Voice of the DBA

Category: Editorial

  • What’s Important to Your Organization

    I’ve had the chance to work in a number of organizations in my career. Every one of these places needed to run a network and software applications to support the business. Most of them also built some a portion of the software they used. No matter how much software they built, but there was always a need to manage a software lifecycle with new applications, patches, and the retirement of systems over time.

    While every organization recognized the value of software, some saw this as an expense, like salaries or buildings. The funds needed were the “cost of doing business.” In these organizations there was always a focus on controlling or reducing costs, doing what needed to be done, and being efficient with how computing was integrated into the business. These organizations seemed to be stodgy and traditional, with management focused more on the analog world than the digital one. Some were quite successful, which I often think is a combination of good management, good staff, and luck.

    These days, I think that view that software is an expense is less and less successful in many organizations. Over time, this will see a deterioration in the success for those businesses. It might be a slow decline over decades, or a more rapid one in a few years. I truly believe in software eating the world, and every company needs to be a technology company. They don’t all need to build software, but they do need to manage it, and more importantly, take advantage of software to better run their businesses.

    We see this in all kinds of industries. Perhaps it’s highly visible in the automotive industry, but in plenty of others, from finance to insurance to retail to manufacturing, the use of software as a strategic asset improves the competitiveness of business. Even in government, organizations are finding that making better use of software allows them to offer more services at a lower cost.

    I wonder how many of you see your employers treating software as a strategic part of their business model. Do they aim to increase profits or become more efficient or even innovate in their industry with the power of modern computing? Or is it just a tool that they depend on, and consider the cost of doing business? If your group isn’t seen as strategic, likely they don’t value your work as highly, don’t provide training, and don’t create opportunity or innovation that ensures your work is interesting. If those are things that matter to you, perhaps it is time to look around for other employment.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • What’s Important to Your Organization

    I’ve had the chance to work in a number of organizations in my career. Every one of these places needed to run a network and software applications to support the business. Most of them also built a portion of the software they used, with some applications being purchased. No matter how much software they built, whether it was a lot or a little, there was always a need to manage a software lifecycle. Whether you build or buy software, you will have new applications, patches for existing systems, and the retirement of others over time.

    While every organization recognized the value of software, some saw this as an expense, like salaries or buildings. The funds needed for computing the “cost of doing business.” In organizations that felt this way, there was always a focus on controlling or reducing costs, doing just what needed to be done, and being efficient with how computing was used. These organizations seemed to be stodgy and traditional, with management focused more on the analog world than the digital one. Some were quite successful, which I often think is a combination of good management, good staff, and luck.

    These days, I think that view the software is an expense is less and less successful in many industries. Over time, this view will see a deterioration in the success of those businesses compare to competitors that treat software differently. It might be a slow decline over decades or a more rapid one in a few years. I truly believe in software eating the world, and every company needs to be a technology company. They don’t all need to build software, but they do need to manage it, and more importantly, take advantage of software to better run their businesses.

    We see this in all kinds of industries. Perhaps it’s highly visible in the automotive industry these days, but in plenty of others, from finance to insurance to retail to manufacturing, the use of software as a strategic asset improves the competitiveness of business. Even in government, organizations are finding that making better use of software allows them to offer more services at a lower cost.

    I wonder how many of you see your employers treating software as a strategic part of their business model. Do they aim to increase profits or become more efficient or even innovate in their industry with the power of modern computing? Or is it just a tool that they depend on, and consider the cost of doing business? If your group isn’t seen as strategic, likely they don’t value your work as highly, don’t provide training, and don’t create opportunity or innovation that ensures your work is interesting. If those are things that matter to you, perhaps it is time to look around for other employment.

    Steve Jones

  • Digitizing Construction

    Perhaps you think of the construction industry as being more analog and less interested in building a robust digital infrastructure. This article talks about one large company that is modernizing, and has accelerated that move during the pandemic. They are generating lots of data with drones capturing images of projects and and with more collaboration between many different groups that are often not physically co-located together. While their business is construction, they are really a large enterprise that faces many of the same challenges any enterprise faces with moving information around, in a secure and convenient way for their staff.

    However, even smaller companies are depending more and more on a modern infrastructure. I had a contractor renovate my bathroom recently, and while there certainly is some in-person work, plenty of the planning, payment, supply chain, and more comes from the use of digital technologies. Even a 55 year old contractor is embracing new ways of doing business.

    This isn’t just in new construction. Many repair companies around the US are consolidating and joining into groups, with better guarantees for their work, but also more precise scheduling, bidding, smoother (and quicker) payments, and even the sharing of designs and problems through images, reducing the number of physical trips that staff makes, and giving a better experience to the customer. This does come at a charge, often with a higher cost for projects, but I find that I can count on many of these services more than I could with random handy people and contractors in the past.

    Construction will always be a hands-on job for some.  After all, plumbers need to go where the pipes are located. The workers and their companies are taking advantage of more technology and innovations to make their jobs easier. We use new materials, new techniques, and products that make the construction of physical spaces, and the deconstruction, quicker and easier than in the past. In many cases, we often get a superior product, though there is often more cost.

    There are also problems. Any time someone is building something, there is a chance they make an error, or a physical part fails, or the supply chain doesn’t keep up. It does seem that I tend to find fewer of these issues than in the past. When I do, often an organization will fix a problem and stand behind their work. If they don’t, the one part of the digital world that definitely affects construction is the sharing of information by customers. Bad ratings, complaints, and more are common, and can often affect business for contractors quite a bit. Positive ratings can result in more work than an individual can handle.

    Maybe that’s the part I like the best, that the digital connections we have online allow us to share feedback and images of workmanship. At least in my area, that’s led to some good outcomes.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • How Paranoid Are You About Backups?

    A friend sent me this article from Backblaze on backup strategies. He asked me what I thought, since I do write on DR and backup strategies. I’ve also blogged at times on my personal strategy, which is Backblaze and cloud services. I have a subscription, that I just renewed, to ensure that my two primary desktops are backed up outside of my house.

    The article talks about the 3-2-1 backup strategy and then some more modern evolutions of this. If you don’t know, 3-2-1 means 3 copies of your data on 2 types of media with 1 copy offsite. That’s a strategy I’ve followed for years in enterprise environments. We usually had a local current copy of databases on disk, a second copy on tape, and multiple tapes offsite.

    These days there are some other variations, with 3-2-1-1-0 and 4-3-2. These might include adding air-gaps between items and verifying there aren’t errors in your backups. They also include the idea that for cloud providers, you include multiple regions or countries in case your vendor has issues.

    Being slightly paranoid is a good thing, especially in today’s environment when ransomware is such a huge issue. While some companies might choose to pay a ransom and decrypt data quickly, many start recovery efforts, with the pressure on IT staff to quickly restore backups, and hopefully not bring in another copy of the ransomware that is time activated.

    No matter what strategy you choose, and there are pros and cons to all of these, you need to be sure you can execute on this strategy quickly. I’ve run test restores from Backblaze, just to see if I can get back a random file or folder that was backed up. I’ve also wanted to ensure I understood how this works in the event of a disaster. I’ve been able to bring back a file to a different machine, which is likely the strategy I’d employ in my personal life.

    At work, the same idea applies. You need to test your restores, and with a large staff and constantly changing environment, you should do this more often. The tolerance for delays (RTO) and lost data (RPO) is lower at most organizations, and clients expect recovery to be sooner rather than later. I’ve also seen upper management (directors, VPs), show up and watch technical staff try to recover data. They don’t like to see you fumbling through documentation or googling how to restore certain applications. They do expect you quickly and efficiently get the process moving.

    A disaster is stressful, and they will likely occur at inconvenient times, like when you’re on vacation or in the middle of a big project. Having some knowledge, and some confidence in your skills, will help ensure that you can function under stress. The more confidence you have in yourself, the more others will have in you, so make time to build that confidence on a regular basis.

    Steve Jones