Making IT Happen

We are seeing examples where software companies are looking to shift from processer to core based licensing, and to apply this retrospectively so that existing processor licences become new core licences. We've fended this off so far by referring back to small print that refers to physical processors (for once, the small print has been on our side!) Anyone else seeing this?

I'm a big fan of ITIL and PRINCE - we use 'lite' versions of each to run our IT services and IT projects. Truly the OGC are the unsung heroes of global standards.

One thing occurred to me the other day. Why does PRINCE cover all project types, whilst ITIL only covers IT services? Could ITIL be extended to become SIL (service infrastructure library), and so extend this wonderful example of common sense across all types of services?

We achieve excellent availability of our systems, and whenever we do have an outage the first question is 'what's changed?' Most of the time, we then find the outage was caused by one of two things. First, our ITIL based change management process wasn't followed, or second, and more subtly, it was, but the final tests that were defined and applied didn't pick up the issue that caused the outage. So how do we ensure we define better final tests of changes to production systems? By no means exhaustive, but here's a rough checklist for defining tests to ensure changes have worked:
1 - chances are the change will work - it's what else it breaks in the process you need to worry about.
2 - don't second guess the people that use the system - work with them to define and agree the tests.
3 - the test should be very clear on timing of the tests relative to when the change is done. Don't change in the evening and then test at 7.45 the next morning if your call centre opens up at 8.00am...
4 - try to use separate people to define the test, apply the change and test it. There's a slight conflict of interest. End users are a useful source of testers.
5 - assume the change will fail the test, and have a plan for extricating yourself from the fine mess you have now created.
6 - make sure you've got people lined up to fix the problem or apply the escape plan. There's nothing worse than knowing it's gone wrong but not being able to get hold of the best person to fix it.

VMWare is now valued at $19Bn following its IPO last week. An amazing investment by EMC, who bought it for $635M in 2004.

We use the product extensively for our test and business continuity environments and are increasingly looking to use it to support production environments. As a solution it almost creates a perfect storm of benefits - quicker and easier to manage environments, much better value from server and hosting spend, reduced environmental impact. If you don't use it yet then certainly worth a look.