I started this blog with the aim of sharing my views and anecdotes regarding the world of IT with anyone out there who might be interested. There isn't any great masterplan or strategy in operation other than I aim at least once a day to post something. As I'll be on holiday until the New Year I figured I'd write this last post of the noughties and pick up the emerging common themes from the last few months?
The most obvious one is the "wasn't everything great in the old days?". That's a real shame because nostalgia shouldn't have a meaningful place in today's IT. As technologists we surely should be looking forwards not backwards. Mostly though the realisation dawning on me is that we've lost a golden opportunity in IT to do something significant. A similar theme is explored in a friend’s blog http://excapite.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/is-the-iphone-really-the-avatar-of-mobile-phones/ which compares advances in cgi technology as compared with IT over the last 15 years.
Why? Lots of reasons I suspect but my endearing hope for the next decade is that we can rediscover just what it was about the world of IT that made it so fresh and exciting twenty years ago. To do that we will have to unload some of the legacy baggage that it holding us back (at a recent expo I saw a quite that some 80% of IT budget was spent on keeping the lights on!). Maybe that will be the real benefit of outsourcing and offshoring. I certainly hope so because I for one am getting a little exasperated "building tomorrow's legacy systems today".
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Billion Dollar Brain
In a recent post I speculated about the concept of Apple making a television. In part it was a flippant post but interestingly enough this article on techcrunch treads a similar tangent about Apple's intentions in the TV space. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/21/apple-tv-kill-cable/
The real standout fact that hits me is that Apple is building a $1 bn data center. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/26/apple-planning-1-billion-idatacenter/
To date I've always considered Apple a design and device shop - but spending $1 bn on something to support iTunes and MobileMe - I don't think so. You'd have to sell lots of singles on iTunes to fund that (well a billion I guess!)
Whatever the plans Steve Jobs has for this datacenter I suspect that the ambitions are considerable.
The real standout fact that hits me is that Apple is building a $1 bn data center. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/26/apple-planning-1-billion-idatacenter/
To date I've always considered Apple a design and device shop - but spending $1 bn on something to support iTunes and MobileMe - I don't think so. You'd have to sell lots of singles on iTunes to fund that (well a billion I guess!)
Whatever the plans Steve Jobs has for this datacenter I suspect that the ambitions are considerable.
The IT Wars
The history of IT is littered with lots of technical, idealogical and mindshare wars. A few examples are listed below:
The desktop wars: Microsoft Windows vs IBM OS/2
The server wars: Mainframe vs midrange
The RDBMS wars: Oracle vs Ingres
The browser wars: Internet Explorere vs Netscape
The Search Engine Wars: Google vs Yahoo
My question today is: Where is todays IT war?
I just can't think of one. Yes, there's lots of competition out there, but I can't think of a really big battlefront that is dividing IT departments right down the middle. Years ago lots of committed IT people were passionate about their decisions and allegiances.
I suppose the answer is that IT has matured to the point where everything is pretty much a commodity. I saw evidence of this when I was recently interviewed for a Data Warehouse Architecture role for a SME software house. Idealogically I hit it off with my potential boss and I know that it could have been a great opportunity for both me and the firm. However they were at that point of selecting a BI technology stack to develop their products and had correctly concluded that technically it was pretty much of a muchness out there. The selection therefore was made on commercial and not technical grounds, which didn't go my way. No hard feelings as I totally understood and endorsed their logic of their decision.
My issue with all of this is however, is that each of these wars have been fought out in an emerging arena that changed the face of IT. Using the examples above there are:
The adoption of the PC as a business tool
The challenge to mainframes from lower cost midrange computers
The move from flat file and hierarchical database to SQL
The internet explosion
So if there isn't a war being fought then I'd derive from that the fact that we aren't on the cusp of a new technological revolution - which for me is a great shame.
The desktop wars: Microsoft Windows vs IBM OS/2
The server wars: Mainframe vs midrange
The RDBMS wars: Oracle vs Ingres
The browser wars: Internet Explorere vs Netscape
The Search Engine Wars: Google vs Yahoo
My question today is: Where is todays IT war?
I just can't think of one. Yes, there's lots of competition out there, but I can't think of a really big battlefront that is dividing IT departments right down the middle. Years ago lots of committed IT people were passionate about their decisions and allegiances.
I suppose the answer is that IT has matured to the point where everything is pretty much a commodity. I saw evidence of this when I was recently interviewed for a Data Warehouse Architecture role for a SME software house. Idealogically I hit it off with my potential boss and I know that it could have been a great opportunity for both me and the firm. However they were at that point of selecting a BI technology stack to develop their products and had correctly concluded that technically it was pretty much of a muchness out there. The selection therefore was made on commercial and not technical grounds, which didn't go my way. No hard feelings as I totally understood and endorsed their logic of their decision.
My issue with all of this is however, is that each of these wars have been fought out in an emerging arena that changed the face of IT. Using the examples above there are:
The adoption of the PC as a business tool
The challenge to mainframes from lower cost midrange computers
The move from flat file and hierarchical database to SQL
The internet explosion
So if there isn't a war being fought then I'd derive from that the fact that we aren't on the cusp of a new technological revolution - which for me is a great shame.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Uncommon Sense
I had the pleasure not so long ago to work with a fantastic Program Manager called Declan. He had coined the term "Uncommon Sense" in response to the fact that "Common Sense" seems to be something of a rarity in todays IT landscape. Here's a point of example.
In this weeks development team meeting we had on the agenda the issue of Disaster Recovery Planning. To cut a long story short our Data Warehouse Manager does not have confidence that our Tech Support colleages on level 2 can reliably backup and recover our data warehouse databases.
I'd like to say that this is the first time I worked in an IT site where confidence in backup and recovery was low but especially in these days of outsourcing I'm afraid that I can't, but that's a topic probably best explored in a separate post.
Because we cannot trust our backups the data warehouse manager has insisted that we keep in our staging database effectively every row that has ever been applied to the data warehouse as an insurance policy. FYI our warehouse contains, in parts, data over 10 years old.
There are lots of reasons why the DRP strategy will fail which I won't bore you with now but the part of the discussion that really tells me that the lunatics are running the asylum is this.
Our staging server is in the same data center as our data warehouse server. So please Qantas, can I ask you that when one of your badly serviced 747's falls out of the sky onto our data center can you make sure that you land on the data warehouse box and not the staging box or vica versa - but please not both. Cheers.
In this weeks development team meeting we had on the agenda the issue of Disaster Recovery Planning. To cut a long story short our Data Warehouse Manager does not have confidence that our Tech Support colleages on level 2 can reliably backup and recover our data warehouse databases.
I'd like to say that this is the first time I worked in an IT site where confidence in backup and recovery was low but especially in these days of outsourcing I'm afraid that I can't, but that's a topic probably best explored in a separate post.
Because we cannot trust our backups the data warehouse manager has insisted that we keep in our staging database effectively every row that has ever been applied to the data warehouse as an insurance policy. FYI our warehouse contains, in parts, data over 10 years old.
There are lots of reasons why the DRP strategy will fail which I won't bore you with now but the part of the discussion that really tells me that the lunatics are running the asylum is this.
Our staging server is in the same data center as our data warehouse server. So please Qantas, can I ask you that when one of your badly serviced 747's falls out of the sky onto our data center can you make sure that you land on the data warehouse box and not the staging box or vica versa - but please not both. Cheers.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The Kids of Today
I travel to work by bus. Today I sat near the back. On the back seat were three school age teenagers. I'd guess about 15 years of age. I couldn't help but listen to their conversation as they were, as is the nature of groups of teenagers, quite loud. They chatted about the usual teenage stuff. Who's seeing who? who fancies who? who's dumped who? What caught my attention wasn't what they were talking about. It was how they communicated. The conversation consisted almost entirely of short sporadic staccato-like sentences. Just like this post so far.
Okay, enough of the silly stuff but if you've read anything from this blog to date you'll realise that I don't write, talk or think in this way. I'm much more verbose which I'm sure that to a teenager equates to very, very boring. I don't think that I used to talk like the teenagers of today so what's changed?
MTV? SMS? Sound bytes? Short attention spans? Directors like Paul Greengrass using an average shot length of 2 seconds in the Jason Bourne films? Well all of these I suppose, but the one that interests me most is SMS. Personally speaking I never really liked SMS'ing until I had a phone with a QWERTY keyboard. I just couldn't get past the frustration of three letters on a key in an unfamiliar layout. That didn't stop it becoming a massive global hit. Even my mum wanted to learn how to text. It's another one of the accidental heroes like UNIX that was never designed for adoption by the mass market. However as the world's desire for Smartphones, typically adopting QWERTY hard or soft keyboards, booms I wander what the future holds for the short attention span generation. Will they be a passing phase? Probably not, but I live in hope.
Okay, enough of the silly stuff but if you've read anything from this blog to date you'll realise that I don't write, talk or think in this way. I'm much more verbose which I'm sure that to a teenager equates to very, very boring. I don't think that I used to talk like the teenagers of today so what's changed?
MTV? SMS? Sound bytes? Short attention spans? Directors like Paul Greengrass using an average shot length of 2 seconds in the Jason Bourne films? Well all of these I suppose, but the one that interests me most is SMS. Personally speaking I never really liked SMS'ing until I had a phone with a QWERTY keyboard. I just couldn't get past the frustration of three letters on a key in an unfamiliar layout. That didn't stop it becoming a massive global hit. Even my mum wanted to learn how to text. It's another one of the accidental heroes like UNIX that was never designed for adoption by the mass market. However as the world's desire for Smartphones, typically adopting QWERTY hard or soft keyboards, booms I wander what the future holds for the short attention span generation. Will they be a passing phase? Probably not, but I live in hope.
Monday, December 14, 2009
The Great Lost Art of Communication
An Italian ex-colleague once told me that in his country it was impolite in the business place not to spend twenty odd minutes in conversation with a colleague before getting round to discussing work. For example "My mother made some great gnocchi last night? How hot was Berlusconi’s latest starlet? How bad were Inter this weekend? Oh and by the way can I just get those cost centres from you?" sort of thing. Actually he told me it was 50 minutes of chat for 5 minutes of business not 20, but I just can't bring myself to believe that. Whatever the duration this may go a long way to explaining Italian productivity relative to Northern Europe for the last thirty years. Whether this practice remains true today or not I have no idea and whilst I'm obviously not suggesting that it be adopted as a business model per se but there are things we can learn from this.
Why? Because somewhere along the line we've I think lost sight of what it is that makes us productive and cooperative in the workplace.
Real Human Communication.
Read any book on the subject and they say that 90% of communication is non-verbal (i.e. body language, facial expressions) so it seems mad to me that the default communication we now find in the workplace often isn't face to face. It isn't even voice to voice. Much of the time it's email.
Here's some stuff to ponder:
How many times do we fire off an email when we could easily pick up the phone?
Have you received a one to one email from the person sitting less than three yards from you recently?
Have you every kicked off a unintentional sh!tstorm when an email you sent got misinterpreted or only half read?
Do you need to know that the hot water in the kitchen on level2 is not working/working/not working again or the white Toyota Camry has left its lights on?
Let's not even mentions the infamous Claire Swire email?
It gets worse. I once had a boss who managed by email. Every day he'd walk into his office, barely acknowledging his team's presence, only to commence a day long stream of email dialogue.
I'm not suggesting that we abandon e-mail - it is a vital business tool after all - but what I am suggesting is that we think more carefully about how we use it. For example, I once worked with a very successful and organised sales rep who configured his email to refresh every two hours to reduce the disruption. The fundamental problem with email is that it is perceived to be 'convenient' and 'free'. The reality is that they often it isn't and until we find a way to measure the metrics of lost productivity because of this inferior form of communication I think we will suffer.
What if we followed the sales rep's example on a corporate level and say configured two email deliveries per day. People would argue about those vital high priority emails but that's missing the point. Collaboration tools and document management tools exist outside of email that could better serve those needs anyway. Making this small change I believe would drive behavioural change and perhaps we'd end up picking up the phone or even, shock horror, actually having a face to face conversation. When in Rome ...
Why? Because somewhere along the line we've I think lost sight of what it is that makes us productive and cooperative in the workplace.
Real Human Communication.
Read any book on the subject and they say that 90% of communication is non-verbal (i.e. body language, facial expressions) so it seems mad to me that the default communication we now find in the workplace often isn't face to face. It isn't even voice to voice. Much of the time it's email.
Here's some stuff to ponder:
How many times do we fire off an email when we could easily pick up the phone?
Have you received a one to one email from the person sitting less than three yards from you recently?
Have you every kicked off a unintentional sh!tstorm when an email you sent got misinterpreted or only half read?
Do you need to know that the hot water in the kitchen on level2 is not working/working/not working again or the white Toyota Camry has left its lights on?
Let's not even mentions the infamous Claire Swire email?
It gets worse. I once had a boss who managed by email. Every day he'd walk into his office, barely acknowledging his team's presence, only to commence a day long stream of email dialogue.
I'm not suggesting that we abandon e-mail - it is a vital business tool after all - but what I am suggesting is that we think more carefully about how we use it. For example, I once worked with a very successful and organised sales rep who configured his email to refresh every two hours to reduce the disruption. The fundamental problem with email is that it is perceived to be 'convenient' and 'free'. The reality is that they often it isn't and until we find a way to measure the metrics of lost productivity because of this inferior form of communication I think we will suffer.
What if we followed the sales rep's example on a corporate level and say configured two email deliveries per day. People would argue about those vital high priority emails but that's missing the point. Collaboration tools and document management tools exist outside of email that could better serve those needs anyway. Making this small change I believe would drive behavioural change and perhaps we'd end up picking up the phone or even, shock horror, actually having a face to face conversation. When in Rome ...
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Paperless Office
In the early 90's, before PC's and email were widely adopted, I remember seeing a news report about a company that had adopted a 'Paperless Office' policy. As such the company's Post Room was the only place that would handle 'dead tree' technology. All incoming mail was scanned internally emailed to the respective employee. The original document would then be archived or shredded. The Post Room also had the only printer in the office which was used for generating outgoing correspondence.
The report predicted that this was how we would all soon be working which obviously didn't happen.
In fact pretty much the reverse has. The Post Room has effectively been bypassed by e-mail and in the main we still print out most of the documents that we're expected to read, most of which are generated internally by co-workers.
I just can't help wondering, however, if we didn't miss a trick somehow. Wouldn't life be better without paper. Maybe I've been too harsh on the Kindle with my earlier post and there is a place for an e-reader. It's probably a better reason for adoption than being able to read Jackie Collin's latest knee trembler on the bus.
The report predicted that this was how we would all soon be working which obviously didn't happen.
In fact pretty much the reverse has. The Post Room has effectively been bypassed by e-mail and in the main we still print out most of the documents that we're expected to read, most of which are generated internally by co-workers.
I just can't help wondering, however, if we didn't miss a trick somehow. Wouldn't life be better without paper. Maybe I've been too harsh on the Kindle with my earlier post and there is a place for an e-reader. It's probably a better reason for adoption than being able to read Jackie Collin's latest knee trembler on the bus.
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