What I want for Christmas

It is that time of year once again and I am getting into the mood to make a list of wants and needs for Christmas. Thanksgiving is over and with keyboard in hand here goes:

• A truly modular laptop- recently I had the opportunity to rebuild my 3 year old laptop. It had developed an intermittent problem that was heat related and it took a while to figure out that I needed to replace the motherboard. I would like someone to make a truly modular laptop so that I could purchase the required part and slap it back together. It took me several hours and an eBay purchase to fix my machine. It should not have to be this way.
• An operating system that is universal- I do not believe that computing OS for the end user has benefited from the current competition. We should have one that works, is bug free, and all applications work on it. Windows clearly does not fit this description, MAC might come close but not all the way. Vista is a long way from what I think we need too.
• Smart Network ports- I would like to be able to set up my computer for the services I need from a network, including the destinations I would like to go to, plug it in, and I get the services I need. This ideal set up would be made available to me wherever I go, to any enterprise network regardless of who's equipment it is built on. Think about roaming with your cell phone. Yes I know about 3G and 4G and 2.5G and all the variations but it used to work! I am not thinking that NAC in its current form is what we need.
• My Blackberry to work again- About a month ago my Blackberry stopped working on my BES account. I can receive emails but not send or respond from that account. I can send from other POP accounts but.... It turns out that there is an incompatibility between my software in the device and the BES software. Now if I could only convince the support guy of this I would be in great shape. It worked up until a month ago so one would think that rolling something back to that configuration would do the trick.
• Anti-virus software that does better than blocking 20% of the known infections.
• Real-time vital health statistics monitoring displayed on my wireless device. No wires or anything, just an implant that does all the work and sends the numbers to my screen. Blood pressure, cholesterol, EKG, EEG, blood sugar. I would be able to tell when it was time to eat, not eat, sleep, not sleep, and leave frustrating meetings before bad signs start to appear on the screen. I could keep my doctor fully informed in real time. No office visits, no problems. The perfect gift!

Politics signals IT shortcomings

Like most Americans I have been watching the Presidential election process closely this time around. Given the current state of affairs in this country I figured the better informed I am the better my decisions would be.

We have now elected to the highest office in the country a person who prides himself on being well connected. Barack Obama is an avid Blackberry user, web surfer, email power user, Facebook user, and text messaging guru. This is not normal in Washington, D.C. Most of the elected officials in D.C. are up there in age so they are not used to all the options available to them.

The news recently is that the President Elect might have to give up his Blackberry in order to comply with the Presidential records act and security good practices. What does this really mean? It means that wireless device security and managed services like Blackberry Internet Services are less secure than they should be. It means that the President has just found out that, while he can be the most connected guy in the world when he is in the office or on his plane, he can not carry around his own personal communications device. It means that we in the IT field still have some work to do.

Can you imagine how good it would feel if we could say that it would be safe for the president to carry and use a Blackberry? We may never get there but it is a good target goal to strive for.

We did, We can, and We will

I have to admit to being an on-line news addict. The immediacy of news from all parts of the world is hard to resist for me. Being well informed is a duty we all have, both in our jobs and our communities. The last two years have been especially enlightening with the election of our new President and new leadership in the other branches of government. It also points out some technology insights that are important to enterprise users.

First, examine Barack Obama's use of technology in his run for the Presidency. He used everything we have developed to communicate a message, to organize citizens for his cause, to raise money to fund his campaign and to serve as a cornerstone for his message on the importance of innovation in our society. While some may have criticized his use of text messaging to announce his running mate I thought it was a classy way of doing it. Everyone got a personal note at nearly the same time. President elect Obama used the Web like no other politician has ever done. In doing so he energized a younger electorate (his customers) and they responded by granting him the right to carry some of these innovations to Washington. I have no doubt he will finally be able to get the federal government to successfully automate many of the functions that still need attention, like the processes we use to vote perhaps!

President elect Obama's use of the same technology tools used by many enterprises was not an accident. Collectively the technology community has developed a powerful set of tools that can bring success to any campaign, business or political. How does it feel to know that "we did that". Even more important is the feeling that we now realize that we can apply these solutions to nearly any problem we face. The tools are out there, as is the talent to apply them.

I have no doubt that we will continue or tradition of innovation in this country. New solutions are out there waiting to be discovered or simply applied to different problems in ways that can range from the very simple to the more complex.

We owe President elect Obama a big thank you for successfully demonstrating to us that innovation is not over in this country.

Storage Networking World Conference

Just a note to shamefully publish the fact that I will be speaking at the Storage Networking World conference in Dallas on October 16th. Please stop by and introduce yourself or just say "howdie".

Web 2.0 Does it really Exist?

There have been numerous occasions where we have all heard buzz words used to describe some current trend or a group of individuals. Generation X or Generation Y come to mind first.

Now we are hearing Web 2.0 being thrown about these days to describe updated applications for gaining access to information. Maybe the information is new to the individuals using it or the application is delivered in a novel way, such as as as service rather than shrink wrapped software for your desktop. But does that constitute something radically new so as to justify the 2.0 designation?

I have been hearing this term used more and more these days and quite frankly it has made me a bit upset at the notion that all of a sudden everything that is web based is new. Clearly this is not the case. Likewise, some have equated social networking sites with Web 2.0. Even though I will admit that some of the social networking sites are providing a valuable service not previously conceived of I hardly think that the underlying infrastructure for the services being provided is that unusual. So how is it that we have designated some of these sites as Web 2.0?

To me it seems like a lot of hype. What is important is how these applications are used and can anyone gain a competitive edge using them. Does that justify a trade show devoted to them? All we wind up with are a bunch of providers trying to fit their applications into the Web 2.0 designation for marketing purposes. That is not particularly innovative.

Let your applications and their usefulness stand on its own, without the labels, and let the market decide if they are worthy of support.

Verbal Communication is becoming extinct

Those of you with teenagers know this already, but it would appear that verbal communications among many of us is becoming extinct. It would appear that we have replaced speaking with one another with Instant messaging and texting.

The other day my daughter forgot her lunch for school. This is not usually a big deal but she is a swimmer and works out 5 hours a day on some days. To say that she eats a lot is an understatement. For her to go without her lunch is admitting you would like to be replacing wallboard and desk tops in the school after she is through with them. So to make the situation better she texted me asking me to return to the pool at 6AM and bring her lunch to her. Mind you I was just there to drop her off at 5:45AM. Being a good father I did as requested and she thanked me via another text message at 7:30AM when she got out of the pool to go to class. In the time it took her to send the text message she could have called me and asked me herself verbally.

Insult to injury is when a co-worker emails or IMs you from across the isle. This has happened to me before as well. One guy was less than 20 feet from me and IM'd me to ask a question. Now I do not mind it when someone likes to use technology because it is fun but this is a bit out of hand. He claimed he did not realize I was in the office but I have a direct line of sight to his chair. The point is he did not look, or he would rather not speak to anyone.

I think there should be rules on the use of IM within an office. If you can reach the person within the same amount of walking you use to get to the coffee pot then you should walk over to them and ask in person. If what you want to discuss is not worth walking that far then it must not be that important anyway. If you are using email as a legal tool to document your discussion with someone then you need to seek out legal counsel and work out your issues with that person one on one. I can understand using IM to see if someone is open to a discussion at that point in time but lets use all of the communications skills we have developed, otherwise we will be back to writing on the cave walls.

The InformationWeek 500

No it is not the latest car race but it is the annual listing of the top innovative IT organizations. I have taken more of an interest in this year's list than in the past due mostly to the economic issues we are currently facing. I thought it would be fun to go down the list and see where some of the organizations stand as of today.

• The number one company, National Semiconductor, is one that I have competed against in a former life. We tried but failed to benchmark our IT organization against theirs. My former employer is basically out of business and Nat Semi is going strong. Good for them.
• At number 17 is Constellation Energy, the parent company to my old electric utility. They just announced that they had to be bought out by a unit of Berkshire Hathaway due to liquidity issues driven by their energy trading unit. Bad break I guess.
• FedEx beats out every passenger carrier on the list at number 18. Always an innovator, I guess it pays to get the baggage there on time, without fail, and to offer your customers a way of tracking its progress.
• Foundry Networks, at number 31, just got bought out by Brocade.
• Microsoft does not appear on the list until number 95! You would think that they would be able to do better.
• Washington Mutual, this year's number 100 on the list, is on the auction block and waiting for government bailout money to come its way before selling itself to another firm. Perhaps a bit of risk management automation would have helped?
• Nortel Networks is on the ropes as well, perhaps justifying their position at number 225.
• After all those ads about their web services you would have thought that Geico could have done better than 242 on this year's list.

Clearly the general economy plays a huge role in the health of some of this year's top most innovative organizations from an IT perspective. There are a number of surprises on this list and a number of opportunities for improvement in IT's contribution to the success of a number of organizations.