You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Innovation’ tag.
If you’ve been in IT long enough you probably remember the famous motto stated by Sun CEO Scott McNealy in the 90′s: “The network is the computer”. McNealy’s promise was a decade ahead of its time. I think it is safe to say that today the network is a big part of the computer. But is the network ready to fully supplant our local computing devices? Despite recent proclamations that “everything is a service” I believe that technologies such as cloud computing have a long way to grow before replacing traditional computing architectures.
A number of trends are pushing the development of cloud computing:
– Consumer technology innovation is pushing business technology innovation
– Businesses are adopting collaboration and team-oriented work methodologies
– Cloud computing is driving down CapEX and OpEx for businesses
– Barriers to entry such as connectivity, reliability, and security are decreasing
These trends are great for small businesses and start-up companies. But I believe that cloud computing faces a number of adoption challenges in medium and large enterprises. Here are just a few:
No standards. All the big guys (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc…) are building out cloud computing platforms today. The problem is that all of these application publishing platforms are different. I can easily move my Windows applications from a local Dell server to a local HP server. I can’t move my application from Google’s cloud to Amazon’s cloud. I can’t see enterprises betting the farm on a single cloud computing platform.
Legacy code. Large enterprises are running legacy code written decades ago. Cloud computing does not offer the cost savings to justify a rewrite of these legacy applications yet.
Performance. A cloud storage technology like Amazon’s S3 will not come close to matching the performance of local storage resources like a NetApp SAN in the foreseeable future. The use of cloud storage is limited to applications with low performance requirements.
Security. Cloud computing and storage vendors will have a tough time convincing large enterprises (and their auditors) that data is securely managed in their cloud infrastructure. I work with businesses every week that dismiss shared computing architectures in favor of dedicated computing resources. Until businesses are comfortable “crossing the streams” we won’t see large adoption of cloud computing by enterprises.
I wrote an article in my company’s blog 6 months ago questioning “green” policy efforts. I’ve been doing some more thinking about this subject lately as I’ve come across articles about taxing energy producers to offset global warming.
Let’s think about this logically.
Energy is required to innovate. Physicists need to run simulations on grid supercomputers. Large disk systems are required to store testing data. Email and collaboration tools are required to coordinate project teams. All of these activities require power.
As you increase the cost of power you increase the cost to innovate. Increasing the cost of innovation will likely slow innovation and decrease the number of companies pursuing innovation.
I believe we should focus on decreasing the cost of energy versus building an artificial energy market using tax credits or carbon caps. What we have today is a situation where government is manipulating the energy market to force changes in energy production and costs.
I agree that we should minimize our impact to the planet by reducing waste. I want to leave my children a cleaner world than my grandparents left me (which actually won’t be hard to do). But making it harder to innovate and solve energy production problems at a time we need it most is kind of like cutting off our nose to spite our face. I would rather increase pollution over the next 10 years and keep energy costs low if that meant we could find a longterm energy solution faster.
Many proponents of artificially inflating the cost of energy believe that this will spur change in the market. I agree that this will create change: even more companies moving manufacturing and operations to countries like China and India that are building power plants like mad. But even if you believe that artificially increasing energy costs will drive companies to look for new forms of energy you have to make a big bet: new and cheaper forms of energy will be found.
Maybe instead of creating a carbon trading system people should be buying stock in companies that are researching new forms of energy production. At least they would be putting their money where their mouth is. They could be part of the solution versus becoming a barrier.
I still don’t know exactly how to define what a CTO does — and I am one. It’s one of those techie titles that means different things to different people. Some people think that a CTO is the head tech guy within an organization. He is the wizard behind the curtain. Others look at him as the futurist that always understands the pulse of the technology ecosystem.
CTOs are dangerous. They generally like change. They are a fast moving part in a slow moving system. They take risks because failing is better than succeeding poorly.
They have more technology smarts than most people in an organization. But those smarts can also be a weakness. Ego can create divisions and resentment. People want to be lead and not driven.
Some parts move faster in an analog clock than others. But all parts have to follow the same beat, the same rhythm. Sometimes CTOs want to beat their own drum and lead the organization in a direction it doesn’t want to go.
I read an interesting article this week in CIO.com about unhealthy CTO roles: CTO: A Dangerous Title. The article is definitely worth a read. The one negative is that it doesn’t tell me what a healthy CTO should be doing in an organization.
How does a CTO encourage innovation within an organization? It seems to me that one person can’t do it all. Innovation has to start from the ground up. Each staff member in an organization needs to provide input. The management team is there to support innovation and make sure resources are available to build upon innovative ideas.
I sense the struggles to generate and sustain innovation in my organization. Many of our management team members are concerned about reliability. Certainly reliability is a key part of any datacenter company’s reputation. But oftentimes reliability is equated with the status quo. Innovative ideas are viewed as risky and therefore a threat to reliability.
I’ve oftentimes considered splitting engineering and operations. Engineering could focus on innovation and operations could focus on reliability. But that flies in the face of the principle that innovation can arise from any part of the organization.
I’m still looking for the solution.
