EDS' Next Big Thing Blog: Read and Respond to What the EDS Fellows Say About Technology

The Peril of Success

Business 2.0 had an article this month called The Agony of Victory about how when an organization is most successful, it is on the brink of a precipice. Unfortunately, they do not have this story online (or at least I've not been able to find it).

In the article, Jeff Pfeffer compares the success of the republican party and its focus on doing more of what made it successful that caused it to get into trouble.

This reminded me of the Innovator's Dilemma series of books. The market leader is usually too fat-dumb and happy to recognize market shifts, or too scared to cannibalize the existing revenue stream.

It is also similar to the story told in Good To Great - the enemy of greatness is being satisfied by being good enough.

Many times when dealing with situations, I hear about the contradiction and compromise necessary to maintain the status quo.

This is one of the reasons I need to spend some more time on understanding TRIZ, since it uses contradictions and how other people have solved the problem to develop innovative solutions.

In the article they did provide two techniques to be aware of:

1. Avoid over-specialization
2. Develop peripheral vision

I learned a long time ago that a diverse team of people will usually come up with a better (more innovative) solution than a team of people that think the same way.

What would Taylor look for in a data center?

I was in a discussion the other day about the parallels between installing hardware in the data center and assembling products in a factory. It made me think about Frederick Taylor and the work he did with time studies for manufacturing.

I made the analogy that cables are like fasteners for manufacturing. We should try to minimize them. They slow down work because they need to be attached, sometimes with special tools ... manufacturers try to minimize fasteners, and use other snap together techniques. If I'd been thinking a little quicker, I would probably have used hoses as an example!

With blade servers, one of the big advantages is that you can snap boards into place and the network, power ... are built into the frame, minimizing installation and maintenance time. You don't need to keep running from the front to the back of the machine.

I wonder what other analogies we should be using so that we could leverage what's learned from manufacturing. A couple of years back, I did a series of posts (here and here) about fads and how they are usually executed from manufacturing first and then the rest of the world catches on.

New issue of synnovation is out

A new issue was just released of the EDS Agility Alliance quarterly magazine called synnovation.

This issue is dedicated to innovation and contains various Agility Alliance partner (e.g., Towers Perrin, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Sun, EMC, Cisco and Xerox) executives discussing the importance of innovation in business.

It is one of the few places that regularly provides insight from this broad base of companies as well as EDS (one of the EDS Fellows usually writes an article).

EDS' Cat Herders commercial still being talked about

EDS' Cat Herders commercial is being featured on the CBS Web site as one of the top-10 Super Bowl spots of all time. The public can vote for their favorite Super Bowl ad, and the winning commercials will be shown during a CBS special on Friday, Feb. 2.

This was one of a trilogy of highly recognized commercials EDS did a number of years back. Unfortunately, it was so powerful that at the end of the commercial, people only remembered the commercial and not who sponsored it.

Vista's Consumer Launch

With Microsoft Vista already in the hands of business, the coming launch of Vista to the consumer market (January 30th) seems a little anticlimactic to me. I haven’t seen the kind of excitement, ahead of Vista’s release date, that I recall from previous releases of new Windows Operating Systems. Perhaps the early release to business has taken the wind out of the sails, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. When XP came out, I remember migrating all of my Windows home computers, almost immediately. I also remember that upgrading was a priority to most of my friends and relatives (I encouraged them to do it and I often helped).

The attitude surrounding Vista migration seems different. In my circle, there is very little interest in upgrading. The current conventional wisdom is to delay buying any new machines until you can buy them with Vista pre-installed, but don’t bother upgrading your current Windows XP systems. In other words, don’t worry about getting a new OS until you need to upgrade your hardware (conversely, delay upgrading your hardware until that anticipated new OS is available). In light of this story, I can’t help but wonder whether Microsoft feels the same way. That’s right; Microsoft is going to support Windows XP for the standard 2 years but is adding 5 more years of extended support.

There is another possibility for this lack of enthusiasm; maybe we are just growing tired of it all. With so much time, energy, information and know-how invested in the OS that we currently use, and the element of risk that we face when we upgrade, maybe we are beginning to decide that incremental changes just aren’t worth it anymore.

Ninetndo Wii Now Touts Online News

Nintendo is betting that the user base for its Wii video game console will include more than just hardcore gamers. The Wii News Channel will be fed by The Associated Press and will be accessible, free of charge, to Internet connected Wii consoles.

An interactive map interface will allow Wii News Channel users to navigate the news with their Wiimote (Wii’s wireless motion sensitive controller). We shouldn’t be too surprised if other video game consoles, like Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, decide to up-the-ante as well. For the future game console consumer, leap-frog may be the biggest game going! And that may be a very good thing.

Ultracapacitors Versus Traditional Batteries

Once ultracapacitors achieve a lower cost per energy unit and higher energy density than traditional electrochemical batteries, they could be the battery breakthrough we have been waiting for. With a need for cheaper, lighter, more powerful batteries, the market is waiting to jump on the battery’s next generation, any news that brings us closer is worthy of highlighting. This article, about EEStor, promises shipment of an ultracapacitor battery product surpassing Lithium-ion, this year.

Ultracapacitors aren’t new; they have been around since the late 1950s. Because they can charge and discharge much more rapidly (high power density) but have lower charge capacity (energy density), they have occupied a niche separate from that enjoyed by their electrochemical counterparts. EEStor’s Electrical Energy Storage Unit (EESU) promises to solve the energy density problem by producing ultracapacitors that more than double the energy density of lithium-ion (280 watt hours per kilogram versus 120 for lithium-ion). If successful, and the price is right, it would signal a significant energy shift for transportation applications like hybrid and electric vehicles alike. But transportation is only the tip of the iceberg; The impact on mobile digital electronics could be staggering.

Wikipedia's Neutrality

Since I regularly use Wikipedia as a reference Web site for my blog entries, I thought this article was of interest. I must admit, I have always considered Wikipedia to be relatively balanced, and I would hate to see that change. I do believe that a free-for-all of corporate funding for content creation and modification could open Pandora’s Box and turn Wikipedia into something else altogether. I hate to be one of those “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it” types, but I have to agree with the folks at Wikipedia. Why mess with a formula that works so well?

Molecular Memory Advances In The Lab

In my recent blog entry About Moore’s Law, I focused on a couple of advancements that would help keep Moore’s Law alive and well for many years to come. Today I found this newly published article about molecular memory density. Even though this technology is still in the early stages of research and development, it highlights another important example of how digital circuit fabrication may change as we move into the future. With current memory densities of 1.79 gigabits per square centimeter using silicon technologies, molecular memory technologies, as described in this research, promise initial implementations with more than a fifty-fold increase, to 100 gigabits per square centimeter. That seems like a big increase, on the surface, but if Moore’s law holds and silicon density doubles every two years, silicon will be at 100 gigabits per square centimeter in just under 12 years. In other words, on the basis of this research alone, molecular memories only offer a density advantage if they make it to production in less than 12 years (granted I may be oversimplifying here).

Of course, once these memories do hit the market, they will need to advance at least as fast as silicon if they are to dominate. In the end the determining factor for the dominant technology (molecular versus silicon) may be based purely on their comparative density-growth curves.

The Continuing OS Saga

I never thought I’d see it but here it is. Sun Microsystems is going to produce servers with Intel Chips! In exchange, Intel will endorse Sun’s Solaris operating system. With Microsoft Vista on the horizon, the timing is interesting, to say the least.

Here is an article that talks about how Vista’s detractors are calling it a “weak imitator” of other operating systems. The article doesn’t identify these “other operating systems” but I must assume that Solaris is one of them, along with Linux and Apple’s OSX.

In light of the above and along with Apple getting set to introduce Leopard in spring, are we getting ready to see a new round of OS wars? Microsoft is so dominant that it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll see a major shift anytime soon but the Vista article does explore an interesting idea. It states that “… programs coming over the Internet are emerging as a more powerful force in computing than software tied to individual desktops.” With the emergence of Web 2.0 applications and improving browser standardization, they may indeed have a very good point. But it could be a moot point as it relates to the OS wars.

While the availability of a sophisticated and popular browser will increasingly be a determining factor when selecting an OS, Microsoft’s formula for success will likely remain intact for a time. After all, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still holds a commanding lead in the browser war. It is now more obvious than ever why Microsoft fought so hard for Windows to have its own, integrated, Internet browser.

Outlook 2007 - who moved my action flags

I've been running Outlook 2007 at home for a while, but last week I moved my work machine over to it. This seems to be a trend this week.

Everything works fine, but it's clear that the way I was using action flags was different than the way Microsoft intended. I used colored action flags to categorize my activities and that's not the way it works anymore.

There are a number of other changes to the way it works as well.

Now I use categories for the types of work. Action flags are focused on timing. I am sure I will get used to it over time, but setting up the display the way I wanted (to group by category and sort by flag) took a little work to figure out. The merging of mail action items with the Task list was nice, but now I have a huge list of things to do that I'm working on cleaning up.

An added benefit from using colors and categories effectively is that I can see what my day is going to be focused on from across the room. I can also do a report that summarizes how I spent my time at the end of the month -- if I can keep the discipline up.

The one thing I wish Microsoft would do is let me group all the unread (regardless of category) together. I guess they expect me to use the search folder display. I use rules to sort mail as it comes it, so sometimes even my incoming mail is already categorized.

Anyone who uses Outlook should be using the Microsoft Desktop Search engine to allow you to search across your .PST files ... it is a godsend to anyone who keeps a great deal of mail archived away for future reference. I've been using it for a long time, but there is a new version that's compatible with office 2007. It surprises me how few people use it.

Thinking About Moore's Law

In the business of Information Technology, there is a perception that Moore’s Law has been our salvation for a long time. After the recent turn of the century, there seemed to be a sentiment among some fellow IT aficionados that Moore’s Law would soon hit the proverbial wall and Information Technology advancement would freeze in its tracks. For some, though, the prevailing opinion was that there would be enough innovation to offset stagnation for a very long time.

I have often thought that focusing on Moore’s Law may be too single minded. When it comes to barriers in IT, it may turn out that the issues won’t be with hardware advancement but rather with fixing software technologies. Wirth’s Law may say it best, “Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.” In addition to drawing attention to how important software improvement is for IT, Wirth’s law also reinforces the idea that we still, more than ever, need to rapidly advance the hardware.

So, let’s get back to Moore’s Law. These days we tend to think in broader terms than IT, so the term digital technology may more appropriately designate the full range of impact for Moore’s Law. Over the past few years, a number of advancements have appeared that will ensure significant increases in transistor density for many years to come. Here is one I just encountered. I thought it was noteworthy because it merges traditional silicon chips with materials that are a product of nanotechnology (I love it when technologies come together). But there are more traditional approaches that will also buy us time. Here is one from a couple of years ago that addresses increasing density with new silicon laser technology.

Moore’s Law is fairly specific so there may come a time when it isn’t terribly important; a time when some new foundational technology, behaving by a different set of laws, may rule the day. After all, the density of transistors my not always be “It.”

Future of the search interface???

Search engines seem to have almost religious dedication from some folks where I work. Even so, there are new search engines coming up all the time.

One interesting user interface (with a great deal of attitude) is Ms. Dewey from Microsoft. This one strives to entertain as well as search. I don't know that I would use this in a work environment, since it can be a bit loud but it is still interesting.

As we move to having better natural language search capabilities, and greater recognition of the context of what your interests are the possibilities could be unnerving.

Another interesting specialization of a search engine is the DXPortal. It was based on goggle services, but the search results are only from ham radio related sites.v

Does anyone know of any other intriguing search examples?

Windows on Sun Ray?!

On the Sun Ray Blog there is a demo screen of XP in a VM on Sun Ray that looks fairly impressive. Unfortunately, it is still marked as coming soon.

You may ask "So what...?" but the implications on the support structure, security and the agility of moving your personal environment around may be intense.

Citrix and Windows Terminal Services have been around for a long time, and heaven forbid X-Windows, but it has not taken off in most organizations. It will be interesting to see what the Sun Ray with Windows will do.

Understanding Interactive Design

With a good user interface (and interactive design), complex digital technologies can be made useful without excessive training and practice sessions. Without a good interactive design, a new product can face an uphill battle, or even failure, in the marketplace. This Newsweek interview with industrial designer Bill Moggridge, though short, has a few interesting examples and insights into the importance of this topic when it comes to modern technologies maturing into successful consumer products.

A bad interactive design can doom a product while a superior design may mean market leadership, at least temporarily. In the consumer arena, breakthroughs at the interactive design level may be the primary ingredient in overall product differentiation. As an example, in the case of the iPod, breakthrough interactive design (including iTunes) has led to market dominance.

Apple is now in the news for its next big thing, and it seems big on interactive design breakthroughs. As for their future success with this product, only time will tell, but they have been very busy.

Must know terms for the 21st Century

In George Dvorsky's blog this week is an entry titled Must-know terms for the 21st Century intellectual: Redux.

It covers a number of topics that we've written about in this blog:

• Accelerating Change
• Human Enhancement
• Augmented Reality
• Mass Automation

so I had to pass it along.

GM's Next Generation Hybrid

Thanks to modern battery, digital and manufacturing technologies, the evolution of the automobile is getting more interesting every year. Last year, I published a short blog entry to highlight CNET’s hybrid car buying guide. This year, there is more news to report on the evolution of hybrids; big news from the biggest. General Motors is not known for leadership in hybrid automobile technology, at least not yet, but this recent article describing the Chevy Volt may indicate that a shift is in the wind.

Since news stories about the auto show, announcing GM’s Chevrolet Volt, have been splashed all over the media this week, you may wonder why I bother to spend more ink highlighting it, so here it is. As an owner of a hybrid myself, I know that this is the kind of hybrid that I have been waiting for. It is a real, built from the ground up, plug-in hybrid and plug-in hybrids can significantly reduce your gasoline bill while increasing your electric bill by only a small fraction of that savings.

From the drivetrain’s perspective, the Chevy Volt is simply an electric car. What makes it a hybrid is the gasoline engine powered onboard generator. It only uses its gas engine to run the generator and recharge its batteries, as needed. Without getting into all the pros and cons on the numerous arguable topics related to hybrids, let me just say that the Chevy Volt, as described in the press, will have a very significant impact in the hybrid vehicle marketplace.

If General Motors can mass produce and bring this particular hybrid variant to market before the competition, it will be a strategic coup-de-gras. Now that is something that I would truly like to see.

Will 2007 be the Year of the Tablet?

It's already January! It's time to reflect on the past year and look forward into 2007. As I look into my crystal ball I see that 2007 will be the "Year of the Tablet."

A tablet PC is a notebook or slate-shaped mobile computer. Its touch screen or digitizing tablet technology allows the user to operate the computer with a stylus or digital pen, or a fingertip, instead of a keyboard or mouse. They offer a more mobile and productive way to interact with a computer. Tablet PCs are often used where normal notebooks are impractical or unwieldy, or do not provide the needed functionality. Typically where handwriting and paper is the predominate tool in use.

Tablet PCs are changing the way people do business, learn, work and play. Recently I had the opportunity demonstrate the digital ink and digital paper capabilities of Tablet PCs to a class of elementary students on a field trip to a TV station in Victoria BC. It only took a few minutes for the students and their teacher to see how this technology could revolutionize classroom learning.

In Vista, the new incarnation of desktop Windows, will let people give the operating system examples of their own handwriting in an effort to improve handwriting recognition. Other new Tablet-specific features in Vista include new "gestures" designed to make it easier to navigate through Web pages, send e-mail and manage other frequent tasks without having to switch to a keyboard.

In 2007 I predict that the use of Tablet PCs will expand in the following areas:

• Health Care
• Social Welfare
• Building and Health Inspection
• Classroom Learning

Apple's iPhone

So here it is, Apple’s iPhone. I recently posted a blog about device convergence as it relates to Zune and iPod, but I didn’t expect to see an iPhone announcement from Apple this soon.

Based on what I have read so far, convergence is the operative word. I also like the looks of the user interface, but I will have to actually get my hands on one before I post any opinions.

With so many technologies that I like to blog about, such as multiple forms of wireless connectivity, sensors and what looks to be a breakthrough user interface, there is much to learn and post about this; Apple’s latest and, for me, most tantalizing innovation.

Pleistocene Park

Everyone who has seen Jurassic Park probably understands the basics, and it looks possible to clone an extinct animal, but this article I found interesting.

Especially for animals like the Mammoth where we have actual tissue, it seems plausible. I am sure the people who are working on it don't view it quite that caviler.

The whole discussion of a Pleistocene Park seems intriguing.

Utility Computing, Could This Be The Year?

I’m a firm believer that if one wants to increase the odds of being wrong, all one need do is make a few predictions. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let me just say that I think that this could be the year for utility computing. Sure, last year we saw some offerings in that space but not really of great overall impact in the industry. After all, we’ve been talking about it for more than five years. Could it be that the way is now clear?

Utility Computing is more than the nexus of SOA, Data Center Virtualization and Grid Computing but, in practical terms, it is no less. For big hardware and software players, the way may be clearer, but it is still littered with legacy systems. Last year, I heralded Amazon’s Utility Compute offerings as serious utility computing for the “masses.” Could it be that a grass roots move toward utility compute will be the spark that triggers widespread adoption? My guess is yes, where new applications are concerned but only maybe when it comes to enterprise wide legacy systems.

It isn’t just Amazon that is expanding into utility, eBay, Google and Yahoo have long been headed in that direction as well, just not as generically. While Amazon creates generic offerings as a utility compute provider, eBay refines its SOA while working with third party vendors. EBay is busily refining the automation and interface model it uses to interact with its customers. This clearly serves to streamline its operation. So, for the biggest players on the Web, utility computing isn’t just an architectural shift driven by the desire of a few techies to experiment with new technologies, it’s a better way of doing business.

So what about the big enterprise legacy systems? Modernizing most of these systems will be expensive and tedious but ultimately necessary since many have grown brittle with age. As utility computing proliferates and proves its worth on the Web, the need for transformation will become even more compelling. Ultimately the popular shift to utility computing may force enterprises to modernize.

So with respect to new Web 2.0 applications, startup companies and assorted new business applications, we will see a strong showing for utility computing and utility computing ready solutions this year. For big enterprise legacy systems, this may not be the year for utility compute, but I think it may well be the decade.