Are Bell Curves Needed?

Panel Discussion on Bell Curve @ The New Age Manager Conclave at Ritz Carlton Bangalore, organised by the SAP ManaGeRight Team, on 23rd September, 2015.

The theme for this edition was  - “Leadership is all about a Brand of Trust”

About SAP ManaGeRight: At SAP, manager development activities are run by a team of managers called ManaGeRight. ManaGeRight has been organizing several programs over the past few years and we are in fact the first company to organize a Managers Day, bringing together all of our 400+ managers under one umbrella for a day.

The New Age Manager-2015- A Novel Idea by SAP: Leveraging on our expertise and learning's from various flagship programs, we are now taking the next step to organize ‘The New Age Manager ‘ as a platform for the best managers across the industry to come together and learn and share from each other. The objective of the conclave was to create a forum to enable the best managers in the industry:

• To hear expert opinions and benefit from shared learning.
• To network with the peers.
• To collaborate on best practices.

This Manager Conclave was first of it's kind arranged by SAP India

I was request to participate in the panel discussion on the topic - “New Age Performance Management – Are Bell Curves Needed?”.

See you at VMworld 2015 SFO

My presentation / Group discussion at VMworld 2015 SFO on "Visualizing Business Critical Oracle Applications"

https://vmworld2015.lanyonevents.com/connect/sessionDetail.ww?SESSION_ID=6431&tclass=popup

SAP BASIS Admin - Important Transaction Codes

I strongly believe, "When you stop learning, you stop growing.."

Alvin Toffler once said “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.."

I have started to learn SAP now!

In this blog, I have listed few important SAP Transaction Codes, a SAP BASIS Admin must know.

What it takes to manage Virtual Datacenter?

Today, just though of putting together, what it takes to build and manage Virtual Data-center?
One thing I want to stress is that, you still need to manage Classic Data-center, however there are several things you need to understand, build and manage on top of Classic DC to make it Virtual DC.

Following diagram gives overall picture, as what you have to manage in IT Operations in case of Classic DC and Virtual DC, apart from the various apps and websites.

Click here to download .pdf file

Also check out fundamentals of Cloud Computing. 

Cloud Computing Fundamentals

Writing a blog post after a long time.. This time on Cloud Computing fundamentals..

Why Cloud Computing?

The IT challenges listed below have made organizations think about the Cloud Computing model to provide better service to their customers

1. Globalization: IT must meet the business needs to serve customers world-wide, round the clock - 24x7x365.
2. Aging Data Centers: Migration, upgrading technology to replace old technology.
3. Storage Growth: Explosion of storage consumption and usage.
4. Application Explosion: New applications need to be deployed and their usage may scale rapidly, The current data center infrastructures are not planned to  accommodate for such rapid growth.
5. Cost of ownership: Due to increasing business demand, the cost of buying new equipment's, power, cooling, support, licenses, etc., increases the Total Cost of Ownership(TCO.)
6. Acquisitions: When companies are acquired, the IT infrastructures of the acquired company and the acquiring company are often different. These differences in the IT infrastructures demand significant effort to make them inter-operable.

What is Cloud computing? (Definition): According to NIST, Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

What are the Essential Characteristics?

Cloud computing should have all of the following characteristics 

1. On-Demand Self-Service
2. Resource Pooling
3. Rapid Elasticity 
4. Measured Service
5. Broad Network Access 

What are the building blocks of Cloud Computing?

What are the Service Models in Cloud Computing?

1. Infrastructure as a service
2. Platform as a service
3. Software as a service 

What are the Deployment Models in Cloud Computing?

1. Public Cloud: Infrastructure Shared across multiple end users which may include companies
2. Private Cloud : Exclusive for one company, it can be on-premise / exclusively hosted at cloud service provider 
3. Hybrid Cloud : Combination of Public and Private cloud
4. Community Cloud : Set of similar types of customer, comes together and share infrastructure, example multiple universities contribute and use one cloud infrastructure.

What is the difference between public and private cloud?

Finally, what are the befits and challenges ? 

Benefit

• Cost 
• Speed

Consumer Challenges

• Security and Regulations
• Quality of service
• Network Latency
• Supportability
• Long term cost
• Lock-in 

Providers Challenges

• Service Warranty and service cost
• Huge number of s/w to manage
• No standard cloud access interface