first-drafts.com
Writing in the Raw
In the News – Press release from CMP Media about my joining IT Architect in 2005
Aug 17th
IT Architect also introduced a new columnist, Michel Labelle, who will pen the “First Draft” column, starting with the September issue. Labelle is a network infrastructure manager with more than 20 years of industry experience.
IT leading the way… Ha
May 29th
You would think that as an IT manager, I would have a lot of say into the technology that makes my company tick. Unfortunately the reality is that most of the large systems you will ever implement as CIO or IT Manager, you will have very little say in. This week was a great example.
IT Project Management
May 28th
Project management is one of those disciplines that I really can’t stand as an IT manager. Its not that I don’t see the value, it is that the discipline itself was never conceived to manage IT projects. Project management and the whole PMBOK, is based around the construction industry and was imported into the IT arena to deal
The Virtualized Dynamic Data Center Conference Vancouver
May 28th
Here’s some notes from today’s Cisco, VMware and NetApps joint presentation on virtualization and cloud computing. Killing the silos It is critical that as IT managers that we understanding that silos in our organization can be both good or bad. When looking at the typical IT environment, we can easily recognize that many of our
The future of wireless cellular
May 28th
The future of wireless is green??? At a decidedly lackluster hockey game last night, I had the pleasure of talking to my favorite telecommunications engineers. I won’t mention his name or his organization since it wasn’t an official interview, but I want to pass on some of his ideas that struck home with me on how
Digitization and cost management
May 28th
Andrew McAfee over at Harvard Business Reviewdiscusses an interesting point on how the IT industry is unlike any previous industry. The core point being that the IT industry is the only industry where prices have continuously declined over time. The graphs he presents are pretty revealing. There is a subtle point about halfway down
Public Safety Canada Daily Infrastructure Report
May 28th
Another of those great resources that I need to dig into every once in a while. The Federal government has a fantastic Public Safety website with a lot of resources that come in handy when you are trying to build a business case for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity. The first thing I recommend is checking
Redbooks
May 28th
Every once in a while a staff member will ask me one of those questions where at one point in my life I might have remembered the answer, but for some reason today I just can’t. Sure I could do a few Google queries and give them an answer, but sometimes being a good coach
Should we get out of the infrastructure business?
May 28th
Brian Madden posed an interesting question on his blog. Five years from now, will a 200-person company need any servers on site? This is an interesting debate, but I would like to look one step further. In a world where we can literally have everything in the cloud, do we really need to keep investing
Consumerization of IT
May 28th
One of the hardest things to take on for most IT departments is the continued consumerization of the core infrastructure technology we consume. Gone are the days when devices were primarily built for the corporate entity. Manufactures realized early that gaming PCs were replaced sooner than CAD PCs and ultimately there was a bigger market.