The Portable Consultant http://theportableconsultant.com/blog ECM infrastructure architecture... and unrelated matters. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:31:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 en ThePortableConsultant’s increasing portablility http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/06/06/increasing-portablility/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/06/06/increasing-portablility/#comments Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:25:50 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/?p=99 The Portable Consultant has noticed that the few posts he once did about the Lexar Lightning and its portable USB applications are the most popular hits on his blog site, almost all of which come via Google.

So it is with great shame that I must confess to being remiss in not informing both my regular readers (Hi, Mom!) of the recent increase in my ‘PQ’, my portability quotient.

Over the past few months I have acquired:

1. a new Lenovo X61 ThinkPad… smaller, more powerful, and with far better battery life than my old refurbished T30 (!) ThinkPad.

Lenovo X61 Notebook

2. a new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet… pocket sized, blazingly fast at connecting to WiFi networks and bluetooth devices, a fine podcatcher and Internet Radio - with a linux terminal interface where I can enter most of the same shell commands I once used to manage big UNIX boxes.

Nokia's Linux powered N800 Internet Tablet

3. a new unlocked Nokia 6300 GSM cell phone… a phone not only capable of going “native” in most countries of the world with local SIM cards, but also the miniature camera I’ve always needed to get those unexpected photos at unexpected times in unexpected places.

Nokia\'s 6300 GSM cell Phone

The whole, however, is greater than the sum of the parts. Together these devices enhance the capabilities of each other in ways I’m only beginning to appreciate.

I’ll be writing more about how these devices play together in the near future.

Cheers,
-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/06/06/increasing-portablility/feed/ The ‘E’ in ECM stands for Enterprise http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/04/18/e-in-ecm-stands-for-enterprise/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/04/18/e-in-ecm-stands-for-enterprise/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:40:55 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/04/18/e-in-ecm-stands-for-enterprise/ Booth bunny
Once in a while every articulate consultant gets to play booth bunny at some technical show. So, having donned a jacket and tie, rather than the fur-trimmed swimsuit, The Portable Consultant was happy to take his turn describing his client’s services to their customers. During a break in the huge lines of people hungry to hear about infrastructure solutions design (”Servers R Us”, basically -all manner of hosting), I took the time to visit our booth neighbours who were presenting their Record and Document Management Systems pilot project.

Now the organization in question is large. Several divisions have the size and technical expertise to justify large initiatives within their own jurisdiction. That being said, I have always been something of a centralist with regard to IT, believing that enterprise-wide strategic solutions are preferable to tactical point solutions in several areas - document and records management being two of them, email being yet another.

So I was interested to learn that this particular ECM pilot project was apparently taking place with some involvement, or at least monitoring, from a central central strategic IT initiatives group. As I learned more, however, it was somewhat distressing to hear that the project would provide its own email archiving component and so the new system would, in fact, result in a de facto change in the enterprise’s existing email archiving abilities.

The quick answer
When I asked whether email would be treated as “business records” I was told they would. When I asked whether the new system would archive email for the business division in question I was told it would. When I asked whether the existing enterprise mail archive would continue to retain copies of mail archived information the proposed system the response was “Yes, if someone were to configure it that way.”

So it appears we have a business unit of this large enterprise making decisions that appear to lie outside their purview, namely the realm of the enterprise’s email archiving policy. It would take considerable knowledge and effort for one of the users to make the configurations necessary to restore the original functionality of the enterprise email archiving function once the division’s new record and document management system had been installed. In short, this one initiative has removed the word “Enterprise” from a portion of ECM policy.

Local versus central or indisputable mandate?
Some may see this as the old battle between the central IT folks and those in the business units. My view is that the ‘E’ in ECM stands for ‘enterprise’ and that a service like email archiving that is clearly within the enterprise mandate should not be altered at the departmental level except to enhance or expand. If this division’s email is no longer archived by the central service then the essential meaning of ‘enterprise’ email will have been lost.

Cheers,
-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/04/18/e-in-ecm-stands-for-enterprise/feed/ Oracle, Link Rot, and the Library of Alexandria http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/02/13/oracle_link_rot_and_library_of_alexandria/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/02/13/oracle_link_rot_and_library_of_alexandria/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:08:04 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/02/13/oracle_link_rot_and_library_of_alexandria/ The Internet isn’t our modern version of the Library of Alexandria, Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive is closer in spirit to that ancient centre of knowledge.

link rot
Over time, especially Internet time, web links break. It’s a part of the natural changing order of things. But the Portable Consultant is particularly sorry to see knowledge, freely offered by a company as part of its marketing, removed completely from the web after a merger or acquisition.

The Oracle Corporation is good at this - or bad, depending on your point of view.

It happened when Oracle acquired Stellent, a well-known ECM company.

The Stellent site remained for a time, but links to free resources like white papers broke quickly and those to training programs followed soon after. It was reasonable, perhaps, in the case of training as that function came under the control of Oracle University. It was sad in the case of the other online ECM resources and white papers that disappeared. Some of these still exist but have been buried without the Stellent name, no doubt because the branding was inconsistent. If the Google search that lists any of these has a broken link you might try looking on Oracle.com under Fusion Middleware (say, What?).

re-branding trumps Search Engine Optimization
Such re-branding seems foolish in one important sense: a Google search on “Stellent training” does not offer any canonical links to Oracle training services on the first page of hits, but if you search the Oracle site you may find it buried in Oracle University under the incomprehensible name of Fusion Middleware. Right, as if all those who read about Stellent in (pre-acquisition) articles and reviews will recognize that Stellent is today “Fusion Middleware”.

No doubt this made sense to someone Oracle management.

Hyperion articles lost
It happened again when Oracle acquired Hyperion.

This time it was more personal. The Portable Consultant had written here about an article on the (former) Hyperion site, Unstructured Text and Structured Data. It took its theme from the George Lakoff book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (what categories reveal about the mind). The Hyperion article links categorization with data mining and Enterprise Content Management, describing several data mining approaches from various companies active in the space.

Sadly, that article is nowhere to be found on the Net. If it does still exist it is buried so deeply within the Oracle site that none of the unique keywords can retrieve it.

However, with some patience, I was able to retrieve a copy through The WayBack Machine at the Internet Archive.

What a shame that such articles should be lost for no apparent reason or for the sake of branding or a change in marketing approach. Thank goodness someone recognized the fragility of our Internet and is attempting to build our new Library of Alexandria.

The Open Text Index and the Internet Archive
I first heard of Brewster Kahle in connection with the intriguing WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers) distributed data search/retrieval system. WAIS indexed databases on Internet sites (not web sites, for this was before Berners-Lee created the world-wide web). As I recall, a central index led searchers to indexes, often at universities and research establishments – foreshadowing today’s Internet search engines.

Later, when Open Text Corporation’s Tim Bray had established the Open Text Index search engine, it became for a short time the back-end search engine for Yahoo! (circa 1995). As technical administrator of the OTI I regularly created a small pile of backup tapes for Open Text’s CEO, Tom Jenkins, to hold up at presentations as: “all the information on the world wide web”. For a time this was probably a fair approximation. Later, these tapes were passed on to Brewster Kahle to incorporate into the Internet Archive.

Today the WayBack Machine provides one of the few links (pun intended) to our Internet past. Whole sites are harvested at regular intervals to provide access, if sometimes spotty, to past web site versions and the information they held. I was able to find my missing article in a collection of pages from the old Hyperion site of 2006.

That I can retrieve Unstructured Text and Structured Data from the Internet Archive is a testament to the foresight of Internet pioneers like Kahle. That I cannot find it through an Internet search engine or retrieve it from an Oracle archive is an example of (understandable) short term commercial interests that do not practice knowledge management… including those companies that would be happy to tell you all about their KM software offerings! :-)

Cheers,
-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/02/13/oracle_link_rot_and_library_of_alexandria/feed/ MySQL acquisition by Sun Microsystems good for Open Source? http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/01/28/mysql-acquisition-by-sun/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/01/28/mysql-acquisition-by-sun/#comments Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:19:15 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/01/28/mysql-acquisition-by-sun/ The Portable Consultant has only now noticed Developer Shed’s good overview of the acquisition of key the open source database company MySQL by Sun Microsystems.

This is certainly good for Sun. It is probably a good place for MySQL, given the alternatives. And it is most likely good for MySQL fans, whether they require the open version or the supported version of the MySQL license.

It also might help Sun figure out how it wishes to structure its own open source licenses in the future. In the past Sun has prevaricated over licensing for key products such as Java and Solaris. Perhaps the MySQL folks, who have successfully structured their own dual-licensing, will assist Sun management in working out future Sun licensing options.

Cheers,
-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/01/28/mysql-acquisition-by-sun/feed/ It’s about ‘fair use’, Mr. Minister http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/01/05/fair-use-mr-minister/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/01/05/fair-use-mr-minister/#comments Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:45:19 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/01/05/fair-use-mr-minister/ The other morning The Portable Consultant caught the second part of a two part interview (RealMedia ram) with Canada’s Industry Minister Jim Prentice on CBC’s (very) early morning business show, The Business Network.

(It’s sad that this business show is relegated to the ridiculously early time slot of 5:45 AM in Canada’s centre of business, Toronto. As well, it’s ridiculous that the content of this show is not available via RSS as a podcast/netcast that could be accessed at a reasonable hour given that there are now dozens of other shows available in that format! …but I digress.)

It was telling that the whole second half of the minister’s time was on the issue of copyright legislation. Secondly, it was somewhat odd that he chose the example of a software program rather than anything related to the real issue of digital rights management versus fair use in the area of consumer entertainment media such as music CDs or movie DVDs.

Did you catch that? He said Canada needs “cutting edge” copyright legislation and gave computer software as an example, not DRM. Now I could just assume he’s been burned by Michael Geist’s ongoing Facebook campaign against the Conservative government’s proposed legislation. Or I could sarcastically suggest he hasn’t been listening very well to the lobbyists who have been pounding at him to align Canada’s legislation with the United State’s Digital Copyright Millennium Act (DMCA) rather than taking a more reasoned approach such as jurisdictions such as the European Community…
…or… or… I could make the paranoid suggestion that someone has been talking to the Minister about how Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is threatening software companies who follow the proprietary software model… and he’s become a bit confused about the two issues.

So, which is it?

  • Avoidance of the issues? - expected of politicians.
  • Confusion of digital media versus software programs? - expected of politicians renowned for their lack of technical understanding.
  • A whiff of anti-open source lobbying going on in the wings? - ok, so that’s a paranoid thought… but… but… entirely plausible.

Since the Minister gave fully half of his interview time to this issue it would be very interesting to know, but unfortunately none of them reflects very well on the Minister’s approach, his knowledge, or the drivers behind his legislative agenda.

The host of Business Network, David Gray, did not delve into the Minister’s position at all… in fact, he only served as a platform for the Minister’s bland statements. He let the Minister off far too lightly, even for a business reporter. Hopefully, other CBC reporters will take up the slack. In any case, Canadians can inform themselves at Michaels Geist’s excellent blog post: Ten Questions for Industry Minister Jim Prentice.

Happy New Year!
-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2008/01/05/fair-use-mr-minister/feed/ Newfoundland data take out http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/26/newfoundland-data-take-out/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/26/newfoundland-data-take-out/#comments Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:08:39 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/26/newfoundland-data-take-out/ It never rains, but it pours. Another data loss story has broken closer to home… well, Newfoundland is not that close but too close for comfort:

It seems that a “private sector consultant” on a provincial government contract (not unlike The Portable Consultant, in fact) took a government PC home and may have exposed personal data to the public Internet.

The initial reports are technically vague, but the reports of the incident seem to point to a situation that is wrong on so many levels that it’s enough to make me want to tear my hair out… umm… so to speak.

Government PC’s should never be taken home… or even invited to drinks and a dinner! What may be a properly behaved PC in a government cubicle becomes a rogue “unmanaged system” when it is removed from the safety of its usual firewalls.

Production data covered by privacy restrictions probably has no reason being on a PC in the first place. Such data should probably be locked up in encrypted databases on secure servers and only access via secure methods.

The consultant should probably have been working with dummy data. In any case, they should be reading Privacy for Dummies and writing a short quiz before they are allowed near restricted data.
The story has a bizarre twist with a so-called “representative of a security company” contacting the consultant to tell them that they were “in possession” of some of the patient records. Since when would anyone in security actually download such data if they came across it? Sounds a bit wierd.

Unfortunately, the news media often don’t have enough resources with the expertise to ask the right questions when a story like this breaks.

Perhaps it’s enough to know that it appears to have been the result of not one, but many lapses of security policies.

Cheers,
-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/26/newfoundland-data-take-out/feed/ UK data loss case - “Penny wise and pound foolish” http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/22/uk-data-loss-penny-wise-pound-foolish/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/22/uk-data-loss-penny-wise-pound-foolish/#comments Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:34:11 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/22/uk-data-loss-penny-wise-pound-foolish/ Cost cutting is being blamed for the loss of massive amounts of personal data in this widely-reported UK government data loss case.

The Portable Consultant knows of at least one excellent free open source data encryption tool that could have protected the data.

How very, very sad for all those concerned.

The protection of data where privacy and security issues are involved should never be subject to cost cutting considerations in this manner. The public good demands an informed threat/risk assessment process conducted by professionals who understand the risks and the real costs of such data loss.

A example of the true meaning of the English expression “Penny wise and Pound foolish”.

-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/22/uk-data-loss-penny-wise-pound-foolish/feed/ Virtual work at Sun Microsystems is a Wonderland http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/16/virtual-work-at-sun-microsystems-is-a-wonderland/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/16/virtual-work-at-sun-microsystems-is-a-wonderland/#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:22:20 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/16/virtual-work-at-sun-microsystems-is-a-wonderland/ It was the spring of 2006 when The Portable Consultant first posted comments here about Second Life’s virtual world.

That was a playground (umm… for adults, you know - like Vegas).

Now we can go to work in a similar environment.

Sun has recently set up a virtual world for its teleworkers, very much like Second Life.

…and they appear to be giving it away as open source.

Now, I’m sure you will want to think very carefully about the design, and clothing, of your workplace avatar!

Cheers,
-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/16/virtual-work-at-sun-microsystems-is-a-wonderland/feed/ You’re more famous than you think when you check the sponsored link! http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/14/you-are-more-famous-than-you-think/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/14/you-are-more-famous-than-you-think/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:01:45 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/14/you-are-more-famous-than-you-think/ Feeling unappreciated? …or just unknown?

Try searching on your name and take note of the sponsored links!

Sponsored links based on your search keywords can turn anyone, or any thing, into a hot web commodity.

Cheers,
-pmh

ps: These are from SurfWax.com, a useful meta search engine.

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]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/14/you-are-more-famous-than-you-think/feed/ Oracle VM solution extends hosting options for Oracle products, but… http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/13/oracle-vm-solution-extends-hosting-options/ http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/13/oracle-vm-solution-extends-hosting-options/#comments Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:15:35 +0000 pmh http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/13/oracle-vm-solution-extends-hosting-options/ Oracle’s announcement of a new free virtual server solution is, at the very least, an extension of those magazine ads that offered greater uptime by running Oracle on top of Linux (the Oracle Unbreakable Linux campaign).

It has been said that Oracle’s main interest in Linux, and Linux support, is to facilitate the hosting of Oracle’s proprietary products. (Oh, and if that cuts Microsoft out of the picture so that customers can spend more with Oracle so much the better!)

The Portable Consultant, whose present work happens to involve infrastructure design including database hosting options, agrees.

Oracle’s VM announcement seems to align with this approach: when hosting Oracle products, consider using Oracle-supported Linux and (New!) Oracle VM.

Whether Oracle’s free VM will challenge VMware in all its roles remains to be seen. My guess it that it is aimed primarily at hosting Oracle products and that is where Oracle development and support will focus.

Cheers,
-pmh

]]> http://theportableconsultant.com/blog/2007/11/13/oracle-vm-solution-extends-hosting-options/feed/