Friday, March 24, 2017

Cloud Computing-Latest Buzz word

We are hearing lots of initiatives being underway around Cloud Technologies . This cloud is supposed to obsolete the need of on-site servers and data centers. It is based on community and cooling concept, use what is need and release what is not required in close to real-time.
Important question to wonder is are we ready as Big organization to let give control of our organization into the hand of Microsoft or Amazon, in the wake of recent internet outages, data breach including MasterCard and Visa it is quite obvious that we  need thorough testing that our data doesn't get into wrong hand.
Truly we are entering in to new era of application and product hosting, moving to cloud will help in disaster recovery but keeping it secure should be first priority. Hard Drive->Floppy->CD->Digital tape->External Storage->Cloud- wonder whats next ??Virtualization, 3D data visualization.

Being Thankful

​I started attending Toastmaster meeting as a guest when my office colleague kind of forced me:). I am thankful to her that she took me to introductory meeting and since then I have taken various role and in Toastmaster group everyone get an opportunity to be themselves.
Topic determined for one of toastmaster speech was "I am thankful for __", and each speaker had a chance to fill in the last word with details they want to share and as speaker. Few years ago I read an article in Reader's Digest, that being thankful and showing gratitude for any person is one of the most overlooked human emotion. It is easy to look half glass empty but we hit resistance when time to be thankful for half glass full.
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. William Arthur Ward
Being thankful helps us to differentiate between have and have-not and take us more towards contentment. It also harness the feeling of completeness and help to uncover our emotions and we act in better way. There are so many ways to show your thankfulness, it doesn't have to be "Thank You" or "Thanks" all the time. It could be as simple as making favorite food for the person, or bringing flower or spending quality time with the person. That too without electronic devices.
Personally I am thankful to my family, friends, colleague who make me what I am today .If you haven't done so or missed someone to thanks who has helped you in accomplishing your dream, goal, helped you in one way or other. This can range for person making morning tea for you or helped in landing you your dream job, helped you to find your better half, make you laugh, stand by you in high and low's.
I would like to conclude my post with wonderful quote from Marcel Proust
"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."  

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

7 Year gap in blogging

I was reviewing my linkedin profile and noticed a link to my blog ...can't believe my last post was in June 2010.Where did 7 year go??wondering,sent 2 kids off to university,aged more,communication and writing slowly and steadily changed from blogging to Instagram,snap-chat,twitter,Facebook messenger,whatsapp. Facetime, skype took over need of in person meetings. We are getting technologically advanced but in this advancement loosing personal connectivity,talk over the phone has become thing of yesteryear.This loss of personal connectivity is impacting all of us alike we are living in our own world which doesn't even have room for constructive feedback.While I appreciate all technology advancement and have adapted few of them I appreciate in person meeting more,I still prefer phone over snapchat,beautifully crafted email over instant messenger.Call me old school-probably ....:)

Cloud Technology & Quality -How does it go side by side?

Cloud has become the latest buzzword in Technology. In an effort to reduce the operational costs, many companies are moving to Cloud providers such as Microsoft, Amazon or IBM. All of these providers are expending lot of effort to capture Cloud market share as much as possible. Many startups are already preferring cloud based solutions to meet the need of fast product development and quick time to market. They are hosting cloud in-house  or renting an instance on public cloud to meet the need of operational, product and service offerings.With all these wind of change coming to technology industry question quite often come to mind is where does quality fit into this picture?

From my point of view, one of the important factors is quality and its management,keeping up with quality goals and objective,cost of product and infrastructure availability for the smooth operation of a company’s day-to-day business.

Many of the questions listed below must be answered when infrastructure and products are hosted outside of your control limit:

  • What happens when server loses the connectivity? Who will be first point of contact ?Cloud provider or in-house tech support ?
  • How does Service level Agreement with Cloud provider will impact companies ?What happens to Service Level Agreement with customer?
  • How do we intend to protect the IP.In the order of priority actions must be taken to smoothly transition to Cloud?
  • What actions are required to secure your application from cyber attack?
  • What kind of control is required for the supplier management?
  • Do you have formal Risk Management in place?
  • How to protect the application,infrastructure from external attack ,such as data spoofing,denial of service attack etc?

To address the concerns above, the following actions can be taken:

Plan:This is one of the important steps to take. One must spent enough time to plan for migration, deployment of new product,timeline,resources required,training requirement,risk and mitigation,identify stakeholders, rollback strategy in-case migration or new deployment to cloud fail.

Quality Metrics: Identify the quantitative metrics which will help you to track the progress of cloud initiatives. Some of the Key Performance Indicators could be number of applications to be migrated,planned vs complete,number of new deployments plan vs complete,
incident and defect by type,severity and priority.Analysis of most common issues and actions taken to address those.

Alignment with standards: These are company specific requirements. Many companies comply with ISO standard,CMMI or internally established standard. Cloud migration or deployment needs to make sure move is in accordance with these standard and any deviation is properly signed off by Leadership or Management.

Risk Management: All risks must be identified and documented as and when they are identified and must have a mitigation plan in place to address the risk. Acceptance,Transfer,Avoidance are few of the risk response type which companies can use to stay on top of the risks.A proper Risk Management Tool such as Risk Log,Risk Matrix,will help in tracking these risks to closure in timely manner.

Supplier Management: Since cloud providers are an external vendor supplier management process must be established and suppliers should be audited to make sure they are
in compliance with standards and requirements mandated by the receiving organization.Quality should be clearly outlined in contract with supplier in accordance with overall quality goals and objective of the company.

Hardening the Cloud hosting:When you put infrastructure or application on the cloud, you are susceptible for external hacking,spoofing,data loss and interception during data transfers.This can be alleviated  through proactive measure of setting up the Intrusion Detection System,diverting the attackers from real data.Public Key Infrastructure establish certificates and digital signatures with pre-set validity period.

I am all for latest technology usage however change must be controlled,success and quality  must be measurable to validate the objective of Cloud initiative.At the end I would like to mention that though Cloud seems like you  are transitioning the company’s operations and infrastructure management to some third party at the end of it Quality,Customer Satisfaction,Security and IP protection is sole responsibility of companies providing the product,services or infrastructure.



References:
What Is the ISO 9000 Standards Series? http://asq.org/learn-about-quality/iso-9000/overview/overview.html