“Open” for Business (first published March 2013)

As my conference season is fast approaching I have been looking at what will I be wearing this year. Well, Open Identity, Open Infrastructure and Open Integration are the themes of my Spring collection.

First up is Open Identity with the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit (#GartnerIAM ). I’m heading straight for the ForgeRock stand which I think will be buzzing this year as we’re seeing interest taking off in their products – and our partnership is really starting to get into its stride too.

Next up will be Open Infrastructure at the AWS Summit in London. This will be especially interesting following Smart421 winning two major AWS contracts recently and starting to operate in the SIAM role for National Rail Enquiries. My expectation is that this time around many more enterprises be declaring their AWS credentials – which is closer to my personal experience.

Last but not least, it’s Open Integration, back at Gartner for the Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit ( #GartnerAADI ) in London on 16-17 May. This time we’re showcasing how Smart421 is turning the Service Factory concept “inside-out” to create the Open Enterprise. If you want to see more then come along and meet us there.

All three themes all tie back to how we see the Future of Architecture developing and that’s getting quite exciting too.

Everything you could automate with IT was completed by 1981 (First published October 2012)

Office Printer – Photo: Frank Baron for The Guardian

I was reading some spam about how IT is really changing the business world today and it got me thinking. When I started work in 1981 everything was already run on a mainframe, so in my opinion the next 30 years of computing was not been about delivering change at all – it was just about moving things backwards and forwards.

In the first 15 years the only demonstrable changes for users was the location of their printer and their applications. Printing went from a computer centre, to a print room in their building and then on to their desk. Day to day applications moved from the computer centre to their desktop PC and then to a computer room in their building.

The following 15 years moved things about again. Moving the printer back to the end of the corridor and printing into colour; applications moved from the computer room back to a computer centre; printed documents moved from the filing cabinet to the recycling bin; the development team moved 5000 miles away; and finally our private experiences started to move from a close circle of friends to being publically available on the internet.

What next ? Every application is moving to a mobile device; data is moving to ‘somewhere in space’; and we’re even being encouraged to ‘bring our own device’ to work – moving the workstation to the home and back each day.

The future of work is rapidly changing and perhaps now, at last, we will have the next phase of true automation.

But I’m yet to be convinced.

News from the CIO front line (First published October 2012)

Just fresh back from CIO Connect ( @CIOConnect ) 2nd & 3rd October in London – and wondering how the topics raised effect our customers today ?

The best session for me was by Glenn Morgan of BA, where two key points stood out.

Firstly, that IT departments should see their “customer” being the same revenue generating customer as the business do – and not just focus on the “internal” customer.

Secondly, that IT should be part of the team developing a business strategy and not a follower – a follower that then has to catch up. That is just too late.

My recent experience is pointing to the fact that our most successful customers have already made the leap and see IT as a true enabler. They are encouraging IT to reach into the business to ensure initiatives are quickly translated into deliverables and there is a true ‘line of sight’ from the business objective to the application that hits the screens – be those screens 3½ or 100 inch wide.

That strategy obviously calls for more rounded people who can think more broadly than a raw requirements specification and are not frightened to contribute ideas directly to the business.

And that is really encouraging to me – as it describes the Smart421 team exactly.

Three and Out (First Published July 2012)

I’m beginning to feel like I’ve had a glimpse of the Stone age. My personal BT Broadband was down for eight days which left a surprising large gap in my life.

Why ? Well, I needed to pay my credit card bill which I always do on-line in the evening – very convenient. So without broadband I decided to fall back to my O2 smart phone and my Nat West Banking app. Ah – only to hit problems with the bank, which was off line due to the RBS problems. So I decided to phone by branch up – ah [again] no O2 network was available.

OK so I survived a few hours “off the grid” but it did make me think that with our dependency on technology and communications we need stronger resilience. Up until now the pace of change has been so great it’s been uneconomic to build resilience.

Now with the maturity of the Cloud solutions there are no costs barriers and no excuses not to build that resilience. Smart421 is already helping our customers with this – so if you want us to help you please form an orderly queue here.

And yes, I managed to get my credit card paid off too – eventually. Phew.

G-Cloud Framework (First published February 2012)

Great news for Smart421 – we have been accredited on the new G-Cloud framework. This adds to our stock of real world Cloud credentials – but I was pondering what this really means for us ?

Am I confident that the G-Cloud is going to change minds about the security of Cloud deployments – so opening the flood gates of opportunities ?

No of course not, but it’s another step closer to making it mainstream.

We’re not going to see adverts for the G-Cloud “CloudStore” on the TV for a while. Even announcing the launch of the G-Cloud on a Sunday night did not raise its profile – I guess it’s just still too geeky to get mass media coverage.

But watch this space.

Today is 1989 – (First published Jan 2012)

Think back to the late 1980’s – the PC is pervading offices and I am running the Information Centre in Mobil Oil developing PC applications and supporting the business.

Every day a business user would come to me with a well thumbed copy of PC magazine to show us some wiz bang PC they had seen or some software they wanted.

My job was to ‘hold the line’ and stick to the strategy – 3 year refresh cycles. More often than not they had greater desktop processing power at home than at work – I certainly did. What we had not grasped was that the PC had become consumer technology – the IT department had to catch up.

Fast forward to late 2011 and we have the Cloud. How many IT managers are still ‘holding the line’ ? Now they face users with well thumbed iPads accessing their holiday photographs from their Cloud storage saying it’s going to revolutionise the way they work.

This time it’s the 5 year outsourcing deal that stops them embracing the change.

So has Cloud become consumer technology now ?

My view is that it’s well on the way – with iCloud here and G Cloud on the way we will be using it as consumers and citizens before we know it.

Should I be worried ? Only if I was back running my old IT Department.

Ovum Observations

Is Consumerization dumbing down IT ?

The theme of the Ovum conference sessions I’ve just attended seemed to be the Consumerization of IT. It’s driving the rush to Cloud and pandering to the trendy BYOD brigade.

Two examples spring to mind. Firstly my 80 year old mother has just got herself an iPad and is downloading apps from the Cloud. At the other end of the spectrum primary school kids use Facebook to organise their social events.

As a techno geek I feel a bit redundant.

Perhaps the ‘Democratization’ of technology is a better concept.

Whatever your view, this change will inevitably lead to more technology in our hands, more complexity, more connectivity and more mobility to come – which in the end has to be good for all us geeks.