I am reading a book on FedEx.

The author is a distribution logistics expert.

About the Author

Roger Frock has conducted numerous projects and workshops dealing with the subjects of transportation networks, logistics operating systems, and responsible and ethical management during his years with A.T. Kearney, as a part of the decade with Federal Express. He has been a guest speaker at the National Council of Physical Distribution Management amoung others on a variety of subjects.

One of my first passions after college was in distribution logistics when I worked at HP and at that time UPS was the dominant shipper and FedEx was a minor player being used for only those few shipments that had to get there the next day.  Focusing on distribution logistics is what got me hired at Apple, and has helped to think about the abstraction of products to delivery of services.

Part of the book tells the story how the board of directors thought it was a time for change in management and was ready to reduce Fred Smith’s authority.  One of my favorite paragraphs is the following.

Watch out for those in the data center/IT space who make cost reduction the #1 goal.  Cost reduction is a temporary move, at some point you need to grow, and growing with cost reduction is not sustainable.

There was actually an executive sponsored study to reduce the # of cities during FedEx’s growth days because those cities were too expensive compared to others.

For those who have been around for a while, we have all heard or seen various projects that feel like this.  The problem is cost reduction is not sustainable for a growing business.  Cost efficacy is a sustainable.

Could you imagine a data center designs were done by someone who focuses on cost reduction?  In fact, that may be a good horror story talking to some designers.  The top two ways typically designed for are resiliency and efficiency.  Who designs for cost reduction?  Willing to compromise resiliency and efficiency.  Not many, but I wouldn’t be surprised there are some designs out there as there are people out there who don’t know data centers/IT who love to hear the words “cost reduction” coming from the data center group.  Until their data center services go out of business with downtime.

Today a group of people are getting together to raise money in memory of Olivier Sanche for his daughter Emilie's college fund.

The Memorial Fun that has been set up at Wells Fargo Bank under the Olivier Sanche Memorial Fund, account #3165058052. The fund is open until January 23rd, the week following the fund proceeds will be presented to Olivier's family towards Emilie's future education.

Olivier and I spent a lot of time together and one of the ways you could describe our relationship is we were wingman for each other.

"The wingman is absolutely indispensable. I look after the wingman. The wingman looks after me. It's another set of eyes protecting you. That's the defensive part.

"Offensively, it gives you a lot more firepower. We work together. We fight together. The wingman knows what his responsibilities are and knows what mine are. Wars are not won by individuals. They're won by teams."
Today, the strategy of having a good wingman is still relevant, but its application reaches far beyond the arena of aerial assault. When fighter pilots lift off into the great expanses of the sky, they may not know what threats lie beyond the horizon. Similarly, with each new day, we have no idea what lies ahead.

The common denominator is that daily challenges are conquered by responsible choices, and creating a culture of responsible choices is reinforced by the presence of a good wingman. In the spirit of the Gabreski quote, "personal battles are not won by individuals; they are won by the reinforcement of good wingmen."

We had each others back and watched out for each other in the data center industry.  Olivier was a wingman I could count on that had integrity that was never questioned.  It is a complex task to green the data center.  Much more than simply getting LEED points.

The challenge, like a thousand-piece puzzle, is that it can sometimes be more difficult than it first appears. The path of least resistance shouts for us to do nothing while a fellow Airman makes a life or career-threatening decision; however, accepting the challenge of being a comrade in arms is a daily whisper for us to courageously be involved. The moral courage to do the right thing is more than just ornamented words; it is the foundation of our Air Force Core Values: Integrity First.

I miss Oliver as a wingman, but any person who uses the concept of a wingman wants more than one wingman/wingwoman.

Who has your back?

Twitter is popular and so is Facebook.  For many blogging is considered old, and many of the youth have moved off of blogs.

Interestingly enough, blogging is not one of them, as only half as many online teens blog compared to 2006, while users ages 18 to 33 also blog less than before. Blogging did see a slight uptick among older generations (ages 33 and up), but still accounts for a relatively small number of total users.

Overall, virtual worlds and blogging aren’t very popular in any age group, which probably indicates that tools such as Facebook and Twitter – which also enables users to express themselves online – have substituted blogging for many users. E-mail, on the other hand, has become nearly ubiquitous, even among adults ages 74 or over.

Being a platform is a hot topic, and Seth Godin makes a good point thinking of your job as a platform.

Where's your platform?

That needs to be the goal when you seek out a job.

Bob Dylan earned the right to make records, and instead of using it to create ever more commercial versions of his old stuff, he used it as a platform to do art.

A brilliant programmer finds a job in a small company and instead of seeing it as a grind, churning out what's asked, he uses it as a platform to hone his skills and to ship code that changes everything.

A waiter uses his job serving patrons as a platform for engagement, for building a reputation and for learning how to delight.

A blogger starts measuring pageviews and ends up racing to the bottom with nothing but scintillating gossip and pandering. Or, perhaps, she decides to use the blog as a platform to take herself and her readers somewhere they will be glad to go...

So, one way to think of a blog as a platform.  Which is why I wouldn’t use Facebook or Twitter.  When I blog at Typepad I own the content.  I can take it somewhere else. I own the url www.greenm3.com which crosslinks to greenm3.typepad.com.  I can take all of this and move the hosting of my blog to somewhere else.

Using Twitter and Facebook is easy for many, but is this how you want to run your platform?

If you create a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, Blogger, etc, your platform to reach your audience can be shut down, and you have no way to bring yourself back up.

The same applies if you choose to blog on corporate blogs.  The corporation can shut you down, remove all your posts, and when you leave all you wrote and the readers/subscribers are property of the corporation. 

The best move Robert Scoble did was keep www.scobleizer.com when he was a Microsoft employee.  All the traffic he gained became his IP and Microsoft did not have any ownership.

BTW, at some point I may get tired using TypePad and the blogging style which then means I can transform www.greenm3.com into the next thing. 

GreenM3 is my platform to build new ideas.  What is yours?

I follow Barton George’s blog and twitter comments.  While I was flying into LV, Barton was covering one of the Gartner keynotes and tweeted.

barton808 Barton George

by sean_kelley_ms

66% of folks here say they will be pursuing private cloud by 2014.#gartnerDC

After talking to a few folks including Barton I wrote a post the next morning that the Private Cloud will bring some really bad $h*!

What the Private Cloud will bring? Really Bad $h*!

I had a full day at Gartner DC LV conference.  At the end of the day I got a good question on what I saw in the future.  Cloud is top of the topics being discussed.

Within an hour computerworld.nl contacted me and asked if they could translate the article into Dutch.  And, here is the Dutch version on computerworld.nl.

Private cloud leidt tot misbaksels

Gepubliceerd:08-12-2010 om 12:29 Auteur:Dave Ohara

Is cloud de toekomst? Afgelopen dagen heb ik doorgebracht op het datacenter congres van Gartner in Las Vegas. Daar kreeg ik een goed beeld van die toekomst.

Veel bedrijven denken na over het bouwen van private cloud. Maar hoeveel mensen weten hoe je een besturingssysteem voor de cloud opzet? Een tweet zoals je die heel veel voorbij zag komen op het congres: