Whether or not to allow the use of social networking sites at work is a current meme; I seem to be reading about it here there and everywhere. Is allowing the use of these sites really acceptable at work during work?

As part of our ongoing Internet usage policy review we have been evaluating whether it should be allowable to use social networking sites during work hours; and in doing so to try and assess any potential value or benefits to the business that the use of these sites may offer. As part of this investigation I have been spending some of my own time on these sites to explore what is available.

Certainly there is a lot to do and hours can easily be whiled away adding additional applications, customising profiles and finding out what friends are up to whilst challenging them in quizzes, offering them gifts or buying and selling their photos but so far I am really struggling to find business value in allowing access to these sites from the workplace – during work hours.

Whilst it is easier to find value in business oriented networking sites I have real trouble with some of the more social-social sites. I don’t want to be a stick in the mud and of course there is clear value in these sites for example where the aim is to generate leads or advertise a particular product, but generally speaking these sites seem to complement social leisure activities. There is the obvious “a happier workforce is a more productive workforce” argument but from what I have seen so far using social networking sites at work during work simply takes valuable time out of the working day.

Am I wrong here? Can social networks add real business value?

Any number of years ago I would hands down have replied Microsoft when asked which company we rely on for the provision of our business applications. Microsoft has and will likely continue to be an important and integral element of everyday computing in our particular environment for some time to come and as such is currently the predominant provider of IT infrastructure and systems in use within our company.  This reliance has been an evolution over a number of years starting out with Word, then Excel (which had Windows as a bolt-on), Office, Email (from Schedule+) and eventually migrating us from a Novell infrastructure to a Windows domain.

However, when looking forward at the ongoing technology strategy I am noticing a steady shift in focus towards mobility and Internet applications, and this co-incidentally goes hand in hand (or not so co-incidentally) with where some of our information is being stored and processed. We used to have a strict policy of keeping our data on our servers and on our site but the move to embracing mobility and Internet services is slowly shifting some data from the core and new information we are coming to rely on is being born and living it’s life on the Internet.

Until recently our reliance has predominantly been on Windows, Exchange Server, SQL Server, Terminal Services and Microsoft Office. However, as our workforce becomes more mobile and remote working beds in to the hearts and minds of employees other vendor products are being called upon to provide the required functionality.  Whilst there are still elements being handled by others including Firewall and Security, it does seem that Google are becoming an increasingly essential provider of technology for people on the move with services including Search, Mail, Analytics, Reader, Adwords, Docs and Calendar increasing in everyday usage. There are alternatives to everyone of these applications but it feels to me that Google is slowly becoming synonymous with the provision of Internet applications in the way that Word and Windows gave Microsoft its foothold into business. For example, if someone asked me to name a good Web Analytics application there aren’t many that immediately jump to mind.

There is no doubt for me that the future leads to Internet based anytime, anywhere applications but who are we to rely on to offer an integrated accessible and usable Internet platform for our business? And what about our information - the time used to be when everything was ran onsite and stored onsite - are we letting go of our data?

At a passing glance you may think I am leaving my job. My desk drawers are empty, the files on my desk are gone, the various catalogues and magazines that were kept ‘for reference’ have been given a decent send off. The only things on my desk now are a laptop, my pencil case, a memory stick and a phone. Before the collection tub starts getting passed around I should clarify that I am not actually leaving but attempting to go paperless (again). Here we go again. In fact a further point of clarification would be stay that it is not just paperless but clutterless - which involves all those gadgets that have built up, cables that lie around and other items that have been popped down temporarily and ended up staying for a few years.

The project started out of a need to tidy our open plan office in general as it was getting very cluttered from mounds of paperwork that threatened to take over. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for the project though - many people still appear to hold the belief that a messy desk is a busy desk; the more paper you have on your desk the less likely you are to be given more. This may be true, only time will tell. However I have found the deconstruction of my immediate working environment and practices somewhat therapeutic and it has helped refocus on projects that have ended up on the back burner for one reason or another - a spring clean perhaps?

If someone approaches me for a work project with a bundle of paper ready to hand over I tell them that, as the project sponsor, they are best placed to keep hold of all their paper work - anything that is essential for me to use during the project can get scanned in and filed neatly in my computer folder. My folders are beginning to fill up and I can’t help thinking that a natural extension of the project would be to reduce the number of electronic documents floating around.

That said, every morning the post arrives and a pile of paper varying from magazines, literature, flyers, catalogues and seminar invitations is dumped on my desk. I give it a quick flick - if it looks dull then it gets binned. Perhaps, if it has a passing interest, I tear out the relevant bit to read about later (some lucky ones get stuck in my journal). Other things including invoices, quotes, etc are duly scanned and sent to the archive - best hold on to them for the time being at least.

The only paper I have left is my daily journal/work planner which I still havent found the nerve to dismiss just yet. It is surprising as there are many tools around me that would perform the job admirably but for some reason I just cant let it go. As I look at my desk now the irritating thing is the number of cables and wires, to which end I have replaced my mouse with a wireless mouse (a Microsoft wireless presenter mouse 8000) and the keyboard is next. I still prefer a wired network connection to a wireless one and there is very little I can do about the phone and various power cables but so far the project is going reasonably well.

From time to time I receive email communications from recruitment agencies telling me something like “Hey, are you looking for a [place your job title here]? - we have this great person on our books and have attached their CV for your perusal”. Now, I don’t know about you but I get a lot of unsolicited electronic mail (I call it SPAM) and what do I do with it? I delete it. I cannot begin to recount how many times I have told users not to open unsolicited electronic email - and certainly not those with attachments.

When we are looking for a new employee we tend to prefer to create our own job specification then approach agencies as appropriate - I cannot imagine a time when I would call someone in for an interview when we have no requirement to fill a position. I would also be surprised at anyone turning up for an interview based on an unsolicited emailing of their CV. I can understand if a person has sent out their own CV with a covering letter (preferably in the post) to a number of companies they have an interest in working for or even if we are actively working with an agency to fill a position but when there is no requirement then it does seem a little strange. I wonder how long it will be before we get offered ‘Buy One Get One Free’ candidates?

If you are signed up with a recruitment agency then check they do not send out your CV (or parts of your CV) unsolicited - unless of course you are happy for your details to be sent out willy nilly to any and everyone who may (or may not) have a passing interest. If that is the case then you may be better off posting it on MySpace or Facebook. Oh and by the way, if my CV ever turns up in your mailbox unsolicited - then please let me know about it!

We are disappearing in a quagmire of data collection and analysis. It seems to me that time spent collecting information, analysing information, identifying trends and reporting upon information is time that could often be better spent.

I agree that there is a place for data collection and analysis but so often these days much time and effort is expended (and not to mention the cost) duplicating information that already exists - or even worse, producing information for the sake of information.

For example, where is the value in creating a localised analysis of time and attendance information in a spreadsheet when that information is already available from a perfectly good time and attendance system? Is it worth keeping daily records of departmental throughput so that various patterns and trends can be collected when the department is provided with a daily plan by the planning team - who already analyse the throughput and have a much bigger picture?

Information should be collected once, appropriately, accurately and reliably.

There needs to be a line between proactively solving problems as and when they happen and the increasing habit of reactively assessing, tracking and discussing figures in data sets. If more effort was placed on solving problems as and when they arise (and learning from the problems) the need for much of the analysis would be cancelled out. Very few people I have met have any formal statistical or probability training and yet given access to something as accessible as a spreadsheet within minutes you can expect a cool list of information possibly complemented by a very nice looking chart - but can we be sure this information is valid for making crucial business decisions?

Ad-hoc data collection and analysis leads to problems with data consistency, relevance, persistence, backup, and validity and needs careful consideration and a real grasp of the requirements before formatting cell colours in a spreadsheet. I have seen so many spreadsheets that are being used to make business decisions that have formulaic errors or inconsistent data upon them and increasingly I am being asked if there are ways of interconnecting this information (the very thought of this makes me shudder) - did I mention we have an ERP?

Information should be collected once, appropriately, accurately and reliably.

Perhaps I should keep a list of all the irrelevant or inconsistent data analysis spreadsheets and attempt to identify potential trends based on this information?

Sometimes I am told by users that these spreadsheets are essential and I always tell them to imagine what would happen if they changed jobs and/or left their current position. How many of those spreadsheets would ever be looked at again? I can tell you from my own experience of dealing with leaving employees that very very few, if any, are ever continued once a person changes jobs - the majority of them are archived then left to fester in their own analysis in the great data skip in the sky.

Our power problem deepen as the power to our building blinked off again this morning for just over one hour. The best we could do was limp ahead on impulse power to safely shut all the servers down in a safe way. Eventually the power man with the special finger turned up and flicked a switch and the power blinked back into life. The finger-crossing routine of restarting everything began in earnest. Finally, the userbase could get back into their emails and documents and not a moment too soon - that was of course - until  the power went off again - and the man with the magic finger had already left.

The problem this time however was the backup battery power had taken a severe beating and the dreaded blinking lights of the UPS and that annoying beeping noise meant we had to shut everything down again in double-quick time. No time for niceties this time around, if a user had not saved their work it was too late, the servers have to come down and they have to do it now - no limping ahead on impulse power for us this time round. Not even venting the core into deep space would help this time - even if we could figure out how to do that without health and safety jumping up and down.

It seems somewhat ironic that the last two machines that can be shut down are the file server and the domain controller. This is ironic for two reasons. Firstly, they are the two key machines in use handling domain functions and managing the all important data store. Secondly, because the battery backup power completely drained just as we got to them (we had shut down twelve other servers in time) and they simply went off. Sure enough, around an hour later we crossed our fingers and they blinked back into life - we had gotten away with it this time.

The problem we face now is that if the power trips for a third time there is barely enough backup battery power to shut down one server, let alone fourt…

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).

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?

For some time now I’ve been working on a server consolidation project in our environment (Virtualisation Update … Web Server). This has been using virtualisation technology which seems to be in vogue at the moment. So, instead of a number of tower based servers we now have just a few HP DL380 64-bit servers running a virtual images which on the whole is working great. Rebooting machines is much quicker, allocating resources is easier, we are getting better value out of our machines and backing up virtual images gives us a sense of security that we could only dream of five years ago. It is also becoming easier to get all the machine images onto the same software release, see Upgrading Windows 2003 Server SP2 to R2.

One problem we have discovered however, especially being a 24 hour operation, is that when certain patches and updates have been installed on a host server it still needs rebooting which now takes down half a dozen servers at a time instead of just the one. The added trouble is that the virtual images receive updates too so now they often get rebooted twice, once for their own update and once for the host update. I imagine a good software and patch update methodology is the answer to this dilemma but it’s still surprising that with all this technology at hand - that a machine still needs to be switched off and on again in order to process an update.

2008 is becoming an interesting time in the field of technology and I’m starting to get swamped (in a good way) with whitepapers, case studies and beta programs. It seems that at every turn there are announcements and launches of new systems, beta tests and new technologies. From the emails I am receiving and news sites I am reading it would seem that Microsoft are leading the way with an almost weekly announcement of something or another.

There was SP1 for Vista (I’ve still held off putting Vista on my laptop even though I have Ultimate sitting in my drawer!), then an announcement of Service Pack 3 for XP, news of Office Live Workspace and Office Live Small Business. Windows Server 2008 is out of wraps with its eight different versions (which caused Monk and Norris some confusion) and Internet Explorer 8 is out on Beta. Silverlight has had a big upgrade and it may even be that Apple might allow an Exchange push client on their shiny iPhone as Apple iPhone and Microsoft Exchange have a cuddle. Now even Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is out on release!

It is getting to that time when, as technology professionals, we need to take a deep breath then decide where to start !