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Showing posts from August, 2017

Network Neutrality – Heads Up!

Network Neutrality preserves your right to communicate freely online. The term Network Neutrality was coined in 2003 by a Columbia University media law professor named Tim Wu.  Back in the day it was referred to as “Open”.   Network Neutrality is a principle where internet service providers and government regulators must treat all data  on the Internet the same.  This means that you cannot discriminate or have differential charging and costs based on user, based on content, website, platform, application, equipment type, or mode of communication. It’s because of Net Neutrality that small businesses and entrepreneurs have been able to thrive online.  Our fair and level playing field is at risk.  Big phone and cable companies and their lobbyists filed suit against the FCC guiding principles for Network Neutrality.  Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) have much to gain financially if they can discriminately charge for varied services that are currently free.  Free Press jumped in an

Service Offerings - Activities for Service Portfolio Management

Service Portfolio Management (SPM) is a process that is defined by ITIL best practices in the Service Strategy Lifecycle Stage.  The initiation of activities for Service Portfolio Management is often a result of changes to strategic plans or the identification of a service improvement plan and are triggered by a proposal that must have executive approval to proceed.   For existing services, Service Portfolio Management considers investments that have already been made along with new investments required.  The combined may result in the service being too expensive for what the business will achieve.  Investment decisions will need to be made.  There are many possible procedures and workflows to fulfill all the details of this process but overall the activities can be clearly understood with four high level process activities. Define – In this stage of the process SPM must document and understand existing and new services.  Every proposal for a new or changed service must be accompa

Work Holistically

I TSM best practice frequently suggests working holistically.   This is particularly true when defining a strategy and architecting a design solution but when you think about it, this holistic viewpoint should permeate every investment, improvement, and action in the entire value stream from thought to end of life for every service or product deployed. At a high-level thinking holistically involves looking at things from a people process technology perspective but cannot leave out our partners and suppliers.  No service, process, or functional team stands alone.   Changing one element of a complex system will impact others.  This is a real challenge because no one team can know everything about all aspects of the system.  Therefore, working holistically requires a balance between specialization (functions and departments) and the coordination of complex integrated process activities.  It is only then do we get a clear picture of the lifecycle of a service and any hope of managing

DevOps Testing – Do it Right

One of the key principles of DevOps stresses that we need to fail and fail fast.   A key part that frequently gets omitted.  That key element of the principle is that we fail fast so that we can LEARN. When we learn it is always best to act and to share.   In the spirit of learning and sharing here are some consequences of not performing DevOps testing properly that might help to mitigate some of your challenges. Consequences of NOT doing DevOps testing properly – challenges and thoughts Culture Conflict Culture Conflict can exist between business leaders, developers, QA testers, infrastructure/tools staff, operations staff or any stakeholder in the entire value stream. When there are unclear roles and responsibilities for the testing of a new or changed service or product, a friction begins.  This friction propagates conflict.  Be aware.  Make management of organizational change a priority. Test Escapes (False Positive)           False Positive Test Escapes occur when

Cyber and DDOS – What is it?

We saw in a recent blog from “The Professor” how cybercriminals could create a network of controlled computers to propagate a “BotNet”.   One of the malicious reasons for these powerful networks of control is so that the hacker can perform “Distributed Network Attacks” (DDA’s). We all have experienced this at some level and the outcome is not good for enterprise, corporations, or businesses of any size.  DDA’s create disruption even to our own home operations.   A DDA is sometimes referred to as a Distributed Denial of Service or DDOS attack.  This virus or network of virus’s attacks behind the scenes to take over system resources.  A DDOS could attack switches, hubs, routers. It sometimes will flood the network backbone with nuisance transactions with the intention of sucking up all the bandwidth that might otherwise be necessary for day to day operations. DDOS can bring to a screeching halt the web sites for processing claims, or even shopping cart interfaces for the purchasing o