30 years of success behind us; looking forward to more exciting changes ahead

It’s hard to believe that 2010 marks SWC’s 30th year in business. Technology is constantly evolving, so we’ve seen many changes over the years. But some things never change—like our commitment to delivering technology solutions that drive value for our clients in any economy.

Our industry changes so quickly that it becomes more challenging every day for organizations to keep up—today’s best practice or solution evolves almost as quickly as the technology.  That’s why we’re more committed than ever to hiring the best IT professionals in the industry, providing our customers with deep expertise across solutions.

We have a tremendous amount of gratitude toward our customers for choosing SWC—we are honored to celebrate these 30 years of success with you. We also appreciate our employees, who make our business successful from the inside out. We’re glad to have every one of you on our team.

We look forward to the next 30+ years.

Recently I found myself scrounging under my bed looking for the dog’s chew toy. To this day I’m shocked I have a dog, let alone a chew toy. But there I was sucking in my gut so I could squeeze my hand one inch further, my fingers desperately grasping for a saliva-coated, rubber, squeaky mouse. At my feet the dog sat barking with a pinch of attitude.

“What’s up, man,” the dog barked. “Faster, faster….”

The experience left me coming to the conclusion that very little good comes from squeaky toys. Looking under my bed however did have a surprising outcome. As it turns out, deep in the underbelly of my bed, just past the squeaky mouse lay something very entertaining: a shoe box filled with old high school pictures. Hilarious, old high school pictures that reminded me of great times but also served as a stark reminder that, well, damn I’m old.

A little later I found myself speaking to my wife regarding our middle-age lives.

“Please, you’re not middle aged,” she said, shuffling around the kitchen between the dishwasher and the cabinet. “I am not married to a middle-aged man.”

“I think you are,” I said. “I can prove it”

My wife ignored me and continued to attack the kitchen work in the kind of way that bordered on obsession.

“I have some gray hair, look at this one,” I said pulling up a silver strand of hair near my ear. “There’s actually a few of these. I think I like them.”

“Means nothing. Lots of people go gray prematurely,” she said. “And I can barely see yours, it’s embarrassing.”

“My back is always hurting and I take Advil like its candy,” I said. Then I dropped the bomb.

“I like saving money, I want my house to be clean, sleep is my favorite past-time and I generally find myself thinking before acting on anything.”

“Whatever,” she said, which meant I won the argument.

It’s official. I’m old.

The truth is, having “been around the block” has its benefits, particularly when it comes to business. Experience has taught me a lot about what works and perhaps more importantly what doesn’t work. Today, I realize that when I get excited about a technology it’s because I see intrinsic value in what it does and that I’m not simply responding to the industry hype machine. In the end, I have to see something that helps business perform cheaper, faster, better.

I’m excited about three technologies: smartphones, Silverlight and the cloud.

Ok, first off, when I talk about smartphones, I’m talking about the iPhone or the Droid or hopefully, if the stars align, Windows Mobile 7. Of course, what has me excited about the smartphone space is what’s happening around applications. I’m not talking about consumer applications. I’m talking about the smartphone applications that are changing how business gets done.

It’s a relatively new arena for SWC but recently we have been forging hard into these engagements and the client meetings have been fascinating. Each discussion has brought to light fantastic, creative and innovative ways to use these devices that have significant impact on how that respective business makes money.

And then there’s Silverlight, a newer Microsoft development platform for interactive web, desktop and mobile applications. In my opinion, it’s one of the nicer surprises coming out of Redmond and seems to be catching fire in the development community. But, from a business perspective, the real Silverlight story is Silverlight Pivot. In this case, a demo speaks a thousand words (so click anywhere it says “Pivot” or “demo” in this post). At a high level, think of Pivot as a highly compelling way to view and analyze data. I have found it nearly impossible to not get a profound reaction every time I show someone Pivot. Usually, the reaction includes an expletive followed immediately with the words “You know, with something like this we could…”

Finally there is the cloud. Huge topic!  I won’t even begin to try and go into details but I want to say this. For the right folks (because the cloud isn’t for everyone), this model can have massive economic benefits. In some circumstances the cloud should free up innovation and allow business to chase opportunities that they would have once thought impossible. I guess in short I want to say that almost every technology conversation today should begin by asking, “Does the cloud make sense here?”

I often find myself telling others how I love the technology industry because it’s always changing and constantly challenges us to find the lightning in the bottle. Every once in a while a few technologies come along that are striking reminders of this sentiment. It’s always fun when this happens and I’m excited about the days, weeks and months to come.

Even if I am old.

Anyone who uses SQL in their environment is at risk for what we at SWC like to call “digital cholesterol.” How do you know you have it? You might notice sluggish system performance, connection timeouts, query deadlocks or worse, complete failure or other near-disasters.

The problem for many mid-market companies is how to justify the expense of a full-time SQL DBA. Many businesses either outsource this function, hand it off to an overworked in-house IT team with little time or SQL expertise, or just put it on the back burner for someone to “get back to” when there is more time or worse, something bad happens.

If your SQL data is critical to your business, it’s imperative to properly assess and maintain your SQL environment. If your digital cholesterol means your database can’t grow with your business, that’s a big problem and it’s probably time for a checkup.

SQL servers should be assessed and maintained to determine whether the servers have been configured to established best practices. At SWC, we investigate everything from configuration, usage and performance metrics; from data we collect, we make recommendations that enhance the systems’ performance and management.

If you notice any of the symptoms of digital cholesterol, it’s definitely time for a checkup to get your system’s health back on track.

With Microsoft’s release of Windows 7, users now have more flexibility than ever before to work remotely—and your IT staff can better manage security and compliance across desktops anywhere, anytime. This is exciting news since remote access technology hasn’t really evolved since Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) were introduced in the late 1990’s.

Sure, newer versions of VPNs have become more secure, but there have been no technological advances in remote access since—even though many companies require more users to work from anywhere in the world. VPNs have several limitations, too. It’s one more application for users to learn, initiate and break. And that requires more troubleshooting and support, time that could be better spent on strategic initiatives. VPNs also make it tough to troubleshoot PCs remotely, since both computers must be available when the VPN session is running.

This is where Direct Access, a new feature available with Windows 7, changes the game. Now through Active Directory, users simply need Internet access to connect quickly and securely to your corporate network. A secure IPsec connection is created, giving the user access to your internal network just as if they are working from the corporate office.

Think about DirectAccess as a clientless VPN—there are no additional tools for your users to learn. And IT staff can work on any machine from anywhere in the world as long as users are connected to the Internet—they don’t even need to be logged in!

We have implemented Direct Access here at SWC and for many customers with great success. Direct Access is just one of the many new features of Windows 7 that allows users and IT professionals to be more productive and efficient everywhere.

 A little while back I told my marketing team that I wanted to launch a video series. Something unique and clever, I said. Something more than just the predictable, infomercial dribble that seems to ooze from every pore of our industry, I said. Something more down to earth, in the weeds, that sort of thing, like a talk show.  And I could be the host.

They had questions. 

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“Camera adds ten pounds…”

“I’ve got good bone structure,” I replied.

“Do you have a topic in mind?” they asked.

“Not yet….But it needs to be something big….but real.”  I squared my forefingers and thumbs and held them over my right eye like a viewfinder.

“Can you dig it?”

Crickets…

“OK, we can talk about show topics later,” I said.  “Who wants bubble water?”

And there you have it. The story of how SWC’s new video series “Out of the Box” was born. Join us for our first installment as we discuss today’s crazy economy, technical innovation and entrepreneurial guts with MVTRAC President Scott Jackson. Watch it and let us know what you think!

Most people understand why one of the most important aspects of a technology solution is the need for security. Oddly enough, one area in particular that is neglected most often is the switching (“Layer 2″) domain within an organization.

Why is this so often neglected?  It could be due to a lack of awareness. Also, while most organizations are willing to invest in a firewall solution, the general impression is that the most significant attack vector is from the outside. But there’s more to this story.

Here are three types of attacks that your Internet firewall, not matter how good, generally can’t stop:

VLAN Hopping: This is when an attacker gains access to the restricted network segment (VLAN) by manipulating a misconfigured access layer switch using tagged frames to masquerade traffic where it should not be. This is the equivalent of Tom Cruise using spy masks in the movie Mission Impossible to trick his foes into providing him with access to vital information and documents.

ARP Poisoning: An attacker replies to ARP requests on behalf of another host and is able to intercept traffic bound for it. Think of this as someone going to your mailbox, reading your mail, then placing the mail back into your mailbox. Only in this case what is being read is all of the data being sent to and from your workstation or server.

MAC Flooding: An attacker floods the network with an invalid MAC address in an attempt to max out the switch CAM table. Once this occurs, the switch becomes like a hub and will allow sniffing of ALL data frames on the network segment. This is like a person (we all know one!) who is normally reserved and quiet, but when they have a bit too much to drink they starting spilling the beans about anything and everything, even stuff you don’t care to hear. If you feed a switch too much Layer 2 data, it starts blabbing.

As you would guess, there is a solution for every single one of these exploits, but is your network protected against them?  If I was a betting person–and based on experience–my answer would be, “Probably not.”  The good news is that securing your internal network can generally be done by leveraging the functionality built into your current hardware.

Now let me counter these three attacks with three solutions that can be used to protect your Layer 2 domain. It should be noted that most vendors support their own iteration of this feature but may go by slightly different names, so as always, consult documentation.

SOLUTION 1 – DHCP Snooping: This strategy, generally used in conjunction with DARP (Dynamic Arp Inspection) will keep connected workstations honest. Think of this as the ultraviolet light used to spot counterfeit money.

SOLUTION 2 – Port Security: This feature limits a connected host to a specific MAC address entry. In the case of MAC flooding, the port can discard source addresses above an allocated limit. This feature is easy to set up and very effective.

SOLUTION 3 – Static VLAN membership: I can’t emphasize how important it is to remove ALL traces of dynamic trunking/tagging negotiation on your network. Tagged frames should never have the possibility to be on user facing ports. (There is one exception to this in the instance of voice VLANs, but when done properly, it does not create the security dilemma at issue.)

Obviously this list is only the tip of the iceberg. NAC, 802.1X, VMPS and RADIUS are a few of the more robust methods being used. But I wanted to emphasize solutions that likely require no additional hardware. What strategies have you used to secure your internal resources?

Software developers are a unique breed. We love to think in abstract terms. Many of us are more comfortable communicating in Java than in English. It’s a sign of a truly advanced civilization that software developers have been put to meaningful work rather than sequestered from the rest of society.

If you read my previous post, you know that I am passionate about writing software on a human scale. This means writing software that serves the user, rather than forcing the user to conform to the software. There are lots of hurdles that developers must navigate to achieve this ideal. The first is probably obvious: how to get started.

Let’s follow Maria Von Trapp’s advice in “The Sound of Music” and start at the very beginning. Before we write a single line of code, we need to have clear answers to some very basic questions. A good way to approach those basic questions is to use the classic “Five W’s” that we all learned in school: Who, What, Where, Why, When and How. Here is a quick primer on how this applies to initiating software projects:

Functional Requirements:
WHAT must the software do?
These are the “Must Haves.” Come up with a list of 5 – 10 bullet points that enumerate what the software must do to be successful. If the list gets longer than this, the project should probably be broken into smaller iterations.

WHY is it important?
These are the “Must NOT Haves.” Summarize 3 – 5 problems (as reported by the users) that will be addressed by this software. Are there things they can’t do that they need to accomplish?  Are there things that are harder than they should be?  Are their customers complaining about issues or missing functionality?

Resource requirements:
WHO is required to be successful?

• Developers and other technical experts
• Project managers
• Business domain experts 
• End users  and customers

WHERE will the project work be done?
Do not make assumptions about the geographic location of any resources (human or technical). Cultural differences abound across environments, organizations and people on the development and implementation side. Assumptions about any of these differences can often make or break a project.

WHEN will the software be ready for the user?
This will likely be a moving target as information changes. Start somewhere with your best guess. It’s much easier to alter project timelines as you go than to shoot for vague or unspecified targets.

Experience requirements
HOW will all these other questions and answers be integrated?
This is the last question you should ask yourself. As you review the Five W’s, you should have a clear enough view of the significant details that you can say with confidence, “This is how we should approach this problem.”

Over the next few posts, I’ll unpack these a bit and discuss how we can use basic journalistic techniques to learn what we need to know to get started. In the meantime, what questions would you add to this list? How is my approach similar (or not) to your approach?

If you’re in the Information Technology field, you’re familiar with industry certification. Some may question the neeed for certification for in-house IT professionals or consultants, but I believe there is a distinct value to working with certified professionals.

Generally, “certified professionals” refers to an organization that has achieved partner level status with the vendor. For example, to be a Microsoft Gold Partner, the company must meet certain criteria, including having multiple Microsoft certified professionals on staff. Cisco, Symantec and HP have similar programs.

Some people (like myself) are “cert” junkies with a road map of certifications planned out for the next several years; others are adamant that they add no real value to their profession. Here are three outdated myths about industry certification that I hear most often:

Myth #1: Certification doesn’t measure “real world” skills.
I hear this a lot! But don’t be fooled: vendors have made big strides in testing “real world” knowledge on their exams. For example, both Microsoft and Cisco certification exams now contain robust simulations that mimic live environments. If you can’t fix it at the console, you won’t pass.

This is essential because technology changes so fast. Certification is a vendor-specific “seal of approval” that ensures IT professionals are on top of the technology and the changes. IT professionals often seek certification in their core competencies, so certs help them build deeper expertise.  

Myth #2: Certification only benefits the vendor.
It’s no secret that vendors need to make a profit. However, they accomplish this by having the widest adoption rate of their product, not by creating certifications. To have the widest adoption rate, the product must be a cost-effective, manageable and viable solution for whatever technology need the solution fills.

I would argue that the higher saturation of a particular certification is indicative of high product adoption—so the product creates the certification not vice-versa. A larger pool of skilled individuals, via proxy of IT service providers, creates a competitive market for support options. A competitive market benefits everybody.

Myth #3: Certification = Higher support costs.
While hiring a highly skilled, credentialed IT professional to perform work may seem to cost more up front, the back end costs are ALWAYS much lower. Why?  If the planning, design and implementation phases are not done strategically or correctly, the project will inevitably generate higher costs in the long run from rework and change orders. I’ve seen many projects scrapped altogether or a complete “rip and replace” of a system that failed to get off the ground due to poor planning.

What’s your perspective on certifications for IT professionals?

The technology sector is pretty funky. It’s always morphing, always changing. The trick is to know when these changes actually mean something. It’s not so easy. Too often we hear the beating drums of change from our industry’s publicity machine. It’s weeding through the clutter and finding the real news, the real trends that can be the challenge and, in some rare cases, the opportunity.

Recently I found myself thinking about Microsoft, Apple and Google. I found myself connecting some dots, drawing some conclusions and wondering if I had developed a notion based on reality or publicity. I thought it may be interesting to throw these thoughts out here at SWC Perspectives and collect your reactions.

Arguably the strength of Microsoft lies in the fact that, through the Windows operating system, it owns the desktop. For decades over 90% of the world’s desktops have run  on Microsoft. The result has been dominance in the application market and then eventually the browser.  Ultimately, Microsoft parlayed this position into creating a “stack” of enterprise applications that, integrated together, are arguably the best value in corporate information technology.

But perhaps things are changing?

Over the last couple of years we have come to include the term “Cloud” computing within our daily vernacular. The definition of Cloud computing seems to be a moving target but there are some key principles to agree on, most notably the notion that technology, whether in the form of infrastructure or application, can be utilized from a third party, over the Internet. Frequently the first benefit to be considered is that this architecture saves the customer from investing capital in hardware, license acquisition costs and administration.

I think the cloud model is living up to its promise of creating a new approach to investing in IT. I also think, as time is moves on, that most organizations are realizing it’s relatively safe to “let go” of controlling the information technology infrastructure. “Big Brother” is not going to steal the data, capital is typically better invested in core competency operations, and the trade-off between a third-party Service Level Agreement and managing a fully staffed IT department is compelling.

But put all of this on a shelf for a second. I need to develop another argument before I can put my entire question together.

I think it is fair to say that the device market has exploded.  To be specific, when I talk about devices I’m referring to the iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile phones, Blackberry devices, etc.  You can probably lump the iPad and Netbook in there as well. And, when I say “exploded” what I mean is that today’s device is universal. It is already the PC, television, automobile of our generation. Everyone has one; it’s universal.

Today, the iPhone constitutes 25% of the smartphone market. It seems that Apple takes chunks of market share with each release of this product. Now, not unlike Google with its recent release of Android. In fact, seemingly overnight,  the Google-driven Android surpassed iPhone for market share. In both cases, what seems clear is that what is driving market growth is the application market.  Of course there are other reasons to buy an iPhone or an Android, but I wonder if this war will be won or lost by the app space?

On another front, I recently learned that Microsoft’s browser dropped below 60% of the market for the first time, while Chrome, Firefox and Safari increased users. Pretty dramatic numbers if you consider that only two years ago, Explorer accounted for over two thirds of the browser market. In point of fact, given today’s trends, Firefox is set to overtake Explorer in market share within the next quarter.

If Microsoft became today’s dominant technology player by controlling the operating system of the desktop, then what does it mean when the device market OS and browser is not Microsoft?

OK, put that question on the shelf as well.  I’ll come back to all of this.

Another thought (related to all of this) occurred to me during a recent sales call. It was one of those meetings that I imagine I’ll remember for a long time.  The account does not fit into our typical profile in that the company has roughly 25 to 30 users.  More frequently our accounts have hundreds to thousands of users. Why I was in the meeting and what compels me about the discussion is what the customer asked for.  Simply put, he said: “I don’t want hardware on my site anymore. Not a single server. And when my users need information, I want them to go to a browser.”

By the way, this is not a company I would call an “early adopter.” It’s a typical Midwestern manufacturer. I imagine the last time they had a technology architecture conversation, I was five years out of college (I won’t dignify this with a date).  But think about that. For a manufacturer, which almost always has at least a handful of proprietary applications along with the usual productivity stuff (i.e., Microsoft Office) this is saying A LOT.

One more statistic to consider before I ask the big questions.

So far the Apple App Store has seen 228,458 applications published in the United States alone.  Every day another 59 join the ranks.

Now for the big questions.

Ask yourself (provided the context of my piece) how you would pull off my client’s request.   Then ask yourself how you may be able to do this in six months or one year?

Ask yourself, if I’m starting a company today – from scratch – how do I setup my technology systems?

Ask yourself, if I’m creating an industry-based application (like the ones my manufacturing client uses), how do I develop it and for what environments?

OK, now take everything off the shelf and look at it. What does the future look like?  I’m not kidding. That’s my question. Is the market really in a state shift? If so, how does this affect us – the customers, the publishers, the integrators? I have my thoughts (which by the way I have conveniently stayed away from in this piece). But I am very interested in what you have to say. Please let me know – respond to this post with a comment.  Pass this article to a friend and let him or her post a comment.

I want to know what we all think!

When I’m not architecting business intelligence solutions or working in the garden with my inquisitive 3 year old, I find time to watch “Deadliest Catch”.  I always have 3 or 4 episodes queued up on the DVR on any given day. I rather enjoy doing my homework while the briny episodes unfold on the LCD.  It could be worse.  Especially if my wife has episodes of Oprah to catch up on!  Yikes. 

One thing I’ve noticed since becoming a DC fan is that all the captains make most of their decisions from the gut.  These decisions include deciding where to fish, how long to fish an area, when to increase the bait in the pots, when to ask the crew to pull long shifts, and when to stop the current plan and start over with a new plan.   How are these decisions/plans arrived at?  The show gives some insight into the decision making process but for the most part we are led to believe that all the decisions are made at the whimsy’s of the curmudgeon captains and their vast years of fishing experience.  This gave me pause the other night.  Could this gut feel decision making approach be a metaphor for some decision makers in the mid-market?

I find there is a parallel between this gut approach on the show and many of our prospects in the business intelligence mid-market.  There are countless small businesses that have become successful by having leaders who can make good decisions based on wisdom and a little bit of luck.  There are also countess examples of small and even large organizations that failed because rash decisions were made.  Our job entails meeting these decision makers, and convincing them that fact-based decisions derived from information can be a good thing!     Every organization has access to data.  Turning that raw data into actionable information is what gets me exited and keeps me coming back each day for new and interesting challenges.  I rather enjoy the warm comfortable feeling of making decisions based on information.  When I buy something at the store I know my money is good because I checked my checking account balance from my blackberry earlier.  I don’t make purchases based on my recollection of the balance from a week ago.  Not good and usually not correct! 

I wonder what the captains on DC would think if I parked myself and my laptop in their wheel house for week or two?  I can see the dashboards and reports I would create. Perhaps I could convince Sig Hansen to let me pear into his decision process and formulate some analysis assets to help him get the crab!  Maybe a trend report that shows average pounds of crap per pot.  Or a deck hand scorecard that shows: avg hours without  sleep, count of employee injuries per string, Avg pounds per pot, Median sort duration per string, Running pounds of crap caught, forecasted profit share, and remaining units of bait.  I could go on and on…   

I don’t know if we’ll ever see SQL Server Analysis Services running on the computers of the Alaskan crab fleet, but I feel convinced that cube based information would make them all better captains.  Of course, taking away risk and unknowns from the decision making process might not make for good TV.  I’m certain it would put more cash in the pockets of the captains and crews. 

Anyone hungry for Maggiano’s and Business Intelligence? 

I will present business intelligence in a luncheon format at Maggiano’s in Oak Brook IL on May 21 from 12-1:30PM.  The topic will be:  “SWC LUNCH & LEARN – Building Better Dashboards with Microsoft 2010”  If you haven’t signed up already, I highly suggest you do so.  We’re very excited about our 2010 BI vision and look forward to demonstrating this vision at the luncheon. We hope you can join us!