(My) Influential Women in Tech

Taking some time out of work in the technical, software, computer industry has been really helpful to give my brain time to sift through the required, the necessary, the nice, and the pointless things that I’ve been involved in over 41-years in technology.

Given that today is International Women’s Day 2016 and numerous tweets have flown by celebrating women, and given the people I follow, many women in Technology. I thought I’d take a minute to note some of the great women in Tech I had the opportunity to work with.

I was fortunate in that I spent much of my career at IBM. There is no doubt that IBM was a progressive employer on all fronts, women, minorities, the physically challenged, and that continues today with their unrelenting endorsement of the LGBT community. I never personally met or worked with current IBM CEO, Ginni Rometty, she like many that I did have the opportunity to work with, started out in Systems Engineering and moved into management. Those that I worked with included Barbara McDuffie, Leslie Wilkes, Linda Sanford and many others.

Among those in management at IBM that were most influential, Anona Amis at IBM UK. Anona was my manager in 1989-1990, at a time when I was frustrated and lacking direction after joining IBM two years earlier, with high hopes of doing important things. Anona, in the period of a year, taught me both how to value my contributions, but also how to make more valuable contributions. She was one of what I grew to learn, was the backbone of IBM, professional managers.

My four women of tech, may at sometime or other, have been managers. That though wasn’t why I was inspired by them.

Susan Malika: Sue, I met Sue initially through the CICS Product group, when we were first looking at ways to interface a web server to the CICS Transaction Monitor. Sue and the team already had a prototype connector implemented as a CGI. Over the coming years, I was influenced by Sue in a number of fields, especially in data interchange and her work on XML. Sue is still active in tech.

Peggy Zagelow: I’d always been pretty dismissive of databases, apart from a brief period with SQL/DS; I’d always managed fine without one. Early on in the days of evangelizing Java, I was routed to the IBM Santa Teresa lab, on an ad hoc query from Peggy about using Java as a procedures language for DB2. Her enthusiasm, and dogma about the structured, relational database; as well as her ability to code eloquently in Assembler was an inspiration. We later wrote a paper together, still available online[here]. Peggy is also still active in the tech sector at IBM.

Donna Dillenberger: Sometime in 1999, Donna and the then President of the IBM Academy of Technology, Ian Brackenbury, came to the IBM Bedfont office to discuss some ideas I had on making the Java Virtual Machine viable on large scale mainframe servers. Donna, translated a group of unconnected ideas and concepts I sketched out on a white board, into the “Scalable JVM”. The evolution of the JVM was a key stepping stone in the IBM evolution of Java. I’m pleased to see Donna was appointed an IBM Fellow in 2015. The paper on the JVM is here.(1).

Gerry Hackett: Finally, but most importantly, Geraldine aka Gerry Hackett. Gerry and I  met when she was a first line development manager in the IBM Virtual Machine development laboratory in Endicott New York, sometime around 1985. While Gerry would normally fall in the category of management, she is most steadfastly still an amazing technologist. Some years later I had the [dubious] pleasure of “flipping slides” for her as Gerry presented IBM Strategy. Aside: “Todays generation will never understand the tension between a speaker and a slide turner.” Today, Gerry is a Vice President at Dell. She recruited me to work at Dell in 2009, and under her leadership the firmware and embedded management team have made steady progress, and implemented some great ideas. Gerry has been a longtime advocate for women in technology, a career mentor, and a fantastic roll model.

Importantly, what all these women demonstrated, by the “bucketload”, was quiet, technological confidence; the ability to see, deliver and celebrate great ideas and great people. They were quiet unlike their male peers, not in achievement, but in approach. This why we need more women in technology, not because they are women, but because technical companies, and their products will not be as good without them.

(1). Edited to link to correct Dillenberger et al paper.

Touch screen and the desktop

I just posted a response over on a CNET discussion topic. As often is the case, rather than write, review, edit and post; I banged away a response and submitted, as always I made a few typo’s, so here is a corrected version.

I’ve just retired from an senior engineering position at Dell, specializing in software and firmware but I also participated in a number of usability studies for hardware/software combinations. I was the originator of the NFC enabled server systems management concept. I’d offer a few thoughts to confirm what some others have said, but also a slightly different perspective.

1. yes reaching across a keyboard to a monitor mounted at the back of a desk is ergonomically unpleasant.

2. Touch is an interesting technology, but for fixed monitors and TV’s etc. it is less than optimal. There are numerous efforts underway to come up with a more responsive, natural way to control a UI. Think X/BOX or Nintendo, or the Samsung SmartTV gestures, voice ala Amazon echo etc.

3. That said, I for one would never go back to a non-touch laptop screen. I can lift my arm from the keyboard and prod the “submit post” button below much quicker that I can use the touchpad, or grab an extrnal mouse and click.

4. If you want a touch screen desktop I’d highly recommend getting an all-in-one with a touch screen and mounting it into a desk. I had one of the Dell XPS 27’s and had an IKEA draftmans desk. We cut a hole 99% the size of the screen; mounted the screen into the hole; secured it with picture wire in a # format across the back. I gave up using a physical keyboard and mouse, bought a Targus Stylus and went 100% touch. The advantage of the IKEA desk is that you can easily angle the surface to one that suits you. Also, it came with a medal lip which stopped things sliding off the edge; also it came with a built in glass area, which was great for to-do lists, notes etc.

One final note, on Touch screen PC’s. As with Windows 10, when switching over to touch screen you have to try to stop doing the way you did them with a mouse and keyboard. The Adobe PDF app for Windows 10, is much easier to use than the Adobe desktop app for Windows 10. Using a drawing program for line art, block diagrams etc. either with your finger, or with a stylus is a huge leap forward to messing about with Word and Powerpoint. In the case of slides, and powerpoint, it made me released me from decades of serial text mode slides.

So rather than ask why so few touch screens for desktop computers. Ask, what are top-5 applications I use, and how could touchscreen make them better, easier, or me more productive. If it’s email, calendar and web browsing, it probably won’t. Although even in those cases, zoom in and zoom out is an improvement.

Retired Until Further Notice

RUFN. I can’t remember where I first saw this, I think on an ex-colleagues linked-in status(*1). Back in September I declared I was done with cube life and it didn’t take long before it was time to part company with Dell.

I’m at an important crossroads, starting to pack up my Austin home, and move to a new house my partner, Kate, and I are building just south east of Boulder CO. Kate is already living in Boulder, where we are partners in Boulder Bodyworker.

So it seemed like an appropriate time to take some time out, and start an exciting new phase of life for me. I’ll be keeping busy, while I don’t have any active movie or music projects at the moment, I am behind on working on a project for Tri Equal and also a member of the advisory board  of the Professional Triathlon Union and continuing generally as an activist in the triathlon community.

I’m available for consulting work in the new year, especially for small to medium sized businesses that want to get an insight or review of their technology strategy; a perspective and advice on working with open source; data center operations.

Otherwise I’ll post here as appropriate and see how things develop next year. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

 

*1. Yeah I’m aware of the slang usage.

Dell and EMC together

I’ve been asked a few times about the Dell/EMC merger/acquisition, I can say nothing, not because of financial or security regulations, but because I know nothing at all. Although it was clear some changes were afoot at Dell, the announcement came as a surprise to me.

A couple of things are amusing though in the industry analysis. The most amusing is the quotes coming out of other industry based organizations and their CEO’s. This is a classic of it’s kind, on the Register about Meg Whitman at HP, and then this one from Dietzen the CEO at Pure.

This moves comes out of ‘weakness, not strength’, claims CE Dietzen

Wouldn’t it be great if instead of this entirely predictable FUD a confident CEO would say something to the effect of

The acquisition will be challenging, but we welcome the increased competition and are sure customers and businesses will recognize and continue to benefit from the great products we already have, and those on our roadmap.

Of course no one would ever actually say that, one it doesn’t make headlines, and two because well…

The other thing that’s been disappointing is that other Dell trope, you can’t use Apple products. See as an example The Register:

I have one thing to say to MacBook users at EMC: Whoops

I have to say, I’m always surprised when I hear this kind of thing. Seriously, while I’m sure Michael Dell would prefer everyone use a dell tablet or laptop, I’m sure he’d rather have the most talented, productive people and being acquired and having to use new apps is enough of a productivity hit. Why on earth would he want to want to make it worse by enforcing a move of hardware, software and app paradigms. FYI there are a number of people in Dell Software Group, especially from the Quest acquisition, that have been using Apple products since the Quest acquisition.

Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative

In a discussion recently I was asked about the Linux Foundation Converged Infrastructure Initiative and if it was still active?

Indeed it is, they’ve made some great progress on funding and supporting open source projects, and there are some interesting developments coming before the end of the year. CII has funded a number of projects through their grants process, you can read more of the some of the projects, and help with prioritization.

It’s not the nature of the CII to broadcast its’ work, the best measure of success are no vulnerabilities in the projects they are supporting. Projects funded following on from the initial OpenSSL, include:

• Network Time Protocol (NTP)
• GnuPG
• OpenSSH
• Debian Reproduceable Builds
• The Fuzzing Project
• False-Positive-Free Testing with Frama-C

Details of the grants etc. are here. Also, I’ve finally added my profile to the CII web site, as seen here

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Goodbye Cube life…

This month marks the end of my 41st year in information technology, IT; or a it was called back when I started, Data Processing.

Interestingly, officially yesterday I cleared out my “executive” cubicle at the mau5trap and for the first time became a remote (work-at-home) worker. I have to say I’d have preferred not to, but really given the distributed nature of our team it was simply a waste of time and space to maintain the cube, especially since I’m there infrequently; and for the most part, none of the other technical team members are.

It also means I don’t have to waste 90-minutes per day getting to and from the mau5trap, which has got significantly worse in the last 5-years. Yesterdays drive home was an epic waste of time, nearly 2-hours of which 90-mins was getting through downtown Austin.

Over the years I’ve worked at the head office of the businesses I’ve worked for; commuted by train, planes and automobiles to offices; worked on international assignment, temporary assignment, and virtual assignment; but I don’t ever recall actually giving up an office entirely before. In my later projects at IBM I was remote from the team and regularly worked from home; that was actually pretty demotivating.

As it turns out, it’s a pre-cursor to the start of other changes, and probably marks the beginning of the end of my technology career. I have no plans to retire just yet, but as someone who spent his career thriving off the enthusiasm and excitement created by being around others, spending days doing whiteboard architecture and design, I find the current state of tools, webex, powerpoint, chat and the omnipresent  email less and less an attraction.

Add to that my recent tendency to take-on the jobs and assignments no one else wants, or is hoping someone else will do, and there you have it.

| Edit. Thanks to #1 for pointing out I had too many “too’s”

O’Reilly Webcast – Extending Cassandra for OLAP

Colleague Randy Guck, who leads our open source Doradus project, recent gave an O’Reilly Webcast on the project and using Doradus to extend Cassandra for high performance analytics.

The discussion on how Doradus leverages Cassandra, its data model and query language, the internal architecture and the concept of storage services gave in-depth background to then understand the Doradus OLAP service and how it provides near real-time data warehousing.

Randys’ slides and webcast can be fund here. It does need registration, but is well worth the effort. The webcast was sponsored by Dell, which was entirely coincidental, since it was for a Hadoop services offering. Doradus offers some interesting ways to extend and use Cassandra and Randy covers most of them in the webcast. The key point is, that Doradus is an open source project, use and source code are free. Details on Doradus are in this blog entry.

Case story for Dell Software and Hardware

I’ve not posted much of late as I’m working on a lot of back office and process stuff, but still working in Dell Software Group. I recently attended the annual Dell Patent Award dinner where I was able to catch up with Michael Dell and my boss, John Swainson as well as a few other executives, as well many of the great innovators and inventors.

My former boss and Dell Vice President, Gerry Hackett made an interesting point in her remarks prior to doing the roll call for her team at the dinner, she said to the effect that Dell was going to be the only integrated solution provider. I was surprised, but thinking it through she was right.

When I saw this customer story about San Bernardino County School district, I thought it was worth linking here.

Dell Software Official Site – Simplify IT Management

We’ve released our latest web presence for the Dell Software group, it’s got direct download links, try and/or buy, easy to find information and more.

Dell Software Official Site – Simplify IT Management | Mitigate Risk | Accelerate Results.

Come work with us

We’re looking for a Senior Software Development Performance Engineer with a proven track record around performance engineering to join our Dell Software Common Engineering (CE) performance team. This team, as part of the Office of the CTO, helps product teams across the Software Group achieve their performance and scalability objectives through direct involvement and consulting engagements.

We are working on some key forward looking technologies essential to the future of Dell Software Group, and we need someone specifically to help on both performance design, as well as recommendations to the design and implementation teams.

Here is a direct link for the job application with a referral from me. As an Exec. I don’t qualify for the referral bonus, so if you know another Dell employee who isn’t an exec. feel free to reach out to them!

Gaining a better city view

Mckinney Texas is a great city, it contains all the best things about Texas towns and architecture.

Now I’m delighted to say they’ve adopted an become a reference for a number of our products. You can read the full solutions brief here.

The city deployed Foglight Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Toad Data Modeler from Dell Software to increase application visibility, speed troubleshooting and improve integration giving

• Better visibility into the city’s critical
  web and legacy applications
• More-modern applications and services for employees and residents
• Faster diagnosis and problem resolution
• Proactive troubleshooting
• Stronger integration of disparate applications
• Ability to get more out of existing infrastructure

Yes, the picture is of McKinney Falls State Park, it’s not a city property.

Dell PowerEdge 13g Servers with NFC

Although I have not worked in the server group at Dell for almost 3-years, I was delighted to see in among the innovations announced at yesterdays PowerEdge 13g launch, the Near Field Communications (NFC) concept and prototype I proposed just over 2-years ago.

The enhanced at-the-server management, and from anywhere: Dell introduces iDRAC Quick Sync, using Near Field Communication (NFC), an industry first. And is one example of many that belies the notion, commonly held, that Dell doesn’t innovate.

For customers managing at-the-box, this new capability transmits server health information and basic server setup via a hand-held smart device running OpenManage Mobile, simply by tapping it at the server. OpenManage Mobile also enables administrators to monitor and manage their environments anytime, anywhere with their mobile device.

Dell for Web Development

The web dev. focussed team here at Dell have recently widened their web page offering to add some of the software and solutions work they are doing. Barton George has also recently published a 3-part glossary on all things, web/cloud related. It’s a pretty easy read and for those entering this arena for the first time, a useful cross check when playing cloud buzzword bingo.

Dell for Web Development

Dell Embedded Systems Management updates

Over at the Dell TechCenter, Peter Tsai has posted a great update on some of the features of the latest firmware updates to the Dell Blade Chasis Management Controller 3.2 including 10gb Ethernet support and enablement; LifeCycle Controller 1.5 updates including complete out-of-band backup and restore, and config management support for Converged Network Adapters; and finally iDrac 1.6 updates.

Head over to the TechCenter page for the complete list of features plus a link to some new whitepapers. I have to say though, the best reason to head over there is to watch the video they did of the new LifeCycle controller feature to backup and restore feature during a motherboard replacement. The LC features uses WS-MAN to completely take a copy of all the configuration, drivers etc. so that when the motherboard is replaced it can be restored along with the Broadcom Nic, PERC and ServiceTag and Asset Tag making it in essence indistinguishable from the original. Brilliant.

Cote on Consumer to Enterprise

REST Interface slide from Cote presentation

Over on his people over process blog, Redmonk Analyst, Michael Cote, has what is a great idea, a rehersal of an upcoming presentation including slides and audio.

The presentation covers what technology is making the jump from the consumer side of applications and IT into the enterprise. I’m delighted to report Cote has used a quote from me on REST.

For clarification, the work we are doing isn’t directly related to our PowerEdge C-servers, or our cloud services. For that, Dell customer Rackspace cloud has some good REST API‘s and is well ahead of us, in fact I read a lot of their documentation while working on our stuff.

On the other hand, I’m adamant that the work we are doing adding a REST-like set of interfaces to our embedded systems management, is not adding REST API’s. Also, since I did contribute requirements and participate in discussions around WS-* back when I was IBM, I’d say that we were trying to solve an entirely different set of problems, and hence now REST is the right answer, to externalize the data needed for a web based UI.

At the same time, we will also continue to offer a complete implementation of WS Management(WSMAN). WSMAN is a valuable tool to externalize the complexity of a server, in order for it to be managed by an external console or control point. Dell provides the Dell Management Console (DMC) which consumes WSMAN and provides one-to-many server management.

The point of the REST interfaces is to provide a simple way to get data needed to display in a Web UI, we don’t see having to expose all the same data, and can use a much more lightweight infrastructure to process it. At the same time, it’s the objective of this project to keep the UI simple for one-to-one management. Customers who want a more complex management platform will be able to use DMC, or exploit the WSMAN availability.