Job Description
“Everyone knows someone wholoves Honda” commercial in context with Honda Facebook is a prime example how social network channels havechanged today’s business. If any IT executives still thinks that social networking platform is for kids and teenagers, wake up! You have already missed lots of opportunity, try to speed up and catch on.
Social network is integral in today’s sales and marketing for almost all products and services.Customizationof aproduct or service based on each individualrequirementis not a new concept and it has been discussedand implemented in isolation. The challenge faced before was to approximateeach individual’s requirements and social network is an approach to approximateindividual’s requirement. Once the requirements are understood, social networks are again used to influence individual customersto buy the given product or service. There are quitea few books written to leverage social network to promote and market products and services. To summarize, in today’s challenging market, it is obvious and evident that social network plays major role in selling product and services to consumers and some cases, evento big corporations.
Given this context, current economical circumstances, growth potential, emergence of cloud computing, compliance conformance requirements,
The following IT jobs will have high market demand in 2010..
- Enterprise Architect – (Thorough understanding of business process management, business strategy, IT strategy, portfolio management, social networking tools ,techniques and its business application and etc)
- Security Officer/Analyst (Audit, compliance,policy management, Threats from social networking, Identify Management Strategy,proactive incident avoidance – data loss prevention)
- Network Engineer – (SAN/IPS/BGP/SONET/DNS/Firewall/Load Balancer/NetCachedevices/SSL Accelerator/SMTP/SNMP/High availability/Disaster recovery/..)
- Cloud Architect ( Cloud operating system – like VMVare, Business cloud)
- Application Architect – (open source technologies,blog – wordpress , blogspot, facebook , youtube, SaaS, twitter , GoogleWave, web services, Rich Internet application – AJAX/Adobe Flex/Microsoft Silverlight)
- Information Architect (Data Mining, Datawarehouse, Reporting, business intelligence, text minig, search optimization)
- ERP specialist(SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edward, Oracle financial, Banking – Fidelity, FiServ, Shaw, Phoenix, Hartland, and etc)
- Vendor/Contract Management ( ITIL)
- Program/Project Management (PMBOK, PRINCE frameworks)
- Smart Phone ApplicationArchitecture & Design– (iPhone, BlackBerry, etc)
In general, infrastructure or data center cost is around 35-40% of an over all IT cost. Due to the high cost absorption in that area, it is prudent for any senior executive in the IT organization to have a better handle on the infrastructure cost. The industry lacks uniformity in the cost management of IT as a whole and it applies to infrastructure/data center cost. The various cost management structure are available to manage the over all IT cost and it depends on the size and type of an organization. However, the general principle remain the same.
IT infrastructure cost looked closely for IT cost optimization by every chief information officers. It is essential, particularly during this economical climate, to look the infrastructure cost distribution and study the alternative approaches for cost and competitive advantage. Chief Enterprise architects are directed by CIO and other senior executives to develop an IT infrastructure cost optimization program. To accomplish it, the enterprise architect must understand the high level information of various components of infrastructure and develop a technical architectural strategy. Technical architectural strategy defines the future state and provides a foundation, the blueprint, for the infrastructure/data centre cost optimization program.
For any future state analysis and definition, the current state is studied and understood before a road map is developed to reach the future state. 1. To study the current state, itemize the various components of technical architecture and the service rendered in each components.
Components of technical/infrastructure architecture
Network devices (Routers, Switches, VPN devices, Hubs, Firewall, Wireless,Intrusion prevention)
Telephony devices (Dialer, ACDs, IVRs, PBX)
External Connectivity SFTP drop box
VPN Tunnel
T1 line
ANX
OC3/5 internet connectivity
Frames/MPLS
Desktop PC
Laptop
Mobile devices (iPhone, BlackBerry, Smart Phones, pagers)
Software System Software Server operating systems
Network operating system
Storage operating system
Desktop operating system
Compilers, Interpreters
File system management (VSAM, GFS )
Name resolution system (DNS)
Email servicing system (SMTP)
Web infrastructure Application Server
Web Server
Portal Server
Data Administration Database server – OnLine Transaction Processing (OLTP)
Data ware house
Reporting
Business Intelligence
Office management Microsoft Office/OpenOffice
Email client
Browser
Remote login
Security – Virus prevention
Service Layer Business process server
Message broker
Connector – database drivers, bridges,
Monitoring and control management Service monitoring
Device monitoring
Compliance management Data Loss prevention
Login monitoring
Collaboration Management server
Document management server
Storage Management Server
Emergency Management Service Disaster Recovery Management
Business continuity Management
Enterprise Resource Planning (it will expand based on the core business) Financials Accounting
Management Accounting Cash flow management
Fund flow management
HR
Procurement
Power grid architecture
Power Distribution Units (PDUs)
Automatic generators Cooling and backup cooling for generators
Fuel capacity and distribution management
Cooling and heating Backup cooling and heating
Wiring management
Physical security
Security Service Directory Services
Identity Management Services User provisioning
Authentication
Authorization
User management
User de-provisioning
Network Security
Intrusion prevention
Firewall protection
Layered protection Zoning – web zone, app zone, database zone, messaging zone, Demilitarized zone, file exchange zone
The service offering in each area depends on an enterprise. Some enterprise has internal teams to provide all these services and some has outsourced all of them. Mostly, enterprises adopt a hybrid approach with both external service provider and internal teams. 2 . Define the future state in terms of strategic objectives like IT simplification, cost optimization, adaptability, agility for new market segment and etc. 3. For each component of the infrastructure, perform a SWOT, cost and new solution analysis and define the road map.
Being a strategist, enterprise architect, chief architect and a leader, I do not believe in setting direction without knowing or approximating the n th step. In one way, it is very mathematical inthe approach as similar to dynamic programming. As dynamic programming used computer programs like computer chess programs, estimating the n th step is based on probable choices using intuition and facts. The facts has the highest probability for success than intuition and I prefer to use the fact when fact can be searched and found. Use intuition only when the facts can not be found.
Cloud computing is in every practical enterprise architect’s or IT strategist’s technology road map and the implementation of the cloud computing for any IT organization is the question of when. Cloud computing has enough cloud in the sky and in some area it is already drizzling and in some area it is more than drizzling. It is going to rain and as people say, when it rains, it pours. Same thing is applicable to cloud computing. It is going to rain all over and when it rains, it is going to pour.
To be proactive for any future requirement for the organization (like I did with google apps on gmail), as an enterprise architect leader, I subscribed to the amazon cloud to set up an infrastructure for web hosting.
I would like to summarize my findings in an executive level.
Set up an elastic amazon cloud for a web site is very easy and designed for a non technical person. (Obviously, it is very very easy to set up for a technical person)
Select the stack you would like to have in the cloud. There are numerous infrastructure stack already available and ready to use (like wordpress, LAMP, Identity management and etc). It is also easy to create a custom stack for your use or promote it your stack for a public use.
Create an elastic IP address for the stack created.
Login to the clone (or instance) using ssh and do the necessary configuration
Load the application
Map the domain address to the elastic IP address
If the traffic to the site increases, increases the number of clones (or instances) associated to the dynamic IP address
It cost me $2.18 and my 30 minutes time (cost for my 30 minute is priceless!)
All the above steps were done in less than 30 minutes with out any prior training. The site was launched in 30 minutes. The above steps make me think, why an organization has to have an army of people to set up and support an infrastructure? CXO, if you are reading this blog, do not spend any more of your significant G&A budget on the infrastructure, ask your enterprise architect to look into cloud computing and save significant cost and divert your G&A into innovation, investment management and enterprise architecture!
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Job Tags
Contract work, Remote job, Flexible hours,