There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary fix.

Check ./ ‘s “IT Infrastructure As a House of Cards“… An interesting readup on what probably many smb’s (of sme’s with the same mentality) are facing.

Where it comes down to in the comments :

• Documentation : Basically the foe of almost all IT-ers. Personally I don’t understand why as it makes your own job easier, but then again, it might not be “cool” or “tech savie” enough for most.
• ITIL : It’s told as “unable to handle change”, yet where it boils down to is understanding (and implementing) the aspects of ITIL. (Hmm, documentation belongs here too…)
• New Tech : All newly graduates want to be the next cool dev, where nobody thinks on the long term and wants to maintain stuff. Yet this should actually be the biggest part of an IT job… maintenance. We’ve got a big enough problem as it is, trying to pace up with all new techs. Remember “ruby on rails”, and how it was the next best thing? Seen it around on enterprise level? No, simply, because big companies try to stick with what works and focus their energy on keeping things running. New things should become a strategic advantage!
• Trust : My gut feeling says many IT shops ruined their reputation within their own company or never got any trust what so ever. This will cause the budgets to decrease, and turn them into McGyver (ducktape & chewing gum).

Why IT shouldn’t be run as a business…

Need an out-of-the-box opinion on running it? Check “Infoworld’s Run IT as a business — why that’s a train wreck waiting to happen”…

Intro

“If you board the wrong train, it’s no use running along the corridor in the other direction,” said famed World War II German resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We in IT boarded the wrong train a long time ago. It’s the “standard model” of information technology organizations — the familiar litany that says CIOs should run IT as a business [1], meeting the requirements of its internal customers. This refrain has been endorsed by our holy trinity, too: analyst firms, most consultancies, and ITIL.

Some strong quotes

• There are no IT projects : He likens IT’s proper role to that of an engineer designing a car. “It doesn’t matter if the ‘customer’ asks for the horn on the backseat. Placing it there would meet the specs and ‘satisfy requirements.’ It would also defeat the usability of the horn, render driving the car dangerous, and could lead to a crash that ruins the whole effort.
• Chargebacks? No! Governance… : Chargebacks are an attempt to use market forces to regulate the supply and demand for IT services. If that’s the best a business can do, it means the business has no strategy, no plans, and no intentional way to turn ideas into action.
• So what should we do? : Nobody in IT should ever say, “You’re my customer and my job is to make sure you’re satisfied,” or ask, “What do you want me to do?” Instead, they should say, “My job is to help you and the company succeed,” followed by “Show me how you do things now,” and “Let’s figure out a better way of getting this done.”

The truth about “To”, “CC” & “BCC”

The Origins
Carbon copying is the technique of using carbon paper to produce one or more copies simultaneously during the creation of paper documents. A sheet of carbon paper is sandwiched between two sheets of paper and the pressure applied by the writing implement to the top sheet causes pigment from the carbon paper to make a similar mark on the copy. More than one copy can be made by stacking several sheets with carbon paper between each pair. Four or five copies is a practical limit. The top sheet is the original and each of the additional sheets is called a carbon copy. The use of carbon copies declined with the advent of photocopying and electronic document creation and distribution (word processing).
(source “Wikipedia”)

The Rules
It is still common for a business letter to include, at the end, a list of names preceded by the abbreviation “cc:”, indicating that the named persons are to receive a copy of the letter, even though carbon paper is no longer used to make the copies. The contacts that are listed as adressed “to” are required to read the mail and take further actions (if needed), where those listed in “cc” are only assumed to read the mail (when the time allows it). The aspect of the “blind carbon copy” (bcc) adds an extra perspective where one could be informed without any of the other contacts to even know!

Practically Spoken : Privacy
Need to mail a bunch of people? Add yourself in the “to” list and -all- the other contacts as “bcc”. This way you avoid to violate other people’s privacy by exposing their private email accounts!

Disk Investigator

Disk Investigator is a pretty unique hard drive data retrieval tool that takes a totally different approach than the usual hard drive data recovery tools. What Disk Investigator does is to provide direct access to the raw data sectors of a selected hard drive so that the hard drive’s data can be explored up to the last bit.

More info? Check out ghacks!

Undelete in windows

Check out an article at Lifehacker: “How to recover deleted files with free software“

Ack! The computer ate my term paper! We’ve all been there at some point. You delete an important file, somehow it skips your Recycle Bin altogether, and for all practical purposes, it’s disappeared into the ether. But before you hit the big red panic button, there’s a very good chance that your file is still alive and kicking somewhere on your hard drive—you just need to know how to find it. With the right tools, finding and recovering that deleted file can be as simple as a few clicks of your mouse.

In need of a CRM?

Say what?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term applied to processes implemented by a company to handle its contact with its customers. CRM software is used to support these processes, storing information on current and prospective customers. Information in the system can be accessed and entered by employees in different departments, such as sales, marketing, customer service, training, professional development, performance management, human resource development, and compensation. Details on any customer contacts can also be stored in the system. The rationale behind this approach is to improve services provided directly to customers and to use the information in the system for targeted marketing While the term is generally used to refer to a software-based approach to handling customer relationships, most CRM software vendors stress that a successful CRM strategy requires a holistic approach. CRM initiatives often fail because implementation was limited to software installation without providing the appropriate motivations for employees to learn, provide input, and take full advantage of the information systems.

(source wikipedia)

Options?
There are several products out there that could get the job done, but just like with all product selections first get an understanding of what you would like to do. Based upon that given feature set you’ll be able to decide which products can be eliminated quite easily. Today I’m going to present four products where two are OpenSource products (with community editions) and two from a SaaS (Software as a Service).

Everything You Need to Know About Hard Drives

Check out the following article at gizmodo.com! It’s a nice rundown on how harddrives actually work.

Capacity Management

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=capacity-management-presentation-1216025745972010-8