Google has other plans for using these site. A hint could be found on a page Googles homepage titles “Powering a clean energy revolution“, where Google describes their effort toward reaching the goal of beeing carbon neutral. I like especially the part, where the author name some companies Google and Google.org are cooperating with. Do you see the point? It’s obvious.

So in the near future Google will not only provide grid-like computing services with GAE, but they will provide carbon-free computing services and this might be putting some pressure on some people investing billions of dollars at the moment in build hi-tech datacenters. Sounds like Google not only wants to index, map and annotate the earth, but they want to save it.

Good luck.

Reading and writing about IT automation, I keep on learning about the subject. Lately I found that there are so many flavors of automation around the operating processes of IT, that misunderstanding seems inevitable. So I try to make a point here to talk about the different kinds of automation one can use all around maintaining a high quality IT environment.

1. Incident-, Problem-, Capacity- and Availability Management
   Automation engines specialized on analyzing and handling events that occur in a IT environment that may lead to or themselves represent malfunctions, loss of quality and the like. Both reactive (automated reaction to an incoming event) and proactive (automated actions taken to prevent events from occurring) are target of these engines. Automation engines that handle the “fault operating” are either embedded into the ITIL processes (see blog entry on extending ITIL with automation) like our automation engine (aAe) or are embedded into system components or management systems with a narrow scope e.g. on redundancy activation.
2. Change Management
   Automation engines specialized on performing changes that modify or extend an IT environment automatically. Either these engines are Inserting an abstracted layer above tasks that need to be performed (like adding users, restarting a component and the like) these engines allow an administrator to perform tasks on many machines or on different platforms without by interacting with the automation engine. An example for this kind of engine is the Puppet framework with a very structured approach to abstraction. Or these engines focus on scaling an IT environment by dynamically adding resources or automatically installing or modifying a system like the Tivoli Provisioning Manager or VMWare Virtual Center does.

I really do hope (not just to save you some consulting fees) to have helped avoid misunderstandings, when you are talking to others about automation and even better maybe I could point out some additional techniques you can look at to make life easier.

Sunday I had a great chance to view virtualization at its best. I attended an Airbus A340 simulator training at Lufthansa Flight Training via ProFlight. As my eyesight will always prohibit me from entering a real cockpit flying in a simulator is about the closest I will ever get to flying an airplane. And I have to say the simulator is like the real thing and I love it!

The session started out with a short briefing on basic aerodynamics, the controls of the Airbus A340 and an overview of basic flying procedures. The instructor was a retired jet pilot who is now working as a pilot trainer. He was very experienced and calm and professional and got us up to speed very quickly. So we could enter the A340 simulator after an hour of pre flight briefing.

It is really hard to tell the difference between the simulator and the real thing. Sitting in the cockpit you can feel the movement, hear the noise and let yourself be drawn into the world of flying. We started out flying in New York and took a look at Coney Island at night. After NY I choose San Francisco International Airport as the next spot for flight training. Taking an A340 at a totally illegal altitude above the Golden Gate is really stunning.

I had the chance to practice four approaches to SFO and got it right the first time (just look at the analysis and be humble!). The only real problem I had was not to hit any other aircraft while taxiing to the terminal. Obviously I feel much better with my head up above the clouds. And I will definitely be back again.

Surfing our intranet I was totally surprised to find one of our administrators – Thomas “thommy” Neuderth - writing about his first contact with automation. I am really happy that one of the best IT experts I had the pleasure of working with has found himself having “no fear of being automated away” and rather interprets automation as a good way to actually live the life of an “IT expert” instead of being an “IT nanny”.

The automation of a simple task like archiving logfiles obviously convinced a “real techie” that there is more than just a little upside to using an automation engine. Of course the implementation of automation actually forced quite a bit of rethinking the common ways of administration and “thommy” describes the skepticism the first contact and the actual adoption of change in a down to earth way. If you are interested, you may read the whole document here.

Some time ago I published an article on the future of IT operation after we are through with all the ITIL implementations (still) taking place. Assuming that all the nice failure handling, proactive failure avoiding and communication processes like Incident, Problem, Capacity and Availability Management are in place, implementing automation is the logical way to move ahead. Compared to implementing ITIL automation actually changes the things that are done and the way they are done. As you may have guessed this statement alone was fertile ground for interesting and heated debating.

Generally the article concluded that implementing the ITIL processes concentrates on the interfaces between IT experts, clients, business requirements and the like where automation concentrates on the way IT operation is actually “produced” (in an industrial meaning of the word). Even though these two may be viewed separately the article shows how an automation environment highly depends on monitoring and IT component data. An ITIL environment puts forth a valid definition of both data sources for a complete IT environment and is therefore a good foundation to start implementing automation.

An IT operations environment with implemented ITIL processes also has common interfaces to the acting staff members. This makes it very easy to “inject” a new entity - like an automation engine - into the whole system. In such an approach the automation engine wraps itself around the data sources of CMDB and monitoring systems. All communication that would today be directed towards human recipients is handled by the automation engine first. Only if the automation engine is not able to complete the task the IT experts are involved.

This short description reveals how well an ITIL implementation prepares an IT organization for implementing automation.  It also shows how automation is made completely transparent to the business using the IT - as the automation engine acts like any human entity taking part in the ITIL processes.

The article itself gives a short overview of the “operational” ITIL processes and how their implementation builds the foundation for automation. If you are interested you may read the whole text here.

You have seen a number of abstract articles talking about the “interdependency model” of an IT environment that is necessary to actually automate across operational silos on this blog. Building this model actually is the main challenge in implementing automation.

I have seen customer situations, where building the dependency model was such an extensive effort, that the focus for the goal of implementing automation was completely lost. An interdependency model is supposed to answer the question “how does one entity in a IT environment depend upon or influence other objects” or “Why the @)!(/Q$§ doesn´t it work anymore after someone I don´t even know changed something I don´t even care about?”.

Though simple answering these questions without having a good CMDB in place and being able to query that CMDB on an expert level, leaves a long trail across an IT organization. Since these key questions are asked for every failure and should be asked for every change an interdependency model is obviously something one REALLY wants to have.

As this model is also one of the key input streams to an automation engine that actually operates IT across silo and competency boundaries we have put quite some thought into the art of modeling. Typical techies we are, our first approach was to build THE BEST of all possible models. We started to build our methodology on the basis of economic dependency models. Well, what can I say… We got a great model and maintaining it just for fun would have cost us an arm and a leg plus maintenance would never have been possible from our technical teams.

So we went back to the think tank with the preliminary assumption, that we would be willing to simplify the model - if we could produce one that could and would be maintained by the technical staff themselves (acceptance is an important factor).

We arrived at something we call the arago M-A-R-S model.

The “M” is for “Machine”

A machine (real or virtual, cloud compartment or actual operating system) is still the basic component of any IT application. Machines can be servers, network components and anything else. Administrators tasked with keeping the infrastructure alive do normally not know much about the business applications running on their “machines” but they know their machines on a first name basis. So a machine is a basic building block of IT infrastructure as well as a component very close to the technical staff. Thus the entity of a machine fulfills both our pre requirements (simple to understand and maintainable by the IT staff)

The “A” is for “Application”

An application is something that is used in a business process. Or technically speaking an application is the “thing” a “user” complains about when interfacing (talking to) the IT department. An application is therefore the basic building block from “the other side”. Where a machine is the basic building block of the technical view of IT, applications are the basic building blocks of the business view of IT.
Naturally an application uses machines or much better “-S-ervices” offered by these.

The “R” is for “Resource”

As you may imagine building up a dependency model by listing all the services offered by a number of machines and then listing all the services used by an application may leave you with very long lists. So we decided to introduce one layer of abstraction into our approach to dependency modeling. This is called the “resource” layer. A resource combines a number of services with a 100% dependency (e.g. an SAP service will never run without a database service, thus there would be an SAP resource combining the two services into one entity and thereby reducing the complexity of the dependency tree of an application).

The “S” is for “Service”

Service defines some functionality that is offered by a machine or a cluster of machines (for redundancy and availability reasons). A service in this case is an IT term that describes a simple building block of software running on a machine. A service can be anything ranging from an operating system or a network connection though a simple application such as a web server or database all the way up to an SAP system or an individually programmed piece of software. A service is something often talked about in the IT organization and usually something that has developers or vendors attached to it.

As simple as this may sound: this four-layer model allows for a real connection of all silos within technology and organization. This model can be maintained manually or - better - can be imported from a good CMDB.

Combining monitoring information with this model (i.e. hooking up monitoring and master data with the nodes of the model) is the basic input for an automated environment (also see input stream and naming convention articles on this blog). You can read the full article on “Measurement as the Prerequisite for Automation” here.

I am sure you will find other good applications for a simple model - or even better maybe you do have some suggestions on how to improve and/or further simplify this model.