Mike Manos has new job CTO at D&B, if Microsoft kept him could be worth $1Bil in cost savings

D&B has a press release announcing their new CTO, Mike Manos.

Manos brings more than 25 years of industry experience and deep technological insight to Dun & Bradstreet. He has a proven track record of modernizing and scaling existing platforms for companies such as AOL Services, Nokia and most recently Fiserv, while simultaneously working with product teams to leverage the industry’s latest technologies to develop new solutions. Manos’ passion for solving the most complex problems for clients of all sizes will deliver immediate value to Dun & Bradstreet as he leads the company through the next chapter of technological innovation to enable the rapid growth and delivery of products, services and data-driven insights.

What was kind of surprising is D&B did not mention Mike’s work at Microsoft as he was the person who built the original data center team for Azure. Mike left Microsoft in Apr 2009 and I remember that time well as Mike asked me to drop by his office to have a chat and he shared that he was going to leave Microsoft and he wanted to know what I thought. Given the situation I agreed the best move was for Mike to leave Microsoft. Reflecting back on that time, there was a huge missed opportunity for Microsoft. Within a short period of time Mike’s manager left the company and the VP above as well. If Mike had stayed and moved up the chain he would continue with building a great team.

Mike’s ability to build a great team is what has made him a success and what enables his skills as CTO. The data center group thinks of Mike as a data center person with skills in electrical, mechanical, and sites, but what few know is Mike has a computer science background. Which is why Mike had so much fun in our discussions over the years. I was so lucky to get introduced to Mike by friends at OSIsoft who knew Mike and said I should have breakfast with Mike. We hit it off immediately and have been friends since.

One of the key things Mike pointed out is the IP of the DC group was in the integration work. The individual technologies and components is what almost everyone focuses on in a technical tour. Picking gear is not the hard part. It is figuring out how to make the system work. How do the components work together. This big picture thinking is what makes Mike a great CTO and Microsoft missed out not having Mike stay at the company for the last 12 years and work in system engineering issues of Azure infrastructure. Mike would be looking at AI, ML, IOT, Modeling, Graph Theory, Network Theory in the data center.

Mike is a system thinker. He looks at the big picture and gets the hardware, software, networking, and anything else that involves solving the problem in the big picture. Examples of Mike’s work can be seen in the patents he has been awarded that you can find here. Here is one patent that is solely awarded to Mike.

Data center programming and application distribution interface

Publication number: 20090307094

Abstract: An exemplary data center interface for distributing and monitoring Web applications includes a specification that specifies a call statement to distribute one or more components of a Web application to one or more data centers and a call statement to report metrics associated with performance of the Web application. An exemplary data center interface for associating advertisements with distributed Web applications includes a specification that specifies a call statement and one or more call statement parameters to associate an advertisement with one or more distributed Web applications based on at least one criterion. Various other devices, systems and methods are also described.

Type: Application

Filed: June 4, 2008

Publication date: December 10, 2009

Applicant: Microsoft Corporation

Inventor: Michael J. Manos

I think if Mike was still at Microsoft and had the equivalent of CTO role for Azure infrastructure he could have easily saved the company over a billion dollars. There has been hundreds of people of focused on cost savings in Azure, but all too often the work is like whack a mole as cost savings all too often just trigger another cost overage somewhere else. And finance keeps wondering when they add it all up the overall costs are not coming down the way they thought.

The other day chatting with a data center executive and we were discussing who the really smart good people are in the industry and we shared our short list. The one we both completely forgot to list is Mike Manos as he has moved on to more than the data center industry, but that does not mean he forgot what a good team looks like to run data center infrastructure. Mike is one of rare data center people who has grown his knowledge to be bigger than the data center building.

How Gary Starkweather helped me and how I helped Gary Starkweather

I miss my conversations with Gary Starkweather and helping others remember him is one of the things that reinforces what I got out of knowing Gary. The WSJ, WaPo, NYTimes, LATimes and many other publications wrote about Gary’s passing in Dec 2019. Gary’s wife texted me a day after Gary had passed and that started me thinking about my relationship with Gary.

When we met, Gary lived in Saratoga, CA which is same city I grew up in. Gary had moved to the Bay Area to work at Xerox PARC which is one of the places I thought of working with I was in college, but went to HP which also has its roots in Palo Alto. Gary and I met at Apple. Chatting with Joyce, Gary’s wife she told a funny story how Gary ended up at Apple. Joyce had been working as an admin and one day while someone said they were looking for a person with imaging background and Joyce put Gary’s resume on a person’s desk. Upon reading the resume the executive quickly went to Joyce and asked this is your husband? Yes. We want him at Apple. Gary joined Apple and worked in the research group which is the same building that had the Cray super computer in it.

So how did I meet Gary. The first meeting I had with Gary was in the research building and we were discussing imaging and Gary showed me a beta version of Photoshop which had not been bought yet by Adobe. Thinking back to 1988 why did I want to talk to Gary. What was I doing in 1988. Oh I was project leader for the 8 bit monochrome scanner and was investigating a 24 bit color scanner project. From then on I would have regular chats with Gary about color, imaging, printing, fonts. When I left Apple I had just finished Japanese TrueType fonts for the Mac and in 1992 went to be project leader on all the Far East fonts for Win3.1.

When I went to Microsoft in Redmond I would come back to Saratoga regularly to see my family and visit a few Apple friends. And Gary would be one of those people who I would see regularly to talk about color, imaging, printing, and fonts. At one point chatting with David Weise who was also a super smart physicists like Gary we were discussing color management in Windows and I said let’s call Gary Starkweather and chat about Apple ColorSync to see if we can come up with a way to use color profiles in the same way.

Five years later in 1997 talking to Gary he said he had had it with Apple after 10 years and needed to get out. I suggested why not come to Microsoft. Gary immediately said it rains too much in Seattle. And I said if you have not been there how do you know? Gary could not argue with that point. I passed Gary’s resume to Microsoft HR who of course took all the credit for bringing Gary to Microsoft. Nice thing is Gary always credits our friendship is why he went to Microsoft.

Here is how I helped Gary. Gary invented the laser printer for Xerox and his financial reward for the patents was enough to buy 2 Toyota Corollas. Working at Apple for 10 years 1987-1997 was not a big stock windfall. Working at Microsoft as a senior architect from 1997-2005 gave Gary the financial security he deserved for being the inventor of the laser printer.

To this day I can remember so many things Gary pointed out and hear his laugh. Nice thing there is a person in Microsoft Research who worked closely with Gary and we can continue to discuss how Gary would do things. Friends help friends.

Apple AirTags, what can you do with it?

I ordered 4 Apple AirTags this morning. Was going to get them engraved and personalized, but that delayed the shipment 2 weeks.

Kevin Tofel writes a nice post on the AirTags here.

Between the additional radios and the breadth of that network coverage, I can easily see Apple AirTags selling like hotcakes. And I’ll be ordering at least one on Friday, if not more, depending on if my family wants them, so I can cut my per-AirTag price to $25 each.

Kevin is a friend from GigaOm days and this post is on Stacey Higginbotham’s IOT website. Stacey is my 1st GigaOm friend and she now lives less than 30 miles away with a Ferry ride. Now that we both have vaccinated we plan on getting together in 2 weeks and chat in person and one of the things we will chat about is the AirTags.

One of the good things I learned from working at Apple is working with electromagnetic spectrum as a design concept. UWB, Bluetooth and NFC are in AirTags. Bluetooth is the industry standard way to communicate on 2.4 Ghz. NFC uses 13.56 MHz. UWB from Apple is 6.24 GHz and 8.2368 GHz and has security features.

Ultra Wideband security in iOS

The new Apple‑designed U1 chip uses Ultra Wideband technology for spatial awareness—allowing iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max or later iPhone models to precisely locate other U1‑equipped Apple devices. Ultra Wideband technology uses the same technology to randomize data found in other supported Apple devices:

MAC address randomization

Wi-Fi frame sequence number randomization

One of the big questions I have is what will Apple announce at its developer conference June 7 -11 for AirTags.

Apple has a developer program for Find My.

Master and Novice; Three Stone Cutters, who do you aspire for in your team?

Everyone wants Masters on their project and they need to have novices as having team of only Masters is not realistic.

Christopher Alexander writes an insightful perspective in his Pattern Language book on what is a master vs. novice.

•The difference between the novice and the master is simply that the novice has not learnt, yet, how to do things in such a way that he can afford to make small mistakes.

•The master knows that the sequence of his actions will always allow him to cover his mistakes a little further down the line.

•It is this simple but essential knowledge which gives the work of a master carpenter its wonderful, smooth, relaxed, and almost unconcerned simplicity.

Another way to look what a master is the story of three stone cutters popularized by Peter Drucker.

A man came across three stonecutters and asked them what they were doing. The first replied, “I am making a living.” The second kept on hammering while he said, “I am doing the best job of stonecutting in the entire county.” The third looked up with a visionary gleam in his eye and said, “I am building a cathedral.”

The master is 2nd or 3rd stonecutter. The 1st stone cutter is what happens all too often as the system is focused on the money paid for work.

We have all seen the first man, he’s there to make a few bucks, and may be the easiest to motivate because he is so obvious with what drives him. He won’t waste time on something that he won’t get paid for and can be highly productive. However, he can be a mercenary and have little loyalty or connection to your purpose.

As projects get bigger and more complex money as incentive to work shows its limits as the number of people who game the system to maximize money over power those who are like the 2nd and 3rd stonecutters.

What if the 1st stonecutter said “I am making a living as a novice and aspire to be a master and be a valued member in the team.”

Blind men and the Elephant - two ways

Part of what I enjoy chatting with Pete Kangas and Chris Heger, the two smartest guys I know in construction is how our different perspectives are shared and we learn. Many times we do not get the other perspective immediately and it takes time to understand the other ideas. We trust we are blind to the other perspective, and with time we could see things from other’s perspective. To explain this concept the bilnd men and the elephant comes to mind.

The blind men and the elephant is a story illustrating how 6 people could see one thing differently and none are right, yet each is so convinced they are right and others are wrong that it blinds them to the truth.

In all the years of know this story I did not know there was a version of the story that tells a deeper story that applies to issues many organizations face. For example, here is where the six blind men argue about elephants are.

The old men argued day and night about elephants. "An elephant must be a powerful giant," claimed the first blind man. He had heard stories about elephants being used to clear forests and build roads.

"No, you must be wrong," argued the second blind man. "An elephant must be graceful and gentle if a princess is to ride on its back."

"You're wrong! I have heard that an elephant can pierce a man's heart with its terrible horn," said the third blind man.

"Please," said the fourth blind man. "You are all mistaken. An elephant is nothing more than a large sort of cow. You know how people exaggerate."

"I am sure that an elephant is something magical," said the fifth blind man. "That would explain why the Rajah's daughter can travel safely throughout the kingdom."

"I don't believe elephants exist at all," declared the sixth blind man. "I think we are the victims of a cruel joke."

And as they sit to compare their views they argue each is right, defending their view and attacking others.

"An elephant is like a wall," said the first blind man. "Surely we can finally agree on that."

"A wall? An elephant is a giant snake!" answered the second blind man.

"It's a spear, I tell you," insisted the third blind man.

"I'm certain it's a giant cow," said the fourth blind man.

"Magic carpet. There's no doubt," said the fifth blind man.

"Don't you see?" pleaded the sixth blind man. "Someone used a rope to trick us."

Their argument continued and their shouts grew louder and louder.

"Wall!" "Snake!" "Spear!" "Cow!" "Carpet!" "Rope!"

Sounds like many meetings and disagreements in organizations that are standard ways of doing things.

When this version continues it shows there is a different way. A way where the six blind men change perspective and are asked to work together.

"Stop shouting!" called a very angry voice.

It was the Rajah, awakened from his nap by the noisy argument.

"How can each of you be so certain you are right?" asked the ruler.

The six blind men considered the question. And then, knowing the Rajah to be a very wise man, they decided to say nothing at all.

"The elephant is a very large animal," said the Rajah kindly. "Each man touched only one part. Perhaps if you put the parts together, you will see the truth. Now, let me finish my nap in peace."

When their friend returned to the garden with the cool water, the six men rested quietly in the shade, thinking about the Rajah's advice.

"He is right," said the first blind man. "To learn the truth, we must put all the parts together. Let's discuss this on the journey home."

The first blind man put his hand on the shoulder of the young boy who would guide them home. The second blind man put a hand on his friend's shoulder, and so on until all six men were ready to travel together.

We are all blind in some way, and the key to see more is to work with other’s perspectives. This is where diversity of the team is a key strength. A homogenous organization or a strict hierarchy of top down can be lik the blind men.