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

5 questions a teenage kid might ask if starting work at your business today

1. Why can’t I access my favorite websites at work like facebook and myspace?
   
   Since you aren’t familiar with those sites, you do a quick google search and find out those sites are social networking sites.  Now that you know what a social networking site is you aren’t sure why they are important.  You respond by saying that you can access a person’s profile in the Microsoft Outlook Address Book. You are proud of your answer.
   
   
2. What is that big thing on the ceiling in the conference room?
   
   You explain that is the old computer projection device that was used to project from a PC to the wall. You further explain that today we use small projection devices like those from infocus and this device is no longer used. However, you still can’t explain why it is still attached to the ceiling.
   
   
3. Why do I need this big phone on my desk? I have a mobile phone with unlimited minutes.
   
   You start to give all the normal reasons like the phone is so others can talk to you and that it has important features like call forwarding. As you start your explanation you realize that the mobile phone has the same features. Instead you change your explanation to the mobile phone reception is not good in the building.
   
   
4. Why can’t I instant message my friends that are not with the company?
   
   Finally you have a good answer to one of the teen’s questions. You explain it is for security purposes because instant messaging is not safe. As the teen shows a puzzled look you realize that wasn’t much of an answer.
   
   
5. Why don’t I have a laptop like home? This desktop you provided takes up so much room in my small cubicle.
   
   You start to respond about the cost difference between a laptop and a PC but realize that several hundred dollar savings over a multiyear period isn’t a good answer. Instead you reply with “do you want a laptop or a tablet?”.

Sensors for Oil

I’ve mentioned before the increasing agents of change to “the edge” such as the use of sensors increases and vast quantities of data beginning to flow into the enterprise to provide context about situations in new or at least more finely grained ways.

This article in Technology Review describes an effort by the seven companies that make up the Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC) to provide $21 million to develop nano-senors that may be able to more effectively map underground structures.

“Currently, even with the most advanced recovery techniques, only about 40 percent of the oil and gas in reservoirs can be recovered. The hope is that by injecting novel sensors into these reservoirs, it will be possible to more accurately map them in 3-D, increase the amount of fuel extracted, and minimize the environmental impact.” Right now, the only way gauge the precise size and capacity of a reservoir is through seismic means, or by simply drilling down.

Since these sensors will be deep underground, the environmental impact analysis should be minimal as well.

The use of pattern recognition on these large streams of data should provide greater context. As we begin to apply these techniques to other industries, there should be a marked improvement in consistency, predictability and overall quality.

Bundling, Services and SaaS

I am on the road this weekend, so while I am getting my laundry caught up I came across a discussion of bundling within the Enterprise Irregulars.

We’re all familiar with supply side bundling. This is the approach to the marketplace used by the telephone and cable companies. They give you a set of services, some of which you may not want, all grouped together for a price. The price appears to be cheaper than what you’d pay individually, but there always seem to be a few things that you’d like to have that are outside the bundle you’ve purchased. To move to the next level of bundle, the price is too high. The balance is in your control and you may be content, but probably not totally satisfied.

For the outsourcing or technical services industry, the relationship with the customer is based on an RFP or similar mechanism. This is demand side bundling. The entity that desires the services puts them together for the market to respond. The supplying organization has an opportunity to present other services, only after having a proven track record of delivery.

As the IT industry embraces Software as a Service the offerings will swing back to a supply side view. The consumer can choose between sets of services, but does not have as much control of what is within those services. This is why SMB organizations will move to SaaS more quickly. They are not used to having a tremendous amount of leverage, and may not even know specifically what they need, so bundling can be good for them.

For larger enterprises, who demand custom Service Level Agreements and control over upgrades, it’s yet to be seen if the model can conform to their needs. Some say that that it is inevitable for the services to reach the quality levels and flexibility desired by these large entities, while others say when that happens it may no longer be SaaS but just the SaaS providers moving into the traditional technical services demand side view (which those providers may not understand).

700 MHz Spectrum auction started

A few weeks ago I gave an update on the spectrum action. Well now it’s started.

A total of more than $2.4 billion were submitted on Thursday in the initial round of the Federal Communications Commission's auction of spectrum. This was the sum of bids received for five blocks of spectrum.

The opening high bids for this spectrum included a $472 million offer for the "D" block, which will have to be shared with public safety agencies under FCC rules. It also included a high bid of $1.04 billion for the sought-after "C" block.

The identity of the bidders will be kept secret until the entire auction ends under FCC rules. At the conclusion of the auction it is expected to net the federal government at least $10 billion.

Starting on Friday, the FCC is scheduled to hold three rounds of bidding each day until further notice.

Virtual Reality and Space

NASA is looking to work with vendors on creating a virtual world to stimulate students’ interest in space. The virtual world will simulate real NASA engineering and science missions.

According to the BBC, NASA wants to generate interest for space among students by creating a virtual world where participants can be involved in missions that mimic real NASA space missions.

VR may even help overcome the boredom of extended missions as well as help train future scientists and nurture interest in space among students, extending current student outreach programs.

For adults, NASA already has a COLAB facility in Second Life to experiment with collaboration and a SL island home to the Jet Propulsion Lab on Explorer Island.

Virtual reality is definitely being taken up by corporations and government more this year.

Attention Engineering and the Automobile

One of the predictions I had for 2008 was for fundamental changes in the user interface. This article describes efforts underway to provide a smarter automotive dashboard, addressing some of the attention engineering concerns I’ve discussed before.

A team from the Technical University of Berlin found that they could improve reaction times in real driving conditions by monitoring drivers' brains and reducing distractions during periods of high brain activity. They were able to speed up driver's reactions by as much as 100 milliseconds. It might not sound much, but this is enough to reduce breaking distance by nearly 3 meters when travelling at 100 kilometers per hour, says team leader Klaus-Robert Müller.

A paper describing the work was published in a book Toward Brain-Computer Interfacing late in 2007.

Having an automated environment with the ability to switch off extraneous information will be critical for organizations and individuals to take advantage of all the information flowing in from the edge of the enterprise and reduce latency in the decision making process. Even though I doubt the most organizations will monitor the executive’s brain as a tool to focus attention, there are still many context based ways to perform these functions, based on the context of the enterprise as well as the individual. As we place more sensors in the environment, the depth of contextual understanding will increase dramatically over the next few years.

FCC Frequency Auction update

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced this week that it approved a total of 214 bidders for the upcoming 700MHz auction, which is due to start on Jan. 24.

I can understand some of the telecom, cable and Internet companies that are listed as auction participants -- including Google, AT&T, Alltel, and Verizon. There are also quite a number of smaller local carriers such as Central Wisconsin Communications, Buffalo-Lake Erie Wireless Systems and the West Wisconsin Telephone Cooperative. It had been mentioned before that there would be a number of regional players, but I wonder how they’ll compete with the bigger players in an auction.

The auction will sell the rights to operate on 62MHz of spectrum on the 700MHz band that will open up after television broadcasters switch to digital transmissions on February 17 2009. The FCC has divided the spectrum into four separate blocks for commercial use, labeled A, B, C and E, as well as a “D block” that is reserved for the construction of a high-speed public safety network. The most valuable piece of spectrum up for grabs is the 22MHz wide “C block,” whose reserve price has been set at $4.6 billion. By contrast, the reserve prices for the remaining four blocks range from $900 million to $1.8 billion.

In addition to its high reserve price, the C block auction gained attention because the FCC last year mandated that the spectrum's licensees are prohibited from blocking or slowing traffic from their competitors, and must also allow any devices to connect to their network. The open-access rules for the C block were a source of controversy when first proposed.

8 Technologies to Master in ‘08

In ComputerWorld magazine there was an article worth reading that was published on-line in late ’07 titled: 8 Blazing Hot Technologies for '08.  They were:

• Virtualization
• Automation
• Real-time collaboration
• Web 2.0
• Ideation
• Consumer-oriented devices
• Unified communications
• Integration

When I compare those to my Predictions for 2008 there is quite a bit of overlap. One of the exceptions is ideation. I was talking with an organization in the mid-west earlier this week about how to harvest the ideas that individuals come with as part of their daily activities. One of the issues is that for some organizations ideas coming out of the IT team may not be all that welcome, either because they come from a context that is “outside the business” or they seem inconsistent with the business direction. Clearly this is something that the IT team will need to work on directly. Many people on the business teams feel they are getting enough technical pressure to keep up – from their kids if not from any other sources. The IT team members at every level need to understand the publicly stated objectives of the business and increase their ability to translate between the IT world and the mainline business – if for no other reason than they are paying for it all in the end. I guess that’s integration, one of the other 8 elements.

Brighter LEDs could replace incandescent lighting

This article published in ScienceDaily discusses researchers who are developing new technology that could replace the household light-bulb within three years. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are already used in electrical equipment such as computers and mobile phones, and are several times more energy efficient than standard light-bulbs. However, because of their structure and material, much of the light generated in standard LEDs becomes trapped, reducing the brightness of the light and making them unsuitable as the main lighting source. The article goes on to describe how they’re getting the light out of the structure.

There has been much discussion about an energy bill passed by US Congress banning the incandescent light bulb by 2014.  Some states and countries already have such legislation. Unfortunately, the current solution is Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) which contain mercury and need to be disposed of properly. LEDs should not have that problem - no one wants a hazmat team to clean up their broken CFL.

Collaboration vs. meetings in the enterprise

The Wall Street Journal is making its opinion pages and commentary free. Maybe the rest of the paper will soon be free online as well? It is certainly in keeping with Rupert Murdoch’s previous public statements to that effect.

By opening the opinion pages, the Wall Street Journal will be operating two different business models side by side. The New York Times tried a similar model, but chose to make its news free and its opinion the core for the online subscription service.

Conflicted models like this seem to be common in business too. For almost every organization there a seeming contradiction taking place:

1. Communications isn’t what it should be
2. There are too many meetings

We schedule meetings to communicate and reach decisions, but because we’re in meetings we can’t get the word out or get work done. Now we at least have the option of various collaboration tools to share these decisions.

It made me think about the separation of content within some organizations as well. There is the “approved” content that’s supported by the organization and then the back channel communications coming in through twitter, instant messaging, blogs… Eventually there is realization that it all can work together and improve the response of the organization as part of a holistic social media revolution. It will all become “business as usual” eventually.

The paradox of IT – Innovator vs. risk manager

One of the interesting issues in the modern Information Technology space is the conflict between those who have access to new technologies & ideas on how to use them and those who are focused on operational excellence and keeping things running to perfection. It can be easy for the corporate information technology function to fall into a role similar to corporate treasury or legal and focus on protecting the status quo. Some say that the majority of IT organizations are in this mode. Protecting the current environment is important to business success, but should it be the core role of IT?

All the operational processes like ITIL concentrate on the organization knowing what’s in the environment and managing changes to it. They reduce unnecessary variation. Unfortunately, since managing change is hard, these processes can also stifle change when used improperly. Rigor can be confused with rigidity. These processes should enable the channeling of innovation and the alignment of the business and technology.

Individuals within the IT organization should have greater access and insight into the business implications and value of new technology. Look at any report on the CES conference and there is no shortage of ideas on implications of technology on organizations. As the goals of the business are incorporated into the IT planning activity, this insight can be put to good use.

One of the ways to make this mental transition is to understand the value delivered to the organization by activities like technology planning and the initiatives it defines. Are the corporation’s business initiatives and the technology initiatives aligned and supporting each other? Since businesses change, we should expect a certain level of technological change to support it. As technologies churn (with the release of new versions…) new capabilities are available and those should support new business activities as well.

What is the role of the business organizations in IT governance? If their expectations are to keep the systems running and don’t bother me with technological change -- IT probably doesn’t really matter. Finding out what is the basis of that perspective should be important to any IT organization.

I was talking with some folks from another company the other day and they described an Innovation program they were starting up. When I asked some basic questions about the alignment between the business and the IT innovation activities, they said it was “important and part of their culture”.( I always get a little worried when I hear words like that – it’s kind of like when a realtor says a house is “well maintained”.) But when I asked about the metrics and how the leadership was involved in managing the innovation churn, they said the leaders were not really involved and the project reported relatively far down in the leadership chain. That sounds like the road to on-going frustration, not innovation.

There are opportunity costs to stay still. We must actively choose the problems we want to live with.

Information security and Green IT conflicting over enterprise mindshare in 2008?

Privacy International just released its privacy protection rankings by country. It’s interesting that almost every country with widespread Internet usage is marked as low on the list. It made me wonder if there is a similar assessment of commercial (or criminal) use of personal information – this assessment was focused on government use. At least in my mind, identity theft is more top of mind than government surveillance.

One of the findings was that there is an overall worsening of privacy protection. I don’t think that’s a big surprise to anyone, as Scott McNealy once said -- “Privacy is dead, deal with it” and that was before the year 2000. That level of acceptance of inevitability just seems unacceptable. With SaaS and large service providers become more prevalent and aggregating information from numerous sources, their privacy practices need to be greater understood. The current fiasco on Facebook with Scoble is an interesting example of trying to control acceptable use.

Addressing this maybe an industry trend that enterprises need to focus greater efforts in 2008 and not just in healthcare. Almost every IT organization aggregates information and needs to control it somehow, since “We live in a time when most people don’t trust big companies”.

Rereading the Mythical Man-Month

I am in the process of rereading the Mythical Man-Month, since I was given a revised copy and last read it way too long ago. Even thought this book is 30+ years old, I find it astounding how little the software development industry has progressed in project management and team makeup. Back when this was first written, 3^rd generation languages adoption was relatively new, so our tooling has moved far beyond what Frederick Brooks could have envisioned.

When I am reading the team structure chapter and see the discussion of the “copilot”, it sounds a great deal more like pair programming than what most organizations have implemented today. When I look at how he describes the use of the “implementer” and the “tester”, test first approaches come to mind. His views of project estimating seem as true today as they were 30 years ago, based on the stories you read in the trade magazines and blog entries.

The other day, I was talking with an individual that is the development leader for a commercial software vendor who was trying to convince her leadership that iterative development was way to go… I thought those arguments were put to bed back in the early 90s – at least that’s when I remember working on process and methodology redefinition. My view is that iterative is closer to a proven approach for successful results than any “waterfall” methodology, especially for the kind of work this organization performed.

I suppose it is because the software development space has such weak requirements (e.g., I’ll know it when I see it), and long lead time. It does seem strange that other industries have overcome those issues so much more effectively. The metrics and the process we use to hold individuals and organizations accountable for need to be reviewed to ensure that we get the desired results. That’s more of a leadership issue than technical though.

Atomically Precise Technologies Report

As I was catching up on my reading over the holiday break I found this Nanotechnology roadmap by Batelle Memorial Institute that appears to be pretty comprehensive. In the executive summary it says:

“The long-term vision of all nanotechnologists has been the fabrication of a wider range of materials and products with atomic precision. However, experts in the field have had strong differences of opinion on how rapidly this will occur. It is uncontroversial that expanding the scope of atomic precision will dramatically improve high-performance technologies of all kinds, from medicine, sensors, and displays to materials and solar power. Holding to Moore’s law demands it, probably in the next 15 years or less."

It then goes on to describe a roadmap for the next 30 years of nanotechnology for fabrication and the application of technology for a number of industries.

What will engineering be like in 2020????

Every six months Purdue sends out a magazine to its engineering alumni called Engineering impact. One of the articles this month focused on Remaking Engineering Education. It echoed some of the concerns I’ve had for a while -- As head down engineering functions move to low cost locations, there are still engineering jobs needed locally, but they require more of a renaissance person than just someone who knows how to design technical solutions.

When the head of Purdue’s Electrical and Computer Engineering school was in Dallas, I mentioned my concerns that as software development shifts from 3rd generation languages to higher level assemblies, quite different skills will be essential. The curriculum will need to change. It looks like I was not alone in expressing the need for this change. I’ve not seen the details, but this article looks like a start.

I’ve always thought that college was more about “learning how to learn”, than teaching me something I could use to hit the ground running. Little of what I studied was directly applicable to what I did when I got out of school. The areas required for the engineer of the future will be much broader and giving exposure to those areas in the relatively safe environment of the university will be a good thing. In the past, companies had internal indoctrination programs to orient people to the corporate culture and give them a framework to lean on for support. Those seem to have gone by the wayside and yet with larger more diverse companies, knowing how things work can be a critical skill to get things done.