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

Wargaming the Business, part 2

One of the key aspects to any simulation is the model and its requirements. The OODA Loop was developed by USAF Colonel John Boyd as a model for military decision making at multiple levels, which can be used in a business environment. With the Internet and currently available technologies, business leaders can create mash-ups of information to better understand the business terrain and competitive environment. Sensors and metrics, including feeds from public and private sources, improve the quantity and quality of the Observe component information. Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) with alerts provides New Information and supports Analyses and Synthesis in the Orient component. Business Intelligence, along with Data Mining, supports the Previous Experience, New Information and Analyses and Synthesis steps as well. All of these tools can then support the decision making through simulation of the complex business environment.

One of the common errors in business as well as warfare is assuming the competitor will "fight the battle" like we do. Former employees of competitors and your competitive analysts can provide the key inputs on cultural traditions and genetic heritage on how the competitors will behave and react to changes. Programs like Top Gun, Red Flag and the OPFOR at National Training Center are designed to provide simulations of how "the other guys fight" by using dissimilar doctrine, tactics and weapons.

The ability to quickly observe, orient, decide and act more quickly than your competition is "The Essence of Winning and Losing".

SOA is a Business Process Architecture

The perceived war between BPM and SOA cited by Christopher Koch, "The New Technology Weapons of Choice in the Continuing War Between IT and the Business," is a competition between specialists. As suggested by Bruce Silver in "The Phony War between BPM and SOA," BPM people and SOA people are not concerned about different things, they are concerned about the same thing from different perspectives. The alignment of these perspectives is a critical opportunity for the business.

A business process is an execution of activities that produces business value. Typically, a business process is initiated by a request and a result is returned. This corresponds to a service in a service oriented architecture (SOA). A service is requested across an organizational boundary to apply a capability that provides business value. A service focuses on making a capability available while a business process focuses on how a capability is applied.

We should distinguish between a service-the value provided, and a service unit-the organizational unit responsible for the capability to be applied. So a shoe repair service is offered by a shoe repair shop. The service is that of repaired shoes. The service unit is the shoe repair shop, including the facilities, materials and shoe repair person.

The service unit will use business processes to perform the work that produces business value. Business processes may be performed manually, they may be executed by a Business Process Management System (BPMS), or they may be embedded in computer applications. Business processes should begin and end within the service unit. Some may be initiated by service requests, and others may be internal processes, either sub-processes or processes that maintain the service capability such as machine repair and payroll.

Too often, services are described as capabilities used by business processes. So, the architecture diagram shows business processes above services and services providing interfaces to applications (essentially embedded business processes). While services are generally invoked by business processes, the model should be that a business process within a service unit is using the services of other service units. The business processes are always a mechanism for applying a capability to produce business value. In a SOA, a business process that uses services is part of the inner workings of a consumer service unit.

Applying SOA to the structure of business processes improves the manageability of the business processes and reduces the coupling between organizational units. A service unit can improve its business processes without engaging other organizations, unless of course there is a need to change the specification for exchange of service requests and responses. A well-defined interface also enables the same capability to be used in other contexts-a major benefit of SOA.

Meaning of Global

I've been working with a large manufacturing company that has operated internationally for a very long time. This company has been working towards being truly global across all lines of business, including functional areas, for many years. Some areas of the business have succeeded in functioning global but others have only recently become aware of the frame of reference change required for their area of the business to operate as a global function.

A company operating globally has long been viewed as not only having operational units across the world but also having all operational units follow similar operating models, and functional areas have the same business processes. The business is run the same everywhere. Visibility to process execution and information across all operations and at a global level is available. Communication across lines of business, no matter where they are located, flows freely.

However, the business model still in place has maintained a strong notion of "domestic" and "foreign", as well as export and import. This continued WE versus THEY frame of reference inhibits seamless global operations as well as maintains complex, non-value added, interface points. The interface points take the form of business process boundaries, organizational boundaries, IT system interfaces, data translation, and also regional politics. Some "non-global" functions are needed such as those that support customs and other requirements for operating across countries and with different governments and local restrictions. But the domestic versus non-domestic frame of reference is quickly losing its meaning when operating in a global company.

This is an observation from the point of view of a manufacturing company. Are there other business functions embedded in some of the largest companies that quickly losing their meaning in a truly global company? How global can a business really be?

Risk of Third Party Claims Clouds Open Source

The use of open source software carries the risk that third parties may claim that the open source code incorporates their intellectual property. The SCO claim that Linux contains copyrighted SCO code is a well-known example. Mechanisms incorporated in open source code also may infringe on patents. See Pet Loshin, "The Linux Liability Problem." Making patents of a few companies free for open source does not solve the problem. Large corporations that use open source software are particularly at risk because the open source software can become a critical element of their business operations, and third party claims could be substantial.

Unlike conventional software products, the program code of open source software is open to examination by anyone. Potential claimants can find code they claim as their intellectual property. There is no product owner, so users become the targets of lawsuits. Claimants can wait until an open source product is highly successful, and then go after the big users with deep pockets. They don't need to look at products that are in early stages of adoption, they can focus on those that are already widely deployed.

There is a need to reconsider intellectual property law in light of modern technology and the open source phenomenon. It is reasonable for intellectual property owners to be compensated, but it is not reasonable to enable them to lie in wait, to ambush unsuspecting users.

Several suggestions:

• There should be a shortened statute of limitations for open source, barring claims not made within a reasonable time after the infringing code became publicly part of the open source product.
• A claimant who contributed the infringing code or caused it to be contributed should be barred from asserting a claim. Of course proprietary code can be contributed under an open source license.
• There should be a waiting period after a claim is asserted that allows the open source community to remedy the problem.
• There should be limitations on liability of users that would reflect reasonable licensing fees.
• A claimant should not be able to enjoin users from using the open source product while the infringement action is pending.

Beyond these suggestions, there is a need for a mechanism by which licenses could be issued for intellectual property embedded in an open source product. A user should be able to purchase a license that reflects all claims on the open source product, and claimants should be compensated without the need to sue each user. This aspect is a bit more challenging since there should be only one license broker for each product, the claimants must be able to trust the broker to pay their license fees, and new claimants may emerge as the product continues to evolve.

I see third party claims as a major risk to users of open source and the open source movement. My suggestions may not be the answer, but maybe they will stimulate some discussion.

Neuroheadset – The Possibilities …

I have been pondering the short and long term possibilities offered by Emotiv's and OCZ Technology's neuroheadsets.

Charlie Bess (EDS Fellow) wrote a blog about neuroheadsets. Here are some additional thoughts ...

A neuroheadset is a device that detects tiny electromagnetic signals generated by neural activities in the cerebral cortex. At least in theory, detecting these tiny electromagnetic fluctuations could indicate what a person is thinking about. If captured, one should be able to control a computer via thoughts. This is what Emotiv and OCZs' devices promise.

First Reaction: My first reaction was, wow, this is just too cool. Imagine throwing away the keyboard, mouse, joystick, sketch pads and just telling the computer what you want by "thinking" it.

Skepticism: My second thought was, get real, too many cool technologies have been promised that either were not delivered or fell way short of the promise.

Pragmatism: Then, reality set it. The premise for a neuroheadset is plausible, and several demos of these devices are available on YouTube (search by Emotiv or OCZ). In time, we'll probably end up with a fairly good interface that will have its niche (so don't throw away the keyboard and mouse).

Criteria: Then I asked myself what would make a good neuroheadset? I think some of the criteria are:

• Accuracy - the ability to correctly associate a brain wave pattern with a unique thought
• Resolution - the ability to distinguish thoughts with a fine granularity
• Quantity - how many distinct thoughts can be detected
• Performance - how quickly can a thought be correctly identified
• Adaptation - can the device adapt to different users' thought patterns
• Persistence - do the individual user's thought patterns change over time?
• Distraction - what to do when the user is "distracted" by an unrelated thought?

Applications: The planned application for the commercial neuroheadsets is video games. This makes a lot of sense, because the audience is willing to buy cool and new technologies, the cost of errors is very low (i.e., a game doesn't respond), and valuable user feedback can be collected. Also, in a different sense, lie detector devices are now being introduced based on brain wave patterns (link1, link2), and there's also a book showing how to build such a device (links3).

My guess is that the next set of applications will be interfaces for patients with neuromuscular diseases and stroke victims. Detection of even a handful of thoughts, such as Thirsty, Itch, Pain, Left, Right, Go, and Stop can have a profound impact on the quality of life for some patients.

The connection between a neuroheadset and virtual reality goes without saying.

Longer term applications could include controlling machines (toys, cars, and airplanes), remote surgery, manufacturing plant control, TV and home appliance control, military, remote robot control etc. (Do you remember the 1982 film, Firefox, where Clint Eastwood was flying a fighter plane by thinking in Russian?)

The obvious applications include remotely controlling other things. However, let's keep in mind that motor control and communications with others are time intensive; so, capturing a thought may be a faster way of getting some jobs done. Consequently, time-critical applications should be good candidates. Another possibility is connecting multiple people via neuroheadsets, so that they could collaborate on a task more rapidly, simply by thinking about it (sorry extroverts!)

It remains to be seen if we can simultaneously control some tasks by thought, while using our muscles to do something else. For example, can I interact with parts of my video game with a neuroheadset, and other parts with joystick and keyboard? Doubtful, but if so, then the range of possible applications expands significantly.

Philosophical: The availability of a neuroheadset immediately raises the question about a neuroactuator, where thoughts, memories, feelings, and experiences could be evoked via external stimulation; then we'll have input and output covered. Now, this gets scary; what's the use for the real world?

Phrenology: Neuroheadsets could be viewed as the modern day phrenology. In phrenology (a pseudo-science), personality traits were analyzed via bumps on the skull, under the premise that different parts of the brain are associated with different behavioral patterns. Now, with the neuroheadset, we can imagine a dynamic electromagnetic topology around the skull that represents the current state-of-mind of the user.

Reality: I'll wait and see how the neuroheadset develops. Video gamers and some patients will probably be the first group of people to benefit from it. If and when the device is sufficiently developed, we'll see some control applications affected. Collaborative thinking may be next big thing with neuroheadsets.

What do you think?

Wargaming, the business

Cheap computing power has created the hot market space of computer games as entertainment. Evolving from the abstracted strategy games like chess and checkers to sophisticated military grade full motion simulators to train warfighters, these are seen as cost effective tools to teach individual skills, team work, and decision making as well as proof of concept/research and development uses.

The military uses the mnemonic METT-TC to help commanders assess the situation, which can be aligned to business fairly readily:

There are several levels of simulation, ranging from individual skill sets to team/unit up through strategic. Most of the computer games are built around an "engine" to drive the game play and graphics, which could be adapted for business. New user interfaces like EMOTIV's Epoc neural headset open the gaming to people who may not normally see gaming as "real". The military uses simulations to teach key skills; why shouldn't business look to these same tools to evaluate investments and enhance decision making skills?

Let's also pause to remember one of the true legends in game design, Gary Gygax, who passed away on March 4^th. Gary invented Dungeons and Dragons, the first widely marketed role playing game, the progenitor of the World of Warcraft MMORPG with millions of players world-wide.

Is IT becoming extinct? No, it’s just evolving.

I read Michael Krigsman's blog entry titled Is IT becoming extinct?, and had to wonder what his definition of IT really was?? If he views IT as a technology focused organization that is separate from the core business, I'd probably agree, but if we're talking about IT being the use of information and knowledge to maximize value delivery, than he couldn't be farther from the truth. Vinnie wrote a response to Michael's entry in his blog as well.

What is true is the enterprise use of information and knowledge is changing. We're having greater degrees of collaboration and customized use of information, similar to the changes that came from the introduction of the personal computer. We're moving through a stage focused on virtualization to one with much greater use of SaaS and cloud computing techniques. We're moving to a deeper understanding of the intersection of enterprise as well as personal context. With all the new compute cycles being made available, we're going to use them in ways that were never possible before.

Michael's arguments about services becoming a commodity are true, as long as we're talking about commodity services. My perspective is that fewer compute cycles are going to be spent on commodity services in the future, when compared with what organizations will use on understanding context and simulating impact of changes. I doubt that anyone should view the skills needed to accomplish those tasks as low value. They are definitely IT, but just a different IT than what we're talking about today.

Social media is definitely going to have an impact. For the larger organization, the IT organization will be deeply involved in this. Collaborative environments are moving to SaaS approaches at a faster rate than the core business systems, but if you start to integrate those collaboration systems into the enterprise processes, moving to a new level of value generation and latency reduction, the commodity solutions are not up to the task. The vendors of these services are likely to remain unwilling to support the level of customization and SLAs required for the foreseeable future. We'll have to see what level of integration they will support going forward, since SOA should allow that to take place. Other business solutions are also going down the SaaS path, but if the consuming organization views tight integration as a differentiator, a commodity solution may not suffice.

There are numerous other arguments in his article, and it is important for each organization to review and determine what impact they would have. In most cases though, it will be the IT organization that does the review. They need to actively decide where to spend their resources. For some, SaaS and other techniques will provide significant value and the pendulum will swing and hopefully reach equilibrium at some point that meets the organizations needs. What there is no problem agreeing with is: those IT organization not focused on delivering ever increasing business value ("caretakers") and actively making decisions about their future will be extinct, since someone will step in and make decision for them or their company.

FCC nets $19.6 billion for 700 MHz auction

Since there have been a number of entries on this blog about the spectrum action (this, this and this), there had to be at least one more on the fact that the auction is over for the 700 MHz spectrum. Although they are not announcing the winner yet, there are some results available. With a quick review, it looks like the reserves were met. It looks like the FCC held on to 8, judging by the locales, they must be the ones least profitable.

Security Modeling for Managers

At its March meeting, the Object Management Group (OMG) issued a Request for Information (RFI) for Business Security and Authorization Policy Modeling (http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?bmi/2008-02-09 ). Security, and particularly authorization management, has become increasingly complex. With Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the number of access points to applications is expanding, access to shared services cross organizational boundaries, and the community of potential users is also expanding as companies work to optimize performance and control. In addition, government regulations are making managers personally responsible for accountability and control.

Current security mechanisms tend to be in the hands of security gurus. Policies, rules and authorizations are expressed in technical languages such as SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) and XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language). As a practical matter, it is nearly impossible for managers to specify these controls, let alone understand and validate them.

The goal of the RFI from OMG is to gather an industry perspective on the needs of users and the products or techniques that are currently available. These insights will potentially be used to develop an RFP (Request for Proposals) for development of standard modeling specifications. Standards will enable models to be specified independent of the multiplicity of security implementation products, and will enable models to be exchanged between modeling tools.

For example, Role Based Access Control (RBAC) has gained considerable attention. It allows the separation of resource access specifications from the identification of persons authorized for access. Managers of resources can specify the authorizations associated with roles. Managers of people can specify the people who perform in those roles. Current products implement such techniques, but the specifications require technical specialists. A modeling environment might express these specifications an a form more meaningful to managers, and it might provide analytical reports for review and to identify inconsistencies.

The scope of the RFI is broader than RBAC in order to address other aspects of security that might be enhanced with modeling. Responses to the RFI are not restricted to OMG members.

Expanding Access to the Night Sky

A few weeks back there was the announcement of The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) by Microsoft research. It is a visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the ground- and space-based telescopes. Although it is not available publicly quite yet, there are some other sites for those who can't wait and have too much light pollution to see the sky at home.

This information comes from a Wired article:

Bradford Robotic Telescope
http://www.telescope.org/
Telescope 14-inch-diameter Schmidt-Cassegrain
Location Tenerife, Canary Islands
Field of view From the north celestial pole to 52 degrees south
Pictures back in Days, sometimes weeks
Results 1,056 x 1,027-pixel color or black-and-white JPEGs
Cost Free

Micro-Observatory
mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/MicroObservatory
Telescope 6-inch-diameter Maksutov
Location Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Amado, Arizona
Field of view Northern celestial hemisphere to 48 degrees south
Pictures back in Days, often overnight
Results 650 x 500-pixel black-and-white GIFs
Cost Free

Seeing in the Dark
www.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/explore-the-sky
Telescope 14-inch-diameter Schmidt-Cassegrain
Location Mayhill, New Mexico
Field of view Northern celestial hemisphere to about 45 degrees south
Pictures back in Days to weeks
Results 512 x 512-pixel black-and-white JPEGs
Cost Free

Slooh
http://www.slooh.com/
Telescope Two 14-inch-diameter Schmidt-Cassegrains - one for planets, the other for deep space
Location Tenerife, Canary Islands, and Santiago, Chile
Field of view Northern and southern celestial hemispheres
Pictures back in Seconds
Results 800 x 600-pixel color JPEGs
Cost $100 per year for unlimited images

I find it interesting that only one of these sites requires payment. It makes me wonder about the direction of industry information sources and the work that analysts and others do just providing information. It appears, at least in the case of the night sky, it's primarily the analysis and timeliness that are valued and the information is freely shared.

Opportunistic Computing in the Cloud

I've been thinking more about the entry the other day on heeding Moore's law.

I've had a few conversations with folks in other organizations about cloud computing. I am always fascinated by their almost blind focus on cost reduction. I see real opportunity for the shift in the value side. Value is what makes IT relevant. An exclusively cost focus is why IT doesn't matter.

Some visionary development organizations are starting to see a future where cloud computing is the default and stand alone applications the exception. Even the desktop will be a little cloud of computing before the end of the decade. Once the development organizations/industry start new projects from a cloud perspective, the concept of the data center will be forced to shift. After all, the only reason for all the hardware is to derive business value from the apps running on it. Once the apps move on, the infrastructure will need to as well. Virtualization is great, but it is only a step along this road.

With our constrained computing perspective, we significantly limit how we think about delivering value. We need to shift our thinking when we move into a computing "age of abundance". When software development turns into assembly instead of creation, maintenance of the code may have more to do with simulation than with what we think of today as maintenance. I wonder when ITIL will incorporate this concept? The ability to understand information flow between components and rapid adjustment to business needs without having business impact will define the quality maintenance organization of the future. Unfortunately, I've only started to see universities preparing individuals for this vision.

Once we have the opportunity to access an almost unlimited computing resource, what we will use it for will shift. We can move to a cause and effect perspective, where we recognize patterns and likely outcomes and adjust to have the future we want rather than respond to the one we get. These different perspectives of the problem are the difference between the way humans who play chess well and the way most computer programs play chess.  In this cloud computing age, we should be able to have the best of both worlds. Unlimited computing to recognize patterns in the massive amount of fine grained information the advances in sensors and edge computing will provide, along with the parallel processing that can be applied to looking at the implications of the likely outcomes.

Microsoft has also done some interesting work with knowledge network to tie people together that work on similar problems, across a large organization. This type of project is a starting point for what you'd do with an unconstrained view of computing. Using the capabilities based on the opportunity to derive knowledge from the information flow, not just in the process itself.

Information Technology courses that impacted your career

Schools have a difficult challenge preparing students for the wide variety of jobs in Information Technology (IT). Examples of the varied jobs include consulting, systems management, application development, network engineering, and security.

As I reflect back, there were a number of courses that I considered being very valuable in my career. My 30 year career has mostly been in the enterprise architecture and applications area.

Here are some of the courses I found most beneficial:

• IBM 360 Assembler: While I never programmed professionally in Assembler this course provided me the necessary foundation for my programming career. Understanding the instruction set and use of registers was fundamental to how I developed and debugged COBOL programs.
• COBOL: This course was necessary to get my first job. I programmed in COBOL for many years and the fundamentals I learned in school jump started my career.
• Typing: Actually, I took this class in junior high. Being proficient in typing has rewarded me with greater productivity than my peers who type with one finger. I wonder if they teach classes on how to type with your thumbs so that I can be as productive with my PDA phone?
• Writing skills: I didn't anticipate that this course would have been so valuable. Effective written communication both formal and informal has been very important in my career.

I would assume that IT professionals that entered the field in recent years have some different courses on their list.

What courses had the most influence on your IT career?

IT development organizations needs to heed Moore’s law

Now that cooling has become a major problem for computing, the focus for the last few years has been on adding more cores rather than increasing clock speed and adding more cache. At the current rate of doubling the number of cores every year, we should be at 30 cores per desktop by the end of the decade. In the data centers, it this will lead to dynamic grouping of cores (if the current concept of a data center survives). This nebulous grouping of processing to perform a function is why the term cloud is so appropriate.

I was talking with a person from the technology office at a large software provider and they mentioned the internal struggle concerning taking advantage of all the parallel capabilities that exist. They have a significant portion of their organization working on the problem. We'll soon be to the point where every desktop is a little cloud of computational capabilities. Writing software for a multi-processor environment will be the norm and not limited to high-performance computing problems.

Today, writing high-performance parallel software using 3^rd generation languages is pretty tough. Moving developers to more model-based approaches that assemble code from existing components will be a pretty hard nut to crack as well. I don't even want to go into the licensing issues for packaged software. We don't have a choice though.

In any case, support organizations need to begin planning now, because making this turn will require significant time and effort. Taking existing code with you may not be much of an option, although SOA should help. I hate to even think out 10 years.

Identity management, security and resource utilization are key hurtles that need to be addressed in this vision, as well as the inertia associated with hardware ownership and control. These areas have not fully come to grips with the cloud computing requirements. Today, there is a great deal of effort focused on virtualization, rightfully so, since it is a tactic that will free up funds to address more strategic issues. We can't confuse the tactic with what we're likely to need to accompany the technology on its journey.

How will I be driving?

Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, referred to as the "Motor City", I often imagined the futuristic car that I would be driving in the twenty-first century. After many years of working with technology that supports the automotive industry, I have realized that the question is not "What will I be driving in the future?" but "How will I be driving in the future?".

Vehicle technology advances have been tremendous in the past few years. These advances have been driven by composite materials, vehicle control processors, and advanced sensor technology.

Integration of wireless technology with vehicle electronic systems and the external environment will drive changes in how we drive in the future, while  innovation in vehicle telematics will drive technology advances for the road and highway infrastructure, law enforcement and safety, traffic management, and environmental management. Finally, inter/intra-vehicle wireless communication will enable integration between the driver, the vehicle, other vehicles, the roadway, and external entities.

The opportunities for technology providers will be significant. The challenges for legal and governmental agencies will play a major part in the adoption of this technology.

The vehicle that I drive in the future, may actually drive itself most of the time.

What’s time for anyway??

I remember hearing the story once of a mother who was taking her daughter to the zoo. They were rushing from place to place and the little girl was frustrated by the harried pace and her inability to enjoy the experience. She asked her mom "Why can't we look at everything?" The mother stated "We don't have time for that." The girl's response was "What's time for anyway???"

I was talking with Ed Kettler (another EDS Fellow) about the use of simulation and business decision making. We were talking about the need to take latency out of decision making and the driving force in business to doing things better, faster, cheaper. Both Ed and I expressed some frustration with those who view simulation as too ethereal and a waste of time. It's becoming part of every level of business, particularly for those deploying SOA. We need to plan for it. I mentioned some efforts around workflow simulation the other day in this blog.

Simulation is one technique that can speed time up. For example, changing a business workflow model, then simulate yesterday's production volume on it and see the impact. Simulation can also slow time down and identify bottlenecks or anomalies and focus an individual's efforts on diagnosis and improvement.

There is continuous effort to place finer grained metering and implement sensors in the business environment, and whole new possibilities to use all the computational power available to us.

James Taylor pointed out in Smart (Enough) Systems that many of the systems in production can be made smarter and provide the information needed to facilitate a decision making process. These don't have to be strategic decisions, since operational decisions are important, too. Those who understand how to use time differently will have an advantage.

Thoreau said "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in." and now is the time to learn to fish.

Nostalgia - or is there some value?

Those of us that have been in Information Technology for a while have seen a lot of changes. As you look around your desk, file cabinets, and old boxes you might ask why are you keeping some of these old computer items.  Are you keeping these items because they bring back fond memories, have practical value, or do you anticipate value in the future?

Here are a couple of items that were quite popular in the early 80's.

• Punched cards (Hollerith card) - If you still have some of these why are you saving them? Are you using them as bookmarks or to take notes on? They don't appear to be an investment item since you can buy 50 punched cards on eBay for about $15.00.
• IBM 360 reference card - I still have mine. I haven't used it in 20 years but I can't throw it away. I admit it; I really liked programming in assembler and debugging COBOL programs. It brings back memories. The reference card is being sold on eBay for about $7.00.

In more recent years we have seen many PC products that are nearing extinction. How many of these do you still have and why do have them? If it makes you feel any better, I still have all of the items below.

• 5 ¼ floppy drives - are you still saving the drives and floppy disks? These drives were introduced 32 years ago. I threw away the floppy disks many years ago, but for some reason I am saving the drives. One reason you might be saving these drives and disks is that you have important data on it. I doubt you have looked at this data in many years. This drive sells on eBay for about $0.99 plus shipping.
• 3.5" floppy drives - These drives were introduced in the 1980's. Today, these drives can be found in many PC's but are seldom used. I still have the drive in my PC but haven't used it in years. I thought for a while that I might need it to occasionally boot into DOS but CD's and USB flash drives can do that now. Some keep the drive because they have software that is on 3.5 disks. I am keeping mine because I don't have any anything to fill the hole after I take it out. A new 3.5" floppy drive sells for about $5.00 on eBay (plus shipping).
• 64 MB USB flash drives and below - I have quite a collection of these. I use the higher capacity USB drives today exclusively. I still remember buying these drives a couple of years ago and paying quite a bit for them. I keep the small USB flash drives for the rare occasions that I need to copy something small for someone. A new 64mb USB flash drive sells on eBay for under $5.00.
• Data Modems - with the wide availability of broadband few use a modem anymore. Modems are still required for some individuals to connect to the Internet and to fax. Modems are quickly disappearing. A 56 KB data modem sells for under $10 on eBay.

There are many other products that are nearing extinction that I could have listed here. Some of these products include:  CRT monitors, PC tape backup drives, and dot matrix printers.

Mind control interface

Kas Kasravi (another EDS Fellow) pointed me to a new product coming in the fall, that was in the area of one of my predictions for 2008. The Emotiv Epoc is a device that claims to be able to use brain activity to control games... I'm sure this will be a case where if effective the number of uses will expand far beyond game play. The use by stroke patients and others who have lost movement or limbs seem clear.

There seem to be more stories all the time about trying to tap into the brain, like this one on pulling images out of brainwaves.

Just as long as it has a read only interface, I'm too susceptible to playing games already without any additional encouragement. ;-)

An example of simulation and process modeling

There have been a number of entries in this blog on the use of simulation and modeling and the effect on IT of the future. I've seen a number of modeling tools, but this week, (as part of EDS' Top Gun Program with Oracle), I was able to see some of the more recent work on the BPA Suite. The thing that impressed me the most was the ability to take a set of information (see slide 26) and run it through a process simulation (slide 29) and see projected performance metrics. Then modify the process and rerun the information and see what effect it had on process performance. Even though I've talked about it, this was the only tool that had the configuration management, data collection and simulation capabilities to do so in an integrated fashion. At least it looked that way in the demo.

They have a clear separation and tracking of business changes vs. the IT changes needed to enable the implementation, with notification back and forth between the teams as changes were made (see figure 3 in this document).

Based on the date of these presentations, it looks like this functionality has been around for a while, but I've not been exposed to it.

Speaking at the Nashville Technology Council

Coming up the end of this month I'm going to be speaking at the Nashville Technology Council innovation conference. I've not spoken at this conference before, but it looks like a pretty good set of speakers for a single threaded conference. I'll be speaking about a number of the topics covered in this blog on technology 3-5 years out.

Reviewing The IT Value Stack

I was reviewing The IT Value Stack the other day and in the process exchanged a few emails with Ade McCormack the author.

Although he does a great job describing the issues of value generation within IT the way it is structured today. There were some differences of perspective that I have to bring out:

1. Ade's discussion of outsourcing appears to be fairly harsh. He does not understand the real value of outsourcing. It is not about replacing workers, but about diversifying risk and contracting for efficiency. His whole premise seems to be that an in house team is always the right answer. I'd say that is a high risk proposition. As the industry moves into a more assembly based value creation approach rather than a hand crafted one, the need to have experts (for a short duration) in high value segments should increase. Outsourcers had better be able to apply those resources seamlessly and more effectively than any in house team could ever do. The changes in the IT industry will demand this ability to tap into a more diversified resource pool.
2. Even though Ade talks about the business value being based on the use of IT, he keeps pounding away that IT is separate and must be "entwined". I'd have bought that argument in the mid 90s when most middle management had little understanding of computers, but that does not hold up today. When he and I exchanged a note about how the "typing pool" has disappeared, I suggest the same thing is happening with "long tail" application development, through the use of mashups and other similar techniques. He does talk about the CIO being the evangelist or enabler, but it was a bit weak for me. IT's days as a separate entity inside the corp. are numbered. Everyone needs to take a hard look at the territory they want to claim for their corporation and prepare the IT organization to make it happen. In Ade's book there is a good tactical framework to do this, and it appears to be a valid means to an end. It's just the end state that I'm afraid could have been more thoroughly explained.
3. One other area that wasn't brought out in the book that I'd like to hear Ade's perspective on is: Cloud Computing. Most of the folks who are working in cloud computing can spell "cost" fairly well, but don't understand "value" and what the organizations will require to use it as an integral part of their business. We'll see how many lessons are going to be learned in that space before there are some changes in the market.

I do believe there was a great deal of useful material in the book and it should make the reader sit back and contemplate their ability to adapt and adopt the concepts, since in any shift like this the leader must ensure that there are followers.

Avalanche on Mars

This may not be IT centric but I was fascinated by the pictures of the Avalanche on Mars. Assuming that they don't happen all the time, being able to see the dust cloud billowing away has some impact.

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. It is one of approximately 2,400 HiRISE images being released this week.

Virtual Presence and Green IT

For centuries the workers of the world have had to locate within commuting distance of their work. It was necessary because their work could hardly travel to where they lived. Not anymore.  The paradigm of moving work to people rather than moving people to work is being adopted more and more by progressive companies who understand that there are benefits that devolve both to the enterprise as well as to employees.

For the employee working at a remote location, telework provides for a choice in lifestyle, living where they want to live, as well as reduction in time (and energy) spent commuting. According to the US census, the average worker spends more than 100 hours a year commuting. During this time they consume approximately 150 gallons of gasoline, which in these days of $3 per gallon of gas is about $500 of after tax income.

For the enterprise, telework allows for greater diversity in the organization, drawing upon individuals from many cultures and perspectives regardless of location. Diversity of perspective usually allows for more ideas in a shorter period of time - a more innovative and productive environment. It also provides the opportunity to reduce costs on office space and other fixed costs. Virtual presence enables easier movement of work between locations based upon time zones. As new work locations start their day, they can be brought into the enterprise processes unnoticed by the end user. Jet Blue has been known for using this technique for its customer support.

One of the areas the IT industry is focusing on is Unified Communications. This involves the use of Voice-over IP technologies (VoIP) to provide transparent access to individuals over voice, messaging and video. In the past the data and voice networks were managed and accessed separately.  We are moving into an age where information delivery is taking place over the same mechanism regardless of format, based on standards like Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).SIP can be used to create two-party, multiparty, or multicast sessions that include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences and is the basis for most VoIP products and services.

Unified communications is becoming the de facto source for information about the context of the individual: where they are located, what role they're playing, what they've worked on in the past, as well as their availability. The focus will with employee identity at the core. Once an organization makes the transition to the approach it will enable:

• Better access to experts - Pools of expertise can be defined within the enterprise and that pool can be addressed directly. Anyone within that pool can respond as they are available. This will reduce the constraints upon the individual. This pooling approach will also allow for the distribution of work in automated workflows.
• Reduced response time to events - When an event takes place where a decision needs to be made or assistance given, the enterprise can draw upon the context information to send it to the people who are actually available to respond. Escalation techniques can be defined so that response time can be defined and controlled more effectively than ad-hoc relationship based approaches.
• Reduced travel costs - As organizations begin to develop a common understanding of how to access an individual, it will not matter if the person is in the same building, on the same continent or working at home. They are represented in the enterprise in a simple and consistent way that can be accessed reliably.
• Accelerated project delivery - Knowing how to find individuals or groups with equivalent capabilities removes latency from projects. Being able to find the status of the people on the project and pull together a conference call on the fly and reach a consensus quickly will improve the agility of organizations and reduce time to market.
• Greater control over IP - In order to facilitate the information flow for the environment described, more sophisticated controls will be required and everyone will benefit.

When combined with workflow techniques that capture the context of the enterprise and role based security, the work environment can be made responsive while still environmentally conscious. All of this will enable an enterprise to reduce the latency in the decision making process and accelerate value generation.

One additional element of "Virtually There" merits mention - if alternative work arrangements become prevalent in a location, the infrastructure necessary to support the community can be undersized to that which would normally need to be in place.  Fewer roads = more vegetation to process CO2, less solar absorption, less energy needed to make the concrete that makes the roads, etc. etc. etc.  Moving work to people rather than moving people to work has benefits on many levels.

Managing IT Complexity With GridMaps

What do financial markets have in common with IT infrastructure and applications? Complexity.

Displaying a huge, dynamically changing process of trading and investing across industries and geographies around the world is a challenge. Reducing this complexity for easy interpretation by human beings is of high value for monitoring, analysis and decision making, like for example SmartMoney.com's Map of the Market.

The same applies to large-scale IT, in particular grid-type infrastructure services, comprising thousands of processors, storage and network facilities. Can it be done?

Yes, a unique, new way of top-level, flexible visualization of all kinds of decision-oriented parameters for monitoring a complex, federated eScience IT environment is using GridMaps*.

The size of the colored area attracts your attention corresponding to the importance of the underlying subject, e.g. the number of servers for a given site. This practical innovation currently helps handle the operational complexity of more than 50'000 geographically distributed CPUs, running more than 100'000 jobs/day.

*Patent pending