Be Careful of "Consultants"

As I was reading an article entitled saving energy in the data center on the InfoWorld site today, I was reminded of how IT managers can be misled by the IT Press and so-called consultants. Written by Logan G. Harbaugh, and Entitled 10 IT Power-Saving Myths Debunked, this article itself introduces at least one myth of its own. I am not alone in my assessment, as many of the readers proceeded to shred the author to pieces in their feedback comments.

Here for example is a real gem. Number two says, "It takes too long to cold-start servers to react to spikes in demand. If customers are made to wait, they'll go elsewhere." The author then proceeds to make asinine suggestions such as holding a site hostage until additional servers — which you turned off on his advice — are brought online. He supposes users will sympathize with your cause and wait around until your site is good to go.

Apart from providing some belly-holding, rolling-on-the-floor laughs, this bit of advice is not only naive, but it betrays absolute ignorance as to how data center and servers work.

First of all, Mr IT journalist guy, the users will go elsewhere — even card-carrying Green Party members seeking to buy recycled products will move on and will likely never come back — this is a lesson every e-commerce site owner learns real fast if he/she is to survive.

Secondly, have you any idea how long it takes for a server to boot up and make itself available on the network? Users expect their pages to load in 5 seconds or less.

Regardless of operating system, a data center server needs a good 5 minutes to boot up — and that is on a good day. This does not include integration into a server farm or registering with the load balancer. It is utterly impractical to even suggest that you can keep part of your server farm unplugged and bring it up in time to deal with increased traffic.

But the purpose of this post is not necessarily to beat up on Mr Harbaugh — although he does deserve the beating. Instead I want to focus on all the times and circumstances in which management listens to boneheaded advice from "consultants" or IT Journalists, as our friend Logan here, and hurt their businesses.

This happens so often that it poses a real threat to IT operations. I would include sales reps in this list, but I assume any MBA holder with half a brain is smart enough to realize that sales people will always say what their targets want to hear in order to get their respective commissions.

Consultants, consulting firms and trade publications (the poor manager's consultant) , however, are expected to be on the side of the people who come to them for advice. But it has often been the case that these people fail their trusting followers miserably.

If these failures were the product of human imperfections, I would not be so upset; but they are instead caused by other factors that should not be allowed to go unchecked, Here are a few along with — and you will love me for this — ways to recognize when you are being had.

1) Agendas and/or Causes
No matter how noble and just a cause, trade publications and consultants must reserve their first allegiance to you, their client or customer. When you go to the grocery store to buy milk, you do not expect to get pamphlet on animal cruelty instead of the gallon of the white stuff are there to pick up. You can tell preachy consultants by their lengthy speeches that have nothing to do with the task at hand. As terrible as the situation in Burma is, your server farm should be the topic of conversation in a meeting called for that purpose.

2)Unholy Alliances
Regardless of how good the products in question might be, a consultants or trade publications that take the side of vendors, are no longer what they claim to be. The have become mouthpieces and salespeople.
The job of a consultant (and, hopefully a professional journal) is to review products and services and only recommend the best of breed.
One easy way to tell these salespeople in disguise is by the way they give unqualified praise or criticism to products of a given brand, to the exclusion of all others in their class. This is especially evident when the consultant in question is ignorant of industry practices such as outsourced manufacturing and "badge engineering."

3)Impractical Advice/False Information
You normally trust consultants and IT journalists to provide you with information you do not readily have access to. It is only reasonable that you be able to trust the information they give you. A simple way to protect yourself here is to see what information you can get on facts you already know; if your consultant is wrong there, he/she is likely to be wrong in other areas as well.
Another great way to determine if you are dealing with the real McCoy is to watch out for defensiveness or unwillingness to answer questions you or your staff might have. Good consultants expect to be challenged; they welcome inquiries, are open to suggestions and listen a lot.
If your consultant is unresponsive and full of hubris, consider cutting your losses early. By the way, always protect your shop by placing clauses to deal with such things in your consulting contracts.

4)Information Hoarding and/or Secretiveness
Demand transparency from all you consultants. If a consultant is not transparent in his/her dealings, look elsewhere. Always stress the need for extensive documentation and knowledge transfer on behalf of your staff.
If a consultant insists on keeping you tethered without a really good reason — for example, you have just had a distributed supercomputer cluster deployed and its optimization will take a few months — take it as a clear sign that you should keep looking. This is not to say that you should limit your choices to open source solutions or that you should expect consultants to give away their trade secrets. Rather, what is advocated here is a reasonable delivery of a finished product with enough documentation and training to insure maximum enjoyment for the expected life of the product.


Don't allow yourself to be conned. No need to thank me. That's what I am here for.