Making IT Happen

It is easy to think that the private sector makes the running on internet innovation, but many public sector and not for profit organisations have achieved some very impressive results. One example is the Philhatrmonia Orchestra, where Richard Slaney and his team produce a stream of innovative and exciting ideas. Some examples include:
1 - PLAY.orchestra - which set out in public places a series of white cubes representing their entire orchestra. When someone sat on a cube that 'instrument' would start playing - so if all the cubes were occupied you got the whole orchestra.
2 - Sound Samples which is a library of every note that can be played by every instrument - there are tens of thousands, and you can join these together to compose your own piece.
3 - Groove Search - in which people could send in brief compositions via their web site, with the orchestra recording the best 20.

On reflection, I think organisations like this are well placed to think creatively about how the internet can help them achieve their goals. Any private sector organisation would be proud of this kind of excellence and innovation.

I was on my way to meet with one of my most important software partners today when a question occurred to me. Am I a smart customer? So I asked them that if they were one of their customers for day, what would they do differently (other than just placing a massive order with themselves, of course.)? Their response:

Before doing a deal
1. share the big picture - issues and opportunities - don't just focus on 'ticking the box' for a particular problem
2. do keep some distance to get the right deal

After the deal
1. Plan ahead
2. Put more effort in up front - it's a lot easier to get things right at this stage than later on
3. 'Trust us'. My summary of what they said is that your issues and opportunities might seem unique to you but if that means you are all over your supplier you might be crowding them out. They are probably smart people who want to do a good job - let them get on with it. It will be pretty obvious if they are just trying to flog you something you don't need.

I asked them which of their customers got most value out of them (excluding us), and they came up with a couple of examples - one in the UK and one in the middle east. They felt that both of these got the most bang for their buck by being smart customers. It made me think that most software comapnies must have a view on which are their smart customers that get good value, and which are their dumb ones that get fleeced. Here's hoping I'm not in the second category with anyone.

Interesting article in today's FT on red tape.

It refers to four examples picked from more than 280 'deregulation' measures. What's interesting is that three of them - on-line risk assessments, sending information to shareholders by e-mail, and lodging planning applications on-line - don't really cut red tape, they automate it. Nothing wrong with that, if it makes things more efficient, but I'm not sure it counts as deregulation.

Fascinating story in Computing last week about the creation within the US Air Force of Afcyber - a 30,000 strong 'army' for cyber warfare.

The article goes on to mention that there is no military equivalent in the UK. I find this surprising. I remember attending a lecture by Major General Sir Laurence New who described his role commanding a tank division (or other military grouping - not sure what Major Generals command in the hierarchy of things) in West Germany in the 1980's. Someone asked him what the most important part of his job was and he responded "readiness". He went on to elaborate that with how ever many soviet divisions just across the border, his troops had to be constantly ready to meet the threat.

Do we have the same level of readiness to meet cyber equivalent of the wave of soviet tanks? I'm thinking of theose military comparison maps with numbers of tanks, planes, ships etc - how would we fare in the equivalent cyber warfare resources map?

Went to an excellent update meeting this morning run by Cordless Group - This covered the overlap between technology, work and people. Neil Salton their (deep breath) Senior Technology Visioning Consultant gave an excellent talk based on his experiences of attending some of the big Euro tech shows like Cebit.

There is an incredible array of new stuff out there. I tapped notes into my Blackberry and at the end had come up with: "Team communications, ms ocs, e.g. web conf group instant messaging, better phones eg wifi, share point, public instant messaging , virtual Margaret, 3d, display technology, multi screen, web cams, blu ray, oled, 3d, blu casting, styles of collaboration, better use of tech, short throw projectors, ultra mobile pc, data input, tablets, asus ultra mobile, giraffe pc, independent docking stations, face recognition, printing eg printstick, run own reprographics inc binding and stapling, rfid, active rfid tags, changing networks, use of mobile data, iphone corporate, smartphone interfaces symbian interface, google, iphone, windows mobile, femtocell at home"

A few priorities for my company: multiple screens, desktop video conferencing, Microsoft OCS, corporate iphone. (No great corporate benefits for the iPhone but I may apply Burstows CIO law - that user satisfaction rises at the square of the rate of distribution of shiny new trinkets).

"Infodemic" is a term coined by David Rothkopf to describe an "information epidemic" where "few facts, mixed with fear, speculation and rumor, amplified and relayed swiftly worldwide by modern information technologies, have affected national and international economies, politics and even security in ways that are utterly disproportionate with the root realities."

Sounds to me like some corporate reporting systems I have known, The reason I mention this is that we are now looking at the next stage of our corporate reporting evolution - or business intelligence, as I must learn to call it.

We put in Business Objects years ago and upgraded to Xi 12 months ago but we have never really got the ROI we wanted, and are considering a shift to the evolving Microsoft platform of PerformancePoint / SQL Server Analysis Services.

Gartner's Business Intelligence Magic Quadrant for 2008 is a useful start.

I was intrigued to see a link for Business Continuity Planning at the bottom of the homepage of the Lehman Bros website. Follow the link and the blurb says "Lehman Brothers has instituted industry-leading best practices for business continuity". Maybe we need a broader definition of business continuity?

Mind you their careers page is still up.

I recently did a talk in a conference in Orlando on this subject. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine that everyone in the IT industry regards 'user requirements' as sacrosanct. In reality end users might not have the faintest idea of new technologies, and therefore tend to frame their requirements around what they know.

To prepare for the talk I googled the phrase in the title, and got thousands of responses - generally software companies claiming their software 'works the way you do'. This got me thinking about the Henry Ford quote "If I had asked people what they want they would have asked for a faster horse". In researching this I found a modern equivalent - Steve Jobs quoted in Fortune as saying "We do no market research". And he sold 6.9M iPhones in Q3.

This got me thinking further, and I googled the phrase "Software that works the way it works". And got one response. One. And that was meant in a derogatory fashion.

What's the disconnect here - how come Apple can brag that their hardware / software product works in the new and wonderful ways it works, but corporate IT departments and suppliers are beholden to producing stuff that replicates current (often bad) practices?

I've been quiet on the blog since Christmas, grappling with our acquisition of Trillium.

From an IT perspective this is now leading to the integration of the two teams, resulting in a huge amount of work. I am now IS Director of the combined group and my focus is on three things - quick wins, longer term integration, and not taking our eye off the operational ball in the meantime. I'm planning to use the blog to tell the story of the integration, so watch this space.

Initial impressions? Culture - in many ways similar, but in some ways quite different - if we can get the best of both we'll be fine.

I went to a Computer Weekly roundtable this week on the subject of Unified Communication. There were 20 or so CIO's there, including Ian Robinson, Group IT Director, McLaren Group, who explained how his COO had described Unified Communications as 'oxygen' for the group. Others described ideas that seemed to me to have huge potential for competitive advantage for their organisations.

The more I listened the more I was convinced that this should form a new and distinct part of our IT strategy, rather than have it rolled up in our infrastructure strategy, which is where it used to sit. I doodled a mind map as we went, which I have attached  UC.tif  - key themes included software such as Microsoft OCS, technology such as IPT, and solutions such as desk-to-desk video conferencing.

A bit like Web 2.0, UC isnt so much one particular technology as a cluster of technical and social trends.