What is cloud storage?

If you have read technology blogs, worked for a large company, or looked for a backup solution in the past 5 years, you will be familiar with the concept of cloud storage. It is a simple way to securely store and access your files from any computer or mobile device. 

Cloud storage became popular at the end of the last decade and has now amassed over 600 million users worldwide. This continues to grow at a fast rate with more and more people turning to cloud to achieve one of four things:

1. Backup files – This will make sure you never lose your work files or family pictures
2. Access files from anywhere – Easily open, edit and save files from any computer or mobile device.
3. Send files to friends or customers – Sending files via email is now a thing of the past. Sending a link is a far easier option.
4.  Collaborate with colleagues in seconds – You can now edit and save files in one location with your colleagues and anybody can easily access the latest version of the file.

Empachal Drive stands out against the competition by offering all of the above features as well as 1,000GBs of storage for a fee of £25 per year for personal usage.

My PDU Plan

To maintain my PMP qualifications, I need to ensure that I continue to maintain consistent learning with regard to Project Management.  I like the idea that people cannot pass the PMI exams and then forget about keeping up to date with learning and modern practices.

Why Education is Important

As a consultant, I do not have an official career path, nor an HR department to provide a yearly development plan.  I have to make my own development plan and think about where my career will take me in the future.  To obtain a career path, it is down to me, what I do and how I do it. 

As a consultant, any time and money spent on education and qualifications, comes out of my time and my money, sometimes at the additional "cost" of not being able to work for a client, earning my daily rate.  The qualifications are quite expensive, often in excess of £1000.  In addition, I do not get given any paid time by my clients to study, as I would if I was employed.

Project Time

Time is part of the Project Management Golden Triangle.  I have blogged about the Golden Triangle before, but the concept is that you have Time, Scope and Quality, as three sides to a triangle and they all impact each other.  If you extend one side of the triangle, one or both of the other two sides will be impacted.

Time is an important aspect of Project Management.  People who understand scheduling will understand how simple and how complicated time planning can be.  On larger projects, the project plan will be controlling many different work streams in parallel and the Project Manager needs to understand the impact of time on each of the work streams and resources. 

Agile Methodology

As I mentioned in a post last week, I have consulting at a client site that uses an Agile Project Management Methodology.  As a Project Manager, I had thought that I have not used Agile before, however, I now understand that as a Project Manager / Developer for many years, I have previously been using an Agile methodology.

In my very first job, after leaving university, I was coding a 4GL, and our Project Management Methodology was DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Methodology).  I went on a course and actually became a DSDM Practitioner.  This was back in 1997.

Introduction to Change

Part of the overall project governance is the Change Control.  This can refer to changes in the scope of the project, the budget, the Schedule, the services provided or the products the project produces.  Change control needs to be in place to ensure that the project is delivered on time, to budget and delivers the required product.  Change control ensure that any change introduced to the project is defined.

Excel - Add a Month

I use MS Excel extensively in my day to day role.  Sometimes the simplest formula can stump me, but when I find a solution, I try to capture it and add it to this blog.

This formula will take a date (say 1st Oct 2013) and then add one month to it.

=DATE(YEAR(A1),MONTH(A1)+1,DAY(A1))

Simple.

Can two Project Managers work on the same project?

I think they can, as long as the relationship is clear and the roles and responsibilities are defined from day one.  Management above the project must buy-in to the concept of having two project managers and must agree to the defined R&R.

I am working on a large project.  Within 6 months, working on the initial concepts, designs and plans in the initiation stage of the project, I realized that there was too much coordination, communication, vendor management, internal team management, user management and reporting required for a single Project Manager.  I needed help and I was not afraid to ask. 

We now have two Project Managers on the project and it is working really well.  I am an easy person to build a relationship with.  I will trust and accept any person, until they cross me or my team.  The new Project Manager has a wealth of experience and is a great asset to the Project.

People within the Project Management Department often comment that there are two Project Managers working on the single project, but I see no issue with it.  Slowly, the colperets are coming around to understanding that the Project has a requirement for two Project Managers to work in tandem together to be able to achieve the final delivery in the manner that the corporation requires. 

Usually a Programme will have many Project Managers, but usually a project will only have one, however, due to the size and structure of the project, this project warrants the use of two project managers.

Defining the roles and responsibilities between us was an important "first day" task.  Over the past year, I had built relationships with vendors, internal technical team, management and the business.  The one part (and important part) of the Project Management I failed to keep on top of was the reporting.  My direction as a Project Manager is to "get the job done", so I did.  I covered all bases, ensuring that we had the best options, decided on the best solutions, worked with the best people and built relationships to ensure we obtained the best deals for the company I am working for.  This was all to the detriment of the reporting side and the management of the stakeholders.  A bad mistake.

The other Project Manager will take care of all of the governance and the management reporting side of the project, leaving me to run with the vendor engagement and the management of the technical teams to deliver the product.  I am a Project Manager that focuses on the delivery rather than the Project status updates and the "Project Management" side.

Have you ever worked on a single project, with another project manager? What was your experience, what worked and what didn't?

Project Update - Feb 2013

Wow - it is already the middle of February.  2013 seems to be going as fast as 2012 flew by.  Before we know it, it will be Easter holiday time.

This month has been a short month for me.  I worked through Christmas, into the New Year and then took a week of holiday with my family to Centre Parcs.  I have been back at work for three weeks and have not made time to write a blog.  I have two poor excuses.  The first is that I am trying to study for the PMI Risk Management exam.  The second is that I am tracing my family tree.  Both of these tasks have eaten away my free time in one way or another.

As for the family tree, I had previously gone way back along both my Wife's and my own family tree, but I had branched out in all directions.  I decided that I needed to start over and concentrate on the male side of the lines, following the 4 grand fathers that we have.  I will create a blog post next month with a short summary, but I warn anyone looking to start their own tree that the process is time sapping and very addictive.  I find it very therapeutic, which is a welcome break after studying and working hard.

The Risk Management study is not going as well as planned.  I am already behind on my simple study project plan, due to a slight lack of enthusiasm in the early part of the year.  I had planned to read the PMBoK Risk Management chapter during my family holiday, but this was not achieved, as I decided that I needed a complete break from work for a week to relax and recuperate.

Study is now going well and the plan to read the chapter from the PMBoK will be completed this weekend.  I have a set of 30+ questions on Risk Management, so I will ensure that these are completed on Sunday morning, before I have some guests for dinner.  The most important task is to book my exam.  I have already been accepted and have passed all of the prerequisites, but I must book the exam to ensure I have the correct focus.

I have been very busy this month on my project at work.  I have written a separate blog post to update you all on what has been going on there.

January 2013 - Project Update

As you may know, I am working for a Japanese Corporation as a Project Manager to migrate all of our users from Lotus Domino email to Exchange.  This sounds quite a simple project, and it would be, if there were not so many dependencies on a corporate email infrastructure.

For almost a year, we have been working hard to understand the dependencies, understand all of the risks, complete the design to ensure the most robust, reliable and fault tolerant system we can. 

I am from a Lotus Domino background and have more than 13 years consulting experience and I am working with a Technical Architect who has been an Exchange consultant for roughly the same period of time.  This relationship has a chemistry which is very useful to the project as we are able to compare best practises and techniques for email on a global level.  We have considerable banter regarding our own technology expertise, which is useful when discussing design issues and infrastructure considerations.

People have the misunderstanding of the size of the project, as they think it is a simple case of changing the Lotus Notes client to the Outlook client.  This is far from the facts.  Imagine that you have a Ford car and just need to change the steering wheel to a model from a Ferrari, then imagine all of the configuration, the systems it integrates with, such as the telephone, radio, windscreen wipers, onboard computer, air bag, indicators.... the list goes on and on.  Now think of your email system and the links to other systems it has, such as Mobile messaging, Blackberry, Backup, Monitoring, Anti-virus, Archiving, storage options ... and the list goes on....

Within December, the budget was completed and contains approximately 200 line items, which covers all of the manpower, hardware, software and services that we require to implement our new infrastructure.  This shopping list took more than a month to collate, speaking with various suppliers, technical teams and the stakeholders.  An approximate budget was set, so reworking the design and streamlining options had to be presented, for example, "If you want to save cost X, then you either remove Y from the architecture, or you run the risk of Z".  These decisions were then put to management for final approval.

The project is now getting exciting - and busy.  I cannot tell you too much detail for now, but the infrastructure is a considerable size and the engagement of the technical team, vendors and consultants, as well as the recruitment is all starting to build up.  This is one of my favorite times in a project, which is taking the design and concepts that have been in development and taking these forward into the final product.  The communication and coordination with all of the people is the particular part of Project Management that I enjoy.  I have built up many relationships and trusts over the past year and they are now starting to pay off.  Communication and being a "people person" is a definite skill required for a Project Manager.

On a monthly basis, I will post an update on the project and try to explain the good parts and the bad parts as we progress.

iGoogle replacement?

I have been using iGoogle for many years and like the home page it have.  I have, and use, only seven widgets on the home page, which I find very useful.

The main use is the excellent bookmarks widget, which allows me to categorize my bookmarks and easily find (and add) bookmarks.  Even my children know how to use this widget.

Other widgets I use regularly are for Gmail and Google Calendar, to see my latest emails and diary entries.  I do not have to open the individual apps, but can see the upcoming appointments and latest emails at a quick glance.

The peripheral apps that I use are for the BBC News Headlines, my Rowing progress on my Concept2 and the weather.  All of these are used everyday or so, but not every time I open iGoogle.  They are good to see at a glance and are more "nice to haves" rather than a necessity.

I understand that Google have made a decision to dis-continue iGoogle in November 2013.  Does anyone have a suitable replacement.  The best replacement I have found so far is igHome, which can be tailored to look similar to my iGoogle homepage, however the bookmarks do not read directly from Google Bookmarks, which is a major issue for me.

Any ideas?

Migration of BES from LN to Exchange

I am currently running a project to migrate users from Lotus Domino to MS Exchange.  One of the many migrations is to move our Blackberry users from Lotus Domino BES to the Exchange BES environment.

We are currently running a Proof of Concept lab, where we have both the BES environments and I am looking for a tool to assist the migration of users from one to the other.  We are using the Quest tool to migrate the nsf mail files, but I am wondering if anyone has had experience of migrating the Blackberry devices.

Mindmaps for web and Android

I am looking for a service to be able to create mindmaps on my Android tablet, as well as enable me to view and edit these on the web.

The maps should sync with the tablet when I load it, or allow me to edit them offline.  Does anyone know of such an app?

Domino Hosting?

I am looking for a quick solution to find some cheap lotus domino hosting.  I have 3 databases which I share with three people.  The total size of the databases are under 100mb.

It does not have to be anything special and it could be a development solution.  I have been looking around on the net, but nothing has taken my attention.

Any tips, or insider information?

Why online backup?

Many people backup in one way or another.  Some people on a regular basis create a CD or DVD of their important files, some people have a NAS drive stored away in a cupboard or in the garage and others save their files on multiple computers.  There are many ways for the home user to back up.

In recent times, it is not uncommon for insurance companies to send your certificates to you online, or to stop all of your paper bills from the utilities companies coming to you through the paper post.  These are some of the important files people keep on the their home computer.

In addition, people download all their photos of weddings, children and events to their computer for "safe" keeping, as the memory card from the camera might get lost, stolen or damaged.  I know that I lost a memory card full of 200 photos from a family trip to Euro Disney and was devastated that it corrupt, within the camera itself.

With the use of media at home, people can now download music through the big resellers as well as videos.  It might be a surprise over time, that some people have approximately 100 music albums stored on their computer, which probably cost in excess of £500.

At the end of the day, because people cannot see the media and files stored on the computer and cannot touch them, they seem to take a back seat when thinking about security and safety.

Ignoring the fact that there are bad people in the world creating viruses, ignoring that computer disks fail or corrupt, the following are reasons to make sure you backup your files.

1.  Natural disaster - In recent weeks in the UK, we have experienced our wettest summer since records began.  Many thousands of properties have been flooded, caused millions of pounds of damage.  If people have a computer, the chances are that they are placed on the floor and not on a desk.  Imagine if your house was under 4 foot of water.  Would your computer be safe?

2.  House fire - Imagine the worst scenario possible.  You come home from work to find your house smouldering from a domestic fire.  Inside all of your possessions have been lost, never to be seen again.  Awful.  But, once you go to the insurance company and try to find out details of insurance, your possessions, bills, utility companies etc... where is the information?  Burned within your computer.

3.  Power surge - This is quite rare in recent times, but if there is adverse weather, we can experience a power surge from time to time.  If a computer is switched on and a power surge happens, the disk drive inside can become corrupt, or worse it would be rendered completely unreadable.

4.  Loss / Theft - A situation where you have your laptop stolen, or your house burgled, is a sad event.  Imagine you have your photos, documents and other media on the computer and all of your data is lost.  You will never get this back and will have lost many hours of work, precious photos and your film collection.

5.  Children - If, like me, you have children, they tend to play on the computer.  Mine will search the internet, play games, use powerpoint and paint to draw pictures, or even complete their homework.  I used to try to tell the teacher that my dog ate my homework, but what would they say?  Children tend to eat and drink by the computer.  Imagine that a glass of orange juice goes all over the laptop, into the keyboard and through to the workings of your laptop.  No more data.

All of these scenarios above point to computers at home, usually positioned on the floor, or a laptop, where it is susceptible to damaged and more importantly data loss.

I looked for a solution to this problem and came across an online backup solution to take all of these worries away.  I found a very good solution and have become a reseller myself.  Take a look at http://www.empachalweb.com for a solution to backup an unlimited amount of data over an unlimited amount of machines.  For an extra cost, you can backup a NAS and even create a shared, secure, drive for all of your machines to stay synchronized.

Take a look.  Be safe.  Backup online.

Self Development

As a mentor, I have often discussed with my team the fact that self development is important. I believe that every individual should take 30 minutes out of their working day to self learn. This would include reading relevant articles on the web, reading news sites and even technical manuals.

30 minutes adds up to 2.5 hour per working week. This amount of time is small enough to not make an impact to your working productivity. However, the golden rule is that if you do not take 30 minutes today, you cannot take 1 hour tomorrow. If you miss a 30 minute time slot in one day, you cannot ever make it up, as this could impact your productivity.

Further to this, I also believe in education. People may be an expert in a particular area, but in the current world, progression never stops. If you were an expert in Exchange 2007, well you are now out of date as Exchange 2010 is the latest version, with Exchange 2015 just around the corner.

It is up to each individual to learn and continuously learn and keep up, especially in the IT world. As a Lotus Notes developer I would make sure that I took at least one exam a year. I think in total, I have taken more than 10 exams related to Lotus over the years. Since moving from my technical background into the Project Management arena, I have already taken 3 exams and am now studying for the next.

I feel it is important to learn from a broad range of sources, including books, blogs and related websites. 30 minutes a day is not too much to ask and it pays dividends in your knowledge and overall breadth of knowledge in your chosen area.

How many blogs should one have?

I am writing an open question to you all.  How many blogs should one have?

I am in the mind that one person should have a single blog.  I write  articles on several topics at the moment, one being Lotus Notes and the other being Project Management.  Both of these blogs are under two different names, one being "Paul Cable" and the other being "The Secret Diary of a Project Manager".

I 'think' I would like to copy my articles from the project management site into this site and close down the PM site.  I would then look to open the article content up to another of my work streams, which is Online Backup.  In addition, I would start writing blogs on all sorts, such as personal experiences, including rugby, dieting and exercise, but everything would be in one place.

Is a single blog suitable for this, or should I keep the personal articles in a separate blog and just include anything 'work' related into my single professional blog?

I see many blogs - especially the Lotus Notes blogs on Planet Lotus - relating to mainly work related articles, with the odd article on personal matters, so does that mean I keep a single blog, but limit my personal articles.  If so, what is the respectable limit?

What do you think?

Why Contracting?

I wrote on a forum some advice to a permanent member of staff considering the option of contracting.  The question was "How much experience do you need before you go contracting?".

My answer was fairly short, but I thought it was interesting enough to make into an article to share with you, especially in a time when contractors are getting a bad press.

I left university and after 18 months in two jobs, I went contracting.  Not consulting, contracting.  I was simply a developer assigned to a project to work on the Y2K project (remember that folks?).  I knew I was a good developer and had the confidence to leave the full-time security and branch out on my own.

Rule Number One as a contractor is to have the confidence in yourself to be able to step out and say "I can do this".  Confidence.  Simple.

The knowledge comes second.  This may surprise some people, but the reality is there is always an answer on the internet.  I remember my parents not being too happy about leaving the security of a full-time role and not knowing where I would be working, but I knew that I would be OK, I had the confidence.

I feel that knowledge must be backed up by qualifications.  People often undervalue qualifications, but the reality is that you are able to get a rounded education, the more you look into specific qualifications.  An example was while working within the Lotus Notes Arena, I was able to understand more of the theory and have a deeper understanding of the intricacies, over colleagues without the additional education and research.  My Father was a great believer in education and I am committed to this day to make sure I continue in his three-word mantra... "Education education education".  

Along with knowledge, a contractor is expected to make an impact to the team / project very soon after starting.  Often a day or two to show the processes / governance is all you are allowed before you actually start making progress on the task you have been taken on for.

Contractors get quite a bit of negative press and many full time employees often begrudge a contractor working along side them.  Usually the main reason is down to money.  This simple little thing makes many people jealous in all walks of life, but the issue between contractors vs permanent staff can often be very visible and difficult.

My reply for this is often the fact that we are actually paid more money that the usual member of staff, but we are only paid for the time we are working.  The eight standard bank holidays, sick pay and our annual holiday is not paid, neither are the extras such as Training and Qualifications (remember my paragraph above).  We do have other "perks" such as our subsistence and travel are paid before tax, we can pay ourselves in a way to minimise our tax, but we still have all the additional paperwork, research, accountants fees etc to make this happen.

Anyone can be a contractor.  You need to have the confidence, the knowledge, the qualifications and the self motivation to go out there and sell yourself. 

Is Android too risky for business?

I have both an Android phone and tablet.  I actually have the new ASUS Transformer Prime, which is incredible.  I like widget and the freedom to place anything on my phone.  There are thousands of Apps available in the new Google Play store. 

However, I attended a Bring Your Own Device event last week which discussed the security implications.  One main point that came across was how insecure Android is, for example there was recently an application for a touch (flash light for my friends in the US), which would maliciously send a text message for an extortionate rate.  McAfee were one of the presenters and showed a frightening slide that told us... 

57% of Android users have no security on their phone 
Only 5% have anti virus or anti malware 
19% have some form of encryption 
17% have a password, or keypad lock 

Do you backup?

I provide a solution to backup up to 5 computers automatically in the background.  You can access these files from anywhere - via the web, or even on your smart phone.  All your music, photos and files accessible anywhere, for just £25 per year.  

Empachal Backup is for personal and business use.  It will allow 5 machines to be backed up for only £25 per year, which is under $40 USD.

Imagine the heart ache of losing all your work, your family photos and your music collection. 

Data backup is very important today where everyone saves their important data in their computer or external hard drive. 5 years ago, or even 10 years back, people backup their data by copying the important files from one hard drive to another.

This no longer a common practice because in the world today, we have more and more software engineers which specialized in different niche. There are backup software which can help you to backup all your data securely and safely.

5 reasons to backup your files...

1. Security.  If you manually copy your files from one hard drive to another, someone can just open your backup copy and see your content.  Zipping all the files with password and you can start doing the maths now on how long you need to unzip them. Further more, is those password protection secure? Data backup software today uses strong encryption algorithm such as AES 256-bit where this algorithm is a military class security to protect your backup data.

2. Continuous Backup. If you back up once a week and your hard disk crashed on the 6th day, you are going to suffer 6 days data loss. That is what I don’t want and I am sure you don’t want as well. 6 days can be lots of data and what if you backup only once a month and your hard disk crashed on the 28th day? Can you live with 28 days data loss? This is another advantage of data back up software where it provides a continuous backup. It also automatically detects new files in your hard drive and back it up on the fly when you are using your computer. You will suffer a very minimum data loss unless you disable the backup feature.

3. Save space. Again, back to the zipping example, you are going to suffer the waiting time for your files to be decompressed. As a result, if you don’t compress your backup files, you are going to waste a lot of space due to data backup. This problem can also be solve with a backup software because it compressed your files as they back up. You might not save plenty of space due to this, but you are still saving space and even 5-6 GB can be a lot when you are in some emergency.

4. Smart Performance. When you copy files from one hard drive to another, sure you are going to suffer performance decrease.  As a result, you might just “Forget it, let’s do it some other time”. And I don’t have to repeat again what if you happened not to backup your data. So, data backup software today is smart enough. They know all these problems will exists and they are here to help us. Mostly, backup software will use the least resources to backup your data when your computer is busy and only maximize the backup resources when the computer is idle. All these actions are automated.

5. Scheduler. There is no point if you plan a great backup strategy but you forget to back up. As a result, backup software usually comes with a scheduler.  With Empachal Backup, you install a small piece of software on your machine and it will backup up all of your files immediately.  If you update a file, it will be automatically backed up immediately, without requiring any manual intervention from yourself.

Empachal Backup allows for unlimited backup (I have over 120GB) and will retain 30 versions of your files, so if you accidentally delete, or update your file, you can restore a previous copy from backup.

Be Smart. Backup.