After I received the news that my paper was selected as a presentation topic at VMworld 2009, I jokingly said that “my presentation will probably be on the last day during the last time slot.” Well, that’s exactly what happened, and I can only blame myself for slipping and thinking negatively for once in my life. However, out of the 150 people who registered for my session, we still had a sizeable attendance despite the quick evacuation that occurred at the Moscone Center just after 2pm (my presentation was at 4pm). To those of you who attended, thank you! For those of you who missed it, you can check out the recording on the VMworld website when it’s posted on the 14th.
Now, the presentation…I love it when you see heads nod while you’re talking about a subject for which you have much passion. I feel that the attendees really received some good content as their last VMworld presentation. As I mentioned to them, I shared many details that they already knew. However, every person with whom I’ve spoken, who had that amazing “ah ha” moment, also knew the exact same details, but never thought about their impacts. Change management cannot be taken lightly, especially when your infrastructure is as agile as a virtual infrastructure.
One of the key points I made during this presentation was to get a third opinion. I know what you’re thinking… “Lew, you’re a consultant…of course you want people to bring in a consultant.” But what you may not know is that I’ve always believed this is a best practice when evaluating anything that would require you or your team to step out of the weeds and review with an unbiased opinion.
Let’s face facts -- it’s not possible for an IT administrator, developer or support team member to find major areas of improvement in an infrastructure they’ve created. Why? Because THEY created it! In this industry people stick to their technical guns, believing that there is a right way and a wrong way to do certain things. I’m not saying this is necessarily wrong, but the “right” way needs to change as the technologies supporting it evolve. Having someone who understands the trends and can look at your environment with fresh eyes is well worth the expense.
I’ll let you know when the VMworld recording is posted.
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1 comments:
I believe your material represents the way IT architects need to think about their strategic initiatives. It's not that you need a third opinion, as much as you need to think about things from three different perspectives. Saving time, saving money, and saving money over time all need to be addressed, for sure. But so do the principles of configuration management and change control as we move toward a more virtualized space. A nice job, and i am sorry to have missed it.
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