CTO Blog
It’s the annual World Wide Web conference in Edinburgh and the place is humming with excitement about a hundred new ideas, capabilities and products. It’s hard not to get excited and I frankly have to confess that my non corporate side has caught the excitement.
My presentation is to explain how business is using, and will make more use of the Web, actually it is more accurately subtitled, why Business isn’t using the Web more, and it’s a big shock to the ‘Webitizens’, (those who live on the Web) who are present. However it succeeds in its objectives and gets a great discussion going from which I think we all emerged somewhat wiser from the interaction.
So what was my controversial argument? The whole concept of the Web is fundamentally opposed in every respect to the current operational requirements of IT within an Enterprise, and that’s why Enterprises a) are not using the Web as much, or in the same way as home users, and b) are not interested in the global excitement of the thousands of highly skilled people who are creating a new set of Web functions and capabilities, loosely defined as Web 2.0 to cover some of the shortcoming of Web. Its gets worse, because the very shortcomings that Web 2.0 is looking to address actually extend the concepts of use that the Enterprise CIO likes least!
Does that mean I believe that the Web is failing to change to address business requirements? Not at all, my belief is its business that is the one that is going to have to change to meet the new expectations from both customers, and employees. The Web will change, or more accurately will carry on changing, the world and that’s the force that will change Business IT, not an internal debate on how to build solutions. But what’s the real issue that makes corporate IT uncomfortable?
Internal IT systems are mostly closed around proprietary systems, transaction oriented, built round machines and data, the Web is open, standardised, messaging oriented built around users and information. That’s just for starters, add in the issues of security, a wide variety of devices supported and the fact that the Web is constantly and dynamically changing to support new ideas and functions, and it’s not too hard to grasp the real issue. Its user/role based interactions versus enterprise based/procedures and transactions.
It’s not Information Technology at all, that term belongs to the phase when we learnt how to deal with the disruptive technology of the PC in a positive manner that contributed to the capabilities of the Enterprise, no, it’s something else. A disruptive change for sure, and it needs a new term to describe it, and some clever thinking about how to incorporate it into an Enterprise in a manner that brings a whole new set of benefits. What really interests me is that I am not at all sure that it is ‘? Technology’, I think it might just be ‘People Services’, the ubiquitous provisioning of a certain basic level of support at a level with pens, and paper.
Comments or thoughts welcomed!!
About the author
Capgemini Global Chief Technology Officer, Andy is a member of the Capgemini Group management board and advises on all aspects of technology-driven market changes, together with being a member of the Policy Board for the British Computer Society. Andy is the author of many white papers, and the co-author three books that have charted the current changes in technology and its use by business starting in 2006 with ‘Mashup Corporations’ detailing how enterprises could make use of Web 2.0 to develop new go to market propositions. This was followed in May 2008 by Mesh Collaboration focussing on the impact of Web 2.0 on the enterprise front office and its working techniques, then in 2010 “Enterprise Cloud Computing: A Strategy Guide for Business and Technology leaders” co-authored with well-known academic Peter Fingar and one of the leading authorities on business process, John Pyke. The book describes the wider business implications of Cloud Computing with the promise of on-demand business innovation. It looks at how businesses trade differently on the web using mash-ups but also the challenges in managing more frequent change through social tools, and what happens when cloud comes into play in fully fledged operations. Andy was voted one of the top 25 most influential CTOs in the world in 2009 by InfoWorld and is grateful to readers of Computing Weekly who voted the Capgemini CTOblog the best Blog for Business Managers and CIOs each year for the last three years.
