And not Or

I was in an exchange the other day with some folks talking about their perspective that all companies need to be using cloud computing. I agree, but my view is slightly different. My perspective is that depending on the company’s size, needs and applications they will likely continue to have in house systems. It’s not a choice between things, but a choice among things and an acceptance of the way things are and one answer doesn’t meet everyone’s needs. You can’t look at it as: clouds the answer, now what’s the question?

Mobile computing is similar. It is the future interface of the enterprise, not really something special anymore. Embracing mobile devices and cloud computing will have a game changing effect, but it is not about the infrastructure but what we do with them and people want to do those things everywhere.

There are a number of other trends taking place like the IoT that are also shifting how organizations think about computing. It is interesting how this term is changing and how various organizations are trying to name it. It used to be ubiquitous computing, some call it ambient computing, but most still use the Internet of Things.

In any case the aggregation of sensors, devices, intelligence, and agents will shift how organizations generate value and shift IT to focus on systems of action.

Internet of Things Units Installed Base by Category (in Millions)

Category	2013	2014	2015	2020
Automotive	96.0	189.6	372.3	3,511.1
Consumer	1,842.1	2,244.5	2.874.9	13,172.5
Generic Business	395.2	479.4	623.9	5,158.6
Vertical Business	698.7	836.5	1,009.4	3,164.4
Grand Total	3,032.0	3,750.0	4,880.6	25,006.6

Source: Gartner (November 2014)

Many still look at these opportunities primarily from an infrastructure perspective, but I definitely do not. It is about the business and the hardware side is a small (but necessary) part. Organizations that will compete effectively in the coming years are going to shift their thinking to “and” and not “or” foundation. It is not all about IT, but IT has a role in enabling this flexibility.

By the way the output of the And not Or logic circuit illustration is always a one –> true.

The ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ of Legacy Systems

Having recently gone through a personal disruption related to employment, I dusted off my copy of Who Moved My Cheese? After re-reading the book, I thought about how this applies to the life of the CIO and application portfolio management. We are all too often with the world we understand and the 80% (or more) of the budget it consumes – failing to Sniff out opportunities.

Recently there was a post: CIOs make the tough call on legacy systems by Mary K. Pratt that delved into the issue of managing the layer upon layer of project success that builds up to calcify an organization’s ability to respond, that I found a worthwhile read.

Even in this day of IaaS and SaaS, the basics of optimizing the application portfolio of an organization remains relatively unchanged. It gets down to where the organization is headed and an assessment of costs vs. value generation.

Organizations need to ask some fundamental questions like:

1. What needs to be done and why?
2. How is it going to be accomplished?
3. What is the expected outcome?
4. When will it be needed or done?
5. How will we measure outcomes, so we can validate that the task is complete and effective?
6. What resources will be required? ($$, people…)

Essentially an assessment of leading and lagging indicators and how the portfolio can support them.

A simple view of the assessment is summed up in this quadrant chart:

I am sure there are other complex and wonderful interpretations of this, but to me this view is the simplest. Keep what adds value and has a low cost to operate. Refactor those programs (where possible) that have a high cost to maintain and also add high value. Validate the need for anything that delivers low value – you may be surprised how many of these you can turn off. Finally, replace those that have business support and high cost.

In this age of automation, the concepts of cost need to be holistic and not just the IT maintenance costs… For a parity of Who Moved My Cheese? touching on automation look to this Abstruse Goose illustration.

It is not hard to start but it is constantly changing so it may never be done.

When will 5G arrive?

Recently came across this interesting post on what 5G will mean for Consumers. In summary:

• Significantly faster data speeds: 10 Gbps, compared to one gigabit per second (max) with 4G.
• Low latency (time to send a packet): one millisecond vs. 50 ms with 4G — great for those chatty applications being developed
• The foundation for a more “connected world”: The Internet of Things (smart appliances, connected cars, wearables) will need a network that can accommodate billions of connected devices.

The most optimistic targets would see the first commercial network up and running by 2020, but even that may be too optimistic. As with LTE, it will take years for the network to become widespread.

What it will mean for businesses is the possibility for finer granularity across a wider geographic area. Hopefully, everyone is getting ready for IoT.

It does make me wonder about the future of relatively low speeds that many regions have as their entry level broad band for the consumer.

First it was Windows and now Office for free on small devices?!?

I mentioned earlier this month my efforts to make a small Windows tablet useful. Now I see a story that Office will be free for small tablets, with an under 10″ screen size. This is definitely Microsoft making a statement that it is serious about getting a beachhead in the mobile space.

I wonder if they have a way of checking to see ways of accessing the ‘display’ from other devices. Or if there will be limitations that only permit editing and not content creation — although that would be rather short sighted if their goal is demand creation.

Abundance and the value potential of IT — things have changed…

Since I have moved to a new blog site I decided to update a post on my foundational beliefs about IT, the future and what it should mean to business.

A number of years back, I posted that the real value for business is understanding unique and separating what was abundant from what was scarce and plan to take business advantage of that knowledge.

I came up with this model to look at how things have changed:

Today, there is an abundance of data coming in from numerous sources. A range of connection options can move the data around to an abundance of computing alternatives. Even the applications available to run on the data continues to grow almost beyond understanding. Various service providers and options even exist to quickly pull these together into custom (-ish) solutions.

Yet there are elements of the business that remain scarce or at least severely limited by comparison. The attention span of personnel, the security and privacy of our environment and even actions based on the contextual understanding of what’s happening persist in being scarce. Part of every organizations strategic planning (and enterprise architecture effort) needs to address how to use the abundance to maximize the value from the scarce elements and resources – since each business may have its own set of abundant and scare components.

For IT organizations one thing to keep in mind is: almost every system in production today was built from a scarcity model of never having enough compute, data… Those perspectives must be reassessed and the implications of value for the business that may be generated reevaluated, since that once solid foundation is no longer stable. The business that understands this shift and adjusts is going to have a significant advantage and greater flexibility.

7 Questions to Help Look Strategically at IoT

There are still many people who view the Internet of Things as focused on ‘the things’ and not the data they provide. Granted there are definitely some issues with the thing itself, but there are also concerns for enterprise, like the need to monitor the flow of information coming from these things, especially as we begin to automate the enterprise response to events.

A holistic perspective is needed and these are the top issues I believe an organization needs to think through when digging into their IoT strategy:

1. What business value do the devices provide – independent of the data they collect?
   Having said that it is not really about the devices, it remains true that the devices should be delivering value in themselves – the data may be just a side effect of this role. Understanding those functions will increase the reliability and usefulness of the data over the long haul. No one wants to put an approach consuming a data stream just to have it dry up.
2. What access will the devices have to the enterprise?
   Is it bi-directional? If it is the security risk of the devices is significantly higher than those that just provide raw data. If a positive feedback loop exists, it needs to be reinforced and secure. If the data flow is too narrow for this level of security, the need for bi-directional information flow needs to be scrutinized – if the interaction is that valuable, it really needs to be protected. Think about the issue of automotive data bus attacks, as an example.
3. If attacked, how can the devices be updated?
   Does the devices support dynamic software updates and additions, if so how can those be delivered, by whom? Users of devices may download applications that contain malware, since it can be disguised as a game, security patch, utility, or other useful application. It is difficult for most to tell the difference between a legitimate application and one containing malware. For example, an application could be repackaged with malware and a consumer could inadvertently download it onto a device that is part of your IoT environment. Not all IoT devices are limited SCADA solutions, they may be smartphones, TVs… pretty much anything in our environment in the future.
4. How will the data provided be monitored?
   Wireless data can be easily intercepted. When a wireless transmission is not encrypted, data can be easily intercepted by eavesdroppers, who may gain unauthorized access to sensitive information or derived behaviors. The same may be true of even a wired connection. Understanding the frequency of updates and shifts in data provided is usually an essential part of IoT’s value, and it should be part of the security approach as well.
5. Can any personal or enterprise contextual information leak from the device connection?
   I blogged a while back about the issue of passive oversharing. As we enable more devices to provide information, we need to understand how that data flow can inadvertently build a contextual understanding about the business or the personnel and their behavior for other than the intended use.
6. Is the device’s role in collecting information well-known and understood?
   No one like the thought of ‘big brother’ looking over their shoulder. People can easily feel offended or manipulated if a device enters their work environment and provides data they feel is ‘about them’ without their knowing this is taking place. A solid communications plan that keeps up with the changes in how the data is used will be a good investment.
7. Who are all the entities that consume this data?
   As IoT data is used to provide a deeper contextual understanding of the environment, the contextual understanding may be shared with suppliers, partners and customers. These data flows need to be understood and tracked, like any consumer relationship, otherwise they may easily turn into a string of dominoes that enable unexpected shifts in results as they change. Awareness of enterprise context management will be growing in importance over the coming years – note that was not content management but context management.

All these issues are common to IT systems, but with an IoT deployment, the normal IT organization may only be able to influence how they are addressed.