Author Archives: coe62

Stop your sobbin’ …..

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…. so said the Pretenders in their cover of the Kinks classic (yes, I’ve noticed that recently I’ve been using song titles for my posts but why not ….) and those words inspired me into one of my few but sadly repetitive rants.

Why are so many IT leaders and C level technology execs such apologists. “Well, I’ve spent 30 years in IT but I did spend a week in product sales so I guess I really see my future as the MD of one of our regional businesses” …… Oh do you !! ….. Why ?? ….. What wrong with being in IT ?? Whats wrong with being a CIO ??

Here’s my take – the CIO’s job is the best one in the company. OK it has to be the right company and probably needs the right CEO but you made that choice when you joined. However, with very little else you might actually have the best role going. Think about it. The Sales Director can work damn hard and maybe improve sales volume. The Marketing Director can bust his hump and possibly improve brand recognition, the CFO can keep the numbers in line BUT only the CIO can look horizontally across the whole organisation and lay out the art of the possible. Only the CIO can sit with the CEO and chart a transformational journey from where we are to where we could be. Who wouldn’t want to do that !!??

Yes I know it comes with all the other stuff. Of course you’re the only exec who has to justify himself on an almost daily basis. It goes without saying that you’re only as good as your last major project or service outage and of course some wag will always ask you why he can’t have an iPhone but that came with the job. If you don’t like it – go do something else.

…. and please, please, please  !!! …. all this talk of Business/IT alignment….. STOP IT NOW !! If you are still talking about this then its time to get another job. That ship has sailed. There is only your Business. IT is Business and Business is IT. The two are inextricably linked and one cannot exist without the other. So, don’t have a separate IT strategy. The only strategy you have is the one that defines your business and ever other function/OpCo/ Division in the company is there to make it happen. Don’t even use the word “alignment”. By its very use it re-enforces the notion of separation.

I still attend CIO events where the discussions are so ‘poor me’. “Why am I seen as just a service provider – I want to be strategic – I want to be on the board”. Now let’s be clear – there’s nothing wrong with being a service provider – unless you’re providing a cr@p service. Some of our best brands are service providers and are successful because they consistently deliver world class service. The difference is that our job starts from that position. However, if you crack that then the “world’s your lobster”

So that’s it – rant over. To paraphrase Jimmie ‘Brother’ Rabitte in The Commitments Stand up tall and shout it loud …. I’m in IT and I’m proud

More than words ….

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I had an interesting interlude with my new Blackberry yesterday after a colleague challenged me to try the voice dialling because it was “just awesome”. Superlatives aside, I was in my car and thought why not. This is roughly what followed (names changed to protect the innocent)…

Me: Call Fred Smith.

BB: Did you say “call Fried Chips”?

Me : No.

BB: Did you say “call Fresh Pips”?

Me: No!!

BB: Did you say…

I think you can guess the rest. Eventually I got to “Did you say ‘call Fred Smith’?” With a sigh of relief I replied “yes” only to receive the response “Which location?” Now even more frustrated, I guessed and blurted out “mobile”, which finally elicited the response “Calling Fred Smith” BUT not before my helpful blackberry advised me: “Next time simply say ‘call Fred Smith mobile 1’.”
Well thank you very much – I have a Blackberry with an attitude.

It did get me thinking though – didn’t someone tell me that spoken voice and natural language was the next big thing – the next evolution in the user interface? We’ve done keyboard, stylus, multi-touch, etc – soon it will all be voice commands.

It seems like such a great idea. The sci-fi contingent amongst us grew up with “open the pod bay doors HAL” or various star-ship captains (Kirk, Picard et at) entering into meaningful dialogue with the Enterprise computer. Yet still we tap away at our keyboard in the same way our predecessors have done and indeed barely straying from a character layout now centuries old (the QWERTY keyboard was designed in 1870).

So why has voice failed to capture the imagination? Why are we still happier to tap, poke and prod our devices rather than speak to them?  Can it really be all down to personal insecurity and self consciousness? I don’t want my IT talking back to me that’s for sure and in most of the sci-fi references, if you look really closely, you’ll see that when something really important has to happen there’s invariably a button to push or a lever to pull. Probably in the heat of intergalactic battle you don’t want to scream “fire” only to have the computer respond: “What would you like to fire?”

Joking aside, if adoption and acceptance is going to come from anywhere, it seems that the mobile space holds the key. Google certainly thinks so: it has just added voice search to its mobile maps application having already enabled it for various other functions on its newest Android handsets. Can the push from the mobile space help overcome our reticence or are we inevitably destined to only ever tap and talk at best? Maybe the more mobile we become, the more comfortable we’ll become with voice as an interface but until then… “Save this document please HAL…. I said, save this …. Oh well”

Beyond Oblivion – beyond the digital download ??

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I sadly missed a tweet (or trick yesterday) on another interesting twist in the whole music download saga. Indeed, if you were preocupied with the Spotify announcement which was big news in itself, this may well have passed you by.

So, if you also missed it, News Corp has made an interesting, if surprising, investment in a digital music start-up company whose stated aim is ” shifting the burden for paying for music to device manufacturers and broadband providers, giving consumers free, legal access to an unlimited number of tracks.”

Let the cheering commence amongst all digital downloaders – but hang on, this must live in the land of ‘too good to be true’ right – whats the catch

Well, according to Beyond Oblivion’s founder Adam Kidron, there isn’t one. Content is essentially ‘licensed’ to devices and services from which unlimited access is provided thus making the actual cost “pretty much invisible to the customer”. Beyond claim this approach will will stimulate the device sales and they will also tier their charges based on the device and market types (presumably a smartphone is cheaper than a PC and South America is cheaper than Europe). The Beyond system can also create protected versions of any file already on a customers device and in a surprising statement “essentially legalise pirated tracks wit the rights owners”. “There is no illegal music in the Beyond world because we pay royalties no matter what its source,” Mr Kidron said.

Beyond will pay monthly royalties from its licence revenue based on the number of times tracks have been played with guaranteed minimums for the record companies and maximum caps to avoid unexpected usage spikes.

Beyond told the Financial Times they “expected to pay out well over $100m in royalties to music companies within five years, but believed it was ultimately possible, via its potential agreements with device manufacturers and the music industry, to add $10bn or more to last year’s global digital music revenues of $3.7bn.”

So this is kinda like pay per use but not quite …. frankly it all sounds a bit confusing and I’m never entirely convinced by claims to make price “virtually invisible” but its clearly a market move to keep an eye on.

What d’ya think ?

When two tribes go to war …..

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According to Bart Perkins in CIO.com: “IT has to take a stand on consumer technology.” He concludes: “It’s better to agree on a corporate policy, publicise it and start budgeting for the projected impact.” I can’t disagree with the latter point, but I also believe consumers will continue to drive this debate: as the new darlings of the tech vendors, they currently hold all the cards.

It wasn’t always this way. The article rightly points out that 10 years ago, most people used more advanced technology at work than at home, whereas now the opposite is true. Today, many employees have better kit at home, and the article notes many also expect their favourite devices to be supported at work. This is indeed the case, but the implications are far more wide-ranging than whether you can bring your favourite gadget to the office. They point to the need for fundamental changes in attitude and approach.

Consumer IT is driving new behaviours and setting new expectations about how we work, as well as the tools we use. There have been too many words/pages written about the role of Facebook, Twitter et al in the workplace, but it’s an undeniable fact that a new generation is arriving with new expectations of a ‘socially enabled’ way of working. To ban or block this behaviour is akin to limiting someone’s vocabulary – you will inevitably get a stilted outcome.

An equally undeniable fact is that the schism between this new consumer (or social) IT and corporate IT is just getting bigger. The focus of corporate IT is narrowing. It increasingly (but rightly) worries about data protection, information security, governance etc, as its world becomes ever more regulated. Social IT, by contrast, moves at a blistering pace, seemingly oblivious to these issues precisely because it is social IT. By definition it’s about sharing, collaborating and networking and thus it’s no surprise most of the publicised innovation is being driven in this area.

Corporate IT is dull and boring – right?? Who’d want to work for a corporate IT department? The networks are slow, the equipment is old, I can’t use my iPhone, it’s so restrictive, so yesterday… If we’re not careful that’s exactly where we’re headed – especially when it’s more attractive to make your money from ‘apps’ and ‘app stores’ rather than actually building applications.

The implications are clear. This debate is about talent not toys. If we don’t act soon we’ll be left with just two types of technology – the interesting (and growing) socially enabled, individually empowered version – where people want to work – and the stilted, highly regulated, narrowly focused version. Oh, and by the way, that’s the one that currently underpins our economy!

This post originally appeared in the  360 degree IT Blog on 14th April 2010

Nothing changes ….

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…. everything’s just the same

These words are starting to resonate with almost daily regularity – which is about the same frequency I hear the words ‘cloud computing’. Now first let me declare a position – I am of an age! That’s an age where I still see all this IT stuff as really just ‘ones’ and ‘zeros’ and I bore people with the fact that, while I work in technology, I’m actually way more interested in “what it does” than “what it is”.

So I have to admit I’m struggling to be swept along on the wave of this so called new era of cloud computing.

Let me explain. When I was a mere slip of a thing there were these things called mainframes – huge computers, often from IBM, that performed all manner of wonders. Operators tamed these Visigoths of computing power through green-screen terminals that actually did very little computing – in fact, they did so little computing we called them dumb terminals – and they were connected by some cables and switches. Often, the mainframe was shared among many users via a sharing service (for IBM systems, TSO – Time Sharing Option) and the really sophisticated ones were even divided into partitions so that they could look like lots of computers at the same time.

Back then, what were the big issues the DP professional faced? Identity, security, reliability, recovery, etc.

Lots has changed since then – three-tier client server, middleware, the network effect, web 1.0, web 2.0 and now the all-conquering cloud. But hang on, we always knew things would get smaller, faster and cheaper – Moore’s law told us that much – and that nice Mr Berners-Lee made sure access and interface would be simpler. So what actually is this cloud computing then? Well, there’s this huge computing capability (what, like a mainframe?) that’s accessed via a browser that actually does very little computing (what, like a dumb terminal?) and your communications flow over the Internet (so, a pretty large cable then?).

And what are we worried about in this new computing age? Identity, security, reliability, recovery… need I go on?

Now, plenty of you will say I’ve missed the point and that cloud computing is actually all about lowering your total cost of ownership, time to market, etc. And of course you’d all be correct – in certain circumstances. But as a far as the IT management issues are concerned “nothing changes – everything’s just the same”.

So perhaps we should forget the hype and go back to what all this “cloud stuff” can do rather than fixating on defining “what it is”.

JMHO

This post orignially appeared as my first contribution to the 360°IT Blog

Whats the Buzz ?? It still just tastes like chicken

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Almost a year ago now I blogged about the impending death of innovation when it comes to the user interface and asked “Does everything have to taste like chicken?”

My point was that in the rush to get the next great Web2.0/Social Networking/collaborative toy out into the market, developers were just copying each other and no one was being really innovative. Rather than celebrating the fact that one could be genuinely different, the prevailing view seemed to be that if you simply just throw more and more familiar stuff into into the same pot then the customers will be happy. Its the equivalent of the one stop shop…. the BlueWater approach to development. Just put as much as you can in one place and then the punter doesn’t need to think – they can just do. So as a result; Facebook updates Twitter which can update Facebook and set your status automatically in Linkedin which can pass the information to Plaxo and so on. Tweetdeck can be a browser and can now do embedded Picasa and YouTube, Disgby can look like Google Talk but actually update everything – aggghhhh !!!

Well, here we are almost 12 months on and its no better – infact to my eyes its getting worse…. and the most recent offender in the tastes like chicken stakes is Google Buzz. Who in the name of all thats good and true though we needed yet another social networking tool and then, worse still, who thought it would be a bright idea to embed it in a really good email client. Jeez, it must have been ‘Chicken Tonight’ over in Mountain View when they came up with Buzz. Now I don’t intend to go into the well documented privacy concerns here – you can google them – but just pause for a minute on the approach. Did we really need another status setting tool ? Did we really want to grow our already impossibly large contact lists again ? Did we really want our finely tuned and pimped Gmail client messed up with yet more notifications ?? ….. and wouldn’t an add on to Gtalk been just as useful (sic) ?

To my eyes, and granted they’re getting on in years now, it seems that there’s no value in being innovative. First mover advantage has all but disappeared and now we can all be fast followers – even Google – by just incrementing what already exists. Call me an old cynic but everything really is starting to taste like chicken

What d’ya think ?

iPad – great marketing trumps great technology every time

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It’s been called everything from the “second coming of pod” through to the Jesus Tablet but finally the iPad arrived (well in video anyway) last night with all the usual Steve Jobs fanfare and hyperbole.

This has got to have been the most hyped piece of technology in recent years. Back in September I posted an article from AppleInsider saying that “despite the fact that no one has seen it, a new survey says that 21 percent of buyers are interested in purchasing an Apple tablet device” and it seems they were spot on.

At the launch even yesterday comments ranged from the typical Apple lovers superlatives through to “it’s just an iPhone with a big screen”. Clearly both points of view are wrong and based on little actual data or experience so here’ what we know

Hardware

  • Apple A4 1GHz chipset (…. wow Apple are now in the chip business !!)
  • 9.7in LED backlit 1024 x 768 pixel, multi-touch display
  • Dimensions of  – 242.8 x 189.7 x 13.4mm and weighing about 700g
  • WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and an optional 3G add on
  • 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacities
  • “Up to” 10 hours battery life, one month on standby
  • Accelerometer, digital compass, speaker, mic, dock connector, 3.5mm jack

Software

  • Modified variation of the iPhone OS and “almost all” iPhone apps compatible with the iPad
  • Contacts, email, music, video and photo iTunes synchronisation
  • HD capable (720p) video playback
  • New iBook (eBook) store  with publishers like Simon and Schuster, Penguin etc already signed up
  • iWorks productivity software available at an additional cost of $9.99 with word processing, spreadsheet and powerpoint functionality

… and most importantly it costs $499 (£310) for the entry level 16GB model without 3G, $599 for 32Gb and $699 for 64GB with a 3G facility costing an additional $130 extra – NOTE that it will use SIM Unlocked but use a mini SIM (how many of you have one of those)

As the FT put it “Arriving with few new content deals despite months of heavy hype, the half-inch thick gadget, which looks like a giant iPhone, met with mixed reviews”. Hardly a revolution ??

Trustedreviews.com went a bit further saying “For a product so massively hyped I think it is fair to say Apple certainly hasn’t managed the Wow Factor like it did with the launch of the original iPhone. The iPad is certainly a competent product, but one that with its strong iPhone roots lies more closely to smartbooks than netbooks and keeps in place the typical fenced gate Apple likes to enforce about how its customers use its products.”

In fact, most analysts have focussed on the negatives – particularly the Guardian however to do this is missing the point. A colleague of mine once told an audience of CIOs and technology leaders that great marketing trumps great technology every time …. and he was right !

5 Technologies that CEOs intend to invest in next year

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Amid all the CIO and vendor hype about where the next round ou IT investment should be focussed, it was hugely refreshing to read on Silicon.com the 5 technologies that CEOs will invest in next year. Not a mention of cloud computing, virtualization, web 2.0 > enterprise 2.0 and all that jazz, just some very basic fundamentals that will driver their businesses forward

  • Better data collection and retrieval systems… to directly drive business growth and find more savings as well as new business opportunities’.”
  • Home and remote working… to get more performance from their existing workforce whilst reducing travel overheads at a time when unemployment is on the rise.
  • Mobile commerce… CEO’s are starting to believe that, after 10yrs of hype, this might just be ready for prime time
  • Business intelligence… track and responding to customer behaviour – if you’re not doing it then you competitors sure are and implied customer loyalty is long gone.
  • E-discovery systems …. “In difficult economic times, legal challenges tend to increase” … so how good are your retrieval and analytical systems ?

Now clearly I’m not saying that cloud computing, virtualization, web 2.0 > enterprise 2.0 et al don’t have a part to play in many of these priorities but shouldn’t we be focussing on the problems – as articulated by our most important customers – rather than the technologies and their somewhat abstract labels

JMHO