Implementing resolutions: Learning new aspects of the business

By Colby Stream

Takeaway: Not everybody has the time to learn the basics of marketing. What else can you do to learn new aspects of your business?

Late January to February: The resolution begins to fade as the hum-drum of everyday business practice claws it's way back into your life. But it doesn't have to.

Patrick Gray wrote an article at the beginning of January discussing five New Years resolutions IT leaders should take into consideration. Now that we're into the end of January/beginning of February, I thought it would be ideal to revisit the resolutions. I'd like to discuss them one-by-one, giving you some tips and inspiration on how to follow through on each resolution.

The first resolution is to "learn a new aspect of your business." Patrick's suggestion is to get out into the business once in a while. Work on the call center floor or in another department. His suggestion is right on; what better way to gain perspective? But I also think it's a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity. Not everybody has the time to learn the basics of marketing. So what else can you do to learn new aspects of your business?

Read another department's workflow documentation

IT is more engrained in every part of the company than any other department. So choose one of those departments and learn about their workflow. Where do your two departments intersect? How can you help them do their job better, and vise-versa? Understanding how another department operates in relation to yours will teach you more about your job and the company as a whole, and allow your team to be more effective when it works with that department.

Ask your reports to walk you through their job…

then verify with data. This one requires some explanation, so hang with me.

Employees always have some sort of a routine, even if they don't think of it that way. Routines are great. After all, that's why the industry invented ITIL back in the '80s (a great piece of history you should read about if you haven't already). But routines don't always get the best results.

I like to take two of my direct reports and compare their productivity data. Which one was more productive? Why? What need does the more productive employee serve that the less productive doesn't? For example, if one employee has a radically better customer service approach (better call times, better reviews, etc.) what is that employee doing exactly?

This information reveals something unique about your business and your customer base. Once you understand this data and how it affects your business, you can use it to improve your team (and thus the business) overall.

Walk around and solve problems

If you'r an IT leader, you probably spend a lot of time planning - looking at big-picture stuff. Get out on the floor and see what's going on. Walk around for 20 or 30 minutes. Ask people how their day is coming along, and if you can do anything to help.

Two things to consider:

1. What's "the floor"?
2. Should you really be solving their problems?

"The floor" can be anywhere. It can be where your direct reports work. Or it can be another department that your team serves. This means you'll be looking at two different sets of problems. Those problems from your direct reports will be more process-oriented. For example, they'll describe a situational problem and ask for your help solving it. Those from a different department will be more technology oriented. They'll need something fixed or need a new piece of technology.

Should you solve these? No, but you should empower the person to solve their own problems.

Dave Ramsey, writer of Entreleadership, says that he treats problems like monkeys. His direct reports can't leave the monkey in his lap. So he requests that they offer a solution to the problem (or three possible solutions), and then he approves the solution. This will work great for situational problems, but what about technology-oriented ones?

I suggest walking people through the solution. Talk them through how to map the network drive. Or how to find a certain file. It's time consuming up front, but in time you'll have to answer less questions because they can answer it themselves (or Google the answer and recognize the solution when they find it).

These are just three suggestions, but notice the common thread: They are designed to get you out of "big picture planning mode" long enough to see the intricacies of the company. They help get you in the trenches. So if these suggestions don't fit your day, just think of an idea that does. Then do it once a week.

And don't forget to share your idea in the comments. We want to know: How do you go about learning new aspects of your business?

Ten technology trends impacting the IT industry, jobs

By, Tom Walat

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Trends such as cloud computing, "big data" and fabric data centers have begun to change the way IT pros do their jobs and the types of problems they have to contend with.

The top-10 IT industry trends to watch over the next several years, listed by Dave Cappuccio, Gartner's managing vice president during Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit last week, include:

1. Consumerization and the Tablet: The advent of the iPad in 2010 caught IT unawares as the popularity of these portable devices infiltrated the enterprise. The rise of tablets has forced IT to rethink how it develops applications that do one specific thing, Cappuccio said.  "Monolithic suite of applications from one vendor" are going away in favor of "function specific, location specific even content specific applications … not a replacement to a PC but for certain situations an augmentation tool," he said.

2. The Infinite Data Center: The trend of "reuse what you have" started a few years when the economy took a nosedive, and money for new data centers dried up, Cappuccio said. But spending capital on newer, more energy efficient servers will dramatically lower operating costs and increase computing power while deferring the need to buy a multi-million dollar data center. Thus even moderate-sized data centers can maintain the same footprint and save "hundreds of thousands of dollars" every year. "It's not just PUE about how efficient your data center is now. IT efficiency is part of the equation … that we're starting to see more focus on now," he said.

3. Resource Management: The "if it's not broke, don't fix it" philosophy will end up costing enterprises more in the long run because a fully depreciated server is inefficient, Cappuccio said. A newer server that uses half the energy but is more powerful with a smaller footprint should be purchased. He also said workloads on virtualized servers can usually be boosted with little increase in energy consumption

4. Mobility and the Personal Cloud: The personal cloud will replace the PC because users want to access data and applications with whatever device they have handy, rendering the "standalone box" of a PC obsolete, Cappuccio said. "Consumers are driving the bus" and IT can't stop this wave of personal devices entering the workplace, but can try to steer users in the right direction, he said.

5. Hybrid Clouds: Through 2013, 60% of enterprise IT cloud adoption will be in the form of existing applications that have been redeployed outside the data center and through 2014, 80% of cloud initiatives will explore private and hybrid cloud options, Cappuccio said. Businesses need to explore what their "mission critical" applications are and what can be shifted into the cloud. "Non-necessary, non-critical compute -- let somebody else do it. As long as it gets done, that's what's important," he said.

6. Fabric Data Centers: The rise of fabric computing will lead to "resource pools" that can be grown vertically until the computing power is maxed out when another pool can be created, Cappuccio said. Servers will be seen more as components in an IT rack which is part of the fabric. The idea is to "build an environment that's easy to grow. Easy to manage in theory. And focused on vertical scalability," he said. In the future, a fabric environment will be able to shift workloads to different clusters based on rules set by IT.

7. IT Complexity: The increasing complexity of the technological landscape means that IT needs to have more "generalists," or people equipped broad set of skills rather than "islands of intelligence within a community" where people specialized in applications or networking or storage, Cappuccio said.

8. Big Data -- Big Problems: The surfeit of data, sometimes measuring in petabytes and most of it unstructured, makes it a challenge to process the information to uncover opportunities that competitors may not have spotted.

This trend was of particular interest to attendees, who sought strategies to handle big data for analytics of real-time fraud detection and the constraints of what types of data can be placed in the cloud.

One IT pro at the show said he is grappling with terabytes worth of data that need to be transferred; as a network administrator he "would never allow that to happen (over the network), even to a DR site." Instead of pushing large amounts of data over his network, he said his company is resorting to the old-fashioned delivery method: "sneakernet."

9. The End of Service Desks: Consumerization has lead intelligent users to crowdsourcing support where answers device or application problems can be found online or from friends. "How do I shift where service gets done, and who does the service?," said Cappuccio. In today's BYOD environment, the responsibility for the support of the device has blurred.

10. Virtual and Software-Defined Networks: The network needs to support more devices and has become more complex. Signs indicate software-based networks will be developed over the next few years where heterogeneous equipment can be managed by software, Cappuccio said. The flexibility is attractive where routing patterns and workloads can be shifted automatically based on rules.

Five tips that will increase your Word productivity

By Jody Gilbert

Takeaway: Searching for ways to increase your Word productivity may get in the way of your productivity. So here are a few tricks you don't need to go looking for.

This post was originally published in the Five Apps Blog on June 2011.

Most of us don't have time to discover all the ins and outs of the software we use on a daily basis. We learn on the fly, we occasionally pick up a tip or shortcut, and we grudgingly plow through the Help system when we absolutely have to.

But sometimes, just a few little tricks can make a big difference. Turning off an annoying feature, learning a keyboard trick that bypasses three dialog boxes, or taking advantage of an obscure option can save you a few headaches and a lot of time. Will they really change your life? Well that might be a stretch. But they could. Try these tips on for size and let me know.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: Make vertical text selections

Usually, we select text horizontally — a word, a series of words, a paragraph — from left to right or vice versa. But sometimes the selection has to be vertical. For instance, suppose you wanted to delete the leading characters in Figure A.

Figure A

To make a vertical selection, hold down [Alt] as you drag down through the text you want to highlight. Figure B shows the column of unwanted characters selected using this technique. Hit [Delete] and bam, they're gone.

Figure B

Although we selected text at the beginning of the lines in this example, you can make vertical selections anywhere on the page.

Note: Some users have reported that the Research pane appears when they try this selection technique. Here's the secret: Release the [Alt] key before you let up on the mouse button. Word should retain the selection. If you hold down [Alt] but release the mouse button, Word may think "[Alt]-click" and open the Research pane in response.

2: Undo automatic changes you don't want

By default, Word imposes lots of changes on the text you enter in a document. For example, it might convert a Web address to a hyperlink, replace straight apostrophes and quotation marks with their curly counterparts, or turn a pair of hyphens into an em dash. If that's a welcome convenience, you're in good shape. If you want to suppress those types of changes, you can disable them. See 10 annoying Word features (and how to turn them off) for details. But if you want to prevent those changes only from time to time, reach for the Undo command — [Ctrl]Z. Undo isn't just for reversing something you've done; it also undoes some of the actions Word takes. Don't want that em dash? When Word inserts it, hit [Ctrl]Z and change it back to the hyphens you intended to enter.

3: Get rid of a persistent border

This forehead-smacking solution earned considerable gratitude from stymied TechRepublic readers when Susan Harkins first provided it. Word offers a sometimes-handy option that lets you insert a border automatically. Type three hyphens on a blank line and press [Enter]. If the option is enabled, Word will replace the hyphens with a horizontal line. You can get rid of it if you press [Ctrl]Z after Word inserts it (see above). But if you try to select the border and delete it, you're out of luck. You're not dealing with a line object here. Word has applied the Bottom Border format to the paragraph.

To remove that format in Word 2003, click in the paragraph and choose No Border from the Borders drop-down list on the Formatting menu. In Word 2007/2010, click in the paragraph and then click the Border button in the Paragraph group of the Home tab. Just select No Border from the drop-down list (Figure C).

Figure C

If you like the automatic border feature, here's a bonus tip: In addition to typing three hyphens to apply a bottom border (3/4-point), you can trigger different border styles. Typing:

• Three tilde characters (~) will create a wavy line.
• Three underscore characters (_) will create a 1.5-point line.
• Three asterisks (*) will create a dotted line.
• Three equal signs (=) will create a double line.
• Three pound signs (#) will produce a "thin thick thin" line.

4: Move selected text up or down

This tip is probably most useful when you're working in a table, although you can use it to reorder paragraphs outside a table, too. Let's say you decide you want the third row of a table to be the top row. Just click within the third row, hold down [Alt][Shift] and press the up arrow key twice. Each time you press the arrow key, Word will move the row up one. You can select multiple contiguous rows to move them as a block, and you can use the down arrow key if you want to move text down instead of up.

Using this shortcut gets a little tricky if you're moving big pieces of text outside a table. It's easy to lose track of what's being relocated where, and you might find it easier to take a standard cut-and-paste approach in those situations. But when the text is small and manageable, the shortcut is great. For example, if you need to move an item up or down within a bulleted or numbered list, you can just click in the item's paragraph and use the [Alt][Shift] and arrow key combo to move the item to the desired spot.

5: Save changes to all open Word documents at one time

This simple technique comes in handy when you're working in multiple documents and want to make sure you've saved your changes to all of them. I actually use it most often when I've made a change to a template and want a quick way to save that change on the fly (before I've had a chance to forget I made a change I want to keep).

In Word 2003 and earlier, just press the [Shift] key and pull down the File menu. Word will display the Save All command on the menu, above the Save As command. Choose Save All and Word will prompt you to save each document (or template) that has any unsaved changes. This is more efficient than having to navigate to each document individually and click Save.

If you use Word 2007/2010, this won't work. But you can add the Save All command to your Quick Access Toolbar:

1. Click the Office button (File in 2010) and click Word Options (Options in 2010).
2. Click Customize in the left-hand column (Quick Access Toolbar in 2010).
3. Select Commands Not In The Ribbon from the Choose Commands From drop-down list.
4. Scroll down and select Save All.
5. Click the Add button and then click OK.

Five tips for managing M2M development projects

By Will Kelly

Takeaway: Micro-management is not the way to successfully complete an M2M development project. Will Kelly advocates a holistic approach to M2M project management.

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies are garnering more attention with the dominance of tablets and smartphones in the consumer and business sectors. Otherwise known as the "the Internet of Things," M2M enables mobile devices to talk to appliances and other devices in the home and the workplace.

The ability to manage an M2M project successfully requires many traditional project management skills as well as more of a holistic approach than traditional development projects. Here are five tips for managing your first M2M development and deployment project. This approach accounts for the business, budget, overall project plan, and development framework.

1: Assign the right project manager

There are many project managers who prosper as generalists and can manage a range of technology development and deployment projects and bring them to a successful completion on time and on budget; however, M2M development projects (at least at this juncture) require a project manager with telecommunications experience. This project manager can also help build your PMO's body of M2M knowledge so project managers without telecommunications backgrounds can lead future M2M projects.

2: Create a detailed M2M development and launch plan

The scope of an M2M project makes a detailed plan imperative so you can account for the technological, budgetary, and business decisions that serve as the project's foundation. The plan should also factor in the M2M product launch and include planning for elements such as:

• Technology choices
• Network build out
• Software architecture and design
• Data flow
• Data security
• Application security
• Network security

This detailed plan can also serve as a counterbalance when exploring new technological changes that can have potential impacts on the project. For first-run M2M projects, I'm partial to more documentation rather than less to capture decisions, develop an audit trail, and for lessons learned so you can build upon the successes and learn from any failures.

3: Consider open source M2M frameworks for product development

M2M has been held back because of its proprietary libraries and frameworks that lock M2M development projects into a niche territory full of "one-off work" for each project. This leads to cost run ups and developer lock-in.

One open source M2M development platform is Data Art's DeviceHive. Organizations can save money and time by using DeviceHive's prebuilt protocols and components in their M2M development efforts. Additional benefits of a platform like DeviceHive are the online documentation, code samples, and tutorials that can help establish an M2M body of knowledge within an organization undertaking its first M2M development project.

A framework such as DeviceHive also enables you to create replicable processes for developing and deploying M2M projects, which in turn helps save on budget and helps develop internal standards for M2M projects. A platform likes DeviceHive can even put M2M development into the hands of smaller, budget-conscious development organizations.

4: Monitor the M2M project's business model

It's in the best interests of the M2M development project, the organization, and the team to keep the business model in the forefront of people's minds. This goes for all levels of management and not just sales and executive management.

Keeping an eye on the business model with an M2M project isn't even just about today's dour economy. An Embedded Star technical paper about M2M project management cites creating revenue sources from new and existing services (a definite attention-getter in today's economy) as a reason why the business model needs some upfront attention.

5: Maintain budgetary control throughout the M2M project lifecycle

More than once, I worked inside organizations that never seemed to maintain budgetary control over projects (but, then again, I spent the last few years working on a federal government contract), so it was refreshing to see attention to budgetary controls in M2M projects during the course of my research.

An M2M project requires a degree of budgetary control that some organizations may not be used to putting in place for their development projects. The budgetary control should extend to these project elements:

• Consideration of cloud-based and on-demand platforms for better budget forecasting and control. The cloud is going to be a dominant force in the future of commercially viable M2M platforms.
• Budget forecast spanning network costs, back-office costs, development and integration costs, installation, and maintenance.
• Defined roles and budget caps on the use of outside consultants and contractors.

Reseed Table Identity without Truncate Table

Here i am sharing a simple example to reseed identity, i hope it will help you.

-------------------------Copy and Paste Below script in Sql query window
--Step 1                        
IF OBJECT_ID('TempDB..#tmp','U') IS NOT NULL
begin
    drop table #tmp
end

Create Table #tmp(ID Int identity(1,1),Cnt int)

--Step 2: Insert Data
Insert into #tmp(Cnt)
Select 1 as Cnt
union
Select 2
union
select 3

--Step 3: Delete Record to Check Reseed
Delete from #tmp where Cnt=3

--Step 4: Reseed Identity
Declare @maxID int
Select @Maxid=max(ID) from #tmp
print @MaxID

DBCC CHECKIDENT ('#tmp', RESEED, @MaxID)

--Step 5: Insert again and check Identity
Insert into #tmp(Cnt)
Select 4 as Cnt
union
Select 5
union
select 6