Preparing for a personnel implosion

I’ve been riffed.

That’s RIF, as in reduction in force. Hard times have compelled my employer to cut jobs, and this time I’m on the list. When life hands you lemons, you write a column on how to make lemonade, so this week I’ve been thinking about how layoffs can affect your network, and what you can do about it.

What happens when half of your network management staff gets laid off? If you’re one of the lucky (?) ones left, you can expect longer hours and more stress. (And don’t assume you’re safe. Layoffs can come in waves, so update your own résumé.)

Like many tasks in network management, there’s very little you can do to help yourself once the ax has fallen. The key to surviving with your sanity intact is to prepare beforehand.

First, automate all that you can. That means you should roll out software to help you with user provisioning, software distribution, hardware and software inventory, license management, and intrusion detection. Take advantage of packages that integrate with your network operating system’s directory services for maximum gain. Consider Intel LANdesk, Novell ZENworks for Desktops, HP OpenView, and similar products.

Train some of your best users to do common tasks. If the power users in the departments you serve can fix common problems without bothering your staff, you’ll be more productive. (They won’t, but that’s not your problem!)

Take advantage of your capital budget. Reductions in one section of the corporate balance sheet don’t necessarily means reductions everywhere. If your equipment budget is relatively intact, you may be able to tap it for hardware to use bundled with the software systems you need to manage more efficiently.

Set your boss’s expectations to an appropriate level. You can’t be as efficient and productive as you used to be with only half as many people. Chances are there will be fewer people to support if the layoffs were pervasive, but users will still expect the level of service they’re used to. Make sure folks in the executive office know that it may be a while before you’re back to your usual response level. Your staff shouldn’t be expected to work twice as hard in exchange for continued employment–though they should expect an increased workload for a while.

If it’s not too late for you to take some of these proactive steps, you’ll be in a better position when the corporate Grim Reaper appears.

Clone, clone, clone your disks

What do you do when you roll out new client PCs? A sensible approach is to purchase identical client hardware (leaving aside the question of desktop or laptop) and copy down to each unit a reference image that contains all the common software your standard users need.

If you’re just getting started with drive imaging and deployment, Microsoft has a good document about deploying Windows 2000 Professional and Office 2000 that you can use as a starting point.

There are plenty of good packages for creating drive images, including Symantec Norton Ghost, Novell ZENworks for Desktops, PowerQuest DeployCenter, Altiris Deployment Solution, and Phoenix Technologies’ Imagecast.

Great way to handle deployments, right? In theory it is, until you consider the fine print. The catch is that requirement for “identical client hardware.” If you’re using a component that requires different drivers from the ones on your image, you need to make a whole new image, which kind of goes against the whole concept.

Unfortunately, even if you buy all your PCs from the same vendor, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get truly identical configurations. Computer vendors often change components in each PC if they have to use up inventory or they got a better deal from another supplier, and to them, one 40GB hard drive is pretty much like another. Even if you do get perfectly uniform PCs in the batch you order today, don’t count on the vendor being able to match your specs when you order a few more next month.

That’s why I’m intrigued by a new service offered by IBM. IBM ImageUltra Services uses what it calls Hardware Independent Imaging Technology (HIIT) to separate the hardware drivers from the software it distributes. It can further separate the operating system from the applications, for three-phase distributions, but that gives you more options.

HIIT depends on a hidden service partition that lives on all IBM desktop and laptop PCs. ImageUltra uses the service partition something like the way developers use an application programming interface. The service partition contains all the appropriate drivers and modules for the hardware, and holds them in such a way that ImageUltra can access them.

Right now ImageUltra is only a service, but in the fall the company plans to release a software development kit to allow companies to access the hidden service partition on IBM hardware, according to Rich Cheston, the company’s director of migration.

The technology is so useful that it gives IBM a competitive advantage in high-volume hardware sales to organizations that roll out a lot of clones. “We’ve been approached by a lot of people to license it,” Cheston said, but he declined to say when that might happen.

I look forward to the day when the technology is widely licensed and incorporated into standard disk imaging tools. It would certainly make life a lot easier for a lot of network administrators.

Dialing for dollars

Fifteen years ago, if you wore a pager, your employer had you on an electronic leash. Ten year ago a mobile phone meant the same thing &endash; it was usually for someone else’s convenience.

Nowadays, mobile phone prices and calling plans are so inexpensive that everyone between middle school and retirement seems to have one. The largest US wireless carrier, Verizon, claims more than 28 million subscribers, and the top six, which include in order Cingular, AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, and VoiceSteam, have in all nearly a hundred million customers, according to Wireless Newsfactor.

When I began shopping for a cell phone, I was overwhelmed by the number of plans and phones all the carriers offered. But prioritizing the factors in the purchasing decision helped me make a reasonable choice, and if I can do it, so can you.

The calling plan will be your biggest expense. Most plans offer you a set number of minutes per month for a fixed fee. For example, the Cingular Region 200 plan gives you 200 minutes for $29.99 a month. The more “free” minutes, the higher the basic cost of the plan. If you use any additional time, you pay about 35 or 40 cents for each extra minute. Toll-free numbers still use mobile minutes. So do incoming calls, whether you answer them or the caller just leaves a message. And each directory assistance call likely costs more than a dollar. Hey, it’s mobile, but it’s still a phone company.

To figure out what kind of plan to look for, start by thinking about how you’ll use the phone. Will you use it only in emergencies? (Ha! That may be what you think now, but wait until it’s in the car with you. Before you know it you’ll be routinely calling your kids to tell them to order a pizza so you can pick it up on the way home.) The average US cell phone subscriber uses between 250 and 300 minutes per month. Will you call locally or do you want long-distance service? Will you get more calls than you make? Some plans from Nextel offer free incoming calls nowadays, but with rates beginning at $70 a month, they’re expensive to begin with. Other providers offer the first incoming minute free. Do you generally stay close to home, or do you want to use your phone when you travel? Away from your home area, some plans impose roaming charges of 39 to 69 cents per minute. Do you need your phone to be available even when you’re not? Voice mail may cost up to $7 extra per month on a low-end plan.

If you really plan to use the phone only for emergencies, you may be tempted to sign up for a prepaid mobile phone. Such plans are designed with those whose credit ratings are too shaky for large vendors to take a chance on them, but they’re open to anyone. With these plans, you get no free monthly minutes; instead, you pay 35 to 65 cents for every minute you talk. It sounds ideal for the casual caller, but the hitch is that you have to buy minutes in increments of $20 or $25, and the minutes expire within 45 or 60 days. For some people, that’s still cheaper than a monthly service plan.

Next, think about what else you might use the phone for besides talking. Most companies offer you free numeric or text paging along with your phone service. That means you can get short messages on your phone’s screen just as you would on a pager, so you can ditch your old pager and save a few shekels. Some plans let you send return messages back. You can also get plans and phones that offer Internet access. My advice, though, is to resist that temptation. A telephone keypad is a lousy interface for data entry, and the phone’s tiny screen is ill-suited for all but the shortest messages.

Once you’re sure of your priorities, reach for my secret weapon – a Web site that lets you compare plans side by side. Go to www.letstalk.com and enter your ZIP code. Click on the link for Cellular Service, then Find & Compare. Here you can screen more than a hundred plans costing between $20 and $400 (!) a month, and compare the plans that pass your screening criteria. The site provides all the plan details, and even lets you order a phone online, though you can still drive down to the local phone store if you prefer. Showing up in person can work out well; I once offered to sign up on the spot if the vendor would throw in a free auto power adapter. She did. You can try the same tack to forgo an activation fee or another option you don’t want to pay for.

About the phone itself – I suggest getting the cheapest one you can find that you’re comfortable carrying and using. Technology is changing so fast that the phone you buy today will be obsolete in 18 months. Oh, it’ll still work, but if the past is any indication, new phones will offer more attractive features at reasonable prices. Unless you invest a lot of time learning how to program it, you’ll never use most of the features that come with an expensive phone. It’s just too easy to lose a small phone or drop one in a puddle. And if you buy a phone for one plan and someday switch to another, the technologies might be different, forcing you to get a new phone that’s compatible with the new service.

What about the alphabet soup of mobile phone terminology? Various phones only run over CDMA, TDMA, GSM, PCS, or GPRS networks, none of which is inherently better than another for voice communication. If you concentrate on the plan features you want, you can ignore all the abbreviations, because you’ll have to choose from among a small number of phones that work with the plan you’ve selected.

By the way, those are all digital networks. Virtually all phones sold nowadays are digital, though they can fall back to a sometimes less clear analog connection where digital coverage is unavailable. If you have an older analog-only phone, it may work with some vendors’ networks, because all of the old analog broadcast antennas are still in place.

Once you’ve decided on a plan and a phone, check the fine print to be sure of what you’re getting into. Be aware that the rate you’re quoted doesn’t include fees and taxes, so what you pay will be a few percent higher than what you think you’ve signed up for. Some vendors require you to pay an activation fee. Many require you to commit to a year or two of service. If you want to switch before then, you have to pay a hefty cancellation fee. Most vendors, however, give you 30 days to try your phone risk-free. Be sure to take advantage of your trial period to make calls from commonly visited locales. Vendors differ in their areas of coverage. Check the maps your vendor provides to get an indication of dead spots, but verify them yourself. I once returned a phone and canceled my plan because I discovered the vendor didn’t have good coverage in a town I visited often.

Sounds like I’m some kind of mobile phone guru, doesn’t it? I never set out to learn all this. In fact, I resisted buying a mobile phone for a long time. It was only when my wife upgraded her service and I inherited her old phone that I finally bit the bullet. Now, every time my mobile phone calls attention to me by ringing in a public place, I feel like I’m the one being bit.