Technical Advice

Green IT is one of the new industry buzzwords that has come along with a recession, an environmentally-minded president, and an increasing awareness that "green" is economical. More efficient allocation in resources leads to a better bottom line. Virtualization is making such allocation increasingly easier for businesses of all sizes to adopt. At the same time, recycling options for old hardware are expanding, and the necessity of procuring new hardware is diminishing, or at least extending out on a longer timeline.

There is an interesting article on MIT's Technology Review today about a project which has used the lightweight OS code base developed for the XO laptop to run older desktop PCs with better performance than would be possible for "modern" operating systems such as OS X or Windows.

A lot of people forget that the catch phrase for the green movement is just "Recycle"... it's actually "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle" and it's intended to be interpreted in that order. Start off using less, make better use of what you do have, and only then, if neither of those actions are applicable, should you actually recycle equipment.

Many organizations are locked into patterns of reliance on the latest and greatest operating systems, although the functionality of those systems is arguably equivalent to older software in many situations (even on the newest and fastest hardware). These organizations have bought into the industry-approved upgrade cycle and don't see the use for older hardware that can't run their standard software.

The thing is, though, much of that standard software can be run in some way, even using older hardware, if one can reconsider how and where it is being run and look at it from a strictly functional perspective.

The answer, of course, is to use a terminal services environment, with a single powerful server handling the heavy lifting of software operation, and the older machines as dumb terminals. This isn't perceived as practical for many organizations because they still insist on maintaining smart client operating systems on those desktops, even when their primary use is as terminals. From a certain perspective, this makes sense; if you are a Windows shop, and you want centralized management, then you reduce your costs by maintaining a single Windows version across your platforms. It's nonsensical, however, when those platforms are simply used to access web or terminal services; client management is only a serious issue when expensive and complex clients need to be maintained for desktop operations. A cheap dumb terminal is fire and forget: drop it in place, run it into the ground, replace it with another if it fries. There is nothing to get infected, stolen, or corrupted... what difference does client management make?

My old favorite for re-purposing older machines into dumb terminals was the PXES Universal Linux thin client boot disk. I see that the project has since gone mainstream, however, and has non-competes with other providers; they are now recommending a project called cult, which looks similar but which I haven't had a chance to try out yet. Cult, PXES, or similar open-source thin-client distributions allow old hardware to be repurposed as a terminal client as easily as popping a CDROM in the drive and turning on the power.

The old machine can be configured to boot directly to an RDP based terminal session; the user logs in and runs everything without even knowing the difference between the Windows login they have just made and the conventional, but more expensive, thick-client version they are already used to. In most cases, the boot time is faster than anything possible with a modern smart-client PC, even running on the oldest hardware. What a deal... use old hardware, improve performance and your user experience at the same time!

Of course, if you are willing to look at web-based alternatives to your Windows applications, it gets even easier. There's no need to set up a Terminal Server when someone else has already procured and configured the servers for you (as have all SaaS providers). In those cases, a lightweight, specialized distribution such as xPUD, Xubuntu, or Damn Small Linux can either be installed to an old, small hard drive, or booted just like cult from a CD or USB stick, putting the user at a rudimentary desktop with web access in a matter of seconds. All the heavy lifting other operating systems do is unnecessary when all your processing is happening on the other end of an Internet connection. Firefox is a safe, stable browser to run on a lightweight, impenetrable, disposable Linux platform to access those services. When Google finally releases Chrome for Linux, a browser specially built for running web-based applications, the case will be even easier to make.

So hold off on your trip to the local recycling facility; slide a fresh CD into the drive and simply recycle your machines in place.

Steve Rubel suggested a few weeks ago that the technology blogging community has gotten lazy and inbred, rehashing one another's ideas and putting up quick, short, thoughtless posts instead of well-written, well-researched, insightful pieces. He calls the resulting conglomeration "The Lazysphere" and has this to say about it:

The Lazysphere - a working definition - is a group of bloggers who I won't name by name, but you can spot them a mile away. Rather than create new ideas or pen thoughtful essays, they simply glom on to the latest news with another "me too" blog post. Their goal is largely to land on Techmeme and sometimes digg - perhaps Google in an archival/Long Tail perspective. These sites - and Twitter too - have perpetuated a lot of lackadaisical writing. The Attention Crash is another factor at work here. People don't have as much time to think.

It may be that comments and responses to his post disprove it, or perhaps they simply reflect those accused pulling up their pants and acting as if nothing is amiss, but either way they amount to fine reading and an interesting snapshot of the various perspectives on the matter.

I have my own perspective, as well, evolving from the slight guilty feeling I got reading the post. Although I believe he hasn't covered the motives adequately, I certainly feel at times as though I contribute to the phenomena more than combat it. The only thing is, I'm not sure if it's good, bad as Rubel suggest, or simply the inevitable evolution of the medium.

There are certainly times when I spot interesting news and slap up a post without putting the time or research it deserves into it. The motivation, however, is not to get dugg or boosted up Techmeme, or Googled; there are a more complex variety of factors at work, some of which are "selfish" in that same light, others of which simply seem to be implicit to blogging.

First, and perhaps foremost, is the money. That's not an issue on this blog, which is simply information for clients and others interested in the business of IT management. I am, however, paid to author another blog and there is a minimum weekly posting requirement which I am insufficiently blessed with new ideas to fill wholly from that font. But the posts have to go up nonetheless, and so if someone else spots something interesting, it becomes my fodder as well.

Here is where I am not sure this is such a terrible thing. I am, perhaps, failing to come up with anything new and original, but I am at least commenting on and offering a different perspective to the original material. This has always struck me as a strength of the system, not a deficiency. Blogging is closer to conversation than journalism; every line in a conversation need not be brilliant in order for the discussion as a whole to elicit new and interesting information.

Which brings me to the second factor, which is timeliness. Conversations fall apart if too much time passes between lines. Whether this is a function of Techmeme or not, the fact is that if you don't put your opinion out there early, it's not going to be a part of that conversation. Witness this post, nearly a month later; it's better than even money that no one who participated in that original discussion around Rubel's post will read this, let alone reply to it, including Rubel himself. If this is simply a fact of conversations, and blogging is seen largely as a conversation, then it seems silly to chastise people for it.

The third factor is an outgrowth of the second, which is simply, time. Although I get paid to blog, it's not paying the mortgage; I think that's true for most bloggers, and so this is something we do in our spare time. Spare time, at least for me, is in pretty short supply. And to be honest, my most original thinking goes to paying clients... I'm not afraid to share what I am thinking with readers and the public, but if there is competitive advantage to be had in a thought, it's likely to go into a discrete e-mail, rather than a public post. And then there is the pressure to post sufficiently frequently to not look dead. I think I barely meet that requirement here as it is, and I'm certainly not doing it with posts matching the caliber of those deep-thinkers and prolific posters on Rubel's "Thinkers" list.

Although these points may sound somewhat defensive, I don't necessarily disagree with the core point, which is that a lot of blog posts seem redundant and ill-conceived to me, too. I, too, admire and envy those on Rubel's list, and would that all of us were more like them. I think my point is not that I think Rubel's accusation is necessarily wrong, but perhaps that it's inevitable, and in some ways it may even be desirable.

That said, I'll try to raise my own level of discourse as well (which doesn't mean every post will be a gem; sometimes I just want to point out stuff that is interesting, not comment on it, just as Steve does with his link posts... which, in fact, comprise the majority of his blog posts as well).

So the whole Microsoft WGA fiasco last week got me thinking--if one of the major arguments for using client-side installed packaged software applications is that they will work for you whether you have Internet connectivity or not, then what exactly is up with leashing those applications and their functionality to the Internet anyway? Isn't this the worst of both worlds--bulky, difficult to update, easily superseded, expensive software that has the same risk of disappearing when the provider's server goes down as does the lightweight, frequently updated, and easily upgraded Software as a Service (SaaS) competition?

Windows Genuine Advantage is a concept (and a name--how many lies can you pack into three words?) that bugs me anyway and so it's easy to pick on, and frankly the outage wasn't all that severe as such things go. But as Gartner analyst Michael Silver says in the above article, "A system that's not totally reliable really should not be so punitive." And he has hit the nail on the head--it's not just this recent server problem that makes it unreliable, either, it has a history of false positives and generally problematic side-effects, and yet Microsoft has been upping the ante for failing to pass the check steadily over the past couple of years. Although they have begun to get into the SaaS (or "Software plus Services" as they like to term the offerings) market of late, and have demonstrated in the past a startling capacity for turning the company quickly on its axis to pursue new opportunities, they currently have quite a lot riding on making their traditional applications an attractive competitor to newer, more nimble SaaS offerings. It wouldn't seem on the face of things to be in their best interest to make those traditional applications less and less compelling by harnessing them to some of the same complexities and challenges that SaaS faces.

I would like to think that someone over there in Redmond has run the numbers on all this, and found that the reduction in piracy from WGA implementation will save them more than the alienation of existing customers and the inconvenience of the implementation will convince people to seek out alternatives from their competitors, but I suspect that isn't the case. Instead, it seems like they are simply coasting on their market position (which may be a viable, if short-term, strategy) and doing what they think they can get away with as the de facto standard maker. But issues like this are exactly the sort of thing that will chip away at that position.

In a larger sense--although this is probably a topic for another article--one has to wonder if Bill's impending departure, and current detachment, is causing the company to lose focus, and to make mistakes which it might not have under his more attentive guidance.

For the moment, however, it simply serves as another question you have to ask yourself when you are selecting line of business software--are traditional off-the-shelf software packages really any more dependable than their Internet-based alternatives anymore?

The post a couple of weeks ago on the idea of using iPhones for business applications provoked some interesting follow-up thoughts that I thought I would put up for some point/counter-point action:

Without going into detail on the selection of the relatively slow and encumbered EDGE mobile networking solution for Internet access away from WiFi locations, it's been pointed out that OWA on Safari isn't really a practical alternative to dedicated mail apps when web access is so slow. Of course, there are ways to use the built-in mail app with Exchange, but it's true that we were proposing OWA as the primary solution.

There have also been a number of complaints about the typing speed using touchscreen keyboard, most recently illustrated by a study comparing more conventional QWERTY micro-keyboards of the sort on Blackberry devices by User Centric out of Chicago. Larry Dignan has a good commentary on the study up on his blog now at ZDNet.

There have also been some performance problems, with various people reporting system freezes and in some cases UI issues that prevent such basic functionality as being able to answer an incoming call. And of course, with complex devices come crashes.

Then too there have been complaints about the oddly recessed miniplug jack that effectively presents some third-party headsets from jacking in. That's not a big deal for some users but there are executives we know who have their favorite mobile headset effectively surgically implanted on one ear, and as a matter of comfort and preference, it's not really practical for them to make a change in that department.

For the most part these (with the possible exception of the EDGE network speed issue) are 1.0 release problems which have a good opportunity to be corrected, and as was mentioned in the original article, we're not going to recommend something that just came out without getting a better picture of these real-world performance issues. But just as we would wait to see how they play out, they also give Apple an opportunity to come up with fixes.

We've been kicking around the idea of adding iPhones to our recommended SMB mobile networking solutions bin lately. As mentioned here previously, it seems clear that a lot of corporate power-users are going to be looking for ways to take their iPhones and make use of them for work, and although they have been marketed and oriented as a consumer device, and though conventional wisdom seems to be against it we're starting to think that it may not be such a terrible idea (the all-seeing, all-knowing wisdom the the Gartner Group notwithstanding).

The InfoWorld article cites all the things you'd expect it to cite: you can't replace the battery, you can't use third-party apps on it, you can't develop your own apps for it, there's no enterprise mail support. "Heck, it doesn't run Windows," you can practically hear them say, "how can you possibly use it for business?"

But it occurred to us that we've generally been recommending that people not tinker with their devices anyway--who wants a lawyer billing $300 an hour changing their own phone battery? And we also encourage people to stick with stock and web-based applications, having found that in-house software development and niche apps tend to be expensive and troubled... frankly, anyone who is developing custom apps for mobile devices instead of building the functionality out to web apps is probably who is crazy here. And the same goes for the e-mail... we hear people gripe about OWA on Safari all the time but we've had good luck with it personally.

In fact, we're already starting to see web development aimed specifically at the iPhone--and a business web-app, natch. And if OWA doesn't work for you, well, pretty soon you'll have other options for that, too.

Other than the price tag, in fact, Apple seems to have nailed the sort of next-gen handheld device that we might have hoped for to recommend to SMB customers looking for flexible, reliable, easy-to-use mobile devices. We realized that many of the objections people have leveled at the iPhone are based on comparisons to Windows mobile or Palm devices... but our experience with those devices in corporate environments has always been that they are complex and error-prone--hardly the gold standard for mobile information access that some of the critics are seeming to insinuate.

Anyway, as with any new product, we're not ready to pile all onto the bandwagon yet... we want to see how things play out in the real world with the thing, whether it delivers everything that's promised. But we're definitely interested, and we'd like to hear other opinions--so what do you think about the idea?