BSM - Service Mentality Blog Book

Adopting a Service Mentality
Peter Armstrong
Adopting a Service Mentality 1

Introduction
For several years now, I have been writing a blog called “Adopting a Service (Management)
Mentality, which is a collection of my rants and raves about how people need to understand
what their customers want and not to be surprised when people walk away if the service stinks.
Now, I personally find reading more than about a page on a PC screen is incredibly tedious,
which is why I keep my blog entries short and pithy. However, that makes it a pain if you want
to go back and read several of them, so I thought I would gather all the entries, and the
comments in one place for you to read / dip into / scrawl over / put in the lavatory with the
other humorous books you have.
So you will find here such classics as the totally useless hair-drier, the De Sade School of
Hotel Interior Design, the CMDB song (to the tune of YMCA), my EMPTYS campaign for
manners – Excuse Me, Please, Thank You, Sorry – and my new IWOS campaign, which
recognises that a large number of people in the banking world appear to be Incompetent
Wastes Of Space!
I have published them in the order they were written, starting back in July 2005, as I found it
quite interesting to see what has happened in the world of IT over the last few years, and how
it has changed. I have taken out the links used in the blogs as they wouldn't work in a book, but
you can always search for the blog entry online and follow the link if you so desire.
As usual with me, these are all written with a degree of humour, but they are meant very
seriously. I personally believe the world needs a lot more humour, a lot less sycophancy and a
lot more service. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them, and many
thanks to all those people who have contributed their comments over the last 3 and a half
years. My apologies if I didn't answer any questions you may have posed – I frequently didn't
get informed about replies that had been posted. Bloody computers!!
Last but not least, it was interesting (well it was for me) to see how I have complained about
certain devices/systems over the years, which have actually improved now – not all of them,
but some are getting the hang of providing what the customer really wants. Can't believe it was
entirely due to me, but please continue to complain if you are not happy with the service being
offered.
Cheers
Peter

Part 1 – 2005
The Innocent Days?

The Revenge of the Monolith
Are mainframes strategic?
I was visiting a large bank recently. As part of the visit they demonstrated their very advanced
internal banking system to us (real-time analysis of customer transactions, extracting to data
warehouse etc.). My colleague was staggered by the ultra-fast response times; it was of course
running on a sensible platform - a mainframe. I have also been talking to some other folks
about this, see James Governor's MonkChips and the z/OS Journal.
It does not surprise me that the mainframe has never gone away, as it still has the lead in terms
of availability, security, cost etc. (The last one may surprise you - look at "The Dinosaur Myth"
where you will find that the cost per end user on a mainframe over 5 years is 1/3 of Unix and
1/4 of Wintel). Now do I believe that everyone should chuck out Unix, Linux, Windows etc.
and replace them all with a mainframe - no. Do I believe you should get rid of a mainframe
because the application package no longer runs on it - possibly, but how about kicking the
software vendor instead? Do I believe you should get rid of a mainframe because it will save
you money - no way, it will cost you more.
A lot of my colleagues think I am either slightly mad, or too set in my ways. Every time they
get money from a machine, fill their car, take out insurance, fly on a plane or whatever I just
smile - imagine the world without mainframes and life would be hell. And yes I do realise that
a lot of good things also run on distributed platforms, although I am not totally convinced that
swamping me with slow graphics and whizzy buttons actually makes the experience any
better?
The thing that really cheeses me off though is when people ignore 30 years of experience.
Running mainframes has taught us how to handle processes like Change Management, Service
Levels, Backup and Recovery, Security and many others. Ignoring what has been learnt here,
which many customers and educational establishments seem prone to do, strikes me as crazy.
One customer I met puts every new employee (who thinks C++, Java, Linux and CTL-ALT-
DEL are the centre of the universe) into the mainframe department for 6 months. Not to learn
MVS or JCL, but to learn how to run a production environment correctly.
Many others are looking at initiatives like ITIL, the IT Infrastructure Library, which is fast
becoming the de facto standard for how to run the processes of IT. Not far behind this
development, a standard has also started to emerge: BS15000. This is specifically dedicated to
IT service management, and comprises two parts: BS15000-1 and BS15000-2. It too is being
widely deployed and followed and is destined to become an ISO standard (ISO 2000).
ITIL started about 20 years ago when mainframes were dominant, and the writers have taken a
lot of the good ideas and experience which existed and documented all of this as an aide-
mémoire for the rest of the world. It has also been updated since then to cater for the brave new
world.
Which is all good news to me because CTL-ALT-DEL is not a production option as far as I am
concerned.
Friday, July 01, 2005

It's a hash key!
Conference call blues
Two Nations separated by a common language?
Every time I get on a conference call with the US I get the "enter your participant code
followed by the pound key". My phone (like all others in the world) does not have a pound key
(£) - it does have a hash key (#).
Add Comment
Thanks to talk.bmc!! - Posted by Irene at 2006-05-19 12:39
Hi was chatting with a client on Skype, he asked me to call to his office (in UK) and press the
Hash key...I did not know which one was it and I Google... I found 4 sites, none of them gave
me the useful info I found on your site!!
Cheers!
hash key - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-05-19 13:07

Gosh, never expected to be that helpful!!! Glad to be of "service".
Cheers
Peter
hash key - Posted by amy at 2006-08-21 16:02

I believe the "hash" key is the pound sign.
hash that you don't smoke - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-08-22 03:06
Amy
This was meant to be English humour - I know you call it the pound sign over there, but like
most British people I think we invented the language and hence you are wrong! The symbol
for pound over here is £ or lb. My American colleagues tell me that the symbol for pound over
there is #. Strange. We use that for number, e.g. #1.
Oh well, if we were all the same, life would be boring!
Cheers
Peter
Hash Mark - Posted by Jim at 2006-08-22 15:19

In the U.S. a hash mark is found on a football field. And, yes, that is different from a soccer
pitch. We're off...

Astroturf? - Posted by astroturf at 2006-08-22 17:29
There was a story of an American footballer who was asked how Astroturf compared with
grass, and he said "I don't know, I've never smoked Astroturf!"
thanx - Posted by Ali Marjovi at 2007-12-11 18:33

oh , thank you very much, I am in Portugal now, and I wanted to activate my new bank
account here. I had to do to it via phone, the answering machine wanted me to press hash key ,
and I didn't know what is that, I pressed star and it said , the mission is not completed
successfully !!! I Googled it and found your comments, my account is now activated. thank
you very much
hash key - Posted by peter at 2007-12-12 16:00

Very glad to have helped - just send 10% of your account balance to .....!!!!!
pound/hash key - Posted by Steve at 2007-12-26 04:43

Dear All,
Just to note quickly that the words "pound key" as used in some parts of the US to refer to the
# have nothing to do with Pound Sterling... The origin of "pound" in this case refers the the old
unit of mass...
amazed - Posted by peter at 2008-01-03 05:45

I am amazed how useful this "humorous" blog entry of mine has turned out to be - just shows
that you can't assume the user will know what you want them to do!
A few other helpful pointers for those visiting the UK:
 We drive on the correct side of the road - Napoleon ruined it for the rest of you.
 Water freezes at 32 and boils at 212 degrees.
 There are 12 inches (an inch is 2.54 cm) in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1760 yards in a mile
(a mile is 1.6 km).
 If you go horse-racing, a furlong is 220 yards.
 There are 14 days in a fortnight.
 We used to have a wonderful system of currency with farthings, ha'pennies, pennies,
threepenny bits, tanners, bobs, florins, half-crowns, crowns, ten-bob notes and I still
remember getting 3 gallons of petrol for a quid.
 A quid is a pound in money (we don't have those funny Euro things) and we still talk
about pounds and ounces in some places. There are 16 ounces (oz) in a pound (lb). We
have never as far as I know used the # symbol for pound weight over here. A pound is
ca.. 454 grams.
 We still drink in pints if you are drinking beer (ask for bitter or lager or Guinness in a

pub, not ale - only foreigners or Dickensian characters ask for ale).
Cheers!!!
Peter
Computers or golf?
Want to improve your IT processes? Well, how would you go about improving your golf
swing?
What is your SLA?
I happened to score my first ever hole-in-one at the weekend (145 yards over a lake for those
who care). I have also put a lot of effort into my golf over the last few years, taking lessons,
working on different aspects etc. and shot 82 and 80 on Saturday and Sunday, so I am
gradually getting to where I want to be, which is single figures.
What has all of that to do with computers? Well, for me the answer is that you cannot improve
a computer system / IT process / business process using IT until you actually define your high-
level business SLA. If I want to get better at golf, then I set out by stating my goals - get to
single figures. I don't start by saying I want the club-face closed 0.75 degrees with a swing-
speed of 86 mph. Why then do we always talk about the availability of server XYZ being
99.98%, when what really matters is whether the customer can do business with us?
Make sense? Then please take a look at the interview I did with Computerworld "Get Into the
Swing of Configuration" and the white paper I have just written on the similarities between
golf and computing "Swing into Business Service Management: Seven Strategies for Enabling
IT to Activate the Business". (Don't worry if you don't like golf - just substitute another sport -
the idea is the same)
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Add Comment
Hole in One - Posted by jgardner at 2005-07-21 16:42
I am impressed that you have actually surpassed me now in several areas of expertise...BSM,
British humour (and history), speaking German (and being funny in a second language), and
NOW golf! I rarely shoot the scores you claim here on your BLOG, and I have yet to hit a
hole-in-one!
Clearly you have drawn on better "subject matter experts" to help you achieve success than I
have. I have tried to teach myself too many things and probably should have gone to some of
the subject matter experts you have to reach the end goal faster, easier, etc...
Sounds kind of like our story around BMC's Managed Services offerings? Get to the end goal
"fast, easy, more predictable". Peter, are you sure Tiger didn't hit your hole-in-one FOR you?

It's called The Open
Can we stop saying the British Open please?
Those who know me know that I am a boring old pedant, and rise like a trout to the fly every
time I hear the phrase "The British Open". As some of you may be travelling to the hallowed
birthplace of golf (St Andrews) this week, I thought I would warn you that the locals are even
more pedantic than I am and hence quite correctly call it "The Open". The use of the incorrect
name "The British Open" is likely to get a sand-wedge wrapped round your neck!
Add Comment
Golf, bacon & whisky - Posted by chrjohns at 2005-07-15 12:24
In regards to The Open which is held periodically in Britain ...
Q: What do they call Canadian Bacon in Canada?
A: Bacon
Q:What do they call Scotch Whisky in Scotland?
A: Whisky
The Open - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-07-15 12:41

Actually it is periodically held in the UK, not Britain (it was held at Royal Portrush in
Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK but not part of Britain). So being totally pedantic, it
cannot really be called the British Open?!?!?
Luggage service
Why are trips ruined at the luggage carousel?
Excuse me, am I invisible?
Lee Trevino supposedly once asked at check-in for one bag to go to Paris, one to London and
one to Tokyo. He was told that this was impossible. "Strange," he said, "you managed it quite
easily last week!"
Perhaps it's me, but I find the luggage carousel the worst part of the journey for several
reasons:
1. You are convinced your luggage has been lost because everyone else appears to have
got theirs
2. No matter what class you fly the luggage comes off in random order
3. Some ill-mannered idiot always barges between you and the carousel and nearly takes
your feet / legs off with their suitcase (and never says sorry)

4. Everyone stands right next to the carousel - if they stood back we could all see more
5. Your luggage actually came off half an hour ago and someone has stacked it 20 yards
away in a corner
6. The luggage comes off on two different belts and you always stand at the wrong one
7. Your golf-clubs are coming off on another belt, which is so far away that it appears to
be in another city
What I really want is different levels of luggage service like different levels of ticket:
• Normal - see above
• Guaranteed lost
• Guaranteed broken
• May appear today
• May be delivered to you tomorrow
• First off the belt
• Delivered to my hotel and I don't have to go the belt at all
• Picked up at my home and delivered to the hotel
I'd pay for better service.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Who designed this?

Why are hotel rooms and bathrooms so badly designed?
It is staggering to me how badly designed many hotel rooms and bathrooms are:
 You can't find the light switches; when you do the room is still dark
 The TV is unwatchable from the chair as it won't rotate that far
 The hotel offers internet - the cable has been stolen
 You collect a cable - it still doesn't work
 The pillows have every combination except one that is comfortable to sleep on
 The shower sprays ice-cold water down your neck when you eventually work out how
to turn it on
 The hair-drier is hidden, or is one of those tedious ones on the wall that occasionally
blows a faint puff of warm air
 The shampoo bottle is impossible to open
 The writing on the shampoo bottle is so small that you can't read it, and in fact you

have just washed your hair with hand lotion
 The light in the bathroom casts your face in shadow when you look in the mirror
 There is so much hotel junk on the bathroom shelf that you have no room for your own
stuff
These (and many more) are easy to fix if you put yourself in the position of the end-user. So
why don't we design computer systems properly? Let's design them for the people who use
them, not the people who run them.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Tiger Wins The Open

Practice makes perfect, but it may take a couple of years for results
Tiger told you his swing would come right - eventually
I imagine many of you saw Tiger win the Open at the weekend. For those who don't follow
golf, you may be wondering why he has not been winning a lot of major championships
recently. A few years back he was unbeatable, and then he seemed to go away. Well, Tiger was
not happy with his swing, he knew his body was changing and so was the golf equipment.
Last, but not least, his competitors were beginning to catch up with him. So he set about
improving his game, "You can always get better. This game's a never-ending struggle and
that's what makes it what it is."
The results this year speak for themselves. First at the Masters, runner-up at the US Open and
winner at the Open.
How many of us get complacent about our IT systems, especially when they are running well
and don't foresee the changes coming in "equipment" or our competition and then wonder why
we get left behind? There is always room for improvement, and the business and marketplace
you are in will dictate the level of investment that makes sense. Business and IT have to talk
together like they never have before, in order to be correctly positioned to exploit the new
"equipment" and out-perform the competition.
In Tiger's case the investment has been significant, but the results show that it was fully
justified.
Monday, July 18, 2005
What's a Mainframe Daddy?

What should I learn now to earn me lots of money later?
Glad to see someone is offering mainframe education - point your kids this way, it will help
them to make lots of money when they grow older. Mainframes will still be here, but there
won't be many people who have the requisite skills.

Here's a quote from the article:
"In my experience, non-mainframe environments don't have that much rigour or structure
to them," Smith said. "When you have a lot of different people working on the same set of
programs, you need to have strict standards in place so that you can ... do maintenance or
add a new feature."
Couldn't agree more; please see my first blog entry where I talk about keeping mainframe
disciplines alive and using frameworks like ITIL to get processes like Change Management
under control. You will also see that my colleague John Albee has lots to say on the subject in
his blog.
Give me service!
How do you differentiate yourself nowadays?
I have been looking for a new PC for some time. I had bought a new one for downstairs, which
I had naively assumed would be there for me to use every now and then. However, it is now
my wife's computer (and my daughter's for her Ipod)! So if I ever want to get on with my
digital photography and music, I need to buy one for upstairs in my office.
I have tried searching various UK websites / dealers and always ended up choosing the
attractively specified model, which just happens to be out of stock all the time (why have it on
your website then you tedious people?) So I was very happy to see a special offer in the
newspaper at the weekend for exactly the specification I wanted (lots of RAM, socking great
hard drive, nice big TFT panel etc.) They quoted a URL for their website and a special model
number, so off I went to the wondrous Internet and tried to buy one. I spent an hour trying
every configuration option available, but could not get down to the price quoted in the paper.
So, I phoned them the next day and was told that the special price only applies over the
phone!! Why? It is much cheaper and quicker to service me over the Web. I do not particularly
want to spend 15 minutes talking to someone in the depths of a foreign country. I have checked
my phone bill; I am glad to say the phone call was not particularly expensive, but it was twice
the price of a much longer call to the US!
In today's always-connected, Internet-driven, broadband-prevalent world the only thing that
actually tends to differentiate you from your competitors is the service you provide. Give me
something a bit extra - speed, ease of use, intelligent assistance etc. - and I will pay for it.
Make life tedious, and I will go to a competitor. IT is there to service the business, which
actually means making my, and every other customer's life easier.
Who is Peter Armstrong?

A short history

Being a bit slow, I've only just realised that I have never told anybody reading this who I am
and what I do. Sorry!
I studied engineering at University, and then went to work in Germany, because I wanted to
actually be able to talk a foreign language - as you probably know most English people abroad
simply shout louder in English to be understood. Got fluent in German, got married (the two
are connected!), got into computing and returned to England with my wife. Started working for
IBM - became IMS (a mainframe database) Country Specialist, particularly in area of disaster
recovery.
Then, in 1986, BMC approached me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse and I was at the
age where I thought it was worth taking the risk (BMC was very small then and no-one knew
where they were going). Glad to say it was the right move, and now many years later they have
put me in the Corporate Strategy and Planning group as I spend my life talking to customers /
media / analysts etc. about where the world is going and what we are doing about it.
If you're bored with all this stuff, and want to check out the fascinating history of the
Armstrong family name, try this link:
http://www.scotclans.com/scottish_clans/clans/armstrong/history.html
(given to us by King of Scotland in 1237, because my ancestor saved his life - King lost horse,
ancestor rode past, lifted him up and rode off). I am related to Neil Armstrong (read that he has
traced his family back to same roots). Also believe I am related to Lance and Louis !
My first podcast
Want to listen to me talk about computers and golf?
This entry is a bit of blatant self-advertising - just done my first podcast.
You will find lots more there as well from my colleagues.
Mobile phones can be wonderful

SMS texting from Outlook?
Yesterday some more bombs nearly went off in London. My daughter works up in London and
travels on the Underground every day. It is hard to describe how wonderful the arrival of a text
message on a mobile phone can be - "Dad, I'm all right".
I don't know who invented the mobile phone, and especially who invented SMS texting, but
you should be given a prize (on the other hand people who shout down their mobile phone in
restaurants should have them surgically removed!). Getting through on the phone was
practically impossible, but the text message got through after ca. 10 minutes.

Whenever I fly somewhere, which is most of the time, my wife sends me a text message when I
am in the air. As soon as I land, I turn my phone on and she gets a beep and a report to say the
message has been delivered so that she knows I am safe and sound.
It would appear that SMS texting is a lot more prevalent in the UK than in the US and I am not
quite sure why. Perhaps you get more free minutes over there?
Now, what I would really like is a feature in Outlook that lets you send an email to a distribution
list, which includes phone numbers. I know you can set up an email id for your phone and route
it through their server. Well I tried that on mine and it was tedious - I got 250 characters of
header info telling me who it was from and there was no room left for the message. I know there
are some phones which do email very well, but the majority of them as far as I know don't, and
not everyone has a Blackberry.
So what you get is an "urgent" email sent to a group of people, who don't see it because they are
on the road. If you sent them an SMS text, they would see it very soon. I have found websites
where you can send an SMS text to a phone number for free, and I have found one that offers a
distribution list service for a fee.
I feel I am missing something obvious here - perhaps someone will come back and tell me there
is an easy alternative in Outlook? In fact, at this point, one of my colleagues will no doubt tell me
that if I did X, Y and Z and wrote a simple program in C++ and cut and pasted that into ... The
point is that I am a normal ignorant useless end-user, who does not want to read a 200-page
thesis or take a degree in nuclear physics to operate something.
P.S. I do actually read instruction books, but most of them just list the features rather than
explain how to achieve what you want to do.
Add Comment
Mobile phones can be wonderful - Posted by mstabler at 2005-07-22 15:07
Peter
This may help with Outlook 2003 - I use it to SMS Text from Outlook to my daughter's cell in
Europe while I am at my home in Austin.
This download will enable you to send SMS text messages through most GSM mobile phones
connected to your PC using Outlook 2003.
You can enter your SMS text within a Outlook-type entry form and have it sent to your mobile
phone for delivery through your mobile phone network service. There is no requirement to
install third-party software or to subscribe to additional mobile network services if your mobile
phone can be connected to your PC. This is typically via an infra-red connection, Bluetooth
technology, or a USB/serial cable.
The SMS messages can be saved as a draft, grouped, and forwarded like standard Outlook
2003 e-mail.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=240080b4-986e-4afb-ab21-
3af2be63508b&displaylang=en

Keeping in touch
How do I know there are new blog items? How do I contact people cheaply?
Apologies if this is blindingly obvious to the people reading this, but I am relatively new to this
blog world. I asked the people who set this blog up for me if you can get an automatic
notification when new entries are made in a blog (and in my case when someone makes
comments). They pointed me at Bloglines, and it's excellent.
The other thing I use a lot is Skype, which gives you free phone-calls via VOIP to any other
subscriber. If the person the other end is not signed up to Skype, you can use it as a phone from
your PC, by just dialling their number. Also has chat.
Add Comment
There is an rss-feed - Posted by mreys at 2005-07-27 07:13
There are individual rss-feeds for each blogger. The one for you is
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Talkbmc-PeterArmstrongsBlog
You can use rss-feeds with popular software like Lektora, Thunderbird, or incorporate them
into 'My MSN', 'My Yahoo'...
I haven't found a general rss-feed to get notified for whenever anyone posts something to
http://talk.bmc.com/blogs yet, and I hope to find out soon.
New "All" Feed and OPML file - Posted by kstone at 2005-10-27 09:27
We have an official "all" feed now that will pick up every new blog entry published in any
blog on this site! http://feeds.feedburner.com/TalkBMC-AllBlogs
Anne Gentle has also created an OPML file which we will be maintaining and adding new
blogs as they come online. It includes the "All" feed and the podcast feed.
http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-gentle/anne-gentle/talkbmc-opml
Innovation or nostalgia
A review of some of the new ideas in the marketplace?
I have been looking at some of the wondrous new things coming our way, which are meant to
make our lives truly complete. However, I am not always totally convinced that these are
actually new ideas and I detect a severe case of nostalgia creeping in here and there. Nothing
wrong with that, as long as we learn from our past.
RFIDs
Now I like these. I think they have enormous potential if used correctly. For instance, giving

me an RFID tag when I enter a hospital and then checking it against the medication I am being
given to ensure that they are not about to shuffle me off this mortal coil gets my approval.
Tagging kids in Legoland so that you can find them when they wander off – excellent. In fact
I would quite happily have one of these implanted in my head if it meant I could get through
immigration in a few seconds rather than the hours it takes at some airports.
So where is the nostalgia in that? Well, the problem with new technologies is that all the
manufacturers run around with different standards and the consumer ends up with the one with
the best marketing – Betamax vs VHS, Windows vs Mac – which is not necessarily the best
brand. And that thought leads me neatly to my next two items of innovation.
Virtualisation
When this all started, the word being used was Autonomic, which in my English dictionary
means uncontrolled, involuntary reaction (as in knee-jerk). You will have noticed that it has
moved on now to a world of (hopefully) controlled reaction to operational problems.
My bigoted mainframe background makes me laugh here, as to me the whole area of
virtualisation is actually the rediscovery of MVS in distributed hardware. We used to have a
platform that could soak up workload, run multiple tasks, be highly available and was secure
(remember those days?). Now we have a selection of poor operating systems, which don’t
meet any of the requirements set in the previous sentence, so we solve the problem by
dynamically provisioning more of them!
As it happens, it is probably the right thing to do, as it would take too long to rewrite the
operating systems to a robust production standard, but do I see virtualisation as the universal
panacea? No. I want to see it driven by business needs (not technology needs), preferably
predicted in advance, and hooked into change and configuration management. If you allow a
dynamic environment with no change control, I believe you have a recipe for disaster.
SOA
I’ve just read a neat article explaining Service Oriented Architecture. I particularly like the
author’s use of analogies:
“SOA is actually everywhere. Let's look at an example of SOA which is likely to be found in
your living room. Take a CD for instance. If you want to play it, you put your CD into a CD
player and the player plays it for you. The CD player offers a CD playing service, which is
nice because you can replace one CD player with another. You can play the same CD on a
portable player or on your expensive stereo. They both offer the same CD playing service, but
the quality of service is different.”
Obviously standards will be the make or break of SOA, but it is that last sentence which is key to
me. The nostalgic part of me thinks back to the different kinds of shopping experience we used
to have – corner shops vs. supermarkets vs. online. I use online shopping for some purchases, but
would not dream of using it for other ones (where for instance I need to try / feel the goods as
part of the decision process). The point is that I can choose which level of service I want and am
prepared to pay for.
That is how we started computing many years ago and that is where it is coming back to today.
IT and business need to decide what level of service is required and what they are prepared to
pay for it. Then I can design the system that is required. I call this a Service Oriented
Mentality.

How do I define time / distance?
Where do we get seconds, yards and meters from?
I've just read a book called "Civilisation One". I am not giving anything away if I say it shows
evidence for the theory that there was a very advanced civilisation on earth that pre-dated the
Egyptians.
As part of this, they investigate how the various units of measurement that we have today came
to exist for time, length, volume, weight etc. This leads to an interesting thought. Imagine you
are on earth thousands of years ago and there is no such thing as a second or a yard or a meter.
Now work out a method for accurately defining units of time, distance, volume and weight.
I'll give the answer in a later blog entry, but for the moment I plan to apply the technique to
any problem I have. If I can't work out the answer to something, I always go back to first
principles. What do I know, how can I build on that, how can I avoid making false
assumptions. A technique that also works for analysing faults on this stupid PC of course!
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Email rules - KO!

Why do people use email so badly and why is email software so stupid?
I was going to write the rules of email (according to me!), and then realised that it would be long
enough to make a book. So bear with me whilst I get a few grievances off my chest (and feel free
to add in some of your own).
As an old mainframe man used to rapid response, I think Outlook is fairly useless. Multitasking
(something we have been doing in computing for decades) appears to be totally beyond its
capabilities. It sits there locked out whilst some moron sends you a 6M attachment you don't
want. Fortunately I am on broadband; I pity the poor folks, who are not. I know you can set up
email to run remote and just download headers. I tried that and it threw everything else into
confusion.
I also have a Blackberry-type device - lovely for emails, almost useless for attachments.
Unfortunately this is a typical example of people designing software to be used by either those
surgically attached to a T1 pipe, or those who are on a 24K dial-up in the Antarctic. I wish they
would try thinking about how people really use this stuff - travelling round the world, sometimes
in offices, sometimes on wireless, sometimes removing furniture in a hotel bedroom to find a
phone socket etc.
So, my rules for today:
• There is no such thing as an urgent email – the correct device for this is called the
telephone.
• Email is not a guaranteed form of delivery.
• Emails can be read by lawyers years later, so be careful.

• People who press the reply-to-all button should be asked to leave.
• People who press the forward button and send me back my own attachment should be
asked to leave.
• Do not send a message to a complete distribution list asking to be taken off it - right-
click the list name, go to properties, find the owner and email him/her.
• Where is the option to send attachments to some people and not others - do I have to
send two emails?
• Can I have a central attachment location, and send a link?
• No-one has invented the device, which I need when travelling, and this is what I want
to discuss in the next blog entry.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Add Comment
Use the phone? - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-08-04 02:16
Got this comment offline by email
Peter,
I enjoyed your post about email rules. I also believe in the proper use of the tools, including
when_not_to use them. (Part of my advice to participants in my consulting skills for
technologists classes).
One suggestion I have is to use email as an exchange of facts alone. Opinions -- maybe -- but
only positive thoughts. Opinions critical of others should not be communicated over email. No
matter how good a writer we may be, and so few of us are, it never comes across the way it
was meant. Instead, make a phone call.
Another rule I have is to stop replying to an email exchange after the third message with the
same person on the same subject. If something cannot be resolved over three exchanges, it's
time to make a phone call. I actually tell my counterpart that I'm calling because we've already
had three exchanges. It usually works and the matter is resolved!
The other (revolutionary) piece of advice is this: ("Revolutionary" because it's not widely
accepted - yet) Pick one day a month when you don't reply to any email messages you receive.
Place a phone call instead. When conducted judiciously, a live conversation is a much more
effective method to exchange thoughts. I've been told it has worked wonders for those who've
tried it.
If it works one day a month, try two days a months, etc.
Hope you find these interesting and maybe share with you readers..
David Alev
E-mail rules, I agree... mostly - Posted by mreys at 2005-08-03 06:30

But not on these...:
Email is not a guaranteed form of delivery.

Not really true, is it? Technology provides the means to check this (delivery receipts) and if
delivery is not possible you will be informed anyway. But this is all technology again!
There is no guarantee for being read though. Here you should start thinking about an
interesting subject line ;-)
People who press the reply-to-all button should be asked to leave.
Unless information in the reply applies to all ?
Do not send a message to a complete distribution list asking to be taken off it - right-click the
list name, go to properties, find the owner and email him/her.
... and I would add that Internet mailing lists (I guess you are referring to company mailing
lists) should always provide the information on how you can un-subscribe. There are
standards for setting up Internet mailing lists (subscribe/un-subscribe automatically),
unfortunately these have been forgotten.
Where is the option to send attachments to some people and not others - do I have to send two
emails?
I think a lot of software architects/writers will not approve your 'request for change'. How
often does this happen? How much time do you loose: you do know about copy/paste? Any
idea how much time will have to be spent on developing this, as compared to your casual
copy/paste?
Can I have a central attachment location, and send a link?
This exists... commercial and non-commercial.
And what happened with addressing the people you write to (Dear such-and-so..., Hello
Mike,...), and finishing with a greeting and a proper signature (even when you reply!). E-mails
aren't letters, but a minimum of good manners is not asking to much, is it ?
Btw, you don't have to go as far as Antarctica to have 24K dial-up, just come to any
Belgian/Luxembuergish hotel.
Coming back to the rules for e-mails and mailing list: have a look at Netiquette
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html. Some things might be a bit outdated, but still is true.
Has the time come for a new rfc on netiquette, with maybe an extra section on blogs?
Cheers,
Mike
Email culture - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-08-04 02:11

Thanks Mike - good input.
Guaranteed delivery - you are right, I mean guaranteed read.
Reply-to-all - let's add "without thinking".
Cut and paste - I'm lazy!!!
Cheers
Peter

Travels without my laptop
When will the world be easy to travel?
Like many others, I travel a lot in my job and like many others I used to lug
around a laptop, a phone etc. I have now reduced my travelling office
whenever possible to a phone, a Blackberry, and USB stick with combined
remote control (plug in and show your Powerpoint - neat). If I am only
travelling for a couple of days I can even get away without having to carry
10 lbs (4.5kg) of chargers, power leads and adaptors!
I watch many of my colleagues and other travellers hauling their laptops
round the world and I ask myself why do the manufacturers force us to do
this? Which pieces of the laptop do we actually need, or should I say which
are unique to us? The only piece you actually need is some of the data on
the hard-drive.
Imagine a world where you just carry this and plug it into the supplied
screen / keyboard / power supply. This would be made available in hotels,
airport lounges, airplane seats etc.
I found a device that does this, but it is rather expensive, and as one
reviewer puts it "In our lifetime we will see a PDA sized device with the right
features, mobility, power, and storage to meet all our needs on the road as
well as in a desktop docking environment. There will be hundreds more
failures before the right device evolves."
It would appear that Intel are working hard in this direction - hooray.
In another review of a small notebook (who has fingers small enough to use
one of these and eyes sharp enough to see the screen?) I read “This is the
perfect device for business if it only had a wireless telephone option. Isn't
anyone listening out there? We need an inexpensive means to do business,
access e-mail (from anywhere), take/make calls, that comes in a small yet
powerful offering. Half a product doesn't influence me.”
And that for me is the key - are the manufacturers listening to the users or
are they simply trying to make us buy 6 devices? Many years ago at school
my art teacher taught me that anything you buy or design should have 3
properties:
• Does it look good?
• Is it well made?
• Does it do its job well?
Try applying those rules to any device you buy or computer system you
design and I don't think you will go far wrong.
Add Comment
Travel without a laptop- Posted by carslone at 2005-09-01 08:57

Hello, Peter.
I was fortunate enough to attend the BMC Forum yesterday, listen to your speech, and get to
meet you. (If you ever want to proceed with the multi-million dollar lawsuit over the paper cut,
you've got a witness!).
I enjoyed your presentation so much, the first thing I did this morning was check your blog,
which I'm finding very entertaining.
On the subject of your dream device to travel sans laptop, I came across a device I though
you'd find interesting. This is Paul Allen's latest venture: www.flipstartpc.com.
Hope you have fun on the course today.
Best Wishes,
Carlos E. Slone
Travel device
Posted by parmstrong at 2005-09-01 09:50
Looks neat – thanks.
Unfortunately not on course today - getting over jet-lag back in UK
Peter
New Blog Name

Why have I changed the name of this blog?
When I entered the brave new world of blogging and started posting entries here, I wasn't really
sure what I was going to write about. Now that I have got into the swing of it, I realise that a
common theme has emerged from my ramblings. Hence the change to the title.
There is a programme on English TV called "Grumpy Old Men" (yes, there is "Grumpy Old
Women" as well) which has a series of people about my age (55) venting their wrath on all sorts
of subjects under the sun. If you listen closely though, you will notice that the same theme runs
through a lot of the complaints - I want to be served where, how and when I dictate. When I walk
into a shop and the assistant is on the 'phone discussing his/her social life, I do not want to wait
15 minutes for him/her to agree which pub they are meeting in tonight. On the other hand I also
do not want someone coming up to me every 15 seconds when I am browsing and asking "can I
help you?"
I know many people who use an end-user response time measurement tool (synthetic
transactions, robots, appliances or whatever), and I think these are very sensible as part of
establishing whether an SLA has been met. But that is the start of the journey for me. If I go to
the doctor and he/she tells me that I have a temperature of 104 degrees (40C) then I would quite
rightly be worried. If he/she then tells me that he/she has no idea what is wrong with me and
what to do about it, then I start to panic.
I walked into a major customer in Hong Kong a while back and the first question the IT manager

asked me was "can you measure the end-user response time, break it down into the individual
components and tell me where the problem lies? If yes, sit down, if no goodbye!" I asked if I
could hover over the chair, as I could provide parts of the solution and wanted to discuss their
requirements for the rest as we were actively working on a solution. That manager had a service
mentality. She wanted to start with the symptom and work back to the root cause. Many of us in
IT measure all the components but don't understand the bigger picture - which business service is
impacted, how much is it costing me? The only reason IT is there is to service the business, so
let's adopt a service mentality and run it that way.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Add Comment
Grumpy old (wo)men - Posted by mreys at 2005-08-03 06:41
In my TV magazine, GOM has always been announced as a program with the people from the
sixties who were about to change the world and what has become of them: They are still being
grumpy about everything (implying that the world hasn't changed as much as they said they
would).
What were your intentions in the late sixties, Mr. Grumpy ?
My intentions - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-08-04 02:21

Retire and teach people golf
Cheers
Peter
How to learn golf / run IT?

Why start at the wrong end?
If you were teaching someone to play golf, where would you start? Take out a 6-iron and hit
some balls seems to be a common approach. Why?
If I were teaching you golf, the first shot I would teach you is a 6-inch putt. Almost impossible to
miss, so you get a great sense of success straight away. You haven't had to learn anything
particularly complicated and you have got some of the fundamentals in place already. We would
then move gradually further and further away from the hole, and you would learn to aim
properly, hold the club consistently and start making small swings
As the lessons progress, we would move further and further away from the hole, learning to hit
long putts, chip from the edge of the green, pitch from 50 yards, and eventually we would start
hitting full swings. All of this would be building on the fundamentals.
In a perfect world you would set up IT systems management this way - put the basics in place
and build on them. Unfortunately most of us have systems and processes in place already and it
is changing these (ingrained swing thoughts) that is often the problem. I would still take the same
approach though. Start with a small key part - the most critical business application, a key IT

process or whatever. Dedicate time and effort to getting this right, and implementing it in such a
way that other applications and processes will build upon it. This is where you look at things like
ITIL to give you a series of interrelated processes working off a common reference - the
Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Make sure the CMDB hooks into and exploits
other processes you already have and/or intend to improve like Asset Management, Change
Management, Capacity Management etc.
Make sure you have the correct foundation in place, and your swing can only improve. If you
read Tiger's book "How I Play Golf" you will find that he learnt golf exactly the way I have just
described - seems to work for him!
Add Comment
The start small approach - Posted by ansgar at 2005-08-22 10:11
That is the kind of approach I think we're all agree with - from a service mgr. project manager
perspective. However, start small does not mean that it might be going easier.
Consider the situation where you have implemented your IT solution to manage now the first
of your most critical business services from a service perspective. People in IT operations have
to deal now with two different environments at the same time, e.g. the "approved" old one
where assets/CIs related tickets, RFCs, etc. were managed like they always did in the past and
the "little new piece" which are now handled the new kind of way – by a different process
flow, with maybe another additional monitor, etc.
As we’re talking about integrated ITSM there are relationships and dependencies between both
sides. Think what chaos in SD might come up, when you have implemented the CMDB storing
now your server information, but other hardware CIs, related software and logical CIs still
reside on other, separated asset silos. Keeping up the service goals of your incident lifecycle in
such a multi-faceted environment is not that easy.
Therefore manage such "big changes” through an adequate programme is key, backed with
internal marketing, sufficient training in advance, test runs, and hands-on at all levels. And,
don’t forget to reimburse your staff for the additional time which is needed to implement the
changes.
Speed or service?
I have just read an article in today's Daily Telegraph Connected section about the impact of
broadband, where the author quite rightly points out that the net only becomes a compelling
proposition when you have broadband available. If you don't believe that, try thinking back to
when you were trying to download a video clip down a slow old dial-up connection!
It would appear that the UK is about to undergo the next wave of broadband, with speeds up to
10Mb per second coming soon, and we are apparently one of the leading broadband countries in
the world.
I am also reading "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman, where the author makes the point
that the connectivity we now enjoy allows people anywhere to compete (digitally) on an equal
footing.

Combine the two articles and I believe you actually come to the conclusion that the world is
partially flat, but has some nasty humps and hollows in those countries / districts, where
broadband is not available. Unfortunately not everyone thinks about this and chucks out a
service, which is unusable until you have broadband, and then wonders why it doesn't take off.
But for me, the key part of the Telegraph article comes in the last few paragraphs:
"People do not buy broadband on speed alone."
"It's all very well to have a warp speed connection, but if your email goes down, you need to
know how long it will take to get fixed, and you want to speak to a real person about it,
instead of a computer."
"So while the Internet has come a long way in the past decade, the companies that plug us
into it are still in the last century when looking after their punters."
Yes, yes, yes!!!!!!!!!! It's service I want, not just speed.
Add Comment
Pharmacy - Posted by fjohannessen at 2005-08-11 10:29
A non-technical case-in-point. I was getting a prescription filled at a Walgreen's (big US
pharmacy). My wife had dropped of the prescription earlier. I came up to the drive-thru
window to pick it up and the person couldn't find the prescription. She disappeared, then came
back and started servicing other customers without saying a word to me. I finally became
exasperated and asked what was going on? She says that they were filling the prescription and
it would be another 5-10. If she had just told me this up front, I would have been happy.
Instead, I drive off unhappy and without the prescription because I didn't want to wait any
longer. I just wanted service!
Don't forget to save!

I have just spent half an hour typing a blog about the joys of using a BlackBerry. However, I
stupidly pressed the view button to check it before hitting the save button tucked away right
down the bottom. Whole lot gone!
Please, software designers, assume that the user is stupid and make it work from my point of
view!!!
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Perhaps it's me, but I find this message tacked on the end of BlackBerry emails extremely
tedious. Do they want to show off that they have a BlackBerry, or do they not know how to turn
it off / change it? Start up the Desktop Manager, go into Redirector Settings and at the bottom

you will find your signature. I have changed mine to my name and my phone number, because I
think people should use the 'phone more and hide less behind email.
In the vague hope that someone from BlackBerry gets to read this, you have a great device for
quick emails, but could you add some features to Version 2 please?
• Out of the box, the Calendar sync does not work at all. On the system we have here, we
use Outlook and the sync in Desktop Manager says sync with Outlook - doesn't work.
You have to change it to BlackBerry Wireless Sync. Obvious?!
• Now you can accept and decline appointments on the BlackBerry. Where is the
Tentative? Where is the Forward?
• Attachments!?!?!? Enough said.
• Webpages - most of the ones I want to go to need Java.
I personally think that IM, VOIP, texting etc. are all going to grow exponentially. So I sit here
in the hope that one day someone will invent a truly useful device, designed from the end-
user's point of view. In the meantime, I'll stick to sending Owls.
Add Comment
Blackberry Autosig - Posted by Bob at 2007-09-21 14:06
Most people add the auto sig so people know that it comes from a mobile which could explain
spelling, grammar and short messages (can me mis-interpreted as rude).
grammar? - Posted by peter at 2007-09-22 03:09

Fair point, although unfortunately large numbers of people seem to be losing the art of
grammar and spelling nowadays. Oscar Wilde once wrote "I'm sorry this is a long letter, I
didn't have time to write a short one." Perhaps the autosig should say "sorry this is spellt rong
and the grammer is rubbish!
Blackberry autosig - Posted by Chris at 2007-11-16 01:38

I agree with the comment. Peter, you may not understand the benefit - the sig lets people know
not to get tweaked by mispellings or extreme brevity, both of which are intrinsic to typing with
your thumbs on keys that are too small. I want to be given a break, and for people not to take
offense, so I LIKE the autosig.
personal - Posted by peter armstrong at 2007-11-16 09:46

Ok, grudging agreement, but I'd still like it personalised, and I still want a decent device aimed
at my needs rather than some technician's vague belief of what I want.
(This woz riten on my blockbery!)

"sent from my blackberry" - Posted by Laura at 2008-01-23 21:08
I also thought this was kind of a snotty "signature" but do like it for the aforementioned reason:
It explains the SMS text, typos and grammar errors that are inherent with the blackberry....
I deleted it for a while, but felt that I had to replace it because I want people to know if I
respond to something, I'm not at a comfortable workstation and may not want to respond in
detail...
Thanks,
Laura
Sent from home - typos are my own fault.
the slippery slope - Posted by peter at 2008-01-24 17:47

Fair enough, but is this the start of the slippery slope to the state wher we dont care about our
spilling and pinctuation, witch lds 2 peeple hoo cant spel or rite inglish?!?!?!
Spell check - Posted by Tim Dowdall at 2008-01-25 09:38

4.3 OS devices have Spell check.
Secondly, the tag line indicates that although you have responded, you may not be in a
situation that means you can reply in full. It has a place, IMHO.
==========
Not sent from my Award winning BlackBerry Smartphone.
New mainframe blog

Forgot to advertise a new mainframe blog, where I have been invited to join in. The link points
you to my first offering on toasters, Romans, driving on the correct side of the road and other
assorted ramblings.
And if you don't believe mainframes are still going strong, try this:
http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/mainframes/story/0,10801,103659,0
0.html
A Design Classic
One of my readers sent me this classic:

This is from a hotel room in Riga. To quote Mike:
"The edge of the sink is so small that it takes 5 seconds to balance the stopper as shown on the
picture. The cord is too short to lay the stopper next to the tap. The other option is to let it dangle,
but then your feet get wet."
Reminds me of many the websites I have used, which seem to tie you in knots because they
never have the option you want, or you have to search far and wide to find it. Web design is a bit
like writing a disaster recovery procedure. The person who designed the website / wrote the
procedure knows exactly what to do next. No-one else does.
In both cases the work is useless until it has been tested by someone else, who was not involved
in its creation.
I was one of the original team that put together the Business Service Management (BSM)
strategy at BMC. You know that a strategy (design etc.) has been successful when your
colleagues, customers, analysts, customers and media all talk about it (just try a few searches on
Google and you will see what I mean). Even better when your customers tell you that the others
are talking, but you are delivering.
Add Comment
Riga - Posted by mreys at 2005-08-17 13:01
Just to warn all other readers. This picture is not enough reason not to go to the beautiful city
of Riga. Anyway, after years of communist and Nazi oppression, the people are quickly
'Adopting a Service Mentality'.
If interested to go, go soon before it's as popular as Prague is nowadays!
(http://pictures.reys.be/Riga)
Are you underutilising ITIL?

A colleague pointed me at this article
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Managers-Underutilize-ITIL-

Survey-Says/
the other day. A lot of my ITIL literate friends and colleagues are surprised
by it as ITIL is widely adopted over here.
• I assume the survey was done in the US, which is several years behind Europe in terms
of ITIL. Not because the Americans are slow, but due to the fact that ITIL started over
here (my standing joke is that it is the only sensible thing to come out of the UK
government in the last 30 years, but I don't want to use this blog for politics), and it has
taken a while to swim across the pond.
• Note the quote:
"....represents a lack of understanding on the part of upper IT management of what
ITIL is intended to accomplish, which is a re-engineering across the entire IT
organization of the provisioning of services."
• Creating a Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) is a total pain in the neck if
you don't have tools to automate the population of it, and to keep it up-to-date. These
tools haven't been available for years. In fact the most accurate CMDB I have
discovered on my travels was in Moscow and that was claimed to be 75% (and it was
only 100% for about 3 hours).
• Many people think a CMDB is just an asset store. No! The significant difference is that
a CMDB holds details of the relationships between the items (Configuration Items -
CIs) stored within it. It’s not just a database, it’s a model of your IT environment and
how IT is configured to deliver services to the business. Hence you can find out how
important something is from a business point of view when it breaks, because you can
determine who is using it, what business process is impacted, how much it is costing
you to be offline etc. I would never store information like licences, maintenance details,
discounts received etc. in a CMDB - these all belong in an asset management system, to
which you can link from your federated CMDB. In fact, the CMDB should be the heart
of your ITIL processes, and should be hooked into as many of them as possible to
provide business impact and hence value. This is when you move IT from a silo'd
technology-driven mentality to a business-driven service mentality.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I have not worked out how to link this to a service mentality except to say it will make
thousands of people laugh and that is a service!
http://www.geocities.com/fang_club/lego_grail.html
Actually I've always thought that you should combine work with humour.
Monday, August 22, 2005

Time and distance follow-on
In an earlier entry I set the challenge of coming up with a method of accurately defining time,
distance, volume, weight etc. if you were living on earth a few thousand years ago.
Having watched a programme on TV last night about the Mayas, the Aztecs and the Incas it
reminded me that I hadn't given the answer.
These ancient people were, of course, fascinated by the the sun, the moon and the stars. In fact,
if you have nothing else around then the only constants are the size of the earth and the
movement of the planets. The theory is that they defined time by the amount of time it took a
planet - e.g. Venus - to track across a part of the sky. The time part was determined by laying
out a circle and splitting it into equal segments.
The clever bit is how to get from time to distance, and here the theory is that they used a
pendulum. If you remember your school physics (a long time ago for me), the time it takes for
a pendulum to swing is dependent on its length (and the gravitational force, but that doesn't
vary hugely across the bits of the earth that we are talking about here). So if you get a
pendulum that swings x number of times whilst Venus is moving across, you have defined
length. From length you can make cubes to give you volume, and then fill them with water to
give you weight - neat.
The interesting part to me is that the whole reason they investigated this is that buildings all
over the place (Scotland, France, Middle East etc.) were all constructed to the same unit of
length (to a very high degree of accuracy). They reckon that this could not be by chance and
hence could not be based on someone's length of foot, or carrying round sticks or whatever.
5000 years later as we need to make computer systems all over the world talk to one another
through standards like XML, WS etc. I am personally convinced that SOA is the biggest thing
happening in computing over the next few years.
Plus ca change?
The intelligent phone?

I am in the middle of reading “The World is Flat”, which talks about how the advances in
connectivity, bandwidth etc. are making the world a level playing field. Just been reading the
section that shows how advanced the Japanese are in the world of mobile phones (cell phones
if you are American). One of the things you can do with your phone over there is pay with it.
Similar schemes exist in other countries as well. Probably all on different standards and
procedures, but hey who thinks about the travelling user? Actually my mobile phone works
everywhere except Japan and Korea, as they are on a completely different system, but that's
another rant at a later date.
All of this amuses me as I wrote about it 5 years ago in my book (note – contains adult
language), where I hypothesise on the mobile phone becoming a personal identification (PI)
system. How many of you have a mobile phone? How many of you have credit cards? Why do
you have both?
The world is going to become more and more wireless, and technologies are going to converge
rapidly. I sincerely hope there are intelligent people out there thinking about what that means

from the point of view of the person in the street. Give me convenience and service and I will
pay for it. Give me hassle and I will go elsewhere.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Add Comment
Wireless or Clueless? - Posted by rstinnett at 2005-09-03 22:22
First off, it was a pleasure to meet you at Forum '05 in Chicago this past week. I learned a lot
from your talk, and thanks to your brief conversation, I finally convinced the company to
purchase a discovery tool for the CMDB!
Anyway, onto the subject at hand. Wireless, in all its glory, is basically thought of by both the
business and end-users as merely a way to replace the Ethernet cables. This is a shame, and as
you pointed out, many companies have missed the boat completely. Take the hotel Forum '05
was held at -- Oak Brook Hills Resort. Completely clueless when it came to wireless. Their
website boasted "High Speed Internet Access!" when in reality unless you were within 4 or 5
rooms of the center of the building you were out of luck as the range was awful.
Now, here is an industry (hotels) that could really take advantage of the concept of wireless
transactions. Just imagine being able to use your wireless device to order up room service,
check-out (or in!) to your room -- or how about this wild and crazy idea, use wireless to
replace the keycard. The possibilities are numerous here. However, the business-end of all this
is totally clueless. They can't manage to set up an Internet access point with any degree or
reliability, let alone implement a wireless way for me to open the hotel door with my cell
phone or other device.
Technology and business are so far apart in many areas nowadays it is not funny. They think
they are using technology, but I argue that most technological innovations in the business
environment were old-news a decade ago. I guess I better keep track of that keycard....
Who is measuring whom?

I was listening to BBC Radio 4 on the way in to the office this morning and there was a
wonderful item about measuring how successful doctors are at handling your appointment
requests. The Government (no comment - this is a non-political blog!) have asked doctors to
tell them how many requests for appointments within the next 48 hours are successful. The
answer is a staggering 99.98%.
However, if you then ask the patients the same question you discover that 30% of patients
cannot get an appointment when they want one.
If you look behind the figures you discover that the Government have given doctors a goal of
handling all appointment requests within 48 hours - this is the SLA. Doctors' surgeries have
achieved this by telling anyone who wants an appointment next week Wednesday to call back
on Monday!!!
So on one hand we have a metric, which appears to be sensible, fulfilling an SLA, which is
meant to be helpful. On the other hand we have an alienated user population, who see a
dreadful level of service with no-one looking at the metrics that are pertinent to them.

Sound familiar?
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Do you want fries with that?

What's the point in blogging if you can't point at yourself in a magazine?
What are you doing on September 23rd?

Supporting children and young people sleeping rough
Since 1998 IT companies have been raising money (over £1M so far) for children and young
people sleeping on the streets of our cities. They do this by sleeping rough themselves. This
year they will be sleeping on the streets of London on September 23rd, and I am enormously
impressed that some of my colleagues have joined in.
The Rules of Cricket

Those of you who are not English or Australian my have missed the fact that England won a
rather important cricket series the other day. It reminded me of how not to explain something
to someone:
The definition of Cricket as explained to a foreigner--
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes
out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.
When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries
to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he
goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay
all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out
twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the

game!
And that reminds me of some help desk calls I have had with companies round the world!!
Add Comment
What part ? - Posted by mreys at 2005-09-14 01:52
I sure hope that it's not the length of the game (up to 5 days ?) that reminds you with service
desk telephone conversations ;-)
My experience - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-09-14 02:14

No Mike - I was particularly thinking about an insurance claim I recently had on my car. I left
the car parked overnight and came out in the morning to discover the windscreen was cracked.
Then the fun started:
"Who was driving the car at the time?"
No-one - it was parked
"How long has the driver had a full driving licence?"
Not applicable
"Was the driver hurt?"
Not applicable
"Was anyone hurt in the accident?"
ARE YOU LISTENING - IT WAS PARKED - NO-ONE WAS IN IT!!!!!
"Did you talk to the witnesses?"
"What time did it happen exactly"
"How did the accident happen?"
I DON'T @~*@*# KNOW - I WASN'T THERE!!
etc. etc. etc.
Hilarious... - Posted by mreys at 2005-09-16 03:38

...if you're not involved.
First line support must be extremely boring. These people have a standard questionnaire and
follow it without even thinking, they're probably not even paid to think!

I'm in the wrong job!
Just watching the World Matchplay golf from Wentworth. £60,000 if you get knocked out in
the first round! I need to practice my golf swing this weekend.
Friday, September 16, 2005
A busy week
Been a busy week this week, with no time to blog. Lots of flying - who does the algorithm for
flight prices? They are either the cleverest person on earth and should be used for something
more productive or do they simply use a random number generator? I don't work on planes
when sitting down the back as there is no room for your laptop, the person in front always
reclines their seat when you least need it shoving your screen straight up your left nostril, and
the person next to you has sticky-out elbows that stop you typing. I dream of the day when we
just carry our hard-drive and the screen and keyboard are provided everywhere.
Sunday I flew to Chicago for ITSMF - the big ITIL conference. This has grown enormously in
the last few years - see my colleague's blog and the link here - and there were 1800 people at
the conference (a couple of years ago it was probably less than 500). People ask if ITIL is a
fad, or whether it works. The answer most definitely is that it is not a fad, it can work very
well (if it has management backing and a committed project manager) and it is the foundation
for ISO 20000, the new International Standard for IT service management coming soon.
Flew on to Vancouver, where we held our International Analyst Conference, and actually met
someone who reads my blog - thanks! Several of the analysts knew of this blog, but said they
would not comment on here as we currently require registration for comments - I will take this
up again with the powers that be and try to get it changed. In the middle of the meeting we all
heard about Hurricane Rita growing in strength from minute to minute so Bob (the big boss of
BMC) flew all the Houston folk back early to sort out their homes and families - hope you're
all OK.
Then flew back to UK for BMC's 25th anniversary yesterday. I created a history quiz for them,
reviewing world events (with music clips) over the last 25 years - contact me offline if you
want a copy as it's big!!
Now I have to get ready to fly to Dubai tomorrow for their GITEX Conference, which is also
celebrating 25 years.
To blog or not to blog, that is the question

A handbook that offers advice to bloggers who want to protect themselves from recrimination
and censors has been released by Reporters Without Borders. I am just downloading it now -
wonder how many of the rules I break?
Obviously written for the (American? and other) markets where the ability to express yourself

freely is nigh-on impossible. Fortunately the UK has not yet gone down the route of farcical
lawsuits - when it does I shall go and live somewhere sensible!
Dubai
Been in Dubai this week chatting with customers (and playing golf with them!) The amount of
construction work going on there is absolutely staggering. I was told that 20% of the world's
static cranes are currently in Dubai.
As usual the hotel managed to totally misunderstand the concept of customer service. I wanted
to do my email, so I read the hotel "services" brochure, which tells me to go down to the
business centre. I march in there with my laptop:
"Oh no, you can do email in your bedroom, I will get you a cable"
Back to the room. Plug in cable (why not put it in bedroom to start with or give me wireless?),
fire up this steam-driven marvel, crank my Internet browser into life; it goes into the hotel
web-page and asks me for for an id and password. So I phone the business centre.
"That shouldn't happen, I will get technical support to ring you."
Five minutes later, they ring.
"That is not an IT problem, I will get the front desk to call you."
Five minutes later they ring.
"You need to contact the business centre."
I went out to dinner!
The next day I went to the front desk and asked again - lady there clicked on a screen and fixed
the problem in five seconds. I did not have the strength to ask them why they did not have a
consolidated incident and problem management system.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Fawlty Towers?
My previous blog entry on the problems in a hotel in Dubai prompted a colleague to pass on
this gem:
"I read with amusement you blog about getting internet access from your Dubai hotel. I once
worked in Saudi Arabia and stayed in a hotel when I first went there in August. I rang the hotel
front desk to complain that there was no cold water for my shower. I was advised that cold
water would be available later. How much later I enquired? October!"
Reminds me of the old days of waiting for the IT department to deliver a new project. Things
have moved on, with ERP and other initiatives delivering code faster. But there are still a lot of

legacy apps out there, which is why I see Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services
growing rapidly.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
The Meaning of Life

Those of you who know me will know that I am bit of a Luddite with all this new technology
stuff. Actually I see it is now called neo-luddism, but I realise I have actually succumbed to a
lot of it (the technology that is).
I sit here typing on one PC listening to BB King playing on another PC (downloaded the album
from allofmp3.com - great site and the Daily Telegraph says it is legal), my Blackberry (great
concept, dreadful implementation) is buzzing, my mobile phone plays the Pink Panther when it
rings, my guitar is attached to a synthesizer and plays the saxophone if I want, my piano is
attached to another PC and 3 more synths and .....
But ... my new car can't handle the MP3 player unless I use an illegal radio transmitter (they
are illegal here in UK), the post has just arrived and I binned 95% of it (I don't want paper
statements), I have four devices charging their batteries up for the next business trip (why can't
I have one charger?), and golf balls are going far too far and ruining some of the best courses
in the world.
The pace of change is staggering, the ideas in Nicholas Negroponte's fabulous book "Being
Digital" are coming true, and you wonder where I am going with all of this.
Well, the fact is that the reason for my neo-luddism comes back to may favourite peeve and
that is that people get way too excited about the technical stuff and forget what the user really
wants. IT is the same - it has to be driven by business level contracts and not by technicians
getting excited about new stuff. Which is why I enjoyed reading this article on SOA, by an
analyst I know.
Now, excuse me, but my Blackberry is calling my phone and the synthesizer is getting
confused!
Sgt. Peppers' Track 6

Until recently I had two KIPPERs at home. This does not mean that I have some strange fetish
about collecting smoked fish, but that I have two "Kids In Parents' Place Eroding Retirement
Savings". My daughter has just moved out, and my son has put down a deposit on a house.
I could at this point drop into some boring rant about the farcically iniquitous price of housing
in the South East of England, but life is too short.
The point is that life is all about change. You may not like it and you may yearn for the good
old days (actually I hated school, but that's another story), but we need to move forwards.

Talking to a large customer this week, we agreed that IT has moved on, but the basic problems
stay the same, and hence the skills we have learnt over the last 30 years from running
mainframes (performance, availability, tuning, security, backup and recovery etc.) cannot be
lost. The skill is taking that and combining it with the best bits of the new initiatives coming
along.
Track 6? She's Leaving Home.
Are we too polite in England?

I know it is dangerous to make sweeping statements and generalise, but the English (and other
nations) are renowned for being polite. This is normally an admirable trait (and one that is
sadly disappearing amongst certain elements of our population) but IMHO there are times
when we need to cast aside the shackles and say what we really think.
I don't mean that you should become an obnoxious foul-mouthed rude git (the people I referred
to above) but that you should politely and clearly make your displeasure known. How often
have you sat in a restaurant and said "lovely" when you actually wanted to say "sorry, I think
the chef forgot to cook this"?
Similarly, on the receiving end you need to listen and respond rather than behave like Basil
Fawlty (if you've never seen Fawlty Towers on TV, please go and find a copy- it is the
essential guide to bad service starring John Cleese).
I personally find that humour / a smile works to break the ice on both sides. As you have
probably gathered from this blog I am a firm believer in the school that says you can combine
humour and work. I meet far too many people who take life (and themselves) far too seriously
- fortunately we are very unlikely to ever meet on a golf course.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Plain English please

A colleague pointed me at this. Wonderful.
Can we please not use phrases like "leveraging the legacy paradigm"? This is a "pass the sick
bag" phrase. The simple alternative is "using what you have". In fact as far as I am concerned
leverage is a noun, not a verb, and paradigm should be banned.
In fact being British, I also spell things with an "s" rather than a "z" so whenever someone in
America puts "Globalization" on a slide or in a document I want to scream. If you want to
pretend that you are even vaguely global in your thinking, then please spell it our way!
I also hate bad punctuation, e.g. "the book and it's cover" - yuck! If you cannot see what is
wrong in that, then buy a copy of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves".
I have installed Bullfighter on my laptop and use it regularly to check what I am writing -

highly recommended.
And whilst I am firmly in rant mode, how about saying "thank you" occasionally when you get
good service, or when one of your staff does a good job; you will be amazed how positively
people will respond.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Add Comment
39/70 - Posted by mreys at 2005-10-11 16:14
Mr. Armstrong,
thanks for the comment on the big L-word. Leverage is, on the other hand, a word you need on
your bullshit BINGO card (ever played this? it's fun!), it increases the chance that you are the
first to shout bingo when listening to a presentation on software roadmaps, project
management....
I would just like to ask for some understanding for non-native English speakers. Incorrect
spelling is everywhere nowadays, and I'm afraid it will be difficult to stop. If you know that
learning a foreign language is a lot about imitation, you know what is going to happen in the
future... I fear that this is part of globalisation, whether you like it or not. I fear that this is the
disadvantage of English being the main business language used around the world!
Now, thank you for the wonderful advice on bullfighter.
Mike.
Regarding the subject: see http://www.bbc.co.uk/testthenation/

And how well would you perform on your third language ? Or just let me know (honestly) how
well you've done... ...
...in your own language.
Personal service
Was on a slow old dial-up all last week, so didn't get round to blogging; I had forgotten how
horribly slow dial-up is. A fact that many people forget when designing websites that are due
to be used in less developed countries - but that's a separate rant.
In the middle of all this my laptop decided it was old and tired like me, and went into a
catatonic state every time I tried to synchronise my offline Outlook folders. I thought it was the
dial-up or the VPN, but when I got back home on to broadband, guess what? Same problem!
Fortunately I had to go into the office today (normally I work from home when not travelling),
so I spoke to our jolly friendly local IS people. Chap there immediately downed tools, attached
himself to my laptop, diagnosed the problem (corrupt OST file) and fixed it. Furthermore he
kept me informed as to what he was doing and why.
It was then that I realised what a joy it was to have a friendly human interface as opposed to
some bloody machine, or some bloke (or blokess - I am not sexist) in some far flung part of the

world, who wants to know my inside leg measurement prior to suggesting a solution.
I know offshoring or outsourcing your help desk is all the rage, but what incentive do those
people have for reducing the number of help desk calls? None! In fact, they want exactly the
opposite, which is why you should always go through a problem management exercise (which
will probably reduce the number of help desk tickets by 20 to 30%) before passing over your
help desk to someone else. My dream help desk has no tickets, because everything gets
resolved automatically, and/or the system gives me enough information and guidance to fix it
myself quickly.
Now I am sitting in the kitchen typing this, waiting for the gasman to arrive as the central
heating is up the twist. He'll be here between 12 and 6 they said. Sounds like some of the
people I play golf with. "What did you score on that hole?" "Somewhere between 6 and 12!"
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Add Comment
The Value - Posted by cote at 2005-10-19 11:52
That conflict between knowing that being face to face with someone is much nicer than having
to call up someone across the world is the perplexing thing about off-shoring, isn't it? Do we
really value the cost-savings so much that we'll throw out the ability to have on-site support in
favor of cheaper off-site support? Obviously, when the question is de-humanized onto a
balance sheet, the answer is yes, definitely, do it double-post-haste!
But, then when it comes to the down-and-dirty of actually doing it, as you found out, it's so
much nicer and quicker to just be face-to-face.
How can we account for that disparity in making help-desk decisions? Dell seems to be a high-
profile company that's gone back-and-forth on this issue, and I'm sure there are many more that
don't have the attention of the press.
What are your thoughts...vague as the question above is?
The gasman cometh?

If the title of this blog means nothing to you, try looking here for amusement.
As I explained in my previous entry, the gasman was due to come round between 12 and 6 on
Wednesday - he didn't. He actually came round at 10.30 on Thursday - problem was that I was
in Barcelona! Why ask me for a phone number? Why not call beforehand? etc. etc. etc.
Unfortunately this is all too typical of the pseudo service mentality, where they drive you mad
asking for all sorts of personal contact info and then never use it.
Barcelona airport was interesting - we landed at one end. Unfortunately they decided to deliver
the luggage at the other end of the airport, which was a good mile walk away. Let me explain
that there are two luggage delivery areas - one right next door to where we landed and the
other one a mile away. So let's play annoy the passengers and split them and their luggage as
far apart as possible - thanks!

As it happens, most of us had no luggage, but we were being picked up by a non-English
speaking taxi driver (whose phone number we didn't have anyway). He was of course waiting
at the other end, because that is where the airport told people that the passengers were coming
out.
I want to meet the person who designs modern airports, because the fundamental ploy appears
to be to make me walk as far as possible. I suppose this is because airports used to be for
getting people on to planes and now they are shopping malls with planes attached?
Then, to add insult to injury, someone drove into my wife's car (parked outside my mother's
house) and drove off. Thank you, you ^&$#&*~!
Saturday, October 22, 2005
The gasman came!

"The gasman will come between 12 and 2" - he actually came at 4.
The problem was that we were doing it wrong, because no-one told us how it do it right (as far
as we can remember).
Lesson 1 - don't make promises you can't keep.
Lesson 2 - apologise to the cheesed off customer.
Lesson 3 - when it transpires that the fault is due to no-one explaining the (recently installed)
system to the customer properly, apologise again.
Lesson 4 - assume that customers will forget anything you tell them, so give them a copy of the
instructions or an easy way to find them again.
A knowledge base is a wonderful thing if you can use it, and the customer can use it.
A similar thing has just happened at home, where the printer cartridge has run out. It helpfully
flashes a red light at you on one of the buttons. This, of course, is not the button you have to
press to change the cartridge - oh no, that would be helpful and intelligent. It's the one next
door with the unreadable icon underneath it. Are there any instructions inside the printer lid to
help you? Don't be silly!!!!
I can't remember if I have said this before, but even if I have, it's good and worth repeating:
It's not that difficult to design something well, so why do so many people fail so spectacularly?
Try using something you design and see what the user thinks of it.

Golf etiquette
At last, a sensible and useful article!!!
Read this, and learn how to speak to CxOs, get promoted, where not to use your BlackBerry
etc.
Some interesting podcasts

Just been pointed at this.
I remember reading Patricia Seybold's book customers.com some years ago - here is an update,
where she talks about bridging the gap between IT and the business.
Several other podcasts including Dr Lawrence Hrebiniak talking about how IT can help the
business implement its strategy if they can find a way to communicate with the business and
deliver meaningful metrics that are easy to understand, and show the value that IT provides.
To me there are two parts to IT - cost and value. Everyone seems to concentrate on the cost
side and reduce staffing, consolidate servers, offshore tasks and processes etc. Not everyone,
though, seems to look at the equally / if not more important value side. How much revenue do
these systems bring in? How much does it cost if they are offline? Which are the core ones that
the business simply cannot live without?
Add Comment
Import in your podcast software ? - Posted by mreys at 2005-10-25 13:04
Good site, probably good podcast,... but the link to import this in iTunes, iPodder or other
podcast software is well hidden!
itunes etc. - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-10-25 13:34

Ah, young Michael. I have refused to buy an ipod because it uses that bloody silly itunes
intermediate step. Ripped all the CDs I like to MP3s plus downloaded ones I wanted from
allofmp3.com (highly recommended). My daughter got an ipod = copy number 2 of songs in
itunes. Her boyfriend then got one = copy number 3 of same songs (it says you can do two
ipods but it requires a degree in nuclear physics). So having filled up most of my backroom PC
harddrive with repeated songs, I simply bought an iRiver and copied across the mp3 folders.
The user interface on the iRiver is crap, but I only listen to it in planes so I can live with it.
Now back to your comment - no idea as I don't use any of those, but I hope the enterprise
leadership people are reading all of this. I just downloaded the whole thing to my PC hard-
drive (whence I can copy it to my iRiver any time I want!!!)
Cheers

Peter
Snail Mail
Went through the post this morning. As usual, I threw away about 95% of it. Apart from the
terrible implications this has on the forests of this world, it got me to thinking about talking to
your customers and asking what they want.
A lot of my statements now are electronic, because I found that option on the various
companies' websites. However, some others seem to resolutely stick to the paper-driven, pre-
dinosaur view of the world. From memory only very few of them have ever asked me what I
actually want.
If you take this thought stream further and get to the stage where all interaction is electronic,
and the 'phone has unfortunately become almost as dead as snail mail because everyone sends
you annoying emails, you arrive back at the theme of one of my recent posts - personal service.
You long to meet someone / talk to someone / be recognised as a loyal customer.
Listening to Patty Seybolds' podcast - see previous blog entry - she repeats that you should
drive your business from the customer's point of view. Work from the outside in, rather than
the inside out. Too true. As they always say it costs far more to attract new customers than to
retain existing ones, so work on retention. Be nice to us. Say thank you. Give us a little bonus
now and then for being loyal. Ask us what we want.
Add Comment
Scary - Posted by cmullins at 2005-11-01 18:17
Hmmm... the thought of actually asking you what you want seems a bit scary to me. Knowing
you, I think it would devolve into a rant about the proper insertion of the letter "u" into certain
words and the desire to never hear the word "leverage" used as a verb again...
Moving on - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-11-04 12:54

Craig - good to hear from you.
Yes, I still fight for the abolition of leverage as a verb, and I seem to add new words to my hate
list every day - my current least favourite is operationalise - yuck!
Bridging the gap

Last year BMC conducted a pan-EMEA survey of 500 IT Directors. This research revealed
that 70 percent of CIOs pinpointed poor communication as the reason for lack of alignment
between business and IT strategies.

As a follow-on, this year we commissioned renowned business author and European Speaker
of Year David Taylor, guru and author of the Naked Leader, to write a guide on how to bridge
this gap.
This guide is now available. Inside you will find interviews with CIOs, as well as tips and
techniques on how to improve the communication between the two camps. Hope you find it
useful.
Rip-off of the year award

I would like to announce a new competition - the ROOTY, aka the Rip-Off Of The Year
Award.
What prompted this I hear you ask? Well, I have just been to South Africa for a few days
(BMC Forum, customer visits, press, TV - gosh almost sounds exciting when I write it all
down!) and I had to park at Heathrow airport. The cost of this has been steadily rising to the
ridiculous levels they now charge, where you need to take out a second mortgage if you are
there for a week. What this means of course is that if you are there for longer than a few days it
is much cheaper to get to the airport by taxi / train or whatever. Net result - you drive away
(forgive the pun) your customers.
Next candidate - buying a CD and paying full price for it (ca. £15 in the UK). The record
companies complain that we all download our music because it's cheaper - DUUUH! Of course
we do, because you charge us iniquitous amounts. Now I would happily buy a CD if it were a
sensible price. Actually I would also like it to come in a 12" cover like we used to get our vinyl
in, because I like to read the sleeve notes and they are too small in a CD. For the older ones
amongst you remember Sergeant Peppers with all the inserts, Electric Ladyland, Ogden's Nut
Brown Flake etc.?
Other candidates:
• Any designer clothing with the name on the outside - why aren't you paying me to
advertise your stuff?
• Alcohol in the UK - it's cheaper for me to drive through the tunnel to France and buy it
there, which also has the added benefit of a nice French meal and no tax for the
thieving Government.
• Petrol in the UK - if only there were an easy alternative we would all flock to it.
The common theme of course is that you gradually cheese people off, and they all go
elsewhere - that's not service, that's greed. If you want to charge me more, then offer me
something I want / something extra / a unique service or whatever and I'll happily pay the extra
(if I think it's worth it!).
Many people think IT should get a ROOTY as IT is considered to be a cost centre. This is
normally in the companies where IT is behind a closed door, and only ever seen when there are
problems. In those companies where business and IT are aligned, then the CIO is on the board,
IT is a fundamental part of the business strategy and IT is seen as a value generator. In fact,
can we please get rid of the name IT - Information Technology. No it isn't!! That immediately

conjures up a vision of techy nerds peering into screens and talking to one another in TLAs
about their SLAs and OLAs and am I boring you yet? Let's have a name that gives a positive
impression and implies that the company makes more money because you're there.
Any candidates (either for a ROOTY or for a new name for IT)?
Friday, November 04, 2005
Serve me now!!!
Had some friends round for dinner on Saturday night, whom we hadn't seen for ages. So they
asked what I do and at some stage we got on to blogging and this set of ramblings, which
immediately set off several examples of how not to treat people.
My favourite was the one we have probably all come across - you try to pay for something, the
assistant is on the (mobile) phone and he/she continues to hold the conversation! Apart from
the total lack of manners and the fact that the conversation is normally about organising their
social life, is it asking too much for a bit of concentration on the person being served? Actually
I recommend that we all rise up and grab the phone when this happens and grind it into dust,
but make sure the assistant is smaller than you!
Imagine one of your key customers is trying to order something from your website, but you
continue to run your totally unnecessary database query at the same time and kill the response
time. If the service is important, then run it professionally. If you can't predict the workload
and hence don't know how much hardware to provision, use (business driven) virtualisation
techniques - something my colleague talks about in his blog.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Add Comment
Shop assistant provisioning - Posted by mreys at 2005-11-07 14:40
In Brussels we have a shopping mall called l'Innovation (Galleria), which you could compare
to Selfridges or Saks to a certain degree.
And I get soooo irritated by their way of working. Just an example... Somewhere around Xmas
period, two girls we're handling the money, and a third and fourth girl were wrapping and
putting our shopping in bags. As one might imagine, the money handling is a much faster job.
So as a customer, you see the two girls in the back working their %rs$s off, while the two girls
in the front are waiting to serve the next customer until the girls in the back have finished.
Why could the 'money' girls not wrap some of the shopping from the customers in the queue,
and maybe hand over the unfinished job, afterwards?
I know it is debatable, and all part of extremely difficult queueing theory, whether an extra
(wrapping) resource is needed so that the 'money' girls could work faster. But this has been
going on for years,... and we just stand in the queue, waiting to be served!!!
Shopping in Brussels, you hate it or you just don't shop ;-)
Dynamic resource provisioning is not solely an IT challenge!

Some more blatant self promotion
I have just written a new white paper, called "Taking IT to the next level", where I talk about
how to move yourself across the Gartner maturity model from proactive to the service and
value levels of maturity.
As you will probably have guessed, I am of the firm belief that the technology part is relatively
simple (leave that part to the software vendors, and make them worry about things like data
models, integration, support of ITIL etc.) The tricky part for me is getting people to think the
right way, which in turn will drive the correct processes, which in turn will drive the need for
the correct set of integrated products/solutions.
As an example of why I keep thinking this way, I rang up my cable company the other day for
help as most of the channels on the TV had disappeared. After trawling my way through
umpteen layers of menu (press 1 for "I am losing patience", 2 for "I am going mad", 3 for "I
am about to commit suicide" etc.), I eventually got to a message that told me they were closed,
and please ring back tomorrow. I tried several other menu options, and guess what, I got the
same message at the end every time. TELL ME AT THE BEGINNING YOU MORONS!
Leave it out!
The title of this blog entry is a nauseating pun as will soon become apparent.
At this time of year in the UK all the leaves fall off the trees and cover your garden. So at the
weekend I got out the leaf vacuum / blower machine thing to suck them all up. My wife told
me that the stupid machine didn't work, so I took it apart, cleaned out all the muck stuck in it
from last year and put it back together again.
Hey presto it worked again - for about ten minutes.
It seems to work quite well on consistent sized dry leaves. It doesn't work at all well on a
mixed set of wet leaves, which is of course what you always get in an English garden.
Which led me to wonder how they tested this machine? Is there a man in a factory somewhere
who has a neat bag of leaves from one tree that he sprinkles on a dry flat floor (indoors with no
wind) and then sucks? Probably worked perfectly.
If you can't see the connection between that and some of the IT systems, which you are
unfortunate enough to have to use, then lucky old you!
Capacity planning died out as an art/science some years ago, because people thought they
would just buy another server - hell, they're cheap aren't they? Suddenly it is back in vogue as
IT has to save money and their systems, which work perfectly with two users, now have to
support a plethora of online web junkies.
Capacity management is of course one of the ITIL disciplines - people just tend to forget about
it and think that ITIL is just about help desks and incident management. There are actually
eight core books and the most important one is probably "The Business Perspective", which
reminds you why IT is there in the first place.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005
I've been rabbiting again

Been a bit quiet on the old blog front recently as I have been on the road for the last couple of
weeks. I tried blogging from a BlackBerry - forget it.
Anyway, to explain the title of this blog to non-UK people, we have an interesting form of
slang over here called Cockney Rhyming Slang. You basically take a word (e.g. talk), find
something that rhymes with it (rabbit and pork), (not always, but mostly) chop that in half
(rabbit) and then use that instead of the original word - easy really. For example, from this site
you get a bit of the history and examples like:
"Got to my mickey, found me way up the apples, put on me whistle and the ...... dog went. It
was me trouble telling me to fetch the teapots."
which really means,
"Got to my house (mickey mouse), found my way up the stairs (apples and pears),
put on my suit (whistle and flute) when the phone (dog and bone) rang. It was my
wife (trouble and strife) telling me to get the kids (teapot lids)."
Hence the title - I have been rabbiting (talking) again about BSM in a Podcast and a white
paper, which discuss how to move up the service management maturity levels and get IT to be
a value enabler rather than a cost centre - please have a butcher's (hook = look) at the links.
Thanks.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Empowering the user

Whilst travelling I tend to jot down ideas for blogs (sad I know, but life gets a bit boring on the
road, and I need something to think about in between doing my Sudokus - best software I have
found is here, and have a look at the techniques pages).
Just been looking at my notes, and I had written the phrases "empowering the user" and
"gadgets", which brought to mind the hotel we stayed at in Dublin (a lovely city, highly
recommended, and thanks to Brendan for organising the event in the Guinness Storehouse).
Anyway, back to the hotel. Very modern, very trendy, supposedly very appealing to the
turned-on modern young professional (hardly a description of me, but whatever) . What that
actually means is that in the restaurant the floors, tables, walls etc. are all made of hard
surfaces with no sound absorption, so you can't have a conversation without shouting. Modern
designers seem to have forgotten the benefits of carpets and curtains and soft furnishings.
The corridors were all lined with black wood panelling, so you couldn't see where you were
going. The lighting in the bedrooms was so complicated that it took you half an hour to turn

the right light on, and I couldn't turn the lights off when in bed - so I had to get up, go over to
the lights, turn them off, and then go back to the bed in the dark - yes I fell over something on
the way!
The shower (very modern) door had no seal so as usual you washed the floor as well as
yourself, there was no shaving mirror, the hair drier was hidden in a cupboard and the only
plug was under the desk, half a mile from the nearest mirror. The shampoo was in one of those
silly little bottles where you can't get the top off when your hands are wet (fortunately I have
twigged this over the years and loosen the tops before I get in the shower). However, when you
now try to put the top of the bottle on the soap rack thing in the shower, it falls straight through
as the gaps are too wide. The soap falls through too.
The TV (an Apple PC with TV card) didn't show any TV channels (except in one colleague's
room, where he was woken at 2 in the morning when it turned on).
There's a lot more, but you get the drift. I thought perhaps it was just me being a grumpy old
man, but all my colleagues were equally annoyed.
2000 years (at least) of hotel design and this is where we have got to? I hope IT can do a better
job of delivering integrated, useful, end-user related services on a shorter timescale. The hotel
would be fixed (probably) by making the designer spend a night there. How often do we force
our application designers and operations people to use the systems they deliver?
Parts or service?
Got a letter from the people who make my car saying that I have to take it in to be checked
because of a "long-term safety related concern with the rear door handles". My immediate
reaction was - if this is a long-term concern, why haven't you told me about it ages ago? But,
perhaps they mean that this is a safety issue if I have the car long-term and it is fairly new, so I
will give them the benefit of the doubt. Isn't the English language fun? The moral here is to get
someone else to read what you have written, because it may get interpreted totally differently -
you know what you meant when you wrote it; they don't.
So, I rung the garage to book the car in, and whilst doing that I remembered that I asked for a
part to be fitted at the last service, but it was out of stock. So they promised me to order one
and let me know when it came in. I have, of course, heard nothing (don't promise to call me,
tell me to ring and annoy you every 4 weeks?) So I asked about the part on order and get the
reply "did you talk to the Parts department or the Service department last time?" The problem
is that I, of course, can't remember and frankly that's not my problem - it's theirs. I expect them
to have integrated systems that talk to one another, and not to rely on me to provide the
application integration. As one customer put it to me when discussing why integrated products
are so important - "Peter, I will give you data once and only once - never ask for it again."
Seems very reasonable to me. That's how we design our stuff, and that's why the CMDB is so
critical in a Service Management environment - do you design your systems that way, or do
you expect the customer to do half the work for you?
Tuesday, December 06, 2005

They know who I am!
Continuing from the previous entry where the garage didn't know who I was and who I spoke
to last time (and they still haven't rung me back to tell me whether the part is in yet) I would
like to give an example of doing it right.
My wife and I are going on holiday soon (30th wedding anniversary) and the people organising
it have been brilliant. What I really like is when I ring them up, my telephone number comes
up their end, they go into their system based on that and have my complete booking in front of
them when I speak to them. The conversation starts with "Hello, Mr Armstrong, how can I
help you?" before I have even said a word. Magic. Reminds me of the old days of the village
pub; "Hello, Peter, the usual?" as you walk in.
Which leads me to part 2 of this blog entry. Because I love to complain so much about
everything, people have been asking me whether there is anything I really like. Well, keeping
this a good clean family blog, here are a few in no particular order:
• A hugely diverse range of music from Albinoni to ZZTop
• My new Bose noise-cancelling headphones
• A well struck golf shot
• Sunset on a Caribbean beach
• New Zealand and South Africa are geographically stunning
• The Sistine Chapel / Michelangelo's David
• Virgin snow
• A field of daffodils
• Good service
• A decent cup of tea (can't get one of these in most countries as they don't understand
the concept of boiling water, milk that comes from cows, and tea that isn't made from
sawdust - whoops I've started complaining again!)
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Happy Christmas!?
Certain groups in the UK think that it is politically incorrect to say things like "Happy
Christmas" - rubbish. I wish all my readers a very Happy Christmas. If you don't celebrate this
particular festival, then have a really good time anyway.
Other groups think that teachers should avoid arranging games of a competitive nature in
schools so that no child feels that he or she has "underperformed". What a load of tosh.
If we allow our children to grow up in a world where everything is perfect, they are going to
get one enormous shock when they truly meet the outside world. I would love to win every
time I go out on the golf course, but it ain't going to happen. Get real.

If we continue with this ill-conceived and ignorant way of thinking I can see two alternatives:
1. A generation of users who expect everything to be 100% perfect and don't know what
to do when it isn't
2. A collection of systems that are average, because no-one is interested in being the best
What's your SLA? "Well, it works quite well sometimes, but you are not allowed to complain".
Would you be happy with that?
Monday, December 12, 2005
Add Comment
Happy Hanukah, happy Xmas, whatever ... - Posted by mreys at 2005-12-12 17:12
Been to Boston recently for a beta class of the promising Capacity Management Route-to-
Value training.
On practically every television channel and news paper, the debate was on! Happy Holidays <-
> Happy Xmas. The debate reached its peak shortly after the e-mail that was sent from a Wal-
Mart Customer Service representative who responded to one of the complaints with.... THE
TRUTH!
The whole story on: http://blog.reys.be/index.php?/archives/233-Telling-the-truth....html (and
many more places ;-) )
You cannot be serious

People ask me how I come up with things to blog about? Frankly, I normally have no idea at
the beginning of the day and then something triggers off a wave of thoughts / rants / distress or
whatever and off I go.
Number 1 today was being recommended a book to read in some email I got. Sounded good,
and I read the first review:
"This is one of the most important books on IT strategic and tactical planning, service
support and service delivery that you can buy."
Well, you reject that one as it was probably written by the author or a good friend and you start
looking at the customer reviews:
I bought it with the objective of having it as a reference for managing data center
operations. The ideas and concepts were very interesting, and I totally agree that the
starting point should include determining linkages with the core business and getting
management support.
Good so far, but I've learnt all that with ITIL, so I read on:
Great concepts but lacks examples
This book is very formal approach to IT services. Please don't give it to your

customers/clients it will scare them. If you need humor or analogies to make things
clear consider another book. The book is very hard to read with wordy sentences.
Simplicity is much better, and this book makes some things even more confusing.
Ah, thanks, put me right off.

Why do people think that long complicated sentences, with strange words are useful? My
latest hate words are incentivise and operationalise - yuck! What's wrong with motivate and
do? Why do some people think you cannot be serious and use humour at the same time - sad
gits.
Which brings me to number two - motivating people / how people behave. we all know that
animals can be trained to act certain ways - Pavlov, monkeys and bananas etc. My pet (sorry
about the pun) example is John McEnroe. Sublime tennis player with totally obnoxious
behaviour on court. Why? Because he was allowed to; no-one (except the Australians from
memory - good on yer) ever had the guts to kick him out of a tournament, which is what they
should have done early on (and what he says should have happened in his autobiography).
However, all is not lost, as he is now probably the best commentator on the game in the world.
Back to the blog - if you read the monkeys and bananas link above, the author quite rightly
points out that a lot of obnoxious, useless behaviour is "because we have always done it that
way". UUUUUUUHHHHH! Not a good answer. Go back and challenge things when you think
they are wrong.
The best question in IT is: Why?
We want 24x7 - Why?
We want 1 second response time - Why?
We want to rewrite this application - Why?
We want to take backups twice a night - Why?
The answer should be a valid business reason, with a quantifiable benefit (how much is this
worth to the company if I do it?) If you can't get a sensible answer, then why do the project?
The status quo may be perfectly valid, it may be totally wrong - let's work out why.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Internet Explorer or Firefox?

As a follow-up to my last blog on monkeys and bananas, I was sent this link offline, which
shows a young lady interviewing random? people in the street. It appears to have been filmed
in Washington Square in New York (worked that out by Googling the Garibaldi statue in the
background - I should be a detective!?) What she is asking the passers-by is whether they
prefer Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Several things struck me as I watched this:
1. I assumed some of the interviews are not shown
2. I assumed she purposely chose predominantly young people

Then I did some more detective work. If you Google the location and University (again, the
hint is in the clothing and some of the interviews, you get the following from Wikipedia -
Because it is surrounded by New York University — indeed, the park doubles as the
university's "campus green" — and is a part of Greenwich Village, the park is typically
inhabited by a variety of bohemian, intellectual, and non-traditional people
you get a totally different idea of the randomness of the sample.
If you did a similar survey in a park in London, I guess the answers would be:
• 30% "Sorry, no idea what you are talking about"
• 20% "Sorry, I don't have cable TV, don't watch those channels"
• 20% "I believe fox hunting should/should not be banned"
• 25% "Microsoft, because it's all I know"
• 5% "Firefox"
I have no ideas if the figures are right and I have no idea what the proportion of people using
Firefox is in the UK - I just made all that up. Which is the point of this blog entry. I enjoyed
the video (in fact it made me download and install Firefox on the home PC, and I do like the
tabs a lot), but I do hate people using meaningless statistics in (I hope futile) attempts to sway
my thinking.
If you want to know what your customers really think about your service, go and ask a
meaningful subset of them. Don't be frightened. If they think it is lousy, ask them why, and do
something about it. If they think it is great, also ask them why.
Add Comment
propaganda - Posted by Jonathan Doors at 2008-06-24 10:25
Or put up some blog entry that is derisive about the competition without ever citing what is
actually wrong with the competition. Oh and I liked the little caveat about the "tabs" in
FireFox, nice touch. FireFox on Mandriva1 will run a lot of web apps that usually are
"Windows only" for other Linux OS's. So why does BMC block me from attempting to access
their products namely "Magic Service Desk"? The warning is fine, but then give me a chance
to see if it will work for me or not.
confused - Posted by peter armstrong at 2008-07-01 06:40

Jonathan
Thanks for the comment - unfortunately I don't know the problem you are referring to - can
you contact me offline and I'll see if I can help?
Peter

All quiet on the blog front
A combination of mega tennis elbow (ouch, I hate PCs) and a long-awaited holiday means this
blog will be quiet for a few weeks. "Hooray" I hear you cry!
If you get grotty service over the holiday period, smile, say "Happy Christmas" and then kick
them!!!
See you in the New Year, when all going well we will remove the registration requirement for
comments and we can start up some conversations.
Cheers
Peter

Part 2 – 2006
The Dawn of Enlightenment?

Back again
Bad luck, I'm back again from my holiday! The good news - my tennis elbow got much better
whilst I was away. The bad news is that clearing 900 emails on my return has started it up
again!
The moral of all of this is, of course, to have a system to handle copious quantities of email
whilst you are away. Here are some suggestions:
1. From a colleague - delete them all, if it is important they will contact you again
2. Only look at the ones where you are in the to: field and ignore any where you are cc: -
in fact, write a filter for this
3. Get a PA to look at them for you and kill the rubbish
4. Pray that someone comes up with voice software that really works
I had, of course, written an out-of-office message so about 100 of the emails were invalid
attempts by me to respond to someone trying to sell me a fake Rolex or medicines or PC
software. No problem, they are easy to delete. What I had forgotten about is that I have auto-
archive set to delete sent items after 30 days, because if you don't do this you get nasty
messages about your inbox being full. Problem now is that I have totally forgotten what I told
people a month ago! So back to #1 above I think.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Add Comment
E-mail injuries - Posted by Bill Adamson at 2006-02-01 07:02
Top blogging Mr Armstrong. I am about to go on holiday to SA with my family in February.
No special occasion apart from getting away from this awful weather seeking the elusive bit of
sunshine and of course spending precious time with the family. Your e-mail problems
instigated an e-mail solution. I have cleared out the backlog, created a "To: Bill Adamson"
filter and fine tuned a couple of other filters. So as an IT planning exercise, taking into account
another persons bad experiences, learn from it and ensure I do not have 900 unfiltered e-mails
to contend with upon my return. I will then be able to prioritise, thus saving precious time and
any risk of personal injury. Simple but effective.
Tipping
One of the interesting things about New Zealand (where we went on holiday, beautiful place,
friendly people, stunning scenery) is that you don't normally tip.
I am one of those people, who likes to tip when I have good service as a way of saying thank
you. When we did this in New Zealand, the look of surprised delight on the person's face made
it a pleasure on both sides.
In fact, travelling the world, I find one of the most difficult things is knowing when to tip and
when it has been included already. In the US you are expected to hand over 15% - even when
you have had the pleasure of being driven badly by someone who doesn't speak a word of
English. In France, they love tourists, as the restaurant bill normally includes service already
and the dumb tourist adds another 10-15%. If you go out with French people, they tend to
leave a small tip and there's no problem. If you are foreign and leave a small/no tip, the waiters
will probably take you to the Bastille and guillotine you! And no, I am not picking on the
French, the same is true in many countries.
What you really need is a handy phrase book with phrases such as "I may be foreign, but I'm
not stupid", or "Why are we taking the scenic route rather than the direct one?", or "Had you
provided any degree of service, I would have given you a tip", or "Here's a tip, get a new job
where you don't have to work with the public".
Here is a quote from the US: "Tipping need not be considered mandatory or automatic. Too
often, tips are taken for granted or expected regardless of the quality of service. Tipping
should be done at your discretion and as a reward for good or superlative service."
Enough rambling - the point is that good service is a joy and I am happy to pay for it. Bad
service is a pain and I will never come again. Same with IT systems.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
The application of technology

A colleague sent me this link, about a new golf bag with solar panels that charges your mobile
phone (no, I'm not making it up!)
My immediate reaction was "Ouch, I play golf to get away from mobile phones!" Actually on
most decent courses they are quite rightly banned. I was going to rant on about the misplaced
use of technology / wasting the user's time and money etc. Then I thought a bit more about it,
and thought this is the most wonderful excuse I have ever heard for playing golf. "Sorry, my
phone has run out, need to play 18 holes to charge it up, see you later." Brilliant. I'm just off to
run down my phone.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Have you tested this?

I was struggling to find something to write about this week. I can understand why authors get
writers' block, because the creative Muses were not helping me at all. Fortunately all of that
changed when I tried to use my super-duper new photo printer to print a document.
First, a bit of background. I had a rather nice photo printer from manufacturer A, which
worked beautifully for a time, but then developed the tedious habit of not feeding the paper,
which means the inside of the printer gets covered in ink. Hint 1 to manufacturers, don't print if
there is no paper feed / paper starts to feed and then stops. After a fine afternoon's work of
shouting at it, hitting it and cleaning all the bits I could get at, I got it feeding paper again.
Alas, it then decided (probably because I shouted at it and hit it) to print in the wrong colours.
At this point, I decided it was time to treat myself to a new one, and happened to read a review
of Manufacturer B's latest offering whilst perusing a magazine at the dentist. Amazon
efficiently delivered it a couple of days later and the photos from New Zealand are stunning.
Yesterday, however, I had to print the first page of an eleven page document. Could I find the
option that says which pages to print - no way! The only options I can find are All / Odd
Pages / Even Pages. Now, it may be that I am being even more blind and stupid than usual, but
I thought the whole point of computer interfaces nowadays was to be intuitively obvious /
simple. All of this means I am now probably going to spend several hours reading the manual
again (yes, I did read it when I bought it) trawling through FAQs, installing new driver
software etc. Where does all of that come in the SLA?
Of course, if I discover that the fault was entirely mine, I shall keep very quiet!!
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
The plot thickens

Continuing on from the previous entry, I discover that the problem does not lie with the printer
(glad I didn't name the manufacturer), but with that wondrous piece of software called Outlook
(or possibly with me).
When trying to print an email (memo style), I cannot find an option to print only the first page.
I could have sworn I used this in the past? Am I being blind / has something changed? Or is
this a cunning plot to encourage us all to write short emails (also a good idea)?
As I am a fan of rainforests, is there an alternative to simply putting one sheet of paper in the
printer and then cancelling the job after it prints page one of an email?
Grrrrrrrrrr
Add Comment
In one word - FinePrint - Posted by Shmulik Flint at 2006-02-12 03:42
As a rainforests fan, you should take a close look at FinePrint (http://www.fineprint.com/).
This is a great product that lets you preview just before the actual printing takes place, lets you
delete pages, or print several printed pages on the same sheet, and lots of other nice stuff.
It even lets you know how many pages have you saved by using it.
Turns out, Outlook has two different print dialog boxes depending on the content you're
printing - Posted by Anne Gentle at 2006-02-09 12:42
According to Outlook Tips (http://www.outlook-tips.net/archives/2005/20050927.htm), the
print dialog changes based on what you're printing. Here's what they suggest:
When you print a plain text message Outlook uses its printer dialog. You have three options if
you need better control over the printout.
1. Convert the message to HTML (open the message, select Edit, Edit message then
choose Format menu and change to HTML).
2. Press Forward and print using Word's print dialog.
3. Print to a digital format such as the Office document image driver and then print the
electronic copy to paper.
There are still extra steps, but I always want to know what's really going on behind the
interface. So there you go! Enjoy your enhanced print
Do you Sudoku?
Now I've started, I can't stop. Just had another thought.
I am a Sudoku addict - do them every day and always have a book of them with me when
flying to pass the time away.
So what has that got to do with Service Management (I hear you cry)? Well, the Daily
Telegraph publishes a couple of puzzles every day and as part of their SLA, they tell you what
level they are - Gentle, Moderate, Tough, Diabolical. Unfortunately their rating system went
up the twist for the last couple of weeks and all the so-called Moderate puzzles were actually
Tough or Diabolical.
I discovered this by trawling through the chat forums on www.sudoku.co.org, and you quickly
get a picture of how many users are affected by a change outside their control, and the amount
of time that is lost. Good news is that the puzzle setter has now spotted the problem and
apologised and we are (hopefully) back to the right levels.
All of which leads me to the observation that you need to know what the end-user is
experiencing. Does that tie in with what you are seeing your end? Do you have a mechanism
for talking to them / contacting them and vice versa? What is your Change Management
process? etc.
Sudoku to Change Management in one blog entry - impressive huh?
The English language

I'm reading a fun book at present called "Red Herrings and White Elephants", which is all
about the origins of some of the more interesting phrases that we Brits use in every day
conversation. I thought I would share some of them with you, with their history and my
suggested modern-day IT equivalents:
"Keep it up" - encouragement to Victorian people playing badminton to keep the shuttlecock in
the air - 5 9's availability, 24 by 7 (by the way 24x7x365 annoys me intensely - that's 7 years
and then what?)
"Rule of Thumb" - various suggestions from the size of stick you could beat your wife with in
the Middle Ages, back to Roman bricklayers using it as a rough measurement - (inaccurate
old-fashioned) capacity planning.
"On the grapevine" - early telegraph lines used trees instead of poles, which bent and broke
and the wire ended up coiled and tangled on the ground and looking like a wild grapevine -
email / IM / SMS.
"Bone of contention" - two dogs fighting over a bone - SLAs.
"Bring home the bacon" - prize awarded to a couple who could live for a year and a day in
complete harmony without a cross word - aligning IT with the business.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Thank you!
One of the frustrations of running an IT system is not knowing what the person the other end is
doing / thinking / experiencing. Normally we only find out when the irate end-user phones up
and tells how "wonderful" the system is today. By sheer chance we are announcing some
wondrous stuff on the 13th to address this issue, and I will blog about it later this week (am
travelling all week and won't be able to bore you with my ramblings), but that is not the point
of today's blog.
Similar frustrations happen with blogging. You sit there whittering on about things that get up
your nose, and wonder whether anybody out there really cares. Then, this morning I get an
email from one of our lovely ladies in the US, who got me into this whole blogosphere thing,
and attached is a spreadsheet showing how many people are reading this and other BMC
blogs / have RSS feeds to it / download our podcasts etc.
Well, imagine my complete surprise when I discover 6000 people have feeds to this blog,
12000 people appear to read it, and over 3000 people have downloaded my podcast on Golf
and BSM. Now, I don't have that many people in my family and I don't have that many
colleagues at BMC, so the conclusion is obvious - I have tapped into a stream of IT people
who play golf, or I have totally misunderstood the stats!
On a serious note, thank you. Please join in and send me comments. Let me know what annoys
you (unless it's me!), or successes you have had. Many thanks to those who have already
contributed. If you don't want it to appear online, then feel free to send me stuff offline, and
yes James they have promised me that they will get rid of the registration requirement.
In the meantime I am off to Oslo and Helsinki this week to chat to customers. I assume they
will talk to me all about the Winter Olympics - a sporting event at which we Brits (with our
huge array of mountains) obviously excel. Time we invented some new sports like cricket on
ice or downhill darts?
Winter Olympics
Wanted to write this last night, but my broadband decided to die. At the weekend the telephone
in our weekend cottage also stopped working (could call out, but no-one could call in), so I
rang up the friendly local cable supplier to get the message that they aren't there after 8pm or
on a Sunday, so please call back during working hours. That's service????? When I did get
hold of them they told me the line wasn't working properly (good spot), but if the fault was in
my equipment then I would have to pay a £50 fee if someone came out and determined it was
my fault. So I went and bought a new phone/answering machine thing for £50 and guess what -
it still doesn't work!
As expected, we spent a lot of time watching / talking about the Winter Olympics in Oslo and
Helsinki. Just for fun, I asked the people there whom they remembered from the UK over the
years. The answer was Eddy the Eagle - brave, but useless. No-one knew that our ladies had
won the curling gold medal last year, and the fact that Torvill and Dean redefined ice dance
twenty years ago had faded from the memory. Which reminded me of IT - you are remembered
for your disasters, but forgotten for your good performances.
Part of establishing SLAs has to be reminding people of when they are getting good service
and asking them if they are happy. It is possible that the service they are getting is in fact too
good, and that parts of the IT system are over-configured. This may and probably will change
over time and the dynamic reconfiguration of IT is going to become a standard way of working
as we go forwards.
All of which means that is vital to know what is going on at the coal face. What are the users
actually experiencing? Are they happy? If not, why not and where is the problem? You cannot
afford to spend hours looking for the problem or have a bunch of technicians pointing fingers
at one another saying "my bit's fine". As you have probably guessed, we have just announced a
bunch of stuff to address these issues.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to tell my cable operator what the end-user experience
is!!
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Leaving home
We have entered a new stage of our lives; both children have now left home. My wife, of
course, misses them terribly. I am getting used to the fact that I actually get to park my car in
the garage!
It also means that we found a spare TV set lying round the house and stuck it in our bedroom.
Only problem is that the remote control is a bit temperamental - probably needs new batteries
and a darned good clean and I will do that later. My wife made the observation, "wouldn't be it
be so much simpler if we could just use one of the controls from one of the other TVs, after all
they all do the same thing?" Standardisation - a dream or a necessity to reduce costs and
improve service?
Comments - no need to register!
Travelling all over the place at present, and due to age and arthritis I don't carry a laptop with
me. Not a problem with general email as this BlackBerry thing works OK, but of course
attachments are a farce and blogging has to wait till I get home.
So, being a sad old fool, it is now Sunday and I am writing a quick burst of blogs before going
to look at televisions - congratulations to the manufacturers on forcing us all to buy new TVs
as they start to put more and more programmes on in wide-screen format. When watching golf,
the ball flies out of shot - tedious. However, the amusing thing is when watching on a wide-
screen TV all the golfers who used to be tall and thin now look short and fat!!! I liked the old
TV format - did you ask anyone before you decided to change it? I have, of course, also waited
until HD-ready TVs are more common, because otherwise you would have to buy a new
version next year - reminds me of a certain PC operating system!
Now the important bit - we have removed the requirement for you to register when adding
comments to these blogs, so go for it! Let me know what annoys you in this stupid world
driven by blind moronic designers (see next entry).
Add Comment
about freaking time - Posted by Chris at 2006-03-11 21:18
Thank God BMC got rid of the registration requirement in order to leave a comment! How
silly was that??
Technology rules KO?

I was in Copenhagen and Paris last week. We had a very pleasant dinner with a group of CIOs
in Paris, where we talked about aligning business with IT, the role of the CMDB etc. Several
people raised the point that the CMDB does not just contain hardware, software etc. but also
encompasses personnel. Spot on. Also makes me wonder when I read people claiming that
they can automatically discover and maintain all the components of a CMDB. Personal view is
that you will never automatically discover everything, but that tools (like ours) will get you a
long way towards it, and that even more importantly with initiatives like virtualisation and
SOA round the corner your Change Management process has to be a/the (?) key part of your
whole CMDB implementation / exploitation.
Also had me conjuring up a vision of all your employees having an RFID chip implanted in
their body so that you could track where they are (not as daft as it sounds - already being used
in some military and similarly sensitive areas). Bit worrying though -
"I'm still at work dear, be home in about an hour."
"No, you're not, you lying git, I can see you are down the pub!"
During the trip I stayed in a very comfortable hotel, all in Art Deco style, but I must give a
stupidest design of the year award to this technological marvel, which was attached just above
the sink:
One assumes that the short cord is designed to stop you committing suicide by plunging
yourself and the hair-drier into the sink, but I feel the designer has slightly forgotten one key
fact - in its current format it is totally useless for performing the only thing it was designed for!
Monday, February 27, 2006
Useful technology
Just been to Vienna - very friendly group of customers, thanks for listening / talking to me. The
hotel room was very good and didn't suffer the usual end-user unfriendly features I have come
to expect. I am sure that somewhere there is the "De Sade School of Hotel Interior Design"
with courses in:
• How to put in 14 lights and hide all the switches so it's really tricky to turn them all off
• How to design shampoo and soap bottles for the shower that are impossible to open
when your hands are wet
• Where to put the hair-drier (see previous entry)
• How to place a TV set so it is extraordinarily uncomfortable to watch from the chair or
the bed
• How to make the alarm impossible to set / go off at the wrong time
• How to fill up the shelf space in the bathroom with so much hotel rubbish that there is
no space for the customer
• How to make wardrobes that aren't deep enough to hang clothes in
OK, enough, you get the picture - send me your entries.
Now, to the positive side. On the way out I went to the IRIS recognition room in Heathrow
terminal 4 and had my eyes scanned. This means that I now get to go through the quick
channel when I come home - walk up to the machine, get my eyes scanned and whoosh I'm
through. Thank you BAA. Technology that helps the end-user, and frankly I would have paid
for it if they'd asked. If anyone from US (and other countries') Immigration is reading this, any
chance of doing the same thing? I've never quite understood why I sit in Gatwick for two
hours, sit in a plane for 10 hours and then stand in a queue for an hour to give you information
that you could easily have captured in the previous 12 hours?
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Add Comment
Optional choices... - Posted by Mike at 2006-03-03 04:13
The class for the wardrobes deepness is optional. It's either that or the class 'How to make
wardrobes that prevent you from walking between the bed and the wardrobe'
The option to make it impossible to set the alarm at the wrong time, sounds rather useful to
me...
Lift Messages - Posted by Steve McCarthy at 2006-03-03 09:48

This one amuses rather than irritates me :
All lifts now seem to have a recorded message that tells you:
a) When the doors are closing (err.. why?)
b) Which direction the lift is going in (err .. why? again)
Write a book! - Posted by Oliver Laube at 2006-03-06 11:30

Hi Peter,
please write a book about your travel adventures. I will be the first buyer. That is real life and
so funny.
Regards
Oliver
Curtains! - Posted by csm at 2006-03-13 16:17

The thing that always exasperates me at hotels is when the curtains won't overlap each other
and therefore will not close completely. So there is this shaft of light that shines in through
them all night long - and it invariably shines right into my sight-line in the bed.
And what type of cruel maids make those hotel beds? The sheets are either so tightly tucked
into the mattress so as to cause the blood to stop circulating in my legs -or- the sheets are just
haphazardly strewn onto the mattress with only luck appearing to be what keeps them from
falling off.
Bad design
Colleague sent me this link about the problems caused by bad design, which results in people
not being able to use the supposedly wondrous device. Spot on.
• Do you design for usability or function?
• How do you know if it's working / being used properly?
I don't want convergence of devices - I want simplicity. Everyone I talk to about data centres
of the future also talks about simplicity. For instance, what I want is a PDA - Phone for
Discerning Adult - which has the basic functions (phone and SMS) and nothing else.
• We are making IT way too complex.
• Computers are stupid; they only move data round.
• Computers do not generate value - people do.
So let's just work on getting the right data, to the right people, in the right place, at the right
time, via an interface that is right for them.
To sleep, perchance to dream.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Add Comment
Design for the user? or cooking is fun and easy. - Posted by twulff at 2006-03-08 09:29
Last Sunday me and my wife were invited to dinner with a very short notice by my mother in
law. She is 77 years and her real reason for inviting us was, that she had bought a new
combined microwave/converges/grill oven, because she thought that the old stove is too large
for two persons, but she needed instructions for operating it.
I was presented with a shining monster with a panel that looked like the overhead panel in the
cockpit of a medium sized airliner, and a manual of the same size as the pilot's handbook to the
same airliner.
It has six buttons - most with multiple functions and a turning knob with different functions if
you turn it left or right.
The first thing I learned was that nothing worked before you had set the clock. Why does an
oven need to know what time of day it is??
I managed to teach her two basic functions: How to switch it on and set the temperature, and
how to microwave a bag of popcorn (she does not like popcorn). I decided to leave the rest of
the functions in the dark.
I am willing to bet a pint of beer that in 6 months she is still cooking her meals in the old oven
and the new one has found a permanent resting place in the back of a cupboard. I can only
hope that this will happen before the next power outage in the kitchen, so I don’t have to go
back and reset the clock.
How do I change?
Just got back from a couple of days in South Africa, where we ran a breakfast meeting with a
group of CIOs, and I got to meet one of their sporting heroes - Joel Stransky (the man who
kicked the famous drop goal to win them the Rugby World Cup in 1995). Very nice chap.
We were talking about aligning IT with the business, and the question came up as to how do I
change from a technical to a business frame of mind?
Several ideas / options came up:
• Get rid of the name IT - it smacks of techy nerds. The business can't run without you so
call yourself something like Business Services or Information Solutions.
• Don't only appear when things go wrong. Be seen regularly as the supporter of the
business and sell yourself in a positive light.
• Present business metrics, not boring techy numbers. We ran 250,000 transactions for
you last week, which generated $x of revenue - not we ran Oracle at 99.83%
• Only use techy speak in the IT department - nowhere else. Learn to say megabuck, not
megaflop or megabyte.
• When given a new project, ask why and how much is it worth, rather than running off
and getting excited about some new toy you can buy.
• Don't report in via the CFO. That way you are only seen as a cost centre. The company
(probably) cannot generate any revenue without you, so you should be on the board
helping build the company strategy.
• Pretend you are on the other side of the desk. What do they want to hear / know about?
You are talking and they are saying in their minds "So what?" Answer that question.
• Get rid of the silos in IT - reorganise according to services.
• Send your IT people out into the front office and make them help the people / use the
systems. That way they will learn what your company does and understand/resolve
incidents far quicker.
• Take the LOB managers out to lunch and understand their issues.
• If anyone in your department says they work on servers / databases / networks etc., tell
them they are wrong. They help your company generate revenue - IT just happens to be
the tool that they keep running to help do that.
• Have a look at this -
http://www.bmc.com/emea/doc_depot/EMEAMgmt_GuideOct2005EV.pdf
I am sure you can think of some more - feel free to join in.
How to keep your job?

Some more self advertising - I have done another podcast. This time it is all about the
difference between old-style IT staff and new-style IT staff (or if you prefer old-style IT and
new-style IT). In my opinion old-style IT people talk about the performance of
Unix/Oracle/DB2/IMS or whatever and the size of their buffer pools; the new style IT person
on the other hand knows how his/her servers/databases support the business, and when he/she
can afford to take them offline. The old style IT person will retire or more likely get replaced
by someone in India or China. The new style IT person will keep his/her job.
Please have a listen and let me know if you agree.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Desirable property - enormous potential

I was looking at some estate agent's (chap who sells houses) particulars, and I don't know how
it works in your countries but over here if the estate agent says enormous potential, it basically
means that the property hasn't been maintained for years and the garden is a jungle. I wondered
then how IT people would describe their systems to the outside world:
• Enormous potential - major cost cutting, way behind on releases
• Previous owners have all left their mark - 5 different systems with no integration
• Unique decorative style - hideous web portal
• In slight need of repair - we chose the wrong system and have been regretting it ever
since, but no-one wants to admit it
• Unique retro-look kitchen - we hate the old (event) console, but no-one will let us get
rid of it
• Separate granny annex - we have off-shored the help desk and they have no idea what
we do
• Previous owner has cleverly merged two properties - complete shambles, the two
systems don't talk to each other at all
• Beautiful mature garden / beautifully maintained property - great web portal. Integrated
systems and we spend a lot of time and money on maintaining it as it attracts customers
and generates revenue
Which one is worth most to the business?
Will this stop you wrecking your back?

My regular reader(s?) will know that I hate lugging laptops and other crud round the world. I
can't see the point of lugging stuff round that is unnecessary. If you think about it, the vast
majority of your laptop (screen, keyboard, power supply etc.) is common and if the hotel or
airline provided these pieces you could just plug in your hard-drive (iPod?) and off you go.
A couple of weeks ago I was sent an email with pictures of these interesting looking devices,
which appear to give you the option to carry your screen and your keyboard in your pocket -
neat. If anyone knows any more about these, please let me know. In the meantime I will try to
do some research
Add Comment
Why bring your hard disk ? - Posted by Jan Flodin at 2006-03-23 10:18
Enlightened by my experiences in Sun's universe I challenge you to take your Laptop
frustrations one step further: Why carry anything at all except maybe smart card proving your
identity?
As you mention everything you need to present and manipulate your data are standard devices
that easily can support an internet connection. When you're on the net you theoretically have
access to all the power and data capacity you can dream of (check Sun's newly announced
GRID and start your imagination) so why not have your data somewhere in cyberspace, where
you by the way even can have someone backing them up for you?
Your current problems are all created by the fact that Bill Gates want you to be tied into his PC
based technology whether it's Desk or Lap Top. In order to be free you simply have to distance
yourself from Microsoft, which naturally leads me to my old favourite comment: Who ever got
the idea of using PERSONAL computers for CORPORATE business?
spot on - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-03-23 11:49

Good thinking Jan - the only reason I hadn't gone down that path is because I have spent too
many hours waiting for the Internet to respond to me! But give me the bandwidth, and
absolutely yes.
NEC's prototypes - Posted by Brittain Fraley at 2006-04-10 18:07

The cool pics are of NEC's prototype pen computer. You can read the story and see some
additional pics here:
http://www.wave-report.com/other-html-files/P-ISM%202.htm
computer pens - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-04-12 11:38

Many thanks Brittain – fascinating
Spitting Bullets!
For those of you confused by the title of this entry - it means I am steaming mad.
At 8 this morning, I tried to use my laptop - broadband didn't work. OK, no big deal, happens
quite often, so I go and reboot the cable box and the wireless router and the laptop and ....
nothing. OK, do the same thing again ... nothing.
So I call the Freephone number of the local cable supplier for help. In the middle of 87 options
for whether I want to sign up for this month's special Neanderthal (all the programmes are that
old) TV channel selection, I get the comment "Please ring xxxx xxxxxxx for broadband
problems and we will charge you an iniquitous fortune to tell us about a problem of our own
making." OK, the message was not exactly like that, but the meaning was.
I call the other number and talk to a helpful lady in some foreign clime, who takes me through
all the procedures I have just done twice and tells me it is not working. The most amusing part
of this was when she asked me to plug the PC directly into the cable box (20 yards away in
another room). Fortunately I have a laptop with an Ethernet plug and this is possible; but I
asked her what would happen if I had a desktop box, with only a wireless connector - silence
the other end, as that does not appear to be in the script. Anyway, she arranges for an engineer
to come out.
8 hours later, he has been and fixed it - problem was with the connection in the junction box
out in the road. The engineer gets my laptop working again with it plugged direct into the cable
box, but "I can't help you with the wireless router - that is not my responsibility."
I try the laptop through the wireless connection - nothing. I call the help centre again - "not our
problem".
To cut a long story short, another 27 reboots and the judicious use of another PC on my home
network, and I can bore you all with my ramblings again (and more importantly get my
expenses finished).
Now, why does that all remind me of the Transaction Management stuff we announced
recently, and the fact that we announced that we intend to acquire 100% of Identify Software?
Oh yes, because I have gone through Problem Detection, Problem Isolation and Problem
Resolution. Now I am going to go through the most important stage - Problem Celebration
(mine's a Guinness).
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Add Comment
Wanted to shoot bullets at my cable provider - Posted by mike smith at 2006-03-31 15:30
Geesch, I had almost the same exact experience with Time Warner Cable in Seabrook Texas.
Maybe we should both call on our cable service providers and explain how transaction
management needs to be handled. Well I'm off to grab a Tequila....
Trains and boats and planes

Been doing some "different" travel recently. For the first time in ages, I went on a train in
England for a long journey. For years, I had been led to believe that trains in England never
leave or arrive on time. To be honest, this used to be pretty accurate, but much to my
amazement the train left on time, arrived on time, the service was excellent etc. Same thing on
the return journey.
Then, at the weekend I had to climb on a series of flights to get to the north of Norway (more
about why in a moment). The queue for security at Heathrow Terminal 4 was nearly an hour.
In fact, you had to check in, then go back outside the building to join the security queue. Now,
I am totally supportive of security procedures as I don't particularly want to share an aeroplane
with a nutter with a bomb, but if you are constantly forcing your customers to stand in a queue
for an hour (this has happened to me several times recently at Terminal 4) then something is
wrong with your security process. Not a great start to a trip and guaranteed to put everyone in a
foul mood before they even get on the plane, and also obviously having a knock-on effect on
the shops in the terminal. In fact the shop-owners should pool together and buy the airport a
few more luggage scanners?
As I got on the plane, I was told (and so were many others) that my hand luggage (a suit
carrier) was too large so it would have to be checked in. OK, but it is not designed to be
handed in, so at the other end it was no surprise to me to find that they had broken part of it. I
tried to report this to the airline, but was told it was not their problem and I had to take it up
with the baggage handling company.
WRONG!!!!
I am your customer, you are meant to be looking after me, not passing me off to someone else.
Unfortunately, because the flight was delayed an hour and the luggage took an hour to come
through, I only just had time to catch the next flight and thus had no time to vent my wrath on
the appropriate people.
Now, could you please compare the train experience with the plane experience and guess
which one made me a happy satisfied customer? Tricky, wasn't it?!
So why was I in the north of Norway? Well, I was presenting at a customer conference, which
took place on a boat cruising down the coast of Norway from Tromso to Trondheim,which is
all rather beautiful - snow-covered mountains, clear water, fjords and pretty villages. Much to
my amazement, my telephone worked pretty much the whole way and so did my Blackberry,
because the Norwegians are intelligent enough to provide a wireless service even out there -
well done chaps and thank you.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Things I like
Thought I would try a different spin today as it is easy to be rude about stuff, but it is more
difficult to find things that I really like. This was prompted by a colleague who talked about his
new espresso machine and tells me he was very pleasantly surprised to be sent some really
good coffee for it, so here goes:
1. Golf balls with RFID chips in them - see www.radargolf.com - neat idea, happy to
demonstrate round the world for you at conferences if you send me a scanner and a
dozen balls. I present all over the world about computers and golf, so they would fit
right in.
2. Band-in-a-box - really neat music software that I use at home - easy interface, simple to
learn
3. Photovista - stitches photos together to make a panorama - load in photos, tell it to
merge and it does it, without nasty looking joins - now I just need to work out how to
print them?
4. I like Aston Martins, Bentleys and Ferraris
5. My Canon EOS digital camera - I need a couple more lenses though
6. Allofmp3.com - brilliant MP3 site, where I buy my downloads
7. Bose noise-cancelling headphones - for the first time in years I can understand the
movies on an aeroplane, and have peace when I want it - bliss
8. Draught Guinness
There are some more, but I don't want to push my luck!
What do these all have in common? Back to my art teacher at school, who said you should
look for 3 things when you buy something:
Great rules for ITSM as well.
The (ITIL) Masters

First question - if the world is suffering from global warming, why is there snow in my garden
this morning?
Second question - if hot air rises, why is there snow on the top of mountains?
OK, enough of that - back to the important stuff in life - golf. I hope that even those of you,
who think that golf is played by boring old fools (me) or overpaid youngsters, took the
opportunity to watch the Masters at the weekend and enjoy the beautiful flowers around Amen
Corner.
I played golf on Sunday and it was rubbish. Last year my long game was crud, and my short
game was wizard. This year, as those who play golf can probably guess already, I have exactly
the opposite - magic off the tee, and crud round the greens, including putting as badly as Fred
Couples did on the back nine.
Now, I sat back and tried to work out why. My driving has actually been improved by a
combination of People (me and the golf pro), Process (lessons and practice) and Technology
(yes, I succumbed and bought a new driver with weights in it which cuts out/down your slice
and it works!) - gosh those three remind me of something!
So, what next? Obviously apply the same techniques to the short game, but build on the same
principles as I used for the long game. OK, I admit putting is a bit different, but I am still
trying to hit the ball first (rather than the ground) and I need to be pointing in the right
direction. Chipping and pitching are subsets of the full swing, and that is probably where I am
going wrong as I am trying to do something clever and different. In golf you will often see the
professional going back to first principles - stance / grip / posture / swing / tempo etc. - to fix a
problem.
Now, if you can't see the parallels between all that and ITIL, let me know and I will bore you
to tears.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Add Comment
Global Warming - Posted by csm at 2006-04-18 01:19
Unfortunately, global warming is poorly named. It would be better named "global climatic
instability" because there are indeed some areas that are getting colder and others getting
warmer.
Do we hate each other?

I've been reading and commenting on this thread, which shows some classic examples of a
sensible request rapidly dropping down into boring techy speak. I was going to ask for
examples of what annoys you most about other people e.g. what annoys IT about users, users
about IT, business about IT, IT about business etc., but that all seems a bit negative.
So I would much rather people waded in with constructive ideas on how to bridge this gap.
Any volunteers?
Which one is free?

A colleague sent me the link to this rather fine coffee table book. If you read the article you
will see that whilst the book is a bit expensive, you do get a "free" coffee table to go with it !!!!
Well, that of course prompted me into thinking about other interesting reverse possibilities.
Buy an expensive digital camera and get a free laptop? Buy 50 sets of guitar strings and get a
free guitar? Buy lots of electricity and get a free server? Buy 5 shirts and get a free suit?
Of course, we all know it isn't really free, but what it points out is that at the end of the day you
are looking for a total solution, not just a bit of it. Which is what drives me mad when people
start talking about boring techy features of some gadget or other, or some piece of software -
get a life! I want a solution, that solves my problem, not a person who has swallowed a
marketing / technology dictionary and is spouting meaningless jargon at me. Ask your
customers what they want and why and what it is worth - you will be amazed at the answers.
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Add Comment
More examples - Posted by Neil Ward-Dutton at 2006-04-19 05:03
Peter - there are some obvious real-world examples: buy into a network contract, and get a free
mobile phone...
Also, more recently: Sun's deal (US only I think) to offer developers subscribing to its software
development tools, a free Sun server to develop and test on.
How was my golf?

I know you are all dying to know how my golf was over the weekend. Long game - not bad.
Short game - greatly improved. Medium game (irons) - room for improvement but heading the
right way. I am actually getting vaguely near my handicap again - hooray!
Now, what was the problem? Fortunately my daughter's boyfriend is a fine golfer (who hits it
so far that I don't even see the bloody thing land) and he spotted a fundamental flaw in my
swing - the old joke here would be that the fundamental flaw is that I swing at all, but we will
rise above that.
Now you are all wondering how I am going to tie that back to SLM / ITIL etc. Well the answer
is that I had implemented some processes (backed by lessons / drills etc.) but hadn't got the
control mechanisms in place to see that the processes were actually being done correctly. To
me that is why the combination of ITIL (processes) and CobIT (controls) is coming up more
and more at customers.
By the way my colleague Ken talks about all this ITIL and CobIT stuff in his blog.
Queueing theory
Regular readers will know that my life is fairly sad - to prove this I am currently sitting in the
foyer of the Hyatt San Francisco airport hotel on a Saturday morning writing this blog entry. I
am also listening to Santana's Black Magic Woman (written by Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac,
for those who care) through my Bose noise-cancelling headphones so I can't hear all the rude
comments my colleagues are making about me!
Anyway, I digress - queueing, or as the Americans would call it standing in line. We are rather
good at this in the UK - it is part of our breeding / training. Other countries appear to work on
the rule that a queue is 1000 wide and 1 deep. So why am I talking about it? Well, as usual I
sat in Heathrow airport for 2 hours, in a plane for 11, all so that I could stand in a queue at
immigration for another hour - crazy. Can someone please sort out a sensible immigration
system, which exploits technology and speeds things up, and yes I will happily pay for the
privilege of using it?
There is a also a rule of queues like this - whichever one you choose, there will be someone
ahead of you who appears to have the IQ of a goldfish. If it is a security queue at the airport
with 87 signs telling you to remove metal from your pockets and take your jacket off, they will
wait until they get to the head of the queue and then proceed to produce metallic objects from
23 different pockets. When they get on the plane ahead of you with a ticket that says seat
number 44H, they will be absolutely shattered to find that the seats start with number 1 at the
front. If they get into a lift (elevator) and press floor 18, with floors 7, 13, 15 already chosen by
other people they will stand exactly in front of the doors seemingly unaware of the fact that
other people will need to get off first. Think you get my drift.
This also got me thinking about those particularly annoying telephone queue messages. You
have gone through 18 menu options and then get the message "you are being held in a queue".
Talk about stating the blindingly obvious. This imparts no new useful information at all. What
I want to know is how long the queue is and whether there is a chance of my reaching the head
of it before I die of starvation or boredom.
Santana is on to Samba Pa Ti now (Abraxas album). Wonderful.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Can I help you?

You all know by now that I am not a great fan of technology for technology's sake, but that I
do get turned on by the (rare) intelligent application of technology. This led to me thinking
about the main point of contact between users and business/IT - namely the Service Desk.
Something isn't working properly so the Service Desk gets flooded with a series of calls, and
begins to lose its cool. Not a pretty sight, and a bunch of frustrated users. As I have said before,
the perfect Service Desk would have no calls. The realistic best Service Desk would implement
several actions to make our lives happier:
• Problem Management - get to the root cause and eliminate
• Proactive notification - tell me before I ring and complain
• People on the Service Desk who speak the same language as the users do and
understand their culture
• Self-service where it makes sense
What most companies have gone for, of course, is the cheap option selected by the chief bean
counter, with the result that we get rubbish service and people who frustrate us even more
when we complain.
So why can't the software determine that the SLA is being breached, raise an intelligent ticket
and route to it to a user-friendly Service Desk, proactively notify me if necessary, dynamically
provision resources to solve the issue or trigger level 2 to solve the problem, and then close the
ticket. Well ours can, of course, but it does mean that you have to:
• Determine which are the priority services - software probably can't do this, you need
some intelligent business-related input - but sucking business process info into the
CMDB will become more normal as we move forwards
• Which, in fact, actually determine your SLAs - these are business contracts, not a
boring string of technical metrics
• Which should all hook into your (end-to-end) monitoring and your service models, so
you can assess impact and prioritise
• Which in turn look at the CMDB to see who is impacted and proactively notifies them -
yes CMDBs can and should contain people too, which many people seem to forget
• Which also hook into your capacity planning / provisioning so that IT can be sure they
have the correct (business-driven) capacity available at the right time without spending
a fortune on redundant kit
This can all be done (and is being done) today, which is why I was in San Francisco last week,
where we were updating our people on how all of this stuff fits together and how it pertains to
your particular industry.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Free Holiday?
There was one of those "you have won a prize" things in the newspaper a few weeks back. As
usual, I read through the prizes to see where the catch was, and much to my surprise all the
prizes seemed attractive. OK, it cost money to phone up and find one which one you had won,
but the call cost was way lower than the worst prize, so I thought why not.
I make the call and discover I have won a holiday for two in Italy including flights - seems
good so far. So I send off the voucher with the code blah blah. Last week in San Francisco I
get a phone call from a hideously cheerful man (who kept calling me mate - I AM NOT HIS
MATE in any sense of the word!) telling me I had won a holiday in Tenerife (close, but not in
Italy according to my atlas). All I had to do was phone a Freephone number in the UK within
the next hour. Well, he choked when I told him he was talking to my mobile in California (that
probably cost them more than the call I made - ho ho!), so he sweetly agreed that I could call
the number when I got back home.
I called the number today and now we get to the twist at last. All I need to do to collect my
prize (and they couldn't tell me why Italy had moved several hundred miles left into the
Atlantic ocean) was come to their offices and sit through some brain-numbing presentation on
why they are the most wonderful travel people in the world. GET LOST. The way you can
persuade me to use your services in future is to tell me I don't have to come to your offices
(which are miles away from my house).
Help the Aged

I often talk about help desks needing to be attuned to the people calling them. So this item
from the Daily Telegraph amused me. Here is a sample quote:
"If you think that bandwidth refers to the girth of the trombonist, that peer-to-peer
describes the seafront between Brighton and Worthing and that podcasting is something
you might do with homegrown peas, then this could be for you."
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Do you speak English?

I wanted to write a blog on the problems of misunderstandings in foreign climes, and how you
should be attuned to the culture of the people, to whom you are delivering service. Two
reasons for this:
I heard an absolute classic on Radio 4 this morning. As part of the build-up to the World Cup
(a soccer tournament for those from America), a football stadium in Germany has a sign,
which when translated directly into English says "Welcome to all the football ventilators". Oh,
I do like calling people ventilators rather than fans - think I shall start up a ventilator club!
I was flying back from Chicago on Thursday evening on the red-eye, so I decided to have a
decent meal before I took off. I am sitting there sipping my glass of Chardonnay and eating my
main course when the waiter comes along with the bill and says "when you're ready, sir." Why
are you bringing me the bill half way through the meal? This has happened to me several times
in the US, and I am trying to work out the thinking behind it.
• I smell and you want to get rid of me. Well, I had showered, fresh laundry, nice suit and
tie, so don't think that was it.
• I am too ugly for your restaurant. It was an airport hotel, so don't think that's it either.
• The food is so awful that you know I won't want to order any more - no, I would have
complained already if that had been the case.
• The restaurant is full and you want to use the table again - no, it wasn't.
• You want to knock off down the pub with your friends for a few drinks before closing
time - probably.
So what message are you sending out to me? All I know is that I react in one of two ways.
Either I get cheesed off and leave straight away skipping all the other options I might have
enjoyed (dessert, cheese, more wine, tea/coffee etc.) or I purposely order something else just to
annoy you and make you do the bill again. In fact, almost invariably, whenever I have been
offered the bill too early the waiter returns shortly afterwards and offers me coffee?!?!
Actually the one that annoys me even more is when I have had a really good meal with
excellent service and then everyone disappears when you want the bill. Why? It should be
fairly obvious that the next thing I require is the bill, so why hide? I find the best thing to do in
these circumstances is to stand up and walk out - it is amazing how quickly people appear then
- "oh sorry, I though the meal was free, as no-one wanted payment for it?"
Constant service monitoring and improvement? That would be nice.
Add Comment
Learning good English. - Posted by Master Fu at 2006-05-12 04:05
One should not be disheartened by people not knowing good English. I am on a world wide
mission to spread the goodness of English language.
CMDB
Here is a blatant attempt to keep ahead of my colleagues in the blog readership league. I am
running a competition with PRIZES.
I know that getting your colleagues at work excited about ITIL and getting a CMDB
implemented is not always the easiest thing in the world (it will actually save them time and
trouble going forwards, but they don't necessarily know that yet), so here is a little ditty to get
them all fired up and in the mood (with apologies to those that wrote the original):
Come on, there's no need to be shy

I said, come on, just load those CIs
I said, come on, IT-IL be a surprise
There's no need to be un-happ-y
Come on, I'll discover for you

I said, come on, see that config come true
I said, come on, with identities too
There's no need to be ex-clud-ed
Let's all hear it for the C M D B

It's fun to load up the C M D B
You get your processes in, relationships too, a single source of the truth
Let's hear it for the C M D B
It's fun to load up the C M D B
You can search anything, give the help desk a ping, federate with all of your friends
No doubt you can do better, so prizes for the ones that make me smile most.
IT is just a tool?
Just been to Poland for the CMG conference there. Met a journalist, who asked me the
question "Isn't IT just a tool, and shouldn't business just use it that way? You don't really need
to have IT as part of the business strategy?"
Interesting question. The problem with treating IT as a tool is that you end up with things like
the hair-drier in my earlier blog entry, the dotcom fiasco etc. I showed him the picture of the
hair-drier; he grinned: enough said.
We then moved on to discussing possibilities in the Polish market and I won't steal his thunder
as he will be writing an article, but one thread in the discussion is pertinent to this blog. We
talked about the difference between a call centre, which my regular readers know can have the
ability to get straight up my nose, and what I want, which is a "service centre". The latter is an
intelligent proactive body, which provides me useful services / information / workarounds etc.,
rather than being the recipient of my bottled-up frustration. Anyone got/used one of those? If
not, why not? Are you still in the chaotic / reactive / annoy the end-user mode?
Friday, May 12, 2006
Prizes, what prizes?

In my previous CMDB entry, I offered prizes for the best entries. Now, the sharper amongst
you will have noticed that I didn't say what the prizes were. Others amongst you probably
thought that this was just a cheap publicity stunt, and there was a catch somewhere. As a result,
there have been no entries - very disappointing - especially as the prizes were the latest Clive
Cussler and Jilly Cooper books, a fine Ashworth golf shirt, a tripod for your digital
camera/video, and if things worked out right an iPod Nano.
The bad news for you is that you missed out! The good news for me is that it is my birthday
next week and I get to keep the prizes!
Now the serious part - how many times have you reacted to something based on a series of
preconceptions? You assume that something is suspect, not going to work or whatever and
hence avoid it. For instance, when I tell people about the mp3 site I use, they get all excited
until I tell them it is in Russia. As it happens, I have been using the site for over a year and had
no problems whatsoever. Or no-one tells you what to expect, so you make your own
assumptions, which never match what actually happens.
How often does this happen in IT? You don't tell people what to expect and they either avoid it
or complain because they had expected something else. This is what SLAs are about to me -
not about server 42 running at 19.8%, but an honest business level contract describing what I
can expect, at what times, with what performance and at what cost.
Pink Elephant parking at Heathrow

Anyone use Pink Elephant parking at Heathrow? Anyone from Pink Elephant reading this?
Your receipt dispenser is a total farce - stick my credit card in, take out a second mortgage to
pay your iniquitous charges, and then to add insult to injury you print out a nasty thin piece of
paper that curls up inside a plastic sleeve. I know the sleeve is meant to keep the rain out - it
also keeps my fingers out – DUUH!
Watching BSM grow

I feel like a parent with BSM (Business Service Management). I was there for its (sorry, has to
be neuter I think) conception, helped deliver it to the world, and then to quote Shakespeare:
"At first, the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy,
with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school."
Yes, I have watched BSM go through its infancy. I have seen the school bullies taunt it and
claim it wasn't correct - as usual, the bullies were acting from positions of jealousy and
weakness.
But, as it has matured, I have watched the teachers and the other pupils understand that they
had something truly different in their midst. Now it was the person to be seen with. People
were trying to be part of its gang.
Along the way I have obviously taught it to play golf.
So where is BSM now? Today BMC is announcing the next level of BSM with major new
products and releases, workflows tying it all together, a whole new level of CMDB and
discovery, integrations amongst our own stuff and with partners and third parties etc.
I think BSM has just had the job interview and been offered the job.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Murphy's Law
Our local water supplier was granted a drought order yesterday - the prediction is that we will
have no water soon, so they need to impose strict controls. It has, of course, rained non-stop
since!
Read this article in the FT the other day, which has some lovely quotes:
"Some technologists have yet to make the link between their remuneration and the
satisfaction levels of the users"
"Migrate the help desk from organic voice mail to digital butler"
etc. etc.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Are you there?

When I started this blog, I made some rules for myself - namely no content with sex, religion
or politics. This is not normally a great problem, but I must admit the combination of recent
scandal in the UK government and the release of the Da Vinci Code movie tomorrow has been
sorely tempting! Move on Armstrong.
I had a phone call from one of the airlines I regularly use the other week. It was a courtesy call
to a "valued customer" to see if I was happy with their service. At this point you are no doubt
impressed. Unfortunately I was in San Francisco at the time, had forgotten to turn off my
mobile and the call came at 5 o'clock in the morning! After a few attempts at speech I managed
to convey that we should talk again later when I was back in the UK, which we have
subsequently done. When we spoke, one of my recommendations to the airline was to exploit
the data they had about me, which would have told them I was in San Francisco and was flying
home with them 3 days later. Profuse apologies their end and the lady involved has been
incredibly helpful in sorting out another trip for me and my wife - well done.
Today, I received an email from one of her colleagues inviting me to lunch at the House of
Lords with some of their senior execs to discuss life / travel / service / my taking over the
Prime Minister's job (I made up that last bit). Now guess what? The date they have invited me
is when I am out in Houston - flying there and back with guess who?
So my beef today is integration. We used to talk about integration of systems and data with
middleware (some of us still do) and how wondrous this would make the customer experience.
When it is done properly, it is magic. Just frustrates me when people miss the obvious.
The next integration front for me is that of the ITIL Processes. I have met many customers who
have implemented one or more ITIL processes, but only a few who have gone that extra yard
(metre, mile, light year?) and made them talk to one another and flow seamlessly from one to
another. To do this, of course, you require an open and federated CMDB, which has only been
available in recent times, with tools to create it and maintain it. So, there's no excuse now is
there?
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Add Comment
Podcast on DBAzine.com - Posted by Imran Chaudhry at 2006-05-23 08:30
I've been reading a few entries in your blog and I've found it an amusing yet interesting read.
You'll be tickled pink to know that I've deemed it worthy to subscribe :-)
Back to the podcast on how to react to this age of offshoring and commoditisation of IT human
resource. Well it's refreshing to hear a British voice! I've been reading for a few years now that
what businesses want now are "business technologists". I find quite a few career minded
friends starting to study MBAs part-time. They realize that there is some bright spark in
India/China who will do the job at half the cost!
On the best practice library, in the podcast it sounds like "itool" which you'll be tickled pink to
know returns a bunch of stuff on iMac products.
For the interested ones, it is in fact ITIL and the WikiPedia entry is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology_Infrastructure_Library
I found the podcast because I'm studying for MySQL database certification and have an
interest in applying it for business advantage.
Keep us updated on elsewhere you are speaking! Take care,
Imran Chaudhry, Southampton, UK
Thanks - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-05-23 12:09

Imran
Thanks for the response - "Itool" is magic - I must copyright / trade mark that and see what
happens!!!
Send me the money!

I was dead chuffed (means very happy) to receive an email today talking about PayPal
introducing a new service, whereby you can pay for stuff using your mobile phone. Why am I
chuffed? Well, I wrote a book about doing this years ago (follow links under the nauseating
picture, but be warned that the book includes adult language of an Anglo-Saxon nature). When
I wrote the book, lots of people told me I was talking through my hat. Admittedly I was hoping
it would be via Bluetooth rather than SMS texting or calling someone (as it would then be
free), but nobody's perfect.
Now, I am not trying to say that I am particularly clever, or can foretell the future. No, the
reason this is happening is because people are at last cottoning on to the fact that if you make
technology useful / make it deliver a service, then we are likely to use it - not tricky is it?
Add Comment
Peter's predictions - Posted by Greg Michael at 2006-05-25 17:56
Mr. Armstrong, I am one of the legions who bought your book, ...Bastard, where you predicted
payments on hand-held devices -- it's the gift of the magi! You have a very entertaining writing
style.
thank you - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-05-25 18:40

Many thanks - both for buying the book and posting the comment
Cheers
Peter
Taste
Yesterday we ran an update event for the European analysts, discussing where the world / IT /
BSM is going. As some of them are brave enough to admit reading these ramblings - thanks
for coming, great to meet up; and for those I had only ever spoken to on the phone before,
excellent to put a face to the name. We also designed a new political party to replace the
current incumbents with a radical new (i.e. sensible) manifesto, but I promised not to do
politics on here.
What did we talk about? Please watch this space and I will keep you up-to-date on what is
going on as it gets announced.
There was one disappointment, however. One of the analysts pointed me at this. Bother! And I
only used allofmp3 because the Daily Telegraph told me it was legal years ago.
Which leads me to taste. I was born in 1950, so my musical formative years were the era of the
Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Cream etc. At that time I was learning to play the guitar and as
I can't sing a note in tune, I tended towards the finger-picking style, where I would pick out the
melody instead of just strumming chords. This led me to James Taylor, Carole King (I was
also playing the piano), Pentangle, Labi Siffre and others, moving on to the Eagles, Unplugged
Eric Clapton etc. in later years. Still can't play any of them properly, but it has been fun trying.
So when I go into Amazon or whatever to buy a CD/book, it kindly looks at my previous
forays, and tries to determine my "taste" and make recommendations. I must admit that every
now and then it leads me to something interesting and enjoyable I haven't tried or heard before.
So they have understood that things like this make their "service" more interesting. They are
trying to give me a fuller, more rounded offering.
So why do we frequently run IT (build technology or whatever) as a bunch of independent
silos, with no recognition of what I am doing with it / no analysis of what I like and don't like /
no attempt to make my experience a more satisfying one?
Mmmm - Taste, saw them in concert in 1967 or 1968 - Rory Gallagher (no relation to those
loud-mouthed obnoxious gits as far as I am aware) was a great guitarist.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
WYSIWYG
Strange thing this blogging lark, I find it is a bit like waiting for a bus. Nothing happens for
ages and then suddenly two or three come along at the same time. Sat here the other day with
no ideas at all and now my brain is suddenly waking up again.
Those of you who know me will not be surprised to hear that I think I am a "what you see is
what you get" (WYSIWIG) person; in other words a forthright, opinionated old git. This
thought led me to several idle sets of musings.
Firstly, I would like to apologise to all those people, whom I have bored to tears over the years
by whittering on about the state of my back/shoulders. My back I have cured by refusing to
carry luggage any more. Everything of mine now has wheels and if you are one of those ladies,
who looked surprised when I refused to put your 4-ton carry-on in the overhead locker for you,
now you know why (please check the bloody thing in, if you can't lift it). My shoulders - after
ten years of MRIs, x-rays, specialists etc. all telling me that I had "osteo-arthritis, keep taking
the pain-killers" I have at last ended up with someone, who has worked out what is wrong with
me. Transpires the top of my shoulder bones are the wrong shape and don't fit in the sockets
properly. Why am I boring you with this crud? Well, believe it or not that makes me realise
how important rapid root cause analysis is in problem management!
Secondly, I would like a WYSIWIG Service Catalogue - don't lie to me or patronise me about
what I am going to get. Tell me honestly what the service will be and how much I will have to
pay for it. As you can probably guess I don't go much for "Freshly caught succulent deep sea
cod, in a lime and beer batter with a garnish of the crispest pommes frites, sliced from the
finest Maris Piper potatoes you can find". Fish and Chips is what I want to know, and now tell
me if they are really good or dripping in nasty old cooking oil. Same with IT - this service will
occasionally be available and the response time will be rubbish, but that's what you get for
cutting our budgets to the bone, firing half the staff and not telling us what is important to you.
Wouldn't that be refreshingly honest?
Continuing the theme of telling me what is going on, why is there so much ignorance around
MIFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive). To quote:
"MiFID will replace the existing Investment Services Directive (ISD), the most
significant European Union legislation for investment intermediaries and financial
markets since 1995. MiFID extends the coverage of the current ISD regime and
introduces new and more extensive requirements to which firms will have to adapt,
in particular in relation to their conduct of business and internal organisation.
Perhaps I am talking to the wrong people, but most of the customers I have been talking to
have never heard of it, which is worrying as those affected are meant to be preparing for its
inception next year. Perhaps it would help if the European government told us about it rather
than wasting its time on the content of my breakfast sausage or whatever it is that they do.
Add Comment
Baggage - Posted by Edna Skupperthatchet at 2006-06-05 10:36
I was on a flight the other day and that Mr Armstrong refused to help me put my carry-on
baggage into the overhead compartment. He is a very rude young man and he smelt of fish and
chips.
young? - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-06-09 18:38

Young?
Note: I have my suspicions about which of my colleagues posted this under such an amusing
pseudonym!!
Noah's ahead of the rest

Cast your mind back a few thousand years and imagine you are Noah. You nip down the bank
for a loan to build your ark.
"Hello Noah, how's the family?"
"Fine, can you lend me a few thousand shekels?"
"Extending the house? Buying a new wagon?"
"No, I'm going to build an ark and put two of each animal in there 'cos it's going to tip it
down with rain and this is my risk avoidance/business continuity scheme."
Of course, he didn't get the money, but he did have the last laugh. And risk is a word I am
hearing more and more often from customers. "It's not about reducing costs so much, as about
reducing risk and spending the right money on the right things". Spot on. That's why you need
the business to tell you what is important, how much risk they are prepared to take, and how
much it would cost them if that service were not available: neat use of the subjunctive there;
hope you're impressed!
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Rambling on my mind
Been travelling a bit recently so managed to catch up on some reading and movies. Read
Lynne Truss's "Talk to the Hand" (follow-up to her magic book on punctuation "Eats, Shoots
and Leaves") which bemoans the modern day world of lack of service / lack of manners. Re-
read Harry Potter book 6; when's book 7 coming out? Saw the remake of the Pink Panther and
gave up after half an hour; awful. Saw the Da Vinci Code; much better than the reviews had
led me to believe. Wouldn't it be nice if you could believe the reviews you read of books and
films? Sounds like a service catalogue?!?
I was sitting in the Outback Steakhouse in Houston (they serve Guinness) and noticed that, for
the first time in a long time, they had a sport on one of the TVs, which was meaningful and
interesting to me; tennis from the French Open. So as no-one seemed to be watching the
women's underarm baseball, or the men's pad me up and hurl me at the other side football, I
managed to get the tennis put on the TV in front of me. Excellent, good service chaps. I then
ordered my meal and watched Sharapova throw away a 5-1 lead in the third set. Perhaps it's
me, and I am an old-fashioned chap, but I do like people playing tennis to dress predominantly
in white. Sharapova had a pink dress with bright yellow knickers - strange combination. And
why do they have to grunt so much? I have this vision of a Wimbledon final between Gruntalot
and Bashitova. Both dressed in multi-colour pyjamas like the cricketers of today - yuck!
What's that got to do with ITSM? Nothing, but it leads me to my favourite sport - golf. As you
know I have written papers / done podcast things on the similarities between golf and
computers. We take something basically very simple and make it as complex as possible in
both cases. So where do I go next with my golf analogy? I think what golfers are looking for is
the perfect chip / pitch / drive / putt, and when you watch the professionals you will see that
they go through exactly the same routine every time. They have a process which gets the club
in the right place at the right time for them. They look at the lie, the slope. They judge the
wind. They look at the shape of shot they require. They talk to the caddy. They consult their
yardage charts etc. Ditto in ITSM - we need to have processes which lead us from one step to
the next in as automated a fashion as possible (because that's cheaper), with the correct steps
being done at the correct time and being documented (for compliance). We are looking for that
integration and flow and don't want to spend months / years implementing it ourselves. Check
out the link to see how to solve problems across I.T. disciplines, and reduce your I.T.
handicap!
The Football World Cup

I am sure you are all wondering why I haven't blogged about this World Cup thing. The answer
is simple; I try to only talk about stuff I know, and I know absolutely nothing about football.
All of those, who are now racing to write comments about my total ignorance of most things
not stopping me before, feel free.
The strange thing is that I was in Tokyo four years ago when the World Cup was on there, and
yesterday I was in Germany, where it is being played this time. In both cases, I must admit that
I went nowhere a match. Obviously I hope that England does well, but fear that if it comes to
penalty shoot-outs, England fans should dig out their Leonard Cohen albums now (music to
top yourself by).
So why was I in Germany? To visit the Toyota Formula One factory. Fascinating. I watched
them rebuilding Ralf Schumacher's car (an American chap decided to ram him early on -
obviously been watching too many John Wayne movies). I am doing a podcast in the very near
future on F1, Toyota, why they chose BMC, what they have done with BSM etc. Will shout as
soon as it is ready. Vvvvvvvvvvrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmm!
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
EMPTYS
I am sure you are having a good laugh at the fact that I can't spell any more. Bear with me.
Example 1
"Can I have a look at the menu, please?" "Certainly, sir, here it is." "Thank you."
Or
"What you got then?" "Look at the board you blind git!"
Example 2
"Excuse me, my laptop's not working." "Sorry, forgot to tell you the server was down, we will
have it back for you in ten minutes."
Or
"Bloody thing's stopped again!" "Well, your fault for using it, you plonker!"
It is amazing to me how many people omit some of those simple words in English, which
make life and service so much more enjoyable. Or they use them, but don't mean them.
Excuse Me. Please. Thank You. Sorry.
EMPTYS
Perhaps I should start a campaign for restoring old values and call it the EMPTY gesture?
Probably get a lot of rude gestures in return?
Why are the youth of today so rude?

Amazingly enough, the title does not come from me, but from an article in the Daily Telegraph
today. This is according to some survey or other; not sure why these people always bother with
a survey when anyone could have told you the result beforehand? Or when they conduct an
end-user satisfaction survey, the questions are all loaded and they never give you the option
you really want to answer? I remember my boss at IBM telling me years ago to never answer
2, 3 or 4 - always go for absolutely dreadful or brilliant, because people never look at the
middle stuff!
Anyway, back to the article and why do I care? I quote:
"Employers questioned say that graduate recruits lack ''soft'' skills; they don't know how to
have a conversation, aren't very flexible, don't listen properly and don't know enough
about customer relations or even how to be polite to customers. These attributes,
employers say, are more valuable than degrees - or would be if young people had them."
I could rant on here about parents, schools, lack of discipline (because the teachers are terrified
of being beaten up or sued), idiotic invocations of Human Rights etc., but I'll hold back. The
article also quite rightly points out that the fault is on both sides. Employers need to recognise
this issue and address it as ultimately their customer satisfaction (= revenues) depends heavily
on it.
Right, time to start up my EMPTYS course at the local University / college.
Add Comment
Youth Rudeness - Posted by Lisa Johnson at 2007-02-17 21:24
Customers need to to learn how to be better customers. The youth are not always rude. Many
elderly are rude, impatient and just nasty. They feel they deserve "special" treatment. I have
been on the customer service side and I am very glad I no longer work in that industry. It
seems more and more often than not, people do not have manners. In this day and age, I very
seldom hear people ever say thank you or please. The going words seem to be, give me or I
need. Once you give a person what they "need" there usually isn't a thank you. What I am
trying to say, lets not always put the blame on youth.
Thank you - Posted by peter armstrong at 2007-02-19 10:46

Lisa
Many thanks for your comment (see I say thank you!) You are right, it is not all the youth of
today. I just picked that as an example that was quoted in the newspaper. In an earlier blog I
suggested EMPTYS - Excuse Me, Please, Thank You and Sorry, and I would like
EVERYBODY to use those more often, especially when they receive good service.
Dangerous?
Is it me or is the world going totally mad? I read at the weekend that a school in England has
banned children from building and flying paper planes, except in a specially designated area.
The reasons given for this are, of course, some fatuous load of rubbish about health and safety.
Unfortunately we seem to think nowadays that children (and adults) should be wrapped in
cotton wool and protected from the nasty outside world. This is probably all driven by lawyers
looking to earn copious quantities of money from asinine legal cases. By the way, when you
look at this link, click on the bogus section at the bottom and see how many fabricated cases
there have been. Which leads me to point one today - isn't it amazing how many statistics and
facts are quoted at us in IT. You wonder how many of them are based on the truth? When
someone tells you their wondrous new technology does whizzy things, challenge them to prove
it.
Now the good news. A book has just come out called "The Dangerous Book for Boys". This is
a splendidly old-fashioned book about playing conkers, making paper planes, skimming
stones, climbing trees etc. It is currently topping Amazon's Hot 100 Books in the UK.
Why do I want you all to buy this and stick your children's heads in it? Several reasons:
• It will probably make them a much better, more rounded, interesting person. That's the
grown-ups - kids should benefit too!
• It will get your kids off the internet and out into the fresh air. This will also free up
bandwidth for important business functions - I heard earlier this year that a large
amount of the Internet's bandwidth is taken up by peer-to-peer traffic - e.g. your kids
swapping MP3 files and videos. My broadband connection seems to run like treacle at
the weekends when all the kids get on (not mine, they've left home - all the others who
use the same cable provider).
• It may make more people think about what is important in life.
Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any actions arising from your kids reading this book -
like burning your house down or breaking their legs - that bit was for the lawyers!
Monday, June 19, 2006
Add Comment
dangerous book - Posted by jill at 2006-07-12 14:50
I had an order placed for this book from Amazon US but cancelled the order thinking I could
find the book locally at Barnes and Noble and look at it before I purchased it. Mostly to see the
illustrations and size of type to see if my 9 year old would read it. Barnes and Noble had never
heard of it, couldn't find the title anywhere. I went back to Amazon today to reorder it and it is
nowhere to be found on their site (US). This is odd since last week I ordered it with no
problem and now the title doesn't show up. What is going on?Why is it so hard to find? Has it
really been pulled for politically correct reasons here? Where can I order it from?
the book - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-07-12 17:33

I ordered it from Amazon UK and got it last week - I am told it has just gone through reprint.
Am reading it now and it is aimed more at a UK market (includes rules of cricket, British
heroes etc.) but there's lots of general stuff as well. You are right - I can't find it on US
Amazon.
What is BSM?
I was one of the very early pioneers of BSM (Business Service Management) at BMC, so I
hope no-one will complain when I claim to have been involved with it for some years now. My
initial reaction when other vendors started using the term was one of annoyance - "hey, we
invented that, and now you can't even get it right when you try to copy us". Then I remembered
that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, and realised we must have put together
something really quite significant, if everybody else in the industry wants to get in on the act.
The latest manifestation of this saga is that I have been having an interesting series of
conversations with customers recently. The fundamental question, which has come up on
several occasions, is "what is BSM?".
My first answer is that it is not a set of products. You do not buy BSM out of the box. My
somewhat nauseating quote is that "BSM is a mindset, not a product set." Hence my attempts
over the years to come up with analogies to try and get this message across: e.g. my likening
computers (trying to get the right data to the right person in the right place at the right time) to
golf (trying to get the right ball to the right place at the right time). I met a colleague this week
who tells me that several German CIOs didn't like my golf analogy, as they don't play golf.
Gentlemen / ladies, my apologies for not making myself clear. The golf analogy (which could
be football, handball, skiing or whatever) starts with the fundamental question "Why do you
play golf?". This is key. You have to establish the basic business SLA before you can start
deciding which technical KPIs / OLAs / SLOs, or whatever other boring acronym you can
think of, start making any sense at all. This is the mindset switch; once you have turned that
on, the rest becomes obvious. If you still think that IT is about running Oracle at 99.4%, and
cheaper than last year (which is what I find in the majority of IT shops), then in my opinion
you have missed the point. If you have turned this corner and are on the next lap, then my
apologies for boring you.
So if I have that mindset, where do I go next? Well, I was discussing this whole issue with Dr
Thomas Mendel of Forrester, and he and his colleagues have written a series of papers on what
is BSM and the techniques like CMDB that are associated with it. If you follow this series of
papers, you will find discussions on CMDBs, SLM, discovery etc. All based round the premise
that you need to understand what all this infrastructure crud is there for, if you want to manage
it from a business perspective. What is the business impact of something failing, where is the
bottleneck if I start this new business initiative, should I use dynamic provisioning for this
capacity issue etc.?
Finally, just for fun, I thought I would dig out one of our original design documents from
several years ago, and quote a couple of paragraphs:
Business Services Management (BSM) provides the ability to manage the IT infrastructure
from the viewpoint of relevant Business Services and key business metrics. As Database
and Application management software focus on the performance management and root
cause analysis of databases and applications respectively, BSM will focus on the
performance management, service management and root cause analysis of the Business
Service. Real value and real ROI will be delivered to the business manager as well as the IT
manager. BSM will look across multiple applications, platforms, databases etc. in
evaluating the performance of a business service and the business services that this service
may be a part of. In addition key business metrics will be collected and used in evaluating
the current and projected effect of business changes on the IT environment.
BSM will include a full configuration, asset and change management database. Unique in
BMC’s BSM data model is the ability to define not only all types of infrastructure
components but also business services, key business metrics and many types of
relationships. For example, what IT components are used in a business service, what
failure of a component implies as a percentage degradation in a service etc. To support this
database and keep it current, extensive auto-discovery capabilities will be included.
The good news is that we have delivered all that, customers have it in production, and we are
now moving BSM to the next level, which I shall discuss in future blogs.
Armstrong clan history

Had a few people casting doubts upon my stories of the famous Armstrongs of the past, and
their friendly teatime habits of pillage and plunder. So here are a few links to the history, the
ballad of Johnie Armstrong, and our castle (in ruins!). Apparently Neil took a piece of
Armstrong tartan with him to the moon - and he plays golf; good man!
Dork of the year award?

For those of you, for whom English is not a first language, a dork is a stupid, inept, foolish
person.
If you have been following the English news recently you will have seen that a new stand has
been built at Ascot at a cost of £200 million or so. The only problem is that the architects
forgot that the Queen is very short, with the result that she couldn't see over the front parapet.
Well done Mr Architect, you get my first DOTY award. Try thinking from the end-user's
view?
I know I'm old (fashioned)

I know I am going to sound old in this blog, but that's OK, because I am old.
I have some hang-ups with modern fashion. The male of the species seem to think that the
colour and make of their underwear is something that should be shared with everybody else.
Their trousers are hanging half way down their bums, and the crotch is about knee height. In
fact, from the rear, they look as if they have had a somewhat unpleasant accident. I seem to
remember reading somewhere that this fashion started in US jails, where they take your belt
away in case you hang yourself or throttle your cell mate. Hence, trousers falling down mean
that you are a "hard" person.
Well, sorry to be a boring old fool, but being served by some youth, whose trousers are about
to fall round his ankles like a Brian Rix farce, is not part of good service to me. Get a belt!
The female of the species on the other hand, have a belt to hold up their low-slung jeans (how
they can justify paying £150 for a torn piece of denim is also beyond me, but that's another
story). However, they don't seem to be able to afford a top that is long enough, so we end up
with a socking great gap in the middle. This, I must admit, can look attractive on a girl with a
good figure and a nice tan. Unfortunately, it is normally an advert for the nasty effects of junk
food and lack of exercise. Rolls of flesh hanging over the aforementioned jeans is not a pretty
sight. At least they have stopped displaying their thongs.
So when I go to a cash machine, I don't expect to find the front-end switch on the pavement,
attached to a bunch of cables disappearing down a manhole cover. No, I expect the designer to
position it so that the screen is not facing the sun and hence becomes invisible, and I expect it
to give me money within a reasonable timeframe. That is my SLA. That is what IT should be
measuring and reacting to. What level of service is being delivered? If component x goes
wrong, who will be affected and how quickly do I need to react? If we add another 200
machines, can we cope?
To be boring, this is BSM - the combination of business awareness, event handling and end-
user experience. Some people claim that you only need to measure the end-user experience and
you're done. My response to that is "would you be happy with a medical system that only used
a thermometer to control your health?" No, I expect service to be a complete, enjoyable
experience. People may be running round like idiots in the background fixing it, with their
trousers half hanging off and their midriffs exposed - I don't want to know.
Rainy Day Man

Some of you will recognise the title as a track from James Taylor's Flag album (for guitarists,
James plays it as usual in A with the capo on the 3rd fret).
Regular readers may remember my telling you that we have a drought order here where I live -
no hose-pipes etc. Well, today is the first day of Wimbledon, so guess what? Yep, it's chucking
it down. Fortunately that gives me a chance to catch up on all my colleagues' podcasts.
Off to California tomorrow for a couple of days (customer briefing in our labs over there), so
probably will be quiet on the blog front for the rest of the week (hooray I hear you cry!).
Add Comment
guitarists... - Posted by Kyniek at 2006-07-04 11:37
Yes, one guitar player present. Will check if it's a truth ;-)
This is also to say hallo from Poland.
KT
Phew! What a scorcher!

The tabloid-type headline above refers to the fact that the weather has gone round the other
way in England. I see in my last entry it was chucking it down; this week we have a heatwave.
In fact, there was a lovely little story in the Telegraph today about an American gentleman,
who heard on the radio that is was going to be 32 degrees yesterday at Wimbledon. So he put
on a wool suit and a cashmere jumper (sweater / pullover or whatever you want to call it) and
nearly died of heat. He had unfortunately not realised that we had converted from Fahrenheit to
Centigrade some time ago!!
Now, I have told you that I am old-fashioned and hence I rather like Fahrenheit, feet and
inches, proper old money etc. I never understood why people had problems with £8/19/11
(eight pounds, nineteen shillings and eleven pence). We had farthings, ha'pennies, pennies,
threepenny bits, tanners, bobs, florins, half crowns, ten-bob notes and quid - why is that so
difficult?
Which all leads me to the fact that we are incredibly good at technical obfuscation in IT with a
plethora of incomprehensible acronyms, hoping that our verisimilitude will disguise our
pusillanimity (yes, I had to look them up too!). Let's have plain English, good simple service,
and an appreciation for the customer.
Wired youth
I was listening to a podcast (part 3) by the boss of BMC (Bob Beauchamp) yesterday, where he
was describing the next generation of computer users. The youth of today expects to be
permanently wired in; for instance, Andrew Murray walks on to court at Wimbledon with his
Ipod. This worries me slightly as I have visions of a generation, which only works when
attached to electronic machines. In fact, I am toying with calling it the Intensive Care
generation.
However, it does raise the point that we have different generations expecting wildly different
forms of service. I/we don't really understand what they want and as they grow up and deliver
the next set of systems, will they understand what I/we want?
For instance, I read the other day that there was an international competition for teams of
youngsters competing against one another in some shoot-me-up computer game. Wonderful
news for doctors specialising in Repetitive Strain Injuries, but not much use otherwise. As far
as I am aware there are no flesh-eating zombie aliens in the village where I live.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am not against all technology. I have firmly embraced digital
possibilities at home. I have my music all stored on a central server, ditto photos (and am
scanning in all old 35mm negs and slides), wireless networked PCs, HD-ready LCD TV etc.
Why? Because they give me better quality / greater flexibility etc. But I am not going to
blindly use technology just for the sake of it. For instance, if I want music in another room, it
does not mean that I am going to install a media centre and wireless speakers. No, I simply
take my guitar with me and play it!
So what should we do with the youth of today? My amusing answer of the day is that they
should go into politics or English football, because the prerequisites are the same - greed and
incompetence!
Back to being serious, I would like to state some rules for you all to shoot down:
• Just because something can be technically done, doesn't make that the right solution
• Innovation must not be throttled, but it must be tempered with business sense
• Don't force people to do something because it works for you - they may hate it, or much
to your surprise, they may have a better solution
• Compulsory sports should be part of the (UK) school curriculum
The sounds of silence
Well, I finished the Dangerous Book for Boys on the plane back from California last week and
what a splendid book it is. I must admit that it is aimed much more at the UK market, as it
covers sensible games like cricket and rugby, as opposed to the incredibly jargon-ridden
insular sports they have in the USA for instance. You would think baseball was simple (bash it,
run) until you watch it on American TV. First of all you must have two tedious announcers
who can't stop talking, and secondly you must have a mass of meaningless statistics. Actually
cricket has the latter, but we don't talk nearly as much!
There was a wonderful story about an American commentator at Wimbledon listening to the
late Dan Maskell, who never said a lot. He asked the BBC boss what they paid Dan for. The
boss listened for a minute; there was silence. "That!" he replied.
The point is to understand your audience and let them know enough, but don't swamp them.
When someone invents an (IT) system that conforms to these rules, they will make a fortune.
Please don't scream Google at me - that is pull, not the sophisticated push I want.
I will, no doubt, now get 8000 emails telling me all about wondrous bits of software that keep
me informed - no they don't, they drown me in a wave of gumph, 98% of which is of no
interest to me at all. Somewhere in the middle of it all is the nugget I need to know, but it takes
(me) a lot of filtering to find it.
Add Comment
Well said - Posted by Ynema mangum at 2006-07-18 17:12
That's why I like RSS!
Time to catch up
I was invited to lunch at the House of Lords today, which would have been rather nice.
Problem is that it is ridiculously hot in the UK today, so when I got on the train I nearly died of
heat, and gave up. Congratulations to all those folks, who have to commute into London, New
York or wherever; I did that when I was younger and am very glad I don't have to do it now.
So I am back home now catching up after being on the road for a while.
I spent a couple of days in Dublin - the Guinness definitely tastes better over there!
Unfortunately, some nutter decided to leave a bomb in the airport, which caused major chaos
and concern. Congratulations to BA though, whose website kept us posted on flight arrivals
and departures throughout and we got home fine.
Last week was a trip to Monterey in California, and the flight over to SF was fine. I then tried
to take a little hopper plane down to Monterey. They had us lined up on the tarmac ready to go
up the steps to the plane, when they turned round and said "sorry, wrong plane, back to the
terminal", where they then told us that the flight had been cancelled and the next one was four
hours later! Thanks, if you had told me a bit earlier I would have hired a car and driven there.
Off we went to get a car - no cars at Avis, Hertz, National etc. so we had to take a bus! The
joys of International jet-setting. Needless to say I didn't even bother with the hopper plane on
the way back and simply got a lift from a colleague back to SF. Great service chaps.
Yesterday I attended an itSMF meeting in the UK on Change and Configuration and Release
Management. Lots of good discussion on how to implement Change Management, how to set
up a CMDB, how to justify Config Mgmt, the role of compliance etc. Members of itSMF will
be able to look at slides and minutes in the itSMF website.
For me, one of the most interesting discussions was whether you could do effective Change
Management without a CMDB. The consensus surprised me slightly as it was yes; this was
because the audience was defining effective as not having too many errors. The fact that you
had to chase round 18 different departments to find out the effect of the change was an
unfortunate fact of life. However, when you changed the question to efficient the answer was
firmly no, and if you changed it cost-effective the answer was help me explain to the business
why I need it and help me justify it in business terms. For me, that is the key - IT needs to
explain to the business why ITIL, CMDB etc. will help the business rather than why it will
help IT. Malcolm Fry has written a little book on this "Selling ITIL", which should help you -
ask you local BMC chap/chapess for a copy.
The 135th Open

Regular readers will know that I could not resist writing about golf during the week of The
Open Championship.
So let's go back to my old hobby horse. The correct name is The Open Championship, not the
British Open - to quote the Daily Telegraph today that characteristic American error of
referring to the "British Open".
Now, for fun, I went to Google and searched for the British Open and got hits from the Detroit
Free Press, The Chicago Sun-Times and the Houston Chronicle - say no more. I also got hits
for the British Open Showjumping Championship, the British Open Squash Championship and
the Weetabix British Women's Open. So if someone tells you that they have won the British
Open Golf, it would appear that they have competed on the ladies' tour. Perhaps someone
should tell Michelle Wie to go for the British Open, and she would be surprised to find she is
playing against people of the same sex?
What's that got to do with ITSM? Absolutely nothing. Which is why I like golf!
Been a rotten day

The day started well, and then it went rapidly downhill. Got a 'phone call at lunchtime because
my mother had just been burgled. To the people who stole my Mum's new TV and her 50-year-
old eternity ring - you *@!$£*%s !!!!
The only good part was when I rang the Insurance company for her. Much to my amazement I
did not end up talking to some bloke in a far-flung corner of our lost empire, who wanted to
take me through 300 meaningless questions. The chap I got was local, helpful, efficient and
reassuring. Well done Zurich, great service and I heartily recommend you to one and all. The
rest of you; continue to annoy me with your rotten service and you'll lose my business (some of
you already have).
Vroom Vrrrooommmm
The podcast maestros have uploaded my new podcast on Toyota Formula One (I visited the F1
factory recently to get the low-down on the team and how they use BSM) - enjoy!
Some of the Toyota IT guys will be at our BMC Userworld in San Francisco, so come and talk
to them.
Cape Town
I'm down in Cape Town for the week, and before you get jealous this is the only time I have
been to South Africa and experienced a 20 degree (Celsius) drop in temperature from the UK!
It is cold, and chucking it down. You see the smokers go outside to kill themselves with lung
cancer, and you almost feel sorry for them as they battle hypothermia and pneumonia.
On the plane down I bought a new "Worldwide" adaptor, because my daughter is currently on
holiday and she nicked all of my adaptors before she flew off. Works in over 150 countries
round the world it says on the box. Guess which country it doesn't work in? Yes, quite right --
South Africa, but you can buy it on the flight down here. No, it makes no sense to me either.
So, why I am here? The Gartner ITXpo is running this week and I presented on the future of
the data centre yesterday, covering issues like Virtualisation, SOA, process automation,
breaking down barriers between Operations and Application Development, getting IT and
business working together etc.
The one that has got me most interested at the moment is the handover from App Dev to
production. How early should IT Ops be involved in the App Dev process? For me, the earlier
the better as knowledge of the business process and the apps supporting it will ease the
building of the service model in the CMDB. Similarly, where should Incident and Problem
Management start? Should there be a subset of this happening in the App Dev world, so that
you start building up a knowledge base prior to release Management passing the "tested" code
across?
Let me know how it works in your shop, because I keep hearing stories of code being dumped
across the "wall" and each side blaming the other. Where do the ITIL processes start (and end)
in your shop? Are they purely in the production world, or do some of them filter into the pre-
production world as well?
Thanks - Peter
Add Comment
Dev to Ops hand-off - Posted by Jim Annis at 2006-09-01 11:11
At the very least the handoff from Dev to Ops needs to include triage and over-ride
instructions for all the critical components. I will explain. Since one must assume that
something will go wrong with the application (nothing being perfect) there must be a process
for bypassing application components in such a way that other production is not affected.
Ideally, for every fault category, there is a remediation protocol that 1) allows production to
proceed and 2) provides development with diagnostic information. This should be part of every
new/updated application hand-over.
to sleep, perchance to dream - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-09-05 09:55

agreed, which is why I would like to see the walls between ops and dev start to break down.
Thanks
Peter
Snow!
I have just been informed that it is snowing up near Johannesburg - a rare occurrence down
here in South Africa. Reading a news report on the web, one weather person is quoted as
saying it will be "bitterly cold" today. The temperature then quoted as "bitterly cold" was 12
degrees C, which made me laugh. Interesting how different people view the same thing in
totally different ways. IT says all the servers are working great; the end users say the service
sucks, for instance. Silo monitoring is pretty boring really until it fits into a greater overall
picture, and you understand why you are doing it and why it matters; the service that actually
gets delivered is much more interesting.
12 to me is not bitterly cold, in fact in the UK that's almost pleasant. Minus 20, now that's cold.
Which leads me to a trivial pursuit question for you - at what temperature are Fahrenheit and
Centigrade the same?
Add Comment
Answer to your question somewhere in Finnish joke - Posted by Mike Reys at 2006-08-02
16:04
Finnish weather explained...
+15°C / 59°F
This is as warm as it gets in Finland, so we'll start here.
People in Spain wears winter-coats and gloves.
The Finns are out in the sun, getting a tan.
+10°C / 50°F
The French are trying in vain to start their central heating.
The Finns plant flowers in their gardens.
+5°C / 41°F
Italian cars won't start.
The Finns are cruising in cabriolets.
0°C / 32°F
Distilled water freezes.
The water in the Vanda river (in Finland) gets a little thicker.
-5°C / 23°F
People in California almost freeze to death.
The Finns have their final barbecue before winter.
-10°C / 14°F
The Brits start the heat in their houses.
The Finns start using long sleeves.
-20°C / -4°F
The Aussies flee from Mallorca.
The Finns end their Midsummer celebrations. Autumn is here.
-30°C / -22°F
People in Greece die from the cold and disappear from the face of the earth.
The Finns start drying their laundry indoors.
-40°C / -40°F
Paris start cracking in the cold.
The Finns stand in line at the "grilli-kioski".
-50°C / -58°F
Polar bears start evacuating the North Pole.
The Finnish army postpones their winter survival training awaiting real winter weather.
-60°C / -76°F
Korvatunturi (the home for Santa Claus) freezes.
The Finns rent a movie and stay indoors.
-70°C / -94°F
The false Santa moves south.
The Finns get frustrated since they can't store their Kossu (Koskenkorva vodka) outdoors.
The Finnish army goes out on winter survival training.
-183°C / -297.4°F
Microbes in food don't survive.
The Finnish cows complain that the farmers' hands are cold.
-273°C / -459.4°F
All atom-based movement halts.
The Finns start saying "Perkele, it's cold outside today."
-300°C / -508°F
Hell freezes over.
Finland wins the Eurovision Song Contest.
Temperatures - Posted by Craig S. Mullins at 2006-08-04 16:54

The formula conversion between Fahrenheit and Celsius is F = 9/5*C + 32
So, if both are equal then C = C, so C = 9/5*C + 32
Which means C - 9/5*C = 32, or -4/5*C = 32, and finally C = (-32*5)/4 = -40
So at negative 40 F and C are equal - and that actually IS cold, whether you are in South
Africa, the UK, or Texas!
spot on - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-08-06 16:12

Mike - classic
Craig - spot on as always
Cheers Peter
You're on my blog!
Back from Cape Town after a very pleasant week - the only downside was a mild case of the
Immodium war on the way home. Don't know how those funny little pills work, but they're
brilliant.
The interesting thing to me as I travel the world is the reactions you get from people when you
tell them that you blog:
• What's a blog? Ah, poor naive fools then get an earful.
• Oooh, will I be in it? Yes, if you say something interesting (the good ones are worth
their weight in gold); but sometimes they just bore you to death for 3 hours. Bit like the
mistake of saying you are a doctor at a party.
• Whoops, shan't talk to you, keep me out of it.
• Yep, know your blog, put some decent jokes in it this week will you!
We could of course spend the next few hours discussing the relative psychological profiles of
these people, but life is too short. They just remind me of the people you get calling service
desks:
• I can't get anything to happen - try turning it on.
• My problem today is .... if they call every day, then they are probably tedious. If this is
the first time, could be interesting.
• This one never calls.
• I go drinking with this man.
Actually my perfect service desk has no calls because everything works perfectly - but then I'd
have nothing to blog about.
ITIL be fine?
Just been putting a new white paper together on automating and optimising ITIL processes - I
will bore you rigid with details, URLs etc. when it "goes live".
However, it got me thinking, which is, of course, a rare and dangerous hobby.
A lot of people used to say to me "we've done ITIL", and you think gosh, impressive. On
digging deeper you find that what they really mean is that they have implemented a Help Desk
and Incident Management, and if you're really lucky they have chucked in some Problem
Management as well. These people were also typically looking to take some tools / framework
or whatever and massage it all around till they got the set of customised processes that they
wanted. Fair enough, that's how the market was a few years back. What I call ITIL be all right
on the night (for those of you not from the UK this is a terrible pun on the name of a TV
programme over here, where things keep going wrong).
Now I find the conversations have changed. People have spotted that to get maximum value
out of ITIL they need to move in several different, but related directions:
• They want a Service Desk rather than a Help Desk. Help Desk smacks of bored people
resetting passwords forgotten by bored users. Service Desks smack of SLAs related to
the business, a Service Catalogue, prioritised Incident handling, Business Impact etc.
• They realise that the biggest killer in the world is change and that you need rigidly
controlled Change Management.
• If I am going to do that then I really ought to know what my configuration looks like
before and after changes, for operations and auditing and compliance and and...
Suddenly they realise that the CMDB is the key piece in the middle, but they are not
quite sure how to convince management that they need one. Ah, so what I need is
something to create and maintain one of those as automagically as possible.
Then they start looking at how all this lot fits together and they realise that what they really
want is ITIL out-of-the-box. Be away with you customisation, you are the bane of my life. Get
behind me, you waste of time and money.
I write about all of this in the white paper and show how it leads on to nice things like data
centre optimisation, exploitation of virtualisation, and of course the most important one - better
service at less cost. As I said, I'll shout when the paper is live.
Tolled you so!
Another hideous pun as will become clear. Let me tell you a little story.
A couple of months ago I went to Houston for a meeting. I picked up my hire car at the airport,
and the lady there told me that they have a new system for paying the tolls on the road I am
about to take. "Just drive through the EZ-Tag lane, skipping all those tedious queues, and we
will bill your credit card later". "What a neat idea", I cry, and leap out onto the freeway -
shame they drive on the wrong side, but that's another story.
I whiz through the toll gates and hit the office faster than ever before - excellent. However,
about a month later I get a letter from the car hire company asking me to send them the money
for the tolls. "Hang on", I cry (lot of crying in this entry), "you said you would put it on my
credit card. Sending dollars internationally costs a fortune (a major banking rip-off, but again
that's another story). Why can't you put it on the credit card that you have on record, and which
I use for all my rentals with you?" They look up their records and tell me that because I prepaid
the rental (the default option on their website as it happens), my rental was considered to be
cash by the computer. Looking two fields further, they can see that in fact I prepaid using
guess what - my credit card. Ah, the computer was not clever enough to spot that -
DUUUUUUUUUUUH.
Anyway, they said no problem, and they would put it on my credit card. So, imagine my
surprise when I get 5 letters from them this morning (there should be six, but one's got lost in
the post), one for each toll. Now, how much did it cost them to send me 6 letters? Each letter
says on it in big type THIS IS NOT AN INVOICE. So I am tempted to send them back a
letter saying THIS IS NOT A PAYMENT.
The point of this story is that it is a typical example of silo mentality, rather than looking at the
whole issue from the user's point of view. Where have I seen that before?
Reminds me of a supposedly true story in New Zealand, where a man was caught speeding and
the police sent him a demand for money and a copy of the photo proving he was speeding. So
he sent back a picture of a $200 note. They displayed admirable humour and sent him back a
picture of a pair of handcuffs! Sweet.
Add Comment
Another hideous pun - Posted by Dave Edwards` at 2006-09-01 14:22

Ask not for whom the toll bills...
Funny story. Craig Mullins mentioned it in <a href="http://www.dbazine.com/blogs/blog-
cm/craigmullins/blogentry.2006-08-31.5336881033">Log Buffer #8</a>.
Dave Edwards,
<a href="http://www.pythian.com/blogs/about-log-buffer">Log Buffer</a>
curmudgeon? - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-09-05 10:02
Ah I see young Craig calls me a curmudgeon - "a crusty irascible cantankerous old person full
of stubborn ideas" or "an ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions" - I feel a
new blog entry coming on!!
Cheers
Peter
Hmmmm... - Posted by Craig Mullins at 2006-09-08 15:42

I didn't really mean to paint you as an old grump. Well, that is only half true - I didn't mean to
emphasize the "old" part. Maybe I should've called you a spry, lovable curmudgeon? (At least I
didn't use leverage as a verb? ;-
Hope all is well with you and yours, Peter.
curmudgeon? - Posted by Alysia Korelc at 2006-09-13 14:50

Peter's travelling and asked me to say on his behalf: "no worries, it made me laugh!"
The future of air travel

Unless you have been lying on a beach ignoring the news for the last couple of days (good for
you) you will have no doubt read/heard about all the hassles we have just had over here. By
sheer chance I am not flying anywhere for the next couple of weeks and I am very relieved.
I have just been listening to the possible implications this will all have on future air travel.
• No laptops. Hooray! I hate carrying the bloody thing with me and as I have pointed out
in earlier entries, we all carry ridiculous amounts of junk round the world with us. Give
me a screen, keyboard and power supply and the only thing I need to carry is a hard-
drive. Or give me XP/Office as well, and I just need a big USB stick (which is what I
carry most of the time nowadays anyway).
• No mobile phones. Hooray! One of the few joys of flying is that you don't have to listen
to the incessant banal conversations of tedious fellow travellers. I read that some airline
wants to introduce mobile phones on a plane - NO! NO! NOOOOOOO! I want peace
and quiet, not some boring prat whittering on next to me. I was explaining to some
American colleagues yesterday that the British way of travel on planes is to smile
politely at the person next to you, say "Good Morning" or whatever and then avoid all
further conversation. Engaging in meaningless babble to fill time on flights does not go
down well with us Brits!
• No BlackBerry. Hooray! You can't use it on the plane anyway.
• No Ipod / MP3 player. Ah, bit more worrying this one, as it means the airlines need to
provide some decent films and music. Some airlines are way better at this than others.
• No books. See previous bullet.
• No headphones? Assume these won't be allowed, and I must admit I am addicted to my
Bose noise-cancelling jobs, as they are the only things that enable me to enjoy a bit of
peace and actually understand what the frequently badly-spoken actors and actresses
are saying in the movies. I would be happy to pay a fee for a decent pair.
• No watches. Great. As the Beatles would say, turn off, relax and float downstream.
Who cares what time it is. The only thing that really matters is how long till you land
and the screens will show you that.
• No fizzy drinks. Hooray! They should all be banned anyway as they are ruining
children's health (and yes, the apostrophe is in the right place).
No doubt, there are hundreds of business-men and women out there, who are totally depressed
by the fact that they can't take tons of electronic junk on the plane with them and then "work"
their way across the skies. Firstly, they are probably playing Solitaire or Sudoku anyway, and
secondly get a life, you are not that important - if you were, you would have someone to do all
that for you.
So, all in all it would appear that I am going to have to carry less (good for my back), accept
the alcoholic drinks they offer me, watch some movies, listen to some music, go to sleep and
not be able to do any work - sounds like hell! And safer too - say no more.
Now, if the airlines could just recognise this as a service opportunity?
Add Comment
Air Travel - Posted by Ken Turbitt at 2006-08-12 04:30

Peter, apparently they are talking of banning booze too (it is explosive you know!), so air
travel will be so boring. No nice drink, no noise cancelling headphones, no personal music, no
laptop for your own DVD (or work!!), not even your favourite book (or teddy bear). Just
imagine 12 hours of boredom, lovely... Think of me tomorrow flying to Nice then next week
flying to Jo'burg.
New white paper

As I mentioned recently, I have written a new white paper all about optimising ITIL processes
- joining the pieces together, automating them, exploiting the CMDB etc. You can now find it
here or link from here and look at the other neat stuff that my colleagues in the Thought
Leadership Council are talking and writing about.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Why does Tiger win?

I know some of you probably find watching golf as exciting as watching paint dry, but
nobody's perfect! However, I hope you have all heard of Tiger Woods, who (I believe) is now
the most popular sports-person in the USA - quite right too. As an avid golfer I must admit that
I feel privileged to be able to watch someone at the height of their powers demonstrate what
can be achieved. For those of you who don't follow golf, he won the USPGA tournament at the
weekend - his 12th Major victory in ten years as a professional. There are 4 majors per year, so
that's a pretty amazing performance.
Golfers everywhere can go out and buy the same equipment as Tiger, go and play the same
golf courses, and end up with a score, which is significantly higher. Why is that some people
can squeeze more out of a bunch of equipment than others? I believe there are several lessons
we can learn from Tiger:
• A clearly defined goal - be the best golfer on the planet, e.g. by beating Jack Nicklaus's
record of 18 majors.
• Practice, tuning, change dedicated to this goal.
• Inclusion of new technology when it makes sense and helps this goal.
• Analysis of the processes required to reach this goal, with continuous improvement as
the aim - never being satisfied with what you have, even when it is the best in the
world, because you know it can be improved.
• Measurement of the key underlying metrics as well the end result - no point in knowing
it is going wrong if you can't tell why and how to fix it.
• Course management - it won't always go as planned, so the ability to analyse the
situation, and take the most effective solution becomes vital.
• An understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, and what has worked before.
There is no point in trying a shot you have never tried before in your life because you
think it might work. Fine when you practise, but not in "production".
• Trying out scenarios where it goes wrong - that's what he does in the practice rounds, so
he knows what is possible.
• Total dedication to his goal, with no deviations.
I've seen a few companies, who work like that, e.g. the Toyota Formula One factory I visited in
Cologne. Their IT General Manager is coming to talk at our Userworld event in San Francisco
next week - see you there?
Next week
Off to San Francisco for BMC Userworld tomorrow. I have had to buy myself a new bag to
take on the plane, as the British Government has helpfully decided that the bag I bought a
couple of years ago does not conform to their requirements. The fact that it has the correct
dimensions according to International regulations appears to be of no interest to them.
Ah well, I am always looking for an excuse to leave my laptop at home, so now I have one.
However, your intrepid reporter will, of course, be blogging "live" (don't fancy doing it dead)
from Userworld, because the helpful BMC people are setting up a bloggers' room there with
spare laptops. This means that my colleagues will no doubt be telling you good stuff about
BSM workflows, ITIL, ISO 20000 etc. I, on the other hand, am currently trying to get my head
round the issue of outsourcing (the norm going forwards for me). What do I store in my local
CDMB and service model and how does this communicate/federate with the outsourcer's
CMDB/Service Model? Fortunately, the clever people at BMC are ahead of me and this new
Service Modelling Language appears to be going exactly the right way.
Now, as you know, I get very bored with techy micro-level crud, and am really only interested
in the overall result - are you giving me (the) service (I want) or not, so to quote:
This common modelling language is an important step in simplifying IT
management in multi-vendor environments, providing a way for information to be
shared across diverse tools and applications. Constructing a complete picture of
the IT environment out of a series of reusable building blocks rather than
requiring a fully customized description of every service is crucial.
Spot on.
San Francisco
I tried to write a blog entry yesterday, but when I hit the save button, the web browser went
into the twilight zone and did a good impression of the parrot in Monty Python - "Look, matey,
I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now."
Anyway, let's try again. The people in charge here at BMC's Userworld want me to tell you all
about the event, how many sessions I have attended, the number of customers/partners here, so
here goes:
• Excellent
• Several
• Lots (over 1800)
Want I wanted to write about was actually this neat city. What do you think of when you hear
San Francisco? Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, earthquakes, hills, fog....? And, of course,
Alcatraz. Went and looked at it from across the bay yesterday, and it got me to thinking.
Imagine you were stuck in a cell there looking out of the window at SF? You know there is
great experience out there, you can almost touch it, and yet the interface (warders, bars, locks
etc.) keep you from reaching it. Reminded me of many IT systems and pieces of electronic
equipment I use. Enough said.
Off now to play the piano at a session I am giving with Malcolm Fry on Orchestrating ITIL,
where we hope to combine fun with education - not like Alcatraz?!
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Various cultural things

I have been gathering a few cultural differences over the last couple of days here in the jolly
good old US of A.
• Teletext - why don't you have Teletext on your TVs? I wanted to look up some sports
results and I haven't got my laptop with me so at home I would simply look it up on
Teletext. To quote Wikipedia:
While Teletext is, in most aspects, technologically inferior to the Internet, it

is still very popular due to its ease of use and integration into the TV.
Another benefit is that, unlike web servers, Teletext is a broadcast and thus
does not slow down as the number of users increase. This is relevant during
great news events which often block access to the web-pages of major news
sites.
Often, when a new technology appears, people rush to kill off the old one without
realising that loads of people still use it. OK, I know you want me to pay for the new
one, but I still want to use both.
• Waste - the American school of cuisine insists on giving me appetizers that are enough
to feed a family of 10 (I also don't like the nouvelle cuisine style, where I spend a
month searching for the food on the plate). What I really want is cuisine with a bit of
finesse - with all the reports on TV about obesity, perhaps that should be thinesse?
Which led me to thinking about servers - not in the restaurant, but in the data centre
(yes, I know I have a strange butterfly brain). I keep hearing that these things are only
running at some ridiculously low level of utilisation, which as an old mainframe man
makes me chuckle. For non-mainframe people, the mainframe typically runs at over
90% and is designed to keep doing that for ages, and we don't reboot it every 30
seconds to put a security patch on it. Anyway, what a hideous waste of electricity. So
here is a quiet heartfelt plug for getting these servers consolidated and using them
effectively and doing something for the planet at the same time.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have just been handed some music because a customer wants me to
play the piano at the end of her session. So I am off to practise "Two out of three ain't bad" by
Meatloaf. Bye bye.
Curmudgeon
I've been meaning to try out these trackback things, so it was a heaven sent opportunity when
one of my ex-colleagues Craig Mullins decided to talk about this blog on his. I have no idea if
I have done it right, but I have religiously copied his trackback URL into the space where it
appears to go, so I shall watch both ends and see what happens.
Anyway, that is not the reason for this entry. Craig sweetly refers to me as a curmudgeon, so I
thought I would look up a couple of definitions:
"An ill-tempered person full of resentment and stubborn notions"
"A crusty irascible cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas"
Now, most of my colleagues will probably tell you those are understatements (in fact some of
them gave me a great book called the Travelling Curmudgeon) , but I would like to correct a
couple of things:
• Ill-tempered - only when I get bad service from people who don't seem to care
• Resentment - not really, more frustration
• Stubborn - yes, the mainframe is still the cheapest, most reliable, most secure platform
in the world!!
• Crusty - yes, been there
• Irascible - oh yes, can be very
• Cantankerous - me?
• Old - bloody cheek, but accurate
So, not far off really. But, being serious, I don't rant against the world just for the sake of it. I
rant because annoying people by providing useless service / meaningless gadgets / inane
conversation etc. should not be acceptable, and if no-one complains they continue to get away
with it.
Now all I need is a slogan.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Add Comment
your slogan - Posted by Y. Mangum at 2006-09-05 11:57

How about "Piano man extraordinaire" ?
how kind - Posted by peter at 2006-09-05 12:06

The keyboard ranter?
Last week
I have been trying to write a blog about last week's events in San Francisco, but I am also
trying to get a visa for a trip to Russia.
First the good part. Last week was excellent. Having been involved from early on with BSM, it
was a joy to hear from so many customers who are exploiting it, and so many partners who are
hooking into it. We had over 1800 people there from countries all over the world and about 60
partners. Some people have been talking about it here, so no need for me to prattle on any
more.
So what's the problem with Russia, I hear you cry? As this is a non-political blog, and I am due
to go there the week after next, I shan't answer that question. Let me just compare two
contrasting visa services.
If you want to go to Australia, you log on to their website, pay them some money and hey
presto the visa is stored electronically, so that when you arrive at the airport and they swipe
your passport they find the visa. Simple, effective, excellent service - 9 out of 10 (would have
been 10 if it had been free!)
If you want to go to Russia, plan about 5 years in advance. First of all, organise a hotel, which
will want to know your inside leg measurement, date of birth, credit card number, political
leaning, grandmother's fifth cousin's middle name and other useful data. They will then
promise to facs you a form to apply for a visa. They will promise this about ten times, each
time coming back and asking you for more meaningless information. By this time, you have
probably funded all their staff on a two-week holiday in Thailand, but you keep going.
Eventually you get the forms, and either traipse off to the embassy yourself (never
recommended unless you like having toenails individually extracted), or pay someone else to
do it for you. The embassy (and the other person) now charge you an iniquitous amount of
money and still can't tell you when you will get your passport back, which is a concern as you
are going on holiday in two days' time. 0 out of 10.
And people wonder why I rant.
Add Comment
Renewing UK passport when living abroad... - Posted by Mike Reys at 2006-09-06 12:13
-Story of my better half-
The procedure takes 10 days here in the UK embassy in Belgium. Not only does it take 10
days, but you have to hand in your current passport which means no travelling (well, you can
risk travelling on 'carte de séjour' within the Schengen countries).
When asked if there wasn't a quicker procedure, there was... by going to the UK for one day!
Eurostar is fabulous, and if you book well enough in advance, even relatively cheap. Hand in
passport in the morning, go shopping (Knightsbridge, Oxford street,...), hairdressing
appointment, seemed almost to good to be true. And it was!
Having your passport changed in the UK requires a UK postal code (no prob, owning property
in Twickenham), and on top of that proof of residence (bills in your name, at the address with
previously mentioned postal code). And that's the problem when living abroad and renting out
your property.
Well how annoying is that... you'd think that people living abroad would even travel more
frequently, thus requiring quick passport replacement, but no...
I can tell you that the better half sounded like one of those grumpy old women on BBC2. Btw,
if ever in need of a Vietnam visa, be prepared to a combination of your Russia visa adventure
and this story... but very worthwhile once you get there !
that's quick - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-09-06 12:28
Gosh, impressive - Eurostar should do a promotion
Person to person
Was a track by the Average White Band from memory.
Just been listening to an excellent webinar with Gartner and a CIO. The discussion was around
how you get a CIO's attention. I won't give away all the answers but it reminded me of the best
slide I ever saw:
"If you are talking to a prospect about the features of your product, and he/she says WOW -
wrong person, no budget"
Or to put it another way, when talking to a CxO, you should be talking about what they want to
talk about, not what you want to talk about.
I'll extend that to when you provide service, you should provide the service I need and am
willing to pay for, not the service you think I want.
Add Comment
Surprised By Good Service - Posted by Scott Sloan at 2006-09-07 10:27

Peter - Did you see my Land's End posting? I thought about it when I read the last line of this
posting.
My experience with Lands End's Live Chat was shockingly easy and the representative helping
me took initiative and contacted their parts department and sent me what I needed for free.
That's what I want and need because I achieved what I wanted to achieve quickly without a
single hassle (aside from my father's dial-up internet connection). "Person-to-Person" Service
to make even the most curmudgeonly smile (like in your picture).
yes - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-09-07 13:40

Scott - yes, saw your blog - what a joy to get great service. Now, if only the rest of the world
would wake up?
Wow - Posted by Craig Mullins at 2006-09-08 15:35

While reading your blog I exclaimed "Wow!"
I wonder what says about me as a target audience for this blog?
wow - Posted by peter at 2006-10-02 03:24

It says you are an extremely clever, well-read person (with no money)!!!
The Armstrongs
Off on holiday for a week, going up to Scotland to check out the family history; we were
bloodthirsty cattle thieves, who used to control the lands between England and Scotland. Good
news the is that this blog will be quiet for a week. Bad news is that I will try and gather some
suitably stomach-churning tales to share with you on my return!
Home again - for two days!

Been to Russia - can I just say that immigration in the vast majority of countries (and I am
including the UK and the US in this) is the most brilliant display of how to avoid the intelligent
application of technology. It is difficult to think of how to make something more complex,
slower and more blatantly designed to thoroughly annoy the end-user. If you ever want an
example of a total disconnect between the needs of the end-user and the technology that could
be employed, or how to implement a set of processes that are designed to be as slow and
manual as possible, then look no further. Unfortunately they have a monopoly and argument is
not recommended with someone in uniform, especially when they are carrying a firearm. ITIL
here would stand for Immigration Treats Immigrants Lamentably.
Moving on, also been to Scotland and the Lake District tracing the family. I had never visited
the Lake District properly before, and it is beautiful (ignore what I said about immigration and
come and visit!) Great granddad came from up there and the hotel I booked transpired to be
200 yards from his grave. But as my family was a bunch of notorious thieves and several met
untimely, well documented deaths, it was relatively easy to find Johnie Armstrong's castle and
grave (treacherously taken and hanged by James V in 1530) and Alexander Armstrong's
memorial (murdered in Heritage Castle in ca. 1300). Also went to Bamburgh Castle in
Northumberland (top right of England), which is a beautiful castle in a magic location on the
seaside and belongs to Lord Armstrong - however, they wouldn't give me a discount when I
said my name was Armstrong so I was a bit miffed!!! But the sandwiches were excellent and a
sensible price. Amazing what a difference a bit of friendly service with a nice smile makes.
Some of the other places we visited required about 15 seconds max to make up your mind that
you had no desire to do any business with them or ever set foot in their cafe/shop/restaurant
again. Just like some websites.
And so on to next week, and I am travelling to Mexico on Sunday to meet up with the analysts.
Which sounds wonderful, but those of you who know me might spot that the Ryder Cup starts
tomorrow and ends on Sunday, so I hope it's on the TV in the British Airways lounge! I shan't
try and predict the result as that would probably scupper our chances totally, but I know there
will be loads of great golf. Yeehah, as the Texans might say. This is why I have cable and an
HD TV - give me what I want and I will happily pay for it. Now, there's a motto for you.
The Ryder Cup

Home again. Spent first part of the week in Mexico with the analysts. If you ever want to get
fit, fly through Mexico City. The airport is about two miles long (well, it certainly felt like we
walked that far), and just to be helpful there are no signs telling you where to go. Is it asking
too much to have a little arrow saying flight connections? From memory Mexico City is one of
the most populous in the world - no wonder, they can't find the way out.
For those of you who don't follow golf, there is a bi-yearly tournament between the US and
Europe. It is called the Ryder Cup. It was played last weekend. We thrashed them!
I shan't gloat (well, just a bit), because the occasion was also the return of Darren Clarke to
golf. His wife tragically died of cancer only a few weeks ago, and the whole thing reminded us
all that there are things in life that are way more important than golf.
So skipping the gloating bit, I sit here wondering why we now seem to be the stronger team.
When you look at the American golfers and the American tour you see a lot of very wealthy,
very independent people. When you look at the European team you see a bunch of people who
enjoy one another's company. In IT terms, the US team for me was a typical IT department
with a silo mentality, and everybody just looked at their own little world. The Europeans on
the other hand had knocked down the silos and realised they were there to deliver a business
service - winning their match for the team.
If you don't follow golf, stop reading now.
Hints to next US captain:
• Don't play Tiger in the foursomes - he hates relying on anyone else.
• Give Phil Mickelson a grin transplant - that vacant expression is getting on my nerves.
In fact, swap his expression with Monty?
• Make all your team join a municipal golf course and play foursomes with 28-
handicappers. Then they'll learn how to play real recovery golf, and tricky lies.
• Make your players play on courses that aren't perfectly manicured, and preferably with
the rain sheeting it down and the wind blowing half a gale.
My new router
The wireless network in my house has been a bit iffy recently. Not sure if it is the router or the
cable box, so I splashed out on a new router (they are not exactly expensive). Also, gives me
the opportunity to upgrade to G from B or whatever it is.
Of course, when you buy one of these things the instructions are never designed to cater for
what you are trying to do. Install from scratch, fine. Upgrade from a previous one - no way. Do
I deinstall the previous one? Or do I install the next one under a new name and keep the old
one as backup? Does the encryption carry over or do I have to redo all the PCs on the network
with a new key?
Don't all start writing in - these are rhetorical questions and I have it working, but it was fun.
Half way through the install it doesn't work of course (can't find the internet) and you wonder
why. Then you suddenly remember that your cable supplier treats this as a new device and you
have to go into their home page to add it. Fortunately you have kept the ID and password to do
this (lucky!).
But that's not the real fun. The real fun is that as part of the install you have to plug one of your
PCs directly into the router with the supplied Ethernet cable. The problem is that your PC is
miles from the router (that's why you have / wanted wireless in the first place) and the cable
they supply is about 2 feet long. Enough said.
Now my wife has just come in and told me the TV is still funny in that room, so looks like it
was the cable box after all. The cable company always takes hours to answer the phone and
they are never there at the weekend (which is invariably when I need them). Time for a drink -
not been a good day.
Continued
In the last entry I was talking about my iffy cable box. I tried ringing them on Saturday and got
one of those infuriating automatic answering things that takes far too long to tell you that you
are in a queue. "The answers to most questions can be found on our website". No, they bloody
can't. Anyway, it eventually tells me that the queue is ca. 30 minutes long. Congratulations on
a bit of intelligence there, but excuse me, you are charging me 5p a minute to call you to tell
you that your service is broken!?!?!?!? Think I'll try again at another time.
Weekend was good for Tiger (there's a surprise) but spoilt for me by Schumacher winning the
Grand Prix (don't like him as he resorts to cheating unnecessarily and I don't like that).
Amazing how the authorities appear to have conveniently scuppered Renault along the way
and made the championship come down to the wire. I personally would have disqualified
Schumacher after Monte Carlo, but there you go. For my English readers Schuhmacher is
German for cobblers - enough said.
Add Comment
Getting through to the Cable company - Posted by Phil Griston at 2006-10-04 21:11
Hi Peter - I'd try the trick I learned when I moved to CA and experienced US customer service.
Call the sales line not the service one (you'll always get through) and ask them to transfer you,
credit back your payments for the downtime or cancel your contract - it works well with
DirectTV over here!
Nice blog by the way
Threes
They say bad stuff always come in threes.
• The cable box finally decided to call it a day:
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's
expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you
hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes
are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil,
run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-
PARROT!!
So I got hold of the cable company (thanks for the tip in last entry Phil), and they
came and replaced it. Fortunately I got someone who spoke the same native language
as I do (well he was from Newcastle, but that's close). This meant that he understood
what I was talking about, whereas last time I got a person from some part of our
previous Empire, who made me repeat every recovery action I had already done (I
have done that already. It does not matter, you have to do it again as it says so on my
script and I couldn't possibly deviate as that requires intelligence and empathy for the
customer). And remember I am paying for the call. For those of you who think putting
a help desk somewhere in the back of beyond is great because it saves money, you are
right, but I hate you and I am actively working on changing all my services to avoid
your penny-pinching abysmal service. It is interesting that many companies in the UK
are now advertising that they don't have foreign help desks - so I can't be the only
grumpy customer?
• Phones don't work very well when you pour water in the base unit - don't ask. So we
went in to Epsom today to buy a new one. We found seven shops selling mobile
phones, but not one selling normal ones?!?! There is a market opportunity there
somewhere?
• My film and slide scanner decided that scanning was something it didn't fancy doing
any more. Worked fine in the morning, decided not to take in the film holders any more
in the afternoon. The shop where I bought it say they couldn't repair it (although I don't
think they really tried). The manufacturer says the spare parts are too expensive / they
can't get hold of them, so I should buy a new one. Excuse me, if you can build new
ones, then the parts are still there!!!!!! So, yes I shall buy a new one - BUT NOT ONE
OF YOURS AND NOT FROM YOU. Get lost. If anyone out there can mend a
Scanwit 2740S scanner or wants to buy one cheap (I think it is just one motor that has
gone), then let me know.
But there is good news - Schumacher's engine blew up and Alonso won in Japan. Sorry,
Michael, obviously would never have happened if I hadn't my three breakdowns first! Ho, ho.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Fat Nation
It's travel time at present (i.e. it is the seminar season) so blogging has been a bit tricky,
because I try to avoid carrying a laptop round the world with me. I know some people are
permanently glued to theirs, but I am not in that camp; I would rather read a book or a
magazine or listen to some music. Yes, I know you can listen to music from your PC, but it's
much easier to carry a little MP3 player.
Anyway, whilst listening to the news the other day, I heard that the UK is now the fattest
country in Europe. Ouch. I sat there and tried to work out why. I think it is a combination of
factors, which surprise, surprise also apply to IT:
• Ignorance. We are all ignorant. That does mean we are stupid, it just means the correct
facts have not been supplied to us at the correct time, or we can't find them. Or we get
so overwhelmed with data, that we don't know where to start.
• Laziness. Some of us (many of us?) are lazy. This is often caused by not being able to
find what we were looking for and hence going for the easy option. This is particularly
true in web commerce - give me something that works and I know I can trust and I will
pay a bit more for it, because I am too lazy to search round for alternatives. Note the
word trust in there!
• Impatience. I want it NOW. Fast food exists for a reason. The Internet has led us to
being a very impatient band of end-users.
• Greed. We all demand that our system runs extremely fast, 24x7 even though
(frequently) we don't actually need it.
• Lack of fresh ingredients. Every now and then someone takes some fresh ingredients,
mixes them all together and comes up with something new - ebay, Amazon, Google,
Youtube etc. I personally cannot understand why Youtube is worth $1.65Bn, but that's
not my problem.
So what's the way to stop being fat? Eat less and do more exercise. And that is the common
mantra of IT - how do we do more with less? By defining what really matters from a business,
not a technical point of view; by understanding why we exist - to provide the appropriate level
of service at the appropriate price to the correct people at the correct time.
Stupid, stupid software

I just wrote an incredibly amusing and inciteful blog about the cultural differences between the
US and the UK, with interesting diversions into the origins of rugby, the internationalisation of
web applications, Guinness and the meaning of life. I then pressed the Save button.
Unfortunately I had chosen a short name for the blog entry index that I had used before, and
this sweet piece of software decided to lose everything I had typed in.
AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
Time for lunch.
Travels
OK, after my recent blogging experiences I have developed a new technique - I enter the short
name and title and hit Save. If that works, then I come back and Edit the entry and add these
ramblings.
I was in Poland last week for the customer event we do each year with our partner out there
Compfort Meridian . I don't how they get so many people to come, but the turn-out is always
amazing. Houston this week, South Africa for a customer event next week, Bulgaria after
that .....
So I have a lot of thinking time in between frenetic bursts of activity. I am occupying a lot of
that thinking time with learning Adobe Photoshop CS2, because I am getting back into
photography. When I was younger I was very interested in photography - my brother and I
built a darkroom up in the attic, and developed and printed our own films. I then went through
the kids growing up and to be honest I spent a lot of time taking what I would call snapshots
rather than pictures. Now that the kids have left home and decent digital cameras have become
the norm, I am getting back into taking photographs.
As I read magazines and an extremely large book on CS2, I am discovering the plethora of
editing options available, and on one hand it intrigues me, but on the other it worries me as it
could promote an attitude of just click away and you can fix it afterwards.
In fact, for me, the skill of photography is trying to capture the photo as accurately as possible
in the camera. Composition is vital, getting the exposure correct is something I learnt about
ages ago etc. Now I admit there are some situations where the camera simply cannot cope and
if you expose correctly for the foreground, then the sky is washed out; if you expose correctly
for the sky, the foreground is in deep shadow. So, here I take two RAW exposures and
combine them in Photoshop. Yes I use RAW rather than JPEG because quality is important to
me.
So what's all that got to do with the price of fish? I worry that too many people nowadays are
taught what I call casual IT. Malcolm Fry tells a story about one of his granddaughters getting
him to fix the printer and telling him that he needed to reboot the PC. Where did you learn
that? At school. She is 6 years old! Kids then move on through school and college/University
and the whole ethos seems to be CTL-ALT-DEL. Don't worry if it doesn't work first time, you
can fix it later. For the old readers out there, do you remember spending hours getting your
punched cards right, and then waiting till the morning to see the results of your one overnight
run?
Now I am not advocating a return to punched cards and one test per day, but it did make us all
take a lot more care over what we were doing and trying to get things right the first time. And
that is what I would like to see today, people taking a lot more care and resisting casual IT.
Casual IT to me equals fat IT, and I don't believe modern agile business can afford fat IT.
(American) football
It has been a pretty good time recently - I realise that no-one has particularly annoyed me for
quite a while (that is not a free invitation). There were only a couple of minor quibbles this
week:
• The bathroom had two hair-driers. Why? One didn't work.
• The car has those tedious lights that stay on after you lock it. I know that can be handy,
but somehow they stay on just long enough to convince you that they are never going to
turn off.
I was sitting in the Outback Steakhouse on Monday night (they serve Guinness), and American
football was on the TV. Now, I know nothing about American football as I was raised on
rugby, where you are only allowed to pass the ball backwards, and you are only allowed to
tackle someone who has the ball. (Un)fortunately for me, my eyesight went when I was about
11, and being tackled by someone you can't see is not a pleasant occupation, so I moved to
squash and tennis. As far as I can make out in American football, some flash bloke at the back
chucks the ball to some fast flash guy at the front, who is trying not to get annihilated by two
8-ft tall, 6-ft wide opponents. I assume the flash guys are paid ridiculous amounts of money.
Are they worth it? Let me know.
In the UK, we have a large number of overpaid primadonnas, who occasionally kick a ball
around and frequently lose when it matters. We call that the national football (soccer) team,
and they are definitely not worth the money.
Actually the thing that impressed me most about the American football on the TV was the size
of the crowd. Huge (I assume there are copious quantities of food and drink available within 30
seconds of where you are sitting?). Crowds are dwindling in the UK because the prices have
gone way up, due to the ridiculous amounts paid to the players - think I've done that one to
death (and I don't even follow football and never go to a match or watch one on TV!).
It is easy to spend money. The skill is spending it the right way so that the customer is happy
and keeps coming back - and spends his/her money with you.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Add Comment
Ticket Prices/Customer Service - Posted by Mark Armstrong at 2006-10-23 11:12

Let us not forget the crazy prices that you pay to attend a Grand Prix in the UK! All because
the promoters of F1 races are charged huge fees by Bernie to host the races in the first place.
They have to get their money back somehow and it always hurts the fans in the pocket. Mr E,
you have enough money. Time to look after the fans and to have F1 races at sensible times -
not 1pm which totally stuffs up your Sunday.
Alonso won. Michael was runner up - ha! Feel better now.
That's my boy! - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-10-23 11:54

Totally agree - and for the rest of you, this is my son proving he is a very fine chip off the old
block!!!!!
Halloween
Halloween is nearly with us, so the folks at BMC thought it was apt that I wrote a piece about
some of the horrors I have heard about in IT shops. As Michael Jackson would say:
It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark
Under the moonlight you see a sight, that almost stops your heart
You try to scream, but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze, as horror looks you right between the eyes,
You're paralyzed
The intriguing thing is that when you ask IT people if they have had any horror stories, they
say,
"NO, nothing ever goes wrong here",
and then I tell them a story about another customer and they immediately say,
"That's nothing, we can beat that easily!"
These are based on real situations; I'm not clever enough to make this stuff up. I have, of
course, left out all references to customer or location or industry, because I believe in
protecting my sources! Enjoy, and let me know if you can do better!
Tranquility
For those of you who read the Daily Telegraph, please turn to page 5 of yesterday's edition. For
those who don't, try here. The picture they use in the paper is much better.
Why should you look? Well, apart from the fact that it is a very pretty castle in a lovely
location, guess who owns it? The Armstrong family. Unfortunately not my part of the
Armstrong family though! In fact, the sharper readers will remember me mentioning it in this
entry. In fact that trip up to the Borders to trace my family roots prompted me to reread "One
Thousand Years of Armstrong History" (a fascinating book sadly let down by very poor
punctuation). However, I had forgotten the part that tells me I am related to the royal families
of both England and Scotland, so I think I'll go and ring up Harry and ask if he fancies a drink!
Now extending the Scottish history bit, one of my ancestors was sent up to Scotland by
Edward the Confessor to get rid of Macbeth and put the rightful king Malcolm on the throne.
Malcolm was the one my ancestor saved later on the battlefield by picking him up when he
was wounded and riding him to safety - hence the family name Armstrong we were given by
the king. Gosh, isn't this exciting - history was never like this at school!
All of which leads me to today's Telegraph and an extract from a new book on language by
John Humphrys. One classic example (with a clever link back to Macbeth up above) he quotes:
Take a few original lines from Macbeth:
Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?
Compare this with the modern guide version:
Oooh! Would you look at that.
As he says at the end we cannot afford to be careless with our language, because if we are
careless with our language then we are careless with our world and sooner or later we will be
lost for words to describe what we have allowed to happen to it. That is exactly how I feel
about service, and why I bore you all with this blog.
Business and IT alignment

Down in South Africa last week; friendly lot down there, whose major gripe is that broadband
is not very available, and when it is, it costs a fortune. I have enormous sympathy with them as
I personally believe the ready availability of network bandwidth is a prerequisite to any
meaningful IT-based service.
Met the man in charge of A1 Grand Prix at our customer Forum; fascinating. If you know
nothing about these chaps, then check them out. They are running a World Cup (for
Americans, that means that other nations join in!!) of Motorsport. 23 nations from memory
(including America) competing in identical Formula One race cars from September to April,
which is a quiet time in other sports. They have taken off from nothing to major success in a
couple of years - watch this space.
I shared a couple of images at the Forum, to show customers where my head is at (is that still a
term I can use or am I showing my age?). Firstly I am of the opinion that just because
something is technically possible, that is not a sufficient reason for doing it (but check out the
comments here, some of which are classic):
Secondly, sometimes things can be done quite well without having to invest a huge amount of
time, money and IT resource:
Which all brings me to the whole question of business and IT alignment, which is the subject
of a book that some folks I know are writing. I have just posted a comment there, in which I
argue that:
• You can align business and IT and still have IT chaos - I can think of many companies
who are totally reliant on the web, but that does mean that they run IT with a "Business
Perspective"
• You can implement ITIL and still not have business and IT aligned - many, many in
this category through no fault of their own.
In fact, I think ITIL has 3 waves. Wave 1 is when people say they are doing ITIL. What they
actually mean is Incident, Problem and Service Desk. They will probably have manual,
possibly effective, but almost guaranteed cost-inefficient change. Not because they are stupid,
but because the tools to create a CMDB and keep it up-to-date were not available until recently
and a manual CMDB is a waste of time and money. So wave 2 is getting your CMDB built
(Malcolm Fry is just about to publish a book on this - will shout when available), but that to
me is where the real fun starts. Wave 3 is the exploitation / consumption of that CMDB and its
federated data.
A lot of people are not seeing beyond Wave 2 at present (perhaps because they don't have any
tools or processes to consume the wondrous beast they have just built). To me wave 2 is just a
stepping stone. Wave 3 is where you align business and IT, and you get to what I call
"Business Aware IT" - BAIT for short. Now you can throw out the bait and reel the users in.
How would you like incidents prioritised by business requirements, how would you like
service level agreements to be business docs and not meaningless technical metrics, how
would you like to build capacity plans from business needs rather than keeping techies happy
with new technical toys (like dynamic provisioning) etc.?
How would you like your service?
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Global Warming
Thought I would use a trendy, much-talked-about title for this entry to attract your attention. A
report came out here the other day, which says we are all doomed (for the Brits, think Dad's
Army, Private Frazer). Our government, bless them, have seized (spelt right - it breaks the i
before e rule) on this and are set to save the planet. How? By increasing taxes.
"Your IT system sucks, but I know how to save it"
"How?"
"By giving you less money to run it"
( quick BMC plug - BSM reduces cost of running IT by 25% according to Forrester).
Anyway, what it really means is that the weather was magic, and we managed to get lots done
in the garden, played golf (well for a change), cleared out lots of junk (who needs a PCMCIA
storage card?) from the house etc. We also proved that my wife and I are either on the cutting
edge of technology or a we are a pair of total nerds.
We wanted to go for a walk up on Epsom Downs, so I suggested that we try out this
geocaching lark. To those who have no idea what I am talking about, geocaching means that
someone has hidden a little cache somewhere, published the location (latitude and longitude)
on the Internet and you now go and try and find it. I assume it was invented by manufacturers
of GPS devices, who were trying to drive up sales. Clever.
Who cares, it was fun, we found it, and it made me think of about applying technology in new,
different and unexpected ways to deliver a service (yes, I am a nerd). There are 329804 caches
out there, so the good news is that I am not alone.
We also managed to prove that you don't always need the latest technology to achieve a result.
We don't own a GPS device (except in the car, and it's not removable), so we used Google
Earth instead to zoom in on the location and then print a picture of the area. Now, was it as
easy as a GPS device - no. Would it work as well in the middle of the woods (ours was on a
junction of field and wood so easy to locate) - no. So do you need the latest technology? All
depends on how often you are going to use it and how much it is worth to you / the customer -
sound familiar?
New podcast
Just a quick entry to say that my latest podcast (the one about IT horror stories) is now
available, so download quickly so that you have something to fill in those dull moments at the
weekend!!
Feedback
There are times when conversation is tricky - for instance why do dentists always start asking
you questions as they stick some sharp instrument in your mouth and say open wide?
However, ignoring that, I generally like some sort of feedback when I am awaiting service. For
instance, I was in a shop earlier today buying some bits for my camera (remote control, spare
battery). I told the guy the model number of the camera and he then spent several minutes
hopping from one screen to another muttering under his breath, typing furiously and waiting a
lot. I endeavoured to engage in conversation along the lines of "Are you looking up the battery
model number or are you writing a letter to your insurance company?", but alas it was to no
avail. Eventually he looked at me and said BP511, which is actually the number I had
suggested 5-10 minutes previously.
Anyway, the point is we can all handle slightly delayed response, if someone tells us what is
going on. You're waiting to board a plane, it's late, no-one says anything; how do you feel?
You're waiting to board a plane, you get regular announcements telling you how long the delay
will be and why; now, how do you feel?
Same with IT systems. Tell me why the thing isn't working, how long it is likely to be offline,
whether there is an alternative, and I can probably live with it. Tell me nothing, don't respond
and I will go elsewhere. In other words, I want proactive service, not reactive. Reactive
assumes I can be bothered to call you - as my wife read in a book the other day "assume makes
an ass out of u and me".
The most expensive way to get incidents into your help desk is to have the user call you.
Analysts tell me it costs about $20-30 per call and it takes 6 calls to get an incident raised. The
sensible way to handle incidents is to try and discover them before the user, proactively notify
the user as to what is going on, fix them and avoid them happening again in the future.
All of which, of course, really should have proper SLAs in place (which one do I work on
first), an understanding of how all the bits fit together (which business service is actually being
impacted, which users, how much is it costing me etc.), a knowledge base of previous
problems (searchable by the user and the IT staff), automated recovery where appropriate, root
cause analysis, tools to fix the problem etc.
Practical ITIL.
Try saying that 3 times quickly.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Overheard
One of the sad facts of travelling round the world is that you sit in lounges and cannot help
overhearing other peoples' conversations. I, of course, am also inclined to join in!
So, here I am in the lounge at Houston, listening to the chap next to me trying to reset his
password. I offered to sell him some software to fix his problem, but he actually works for a
software company that sells password software. Only problem is that they haven't implemented
the software (yet?).
Which leads me to the comment I have heard a lot recently that IT are the cobblers' children.
We have spent years sorting out the ERP systems for the business (hence SAP etc.), we have
sorted out the HR systems (e.g. Peoplesoft), but we are way behind in sorting out our own
shop. Hence the groundswell of ITIL, CobIT, ISO2000 and BSM - time to sort out our own
processes, but please, please from a business perspective, not from a technology perspective.
Feeling slightly smug

Five years ago I wrote a (warning! adult language) book about the intelligent use of
technology; here is a sample quote:
"The rest of the book will take you through a day in my/your life and look how the
intelligent use of technology, as opposed to the technical self-satisfaction
approach, could make our lives easier and give us time to enjoy our leisure.
For the moment, imagine that there is a “ring” surrounding you, that contains
your personal details (name, address, credit card etc. – chosen and controlled by
you) that you can choose to pass on to someone easily and quickly. I’ll describe
how I think this could work later in the book, but for the moment assume that this
Personal Identification (PI) system exists and we’ll see how it would change our
lives."
Those of you who have bought the book (thanks!) or know me, will know that I have been
suggesting getting rid of money and credit cards for years and using phones for paying /
checking into hotels etc. So why am I feeling slightly smug? My son has just sent me this link
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6168222.stm. OK, I predicted it would be Bluetooth
based, but nobody is perfect!
Think I shall contact the GSM association and have a chat!!
Financial Times 22 Nov

If you get a chance, please buy a copy of the FT today, and you will find an article written by
Alan Cane about the value of the IT department, called "Are there benefits to staying in-
house?" This addresses the key areas of what should be offshored / outsourced / the role of IT
etc.
As you have probably guessed, I talked to Alan the other week, and nice man that he is, he has
quoted many of my thoughts on how IT can move from being perceived as a cost centre to a
value centre, along with thoughts from analysts, CIOs etc.
Surrealist boredom
If you look when this blog was posted, you will see, dear readers, that I am a totally dedicated
professional, who even blogs on a Sunday. Or, as you may have guessed, I am bored out of my
tiny little skull.
This has been a somewhat surreal week for me, as I am not into gambling in any way. I flew
into Las Vegas on Wednesday for the Gartner Data Centre Conference - an excellent event
with a very large attendance - and then flew on to Reno, where I am now, for the BMC Annual
Performance Conference and CMG. More on these later, let's talk about the surrealism first.
I went for a wander round the Venetian when I was in Las Vegas. For anyone who hasn't been
there, imagine a canal with gondolas under a false sky in the middle of a hotel. Perhaps it's me,
but I just burst out laughing. But, hey, they are catering for a certain type of end-user and
creating a fantasy, so who am I to knock it?
The one part that I don't like is the fact that everyone smokes as if it is going out of fashion
(which it is). You arrive to check in and have to battle your way through clouds of smoke
across the casino floor. Personally, not a good service experience and enough to make me turn
around and leave.
When you go to eat, the buffet serves every possible meal at all times of the day. On one hand,
this is very helpful if you have jet lag as you can eat what your body craves for, but it is
slightly disturbing when you are tucking into your bacon and eggs and some overweight little
oik walks past with a socking great ice-cream sundae smothered in some sweet calorific goo -
and they wonder why they are fat.
My biggest problem was finding something to do at the weekend as the whole gambling thing
leaves me cold. Yesterday I went up to Lake Tahoe to take photographs. Absolutely stunning.
Crystal clear lake in front of you, ski-slopes behind - magic.
Today - pass, working on it. Think there is a golf driving range downstairs, so that should help.
So, back to the work part. I presented on Business Aware IT at Gartner, where I tried to
explain what was needed to make IT truly effective and turn it from a cost centre to a value
generator. I know we have all been talking about this for years and as one of the analysts put it
to me, 3 years ago the answer was "abc", and then next year it was "def" and the year after
"ghi" and so on and so on. So are we actually close now to achieving this dream? Well, I must
admit, I think we are. As I have stated in previous blogs I think there are 3 waves - the first was
getting the basic processes in place (incident, problem, help desk etc.), the second is getting a
picture of how it all fits together (CMDB service models) and the third wave is exploiting that
information to run everything in IT from a purely business point of view. These pieces are now
all available for the first time. Judging by the very large number of people coming up at the
end to ask for a copy of the slides, I appear to have hit the "hot button".
Now, this requires a two-way conversation between IT and the business. The business has to
be able to express its priorities, its goals, its capacity plans, its required service levels. IT has to
be able to explain in easy language what is possible and what is not, and what the associated
costs and risks are. One of the discussions I was having with one of the analysts is that she
believes BSM (business service management) is just about the Service Impact side of things -
IT's ability to respond to events in the order that is correct for the business. As one of the early
godfathers of BSM, I can only disagree with that view. That is just one part of BSM. When we
designed BSM it was all about this two-way conversation and the exploitation of the business
knowledge in all that IT does from application design, through end-user experience to capacity
planning etc.
So where the biggest challenge at present? The technology is simple (we've cracked that and
bolted it all together for you). The people and process is the part we all need to work on now.
Which is why this blog has mentality in its title.
P.S. Just played Pebble Beach on the golf simulator downstairs - brilliant!
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Travel a lot?
Feeling a bit cheesed off, as I have just read that they are trying to shut down my favourite
mp3 site (some interesting comments on people using a service because it is priced correctly -
shut it down and they go underground). So I am listening to some sublime Jimi Hendrix to
cheer me up.
Do you travel a lot? Well, you have probably come across the very useful www.seatguru.com,
but here is another website that might amuse you www.sleepinginairports.net. And, if you do
travel a lot, then you hope you don't lose your luggage. Reminds me of the story when Lee
Trevino checked in 3 bags at Heathrow, and said "I would like that one in New York, that one
in Paris and the clubs in Tokyo please". "Sorry, Sir, we can't do that, it's impossible." "No, it
isn't," he replied, "you did it last week!" Boom, boom !
You also hope this doesn't happen on the plane.
And now the serious bit - here is someone saying nice stuff about us, thank you.
And the wind cries Mary.
Verging on the ridiculous

I have removed the names to avoid lawsuits.
As you may or may not know, ABC owns large chunks of DEF. DEF is my cable provider at
home and they recently wrote to me offering a half-price ABC contract and a free Nokia
phone. So I rang up, eventually got through and said go for it. Unfortunately, due to their
inability to handle the number of people trying to sign up (ever heard of capacity
management?), the whole thing went belly up at that point.
I got one email saying thanks, and stayed in all the next day waiting for the promised phone to
arrive. Guess what? No phone, no confirmation email, no nothing. So I then ring up the help
number I was given when I signed up. Can't find me, their systems aren't working, why don't
you try again online.
Go online, the system doesn't work. (Capacity management again?)
Try sales again - totally useless. Can't handle a half in, half out customer.
Find an email id on the website. Write to them. Get an email back saying undeliverable. Try
again. Undeliverable. Scream. Next day get an email saying tell us your name (try reading the
signature at the bottom, DUUUUH), your order number (I haven't bloody got one, you moron,
read the email), inside leg measurement, grandmother's fifth cousin's middle name etc. and we
will work on it for you some time this century.
Ring current mobile provider, who tell me that as I am such a long-standing loyal customer,
how would I like to stay with them and have a monthly rate £10 less than I am paying today.
Thank you very much - why didn't you offer this to me without my having to threaten to
cancel? See below.
Write rude email to ABC telling them to get lost.
Just been sent a link to this. Look at Vol 7, number 4. A quote:
"Stop treating your best customers the worst"
Spot on - I would never have even contemplated the ABC/DEF offer if my current
vendor had been looking after me. They were lucky, the competition was incompetent,
but you can't rely on that.
Christmas Quiz
Time for a little quiz I feel. Warning - the answers are not the easy ones you expect. Fans of QI
on BBC2 should get some or all. If you know all the answers without reference books or
Google (and Google isn't always right), you need to get out more. Answers later in the year.
• Who invented the telephone?
• Where is the driest place on earth?
• What man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon?
• Where does Chicken Tikka Masala come from?
• Who invented champagne?
• How many states are there in the USA?
• How many legs does a centipede have?
• Which way does the water go down the plughole?
• Where was baseball invented?
• What was James Bond's favourite drink?
Who said this blog didn't teach you anything?!?!?!?
Monday, December 11, 2006
www.bmc.com
They warned me that I was due to appear on www.bmc.com, but I hadn't realised I was due to
take over the whole thing - tomorrow the WORLD!
Seriously, please check out the new look and let us know what you think.
Oh yes, don't forget my Christmas Quiz - it doesn't matter if you get some wrong.
Add Comment
Scary - Posted by Mike Reys at 2006-12-15 14:05

Your picture on the main page was kind of scary in the beginning, but I resisted the close
button, and I must say that the BMC corporate website looks better than ever!
My Father's Picture - Posted by Mark Armstrong at 2006-12-19 11:13

Very scary indeed I would say!
Actually I had better be polite and wait until after Christmas to be rude!
Peter Armstrong picture - Posted by Dmitry Baryshnikov at 2006-12-20 06:19

Come on, very nice picture! (for the Englishman indeed:)
Immobile design
OK, need to get myself in the right mood for this rant, so here we go.
Just read in the paper that some school has banned saying Happy Christmas because it might
offend some religions. What rubbish. The people you upset are people like me, who get upset
when we can't say Happy Christmas.
"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for
an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress,
non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday,
practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion
of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice
not to practise religious or secular traditions at all."
To the Health and Safety people, who ruin all our lives by taking away all the fun, I am sure
you will enjoy your totally safe but also totally boring Christmas. Actually we all secretly hope
you fall off the ladder when decorating the tree, and the candles burn your house down, but this
is the season of goodwill, so we'll skip that bit.
OK, getting there - there were several more, but I couldn't work out how to keep them clean.
Now, the continuing saga of getting my wife's mobile phone upgraded. The current mobile
provider told me I could have £10 off a month, or a new phone. The new phone was worth
about £30, so I went for the £10 off, and went to a local shop to get a new phone. Put in the
SIM card from the old phone - makes calls, receives calls, receives messages - can't send
messages. Ring mobile provider and am told that it is a fault with the handset. We try another
handset in the shop - guess what? You got it, same problem. Ring mobile provider again. Oh,
you must need a new SIM card as yours is an old one. Ever heard of Route Cause Analysis?
Anyway, they say they will send us a new SIM card, which will take 2 or 3 days. What they
fail to tell us is that they are going to cut off the old one when they send out the new one - a
fact we discover at the weekend when the old card stops working. Another call to the
"(partially)Help(ful) Desk", who confirm that this is normal. Why the hell can't they get me to
ring when the new one arrives to activate it? All the calls I am currently making are, of course,
from another phone and are chargeable - if the old card still worked it would be a free call.
Every time I call, I get a message telling me to dial 150 from my mobile phone - I can't you
moron, because it doesn't bloody work, because of your crap process.
In the meantime, my daughter (bless!) comes round, looks at the new phone and says "Well,
like yuck, it's got no MP3 player, it doesn't take pictures, no video, the ring-tones are boring
and and and". She found it strange that we purposely chose a phone without these features,
because frankly they may be of interest to anyone under the age of 30, but to boring old cranks
like us (who have quality MP3 players and high quality cameras and taste in music), they are a
total waste of space and time. Manufactures - can we please have a Grumpy Old Men/Women
option on new devices, which skips the crap and gives us what we actually want?
Now the SIM card has arrived and we discover that the new phone (same make as previous
one; in fact, basically just an upgraded model) does not have the one feature that made the old
phone really useful. When I am travelling my wife sends me a text message whilst I am in the
air. As soon as I land, I turn on my phone and she gets a beep and a report to say the message
has been delivered. Hey Presto, she knows I am safe and sound. The new phone makes no beep
and the delivery report disappears after about two nanoseconds on the screen. Absolutely
bloody useless.
Anyone want a new phone for Christmas?
Add Comment
Marry Christmas! - Posted by Dmitry Baryshnikov at 2006-12-22 04:35

Thank you for your post, Peter. I completely agree with you about your feelings. If we have the
holiday that is called Christmas for 2000 years, than why can't I congratulate my friends and
relatives with this holiday by its natural name? Ah, all this political correctness...
And though I'm slightly less than 30, I do think that all these universal devices are total crap.
One function - one box. The heavier the box, the higher the quality of the function (service?).
Especially when we're talking about the stereo amplifiers and a/v receivers. :)
And you know what, Peter? Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family
and friends!
Christmas and immobile mobile - Posted by Alysia Korelc at 2006-12-22 10:58

During the drafting of our American Declaration of Independence, Ben Franklin changed the
phrase, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable," to "We hold these truths to be self-
evident," in pursuit of generic appeal and to avoid religious overtones. This country was
colonized by people seeking freedom of religious expression and we have, for over 200 years,
embraced that notion, even promoted Christmas as a season of joy and celebration with
community, even turning it into a season of rampant commercialism and conspicuous
spending.
However, we have become a litigious society of self-serving special interests, still exercising
our very basic freedom of expression withheld in our own Constitution, and seem to have
turned tables on ourselves. That the rest of the world appears to have followed suit is very sad,
indeed. Good grief, 'getting right down to it, Christmas is a birthday; it just so happens a huge
percentage of our free world population celebrates it. Since medieval times, when Christmas,
ergo Christianity, was associated with monarchy, we've battled on fields and printing presses
over the holiday. But, getting back to my opening statement - when the Pilgrims landed on this
continent, they were the minority rule that drove the foundation of this country. It's beginning
to look a lot like another minority rule is in the works to try to change a 'sacred and undeniable'
holiday celebrated by the majority of the free world - in order to avoid religious overtones.
Hmm...I wonder what Ben Franklin would have to say about that. But, this I do know: it's
beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and here's wishing you and your family a very happy
one, indeed!
Alysia :)
P.S. Sorry about your wife's immobile mobile phone. Perhaps she'll find a nice surprise under
the tree - that even your daughter will declare as 'cool?'
Political correctness - Posted by Jan Flodin at 2006-12-28 10:48

Funny I should read your blog just the day after I read a story in a local newspaper about a re-
run of the old Pippi Longstocking series on Norwegian TV. In the new translation her father
has been changed from being a "negro king from the South Sea" to being "a South Sea king".
So not only Christmas but also our childhoods fairy tales has to watch out for political
correctness.
Being a Dane I barely dare play football any more. Imagine playing against a person with a
different ethnic background and hitting just a couple of centimetres past the ball - next day's
headline story on Al Jazeera will be "Dane kicks Muslims!"
Part 3
Did you really test this?

Apologies for lack of service
Regular (avid?) readers will have noticed the complete lack of entries in recent times. Sorry
about that; was away with no laptop and discovered that trying to write a blog entry using a
BlackBerry is totally useless.
Anyway, answers to Christmas quiz will come as soon as I get the book back from my
neighbour!
The funniest thing that happened over the holidays (well, funny now, but not at the time) is that
my wife's old phone got stolen, so she is now having to learn to use the new one (see previous
blog entry for full story of our immobile problems)! To all UK readers, when you send an SMS
text do you:
• Get a report back in your inbox when the person the other end receives it?
• Get an audible (I mean loud, not a silent little apology of a beep) alert when this report
arrives?
• If so, what phone and what network are you on?
I am on O2 with a Nokia 6230 and get absolutely nothing (OK, I get a message sent, but
nothing to confirm when the person receives it and opens it, which is what I am looking for).
My wife's ancient Nokia (on T-mobile) had this feature, but the new one makes a futile beep
and no report. Yes, we have turned delivery reports on, but that doesn't seem to help. I am
trying to work out if it is the phone or the network.
And yes, this is a typical example of a useful feature being there in version 1 and then
disappearing in version 2, because no-one asks the users what they want. Instead they jam
modern devices full of technorubbish, which no-one wants or uses. Ah, I am getting back into
the swing of blogging!!!
Monday, January 15, 2007
Add Comment
SMS Delivery Reporting in mobile phones - Posted by Dmitry Baryshnikov at 2007-01-16

09:49
Hello, Peter. Nice to see you back! You know, Sony Ericsson added the SMS delivery report
feature some new functionality in their recent models. You get the delivery report like a
message on the screen (and it beeps if the sound is on), but it won't disappear until the user
presses "OK". So you're always aware.
Quiz Answers
Got the book ( The Book of General Ignorance) back from my neighbour, so here are the
answers:
• Who invented the telephone? Not Bell. Antonio Meucci invented it in 1871, five years
before Bell's patent.
• Where is the driest place on earth? Antartica. Parts of the continent have seen no rain
for two million years.
• What man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon? None. You can see some from
space (starts only 60 miles up), but not from a quarter of a million miles away.
• Where does Chicken Tikka Masala come from? Glasgow. Britain exports Chicken
Tikka Masala to India (to keep the help desk people happy?)
• Who invented champagne? Champagne is an English invention. We started it in 1662.
The French picked it up and perfected it in 1876.
• How many states are there in the USA? 46. Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and
Massachusetts are all officially Commonwealths.
• How many legs does a centipede have? They have never found one with 100; the
nearest is 96. (So the old schoolboy joke about "What goes 99 bonk? A centipede with a
wooden leg" is wrong.)
• Which way does water go down the plughole? Depends on the shape, how it was filled
etc. The theory that it changes from northern to southern hemisphere due to the Coriolis
force is a load of rubbish.
• Where was baseball invented? England. (From memory the only ball-games invented in
the USA are basketball and lacrosse. We, on the other hand, invent good games, and
then make the mistake of teaching the rest of the world how to play them. Then we get
thrashed. America, of course, adopts a different system. They call it the World Series,
but don't let the rest of the world take part, so that guarantees that an American team
wins!)
• What was James Bond's favourite drink? A painstaking study at
www.atomicmartinis.com has shown that James Bond consumed a drink, on average,
every 7 pages. His favourite is whisky.
Hope you enjoyed that. As you can see most of us think we know the answer to many things,
but are in fact totally wrong. Same in IT. Many myths exist, and are perpetuated in educational
establishments. Ask someone to prove it (e.g. this system is better / cheaper / more secure /
what the user wants etc. etc.) next time.
Gone Caching
Can't remember if I have talked about this before, but I have got into geocaching. Basically, all
round the world, people are hiding caches, and then publishing their location (longitude and
latitude) on the Internet. Your mission (if you accept it) is to find them.
Now, before you get excited, the caches do not contain money or anything valuable. They
contain a log book to record your visit and some cheap plastic toys for kids to swap (put one
in, take one out). They may also contain trackable items that travel the world. You also log
your visit on the Internet.
Why? Well, firstly it is a great way to get kids to go for a walk, rather than play some mindless
game on their console, or sit in front of some reality TV junk (if I ran the country, anyone
appearing on, or watching Celebrity Big Brother would be exiled or shot). For me, it is a way
to see parts of the world I am visiting, rather than sit in a hotel room getting bored.
So, is this just a group of nerds, who have graduated from trainspotting? Well, there are over
15,000 caches in the UK, over 16,000 in Texas etc. That's a lot of nerds! I placed a travel bug
(a trackable thing designed to travel the world) in a cache on Saturday and it has already
moved on. I have another one that I will be placing in a cache in Houston next week. For BMC
people there is a cache about 50 yards from our campus.
So where am I going with all this. The reason I can do geocaching is because my wife and I are
now of the age where we ask one another what we want for Christmas, rather than buying
some pointless gift that never gets used. Hence, one of my Christmas presents was a GPS
device, and we have been all over the place having pretty walks and finding stuff.
You see, the whole point is to ask someone what they want, and then provide it, rather than
guessing what they want and cheesing them off with a load of rubbish.
Trying to keep up-to-date

Had a day up in London yesterday as I had to get a new passport, and have lunch / catch up
with James Governor of Redmonk.
Why the passport? Well, the old one had filled up. There is, of course, no user-friendly service
of adding some pages. You have to get a new one as Gordon Brown needs more money to fund
something or other. In fact, I run two passports, as I travel in countries that don't like one
another's stamps in your passport (sad) and one of these got stolen. The police actually found it
and returned it, much to my amazement, but the passport people would not reinstate it. Why
not? It's only a bloody Y/N flag in a database!!! Of course, the answer is that they want you to
part with £108 for a new one (higher than usual fee as I required it same day). Having said all
that, they were very helpful and it all worked, so at least they score on customer service.
Had a couple of hours to kill, so did some geocaches and visited the British Museum ; if you've
never been, please go and visit the famous Reading Room, which has been used by such
people as Marx, Wilde, Gandhi, Shaw, Lenin etc.
Lunch with James is always interesting as he is 20 years younger than I and keeps me up-to-
date with things happening in the IT / Internet world. So I have now looked up Slingboxes
(don't want one as I don't like watching TV on a PC, but can see the attraction), del.ici.ous
(started using this morning), flickr (knew about it but have been using Photobox for printing;
flickr looks much better for sharing, I will upload some of my stuff and point you all at it!),
last.fm (which is installing a plug-in to scrobble my music tastes!) and some more I have
forgotten.
Signing up to these various services illustrated brilliantly the way that some people think about
the user and others just offer a boring standard interface. On all of them you have to choose a
name for yourself, which you try to keep the same as other sites as you can't remember all the
names and passwords you use (so you store them somewhere which rather defeats the whole
object of security, but we shall rise above that). What differentiates them is when they check if
the name has already been used. The bad sites let you fill in all the fields, disappear for a think,
come back and tell you bad luck and wipe out half the data you just entered -
GRRRRRRRRHHHH! The medium ones let you hit a validate button before typing the rest in,
and the winner checks it as you go along and gives you little ticks to say it's OK. Simple, but
give those sites a big cigar. (It's an expression, I am violently anti-smoking!)
Both James and I are active bloggers, and we agree that the one thing that frustrates us is how
few of you lob comments in - we both get lots of offline emails, for which we are extremely
grateful, but do join in. In my case, let me know of any other neat services on the web I have
missed / neat things you have found / ones that really cheese you off or whatever. Thanks.
Excuse me now, I have to fire up some obscure music (Curved Air will do for a start) on the
other PC so my scrobbling plug-in has something to chew over.
Add Comment
cheers mate - two oh - Posted by James Governor at 2007-01-24 12:23

great to see you as ever. have looked at a few pics on flickr. very nice. regarding the identity
thing thats one reason I like flickr so much... I am already on it!
have you joined the dorktunes group yet? please do and fire over your last.fm id
flickr, last.fm - Posted by Peter Armstrong at 2007-01-25 03:45

Ta - Have looked at your photos on flickr - seen the ankle biter walking! Have also joined
dorktunes - I am parmstro.
Favourite blogs - Posted by Jesús at 2007-01-29 06:32

It's nice to know when my two(*) favorite bloggers have a meeting in the "real world".
(*)Excluding a domestic one: www.caballe.cat. Try a visit but it's mostly writen in catalan :(
thanks - Posted by peter armstrong at 2007-01-29 11:03

Many thanks - not many people can claim to have Jesus reading their blog!!!
Will take a look at your link.
Cheers
Peter
Unrealistic planning
As an aside, if anyone wants to look at the photos that occasionally go along with this blog, try
www.flickr.com\photos\parmstro (best ones are on page 2, but I can't find out how to sort
them!)
They want to knock down 5 houses in the middle of our village and build 49 retirement flats
for the elderly (I can say that as I am old enough to qualify for one if I want). Now, there are a
few reasons why this is not a particularly clever idea:
• It is totally out of character with the rest of the village
• There is very limited / no access for things like fire engines, refuse lorries etc.
• There are 19 parking spaces for 49 apartments
• There is no supporting infrastructure (doctors etc.)
The good news is that we had a meeting in the village hall, where the people were asked
whether they supported the scheme or not. Apart from one lady, who had come to the wrong
meeting, we were, surprise, surprise, all violently against it.
As I stood there (all the seats were taken, this was a big event in our village), I was sad enough
to equate this to unrealistic IT projects. "We've bought 49 new servers, but you can't get at
them, they are not attached to any other systems, they have a different interface and they have
insufficient bandwidth and storage to be useful."
How nice, I thought, to go and ask the users what they really want, rather than throwing
technology at me in the hope that I will be impressed.
From TV to golf
There are a couple of adverts on UK TV at present, which highlight some of the daft thinking
prevalent in the world.
The first one is for a place that sells PCs and stuff. The assistant is telling the customer all
about the Hokey-Kokey 47 ZX2 turbo with twin widgets, graphic something or others and a lot
of other tosh. Eventually he gets to the point - "and this means you can run two big
applications at the same time". Now, forgive me if I think a decent operating system should be
able to run two things at once rather than having to have some hardware feature (and we all
know that the operating systems on most laptops are totally incapable of such a simple feat),
but the point is that if you tell a customer about the features of your product and he/she says
"wow", then you have the wrong person and they have no money.
Second one is for a bank that is deciding where they should put their call centre. The managers
(and young trainee) are on a golf course in the sun "blue-skying" ideas like Spain, Bermuda,
Eastern Europe, Delhi and the young trainee says what about locally? Give the lad a bonus.
Big articles in the UK press this week about companies moving centres back to UK as people
in foreign countries have difficulty understanding the customers and their culture. That's what
you get when a bean counter looks at a cost equation rather than the bigger picture. Who pays
your wages? The customer!
Which amazingly enough leads me to golf. For years my ball flight has been left to right. On a
good day, a fade; on a bad day a socking great slice. I have been working on shaping the ball
for ages and trying to get it move the other way. Works on the driving range, but never out on
the course. Imagine my surprise when I suddenly started hitting the ball right to left! The first
few rounds were a disaster, of course, as I had no idea which way it was going to fly off, but
now I am getting some control and consistency. And that is what customers want - consistent
performance, which hopefully improves over time.
So, let's finish with an old golfing story. Man on first tee hits socking great slice over the fence
and on to the road. Bother! 3 off the tee. Finishes the round, comes back to the clubhouse to
find the police there. "Did you slice your first tee shot over the fence on to the road?" "Yes."
"Well, it hit a lorry, smashed the windscreen, caused an accident and 2 people are now in
hospital - what are you going to do about it?" "Good question; I think if I move my hands
round and use a stronger grip, it should cure the slice".
Payback time
Every now and then you come across a classic. Here is how one end-user shows his dislike for
cold-calling. Warning - it does get a bit politically incorrect at the end, but you will have got
the gist long before then. Enjoy.
Add Comment
Too naughty for the web police - Posted by Nigel Heney at 2007-02-08 08:29
Peter,
Clearly this article was too funny to be read at work and the good web washer as deployed by
us stops it from being seen (in the UK at least).
Just thought I would let you know.
Nigel
PS thanks for a very entertaining (and useful) presentation in Houston last week in probably
the hardest slot of the week as we were not a pretty bunch following the graduation dinner!
true - Posted by peter at 2007-02-09 01:13

Yep, I had that as well - looked at it on the home pc
Cheers
Peter (currently in -15 finland!)
Nice one! - Posted by Phil Griston at 2007-02-09 19:52

Of course, sometimes software end-users get their own back too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ypt_FzRAk
PS - do you think this is Lance Osborne? He denies it.
no surprises - Posted by peter at 2007-02-12 12:33

As I speak German I sat through part 1 of this video.
1. You knew it was doomed when you saw how his laptop was placed.
2. Why take so long to tell me?
3. Windows upgrade - oxymoron?
I suppose I am meant to feel sorry, but frankly I could have told you most of what would
happen without seeing the video, but then I am on old cynic, who doesn't think Windows is an
operating system.
(I've just been struck by a Windows logo flying through the window as I typed that!!!!)
Managing Geeks
Colleague pointed me at this excellent article on managing geeks. Here's the start of it:
Hopefully most readers will agree that people working in IT can be broadly categorized
into two groups: those who are oriented around action (process, business, projects) and
those who are oriented around things (hardware and software technology, documents,
data).
The term geek is usually attached to the hardware-software group, so while it’s not
universally viewed as a positive term, we use it here to describe the IT staffers who are
more interested in technology than the business drivers to use it.
Because of this group’s focus, they tend to lack respect for many of the imperatives that
matter to the business.
Spot on. Enjoy!
On the BBC - the BMC Churn Index

Have just seen myself on BBC breakfast news (click watch button on right)! They interviewed
me, because we have just released the BMC Churn Index. The BMC Churn Index is an
independent study we commissioned to find out how often people change supplier (insurance,
gas, phone etc.) across Europe and why.
I will write much more about this later in the week, but for the moment, this is costing the UK
£5 billion, costing Europe £48 billion, and the fundamental cause is not actually money. People
are fed up with poor service, being ignored, having to repeat their complete history to the next
person who doesn't know them, being kept in the dark etc.
If you hate poor service, then please go to BBC breakfast (email breakfast.tv@bbc.co.uk) and
let them know.
Thanks
Peter
BMC Churn Index

To every season, there's a churn, churn, churn (that should be vaguely amusing to the older
amongst you).
As promised some more detail. We commissioned an independent research company to survey
over 12000 people in 12 countries across Europe. We knew that people churn, but wanted to
understand why. The research was analysed by an experienced researcher at the London
School of Economics to uncover statistically valid trends, and the results have been endorsed
by an expert on the subject of Churn – Professor Robert East of London University's Kingston
Business School.
Some of the messages coming out:
• The pace of switching is increasing – up 60% in the last six months alone
• People may move for money but the primary triggers for switching come from
business services that are failing the end customer
• Competition may be good for business but churn isn’t. Churn is simply indicative of
business processes that are failing customer expectations and not delivering the right
customer experience
• Consumers would be more loyal (96%) if they were rewarded for staying.
• Although people are learning the churning habit there is a strong preference not to
churn (96%), if consumers feel valued by their supplier
• Offering consumers incentives to switch is a false economy if when they arrive they
don’t find a service environment that is set up to deliver the expected service
experience.
• The BMC Churn Index shows that getting new customers by giving them discounts is
inherently flawed since this teaches established customers to switch
• Businesses targeting the young are in for a rough ride – 21-34 year olds switching 28%
more often than 45-55’s
• Banks beware. The awful NPS scores says there is pent up demand to churn
Tomorrow, I will answer the question - "so what do we (IT) about it?"
If you churn enough, do you get bitter?

Title was meant to be a cunning wordplay on butter, but frankly it's pretty awful. I've put the
link to the BBC newsclip on the first churn entry if you missed it and are bored enough! I'm
only on for a few seconds, so don't panic.
So how do we stop the churn? Obviously there are the business decisions about incentives for
new users vs current ones, but that's beyond the scope of this blog so I'll stick to what IT can
do.
• Help Desk. Don't want one! I want a Service Desk. Something that is helpful, proactive,
and responsive.
• Incident Management. Don't just ship it all to somewhere cheaper. Make sure there are
incentives to reduce the number of incidents and improve the service.
• Using, for instance, Problem Management and Knowledge Management.
• Implement a self-service request system / self-service fix it system.
• Understand who is using what. Have people info in the CMDB.
• Understand what business services you have, and how important they are. Understand
how they relate to the infrastructure so you can work out who is affected when
something goes wrong.
• Measure your systems end-to-end and from the user's point of view, rather than
meaningless metrics of how the server/dbms/os/app is running.
• Have sufficient capacity to run the important customer-facing systems. Nothing cheeses
a customer off quicker than a system that doesn't work / works s....o
s......l......o......w......l......y that you forget why you started. Or as with me the other day,
you try to become a customer and the person on the phone says sorry, our systems are
down / broken.
• Send your staff out to the front office to see how the systems are used in practise.
• Try using your own systems like a customer.
I'm sure I've forgotten a few. Let me know.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Add Comment
The "Service" Desk - Posted by Blair Kantolinna at 2007-02-21 08:15

Hi Peter
I've had several friends pick up on this report and their comments are interesting. The main
frustration seems to be most organisations' desire to prevent helpful transactions with their
customers. For example, it seems that every UK based Telco has at least 3 numbers for ISP
support (new customers who get a fast response, existing customers who get limited response,
and dissatisfied customers who normally have to write in to cancel their contract because they
can't reach anyone on the phone). This is ludicrous and it's no wonder people will go through a
lot of hassle to switch. But if the supplier could just realise that a happy customer equals higher
margins and a greater likelihood of up-sell to new services this phenomenon might change.
Unfortunately we tend to introduce change without utilising the existing infrastructure and
processes. As a customer I have seen this with my TV/Phone/Broadband supplier. They keep
writing to me offering me additional services (which I already have) and telling me how great
this new whiz-bang system is. All I want is a single point of contact and a person or website
where I can input information and get answers. When that isn't available I naturally assume
that the competitor's service can't be any worse and move supplier.
Ignorance is *iss? - Posted by Peter Armstrong at 2007-02-21 11:16

Blair - spot on. Thanks – Peter
FT Podcast
Sorry, been a bit busy travelling round the world, so blog has been quiet.
I was in Palm Springs for the last few days (it's a hard life), at a big CIO bash organised by
Computerworld. The conference was all good stuff, but what really got me was the fact that
when I arrived at the hotel, there were 37 people itching to take my luggage away from me and
give it back to me (hopefully) a few minutes later, but at the check-in desk there was one
person. DUUUUH! What impression does that give the customer? To me it said (greed
combined with) total lack of capacity management. Same thing when you hit the airport
security and end up in a line that switches back and forth like the queues at Disneyland. So,
what you are telling me is that you can't afford enough staff and machines to handle the
workload and you don't care if you cheese off the customers?
Anyway, now on to the positive side of this entry - I did a podcast with the Financial Times
recently, which has just been released in the Digital Business section, dated 7th March. There
are 3 parts:
• Nicholas Carr talks about the switch from profligate to frugal computing, due to the
problems of electricity, cooling etc. Spot on - server consolidation is the order of the
day.
• I talk about Business Liaison Officers, who sit between business and IT and try to get
the 2 sides talking a common language to each other and avoid cheesed off customers
(internally and externally).
• We have a group discussion on the fact that most people have more software licences
than they need and hence need to apply the principles of asset management to software
just like they do to hardware.
Hope you enjoy them.
Understand the customer

Sweet story from a colleague:
Advisor: “When your Majesty leaves Buckingham Palace by coach at eight in the morning,
your Majesty arrives at Windsor at twelve. If your Majesty would take the new railway, your
Majesty would be at Windsor at nine!”
King: “Why on earth would I want to be in Windsor at nine in the morning?”
Some customer quotes

Believe it or not, these come from customers:
Bronze Medal – "Do users contact you directly? Not unless they want a slap"
Silver Medal – "You have to have guts to raise a major incident; you can expect to get a good
kicking"
Gold Medal – "Sometimes we leave off the names of approvers who might try to block the
Request For Change"
Sweet. Got any better ones?
Subliminal?
First a little joke:
There are two types of expert:
• Those who don't know and
• Those who don't know they don't know
I read an article the other day that says that subliminal advertising really does work.
BMC PRODUCTS MAKE YOU
The phrase was coined in 1957 by some bloke in the US, who actually lied about the results.
MORE ATTRACTIVE TO THE
But they have now conducted new tests, which show that messages we are not aware of can
leave a mark on the brain.
OPPOSITE SEX
What do you think?
Add Comment
Don't Think So - Posted by Craig Mullins at 2007-03-23 15:05

Judging by the photo you haven't gotten any better looking Peter, so the subliminal advertising
in your blog must not be truthful...
ho ho - Posted by peter armstrong at 2007-03-26 09:43

Very good! But, I did say opposite sex, so if I continue to be unattractive to members of the
same sex, that is a result for me!
! - Posted by Craig Mullins at 2007-03-30 15:18

Touche!
Pain in the neck

Actually, what I am suffering from is a pain in the back and left leg - too many hours spent in
planes I think. My friends and neighbours used to be jealous of my lifestyle, until they realised
how many days / weekends etc. get lost. Anyway, enough of the violins!
Reminds me - many people ask me whether I am worried about flying? No, I reply, flying is
good, it's landing at the wrong time and place that worries me!
So what else is a pain in the neck? Changing the clocks. How some plonker (English word for
idiot) or group of plonkers in Congress came to the idea that moving the clocks out of sync
with everyone else in the world would be a neat idea is beyond my comprehension. I am sure
someone will tell me it saves electricity. Rubbish. Time is an arbitrary logical concept applied
by man. Changing the clock from 6 to 5 does not make the sun rise earlier or set later. The
length of the day remains the same, you have just applied a different logical window on top of
it. So now I keep missing appointments with the US because Outlook is one hour out -
DUUUUUUUUH.
It is also obvious that none of the plonkers in Congress have never worked in computers,
where changing the clocks has been a nightmare for years. Computers tend to have this strange
idea of using timestamps to record the order in which things happen, and going backwards
suddenly throws them up the twist. Hence all sorts of wondrous code, hardware etc. to make
sure things get recorded in the right order. I believe Arizona and Utah (?) don't ever change
their clocks. Brilliant - let's all move there.
Can you blog with a BlackBerry?

This is an experiment. I had been ignoring my blog as I have been on road with no laptop and
then I thought I would give it a whirl on this stupid bberry thing. So if you can read this I have
had success and will proceed to write some interesting stuff.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Add Comment
Re: if you can read this - Posted by Kyniek at 2007-04-16 07:07

Yes! Please... :-)
blog it - Posted by jim at 2007-05-05 13:46

it's been since april, were is the interesting stuff?? Blog it dude!
ho - Posted by peter at 2007-05-06 04:37

Ho bloody ho!!
Having come to the conclusion that blogging on a BB is about as sensible as painting the
golden gate bridge with a toothbrush, I gave up on the whole idea!!
Cheers
Peter
Yet another podcast

The reason I tried writing a blog on the BlackBerry, was because I wanted to tell you about a
new podcast I have done. However, before I launch into some boring self promotion, let me
talk about blogging on the wrong device.
• Is writing a blog entry on the BBerry a good idea? No.
• Was it a pain in the neck? Yes.
• Will I do it again? No.
In fact, it was about as much fun as watching reality TV, listening to French pop music (the
definition of the word oxymoron I feel), or having your legs waxed (I'm guessing on this one).
Anyway, I have done a podcast on this churn index I have been telling you about. People have
really picked up on this, as the vast majority of companies seem to be coming to the view that
giving people a cheap introductory offer and then cheesing them off with miserable service is
not a long-term business plan. In fact, one of the major UK mobile phone companies rang me
about it last week, which is good news.
Who wants to be a CIO?

Just been reading this article, which for me sums up a lot of what is wrong in the world of IT
today. It reminds me of those old cartoons showing what the original idea was, what marketing
thinks, what R&D produces etc.
• Ask a CEO to design the IT system, and you get a BlackBerry
• Ask a CFO to design the IT system, and you get a large spreadsheet
• Ask a CIO to design the IT system, and you get dual nuclear bunkers
OK, I am exaggerating to make a point, and the point is that they are all wrong, because none
of them efficiently and effectively combines the business requirements with the technical
capabilities that exist.
One of the major problems is that business and IT simply speak totally different languages. To
an outsider, they may both appear to be speaking English (or French, German, Chinese or
whatever) but to the CEO an IT person is as eloquent as a gorilla grunting and vice versa.
Hence the influx of business background people in the CIO role, but we still have the same
issue - these new CIOs need to be able to have a gruntless conversation with the IT staff, most
of whom can't put together a sentence without at least one acronym in it.
So the world desperately needs that new breed of person who can understand business
requirements and can also cut through technical jargon and ask for understandable input. That
person needs to show what can be done in the way of revenue generation, cost reduction and
risk mitigation in terms that both sides can understand.
For me the starting point is actually defining the overall company strategy - are you a pile-em-
high sell-em-cheap company with poor service, or do you give me a glass of champagne as I
walk in and attend to my every whim? Excellent companies are not excellent at everything,
they tend to excel at one thing and make that their core principle. What is the model that your
company is trying to run? Service, quality, price, access, experience or what? You can design
IT for any of these, but IT needs to know what you want.
Now each time business and IT look at a project together, they can ask the two vital questions -
why are we doing this and what's it worth? If you can't answer these in terms of increased
revenue (the innovation officer) or decreased costs (the technology officer) or reduced risk (the
compliance officer), then in my opinion you shouldn't do it.
Breaking down the silos

Every now and then you read an article (http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=26851) and
you just scream "YES, YES, YES".
Customer contact
Been thinking - dangerous and stupid I know, and most of you will probably say DUUUH,
obvious when I tell you what I have been thinking about, but here goes.
In the (good?) old days, contact with the customer was predominantly of a personal nature.
You met people face to face and spoke to them. You could see what their reaction was, what
their mood was, you could see whether they needed service straight away or wanted to browse
etc. Some people got to be very good at this, and others were awful, and that often depended
on where you worked / what the company ethos was. Customers voted rapidly with their feet if
they weren't happy.
Then we went to the world of the telephone and tried to work out how to deal with customers
at the end of a piece of string. Again, some people do this well and others are terrible. People
have experimented with making us talk to their staff in far-flung parts of the world using
strange scripts designed to annoy us intensely. Customer backlash is gradually driving
companies to get it right / better.
And then came the internet and we don't talk to customers any more. We offer them an
electronic experience. Sometimes this is good and frequently it is awful. However, now we
don't talk to them to find out if they like it. We don't look at it from their point of view to see if
it is working. We don't log on to our own systems and pretend to be a customer and see what it
is like. We don't send people from the IT department into the front office to work alongside the
people there and see whether the systems are up-to-scratch. We don't ask the business
managers if they are happy - we just tell them that the servers are running at 99% availability
and 15% utilisation. We don't start by asking the business exactly what they want and how
much they are prepared to spend to get it.
If you have just read that and screamed - "oh yes we do" - then congratulations, you are the
(wonderful) minority. Please send me your URL.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
A pedant? Moi!
Those who know me will know that I am a bit of a boring old pedant ("only a bit?" I hear you
cry!). For example, the incorrect use of the apostrophe drives me mad:
• The book and it's cover
• Potato's for sale
• Three weeks notice
If you don't see anything wrong with any of those, then I suggest a career where correctly
spoken English doesn't really matter - e.g. US president or contestant on a reality TV show.
So what prompted me to remember my pedant's background? Well, I was sitting next to a chap
on the plane last night, who was reading a book called Globalization. It's probably just me, but
I wanted to rip the book up and shout at the author - it's spelt GLOBALISATION you prat!!!
I've just searched on amazon.co.uk using Globalisation. First book, spelt with a "z" is written
by Joseph E. Stiglitz - must be American with a name like that. Second one spelt with an "s" is
written by Philippe Legrain - French I assume, but at least he can spell. Number 3 is Joseph
again, and number 4 is Manfred B. Steger - well you know where he comes from. The next 12
are all spelt with an "s" - hooray - with some splendid English names like Jeremy, Eric and
Giles, but also a Wayne, a Dermot, a Yang Yao, as well as Sylvain, Benedicte and Desmond.
So come on America, the rest of the world has got the hang of this English language lark -
when are you going to catch up?
Now for the serious bit. When you design your "global" systems, are they really global? Can I
enter my name and address? Can I order from you if I live in another country? Do you have
someone I can talk to in my language if I need help? Will that be a local call or will I have to
pay a fortune to call your country (in which case, forget it)? Can I easily find your local
office/agent? etc.
A Google classic
Just heard about this from my son - an absolute classic.
Go into Google, click on Maps. Now in the search enter "Dublin to New York" and hit search
maps. Look at the route - especially step 46.
Enjoy!
Add Comment
But it takes longer ... - Posted by Chris Loosley at 2007-05-03 18:38

I just saw this, but a day too late. If my daughter had known your son, we could have saved
over $800 on a ticket between San Francisco and Aberystwyth. But I see that the travel time is
longer -- 31 days and 8 hours (one way), in our case.
Interesting that the Boston-Le Havre transatlantic route is used between US and Europe, no
matter what your origin and destination. I guess that's the only route approved for transatlantic
swimmers!
aberystwyth - Posted by peter armstrong at 2007-05-04 04:34

Ah, I know Aberystwyth well. It will take a reasonable time to get from SF to London and then
about 5 days to drive to the other side of Wales!!!
What's in a name?
"What's in a name?
That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Bill Shakespeare
Just been reading this article. As part of it, a chapess from HP suggests that the name IT is
dead, and we should be moving to something new like Business Technology. Well, knock me
down with a feather! Had she only read my blog in March 2006!
As I said way back then, I totally agree that IT is a boring old name well past its sell-by date. It
smacks of people with dubious social habits appearing like Hobbits out of a cave when
something goes wrong.
However, I am not too sold on Business Technology either. To me that smacks of desperately
earnest young chaps with the latest techy gizmo, frantically clicking away when they should be
listening.
Q.How do you ignore a BlackBerry?
A.Turn the bloody thing off when I'm talking to you!!!
Anyway, what I would really like to ask you all today is what should we call IT? What name
truly gives the correct impression of an intrinsic part of the company and its business services,
without which the company couldn't survive? Business Service Provider? Any suggestions
Add Comment
IT is dead . or is it just HP who has been for a decade? - Posted by Jan Flodin at 2007-05-
10 09:53
"The intent, according to Frank Gillett, an analyst at Forrester Research, is part of a shift by HP
away from selling products to providing technology solutions to solving business problems.
HP also wants to standardise and pre-package its offerings to improve customer efficiency, he
said."
Well, to me it sounds like some HP sales executive just attended a course and heard you shall
sell solutions and not products. But most of the class he was asleep so he never heard that
solution and product selling are two different sales approaches - not a matter of packaging your
products and call them solutions, which by the way will be product bundles.
The real interesting thing is that HP even backs the new campaign with newspaper adds stating
that now is the time where the business shall decide the IT spendings.
I know it haven't been like that in all companies, but why common sense suddenly can be a
major shift calling for big campaigns, I can't understand, and the companies who tries to do so
in my eyes most of all exposes themselves as companies who for the last couple of decades
have been acting completely irresponsible with themselves and their customers - and why
should I ever consider to do business with such laggards ?
Solution selling - Posted by Peter Armstrong at 2007-05-11 08:47

Seem to remember teaching people all about this in the South of France many years ago - that
was a neat job / location.
Cheers
Peter
Hobbies
Had a chat today with the lovely lady in charge of all this blogging and podcast lark. She was
asking me about hobbies outside work (must have been bored), and we shared some mutually
interesting websites. Doesn't that show you how the world has moved on? We used to swap
physical photos, telephone numbers, real addresses - now you point someone at your facebook,
flickr or whatever. Does, of course, mean that the sites have to be useful and responsive, which
is one of the reasons I don't bother with youtube as it takes ages to watch anything. Yes, I have
broadband, Yes, I have the VPN turned off. And frankly most of what I have seen is sad spotty
youths boring me rigid - must be an age thing.
Well, if you go here, you will see that flickr knows about me and one of my hobbies -
geocaching, which I've bored you about before. I don't often get excited about technology but
every now and then someone gets it right from the consumer's point of view, e.g.
• Digital cameras and Photoshop - all the power of the darkroom and more. Has got me
back into photography and am now entering competitions.
• Google / Wikipedia - may not be 100% accurate, but used intelligently they are
marvellous.
• ebay - who remembers Exchange and Mart (UK users only)?
• Google Earth - incredible and for geocaching there is a really neat plugin that shows
you all the caches near where you are.
• Online photo sharing and printing - the quality of the site I use (photobox) is excellent
and the service is fast and efficient.
• MP3 players. I don't know if you have ever read Negroponte's book "Being Digital"
which predicted all this digital stuff - highly recommended, and remember it was
written in 1995.
• last.fm - personalised radio
• GPS - because men never stop to ask for directions
I know there are more, but that's a good start - lob in any other key ones you fancy.
And then, of course, there are the ones that annoy me.
• Changing the shape of the TV picture so that I have to buy a new one - I was happy
with the old shape.
• ebooks - sorry never going to read a book on a screen.
• The BlackBerry - brilliant idea with a totally crap implementation.
• Combining 47 devices into one so that is almost guaranteed to go wrong.
• Telephones, which do more than calls and SMS. I am never going to watch TV on a
phone or play a game on it.
• Annoying ring-tones. The people who have them. People who shout down the phone.
(These all tend to come together).
• Any device with stupid buttons.
• A DVD rewinder.
• Any website that asks me to type in information I have already given it before.
Again, there are lots more - lob in your own ideas.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
The Technology Garden

I have been sent an early copy of a book due to be published next week. It's called "The
Technology Garden" (ISBN 978-0-470-05969-2), and is written by Jon Collins, Neil
Macehiter, Dale Vile and Neil Ward-Dutton - thanks chaps. It's all about the alignment
between business and IT, how to get it, how to maintain it.
I haven't had the time to read it all yet (will do that on the flight to US on Sunday), but I love
the general idea, which is that IT departments tend to be like gardens. Most of us inherit a
garden with a house, which may not be perfect or exactly what we want, but we have to decide
how to work with it. We have to feed it, prune it, weed it etc. or it ends up in chaos. Good
analogy.
I'll give you a full report when I finish it, but in the meantime here is a class quote from it:
"It's vital to remember that a service is something you experience, not something
you build."
The definition of momentarily?

As a "Brit", I find the word momentarily ugly and overused. A classic example of this was
when I arrived at San Francisco airport yesterday. Good flight, first in line at immigration,
luggage came through quickly (by the way, if you all stood back, you morons, we could all see
more!), exit to arrivals hall not blocked by crowds of idiots greeting one another and blocking
the way out for everyone else. So far, so good.
Then we went upstairs to the little train station for the link to the car rental place, and it all
went downhill. The train was not working properly - "there is a delay, the train will start again
momentarily" - some faceless voice told us every few minutes. Momentarily moved through
the following:
• soon
• in a few minutes
• some time in the next hour
• perhaps this afternoon
• before Christmas
• in my lifetime
• before the next Ice Age
I may have missed some of the stages, because we were also given (at extremely infrequent
intervals) inaccurate and misleading information as to where we should go. Downstairs for a
shuttle bus - there wasn't one. We're sending a shuttle - they didn't. So we all went to the taxi
rank and took taxis to the car rental place, which meant there were huge queues and enormous
numbers of extremely frustrated taxi drivers, who were driving people 10 minutes down the
road.
We shall manage to annoy all of you momentarily.
Fortunately I am flying out of San Jose.
Great minds think alike?

Just discovered that our CEO does geocaching too. Nice chap, always liked him, knew he was
basically sound!!!
A mini saga
I was going to write a long vitriolic attack about the chronic incompetence of my cable
provider and their particular ability to get almost every bill wrong, but my save didn't work and
I lost a lot of typing, so here is a short vitriolic attack!
Suffice it to say that adding an item to my bill that I never asked for, charging me for it and
then saying I can't have a refund because I must have asked for it is not a great customer
service scheme. When I quietly pointed out that it appeared when they took off the extra set-
top box (which they also failed to come and collect as promised) and was no doubt due to
some prat typing in the wrong code, they admitted it was their fault and gave me my money
back. They had also failed to give me the rate they promised me, sent me the wrong broadband
bill ........ etc. etc. et bloody cetera. Can anyone recommend a good cable/TV/broadband
supplier in the UK?
And then just as I finish my conversation with them (5 different departments, some of which
actually understand the English language), I get this email (sent to Peter Armstrong):
The online community for today's over 50s

Dear Mrs Armstrong
Why don't you join us and discover a world of like-minded friends and easily stay in touch?
Excuse me, I'm just off to paint my nails and pluck my eyebrows.
The Technology Garden
As promised, I have finished reading the book I was sent - The Technology Garden. Being a
sad git, I am of course amused by what you get when you search for "The Technology Garden"
on Amazon:
• Estimating Cost Guides to Landscaping
• Duracell AA Ultra 4 pack batteries (don't ask, that's computers for you!)
• Lawnmower Manual
• Brickwork and Paving
• The Dishwasher Manual
• Electrical Bug Racket (great fun, you swat flies with a tennis racket type thing)
• Recycle!
• and lots more - oh what fun, I could be here for hours.
Anyway, ignore the rest and home in on this rather splendid book. I must admit that a lot of
these management and technical books bore me rigid, as the authors trot out their "brilliant"
theory 27 times (they only have one bit of info so they have to repeat it a lot to fill up the
pages). So what joy to have one that starts with a great hook - the gardening analogy for IT -
continues with lots of great practical advice and is littered with a plethora of meaningful
customer quotes. I even read the whole thing (which trust me is rare for a non-Harry Potter
book for me), and even more amazing when you realise that I had mugglenet.com's " What
Will Happen in Harry Potter 7" lined up next!
(This para only for Potter fans - Is Snape good or evil? Is Harry a Horcrux? Who is R.A.B.?)
Anwyay, The Technology Garden - a good read / reference, and with a scorecard at the end so
you can see how well business and IT are aligned in your company. Well done chaps.
A Microsoft Classic
Always a step forwards, when you admit your own mistakes:
Who knows, one day, they may even manage to write a production Operating System?
(Remember, I was brought up on proper systems, that work, are secure, have extremely high
availability and are designed to do more than one thing at a time).
Where does my cable/pipe go?

I have been mulling over a few things. As I told you the other day, my cable supplier is getting
on my nerves and every month starts with a call to complain about the inaccuracy of their bills.
I also asked you to tell me if you know of any good cable/TV/broadband suppliers in the UK.
The results have been absolute silence. This proves one of 3 things:
• No-one reads this rubbish. I know this is not true as I have seen the stats and surprising
numbers of you actually seem to like these rants.
• No-one in the UK reads this rubbish. Once again, I know people do as they actually
have clubs now where readers of my blog can go for counselling; you shuffle in looking
embarrassed, mutter the words "I read Peter's blog", and people rush to embrace you
and help you.
• Which leads me to number 3 - there is no decent offering out there, which is probably
true. Oh I am sure there are various offerings, but as they fall over themselves to give
you a wondrous price, you find their service stinks.
Which brings me back to the subject I have talked about before - churn. I don't want the
cheapest offering, I want one that works with people who understand what the hell I am talking
about when I get them (hopefully rapidly) on the 'phone. Is that asking too much?
Anyway, all of that leads me to the title of this blog. I have a cable into the house which pipes
in TV, phone and broadband.
• If I change suppliers, do they use the same cable or do I have to have another one?
• When I changed gas and electricity suppliers a few years ago, what actually happened?
Is there a little man living under my street who switches my gas pipe from ABC Gas
and attaches it to XYZ Power or what? Or does it all come down some big communal
pipe and the companies squirt supplies in?
I have just looked on uswitch.com for the answer to this, but can't find anything, but I did find
this quote:
Customer rating – Who gives the most satisfaction
Yes, money is important, but most of us don’t mind paying a little more for better
service. Selecting this option orders your results with the supplier with the highest
customer rating being shown first.
Spot on.
All quiet for a while

So why haven't I been blogging recently? Simple answer - I have been on holiday. It was my
birthday (happy birthday to me ...) and I wanted to work on my golf swing. How was the golf?
Thank you for asking. Long game was ace; short game was crap; we found a great new course.
Oh well.
What that meant, of course, is that I had two blissful weeks without a laptop. Being sad I took
the BlackBerry as I find it easier to delete all the crud as you go along and save having 8000
emails in your inbox when you get home. They send you "your inbox is full, clear it" friendly
messages, which of course make it fuller, and as deleted items still seem to count, the whole
thing is all rather stupid. Another example of software designed by people who never actually
get to use it. They also send you "change your password in the next 10 days or you will be
locked out" messages, so obviously no-one in the US ever has a holiday longer than 10 days –
tough!
I have this strange dream that certain things will happen going forwards:
• Wireless will be available everywhere, so I don't have to go and find a Starbucks in the
middle of the Mongolian desert in order to do email / write a blog, which is good news
as I don't drink coffee and I don't like their tea-bags. Short digression - you can't get a
decent cup of tea once you pass Calais, or if you go to the US. On the continent, they
don't seem to understand the concept of boiling water and their milk seems to come
from a chemical factory. In the US they have Lipton Yellow Label - say no more.
• Mobile devices will become vaguely useful. They will have an interface where you can
search Google (already happened), will be able to look at Google Earth, zoom into
maps, write blogs, execute Java etc.
Dream on.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
A gem
A very old lady, apparently, wrote this to her bank. Pure magic.
Dear Sir,
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my
plumber last month.
By my calculations, three 'nanoseconds' must have elapsed between his presenting the cheque
and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honour it. I refer, of course, to the
automatic monthly deposit of my Pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place
for only eight years.
You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting
my account £30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.
My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my
errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and
letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-
recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become. From now on, I, like you, choose only
to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan payments will therefore and
hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank by cheque, addressed personally
and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.
Be aware that it is an offence under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an
envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact Status which I require your chosen
employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about
him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of
his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Solicitor, and the mandatory details of
his/ her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by
documented proof.
In due course, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in
dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modelled it
on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone
bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as follows:
1. To make an appointment to see me.
2. To query a missing payment.
3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
4. To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
6. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
7. To leave a message on my computer (a password to access my computer is required. A
password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorised Contact.)
8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 89-- To make a general
complaint or inquiry, the contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my
automated answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait,
uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.
Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover
the setting up of this new arrangement. May I wish you a happy, if ever so slightly less
prosperous, New Year.
Friday, June 08, 2007
And a bonus for Friday

I love Google - found this researching/confirming the previous entry - read it aloud!
"Hello, 188188? I need the number of the Abbey Telecom."
"Would you spell that, please?"
"Certainly. A as in aye. B as in bee. B as in bee. E as in eye. Y as in you."
"Just a minute, sir. I'll connect you with my supervisor."
Add Comment
There are more telephone jokes here ... - Posted by John Preston at 2007-07-17 17:18
There are a few more of those telephone jokes here ...
http://www.abbeytelecom.co.uk/telephone_jokes.htm
What's it worth?
Had a very interesting chat with an old (well younger than I, but I used to work with him years
ago) colleague yesterday - John Tabeart of PROfutura. John shares my frustration of IT getting
better at producing business justifications for new ESM investments, but not always going
back afterwards and
• Seeing what the return really was
• Ensuring that they are getting everything possible out of the project
• Showing the business the benefits of the investment
There are often very valid reasons why this doesn't happen - time and workload being classic
examples, but if IT doesn't show the true value of what they have achieved, then it is more
difficult to go back to the business next time.
I think IT is now moving from the days of having to prove everything saves money into the
days of showing how they can provide innovation and help drive the business forwards, so
anyone who can help IT along this path gets my vote.
Squirrels
I was watching a squirrel in my garden this morning. Now, ignoring the fact that I think grey
squirrels are nasty little tree rats and should be shot on sight, I was intrigued by this animal
jumping up chairs / across the table / onto another chair / onto the garden umbrella and then
trying to launch itself across a gap on the slide down. Why? Because it couldn't get to the bird
table by any other route. Fortunately it failed, which made me happy (if it had got on my bird
table, it would have got my lob wedge up its ****).
So what, I hear you cry?! Well it reminded me of how awkward many websites are - I am sure
the answer is there somewhere, but I seem to go around 14 corners to get there. If you want an
interesting study, try logging on to your own website, and pretend you know nothing about
your company. Now work out what your company does and how to do business with them.
The Squirrel Awards

I write this stuff and people tell me things aren't as bad as I make out, I'm just a grumpy old
fossil. Well, the latter part is true, but let me hereby announce the first set of Squirrel Awards.
These are given to companies, who make their customers go through complicated mechanisms
to do business with them, rather than thinking with a service mentality and making life easier
for us. I am sure you can lob in a few of your own, so feel free to join in.
• A certain car hire company. I joined up with them when I lived in France for a while.
According to their system I still live there. If I login to their UK website, it tells me that
my id and password are invalid. If I then try to link my existing details to an online
account, it tells me I am already in the system and won't continue. If I login to the
French website, it knows all about me, but I can't find anywhere to change my profile. I
have phoned / facsed and emailed them. No change.
• Another car hire company. I have a reservation and I want to change it. I login with my
id and password and it asks me for the reservation number! WHY? You know what it
is, you morons, I don't have it to hand! Just because you are too lazy to implement a
decent indexing system, don't punish me.
• A certain airline, where I book tickets online. They know all about me. I am a long-
term customer. Why then do you ask me for my credit card details and address every
time I buy a ticket? As one European CIO quite rightly said to me years ago (about our
products) "Peter, I will give you data once and never again; I expect you to remember it
and exploit it in all your software - that is part of true integration."
• Same airline. Book tickets online, get an email with details/ cost etc. Change the ticket,
get nothing to confirm the fee I have just paid and need to call someone to send me a
receipt so that I can claim it. Was told in the accompanying note "The ticket usually
counts as the invoice". Not with e-tickets it doesn't, there's nothing on there about the
price paid!
• Colleague getting a quote for car insurance. 20 minutes on the phone answering all the
questions. The last question was "what sort of car?" "A Porsche" "We don't insure
them!" Could you start with that question?
• And now to be positive, a hotel chain I use. Login to their website and it shows me all
the reservations I currently have, shows me the hotels I have stayed at before so I can
rebook etc. Wonderful.
OK, your turn now!
By the way, does this affect my loyalty? Yes, I avoid the top two companies, only use the
airline if I have to and always book that hotel chain if I can.
Add Comment
Let me tell you about loyalty! - Posted by Ynema Mangum at 2007-06-29 16:00
I once gave up eating at a restaurant because they stopped carrying the salad dressing I
prefer...Why wouldn't I stop visiting a site or buying certain services from companies that don't
ask my opinion if they are going to make a major change? It's a social, open world we live in.
No business can forget it.
Travel - Posted by Dougie Lawson at 2007-07-04 15:49

Just be thankful you're not having to use the Online Travel Reservation system at your
previous employer. It used to be so much easier when you phoned a warm body, told him or
her where you were going, when you were going and when you were coming back. Next day
there'd be a courier in reception with your tickets, receipts and a clip-board. Sign the receipt
and you're done.
Now we have an OTR system. Last time I tried to book a hotel in Mainz they were all booked
out. I thought about finding a campsite to pitch my tent - but that's not on the "authorised"
accommodation list. Down the big snake, grumble, throw the dice again hoping for a ladder.
We've also heard of folks being routed via stupid places on long duration flights A to B via Z
to save the odd buck. They forget that the five hours on the extra sectors takes it's toll on the
passenger. Some folks now resort to finding the route they want then feeding that back into the
OTR system.
Automated Call Centre systems - Posted by Ron Preedy at 2007-07-06 04:23

My favourite:
Call the 0800 number of my fixed-line telephone provider on my mobile, because the line is
dead. Voice tells me to call a high-priced mobile number instead. Call that number, voice tells
me (after 2 minutes of blathering) that to report a problem, I should call yet another (low-cost)
number.
New voice tells me to "give me" my customer number. Now what? Is it a voice response
system, so I can just say the number? Or do they want me to tap it in on the phone keyboard? I
try the voice, you can guess what happens "I didn't understand your response. Please try
again". Now I type it in, wonderful, voice tells me to hang on for a few millennia till a human
can speak to me.
No prizes for guessing the first question he asks. Correct: "please give me your customer
number."
GAAAAAAH!
If I didn't know that the main competitor was even worse (that's why I changed), I would have
cancelled immediately.
Regressive and Poisonous?

A colleague pointed me at this article
http://advice.cio.com/gary_beach/large_it_shops_branded_regressive_and_poisonous.
An interesting dilemma - do you rigidly control everything that gets installed or do you allow
the trendy young things joining your company to put on Facebook, IM, Google desktop,
Youtube and all those others I have never heard of? What if someone wants Mozilla or
OpenOffice (which I run on this machine, as it my personal home one) and your company
standard is Microsoft? How do we bridge the gap between innovation and control?
Add Comment
Good find.. - Posted by Dustin Puryear at 2007-07-11 09:45

Good find! I commented on the article myself:
http://www.techevangelism.com/2007/07/11/are-it-departments-slowing-down-technology/
Thanks Peter.
--
Dustin Puryear
Author, <a href='http://www.puryear-it.com/pubs/ebooks/linux-unix-best-practices'>"Best
Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers"</a>
<a href='http://www.puryear-it.com'>http://www.puryear-it.com</a>
Another squirrel award

I have a PC at home, which I am using to write this blog entry. I use this one, because it has a
nice big screen, Mozilla and all my music on it; so I can see what I am doing, and have
soothing background stuff (J.J.Cale today) at the same time. However, as I have lots of music
and also lots of pictures on here, the hard-drive is starting to fill up, so I thought I would buy a
second one to put in. Now the fun starts.
• Step 1. I look on the website for the PC manufacturer and find loads of drives, but
unfortunately nothing as helpful as "if you have this model of PC, then these drives will
fit". Gosh no, that would be helpful, so you have to look through each drive seeing
what models it would work in. I can just about handle this, but I can't find the PC I
bought from them not long ago. I find an accessories button, but it seems that all I can
buy for my PC is a new keyboard or mouse, so on we go.
• Step 2. Call the "help" desk. Now, in a perfect world, they would know who I am and
what model I bought from them, but the world is far from perfect so you grope your
way round the floor looking at the back of the case whilst trying to conduct a
conversation with a chap who doesn't understand a blind word you are saying. What
can I say - I speak English, and most people on help desks don't; at least, not the every
day conversational English I consider to be my patois.
"What is your model number, Mr Armstrong?"
"No idea, where do I find that?"
"On the PC"
"Well, slap me with a wet fish, I would never have thought of that, where on the
PC?"
"Why do you want a fish, I thought you wanted a hard drive?"
• Anyway, according to the "help" desk, you can't put a second hard drive in my PC,
which did surprise me as I can see a hollow slot for it to go in and a spare plug on the
mother board. I tried explaining this, but gave up as the poor chap's script only
extended to "You can't put a second drive in that model."
• Step 3. Go to the local friendly local PC shop with PC under my arm. Show it to
friendly technician. Walk out 5 minutes later with a nice new hard drive, a STA cable
to attach it and full instructions on how to install it.
• Step 4. Go back home. Install drive. Format it. Move music and pictures across. Magic.
J.J.Cale has just played "Lies" - seems apt.
Travel-o-pity?
I realise I have been very quiet on here for a while. Several reasons for this:
• The Open was on - I know certain ignorant people (including Scottish golfers like Mrs
Doubtfire) have dropped into the annoying habit of calling it the British Open, but as I
have pointed out before, that's wrong. Anyway, a cracking tournament with the Barry
Burn playing a major role again, and a dead nice (non-American for a change) chap
won it - Padraig Harrington. By the way, have you noticed that the ladies are being
allowed to play their Open at St Andrews this year for the first time ever? Laura Davies
made a classic comment - "I'll change my shoes in the car park; it's the course I want to
see, not the clubhouse!"
• Harry Potter book 7 came out. I am sure there are many out there, who will turn up
their noses and say "I don't read such rubbish" or "A children's book - how could you?"
etc. Well, all I can say, is more fool you for missing out; and don't knock someone who
has brought millions of children worldwide back to the joys of reading. Infinitely better
for them than sitting in front of their PSPs and XBoxes or whatever the bloody things
are called. Anyway, more of HP in the next entry.
• I haven't been travelling as much recently, which means I am in a better mood as I have
less to complain about than usual!
Travel is basically a right pain nowadays:
• It starts with parking the car. If you use the short-term car park, you need to take out a
second mortgage to pay for it. If you use the long-term car park you wait hours for the
bus. So you decide to use the meet and greet parking service, where you drive up to the
terminal and someone takes the car away and meets you when you come back. Only
problem is that some nutters tried to ram a car into an airport terminal over here
recently and blow it up, so you can't get anywhere near the terminal buildings now.
• You've checked in online to save time. Only problem is that due to the aforementioned
nutters' friends, you can only take one piece of luggage on the plane with you, which is
about big enough to hold a book and not much else. So you now stand in a queue for
hours waiting to check your bag in.
• Fortunately you are a gold-card holder and hence can go to a shorter queue for your
bags, but then you have the joys of the security check. Now, over here, the queues for
this seem to grow longer every week, although the one I came across in Amsterdam
airport the other day was an absolute stinker as well. I have nothing against security, in
fact I am all for it, but could we have two things please?
1. Could the airports please employ enough staff and machines?
2. Could the moronic public try taking their brains with them when they travel
rather than packing them with their thongs? There are about 8427 notices telling
you that this is a security line, and you will have to take off your jacket, shoes,
belt, put your laptop in a tray etc. (in fact, why not make us strip to our
underwear and sort out who really needs to travel?) Well, unfortunately, your
average moron gets to the front of the queue and then stands there like some
brainless statue and starts asking what he/she has to do. Give me strength. If
you're that stupid, don't bother to come back from your holiday, as the country
won't miss you.
• You are boarding the plane and the people in front of you are shattered that the seats
start with 1 at the front and the fact that they have seat 47E and F probably means they
are towards the back. The people in front of them are still trying to understand the
concept that the seats are numbered A,B,C etc. going across the plane. Have these
people never travelled before? They must have, because they do this on the flight home
too! Again, don't bother to come back.
• After your scintillating business meeting and two nights in a hotel room with only local
language channels and CNN for company, you arrive back at your home airport. Being
clever, you have had your eyes scanned so that you can go through the special IRIS
recognition channel to skip the passport queue. Oh dear, the man in front of you takes
14 goes to get the machine to work. Even if you do it right, it is such a slow laborious
process that you wonder why you bothered in the first place.
• You've forgotten where you parked the car. It's raining.
I hope some UK travel company reads this and realises that they could make a killing by
providing an escort service for arrival and departure.
Enjoy your holidays.
Harry Potter and the secret of BSM

A little something for you to read on holiday.
As the sun shone over the back gardens of Privet Drive, you would have thought that all was
well with the world. Mr Dursley’s ample stomach was stretched out in a deck chair and was
rising and falling slowly with his gentle snoring. It had been a very good lunch.
However, upstairs in the smallest bedroom of the house, matters were not nearly as sunny.
Harry Potter was fretting over the choice of subjects he should take next year at Hogwarts.
Certain subjects could not be avoided, as much as he would have liked to. Professor Snape’s
Potions class had to be taken by all students, but it looked a lot more interesting this year.
Professor Snape had laid out his agenda in the joining instructions.
“This year you will learn how to move from a simple Potions mixer, to a fully fledged
Solutions expert. Students who pass their end-of-year exams will receive the title of
Solutions Architect.”
So that one was a definite. The problem was that no-one knew who the new Defence Against
the Dark Arts teacher was going to be. Harry had no intention of missing the classes, as he was
more likely than anyone he knew to need the skills they taught, but he wanted to equip himself
for any nasty surprises. “If only Ron and Hermione were here,” he thought. Suddenly his brain
went into overdrive and he remembered the new system that Hermione had taught him to use –
WWW – the World Wizard Web. Harry hauled his cauldron over to the fireplace, threw in a
pinch of floo powder and shouted “Hermione!” The cauldron seethed and bubbled and then
asked him in a deep voice:
“Name?”
“Harry Potter”
“Password?”
“Voldermort”
Harry knew his password was safe as no-one else would dare to speak the name of the evil
Lord Voldermort aloud. He had also used Tom Riddle and Draco Malfoy – basically anyone he
didn’t like. There was a tremendous flash and a bang and Hermione’s face appeared in the
chimney.
“Hello Harry, I thought you had forgotten how to make your portal work?”
“Sorry, Hermione, I have been so busy working out what subjects I should do next year, I
forgot the access procedure”
“Well, it’s very lucky for you that you can set your own password and it's a single system sign-
on, or we would never get hold of you! What subjects are you taking?”
Suddenly there was another tremendous flash and bang as Ron’s face appeared next to
Hermione’s.
“Hello you two. I saw you were in an online wiz-chat, so I thought I would join in.”
“We were just discussing the subjects for next year. We all have to try and become Solutions
Architects,” Hermione and Ron both nodded agreement, “but I’m worried about Defence
Against the Dark Arts.” At that moment Ron’s face went all fuzzy and his voice went up and
down like a yoyo. About 30 seconds later it came back into focus and they could hear him
again.
“Ron, what was that, you went all funny?”
“Sorry, it’s this rubbish WOS (Wizard Operating System) on this cauldron – I know you have
upgraded to WIZOWS (Wizard and Owl System) Harry, and Hermione is playing around with
WSL (Wizard Scripting Language) on her WIZIX (Wizard Intermediates and Experts)
cauldron, but I’m still on this old thing”.
“Don’t panic Ron,” said Hermione, “all this new stuff is not as good as people make it out to
be – I know some people who swear that the old WIZ/390 is still the best and most reliable.”
The three friends dropped into a long discussion on when and where they would meet next
week. They also swapped some good WRLs (Wizard Resource Locators) they had found on
the WWW, including an article from the famous wizard William Gates about his plans for
digitising Quidditch matches so that everybody could watch it from their cauldron portal.
“Back to Dark Arts,” said Harry, “I have been looking at some of the equipment we can buy
next week in Diagon Alley. Cauldrons Anonymous have some neat looking stuff.”
“Forget it,” said Ron, “I tried looking up some of their stuff on their wiziweb site and
everything came up as Not Available Yet, try again next year.”
“Fair enough, and I am not at all keen on those Tivolin people as you know.” Ron and
Hermione nodded their heads vigorously, and looked distinctly sick. In their last year at
Hogwarts, Harry had come upon the secret diary of Tom Riddle and in there he had unlocked
the secret of Tivolin. Just as Tom Marvolo Riddle was an anagram of “I am Lord
Voldermort”, so he also discovered that Tivolin was an acronym for “This is Voldermort’s
Inheritance.” Just thinking about it sent a shiver down their spines.
“There’s always Howler Prevention,” said Ron.
“They confuse me as they seem to have three versions of everything, and I’m not convinced
they really are focussed on what I need to be a fully fledged wizard,” said Hermione.
“So I assume you two have come to the same conclusion as I have and think that the Best
Muggle Company is the one to look at next week.” Ron’s father had told them that the
company existed in both the Muggle and the Wizard world. In the Muggle world, the company
pretended that the letters stood for the names of the 3 founders of the company, but wizards
knew the truth behind the name and always had a good laugh at the Muggles.
“I am really interested in this new offering they have,” said Harry. “It’s called BSM, which
means Best Spell Management. It is a simple extension to your existing wand, which reacts to
the danger you are in and prioritises which spell to use to save yourself. It sounds really neat,
because I am fed up with losing at the duelling club when I deal with the wrong threat first.”
“And, it knows what spells you can do already by reading your wand. It even works with this
stupid old broken wand of mine – I may not need to get a new one next week.”
“Well Harry, sounds like that's the one that will keep you safe at Hogwarts,” said Hermione
with a smile on her face.
Fame at last?
I've been quiet for a while because I assumed you were on holiday dear reader. However, now
I feel it is time you got back to work, so some thoughts to get you gently back into the right
frame of mind.
• Congratulations to the climate protesters at Heathrow Airport - it's working. I've just
been outside and it is grey, cold, miserable and wet. Now, please go home and let me
drive my car round the garden 47 times so I get some sunshine!
• Just got this email:
Fellow golf enthusiast!
Your site (http://talk.bmc.com/podcasts/podcast-armstrong) has been added to our
ever growing list of golf resources, and can be found on this page: http://www.st-
andrews-golf.org.uk//golf-information/resources/golf-software.cfm
Recognition at last.
• And this email as well:
"People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia
Wikipedia, on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according
to a new tracing program."
Well, the Wikipedia entry for The Open at Carnoustie got the yardage of the course
totally wrong - what more can I say?
It does, of course, raise several very serious issues. What is correct out there / who is editing
the entries / who controls the content / does self-regulation work etc. etc.
Federated CMDB spec

If, like me, you spend the occasional sleepless night wondering how on earth a series of
CMDBs might speak to one another, then you probably want to have a look at this. My
colleague Van Wiles, who is heavily involved in making it all happen, talks about it on his
blog.
Whippersnappers
I found myself using a word the other day that I hadn't used for a long time - whippersnapper.
A splendid old English word:
"Whippersnapper" is a somewhat archaic term, rarely heard today outside of
movies, and then usually from the mouth of a character portrayed as
chronologically-challenged and hopelessly old-fashioned to boot. A
"whippersnapper" is an impertinent young person, usually a young man, whose
lack of proper respect for the older generation is matched only by his laziness and
lack of motivation to better himself.
The definition rather reminded me of the modern young computer "experts" and their
disrespect for that boring, old, non-strategic, does most of the work in half the time, never
goes wrong, incredibly secure box that no-one talks about, but still runs lots of the important
stuff and grows every year! But I'm just chronologically challenged and old-fashioned!
Paperless office?
I always like to keep on the cutting edge of yoof and fashion, so a colleague just sent me a link
to a certain new advertising campaign. So, quick as a flash, I looked up who Gwen Stefani is -
I had vaguely heard of her, but she's never invited me out for a drink, so is not high on my list
of intended dinner guests. According to Wikipedia she is a "fashion trendsetter", which I
interpret as meaning that she would cause a few heads to turn in my local pub.
So what, I hear you cry, leave the girl alone, and you're right this entry is not about her, but
about why you would spend a ton of money on an advertising campaign that encourages
people to waste paper (and hence give the planet another kicking)? There is a great quote in
the article - "We are focusing on what the end result is rather than hardware products". I beg to
differ. Focusing on the end result is what CxOs do and I don't see them queueing up for a
Gwen Stefani paper doll - somehow I think they would rather hear about reducing their carbon
footprint. (Gwen probably thinks that a new style at Jimmy Choo - stop it Armstrong!).
The whole debate about green data centres is getting bigger and bigger over here, and people
are beginning to cotton on to the idea that loads of underutilised electricity-guzzling servers is
not a great idea. However, you can't just bung workloads together any old way, and hope that
it's all going to work. No, unfortunately, you need to know what runs where, how it all hangs
together, how important the different workloads are, what trends they have, when you can
make changes to them, what their future capacity requirements are etc.
People will tell you that virtualisation will save the world, and it will definitely help, but it has
certain prereqs.
• A knowledge of how it all hangs together from a business point of view. Just because
you can do something technically does not necessarily mean it makes business sense.
• A rigid Change and Configuration Management process - if you can't control a
relatively static environment, then how are you going to manage a dynamic one?
• A predictive capability - bring back capacity management, you can't afford to simply
buy a bunch of new servers any more.
Perhaps it's me, but I think that's more important than making a paper doll.
Do you Skype?
Or perhaps you couldn't when you wanted to? 'Twould appear that the combination of high
traffic and Microsoft patches is being blamed. Pass. What intrigued me was Patch Tuesday:
Microsoft regularly issues patches that may cause Windows computers to
reboot, .... Microsoft releases software updates on the second Tuesday of each
month, a day known to systems administrators as "patch Tuesday."
Remind me to play golf on Tuesdays. By the way, is it just me, or do you think Phil Mickelson
looks (and walks) as if he should be in the cast of the Waltons?
Cracked iPhone
I was intrigued to read that someone had to crack the iPhone to work with any SIM card on any
network. "Hey, let's announce a phone that doesn't work for most people who want it."
No doubt I have misunderstood something or other, and it all appears to be an American issue,
so do I care? Well, only inasmuch as this appears to be yet another device that combines
several things together that I don't necessarily want combined together with the result that it is
bound to go wrong, soaks up batteries in a few hours, and is insecure.
As you can probably gather I am not the world's greatest fan of convergence for convergence's
sake. Sensible combinations, which reduce the number of rechargers I lug round the world -
great. Toys - I'm too old to get excited.
Now if someone could do something sensible with the phone like let me check into a hotel, pay
the bill, fill the car etc. without me having to pay extra - that would be sweet. I know there are
several initiatives running on this round the world. No doubt, however, they will all be
different and incompatible.
Yes, I am having a cynical day today. Please prove me wrong!!
Add Comment
a toy you would like. - Posted by Dawn Naidoo at 2007-09-06 02:50

try this
http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20060912/splash-power-the-wireless-gadget-charger/
much too sensible - Posted by peter armstrong at 2007-09-10 02:52

Dawn, that is way too sensible and useful and user-friendly to ever catch on (that's english
irony!).
neat, like it, in fact I would like one of these in every hotel room, airport lounge, office etc.
thanks
peter
Insecure iPhone? - Posted by Craig S. Mullins at 2007-10-10 14:19

When I read your comment that the iPhone is insecure I just couldn't get the image of an
iPhone asking "Does this battery make me look fat?" out of my head... I head to click on the
link that you so kindly provided to realize that you were talking about network security...
insecure? - Posted by peter at 2007-10-10 14:55

Sweet - I won't be able to look at an iphone the same way ever again!!!
Do you speak English?

Been in a bit of an inspirational wasteland recently as far as blogging is concerned. Then I sat
in a metal tube and hurtled across the sky and had several ideas. As marketing would put it
"Use this incredible opportunity to get away from the daily grind and let your creative juices
flow", or as I would put it "Finished my book, read the paper, had to do something to stop me
thinking about the fact that I was hideously uncomfortable and bored to tears."
From a cartoon in the paper:
"Sorry, do you speak English?"
"I am speaking English - I said it comes with a 2.0 GHz, Intel Cored duo 8x
double layer super drive and ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128 MB memory"
Amazing how often you hear IT people speak to business like that!
Special airport edition

For those of you who haven't flown through a UK airport recently, a couple of facts.
1. Due to the fact that the world unfortunately contains some nutters, who want to kill
other people, you are restricted to one piece of hand-luggage, no liquids etc. This often
throws people on connecting flights as they get on board in e.g. USA with two bags and
suddenly find they are only allowed one on the next flight. Oh, for standardisation
across the world - dream on.
2. British airports sell "special airport editions" of new books. Now you would think in
light of the above, that these would be small, light versions that could easily be put in
your hand luggage. Oh no, much too sensible. They are bigger and heavier. In fact, they
could probably be used as a weapon to smack someone over the head. Perhaps I'm
meant to buy one for self-defence?
We all hate England?

I'm on a communications (or lack of it, or misinterpretation of it) jaunt at present:
Reading the paper on the plane, John O'Neill, the CE of the Australian Rugby Union, was
quoted as saying, "we all hate England." How kind. I remember Paul Casey being quoted just
before the Ryder Cup as saying, "we all hate the Americans", and he was then cast out to the
wilderness for a year, despite the fact that his girlfriend (wife?) is American and that wasn't
what he said/meant anyway. In both cases I believe they meant to say, "we all hate losing
to ...", which does rather change the whole thing from an insult to an accurate and wholly
understandable point of view.
Some quotes
Network performance at home is reminiscent of wading through treacle with concrete boots
on, so I'll combine my last few thoughts in this entry.
Some quotes from the BA inflight magazine:
"You should have antennae twitching like the ears of a deer, always looking for
what the customer wants"
"You can have the best packaging in the world, but people need to try the product"
"Never, ever go forward with an idea without trying it on the customer first"
Is convergence a good idea? Will we end up with useful devices or a set of features we don't
want and batteries that only last a few hours?
And last, but by no means least, a wonderful story from Poland about security. A woman goes
into the bank to get some money out and hands over her signed slip. The cashier says, "sorry,
that's not your signature." "How do you know?" "I have the right one here on my screen", and
at that point the cashier swivels the screen round and shows the woman what the signature
should look like!! Love it.
RUG and UW
Quick bit of advertising.
• This year's annual Remedy UK User Group is on 10th October at One Great George
Street, London, SW1P 3AA. That one is organised by the customers and BMC are
invited to participate. Items include ITIL V3, ITSM 7 migration, Service Management
futures etc.
• BMC's Userworld is in Vancouver at the end of this month / beginning of November,
where amongst other things I will be chatting to Dr Thomas Mendel of Forrester on
stage about where the world of business and IT are going. Hope to see you there.
A message to my Australian reader(s?)

In reference to my recent blog entry - "yah boo sucks"!
For those of you, who mistakenly do not follow Rugby (the proper game invented by us, where
the ball is not allowed to be thrown forwards), we beat the Australians at the weekend, much to
everyone's surprise. Now, we just need Lewis Hamilton to hold it all together in Brazil and life
will be sweet.
Service Automation and Emprisa

Do you get fed up with doing the same old thing time after time?
Do you find that so-called modern computer systems are actually a pain in the neck and take
hours to configure?
Do you still have too many people worrying about widgets when they should be worrying
about service?
Does it take 6 of you to get something finished end-to-end?
Are you bored with the word compliance?
Do you wish end-users could just get on with it and stop pestering you with their requests?
Do you want to know the meaning of life?
OK, maybe not the last one, but you may have spotted that we announced the next stage of our
BSM strategy yesterday - BMC Service Automation and the associated acquisition of Emprisa
Networks.
Pilot talk
I may have mentioned some of this before, but flying home from Russia reminded me.
• "Hello, this is your pilot" - glad to hear we've got one, would be worried if we hadn't.
• "We are cruising at 36000 feet" - I don't care as long as it's higher than anything
between Moscow and London and nothing else is cruising at the same height nearby.
• "The temperature outside is -38 degrees" - who cares, I'm not going out there.
• "The weather in London is ....." - ah something useful at last
• "And the local time is ...." - also good
• "Thank you for ....." - shut up and let me watch the movie.
Then as you are about to land and are frantically trying to watch the last 5 minutes of the
movie that has been running for 3 hours, every bloody member of the crew has to have their 30
seconds of fame on the microphone:
• "Ladies and gentlemen, as you have just heard from the captain, we are about to land" -
I know, moron, tell me something new.
• "Please use the lavatories now" - what you really are saying is that there is a two-mile
hike the other end followed by an hour's wait in the immigration queue. Immigration -
the most inefficient process in the world, that could be so quick and simple if anyone
(apart from the passengers) cared.
• "Please return your seat to the upright position, fasten your safety belt and turn off all
electrical devices" - fair enough.
• "Please do not turn on your phone yet, dufus" - I heard recently that some airlines want
to allow mobile phones during the flight - what a hideous thought. I will be surrounded
by the brain dead shouting down their mobiles about meaningless dross - my vision of
hell.
So what is the point of all this? Well, simple really - how about telling people what they really
need to know rather than presenting them with a load of meaningless metrics?
Yet another podcast!

Here I am on the sun-baked slopes of Vancouver - actually I've just been outside and it's
bloody cold. Anyway, did a podcast yesterday about the joys of BSM and the wonders of BMC
Userworld. Enjoy!
Userworld 1
They asked me to do some "live" blogging from BMC Userworld here in Vancouver, so here
goes.
Yesterday was our Executive Summit, which is always enjoyable for me as I get to sit back
and listen to customers talk about our stuff rather than having to stand up and talk about it
myself. As I have said in this blog before, to see the BMC vision turn into reality and then have
people stand up and tell you how they have saved millions of dollars using it makes it all rather
worthwhile. I did hit the stage for a short time, of course, with fellow members of the Thought
Leadership Council, and I got to pick their brains on a range of subjects round BSM today and
tomorrow.
Today I was on stage with Dr Thomas Mendel of Forrester, having a fireside chat about
business and IT, BSM, ITIL V3, the future of the big 4 vendors etc. I know they were filming
the sessions - if I find a link I will publish it later.
Oh yes, and I have also found 4 geocaches nearby so far!
Userworld 2
Interesting just listening to what people are talking about round you. I have heard so many
conversations this year about how "many millions of CIs we have in our CMDB" that I think
there will soon be a who has the biggest CMDB prize?
Also just met two customers at lunch, who wandered up and said "I think we have something
in common" - no, not members of the drink the European wine lake dry club, but actually
another couple of geocachers. Think I'll set up a cache meeting and a couple of caches at next
year's Userworld, which is in Miami in October from memory.
Userworld 3
Nearly time to go home, after a splendid week's education and entertainment. We all went to a
venue last night to listen to "American English". I know that sounds like an oxymoron to some
of my readers, but they were actually an extremely good Beatles tribute band. My only
confusion was that their final song was "Live and Let Die", which was by Wings, not by the
Beatles? But who cares, they were very good.
Then this morning a highly entertaining speaker who showed us the wrong way to use
Powerpoint - excellent and so true - and discussed the meaning of many of the terms and
acronyms we use every day. My favourite was CMDB - Britney Spears trying to recite the
alphabet. Classic.
To those in Europe who couldn't make it over here, the next European Userworld is May 19th
to 22nd in Lisbon. Hope to see you there.
Some questions
1. My laptop is performing like a dog, so I have removed large quantities of junk and
strange temporary files that Windows seems incapable of tidying up itself (does
Windows actually understand the concept of GETMAIN and FREEMAIN?), and then
run defrag. Defrag comes back and says it can do no more, so you run it again and it
gets better. Why doesn't it do it the first time? "Sorry, I know I can actually help you,
but I can't be bothered unless you kick me again." Sounds like some customer un-help
desks I know.
2. Tried out some of the TV channels on the flight home. Wanted some amusement so
tried the comedy stuff. Everybody Loves Raymond - no they don't. Everybody Hates
Chris - true. Till Death - hopefully very soon. What happened to decent comedy?
Please don't tell me I should watch The Office - any intelligent person would have shot
the boss after 20 seconds - or Little Britain - even worse. Must be getting old.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
More questions
Been spending too much time in aeroplanes, which gives me time to think!
• Who decides what is correct/incorrect nowadays? Is there a handy website listing words
I can't use, because I get very confused? What if someone says the performance of IT
stinks? What if they say the service desk is a pile of ****? Will they get forced to leave
the company? Hopefully not! I never actively set out to offend people (some may be
surprised by that!), but I do believe we should be able to say what we think.
• I came up with an idea for a TV programme a while back. The name was Eviction.
Basically each week the country would vote for the top 10 people who should be
chucked out (virtually chucked out, not really chucked out unfortunately). My list
started with Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, anyone who had ever been on a reality TV
programme and Posh Spice (unless she promised never to sing again). Anyone else
want to join in with their list? By the way the idea is documented and registered with
my lawyers so you can't steal it.
• The business lounge at the airport used to be a quiet haven. Now it is a sea of tedious
people shouting down their mobile phones. It may be that we pick up certain
intonations more rapidly than others, but there certainly are some accents that grate and
seem to stand out. In the Far East people tend to put their hand over the phone and their
mouth and talk quietly - wish people over here had as much respect for others round
them. Oh yes, and the loudest people have the most annoying ring-tones too, and take
ages to answer the bloody thing.
• Anyone parked at Pink Elephant at Heathrow? Apart from being a rip-off, when you
come to pay at the exit, the machine to take your ticket and credit card is excellent.
However, the person who designed it thought that receipt might get wet / blown away
so he/she makes it come out in a little enclosed plastic hood, which means you can't get
at it!! Do these people never try their designs out?
• And finally some good news/bad news. As I landed in Poland on Monday I got a phone
call from Goldfish (one of my credit cards). Mr Armstrong did you make the following
purchases? Yes to some, no to others. Appears I am the victim somehow of identity
theft. Well done Goldfish for catching on straight away, getting hold of me immediately
and blocking the card. That is good service. Now if they could just give me the address
of the ****** who stole my number so I can go round there with a large baseball bat
for a chat?
X and my laptop
No connection between the two parts of the title - just saves writing two blogs!
As reported a couple of entries ago, my laptop was performing like a dog. This is just a quick
public thanks to the splendid IS people we have, who have got the whole thing running at a
much faster rate of knots - brilliant.
Now - here's a hypothetical situation - every time you pick up the paper you are greeted with a
picture of X falling out of a nightclub having spent some ridiculous amount on alcohol
(hopefully not my tax money). You are told that X is young, does not have a lot of brain cells,
comes from a dysfunctional family, has no parental control, has pots of money and is bored
rigid; but it's not exactly the way to gain respect is it? So your reaction, I am guessing, is to tell
X to get off his ****, and do something with his life that his mother/country would be proud
of.
Right, what's that got to with Service Management? Well, I think those in positions of
responsibility in commerce or public life or whatever should have SLAs, and to me X (and
many others) are frequently if not permanently missing their targets. To me an SLA is not
about whether a lump of boring hardware is working - it is about delivering a worthwhile
service to those that have signed up (and probably paid) for it, at an appropriate cost.
Identity Theft
Regular readers will know that I was recently the victim of identity theft. I was in South Africa
last week and discovered that their banking systems are light-years ahead of ours in the UK.
One of the really neat things they offer is an SMS or email to you every time your credit card
gets used. Neat, simple, elegant.
• Has any other country got anything like this?
• Why can't we have this in the UK please?
They also have real-time banking, as opposed to the 3-5 days it takes to move money between
banks here in the UK. In today's world of computers and the Internet, it really is crazy that it
takes days to clear a transaction between banks.
Also here in the UK I cannot transfer money to a foreign account without paying extortionate
fees and filling out boring forms - should be a simple online option.
• How long do inter-bank transactions take where you live?
• Can you easily transfer to a foreign account in a different currency?
Time to rise up and kick the banks I think.
Give and take

I've been rabbiting on again (rabbit = cockney rhyming slang - short for rabbit and pork,
rhymes with talk, so rabbiting means talking a lot). This time about give and take between the
trendy young things who think WINDOWS is an operating systems and us old folk, who think
WINDOWS operating system is an oxymoron.
Anyway, the serious point is about what we can learn from each other, how we can exploit 30
years of experience in running production systems through best practices like ITIL, what we
can do about us all getting older, how we can combine forces to give better service etc.
Link is here. Hope you enjoy it. And there's a white-paper I wrote to go with it.
Barbados
Just had a wondrous week in Barbados recharging the batteries. What a lovely place - beautiful
beaches, friendly people, a sensible pace of life. No wonder Tiger got married there.
As we sat in one of the restaurants overlooking the beach and the gentle waves, it reminded me
that it really is the whole experience that matters. The location, the person you're with, the
food, the wine, the service etc.
So here's my question today - if you had two restaurants, one with exquisite food but rubbish
service, and one that where the food wasn't quite as good, but the service was magic, which
one would you go for? Or do I have to tell you the price as well?
If you can't see a connection between that and BSM, then you probably need a holiday!
Pay by phone
There was a news item on the TV last night - at long last they are trialling the concept of
paying for stuff here in the UK using your mobile phone. As far as I can see the phone will act
as a virtual cash card that you can swipe over readers and can also be used in place of a credit
card. Obviously security is a major concern, but there are ways of fixing that. Now, where did I
read about an idea like that years ago?
Phrases you don't want to hear

There are certain phrases, which immediately make me reach for the vomit receptacle:
1. Party political broadcast (for non-UK people, a series of cleverly presented lies,
designed to make you vote for them - hence most of us just turn them off or make a cup
of tea)
2. Spice Girls Reunion - couldn't sing first time round, spare me
3. Any Leonard Cohen track - music to top yourself by
4. Team Building Exercise - some load of psychobabble, normally associated with some
activity that I would normally pay not to do
Number 4 may seem a bit harsh and I am sure there is the occasional team-building thing,
which people actually enjoy - see below. I am talking about the ones, where you are meant to
hang off a cliff-face relying on your colleagues or similar. Blindingly bloody obvious that you
don't do it alone, and I don't really need a team of psychologists to tell me that "working
together is the solution" – DUUUUH.
Anyway, I have actually spent my evenings in the last couple of weeks practising for my first
live appearance with a band and that is what I see as a proper team-building experience.
Tremendous fun; way better as a group than individually, and every now and then we even get
to all play the same tune at the same time.
What's all that got to do with service management? Well if you are an end-user do you care
how many times we practised, how many times we changed the key and the tempo, how we
decided who takes the solo etc. or do you only care about the whole thing working together in
a production environment? Just as our audience will basically assume that we just wander on
stage and play (so would you if you heard us!), your average end-user has no idea how much
work goes into getting an IT system to work properly.
Oh yes - this Friday, contact me offline if you want to know where.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Add Comment
The gig - Posted by Ronald at 2008-01-07 11:46

Some people might say they would pay not to hear the performance. :-) But I won't be that rude
as I am sure your musical abilities far outstrip mine - first year in school I was kicked out of
music class for noise pollution.
BTW: The spice girls are a seven beer band.
the gig - Posted by peter at 2008-01-07 13:32

Ronald - how kind - ho ho!! Actually the gig went very well and I have been invited back -
amazing how well things go if the audience has more alcohol than the band!!
Only 7 beers?
Cheers
Peter
Spicegirls - Posted by Ronald X at 2008-01-08 13:55

7 beers <-> 6 sticks of dynamite, same effect?
BTW: What are the Spicegirls doing when they are standing shoulder to shoulder on stage?
Answer: Wind tunnel testing...
Part 4 – 2008
Another year older, but probably no wiser?

Sorry, can you try again?
Happy New Year one and all - I have been in BlackBerry land for a while, so couldn't do any
blogging, but here's a cracker to start the year. A colleague of mine passed on this wonderful
email - I have removed the company name to protect the guilty:
Dear Customer,
Thank you to all of you who participated in the xxx January Sale.
Over 100,000 people logged onto our site at the same time this morning. An
unprecedented number for which we could not prepare.
Due to the high volume of orders we have had to turn the sale off and will
advise you when and if we are in a position to relaunch the sale.
A large number of people were unable to complete their order since a
negative total came up for payment. All these orders are registered as
“incomplete” on our system – meaning that we do have details of the order
and the time it was placed.
We will be in touch with all customers who placed a completed or an
incompleted order during the course of the next few days and all stocks will
be allocated to customers – as advised on the site – on a first come, first
serve basis. Please note that we have received well order 1000 orders and
so it will take some time to process all of these.
Thank you for your understanding and thank you for visiting our website this
morning.
Kind Regards
A new year's sport

Well the New Year's sport has kicked off with the Australian Open tennis. For those of you,
who don't follow tennis let me explain.
The women's championship has lots of people called Gruntalot, Bashitova, Beltitova,
Smackitova and Thumpitova. The final will probably be won by someone ending in Ova, who
grunts a lot.
The men's final will probably be won by Federer.
Not sure where the golf is at - haven't watched any recently.
Reason for mentioning both sports is that they have changed dramatically in recent years due
to the introduction of new technology. I could rabbit on for hours here about whether the new
equipment is good or bad - personally think that the finesse has gone out of both games
especially in golf and it all seems to be down to power nowadays. For me it is interesting to
watch tennis players on an unfamiliar surface - grass - and golf players on a proper golf course
- links.
Anyway, what has all that got to do with computing. Well, I sit here wondering whether people
get too excited about new technology and simply replace things for the sake of it, rather than
seriously considering the merits of new vs old?
Add Comment
Sequels - Posted by Ronald at 2008-01-17 01:58

Updated versions of technology products are like movie sequels, always disappointing and
worse than the original.
Blog-tagging
It would appear that I have just been blog-tagged by a nice chap I used to work with called
Craig Mullins.
Basically, blog-tagging is a harmless chain letter (unlike those ones that promise you untold
wealth and health unless you stop them - load of tosh), which is slowly but surely spreading
round the blogosphere. The way it works, when you are tagged by another blogger, you have to
write a blog posting about yourself, with 5 things that others might not know. . . and then tag 5
other bloggers. Craig says 8, but the original one says 5!
So here goes:
• You know I play golf and music. I actually compose and arrange music, and have one
keyboard, 3 synthesizers and two music PCs within 6 feet of me as I write this. In a
room nearby are two guitars and a Midi Guitar Synth. I use Band-in-the-Box and
Cubase mainly.
• I have got back into photography again and am scanning every negative I own, moving
on to slides hopefully later this year. I had already digitised all my music, so time to do
the photos I thought! I use Photoshop with various plugins, Photovista Panorama for
guess what panoramas, and Photomatix Pro for HDR as my basic setup. I shoot
exclusivley in RAW. When Canon announce the EOS 50D I will upgrade my camera!
• I only work 3 days a week now. The travel, especially the long-haul flights was doing
my body no good; in fact the only happy person was the chiropractor!
• I normally avoid talking about sex, religion and politics on here, but can I just say I
can't think of a single politician I would willingly vote for, and I feel religion has lost
its way - can we bring back peace, love and harmony please? I can go on about both of
these at length!
• I am planning to write a novel based round some of my hobbies. The plot is mapped
out, and it will be a thriller with codes and puzzles along the way.
OK, now to tag some people I respect: James Governor, Ken Turbitt, Ynema Mangum, Tom
Bishop and Atwell Williams.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Add Comment
Thanks for the tag! - Posted by Ynema Mangum at 2008-01-17 11:17
I'll put it in my next post! I'd love to read your thriller when it's published.
Peace, love and harmony.
~Y
The Novel
Well I have started work on the novel, and it's an enlightening experience. I had done my
planning in advance - mapped out the plot, worked out who the major characters are, planned
some of the puzzles that would be used along the way etc. Then I started writing, and it is
amazing how you get half way down a page and then suddenly say to yourself, "hang on, you
can't do that, because you haven't explained how they would know that / haven't established
that character or whatever."
Fundamentally, it will come as no surprise to you, that I have discovered you have got to have
a rock-solid foundation in place, or the whole plot falls apart. Unfortunately for me, it is not a
fantasy novel and hence I can't suddenly pull magical apparatus out of the air to save my
hero/heroine - that would be a remake of Batman or Harry Potter!
Same thing, of course, with IT and systems management. You can't expect someone to appear
with a magic wand, when you are running around like a headless chicken trying to solve each
problem as it pops up. That's why we designed this whole BSM thing with the central Atrium
architecture, so that everything hangs together and makes sense. However, I think you also
have to be realistic and realise that your processes may not be 100% perfect first time round, so
you may have to go back and tinker with them, but we want to keep that tinkering to a
minimum. As my Dad used to say "time spent on recce is seldom wasted."
Atrium - the magic wand of BSM - not sure our marketing people will go for that?
Obesity
First, an apology. I am probably going to upset some people in this blog entry, but it's all in a
good cause!
As we all hopefully know, there is a worldwide problem with obesity. Most of us are probably
overweight; I know I overindulged over Christmas and New Year and am now having a few
weeks with no alcohol, no snacks, lots of fruit and veg. I also ride the exercise bike every day,
and regularly go for long walks because of my strange geocaching hobby.
In fact, there have been some very good programs on the TV in the UK in recent weeks
showing us just how much crap there is in processed food. The amounts of sugar, salt and fat
that sneak in under the radar screen are terrifying and the amount of junk food that some
people eat just staggers me. There have also been some programs looking at the basic excuses
that people come up with - I have the fat gene, my Thyroid doesn't work properly, I've tried
everything etc. In the vast majority of cases, these people simply eat too much / the wrong food
and don't exercise enough. It is also interesting to see that a lot of fat kids have fat parents -
what a surprise!
I am glad to see some people really trying to address the issue, for instance I saw on the News
yesterday that they want to teach children how to cook proper food - hooray. What I personally
would also like to see is the little ankle biters running round doing some sport. I don't know
what it is like in your country, but here in the UK organised sport at school seems
unfortunately to be dying out. You hear totally fatuous excuses like:
• "You can't have a child losing, it is bad for them." Total rubbish - they've got to learn
some day, so get on with it and teach them real life.
• "We don't have the time or the training." They had the time in my day, and how
difficult is it to run round a pitch blowing a whistle?
• "They might hurt themselves." The crux of the problem. The UK is now run by a bunch
of mindless morons, called Health and Safety - the other tedious bunch are called
Human Rights. These useless individuals probably started with some good intentions,
but have now reduced us all to a state, where we are terrified to allow children to do
anything that might harm them, and if they are hurt we are of course not allowed to
touch them, as we are then deemed to be paedophiles. Get real. I didn't sue my parents
when I fell out of a tree or fell off my bike or got knocked sideways on the rugby pitch
- it was my own stupid fault and I learnt how to do it right next time. If we bring up a
generation of mollycoddled children, who are bored out of their brains, don't be
surprised if you end up with a load of fat, socially inept kids who resort to alcohol and
drugs for entertainment and whose sole skill is the ability to play computer games or
name every "celebrity" in Big Brother.
In the world of computing stupid ideas and regulations fortunately tend to fall by the wayside. I
believe sensible regulations will survive, hence the rise of COBIT and ITIL as the de facto
standards round the world and the release of ISO 20000.
This also means that we cannot afford to continue with the obese data centres that we have
now. The amount of wasted power in the IT industry is frightening - caused IMHO by a naive
belief that technology can solve anything, laziness and the inadequacy of the so-called
operating systems that now prevail, which are singularly ill-equipped to run multiple
workloads. Hence the rise of virtualisation and VMWare etc., which to anyone who remembers
mainframes does not come as a big shock. Centralised computing, water/liquid cooling,
capacity planning, high utilisation, mixed workloads - any of that sound familiar?!?
Enjoy your lunch.

The novel - an update

Well the book is coming along. I have written over 50 pages now and it still hangs together. I
gave a draft to my wife, daughter and a couple of friends to read and no-one set fire to it or
suggested using it to line the bottom of the parrot cage, so that's a pretty good start!
I then asked some questions like:
• Would you read it, if I hadn't written it?
• Do you want to read more?
• Would you pay for it as a book?
• Would you recommend it to others?
We often tell people their service is lovely, or their system works really well, when we actually
think it's crap. Fortunately my family and friends know I would rather hear it's crap, as
opposed to some well-meant but useless praise. Also, I'm glad to say they liked it, but they also
pointed out some areas that were weak and some bits where I hadn't got the emotions of the
characters right - all good constructive criticism.
Let's have constructive criticism in life, and then the service will probably improve.
Catching Up
I have been so absorbed in my hobbies (and other boring stuff like work) recently, that I
haven't really concentrated on what's going on in the world, so time for a catch-up:
• The Americans had a sporting event at the weekend. Apparently it is the most watched
sporting event in the world. I, of course, didn't watch it as it was on very late and I don't
understand a game where they chuck the ball the wrong way!! Anyway, well done the
Giants. I've just read the BBC website for the result and it says Manning was named
MVP - Most Valued Player? - and quarterback Tom Brady was sacked five times -
strange, over here you get sacked once from a job? The point I am making, badly, is
that jargon that is meaningful to you may be totally incomprehensible to the person you
are talking to. That's why business has no idea what IT are talking about most of the
time.
• We, of course, over here are so incompetent that we can't even find an Englishman to
run the English football team. We had the Swede with the bad teeth, and now we have
an Italian chap, who seems very competent. The first time he was interviewed, he
apologised for his English and promised he would learn it in four weeks. However, as
some of our players probably only have a vocabulary of 10 words, that shouldn't be too
tricky! Can I suggest "Learn how to take a penalty, you overpaid prat" as one of the
first phrases to master?
• Today is super Tuesday in the US. In the UK it is pancake day. Think I prefer ours.
Anyway, the US has its next day in the run-up to the Presidential election, which I
believe is in November. You poor things, months and months of this stuff. Now don't
get me wrong, electing a President is mega important, but I get so bored with the build
up to all these things on TV that I want to get a Leonard Cohen (Richard Ashcroft for
younger readers) album out and slit my wrists. Let's have election campaigns round the
world with zero budget. Anyway, enough politics, the point is imagine an IT system
which went, "and the answer
is ............................................................................................. wait for
it , ............................................................................................., yes it's $42 including
post and packing! How long would you put up with that?
Add Comment
Ooops, sorry Pancake day is cancelled! - Posted by Ronald at 2008-02-05 13:19

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?
from=rss_News&set_id=1&click_id=79&art_id=nw20080205183029774C503459
Do you think that version Red Tape 2.0 will include a type of virtualisation?
Churn is everywhere!
About this time last year I was entertaining you all with my diatribes on the subject of churn.
Well, my colleagues in Asia Pacific have just run the latest survey, and unfortunately it tells
the same story - treat us badly and we go elsewhere. Pretty obvious really.
What they also sent me for review includes the findings from recent research by Nielsen
Global. What this research shows is that trust in marketing messages declines with age to the
point that it is negligible by the age of 40.
In my case, it is probably negative!
However in marked contrast, the research also shows that consumers trust each other and that
therefore personal recommendations (or word of mouth) are of vital importance.
In other words, a service failure may not just lose a customer, but can also significantly impact
the recommendability of your organisation. Service delivery processes MUST be capable of
exceeding customer expectations if they are to deliver a sustainable and growing business.
Again pretty bloody obvious - amazing how many people choose to ignore it though.
Heaven and hell

Don't ask me why, but I was wondering what would be my versions of heaven and hell (or
whatever your religious equivalents are). If you think these are flippant, then you are correct,
but there is, as always, a hint of sense in here as well!
Hell:
• Dinner with Tony and Cherie Blair - as Piers Morgan so sweetly put it recently, Tony
has been punished enough, he wakes up next to Cherie every morning.
• Being in, watching, anything to do with reality TV.
• Most PCs - see below.
• Poor service.
• Impolite people.
Heaven:
• A PC that has a sensible operating system - so that's goodbye to WINDOWS (and most
of the others).
• Broadband that goes at the speed they sold you.
• Sensibly priced music downloads.
• A better golf swing.
• The ability to remember that your wife told you to do this morning.
• Good health.
• Thank you. Please.
Feel free to add your own.
Add Comment
My wife told me... - Posted by Ronald at 2008-02-20 09:24

My wife had some things to add to your list but I can't seem to remember what they are...
Want to buy a PC?

Old but very valid.
COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?

COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a
computer.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.
ABBOTT: Your computer?
COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Windows?
COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?
COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?
ABBOTT: Wallpaper.
COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.
ABBOTT: Software for Windows?
COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track
expenses and run my business. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO:! Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?
ABBOTT: I just did.
COSTELLO: You just did what?
ABBOTT: Recommend something.
COSTELLO: You recommended something?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: For my office?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!
ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.
COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my
computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?
ABBOTT: Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: Word in Office.
COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?
ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue "W".
COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue "w" if you don't start with some straight answers.
What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?
ABBOT T: Money.
COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?
ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.
COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?
ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.
COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?
ABBOTT: One copy.
COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?
ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.
COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?
ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!
(A few days later)
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?
ABBOTT: Click on "START".............
Friday, February 22, 2008
Serendipity
Serendipity - making fortunate discoveries by accident.
Seems apt, as several things have come together recently. Firstly, apologies for lack of
blogging recently, but I have been running round in circles.
• I am helping put together the agenda for our Userworld in Lisbon. I missed last year's in
Prague, which annoyed me intensely, so am looking forwards to this one - even if it
does clash with my birthday! Hope to see you there. We are putting together an agenda
driven by customers, which is why we have included tracks on best practices and
industry focus, key areas like virtualisation and data centre automation as well as tracks
dealing with "the normal agenda items" you would expect.
• I am reading a fascinating book called Bad Lands, written by the founder of Lonely
Planet. He visits places like Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea as a tourist, and blows
away many of your misconceptions on parts of the world, about which most of us are
woefully ignorant.
• I was in the South of France last week - someone has to do it. I used to live down there
in a little village called Valbonne. Beautiful part of the world, and if you ever go there,
please venture away for the coast and explore the countryside. You will find it very
worthwhile, with some stunning landscapes like the Gorges du Verdun, Gourdon, St
Paul de Vence etc. Anyway, we were there for the first VMWorld in Europe - a
staggeringly big event with over 4000 people attending to discuss the wonders of
virtualisation. My take is that virtualisation is going to happen in a big way, for all sorts
of reasons
• Cost savings
• Green IT
• Unix and Windows are rubbish at running multiple workloads - hence servers running
at 10-15%
• Space
• Disaster Recovery
• etc. etc.
However, the move to mission-critical production doesn't seem to be happening yet because of
concerns over licensing, culture, and above all control. If you are going to work towards the
data centre of the future with a dynamic infrastructure responding to demand, then you had
better have a thorough understanding of how it all hangs together, rigid change and
configuration processes, a high degree of automation, a resurrection of correct capacity
management, and last but not least it should all be driven from a business point of view rather
than a love-in with the latest whizzy piece of technology.
In fact, a lot of people were talking to me about server consolidation in a centralised data
centre, with ultra-thin clients. Sounded very familiar. Then IBM announced the z10 with 4000
virtual Linux servers. Reminded me of the book I talked about up above and trying to remove
peoples' misconceptions. Now if the mainframe just ran virtual Windows servers?
TV+
I wanted to upgrade my broadband at home, so I checked the supplier's website and found they
had a new package, which combined 'phone, broadband, TV, the sports and movie channels I
have and a few other things. First question - why the hell didn't they contact me and tell me?
That would be proactive customer service promoting loyalty!
Anyway, managed to get someone on the end of the 'phone, who spoke English and I signed up
for the new combo as it gives me much faster broadband, one of these V+ boxes (Tivo in US I
think is what you call it - anyway a hard disk recorder thing) and a second set-top box for
upstairs for "free". Of course, there is no such thing as free, but let's just say "at no additional
charge".
The V+ box is magic. I thought I would hardly use it as we haven't recorded anything on the
old VCR in years, as it is such a pain. Amazing what a simple user interface will do to change
your mind. Recording is a doddle - even does it for you automatically on the one you are
watching so you can go back and check out bits you didn't hear properly or whatever. Neat.
Gosh a piece of technology designed with the end-user in mind - can it really be true?
Well, there is of course one strange thing about it. Every time we want to watch one of the
movie channels, which we have already paid for, it asks for our PIN number. WHY? I called
them and asked. It is for your security they said. Balderdash, it's for my annoyance I replied,
but as the person on the phone this time did not understand irony or English, that was rather
wasted on them.
Which leads me to the programme I recorded last week - Phone Rage - all about call centres
and how / how not to run them. All too predictable I am afraid, but should be compulsory
viewing for anyone working in a company that has a service desk.
Guess what, if your service is rubbish, the customer hates you and goes elsewhere - amazing!
UserWorld
Well that was a strange weekend. On Sunday we had quite a lot of snow, which ruined any
chance of golf. On Monday it had all gone and I had 10 pars, plus 6 bogeys and 2 lash-ups,
nobody's perfect! The swing is coming back slowly, at last.
Rest of my time is taken up at present by running round trying to get all the sessions in place
for UserWorld. Please have a look at what we have got in store for you. You will find the
agenda here and the session catalog here , which you can search via focus area, track, ITIL
discipline etc. If there is something else you want to search on, let me know - I could put a
whole string of product names in there, but frankly that's a bit boring!
We are trying to make the whole event very customer focused, and have a large number of
customer presentations lined up so that you can learn about the practical application of our
solutions as well as catching up on the latest information. Again, if you think something is
missing, let me know.
Hope to see you there!
Nomophobia
I've read a couple of things in the papers this week, which disturb me somewhat. Ignoring the
fact that 98% of what you read in the papers is probably untrue and/or inaccurate, let's go for
that little 2% kernel.
• Apparently they are getting very close now to allowing the use of mobile phones (what
you Americans call cell phones, although they probably wouldn't work in jail) on
aeroplanes. Now that is my vision of hell - stuck for ten hours next to some tedious git ,
who spends the whole time shouting down his phone. In the Far East I have noticed that
they put their hand over the phone and try not to disturb you. How kind. Over here,
unfortunately it seems to be a desperate bid to annoy as many people as possible with
inane useless conversations, that are meant to show me how important you are. Nope,
wrong. Just shows how stupid and selfish you are.
• There is also apparently a new disease called Nomophobia, which means you can't
stand to be without your mobile phone. 13 million Britons fear being out of mobile
phone reach. Hey, just lean out the window - you'll hear the other bloke shouting
anyway! One in ten say they need to be contactable at all times because of their jobs.
This is true of a few truly important people. The rest - get real.
Which all raises the question in my mind about what is actually important and what isn't. Sit
back and think about your life and decide. In my case, family and health come way ahead of
anything else (except perhaps my golf swing?) Now do the same thing for your business
services. Might change the way people view you if you get your priorities right.
Call centre classics

Apologies if you have heard some of these before, but they are classic. I will do one or two a
day to make you laugh.
Customer: "I've been ringing 0700 2300 for two days and can't get through to enquiries, can
you help?"
Operator: "Where did you get that number from, sir?"
Customer: "It was on the door to the Travel Centre."
Operator: "Sir, they are our opening hours."
AND:
Caller: "Can you give me the telephone number for Jack?"
Operator: "I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand who you are talking about."
Caller: "On page 1, section 5, of the user guide it clearly states that I need to unplug the
faxmachine from the AC wall socket and telephone Jack before cleaning. Now, can you give
me the number for Jack?"
Operator: "I think you mean the telephone point on the wall."
Call centre classics part 2

As promised, some more crackers:
Caller: "Does your European Breakdown Policy cover me when I am travelling in Australia?"
Operator: “Doesn't the product give you a clue?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Caller (enquiring about legal requirements while travelling in France )"If I register my car in
France , do I have to change the steering wheel to the other side of the car?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Directory Enquiries
Caller: "I'd like the number of the Argoed Fish Bar in Cardiff please."
Operator: "I'm sorry, there's no listing. Is the spelling correct?"
Caller: "Well, it used to be called the Bargoed Fish Bar but the 'B' fell off."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Then there was the caller who asked for a knitwear company in Woven.
Operator: "Woven? Are you sure?"
Caller: "Yes. That's what it says on the label; Woven in Scotland."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Magic
Call Centre Classics - the finale

The last few - enjoy
----------------------------------------------------------------------
On another occasion, a man making heavy breathing sounds from a phone box told a worried
operator:"I haven't got a pen, so I'm steaming up the window to write the number on."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tech Support: "I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop."
Customer: "OK."
Tech Support: "Did you get a pop-up menu?"
Customer: "No."
Tech Support: "OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?"
Customer: "No."
Tech Support: "OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?"
Customer: "Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tech Support: "OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the 'OK'
button displayed?"
Customer: "Wow. How can you see my screen from there?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Caller: "I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised that I need it. If I turn
my system clock back two weeks will I have my file back again?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Add Comment
Comment - Posted by Rob van der Burg at 2008-06-11 07:08

Caller: "I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised that I need it. If I turn my
system clock back two weeks will I have my file back again?"
you know, I have seen this one passing my RSS reader now for some time and the more I see it
the more I think that this is the way it should work!!!
:-)
Rob.
A fun LITIL game

Apologies for the hideous pun in the title - here is a fun little ITIL game to show how good you
are at ITIL processes. Turn the sound on and give it a whirl. I throttled the children on screen 4
- only joking, I am sure they are sweet little ankle-biters!!
I've finished the book!

Yeehah, yippee and all that sort of stuff! I have finished writing my first novel. Now comes
that part of the project we all know, where you try to persuade other people that they should
invest in it, so I am contacting publishers and agents to see if I have any luck.
Anyone know an agent?
The book as I have said before is based round geocaching, a hobby to which I introduced some
of our Bulgarian partners last week. I don't think they quite believed that a grown man walked
round the streets looking for little plastic boxes, and then when I found one there was a fight to
see who could find the next one!
Reminds me of that first ITIL project!
Add Comment
Agent - Posted by Phil Griston at 2008-04-22 17:38

Hi Peter - congrats on finishing the book - that's the easy bit over :-)
If you're up for an agent based in the US you could look at http://www.zackcompany.com/
Andy is my wife's cousin so I have an family interest but his site does have a lot of great
advice for the budding author and his blog is an interesting insight into the literary world.
He also has quite a good sense of humo(u)r for a Yank so your style may appeal to him!
Another podcast?
Some of you may remember a thing called the BMC Churn Index, which we ran in Europe a
while ago. It was a study to see why customers "churned", i.e. why did they change their
suppliers for banking, phone, utilities etc. The index demonstrated very clearly that whilst
financial incentives may be attractive in the short term, they were definitely not the correct
way to build a long-term viable business model with customer retention.
We have now run the Index in the Asia Pacific region, and in this podcast you will hear me
discussing the results with Professor Adrian Payne from the Australian School of Business at
the University of New South Wales in Sydney. You can find the podcast here. Hope you enjoy
it.
Terminal 5
I did my first flight from the new Terminal 5 last week. For those of you. who have spent the
last few weeks in Outer Mongolia, this is the new terminal at Heathrow, which cost enormous
amounts of money and opened with a series of glitches, delayed flights and lost luggage.
Being an experienced traveller, I assume that planes will be delayed, luggage will go missing
etc. and treat it as a bonus when things actually go right! However, T5 has been a bit beyond
that so I took hand luggage only on this trip. The Terminal itself is frankly a terminal, or to put
it accurately a shopping mall with planes attached. The surprise was that it was actually two
buildings joined by a little transit train, which means it takes ages to get to your gate - be
warned. Being positive, security was amazingly fast and I was through in two minutes, which
must be a record and the lounge was very comfortable.
The classic cock-up came on the return journey. As an aside, I detest compact digital cameras
with just a screen on the back and no viewfinder. I cannot see any joy in trying to compose a
picture by staring at a screen, which you can't see in daylight - seems a fundamental design
flaw to me. Well, some brilliant spark has done exactly the same on the payment machines for
the car park - you insert your ticket and are then presented with a screen, which appears to
have black text on a dark grey background - DUUUUUH! In fact, every time a car drives out,
someone comes out to help! Now there's a brilliant use of technology.
UserWorld Update
Not long now till the fun of UserWorld in Lisbon.
Again, for those of you, who have spent the last few months on the Northern slopes of Mount
Everest, we run a big event for our users twice a year - once in the land we colonised across the
pond many moons ago (and then you chucked us out, and our tea in the harbour, which I
thought was a bit rude, and frankly your teabags have been pretty rubbish ever since!) and once
over the other side of the Channel in a place they call Europe.
We have now got the vast majority of the sessions sorted out for you, so that you can plan your
schedule, and I am very glad to say that we have 3 times the number of customer sessions we
had in Prague last year (up from 11 to 33) and the number of external speakers has also gone
up from 17 to 42. Our intention is for you to hear from your peers about the business issues
they had and how they went about solving them, plus sessions on burning issues like
Virtualisation, Data Centre Automation, Green IT, Best Practices like ITIL, CobIT and ISO
20000, and of course the latest details of the solutions you have kindly bought from us, with an
opportunity to meet the guys who designed them and wrote them.
Shout if there is anything you'd like to know. Hope to see you there.
BlackBerry time again

My old BlackBerry started developing some interesting new habits - namely you would click
on one option and it would jump to a different one. This meant that it constantly wanted to
make an emergency call rather than unlock, deleted emails rather than reading them and other
enormous fun. Anyway, got a whizzy new one now with GPS (neat), and all sorts of other
features that you will never use.
Actually the GPS is rather clever, now I've worked out how it works. I asked it to tell me
where I was and it was spot on. Looking at the options, there was a "local search", so I typed in
"pub" not expecting it to be intelligent enough to recognise anything quite so useful. Gosh, it
came back with a list of the ten nearest (seven within less than a mile - this is England) and it
shows me where they are on the map. I am almost impressed.
Of course, being a geocacher I actually want to put in some coordinates and be directed to that
place, so I have investigated bits of GPS software for exploiting the built-in GPS.
Unfortunately the ones I have found so far assume that I live in the colony the other side of the
pond. They also, as far as I can make out, lack that nice simple function - tell me where I am
and let me enter some coordinates of a place I want to go to. Doesn't seem a lot to ask? If
anyone knows of a simple, intelligent, useful, non-monthly subscription piece of
GPS/geocaching software for the BB, please let me know.
The other problem is that it doesn't work! Emails are fine, but appointments are useless. If I set
up synchronisation to Outlook I get a message about the appointment, but no option to
accept/decline/tentative or whatever and it only synchronises when I attach it to the laptop -
useless. When I choose wireless BB sync, I get the entries in the diary but no invites and
option to accept/decline etc. What am I doing wrong? Or rather what are the manufacturers
doing wrong?
Last but not least, just read an article about people using BBs, phones, laptops etc. when
someone is presenting. Should this be banned, or do I simply assume that because I am such an
incredibly engaging, fantastic speaker than the problem won't arise?!
The Complete Package
After many years of faithful service, our oven decided to shuffle off its mortal coil - that means
it died, if you didn't study Shakespeare or Monty Python!
My daughter, of course, immediately found me a load of Internet sites selling built-in ovens,
and pointed me at them. The initial prices looked attractive, but as I delved deeper I realised
the total cost was much higher. You see, I want someone to remove the old one (it's heavy and
wired in), take it away, deliver the new one and fit it. Preferably all in one go, rather than the
usual five visits you have to organise, because no-one can ever tell you when something is
going to be delivered.
Down in Spain, when our washing-machine decided to wash the floor rather than the clothes in
it, the local electrical goods company delivered the new one and refused to leave until they
had fitted it and proved it was working. Here in the UK, you normally have to ring up several
different people and get things coordinated (never works) or do it yourself. Fitting a washing-
machine is easy. Lifting a bloody great oven into the cupboard is not something I particularly
fancy doing with a dodgy back.
So, what was the solution? The cheapo internet option plus assorted phone calls - no. The local
shop, which has organised everything and actually works out a wee bit more expensive, but a
darned sight more convenient - yes.
Now, that's what I mean by a service mentality - look at what the end-user wants and deliver it
- all of it.
My birthday
Tomorrow is my birthday, which of course I am celebrating in wonderful style by attending
BMC UserWorld in Lisbon - ho ho!
First off, to help you with your choice of suitable present for me, here is a list of the things I
definitely do not want:
• A copy of Cherie Blair's book
• A copy of John Prescott's book
• A copy of Lord Levy's book
• Anything endorsed by, or written by a celebrity
• Anything non-alcoholic!
Hope to see you here at UserWorld over the next few days!
The old ones aren't always the best
Listened to Paul McCartneys' new album on the way to the airport (it was given away free in
the Sunday Mail). Awful. Tuneless, and he can't sing any more IMHO. I can only assume that
this is part of the divorce settlement, and he has made an album where Heather gets all the
royalties!
Why doesn't someone tell the old wrinklies that they can't sing any more. Sinatra was painful
at the end. Elton John - ouch. Pink Floyd - never could sing in the first place, but Gilmour still
plays sublime guitar, so they are forgiven. Etcetera, etcetera.
Made me think about old bits of hardware and software you have lying around. Should we
keep using them, or is it time for them to retire gracefully? All depends on whether they still do
a good job or not, and what the replacement would cost of course. I still love mainframes, and I
asked myself whether this was nostalgia or stupidity, but then I looked at what is going in the
world of IT with virtualisation, and the parlous state of modern operating systems and then I
realised they are still wonderful, and definitely have a vital role to play in today's data centre.
Add Comment
Green factors - Posted by Niek Steenhuis at 2008-05-22 04:07

One thing that might be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not to keep old
hardware, is to look at the energy that the old machine uses. New machines tend to consume
less energy than old ones. You're right, the replacement costs are an important factor, but a
new machine might save you money in the long run, as the money you save on energy might
exceed the one-off investment you make for a new machine. And obviously, saving energy is a
very green thing to do.
Then again, the importance of nostalgia should not be underestimated either :)
Regards,
Niek Steenhuis
Editor TOPdesk Magazine
PS We are currently finishing the latest edition of our service management magazine, and this
issue deals with Green IT. If you're interested, you can take a look at
www.topdeskmagazine.com. I expect the new content to be published in a few weeks. Until
then, there's other content that might be interesting to you too.
thanks - Posted by peter at 2008-05-23 07:24

Niek
Many thanks for the comment - will watch out for next issue - peter
Check-in on a BlackBerry?
I have to admit that this new BlackBerry is a great improvement on the old one. Now that I
have actually got it working, it is doing email, calendar, SMS, phone calls and GPS. I found a
neat bit of geocaching software called Geocache Navigator, but it appears to be only for
monthly subscription on US-based contracts - shame.
Anyway, as it also appears to support Java, I thought I would try checking in for my flight
back to the UK from Lisbon. First few page were fine, but then unfortunately when I clicked
the "check in now" box it just died completely. So I went to the nearest laptop in the Internet
Cafe here at UserWorld and checked in there.
The airline I fly with allows me to check in 24 hours before departure. So you click on the
"Departing in next 24 hours? Click here to check in" button and you would think it was
intelligent enough to look up which flight you had booked with them in the next 24 hours and
take you there. NO, sorry, it actually gives you a list of every flight you have booked (in my
case, quite a few) going out over the next few weeks / months and has a "Check in now" button
against each of them. Clicking on any of these apart form the flight you want gives you a
message saying that it is longer than 24 hours away, and hence you can't check in yet. So, why
give me the option then you idiots?
I also buy tickets on this website every month, but it still asks me every time what my address
is, and what my credit card details are. DOOH! A CIO of a large Insurance company once said
to me "Peter, I will give you data once and never again - I expect your systems to remember
it." Spot on.
Add Comment
Geocache Navigator - Posted by Sundevil at 2008-05-22 12:57

Peter, you can subscribe to Geocache Navigator either monthly ($6.99) or annually ($39.99).
And there's no restriction to the U.S. - geocachers all around the world use the application. You
can try a 60 day trial here:
http://www.trimbleoutdoors.com/rim/
Or purchase the subscription here:

http://handmark.resultspage.com/search?w=geocache&x=0&y=0
Enjoy!
geocache navigator - Posted by peter at 2008-05-23 07:35

Many thanks - have been trying it out this week and it looks really neat - peter
Back to golf
So UserWorld has been and gone, and I can get back to my golf now!! Ho ho. Being serious, I
was very happy with many parts of UserWorld and think the whole thing went well, but you
can always spot ways that you can improve things next time round - which is planned to be
May next year in Nice. One thing is that it will be a week later - week of 25th May - and hence
won't clash with my birthday, so there's a major step forwards!
If you attended UserWorld and have some comments on what was good / what was bad, please
contact me via this blog or direct via email (peter_armstrong@bmc.com). If you couldn't
attend for some reason we can change, or didn't think the agenda was right or whatever, please
let me know.
Now, let's talk about the really important stuff in life - golf. I am thinking of starting up a
company called Golf bags that actually fit properly on golf trolleys.com. Why? I have a golf
trolley from a very well-known company. I also bought a golf bag from the same company as
my old one was falling apart (the zips always break - another complaint) and I had naively
assumed that the bag would fit on the trolley. Nope. Wallows around like a jelly (jello for US
readers I think). As an engineer, it really does not strike me as particularly difficult to come up
with a design that works. Anyone want to join in my new venture?
The other thing we would sell is personalised golf balls. You send us a picture of the person
you most hate via the Internet and we send you back a dozen balls with their picture printed on
them. Now go and have some fun. I'll take a box of the Blairs (they come in mixed his and
hers), a box of the Gordon Browns, a box of the Mugabes, a box of the .....
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Add Comment
Golf, IT and business - Posted by Jan Flodin at 2008-06-06 09:11

The problem you have by fitting the golf bag on the trolley to me seems like the problems IT
industry have with fitting anything together - namely a lack of decently working standards.
The bad zippers are most likely the only way for golf bag producers to have you buy a new bag
every second year - fashion alone will not make a true golfer change his bag, but maybe as
more and more women starts playing?
Finally your idea with golf balls must be a sure hit. Not only will many people buy for their
own usage, but I'm sure it will be "the gift for the man who has everything" - which in fact
most golfers have so the market is perfectly addressed. Do you need an investor?
Golf balls - Posted by Matthew Burrows at 2008-06-25 02:41

Peter, could you embed RFID chips in the golf balls to increase your chances of finding them?
What about an auto discovery solution which plots your progress on a topology view of the
course?
rfid chips - Posted by peter armstrong at 2008-07-01 06:52

Matthew - that technology actually exists - the company is called radargolf.com from memory.
The plotting with GPS is also available on the TV broadcasts, and you can get handheld GPS
devices to show you yardages etc.
However, beware the rules of golf (sarbanes oxley?) - the rfid chips wouldn't be allowed in
competition as it is deemed to help you find the ball - personally think anything that speeds up
the game is a good idea, but rules is rules!!!
Apologies
Apologies for lack of blog and lack of replies - am on road sans laptop and writing entries on
this raspberry is a total pain in the ****. Normal service should be resumed soon (unless I
decide golf is more important!!)
Add Comment
Solution - Posted by YourFace5150 at 2008-07-29 10:10

Opera Mini for Blackberry.
opera mini - Posted by peter at 2008-07-30 04:50

Ah - that looks neat - am downloading now
Many thanks
Peter
Catch up
Been all over the place recently talking to lots of people, so getting to blog has been tricky -
sorry about that. Here's a summary of some of the thoughts I have gathered.
• Went to a thing called the Eden Project down in Cornwall. Basically a bunch of
gardeners have taken a barren, exhausted china clay pit and created a mega "garden"
with two massive Biomes (one of which is the biggest greenhouse in the world) and
millions of plants. Technically brilliant, but no-one told me what was going on / the
only explanations were in such small writing and such detail that you couldn't be
bothered to read them. In other words, just like most IT systems from the business point
of view, bloody clever but what's it do, and could I have the reports in a language I
understand please?
• Had dinner/lunch with CIOs in Brussels, Warsaw and Frankfurt. We talked about
issues like Time to Market and Aligning IT and business, because we recently
commissioned a couple of independent reports, and we wanted to see customers'
reactions. Here's one of them, I'll stick the URL in for the other one when it's finalised.
I've always been of the opinion that European IT managers try to squeeze every last
drop out of their investments, whereas the US culture is a little more towards
technology being the solution to everything in the world. Agree / disagree?
• Great new word I learnt - emetophobia - sufferers will go to any length to avoid
encountering something that might cause them to be sick. In my case Big Brother, any
TV soap, rotten service etc.
• I get very confused nowadays by what is politically correct and what isn't. For instance,
I read that failure is incorrect - now it's a deferred success! Try that one with your
boss / the business / the customer!!
How was your stay?

For those of you who travel, I thought I would give you a handy little entry, which you can
print out. Then you can simply highlight the relevant parts when asked this tedious question at
checkout. They are all based on personal experience.
How was your stay?
• Excellent thanks
Dreadful
• The limo picked me up at the airport and delivered me very smoothly.
The shuttle bus wasn't running, so I had to persuade a taxi driver to take me the two
miles after he had been in the queue for half an hour and he bloody nearly killed me.
• Your special check-in was fast and efficient - just what I needed after a long hard day.
(Actually the best ever was Dunk Island - the arrivals hall at the airport / resort is a bar,
and as you arrive they serve you a drink and whisk your luggage off to the room)
I had to stand in line for bloody hours waiting for you to take a set of information
from me that you already know - hopeless.
• The room was beautifully furnished, the desk was big enough for my laptop with a plug
and free wireless internet connection.
I don't know how you managed to design a room with 10 lights and still everywhere is
too dark to read. The TV is set at such an awkward angle that you can't watch it
comfortably from either the chair or the bed, and by the way it doesn't work. 20€ a
day for an Internet connection is daylight robbery, and where is the cable?
• The bar and restaurant were excellent, and the executive lounge was a delightful haven.
Last week in the your hotel in Warsaw you invited me to the Executive Lounge as I
am a silver/golf/platinum member. This week, you tell me I can't use it!?!? So I
wandered down to your bar, which was full of loud drunks, smoking their brains out.
The restaurant was totally dead and the menu was about as appealing as a vasectomy
reversal.
• The bedroom was beautifully quiet and I slept like a log.
Strangely enough, listening to to the couple next door have a flaming row,
accompanied by an air-conditioning unit that was gasping its last breath didn't lead to
a good night's sleep. The pillow appears to have been stuffed with ball bearings.
• A beautiful bathroom with everything I needed.
The shower was designed by an idiot, so that you couldn't turn it on without getting
covered in ice-cold water. The shampoo and soap were impossible to open with wet
hands and the shower poured all over the floor of the bathroom. Where was the hair-
drier? Oh yes, miles from any mirror - bright. The shaving mirror? Designed for
extremely vertically challenged people. Did anyone ever try the room out?
• One of the best breakfast buffets I have ever seen.
A sad collection of unappetising food, for which you wanted to charge me an
unmitigated fortune when all I wanted was a cup of tea and a roll.
• A modern gym, a swimming pool and a golf course - magic.
A smelly little box room with a broken bike - yuck.
• The staff were extremely courteous and helpful.
I object to some rude git asking me for a tip every time I appear.
• Checkout - perfect, did it from my room and am already on my way.
I'm still standing here waiting to throw this at you, because it appears to be beyond
your comprehension that lots of people will want to check out at the same time. There
would be even more of us standing in the queue here, if the lifts worked.
Fertilisation
I was sending an email to someone the other day on my whizzy new blackberry thing. I have to
grudgingly admit that they have come on leaps and bounds in recent years. There are still some
options missing - especially in Calendar - but at least you can do email, SMS, diary etc. whilst
on the road and the GPS works too!
The thing that amuses me though is the spell-check. Yes, there is a spell-check, so excuses for
bad spelling are gone now, I am afraid. People still can't punctuate (and Americans can't spell,
as we all know!) but we are getting there. However, its dictionary is a little basic -
virtualisation comes out as fertilisation, which I rather like. In fact it made me think of a rather
neat analogy.
I talked about the Technology Garden book a while back, where IT is likened to a garden - you
need to fertilise some parts, prune others etc. Made me think about most data centres
nowadays, which are running hundreds/thousands of underutilised servers - not their fault, the
operating systems are just useless at running multiple workloads. Bit like having a garden with
hundreds of flower-beds, each one of which has one plant in it. Unfortunately you still have to
weed, edge, fertilise etc. each flower-bed, when what you actually wanted in the first place was
a herbaceous border.
We have an event next week in London, where we will be looking at how to get to the
herbaceous border as quickly, safely and "greenly" as possible. Hope to see you there
Almost there!
You know when you come across a piece of technology, that almost works and could be really
useful if they just went that little bit further? No? Lucky you!
I was flying from Heathrow the other week, and being a good corporate citizen I booked my
long-term parking in advance to save the company money. System is quite neat; you pay in
advance and when you arrive it reads your number plate and knows who you are. The ticket it
give you has your number plate on it, and when you come to leave you simply insert this ticket
and it knows you have paid.
So where's the problem? Ah, the problem is that it read my number plate wrong! It read the W
as 11, and actually ended up with a registration that is not even possible on a UK car - in fact, I
can't think of any country where the combination it produced would be valid. So, mistake
number one is not putting some intelligence into the program to work out what a valid number
plate would be. Not terribly tricky.
So, spotting the error, I drove round to the office and asked if they could exchange the ticket
for an accurate one, so that I could drive out easily when I returned from my trip. I had the
paperwork with me to prove I had paid, but this was when the people and process part, rather
than the technology part, fell apart.
"Sorry, we can't do that."
"Why not?"
No logical reason came forwards, but the basic answer is because they never thought of this
possibility, or the bloke hadn't been trained how to do it.
"Just come to this window when you return and we will sort you out."
"Why can't you sort it now - I did this to save time?"
etc. etc. etc.
Now, I wonder if that means the speed cameras are reading my number plate wrong? No
chance!
Who chose that then?
I don't normally do politics here, but on the grounds that politicians really ought to be
providing a service to the people, who elected them, this seems particularly apt. Enjoy.
'Good morning America , how are you? This is your favourite son, Chad Hanging,
reporting
The President of Englandland, Norman Brown, is arriving in our nation's capital this
afternoon to meet with President Bush. But just who is this guy? Let's cross to our special
correspondent Brit Limey.
Hey, Chad . As you can see, I'm standing in the world-famous Trafalgar Circus, with the
House of Fayed directly behind me
So what can you tell us about Norman Brown
Well, Chad , he has been President for some nine months now. He used to be Chancellor.
What, you mean he's, like, German?
No, that's what they call their Treasury Secretary over here.
And is he a Conservative, like President Tony Blair?
No, Chad . He's Labour. President Blair wasn't a Conservative, either. He only pretended
to be.
So how did Brown get the job?
He just kept shouting at President Blair until he stood down.
But he won an election, right?
No, Chad , there wasn't an election. He did think about calling one, but decided against it
because he was frightened he might lose.
How can you change Presidents without having an election? I mean, it's not like President
Blair was assassinated.
That's just the way it works in Englandland. The leader of the party with the most seats in
the House of Lords gets to be President.
So Norman Brown was elected leader of the Labour Party?
Negative, again, Chad . He did raise money and have a leadership campaign, but no one
stood against him.
What, nobody? No primaries, no general election, nothing?
Affirmative, Chad .
Let me get this straight. His party hasn't elected him, the country hasn't elected him, yet he
still gets to be President. Sounds like a tinpot Commie dictatorship to me.
You could say that, Chad . Norman Brown doesn't really like anyone being given the
chance to vote on anything.
Someone must have voted for him, some time.
Oh, yes. He was elected to the House of Lords by his constituents in Scotlandland.
He's Scoddish, then?
That's a big Ten-Four, Chad.
So is he President of Scotlandland, too?
No, that's a guy called Alan Salmon.
Hang on, if Brown's from Scotlandland, how can he be President of Englandland?
That's just the way it goes in this crazy country, Chad . Brown can make laws for
Englandland, but not for his own people in Scotlandland. Not that it matters much because
Brown has signed away most of Englandland's lawmaking powers to unelected European
bureaucrats in Brussels , Belgiumland.
That would be like stripping Congress of the power to make laws in America and handing it
over to Mexico .
I guess so
How in the Hell did the people of Englandland vote for that.
They didn't. Brown wouldn't let them, even though it was a solemn promise in his party's
manifesto the last time people were allowed to vote.
Couldn't the Supreme Court have stopped him?
Not really. The Supreme Court of Englandland is now in Strasbourg , where the geese come
from.
Isn't there any opposition?
There's a guy called Boris.
Sounds Russian.
I wouldn't be surprised, Chad . There are millions of Eastern Europeans living here now,
mainly in Peterburg. Englandland has seen mass immigration over the past ten years, but
no one voted for that, either.
What in the name of Ulysses S. Grant is going on over there, Brit? We're talking about the
country which gave us Magna Carta, saw off the Armada, stood alone against Hitler and
invented parliamentary democracy. How does Norman Brown get away with it? He must be
a popular guy.
Far from it, Chad . According to the latest opinion polls, he's the most unpopular President
ever. His approval ratings are even worse than George Dubya Bush. There's talk about him
having to stand down soon. He's already promised the job to some guy who works for him -
name of Balls.
Say again, Brit, you're breaking up.
A good recovery
I had a quick trip down to South Africa last week for a Virtualisation conference and some
customer visits. Always enjoy going down there, as the locals speak English. What I mean by
that is that they, like the Australians and the Kiwis, have a healthy respect for the Anglo-Saxon
origins of our language, rather than the pretentious, boring, politically correct patois, which is
prevalent in some other countries!
Stayed in a hotel in Cape Town, which had an attractive looking tea tray in the bedroom, which
was good news as they wanted me to get up at the crack of sparrow for the first customer
meeting.
Now can you spot the obvious problem? The business service they are endeavouring to provide
is that of making a cup of tea, and they have provided the tea, the milk, the tea pot, the cup, the
kettle, the biscuits - but they have unfortunately forgotten the cable for the kettle!
So, no tea in the morning then - bother. I went down to check out and told them the cable was
missing, so that the next guest would at least have a working solution. They asked me how
long till I was being picked up - 15 minutes I said. Hey Presto, 5 minutes later a waiter
appeared with a pot of tea for me. Now that was customer service.
The Four Majors

Bear with me, I know not all of you follow golf, but this is quite simple! There are four major
championships each year in golf, and being strange, they reminded me of the four major
operating systems out there - z/OS, UNIX, WINDOWS and LINUX. See if you can work out
which is which. I have listed them in the order they are played during the year.
• The Masters - prettiest of the lot and always played on the same gorgeous golf course,
which sets its own rules. In fact, you could say that it does not play well with others.
Established in 1934. Seems to be open but is very tricky on the greens. Won by Trevor
Immelman.
• US Open - the set-up can be very tough. This year was more realistic after complaints.
Established in 1895. Won by Tiger Woods hopping on one leg.
• The Open - yes, that is the correct name, it is not called the British Open (that's played
by the women next month). Lots of people have started calling it the wrong name, but
that is basically ignorance. Established in 1860, so the oldest, the original, the most
prestigious, and they even allow younger people free entry (as spectators) nowadays.
Only played on links (seaside) courses. Won by Padraig Harrington at the weekend.
• US PGA - established in 1916 by the PGA of America. Won by Tiger Woods last year.
Only one where leading amateurs are not invited to compete - you have to be part of the
(professional golfers) community.
There is talk about a possible fifth major - the Players Championship, which is played
nowadays at TPC Sawgrass, with the famous 17th hole island green. This one was established
in 1974 and is run by the PGA Tour. Won by Sergio Garcia this year. VMWare?
Add Comment
The Four Majors - Posted by Stewart at 2008-07-30 03:31

Your post got me thinking....What about your favourite course that is not a major but always
results in an enjoyable days golf.....OS/400 perhaps???
Gosh, another podcast

Not only do I get to bore you rigid with my blogging, I also assault your ears with my
podcasts! Just recorded a new one, which deals with the way I see the skill requirements
changing in IT. Talking to customers from IT and the business, I see the IT landscape shifting,
with more emphasis on process and automation, a need for better business understanding at all
levels etc. and that is what I talk about in the podcast and my new white paper.
Let me know if you agree. Thanks.
The Novel
Trying to get the book published is an interesting little challenge. Unfortunately, you can't
approach the publishers directly, you have to go through an agent. The vast majority of the
agents don't respond to electronic communications - you have to print off a copy of your book
in a certain format. Understandable but time-consuming and tedious.
So I have been looking at self-publishing. I have printed off a couple of copies of the book
using www.lulu.com - very neat and very easy. Got them back this week and it is amazing
what you spot when something is printed, that you simply don't notice on the PC. Remember
the talk years ago about "the paperless office" - load of rubbish. I personally can't read
anything over a few paragraphs on a screen, which is why I keep my blog entries short.
Why do some websites litter their pages with links and text. Remember KISS? "Keep it Short
and Simple", "Keep it Sweet and Simple", or my favourite "Keep it Simple, Stupid".
I'll let you know when the book is ready - I have proof read it (again!), corrected the layout
mistakes and changed the page size / margins etc. Let's hope I've got it right this time!
Told you so!!

I could sit here and write a piece about how wonderful the mainframe is, as it is still the most
reliable, most available, most secure, most cost-effective platform on the planet, but no doubt
someone would pick a fight!
So I was extremely happy to read the results of the latest BMC mainframe survey, which has
just come out, and much to my joy It actually proves my point, so no fight necessary!
So, what were the results?
• The mainframe is growing, will continue to grow and is attracting new workloads -
hooray!
• The wall between mainframe and distributed is beginning to disappear - two thirds of
the customers said that having shared tools and applications spanning across both
platforms is very important - hooray!
• In fact, 29% of companies now have mainframe and distributed organised together -
looking at things from a customer point of view, rather than a silo point of view -
hooray!
• Labour costs are much lower on the mainframe - exactly!
So what are the concerns/issues going forwards? The usual suspects appear - productivity,
costs, staff - but the ones that are coming up are those of energy, common processes across the
different platforms and compliance. In fact, the areas cited as being most important for
common processes are change management and service desk.
So, I must admit that I am gloating a tad, as I gave a presentation at Userworld on this very
subject - when a silo dies, who will hear it? - and it would appear I wasn't alone in the forest -
hooray! Now, please excuse me as I try to get my head through the door.
Published at last
Hooray - the novel is published at last.
Have gone the self-publishing route for the moment - when I have time, I will go back and try
the agents again, but they all want hard-copy and don't take electronic input – tedious!
Now I have to start playing with all the advertising buttons and widgets they give me to see if I
can get them on to Facebook and other places!! The joys of social computing.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Plain speaking
Many years ago, storage was expensive and so were computers, so clever programmers
developed techniques to squeeze as much as possible out of the limited resources they had at
their disposal. Then stuff got cheaper and IMHO the art of programming changed from
efficiency to ease-of-use.
Unfortunately, we seem to be treating the English language the same way! My least favourite
word at present is probably "incentivise" - ugly in the extreme.
Here are a few I have come across recently and my simple alternatives:
• Operationalise - Do
• Verbalise - Say
• Transition (as a verb - yuck) - Move
• Compartmentalise - Sort
• Leverage - Use
• Incentivise - Kick
Virtualisation is all about the most efficient use of the resources available - so let's get our
brains and mouths working the same way!!
Monday, September 01, 2008
How long?!?
I was in Zuerich last week presenting at an event run by one of our partners, and I met a dead
interesting chap there. His name is Ueli Steck, and his particular area of expertise is extreme
mountain climbing - in other words, one of those people, who rushes up mountains by
themselves with no ropes.
Unfortunately I couldn't understand everything he was saying at the time as my Swiss German
is not too hot, but to cut a long story short he holds the world record for solo climbing the
North face of the Eiger. This normally takes a day or two, but he did it in, wait for it, 2 hours
47mins 33 seconds!!!!
Now, two things struck me when I heard that:
• The team record is 6 hours and 50 minutes, so the next time your boss wants to send
you on one of those hideous team-building exercises, simply point him at this!
• If you can climb the North face of the Eiger in less than 3 hours (and it only took him
an hour to get down) why does it take so long to choose a President?
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Add Comment
Ueli Steck - Posted by Jo at 2008-09-02 13:40

Ueli has also just this Saturday made the first free-climb the route Paciencia on the Eiger north
face. 27 pitches (900m) and with no fixed bolts in use. Stephan Siegrist belayed him.
Ueli's a great person both on and off the mountain.
The Dark Side of the Moon

I've just read a book - title above - which is not the history of Pink Floyd (Nick Mason wrote
the best one of those), but is all about sending men to the moon.
When you read reviews for it on various websites, you will find a bunch of picky people, who
have taken joy in finding inaccuracies in the book, and frankly the author (a Professor of
Modern History), should have checked his facts better. However, for me they have all missed
the point, which is what did the world get for the $35 billion it cost to send people up there?
I've nothing against unmanned space exploration, it's the manned part that doesn't add up for
me. I heard this question asked of a NAS spokesman at a conference a few years ago, and he
couldn't give a satisfactory answer either.
Now, I don't want to get into arguments here over whether it was a necessary part of the Cold
War, raised American prestige/morale or whatever. The point I am making is that when you
are asked to run a project, e.g. in IT, then shouldn't the first questions be why? and what's it
worth? And, if you can't answer those, then the project IMHO should not go ahead.
By the way Teflon was developed in 1938, Velcro was also not a by-product, the first weather
satellite was launched on April 1st, 1960, the first navigation satellite was launched twelve
days later, and twelve people (including my relation) have walked on the moon, according to
the book and Wikipedia.
Now, if you could just remind me what the Large Haldron Collider is going to do for me
Add Comment
Large Hadron Collider - Posted by Ron Preedy at 2008-09-30 05:22

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
Albert Einstein
BlackBerry check-in etc.
Regular readers will know that I have had a love/hate affair with the BlackBerry for some time.
This was predominantly due to the crap interface and lack of features that existed on the early
models. Having now used this whizzy Curve thing for several months, I must admit that they
have improved a lot - it would appear they looked at what users used them for?
Calendar works now - except I can't find how to change my attendance at an appointment and
let the organiser know why - GPS is very handy for me and the maps are surprisingly good.
I've even used the camera to take some pictures, where the quality wasn't of importance. There
is a whole raft of other icons on there, which are frankly a total waste of time, but you can
ignore them
I have installed Opera Mini as recommended by one of my readers (many thanks) and it is neat
- even allows me to check in for flights and browse web-sites I couldn't navigate before.
Then, to round it all off, Lufthansa actually sent me my boarding card last week as a gif file on
the BlackBerry. Being a cynical old fool, I didn't believe it would work, but hey presto I waved
the BlackBerry with the picture on it at the luggage check-in lady and she swiped it with no
problems - now that's a good use of technology in my opinion.
The credit crunch - older but wiser?

Let's be honest, it didn't need a brain the size of the Universe to work out that if you lend lots
of money to people who can't afford to pay it back, then the whole house of cards will come
tumbling down one day. It staggers me that so many people got caught up by the whole thing
and threw away the fundamental rules of banking, but hey I don't run the world (thank God I
hear you cry)!
The youth of today (or any time) are, of course, convinced that they know everything. I, on the
other hand, am now convinced that as you grow older, you either become a nerd and know lots
about very little, or like me you know know less and less about more and more.
For instance, I simply do not understand:

• How anyone finds Ricky Gervais funny
• How anyone can like Coldplay or the Streets
• How anyone finds Kate Moss attractive
• How anyone ever believed a word Tony Blair said
• Why they don't pay me megabucks
• Why people can't use apostrophes correctly
• etc. etc.
Being serious, what the current crisis has brought home for me, and I hope for lots of others, is
the painful truth that you can't have everything today. Good stuff costs hard work and money,
and if you haven't got enough money then you need to prioritise your requirements. Too many
people, IMHO, say "I need", when they really mean "I want" or "I would like".
Same thing applies to IT. As a bedrock, I require sound business policies and a strategy that
lays out the requirements and the priorities. If I don't have that, then I have a system that will
collapse under pressure.
It is very easy to run things efficiently in IT - there are loads of tools for people to play with
and tune stuff for hours - all of which is a total waste of time and money if they are working on
the wrong thing. The first step is to be effective. Then you run what matters efficiently.
Now, could we have some effective global fiscal rules please?
Humour - at last!
Last night I watched a splendidly silly and funny programme on the TV - it was called
"Britain's Got the Pop Factor and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar
Strictly On Ice" - for those in the UK who are scratching their heads and saying that wasn't on
last night, I recorded it.
As you have probably guessed it was a complete spoof on all the "talent" programmes, a bit
like Spinal Tap meets the X Factor (if you've never seen Spinal Tap, then you have missed a
rare treat).
What's all that got to do with the price of a fish supper I hear you cry? Well, for me all those
programmes are a case of the Emperor's new clothes. Yes, every now and then, there is a real
talent in there, but most of the people would be better served by being told straight up that they
have less talent than my left toe-nail.
It is interesting to see the difference between the US and the UK shows as well. In the US, all
the judges (except the British ones) are nauseatingly nice to the contestants, even when they
(the contestants) are total rubbish. It would appear that telling someone that they couldn't carry
a tune in a bucket, or that their singing coach must be tone deaf is seen as being highly
impolite, with the result that the British judges are seen as being rude and arrogant. NO, that's
just being honest, and we need a lot more of it, as long as it is done in a helpful way.
Constructive criticism is helpful. Destructive criticism is horrible.
Same with business services and IT.
History in the making - part 1
An interesting week, with as they say, history being made. I was going to argue that you can't
make history, based on its definition as "a chronological record of events", but it is also defined
as "the events forming the subject matter of a historical account", so shut up Armstrong.
Anyway, a thrilling race, which was decided in the last few seconds, with the title going to a
good-looking young black Englishman. Yes, I am referring to the Formula One Championship,
won by Lewis Hamilton, which does seem to have laid the foundation for a similar event in the
US yesterday! A cracking race, full of drama, which had you on the edge of your seat - the F1
championship again.
Now, I have to admire the Americans for pouring out in such numbers and supporting their
candidates. I can't actually see any politician over here getting anywhere near that level of
interest, unless they offered free alcohol and a discount on your next tank of petrol (gasoline,
which is way more expensive here that it is in the US). But, it does all go on a bit; call me
clever, but for me the result was blindingly obvious ages ago. To be honest I though Obama
had blown it when he broke one of the fundamental rules of American life - don't interrupt
sports coverage unless you are advertising food, beer or lingerie.
I, personally, would ban all political advertising and I'm quite keen on putting a sensible cap on
campaign expenses - about $10 say. However, that is what democracy is all about. Trying to
persuade the public that they are somehow involved in the running of the country.
OK, enough cynicism, what has that got to do with IT? Well, I sat there thinking what would
happen if you ran IT like a democracy? Years to get to a decision, millions of wasted dollars, a
system that half the people didn't want in the first place - you get my point.
Business/IT, IMHO, needs to be run as a benevolent dictatorship. We don't vote for the people
in charge, but we do expect them to take decisions rapidly and get things done, and if they are
true leaders they are courageous enough to admit they have made a mistake and they change it.
In today's process driven world, rules have to be made and enforced - e.g. ITIL/CobIT - and
management needs to make them happen, not discuss for two years what would be nice.
Many years ago I read a survey, which said that no matter how long you took over them, 50%
of business decisions were right and 50% were wrong - the successful companies got on with it
and corrected their mistakes. More of that in the next entry.
History in the making - part 2

I shall hasten to point out that these are my personal views, but I somehow feel lots of others
think the same way!
In my previous entry, I talked about the need not only to make decisions quickly, but also to be
able to recognise when they are wrong, which neatly brings me to the other subject occupying
all our minds at present - the global financial cock-up caused, we are told, by the greed and
incompetence of some of those in the banking system, and the inability of the regulatory
authorities to impose any meaningful controls.
A colleague tells me that in Germany there are strict rules if you want a financial bail-out from
the government - a cap on salaries, no bonuses and no dividends. Surprise, surprise, as far as I
am aware, no-one has taken the money yet. "Now, let me see, a couple of billion from the
government and we sort out the bank, but I get no bonus and less money each month, no don't
fancy that. Let's try sorting out the problems (we caused) ourselves."
(By the way, a proper British billion is one million million, rather than the one thousand
million they use in the US, so if you use our numbers the whole problem seems much
smaller!!!)
Then I hear that the bosses of one major US bank are not only getting a bail-out but also their
bonuses this Christmas - in fact, the amounts, which are US billions, are almost equal. Sorry, is
it me, or have we lost the plot? I believe they caused the problem, so don't we have every right
to demand some sensible controls on where the bail-out money is going and don't we also need
to have some controls in place to make sure it never happens again?
"Hey, I don't care how you run IT and how much you spend, just come back and ask for more
money next year when it's not working properly, and we'll sort you out, and salary rise? Of
course, go for it. Bonuses for all the staff? Absolutely!"
Which all leads me to my latest campaign - IWOS. This stands for "Incompetent Waste of
Space" and every banker getting a bonus this Christmas has to wear an IWOS T-shirt (for the
rest of their lives). The sharp ones amongst you will realise the enormous marketing potential
for "IWOS here" merchandise. Excuse me, I need to go and talk to my bank about a loan for a
startup - oh dear, fat chance, shame.
I Wos There!
Continuing my IWOS (Incompetent Waste of Space) campaign, and again strictly my personal
opinions.
I usually keep politics out of this blog, but as the current world mess seems to have been
caused by incompetent bankers, who were not regulated by politicians, it is tricky to avoid the
political side for the moment.
On Tuesday we had an in-between budget here in the UK designed to help alleviate the
problems, or as I would like to describe it, a complete waste of time from a group of people
who have no idea how to kill the monster they helped to create. I won't bore you with the
details, suffice it to say that the desired "shot in the arm for the British economy" is probably
about as useful as a sun-lamp to a man in the middle of the Sahara. For any British readers, an
abolition of stamp duty or a major reduction in fuel duty would have been a shot in the arm -
feel free to agree/disagree.
All of which, of course, reminds me of IT - run it for years with no business policies and no
regulation and what do you get? And people wonder why I rabbit on (cockney rhyming slang
for talk a lot) about ITIL and CobIT?!?
No doubt we will now see people killing projects and laying off staff. I would like to argue that
this is wrong, as then you have less attractive options, with no customers who have any money
to buy anything. Yes, only do the projects that really matter, but how about giving your staff
the following choices:
• You all take xx% less, and you all keep your jobs (includes all levels - no bonuses, no
specials)
• OR We all work a 4-day week and earn less (all levels again)
• OR we fire xx% of you (all levels again!)
And for those, who think I should lead by example - I cut down to 3 days a week last year and
took a 40% pay cut - admittedly for health reasons rather than a recession, but I made it work.
Anglicisation!
Had lunch with James Governor of Redmonk yesterday - we lunchised well and also
conversationalised extensively.
James suggested that monetise is probably one of the nastiest words in common use at present -
agreed. I respondised with incentivise - yuck, enough to make you vomitise. I surmise there
are many more out there, being utilised by the great unsanitised in their desperate desire to
verbalise everything as badly as possible.
Mobilise yourselves! Chastise anyone utilising bad English! Exercise your right to excise
meaningless claptrap!
BlackBerry thumbwheel problems

You may know this already, but if not could be helpful.
Yesterday my BlackBerry (8310 model) developed an interesting feature - the thumbwheel
thing that moves you round the menus would go up but not down, which made life a tad tricky.
Wandered through a few websites, which were recommending me to take the thumbwheel out
and clean it - all looked a bit hairy. So I simply dabbed it with a cotton bud thing covered in
alcohol (I happen to have a bottle I bought years ago just for cleaning electrical contacts),
moved the thumbwheel around, up, down, left, right etc. and it now works perfectly.
Credit Card blues

I won't tell you which credit card I use, but see if this rings a bell.
I get points on my credit card, which I exchanged for some shopping vouchers a few weeks
ago, but they haven't arrived yet, so I looked on their website to confirm the order had gone
through, but no way of tracing what has happened to it. My statement, which has just arrived,
has a totally different number of points shown on it, and does not reflect the vouchers, so I
decide to ring them up. Oh dear.
• (auto voice) Please enter your 16-digit number - done
• (auto voice) Please enter your date of birth in the format ddmmyy - done
• Gives me my balance, my inside leg measurement and 14 other thiings I don't want to
know and eventually gets to the option to talk to someone
• (real voice) Hello, Mr Armstrong, how can I help you? - good, they know who I am
• Explain the problem - of course, they can't deal with it (so why give me this number to
ring?) and put me through to points department
• (different auto voice) Please enter your 16-digit number followed by hash - done with a
grimace
• (different auto voice) Please enter your date of birth in the format ddmmyyyy - done
with a vow to kill the next person who asks for anything
• Lots of options, which eventually get to the one of speaking to someone
• (real voice) Hello
• (me) Bloody hell, it takes hours to get through to you
• Sorry, the phones are very busy today
• No, that's not the problem, it is the fact that you have asked me for my information
several times in several different formats and I'm losing the will to live
• (with a smile in his voice) and could I please have your 16-digit card number, date of
birth and postcode again?
Transpires they ran out of vouchers and they will be shipping again soon - why not put that on
the website?
If you want some fun, and are not offended by rude language, try searching for desperate call
centre (or center if you can't spell properly) on Youtube.
Wireless Network Problems
You may be wondering why I have suddenly started to pour forth my thoughts again after
being quiet for a while. Probably not, but I'm going to tell you anyway!
I've had all sorts of strange problems with the wireless network at home. Been working fine for
years, with the occasional loss of signal, but in the last few weeks it kept dying.
As usual, you ask yourself what have I changed, and the answer of course is nothing. Now,
everyone on a help desk / service desk knows that when the user says they have changed
nothing, they are lying through their teeth but this is an essential part of establishing a
communications protocol between the user and the poor person the other end, who is going to
run through their prepared script if it kills them.
Reminds me of a classic true story years ago, when a user complained to a colleague that the
batch job they ran last night ran perfectly, but tonight when they ran it with "NO CHANGES
AT ALL" it failed. My colleague then asked the brilliant question "Why did you run if it
nothing has changed - you had already run it yesterday?" At which point the user admitted that
the date had changed, the input file had changed ....!
Anyway, have upgraded the USB adapter things to higher speed and put big new antennae on
the router and it is working better so far. Fingers crossed.
Consumer testing
The seal on the door of our washing machine started to leak, so a nice chap came round today
and fixed it.
As we waited for the machine to go through its cycle to check all was OK, he told me some
interesting facts about how few manufacturers there are nowadays of white goods and how
much badge engineering goes on. I, of course, asked him which machines he repaired least
often, and I am afraid the answer is that they are all fairly similar nowadays, except for one
company up in Scotland that offers a washing machine guaranteed (parts and labour) for 5
years or 10 years - you choose which model (yes, he happens to be an agent for them, but he
knew I wasn't interested in buying one). They are, of course, not cheap, but for places like
hotels and hospitals a very sensible idea. Another case of describing the business need and then
selecting the appropriate solution, and the TCO is less than buying a new machine every year /
repairing the old one all the time.
He also pointed out that most of the consumer reports were pretty useless and inaccurate as
they never actually bothered to talk to the people out in the field to find out which machines
break down frequently, which ones are better built than the others, who uses the same internal
components etc. Interesting thought - don't just ask your users if they are happy - ask the
people who repair your stuff what they think of it - could be illuminating.
What an idiot!
Flew in from Budapest last night, where we had been running a CIO event. Bought my wife
some presents in duty free on the way home, and stupidly left them on the plane when I got off
- what an idiot!
I phoned British Airways, who were incredibly helpful and promised to follow it up and call
me back. Unfortunately I missed the call (stupid BlackBerry only rings twice - how do I
change that?) and when I tried to call BA back again, they had no idea who called me or any
notes about the whole thing.
Oh well, they gave me a number to ring at Gatwick and then the fun began. I went through
about 15 different numbers (5 of which didn't even work), with each person telling me I needed
to talk to someone different until I eventually found the right department (I think).
They, of course, do not answer the phone - after two minutes you get a message:
The other person has cleared
and the phone dies. Cleared what? Their throat? Their bowels? Their desk?
I found an email address for them, and have sent an "urgent" email with checks for receipt and
read. Don't hold out much hope.
The novel and the next book

Have been accepted by an agent for my novel, and am currently going through critique /
review / polish stage, which will hopefully be followed by someone actually taking it on and
publishing it. Keep your fingers crossed!!!
Whilst all that is going on, the bad news is that I am putting together the next book!! For this
one, I have taken this great string of rants and raves known as my blog and turned them into a
book with all the comments etc. so that you have the whole lot in one handy place for keeping
in the lavatory or wherever you read the important material in your house.
Now, this may sound like an easy concept, but we all know that can't be true. For a start I
wanted all the entries to go in chronological order and on the blog, of course, they go LIFO. I
also wanted all the comments. Now, someone out there will no doubt tell me there is a dead
easy way to do this, and I am not really sure if I want to know as I have just spent ages cutting
and pasting each entry and comment over into a Word doc, that I am now laboriously
formatting to make it look sensible.
I must also admit that I struggle somewhat with Word as it never quite seems to do what I
expect and formats things in strange ways that I don't really understand. Anyway, wish me luck
- I'll see if I can get the whole thing together in the next few weeks.
The End
Which rather neatly brings me to a good logical place to finish these meanderings. Hope you
enjoyed them.

BSM - Service Mentality Blog Book

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Adopting a Service Mentality

Adopting a Service Mentality 1

Adopting a Service Mentality 2

The Innocent Days?

Adopting a Service Mentality 3

Adopting a Service Mentality 4

hash key - Posted by peter armstrong at 2006-05-19 13:07

hash key - Posted by amy at 2006-08-21 16:02

Hash Mark - Posted by Jim at 2006-08-22 15:19

Adopting a Service Mentality 5

thanx - Posted by Ali Marjovi at 2007-12-11 18:33

hash key - Posted by peter at 2007-12-12 16:00

pound/hash key - Posted by Steve at 2007-12-26 04:43

amazed - Posted by peter at 2008-01-03 05:45

Adopting a Service Mentality 6

Adopting a Service Mentality 7

The Open - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-07-15 12:41

Adopting a Service Mentality 8

Who designed this?

Adopting a Service Mentality 9

Tiger Wins The Open

What's a Mainframe Daddy?

Adopting a Service Mentality 10

Who is Peter Armstrong?

Adopting a Service Mentality 11

Mobile phones can be wonderful

Adopting a Service Mentality 12

Adopting a Service Mentality 13

Adopting a Service Mentality 14

Adopting a Service Mentality 15

Email rules - KO!

Adopting a Service Mentality 16

E-mail rules, I agree... mostly - Posted by mreys at 2005-08-03 06:30

Adopting a Service Mentality 17

Email culture - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-08-04 02:11

Adopting a Service Mentality 18

Adopting a Service Mentality 19

New Blog Name

Adopting a Service Mentality 20

My intentions - Posted by parmstrong at 2005-08-04 02:21

How to learn golf / run IT?

Adopting a Service Mentality 21

Adopting a Service Mentality 22

Don't forget to save!

Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Adopting a Service Mentality 23

grammar? - Posted by peter at 2007-09-22 03:09

Blackberry autosig - Posted by Chris at 2007-11-16 01:38

personal - Posted by peter armstrong at 2007-11-16 09:46

Adopting a Service Mentality 24

the slippery slope - Posted by peter at 2008-01-24 17:47

Spell check - Posted by Tim Dowdall at 2008-01-25 09:38

New mainframe blog

Adopting a Service Mentality 25

Are you underutilising ITIL?

Adopting a Service Mentality 26

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Adopting a Service Mentality 27

The intelligent phone?

Adopting a Service Mentality 28

Who is measuring whom?

Adopting a Service Mentality 29