Article: Recruiting Product Managers

This was copied from ‘The Silicon Valley Product Management Group’ by Marty Cagan…————————-Probably the single most common question I get from CEO’s is where
to find great product managers?I tell them that often they’re already in their organization, hiding
under a different title – maybe a software engineer, designer, or an
SE – just waiting to be discovered. But whether you recruit product
managers from inside or outside, the easiest way to spot them is to have
a clear understanding of the characteristics to look for. So in this
note I’ll enumerate the specific traits and skills you’re
looking for:

Personal Traits and Attitude

Most skills can be learned, however there are some traits that are very
difficult to teach, and as such they should form the foundation of any
search for a product manager.

– Product Passion

There are some people out there that just love products. Not
necessarily every type of product, but also not just a single type of
product. Great product managers have a love and respect for good
products, no matter where they come from, and they live to create them.

This passion for product is an essential ingredient as it will often be
called upon to provide the motivation to get through the many very
difficult challenges, and long hours, of defining a great product.
Further, the product manager will need to inspire the rest of the
product team, and the passion for a product is contagious.

It is fairly easy to determine whether or not you are talking to such a
person by simply asking them what some of their favorite products are
and why. It is hard to feign passion; the insincerity comes through.
Ask for examples from different domains. Ask what they would improve on
their favorite product if they were the product manager. Ask about bad
products too.

– Customer Empathy

The ideal product manager does not necessarily have to come from your
target market (there are pros and cons to this), but they absolutely
need to be able to empathize with your target market. This trait is
often difficult to find in high-technology companies trying to produce
mass-market products. We tend to want to think of our users as we think
of ourselves and our friends. However, the target market very likely has
quite different values, priorities, perceptions, tolerances and
experiences.

Ask the candidates about the target market, and how they believe they
might be different from themselves. Try and detect how the candidate
feels about the target market, and most importantly, does the candidate
respect and empathize with that target market, or does he view his job
as “enlightening” the target market.

This is doubly important for international products, or those products
targeted at specific countries or cultures. There are many
similarities, and many differences, between cultures. Many of the
differences are incidental and not important to defining products.
However, some of the differences are essential. Does the candidate you
are talking to have enough understanding of the target market to know
which is which?

– Intelligence

There is really no substitute for innate intelligence. The successful
product manager must be able to learn very quickly. Product management
is about insights and judgment, both of which require a sharp mind.
Hard work is also necessary, but for this job, it is not sufficient.

Hiring very smart people is harder than it sounds. Much depends on the
strength and security of the hiring manager. Hiring smart people speaks
to the company culture which is another important topic in its own
right, but suffice it to say here that if your goal is a truly good
product, it is simply not going to happen if you can’t find a truly
bright product manager.

Assuming you are anxious to find the brightest, most insightful person
possible, one technique is to drill in on problem solving. Microsoft is
famous for their very intensive and effective interviewing for
intelligence based on problem solving. The technique is to use one or
more experts in some topic to drill the candidate on a problem. The
interviewer is not looking so much at whether or not the candidate
simply knows the right answer (knowledge rather than intelligence), but
rather, how well they deal with not knowing the answer. How does the
candidate work out problems? When the candidate comes up with a
solution, the interviewer changes the question somewhat and asks what
the candidate would do then. This is done continuously until the
candidate must force herself to deal with a scenario she doesn’t
know the answer to, and then she is asked to verbalize how she would go
about solving that problem. With practice, this can be a very effective
technique in assessing a candidate’s problem solving capability.

Another approach is to ask two or three people in your organization who
are well known for their intellectual prowess, and ask them to interview
this person, and help you determine the candidate’s problem solving
ability.

– Work Ethic

Not every role in the product team requires the same level of commitment
and effort. However, the product manager role is not for someone who is
afraid of hard work. It comes along with the responsibility. The
product manager is the person ultimately responsible for the success of
the product, and this burden weighs heavily on the successful product
manager.

Even when skills such as time management and the techniques of product
management are mastered, the successful product manager is still
consumed with the product. Can you have a family and a non-work life
and be a successful product manager? I believe you can. At least once
you have some experience. But there are many people that want to be
able to work 40 hours a week and most importantly, leave their work
problems at the office when they leave at the end of the day. This
unfortunately is not the life of the successful product manager.

I believe in being very frank with candidate product managers about the
level of effort required for successful product management. But to be
perfectly clear, it is not about requiring the product manager to work
certain hours – if you have to actually ask or tell the product
manager to come in during a critical point you have the wrong person for
the job.

It should also be emphasized that the level of effort and commitment is
not uniform throughout the lifecycle of the project. There are certain
phases that are much more intense than others. What won’t change
for the successful product manager is the degree to which they care and
worry about their product and the lengths they are willing to go to
ensure its success.

– Integrity

This trait also relates to the company culture, but of all the members
of the product team, the product manager most needs to reflect the
values of the company and the product. In most organizational
structures, the product manager does not directly manage the people on
the project team, and as such, he can’t simply direct the people to
do his bidding. Rather, he must work by influencing those on the team.
This persuasion is done by mutual trust and respect.

This trust and respect is built over time by the successful product
manager demonstrating the traits and skills of a strong product team
leader. If the product manager is not perceived to have integrity, or
honesty, or fairness when dealing with his teammates, then the product
manager will not have the degree of collaboration and team effectiveness
that he needs to get the job done.

The product manager may not be an expert in every role of the product
team, but he should have a deep understanding and respect for what each
team member is responsible for, and he should be willing and able to
trust those people to do their job.

As the main interface between the product team and both the executive
team and the sales organization, the product manager is often put in
difficult situations, such as being asked to deliver products earlier,
or with special features for large customers. The product team will
watch closely how the product manager handles these situations.

As with intelligence, assessing someone’s integrity can be
difficult. For candidates with previous experience as product managers,
they can be asked about how they dealt with the stresses in past
products. Press for details of particular situations; what made the
situation hard and how was it dealt with?

– Confidence

Many people think of confidence as a result of experience. However,
while experience may be a prerequisite for confidence, many very
experienced product managers simply do not project confidence (you can
sometimes find brand new college graduates simply bursting with
confidence, although this is generally the confidence that comes from
not yet knowing what they’re in for).

Confidence becomes an important trait in that the entire product team,
executive team and sales organization is looking to the product manager
to convince them that what they are investing their time and money and
careers in will be successful. There will be many difficulties along the
way, and during these times of stress especially the product manager is
looked to for inspiration.

It is important that the product manager be able to project confidence,
to be able to remind the team and organization why the product will be
successful, and why the vision is a good one. In communicating
persuasively, confidence is a critical ingredient.

– Communication Skills

While communication skills can, for the most part, be learned, it can
take years to become an effective speaker or writer, and these skills
will be required from the start. As discussed above, the product
manager influences others by persuasion rather than authority –
making his case by communicating either through writing, speaking, or
both.

Speaking skills can partially be assessed during the interview itself,
but written skills should be assessed specifically. I like to suggest
that product manager candidates bring in examples of written material
such as white papers or strategic documents.

While good communication skills are absolutely essential, it is
important to emphasize that speaking with an accent, or minor
grammatical issues with a non-native language, do not constitute poor
communication skills. The person must speak clearly enough to be easily
understood, and write powerfully enough to persuade, but perfect
pronunciation or grammar is not required.

– Attitude

The successful product manager sees himself as the CEO of the product.
He takes full responsibility for the product, and does not make excuses.
The successful product manager knows he is ultimately responsible for
the success of the product. More importantly, he knows that there are
many very valid reasons for the product to not ship, or fail in the
market when it does – the product is too difficult to build, it will
take too long to get to market, it will cost too much, it will be too
complicated, etc. – but he knows it is his job to see that each and
every one of these obstacles is overcome.

This does not mean that he micromanages the product team, or that he
tries to do it all himself, but rather than he is quick to take the
blame if something goes wrong, and equally quick to give credit to the
rest of the team when it goes well. The successful product manager
knows that it is through the rest of the team that his product vision
will become a reality, but that it is his product vision they are
building.

Skills

In order to succeed at the job of product management, there are several
skills that are important. If the person has the right personal traits,
I believe all of these skills can be learned:

– Applying Technology

One reason many successful product managers come from the engineering
ranks is that a big part of defining a successful product is in
understanding new technology and seeing how it might be applied to help
solve a relevant problem.

While you don’t need to be able to invent or implement the new
technology yourself in order to be a strong product manager, you do need
to be comfortable enough with the technology that you can understand it
and see its potential applications.

There are many ways to develop this skill. Taking classes, reading
books and articles, and talking with engineers and architects can all
help you learn. Ask the senior engineers on your product team what they
would recommend as ways to learn more about the technology
possibilities. Brainstorming sessions with the engineering team is
another way to learn how new technologies might be applied.

– Focus

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
There are so many distractions out there, especially for the product
manager trying to create a product that customers will love. The ability
to keep the focus on the key problem to be solved, and not to succumb to
creeping featurism, or the loud voices of a few key people or customers,
requires tremendous discipline – both company discipline and
personal discipline.

The truth is that nearly every product has features that are not really
all that important – if the features were never there it would not
significantly impact the sales or customer satisfaction. Much more
often, if the features were not there, the product would be better for
it as more users could comprehend and appreciate the resulting simpler
product. Focus will help you reduce the number of cluttering features,
reduce the time it takes you to build the product, and therefore the
time it takes you to get to market.

– Time Management

In today’s e-mail, instant message, and cell-phone based world, it
is so very easy to come in to work early in the morning, work
frantically all day even skipping food, and then head for home well into
the night, not having actually accomplished anything important for your
product. That is because you have spent the day chasing fires and
working on “urgent” items.

It is absolutely essential to get very skilled at distinguishing that
which is important from that which is urgent, and to learn to prioritize
and plan your time. If you can’t manage to get the time to focus on
those tasks which are truly important to your product, your product will
fail.

I have known too many product managers that burn themselves out with
70-hour weeks and the worst part is when I tell them that they’re
not actually doing their job. The natural response is that they just
don’t have any more time and can’t work any harder. I then go
into my lecture on time management and working smarter. So much of what
these people spend time doing is avoidable.

– Written Skills

Product managers spend a great deal of time writing – composing
e-mails, specs, white papers, strategy papers, data sheets, competitive
product reviews, and more. The successful product manager is only
taking the time to write these if he believes people are going to read
them, and since they are going to be read, they need to do their job
well, which is typically to describe, educate and/or persuade.

Being able to write clear and concise prose is a skill that product
managers use every day. The successful product manager realizes that the
readers of his writings are constantly evaluating him based on his
writings. Especially with senior management, sometimes these writings
are all they have to go on.

– Presentation Skills

The other major form of communication that product managers frequently
need to do is a presentation. Presenting in front of a group is hard for
many people. Presenting effectively is even harder. Yet this is an
important skill for a product manager since many of the most important
events in the life of a product require the product manager to stand up
in front of company executives or major customers or the company sales
force and in the short time you have, explain what your product is about
and why it is important.

We have all sat through terrible presentations, with slide after endless
slide; the speaker simply reading the bullets; people straining to read
the too-small print; meaningless graphics; and being unclear what the
key messages actually are and why you should care.

In contrast, the successful product manager has a minimal number of
slides; he is engaging, clearly knowledgeable and passionate about his
product, he speaks clearly and to the point, his slides provide relevant
supporting data for what he is saying, and he has unambiguously stated
his main points, and what he needs from the audience after the
presentation. His presentation finishes early, he entertains questions
and if he can’t provide a clear, useful answer immediately he
follows up diligently and promptly with the questioner, and if
appropriate, the entire audience.

– Business Skills

Finally, business skills are also important for the product manager. As
the main interface with the rest of the company, the product manager
will need to work with company finance staff, marketing people, sales,
and executive management, and the language and concepts that these
people deal with.

I sometimes talk of product managers as needing to be bilingual. They
need to be able to converse equally well with engineers about technology
as with executives and marketers about cost structures, margins, market
share, positioning and brand.

This is one reason why so many product managers are recruited out of
business school. The product organization knows that they need someone
that can talk the language of the business side, so they hire an MBA. I
have known some great product managers that have come through the MBA
path, but if you’re read this far, you know that the business skills
are but one part of the mix required for a successful product manager,
and they can certainly be learned. It is at least as common that an
engineer moves into product management and acquires the business skills
required by reading books, taking courses, and getting coaching and
assistance from mentors in the finance and marketing organizations.

So where do you find these people?

After reading this list of traits and skills, you may be thinking that
such people are extremely rare. They are rare – about as rare as
good products are. But few hires you make will be as critical as your
product managers, so it is worthwhile to interview for these
characteristics and to set the bar high.

There are different schools of thought on recruiting product managers.
Many companies think that all you need is someone from the marketing
organization or someone with an MBA. In the old-school definition of
product manager as product marketing, this may have been true, but this
is a recipe for failure today.

Many companies prefer MBA’s from top business schools that have a
technical undergraduate degree combined with applicable industry
experience. This can work well if you keep in mind that a problem with
MBA programs, even from the top-tier schools, is that they almost never
teach product management, so it is dangerous to assume that the recent
MBA grad has any idea of how to be a product manager.

My favorite source for product managers is to look for people with the
characteristics described above and then use training, an informal
mentoring program, and/or a formal employee development program to
develop these people into strong product managers. Such people might be
found virtually anywhere in the company. I’ve seen outstanding
product managers come out of engineering, technical support,
professional services, product marketing, sales, and the user community.
Often these people will approach management asking how they can get more
involved in the product. It can also be useful for senior management to
approach top performers from across the company about the possibility of
product management, as this can be essential experience for those on an
executive track.

I’ve written earlier about running a good interview process
(www.svpg.com/blog/files/microsoft_advantage.html), but there have been
some great posts on general hiring practices recently. My favorite is:
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/how_to_hire_the.html.

** Did you find this article useful? If so, please consider forwarding
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Personality Types in Product Management – Survey

 A new survey was posted at http://www.blackblot.com/surveys.shtml .  This anonymous survey explores the link between the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicators and the various roles in product management.  Before completing this survey you must determine your Myers-Briggs personality type indicator. To learn more about the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, please visit The Myers and Briggs Foundation.  There are several abbreviated online tests that are based on Carl Jung’s and Isabel Myers-Briggs’ methodology. Average time to complete an online test is twenty minutes. Examples below:
Personality Test #1 (statments approach)
Personality Test #2 (questions approach)
    

‘Unlocking Value’ at Microsoft

Following article has been published in the business week @ http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jun2007/bs20070607_329811.htm Here for your reference.—————–After getting a Kellogg MBA, this nontechie became a software product manager in Redmond. Here’s a typical day Scott Buchanan
Product Manager
Microsoft
Kellogg, MBA Class of 2006What happens after you’ve created an exceptional product? Well, you have to get your customers to buy it, use it, and ideally, love it. That even holds true for something as ubiquitous as Microsoft Office software. I am the product manager responsible for Microsoft (MSFT) office deployment and adoption. In a nutshell, my job is all about unlocking the value in our products. For example, you can only experience the value of a chocolate chip cookie once you “deploy” it to your mouth or the value in a pair of running shoes once you “deploy” them to your feet. It’s the same with Office software&emdash;our customers only realize the value of Smart Art, real-time editing, and other features once our technology is “deployed” on their computer. My job is to develop strategies and tools that make the job of deploying and adopting our software as clear, simple, and inexpensive as possible. In my post-MBA job hunt, Microsoft was not the most obvious fit—I’m not a very technical guy. On my first day at Microsoft it took me 30 minutes just to find the latch to open my laptop (though I did successfully find the “on” button pretty quickly). I think that’s why my MBA at Kellogg has played such a vital part in my career development. Success in my role isn’t about understanding technology, it’s about understanding the customer. You see, many of our customers buy our products, but then delay deploying them. You can imagine that updating Microsoft Office across all the computers in a 10,000-person organization is a huge task that requires a lot of technical support and a lot of money. So, I need to figure out how to leverage our thousands of field sales personnel and partners to make deployment as straightforward as possible for our customers. I also have to figure out how to connect with customers directly, to convince them that every day they delay deploying Microsoft Office they miss out on real business value. In both cases, this takes a clear understanding of their functional (bits, bytes, deployment tools, etc.) and emotional (superstardom, frustration, support, etc.) needs, and ultimately, clear and simple messages about the value of Microsoft Office. With field, partner, and customer interests constantly in play, each day is pretty darn busy. Here’s an idea of how a day typically shakes out: 6:54 a.m.—Hop in the car and head to the Microsoft campus. Plug my Zune media player (shameless product plug) into my car stereo and sing loudly to keep myself awake. Getting out the door before 7 a.m. is crucial to beating the positively brutal Seattle-area traffic. 7:28 a.m.—Wade through e-mails. Throw some random fist pumps. 8:02 a.m.—Run the latest Microsoft Office deployment numbers by country. Identify those countries that are falling behind pace. E-mail local management with ideas on how they can close the gap. 8:39 a.m.—Scoot over to the Executive Briefing Center (EBC) to talk with a group of customers about the business value of Microsoft 2007 Office. Every day, executives from dozens of companies (and countries) attend all-day presentations at the EBC to learn how Microsoft products can help their business. 9:45 a.m.—As I walk back to my office I take a moment to daydream…. I run into Bill Gates and he says, “Scott, I’ve been thinking. I’m going to be working on the Gates Foundation full-time in two years, and I need someone to lead the company. Steve Ballmer is a fantastic, high-energy guy; but your hairline is far better. I think you have what it takes to lift Microsoft to the next level.” Almost hit by car. Snap back to reality. 9:58 a.m.—Quick one-on-one meeting with my director to review current projects and get some more direction on a scorecard I’m developing to track our team success… See Full Version —————————————-Comments: 

• @ Matthew W. I. Dunn Aug 27, 2007 4:31 PM GMT Amen to J’s comment! My frustration threshold has just about been reached with MS’s products. As a consumer –and, not a tech geek or product manager or whatever — I don’t like how MS products tells me what I should be doing, rather than allowing me to do it. I write intensively. When I went from Word 2000 to 2007, I knew there would be a learning curve: But, I shouldn’t have to relearn aspects of a program I’d been using for 7 years! Word 2000 wasn’t perfect, but I never felt like it was impeding what I wanted to do, which was write. Now, with 2007, I understand what people mean when they complain about “wrestling” with MS products. It’s not a good sign of value when a customer thinks about getting rid of your product and re-installing an older version of it . . . or, worse, when he really starts to consider giving a competitor a shot at impressing him.
•  
• @ software guru Jul 31, 2007 1:03 PM GMT These comments seem a bit harsh; as the author said, his job is much more about business and “soft skills” than about technology. As long as he uses his soft skills to enable succesful deployments , he will be succesful. Mentioning that Windows can be installed on XYZ OS and platforms won’t cut it- bring in the techo geeks for that one ( don’t worry, Microsoft has plenty of them as well).
•  
• @ J Jul 19, 2007 10:29 PM GMT I spent 17 years at MS, starting in the late 80’s. This guy is the emblem of why I left … unlocking the value starts with defining what customers want and it doesn’t end when the software is installed on their system – it ends when they use the features and would actually choose to recommend the software to a colleague/friend – or be excited about buying another product from you – which hasn’t happened at MS in a long time.

 

The Last Word on Layoffs: Evidence on Costs and Implementation Practices

 Here is the interesting article i found on HBR.

 Please readby!

 ———————————————

Posted by Bob Sutton on July 31, 2007 11:32 PM in Harward Business Review

Over the last two weeks (1, 2), I’ve looked at some of the best ways to manage layoffs. A study by Christopher Zatzick and Rick Iverson of Simon Fraser University, published in the Academy of Management Journal last October, adds an interesting twist. They found that layoffs have the most negative effects on subsequent performance in “high involvement” workplaces. These are workplaces where employees have more decision-making authority and responsibility and greater emphasis is placed on the importance of human beings compared to traditional workplaces. As Zatzick and Iverson conclude, this finding makes sense, because when members of an organization have been treated especially humanely, given substantial authority, and persistently told how much they are valued, layoffs violate the “psychological contract” between the organization and its people. In contrast, organizations that have a history of treating employees in less humane ways and giving them less power, and then do involuntary layoffs, aren’t breaking any implicit or explicit psychological contract — employees don’t have as much reason to believe that such treatment is breaking any promises. This may all sound like evidence that “no good deed goes unpunished.” But Zatzick and Iverson did find that high involvement companies that stuck to their practices during downsizing rebounded more quickly than those companies that abandoned high involvement practices after implementing layoffs. So two lessons emerge from this research:1. If you run a “high involvement” or especially humane organization, layoffs will do more initial harm than if your organization uses more traditional practices. So it is especially essential to use layoffs as a last resort when you have a history of treating people well. 2. If you do feel forced to implement layoffs, stick with the high involvement work practices. Productivity will recover more quickly than if you abandon such practices. More generally, a large body of research (see Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First) suggests that when organizations treat their people well (in terms of pay, empowerment, respect, using layoffs as a last resort, and so on), they will consistently outperform competitors over the long haul. Such research suggests that when leaders see employees as replaceable cogs in the organizational machine, as little more than “units of production,” they are not only denying the humanity of their people, they are also are likely to cost their companies — and themselves — some serious money down the road. P.S. For more on this topic, I recommend reading The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences, by Louis Uchitelle.

HARVARD BUSINESS ONLINE RECOMMENDS:
Lead Change–Successfully, 3rd Edition (HBR Article Collection)
Winning Your Employees’ Trust (HBR Article Collection)
Managing Change (Interactive CD-ROM)

The Forgotten Strategy

The Forgotten StrategyKey ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Pankaj Ghemawat

The Idea

Multinationals’ global operations consistently underperform their domestic operations. Why? These companies’ strategies focus mostly on similarities across their markets: whenever possible, global companies standardize their business models to achieve economies of scale. They view regional differences as obstacles to be overcome—not opportunities to be leveraged.This perspective, says Ghemawat, blinds firms to a contrasting strategy: arbitrage, the exploitation of differences (in culture, administrative practices, geographic distance, and labor or capital costs) across markets. Top-notch companies seize advantage of such differences while also leveraging similarities that create scale.Consider Cemex. The Mexico-headquartered cement maker arbitraged differences in the cost of capital across Mexico and the United States by listing itself on the New York Stock Exchange (thereby mitigating “Mexico risk”). Yet it also standardized its production-to-distribution chains in major markets. Today, Cemex is the world’s most profitable international cement manufacturer.

The Idea in Practice

Ghemawat suggests considering four arbitrage strategies:CulturalCultural arbitrage exploits differences in culture across countries or regions.Example: Many consumers associate Brazil with football, carnivals, beaches, and sex. Canadian brewer Molson exploited this cultural difference by launching in the Canadian market “A Marca Bavaria”—a superpremium beer imported from Molson’s Brazilian subsidiary. Molson uses the product’s association with Brazil’s high-energy, sensual image to target 19- to 24-year-old men.AdministrativeAdministrative arbitrage exploits legal, institutional, and political differences across countries.Example: Through the 1990s, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation incorporated about 100 subsidiaries in havens with no or low corporate taxes and limited financial disclosure laws. Result? It paid income taxes at an average rate of less than 10%—compared with the statutory 30% to 36% rates of the three main countries in which it operated (the United States, Britain, and Australia). And by placing its U.S. acquisitions in holding companies in the Cayman Islands, the company could deduct interest payments on offshore debt against the profits generated from its home operations in Britain.GeographicGeographic arbitrage takes advantage of the impact of physical distance on transportation and communication costs.Example: The cost of air transportation has declined more than 90% in real terms since 1930—more sharply than older modes of transportation. The drop has enabled the Netherlands’ Aalsmeer international flower market to thrive. Every day, more than 20 million flowers and 2 million plants are auctioned off through this market. Blooms flown in from as far away as India are sold to customers in the United States or Europe on the day they arrive.EconomicEconomic arbitrage strategies exploit cross-country differences in economic factors such as cost of labor.Example: Headquartered in a cheap labor market, Brazilian regional jet manufacturer Embraer focuses its internal operations on final assembly, which is the most labor-intensive part of the production process. It outsources other activities (such as R&D) to its supplier partners. Its employment costs came to $26,000 per employee in 2002, versus an estimated $63,000-per-employee cost of its chief rival, Canadian-based Bombardier.# Source: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/

Microsoft officially gets into the security business

Microsoft officially gets into the security business with the launch of Forefront Client Security and System Center Essentials 2007
Tuesday, June 05, 2007 Redmond, Washington-based software giant, Microsoft, announced the launch of Forefront Client Security at a security product launch event themed “You’re In Control” at Beverly Hills. It also announced the System Center Essentials 2007.Microsoft’s Forefront Client Security is designed to help protect business desktops, laptops and server operating systems from viruses, spyware, Trojans and other current and emerging threats.“Over the last five years, we’ve done a lot of investment in fundamentally securing our platform, and in the last couple of years we’ve increased our investments in terms of building a set of security products that augment that platform, and are focused on providing a more complete solution for businesses, said Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. “That’s a big deal, Microsoft entering the security marketplace, the security business. We’ve had some security products in the marketplace for some time, but with this launch, spreading around the world, we’re really saying that Microsoft is making a long-term commitment to providing a complete security solution for businesses,” he added in his keynote address to business customers and partners.Muglia pointed out that customers are under increasing pressure to manage the complexity of today’s business environment while protecting information against an ever-evolving array of threats. “With Forefront and System Center, we are building integrated solutions on a common management infrastructure, thereby making it easier for organizations to protect their IT assets and deliver high-quality service to their customers,” he said.The Forefront Client Security had already achieved West Coast Labs Checkmark certification, a global standard that certifies information security products to real-world standards. Outlining Microsoft’s vision for integrated security and management solutions, Muglia described how Microsoft was delivering deeper integration with its Forefront and System Center solutions to help customers simplify security management, improve productivity of IT professionals and more closely aligning IT to the needs of their business. “Forefront is an IT professional’s Product”            -Margaret Arakawa, senior director of Security and Access Product Management at Microsoft Is Forefront interoperable with other operating systems? So far our client security is for Windows clients, whether it’s XP or Vista. But we hope to extend it to other platforms. One great thing about interoperability is that since Forefront was built on System Center products, System Center actually has the capability to manage different types of operating systems, be a partner to build pacts to allow you to manage Linux, Unix or Mainframes. Will organizations have to replace their investments to rollout Forefront Client Security? There are companies who have client security solutions in place already. They evaluate what they can buy. We talk to them very extensively. Today, they have basically helped us build this product: we talk to them about what they think of the current solution, what they would like to see improved, who would they like to see the improvements from, etc. They feel Forefront Client Security will enable them to save time and money, and enable them to get information faster.Which is the target segment for Forefront Client Security? We are looking at customers from the mid-market through enterprise, in the small business space where customers do not have enough IT staff to manage the desktops and servers. And the Forefront product is an IT professional’s product. The same technology is able to scale from a mid-market customer to a very large customer.What technology do you use for the security devices? Is it based on SSL-VPN, or other end-point security? Forefront actually aligns business security products. It includes client security, server security products. The Forefront Security for Exchange and SharePoint includes the edge security products like ISA server and IAG, and IAG is a VPN product. They will all be revamped as Forefront.We have been speaking about the convergence of security and systems management. What about people and cultural aspects? We don’t believe that enterprise customers are going to change dramatically. There will always be IT people or systems management people whose sole job is to ensure that servers and desktops are up and running. There will be security experts also. Our customers feel they do not need two infrastructures. They want a single infrastructure that leverages the skills of both the sides. They wanted Microsoft to build a common infrastructure for management and security.How has the response been so far to Forefront Client Security? It has been very good. We already have nine case studies from customers who are very committed to go with our client security. MSIT, Microsoft’s IT department, has committed to deploy Client Security on 50,000 desktops. You know, ours is one the most heavily attacked infrastructure in the world-hackers are always trying to attack our clients or servers. We are seeing good response from a wide range of customers, who want to reduce costs and get information faster. Microsoft said the delivery of new products under the Forefront and System Center brands were in line with the new industry trend, the convergence of security and systems management. This trend was being driven by a customer need to better manage the complexities of modern-day business, and to protect systems against a fast-evolving threat landscape.“This convergence is about enabling a greater level of common infrastructure across security and management, and providing tools that help meet the needs of both the security and management IT staff,” said Bob Kelly, general manager, Microsoft.
© Source: Dataquest

Inspirational Speech by Mr. Azim Premji!

Folks,

I came across an inspirational speech given by Mr. Azim Premji @ one of the convocation ceremony @ IIM Ahemdabad.

 

Here is a link, Speech by Mr. Azim Premji @ IIM Convocation Ceremony

 

Please do have a look at this, its must read.

 

Happy reading!

 

-Yogesh

Conquering the Challenges of Managing a Data Center

 

Ensuring high availability is the biggest challenge faced by CIOs while managing their data center and about 50% of them have outsourced some of the monitoring and management to a third party. Here we explore these and other data center mgmt challenges in detail  

 

Sanjay Majumder Over the last few years, we have seen the number of data centers growing at an exceptional rate. The term data center brings to mind a picture of a highly secure room spread over acres of land, with organized cabling infrastructure, extreme cooling and dedicated power house. Well, in reality things are slightly different. A data center, in simple terms is nothing but a place that holds your data, IT infrastructure and applications. In the early days, there was no term called ‘data center’, as such. There were server rooms where all the servers were kept and managed by an expert IT team. With the ‘Dot com’ boom, emphasis on datacenter has risen at a phenomenal rate. Initially, these data center facilities were constructed by ISPs for hosting applications, servers etc, for their clients. These days, each and every enterprise has its own data center in place. But on the other hand the complexity of managing these data centers efficiently has also become a challenge for the CIO. Therefore, we decided to find out the key data center management issues faced by CIOs and try to find answers for them. For this, we interacted with 28 key CIOS from across the country.

Understanding the key challenges
52 % of the respondents said that ensuring high availability was the most challenging task for them. Around 24 % respondents said capacity planning was their key concern. While 10 % of the respondents primarily faced issues like keeping costs under control, the remaining 14 % said ensuring optimal utilization of resources was their prime challenge. To ensure high availability, you need to have redundant power backup. Secondly, data center should adopt network load balancing along with DR so that stress on the data center can be minimized. For the critical applications running in your data center, also you should have an automatic fail-over setup. Build redundancy into all the possible elements that can affect high availability, for example, switches and routers. If you think, you don’t have enough trained staff to provide high availability then better outsource the management of your critical apps. To combat the issue of capacity planning, one of the options suggested by some of our respondents was server consolidation. One of the requirements for doing a successful server consolidation is monitoring your IT resources and then formulating the strategy. Broadly speaking, server consolidation translates into IT resource management. If you think that your current data canter can’t take load of your upcoming projects then only you should revamp your data center (DC) or if you don’t have enough time and budget then outsourced DC would be a better option. Virtualization is another solution for capacity planning. It taps the unused processing power of the servers in your data center. Moreover, with virtualization, you can add more apps in the same environment in order to utilize unused server power for efficient resource management. This will also help other concerns like ensuring optimal utilization of resources and keeping costs under control.  

Key management concerns
Power concerns top the list, followed by crash and recovery. There are also connectivity related, cooling and data backup issues. Let’s take these issues one by one. Yes, power is the basic need for a huge data center, moreover as your data center grows you would require more electricity in order to power your infrastructure. Here also, capacity planning plays a major role. One has to evaluate the present and future power requirements for a data center. Then deploy a power conditioning system for your DC, which includes UPS and indigenous power generation unit. These days, many organizations have their own power generation units for powering their data center grid. Next you may face crash recovery issues. For instance, if any of your mission critical applications fail due to hardware failure then what would be your recovery strategy to bring back the application with minimum down time. In that case, keep your hardware and spares ready in stock, so that you can just replace the hardware and host the application on a new piece of hardware. Connectivity issues are another common area of concern that CIOs face, while managing their data centers. In fact, one interesting aspect that came up from our survey was availability of network equipment. What if one switch fails somewhere in your large data center? How quickly would you be abe to find and rectify it before something disasterous happens? For this, you need real time monitoring of the networking equipment and failover support for the most critical ones. Data centers have a lot of servers and other equipment that generate huge amount of heat as well. As the temperature rises, it adversely affects the performance of the data center, plus chances of wear and tear of equipment also increase. Therefore, cooling plays a very important part in your DC. Before building a DC, you need to analyze your cooling requirements and design your DC accordingly. For your existing data center, you should put in temperature monitoring and control equipment. One of the respondents said that for additional cooling on demand, you can also deploy emergency chillers.

 

© Source: PCQuest  

 

Conquering the Challenges of Managing a Data Center

Ensuring high availability is the biggest challenge faced by CIOs while managing their data center and about 50% of them have outsourced some of the monitoring and management to a third party. Here we explore these and other data center mgmt challenges in detail
Sanjay Majumder Over the last few years, we have seen the number of data centers growing at an exceptional rate. The term data center brings to mind a picture of a highly secure room spread over acres of land, with organized cabling infrastructure, extreme cooling and dedicated power house. Well, in reality things are slightly different. A data center, in simple terms is nothing but a place that holds your data, IT infrastructure and applications. In the early days, there was no term called ‘data center’, as such. There were server rooms where all the servers were kept and managed by an expert IT team. With the ‘Dot com’ boom, emphasis on datacenter has risen at a phenomenal rate. Initially, these data center facilities were constructed by ISPs for hosting applications, servers etc, for their clients. These days, each and every enterprise has its own data center in place. But on the other hand the complexity of managing these data centers efficiently has also become a challenge for the CIO. Therefore, we decided to find out the key data center management issues faced by CIOs and try to find answers for them. For this, we interacted with 28 key CIOS from across the country. Understanding the key challenges 52 % of the respondents said that ensuring high availability was the most challenging task for them. Around 24 % respondents said capacity planning was their key concern. While 10 % of the respondents primarily faced issues like keeping costs under control, the remaining 14 % said ensuring optimal utilization of resources was their prime challenge. To ensure high availability, you need to have redundant power backup. Secondly, data center should adopt network load balancing along with DR so that stress on the data center can be minimized. For the critical applications running in your data center, also you should have an automatic fail-over setup. Build redundancy into all the possible elements that can affect high availability, for example, switches and routers. If you think, you don’t have enough trained staff to provide high availability then better outsource the management of your critical apps. To combat the issue of capacity planning, one of the options suggested by some of our respondents was server consolidation. One of the requirements for doing a successful server consolidation is monitoring your IT resources and then formulating the strategy. Broadly speaking, server consolidation translates into IT resource management. If you think that your current data canter can’t take load of your upcoming projects then only you should revamp your data center (DC) or if you don’t have enough time and budget then outsourced DC would be a better option. Virtualization is another solution for capacity planning. It taps the unused processing power of the servers in your data center. Moreover, with virtualization, you can add more apps in the same environment in order to utilize unused server power for efficient resource management. This will also help other concerns like ensuring optimal utilization of resources and keeping costs under control.   Key management concerns Power concerns top the list, followed by crash and recovery. There are also connectivity related, cooling and data backup issues. Let’s take these issues one by one. Yes, power is the basic need for a huge data center, moreover as your data center grows you would require more electricity in order to power your infrastructure. Here also, capacity planning plays a major role. One has to evaluate the present and future power requirements for a data center. Then deploy a power conditioning system for your DC, which includes UPS and indigenous power generation unit. These days, many organizations have their own power generation units for powering their data center grid. Next you may face crash recovery issues. For instance, if any of your mission critical applications fail due to hardware failure then what would be your recovery strategy to bring back the application with minimum down time. In that case, keep your hardware and spares ready in stock, so that you can just replace the hardware and host the application on a new piece of hardware. Connectivity issues are another common area of concern that CIOs face, while managing their data centers. In fact, one interesting aspect that came up from our survey was availability of network equipment. What if one switch fails somewhere in your large data center? How quickly would you be abe to find and rectify it before something disasterous happens? For this, you need real time monitoring of the networking equipment and failover support for the most critical ones. Data centers have a lot of servers and other equipment that generate huge amount of heat as well. As the temperature rises, it adversely affects the performance of the data center, plus chances of wear and tear of equipment also increase. Therefore, cooling plays a very important part in your DC. Before building a DC, you need to analyze your cooling requirements and design your DC accordingly. For your existing data center, you should put in temperature monitoring and control equipment. One of the respondents said that for additional cooling on demand, you can also deploy emergency chillers.
© Source: PCQuest

 

HBR Articles!

Folks,

Interesting articles published in  HBR.Please do visit.Three Habits That Hold Leaders Back — and How to Overcome ThemAre you as successful a leader as you can be? In this adapted excerpt from his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful! Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith discusses three ways that leaders limit their effectiveness — and shows how to move beyond the bad habits that hinder your best leadership.Leading Change Without a Burning PlatformIn companies enjoying high performance, change leaders face unique challenges. This article examines the steps GTECH (now part of Gruppo Lottomatica, Italy), a leading gaming technology and services firm, took a few years ago to illustrate how its leadership can transform a company’s operations — without having to wait for an emergency.What You Can Do Right Now to Grow as a LeaderAre you looking for the next great opportunity to build your leadership capacity? Whether you seek fresh leadership challenges in a new position or in your current role, choose them wisely, advises Cynthia D. McCauley, Center for Creative Leadership senior fellow and author of Developmental Assignments: Creating Learning Experiences Without Changing Jobs. Here, McCauley outlines the five types of challenges you should seek to best develop your leadership capabilities.Direct from the C-Suite: Why Inspiring Trust Is a Leadership Imperative TodayTrust in corporate leaders is in short supply these days, but inspiring the trust of stakeholders is crucial for leaders at every level of an organization, says Kathy Bloomgarden, CEO of Ruder Finn. In this article, an adapted excerpt from her recent book Trust: The Secret Weapon of Effective Business Leaders, Bloomgarden explains why trust is so critical and describes the characteristics shared by corporate leaders who excel at building and sustaining it.Real Leaders NegotiateConventional wisdom says that leading people requires vision, charisma, and self-confidence. That may be, but the real work of leadership — causing individuals to act willingly in desired ways for the benefit of a group — almost always involves negotiation. In this article, Jeswald Salacuse, author of Leading Leaders: How to Manage Smart, Talented, Rich, and Powerful People, identifies three key aspects of negotiation that will improve your power and persuasiveness as a leader.-Yogesh Hublikar