IT Value Stack

IT and the Future of Oil

There are many influential people across the globe who believe that the availability of oil against demand has peaked and that we are now hurtling uncontrollably towards what might be called the post hydrocarbon man' period where the oil based goods and services we have taken for granted become only affordable to a limited few. Given the role the IT industry has in the consumption of oil through component development and operational delivery, it is appalling to see how off the pace we are in the data centre.

Only market forces will stimulate a change in this situation. Users will eventually boycott organisations with poor green credentials as will corporate buyers. But it is taking time to come into effect.

I would like to see a smarter relationship between business and society. Rather than pump all that surplus heat out into the atmosphere, why not set one's data centres up next to, for example, sports centres? The excess heat could be used to heat the swimming pool. Or funnel the excess heat into some type of biosphere construction thus enabling the production of tropical fruit in non-tropical countries. Just a thought.

(For more on this you may want to read Lean & Green — Reducing Energy Drain for IT Business Gain)

Making Money from Social Networks?

In her post On the Monetization of Social Networks, Gladys Priso writes:

"An article on the economics of social networks published by the Economist Online, concludes that “social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere,” because it is not clear how companies will be able to monetize that pattern of behavior."

Experience suggests that migrating a free-service to a paid service rarely pays off. The content would need to be unique in terms of either content, accessibility or connectivity to like-minded people. LinkedIn appears to provide services that allow payers to see everything about every LinkedIn member. I happen to know many people who find that service of great value.

So perhaps the users continue to get access to social networks for free, but the advertisers, marketers and recruitment consultants provide the revenue stream for the site owners. However I do feel that with good brand management the social networking sites can cultivate the exclusivity effect needed to attract impressionable cash-rich surfers.

DeGeeking IT

The IT industry certainly needs degeeking. There is little hope of ungeeking individuals, its a DNA thing. The best we can do is dilute the gene pool. Women offer that potential. Typically strong on the traits that geeks are so typically poor on, eg. empathy, nurturing and social skills in general. We need to encourage women into the industry.

Women need to be made aware that you can have a career in IT without being a technical person. Sales, marketing, training and recruitment come to mind. I meet a lot of IT graduates and sadly those women who have taken the brave move of entering a career in the technical side of IT are faced with males that to varying degrees promote the notion that to fit in around here you need to ‘geek up’. Thus I witness young female graduates pretending to be excited about the latest version of Vista, Linux, Star Wars etc. It’s very sad but that is how it is.

We need to reward the renaissance techies such that the males mimic the new role models and thus behave in a more socially acceptable way. Then women will feel more inclined to get involved, on their own terms.

Failing that a series of promotional ads starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney to promote careers in IT should do the trick!

The CIO as an Acquisition Partner

In a recent post on Information Week, John Soat asks "Is the CIO an effective position to enlist in your company's mergers and acquisitions strategy?"

This post raises some interesting issues. The first is the role of the CIO in the acquisition (there are no mergers) due diligence process. The second is the issue of the actual need for technology due diligence.

I think the CIO has a major role to play, but that may be lost on the executive team who see IT as the stuff that gets tied up once the light turns green. What they fail to realise is that in an IT-centric world, IT due diligence needs to happen near the start of the process.

However if the tech vendors and to some extent the users have their way, we will all be moving to web services. There will be multiple stove pipe solutions in use in the organisations involved. There will thus be less of an integration issue as the infrastructural aspects of the IT will be the vendors' problem. This is both a simplistic perspective and an extreme one. However I believe that we need to give this scenario some consideration. As it will also herald the death of the end-user IT function. 

Where will the users be?

On Cisco's Executive Thought Leadership blog Gladys Prisco writes:

"While much attention is directed to advocating the benefits of massively collaborative tools or debating the merits of technical architectures, little attention is devoted to end users and their perception."

Nobody can predict the future. So here goes!

There is no question that collaborative tools are the way forward in the corporate space, both for internal and external purposes. The question there is who can provide the most visited, and therefore knowledge rich, virtual water coolers. In the consumer space it is a bit more like the nightclub business. Fashion will dictate who goes where. The fashionistas will set the pace the rest of us will follow.  When kids find their parents on Facebook, they know it is time to move on.

Over time the social networking sites will move from all inclusive to exclusive. These virtual 'gentlemen clubs' will have stringent membership criteria.

In conclusion users will gravitate to where their interests / social aspirations take them constrained only by affordability.

Read the complete post on Cisco's blog: Don’t Lose Sight of the End User

Speak English, Not Technobabble

Ben Worthen writes about a CIO who hates technobabble: Ramon Baez of Kimberly-Clark.

He writes:

"Baez has tried to eradicate tech speak and acronyms since joining the consumer-goods giant a little over a year ago. He’s starting with the emails that the information-technology department sends out whenever it has to make changes to a system. You probably know these messages: They’re the ones that make your eyes glaze over for the three seconds it takes to find the delete button."

This is refreshing. Baez has a career in any organisation that sells electrical or electronic products never mind as a CIO. The fact that he has to bring in intermediaries is a sad reflection on the IT industry. We have to raise our game. However it is a move in the right direction. What must technologists be thinking when they send out an email that refers to the TFPS server? It is as if an entry requirement for a career in IT is to have proven record of being empathy-free.

(Here are my observations on where technobabble comes from.)

The Impact of India Inc.

In The Impact of India Inc. on Telecommunications Nick Adamo writes:

"I recently returned from my first ever trip to India, and experienced firsthand the juggernaut that this country has become across most of the major industries in the world..."

Globalisation will shift power eastwards and India is currently best placed to exploit that reality. China will eventually grow companies of sufficient critical mass to give their western counterparts something to think about. I feel the Telecoms sector in general missed its opportunity to subsume the IT sector and so is stuck in a space between infrastructure and applications. Good at the former and aspiring but falling short on the latter. But the Internet is diminishing the value of playing in the infrastructure space; unless you are in the business of helping users migrate from the Telecoms vendors to the internet.

So the Telecoms industry's biggest threat is not the East but the Internet. There was a time when the Telecoms players had the money to buy out the IT industry. If that had happened they would be accelerating the production of mobile apps as we speak. Unfortunately today we have lots of bandwidth and very few interesting applications to exploit it.

Telecoms companies would be wise to hand over the keys if approached by eastern buyers. But I suspect the latter are too smart to fall for that.

Getting Sued for Technobabble

Ben Worthen's post SAP Sued Over Tech Jargon struck a chord.

He writes:

"Software giant SAP is getting sued for failing to deliver an “out-of-the-box integrated end-to-end solution that increases…effectiveness.” Amazingly, the meaning of these buzzwords may cost SAP over $100 million."

It is time for the tech-sector to speak business, particularly when it comes to dealing with users / customers. This applies to the service desk and the sales contract. If Sap has promised an ‘out of the box solution’ then one would expect a plug and go software package that met the documented requirements of the customer.

The question is whether the customer articulated their needs accurately in the Invitation to Tender. Anyone who expects enterprise applications software to map directly onto their business processes has either studied the proposition in great detail prior to purchase or is living in fantasy land.

See also my post Where Tech Jargon Comes From.

Healthcare IT: Saving Lives, Saving Money

On Cisco's High Tech Policy blog Paul Redifer writes:

"The US health care industry has been one of the last to benefit from the increased efficiencies brought by the adoption of information technology tools. Despite abundant evidence that technology could help lower costs and improve health care outcomes, providers have been slow to adopt. For most US providers the biggest obstacle has been poor return on investment. A small physician practice could face costs of over $30,000, yet that practice may see very little of the financial benefits. Instead, patients and insurers – either private or government-run Medicare and Medicaid - will benefit from fewer duplicative or unnecessary medical tests, reduced medical errors, and better care of chronic illnesses."

The automation of healthcare has to be a good thing so long as it is secure and user-focused. To arrive at a situation where the user, in this case a small physician practice, does not see a clear ROI clearly is wrong. In the UK we have similar healthcare initiatives that are conceptually sound but are poorly implemented. Whether the users are office workers, physicians and patients, IT solutions need to be developed with the user in mind. Thus avoiding the political conflict that tarnishes the initial vision.

Read Paul's complete post Healthcare IT: Saving Lives, Saving Money

Top 10 Reasons to Fire the CIO

Ben Worthen's WSJ blog Top 10 Reasons to Fire the CIO provides a good list.

The underlying themes are that poor CIOs exhibit many of the tendencies of technologists. For example poor empathy, diplomacy and political skills. It is quite common for the CIO to be fired when the exec team bring in the change merchants to improve the IT-situation. Smart CIOs would beat them to it and get their corner of the business in shape before an exasperated board takes extreme measures.

Again many CIOs don't know the difference between being smart and being right. This almost autistic disposition (High IQ, low EQ) does not endear them to their more well rounded business counterparts.

I get into this in The IT Value Stack.