How to Change the IT Architect Hiring

Practice

How to Change the IT Architect Hiring Practice so Companies and End-Users Win,

a Proposed Change

Part I

By Brian Murphy / Draft 1 Sunday, September 15, 2013

www.linkedin.com/in/virtualos/[1]

"An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offense; A vain man, in

order that it may."

William Hazlit

First and foremost, some perspective, although I feel this would benefit all IT

Architects, my examples are based on personal experience from the better part of 16.5

years with 1.5 years consulting, 15 years as full time employee for GMAC FS / branded

Ally FS / now Ocwen Financial, Dell/Perot. You’re more than welcome to review my

biography/profile at www.linkedin.com/in/virtualos/[2] to validate if my opinion is

worth the time. When I left GMAC FS, I was managing three teams and continued to

wear the hat of Enterprise Architect and Citrix Architect.

But our answer is, you shouldn't go as far as you’re probably considering,

given the panic mode most managers enter when a star threatens to shoot

out the door. Under normal circumstances, to keep stars happy, you just

need to give them what they crave: outsize compensation; effusive

recognition; enjoyable, challenging work; and the feeling that they’re not

being micro-managed. All that changes in a split second, however, when a

star asks to see you, closes your office door, and says: “I’ve gotten an

offer I think I just can’t refuse.”

Your first instinct will be to match the offer financially. Usually, though,

that won’t be enough. The competitor luring your star has been smart

enough to make the deal richer in other ways with, say, more job

responsibility or a bigger title. You can match those, too. And that’s where

the trouble starts. Because promoting stars just to keep them can incite a

little riot, especially if the promotion is over people who feel they deserve

the same kind of treatment but just haven’t threatened to leave.

Before you know it, other stars will be insulted by your accommodation,

and even some midrange performers will feel resentful. And at the end, the

only contented person left in the place might be your over-performer who

has decided to stay, now feeling more indispensable than ever.

http://goo.gl/R4z3l1 - Jack Welch

I’ve managed, hired, fired, interviewed, and consulted. In other words, I’ve been on

both sides of the hiring process having to approve recruitment vendors in a scenario

where all resumes came from approved vendors, internal candidates, or existing

employees. To consulting and unbeknownst to me at the time [consider 10 years ago]

98% of my interaction as sole proprietor IT consultant would require interaction with a

recruiter then behind the scenes - hiring manager.

I'm not one to mince words, so, the purpose of this guide is to reach those at executive

level that can implement change from the top down. Otherwise, it will only get worse.

The goal is to convince, beyond doubt, which Recruiting practices and bad Hiring

Managers must change or get out of the business. The primary focus being small

business owners, sole proprietorship; such as myself that now must utilize what is akin

to a Union of Recruiters that have penetrated every company in America and except for

the innovations of LinkedIn a majority of my negotiations start with a recruiter. In 17

years, I have 5 that I trust without doubt.

How many people do you know that can paint a masterpiece? It is the same in IT, not

everyone can create masterpieces. If you were hiring someone to paint a portrait of

your datacenter, one would hope you would pay top dollar for someone that could make

you and the company proud. Hire a pianist for a concert, depending on the concert – is

it not truth that the more important the concert the smaller the names on the list?

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man

stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit

belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust

and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and

again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does

actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great

devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end

the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails

while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid

souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

President Teddy Roosevelt

I'm using the term IT Architects because that is my profession [however, it would

appear that IT <Insert Title>, and wish to compare our profession to other "Architects"

other than IT. Our profession is the only is one that I’m presently aware of that does

use a methodology of other Architect. What I’m proposing is simple, allow IT

Architects that specialize in certain disciplines such as Citrix, Cloud, VMware,

Networking, IT Security, Storage, and the list goes on; propose their architecture and

paid a proper wage based on competing bids. Any IT Architect, assuming they are true

to the discipline, should have an idea of what their architect entails. I require NDA

now for my architecture – why?

Imagine you were just told to start interviewing Architects to build a new, never seen

before building design to eclipse all buildings before it arrived. Would you not bring in

multiple Architects, ask for references or recommendations; MOST important, you

would review their proposed design, immediately ruling out those that simply get in,

read the docs, willing to work for less per hour, minimum standards met – get the

picture.

"Knowing others is Wisdom. Knowing yourself is enlightenment."

Lao-Tzu

Bad designs are destroying VOS and leaving bad impressions on end-users that must

endure the problems when the solution is simply to start focusing on the ability of the

Architect, bring them in to propose a design, make them tell you how they will

generate cost saves, look at their references or private portfolio; this one change would

eliminate this focus on hourly rate because when you budget 4 million dollars and I do

it for 800K – what do you care what I’m getting paid? I can implement an 8000 user

solution in 8-10 weeks. At 500.00 per hour, you still made the right choice. People

should get paid based on profession chosen and the ability to deliver the critical

components of their chosen profession – in the case of IT Architects, whether Citrix,

VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Enterprise Architects, Enterprise Application Architects,

Cloud Architects; all the same requirements.

I wish I had a $1.00 for every Recruiter/Hiring Manager that wanted to hire me after

they had already obtained architectural design from Citrix or Citrix partner. The

answer is NO, every time; to say yes – for me – is an issue of Integrity. Other Architect

professions believe they have the best design, why would I accept a job

implementing someone else’s design? To get paid – no, not if you have any

Integrity.

"From my days in the Pit, I learned that the game is all about fielding the

best athletes. Whoever fielded the best team there won. Reuben

Gutoff reinforced that it was no different in business. Winning teams come

from differentiation, rewarding the best and removing the weakest, always

fighting to raise the bar."

Welch, Jack; Byrne, John A. (2003-10-01). Jack: Straight from the Gut

Not only did this happen recently, they tried to dictate what I would get paid per hour

– no negotiation. My argument back was too logical and didn’t matter because at this

point in the negotiation these individuals have no power. They have no power to

change the pay and too afraid to support you because they feel like they can get

someone else – which they can because that is the other card on the table; lack of

Integrity. Every IT Architect that accepts lower pay or does not stand by their brand

empowers the those focused on how to drive down rates rather than the LONG TERM

PICTURE of which IT Architect provides the best architecture, agility, CAPEX, OPEX,

ROI, TCO cost saves.

Myself and others utilize, enhance, our designs in our area of expertise; my first

implementation almost 17 years ago of Citrix Winframe 1.0 on Windows NT 3.51.

There are others in the same situation that have accomplished the same or more and

have more tenor. Unless the company refuses to use Recruiters and create their own

HR recruiters [example Dell], you must utilize a recruiter unless you happen to know

someone at another company that can submit your resume. LinkedIn is a great tool for

bypassing the recruiter but to date it falls in that 1%.

Once again I saw the benefits of acting like a small company. Giving the

project visibility, putting great people on it, and giving them plenty of

money continues to be the best formula for success.

Welch, Jack; Byrne, John A. (2003-10-01). Jack: Straight from the Gut

Anyone branding themselves IT Architects should have the ability to stand front and

center and pitch their idea, tell you where they can save money from a CAPEX, OPEX,

CAPEX, ROI, and TCO. That alone would rule out the “pretend architects” from those

of us that can stand before anyone with confidence and – in my case – present 30 key

areas where I can architect a solution for VOSC [Virtual Operating System Cloud]. You

will never hear me use the term VDI – why? It is NOT a desktop. It is a virtual

operating system with the critical purpose of providing a SECURE conduit to “Your

Company Business Applications”. Now, if your budget is 4 million for 50,000 users yet

based on my initial discovery and globalization with some sites having multiple shift

differentials I estimate your total concurrent use at 30,000 users and quote you a

CAPEX cost of 800,000.00 – COMPLETE.

Not only this, I create 30 areas of cost savings from network bandwidth CIR rates

reduced by half to deploying thin clients that utilize .5 amps versus 3 amps or more,

consolidate an estimated 2200-2500 applications, provide licensing control for those

applications so those applications that are concurrent licensing I can create a single

published application accessed globally by all 50,000 users but now concurrent is

30,000 saving 20,000 licenses. This applies to many applications. I’ve only listed 3 of

30.

In his book “Straight from the Gut”; Jack Welch stated:

“But differentiation is all about being extreme, rewarding the best and weeding

out the ineffective. Rigorous differentiation delivers real stars—and stars build

great businesses. Some contend that differentiation is nuts—bad for morale.”

Source: Welch, Jack; Byrne, John A. (2003-10-01). Jack: Straight from the Gut

In other similar titled professions, it is a competition whereby the best architecture and

cost saves win. In the IT Architect profession it becomes who works for the lowest

hourly rate; stated prior this has been 99% of my dealings with the top 1% I can count

on one hand the number of recruiters I know and trust have my best intentions at heart

and their other customer – the company I plan to bring my ideas and architecture.

Proven, repeatable, cost savings and IT agility.

Hiring the right IT Architect is critical to the success of certain complex

implementations. I have been implementing Citrix solutions (Top-Of-Stack) for almost

17 years now but what most fail to understand is to implement Citrix solutions

correctly, create Agility, create Application Lifecycle Management, create cost saves in

30 key areas; requires advanced knowledge of Big Data, Networking, Firewalls,

Windows Server Operating Systems, Windows Clients, Android Clients, Macintosh

Clients, Disaster Recovery, all the major hardware server vendors, all the major Big

Data aka Storage Vendors, Active Directory, Advanced DNS concepts and the complete

stack of the solution you represent. Citrix XenDesktop when implemented properly is a

major cost savings.

Yet, the value is in Citrix XenDesktop, XenServer, XenApp, ShareFile, Podio, Citrix

Universal Receiver, Citrix StoreFront, Citrix Single Sign On, Netscaler APC 10.1, Insight

for HDX and Web, Citrix Mobile Phone solution, and Citrix Tier1 Hypervisor for the

desktop allowing for offline mode. With these components, you can create a VOS cloud

that can service 30,000 or 300,000; with that said; why do most implementations fail?

1 reason; the most often missed aspect of the design; a true case of “putting the cart

before the horse”; regarding Citrix Architect there is 1 common mistake that causes

failure.

When I say fail? I include those that consider consolidation a success at a cost to more

Help Desk tickets and resources allocated more to supporting a bad architecture than

working on new projects or increase cost for whatever reason. The opposite of

“Agility”; the purpose of IT is to allow the business to grow without hindrance. Having

seen many environments, I am often amazed what users are willing to put up with,

until they leave and find a company where IT enables business Agility by utilizing

internal and public cloud hybrid methodology with dynamic capacity on demand, data

center resources running at 70% utilizing top of stack – versus what? 1-2% today?

Instead, the system is now based on who will give in first and take a lower rate, this is

considered a win. How does it feel to know you based your decision on the value of a

person without given the chance to prove their value by presenting their designs, cost

save methodologies and I could go on but the point is you have misrepresented your

customer on both sides of the fence?

That recruiter has misrepresented you and I by only considering our worth per hour and

rather than going to bat on our true value attempts to see how “low we will go” – NO;

but the real victim is the customer that is sold a resource because simply because they

chose to work for less – nothing to do with their recommendations, their design

recommendation after review of the environment, finding those hidden cost saves,

creating a design that impresses the end-user community – how is this not best long

term for your customers on the “hiring side of the fence” and mutually beneficial

because once the cost savings is proved, you have an architecture that is tweaked

slightly better to achieve these cost saves, the focus now is I DON’T WANT TO LOSE

THIS PERSON; Sounds great, so I’ve shown you a repeatable process and true cost saves

of 3 million, how does 200.00 per hour sound for 10 weeks of work?

Why bring this up? Most are going to say it cannot be changed – really? You need to

read; “Who Moved My Cheese”. (Reference: http://goo.gl/IMuY[3]) For those of you who

are recruiters and hiring managers, I don’t blame you directly. This is not a finger

pointing article written out of anger. I’m doing my job, creating a solution that is

ultimately a better value to the customer and end-users we support. If we must go

through you, then things must change. Whether you as a leader in the industry of

recruitment or as Hiring Managers approaching senior management or executives

reading this, hopefully agree, and change the hiring practices.

Success if defined by the IT Architect. How can you as a hiring manager, define the

abilities of the IT Architect unless you provide them a chance to show the “blue prints”

to the plan, proposed cost saves, proposed CAPEX cost, where agility is achieved?

This appears to be reserved for “vendors” yet where a vendor once quoted 12 million

dollars how was I able to quote $800,000.00. This was the only time in 17 years a

company hired me based on my known/proposed architecture, my “Brand Name” built

with Citrix [after speaking to Citrix employees assigned to the account].

I've only met a small percentage of individuals in the virtual space relative to Cloud

which make no mistake VOS is a service offering in the cloud and require similar

architecture to create that associated cost effectiveness that is perceived with SaaS,

PaaS, IaaS solutions today.

It really isn't that difficult, just hire the right person for the position. Right people in

the right places - sounds simple; At this point, it can only get worse so to all you

Recruiters and Hiring

Managers focused on hiring the cheapest labor you can rather than focusing on the

benefit the customer gains and the additional business you gain by placing the "right

resource that meets or exceeds expectations with a proven track record that is verified

by that resource ability to produce recommendations or perhaps already utilize a tool

intended to help alleviate having to call someone every time you bid on a job; LinkedIn

being a good example.

This requires recruitment firms to enable their recruiters to think on their own, give

them bargaining power – I’m so tired of “I need to check with my manager”. Are you

not as fellow IT Architects? It reminds me of certain new car dealerships where I offer a

price and the first thing out of the salesperson mouth is “I need to check with my

manager”.

I honestly don't understand and refuse to work with Recruiters when I send them a PDF

of my 44 recommendations on LinkedIn, copies of awards, Certifications, over 100

recommendations counting the cards, emails, spot bonuses, and they ask for

references? My response, "I just gave you 44 multi-paragraph recommendations from

real people that you can look up on LinkedIn and contact as many as you wish". All my

former managers have given recommendations and that is who I would provide for

contact.

As a contractor, I cannot expect my former managers to get a phone call and restate

what they have written in stone on LinkedIn because "it is our policy". If I give in to

this policy my former bosses would start to get annoyed and ask why they can’t just use

the recommendation on LinkedIn; is that not one purpose of LinkedIn – sure it is, but

our policy is to ignore the obvious. At what point to you stand up for your

accomplishments and say NO.

If one thing is certain, change is inevitable. If change does not happen, everyone loses.

Most of all, the end-users become victims of poor design which impacts their ability to

perform their job, all because the wrong person was hired; some will read this and get a

wake-up call not knowing that private Cloud

Lack of integrity never works in business; it seems as we grow older some create false

excuses for cutting corners, blaming others for their mistakes, not taking responsibility.

"Real winners never sneak to finish lines by clandestine or compromised routes.

They do it the old-fashioned way—with talent, hard work, trust, fairness, and

honesty. It’s okay to negotiate tough business deals, but conduct your business

with both hands on the table and sleeves rolled up."

Huntsman, Jon M. (2008-10-29). Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult Times,

New and Expanded Edition (p. 48).

The fault is not all with Recruiters, the firms, Hiring Managers, and HR hiring

restrictions; every time someone in our business allows a recruiter to dictate their

hourly rate actually loses integrity. You just validated that you are worth less and each

recruiter or hiring manager that is allowed to dictate your or my salary makes it that

much easier for them to try it on others to where we are today where some will not

speak with you or pass your resume on for a phone call if you refuse to work for that

rate.

I try to negotiate with them and explain that the focus or my focus has always been on

cost savings I bring to the table, do you thing the customer or hiring manager can spare

at least 10 minutes so I can explain why I am the right person for the job and once I

describe all the areas where I can create cost savings the hourly rate would be the least

concern. I wish I could share everything but I require an NDA to for full disclosure of

my design and after 17 years and millions of dollars saved (3 million on 1 project) I

simply cannot understand why a hiring manager would be more concerned about cost

of implementing a VOS Cloud Solution with Citrix TOS (Top of Stack) utilizing any

hypervisor; thus, maybe they have a large ESX environment, or HyperV, or XenServer.

Citrix VOS works with all hypervisors. The type of hypervisor is something to consider

relative to TCO and ROI but one factor of 30 areas of true cost saves.

I’m using Citrix as my primary example for two reasons;

They were first to market

They have the best top of stack solution

If you need convincing, read my article “King of the Stack”

at: http://goo.gl/3qDZxq[4]

Globalization and Cloud VOS create massive opportunity for cost saves which I will

outline a few of the 30 that are repeatable processes not unlike a manufacture of cars or

other products and concepts such as Six Sigma. (Reference: http://goo.gl/mmtx[5])

Here are some numbers that are repeatable: (Some of many)

10 second logons per VOS [My term – Virtual Operating System, because it is

not a desktop]

12-15 IOPS per VOS

Windows 7 Professional, read-only VDISK, streamed to X # of users of which

becomes a hardware limitation; with a goal of utilizing 200% of the underlying

hardware (cost save).

2 tickets per day per 8000 users (massive cost save)

2200 Applications hosted on XenApp generates a tiny 50,000 IOPS

Staff reductions at every site, Help Desk

Simply provided training for Desktop Support Teams to become VOS

Operations Support

POD based (2 meter cabinet) design with Dynamic Capacity on Demand

methodology – exists today and cheap.

Citrix, as one example, gives you their software for free; all that is required is

a CONCURRENT LICENSE. Netscaler hardware and VPX being the exception.

Application Lifecycle - All applications hosted in XenApp, one single RO

XenApp VOS Disk hosted on shared NAS emulating NFS or CIFS or fiber LUN

presented to several servers (shared)

N+1 POD with Hardware LifeCycle

CIR Rate reductions for every remote site (Massive OPEX savings potential per

MONTH)

It is the same with creation of a Cloud Services Platform. Some can paint, most

cannot. Some architects utilize standard practices, others have proprietary and

inventive ways focused on cost saves; ROI, TCO, CAPEX, OPEX. What are Cloud

Services and the small percentage of Architects who can implement a complete

solution stack?

Hiring an Architect should be based on their proprietary design that meets or exceeds

all best practices across all IT towers. Have you hired a contractor to build a building

before looking at their proposal? IT Architects if truly architects have a picture in their

mind and utilize a specific design that is repeatable and works every time. If they

cannot tell you the architecture to be used and explain the areas in which you will

benefit how can you possibly know your hiring manager or recruiter has not simply sold

you a resource because they accepted a pay cut?

I stated that most implementations fail in 6 months, defined as users unhappy, more

expensive than physical PC’s regardless of the reason(s). The Citrix VOS Cloud with

Netscaler, Provisioning Server, Universal Client, StoreFront, MDM, ShareFile, Podio,

and competing products VMware vCloud and ESX implementations are akin to

installing Microsoft Office Professional and only using Word. Or, because it is thought

of as an OS - and Citrix takes the blame here by not marketing their own products

correctly. XenDesktop is merely a virtual OS conduit for business applications hosted

on Citrix XenApp which runs on Microsoft Terminal Services.

Citrix Provisioning Services allows for one single virtual OS file hosted on a NAS or a

single NFS LUN shared by multiple-fiber connected physical servers. Since the virtual

operating system does not have applications installed but presented by Citrix

XenApp/Terminal Server which is designed to host segmented but hybrid and complex

shared use of DLLs in memory allowing for more user sessions per host and designed to

do this with minimal impact to processor, memory, and IOPS.

To expound further, you can expect to utilize around 50,000 IOPS per 2200

applications hosted on Citrix - otherwise it was done wrong. The read-only single

virtual operating system allows for a single point of update with all customization

requirements handled by Group Policy and Citrix Policies. This model works in multi-

tenant scenarios, no inventory agents installed in the OS, no remote control agents

required being this functionality is built into XenDesktop so that Help Desk can

shadow a user desktop and obtain critical information using Desktop Director tool that

ships with XenDesktop.

Regardless of 30,000 or 300,000 users makes no difference, the Desktop Director tool

best feature is the advanced search that allows for Level 1 - 4 support teams to quickly

find the user desktop, then shadow it and capture the issue. Generally, there are not

many issues assuming you do not install all the agents from the desktop environment

into the virtual operating system / with Provisioning Server produces a single read-only

instance that allows for automated creation of desktops based on the criteria you define

and this can be a complete 180% difference from customer to customer or business

towers.

Virtual operating system is merely a CONDUIT to the business application. We often

forget that the reason this technology exists is not for our pleasure but 5o provide

access to business applications from any device at anytime from anywhere using any

type of connectivity from 3G, 4G, Dial-up, Satellite, to congested Internet connections.

In 90% of the implementations I'm asked to fix, maybe it is just me, the "cart was put in

front of the horses". Most VOS implementations die on the vine despite what all the

vendors are stating. The question is why?

It comes down to one thing; however, that one thing has many complex obstacles in

the path making this a very complex and difficult to answer without offending. Yet, to

not discuss it and allow it to continue I might as well find a new career due to every bad

implementation gone wrong leaves the end users - the reason IT people exist -

disgruntled and pleading for their old and dusty physical computers back and

management eventually gives up because it truly becomes a disaster and

unmanageable.

Amazing how one thing, addressed at the end by 95% of implementations today

instead of the beginning, can triple your Help Desk calls in 6 months and now you have

lack of resources for projects due to support taking priority over new projects so you

wasted all that money and now have to hire more resources to support the

environment when the goal is reduction in staffing – unfortunate side effect of proper

designed VOS solutions. If you are in any position to force change, start by getting to

know and teaching these simple concepts to your hiring managers that you employ to

work with recruiters (practically the only way to get a job now in IT – IT now has a

middle layer that never existed 10 years ago, not unlike a large Union with the goal of

representation to every employer and job seeker while getting paid by the company and

will try to do everything they can to dictate my/your hourly rate.

Every consultant in IT that lacks the Integrity to say no, I make this, you will pay me

this because I’ve earned that right and the cost saves (coming up) some of us bring

negate any reason to focus on hourly rate. If hiring managers would focus on hiring the

right person and cost savings rather than trying to save money at the beginning rather

than big picture relative to OPEX, CAPEX, ROI, and God forbid lower TCO. Next, the

recruiter should focus on the value of experience and accomplishments backed by actual

recommendations from real people not “click the mouse button endorsements”.

TRAVEL IS FATAL TO PREJUDICE, BIGOTRY AND NARROW-

MINDEDNESS… BROAD, WHOLESOME, CHARITABLE VIEWS OF MEN

AND THINGS CANNOT BE ACQUIRED BY VEGETATING IN ONE LITTLE

CORNER OF THE EARTH ALL ONE’S LIFE.

—MARK TWAIN

Executive IT leadership, if you really want to know why the VOS solution failed where

others have succeeded and saved millions, start with the people that hire and teach

them the principles of business cost saves, agility, people of integrity, hiring the best

resource for the job versus the person who “talks the talk” just like anyone can read the

PDF or EDOCS and follow the steps rather than produce an architecture, for example,

that is proprietary and requires an NDA but with proven, repeatable processes utilized

and implemented for more than a single customer and pay them their worth or suffer

the consequences of failed implementation within 6 months – based on 17 years in IT,

15 years as FTE with GMAC now Ally and Ocwen, Dell, and now close to two years as a

sole proprietor having to turn down more jobs than accept for reasons of pure

Integrity.

Every implementation gone wrong is a lot of end-users that now consider VOS a

four letter word due to the person or person’s your hiring manager interviewed

and hired because they just made the cut and accepted a lower rate putting them

at the top of the resume stack yet if one thing is done wrong, or simply the fact

that some people claim to be musicians or painters; seen all the time on certain

television shows where they seem to actually believe they can sing, yet everyone is

telling them find another profession.

This must stop, before VOS solution becomes a four letter word to the majority as some

leave for other companies, 1 bad experience they tell 10 people, try to implement VOS

there and if enough people have already gone through that bad experience my ability to

stay employed continues to decline; which is truly sad knowing that you still have

those 2% of Architects that implement cost effective, agile solutions that save millions,

VOS that boots in 10 seconds, 1 GB of RAM, centralized applications, telecom, file

servers, and ultimate security of data never leaving your network.

The data never leaves your network, all the user sees is a representation of the desktop

like watching TV. The TV is just a receiver for the data, you see it and hear it but it

originates somewhere else and when you turn your TV off, the data was never actually

on your TV, it is merely a conduit. VOS is a conduit for accessing business applications

– centralized applications, databases, storage, telecom incoming and outgoing lines,

with virtual phone hosted as an application presented to the VOS – just plug in a

headset and with Citrix HDX, the user will never notice because everything resides on

one LAN, WAN no longer part of the equation and as you will read a huge potential

cost save that 98% of consultants miss because it is more of a post-implementation – I

call it like I see it.

So, the root of the problem is not the "1 thing that causes all VOS implementations to

fail" but the fact that 10- 15 years ago a sole proprietor such as myself did not require a

middle person such as a Recruiter and bad hiring managers wanting to buy cheap labor

and willing to hire an engineer playing architect but worse driving the rates down for

those of us with more than 15 years experience. With that said, experience means

nothing without proven, year after year accomplishments and seeking out harder

challenges because you love the profession, the technology, and that feeling of

accomplishment when you have built a solution that on average costs 6 cents per user

per usage hour, dynamic capacity on demand, one VOS to update, one platform to host

all applications and present those to the read-only virtual operating system that boots

in 10 seconds and runs perfect with 1 GB of RAM allowing for 3x the number of

desktops alone by not having to use 4GB due to improper use of virtual operating

systems versus their physical counterparts.

The point of using VOS is to not use Desktops and to actually save money which

counter to most examples is possible. Are certain vendors going to suffer, absolutely -

question is will they adapt. Why do you care? As business owner or CEO to CIO to IT

engineer your job is to save the company money and create agility in IT so it does not

create a bottleneck for the business and rather then being seen as an expense your are

now creating solutions that are dynamic, centralized applications, application lifecycle

management, one read-only desktop for all, no more inventory agents due to having

your applications on Citrix XenApp and using best practices of Role Based security and

Domain Local Groups per application you can tightly control and immediately report on

number of users in that group to assure it matches your licensing. Not only that, you

get published applications that are restricted to X number of users but leverage

concurrent licensing and global dispersed users where the application has 10 licenses

that are also concurrent (not bound to a user - just a license) but 50 users in the group

using the application over a 24 hour period. The alternative is install the application

on the desktop and buy 50 licenses.

Now, apply this to every application you have and hopefully you are thinking of all the

cost saves on application licensing alone by simply centralizing the applications to a

solution that is specifically designed to host shared applications, then all it comes

down to is tweaking the timeouts, determining your actual concurrent users out of

30,000 might only be 19,0000 at any given hour. Next, you but hardware to host that #

of users, not 30,000; using a POD based deployment methodology (think of a POD as a

2 meter cabinet with top of rack switches, next blades, next storage). Using this

methodology does not eliminate the need for N+1 and Disaster recovery but all those

dollars saved on licensing, elimination of all those vendor contracts for anti-virus

agents (this is another discussion), inventory agents (all applications now on Citrix

XenApp/Terminal Server with access streamlined to a single Active Directory Domain

Local Group assigned to each application and further restriction policies to limit # of

concurrent users, rules that allow users from this IP segment but not these IP segments

(SOX/HIPAA Applications?), Citrix StoreFront Web Interface that supports all clients

and mobility where you can move from device to device work to home and utilizing the

Citrix Universal Receiver for Macintosh, Android, Linux (Ubuntu, Red Hat, so forth),

iPhone, iPad, Chrome Book (embedded HTML 5 Google Chrome Applications that uses

their browsers and found in their Application Store) and the multiple Microsoft

Operating Systems such as XP, Vista, 2000 to Windows 7 and 8.

So I've provided multiple cost saves to consider as to why and how VOS can be a true

benefit from CAPEX, OPEX and ROI. This is nothing compared to the big picture yet

due to corruption, greed, and shady deals between Recruiters and Hiring Managers that

lack the understanding of the complexity of this type of solution and worse are focused

on hiring someone that is willing to come down on their rate so they get what is paid

for as their solution that on average dies in six months and everyone involved throws

up their hands and says something like "well, we tried it is just becoming too hard to

manage and users are screaming for their physical PC's back - who can blame them?

Confucianism states: “Do not do to others what you would not like

yourself.” Zoroastrians are advised that “if you do not wish to be

mistreated by others, do not mistreat anyone yourself.” Muslims are

taught no one is a true believer “until he desires for his brother that which

he desires for himself.” Hinduism warns never to behave “towards others

in a way which is disagreeable to oneself.” The Torah says: “What is

hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the

rest is commentary. Go and learn it.”

Huntsman, Jon M. (2008-10-29). Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult

Times, New and Expanded Edition (p. 149)

One of the biggest cost saves, often missed, is post-centralization of applications,

replacing PC's with small Thin Clients (no moving parts, last 7 years on average) at all

remote sites with a device that uses half an amp opposed to 3x that amount and

suddenly you notice your energy expense of running PC's, that hot air blowing out

requiring AC to work harder - remember no moving parts. And yet, this is nothing

compared to turning down CIR rates on every circuit globally because you just cut your

bandwidth requirements down to maximum of 15K per user, 0K when not being used

except for the occasional HDX ping to verify the session is not disconnected and

therefore a candidate to return to the pool and free up that license.

Imagine if you centralize file services, and applications from every remote site, no more

data or multiple copies of Access Databases with link tables into other databases and

MDE front-end run from a network share local to each site or God forbid run across the

WAN. XenDesktop/XenApp supports the virtual Cisco Phone Client, Lync, SharePoint

integration internal and external if we throw in Citrix Netscaler. Plug in a headset to

the Thin Client, send that encrypted HDX traffic down the dedicated audio or video

channel to the remote site and centralize all your incoming and outgoing telecom to

one location and further reduce bandwidth requirements not to mention all those

remote PBX's with those expensive VOIP cards.

I've shared a few of 30 potential cost savings that I know and have proved that I can

provide. I'll leave the business before I allow someone else to dictate my pay.

Regardless of contract or full-time. I've already decided to leave the consulting

business. The solution is changing the hiring process so I can stay. Or, someone reads

this and hires me direct and pays my worth - I require an NDA and non-compete to

disclose my architecture and 30 critical cost saves. I look forward to your LinkedIn mail

or Inmail.

Last but not least, why do overpaid CIO's outsource IT? CEO/CFO Business

Functionality? CIO Development? Same reason companies outsource hiring:

So they can point the finger at someone else and keep their jobs although they hired

the outsourcers.

Part II - Q & A - http://goo.gl/XtYuSo[6]

Sincerely,

1. http://www.linkedin.com/in/virtualos/

2. http://www.linkedin.com/in/virtualos/

3. http://goo.gl/IMuY

4. http://goo.gl/3qDZxq

5. http://goo.gl/mmtx

6. http://goo.gl/XtYuSo

7. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/VCISS-GROUP-4184033?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Brian Murphy

LinkedIn - Most Recommended People

http://www.linkedin.com/in/vcisscloud

More publications? Join my blog at:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/VCISS-GROUP-4184033?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr[7]