When I evaluate a new firm, the first thing I consider is the infrastructure. Typically, I try to think through the OSI model and work my way up. The most important thing is to keep track of the mundane, the obvious.
- Power – Is every load backed up by a UPS? What happens if the UPS dies? Is there notification for all power outages? What is the load on every UPS? When were the batteries last replaced in all UPS’s?
- Wiring – is all the wiring in the firm up to date? Does it pass certification? Do you know where every wire is and it’s functioning properly?
- Printing - Which printers are beyond capacity of their life cycle? When were the printers last maintained? Is there a service agreement in place for printers?
- PC’s – Are the PC’s of the firm up to date? Have they had all their patches installed? What image is everyone using? Are folks in IT using the same application set as everyone else? If not, why not?
- LAN - Are the switches up to date? Backed up? Are the collision domains appropriate? Do additional VLAN’s need to be installed? What is the processor load on all switches across the enterprise? How many collisions are happening per day? Errors? When was a sniffer last put on the network?
- WAN – What is the load across the WAN? Are we using appropriate protocols for our WAN? When were the configurations of the switches last backed up? How often do we back them up? If the main circuit on any particular switch or router were to go down, could we get to that router via a backup path? Is the core router a single point of failure?
- WAN Links – where are all WAN links terminated in every building? Where is the CO that the link goes to? What physical path does the link take to get to the CO?
- Servers - Is the hardware under warranty? When were patches last applied to each server? Do we know the names of all the servers and their physical locations?
- Server Rooms/Closets – is the access secured by lock? Do we have access to the building after hours? Is the room cooled appropriately? Is the room in a clean and orderly? Are the wires appropriate? Is there adequate information in the room? Is there a camera on the room?
- Virtual Environment (servers)
- Monitoring – If power is lost, are we notified? Temperature? Monitor in the following order: Power, temp, WAN links, routers, telephone switches, network switches, hubs, servers, UPS, cell phones, PC’s
- Telephones - where is the switch located? What is the procedure in case of a power outage? Is the switch backed up? Are there backup parts on hand in case part of the switch goes down?
What does your checklist look like? Care to share it?
This is where we’re headed if we don’t get control over e-mail…. Get the lowdown from BackBlaze.
Below are my 11 favorite tools on the internet. I run across A LOT and use quite a few, but here are my top ones:
What ”popurls is the dashboard for the latest web-buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the internet.” Why I search a lot of online sites, popurls is an easy, convient, customizable way to see all of them. Why not It can be a bit daunting at times.
What a simple tool for tracking daily goals. Why great, simple elegant. Good way to keep track of the goals we all set for ourselves. Why not somtimes I find it a bit too simple. The icons cannot be changed, either.
What “Send, track and collect payments quickly. Great for teams, freelancers and service providers.” Why This site is fantastic for keeping track of billings for clients. It even has a timer that you can use so you don’t have to (ah, hem) *guess*! Why not the free version only allows 3 clients.
What an RSS Reader. Why I watch 17.3 zillion blogs. they’re all conveniently ignored here. Why not no way to tweet. I find it a bit overwhelming at times.
What “the professional twitter client” Why Keeping you from seeing all my tweets at once (don’t you hate it when one person takes up all your tweet space!) Scheduled tweets, statistics, branding, personalized view, iPhone app, Wow! Why not with so much going on, there’s not too much room for actually reading tweets..
What “Remember Everything “ Why This is my favorite place to keep all my little jots and tiddles. I really like the iPhone app which allows me to make a voice note. Best of all, all the notes are in a single location, not spread across computers, notepads, etc. Why not not a whole lot of downside here.
What A collection of 4 differenct web based softwares – basecamp, highrise, backpack and campfilre. Why I have a man crush on this company. I completely subscribe to their philosophy. I use highrise as my contact management software and I’m working with another client using backpack as our intra/extranet. Good stuff. Why not if you’re a large company, the ubiqutious of Microsofts products might kill putting these into production. Also, they were designed with development teams in mind, which sometimes gets in the way.
What The ultimate in web-based storage in my opinion. Why I have use my d this for about 3 years. The thing I like about it is this – it just works. At one point, I crashed my laptop. I freaked out because I didn’t think I had backed up OneNote notebooks (this was before evernote), luckily everything was in Mesh. You can also remote into any computers that have the client running. Why Not well, it is Microsoft .
What “gist helsp you build stronger relationships by connecting the inbox to the web to provide business-critical information about the people and companies that matter most.” Why Gist keeps all the notes that I have on each of you in one place. Unlike my highrise account (see 37signals above), this scours the web and gives me the low down on all of you whom I am keeping tabs (insert evil laugh here.)
What ”get a better resume, online” Why Visual CV is an interesting twist on the old resume. It allows you to build an online resume that looks very profesional. You can then output this to a PDF or link to it. The graphics are outstanding. Why not might be an overkill when put in perspective with LinkedIn and other services.
What Free online audio conferencing. Why Face it, you need to have conference calls. Now you don’t have to pay for them.
The one thing that I am finding out is that social media is not just important, it’s EXTREEMLY important. You should really be spending some time every day on your personal brand. I know this is difficult with all the emergencies that come up, but this has now become a fundamental issue in building your brand. There is just so much out there that this little missive will barely scratch the surface.
The good folks over at the social path had a great run in January on a social media make over. There is a ton of good stuff in there. The basics:
- Linked In. This post by Guy Kawasaki is one of my favorites on setting up your profile. It’s a bit old, Linkedin has added a lot of features since 2007, but its a good start. Kay Luo and the Linkedin team have a lot to say here as well. Bottom line (especially if your looking for a new job) fill out eveything on here and do it often.
- Twitter. Oh My. Twitter. This little guy is all the rage these days. Hours and Hours can go into doing twitter the right way. There seem to be two camps Love it and Hate it. My opinion – tweeting about 10 times per day (NOT all at once) is great. And its good media to feed into my BLOG.
- Blogging – no better way to brand yourself personally than to blog. The team at ProBlogger have some of the best ideas I have seen.
- Those of us in the legal field – ILTA. There are a few people (lets say 50) out of the thousands on ILTA that I know their names. And I know them for one reason – they are on the lists that make up the normal part of every day ILTA life. But even if you are not in ITLA, groups inside of LinkedIn serve a very similar purpose.
I could go on and on, but this is where I have started. Where have you found success?
OK, you’ll hear quite soon from me how everyone is using the wrong old, boring apps, but let me post this first. I love NOTEPAD. Why – it’s simple. I probably use it just as often as I use my web browser. In this day and age of word, one note, evernote, whatever… trying to auto format things for me, I just love the simplicity of notepad. I use it for copying and pasting all the time. Now, you Word extraordinaries out there that can tell me how to past text as until you’re blue in the face, just zip it. I know how to do that in word, excel, etc. But none of that is as simple as notepad. Just rips all the formating out of everything no matter where I pull it from.
So…. do your users/friends/colleagues know how to use this FANTASTIC too? let me know in the comments below.
We all have to sell. I recently read an article in Inc. magazine that outlines perhaps the best way that I like to be sold to and my philosophy on selling as well.
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100401/on-the-road-with-a-supersalesman.html
Selling is more about building a relationship and seeing how you can help the other person, not about making money anymore than being a CIO is about making money. What do you think? How do you sell?
There are several things to think about when managing an IT environment. But one of the most important things you can do – the first step of every day is this – Be Credible.
What does that mean? It means that the routine must first and foremost be routine. Is the network up and running everywhere? Are there applications that are percieved to be slow? What is the spend of the department vs. acutal revenues? Is everyone where they need to be? Do you have the right people.
There is a lot of future thinking that we have to do. A lot of research, conversations with business leaders, negotiations with vendors, understanding of new products – all of that fails in comparison with this simple idea. People don’tcare what you know until they know you care.
So, what’s your routine? Leave a comment and let me know. Also – fill out the poll over —> there.
I heard a great axiom the other day – “Is your office a place where someone feels free to walk in and say something stupid?” It was during a keynote speach at Gartner’s CIO forum in Arizona. The person who said it was Keith Ferrazzi.
Keith’s entire presentation was on relationships – building them and keeping them. His new book – (Who’s got your back?) was pretty inspring, too.
So, here’s my question for you – in your relationship, job, peer groups, who has your back? Can you walk into a room and say something absolutely stupid and get away with it?
View Daryl Irby's profile
