As American Thanksgiving approaches, I'm reminded of how thankful I am for good clients and vendors. 

I make a point of thanking my clients and vendors year-round, but every so often, when I have an especially easy transaction, I will make a point of turning to the other person and saying "Thank you for making that easy, and thank you for being our [client/vendor/business partner]. I am so pleased to be able to work with you."

It's so easy to forget to say "please", and even easier to forget to say "thank you". In so many cases, our business etiquette has devolved to parting words such as "See you later" (or just "later", which I abhor even more) or "Have a nice day! Bye!"

While there is nothing wrong with wishing someone a nice day, I have learned over the years that simply thanking someone for their assistance with a transaction--regardless of which side of the desk I'm sitting on that day--can be a positive influence and make a huge difference in my future dealings with that person. I can think of worse things to have clients say about than "You're always so gracious."  Would that all of my clients and vendors were overly gracious, because my business world would run much more smoothly. 

I've learned to use courtesy to defuse my own frustration or tension during negative business transactions. There is nothing quite as effective at the start of a meeting to disarm a snarly customer or vendor as sticking out one's hand, looking them in the eye, smiling, and thanking them for taking the time to meet with you to discuss this important matter. 

Most likely, they'll stammer something like "Uh, you're welcome...".  While that won't necessarily make them stop being angry or frustrated or upset, it will generally help defuse the tension enough to open up a civilized conversation.

There are other ways to defuse verbal confrontations. I'll talk about those another month.

Retaining Clients Through Outstanding Service.

I've worked in technology for a long time, with customers who have utilized my services for 20+ years. In this business, a three or four year customer is considered loyal, but...20 years?

"How on Earth...?" I hear you say.

The answer is: outstanding service.

You were raised in a WHAT? Prior to entering the technology sector, I was born into and raised in...the hotel industry. Specifically, my father was general manager of a luxury business hotel in Chicago (the Knickerbocker, before you ask), as was his father. At that time, general managers and their families usually lived on-site.

Living in a hotel (yes, just like the title character in the Eloise books) was fun...but it was also hard work. I was drilled in etiquette and communication from a very early age. Making guests feel welcome and comfortable was the top goal of every day. Anticipating guests' needs before they even realized they had those needs was an essential skill.

Many years later, when I started my first IT service company, these same service principles won us a number of happy customers...and those folks happen to be the core of my 20+ year customer base today.

The principles of providing good IT service aren't difficult or time-consuming, but they do require consistency of delivery:

First impressions are important. Speak clearly, look people in the eye, and give them a firm (but not bone-crushing) handshake. Use proper and appropriate language. If you have a swearing problem, train yourself out of it.

Smile...and mean it. I've lost track of how many times I've been told by people "What a nice smile!" when first meeting me. I didn't go to a cosmetic dentist to get that reaction, however; all I did was learn to smile honestly and openly, because I am always delighted to meet a new client. (If you meet new clients all the time, and you don't honestly feel thrilled to meet them, you're in the wrong business role.)

Listen more than you talk. The more you listen, the better a conversationalist people will deem you. It's important to understand what your client wants/needs/feels, and you're not going to get that information by talking about yourself constantly. They're the client; it really is all about them.

Manage expectations. When discussing what it is you're going to do for your client, repeat back what you've heard, and ask them to confirm that you captured all of their concerns and desired action items. Also, don't promise things that you're not certain you can deliver. Be honest if you can't get something done within a certain timeframe.

Do what you say, and say what you did. After setting expectations, fulfill them as fully as you can. Contact the client as soon as you're done with whatever task(s) you set out to do, and let them know how things went, and if there are any follow-up items.

Follow up. I always follow up each client visit with an email to the client summarizing what was done, how much time was spent, and what task items (if any) are remaining to be completed.

Put yourself in their shoes. To you, a broken printer may not seem important. If your client spends their entire day generating critical proposals using a special color printer, and the nearest color printer is in the next building, fixing that broken printer isn't just important, it's urgent. They will fixate on that broken printer until it's working again. Try to understand what's important to the client, and align yourself with their mission/values/goals so that you can deliver better service.

Defuse verbal conflicts. My favorite book ever written about how to communicate is Suzette Haden Elgin's The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense. While the volume is fairly slender, it can tean you how to defuse nearly any type of disagreement with anyone. This is especially important in a field such as IT Operations or Support. While the book is currently out of print, used copies are easily findable online and in used bookstores.

Stop the knowledge competition. There's an obnoxious character from Saturday Night Live named Nick Burns, Computer Guy. One of his signature phrases is "Gimme the keyboard". Nick delights in making end users feel stupid and in showing how much more he knows. Don't be Nick. Be someone nicer, kinder, and gentler. Rather than telling a client "you don't understand", explain instead the factors that go into making the type of decision for which you're suggesting a solution. Lead them step by step through the logical process of getting from Point A to your desired Point B. They'll be easier to work with, and rather than feeling stupid, they'll feel something much better: informed.

Anticipate needs. If you pay close attention to your clients, you'll eventually be able to anticipate their needs. One of the best ways to delight a client is to anticipate their needs. Even if they don't buy into whatever it is you're suggesting at that moment, they will stop and think, "Wow, I'm really getting attention paid to me here. I like this." 

Reduce System Implementation By Emphasizing Design Over Build.

Many years of designing, executing, and remediating complex technology projects have taught me a valuable lesson: Document BEFORE you build.

Most people have it backwards. They'll do a little planning, then start building everything, then revise the plan as they build stuff, and then they'll update the documentation later.

Yeah, right. "Later" never happens...and suddenly you have incorrect/incomplete/outdated documentation that doesn't match what was built. That costs time. Time costs money.

"...but there's always time to do it over." My experiences have led me to believe that each hour of planning and documentation performed up front saves at least 8-10 hours of labor later on in the project. Some of my clients have told me I'm being too conservative, and that each hour spent on planning/documentation saves more like 12-16 hours of labor later.

It's faster and cheaper to do the due diligence up front. This means collecting information such as IP addresses and setting up naming standards. Documenting who the project manager and all of the team members are. Setting up spreadsheets and Visio documents delineating what needs to be built. Reviewing all of that documentation with the project team and project stakeholders.

Let's face it; it's a lot easier to rework a Visio diagram than it is to rip apart and rewire a densely-cabled VMware cluster. (If it isn't, hire yourself a 12-year-old to work Visio for you. Just make sure you don't violate any child labor laws.)

When planning first, second pays off. I once had a client that contacted us in an emergency situation. They were moving their data center, and the vendor that had contracted to move their VMware cluster had flaked out and resigned from the project three weeks prior to Moving Day because they had no resources available.

I was sent across the country to the client (who turned out to have a bunch of incredibly nice and easy to work with employees) just two weeks before Moving Day...for a project which had been inked out as taking FIVE weeks.

The VMware "cluster" was actually several unrelated VMware hosts, none of which had matching hardware, all of which were using a combination of local storage and a single very old SAN. It was clear that the old VMware systems would not survive being shut down and moved. 

The client did have a new set of VMware hosts and SANs ready to go at their new site...but how to migrate from the old, horrible VMware hosts to the new beautiful hosts with no connectivity between the two sites?

I spent two days documenting what the new VMware cluster needed to look like, creating an intricate spreadsheet showing every connection to every host and every switch port.

On the third day, I had the client move one of the new VMware hosts and one of the new SAN units back to the old site. It took two days to build a new VMware "mini-cluster" consisting of one host plus one SAN, connecting everything to the old network. On the fourth night, I migrated all of the client's production systems from the old VMware hosts to the new mini-cluster. Just one of the new VMware hosts was several times more powerful than all of the old VMware hosts combined, so this wasn't a big deal.

The following week was spent at the new site, building out the rest of the two new VMware clusters, leaving space in the rack for the missing host and SAN. Everything else was loaded, configured, and cabled.

On Moving Day, the client had a special team in place to move the new VMware mini-cluster from the old to the new site right away. I met the team at the new site, and hooked up the mini-cluster to the other new hosts to form the final production cluster.

Early in the morning on Day 1 At The New Site, all production systems were up and running...two days ahead of the original schedule.

Such is the power of documenting first, building second.

Ditching Magnetic Tape For Cloud Backup.

For decades, magnetic tape was the preferred format for data backup. Tape was comparatively cheap, easy to store, and held a lot of data.

Costly and unreliable. However, there are downsides to tape: newer tape media such as high-capacity DLT cartridges can run upwards of $50 or $75 each. A minimal tape rotation with two weeks' worth of daily backups plus one year of monthly backups requires a minimum of 24 tapes. Tape systems are still largely mechanical beasties requiring manual handling. Even tape libraries need to have tapes imported and exported on a regular basis. The only value a tape library adds over a standalone tape drive is to reduce the frequency of having to change out the tape media.

Take it away, bring it back. Then there's the headache and cost of paying a third-party service to take your backup tapes offsite and bring back your old backup tape for recycling or data restore. All of this adds up to a bunch of hidden costs of using tape.

eVault was the first all-electronic backup/recovery service that I recall running across. I was a bit doubtful at the time because in an emergency requiring a full server restore, one would need to have a tape cut and couriered from eVault to your local site for restoration. Also, internet bandwidth was comparatively slow, and the backups took a lot of time.

The state of e-backup today. Fast forward to today, and eVault has been joined by a number of companies such as Barracuda and WD Arkeia, all offering sophisticated backup appliances. Paired with a speedy internet connection--which has become a fundamental business requirement, rather than the luxury it was considered only ten years ago--these systems provide all of the functionality of a traditional tape backup system without any of the drawbacks.

All of the contemporary backup services my clients use these days back up to a locally installed appliance. The appliance, in turn, streams the backed-up data up to cloud storage. This eliminates the need to handle, courier, and/or store media offsite.

Extra value for virtualized shops. Some backup services log into machines using Administrator or root credentials to perform file-level backups. Others utilize backup agents. Still others back up entire virtual machines on hypervisors by leveraging APIs in VMware or Hyper-V.  Many of the first-tier backup systems can also perform bare metal restores. Barracuda's system even allows you spin up a backed-up VM on their appliance temporarily if your primary storage fails...meaning recovery from a total systems crash is measured in hours, not days.

All of these systems are far easier and faster to set up than traditional backup/restore suites. Barracuda set the standard for ease of use: connect their appliance to the network, power it up, log into Barracuda's cloud and establish a web portal account, and link it to the appliance. That's as complicated as system setup ever gets. 

Software licensing for such systems is very different from the "one server, one backup agent license" model. In Barracuda's business model, there's a one-time purchase of the appliance, and then fixed monthly or yearly charges for support, updates, and cloud storage. There are no per-server charges. Back up one server or back up a thousand; they license their backup by total capacity, not individual system. 

There is a tradeoff.  Cloud-based backup systems aren't quite as granular (yet) for backup scheduling as traditional systems such as Backup Exec or Arcserve. On the other hand, scheduling and backup granularity was needed by tape-based systems because multiple copies of each backed-up file were needed on multiple media. With cloud-based backup, that requirement falls away. Cloud-based backup systems rely heavily on compression and deduplication, storing a master copy of each file (or image), plus all subsequent changes. 

Overall, installing cloud-based backup systems has allowed our company's engineers to relax and refocus from constantly tending backup systems to more productive tasks such as virtualization, proactive systems management, documentation, and training. All of our customers running cloud-based backup adore it. I've yet to see a single cloud-based backup system placed on trial with a customer come back in the door. 

Air conditioning IT systems saves you money.

I am constantly surprised by most clients' lack of attention to climate control when planning new office space. Specifically, not understanding or acknowledging that computers and storage systems need 24x7 cooling.

This isn't a new issue; mainframe computers needed large computer rooms with dedicated power and air conditioning systems. While computers have shrunken to slightly oversized pizza-box dimensions, they still need a consistent (cool) environment.

"Hot New Space" shouldn't translate to "Hot Crashing Servers." This issue arises whenever one of my clients starts preparing to move into a new set of offices. Over and over again, I've explained to companies that if they're large enough to warrant a set of computer systems that must stay on 7x24, then they need to acknowledge the need to (a) provide clean power to those systems and (b) keep those systems cool. 

The unpleasant truth clients don't want to hear: Overheated computer systems fail faster. A lot faster. When kept properly cool and clean, a new server can easily last five years. When left in an uncooled environment, servers can die in as little as 18 months to two years. 

Making a bad matter worse, everyone's data storage needs are expanding rapidly...meaning more disk drives are needed now than ever before. Even with disk drives running smaller and cooler and lower-power than prior generations, manufacturers have compensated by stuffing each chassis with even larger numbers of drive slots. CPUs are more powerful, and generate more heat than prior generations of computers. The result? A potential systems meltdown.

There are no shortcuts. I've tried a few "self contained" air-conditioned racks, all of which have promised to be cheaper than installing a dedicated air-conditioning system. In each case, these racks have only worked to keep everything cool if they've been hooked up by a licensed HVAC contractor to expel warm air to the building's "waste air" ducting system. Thus far, none of the self-contained cabinets have ever proven cheaper than installing a dedicated air conditioning unit. 

Air conditioners have also come a long way since the huge units we used to see in computer rooms. The first time I saw a ductless mini unit, I was underwhelmed...until I stepped into the computer room and was shocked to find how cool the room was. Such units tend to be physically small, wall-mounted, and require very little in the way of ducting. The current name for these systems is "ductless mini" air conditioners. The earliest unit I'm aware of was the Panasonic Mr. Slim, but there are probably a dozen different manufacturers at this point. There's nothing weird about these types of cooling systems; you can even find them on Home Depot's website.

Allocate the resources. Use an expert. The important thing for IT is when you're building out a new office space, dedicate a reasonably-sized room that will hold at least one four-post computer equipment rack plus at least 5 feet behind and in front of it, plus at least 3 feet to one side of it. Hire a licensed HVAC contractor to inspect the room and recommend a suitable air conditioner.

You'll need to give your HVAC contractor a tour of your existing IT setup, so he or she can estimate how much of a thermal load your systems will place on a new A/C system.

Computer systems which are kept cool last longer and have fewer failures. A reduced failure rate lets your IT organization perform their jobs more productively and proactively.

Contemporary IT workers tend to dismiss the need for desktop management. I suspect much of contemporary IT training focuses on using Active Directory Group Policy Objects to manage desktops, and this encourages newer IT folks to ignore desktop management.

Which model is your shop? In truth, a good desktop management system can mean the difference between being an IT shop which is proactive rather than reactive.  Proactive is always less expensive than reactive in terms of time and money and stress.

The basic functions of a desktop management system are: inventory, remote control, patching, and application distribution. Some systems also include the ability to push out system images and/pr power systems up/down.

Having an accurate inventory of your desktop/laptop systems is important because you can't manage what you don't understand.

It's not easy to find good IT help desk staff. Making your help desk staff run around from machine to machine wears them out and increases your IT staffing requirements. If they can take remote control of a PC to assist an end user with a specific issue, both parties will be able to stay on-task. The end user can get on-screen help immediately, and the help desk staffmember can get to the next trouble ticket more quickly. It's a win-win situation.

Patching is the bane of every IT manager's existence. When you have 5 or 10 machines, patching manually isn't an issue. Starting around 20-25 machines, there's a lot of running around on a constant basis to keep machines reasonably currently patched. Above that, you'll probably need to dedicate someone's job to just running around touching systems constantly. It's a never-ending battle.

Application Distribution isn't that different a challenge from patching...except every application installs differently, whereas with most patches, it's a matter of clicking "next next next" until the job is done.

Imaging systems has gone in and out of style for a while. Setting up imaging takes a lot of up-front work, but if you have an organization which refreshes machine images regularly or has a high turnover rate, that work pays off very quickly in saved time and money down the road.

Powering systems up/down automatically is a highly useful ability in educational circles. Entire computer labs or classrooms full of computers can be powered up or down with a single command. (The classroom/lab environment is also where machine imaging is a thoughtful and money-saving investment.)

I tell my mid-sized and large clients that I don't have a specific preference on which desktop management system they use, as long as they choose one which meets their specific needs. This could be SCCM, ZENworks, LANdesk, KACE, or any number of other systems. Ideally, the system will be able to link to Active Directory to make your life easier. (All of the systems I've named here have that ability.)

Running a VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) environment? You're not exempt from desktop management. While inventory isn't an issue, distributing applications is. Look into third-party application layer management systems such as Unidesk, which reduce the amount of time and effort needed to build and rebuild "golden master" VDI images by breaking down the functional components into layers.