Executive Advisory Program

2010 arrives: Hope stays alive, and CIOs should look hard at the mirror

posted by Jack Santos

There is a lot of talk about the role of the CIO, the future of the CIO, and whether CIO’s are taken seriously.  Hogwash. As leaders, one of the last things we need to do is bellyache about how we “don’t have a seat at the table”.  If you want to be at the table, act like you should be.

Along those lines, One of the things I have always tried to do as a CIO and IT leader was balance my work life, home life, and community life.  The latter has led me down some interesting paths – like ladling soup at a home less shelter once a month for about 4 years, or chairing the Chambers’ economic development efforts for hi-tech companies. 

Many years ago I also was involved in selecting college scholarship recipients for an inner-city scholarship program: The Jacob L and Lewis Fox Foundation (of which I am an alumnus – but that’s another story).  For hours I would diligently pour over the high school student apps, rank their responses on key criteria, help with the interviews, and participate in the final selection.

This past Tuesday evening I took a ride back to my “ancestral homeland” (Hartford, CT) and joined the annual Fox Foundation Holiday Dinner – a tradition which I attended religiously, but (sadly) due to schedule  and distance it has not been something I have gone to in at least 10 years.  My loss. 

I had forgotten how invigorating it was to listen to these kids (click here for the current year winners), at such early stages in their lives, yearn for opportunity and learning.  It was even more poignant since most of these kids didn’t come from well-to-do families, but were products of an inner city school system in the first minority-majority state capital in the nation. 

Besides engrossing conversation with old-timers (former scholars), we were entertained by poetry, dance, and acting performances by this year’s crop of scholars --- and a talented bunch they are.  What are they doing with the financial backing the foundation gave them?  Attending local schools like UCONN and the University of Hartford as well as Dartmouth, Temple, NYU, Trinity, and others.  An impressive lot.

In a time where terrorist attacks are on our mind, religious and racial  hatred and bigotry is almost unavoidable, and peace seems like such a foreign concept…it brought tears to my eyes to see our future.  Lewis Fox, lawyer,  philanthropist, devout Jew, dedicated community member, and  founder of the Foundation (in his father’s memory) would have been proud.  His legacy continues, and our future as a country is in good hands with these kids.

And for CIO’s concerned about their place in their company – think broader, look in the mirror, and take action.  “The table” is a lot bigger than just your company…and the compensation much more heartening.

Happy New Year!

Metaphors, Models, Phases, and Stages

Posted by: Jack Santos

My fervent wish for 2010 is that all the cloud hoop-la from vendors dies a slow, gracious death, and we continue to hear about real-world examples of success using new, and different, business solutions. 

What's interesting about "cloud" is that it really isn't new -- but it does reinvigorate an option that has always been there for a CIO.   Many companies I speak to are excited by alternatives and potential new ways of doing the work – sometimes cheaper, frequently faster, and often better -- see my recent Burton Group doc on "Elastic Computing" for more (if you are a client).

But a home phone voice-mail failure brought home what cloud is really all about, and how (in a small consumer based example) it really is an old dog with old tricks.  In fact, it’s such an old dog, I think we can identify stages of computing based on cloud/non cloud maturity.

Stage 1:  Do it yourself (DIY) voice-mail:  You may all remember the answering machine – an early form of voice-mail – and how we flocked to it.  Yes, tapes, mini tapes, even memory chips were different incarnations of the “home answering machine”.  Prices started high (50-100 dollars or so in the 60s – I’d hate to think what that is in real dollars today)…and many of us went through multiple incarnations.  We set it up, had it take desk space, power, and mind-share (how do I replay that message?).  Then there was network based VM, and the game changed.,

Stage 2: The “almost cheap” voice-mail:  So somewhere in the 80s (maybe late 70s), the phone companies started offering phone based voice-mail.  Voice-mail in a cloud. And everyone flocked to that.  Ostensibly cheaper – it didn’t require an initial cash outlay, although over the life of the service it was way more expensive than Stage 1 DIY.  But, being creatures of habit and installment plans, why go back?  Out of sight, out of mind, a bit easier to use, no maintenance, no desk space, no fuss, no muss.  Did we worry about security?  rarely.  Everyone trusted Ma Bell’s children, and even after caller id hacks got strangers into celebrity mailboxes, no one blinked an eye.  Some of that applies today with commercial cloud usage… cheapness is just a mirage, a trade-off…security a dream.  But most consumers are willing to accept the shortcomings.  And those that don’t just had a little less desk space available.

Stage 3: The ubiquitous, duplicitous voice mail:by the 90s, and 00s cell phones were in vogue, and – guess what – whether you liked it or not  you got an answering machine thrown in – either through an explicit charge, or as a hidden charge.  Voice-mail in a cloud, on steroids. Try to get a cell without a voice-mail account – the best you can do is turn it off – but it’s still there and you pay for it.  Now everyone has multiple voice-mails, using multiple protocols, an inability to integrate across systems (or at least an unwillingness by the carriers), and a fair amount of frustration by consumers.  Ubiquity not only has its costs, but also its confusion – and we live with that today.  Except for the ones without cell phones, and with the box on their desk.  And for cell phones – driven by mobility and anytime/anywhere access – there is no desk.

Which brings us to stage 4:  A world were some people (at least for this commodity example) still have the DIY option running (although they are few and far between since land lines are disappearing faster than the Ross ice shelf)… and “cloud” solutions are on the brink of bringing some level of sanity to the confusion of ubiquity – Google Voice is a prime example.  An answering machine of choice that can handle all the different ways of reaching you, and has one set of features – accessible on-line, integrated with email, messaging (did anyone say Unified Communications?).  This is a world where services are even more distinctly defined, unbundled, and offered over the internet. The "voice-mail as a service" stage.

This, my friends, is a stage still in the making for most compute services today;  It’s a stage that encourages entrepreneurial solutions, and solves problems in ways that weren’t  capable just a few year before. Answering machines have shown us the way

Mike Rollings– Research Director for our Enterprise Architecture service, makes the case for an even more advanced stage of “voice-mail as a service” leading to a single voice-mail service for users that works seamlessly with other phone functions.  I suppose one can make the argument that things like Google voice, rather than being viewed as just  a pure “integration engine” (not unlike the old screen scraper metaphor for desktop integration) is a step toward that. 

So what do YOU think?  Do these stages begin to form a model for computing maturity in an era of clouds?  Does the history-of-the-answering-machine metaphor hold true for most commodity services, and maybe even some non-commodity ones?

BPM #fail - Organizations adopt disciplines and people adopt approaches

posted by Mike Rollings

Last week I went to Cocoa Beach Florida to collaborate with Richard Watson, Anne Thomas Manes, Chris Haddad, and Kirk Knoernschild on our Business Process Management (BPM) research initiative.  Throughout the week we analyzed the results of our client and non-client interviews.  Many interesting insights were formed regarding their experiences, and we learned a lot from their struggle to do BPM.

One insight that I want to share with you is related to the same struggle that organization's have with pursuing enterprise architecture (EA) and service oriented architecture (SOA) -- BPM is a discipline not an approach. 

If you think that a methodology or a 'way of doing something' is the secret sauce for BPM, EA,  SOA or any other programmatic change initiative then look a bit harder.  The real secret sauce is recognizing that you are dealing with adoption of an organizational discipline -- a lifestyle change.  For these initiatives to be successful you need to get the whole body involved. 

BPM is no different.  Many struggle with finding the right approach, gaining adoption, rising above an automation mindset, and several other challenges.  Yet, all volunteer that culture is something really hard to overcome.  Culture has become our favorite punch-line to a very bad joke.  "Did you hear the one about the organization adopting _ _ _?  They could not change their culture".  Just fill in your favorite initiative, chuckle, and then commiserate with your neighbor.

It seems that organizations give up on transformation and put in place coping strategies to live within the status quo.  They give up on asking the question "should we be doing this process at all" and instead ask "how can we automate what you are doing". More often than not they give up even before trying and look for the path of least resistance.  It appears easier to go after automation, then monitoring, and then improvement.  But would you really make it any easier to change status quo? No. The net effect is further calcification. 

BPM will not make any automated process easier to change if humans never examine its relevance and value to the larger whole.  The notion that you can convince someone to change later after you have further solidified their beliefs is delusional.  Want to hear a radical thought?  Some have even figured out that doing process execution is the LEAST valuable part of the endeavor -- they are focused on business optimization. Notice I did not say 'process', I said 'business'.  Yes, like we have learned before, you can do a discipline without shiny new tools.  Tools can help, but a tool-centric approach is not going to give the organization discipline.

Repeat after me "Organizations adopt disciplines and people adopt approaches". 

For more information, Burton Group clients can refer to "Real Transformation: Why IT Change Is Not Enough".

The Future of TV

Posted by: Jack Santos

Let me preface this post by stating that I don’t consider myself a videophile, or even an audiophile.  I have friends (like Mike Clapis, owner of Clapis Associates, or Dave Passmore, Research Director of our network strategies group) that would probably puke at what I have done with my flat screen TV.

But I just accomplished something with my home media setup that I can only say is what EVERYONE will be doing within 5 years.  This also explains, in tangible terms, the recent acquisition of NBC universal by Comcast.

You see, I HATE that I am paying Comcast over $100 a month for what amounts to about 5 hours a month of TV watching (but includes 24X7 internet usage).  I also have wireless 3G access which, though not as fast as 8Mb/sec Comcast, is good enough at 1-2 Mbs.  And I pay for Netflix, which now offers online viewing of movies.

When I first started thinking about doing this I was told by a lot of nay-sayers all these “the sun will get in your eyes” excuses for why it won’t work:

Not enough bandwidth

Downloads will take too long

Picture/video quality will be horrible

PC isn’t powerful enough

Playback will constantly stop/start for a variety of factors

It won’t be easy to use for the average Joe

Two years ago that may have all been true.  What a difference time makes.

This week I cut my cable, and hooked my flat screen monitor up to the internet via a PC.  And now my access to content (free and pay) is even greater than what I had available via Comcast and “on-demand”.  The real bennie is the easier user interface – windows based, point and click  (a pox on cable directories).   Much  of it through a consolidated video search engine: “clicker.com”.  Video quality for the most part is as good as snow free, ghost free old time broadcast quality, and in some cases approaches 720P HD quality; 1080 is on the way.  YouTube, others are pushing the envelope on quality.  There is very little herky-jerky stop/start stuff going on, and I can still have PC window sessions and other things going on in the background (try doing that with cable).

 

 

The last piece that fit was a remote control;  I experimented with wireless mice, presentation devices, and wireless keyboards with varying degrees of success.  Until Kevin Kampman (from our identity strategies group) said “Hey Jack – I think there’s a an app for that”.  And there was.  I am now using iMocon on my iPhone to control the mouse and specialty keys (everything short of a keyboard), and it works well.  Point and click on videos, and away we go.

I will admit I take advantage of the Netflix unlimited download movies deal (for $15/month).  Still beats $100. I can also plug in my iPhone (when not using it as a remote) to play music on the 5.1 speaker system, or watch videos.

Add to this Digital Video Recording functionality, and the inevitable entrepreneurial zeal that will go into new features and functions based on PCs and iPhones. This is the future.

It took 40 years to go from ubiquitous broadcast TV to ubiquitous cable, with a hundred fold increase in content. it will take less than 5 to go from cable to ubiquitous Internet TV, with a thousand-plus fold increase in content. 

The real proof in the pudding is that my non-tecchie wife is loving it, and finds it easier to use than vanilla cable; and the choices....

Gotta go, YouTube's calling…

 

 

Going Barefoot, All Over. The end of SOX

Posted by: Jack Santos

Today’s WSJ had an interesting editorial commentary on SOX:  James Freeman’s “The Supreme Case Against Sarbanes-Oxley”– about a supreme court case on the now infamous Sarbanes-Oxley regulations passed earlier this decade.

I don’t often agree with Rupert's henchmen (and women) at the journal, but on this issue I have to give them credit.  Sarbanes-Oxley was ostensibly  passed to shore up financial reporting and controls after the Enron and WorldCom era – the dot com bubble.  Unfortunately even larger frauds (and bubbles) have occurred since then (Madoff, for one)…so the effectiveness of SOX has to be called into question.

Don’t get me wrong – SOX has been a boon for IT employment.  Business process management, system changes, new analysts, have all been a growth employment area in part due to SOX.  As a consumer, I feel that some of  the SOX inspired checks and balances are good– greed needs to be monitored and regulated. 

But I also believe that you can’t solve the issue of ineffective monitoring and regulation but just adding on more rules – one has to ask whether the monitoring and regulation of the existing rules is being done – and done well. 

Sure – not all of SOX was bad; rules that auditors should not be consultants, that the audit and compensation committee have at least one person with a financial background on it…that is all good.  But there is a lot in SOX details that is overkill.

And here we are again, another bubble, another set of financial irregularities, another failure in financial monitoring and regulation….and a democratic congress that may be hell bent on expanding the rules.  How about enforcing what we have?  and maybe even rollback what doesn’t work?

Sure – this won’t help IT employment, and may in fact kick a dog while it’s down (IT employment, like the rest of the economy, has not been great).  But a recent call with a client put it in perspective for me.  This particular client asked how he can justify the number of staff he had on hand to do a particular task.  Realizing that who I had on the line was a junior manager (and that I had a teaching moment) I said “You ask how do I justify this work, these jobs, to keep folks on?  Your boss is asking how can I do the job better, faster, cheaper, or add value – so that the organization, and all the jobs, can survive another day; you need to think about it in those terms to sell it to your boss”. 

That little nugget is the difference between a supervisor and a manager.  

And thus it is with SOX regulations….the wisdom to know what you can change, accept what you can’t, and get rid of what doesn’t work.

The end of SOX is near, we hope…but long live real regulation.

"God is in the details" - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Posted by: Michael Disabato

I have been asked by several firms what should go into the CMDB. The answer is simple: everything.

For example, a server will need:

- The hardware
- The operating system
- Any database software running
- Any applications running
- Any patches applied (yes, they are CIs)
- Location information
- Administrator names
- Access control lists
- etc.

Why all this? Because you can’t manage what you don’t know about. The CMDB stores all the CIs in the enterprise, and the linkages/dependencies between these CIs form the service chain for each delivered service. In many discussions I have focused on the technical infrastructure (servers, switches, routers, WAN, etc.), but reality demands you add the people, processes, and places as well. This not only shows you who is impacted when a failure occurs, it is necessary for good risk assessment during the Change Management process.

As Ludwig Mies van deer Rohe once said, “God is in the details.” All the details belong in the CMDB, no matter how insignificant they might be.

Michael

The Golden Age of Computing

Posted by: Jack Santos

Occasionally I gain insight into where things are going such that it really excites me about the direction of our profession, and of the human race.  That happened today, with a briefing from IBM research.

We live in a world where heart transplants, ear implants, hip replacements are all routine.  Often the recipient is better for it coming out of the procedure than they were going in.

IBM didn’t say this, but what I gleamed was that within my children’s lifetime, we may not only be looking at our traditional organic transplants, but we’ll achieve stand alone compute capacities that will enable us to mimic the human brain.  Think brain replacements.  By 2020 we may see the mechanics in place, so sometime beyond that could see that kind of breakthrough.  Compute capacity today is already equivalent to cat-brain capacity (the IBM Dawn effort at Lawrence Livermore Labs).

Head trauma, Alzheimer's disease, memory enhancement, brain augmentation – all are areas that could see significant research benefit.  On a separate but related track are efforts like Google’s where access to information ubiquitously will only make this vision even more likely (or Frankenstein-ingly threatening).  I sometimes feel like an extension of the internet: answers to obscure questions come to me within 10 seconds by speakingto my iPhone.  The result is that I already mentally compartmentalize what I need to remember, and what I can conveniently forget, because of the ease of this access.  I am, as a biological entity, already being enhanced by compute technology – and the trend is accelerating.

2020…the new 2012, at least for IT. But not the end of the world, the beginning of a new one…

The Cell is going to POTS..or not

Posted by: Jack Santos

Everybody loves handheld (like iPhone) data and web access.  In fact, in a recent call with a very large west coast chip company, their IT’ers found it hard to believe that the trend was for senior execs to not take a laptop with them, and totally rely on a cell (Blackberry, iPhone) for access.

But that said, let’s just talk about POTS (plain old telephone service).

But wait, it isn't that plain anymore, especially on the iPhone.

Besides the normal AT&T service (enter a number, call, talk, hang up, see the minutes on my monthly AT&T bill)  I now have 2 other options that I typically use overseas:

Skype:

Find a WIFI signal, open the Skype app, dial a phone number, talk, hang up, get billed 3-30 cents a minute, based on country, anywhere in the world (pay with PayPal).

And now (as of Sept)

Vonage:

Find a WIFI signal, open the Vonage app, dial a phone number, talk, hang up, get billed 5-25 cents/minute, based on country; a minimum 35 cents monthly charge, even if not used)

   -or –

Get within 3G range, open the Vonage app, dial a phone number, talk, hang up, get billed the same Vonage rate as above plus use my AT&T minutes (i.e., its a double dip - the minutes show up on my monthly AT&T bill because the call gets routed to a Vonage access point phone number, and then forwarded to the number you dialed).

From a geek perspective – this is all really cool. And has great potential for reducing my overseas phone bill (which IMHO has always been a rip-off).

From a POTS perspective – can we (the telecom/software industry) make this anymore complicated?  I’ll bet we can…but I suppose freedom of choice always is more complicated..note  (in the US) the result of the original Bell system breakup, or energy deregulation.

Wait until we can use any third party VOIP technology over the traditional 3G/4G network (lots of behind the scenes fighting going on over that right now).  Something Paul Debeasi has been predicting for some time now (Paul is our mobility analyst). His blog is here. Paul has been doing research on mobility and cell phone policies and governance within organizations – an area seeing a lot of change lately, as evidenced by these options.  Makes for a lot of strategy options for the traditional carriers (to put a positive spin on it).

In the meantime, road warriors are loving it, and my EU travel phone bill is down by 80%.