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Technology
Seduced by the Apple: not so invisible infostructure
Did I ever tell you that I am sort of a hardcore Apple fan? Nah, probably not.The thing is, the way they package technology into solutions that touch the heart of their clients is simply unmatched. And the rest of the IT industry can learn from it. Take for example the new Time Capsule product: when I was in London last weekend (unexpectedly enjoying snow and some things happening around a torch) I witnessed it life for the first time in the Apple Store in Regent Street and I bought it immediately trough the Internet when I returned home. It essentially just happens to be a backup device, but it is wireless and looks like a piece of art. It works in the background, in real-time synchronised with one or multiple computers (best of course Apples, equipped with Time Machine software, but even Windows PC’s will do) and it comes with half a terabyte of storage (or a full terabyte, if you want to backup your entire neighbourhood).
In our new vision document TechnoVision 2012 – much more about it soon on this blog – we introduce the concept of Invisible Infostructure: an information-rich business and technology infrastructure that is virtual, remotely managed, self-configuring and delivered as a utility, thus almost perfectly invisible to its users. This device fits perfectly in that vision, but then again, who want this little cutie to be invisible…
Seduced by The Apple again. How do they do it? And how can we copy it to deal better with our everyday business / IT challenges at work? For the very, very first time in my life I consider making a backup to be a cool activity. That’s a monumental achievement. Period.
Sector as a Service with Utilities versus Online Products
I have been struck recently by how many times I have been in conversations about what I think I can best describe as the ‘removal of value’ from products, or at least the failure to create a sustainable business proposition. Most alarmingly most of these stories are connected with new markets and the delivery of products as ‘services’, the very change that the new technologies are being adopted for by the business world. The one that sparked off this Blog piece was an interesting story in the Ecconomist.com about Online Social Networks, with the sub title ‘Social Networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it is a business’.
The point was that every new ‘service’ even if it pulls in millions of people does not necessarily have a business model, and that advertising cannot be the revenue generator for everything. The comparison point was with mail services, once seen as a key new market with Microsoft buying Hotmail, and various other big names making their own acquisitions, but today nobody has a business model generating revenue from what is still a free service, albeit now enormously upgraded in terms of amounts of storage, etc, to levels that would not have seen feasible five years ago. Why persist with providing it at all? Answer, because it is cheap to operate and keeps the millions of users within the brand and websites of the operators. So to be successful it’s the old rule, something to grab attention, a supermarket might call it a loss leader, and something else to create revenue and profits.
Communications, Convergence or Context as a driving force
The use of the term ICT to represent the addition of ‘Communication’ capabilities to ‘IT’ seems to be slipping into articles and slides. Interestingly this also happened in the late eighties through early nineties as part of the adoption of ubiquitous networking, but then it went away again. Actually this is to me just an extension of convergence, itself another term that has been around for a long time.
The history of technology is one of convergence as previously separate functions and devices merge, today the phone and PC is one example, as is the TV and the Media centre for another, but what started my thinking on this subject was looking at the MIT Convergence Culture Consortium. The mission statement is and I quote; “The Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) explores the ways the business landscape is changing in response to the growing integration of content and brands across media platforms and the increasingly prominent roles that consumers are playing in shaping the flow of media”.
Now what intrigues me about this is that’s it not just technology elements in the convergence, but business and culture too. Okay so it’s not new that technology transforms business, or even culture, but it’s the scale of this transformation that intrigues me. Add the amount of material being created; some one muttered to me that we are creating the entire library of the USA congress every eleven minutes the other day. And this leads me to what I think the C in ICT should stand for; and it's ‘Context’. I find this an under appreciated area which seems to be lost in the ‘semantic’ debate.
IT is essential; but the IT department may not be…
Actually the rest of the statement adds the phrase; to ‘Business Innovation’ which leads to the sad finding in the annual Capgemini CIO survey that IT departments find themselves in fifth place when it comes to innovation in the business. This places them behind Sales, Marketing, Operations, and R&D, but that the driver for all these areas is certainly Technology, and you could say IT, in one form or another. Well, there are potential answers to this question contained within the survey responses about what is wanted, how what is delivered is received, etc, so I recommend reading it carefully with the following thought in mind to interpret the findings.
I believe that there are two characteristics that are confining the role of what should be the skill centre of the enterprise in driving the use of ‘technology’ for the support of the business. First the focus of the IT department has largely been defined as internal support towards supporting administrative operations, usually under the control of the CFO; Second as part being successful in delivering to this scope, IT departments find themselves only able to make business cases around cost reduction. In other words the definition of the role stops them playing a full part in the innovation cycle in the same way as Sales, or Marketing in particular where justifications are normally around increased revenues, market shares, margins, etc.
In the IT department of today Innovation around cost is seldom more than evolution of supporting what is there, and for many CIOs and IT departments they are judged on nothing else, indeed are often hired just for their skills in this role. However what the survey shows is that an increasing number of CIOs recognise that this is not enough, but are frustrated in how they break out to play the role of helping the business use technology more strategically. And that to me is the trap; it’s not the whole business that innovates, its small groups within the enterprise coming across an opportunity to ‘change the game’. That means you have to figure out how to operate an engagement model that allows these people to come to the IT department for support in developing their idea, shadow IT, or even what is currently a down right unsafe practice, into a business valuable innovation as judged by their operational area key performance indicators, and not by the IT department key performance indicators.
That’s less about being awarded the role of ‘innovation’ at a board level, and more about acting to create an innovation support environment within the IT department, more akin to being an internal Venture Capitalist. The basic role of a VC, in the external world, is to develop a promising start-up into a valuable business. Am I advocating money? No. It’s the skill investment, and may be some space on a ‘safe’ server, that’s needed, because many of these opportunities will not be about conventional IT, and a business case in lowering the cost of administering internal operations. In fact they will challenge the existing IT function, and its current role, by expanding it into new fields around new technology. And that means the innovators will have to find their own business case to show to their own department around its goals; sales revenue, market share, etc.
The second element of the trap is that by definition ‘innovation’ is not comfortable to an existing state, so the first reaction of most professional IT staff is to stop these things wrecking the existing systems that the Enterprise relies on. Well, that’s not worked in the past; think PC, Smart Phone, Internet, and now Web 2.0, so all this does is drive innovation based on new technology underground where it will expand until there is a very real chance that it will cause a serious problem to the existing systems. Supporting or enabling may be painful in the short term, but in the longer term it’s safer!
With that thought in mind now read the survey, and see what it suggests to you about the role, and the issues, that CIOs and IT departments are grappling with, and in some cases succeeding around. In its self it may be a help as the reference document for an internal management discussion on rethinking resetting some of the key performance indicators for IT within the Enterprise.
Great Expectations; but how effective?
I am not sure if it’s the time of the year for surveys, a sign of impending worry about 2008 as a potentially tough business year, or maybe a year of technology change, but there are a lot of surveys about. Gartner’s Massimiliano Claps has a pretty through and structured approach out on how to approach cost cutting complete with what he refers to as a ‘Cost Reduction Score Card’ so if you are looking for technology driven improvements it’s a good starting point in my opinion. I have also seen the draft of the Capgemini CIO survey due out in March, and this shows many CIOs to be rather concerned with the way their role, and that of the IT department in the enterprise is, or should change, in response to using some of the new technologies as business tools.
However, the most interesting one for me came from Information Age publication on Effective IT under the title of ‘Effective IT 2008’ sub titled ‘the technologies and services behind today’s most dramatic business success stories’. This is a definite must to take a moment to go through because it asks two questions and compares the answers:
- what are your priorities?
- how effective has been your deployment?
And it’s the latter that is so interesting and frankly not usual to find in a survey.
This was based on them surveying exactly what CIOs had chosen to adopt in 2007, and starts the first surprise with only four of the top ten priorities, or intentions, for 2007 adoption actually having been carried out:
- Mobility
- Help Desk Mgt
- IP Infrastructure
- Server Automation
two were not even listed at all let alone given a priority in the 2007 list
- Collaboration
- ITIL
and the remaining four were listed but not in the top ten priorities:
- Virtualisation
- Standardisation
- Thin Clients
- and the key last one? The appointment of an IT to Business Manager to handle the changing relationship.
Take the list of the ten most effective things that CIOs think they did in 2007, remove Standardisation for development, and all the remaining nine in one way, or other, are linked to the way people want to use IT, and most probably new technologies in the business. Some are directly linked like Collaboration with most the consequences of deploying and supporting, i.e. Mobility, Software as a Service, IP Infrastructure, ID management, etc. What we call at Capgemini the ‘Hidden Infostructure’ meaning a complex set of abilities that allow extreme ‘agility’ in users working practices.
Turn it the other way around: look at the ten least effective things? Mostly the worthy IT driven activities from open source, to portfolio management, information life cycle management, even offshore and outsourcing, are all in the list plus the interesting addition of the ‘formal deployment’ of Web 2.0.
My conclusion, taken with the discussions CIOs and Business Managers, is that operating the traditional IT for the Back office well does not win any prizes, or even interest, from the business end, it's just an expectation that it will be there and working. The users are now driving the IT department in a different direction and the rewards are for doing things that directly support what they want, and it seems to be less about applications and more about ‘collaboration’ and ‘mobility’. All of this represents a ‘new’ set of challenges, and if the survey is to be believed, relatively unexpected in the planning cycle for 2007. No wonder CIOs turned for help to ITIL which came from nowhere in the 2007 priorities to being the eighth most popular adoption in 2007 and presumably led to appointing an IT Business Manager to handle the introduction.
It seems that the expectations of the business are changing; yup must run what you have now well and keep costs down but don’t expect prizes for ‘doing your job’. Instead the pace seems to be fast enough to be forcing change in planned IT strategies, as well as actually planned IT projects, towards doing direct support for users who want to change their working patterns. This seems to be where IT will be ‘marked’ by the business as to whether or not you are meeting ‘expectations’ ‘effectively’. Mmm, easy to say, but cost based optimisation of IT does not sit well with delivering new technologies into challenging new environments, no wonder we see a significant number of IT departments needing a new role to set expectations realistically!
Seems to be the time to read ITIL very carefully indeed, and decide how it might provide what I call an ‘enabling’ framework between IT and the Business to lay out some structure for both to work within for a testing year ahead.
Wait and they will come, but don’t stop them first!
I got some interesting feedback on my post ‘Imagination in the use of Web 2.0 thrives’, of which one point was about the need to work differently when using Web 2.0. This pretty well crossed with two other events; the first was a really funny advert on US television which shows a father and son in a new car; and the second being sent a link to a blog on five questions a teenage kid might ask if starting work at your business today. You really need to read this, and then think long and hard about why we can’t answer all the questions. The only really response is ‘because that’s the way it is round here and we can’t change it’.
The blog comments were almost polarised between the ‘why would you not work in a Web 2.0 manner’ and a ‘where would you get the best pay off for adopting Web 2.0’. And there in lies the issue, a traditional enterprise with all its investments in IT and allied to that the ways of working, needs a reason to change, whereas a new start up business just wouldn’t be bothered with the need to build up all of this. I already know of at least two companies where the classical implementation of an Intranet has been replaced by using Facebook. Actually it wasn’t a question of replacing; these enterprises have cut the cost and time of building infrastructure out by going straight to a Facebook based enterprise. You can add to that the use of SaaS to build out the rest of their enterprise systems and the whole package is a generation different.
An answer that is really not going to be possible in a conventional enterprise, or is it? The more I have looked at what works and what is challenging the more I realise that it's less of a replace or integrate challenge and more of an add on a different capability. This quite frankly is the accommodation that we have had with each new generation of technology, and why the Mainframe not only lives, but its use still is being extended in many cases. If it works don’t bother to come up with an argument to replace it. The challenge is more subtle and it’s the reason why my CEO thinks I have become a business consultant, (no I don’t like that thought either).
What I have learnt after living through two previous generational shifts – Mainframe to Mini and Mini to PC – is that you can’t push the technology, you have to figure out the business value and allow the users who really want that value to ‘pull’ through solutions. That’s why I have kept focussed on this point, I know, and believe those of you reading blogs like this one, know it’s the right technology and due to its inherent rather simplistic nature are not deeply troubled by the technology deployment issues, but how do we get the Business to see the light and use it? Solve that one and then we get into the interesting details of what and how issues of pure technology.
My answer is let the ‘kids’ and the ‘aware’ got on with it, but by kids I mean the young professionals, those same guys with MBAs that pulled in the PC technology that last ‘changed the game’ are doing it again right now. And if we are facing a tougher year for all business activities in 2008 then in the search for new markets, cost savings, etc then the barriers to acceptance will just collapse. Why? Because whilst you still have the existing market activity it pays to carry on with what you are doing now, push away disruptive activities ,and optimise the current way of doing things; When the market isn’t there that’s when it becomes necessary to rethink things and consider really innovating. Just make sure in the meantime you haven’t killed off the ‘kids’ and their under cover activities with new ways of doing things.
The TV advert? Well the father doesn’t understand all the new features on the new car, but it doesn’t matter because the old controls are still there so he can still drive where he wants to go. His son can’t drive, but annoys him by knowing what everything is, Bluetooth, iPod link up, Satellite radio, GPS, etc. It ends with the father ordering the son out of the car to stop him playing with everything.
Boundaryless IT Specialist
I am currently in San Francisco. Just around the corner here in California, the Republican candidates for the presidency are debating, trying to establish who is the most conservative while the Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are holding hands to show off their unity.
The Open Group is having its own show-off. The quarterly member meetings and the Architecture Practitioners Conference are better visited than ever, and for the very first time there is also an IT Specialist Conference. The reason: the direct availability of IT Specialist Certification: a unique, open program which assesses senior IT specialists on people skills, technical skills, experience and contextual awareness of adjacent areas such as business, architecture and project management.
Based on the real-life proven, internal certification programs of Capgemini, IBM and EDS, this open program is destined to quickly become a world-wide standard. And we’re only too sure that the world is waiting for this: the key success factor for organisations to collaborate is still the quality of their individual employees. Technology-driven change highly depends on the proper abilities, experience and skills of IT specialists. These need to be real, demonstrated attributes, so we are not talking about isolated book knowledge or having passed some shallow multiple-choice tests.
Outsourcing the intranet
I’ve been thinking for some time that a logical conclusion to the plethora of free (or at least cheap) social web applications will be companies simply outsourcing their intranets. Delivering a few portlets (or Open Social applications) into iGoogle or Facebook would seem to solve the problem of connecting your employees with the business, and has the additional benefit of helping employees connect with other employees. However, I was still surprised when I woke this morning to find that Serena has adopted Facebook as their intranet. The technically feasible has entered the realm of the possible.
Strategy and differentiation
A lot of us place a great deal of hope in enterprise applications. After all, applications have been a great source of differentiation in the past. In a world where globalisation has firmly taken hold and we're all under intense cost pressure, everyone is searching for that edge that will push up margins or grab a little more of the market.
The poster child for this is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart made a massive investment in a data warehouse during the early eighties (somewhere around US$110 in 1980's money), mining the data for insights into supply chain behaviour that enabled them to create the most efficient supply chain in their industry. Half the savings this delivered was passed directly to the customer in terms of every day low prices, and the rest if history. The application enabled Wal-Mart to differentiate, while the investment required (not to mention the delivery effort) was a barrier to competition. IT strategy was, effectively, application selection strategy.
Today, a lot of companies are taking a similar approach, pinning their hopes on a best of breed solution that will help them stand out from the crowd. I find best of breed to be a funny term though, as it carries connotations of being better than the rest when it really means no worse than anyone else. That application-centric approach to IT strategy doesn’t work any more.
Making the most of our most valuable asset
As others have pointed out, enterprise applications can be annoying beasts to deal with. Most of us are familiar with a time sheet application that seems to require more effort entering the time than it did in accruing it, or the order management application that requires four screens of data but spits out an error and forces you to start again unless all the data is perfectly correct. (Hard to use procurement applications make it difficult to buy stuff, though this might be how they are intended to function.) Enterprise applications, everything from time sheets through to portals and collaboration platforms, seem to put usability last on the list of priorities.
Un-Babel
I am not much of a Bible expert, but I do know it were the descendants of Noah (the guy who did all the difficult things with shipping animals, really the very first logistics consultant) that founded the city of Babel on the plain of Shinar. There, guided and united by their leader Nimrod, they built a tower that was destined to reach the heavens. This was apparently not in the Divine Master Plan and through a heavenly intervention, the arrogance was quickly taken care of: everybody started to speak their own, unique language and in the confusion of tongues that resulted, collaboration was no longer possible. Soon, the people of Babel were scattered across the world, all speaking their own, incompatible languages, no longer able to communicate, let alone create something useful together.
Am I mistaking, or have we just found the original bloodline of IT Specialists?
Let’s face it: the persistent tendency of IT Specialists to design and build megalomaniac structures, seems certainly to be genetic material. And the ability to speak the same language is not particularly overdeveloped. The latter becomes especially apparent if IT people try to have a meaningful dialogue with their business clients. After all these years of reluctant coexistence, it’s still mainly a matter of gesticulation and throaty sounds.
iPodification leads to Nothing
I have always argued that Steve Jobs should never touch that iPod Scroll Wheel. Simple things should stay simple. But who am I to argue when he continues his fascinating ‘delete the button’ act with the new iPod Touch: essentially an iPod (and Wifi enabled Internet device, really) with just a touch-sensitive screen to control it?
It’s yet another compelling demonstration of the ongoing iPodification of computers: we start to get used to ‘non computer-like’ devices as the primary access channels to information, transactions and interactions. On one hand, these devices become smaller, flatter and simpler. And on the other hand, we may find ourselves sitting around it, running on it or hitting with it.
The Rustling Trees of Tafiti
Tired of all these years of using the Back-button? Being haunted by Cookies? Bored with the so-so user interfaces of mediocre web applications? Want to experience that Vista Feeling but don’t have the courage to buy the product for at least two years (if anybody wants to sell it to you in the first place)?
We may have a nice link for you.
Almost sneakily, Microsoft has put a new search application online. It’s obviously a beta and it is built as a front-office on the well-known – but not so heavily used – Live service. But more interesting is that the application is based on the new Silverlight platform, essentially a browser plug-in, supporting gorgeous looking, highly interactive, multimedia-based applications. Rich Internet Applications really, in the style that we learned to know through Adobe’s Flash and Flex.
Admitted, that was quite a piece of infamous name-dropping in just a few sentences (Live, plug-in, Flash). But Tafiti – this is the Swahili word for ‘researching’, are we seeing some Ubuntu-inspired activity here? – gives a revealing look at what the next generation of user interfaces may look like. Just think about the mouse and information will pop up somewhere on the screen. The stunning graphics are a true delight. Watch the moving tree view, with the search results sort of fluttering around. Could bring tears to your eyes.
The question - of course – is if these are tears of happiness or of sheer misery.
Second Life Big Bang
Let’s be honest, it’s not even fun anymore to make fun of Second Life. That would be like, stating the obvious. Well, ok, one for the road then. I think this little YouTube video clearly makes the point.
We’re in the mid of summer and I’m currently between two short holidays abroad. My hometown seems to be completely deserted, nobody is on the streets, the roads are empty and nothing interesting is for sale in the few shops that are still open.
Finally, real life starts to resemble Second Life.
Mesh Network Bunny Ears
I like simplicity. I like browsing through the specifications of the 100$, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) computer, now called the XO. Of course, the paramount importance of the XO is its potential to help children from all over the world to learn and communicate more and ultimately lead a better life. But it is also a compelling illustration of what happens when you design a computer experience without having to deal with backwards compatibility or pre-existing notions of how computers are supposed to work.
The XO is a small, easy to carry device (almost like a school bag). With its round shapes and bright colours, it sort of reminds you of the pre-Y2K version of the Apple iBook. Also, it has built-in Transformer capabilities, enabling it to quickly morph into a standard laptop, an e-book that can even be read in full daylight or a gaming console. It is simply fun to look at, especially when its mesh network ‘ears’ are folded out. This will definitely appeal to children, but many features of the XO may even impress the most spoiled business PC users: there are more lessons contained in the XO than we think at first glance.
iPhone launched in Second Life
I thought, let’s discuss a bit about Apple.
Of course, there is no point in adding yet another hit to iPhone’s current Google Quotient (187 million, and counting..). So this blog-item is not about the iPhone. But mentioning the iPhone a few times, will definitely increase the visit count of this site. Especially when we combine mentioning the iPhone (or simply Jesus Phone, if you like) with mentioning Second Life. This could be done with an announcement like ‘Second Life citizens can now buy virtual iPhones; they have to wait for several hours in a virtual queue in their favourite shopping mall after which they can exchange cool, fake phone calls with their newly acquired devices; the little 3D iPhone retails for an amazing 499 Linden Dollars'.
Sorry about this. I promised myself never to discuss Second Life again – after summer nobody will anyway - but it was too tempting not to draw your attention to some of the practical experiences I have had with yet another Apple innovation. A few of you may recall an earlier blog-item, in which I described the new Nike+ combination of an iPod and a RFID-enabled sensor in your running shoes. I considered it to be much more than just a metaphor for applying new, fresh IT ideas to business.
The 100 Best Web Apps are …and you voted for them!
Well it’s a kind of alternative build on my colleague Ron’s blog piece on what the CIO, or CTO, should try out on as a personal use before recommending wider adoption in their enterprise. Out there is a site that found the 100 best web applications based on votes from 489,467 people. This started with an initial exercise in open nomination providing a list with an incredible 5000 nominations, too big to be sensible, and it seemed possible that there might be some sad people nominating their own creations! So the site editors cut this back to their choice of 250 web apps, and invited a further round of voting to find the final list of the 100 Best Web Apps.
An excellent case of using the principles of Web 2.0, and even social computing, to create, and share experiences, but just pause for a minute to reflect on the scale of this. Firstly that there were slightly more than 5000 recognisable web apps that could be accessed as part of the nomination process, try that rate of progress in the creation of regular client server applications at a similar stage of their technology cycle as a comparison. The second point is that half a million people found this site, and decided to register, and vote.
Take a look at politics in your country, and the turnout for elections. Point made?
The CIO Dog Food Wikinomics Experience
They say that dogs eventually start to look like their masters. Would this pertain to CIO’s too? You tend to think so. More than ever, the CIO is reporting to the Chief Financial Officer again. Shocked by the economic downturn and the increasing pressure of regulatory compliance, management seemed to have good reasons for that.
I wouldn’t dare to stigmatise anybody, but we can safely assume that CFO’s have not been selected for their uncontrolled, wildly imaginative and innovative ways. Otherwise, they would have become video clip directors or fashion designers. And it’s easy to see how an understated, restrained view of the world cascades through the chain of command: sooner or later, some CIO’s start to look and act like accountants.
Dreadful indeed.
Especially when recent research proves that boardroom executives once again see the innovative value and growth potential of IT. And they are relying on the CIO to provide the spark of inspiration. In practice, I see many CIO’s struggle to articulate a compelling technology-enabled vision, let alone that they successfully reach out to the business side of the company and convince it of the transformation potential.
Web 3.0 gets meaningful by building on Wikipedia
I have voiced my concerns that the rise of Web 3.0 in the need for the Semantic Web might mean a return to a whole series on approaches that have been around for quite a few years now without actually getting anywhere meaningful. I was hoping to be proved wrong and that new approaches would emerge that built on the new capabilities and thinking that have emerged, and are still emerging.
I am delighted to find DBpedia.org which describes its self as ‘querying Wikipedia like a database’ and goes on to offer the explanation; DBpedia.org is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available on the Web. DBpedia allows you to ask sophisticated queries against Wikipedia and to link other datasets on the Web to Wikipedia data.
What comes first? Structured, or Unstructured?
Its seems we are in the middle of a boom market for Business Intelligence Management, or what ever term you want to apply to the gathering and use of Information and Knowledge for the support of business decision making. On one side we have a generation of investment in knowledge management tools, on the other side we have Web 2.0 based approaches, and that’s before we start on the detailed debate of what is structured and unstructured data etc. I want to explore this debate from a different direction, what is happening and working in two different areas.
Some Cracks are appearing in Web 2.0 basics
As you may have gathered by now I am a big believer that standards play a crucial role in the current wave of technology, and that this has allowed what I have called ‘shadow IT’, (parallel activities to the official IT systems), to develop with reasonable safety. Perhaps more accurately this can be described as ‘technology literate user driven IT’, as I am far from suggesting that all users are either capable, or should be allowed to do what they want. The big safety net to me is standards, as this allows users to be given more personal flexibility in how they choose to use technology whilst ensuring that the poor CIO can have some piece of mind by knowing that the standard establishes some boundaries to behaviour.
It’s therefore somewhat alarming to be watching RSS fragmenting into multiple so called standards. RSS has been one of the building blocks of the whole Web 2.0 approach, and today it is increasingly coming into use as a core mechanism in designing dynamic information distribution systems within our enterprises. A look at Wikipedia shows the issue somewhat too clearly. At the end of the first introductory paragraph they list three major families and group the versions together as four separate release specifications; RSS 0.9, 0.91, 1.0 and 2.0.
Does the desktop matter anymore?
It seems that Web 2.0 has entered the business main stream now that established business dailies—such as the Australian Financial Review which had an article on wikis (light weight, online, blackboards) the other day—are publishing on the topic. For a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media only in 2004, referring to a perceived second-generation of Web-based services that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users, Web 2.0 seems to have already established itself as a force to be reckoned with.
One of the dramatic changes Web 2.0 brings with it is a shift from desktop applications to shared spaces—collaboration delivered as a service over the internet. This is a dramatic break with the desktop centric world we’re all used to. Rather than installing an application and then typing in obscure strings of characters to contact other users, with a few mouse clicks on a web page we’ve created a new shared space (wiki, project room, blog, …) and invited friends and colleagues. We might be starting a new project with an online project management tool, bringing a virtual team together across time zones, countries and even organisations to design a new product. Or perhaps the space will be only used for a couple of hours to resolve an organisational issue. Web 2.0 has obvious attractions in the enterprise, as the capabilities it provides go directly to some of the root causes for some of the most vexing problems we’re faced with collaborating across time and space, or even across the room.
So, does the desktop matter anymore? If our work moves online, then what happens to the applications installed on the laptop that I have balanced on my knee? A lot of the old productivity applications are being embedded in Web 2.0 web sites. Word processing documents, video, audio, spreadsheets and even presentations are being moved off the desktop and onto a service that lives out in the cloud that is the internet. We’re even seeing the emergence of what are being called WebOSs, which promise to provide something like the current desktop experience complete with productivity application but all delivered via a web browser.
Not only Google but also….
We do all seem to be fixated on Google as the ‘best’ search engine, and it’s true that it really seems to be the best ‘general purpose’ search engine around. If we add Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, to the list then market researchers suggest that the four so called ‘big brand’ search engines account for 99% or more of searches. I am just as much guilty of making these de facto choices as anyone, but I came across this really interesting article on ‘the top one hundred alternative search engines’ and have since started to make more use of some others, and think about search engines again in terms of their role in the developing new people-centric Web 2.0.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
We talk about the end of business as usual, mash-ups and how the ground rules in our respective industries are changing. But how do we use these technologies to change our own business? When it comes time to replace that core banking system or enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution and we cannot see any other option than creating another major project and application. These systems are big, and it will take big projects to replace them.
Our current approach to IT is the product of how we have engaged with IT in the past. Projects were large, which makes sense when applications needed to support a lot of business functionality. Delivering even a simple solution was a major challenge, and we quite rightly engaged IT as a major engineering task. The size of the problems we would tackle—the amount of functionality in a solution—was simply a product of the economics of software development. While that original valve and punch-card solution used to predict a U.S. election (correctly, despite what the critics thought) didn’t deliver a lot of business functionality by today’s standards, at the time anything smaller wouldn’t have produced a useful solution. IT is a lot more capable today but the same rules apply; significant slabs of functionality take a correspondingly significant effort to deliver.
And now we have reached the nub of the problem: we’re still thinking of IT as an engineering challenge when the rules of the game have changed around us. As Albert Einstein eloquently put it, we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them! Approaching the development of a new core banking or sales and operations planning solution from the familiar engineering viewpoint will result in a similar engineering centric approach. We need to do some thing different.
77 Million Innovations
I have to confess I am old enough to vividly remember how Roxy Music made its entry into the pop music scene. It must have been early in the seventies, the steam machine had just been invented and most homes were still lighted by candles. Ceramics teacher Brian Ferry thought the moment was right to create an entirely new band, as an eclectic mix of post-modern noise, absurd and yet semi-literary lyrics, powerhouse glam rock and a totally over-the-top visual presentation.
Now why had nobody thought of that before?
Quite an innovative band they were, and with classics as Virginia Plane and Do the Strand (“It’s the new way, that’s why we say, do the strand”) they shook the fundaments of the establishment. Undoubtedly, the most eye-catching band member was Brian Eno - sort of a 70’s version of Lord of the Rings’ Legolas – who produced the weirdest sounds out of a primeval synthesizer. It’s this same Eno who – 35 years later – has created a spectacular digital work of art that is both a great illustration of the power of mashing up through new technology and, even more important, contains an important innovation lesson: don’t just try to improve or renew what you were already doing, reinvent your fundaments instead. These are the real breakthroughs.
Perfect Project in Perfect World
Admitted, Linden Lab makes all the right moves, bringing the software of Second Life to the open source community. Immediately after the long-anticipated announcement, a splendid wiki is launched, which includes a well-elaborated FAQ section (“How can you prevent malicious programmers from finding flaws in the code to exploit security problems?” and far more important “won’t somebody steal my Linden dollars?”). Also, it features a great portal which links to everything there is to know about the system, ranging from the overall architecture to the actual source code and naming conventions. In essence a very useful example of the way the Internet and Web 2.0 nowadays should be used to support any (repeat: any) development project. With thanks to all the lessons that open source has taught us for the last few years.
All the same, it is definitely something else – the rudimentary style of a wiki – compared to what you typically will find in Second Life. Personally, I think we find very different target audiences in these two environments. And that is despite the claim of Linden Lab that the transition to open source will enable the end-users and developers of Second Life to collaborate much more effectively. Playing a role in Second Life won’t particularly attract programmers. Especially not C++ programmers (I only learned today that Second Life is predominantly developed in C++). Actually, I wouldn’t even have the faintest idea what C++ programmers would be looking for in Second Life. It is sort of difficult to envision them polishing for days on the right chin and nose, the most ravishing hairdo, that nice suit for a virtual marriage ceremony or yet another idyllic feng shui garden with flowering paths, meditation cushions and wind chimes.
Innovation happens elsewhere. Doctor’s prescription.
I truly like to watch it: companies that during the course of the years transform into incarnations that just do not resemble the original any longer. Often, it is a sign of a strong urge to innovate. Also, it can be the demonstration of a grinding lack of realism or simply a proof of an inflated ego. Or all of that. Either way, there’s always something exciting happening near companies that are reinventing themselves.
I voted. Yes, we know.
Just to make sure you are aware: today we have general elections in the Netherlands. Of course you are – like the rest of the world – holding your breath and anxiously awaiting the results: we all know that changes in the Dutch government will have a profound impact on the global economy, politics, and culture alike. And I’m not even mentioning the Antarctic ozone hole.
It is sort of pity though, that some of the voting computers appear not be entirely safe. A recent investigation suggested that a certain type of e-voting machine emits radio signals that can be tapped from several dozen meters. A very smart hacker would theoretically be able to detect the images on the screen, thus monitoring the choices of voters.
The Real Java Milestone
I honestly don’t know what to think of it. Sun finally released its Java base code to the open source community. According to Sun’s Executive VP Rich Green this signifies nothing less than a ‘milestone for the whole industry’. That’s definitely one way to put it. Others might add that it is also confirming something we already knew for some time: there is simply no way you can make money with developing and maintaining a programming language.
Anyway. So it’s a milestone. I guess that fits seamlessly in the huge pile of remarkable moments that we have shared with Java in the past ten years or so.
It’s just that I’m still hesitating to determine what exactly are the most impressive milestones.
Maybe it is the appearance of the first applets: these miserable pieces of code that took far too long to load in your browser and then treated you to mannered animations or a laughable attempt to make something resemble like an input dialog. With the advent of applets, the still young principles behind the lightweight browser lost their innocence for good. And judging by the screaming cacophony of non-standardised, yet very arty ‘plug-in’ user-interfaces in the browser of 2006 (thanks to all the enthusiastic followers that brought us ActiveX and Flash), this historic Java moment still echoes every day.
SAP TechEd '06 TakeAways (II)
Although the next event in Bangalore is almost taking off already, I still have to fulfil my promise to provide you with some additional takeaways of the recent SAP TechEd conference in Amsterdam. I’m terribly sorry it took me so long. What can I say? Browsing through all of the sessions handouts took me two weeks straight in a row and then – of course – there was no time for blogging left. One thing is for sure: the audience of the TechEd conference is changing even faster than SAP’s software stack. And interestingly enough, the average age of the attendees seems to increase, together with the introduction of new, yet unknown communities into the SAP universe, such as Business Process eXperts, Enterprise Architects and, yes, even some Java programmers.
Floated for days, couldn't blog
I guess every blogger uses it sooner or later: the excuse that explains why it took some time to write a new item. I prefer to just point you to this item, which describes many credible (“I was busy”, “Traveled abroad”, “Caught the flue”) – and less credible (“I forgot my password”) – excuses. Noteworthy are also the comments, that contain many additional resorts, including the very useful “I got a life” and, of course, “Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I was attacked by a press gang. I managed to escape when a pirate crew ransacked the cruiser we were on and set me adrift. I floated for days before coming back ashore.” Any other, even better suggestions?
SOA & Web 2.0: Cage Match
Two broad camps are forming (or have already formed) in the information technology community at the moment. On the side of big business and enterprise software we have service-oriented architecture (SOA). On the side of the Internet, democracy and empowering the individual is Web 2.0. Arguments are flying about the differences (or similarities) between the two camps, with pundits claiming everything from differences in the protocols underpinning each approach through to the grand philosophies they espouse. Depending on whom you choose to listen to, Web 2.0 and SOA are either on a collision course, or simply different names for the same thing. I think that they two are complimentary, rather than in conflict, and the businesses that can successfully marry the two will be the real winners.
Don't touch that Scroll Wheel
A Blackberry that crashes. I didn’t even know it existed. Until our guys from the IT department recently gave me the newest, shiniest version which – in their opinion – has a lot of additional features which I just must have, like - you know - being a CTO and all.
I soon discovered what this means. The device is heavier and features a revamped user-interface which is different from previous versions, apparently for no good reasons. It somehow feels slower too, although I can’t really point out why that is. What is more crucial: all the new capabilities clearly demanded for more complex software and this time, the developers at RIM seem to have overestimated themselves. After a few days of use, I started to encounter a decelerating Blackberry and then – finally – these good old buffer overflows came in. I must admit the panic messages are clear and crisp. But they always appear just before the system freezes completely. You’re about to perish. Have a nice day. Not really comforting.
The Boundaryless Enterprise
There's an interesting tectonic shift in IT these days. For decades we've focused on applications and data, with users sitting at the fringe poking the application to make it do things (register a lead, update customer details, create a purchase order, generate an invoice, and so on). But running through a list of the new generation of technologies we see that the one thing they all have in common is the primacy they place on users.
Web 2.0 technologies (wikis, blogs, etc) make this primacy explicit: each technology is designed to support teams of users as they collaborate and work together. Composite applications have a similar focus, providing users with clearer and more coherent views into company business data and functions. Even service-oriented architecture (SOA) has a similar effect; collecting differentiating business logic into BPM and rule enabled services where it is easier for the user (the business owner or SME) to understand and manage it. And the approach even extends to how we deliver software, with the agile family of methodologies placing the user front and centre.
With this thought in mind, I found it interesting that Oracle purchased Sigma Dynamics the other week. Sigma Dynamics is designed to augment users rather than simply supporting them, providing insight and suggested paths to follow rather than simply data or information. I think that Oracle's purchase points to the next front that's opening up in enterprise software.
Mashup Programmer loves Bastard Pop
My 13-year old son recently told me that he wants to be a computer programmer. A devastating announcement that threw me back into deep, introspective thoughts. You start to imagine all sorts of things. Where did it go wrong? Did he have a nasty accident in kindergarten and the teacher never dared to tell me? Does he eat enough fiber? Shouldn’t I have talked more with him about all the great things you can do in life?
Let’s be honest. I was utterly depressed.
Finally I came to reason, about three or four weeks later. I started to discuss with him. My son had not yet an idea of what programming language he wanted to learn. Some fuzzy MSN buddy had suggested him to dive into C++. It’s remarkable how calm you can stay under deep pressure. I felt this almost Buddhist joy of forgiveness when I told him – without shouting – which crimes have been committed in the past twenty years in the name of C++. That many of his crashing applications have been written by C++ programmers that love to do silly, funny things with computer memory. That the so called buffer overflow has inspired a whole generation of hackers. That C++ teaching books are no longer allowed in hand luggage at Heathrow. That the programming language is ridiculously complex, like its modern brothers Java and C#, and that you have to be an expert in maths to understand it.
Pandora's Box Contains Mystery Meat
It’s good to see that the personal music channel Pandora has been chosen in Time’s new list of really, really cool websites. I happen to like the site, although I’m still having some mixed feelings. Surely, Pandora provides some fantastic functionality. Using deep data mining and adaptive filtering – and after asking for just a few favourite songs - it manages to create a personalized radio channel that only plays good music. Well, to my ears that is, which in this case according to Pandora means “electronic roots, down tempo influences, use of electronic pianos, subtle use of electric keys and trippy soundscapes".
E-mail Haunting
For some of us, it is already depressing enough to return from holidays. But things really get worse if you have to spend your first couple of working days in a pool of e-mails. Mind you, I’m not depressed. For now. But nobody would have objected, given the fact that I had to deal with more than 750 serious e-mails (which is of course without the spam).
Just a few years ago, I still had the guts to compose the following Out-of-Office message:
“Dear Writer. Thank you for your e-mail message. I am currently on holidays. As you will very well understand, when I am back I cannot dedicate my scarce time to filter out the few messages that are still relevant by that time. And just to make sure: I am convinced that your message would be one of them. Anyway, for my own protection and wellbeing I will automatically delete your email right now. If you still wish to reach me, you may consider resending your message once I have returned. In the meantime, I wish you strength and honour. Have a nice vacation.”
Worked perfectly fine.
Processes, rules and things in between
I was commuting the other, catching up on my reading, when I came across the following from David McGoveran:
We talk about business processes, business transactions, business events, business activities, business metrics and key performance indicators, and even business services. The language IT uses is now a bit more familiar to business users, and they’re beginning to expect great advances. It’s really too bad they’re going to be disappointed. Unfortunately, though the words may sound like they refer to business, the software industry uses them to denote technology. We’ve merely plastered over the gap between business and IT by mimicking the words used by business, all but ignoring the details of how they are used.
This is something that resonates with me. For a while I’ve been thinking that there’s a hole in our current technology stack. We claim that BPEL, WCL, rules etc provide all the tools required to capture and automate business logic; however this creates an articifial divide between decisions (rules) and tasks (processes). We seem to focus on the macro processes and the micro rules and forget about the interface between the two, the area in business logic where a great deal of a company’s differentation can reside.
Just what is SOA?
The industry is buzzing with SOA being positioned as the next big thing. As with all new technological fashions SOA promises to delver better, faster, cheaper IT support than was possible before it arrived on the scene. However, all this hype seems to have resulted in a great deal of confusion around just what SOA is, and what it isn’t. Is it a new generation of middleware based on web services and the WS-* family of standards? Is it a new generation of process modelling tools based on BPEL et al? Is it something to do with enterprise architecture? Or is it just another over hyped technology?
Too Much User Interface
Many of you are planning to go on holidays soon. I know I am. And I’m confident that you don’t want to spend your valuable free days doing perfectly nothing or – even worse – read that Da Vinci Code for the third time. So during the next week or so, I will point you to some books that you may want to pack in your suitcase. Yes, books. Good, old-fashioned paper. There’s nothing else left in these scarce moments in which you don’t have a high-speech Internet connection nearby. And it’s just fine too. Otherwise you would miss that brilliant opportunity to read Head Rush Ajax.
It’s not a book that I would recommend to you