From senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.kei.com!eff!news.umbc.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail Fri Dec 3 14:55:44 EST 1993 Article: 1821 of alt.books.reviews Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.kei.com!eff!news.umbc.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: roberts@decus.arc.ab.ca (Rob Slade, Ed. DECrypt & ComNet, VARUG rep, 604-984-4067) Newsgroups: alt.books.reviews Subject: "VAXcluster Principles" by Davis Date: 23 Nov 1993 13:44:03 -0600 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Lines: 66 Sender: daemon@cs.utexas.edu Message-ID: <9311231950.AA01651@eureka.arc.ab.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.cs.utexas.edu BKVXCLST.RVW 930910 Digital Press PO Box 3027 One Burlington Woods Drive Burlington, MA 01803-9593 800-DIGITAL (800-344-4825) VAXcluster Principles, Davis, EY-M740E-DP-CRE, 1993 If "principles" were all this book dealt with, it would only be fifteen pages long. What we have here, rather, is a very detailed description of the component parts of a VAX cluster - other than the VAXen themselves. Communications channels and devices, storage hardware, and the various system files and utilities are examined. Included in this overview are some of the underlying principles of those components. Although it is somewhat unfair to ask a technical work to conform to the same literary standard as other works, the style here could definitely use improvement. We are given the same (word for word) definition of a VAX cluster twice in the first eight pages, and the same (Digital specific) definition of a network twice within twelve pages. I know we are talking about fault tolerance here, but some of the redundant material could easily be removed. At the same time, the formatting of the text and the use of bullets and indenting is often confusing, especially when multiple levels of bullets and indents get mixed on a single page. Since the VAX cluster is implemented only on proprietary machinery and a proprietary operating system, it is not surprising that much of the material is hardware and operating system specific. Scattered throughout the work, however, are gems of generic interest, such as the well-defined structure of an Ethernet packet, right down to the diagrammed description of Manchester phase encoding of data. Chapter one is an introduction to the topic. Unfortunately, it is possibly the most confusing part of the book. Chapter two, discussing the outline of Systems Communication Architecture (SCA) is somewhat better, but still a bit ragged. (For example, having almost completed the description of SCA, we are given a simplistic analogy of SCA likened to a telephone system. This might better have been an introduction.) Davis is obviously more at home with the guts of the system, and the book improves a great deal as chapters three through eight delve into interconnects, storage architecture and options, locking, the Connection Manager, and miscellaneous topics. The work is replete with specific examples and notes regarding particular devices. It is not simply a reproduction of the documentation and marketing notes, though. The material is well-organized, and gives details about the underlying structures before moving on to details of operation. This may be frustrating for some who merely want a "cookbook", but for the curious it can be an interesting and potentially valuable excursion. For those considering the installation or configuration of a cluster the book will give valuable background and guidance. Those already managing VAX clusters may not find an immediate need for it, but will probably deepen their understanding of the system. Those running MVS, of course, won't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKVXCLST.RVW 930910 Permission granted to distribute with unedited copies of the Digest ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 DECUS Symposium '94, Vancouver, BC, Mar 1-3, 1994, contact: rulag@decus.ca From senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail Fri Dec 3 14:57:45 EST 1993 Article: 1831 of alt.books.reviews Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: roberts@decus.arc.ab.ca (Rob Slade, Ed. DECrypt & ComNet, VARUG rep, 604-984-4067) Newsgroups: alt.books.reviews Subject: "Globalization, Technology and Competition" by Bradley/Hausman/Nolan Date: 25 Nov 1993 12:46:58 -0600 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Lines: 139 Sender: daemon@cs.utexas.edu Message-ID: <9311251853.AA08751@eureka.arc.ab.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.cs.utexas.edu BKGLBTCH.RVW 980930 Havard Business School Press Soldiers Field Road Boston, MA 02163 617-495-6700 617-495-6117 800-545-7685 617-495-6444 617-495-6334 fax: 617-496-8066 or McGraw-Hill Ryerson/Osborne 300 Water Street Whitby, Ontario L1N 9B6 416-430-5000 416-430-5047 Rita Bisram, Marketing fax: 416-430-5020 or 2600 Tenth St. Berkeley, CA 94710 USA 415-548-2805 800-227-0900 "Globalization, Technology and Competition", Bradley/Hausman/Nolan, U$34.95 The inclusion of "globalization" and "competition" in the title, as well as the imprimatur of the Harvard Business School indicate that this will be other than a technical manual. At the same time, the subtitle does give one hope that there will be some technical material of interest. One should know better by now. When business and technical interests clash, business always wins. "Business" research, along with much of economics, reminds one of the statement about much of educational research: if it isn't blatant nonsense, it's stuff your grandmother knew. As they say in Russia, there is no pravda in Izvetsia, and no izvetsia in Pravda (a pun on the names of the two major papers, the "Truth" and the "News"). This compilation of papers appears to have been taken from a single symposium and made to fit into a book. The heavy preponderance of professors from Harvard and MIT make the work seem quite self-indulgent. The range of companies studied goes from big to big: by the time you are finished you will know more than you ever wanted about the International Stock Exchange, General Electric Information Services, Saturn, Benetton, Wal-Mart and Rosenbluth Travel. In the absence of a preface or foreword, chapter (or paper) one, with the slightly reordered title of "Global Competition and Technology", would seem to fill that role, particularly as it is the only content of part one. However, after an initial laying of some foundations and a seeming introduction to part two, this first paper drifts into a mini-"Megatrend" essay which tries to touch all of the communications, technology and globalization bases without much apparent structure. The technical background is suspect in places, as where the authors applaud the death of standards, suggesting that this will drive the movement to open systems. This indicates a very profound lack of understanding of the necessity of standards for the open systems concept to even exist, and a limiting of the definition of "standard" to "proprietary standards", itself almost an oxymoron. Part two discusses organizational structures. If the aim is to propose any suggested style for "global" organizations, it is only scantily achieved. Malone and Rockart give us some rewording of Naismith's "networking", structure with an organization (as opposed to the hierarchical pyramid of traditional companies) with "adhocracies" and "answer networks". However, they appear to be proposing that such structures already exist within large corporations: their only evidence is a "gee whiz" listing of some information technologies already in use. Some idea of the framework under which a global organizational structure could develop would be helpful. Eccles and Nolan appear to want to give us that. Instead, we get a retreading of the usual "policy vs procedure" model of delegation from management to line workers (under the new phrase "superordinate design"). Tacking an additional title onto an existing acronym (GIS, commonly known as geographic information systems but here used as global information systems), Konsynski and Karimi purport to help us to design worldwide networks. Instead, we have vague business terms being applied to complex networking problems; one admission that networks might be limited by available technologies; and one "case study" which lists applications which are, again, impressive but do not address current major problems. Part three purports to talk about the creation and restructuring of industries. Whether this is supposed to be prescriptive (how to restructure) or descriptive (what new industries *will* look like) is left open. In any case, definitive statements about restructuring are hard to come by. Bradley's article lists some new industries and some restructured companies. But the role of information technology is not directly linked to any changes. The promised examination of the value and cost justification is limited to two paragraphs stating that measurements of return on investment for networks are difficult, seldom done, but should be done. Not very helpful. (In addition it is very difficult, in the paper, to distinguish technical networking from business, political or social "networking".) Hayter's chapter discussing the changes wrought by the introduction of electronic trading to the International Stock Exchange is fascinating but somewhat limited by the lack of specific examples of change to affected companies. The restructuring of a manufacturing industry is examined in the case of a particular company, but the Jaikumar/Upton paper goes to the opposite extreme and fails to give any account of technology in this firm limited not only to one nation, but to a restricted area within Italy. The Hammond article does study one technology area ("point of sale" information) and one industry (retail sales, particularly fashion) and produces the best of the bunch. More detail would have been helpful. One example in the fashion industry cites a six-week response time. That is half a "season" in fashion: it would be interesting to see how to shorten it. Part four is ostensibly aimed at the general manager who needs to respond strategically to the changes of globalization and technology. One would assume, therefore, that this section would be primarily practical. Not so. A paper by Clemons again trying to cover the whole field (and, again, demonstrating a basic misunderstanding of the business aspects of computing by the statement that information technology investments are feasible and not restricted to a single use with a single partner), a presentation of an IBM study on globalization that stresses "balance", and an interesting study of GM's Saturn division which makes almost no mention of technology. The one useful article details the international "expansion" of a travel agency through alliances with "local" firms in other countries and the use of technological assistance which supports and cements the alliance. The final section of the book is entitled, "Competing with Technology". However you wish to interpret that, the three papers have little to do with it. Hausman lists activities of various telecommunications carriers overseas, while the other two articles are two versions of peering into the future. The Marx article is quite "blue sky" in its assessment. The Hald and Konsynski article is more detailed but perhaps no more useful. The technologies it examines are certainly interesting. However, the recent development of a dependable replacement for the century-old gas meter design will likely turn a seven hundred million dollar gas meter supply industry into a twenty-five million dollar industry within three years (and have an even greater impact on gas service.) This may not be as "sexy" as virtual reality, but it will affect business much more over the next five years. The conference that prompted this book may simply have been a bad one. In all likelihood, though, this is a fair representation of current business thinking with regard to technology. Fuzzy. I would recommend that managers with a technical background study this book. My reason is the same reason I would give for studying BASIC. In self defence, it behooves you to know what the brass is being fed, and, what nonsense you might have to deal with. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKGLBTCH.RVW 980930 Permission granted to distribute with unedited copies of the Digest ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 DECUS Symposium '94, Vancouver, BC, Mar 1-3, 1994, contact: rulag@decus.ca