What is IT Renewal?

In the first post in this series, I discussed how information and technology are becoming ever more central to what an organization does and how it does it and how consumer technology is beginning to have a dramatic impact on enterprise IT. I referred to the actions an IT organization takes in response to these changes as “IT Renewal.”

In Part 2, I described three major opportunities for Cloud Computing to accelerate IT renewal:

1. Finding and validating new business opportunities.
2. Improving existing business capabilities.
3. Transforming how IT capabilities are managed and deployed.

I wrapped up the second post focusing on opportunity #3 from the list, arguing that IT Management is becoming a distributed activity that exhibits many of the characteristics of complex systems, where:

• Organization is a natural, spontaneous act;
• Emergent structure trumps imposed hierarchy and control;
• Creativity arises from variety and randomness;
• Relationships, porous boundaries, free flows of information and self-reference are essential to survival and growth.

These complex system characteristics lend themselves to the use of collaborative approaches to managing IT work – what I referred to as the “Five C’s” of Information Management.

The “Five C’s” of Information Management

As the management of information and technology becomes increasingly distributed and complex, five types of management activity emerge as important to the way work is done:

1. Collaborating
2. Coordinating
3. Connecting
4. Co-creating
5. Coalescing

Enabling the “Five C’s” in the Cloud

Because each of these activities is increasingly being conducted across time and space and across organizational boundaries, enabling them through flexible, scalable cloud solutions becomes an attractive proposition.

As an example, I’m currently working with a client who is refining their IT Operating Model so as to enable a new, growth-oriented business-IT strategy. They had determined that they wanted to support their IT work and forge stronger business relationships using Microsoft SharePoint. However, they are currently on SharePoint 2007 and recognized that they needed to move to SharePoint 2010 as their preferred collaboration and knowledge management platform. However, the upgrades to servers, licenses and related IT infrastructure was going to take 3-4 months, and a significant capital outlay. But, they did not want to lose the momentum they had already established in developing the new business-IT strategy.

As an alternative, we were able to set them up with a cloud-hosted SharePoint 2010 instance over one weekend, with zero capital outlay, and a very modest monthly cost that scales with the number of users, and therefore with the value delivered. Now, they are creating new levels of organizational clarity, establishing a continuously improving IT Operating Model, and experiencing new ways of working – collaborating, coordinating, connecting, co-creating and coalescing, against a set of Cloud-based software services.

Let’s take each of these in turn and see how they can help you “manage IT in the cloud.”

Collaborating on IT Work

Much IT work is performed through teams – increasingly distributed across geographies, organizations and time zones. This change forces a shift in work management from a document-centric (write-attach-email-review-attach-email, repeat ad infinitum) to a more collaborative Wiki-based approach, which has significant advantages:

• Wiki’s are inherently non-linear and encourage a ‘constructive informality’ that improves quality over time, drives organizational clarity and reduces or eliminates redundancy and contradictions. Wiki’s (well-managed!) let you stop wondering, “Is this the latest version? What was changed since the last version?”
• Wiki’s encourage multi-author collaboration. Whereas the typical document-centric approach has one or two main authors with everyone else in a review role, Wiki’s encourage a more collaborative approach to authoring – with higher engagement and understanding in the content.
• A Wiki approach dramatically simplifies search and discovery. The ability to hyperlink, tag, and use a well-factored semantic Wiki leads to content that is far more accessible, intelligible and searchable for all stakeholders.
• There are many good Wiki products available as SaaS, including SharePoint, Confluence, and MediaWiki.

Coordinating Activities in Time and Space

As IT work becomes more distributed, the need to coordinate activities in time and space becomes both increasingly important and challenging. And again, SaaS offerings are ideally suited to helping distributed teams coordinate their activities, including:

• Real-time communication and collaboration – e.g., IM, Google Wave
• Collaborative Project Management – e.g., Bamboo, BaseCamp
• Desktop videoconferencing – e.g., Go To Meeting, WebEx

Connecting People and Ideas

The need to identify and connect people and ideas is important to innovation and learning. As IT work becomes more distributed, cloud-based SaaS solutions become effective ways of connecting people and ideas, through tools such as:

• Social Networking – e.g., FaceBook, LinkedIn, Plaxo
• Mind Mapping – e.g., MindMeister, WebBrain, Bubbl.us
• Virtual Electronic Whiteboards – e.g., FlockDraw, Colabopad
• Social Network Analysis – e.g., Netminer, InFlow
• Innovation James – roll your own using a combination of cloud-based services

Co-Creating Experiences

As business and IT converge, opportunities emerge to co-create experiences with customers, consumers, suppliers, business partners, etc. New types of SaaS solutions for co-creation include:

• Modeling and Simulation – e.g., Creately, FlexSim, Second Life
• Prototyping – e.g., iRise, Dreamweaver
• Virtual Worlds – e.g., Second Life, There.com (currently closed)

Coalescing Around Ideas and Reaching Consensus on Decisions

With the increasing distribution of IT work comes the need to poll stakeholders, tap into sentiment, coalesce around ideas and reach consensus around decisions. And new approaches and supporting tools emerging into this space, including:

• Polling – e.g., Survey Monkey, Kluster, IdeaScale
• Group Decision Making – e.g., Resolve
• Prediction Markets – e.g., NewsFutures

Summary

One the one hand, the increasing complexity of the world of IT management, and the convergence between the work of professional IT organizations and their customers and consumers can seem like a daunting challenge for IT leaders – a threat to the order, security and stability they have worked so hard to achieve over the last 50 years of enterprise computing. On the other hand, the shift to the “information prosumer” and the distribution of IT work is forcing a new way of managing IT activities – across organizational boundaries, across geographies and across cultures.

Just as these shifts are taking place, the Internet as a computing platform and the rise of Web 2.0 and 3.0 capabilities promise a new set of rapidly evolving tools – available as Web services – accessible from mobile devices – and affordable by even the smallest business or even the individual consumer.

I believe these Cloud-based IT management capabilities offer a way for IT leaders to step ahead – to take the lead in learning how to deploy and take advantage of these services – and help to drive business-IT convergence for their organizations.

Illustration courtesy of Suzanne Lebeda at Adirondack Artists’ Guild

Related articles

• Leveraging the Cloud to Accelerate IT Renewal – Part 2 (vaughanmerlyn.com)

Why IT Renewal?

In the first post in this series, I discussed how information and technology are becoming ever more central to what an organization does and how it does it. I further argued that consumer technology is beginning to have a dramatic impact on enterprise IT – no big news unless you’ve been hibernating for a few years!

With the increasing significance of information and IT, the rapid spread of consumer IT and continued economic doldrums, business leaders are scrambling for any edge they can find to drive business growth and innovation, while keeping costs under control. It’s not just the consumer technologies (e.g., smart phones, tablet computers, sensors) being recognized as potential tools in the competitive battles for customers – it’s also the new workforce with their comfort with IT and expectations for new ways of working (e.g., instant messaging, presence computing, mobile everything.)

How The Cloud can Accelerate Renewal

So, why might Cloud Computing represent an important vehicle for delivering IT services? I see at least three major opportunities for Cloud Computing to accelerate IT renewal:

1. Finding and validating new business opportunities.
2. Improving existing business capabilities.
3. Transforming how IT capabilities are managed and deployed.

Let’s take these in turn and explore how Cloud Computing might fit into your situation.

Finding and Validating New Business Opportunities

Cloud-based services make it relatively easy for a business to experiment with new products, services and even new business models. Not having to procure or build costly infrastructure can reduce or even eliminate capital outlay. It can speed time to market and ensure future flexibility as market conditions and competitive responses change.

Short lead times, the ability to more closely align costs with benefits and the flexibility to scale up or down as needed represent an attractive value proposition for those wanting to explore the unknown. And an added attraction for using the Cloud to explore new business opportunities is that the need to integrate with existing systems and data will typically be less than that associated with replacing or upgrading existing solutions.

Improving Business Capabilities

This can be a more challenging play than the renewal situation above due to the need for interfaces to existing systems. But it can still represent a worthwhile approach, especially if current capabilities are lacking. If you’ve been diligent about Service Oriented Architecture, interfacing legacy applications with Cloud services should not present a significant challenge. If you’ve been proactive around business analytics and data warehousing, again, building necessary data interfaces should not be a reason to break a real sweat.

However, if you are behind the curve on SOA and business analytics, moving existing solutions to the Cloud might be more challenging. On the other hand, now might be a good time to catch up with the state of the art, and see what you’ve been missing in modernizing and virtualizing existing systems.

Transforming How IT Capabilities are Managed and Deployed

This is the Cloud play I am personally most excited by for several reasons:

• Traditionally, true to the “cobbler’s child” syndrome, IT organizations are typically quite lacking in their own use of IT – managing IT capabilities and assets via Excel spreadsheets, email and lots and lots of meetings!
• As I’ve noted before, moving to the Cloud is inevitable – the only question for CIO’s and the IT professionals that report to them is, “Will we lead the shift or be left in the dark while our business clients and customers race to the Cloud?” Leveraging the Cloud for internal IT purposes is one way of getting ahead of the game, at least in terms of learning and experience.
• I believe the nature of IT work, with its complexity and knowledge intensiveness, lends itself to a more collaborative and networked approach, which in turn lends itself to a Cloud-based platform.

So, how can IT organizations leverage Cloud services for internal use? First, we should recognize that as business and IT converge, the management of IT assets and capabilities is becoming both more complex and more distributed.

IT Management as a Distributed Activity

Roles that were traditionally held by IT professionals, such as business analytics and application configuration are devolving into the business units. IT professionals are assuming new roles such as sourcing management, information brokering and enterprise architects. Alvin Toffler, in his remarkable 1980 book The Third Wave, postulated that the separation of production from consumption was an unnatural act, and that technology would over time enable us all to become ‘prosumers’ – producing ourselves what we needed to consume. The Cloud truly opens the door to the age of the Information Prosumer.

IT Management as a Complex Activity

As IT management expands beyond the traditional roles of the IT professional to the emerging roles of Information Prosumers, the complexity of our IT environments is increasing. How can we turn the increasing complexity of the IT environment to our advantage?

The study of complex systems offers some important insights into this question. It teaches us, for example, that organization is a natural, spontaneous act and that emergent structure trumps imposed hierarchy and control. It reveals that creativity arises from variety and randomness. It highlights the importance of relationships, porous boundaries, free flows of information and self-reference.

These clues point us to what I refer to as the “Five C’s” of Information Management – Collaborating, Coordinating, Connecting, Co-creating, and Coalescing. And these Five C’s, it turns out, are ideally suited to Cloud-based services.

In the next and final part of this short series, we will drill into the Five C’s of Information Management, and how Cloud Computing represents a fast path to realizing these characteristics.

Image courtesy of Forex Learning Journal

This is the first in a multi-part post on what I’m referring to as “IT Renewal.”  Some people call this “IT Transformation” or “IT Transition”. Others don’t name it – they just do it as a natural part of how they run and continuously improve the ‘business of IT.’

The Convergence of Consumer IT and Business IT

Information and technology are becoming ever more central to what a company (or government, or any organization) does and how it does it. IT for the consumer world (think iPhones, iPads, Kindles, Facebook, eBay, and so on) and IT for the business world are converging. After all, business people are consumers, their customers are consumers, and how we navigate our personal lives spills over into our business lives and vice versa. And as the new workers join the workforce, they do so with an IT literacy and a set of expectations about how they will work, collaborate and communicate.

These consumer devices and services not only allow us to do our work in different ways (think mobile, for example), they also allow us to do different types of work (think sentiment analysis – what are our customers, prospects, competitors, et al saying about us? Or location-based marketing. Or participating in communities of interest or practice.)

The Changing Roles of the Corporate IT Organization

The convergence of business and consumer worlds is beginning to have a dramatic impact on corporate IT. Imagine the following scenario.

Mary, a sales and marketing Vice President, approaches her IT organization with a request to implement a CRM solution. “Yes – we can do that. It will take about 2 years to do, but we can’t get to it until next year. And it will cost about $20 Million, give or take 30%.”  Mary then sees an ad for ‘CRM in the cloud’ and calls the vendor. “Yes, we can get you started today. It’s probably best to start with a pilot group, which we can do for $40 per user per month. We can then bring the cost per user down as you scale up the number of users. And you get a 30-day free trial to make sure our solution fits your needs.”

So, what’s Mary going to do? She’s been charged with driving up sales and she’s convinced that a CRM solution is a key tool to do so. Easy choice, right? She goes ahead with the cloud solution. Variations on this scenario are playing out every day. The more visionary IT leaders are partnering with the Mary’s in their companies, and helping them chose the right vendor and deal with issues such as privacy, security, data ownership and so on. The less visionary leaders are in denial – the cloud is a passing fad. Mary’s going ahead with the Cloud solution anyway. The only question is, does she do it behind Corporate IT’s back, or with their blessing, help and guidance?

The Need for IT Renewal

In the previous paragraph, I used the labels ‘more visionary’ and ‘less visionary’. I could have use the terms ‘renewed’ and ‘un-renewed.’ Or, ‘transformed’ and ‘un-transformed’. Progressive IT leadership is working at repositioning the IT organization as a business enabler – no matter how and where IT capabilities are sourced. In many respects, the core IT roles are shifting towards Enterprise Architect and Integrator, rather than manager of data centers and server farms, developers of systems and software and managers of projects. This shift is what I’m referring to as ‘IT Renewal.’

The Cloud is Both a Driver – and an Enabler of IT Renewal

So, the key roles of an IT organization are being changed by the inevitable emergence of the Cloud as an option in the delivery of IT services. Can the IT organization also leverage the Cloud to enable and drive IT Renewal?

The answer is, I believe, a resounding, ‘yes’. And doing so is essential for getting ahead of the curve for all the Mary’s in our companies. When Mary comes to us, the first answer should be, “Yes, Mary – we can help you deploy a CRM solution. We’ve been investigating Cloud solutions for this type of need, and I think there are some very attractive options we can get you started with almost immediately and without massive capital outlays.” Even better, we approached Mary before she approached us, and told her about the potential for a low cost, relatively easy way to boost sales with a CRM capability.

Leverage the Cloud for Things You Can’t Do

I’ve been participating in a series of CIO Forums across the US, sponsored by Microsoft Windows Azure. It’s been a fascinating experience!  Much of the discussion in our panel Q&A’s has been around the challenge of moving legacy systems to the Cloud. While this might be an interesting cost reduction play, the best cases I’m seeing out there are about using the Cloud for things you can’t easily do today (such as helping Mary lift sales with a Cloud-based CRM!) And that is where I believe the path to IT renewal can begin, or, for those who are already on that path, can be accelerated. More in the next post in this series.

For a blog entitled “IT Organization 2017″ and for a management consultant who has had a very satisfying professional career consulting to IT organizations, the title of this post may seem both extreme and inappropriate.  However, I use the title not just as a controversial ‘hook’ to attract readership, but as a sincere expression of what I think is happening today – and will continue to do so.  The traditional role of the IT organization is on the decline and will never return to the importance and business value impact it had over the last 50 years.  The good news is, there is a crucial new role emerging – and for IT leaders that can envision and lead the new possibilities, I believe there’s a bright new future – perhaps brighter than the traditional IT leadership role.

So, Who Screwed Up the IT Organization?

I’m not sure this is anyone’s ‘fault’ per se, or could have been avoided.  Rather it is a natural by product of technological evolution.  Back in the late 1800′s, many corporations employed Chief Electrical Officers.  Nick Carr gets into this nicely in his aptly named book, “The Big Switch.”

A hundred years ago, companies stopped generating their own power with steam engines and dynamos and plugged into the newly built electric grid. The cheap power pumped out by electric utilities didn’t just change how businesses operate. It set off a chain reaction of economic and social transformations that brought the modern world into existence. Today, a similar revolution is under way. Hooked up to the Internet’s global computing grid, massive information-processing plants have begun pumping data and software code into our homes and businesses. This time, it’s computing that’s turning into a utility.”

The shift from electricity as a highly specialized resource to commodity took about a decade as standards such as voltage, alternating current, plug and socket configurations, and so on were settled.  Once the standards existed, businesses could simply plug into a grid – electricity became a commodity, and the Chief Electrical Officers become extinct as the Dodo.

An Historical Perspective

The first commercial mainframe computers, the LEO were created in 1951 by J. Lyons and Company, a British catering and food manufacturing firm.  The idea of a food and catering company today designing and building it’s own computer is unthinkable!  I remember in the late 1960′s, businesses such as Massachusetts General Hospital were creating their own programming languages, data base software and teleprocessing monitors – activities that would be considered wholly irresponsible today.  I wonder if 15 years from now we will look back at the turn of this century and be bemused by the fact that typical companies of any size at all maintained IT organizations – in some cases, thousands of IT professionals – writing programs, tending help desks, and so forth.

So, What’s Happening to the IT Organization?

For many years the annual surveys of top CIO issues list business-IT alignment. It’s a noble and challenging goal – and it’s no longer the right goal! A combination of technology advances, advances in standards and architectures (mostly prompted by the Internet revolution) and the increasing IT literacy across the business means that the challenge has moved beyond Business-IT Alignment to Business-IT Convergence.

From Business-IT Alignment to Convergence

Let’s drill further into this convergence phenomenon. Today, many IT activities, including project management, information analysis, application configuration are devolving into Business Units while others are consolidating with support functions such as HR, Finance, etc.  Helping to drive this is the rapid consumerization of IT devices and services, with iPhone’s, iPads, Android devices and the like becoming an important window into business systems and information.  Further driving this is the increasing ‘IT Savvy’ and confidence with IT that business executives, line managers and workers (especially, knowledge workers) increasingly feel.  This is in part generational – people entering the workforce with high IT literacy, and in part a byproduct of people’s engagement through social media, e-commerce and so on.

From Owning to Sourcing IT Capabilities

The last decade or so has seen a shift from owning all needed IT capabilities (data centers, server farms, software teams, application development groups, desktop support, etc.) to sourcing these capabilities externally.  Today, traditional functional outsourcing is being continuously expanded, and now often includes Business Process outsourcing as well as the outsourcing of compute power, data storage, IT infrastructure, applications and platforms through the rapid rise of Cloud Computing.

Information is Becoming both Strategic and Implicit

Information is becoming an increasingly strategic asset.  There is compelling research data showing how companies are successfully embracing and competing on business analytics.  At the same time, data is also becoming implicit to business management and operations – increasingly representing what the business manages and how it manages. In many respects, the context for IT today is becoming less about IT and more about information – the ability to capture, integrate, interpret, predict, and act is increasingly the holy grail of competitive advantage – and that belongs in the business – not in a separate specialist group.

So, Where Do IT Capabilities Belong?

Now, I’m on dangerous ground, because the answer depends – on the nature of the business, IT savvyness of business managers and knowledge workers, and their vision for how they want to deploy and manage information and IT.  But, I’d argue that many IT capabilities belong in business operations.  For example:

• Business Process Management
• Business Analytics
• Project Management
• Satisfying Business Unit application needs

Other IT capabilities belong in the governance of the business.  This might include, for example:

• Enterprise Architecture
• IT Strategy
• Portfolio and Program Management

And finally, some IT capabilities should be centrally coordinated and shared. Examples here include:

• Common and shared IT Infrastructure
• Enterprise Applications

So, What Are the Implications for IT Leadership and the IT Professional?

I will save that for a follow-up post, but suffice it to say that most companies and their IT organizations are not quite ready for the shift I’m espousing (and, indeed, predicting).  And, I think it is the clear responsibility of IT leadership to help lead this revolution – ensuring that it is orderly and safe – ensuring that the business and IT professionals are fully prepared and able to take advantage of business-IT convergence.

Please join me in the next post on this topic – and in the meantime, please weigh in with your perspectives and observations.

Painting by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre: The Sack of Rome by the Barbarians in 410

How Can You Measure and Compare Service Providers – Including Yourself?

What does it really cost you to deliver a given service?  How does that cost change as you adjust service quality parameters?  How does it change if you incorporate elasticity into service quality – allowing, for example, for peak loads to increase by a factor of 100 on, say, Valentine’s Day?

These questions have never been easy to answer.  Even with attention to Service Management, and with the use of frameworks such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), most IT shops are not great at measuring these things.  Then, along comes Cloud Computing, with some very appealing value propositions, and potentially, a quick way to offer business services, flexible service levels and agile platforms.  Just how well do the various cloud vendors perform?  How can you compare one vendor against another – or against your internal service capabilities and performance?

To help answer these questions, there’s a new game in town called the Service Measurement Index. According to the Cloud Commons web site:

Hailed as an industry first, the Service Measurement Index (SMI) is a set of business-relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that provide a standardized method for measuring and comparing a business service regardless of whether that service is internally provided or sourced from an outside company. Designed to become a standard method to help organizations measure business services based on their specific business and technology requirements, the SMI enables individual preferences to be the basis for what defines a good service.”

The SMI framework, originally created by CA Technologies, was recently transferred to the Cloud Service Measurement Initiative Consortium (CSMIC) to be independently developed and run.  The CSMIC is a consortium of academic institutions and representatives of business and government that is led by Carnegie Mellon University – source of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).  The CSMIC currently comprises four Working Groups:

• Service Characteristics & Definitions (includes Taxonomy)
• Measures and Metrics
• Literature and Relationship Review
• Adoption and Strategy

The SMI Framework

The SMI Framework provides an holistic view into the entire customer experience for cloud service providers in six primary areas:

• Quality
• Agility
• Risk
• Capability
• Cost
• Security

Somewhere between JD Power & Associates and Consumer Reports, the SMI promises to provide a standardized way to describe, measure and, ultimately, benchmark service providers using ‘apples to apples’ comparisons.  Users of the SMI Framework should be able to compare cloud service vendors against their specific business and technology requirements.  They should also be able to make real-time decisions about where and how best to migrate or deploy an application.

Tackling the Largest Part of the IT Budget

While the White House attempts to reign in an ever expanding budget deficit by nibbling around the edges, most IT shops realize that the largest component of their budget goes to “keeping the lights on and the trains running on time.”  Making a serious dent in this budget could free up money and resources for higher value activities.

The jury is still out as to whether cloud computing will live up to all its claims for cost-effectiveness, but with the SMI, at least over time we will have the means to make those comparisons and make informed decisions about how best to source computing resources and services.

Join Me In a Live Conversation About The Cloud

As a reminder, I head out this week across the US for a series of CIO Forums about Threats and Opportunities In The Cloud.   Please click on the link for details and to sign up for this event!

Related articles

• Enabling Trust In The Cloud (chucksblog.emc.com)
• Addressing the Need for Cloud Service Assurance (blogs.cisco.com)
• Cloud services: trust, but verify (zdnet.com)

I believe that there is an inevitability to the Cloud as a new way to deliver capability and functionality and that the implications are far reaching for IT organizations.  One implication that I am already seeing play out is the disintermediation of the IT organization as businesses look to short cuts and workarounds to get their pet initiatives deployed.  This is not inherently bad, but it is a slippery slope.  Businesses will unwittingly take on risks they don’t understand and ultimately, it will be the responsibility of the CIO to sort out the mess!

Cloud Computing and Business-IT Maturity

I’ve also posted extensively on the Business-IT Maturity Model and for this CIO Forum Series I will be examining the threats and opportunities for Cloud Computing at each level.

The event will be held in 4 US cities as follows (please click on the link for the city you are interested in signing up for to be taken to the appropriate registration page):

• Chicago on February 17
• Houston on February 22
• Dallas on February 23
• Seattle on March 3

Here’s a quick introduction to the events:

Agenda

The agenda for each session will follow the same format:

• 6:00 – 6:30 Drinks
• 6:30 – 7:30 Dinner
• 7:30 – 9:00 Introduction – Threats and Opportunities in the Cloud
• Business demand and IT supply maturity:
  • Challenges and Opportunities at Level 1: Infrastructure and Core Solutions
  • Challenges and Opportunities at Level 2: Business Process Enablement
  • Challenges and Opportunities at Level 3: Product, Process and Business Model Innovation
• Understanding the Cloud Provider Landscape
• Real-World Cloud Cases
  • Level 1 Case: Scaling through Infrastructure On Demand Outsourcing
  • Level 2 Case: Extending reach and enhancing customer experience
  • Level 3 Case: Innovating products and business models
• Building your Cloud Agenda
• Panel Discussion

Please join me and my co-presenter, Brian Orrell for what promises to be an informative and enjoyable evening!

The always-impressive Dion Hinchcliffe sums it all up perfectly in his post, “CoIT: How an accidental future is becoming reality“.  Hinchcliffe repurposes Computerworld’s Scott Finnie’s use of ‘CoIT’ as referring to the ‘consumerization of IT’ to a new term, ‘Cooperative IT.”  I’d like to humbly suggest yet another interpretation of CoIT as a shorthand for “Converged IT” – referring to a world where much of the work of the IT organization has converged with the business as a deeply embedded capability.

A Vision for CoIT

Hinchcliffe suggests some aspects for the vision of CoIT as embodying:

• Decentralized (or at least distributed) governance
• IT support that scales up to the new app/device proliferation
• Business led IT solutions with an enabling infrastructure

I think these are appropriate, though many details and realities to be yet worked through.  And, I believe, while the IT leaders who are most proactive in leading this shift will make some mistakes, they will also be the first to figure out the new realities and will ultimately make less mistakes and learn more quickly than their ‘ostrich’ counterparts who either believe this will all blow over, or that they can figure it out down the road.

What do you think?  Do you agree with Hinchcliffe’s vision?  What are you doing to exploit the emerging ‘converged’ reality of CoIT?

Digital Art: ‘Convergance’ by Wilby  courtesy of Iasos.

For IT Leaders, the Cloud Changes Everything!

For me, the big question is, what does the migration to Cloud Computing mean for today’s IT organization?  What structural changes are necessary to successfully leverage Cloud Computing capabilities?  How quickly should you be moving IT services to the Cloud?  How does the Cloud impact the IT Service Portfolio and the capabilities needed to deliver those services?  What are the implications for IT competencies?  How does business-IT governance change in a Cloud Computing world?

I think these are important questions whose answers are not yet totally clear.  As I reflect back on the shift from mainframe to client-server computing, many IT organizations were less than stellar at anticipating needed changes.  As a result, they experienced more bumps and potholes in that journey than was necessary.  For example, for all that had been learned about back-up and recovery in a mainframe world, the onset of client-server computing created gaping holes in the IT organization’s ability to cope with data protection and loss at the Personal Computer level.  The same was true for the evolution from client-server to the web – many of the controls put in place for client-server computing were ineffective (and some even counter-productive) as more work moved to the Internet.

Which Aspects of Cloud Computing Could Bite Your IT Organization?

In the next few posts I will explore some of IT organizational implications of Cloud Computing.  Aspects we will examine will include:

• Mobility implications – both for the business user and the IT professional charged with enabling that user.
• The distinctions between Infrastructure as a Service, Applications as a Service, Platform as a Service, Development as a Service and Business Process Services and how these impact IT organizations.
• The distinctions between Public, Private and Community Clouds and their implications for IT.
• Accounting implications, including funding and budgeting.
• Implications for Business-IT Governance.
• Security and Privacy.
• Implications for the work teams and flow of work involved in requirements analysis to solutioning.
• Impact on Enterprise Architecture.
• Implications for IT Services and Service Management.

Please weigh in – let us know your experiences, issues and concerns about the shift to the Cloud.  Do you agree with my assessment that this shift is inevitable?  How fast do you see it happening?  What does it mean for you personally, and for your career?

IT Reality 1.0

Reality 1.0 holds that IT must be managed.  It is difficult and complex – fraught with crucial technical details.  Mastering these details requires teams of technical experts, following rigorous processes and procedures.  Issues that mere mortals don’t often think about – things such as back up and recovery, security and privacy, regulatory compliance, business continuity – must be planned for and managed by IT specialists who have been properly trained and certified in these disciplines.

Reality 1.0 holds that IT should be owned, and certainly, must be controlled internally.  It holds that business users must be protected – both from themselves and from the raft of vendors and consultants, all trying to sell them stuff that could cost them money (at the very least) and might even get them in trouble.

Reality 1.0 holds that qualified IT resources are scarce and costly.  They take time to develop and cannot be ramped up or down quickly.  Therefore, long term planning and concerns about scaling are constantly on the IT professional’s mind.

Reality 1.0 is obsessed with risk avoidance.  Constantly aware of many of the horror stories that are told around the IT campfires (and sometimes involved in either perpetrating or recovering from such horrors), IT leaders work to prevent the many risks associated with IT.

Given resource and risk issues with IT, Reality 1.0 deploys sophisticated tools and governance processes to filter the many opportunities for IT-enablement and weed out all but the key initiatives that justify the the investment and risks.

Reality 1.0 perceives the world of IT as relatively closed and proprietary.  Therefore, it is obsessed with IT architectures and standards – with figuring out how to weave together point solutions into capabilities that meet enterprise needs.

Reality 1.0 is about large projects and solutions – multi-month, sometimes multi-year initiatives designed to last for years.

Reality 1.0 separates the world into ‘development’ and ‘production.’  The move from one to the other is like the move through an airlock – from a dangerous and polluted free-for-all into the safe, secure and sterile data center.

IT Reality 2.0

Reality 2.0, by contrast, holds that IT is simple, ubiquitous and inherently safe.  Almost anyone can be creative and productive with IT – all they need is an Internet connection and a device equipped with a web browser.  If the user knows nothing, they can simply leverage what is already on the web – and learn as they do so.  If they know a little, and are adventurous, they can do much more than passively leverage what is already there – they can “mash up” new capabilities from existing ones to solve new problems.  They can learn as they go, become even more adventurous and creative – perhaps even commercialize what they have created.  Over time they will become even more skilled – creating more sophisticated solutions – or leveraging ‘crowdsourcing‘ to engage others to help them create the solutions they need.

Reality 2.0 does not care about IT ownership or control – they care about results.

Reality 2.0 sees the world as a sea of opportunities and solutions to be tried and exploited.

Reality 2.0 sees IT resources as ubiquitous – found with a click of the mouse, engaged with a few more clicks, and paid only when they’ve delivered.  Resources are paid for as they are needed – no long term commitments or overhead payments to worry about or justify.

Reality 2.0 is about risk management – moving incrementally and organically, managing risks as they are recognized.

Reality 2.0 has no time for bureaucratic processes such as governance committees and cost justification rigmaroles.  It sees any opportunity as worthy of a quick experiment to see if its real – it believes that in the time it takes to create a business case or wait for the next governance committee meeting, the idea can be tested and validated or eliminated – let the proof of the pudding be in the eating, so to speak, not in the political machinations of investment review bodies.

Reality 2.0 perceives the world of IT as essentially open.  Things in its world naturally fit together.  Therefore, things can be built in small incremental steps – evolving in the light of experience and changing needs.  Things can also be built as discrete point solutions – and yet still can be fitted together if need be.

Reality 2.0 is about small projects and solutions – created in days or weeks and designed for just as long as they are effective.

Reality 2.0 sees development and production as living side-by-side in some virtual place in the sky – while I’m working on its creation, it’s in development.  Once it’s working, I declare it ‘production’ and it is so.

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times…

If IT Reality 1.0 accurately reflected today’s world – as it did for most of the last 50 years or so – life would be ok for IT leaders.  Both they and their business consumers would understand their respective roles and would work together for the mutual good.  If Reality 2.0 accurately reflected the world – as it might do in the next 50 years or so, life would ok for IT leaders.  While their roles and those of their business consumers would be very different from those typical today, again they’d be on common ground.

The really big challenge today is that the reality today is neither 1.0 or 2.0 – it is in transition.  And in the immortal words of William Gibson, “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”  This ‘uneven distribution’ of IT Realities 1.0 and 2.0 is going to represent both a curse and an opportunity to IT leaders.  For the progressives, it’s a wonderful opportunity to shift IT into overdrive.  For the laggards, I fear that it’s going to make their lives more and more miserable!

Do you live in this dichotomy?  How quickly is reality 1.0 being replaced by reality 2.0?  Are these realities coexisting?  What are you doing to accelerate or impede the shift?

I introduced my ideas about leveraging Web 2.0 (broadly defined) to significantly drive up the value of business innovation – specifically by following the principles and processes of Design Thinking.  I’ve been getting to this point in my last series of posts (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.)  In fact, those posts were largely written as I was developing my session materials.

Does ‘Design Thinking’ Have Legs?

Part of my thesis built upon the success of the Design Thinking movement that has gelled over the last 5 years.  I have found the success stories compelling, and the underlying principles resonate with my own experiences and values over the last 30 years in trying to leverage IT for increased innovation.  However, I was troubled by the recognition and acceptability of the term ‘Design Thinking’ – especially in the US.  The text of a 2007 speech by BusinessWeek‘s Bruce Nussbaum given in London tipped me off that there might be a problem here.

Nussbaum’s Banana…

In his 2007 speech to the Royal College of Art, Nussbaum noted:

In the US, CEOs and top managers hate the word “design.” Just believe me. No matter what they tell you, they believe that “design” only has something to do with curtains, wallpaper and maybe their suits. These guys, and they’re still mostly guys, prefer the term “innovation” because it has a masculine, military, engineering, tone to it. Think Six Sigma and you want to salute, right? I’ve tried and tried to explain that design goes way beyond aesthetics. It can have process, metrics all the good hard stuff managers love. But no, I can’t budge this bunch. So I have given up. Innovation, design, technology—I just call it all a banana. Peel that banana back and you find great design. Yummy design. . The kind of design that can change business culture and all of our civil society as well.”

One of the first to make the Web 2.0 connection, Nussbaum went on to say:

Innovation is no longer just about new technology per se. It is about new models of organization. Design is no longer just about form anymore but is a method of thinking that can let you to see around corners. And the high tech breakthroughs that do count today are not about speed and performance but about collaboration, conversation and co-creation. That’s what Web 2.0 is all about.”

I tested the waters of my Summit attendees, first by asking how many in the room had some familiarity with the term ‘Design Thinking’?   Three hands shot up, and a couple sort of hovered around shoulder level (presumably meaning, “I’ve heard of it, but please don’t call on me to talk about it!”).  Of the three hands, two were from companies for whom I had Design Thinking case studies about and who were listed in my very first slide (I had not at this point turned on the projector.)  The third hand was from a senior executive at a major Industrial Supply company that I had not expected to be particularly Design Thinking literate.  So, test 1 indicated that the term is not widely known.  Of course, this does not necessarily mean that Design Thinking is not widely practiced – perhaps all 60 companies in the room do in fact excel at Design Thinking, but refer to what they do as some variation of Nussbaum’s ‘banana’?  However, I truly doubt this.  In fact, the many one-on-one conversations that I had with the executives at this summit during the reception and dinner following my presentation supported my sense that explicit efforts to drive up the value of business innovation are relatively few and far between.

Are Design Thinkers Web 2.0 Enabled?

To the larger part of my thesis, there was little evidence at this Summit that any form of Web 2.0 was being explicitly leverage to support Design Thinking (or innovation, or the banana!)  There were a few ‘accidental experiments’ and emergent social networks – both internal and external – but nothing claimed as part of a deliberate, holistic effort to increase innovation through Web 2.0 technologies.  This for me was the big surprise.  The Senior Vice President of Strategy from one of the Design Thinking literate companies told me at the reception, “When you first connected Design Thinking and Web 2.0 in your presentation, I thought you’d completely lost it!  But as you gave examples, the light bulbs began to turn on – I think you are onto something!”  This was gratifying indeed – well worth the price of admission!

Graphic courtesy of RI Nexus

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