Shut 'Um Down

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Its all very well for you switched on and on the ball organisations, all your quality data in the Cloud and most of your staff applications presented in any modern browser they want to work with. But spare a thought for the Councils and Socialhousing providers, who are still working hard to complete (or maybe just start) that journey. It’s not through want of trying generally I would say. Often budget holds organisations back, sometimes its way more complex, or cultural. While the benefits of Cloud should be quite obvious, however suppliers often fail to make the case for a sale, particularly finance budget holders !

Pretty much eight out of ten of my recent clients, have been trying to move on from something, often multiple challenges. All sizes of organisation are facing this, from managing under 150 homes on an MS Access solution, up to those having tens of thousands assets. Keeping cybersecure is also a growing challenge.

A recent theme has been the vulnerabilities of one of the sectors old favourite Asset Management solutions Keystone, showing up being discovered, getting on for two years since Microsoft pulled security updates for Silverlight. That was no surprise however, since I originally blogged about it in early August 2012, a full 12 years ago. The on-premise servers its installed on can be ‘isolated’ from the network and outside world, although this does make it more challenging to use asbestos info and other asset data, particularly to enhance repairs service and keep it safe & compliant. A quick move off Keystone is not particularly practical to its owners suggested replacement. It certainly looks like a slow transition if its selected. There are good alternatives out there, although insight and third-party guidance would be advised, for folk going down that path.

Solaris desktop in all its glory

Its amazing how much old kit is out there, much of it way beyond its sell-by-date and some clearly on its last legs. 

If I had £50 for every time ICT techie told me that they dreaded servers needing a reboot and feared they might not come back up, I would certainly have £600 this year by now. Late, great names such as SunOS, Solaris pop up, decade old not-upgraded SANs, either technically out of support or close too practically. While many organisations have been in a transition off these boxes/platforms for some months or years, clearly some are yet to start on that journey.

 

The other area that pops up are legacy domains. Some of these are sometimes in the EU and being used in the UK or visa-versa, clearly not totally compliant after Brexit. Also, there are still many group organisations with remnants of original constituent domains left over. These often contain lots of unstructured data, files, documents, spreadsheets etc, many of which historically should have been data cleansed. Again, easier said than done in order to achieve a sufficiently high level of social housing GDPR compliance.

An accurate and up to date infrastructure and application inventory is an essential tool. Clearly, running on recent versions of our applications (harder when not Cloud apps OBVs) is also essential, particularly where we need to rely on supplier helpdesks for support. Its not unusual for me to encounter applications many years out of date, which based on software contracts helpdesks shouldn’t even be taking calls for. However, annual support and maintenance is still being paid on time!

So, have ICT check and update your inventory, getting a short-medium term strategy formed to migrate away and shut your troublesome legacy hardware & infrastructure down. While its perhaps not a quick move, it will shore up foundations to a smoother future for staff and your ICT team supporting it all  

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ *** Join the discussion with Claire & Aiden *** _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

If you are stuck on legacy SocialHousing solutions, reach out

please just get in touch , for a chat over a brew and some digestives ☕😋

       Related Post: How can the right Critical Friend guide you to a new system?

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - Shut 'Um Down.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Could we help you or your organisation? Our contact details are here , get in touch we will be pleased to chat about your problems and help with your organisation issues.

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Bought & Sold

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

A piece of social housing ICT infrastructure news this week, you might have missed. Montal, Microsoft Gold Certified partner, who supply much of the social housing sector with cloud, hardware and other support services, were acquired by Castleton Technology PLC, for £3.84M on the 24th June 2014. You can read the full stock exchange text here - http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail.html?announcementId=11991655

The press release states " Castleton is an AIM quoted public company focused on investing in the technology sector. Montal is the first acquisition of its strategy to build a managed services business focussed on the housing and public sectors. The transaction was arranged by our shareholders MXC Capital, who are also significant shareholders of Castleton. Ian Smith, managing partner of MXC Capital is the CEO of Castleton".

It will be very interesting how the experience of customers in the social housing sector goes, with these changes. Also, with a focus on managed services, where that that leaves Montals' IT Consulting team, is unclear.

Read on to a few more sales in the last few months: Keystone , Promaster, Northgate up for sale
 

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You can link with me on LinkedIn here - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy It would be great to connect !

Rory Gallaher - Bought & Sold.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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It Must Have Been Years

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/

So as 'Stand up for the weeks' Paul Chowdhry might say, "So what's happening this year housing IT people?". Well quite a lot actually.

Wokingham met Toon, when everyone in housings (well apparently about 20% anyway) favourite Marmite asset management application Promaster, was snapped up by Orchard back in the summer. Staff numbers grew to 185 making Orchard Systems the largest of the independent HMS (Housing Management System) providers.

Microsnore by popular demand, returned the 'Windows' button to Windows 8.1, but predictably did not link it to anything very useful (like an option to have Windows 7 back on our office desktops). No surprises there, still out of touch...

Civica bounced on the scene to launch their game changing HMS Cx. At last someone has had the nuts to completely design an integrated system, from the ground up, completely browser based, in a Windows8 flat UI style. Well done, its taken a while, but now there's something good to move all those 4Js, UH, Saffron & CTX to. I will be looking with interest at the newer modules when they ship early in 2014.

Blackberry crashes to a $4.4B loss and looks to be going the way of Palm and Nokia. Some local authorities and RSL groups still force their staff to use them as standard issue. You might even have a BB in your pocket and your personal iPhone in another? I wonder how long that will continue? BYOD has hardly started to take off in housing, in places I work with, its still a rarity.

At the start of the year, it looked like SAP where serious about their push into the vertical market-space of UK housing. Apart from the project at Sanctuary engineering an all 'encompassing SAP landscape', I have heard very little. We can assume Sanctuary are getting the SAP massively re-engineered 'Real Estate module' almost for free, as the growing pains will probably need one or more epidurals along the way. An industry insider suggested to me that Northgate were not expecting anyone to give notice on their iWorld system just yet. Watch this space.

Amazon were threatening drone delivery of parcels late in the year. Could this tech, be the key to tackling ASB on our schemes? Maybe filming and recording it, rather than 'taking it out' as can be the case when controlled by less caring organisations?

Google Glass, the Bluetooth headset of 2013, still not cool, wearing it will not make you cool. Talking of cool, the IT Crowd got a C4 special on Christmas Eve. How cool is that? You know Jen, Moss, Roy, Richmond (who lives in the server room) and the despotic Reynholm (I bet you have done some SQL queries for him...), surely from your own offices.

Next up was 3D printed metal objects, like the gun that fired real bullets. How long before the DLO operative can clock up 'Right 1st Visit', by printing that Worcester Boiler part, while the tenant waits? Then she can log her completion on her Winphone6.5 (less than) smartphone. Yes, we have noticed that at various places agnostic mobile apps haven't reached all corners of the UK, just yet!

Telecare moved forward with Motorola's patent for a Bluetooth skin tattoo (I kid you not), brought the Internet of things, one big step forward.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10436521/Motorola-wants-to-patent-microphone-skin-tattoo.html

In contrast, the IDS Universal Credit IT rollout didn't move that far forward, (as predicted, by all but IDS). I bet we would all like a project like that to manage, write, promote, staff etc, with a bottomless pit of cash, moving targets and £payoffs even if you fail. Just 'believe' and it will be so, don't waste time with detail, test plans, use cases, UAT's etc, seems to work for Iain. Avoid these schoolboy errors and your projects will run smoother, with less surprises.

That last one proves that while many things change, somethings, like Government IT projects, just stay the same. No doubt 2014 will bring us new challenges and surprises. I have been fortunate to have worked with some really inspirational people, who are really changing lives, systems and our society, in so many positive ways. There have been some surprises along the way too. Some things that were bad and come good and vica-versa.

My best wishes go out to you, your family, colleagues, customers, service users and neighbourhoods, for a fairer, smarter 2014. I look forward to meeting and working with you this coming year of the horse. Lets be thoroughbreds!

You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

Read on to, UKHousings next new kid on the block, Cx,

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2014/01/becoming-cx.html

Gary Numan - It Must Have Been Years .


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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Little Fluffy Clouds

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK

Never a week goes by without someone, generally a user or department manager asking me about ‘cloud computing’. How are other housing associations and groups getting on with this and should all their computer systems be in ‘the cloud’. It always makes me frown a bit, I must admit. Having said that if I had £50 for each of those queries, I would have a useful top up to my pension fund!

The hype and advertising collateral has done a great job of confusing users and making many rash promises that in many cases are simplistic at best. “Put all your applications in the cloud and have them work together seamlessly, access them everywhere on any device, yadda, yadda, yadda...”.  In many cases suppliers are offering what used to be the dull and boringly named ‘hosting’. IE move your data to their servers to host, offsite, rather than in your IT department or data centre. Depending on the application, this might not even make it more accessible on more types of devices; smartphones, tablets, ipads etc, without more expense.

Please however, don’t get the idea that I am anti-cloud, I am certainly not. Many applications (or ‘apps’ as the you’t would have it) work and belong in the cloud. Webmail, Spotify, Evernote all spring to mind. In the housing world, applications like TPTracker and EBS React are often delivered using a similar model, with no software required to be installed on PC’s, laptops or other devices. Integrated links with Housing Management Systems (HMS) can pose challenges, but are not insurmountable. Some HMS systems or part of them can be accessed via browsers, this is more a delivery method than use of the ‘cloud’ however. A true cloud app does not require local software to be installed. Microsoft’s Office365 breaks this rule where used in large business situations. For interfaces with the traditional HMS applications, fat client installs will almost certainly be needed.

Using cloud storage and services does provide scalability. Peaks in requirement can be easily managed, you just rent a bit more of the service, bandwidth or space. The lack of big upfront costs attract many smaller organisations. Rather than spend £30K on a little server area, a similar amount can be paid on more of a pay as you go model, over fixed term contracts, monthly. Strong SLA’s and guarantee of service are essential. Sometimes a ‘private cloud’ can be the best option, for larger organisations, particularly where vast quantities of data are being managed or generated. Costs based on data volumes or bandwidth can often be expensive. One other factor can be your bandwidth availability to the outside world. If you are on the edge of a town or conurbation, an upgrade to your local node might be a pre-requisite. If you cannot, it may derail your plans.

How fast applications run will certainly be affected by cloud hosting. While I don’t mind waiting 10 seconds to complete my Amazon or Ticketmaster purchase, you probably would not like your staff waiting around too long to update a rent account or a repair request. Use of a private cloud might be more controllable however.

The last elephant in the room is can you rely on your sensitive resident data being stored in the cloud, maybe not in the UK or even Europe. All those NI, HB numbers, DD sort codes and accounts, birth dates etc. Extremely useful if hacked. For me I would be reluctant to put sensitive customer data in the cloud or an application that provides competitive advantage. It’s a tough call and if you feel you want to, needs a reliable partner with some tight contracts!

Read on to: Why you need to name your projects well

Chillout to this.


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk

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