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Power to the people? To the computers would be nice!

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Posted in Management on April 28, 2008 at 5:36 pm

I have just finished restarting the computer system after yet another power outage. I have lost count how many power issues we have experienced with our local on-site sub-station (not to mention the number of hours lost), which apparently when installed was going to bring ‘huge benefits’. I keep telling the powers that be that they are playing with fire as equipment really doesn’t take kindly to regular power failures (and then sudden power startups) but the nagging problems remain and praying the power will only be off for a short time doesn’t seem to work anymore.

I have previously written about these power outages (Reflecting on the power outage) which have been going on for over a year now and have to reflect upon the latest bout in terms of the technology we have - which I will probably do in the car later (so if you pass someone on the roadside banging his head on the steering wheel it is probably me). Souping up the batteries on the UPS helps a little but they are there primarily to offer a brief window of extended use and to give enough time to shut everything down safely. Some of the previous reflections have been:

•  Being more vigilant with back-ups and recovery procedures
• A better view of the systems from my desk (so I don’t waste valuable power time trudging around to various computers and devices)
• Reliable mobile warning messages when the power goes off (and comes back on again) - primarily so I can get on with my life - still not found one!
• Emergency kit to deal with system issues - getting bigger all the time (the kit not me)
• Providing some emergency power to hot desks (so at least one or two users can get essential information for a while) - hooray done - but how many desk is enough?

At least the power is back up now and the systems are online so I can go and get a coffee out of the machine (hopefully that will not trip the power - fzzzt).

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When spam should not be spam

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Posted in E-mail on April 14, 2008 at 11:14 am

Following up from my previous post When spam is not spam. Dare I say that we think we may have started getting spam under control. Fighting the ever increasing influx of spam (Guess What … SPAM is on the increase) is becoming a hefty challenge but we have come up with a combined approach that is starting to work. This combines an internal employee white-list with a trading partner white-list, a managed spam keyword black-list, an internally managed keyword black-list, a virus checker and several other scans all built into a multi-tier incoming email analysis system. It took some time to set up but the number of spam emails that we know we can delete automatically has increased whilst the number of false positives has dramatically reduced. In real terms, instead of having to trawl through almost ten thousand quarantined emails per day it is down to just over one thousand.

Mind you we now have a new problem. In addition to dealing with “spam that is not spam” we now have to find a way to defend against emails that “should not be spam but are spam”. Imagine this scenario, the internal email recipient is one the white-list, the trading partner is on the white-list, the attachment is an accepted format and the email passes the keywords check but it has a series of joke images and text that then get flooded around our business internally? How do we deal with that? This stuff gets stored in multiple places, archived, backed up, printed out, before being forwarded to ‘x’ number of additional recipients and don’t get me started on those “forward this email to ten of your friends” e-mails. What is that answer? Ask our big important customers to stop sending us spam? I can just imagine the conversation:

Customer: “We will forward our order by email shortly”

Us: “Thank you very much, oh and by the way…”

Customer: “Yes?”

Us: “Would you please tell your staff to stop sending us spam”

Customer: “What?”

Us: “Yes, we don’t mind the nice order but please stop barraging us with all the other rubbish”

It is a surprise that there are large well known companies out there that seemingly have very little policies on dealing with spam sent by their employees.

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Seeing green

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Posted in Management on April 3, 2008 at 9:38 am

I was reading a post by Dennis Howlett “The state of green, 2008” which discusses a recent report “The State of Green Business, 2008“. The aim of the report is to explore the question “How are U.S. businesses doing in their quest to be greener and more environmentally responsible?” and offers a set of indicators to monitor and track progress. These indicators cover areas such as e-waste, energy efficiency, office space and power use and I found that it really helped to put into perspective all of the areas which can be improved.

As an exercise I spent some time reflecting on the information in the report and examining our IT operation and was surprised to see we were already conducting a number of green activities without necessarily realising it at the time - you can read about these in my post “technology and the environment - Green IT“. Obviously these are simply a starting point and the report highlights a number of areas where we might be able to make a greener impact.

Have you started to specifically address green as an issue and if so what activities are your technology department doing to help your business become greener?