Category: enterprise
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“Badges? We don’t need no steenking badges!”
All too often I’ve encountered a certain type of person in an enterprise, business or personal setting who questions the need for a secure network environment. Actually the word “questions” is too weak; this type of person actively opposes network security measures. And very often they’re in a decision-making position for their organization. One otherwise…
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Dark clouds on the horizon?
To punctuate my previous two posts on cloud solutions, CIO Magazine offers up this observation: Unfortunately, too often cloud applications and services are bought by people who really shouldn’t be buying. Sure, they may have the budget … but that doesn’t mean they necessarily have the training to make good IT decisions, let alone the…
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Cloud: sexy – Enterprise: not so much
I read this article several weeks ago. I’ve pondered it. I’ve read it over again. Here’s a quote: If you unnaturally extend or generalize cloud solutions to me, or if you pontificate cloud idealisms without providing tangible platforms that can service what I am, then you waste my time. When you waste my time, I…
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Harpooning the whale
One data set, two locations – each with an EMC VNXe array. Big giant file sets. How do engineers in the US and Mexico share 3D models quickly and seamlessly? We receive engineering drawings and models from our customers. We comb through the files extracting bill-of-materials information, critical dimensions and other vital attributes. A single…
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Servers in the closet
Well, here it is. Our “efficiency” server closet: Quite a change from our previous, spacious custom-deluxe server room. It’s not quite final in this picture. We’ve added another switch in the space between the chassis switch and the firewall. Cooling remains problematic. But it took a bit of work to get to this point. For…
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What happened?
Lots. Lots of changes in the last six months, and it’s been hard to keep up. But as you can see from the pics, our IT lab and server room are no more. 160 dedicated amps of power, 3.5 tons of dedicated air conditioning. Backboards on three walls, four NetShelter racks, cable ladder. Nice…
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May I Exchange this for another, please?
We detoured briefly into a live ERP implementation. It’s moving forward, hiccups and all. Many of our users are beginning to understand the power of our new system. With great power comes great responsiblity – er, I mean major configuration pain. So we’re learning the ins-and-outs of QAD. I started this journey with the intent…
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The Belly of the Beast, Part 4
I promise to tell you how we got here, but not today. I’m a bit tired. It’s always a gratifying point in any IT project when a critical mass of users has turned the corner and begun investing themselves in their new system. I think we’re at that point today. There are still some unsolved…
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The Belly of the Beast, Part 3
Data is here. No migration is without anomalies, so I have some hunting to do – missing records, missing fields. But the real excitement, as always, is with our users. Change is exciting. New ERP system, new capabilities, information at our fingertips. Why am I always reminded of the 1980s IBM / Charlie Chaplin commercials?…
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The Belly of the Beast, Part 2
Vantage data + QAD schema, will it blend? This is the time when all those silly data entry errors come home to roost. In our case, fourteen years worth. The majority of the last 96 hours has been scrubbing and rationalizing the Vantage data into a format that can be imported into QAD. As I…