Daily Network Monitor

This item via the MSP Mentor blog points out yet another way for smart VARs to get out of commodity selling and deliver sustainable service revenues by specializing.

Heyer’s new Advanced Remote Management Services (ARMS) provides customers with proactive remote monitoring and maintenance of Heyer [ventilation, anesthesia and inhalation] equipment — while complying with network security and regulatory practices … Heyer ARMS leverages the ComBrio Virtual Service Infrastructure (VSI), a virtual, secure IP infrastructure used for the continuous transport of real-time remote device monitoring data and on-demand access for remote device management.

Talk about a life-or-death SLA.  I’d be a little worried leaving my ventilation up to the average VAR, but I’m pretty sure that the ones who figure out how to do this well will be very well off indeed.  I’d even go so far as to predict some kind of IP revolution with all kinds of equipment getting network attached and coming under remote network monitoring.  What a wonderful world that would be.

I spent some time in flow state yesterday at work.  That’s rare for me, unfortunately.  The life of a middle manager can be full of interruptions and meetings and crises, with precious few opportunities to buckle down and get some honest work done.  I’m sure you can relate, whatever your job might be.

For those who don’t know, flow state is “…the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” [wikipedia]  It’s hard to explain, but when you’re in it, you don’t really feel the passage of time, you don’t get tired or bored, and you crank out lots of work, usually very good work.  Being able to get into flow at will is something to aspire to, something great artists and athletes can do.

What’s interesting about this - at least it’s interesting to me - is that I got into flow doing something that’s not usually part of my job.  I was setting up the next incarnation of The Daily Network Monitor Blog in WordPress.  I am by no means a codemonkey, but I was up to my elbows in PHP and CSS and RSS, and I was seriously into it and suddenly it was dark when I looked up from my computer.  I’m not going to pretend to have a hidden talent for programming, but I think I did pretty well.  You can judge for yourself when the new site goes live.

Until then, I hope you all step away from the reader and find a project that needs doing that you can dive into and achieve some flow.  Happy new year.

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It’s also the last Friday before Christmas and New Years, the last pay period of the year, and for me, the pivot point between budgeting and planning ahead for 2008, and starting the performance review process looking back on 2007.

In January we’re going to kick off a marketing campaign with our new white paper about the skills and methods of the most effective network administrators and tying it in to the idea of new years resolutions. I wonder though, if the average network tech or admin could take a minute to reflect on the highs and lows of the year, what would really be the networking new years resolutions for 2008?

I suppose the usual stuff would be there - lose weight, quit smoking, save more money for retirement, volunteer more, work out more, write the great American novel - after all network admins are people too, but what kind of things do techies resolve to do next year? Perhaps some of these:

* Get Cisco certified
* Spend less time in World of Warcraft
* Finally replace that [fill in the flaky old piece of hardware of your choice]
* Write that blog you’ve always wanted to write, an expose of the life of a corporate IT professional
* Pay for those shareware utilities you depend on every day
* Drink less Mountain Dew
* Reduce the portion of your cubicle devoted to action figures to no more than 50%
* Demand the budget to upgrade your network management tools to the latest versions

OK, I guess that might be a little self-serving, but I’ll leave it to you to chime in with your own in the comments. What are your top networking resolutions for 2008?