Keeping your software and systems integration ahead of the curve

Integration of software and systems is an effective strategy in terms of reducing costs and increasing performance. It begins with the software designer who assembles units and components and then adds a quality assurance team that validates a consistent arrangement of the software and components.

I have found that the best integration plans contain system level standards, practices and enhancements of continuous improvement (CI) /continuous delivery (CD) and non-CI /CD system software.

The nature of technology requires companies to upgrade and enhance capabilities continually. However, some enterprises execute processes and workflows manually; and as a result, it is not cost effective. Here are some examples of technology upgrades that benefit from integration of software and systems.

1. DevOps: The success of a development team can be measured by throughput and stability. The former can be defined as the frequency of production releases, while the latter refers to the time required to heal and/or recover the application. DevOps aims at increasing coordination between development and operations teams by automating repeatable tasks and developing a continuous delivery pipeline. The results: faster time to market, increase in frequency of production deployments and shorter lead-time for addressing issues and fixes. If your organization expects to achieve these outcomes, it should be using a proven-effective product for managing the latest upgrades and operations.

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Contract Systems Engineer Opportunity in Dallas, TX

We pay for referrals, so if this opportunity is not a good match for your skills or you are not available but know someone who is, please forward this email to them.

Contract Systems Engineer Opportunity in Dallas, TX

POSITION SCOPE: We are seeking an experienced Systems Engineer to assist with the implementation, maintenance and daily operations of our Microsoft Windows Server Infrastructure. The successful candidate will have extensive Microsoft Windows and VMware Server experience in a large enterprise environment.

The successful candidate for the position of Systems Engineer (Intel) will be expected to perform the following tasks:

Server builds and migrations,

load testing,

performance tuning,

capacity planning and sizing,

operating system installation and configuration,

operating system upgrades and patches,

system and process monitoring,

process documentation,

VMware support and implementation,

Citrix support and implementation,

backup support and implementation,

and help desk ticket resolution.

Job Requirements:

Experience installing and supporting Windows Operating Systems

Experience configuring and troubleshooting server hardware

Experience installing and supporting VMware ESX Clusters

Experience creating file systems from San Raid Groups

Experience with enterprise level backup systems

Experience with server monitoring and tuning utilities

Experience with active directory including multiple domains and OUS

Working knowledge of Ethernet and fiber channel networks

Ability to conceptualize alternative approaches to problem resolution

Ability to adjust, sort and distinguish priorities

Ability to take ownership of an assignment through to completion

Detail oriented with excellent oral and written communication skills

Experience:

5+ years of Windows Server experience in a large enterprise environment – Required

3+ years of large VMware Cluster experience – Required

2+ years of storage area network experience – Required

2+ years technical writing– Preferred

2+ years Project Management – Preferred

Education:

BS Degree or Equivalent Experience

If you have this experience, feel you are a fit for this position, and are interested, please answer the questions below:

1) Do you have an updated Word copy of your resume?

2) What is your availability to start?

3) Are you open to a contract position?

4) What is your current salary or pay rate?

5) Are you currently eligible to work for any employer in the US?

6) When is the best time to contact you and what # can you be reached at for this opportunity?

If this opportunity is not a good match for your skills or you are not available but know someone who is, please forward this email to them as we pay referral fees for anyone you refer that we place with a client.

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Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

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IT Consulting: IT Contract Work Is Up, Permanent Hiring Slowly Increasing

Technology contractors appear to be seeing the best growth rates in hiring. For high-demand IT architecture and project management jobs, the salary picture is promising.

If you have in-demand skills, your asking price is probably above market rate—even with the slow growth of technology jobs, say hiring managers and recruiters polled in an August survey by online job board Dice.com.

Fifty-one percent of 1,350 IT decision makers polled said they are having to sweeten salaries for highly sought-after tech talent, though about 22 percent of workers are not willing to leave their current jobs. Caution about the economy is still in the air for employers and workers alike. But if you are receiving offers, don’t be afraid to try to get the best salary possible.

“Indeed, money dominates the enticement list, whether it’s higher salaries or sign-on bonuses sometimes necessary to help with relocation,” Tom Silver, senior vice president of Dice, said in a Sept. 8 statement. “But No. 3 on the list might surprise you: flexible work options, including telecommuting.”

The rise of telecommuting is one of those win/win situations for employers and employees alike: Companies get to save on office space costs such as leases, power consumption and insurance, and employees get to stay closer to their families, save on commuting costs and have a bit more hourly flexibility. Plus, employees will more likely start their days earlier thanks to a nonexistent commute.

“Technology jobs with a telecommuting option have doubled on the Dice site year [over] year,” Silver said. “Still, they remain less than 1 percent of the total jobs available. Corporations may want to consider giving more tech employees the option of telecommuting. Not only might such a policy attract and keep talent, it can offer real cost savings, as well.”

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Direct-hire Sr Desktop Engineer Opportunity with a Great Company in Grapevine, TX

If this opportunity is not a good match for your skills or you are not available but know someone who is, please forward this link to them as we pay referral fees for anyone you refer that we place with a client.

Location: Grapevine, TX

Sr Desktop Engineer

Required Experience

· Intimately knows the insides of Windows client platforms (XP, Win7)

· Must at least know how to script with VBScript

· Experience with a variety of client management tools in order to make educated recommendations (Ie, Antivirus, Patch Management, etc)

· Experience with OS deployment methods such as sysprep, ghosting, unattended install, etc

· Must be able to work with IT architects, support staff, server & network engineering, DBAs and developers in order to solve complex problems that span multiple disciplines as well as lead projects or architect client solutions that require support from multiple teams.

· Must know how to do basic SQL queries

Preferred Experience

· Programming experience such as with VB.NET, C#, etc

· Intermediate to Advanced SQL query experience

· Experience with MDT imaging technologies

· Experience working with locked down end points such as public facing systems (kiosks, library systems, digital signage, etc)

· Experience designing and implementing client solutions that meet regulatory requirements such as SOX, PCI, etc.

· Administration experience in products that GameStop employs today (Remoteware, BigFix, MDT, EPO/AntiVirus, Service Desk Express)

· MCSE with at least an educational knowledge of Server technologies if not working experience

If you have this experience, feel you are a fit for this position, and are interested, please answer the questions below:

1) Do you have an updated Word copy of your resume?

2) What is your availability to start?

3) Are you open to a direct-hire position?

4) What is your current salary or pay rate?

5) Are you currently eligible to work for any employer in the US?

6) When is the best time to contact you and what # can you be reached at for this opportunity?

Regards,

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

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Retain Your IT Staff Through Job Rotations

As the economy slowly shows signs of improvement, an IT Job Rotation Program can help you retain your top performers.

As the economy slowly shows signs of improvement, your IT staff members will inevitably question whether they should explore new opportunities. The management challenge that we face is that IT professionals possess skills that are relatively transferrable from one industry to another, so if you’re in a hard hit industry, you have more risk in retaining your top talent as other industries improve faster. So, how do you retain your IT staff in today’s unpredictable economy?

Build a Job Rotation Program

Job rotation programs are designed to move employees from job to job within a company as a vehicle to attract, retain and motivate staff. Rotation programs give employees an opportunity to explore other careers, prevent job boredom, develop competencies, foster career growth, and improve talent in an organization. A well designed job rotation program can have a very favorable impact on job satisfaction, productivity and retention. Rotations are different from normal job openings because the job opening is created by two employees interested in moving into each other’s jobs.

Where Do You Start?

First, assemble a small, cross-functional team of individual contributors and managers to define the program. The team can help you study the topic, define specific objectives, establish the process, and make sure that whatever you eventually put in place will be an effective program. There is a lot of free information available on the internet and even consultants that specialize in the topic.

Defining Objectives

While the name of the program clearly implies its intention, it does not convey the reasons why such a program is necessary for your company. It is important that you clearly emphasize why the program is needed. Organizations put rotation programs in place to solve different objectives. The team that you assemble to build the program can help you identify and communicate the objectives of the program. Merely saying that the program will be designed to help retain employees is not sufficient because no one will understand how such a program will help retain employees. And retaining employees is a goal or an outcome, not an objective. An example of an objective of a job rotation program may be to broaden an individual’s knowledge of other functions in the IT department, which in turn will help become more valuable to the organization. In this age of doing more with less, this is a worthy objective.

Establishing a Process

After you have sufficiently studied rotation programs and are ready to design your own, carefully consider the type of process that you will need. Some companies have very informal rotation programs. In these companies, the culture itself encourages employees to move from one job to another. There may be enough natural movement that a highly structured program is not necessary – too much structure may even be viewed as an impediment in this type culture. Although, it is arguable that some amount of structure is necessary in any type of culture so that employees understand how to make a move into a different role that is right for them – and for the company.

When designing a job rotation program, consider steps such as the request process, eligibility, matching participants to opportunities, terms of rotation, timing, transition plan, and monitoring the rotation. It is best to have the program clearly documented and made available on the company’s intranet.

Measuring the Success of the Program

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IT Departments: Bridging the IT Generation Gap

Older generations learned tech. The younger generation lives it. Organizations that want to succeed need the skills of both.

InfoWorld — IT pros who grew up in the Baby Boom are dinosaurs who just don’t get it. Generation Y is full of Facebook-happy slackers with an exaggerated sense of entitlement. But beyond these broad generalizations lie some real differences between the generations of geeks who do tech for a living, from Boomers to Generations X, Y, and the Millennials.

“Today’s generation was born into a world where technology is about interaction, whether it’s playing video games or using social media,” says Larry Johnson, age 62, co-author with daughter Meagan (age 40) of “Generations, Inc.: From Boomers to Linksters — Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work” (Amacom, 2010). “They spent hours at it, the way I spent hours watching ‘Rin Tin Tin.’ So their brains are structured to interact with technology in an entirely different way.”

[ Looking to get the most out of your IT investments, see InfoWorld’s “20 more IT mistakes to avoid” and “16 ways IT can do less with less” | Find out which of InfoWorld’s IT personality types best fits your tech temperament. ]

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IT Staffing: IT Hiring Continues to Improve, According to Surveys

Hiring for IT jobs continues on the upswing in the U.S. and Canada as recessionary gloom gives way to cautious optimism, according to various recent polls of employers, who cite networking, security, virtualization and database skills as among the most sought-after.

IDG News Service — Hiring for IT jobs continues on the upswing in the U.S. and Canada as recessionary gloom gives way to cautious optimism, according to various recent polls of employers, who cite networking, security, virtualization and database skills as among the most sought-after.

“Overall, employer confidence is improving,” said Tom Silver, senior vice president, North America, at Dice Holdings, which operates Dice.com, a technology and engineering careers website. “We hear that as we speak to our customers every day.”

The most recent edition of The Dice Report, which heard from 600 respondents across the U.S. who hire or recruit technology professionals, found that 71 percent expect to add more employees in the second half of the year than they did in the first. More than half of that 71 percent expect to hire 10 or more new IT staff members. Likewise, CDW’s IT Monitor has had similar findings in its surveys across the U.S. and in some areas of Canada.

The IT Monitor recently found that 37 percent of IT decision makers at large companies expect to hire more IT staff in the rest of the year, which is up 11 percentage points from a year ago — the size of the increase was “a much faster jump than I would have expected to see,” said Matt Troka, CDW vice president of product and partner management and acting CMO.

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2010 IT spending still looks strong, Forrester says

IDG News Service – Despite fears caused by the European debt crisis, spending on technology products and services is set to continue growing around the world, although the pace of growth in Europe overall will be lower, Forrester Research said in a report released Tuesday.

U.S. IT goods and services spending will jump 9.9% in 2010 to $564 billion, compared to 7.8% growth worldwide to $1.58 trillion, Forrester said.

Canada will experience the highest IT spending growth this year with a 16.2% rise, according to Forrester. IT spending in Latin America is set to grow 15.4%, followed by Asia-Pacific with 11%. Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa will see a 10.5% uptick.

But IT spending in Western and Central Europe is set to drop by 0.7% due to the debt crisis and the weak euro.

The US 2010 forecast represents a 1.5% increase over one Forrester gave in April, while the global growth rate remained roughly the same as the previous forecast of 7.7%.

Growth is being spurred partly by the fact that the U.S., and to a lesser extent, other nations, are entering an innovation cycle marked by adoption of new technologies, Forrester said.

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Mike Hanes ProVisionTech

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Job Tips – What Does the Ideal IT Resume Look Like?

Cross Posted from CIO Magazine

Everyone has an opinion on what information an IT resume should include and how it should be formatted. Please share yours.

Last week I interviewed Shana Westerman, a recruiting manager with IT staffing firm Sapphire Technologies, for an article on IT resumes. She has a fresh perspective on how to write an IT resume based on her experience matching IT professionals for contract and permanent positions with her IT line manager and IT executive clients.

Westerman’s thoughts on how to write an IT resume are informed by her need to know as much about a candidate as possible before presenting the candidate to a client. They’re also informed by her clients’ needs for detailed documentation on prospective employees. 

I found Westerman’s underlying message (be careful who you take resume advice from; make sure it’s tailored to IT jobs because not all resume writing advice is) refreshing, thought-provoking and sensible. But I knew some readers would consider her recommendation to write long, detailed resumes heresy, and indeed it stirred controversy (see the comments readers left.)

Who knew IT resumes could inspire as much debate and vitriol as President Barack Obama’s citizenship or Sarah Palin’s viability as a presidential candidate? Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on what an IT resume should look like, and often those opinions contradict each other.

For example, some professional resume writers and recruiters say the resume shouldn’t be more than two pages while others (including Westerman) say a three or four page resume is fine, especially for a high-level IT executive with several decades of experience. Some job search experts and career counselors recommend including fancy graphics, images or charts to make one’s resume stand out. Others say fancy formatting is unimpressive and irrelevant. 

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My EVO is Corrupting My Outlook Data on my PC

I bought my EVO June 4 and synced it with my Outlook and it appeared to work just fine.  However, after a week or two (not sure at this point) the phone started overwriting my PC Outlook contacts with truncated data.  The EVO then began to NOT recognized the sync software on my PC and asked me to install it.  I uninstalled then reinstalled the sync software.  My phone still did not recognize the software on my PC.  Took it to the Sprint repair store and they did not have a clue what to do.  I came home and plugged the EVO in to charge and behold it started syncing.  It started adding duplicates to my Outlook contacts, 896 of them!!!  I stopped the sync once I noticed and was able to delete the duplicates using advanced find to search on the "modified" date.

I had to take the EVO back to Sprint for a hard reset to get rid of all the duplicate contacts and start over.  The EVO is syncing now, however, it is truncating all the notes data in the contacts.  Was on the phone with HTC for one hour and they have no clue what to do and said maybe a fix would be out soon.

Mike Hanes
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