Welcome to B & M Bulletin, produced specifically for IT specialists. In this issue:
• Investing in the future: making the most of time off
• Tech View: Storage to support virtualised environments
• Specialist Profile: Technical Project Manager Dave Kirk
• Real People, Real Skills: Account Manager, Kevin Gill
• B & M ProLegacy
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Investing in the future: making the most of any time off work
Matt Jones, HR Manager of B & M, considers the benefits of investing in your skills during any gaps between contracts
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...improving technical skills...
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There are often mixed views in the IT contracting sector on whether contracting can really deliver the nirvana of job satisfaction, financial reward and a good quality of life. Some contractors tell us that they feel like a temp whose skills are under-utilised, while others say they enjoy the regular change that contracting brings, along with the opportunities to enhance their skills as well as being free from company politics.
Many contractors who work abroad benefit from the experience of living and working in a different culture, opening up a new social life and the opportunity to take part in local activities such as skiing - as well as experiencing the finest local food and wine. IT contracting has always given people a good opportunity to strike a work / life balance which allows them the time to accomplish personal goals while they work. By taking advantage of time off between jobs, many contractors are able to spend time with their families, pursue hobbies and interests or take longer holidays that are not afforded to permanent staff.
In the current economic climate it is true to say that some IT contractors are finding that they have time on their hands. Many specialists that we have spoken with are using this enforced time away from work not only to pursue leisure interests, but also to grow personally and professionally, improving technical skills and updating their CVs in preparation for future interviews and vacancies.
Those we have spoken to are confident that they will see a good return on this time investment in the long run as they will be ahead of the competition as soon as the economy picks up and new opportunities come their way.
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Tech View: Storage in virtualised environments
Paul Smith considers the joys of free processing, but warns that storage needs must be taken into account
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Controlling the cost of resources is at the forefront of everyone’s mind and commercial enterprise systems are not exempt from this. The question on every IT manager’s lips is: “How can I exploit my existing resources better (preferably without spending any money)?” An increasingly common answer these days is ‘Virtualisation’.
Intel server CPUs in particular are on the whole vastly under-utilised. If your processors are on average 20% busy you could add three more similarly-loaded virtual partitions and still leave 20% capacity to cope with peaks. This is wonderful: it means you can have one machine where previously you had four, saving loads of money and power.... But - and unfortunately there’s always a ‘But’ - there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Making changes to resources and performance may end up moving a problem elsewhere. In the case of Virtualisation, it may shift bottlenecks to storage as pushing more processing into a single unit also means dramatically increasing the amount of data that needs to be accessed by that machine to keep things running.
When considering storage demands for any system you need to think about both capacity of your disk requirements and the bandwidth of your network. Modern servers generally have huge amounts of RAM, so all you need to solve is your disk storage needs. Disks are relatively cheap, but can be unreliable over time and, as you are effectively putting your all your processing eggs into fewer baskets, local storage should be ruled out in favour of resilient remote storage, such as SAN Nodes.
Then consider the network technology that you are going to employ for your SANs - from a choice of Fibre, iSCSI or NFS. Fibre performs better and can deliver around 185MB/s over a 2Gb data link; iSCSI or NFS on the other hand can only manage around 110MB/s over 1Gb, but will typically cost anywhere from three to five times less than Fibre.
In the next issue of B & M Specialist Bulletin, we consider the complex subject of Disk and Network Provisioning.
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Specialist Profile: Dave Kirk, Senior Technical Project Manager
This month we profile Dave Kirk, a senior z/OS and UNIX technical project manager
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Before becoming a contractor with B & M, Dave Kirk was one of its customers, which is why the company was his first port of call when he first began contracting in 2004. He is currently working on a number of different projects for a global telecoms company, including hardware upgrades and automation software implementation. The technical project management role involves working with people in different countries and with different technologies – and this mixture is something that Dave thoroughly enjoys about life as a contractor: “I enjoy the variety of work available, with the ability to work on projects involving both hardware and software.”
His home base is in Nottingham, England, but contracting has given Dave the opportunity to live in cities as diverse as Edinburgh and Amsterdam, among others. “I really like the opportunity of working with people from different countries and cultures”, he explains, “It all adds to the challenge”
Dave feels that using contractors gives customer companies access to specific skills that they may not have available in-house, while for contractors and customers, benefits come in the form of having more flexibility and being able to develop new skills and work in different and challenging environments. As he explains, “Since I began working as a contract specialist, I have developed new technical and soft skills and have worked on projects involving different technologies that I would probably not have experienced if I had been in a permanent position. I’ve also had the opportunity to develop or adapt my existing skills – for example in my team, we have benefitted from using PRINCE2 principles to improve the way we work.”
Dave feels that he has a very good relationship with B & M in general and with his account manager, Seamus Hayes, in particular. “I find them very open and honest and feel that communication is regular enough to allow us to keep in touch - but not so frequent as to become intrusive”.
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Real People, Real Skills: Account Manager, Kevin Gill
Account Manager, Kevin Gill, is a professional with over 10 years' experience in IT recruitment
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Kevin joined B & M as Account Manager in 2006 and brought to the business seven years’ experience in the UK IT recruitment market place.
He began his career working with one of the largest IT recruitment organisations in the industry and benefited from its reputation of providing thorough, comprehensive training to its recruitment consultants. This training formed a solid foundation for the need to accurately identify a client’s needs and above all respond quickly and efficiently to their requirements.
Later, Kevin joined Aquent, the largest staffing organisation in America working from a new ‘test’ office in Reading which was ultimately relocated to London. He spent some time in the US with the main core of the business in Boston MA, Washington DC and Omaha in the mid-West.
The commute to London became onerous and Kevin joined a niche consultancy supplier in Newbury as Recruitment Manager supervising a small team that catered solely for the software industry. With his team he developed the recruitment arm of the business to become the main source of revenue by organic growth and, above all, by providing an unrivalled service to his client base.
At B & M, Kevin has developed key accounts in the UK, predominantly in the finance sector. He also manages our relationship with IBM.
Kevin spends his spare time with his wife and son, and renovating the Victorian family home. He also enjoys playing golf (badly).
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B & M ProLegacy
enduring support for legacy systems
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B & M ProLegacy is an enduring legacy support service which ensures that critical business applications and platforms continue to work effectively. The service enables organisations to improve the efficiency and productivity of their IT function by outsourcing the support and maintenance of systems software environments whilst reducing organisational complexity, headcount, cost and risk. B & M ProLegacy is designed to provide support for any stabilised production system where further development is not anticipated.
B & M will manage the customer's software infrastructure to ensure that legacy systems offer optimum levels of availability. The service allows organisations to outsource the maintenance of their legacy systems, freeing up in-house IT staff to focus on development of future IT infrastructure. For information about how ProLegacy could benefit your organisation, contact sales@bmeurope.com.
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