Oaksys Tech Update

The latest Web 2.0 and SOA seems all about getting things done quickly rather than producing robust computer systems which are secure and producing auditable results.
A new entrant to the IT world that I know is being given projects connected with financial systems. They give him projects in a range of different programming languages even if he does not know that language. He is then expected to pickup the programming language in a week or two and to generate public facing production systems from that language within a few weeks. So far there have been no tears, but the potential for corporate embarassment is substantial.The person(s) at fault is this young man’s boss(es). I think the time has come for legislation that any public facing system involving credit cards to be certified by a qualified chartered professional before release to the public.

Guru

Here’s quite a useful analysis for authors wanting to use the internet for publicity. The danger of being too technical is that you get engrossed in the technology and forget the message of marketing.

Alaric

One of the issues raised in my book Teen Valour is the conflict faced by a teen boy when he is faced with the opportunity of making a lot of money. In the story the boy is given the opportunity of making a great deal of money for apparently little effort. It conflicts with the upbringing by his parents. They teach him that he will have to work hard and live carefully to accumulate any savings. Adam Cranford, the hero of the book, already has enough problems dealing with the fact that his family are relatively poor yet all of his friends at the new school are very wealthy.

He can see how having access to wealth has spoilt some of his friends, but when he is faced with the opportunity to make a lot of easy money how should he react himself? Will he take advantage of the situation and give into temptation. Adam is a deceptively simple character. It is not easy to predict how he will react.

Alaric

I briefly flirted with using www.1and1.co.uk as a hosting service for an e-commerce application. Their pricing appeared to be very attractive and their software solutions had a good offering of features. Setting up the site was easy and straight forward and we soon had the basic site working.

However the problems began when we realised that to get the features required we needed to upgrade to the next level of their service. The online system would allow an upgrade, but did not not permit the carry over of the 50% discount of prices that were on offer at the time. So we contacted the customer support by email, their contact phone number was one of those iniquitous  0870 numbers where you pay excessively to sit in their phone queue.

After several rounds of emails with their support people it was clear that they did not want to help. They wanted to pass responsibility to their billing department. “Billing” is there to sort out collection of money not to change account type. The customer support then claimed they could only dealing technical queries. It was clear that we were not going to get the support that we needed so we took advantage of the 30 free trial and cancelled the account. The cancellation process is well hidden and is two stage process. It requires you to respond to an email (which never arrived) or the cancellation request would be ignored.

Regardless of the cancellation the Billing Dept still tried to charge the account set up fee (during the 30 free trial). A personally addressed letter to the UK Chief Executive did not receive a response. Fortunately we know how to complain and their billing people backed off, but we have seen reports that 1and1 are quick to resort to the use of debt collection agencies. They also “fine” you should decided to use credit card chargeback.

It is really sad that 1and1 clearly invest a lot of money in good data centres, software development, advertising and marketing yet their Customer Support is really unhelpful. It is a total waste of their corporate investment.  That brief experience has convinced me that 1and1 should never be trusted to provide services to a business. The business risk, created by their poor Customer Support, is just too great. It makes me want to find their management team and to shake some sense into them!

Since that debacle some research on the Internet has shown a high level of public discontent with the 1and1 Customer Support. It seems that the main supporters are also 1and1 affiliates who would make a financial gain by encouraging people to join 1and1.

You should also take into account that the 12 month contract commitment for the “50%” effectively means the first year is only 25% off.

Guru

Google voice is starting to hit the world. This is the start of a new era for voice telecoms, but at present it is only North America receiving the service. Skype should have done this, but since being taken over by Ebay it has lacked impetus. Meg really did pay too much. About 18 months ago I predicted that the home PC would largely disappear to howls of protest from the Geek Brigade. However this Google step is just another step along the path of thin devices in the home. Who wants the hassle of maintaining a PC at home?

Guru

The Blog by Alistair Kelman describes some of the new rules that will apply to electronic evidence in court cases. In essence the organisation will have to be able to produce a snapshot of their system including transient messages such as IM’s, email and twitter.

Nightmare stuff!

Guru

On the Finextra daily news blog I see an article that a company called Streambase has introduced a facility to allow traders to watch events on Twitter. There are no real controls on who broadcasts information on Twitter or on the content. If the financial firms take advantage of this new service I predict that there will be tears at bedtime. It is a bit like using rumours among the crowd on a race track to make your investment decisions before visiting the turf accountant.

Guru

I’ve been in computing since 1970. One of the early lessons was not to attempt to “computerise” a mess. The mantra was that computers just let you screw up more quickly. The same lesson really applies to outsourcing or offshoring.

Many of the instances of outsourcing that I see are where poor management has created a problem for the organisation. The local management then attempt to solve the problem by giving their IT structure to someone else to run. If you believe the Outsourcing Salesman it will be done more efficiently (cheaper) and with greater flexibility. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the Outsourcing Company will want to make a profit of at least 10% over what it used to cost to run in-house.

So how do they make this profit:

• Use cheaper resources (people and equipment)
• Shared overheads with other work
• Cheaper financing
• By cutting through the internal politics
• Reduced internal overheads compared to what the client organisation would charge.
• Charging for subsequent changes to the system (the £100 replacement light bulb effect).
• Efficient billing, for what used to be done “free” by the internal IT team.

Handing over a management mess to an external outsource suppliers gives them a much greater opportunity to charge for ex-contract work that was not documented in the original specification. It would be better if the management team of the client resolved the problems themselves before talking to external suppliers.

Sorting out the marketing for a new book seems to entail as much work as writing it in the first place. Teen Valour is about 170,000 words and took about 6 months to research and write. There seems to be an endless supply of publicists willing to take a fee and have no results firmly defined.  The current bid is about $4000 just to get talking to publishers, but no guarantees.

Alaric