Posted by: Jack Santos
From Hammer and Champy in the 90s to Hamel in 2009. From A to Z: Accenture, Booz, Mckinsey, Theory Z.
Many many recommendations will need to be pulled, reedited, foot-noted, or post-scripted.
Or better yet, more will get written.
All because of this:
Or…as we in software development used to say: “It isn't a bug! It’s a feature!”
Posted by: Jack Santos
There is a disease among us that I call STS – stock ticker syndrome. I experience the symptoms at least once a day. Usually it’s someone asking me if I saw their email, or me asking someone else. And usually the response is : “No..I never got it…let me look…oh there it is….sorry”. Or, alternatively, “No – never got it, must have gone into spam” (usually it’s sitting in the inbox).
The real problem is that in our 21st century communication system that we have built, these tidbits of information fly in and out so fast it is easy to miss something – 
like watching a stock ticker. At any given minute of any given hour of any given day, you can see the emails coming in at a regular pace. And many people do just that – mesmerized by the pattern.
Our Gartner/Burton content and collaboration guys have a good recommendation for this: software that “pulls” relevant info forward, and pushes “irrelevant” info back. The real issue becomes what is relevant and not.
Vendors are jumping into the fray – Facebook comes at it with a social networking bent, Google, in its typical “throw mud on the wall and see what sticks” approach, has already introduced multiple attempts (like “Wave”) -- the latest is “Buzz” for Gmail. Even collaboration tools like SharePoint (or Lotus Notes) think they have a solution. Twitter comes at it from a different direction…make the tidbits smaller, but more numerous; so if you can’t beat STS, join it .
They fact is that it’s just life as we know it, and we’ll have to get used to high “miss” rates….which is worrisome. I suppose the argument could be made that the only difference with pre-internet life is that now we know (or can find out) what we missed, whereas before we would have no clue, and no way to find out. I suppose so. But this is a troubling side effect of the information society, and not something the just “unified communications” (whatever that marketing term means) can solve…..But it’s an issue we (as management) need to focus on.
Just delivering new ways of funneling more information, and no context or filtering, (like Buzz) won’t help…
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!
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…
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…
Posted by: Jack Santos
Just back from 2 weeks at sea; timing is everything – just missed a hurricane. It gets interesting when life doesn’t include daily (if not hourly) interaction on the internet…and it was a welcome respite. Which reminded me of this recent piece forwarded by a friend:
If Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive today, their infamous sketch "Who's on First?" might have turned out something like this:
COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.
ABBOTT: Your computer?
COSTELLO: I don't own a computer.. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Windows?
COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?
COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?
ABBOTT: Wallpaper.
COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software... ABBOTT: Software for Windows?
COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?
ABBOTT: I just did.
COSTELLO: You just did what?
ABBOTT: Recommend something.
COSTELLO: You recommended something?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: For my office?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!
ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.
COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?
ABBOTT: Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: Word in Office.
COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?
ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue "W".
COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue "W" if you don't start with some straight answers... What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?
ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer..
COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?
ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.
COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?
ABBOTT: One copy.
COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?
ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.
COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?
ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!
(A few days later)
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?
ABBOTT: Click on "START"............
Posted by Mike Rollings
Rocky Horror Picture Show fans will immediately sing the title of this post in their head. It's funny how the mind associates things. The same thing happened when I read a recent article:
(Edited excerpt) "The initial reaction was anything but positive. They thought it was a horrible idea... every institution he funded demanding ever more computer power and duplicating research on those machines. At the time computers were completely incompatible and moving data was a huge chore. The resistance came about because those institutions wanted to keep control of their computer resources. But, they soon saw that hooking up to it meant a huge increase in the potential computer power they had at their disposal. They quickly learned that there was a tremendous gain for them, and it also fulfilled the goal of cutting spending on computers".
I read this and thought it could apply to a discussion about cloud computing, decisions about shared corporate computing environments, or just about any transformative change.
What did this quote apply to? Forty years ago today data flowed between the first nodes of what was then known as Arpanet -- the beginning of the Internet. Mark Ward of BBC News interviewed Dr Larry Roberts, the MIT scientist fundamental to Arpanet. The article "Celebrating 40 years of the net" describes what happened.
Happy Birthday Internet! The story is just another reminder that human behavior is a critical aspect of change.
Posted by: Jack Santos
Sometimes intriguing stories come from unexpected meetings. Because of a canceled flight I needed to share a cab from Basel To Zurich with 2 other young men – they looked slightly older than college age to me, although I suspect they were in their 30s.
Rupert had a backpack and an IBM laptop. After brief introductions, his excellent English led into an engrossing conversation on linguistics, language extinction, and programming. Rupert’s undergrad degree is in computer science, but he now is involved in University work in linguistics. I presume he teaches – but we never got that far to find out. Our conversation led to a discussion of languages, language extinction, and his current research focus. Being from the Boston area, I referred to MIT's Noam Chomsky – which elicited much disdain from Rupert: “he’s not a real linguist”. I sensed he felt that Chomsky bordered on a fraud.
Rupert is particularly interested in Slavic languages, specifically languages that are in danger of extinction because there are so few people speaking them. I presumed at first it was because of the predominance of American English (the global lingua franca); but in the Czech-Polish-Russian belt it actually is the slaughter of languages and dialects by Russian speakers and hegemony.
Even more interesting was how he was trying to save endangered languages. 
He had spent some of his research studies using XML style sheets and XSLT – web programming technologies – to codify the structure of languages that are bordering on extinction. In one specific case he used two written guides to the language that were published over a hundred years ago or more, and is capturing the language rules and constructs using style sheets and XSLT transformations.
So he is using what is basically a modern computer language to preserve legacy spoken languages. Brilliant. He promises to send along his research when complete. I can’t wait.
Posted by Chris Howard
During my first of many trips this fall, I have time to catch up on some reading and writing. On my way to Regina, Saskatchewan, I dove into Paul Krugman’s recent article in The New York Times Magazine: “How did Economists get it so Wrong?”. The piece is an analysis of primary academic approaches to the macroeconomy, with emphasis on Keynesian vs. Neoclassical economics. The context within which he analyzes these approaches is their ability to describe the forces of depression, recession, bubbles, and human behavior. On this anniversary of the collapse of Lehman brothers, it was a sobering read.
My intent here is not to write about the economy, or even Krugman’s piece. You can read it for yourself here. In the opening pages, however, he ponders the state of the economics profession and raises issues that really resonate with me:
The central cause of the (economics) profession’s failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess.
Unfortunately, this romanticized and sanitized version of the economy led most economists to ignore all the things that can go wrong. They turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the imperfections of markets – especially financial markets – that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers when regulators don’t believe in regulation.
It’s much harder to say where the economics profession goes from here. But what’s almost certain is that economists will have to learn to live with messiness. That is, they will have to acknowledge the importance of irrational and often unpredictable behavior, face up to the often idiosyncratic imperfections of markets and accept that an elegant economic “theory of everything” is a long way off. In practical terms, this will translate into more cautious policy advice – and a reduced willingness to dismantle economic safeguards in the faith that markets will solve all problems.
(Paul Krugman, “How did Economists Get it So Wrong?”, New York Times Magazine, September 6, 2009.)
These words might just as well be used to describe common
tensions within enterprise IT. For example, the first paragraph describes why
many strategic IT initiatives, like SOA, fail. Too often, IT zealots and
architects are blinded by technophilia and wind up creating intellectually
elegant approaches that do not produce results. Context is critical because it
introduces variables which increase the likelihood of an initiative’s success. At
some point, theory must give way to these variables. It is also faulty thinking
to believe that the strength of a theory can actually change the context in
which it is proposed. In other words, ignoring a fact (of context) in order to
preserve an elegant idea does not make the fact go away.
Given the complexity of a modern enterprise, an overarching theory which guides all aspects of IT is unrealistic. More likely, a holistic approach will comprise multiple theories, each applicable to a subset of IT. Those theories must incorporate an understanding of both system and human behavior, otherwise an overemphasis on automation will result in suboptimization and dehumanized processes. Those humans will exercise their predictably irrational behaviors and wreak havoc on an elegantly intellectual governance approach.
What I’ve just taken pains to describe is the most common failure of enterprise architecture. Give and take between idealized visions of IT and the reality on the ground is the hallmark of effective enterprise architecture. Regulators not believing in regulation – or management not believing in governance – leads to the creation of policies that are either not enforced or mismatched to actual behavior; alternately, governance is preached but no policies are created. Regulation and governance should allow for organic flexibility when operating in a real environment. True, believable governance should inspire and enable behaviors that foster creative work in a safe environment that benefits the enterprise, its people, and its surroundings.
The last paragraph of the Krugman quote touches on what I’ve been calling postmodern IT. The overarching theory (i.e. homogeneity) gives way to messiness. In the midst of that messiness, there are a variety of right answers – solutions to business problems – that can emerge. Postmodern IT embraces the fact that IT environments and infrastructures are heterogeneous, a fact that is only strengthened by recent and future advances in cloud computing. Design and engineering approaches in the postmodern IT paradigm must deal with the combination of fragments, give way to better solutions, and free architects to assemble effective and efficient business applications.
Then again, I don’t want to propose an intellectually elegant overarching theory of postmodernism that is intended to represent all of IT ;-)
Posted by: Jack Santos
I am visiting clients in Europe this week, and it’s my first trip abroad carrying two passports. Yes, you heard right. I qualified for, and obtained, dual citizenship this past year, so I am now a citizen of the US and the EU. My progeny have pointed out that this disqualifies me for the highest US (or EU) security clearance positions. Thems the breaks. In fact, there is a whole subculture of people that thrive on multiple citizenships. Like this blog here. Or more information in FAQ format here.
In fact, there may be other downsides, yet to be tested: taxation, military service, etc. are all potential gray areas. Technically, I am now an ex-pat Portuguese citizen.
So why do it? Two words: Customs lines. 
And in fact, upon arrival at Heathrow the non-EU lines were 30-100 deep, while the EU citizen lines were 1-5 deep. Hmmm, I wonder what the security cameras thought of the line jumper from one citizenry to the other? Opportunity (and time-is-money) knocked! Left the US as an American, arrived in the EU as a European.
But, in our IT world of externalization (i.e., globalization), consumerization, and democratization, the implications are much broader.
What does it mean to be a citizen? How is allegiance determined? What happens when travel and migration is so matter-of-fact that the geographic lines are nearly meaningless? How does a culture develop? These are questions that the US has been grappling with, as melting pot. As we now take the 
melting pot global (because of IT effects), the implications are that much more insidious. September 11 – when viewed as a clash of cultures – was just a warning bell. Saudi citizens, trained in Afghanistan, residents in the US.
As our world gets smaller, because of outsourcing and the effects of the internet, the questions get larger. And as one of the first global citizens, I wonder if allegiance becomes less to geography, and more to ideas.
But then again, isn’t that called religion?
