Few weeks ago, when I published the article “The Future of IT”, I was planning to write something about technology.
But, as most bookworms turned practitioners, I know that a white page is tempting.
Most writings about the future are actually the typical side-effect of an attempt to find order within chaos- notably when it is an unknown chaos that you are trying to describe.
This article is published in four parts (no more than 1000 words each).
Of course, I tried to keep it readable- no more than 150 to 250 words per section.
This is the third article: starting.
IT systems are obviously not a one-size-fits-all. The current trend is toward standardization, and this chapter will summarize some current trends and issues. The common thread? Tailoring the response to the needs (and budgets), while allowing future expansion.
IT and fashion
Cloud and component computing
Frameworks
Learning to listen
IT and fashion
I wrote in the previous chapter about my pattern-oriented systemic view.
I see systems as a set of behaviours with associated resources, both in terms of interactions with the environment, and resources to deliver the results produced by the behaviours.
More than 10 years ago, when talking with an outsourcing customer, my suggestion on moving from a captive market to an open market was to adopt the same conceptual framework used by the fashion industry for a long, long time.
Three levels- prêt-à-porter, some intervention, and custom.
If you work inside an organization, chances are that you are using services built around a similar approach.
In any organization, usually all the three “levels of service” are used- e.g. you might buy off-the-shelf notebooks, customized letterhead, and a website designed specifically for your company.
Technology has been changing radically from the 1980s, but nowadays the offer on the market is showing some fatigue.
Yes, there is something new every day- and you feel compelled to find place in your budget to update.
A side-effect of the three-layers approach is that suppliers try to standardize and re-use, creating few suppliers on each component, i.e. increasing specialization at the bottom of the feeding chain.
In software as in hardware, this produced a decreasing speed of innovation- fewer suppliers
Often you get only more bells and whistles (and training time) to deliver exactly the same results.
It is interesting to see how “virtualization” is de-facto creating what was common on mainframes.
Cloud and component computing
Did you ever see that screensaver showing “SETI”? It can be easily said to have been the first visible example of “crowdcomputing”.
The idea is simple- any personal computer today has more computing power than is needed for the mundane tasks it is applied to.
So, why not to share resources via Internet?
If you move forward a little bit, you have: the “cloud”, a virtual computer with infinite resources, available if and when needed, and the “component”, a single-purpose computer or software component, coming pre-installed, just plug-in, and move on.
I will ignore all the issues about security, flexibility, etc: it is something beyond the scope of this article, and I already wrote about them on my blog.
And when I refer to “components”, I am really talking about two different elements: software components, and what is more appropriately called “appliance”.
A “component” is something delivering a specific result based on the information you provide to the component; you know what you get, not necessarily how it is produced.
An “appliance” is usually a physical machine built on purpose for a specific application, say some monitoring or number crunching, that you can insert in your IT environment.
It is really even older than mainframes: your wristwatch is an example- unless you are used to open it, you are just satisfied to know how to set the alarm or the time.
They reduce your IT investments, and add “scalability”, i.e. you can add capacity when needed.
Frameworks
The previous two sections discussed an evolution from the market, in terms of services and technology.
The general trend toward standardization helped to generate a common consensus on what should and should not be done when creating or using IT systems.
Of course, talking about “best practices” is not the same as applying those golden rules within your organization.
I wrote “frameworks”- because we consultants thrive on the alphabet soup; we generate a new methodology every day, and a new proposed standard every month.
Standardization implies that big IT spenders started considering: why should everyone propose a different way of doing what, in the end, is the same?
Specifically on IT, the UK OGC created various reference standards by consensus between the industry players.
I will hint at two that have the largest possible use, also beyond IT, MSP and ITIL.
ITIL is focused on the service side of IT, i.e. delivering something to the “customers” of your IT systems- and it applies to internal systems, cloud computing, packaged software, anything.
I will discuss ITIL more in detail in the next section, to show how it can be used outside the technological industries.
While other methodologies focus on the management within a project, MSP is centred around the change and interaction with the parties affected by the change, i.e. the programme’ results.
In IT systems, often the focus is on a project-by-project basis, and MSP is an appropriate re-balancing toward the “why” a system is created- and its audience.
Learning to listen
Yes, ITIL stands for IT Information Library. But…
In my experience, IT is too often focused on the day-by-day, and this affects the ability to think, propose, and deliver for the future.
What are IT systems? A tool to an end.
And what it is their end? Supporting the business.
Evolving IT systems requires time- something that often I saw simply ignored.
From my perspective, the best value of ITIL is that it allows to focus the IT resources on the present and future of activities, while helping the customers to receive service at a level equivalent to the best that they could receive from any specific person within the IT organization.
The secret? Collecting and structuring knowledge, and teaching the “front line” people how to access this structured knowledge to give answers.
By suggesting how to structure the knowledge, and how to manage the communication between IT resources and the customers, ITIL is actually a model that is applied in other industries, where few are dedicated to the production of a product or service for a large customer base.
An interesting side-effect is that you will eventually receive knowledge about your customers, their needs- and this will help to improve the product and service design.
You will discover that just changing few pages inside the documentation delivered with your product or service, and maybe shuffling or renaming something, will reduce the number of support requests, and improve the perceived quality of the service that you deliver.
Tags: AGB2009, AGB2009SUMMARY, commodity, computing, department, FIT2009, future, ibm, information, innovation, it, microsoft, msp, prince2, summary, technology