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A look ahead: Some technology developments to expect in 2009
2008 was a year of rapid changes for Chief Technology Officers. We should expect 2009 to move even faster. Where will the biggest trends take us? I offer some considerations below. Please
look these over and give me your thoughts. Push back if you have
disagreement.
First, my overall advice for CTOs in 2009… Just like the new thin interfaces you will be testing in your lab… be flexible. Now here are some more thoughts on what's in store for CTO s in 2009:
- Here is a no-brainer: Increasingly CTOs will leverage social media to
collaborate. Things are moving so fast that we all like to network to
seek help on big things and to get advanced warning on what is coming
next. More of us will be on Twitter, in Facebook, and writing blogs.
And this is a good thing.
- "Mashups" will still be very
important as an enterprise objective in 2009 (and beyond). And the
company that will help accelerate them into the federal enterprise is
JackBe. They do things in a way that enterprise CTO s like. They build
in connections to governance, security, identity management. And they
play well with the entire ecosystem so you don't have to rework all
legacy just to use them. Of course web2.0 will remain a key trend, but mashups takes web2.0 to a new, more mission-oriented level and for enterprise players the mission is what is important.
- An approach we will all learn to love and follow is "context
accumulation". This very important term was coined by Jeff Jonas, and
I think Jeff is going to have all of us moving out on that in the next
12 months. If you agree, visit his blog and by all means help others
understand why this is really the only way we humans stand a chance of
surviving/thriving in the onslaught of data.
- Federal acquisition of IT will still be criticized for all the
reasons it always has been. But there will also be an acceleration of
a dramatic positive change brought about because of open source
software and a new appreciation that IT acquisition processes
(RFI/RFP/FAR/DFAR based purchases) do not apply to software that is
free. Free software is not being bought, it is being used, for free.
The whole reason the FAR exists is to ensure when the taxpayer's money
gets spent it gets spent wisely. When things are free the FAR has less
applicability. Services for open source are being bought and since
that uses government money of course the taxpayers will continued to be
served by the same FAR-type processes that are meant to ensure open
competition, but that is not for free open source software, that is for
services to configure and manage the software.
- Will this be the year of enterprise security? We have been banking on that for a long long time. We know the answers on how to make enterprises more secure. There is a great recap of some of the most important components of security in the CSIS report. But there are many more things that can be done as well. My goal, as captured here, is to improve security by two orders of magnitude within the next 24 months.
- Netbooks, Thin Clients and Cloud Computing will accelerate
throughout the technology landscape, especially inside the federal
government. These trends in both devices and the cloud components are directly related and are also benefiting from the global, unstoppable trend toward open computing
(open software and open standards). One to watch in this area: Sun
Microsystems. But also track the dynamics of the netbooks providers.
Dell will get serious about netbooks, but Acer will continue to grow
market share.
- A key accelerator of Cloud Computing has been the powerful technologies of virtualization, especially those of VMware. Open source and other virtualization capabilities are coming fast too. Trend to watch in 2009 is the arrival of higher order, more elagant capabilities to manage virtualizaiton accross large enterprises. VMware and Opsware (HP) will continue to evolve to do this, but Appistry, Vizioncore, Xsigo and Sun (and others?) are coming fast.
- Increasingly leaders will recognize that concepts of operation that
require humans to tag and create metadata are sub-optimized. When busy
people are tasked with burdensome tagging operations they too
frequently become tempted to cut corners and rush the process. Over
time, meta data generated this way just becomes meta crap. This
growing recognition in the federal space will sweep in new technologies
and new approaches to discovery of content. One to watch to solve this
issue: Endeca, because of their approach to visualizing information and enabling human to computer iterative examination of data. - Flexible computers will arrive in production this year for early
adopters and many CTOs will use them in labs to assess applicability
for massive deployment in the coming years. These flexible computers
are the ultimate thin clients. Backends/servers/architectures
developed for the cloud perfectly suit ultra thin, flexible computing
devices. For more on this hot topic, start at the site of the Flexible Display Center at ASU.
- Collaboration will increasingly be seen as the means to link human
brains together. Collaboration tools that are stand alone stovepipes
will be a thing of the past. Users will collaborate using the entire
technology environment: voice, video, data, whiteboard, chat,
application sharing, info discovery will increasingly be integrated
into a single fabric. Key players here: Adobe, Microsoft and Cisco.
- In a big change for how money is moved in major enterprises, the CIO
will be given responsibility for the energy budget. This will encourage
CIOs to modernize to conserve energy, since money saved from energy
costs can be invested back in modern IT. This will be a very virtuous
cycle, that saves money for organizations, saves energy, and modernizes
IT.
- In a stunning turn, IPv6 will be rapidly adopted, not by enterprises,
but in homes. The major home communications provider that delivers
full IPv6 to home environments (and to cell phones) will have an incredible advantage over
competitors and will dominate. The many rich features of IPv6
delivered to consumers will finally push enterprises everywhere to move
out on IPv6.
- In 2009, as in every year prior and for most into the future, there
will continue to be bad people using technology to do bad things.
Enterprises will move to protect info, but bad guys will keep moving to
get the data. And the use of social networking tools by terrorists
will likely grow. This is not a foregone conclusion, but I'm not
personally sure what can be done to mitigate the use of advanced
technology by bad people, other than to say that we good people need to
work together more to stop them, and my hope is that we can keep 2009
safe and secure.
Thoughts/comments/suggestions? Please let me know what you think.
Collaborate and Deliver With More Cowbell
Participants in this week's Enterprise 2.0 conference, hosted by the ODNI's ICES group and the CIA's WIRe team, were treated to a shared experience that is hard to capture in a blog post. So I won't try. But I will say this, we all had some great collaboration and coordination lessons and context, and we were able to participate in creating that ourselves because the conference organizers established a great ambiance and gave us access to wiki's, blogs, twitters and WiFI that knitted that all together. I really appreciated being there.
One lesson I'd like to note now was underscored by Fred Hassani. Fred found a great way to make us all think about the variety of collaboration tools at our disposal. In a musical analogy he underscored how hard it can be to make music with instruments that don't traditionally play well together. But in a sign that the spirit of the community is strong, we all saw how a cowbell can make really really great music if you put your heart into it. And we the community of professionals can make use of any tools we are provided to collaborate, even if they are not our favorites. We will always make due and will always overcome. One way we will overcome is through mashups. Just like in music you can mashup piano's and cowbells, in IT you can mashup imagery data and SIGINT data and analytical data etc.
Which brings us to a great video that underscores this point– not from thte WIReICES conference, but from a group of spirited collaborators from SNL who many of us in the community look up to.
So please check this out and as you do please think of the IT tools in your enterprise. I guess the point made for CTOs is that we need an enterprise that allows mashups of all tools and all data. You never know when the maestro will call for more cowbell.
Another government IT program succeeds beyond all expectations!
2002 congress passed the E-Government Act. It mandated that the approximately 300 federal entities that can make rules expose those rules in a modernized way and also specified that regulations in draft will be exposed so comments can be solicited.
The government's response: OMB and CIO's from throughout the government established an eRulemaking solution that required extensive IT planning, engineering and the fielding of a new IT system. The eRulemaking Initiative's Federal Docket Management System (FDMS) was created to provide an online public docket and comment system which expands public access to read and comment on Federal Agency rulemaking. Although it is a centralized system, agencies were given an ability to manage content and workflow related to their own regulations. Scalable web-based solutions that enable users in government and also citizens to find and read proposed legislation and supporting documents was provided.
And they did this in a way that was way under budget and delivered on time. And its functionality exceeded all expectations. Which is GREAT!
As an IT professional, this is the really neat part that bears repeating. This project, which is very complex and IT intensive, was delivered under budget and on time. Additionally, its capabilities far
exceeded the expectations of everyone involved.
If you haven't heard of FDMS, maybe it is because it was widely successful. To frequently the only programs that make news are those that don't deliver on expectations. That means IT heros, like Pat Micielli of EPA who led this program, frequently don't get the recognition they deserve for the great things they do.
I hope I've gotten your curiosity up a bit on what Pat accomplished. If you are a citizen of the US you should be very proud of this one. So check out http://regulations.gov for a first hand look. You will see a single interface into approximately 1.5 million documents. Don't worry, there is a way you can navigate through these without looking at each individual record. Just dive in and give it a try. Search for a term like "data center energy"and view the results or narrow them down by agency. Or click on those in the range of comment period you are interested in. which ever selection you pick, notice how all the other facets of the search change as you do. See how you can guide through the results and how the results keep giving you options for refining results? After you try it this way, can you imagine doing it any other way?
Government users are giving more access (there are nearly 4 million records accessible only by federal agency users on FDMS.gov).
Overall, as a CTO and an admirer of technologists at the large agencies, I enjoy pointing this out and really admire what these folks have done. Great Job! And as a citizen– Thanks!
Disruptive Technologies List Updated
The list of the positive technologies I believe all enterprise Chief Technology Officer s should be tracking has now been updated. Please check it out at:
http://www.ctovision.com/disruptive-technology-list.html
I try to keep this list up by remaining in dialog with enterprise CTO s and soliciting their feedback on the list. I also keep watching what the venture capital folks are investing in and try to closely track what the big IT firms are up to. The result is the list.
I’ve also started writing slightly more detailed reviews of key positively disruptive technologies. I post them under titles “Disruptive Tech:…” and you can find links to those pages on the right hand side of the CTOvision.com blog.
For now this list includes:
- Disruptive Tech: Adapx
- Disruptive Tech: Adobe
- Disruptive Tech: Agent Logic
- Disruptive Tech: Attensity
- Disruptive Tech: Basis Technology
- Disruptive Tech: Centrifuge Systems
- Disruptive Tech: CopperEye
- Disruptive Tech: Endeca
- Disruptive Tech: Forterra Systems
- Disruptive Tech: Initiate Systems
- Disruptive Tech: Inxight
- Disruptive Tech: Language Weaver
- Disruptive Tech: MetaCarta
- Disruptive Tech: PixLogic
- Disruptive Tech: Quantum4D
- Disruptive Tech: Triumfant
See also:
Special Request: Collaboration Tool Survey
With the help of vizu.com I have just created an online survey I’d appreciate you taking a quick look at. The survey is located at this link: http://www.ctovision.com/collaboration-tool-survey.html and is also, for now, along the lower right hand column of the CTOvision blog. You can enter your responses either place for a look at results.
The point of the survey is to get a quick feel for collaboration tools that CTOvision readers use. I don’t know what results to expect, but if there are conclusions of note I’ll blog about them here.
Thanks in advance
Bob
Enter my office: using Adobe Acrobat Connect
I have picked a primary online meeting tool for my consultancy (Crucial Point LLC). Although I will use any tool a client or associate needs me to use, the tool I prefer is Adobe Acrobat Connect.
Why did I select Adobe Acrobat Connect? A key reason is that no downloads are required for this to work (assuming, of course, that you have flash player installed on your system, which 98% of the computers on earth already do).
Clayton Christensen, Disruptive Innovations and Enterprise IT
Today I got to meet one of the most influential
thinkers/speakers/writers in the globe today– Clayton Christensen. He
spoke to a small group of technologists (CIOs and CTOs) at the Cisco IT
executive forum, and held us all spell-bound by his fascinating (but
sometimes dismal) projections based on his understanding of some major market forces.
Although I recognize most of the thoughts he presented from his
books and articles, it was good having his personal context. It may
help some of those concepts to sink it a bit more, and will help me as
I try to maintain an eye on the horizon for the next technology
disruptions.
One thing I realized right away is that I have been using the terms
he coined a little bit differently than he does. I hope that is just a
matter of perspective and not a misuse of the concepts he articulates
so well.
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