VirtualTrenz.com

If you aren’t living in a show or in outer space, you already know that things have gone awry in our economy.  I am sure some people have used other words to describe the state of the economy, but don’t fret.  This is the time as a consultant, or for other professionals, or anyone that has a job and wants to keep it, to improve your skill-sets.

Become an Expert

If you are living off a trust fund or your parent’s house, maybe you don’t ever have to worry, but with the sense of urgency, this is a great time to light a fire on your behind and start to learn something new or become an expert at what you do.  Reading Seven Years to Seven Figures by Michael Masterson, he outlines some great guideline and some activities that can help you in becoming an Expert or Master in your specialization, a new one, or whatever you want to learn.  He describes that you should be doing and studying the subject you want to specialize in  for 1000 hours, and you should be doing it for  5000 hours in order to master it.  The way you can track it is by having a sheet with 1000 squares, and once you complete an hour, you cross out a box. The same to master the subject of choice but using 5000 squares.  I have started this for my golf game, but I have a long ways to go.  I have a template so I will post it in the next week or two.

Dog Eat Dog World

As most of you hard-working, over-achieving people know, this is a very competitive world.  We should always be on top of things in our field, or even learn something new to branch out.  Who said that Doctors were the only ones that had to keep studying and keeping current.  I know that keeping current and ahead of the curve in the Tech field has helped me a great deal, and I have gotten to the place I am at because of that.  Let’s keep evolving and keep ahead and learn more things.  Get off the couch and do something!

I am not a 7 figure consultant yet, but I will be posting several things that I have done in order to get to my goal, which is to get to 7 figure profits per year as a consultant.  I welcome comments and questions on the subject.

Your Daily/Weekly/Monthly Goal Action List

I agree with Michael Masterson in the subject of planning ahead daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.  In Seven Years to Seven Figures, Masterson goes over making a daily, weekly, and monthly to-do type of list.  I have also done Tony Robbins coaching, and he also has a similar philosophy in planning ahead, but it is more in terms of goal setting.  Making these to-do lists are more like a Goal Settings Action list. I call it a “Goal Action list.”

15 Minutes Daily

Putting ideas to paper is far more effective than just daydreaming. If you wake up 15 minutes earlier each day to write down your to-do list, your day can be far more effective.  You do this every day first thing in the morning, and then you plan for your weekly list for 15 minutes on Sunday afternoon. The weekly list are more general and will be used as a guide for your daily lists.  The monthly list can be created in 15 min during the weekend prior to the month ending. This list will contain high level goals that you will accomplish weekly/daily.  I have templates for jotting down your daily, weekly, and monthly actions.  I will be posting them on this blog very soon.

Taking Actions

Creating these Daily/Weekly/Monthly Goal Action lists are not just for jotting down what you have to do or think you are obligated to do.  You want to have at least 10 - 25% of your action items be things that will be getting you ahead or to the next level.  For example: If you want to be on your way to being a millionaire consultant, you want to put aside time to learn new things, get referrals, or prospect for new business.

Evaluating Your Lists

It is a good idea to put each Goal Action list’s paper in a notebook and evaluate them each week/month.  You should start to see trends pretty quickly. Basically, what you want to do is to see how much of a percentage of the action items you write down are being done.  If you see that only 25% are being done, find a way to be more productive, or jot down actions that you think will inspire you more.  You can also be creating a wish list instead of an action list. Do not focus on too many items. You might want to start with just 8-10 items a day.

The next post should have templates for you, and I will explain what system I use to make sure I prioritize and finish these Goal Action items.

VMware

For those of you professionals or hobbyists following the general virtualization trends, you will see that that VMware is the current champion with the bulk of the marketshare (It was over 90% or higher as late as last year, but I think that lead is dwindling.) They have the most tools, and they are the best proven in Enterprise production environments.  Basically, they are a mature product in an arena of competitors going for the gold.

Main Competitors

It looks like the main competitors at the moment are Citrix and Microsoft.  Citrix XenServer is the best of the 2 at the moment.  It is the one that is closest to VMware in terms of their features, capabilities, and management.  Microsoft Hyper-V is new to the game, but they are really behind in the features and capabilities.  They do have on their side that they are shipping Hyper-V for free, and it is included with Windows 2008, but the fact is that a big time company is not going to implement Hyper-V at this moment for many reasons including that it is not “production” ready, especially without a V-motion type tool or a High Availability feature.  I do see Microsoft using their muscle in narrowing the gap with VMware in the next couple of years if they have a viable management interface, and they get more seasoned with the necessary features needed in a datacenter.

Other Competitors

Virtual Iron is the only competitor that was not mentioned that even has another piece of the marketshare (less than 5% last time I checked.)  The hypervisor does go on bare-metal (no OS layer to be installed on) like VMware.  From several articles I have read, Virtual Iron seems to be maturing and trying to keep up with the Jones’.  I am not as well versed in Virtual Iron (I will have a guest blog soon with someone that does), but it is built on the Xen Hypervisor, and I heard it is pretty easy to use. I know that is not much to judge it, but once I get my hands on it, I will fully test it out and report on it.

Now where is that complex lab environment for me to build these test servers?  Anyone willing to lend me 2 servers?  Well, maybe this blog can eventually fund it. That’s an idea.

This week was VMworld in Las Vegas, which around 15,000 virtualization buffs joined in.  Here are the major highlights of VMworld and from other Virtualization companies trying to steel the thunder.

• VMware and Cisco to work together to deliver joint solutions to incorporate Cisco Virtual Networking capabilities into VMware Infrastructure and improve performance of virtual desktops across Wide Area Networks.
• VMware announces the Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDOS) - This is no surprise and general information has been around about VMware’s stab at their own OS. VMware explains it as “The Virtual Datacenter OS allows businesses to efficiently pool all types of hardware resources - servers, storage and network – into an aggregated on-premise cloud – and, when needed, safely federate workloads to external clouds for additional compute capacity.  Datacenters running on the Virtual Datacenter OS are highly elastic, self-managing and self-healing.  With the Virtual Datacenter OS from VMware, businesses large and small can benefit from the flexibility and the efficiency of the “lights-out” datacenter.” The VDC-OS has three main components: “Infrastructure vServices,” “Application vServices” and “Cloud vServices.” More info on the VMware site.
• VMware to release new products 2009 - Some those announced were, 1. Cloud computing initiatives to enable the mobility of virtual machines (VMs) and data to and from local and remote datacenters, and tie those datacenters together with new security structure. 2. Network virtualization, including switches and routers. 3. Expanding the concept of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) beyond a user getting his desktop delivered remotely to a laptop or desktop, into that user being an endpoint for all his data, rather than a device being the endpoint.

• VMware announces bare-metal hypervisor that will run on a laptop or desktop.  No time frame was given for its release.
  

Other Virtualization information:

• Citrix announced XenServer 5 has been released.
• Microsoft kept reemphasizing that Hyper-V is free.  They had a massive product launch right before VMworld and kept at it while VMworld was going on.

No, I am not giving away Free Beer. I was just making a reference for an “Attention Getter” like those good old days in College, when Free Beer got you to a party.

Hyper-V

Microsoft announced today that they are making their Virtualization product, Hyper-V,will be available for FREE! (Formally $28 a license).  Microsoft is back to their old tricks to get their product to the front of the headlines.  I am not sure how many Enterprises are ready to switch over to Hyper-Vwith it not being as tested as VMware’s ESX product.  Of course let’s not forget that Hyper-V still has no live migration feature like VMotion or Failover function like VMware’s HA (High Avaiability) feature.

Microsoft Hyper-V will be available within the next 30 days according to Microsoft. Learn how to get started with Microsoft Hyper-V with this document by Microsoft “Getting Started with Hyper-V.”

Yes, the title is deceiving.  I wouldn’t have it any other way than working as a consultant (until I get to my financial goal and who knows then).

Starting in Consulting

Starting as a consultant can be tough. First, you must master a type of job. Then you must convince a consulting company to hire you and pay you the big bucks. You can also go into consulting on your own or amongst a few consultants in which you can be a partner.

Mastering a Subject

In the book “Seven Years to Seven Figures,” by Michael Masterson, he describes mastering a specific job or task requires at least 1000 hours to master, and about 10,000 hours to become an expert.  The way he suggests in doing this is to make up your mind what it is you want to master, and create a matrix with 1000 squares on it. Then you check off one square for every hour you spend attaining your goal of mastering the subject.

Other Advice

I am in a high demand area of technology consulting.  It is not enough to just be a consultant.  You have to keep sharpening the ax all the time.  To keep in demand, one must keep up with trends and new technologies.  I will have another post in which I will describe how to be a consultant on your own, and the best way to be successful to be profitable your first year as an independent consultant.

Handling difficult clients sometimes can be similar to handling difficult people or a difficult employee, but there are certain factors that make this more difficult and at the same time easier to handle.  On the difficult end, a client hires a consultant, and it is a lot easier for them to fire or end your contract than it is get rid of an employee.  To avoild a lot of the misunderstandings and difficulties that can arise during a project, it is best to get a good SOW (Statement of Work) outlined and agreed upon by all parties in the beginning.  Encourage the client to bring out any questions or concerns he or she may have before the project starts.  It goes both ways.  The consultant must also have structured questions to assess any of the project’s potential shortcomings before the it starts.

Now the easy part - You can always fire the client.  Of course this works mostly.   if you are a partner or own your own firm.  If you have good influence over your employer’s decisions, you might also be able to get away with this, but if the client is a cash cow for your company, this might be a hard decision, and you might want to figure another way to remediate the issues.  The short of it is, sometimes a client is not worth the trouble.  I believe you should Fire the client if he takes advantage of your services too often, tries to get away with services not in the SOW, and/or is costing you money due to difficulties also not covered in the SOW, which you are not being compensated for.

Have you had a difficult client? What have you done about it? Have you ever fired a client?

I wanted to make this post a little different and talk about my blogging experiences.  The title comes from not posting anything for almost 4 days.  I had so many ideas, but I just didn’t put the pen down on the paper.  I decided to just write when I get an idea, and set it aside for when I thought the time was right to post it.  Today, I am just writing so don’t expect too much proofing on this one.  I read at least the main 5 blog sites on my Google Reader each day.  I love reading about different prospectives about life, work, marketing, or anything else my top bloggers talk about.  At this point I’d say that I like to incorporate many bloggers’ styles at least until I find my own way of doing things.  This blog, VirtualTrenz, will be mainly about technical subjects and consulting, but at times I will incorporate my own life and thoughts into it as well.

One of the blogs I just started following, Zen Habits,  has some really insightful posts.  Yes, it truly applies to “Zen” type things with insightfulness, spirituality, and knowledge in its posts.  Now to the point  - yesterday, Leo (ZenHabit’s Blogger) wrote about the “12 new rules of working you should embrace today,” which I highly suggest you read, and there were a couple of points I found very interesting.  The whole article seemed like it was written with me in mind.

First, I wanted to reiterate Leo’s point about resting being as important as work.  I think I sometimes get caught up in using all my time to work and my material goals, but eventually I feel a little burnt out. I find that when I am working on projects without being on-site at a client’s that a quick siesta/nap is essential to get focused again.  I also need some resting at times to recharge with a weeklong vacation or a 3 day weekend out of town.  Those are the times I look forward to the most, and I do feel a little unmotivated when I come back from work after a nice short break, but it is so essential.

The other point was “Meetings suck.”  I agree with him that meetings are almost never essential unless it used to get a sale or get together with a client and/or the employees to transfer knowledge for the project at hand.  All the other meetings can be a quick IM, email, or a phone call without skipping a beat.  Why do  all these huge organizations find it essential to book your whole day with meetings?  How do they ever get work done?  They really don’t.

As a hurricane potentially comes through South Florida, I thought of the following question, How should a consultant handle his or her business during an emergency?  I believe that family comes first, and I will be doing whatever is possible to help secure my parents’ and my house and our safety before the potential hurricane comes through.  I will be notifying my clients that I will be available by phone all day, but I may not be on my computer due to the potential hurricane coming through Florida.

There are some other things to keep in mind to protect your business. Remember to backup your files. A remote backup service such as mozy.com or carbonite.com is highly recommended.  Remember to keep your important papers and files in a fire/water proof container or safe.  Send emails out to your clients or bosses if you work under someone to tell them that you might be unavailable for a certain period of time.

What would you do during such an emergency?

Most of us are consultants, because we love to do whatever we specialize in very well.  As per technology consultants, a lot of us (from my opinion and the friends I have in the field) we like the extra money, the freedom, and the adventure of having shorter term projects in many times different companies and locations.  I am one of those that looks at the future, and not only wants to be a consultant, but I want to head a practice or have my own company whether it is just me or having some employees.

I have 2 books that I have been reading that have excellent ideas to get toward a goal of that nature.  They are “Getting Started in Consulting” and “Million Dollar Consulting” by Alan Weiss.  I won’t go into many details in this post, but there are a lot of good nuggets in these books about the marketing and business aspect, which some of us don’t usually get into and are very essential.  Other topics that thought were important revolved around relationships with clients, your office space, and setting your rates.  I think these are comprehensive guides, and if I had to choose one, I think the Getting Started in Consulting gives the best bang for the buck.

Until next time.