Greening Your IT - Dispelling the Paperless Office Myth

Printing and the consumption of paper, ink, toner, and electricity are one of the easiest ways to raise awareness and lower costs in your organization. But can any office go paperless? I think time has dispelled (or “busted”) this myth. So accepting that printing and the processing of paper will never disappear completely the emphasis turns to responsible use of printing and print technologies.

So what we are after are the easy wins in this area. Growing in popularity recently has been having a social-engineering approach of people tagging comments to the effect of “do you really need to print this?” attached to their emails. Having management reiterate the importance of reduced paper use in meetings is also helpful. But these are not methods that can necessarily be objectively measured for results unless you know how much printing is happening in your organization today.

All corporate network printers should support the ability to centrally draw back and report on the volume of printing they have completed in a given period of time. A small amount of legwork can have this functionality setup and working in a short timeframe, and then this data can be used to objectively measure the results of any further printing reduction activities. Having a place to store all this data (as configuration items) for the purposes of measurement is yet another reason for your organization to formalize the CMDB.

With an understanding of how many pages your organization prints daily/weekly, you can start to measure any reductions. Following the “reduce, re-use, recycle” mantra, other ways can be instrumented to reduce printing volumes. By leveraging Active Directory group policies for providing access to networked printing resources, you can control what users have access to which printers, at what times. This will prevent employees from printing volumes of paper for personal use before and after core work hours.

The more difficult questions arise around how to control the size of print jobs, the content of printing (printing only what’s necessary), and the format of the print jobs. There are means for accomplishing all of this via various new technologies (foremost amongst newcomers in this arena is software development company GreenPrint - http://www.printgreener.com ) but the most important point is to understand where you are today, set goals, communicate those, and reward those who assist in achieving them.

Quick wins to reduce your organization’s carbon footprint in the area of printing would need you to start measuring your printing and reporting weekly or monthly (please don’t print and post the reports!). Accountability and recognition will be some of the keys to success in this area.

Some of this quick wins would be:

• Ensure you use recycled paper
• Reduce the number of printers (if possible)
• Provide the ability for all staff to “print” to PDF and encourage that behaviour
• Use Group Policies for Windows-based print queues to enforce duplexing and other print saving measures
• Disable printing outside of core business hours for most staff
• Ensure all printers have either “power save” modes or ideally are powered off overnight

Updated Fognet Field Guide to NNM Available

Fognet's Field Guide to OpenView Network Node Manager

A reference guide for administrators of HP Software Network Node Manager.

This vade mecum is written for field consultants, users and administrators of the HP Network Node Manager (NNM) software product. The second edition covers information that is relevant for NNM product versions 6.0 through 7.53. It does not cover NNM 8i, which is an entirely new and different product. It was written for those who seek a shortcut to commonly used product info that is either missing or obfuscated in the product docs, and it covers practical implementation information that can’t be found in any product documentation or the fine product manual or reference pages. This guide was gleaned from OpenView users and from the author’s fifteen years of compiled notes on the product.

June 2008 Update: 2nd Edition now available in paperback via Lulu or Amazon or PDF download via Lulu

Vivit Press Release - New Board Members Announced

NEW YORK, June 5  -- Vivit, the independent, non-profit,
users group for the HP software community has closed their elections and
announced their three newest Board Members. Donna Farmer, Executive
Director of Vivit, congratulates Brad Clark, Systems Management and
Availability Specialist of Herman Miller Inc.; Jim Murphy, Director of
Infrastructure Management Practice of Pepperweed Consulting and Karen
Semonson, IS Operational Services Manager of Foremost Farms Inc. as the
most recent Directors of the Vivit Board.

   "Mr. Clark, Mr. Murphy and Ms. Semonson are all experienced and
dedicated individuals who already volunteer their time and talents to help
support Vivit, said Donna Farmer, Executive Director of Vivit. "I look
forward to having the opportunity to work more closely with each of them in
their new role as Directors of the Vivit Board. Together, we will serve
this organization by providing strategic guidance and direction as we move
forward and continue to fulfill our goals."

   "For me, this is an exciting opportunity to work closely with a very
talented team with diverse backgrounds to really shape the future of our
organization and its relationship with HP," said Brad Clark. "I look
forward to connecting with more of our members and utilizing their input to
continue to strengthen Vivit's service offerings."

   Jim Murphy said, "I would like to thank the nominating committee, and
everyone who voted. I am looking forward to working with the board of
directors and the membership to build on the success and legacy of the HP
Software community. We have the great challenge of working together to
provide a place where people can come and gain knowledge about how HP
Software can be implemented to achieve efficiencies and improved service
quality for Information Technology organizations around the world. It is
going to be an exciting year."

   "As a real world strategist utilizing HP Software's product portfolio
to run Information Services like a business, HP's visionary direction and
roadmap is chock full of relevant answers too many of my intriguing
questions.

   Being an active member of Vivit has allowed me to move from a brisk
stumble to a swift stroll as I have expanded my knowledge about HP Software
through sharing and connecting with other practitioners. These Vivit
relationships have encouraged me to build a new environment, all the while
being surprised at how much I have been able to get done.

   As a Vivit Board Member, the accountability for nurturing the global
user connection and representing the voices of HP practitioners is -- in
part -- I believe, the practical answer to how HP's vision and roadmap will
be achieved," said Karen Semonson.

   "I am pleased to see three new excellent Board members join the Vivit
Board. All of them have shown leadership and commitment to HP's Worldwide
Software Users Group, and will continue to help advance the organization,"
said Tom Reinsel, past President and Director as he departs after serving
on the Vivit Board for six years.

   About Vivit

   Vivit is a non-profit corporation founded in 1993 (as OpenView Forum)
by customers of Hewlett-Packard's Software products to represent the
interests of HP Software customers, developers, and partners world-wide.
Vivit represents and serves the broad HP Software Community (including
OpenView, Mercury, Peregrine, Radia, and more) and is the endorsed HP
Software users group. Vivit has 8,360 members and growing every week
representing all areas of Business and Industry. For more information about
Vivit, log on to the organizations web site at http://www.vivit-worldwide-org .

HPSW - Part 3 - The Software Announcements

HP had three main announcements they were using Wednesday's mainstage session to make:

1. Application Lifecycle: The enhanced integration and development in the Portfolio, Requirements, and Quality products, providing for the ability to manage the application lifecycle from start through to go-live. Maybe I missed a memo, but I didn't think that this was so new to HP Software?
2. The Release Control product, and the claim that it helps with automating operations, and ties into that federated configuration management system; uCMDB. More detail around these includes that the tools have been revisited to accord with ITIL v3 in the sense of federating a Configuration Management System instead of gathering & replicating the config items across several barely linked data-stores. This is far more interesting of an announcement to me (as is the third one discussed subsequently) particularly with the time I have been putting into investigating vendor-based federated CMDBs and the mechanisms used to populate them.
3. Virtualization: HP announced that they have been working tightly with vmware to create better management & operation of virtual environments. This was interestingly reflected on the show floor later . An increasing number of software partners are flogging integrated or at least somewhat coupled virtualization-oriented offerings that connect one way or another to the HP Software Suite. Most offerings are around the management of your virtualized infrastructure or the leveraging of virtualization for the development and quality processes.
   

HPSW - Part 2 - Business Availability Center Announcements

HPSW is staking claim on the #1 spot in data centre automation and IT service management. We're introduced to Ramin Sayer, the Senior Director for BSM & uCMDB products. Ben continues to play the role of Dilbert's boss, which is ironic for someone as bright as he is, I understand it's intended to summarize facts for any "pointy-haired idiots" in the audience but it gets annoying after a while... but I digress.

Ramin walks us through the BAC suite of tools; none of this really that new to me having been on the BAC training already, but a good over-view. The discussion goes around moving from reactive application and infrastructure management to proactive root cause analysis. Honestly, this message has been re-iterated for a number of years now, but what they're focusing on is how integrating the new technologies acquired in the past year or so is giving better functionality to this end.

OpsWare tools, Service Manager, the "new" NNM8i (topic for another posting), and uCMDB are all shown integrated to match the process of change with the actual change release. Release Control 4.0 gives impact analysis pulled from the change management system & the CMS, to give the CAB a better picture of change impacts. Very cool idea, but I have to ask how long it would really take any organization to get to the point where this is functional? Again, a likely suspect for another posting, because as the guys continue talking my mind starts spinning ff on how to make this kind of implementation work optimally.

We're introduced to the ex-OpsWare product, HP Operations Orchestration Centre and how it underpins the change life-cycle through another medley of integrations to provide process-oriented change, incident, problem, and configuration management. Ramin discusses BAC being used in the NOC or Operations Centre and the Application Support groups. With focus on product integrations, HP shows us how we should really buy all of their software, by moving the incident into Service Manager, then Release Control, and Network Automation tools all underpinned by uCMDB.

uCMDB is definitely getting reviewed in an upcoming post so stay tuned for that one.

HP Software Universe 2008 - Las Vegas - Part 1

Wednesday morning rolls around pretty early in Las Vegas... It's day three of the "big show" for HP Software in the Americas. I'm sitting in the mainstage area waiting for this morning's keynotes:

• Ben Horowitz, Jonathon Rende, and Ramin Sayor to speak about Business Technology Optimization
• Christopher Rence to speak on HP Software at Fair Issac Corporation
• Caleb Sima to show us what the "newly acquired" web security tools are all about and discuss current exploits
• Jean-Michel Cousteau to educate the group on the true interdependance between mankind and nature
  

David Gee (VP of Software) kicked things off. A humorous vignette of David as Kevin Spacey's character from 21 and then David refers to today as "product day" which concerns me a bit in that we may be going down the road of sales pitches and not technology updates... but I'll be optimistic... as we go.

Ben Horowitz:

Two facts, three announcements:
1. HP stakes their claim as #1 in requirements management; segues to Jonathon Rende's talk. VP Products SOA, Jonathon introduces a virtual company called "Weeble Communications" and uses it to describe why HP SW is #1 in requirements management. PPM & it's integration with QC & other products is used as the starting point. Jonathon focuses on governing lifecycle processes. Ben keeps interjecting, and finally promises to stop the weeble puns, which is greeting by a trickle of applause. Content creation around workflows is pointed to as a differentiating factor, and how important it is to have their Out of the Box (OOB) content templates. Another factor Jonathon notes is the process of going from business priorities to project management and QC in parallel.

HP announced the Requirements Management module of the latest release of Quality Centre which puts requirements management into the same platform as the quality management tool set. The ability is provided for non-functional requirements (security, performance, etc) to be linked in early on in the project lifecycle. HP states that risk based decision making is available out of the gate and customizable to your organization - the announcement from Jonathon indicates that these can also be technical questions; and that this gives IT and the PMO the ability to create (and manage) contracts with the business areas around application project quality with most if not all vital decision points.

Continuing on about the features and functions , we're informed about agile quality practises that are being integrated into QC now, and that "lightweight out of the box" components are supporting this feature as well. Additionally Web 2.0 framework support has been added in Load Runner/Performance Centre, which seems an obvious mandatory in todays business space.

So, the marketing angle from HPSW on this topic discussing the solutions targeted at Project Portfolio Management, Quality Centre, Performance Centre, and Application Security Centre that provides for one application life-cycle vision across the organization. As I always say, great, but at what cost and how long would it really take to get this in place? As well, I'm not generally a big fan of "out of the box" processes and templates designed for your business processes, but without really rolling up my sleeves on this one I'm holding back a strong opinion on endorsement.

More to come in my next post...

Follow-Up on CMDB's Out of the Box

I had an email in response to my last post from "Manu" at www.tideway.com ...

"I would say you should also consider evaluating non-framework related solutions like the ones from Ni2 or Managed Objects (I am not working for either, so this is impartial feedback from our customers).

This said, I personally think that evaluating CMDBs without the tools that populate them is limited in value. .."

The plan was to investigate the three products named (each claiming to be an industry leader) along with their respective discovery mechanisms, but I hadn't explicitly stated that, so good catch Manu!