February, 2008
by Denise P. Kalm, Secretary, NCCMG
Denise Kalm has 30 years experience in IT including application programming, enterprise systems management and performance management/capacity planning at Pacific Telephone and Bank of America. She moved to vendor land in 2000, spending 5 ½ years with BMC on the EPA product line, then recently became the senior product marketing manager for enterprise job scheduling products at CA, Inc., formerly Cybermation. She is a regional officer of CMG, has held many volunteer positions within that organization and is a frequent contributing author. Prior to entering the IT profession, she was a biochemical geneticist. Her hobbies include flying, Jazzercise, writing and scuba diving. Her book, Lifestorm, on the Oakland Hills fire, is available on Amazon. She is an executive and personal coach as well, offering phone and in-person coaching.
About the Author
Denise P. Kalm, CA, Inc. formerly Cybermation
Parkas wrapped tightly, we braved the unusual cold of a California February (yes, we do have to scrape ice off our windshields), and huddled close to listen to another terrific group of speakers.
Dave Truslow, Pallas International spoke on "Storage Virtualization: Look Before You Leap." He helped to define what virtualization is, making sense of the numerous definitions out there. He also talked about the realities of the benefits and then helped us understand how "leading edge" can turn into "bleeding edge" without the right tools to help you manage a virtualized environment. To avoid performance problems and bottlenecks and to manage usage pattern changes, you need tools to help you measure and collect data, create and calibrate models and then forecast, but most tools out there don’t do as well in a virtualized environment. It can be very difficult to sort out response time problems with mostly server-based data. Truslow then went on to assess the predictive power of models, showing how he calibrated and tested various models to find ones that worked for different kinds of data. Finally, he talked a little about a fast and automated tool that can help you better manage. A lively discussion ensued especially about how much is real and how much is hype around storage virtualization.
Bracketing lunch, with one hour on each side, we had part two of a presentation by Thomas E. Bell, retiree and Joseph Delano, CFP - "Positioning for Retirement." (see August, 2007 NCCMG notes for information on part one). Possibly the scariest topic for all ages, Tom and Joe helped us to plan successfully to ensure we have enough money to retire. Based on years of experiencing advising clients, Joe was able to show us the common misconceptions and mistakes people tend to make; Tom shared personal experiences and how he is able now to do the things he wants, including adopting special needs children, because he has taken the time to plan and position for his retirement. Some key points were made that would be of use to all:
Look for more information in the future in Measure IT from this team, and possibly a workshop at CMG 2008 - reason enough to attend.
Michael Swanson, President, ISAM, closed out the day with "Best in Class SAM Practices in a Changing Software Industry." He talked about how it is probably not possible to further reduce hardware costs, as there is only the one vendor in the mainframe space, but that there is plenty of room to do so in the software arena; his work indicates that with good asset management, the price is continuing to fall for software. He provided plenty of statistics to bolster his claim of how companies can do better. He described three stages of cost management - short term administrative, configuration review (medium term) and usage and deployment - a longer range activity. Any efforts made will probably help, so asset management is clearly a huge benefit for those who undertake the effort.
Our next meeting is May 6, 2008. Location to be determined. Any questions or comments, please contact Cathy Nolan at ( or ).