What is a servers economical life

In some industries they see it as important that a computer hardware has a long lifespan.  I hear that in the oil industry they are looking to get 7 years out of their servers.  Is this realistic.  In my opinion no.  Anybody that expects the highest possible uptime should not expect more than 3years, at most 4years,  lifespan from a server, or other computer hardware with moving parts. 

There is a reason for that with most manufacturers the 3 year warranty is cheap, year 4 reasonable and the cost of year 5 can be accepted.  Any more than that and there is definitely no economy in it.  It’s cheaper to buy new.  The trouble is in most cases no1 the harddisks and no2 the power supplies.  No amount of guarantees can make them live longer.  All the guarantees do is ensure there is something there to swap them with when they do fail, and failure usually mean some sort of downtime. 

A problem is that no hardware manufacturer will give you a “guarantee to fix”.  Service contracts involve a guarantee to maximum time before engineer is on site, and often a second maximum time until part is on site.  In the old days these where one and the same since the service engineer had a ll the most common parts in the back of his car.  These days stock is smaller and the part might be a flight away.  Not good if your problems is during a volcanic ash crisis, or a 9/11.

I can see the attraction of 7 years if you are in the sample financial industry since there is requirements to keep financial data for 7 years.  It is however better to prepare a migration path early, because it will be needed. 

Another requirement when trying to extend the life of hardware is frequent monitoring.  And here I must insist on the necessity for physical presence in the computer room.  Those blinking lights will for the trained eye give early warning.  They are also much easier to see than a line of log hidden among thousands.  Today we see the opposite trend with many being proud of their dark data centres.  Dark here meaning no light due to no manpower on site.

The necessity to be prepared will increase as more and more backups are online or on secondary storage.  They will expire just as fast as other hardware.  In the old days tapes could last long if they where kept well and tested for failure at regular intervals.  Always keep 2 at least copies because tapes did have a high failure rate due to stretch.  To ensure recovery I always brought 3 sets to the dr centre.  One problem is to find something to restore them on when they are needed after several years. 

A diskdrive is a diskdrive and they will fail eventually due to that they have moving parts inside.   A possible solution can be the ssd that could be written to once and then , which would help against its so and so many writes sudden death syndrome.  Currently however due to its cost its not taken up in any large numbers. 

Ssd’s  is not a solution for the parts of servers/applications/databases that requires frequent rewrites.  It could even shorten the lifespan of the hardware requiring a higher rate of turnover.  There have in use for high turnover database logs been reports of whole shelves of ssd’s failing at once, after less than 2 years of service.

Forgotten about act of day to day IT operations

An important but easily forgotten part of a company is its day to day IT operations.  What create kudos is new stuff, like development.  This is where Executive management has its IT eye in a company whose core business is not IT.  This is a natural progress from that share value is seen to have all current  status built into its current pricing and only new announcements can afflict it in a positive way.

This often leads to the attitude that IT operations is just “your job” and achievements is treated thereafter.   Sometimes for a CIO the only way of getting cudos for the operations part is through saving money by outsourcing it.  No wonder 90% of their attention is on development.   

Problem is that today IT operations is at the core of every business.  Few can handle even the simplest task without their backend computers, networks and core infrastructure running perfectly.  When you outsource it you lose part of the control on a vital part of your business success.  It’s not until it goes wrong, and sometimes very wrong ref Ulster bank, that top management takes an interest.  This often leads to a negative aspect.  Every time IT gets attention it’s because something went wrong.  And since rewards are only given for positive news, day to day running of IT becomes a neglected non rewarding area.  And the most neglected part of all is often Disaster Recovery.  A part of IT that will always have a certain stigma over it, due to it’s need of negative thought.  An important key element non the less since its what prepares you for what every IT manager now is  inevitable;  a major system let’s call it hiccup.

    

It is sad that many non IT executives in businesses whose core activity is not IT related, almost takes pride of their lack of knowledge of IT.  They couldn’t express it so openly if it was about any other side of their business they lacked core knowledge.  

This leads to that the CIO/IT Directors role becomes a buffer between IT and the top executives.  And since it’s the top executives that hires said CIO they often end up with a “talker” rather than a doer  with real knowledge.  

Building downwards from there, the “talker” CIO will see too that he don’t hire anyone in lower ranks that can upstage him/her.  Alternatively will feel a need to ensure that anyone able to do such a thing has no channel of communication with the executive level.  Often an easy solution since the executive level has no interest anyway.

This is the type of scenario where massive problems eventually will bubble to the surface.  It also makes for an unhappy company with resentment growing through the lower ranks.

To avoid more pitfalls in the future the executive level  needs to get a better understanding for what makes their business tick on a day to day level.  Unless you have your core right, future success can not be assured, and even the new stuff will only give temporary success at best.   

The losers in the long run will be the shareholders. Long term the company that do not have control of their day to day operations, and IT operations is a vital part of this, will lose out, or fail spectacularly. 

Mass marketing via email

An effective way of marketing to an established set of customers has for a time been mass marketing via email.  You should always encourage your customers to include the email address when they register.  If you include clauses (with opt out buttons) that let you utilize 3’rd parties it will increase the value of your list.  Be careful though, you don’t want it to be a list of people that has banned you from sending to them.    

Genuine offers are required.  And they will feel extra good about it if they receive it before everybody else.  Like sending the email the night before the general release of the offer.

How to send to this list you have collated is a matter of choice.  If you are a regular mailer with knowledge of emailing I would recommend a self run packages due to its lower cost in the long run.  It also leaves you in control of the list.  A list that can have a value in its own.  If you contract out, be careful to have clauses in the contract that expressively say the list of email addresses is yours and yours alone, and is to be handed back if the contract ends.

A good one for self hosting is Listmanager form Lyris http://www.lyris.com  A very high capacity and fast mailer with response tracking facilities. Couple of hundred thousand an hour should be no problem.  It also handles spam filters very well. An important consideration for repeat mailing. You don't want all your efforts to be filtered away. A problem with free and cheap mailers. 
Lyris also has good support.  

Always send from a domain that can be looked up via reverse dns. This is the first test from most filters.  Also set up a real reply address where you can handle automated verification responses from spam filters, and answer spam complaints from the likes of gmail.  Be careful with having a opt out link at the end of all sent emails.

You need to carefully monitor your sending’s.  A good system should track the progress and put non successful conversations on hold.  However a general problem in the transfers can lead to a list where all is on-hold.  See to that they are not wiped off your list to quickly.  I would also recommend subscribe confirmations via email to verify genuine email addresses and sort out the mischievous.

Integrate your emails with your website so you can track the responses and uptake/sales from each mail.  A good package should have this included.

Creating a regular stream of similar emails can be a chore.  Some packages also offers automated help with the composing of the emails, allowing a daily marketing becoming somebody’s part-time job.  

The importance of selling your company name and logo

If you retail in the market for interchangeable consumer goods, it’s important to build up the customer knowledge of your brand.  You should take every opportunity to display your logo and just as important, your brand name.  It is easier to get shelf space in a chain of stores if their customers already request your product.  And the only way they can know it is by you marketing it to them.  This can take many forms.  Traditional advertising in papers, on tv or radio.  Or more modern forms like  website, Wikipedia, or social media like Twitter, Facebook or Google+  A combination is often required to reach momentum.

To get repeat custom they also need to know that it was your product they purchased.  That means displaying your brand name and logo very clearly on the product, and not be happy with a small mention in the nearly visible text on the pricing label.. 

It is surprising how many, that have worked a while in the same company, take it for granted that everybody knows about it.  The truth is that many times I where in contact with people from the UK who was asking Ryanair who, when I contacted them about something else than travel.  People might not associate the company if the query is unrelated to its most visible activity.  Also a company well known in a local area might be nearly unknown outside that area.  This can be an issue if your marketing people are local and you are trying to market nationally, or even globally.   

If you have a website, it’s important to visualise your product on it.  If they click the button products there should be pictures of what you can actually purchase, with proudly displayed logos and company name.  Try to find a way of selling your product on the web also.  There usually is some way of making a variant of the product that can have a longer lifespan so it can be shipped by cheapest way.  It will introduce them nicely to your product range and there will be no delay between seeing and purchasing.  Get good deals on shipping to as many destinations as possible and display them on your website.  You never know where the next purchaser might be from.  Selling online can be done very cheaply using established payment channels like paypal. and can take little effort to accomplish.  What is most important is that it gives you a way of better controlling the  presentation of the product.  On your site there is no big supermarket chain that sets a markup pricing you above your competitor, or give you inferior shelf space.

 If you insist on not selling directly, lead potential customers from your product page to outlets that will do your product.  And make sure regularly that they actually still do.  A customer will not like to travel to a store to get your product and then discover that they don’t stock it after all.

IT a cost or a source of income

Is IT a cost to be minimized or a, sometimes in a roundabout way, source of income to be maximised.  For a long time companies has seen IT as a cost centre, a necessity.  IT started out as a way of giving your business an advantage.  As your competitors got the same or similar systems iITbecame more of a necessity than advantage.  This has lead to the thinking of coomoditating IT.  Seeing IT as a service that can be bought from somebody else sample in the recent growth of cloud services.  A way of hardware makers to sell you hardware without actually giving you the stuff. 

The people in IT then will want to redefine themselves.  This together with the need for IT directors ad CIO’s trying to gain entrance to the very top management means that they will try to make more of a mark.  Why not by, instead of being a cost,  becoming a source of revenue. 

Early attempts lead to the invention of internal cost centres.  The problem her is the word cost.  Now other departments see IT as even more of a cost.  Something that can be bought internally or sourced externally.  It brought the cost of IT to people that before wasn’t used to paying directly for anything.  And with that a backlash. 

If we think about it, IT is already a source of revenue generation for many businesses.  The growth of the web has seen to that.  IT runs websites that in some companies all sales goes through.  However this is seldom attributed to IT.  Even though they often sourced the system, organized all the technical necessary, and created the site itself. They are just the facilitator, and out of the goodness of their heart, or as a lack of being present at the top where these things are discussed, IT has let the company continue to believe that.  

There is many other examples on where IT is revenue generating.  Take the customer helpdesk or call centre.  Sometimes originally an extension of the IT helpdesk it facilitates the continued sale of your products.   And at some companies at a cost of contacting.

 

What IT becomes in a company often depends on the person in the IT director role (+his/her team)  some times, but not necessary, combined with the interest the CEO has of the area.  If your IT management is inventive and has a good business acumen they see the potential in the new trends of the market in areas like social advertising, network building and customer interaction.  With the current development rate IT has not yet reached the stage where it cannot bring business advantage for the inventive that can redefine the market by their differentness.  To state anything else is to say the world has come to its pinnacle of development and there is nothing more to be done. 

For the rest maybe commoditation is the way forward.  There is certainly enough internal naysayers, and external forces, that sees profits to be made, for that to work too.  But then you have given away a potential avenue of making your offering different from everybody else.  If you sit down and wait, eventually a competitor will seize the advantage.