vRealize Automation 7.2 released

vRealize Automation is the automation platform by VMware. The first time I heard about it I was a bit puzzled. Don’t we all already do automation? Isn’t that the basics of what IT is? It depends on your definition of automation but the way vRealize brings it to us is not the way we did things. But it’s the way we want to do things.

A Short Introduction

So, for all of you out there who think that vRealize Automation (or vRA, as we like to call it) is not for him or her, think again. vRA can make your life so much easier. Imagine this: you want to test an update. What would you normally do? You would go to your test environment, if you have one, install it there and if it turns out that it does not cause any issues, you deploy it in production. That sounds like a viable way to test, but is your test environment a mirror of your production? Does it run the same patch levels? Does it run the same databases? Is it truly a source you can rely on? Probably not. If you are really good, you only have minor differences. And if we’re all honest, for most of us it’s not like production at all.
With vRA you could clone your production environment, have it redeployed with some crucial changes so it will not interfere with your real production, and make it available to you. Then you can install and test your update and really be sure it works or not before you deploy it in your actual production environment. And if you have NSX, the network virtualisation solution by VMware, as well, you can even have it create an isolated network bubble just for you. And the best thing is, vRA can even clean up after you and archive your test or just delete the whole test environment.
This is just one example of what vRA can do. There is so much more. vRA can talk to vSphere, obviously, and with this update it can talk to the latest version of it. But vRA can also talk to others. It features multiple ways of interacting with third party soft- and hardware. Do you want to offer developers the opportunity to create their own environment and does that include configuring firewall rules for a Cisco ASA or load balancing rules for an F5 or a Netscaler? You’re covered! Would you like to give your application managers a way to backup their app? vRA can work with a range of backup software flavours so you can create a single click workflow for your app managers to make it all happen without your intervention.
As said, vRA does that through blueprints. You create a blueprint by dragging and dropping the elements you wish to configure in the sequence you want to configure them. These elements can be predefined elements, third party elements, scripts and templates created by you and calls to external systems. You can also transfer information to other platforms like Chef, Ansible or Puppet, have them do their stuff and report back to vRA when ready. You can also create forms you want your users to fill out with predefined variables or variables you create yourself to use them in your workflow. And such a workflow can also incorporate an approval from a manager to prevent someone from requesting more resources than they need. Or when a  workflow exceeds the currently available resources. It also works in conjunction with other vRealize apps like Operations and Business so you can build it as far as you like and it’s really only limited by your imagination.
Why is this so revolutionary, you may say? Why would I need something that takes my job, turns it into an icon on a web portal that a user can click to have it do something that is really my job? Well, because this is what your job became as the dependencies on IT and the demand for more services went up and there was no way to make it happen other than have someone do it manually. But now vRA can do it for you so you can focus on things that really matter.

What’s new?

Now, that short introduction paragraph does not do justice to everything the platform can do. And with version 7.2 it can do even more. A short list of what’s new? Here you go. The vRealize Automation 7.2 release includes resolved issues and the following changes (taken from the release notes):

Accelerating Time to Value

• Enhanced installation API.
• Enhanced upgrade API.
• Migration Improvements.
• FIPS 140-2 Compliancy.
• OpenLDAP support.

Application Centric Infrastructure

• Elastic Application & XaaS (Scale out/scale in for Application & XaaS objects).
• Enhanced Load Balancer Functionality (Selectable Algorithm for On-Demand Load Balancers on the blueprint).
• IPAM Framework expansion to allow vendor plug-ins to support on-demand routed networks.

LifeCycle Extensibility

• New EBS events for blueprint components:
  • Pre- and Post- Event for each blueprint component.
  • Before|After request, Before|After Allocation, and so on.
• Reassign Managed Machines.
• Azure endpoint.

New Integrations

• ServiceNow integration to ITSM tools integration with ServiceNow.
• Container support.
• Admiral integration.

Miscellaneous

• Entitlement enhancements:
• • Add all users.
  • Delete inactive enhancements.
• Import vcd workloads to import vCloud Director workloads.
• Leap support – API & UI to OpenLDAP support.
• Service Monitor URL added for HTTPS.

ClonOS: New FreeBSD-Based Free/Open Hosting Platform

Currently, FreeBSD is well proven as a base for routers (pfSense, OPNSense, BSDRP) and NAS (FreeNAS, zfsGuru, NAS4Free). However, FreeBSD-based solutions are almost completely absent in the virtualization area, and ClonOS is one of the attempts to change that.
ClonOS is a new free open-source FreeBSD-based platform for virtual environment creation and management. In the core platform are:

• FreeBSD as the host OS
• bhyve
• xen
• vale
• jail
• CBSD (as a management tool)
• puppet (for configuration management)
• additional features such as go-micro services (obtaining VMs, resizing disks, and so on)

In the Works – VMware Cloud on AWS

The long-standing trend toward on-premises virtualization has helped many enterprises to increase operational efficiency and to wring out as much value from their data center as possible. Along the way, they have built up a substantial repertoire of architectural skills and operational experience, but now find that they are struggling to match public cloud economics and the AWS pace of innovation.

Because of this, many enterprises are now looking at the AWS Cloud and like what they see. They are enticed by the fact that AWS has data centers in 35 Availability Zones across 13 different locations around the world (with construction underway in five more) and see considerable value in the rich set of AWS Services and the flexible pay-as-you-go model, and are looking at ways to move in to the future while building on an investment in virtualization that often dates back a decade or more.

VMware + AWS = Win
In order to help these organizations take advantage of the benefits that AWS has to offer while building on their existing investment in virtualization, we are working with our friends at VMware to build and deliver VMware Cloud on AWS.

This new offering is a native, fully managed VMware environment on the AWS Cloud that can be accessed on an hourly, on-demand basis or in subscription form. It includes the same core VMware technologies that customers run in their data centers today including vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), Virtual SAN (vSAN), and the NSX network virtualization platform and is designed to provide a clean, seamless experience.

VMware Cloud on AWS runs directly on the physical hardware, while still taking advantage of a host of network and hardware features designed to support our security-first design model. This allows VMware to run their virtualization stack on AWS infrastructure without having to use nested virtualization.
If you find yourself in the situation that I described above—running on-premises virtualization but looking forward to the cloud—I think you’ll find a lot to like here. Your investment in packaging, tooling, and training will continue to pay dividends, as will your existing VMware licenses, agreements, and discounts. Everything that you and your team know about ESXi, vSAN, and NSX remain relevant and valuable. You will be able to manage your entire VMware environment (on-premises and AWS) using your existing copy of vCenter, along with tools and scripts that make use of the vCenter APIs.

The entire roster of AWS compute, storage, database, analytics, mobile, and IoT services can be directly accessed from your applications. Because your VMware applications will be running in the same data centers as the AWS services, you’ll be able to benefit from fast, low-latency connectivity when you use these services to enhance or extend your applications. You’ll also be able to take advantage of AWS migration tools such as AWS Database Migration Service, AWS Import/Export Snowball, and AWS Storage Gateway.

Plenty of Options
VMware Cloud on AWS will give you a lot of different options when it comes to migration, data center consolidation, modernization, and globalization:

On the migration side, you can use vSphere vMotion to live-migrate individual VMs, workloads, or entire data centers to AWS with a couple of clicks. Along the way, as you migrate individual components, you can use AWS Direct Connect to set up a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS.
When it comes to data center consolidation, you can migrate code and data to AWS without having to alter your existing operational practices, tools, or policies.

When you are ready to modernize, you can take advantage of unique and  powerful features such as Amazon Aurora (a highly scalable relational database designed to be compatible with MySQL), Amazon Redshift (a fast, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse), and many other services.
When you need to globalize your business, you can spin up your existing applications in multiple AWS regions with a couple of clicks.

Red Hat boss Jim Whitehurst on how today's managers must be more inclusive.

Traditional management methods are rooted in the days of steam trains and textile mills and need to be updated to cope with a workforce that has to make decisions on the spot, says Jim Whitehurst. His name might not be familiar to you, but since becoming CEO of the open source tech company Red Hat eight years ago he’s transformed it into a powerhouse with more than $2bn (£1.5bn) in annual revenues and a $13bn market cap. So he probably knows a thing or two.
‘Traditional management developed in the late 1800s, basically to co-ordinate uneducated people to perform rote tasks in a very static environment’ he tells MT. ‘The problem is in the intervening 150 years the world has fundamentally changed. Rote tasks have or are being automated, so generally the people we hire now are hired to apply a degree of initiative, judgement or creativity to their jobs. This whole concept of a static environment where you say "let me plan what I want to do and then tell people how to do it just doesn’t work anymore – the world is moving too fast.’

Most executives still try to use these old school solutions they learned at business school, he suggests, and as a result they’re failing to get the best out of their workforce. Here are his suggestions for making sure your organisation keeps up with the changing times.

Give workers meaning and context

The role of today’s manager, says Whitehurst, is to ‘create a context in which people can do their best work.’ An important part of that is giving the work they do some meaning. ‘You need to start off with the mission of the company, why we’re doing it, why it transcends just a paycheck – meaning is absolutely critical.’
Mission statements are a bit old hat now but it’s nonetheless true that workers want to have a non-financial reason to do their job. At Red Hat that’s an obsession with the philosophy of ‘open source’ software development. A more down-to-earth example could be as simple as helping customers try great food or manufacturing the highest-quality widgets in the country.
Workers also need to see their role in delivering on that purpose. ‘People need to understand the strategy of the company and how they fit that strategy deeply,’ says Whitehurst. ‘They need to understand the context of how to make the right decisions.’

Don’t be ‘terminally nice’

Whitehurst was previously COO at Delta Airlines. ‘When Delta was in bankruptcy some of the advisers had a term: ‘terminally nice’. Companies often end up in that situation because people aren’t willing to have tough conversations. That happens a lot in business.’
While co-operation is good, sometimes sparks need to fly for things to progress. ‘You get better decisions if people have straightforward, open, honest conversations – even if they’re painful,’ he says. The role of managers is to get rid of the ‘elephant in the room’ to make sure that people are willing to have them.

Hire people that will fit in

‘As soon as you recognise that people aren’t emotional cogs, that they are emotional beings, you have to recognise that you’re not just hiring for skill sets, you have to hire for cultural fit as well,’ says Whitehurst. Lots of managers do that, but it’s often implicit, rather than explicit.
At Red Hat, ‘we recognise that we need people who are comfortable with ambiguity, that are very self-starting that actually thrive in a world where there’s not a lot of rules.’ One way they do that is by pro-actively hiring through employee referrals – ‘nobody knows a red-hatter like another red-hatter.’
It's a controversial tactic - focusing too much on cultural fit means closing your business to different ideas that could help it thrive. Managers need to tread the balance between hiring people that will work well within their organisation and bringing in identikit yes men.

Make decisions inclusively

In many businesses, ‘change management’ is about making a decision at a high level and then communicating the reasons for it to employees. Whitehurst says that’s the wrong way around. ‘It’s so much more effective to engage people in making the decision and then you have no "change management" – it happens during the decision-making process.
That’s partly about improving the decisions that are taken – ‘I’ve been shocked at how much better the decisions are because the people close to the problems are involved,’ says Whitehurst. But it’s also about making people feel they have a say. ‘In the less hierarchical socially connected world we live in today, the millennial type of people that you want to hire expect that they’re going to be heard.’
That doesn’t mean you have to do what they say, of course. ‘People don’t necessarily expect their opinion to win,’ says Whitehurst. They just want to have a say.

by Jack Torrance

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is an open infrastructure and management platform for servers and workstations with robust security capabilities. It is built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technologies and enables customers to virtualize both traditional and cloud-native applications. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is the open alternative. It offers a high-performing, fault-tolerant, and more secure platform for mission-critical, virtualized Linux and Windows environments. Red Hat reduces the cost and complexity of proprietary virtual machines (VM) through improved economics, interoperability, and agility of virtualization. Backed by Red Hat’s certified ecosystem of software and hardware partners, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization offers unparalleled performance, scale, and flexibility to support a broad range of critical workloads.

10 Leadership Lessons from Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg are famous names that we always heard of on the news and internet. But have you heard about Jeff Bezos; CEO of Amazon.com – the largest and most successful internet retail company in the world? Jeff Bezos currently tops Fortune’s latest list of the world’s greatest leaders. Let’s have a look on the leadership lessons that he practices that turned Amazon.com from a garage operated company to a multi-million dollar business:

1. Be Stubborn and Flexible

 “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.” This is what Bezos says when it comes to business. According to him, if you are not persistent enough to pursue your dreams, you will easily give up on the trial and error that you do for yourself/company. At the same time, you need to be flexible on the details to see the bigger picture when it comes to problem solving. In a nutshell, any entrepreneur need to have these two characteristics in order to excel.

2. Never Stop Experimenting

“If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.” Experimentation and willingness to invent has always been a part of the culture in Amazon. It’s how new innovations are born and how they stay competitive in the market.

3. Be Willing to Invent

Bezos lived by rule of rapid experimentation and invention. Invention is really important to him and his team at Amazon. He looks for people that like to invent and are always looking for ways to make products better.

4. Think long-term

Thinking long term requires a tremendous amount of patience. This is especially true when you’re the CEO who needs to focus on day-to-day operations. Since its establishment in 1994, Bezos encountered numerous obstacles and challenges in setting up the company as people barely know what the internet is.

5. Obsess About Customers

“Focusing on the customer makes a company more resilient.” At Amazon, the team practices to always start with the customer and “working-backward” approach to upgrade your service. When you work backwards, you start with the customer and their needs and problems.

6. Take on new and unique experiences

Innovative leaders always embrace new experiences as a means to engage in interactive learning.  It’s important to approach new activities with an open mind. When you’re working with a variety of people, processes and products or solving new, complex problems, you’ll see a big boost in creative thinking and you’ll gain new perspectives on the world around you.

7. Work in a Call Centre

We live in a digital age where everything will go viral especially when it comes to complaints and customer service. Bezos asks thousands of Amazon managers, including ­himself, to ­attend two days of call-center training each year. The end result: humility and empathy for the customer.

8. Every day is a new day for Internet

We still have so much to learn on the World Wide Web. In an interview, Bezos says that they treat every day as a new day for the internet as there is so much to learn and discover.

9. Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards – many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes. They ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

10. Hire and Develop the Best

 Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others.

Goodbye vSphere Client for Windows (C#) – Hello HTML5

The C# client (AKA Desktop Client/thick client/vSphere Client for Windows) will not be available for the next version of vSphere.  Current versions of vSphere (6.0, 5.5) will not be affected, as those will follow the standard support period.  You’ve heard this from us in the past, but we’ve been waiting for a sufficient replacement before finally moving forward.  Second, we want to talk about the recent vSphere HTML5 Web Client Fling, user adoption, and VMware’s focus on bringing a great user experience.  Like the Embedded Host Client Fling (which made it into vSphere in 6.0U2), we plan on bringing this product into a supported release soon.
We’ll be referring to the new client as the vSphere Client, as it better describes the product, and isn’t a ten syllable mouthful (vSphere HTML5 Web Client).

Looking to the Future

VMware has been working towards the transition to HTML5 with the Platform Services Controller UI, vCenter Server Appliance Management UI, and the Host Client.  All three of these were very well received and have become the official interfaces for their respective components.  The last (and biggest) one to tackle was the management interface for vCenter Server.
vSphere Web Client has always been intended to be the replacement for the Desktop client, and many of our users have tried to embrace this during the vSphere 5.5 and vSphere 6.0 periods, spending their time working within the Web Client even with the Desktop client available.
While there were certainly issues with the 5.5 and 6.0 Web Client, many users that committed to the experience came to enjoy many of the new features and usability improvements.  We also continued to listen to our customers, making further efforts to improve the Web Client experience have been made across 5.5U3, 6.0U1 and 6.0U2, including VUM (vSphere Update Manager) in 6.0U1 Web Client.  We have made the Desktop client available during this period, which was much longer than originally planned.  But now that time is ending.
Additionally, due to the shift in backend services going from vSphere 6.0 to the next version, updating the Desktop client would have required a huge investment.  This may have been okay in a vacuum, but the required resources would have severely impacted the progress of the new vSphere Client, only to end up with four clients for users to juggle.  We decided to focus on bringing the new vSphere Client (HTML5 based) up to speed as fast as possible, simultaneously offering a great user experience and getting off of Flash.

The new vSphere Client (HTML5)

This decision is about VMware trying to provide the best user experience: a fast, reliable, scalable modern interface that allows you to get your work done is our primary goal.  The new vSphere Client is the best way to achieve that goal.  Many have already tried out the Fling (https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vsphere-html5-web-client), with approximately 40% of survey respondents deploying it into Production and using it daily to manage their critical environments.  With this Fling, we’ll keep the user experience mostly the same as the Web Client, which we’ve improved, based on your feedback.  We also plan on making additional improvements to make it easier for C# users to transition.
One benefit of the Fling delivery model is very fast turnaround.  We’ve been able to release a new version of the Fling every week, with new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements.  More importantly, we’ve been able to quickly incorporate user feedback into the product.  Sometimes this means simple bug fixes, sometimes this means changing our priorities to better address user needs.  While this pace and model of delivery may not be used for the fully supported releases, due to testing time required, we likely will continue to use the Fling releases to stay on track with users.  A fundamental part of this high touch engagement model is users staying as up-to-date as possible, and most of our Fling users are doing just that, so thank you!

Plugins

We also recognize how important plugins are, and the transition from Web Client to vSphere Client will take second and third-party plugins into account.  We’ve already started engaging with plugin developers of all sorts to get them moving to the HTML bridge, which will allow the creation of a single plugin that is forward and backward compatible with both the vSphere Client and the Web Client, creating a smooth transition path.  If you require more information on plugin migration, please contact us.  One great source of information is this site which contains a lot of future looking information about vCenter.  This site will be updated as more information becomes available, so keep an eye on it: http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/future-overview/overview.html
We do expect the plugin transition to take some time, and this means that we expect to ship the Flex based Web Client and the HTML5 based vSphere Client side by side for some uncertain period.  Everyone is very eager to have the new vSphere Client as the only client, but we want to respect the porting development time our partners require.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 Has Landed

If you're serious about server Linux, odds are good you're running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). There are other good ones; SuSE Linux Enteprise Server (SLES) and Ubuntu 16.04 Long Term Support (LTS) Server both spring to mind. But the Fortune 500 loves RHEL.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 is available today. Red Hat

Who can blame them? It comes not just with a top-flight Linux distribution but with the excellent RHEL support program, So, it's good news for many business RHEL system administrators that RHEL 6.8, the latest version, is out now.

As usual, the latest member of the RHEL 6.x family includes numerous small improvements. The RHEL 6.8 base image has been changed to make it easier for sysadmins to migrate their traditional workloads into container-based applications.

To enhance virtual private networks (VPNs) security, RHEL 6.8 has switched to libreswan. This is an implementation of one of the widely supported IPSec VPN protocols. Libreswan replaces openswan as the RHEL 6 IPSEc VPN endpoint solution.

RHEL 6.8 users will also see increased client-side performance and simpler management through the addition of new capabilities to the Identity Management System Security Services Daemon (SSSD). In addition, identity logins are sped up by using client cached authentication look-up to reduce the unnecessary exchange of user credentials with Active Directory (AD) servers. Support for adcli, an AD tool, will simplify AD domain RHEL 6.x management. Finally, SSSD, which handles identity and authentication remote resources, now supports smart card user authentication.

Why all this AD support? In case you missed it, Red Hat and Microsoft are now partnering. RHEL is now available on the Azure cloud.

Do you want local back-ups? Then you'll like that RHEL now includes Relax-and-Recover. This is a really easy to use bare-metal system archiving tool. It enables systems administrators to create local backups in an ISO format that can be centrally archived and replicated remotely for simplified disaster recovery operations. It's that rarest of things: A true set up and forget it back-up system. I've used it myself and it works.

The new RHEL also includes an enhanced yum package management tool. This simplifies installing packages while adding intelligence to the process of locating required packages to add or enable new platform features. While it's not an Ubuntu Snap style packing system its functionality is a step in that direction.

Finally when it comes to storage, RHEL 6.8 now uses dmstats to provide increased storage usage and performance visibility. In addition, RHEL's Scalable File System Add-on 8 now supports xfs file-system sizes up to 300TB.

Jim Totton, Red Hat's VP and general manager of the Platforms Business Unit, said in a statement, "RHEL 6.8 continues to demonstrate Red Hat's commitment to our customers' many mission-critical deployments by delivering a proven foundation for the applications and systems that power the modern enterprise. With enhancements to security features and management, RHEL 6.8 remains a solid, proven base for modern enterprise IT operations."

Today's release also marks the transition of RHEL 6 into Production Phase 2. In this part of RHEL 6's life-cycle Red Hat is prioritizing security features for critical platform deployments over inovatation. If you want the newest production ready Linux features, you'll want RHEL 7.2.

Not sure if RHEL is for you? Red Hat has recently started offering a free RHEL subscription for developers, as part of its Red Hat Developer Program. You can't use it for production, but you can use it to get a feel for RHEL.

surprise - people management is about people

Being in a leadership role now for some years in this crazy growing and changing world of technology, I see myself in a position to may give you some advises you can benefit from, when you develop into your next play – a role where you´re not only responsible for yourself anymore. A people manager role. There is this quote saying, that when you develop from being an individual contributor into a management position, it is not about how great you are and perform anymore, it is about how successful you can make your team. I saw people struggling on this. Why? Because by nature sales experts are restless fighters, chasing for their own success and having a high level of ego. I don´t mean that in a negative way, it is one of the skills you do need to have in that business.

So coming from a world where it is all about you and now it is all about them is not easy. You really have to think it over. Take a step back, collect lots of feedback from your peers and have an idea about what really makes you happy. And I mean that not only in the sense of if it is the right decision for yourself. As I mentioned in the beginning, you take on responsibility for individuals and you absolutely should care. A high performing account manager is not necessarily a good people manager and a development into leadership role may even not be seen as a development because it feels wrong. Actually this is a step backwards.
If you made up your mind I have three advices for you, which worked for me very well.

1. always hire the best team
In my past years I did hundreds of interviews together with management peers. I have often been really surprised about the indifferent way they did their interviews.(Being later on surprised about why their team is not performing) Your success as a manager is the success of your team in total. So simple as that. You should have a high interest in hiring the best people for your specific open roles. Don´t only think about skills, experience and educational background. Consider soft skills, diversity and how the person would fit into your existing social micro cosmos. Be bold to hire people for roles where they maybe not the experts in. They may have an expertise on totally different topics you never have thought about and they have interesting stories to tell. Don´t limit yourself. The best advice I have for you in doing a perfect interview is, ask as much questions you can. Ask what you´re interested in apart from the job qualifications and prepare yourself to ask creative questions based on their background. (I don´t mean those nonsense questions like google used to have – sorry google.

2. be authentic, be interested and show empathy
Now when you manage your team, you´re in a relationship with let´s say 10 people or more. (In my perspective the span of control for a people manager ends with around 10-12 individuals) The fundament of this relationship should be trust and authenticity. You will be together with your team around 10 hours per day. This relationship mustn´t be friendship (sometimes it can be) and you don´t have to leave the professional path, but it requires as much intense work to keep it up like a friendship. What does this mean? It means all those little things which appear not to be important but at the end they make a difference and make you unique as a people manager. As the headline says – your business is now about people. Be interested in them. Don´t arrive at work, sitting at your desk and claim that you´re always open for them if they have any issue. Look at your individuals maybe a minute longer and build up pro-active empathy. What can you read in their faces? Did they have a good weekend? What kind of activity have they done? What kind of activity have you done? Give and take and absorb as much as you can. Don’t always talk about the things which are going well in your life. You can share your challenges as well. And never forget, personnel development is a key factor in performance management. You have to provide the platform for it and should know all the time, by what your individual is being motivated to achieve his next play. Lead by example and prove your authenticity in speaking about your career development as well. This makes you a great people manager.

3.always tell the why
Working in IT, technology, marketing or elsewhere in a fast changing working environment means you have to do quick decisions and have to cope with a fast pace. Your management style has to be versatile and to be adapted to several different situations during one day. Sure – you could be all the time very directive and just tell you team what you want them to do. But this turns out not to be very useful as you will not benefit from the skills and knowledge from it. You must manage your team by objective (MBO) and not by control (MBC). If you have tasks for your team, make your life easier and tell them the sense behind. Why do you ask them to do it – and especially why is it important to you personally? If the spirit is right, every single individual is happy to help you out.  If you have considered number one of my top three people manager skills, you are surrounded by bright minds. They will claim and want to know anyway what´s the deeper sense behind. Do concentric briefing and give a holistic explanation. Make sure that everybody understands buys in and accepts it as q common task which is in line with the companies strategy. This leads to the best performance and results.

Marc Oliver Nissen - MCMI

I simply help to find and develop your next talent that will rock the company

6 Things You Must Quit Doing Now If You Want To Be More Successful

 Dr. Travis Bradberry

Most of us grew up hearing the mantra "Don't be a quitter," and we've internalized it to the point where we feel guilty even if we don't finish a book that's boring us to death. Our parents weren't entirely wrong in saying that persistence is necessary for success, but sometimes quitting is the most effective course of action. Whether it's a failed project, a thankless job, or a doomed relationship, quitting can be a virtue.

"Quitting is leading too." - Nelson Mandela

As it turns out, some of us are really good at knowing when to quit, while others have a hard time getting "unstuck." Research from the University of Rochester found that people are motivated by either "approach goals" or "avoidance goals."

Those who fall into the approach camp are motivated by challenges and don't waste time trying to solve problems that simply don't have a feasible solution. In other words, they know when to quit.

People motivated by avoidance goals, however, worry a lot more about failing. They want to avoid failure at all costs, so they keep plugging away at things, long after logic suggests it's time to move on. This is typically a much less productive way to work.

Knowing when to quit is a skill that can be learned. If you tend to get stuck on things long after it's obvious that what you're doing isn't working, you can train yourself to do better. You just need to practice quitting. Thankfully, life provides plenty of opportunities to do this. Here are some things we should all quit doing.

Quit doubting yourself. Confidence plays a huge role in success. Hewlett-Packard conducted an interesting study whereby they analyzed the process through which people applied for promotions at the company. Women, it turned out, only applied when they met 100% of the criteria for the job they wanted, while men applied when they met 60% of the criteria. The researchers postulated that one of the (many) reasons men dominated the upper echelons of the company is that they were willing to try for more positions than females. Sometimes confidence is all it takes to reach that next level. The trick is, you have to believe it. If you doubt yourself, it won't work. Faking confidence just doesn't produce the same results.

Quit putting things off. Change is hard. Self-improvement is hard. Scrounging up the guts to go for what you want is hard, and so is the work to make it happen. When things are hard, it's always easier to decide to tackle them tomorrow. The problem is that tomorrow never comes. Saying you'll do it tomorrow is just an excuse, and it means that either you don't really want to do it or that you want the results without the hard work that comes along with it.

Quit thinking you have no choice. There's always a choice. Sure, sometimes it's a choice between two things that seem equally bad, but there's still a choice. Pretending that there isn't one makes you a victim who is voluntarily taking on a mantle of helplessness. To play the victim, you have to give up your power, and you can't put a price on that. To succeed at the highest level, you have to quit giving your power away.

Quit doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Despite his popularity and cutting insight, there are a lot of people who seem determined that two plus two will eventually equal five. The fact is simple: if you keep the same approach, you'll keep getting the same results, no matter how much you hope for the opposite. If you want different results, you need to change your approach, even when it's painful to do so.

Quit thinking everything is going to work out on its own. It's tempting to think that it's all going to work out in the end, but the truth is that you have to make it work. This has many implications. Don't expect your boss to notice when you're ready for a promotion, don't expect your colleague to stop sloughing work off on you if you're always willing to do it, and don't think that anyone is going to stop walking all over you as long as you allow it. Everything is not going to magically work out on its own; you have to be proactive and take responsibility for yourself.

Quit saying "yes." Every "yes" you utter is a tradeoff. By saying "yes" to one thing, you're saying "no" to something else. Saying "yes" to staying late at work, for example, might mean saying "no" to the gym or to time spent with your family. Research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, showed that the more difficulty you have saying "no," the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Saying "no" is indeed a major challenge for many people. No is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it's time to say "no," avoid phrases such as I don't think I can or I'm not certain. Saying "no" to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. When you learn to say "no," you free yourself from unnecessary constraints and free up your time and energy for the important things in life.

Bringing It All Together

There are dozens of ways we get in the way of achieving our full potential. We doubt ourselves, we decide that something is just too hard, or we tell ourselves that we'll worry about it tomorrow. If you really want to succeed--and I mean really succeed--stop focusing so much on what you should be doing and, instead, take a really good look at the things you should quit doing.

What is IT Management?

There is a traditional Danish proverb that runs “When you have a clock in your house, you know the time – once you get two clocks you are no longer certain”. I believe we need to be more certain of all the definitions and concepts that help understanding of all ideas of ICT Management.

Important part of the language of information science is about understanding the term ‘Information’. Conceptually information is the facts provided of learned about something, the words data, information, and knowledge are often used interchangeably. In fact, they are similar concepts, but with some key differences so it is important to distinct among Data, Information, and Knowledge.

Data is elementary description of facts and statistics collected together and recorded but are not organized to convey any specific meaning. An example of data items is the employee birth date; another example form IT field is the date of logged incident.

Information is data that is organized for a specific purpose and presented within a context that gives it meaning. An example of information items is the average employees over fifty; another example form IT field is the rate of unauthorized change within the organization.

Knowledge consists of organized and processed data, facts, skills, and/or information acquired through experience or education. An examples of knowledge items is the average employees over fifty increased by about 20% since applying a new HR rule last year; another example form IT field is the rate of unauthorized change has decreased by 10% since a new version of ITSM tool was released.

Since we live in the "information age," information technology has become a part of our everyday lives. That means the term "Information Technology," already highly overused. Now let us move a tiny step forward to dive into the term information technology. Information Technology is often defines as all forms of technology and computer based elements such as networking, hardware, processes, methodologies, software, or the Internet, that people use to the development, maintenance, and use of data, information, and knowledge.

Nowadays information technology could be considered a mainstay of the business and I want to bring to your attention that there is a various factors affect the business value impact of Information Technology (IT). The most important factor is the alignment between IT and business processes, organization structure, and strategy this alignment require a proper management methodology to be adopted before we delve into these encounters, it is wise to describe in a nutshell the definition of term ‘management’.

The fact is that there are many definitions of management, in the terms of early theorist Henri Fayol (1841 –1925) management described as the process of planning, leading, organizing, and controlling. Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) has defined management as the knowing exactly what you want people to do and then see in that they do it in the best and cheapest way.

From resource-based perspective organisations use four basic kind or resources; human, financial, physical, and information. Definitely we are interested in the last one, the information, which are usable data needed to make effective decisions. So let us has a quick overview of the information technology management.
Information Technology Management can be defined in term of early theorist Henri Fayol as the process of planning, leading, organizing, and controlling information technology to help people perform all tasks related to data, information, knowledge processing and management.

From what we just define IT Management is a PROCESS controlling TECHNOLOGY to help PROPLE. Those three elements, Process, People, and Technology are always inevitable when we start speak about IT management. And to be a successful IT manager you need to know how to manage the relation among them.

Ayman Essmat

ICT Services Manager

ZFS at Linux

Canonical have conducted a legal review, including discussion with the industry's leading software freedom legal counsel, of the licenses that apply to the Linux kernel and to ZFS. And in doing so, we have concluded that we are acting within the rights granted and in compliance with their terms of both of those licenses.

While the CDDL and GPLv2 are both "copyleft" licenses, they have different scope. The CDDL applies to all files under the CDDL, while the GPLv2 applies to derivative works. The CDDL cannot apply to the Linux kernel because zfs.ko is a self-contained file system module -- the kernel itself is quite obviously not a derivative work of this new file system.

6 Proven Ways to Build Your Best Team - Luke Heine

Today our organizations are becoming increasingly complex, with projects spanning multiple teams, managers, and even continents. In our highly interdisciplinary and global world, the teams that end up achieving the most success are the ones whose members can access resources outside the team—those who can acquire assets and get help from experts who might be useful to the primary team. [1][2][3]
Here’s what organizational greats Deborah Ancona and David Caldwell have to say about making great cross-boundary teams.
1. Know Your Type
While bureaucratic workplaces vary from broken water coolers to segways, a team’s structure—based on its members’ involvement and the group’s position in the broader organization—typically falls into one of four quadrants.
First we have the seven-year-old soccer squad, where no one passes the ball and everyone gets watermelon after the game. These teams have low internal cohesion and low external pressures, and are more accurately characterized as groups providing aggregated output divorced from the broader organization.
(Don’t tell your aspiring soccer stars!)
Next, we have teams with high internal pressures and low external demands or
 timelines. Think brainstorming groups—or aspiring musicians backed by their billionaire families. Because all the information used for hitting goals in this group is found within the team, the trick for managers here is to find members who possess all the necessary information for the goal at hand. [4a]
The third group is a rare breed. It’s rare to find teams that only have external demands and low internal demands, and they might just be a construct by Ancona and Caldwell (gasp*).
However, teams of the fourth variety—those that need to juggle both high internal and external demands—are becoming increasingly common as work becomes more interdependent and complex. In these industries, the key is to find members who not only possess the right skillsets, but who can also harness the skills, expertise, and resources of others’.
Here’s how you can engineer a team for success.
2. Pick People with Different Essential Strengths
Research shows that teams comprised of members with more functional areas perform at higher levels than others [7]. Just like when Tom Cruise formed his
team in Mission Impossible, your first step in forming an effective team is to recruit individuals with skills in all the functional areas necessary to accomplish the mission—or for the rest of us, to  build the product.
Functionally diverse teams offer a two-fold benefit. They have more frequent internal exchanges of information, allowing for more innovative decisions than less diverse teams. They are also more likely to communicate more frequently to outside groups, making them them better at acquiring external resources. [8]
(The one caveat to this is that if you load your team in one functional area, members will start to compete for status. Just like in the animal kingdom, balance is important!)
3. Build a Diverse Network
To maximize the chances of success for your group, include both individuals with strong and weak relational ties. Strong ties exhibit high reciprocity and high time investment (i.e. every serious romantic relationship you’ve ever had); weak relational ties exhibit low reciprocity and time investment (i.e. every Tinder match you’ve ever had) [9]. Each type of tie has its advantages, and you want both for your team.
Networks characterized by strong ties have high information value but low variety. Although there are fewer options to choose from, the value of those relationships can can be effectively transferred to the team. Networks characterized by weak ties have low information value but high variety, as weak ties require less energy to maintain and provide high access to information. However, because those ties are weak, transference of information is more difficult.
Ideally, you want to the best of both worlds. Recruiting individuals with strong and weak ties is the best strategy to cultivate a highly connected team with a large information flow.
4. Offer Temporary Roles
Bring in the interns! But actually ;)
Expanding a core team is expensive in terms of energy, finances, and time. Temporary positions can be a great solution.
Teams can get the added information and resource boost of expansion by bringing in experts for limited times or specific functions, offering membership contingent on the progress of a project, assigning part-time roles, or providing tiered membership options
5. Send Fewer Emails—But Make Them Count!
A study of 45 product development teams found that team productivity was boosted when individuals participated in activities to promote their team, secure resources, or strengthen bonds with groups linked in the work flow [1].
The study also found that while the frequency of communications members had with other teams had little impact on effectiveness, the quality of their interactions did.
One good voice message left every 3 months could do a better job of staying in touch then daily “hey” text messages. Repeatedly spraying your business cards like Rick Ross sprays dollar bills may not be as effective as you (and only you) think.
Remember, the quality and content of a team’s external communications are significantly more important than the frequency of those interactions [4][5]
6. Focus
Before you engage your valuable resources, it’s important to know what you’re looking for.
When groups engaged in unfocused attempts to acquire key information outside the team, broadly scanning the environment for resources, performance among team members suffered, particularly later in the production life cycle [1].
Once a product idea was developed, less successful teams sought out general information, while more successful teams cut down on broad, generalized communication, increased the number of communications aimed at acquiring specific information, and began coordinating distinct tasks.
Takeaways to Keep You Cool
If you want to form a team that works and plays well with others, consider the following questions:

• Do the people I’m selecting have the skills and experience to match their assigned goals? Can they actualize their own projects?
• Do potential members have connections to relevant networks inside and outside organizations? Do they have relevant contacts who can help them out?
• Does management understand what the team can and can’t do? How much does the team need to rely on others? How much of the work needs to be outsourced?

Keep these in mind as well [6]:

• What is the political structure of the organization at large?
• How does the group’s product fit into the broader strategy of the organization?
• What are the expectations for the group by management?
• Which key resources do members need from other groups?
• Where is the location of outside information that would benefit the group?

As work gets increasingly complex, Ancona and Caldwell give us a framework to make team selection simpler.