Considering the Cloud? - Overview

On the Houston Business Executives "Executive Hour" Radio show on Houston's 1070 AM, Lance Griffith, CEO of CAP5, discusses with the show host, R.D. Yoder, Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud Computing to help the general business audience understand all the buzz-words flying around and whether or not it's worth considering one over the other for their IT Infrastructure.

Now it's time to consider a Private cloud...

In an article on CAP5's PAPER.LI Site april 15th, 2012, called 7 Things to Consider before Building a Private Cloud, the author RWW talks about the below 7 points.  I am going to expound on these 7 Points over the next 7 post and talk about knowledge and experiences CAP5 has regarding each of these points with our client's Privae Clouds that CAP5 hasbuilt for them. 

Here are RWW's "7 Things to Consider Before Building a Private Cloud":

1. Workload and Infrastructure Interaction
2. Security
3. Latency
4. User Experience
5. Cost
6. Automation
7. Cloud Enablement

Please refer to the Article by RWW when reading the series "Considering the Cloud" over the next few articles

Backups Don't Matter As Much As Recoveries!

Just a quick post today but it's an important one. 

I asked a gentleman the other day, "what is most important to you about your backup solution?" His reply, "that I can recover my data in the event of a hardware loss."

CORRECT ANSWER!

Here are some other questions you should further ask yourself:

• Are you able to restore the data that you have been backing up? 
• Are you testing to insure that the data is making it to the backup media?
• Is the backed up data good for long periodds of time and does it remain on the media you use to back up your data?
• If you loose your hardware that you are backing up or it is destroyed, what is your contingency for having additional hardware to restore the data that you have backed up on? 

These are just a few questions.  When CAP5 does an analysis for a customer in regards to a backup solution, we asks many question more along the lines of  "how will you get your business back up and running in the event of any type of failure! 

Food for thought!

The Law of Precession - The Big Picture in Technology

I was talking to my friend, Jack Warkenthien of NextStep Solutions (http://nextstep-solutions.com), last week and we were talking about enhancing CAP5’s Sales Process.  In that conversation he brought up the term “Law of Precession”.  Although through deduction in deciphering the roots of “Pre” for “forward” and “Cession” for “group order”, the “Law of Precession” was new to me.  (Not knowing the exact meaning of term Precession at the time, I later found the dictionary definition being, “continuous forward progress by a group moving along in an orderly fashion.”) 

Even though I pretty much knew what Precession meant, I still had never had heard of the “Law of Precession” so of course I asked Jack.  I am sure this is what he wanted anyway so that he could impart his knowledge and elevate our conversation regarding enhancing my sales process.  He is an expert in the Sales Development and Consulting field so it only made sense that he should tout what he knows and impress me!

His explanation was rather deep with lots of personal feeling behind it.  I was very impressed with his explanation and listened intently as he moved the conversation from a knowledge transfer to more of a “what I believe” heart felt impression which he left with me. I could never mimic the way that Jack explained the law.  Now that I understand it, I think that everyone needs to define the law on their own terms and I would certainly do that by hearing the conversation from Jack or someone like Jack that has a belief in the Law of Precession through life experiences. 

I am still learning to define the Law o Precession in my own terms but I can simply clinically explain it as:, the Law of Precession is more of a “Lifestyle Philosophy” that surrounds our lives if we concentrate on it.   In short, I found out that that the Law of Precession has everything to do with setting our sites on the end game or the big picture goal and while doing so, the general law allows for all the particles and pieces to fall into place on their own naturally. 

In trying to find my own definition, I came across the following article that I think will help everyone define the Law of Precession in their own terms: “How we can Apply the Law of Precession to our Relationship and Stay Happy…” (http://natureluvr.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/how-can-we-apply-law-of-precession-to-our-relationship-and-stay-happy%E2%80%A6/)

Now to explain why I have picked this subject… For years, I have been searching for an analogy to explain CAP5, the root of the long version of “Capability Maturity Level  5”  The Law of Precession is the perfect analogy to explain this maturity!  CAP5s are the technological goals, otherwise known as “Fully Optimized” goals, that all companies should set their sights on when working on their technology business (opposed to “in their technology business”).  As long as responsible technology parties keeps their focus on the their technology environment’s end game, all the other particles and pieces will naturally work out with a high percentage of success.  Alternately, companies often focus on fixing what is broke and instead of finding out what truly is causing the problems that initiated the issues to begin with.  If all a company does is focus on the little things, they will spend too much time, money and resources and will never get to a fully optimized state within their technology environment.

I certainly challenge all that are working on high maturity and fully optimized technology business environments, to adopt an end game strategy.  Hopefully through understanding the Law of Precession, all can gain a well-rounded analogist perspective in solving the bigger picture problems in their technology business organizations.

To find out more of how the CAP5 philosophy can work in your company's technology organization, please contact us at sales@capfive.com or 713-979-5280.