E-Oasis Alerts

IT (Information Technology) projects stall for lots of reasons. They also fail spectacularly. Worse, they don’t fail soon enough and organizations bloat staffing in pursuit of a project that should be killed. It’s also common to see unqualified resources stumbling through what an expert can finish with little effort.

Nothing Concentrates the Mind Like a Hanging

A sense of urgency is often missing in IT projects. Milestones are missed with regularity and it’s often unclear who is responsible for deliverables. The expectation that a Google search will yield the technical recipe often substitutes for seeking out experienced help.

It’s not uncommon to hear some imaginative reasoning for why a project missed a deadline or failed to accomplish the objective. Most of these reasons are just fabrications. Sometimes the simple steps such as having clear consequences (the hanging) and an immovable deadline (at dawn) are not sufficient to provoke any meaningful results.

Now what?

It’s no secret that most people inherently avoid conflicts. They know what they should do, but inexplicably can not confront the situation before them. It’s no different with a technology project but there is a twist. You may not be able to overcome the imaginative technical fabrications in addition to confronting the individuals involved.

It’s time to seek out a peer review of the project and place a technical expert in direct conflict with your in-house resources.

What happens next will be the real test of your own leadership.

Assessments, General, Lessons Learned, Technology

I recently attended the HIMSS09 Healthcare conference in Chicago.  Most of you know that Healthcare is receiving almost $20 Billion in incentives from the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act).  To claim that stimulus, participants must demonstrate the mostly undefined “Meaningful Use” criteria.

Can We Afford Point Solutions?

The Vendor interest at HIMSS09 was apparent, however the physician reaction to the stimulus is lukewarm at best.  A first year payment of $18K in 2011 or 2012 to the physician practice is hardly an economic incentive to deploy a point solution that is unlikely to integrate with anything else.

Speaking with CIOs after the CIO Forum in Chicago, the overall view expressed was one of apathy towards the stimulus changing priorities within their organizations. Some spoke candidly that the stimulus will not affect the current IT initiatives already underway in their organizations. Others wondered if their organizations would be able to avoid the penalty phase of the ARRA.

What Problem Are We Trying To Solve?

Clearly, we’re not trying to fix healthcare with these incentive payments. In fact some view that this program will worsen the healthcare crisis. Absent from HIMSS09 were discussions about a revolution in healthcare with more of the same glacial progress expected in the coming years.

Does Healthcare’s Journey Continue Glacially Down The Same Path?

What do you think? Is the inertia so great that healthcare will not be able to overcome its own coefficient of drag?

General, Lessons Learned

As an electrical engineer growing up in the power industry, I was fortunate to be around much of the electrical power infrastructure that most of us take for granted. From coal-fired power plants, hydroelectric, and gasification, I also had the good fortune to learn about high voltage transmission, substations and switching, and SCADA first-hand.

It’s obvious that a major shift is underway for electrical generation in North America. Wyoming, specifically, deserves closer inspection.  Let’s connect the available dots to understand why Wheatland Wyoming is positioned to benefit from wind energy development.

Dot #1: Wind! Wheatland, Wyoming  sits within the windiest point in the nation according to the NREL map, but developers are stuck without available transmission capacity.

Dot #2: Trifecta! Not insignificant is the environmental, land use, and siting issues with building new transmission lines.  The fact that Wheatland has the greatest access to existing transmission corridors and the fewest environmental conflicts gives them the trifecta of wind, transmission, and environmental attributes to thrive in the new energy economy.

The Wyoming Infrastructure Authority is actively promoting the Wyoming Colorado Intertie project to find a market for Wyoming wind.  This tie starts at the Laramie River Station just outside of Wheatland.

Dot #3: Transmission! Basin Electric, who operates the Laramie River Station,  already has a transmission line from Gillette at the Dry Forks power plant to Colorado  planned.

Dot #4: Market Access! Xcel Energy  actively participates  in the High Plains Express transmission line  planning. This line starts at Dave Johnson and connects at the Laramie River Station and is expected to bring wind power from Wyoming and Eastern Colorado and New Mexico solar to demand-needy areas.

Every wind developer knows that the closer their project is to a transmission corridor and a major substation to connect to, the more economically viable it becomes for development.

Dot #5: Infrastructure! Wheatland has the existing infrastructure to be the Forward Operating Base for all types of wind development including construction. The town has already benefited from significant improvements in schools, roads, and services during the 1977 to 1980 construction of the $1.6 Billion Laramie River Station (LRS) power plant just outside of Wheatland.

Dot #6: Stimulus! At a recent conference in Denver regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Nick Muller (Executive Director of the Colorado Independent Energy Association)  stated that Wyoming Wind is ahead of Colorado in areas of wind development. Approximately $3.2 Billion in loan guarantees is ear-marked from the ARRA for the Western Area Power Administration. Transmission line improvements are high on everyone’s list of projects for the Western States.

Dot #7: Stimulus Again! Part of the ARRA includes money to demonstrate carbon sequestering. Basin Electric already has proposed a large-scale carbon capture demonstration project to be done at its Antelope Valley Station. If successful, the implications for Basin’s other plants including Laramie River Station are obvious. Wheatland will benefit from a huge investment in carbon capture at Laramie River Station.

Dot #8: Training and Education! Laramie Community College, located in Cheyenne, WY has been designated as a regional training center for Wind Energy. The University of Wyoming, in Laramie had previously announced in 2008 the building of the UW Wind Energy Research Center.

You Better Hurry

The locals are organized and understand what is at stake. A few of the Wind Energy Associations include:

• Bordeaux Wind Energy Association
• Glendo Wind Energy Association
• Slater Wind Energy Association

It’s clear that Wheatland is sitting favorably within this wind corridor with its nearby Laramie River Station figuring to be the next likely major  interconnection point  for wind energy transmission and the town already possesses the infrastructure to take on the coming boom in wind development.

Platte County is Capable of 2,000 megawatts of Wind Energy

Early adopters will snatch up the available inventory of housing and industrial buildings while later arrivals will spur construction projects. To get an idea of the scope, some estimates place 100-200 construction jobs per 100 megawatts built and 2-6 permanent jobs for the same metric.  For Platte County, that translates into 40 to 100 permanent families and a staggering 2,000 to 4,000 construction families.

All the dots lead to Wheatland as a primary geographical focal point for the new energy economy.

About the Author:

Blaine Berger is the President of E-Oasis, a business and technology veteran with 25 years of experience. You can contact Blaine via e-mail at blaine@e-oasis.com or follow @eoasis on Twitter. You may also leave a comment on this blog.

Anti-Threat, General, Networks

Creative Foam, a manufacturing company, has announced plans to open a Longmont, Colorado facility. Among their products are portions of wind turbine blades that Vestas and other wind turbine companies use for their 100-plus long wind turbine blades.  Creative Foam chose Longmont to be near Vestas who is investing heavily in Colorado.

Welcome to Longmont, Creative Foam. We’re glad you’re here!

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General

This is going to be one of those mostly technical posts to help others who are struggling with using PHP-Soap to access Exchange 2007 web services. Apologies to regular readers who are not familiar with PHP and Exchange 2007. If you find this helpful, please leave a comment below.

Start at the Beginning

To get started, you’ll need to read Erik Cederstand’s HOWTO talk SOAP with Exchange and get the fundamental stuff working.  For some common problems, also check out the ongoing thread http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/showthread.php?p=171001 . Additionally, the MSDN reference at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx is where you need to educate yourself on Exchange Web Services, XML, and error messages.

Know what XML you are forming

The Microsoft Developer’s Network is the place to start for XML examples. Here’s the XML we’ll form for our CreateItem example:

/*

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?> <CreateItem xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance” xmlns:xsd=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema” MessageDisposition=”SendAndSaveCopy”>

<SavedItemFolderId xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages”> <DistinguishedFolderId Id=”sentitems” xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types” /> </SavedItemFolderId>

<Items xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages”>

<Message xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types”> <ItemClass>IPM.Note</ItemClass>

<Subject>YOUR SUBJECT</Subject>

<Body BodyType=”Text”>YOUR BODY TEXT</Body>

<ToRecipients> <Mailbox> <EmailAddress>SOMEONE@e-oasis.com</EmailAddress> </Mailbox>

</ToRecipients> </Message> </Items> </CreateItem>

*/

Use PHP-Soap to form the XML request

Debugging Soap errors can be frustrating, but if you “stare and compare” against your XML you can typically find the problem. Here’s the PHP code to form the XML request. Note how the attribute of BodyType is passed within the Body tag using Body['BodyType'] and the content of the Body tag is passed with Body[_] = “YOUR BODY TEXT”; .

//CreateItem Sends e-mail through Exchange 2007 $CreateItem->MessageDisposition=”SendAndSaveCopy”; $CreateItem->SavedItemFolderId->DistinguishedFolderId->Id = “inbox”; $CreateItem->Items->Message = array();

for($i = 0; $i < 1; $i++) {

$CreateItem->Items->Message[$i]->ItemClass = “IPM.Note”; $CreateItem->Items->Message[$i]->Subject = “YOUR SUBJECT“; $CreateItem->Items->Message[$i]->Body[_] = “YOUR BODY TEXT“; $CreateItem->Items->Message[$i]->Body['BodyType'] = “Text“; $CreateItem->Items->Message[$i]->ToRecipients->Mailbox->EmailAddress = “SOMEONE@e-oasis.com“;

$CreateItem->Items->Message[$i]->IsRead = “false”;

}

$result = $client->CreateItem($CreateItem);

Was this helpful?

If you found this helpful, we’d appreciate a comment or other PHP-Soap examples that can help others.  Until PHP-Soap access to Exchange 2007 becomes more common-place, these examples will be huge time-savers for everyone.

E-Mail blaine@e-oasis.com or twitter @e0asis

General, Technology

It’s difficult to write a post about Twitter without defining it. The problem is that Twitter is a work in progress. None of these elements will be explored in this post:

1. Will Twitter find a way to make money? (Apologies to Fred Wilson)
2. Is Twitter useful for <insert favorite use>?
3. How does Twitter <help><hurt> me <my business>?
4. What the heck is Twitter anyway?
5. I <hate><love><don’t care about> Twitter.
6. You should not use  Twitter for <insert-your-favorite-rule>.

Ignore the fail whale, the fanboys/girls,  and the crowd-based do’s and don’ts. Even Captain Obvious can see that Twitter is a work in progress as evidenced by the good folks at Twitter explaining they will scale first and seek revenue second.

Suppose instead you conduct this thought experiment:

Every Person on the planet with a wireless phone or computer is a Twitter user.

And these millions of Twitter users are all talking at once all in the same room.  Some in small groups and some in large. Some organized and most ad-hoc. Some talk is polite, some is rude, and most is seemingly without context.

What then becomes important when you realize these conversations, occurring in real time and possessing the possibility of crowd consensus, are about your brand?

About your industry? About something you care about? Maybe even about you personally?

What becomes important once Twitter scales?

What will matter when the discordant din from Twitterville is loud, overwhelming, and impossible to manage with the current tools?

Listening.

Not eavesdropping, but really Listening.

Listening at the flash-point of need.

Responding is an entirely different post.

But Listening is something you can start right now. This reason alone may not be compelling enough to compete for your time at this point in Twitter’s development.

Maybe there’s plenty of time and you can relax while Twitter is the rock your competitors break themselves against.

Or maybe others have the Listening part down and they’ve moved on to Responding?

Diagnosis Twitter: Relevant, not yet at scale, and ignored at the expense of your brand.

What’s your story about listening at the flash-point of need?

####

General, Lessons Learned, Technology

It’s no wonder. With so much hype at the intersection of the economy and all manner of magic that is supposed to save you money, it’s easy to simply dismiss the cloud as all hat and no cattle.  The Cloud is Loud and Proud and not going to diminish for some time.

After reading Randy Bias’s post on Cloudcenters from GoGrid, I have to admit I’m rooting for the cloud. What stands out in the GoGrid description is the understanding of the Enterprise IT zeitgeist and the real-life concerns that must be overcome to use a cloudcenter.

I still believe there are two major impediments that bar the Cloud from any widespread adoption by the Enterprise:

1. Performance – Users want good response time. Most Enterprises can’t afford the bandwidth required to locate their computing off-premise (i.e. “In The Cloud”) and still deliver a satisfactory user experience.  Something has to change (cheaper bandwidth or different approach for desktop to application computing).
2. Security – Corporations can’t even keep their own on-premise data properly classified or secured. “Encryption at Rest” is the natural minimum requirement. Which leads you back to Performance.

Keep your eyes on GoGrid and read the Cloudcenters post right now to understand how a Cloudcenter looks remarkably similar to your existing data center.

Source: GoGrid’s Cloudcenter

DataCenters, General, Networks, Technology

GE Energy is relocating to Longmont at 1800 Nelson Road. The company, with about 180 employees,  makes control systems for power plants, oil and gas refineries as well as other equipment in the energy field. The move-in date was reported in the March time-frame and activity is evident as contractors prepare the building.

Welcome to Longmont, GE Energy!

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General, Welcome

Hopefully, none of my blog visitors are “weak sauce”! Just remember it’s not possible to be a SuperStar without some weak sauce.

General, Lessons Learned

Enterprises are cutting operational expenses for 2009. Common expense reduction items cited include:

• Eliminate Travel
• Eliminate Training
• Cut Contractors
• Layoff Employees
• Extended shutdown during the Holidays
• Eliminate employee reimbursements for cell phones and Internet access
• Eliminate trade show exhibits
• Reduce Management bonuses
• Reduce Staff salaries
• Stop Hiring
• Consolidate or eliminate physical locations

However, even an arm-chair economist knows that cutting expenses alone does not ensure business survival. Now that the latest job loss numbers are out, the acceleration effect those job losses have on confidence and other industries will be telling. This effect will be fueled by media-led fear-based metaphors and inaction by those watching the panic parade.

After you’ve cut the expense side of the equation ( one hint: Kill your Weak IT Projects Right Now), what are you doing about the demand side of the equation?

The C-Suite can not legitimately hide behind “unexpected weaker demand” and fail to act.  By now, who doesn’t expect weaker demand?

The question is, what are you doing to stimulate the demand for your products and services given the economic downdraft?

General, Lessons Learned