Data and meta-data

Data - A letter of recommendation

Mr. Most Hated, can always be found
hard at work in his cubicle. He works independently, without
wasting company time talking to colleagues. He never
thinks twice about assisting fellow employees, and he always
finishes given assignments on time. Often he takes extended
measures to complete his work, sometimes skipping
coffee breaks. He is a dedicated individual who has absolutely no
vanity in spite of his high accomplishments and profound
knowledge in his field. I firmly believe that he can be
classed as a high-caliber employee, the type which cannot be
dispensed with. Consequently, I duly recommend that he be
promoted to executive management, and a proposal will be
sent away as soon as possible.

Meta data

Kindly read every other line

Consumer IT and Archimedes

The rise of consumer IT means, everyone now is acquinted with various hardware and software artifacts. Many people have network routers at home, can create a small home office network all by themsalves. Make various applications on different computer work together. They can make applications share resources like printer, fax and scanners. They share data like photos and music across their own network and indeed over internet. They collaborate with their friends and family using voice and non-voice channels.

Some of these people are decision makers in corporate world. When they compare the ease with which they themsalves can make this happen, to their experience with enterprise IT, they get a rude shock. Some of them then start suspecting enterprise IT organisation of ineptitude and incompetance.

But they are wrong. As was Archemedes. Archemedes had famously said "Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth!". We now know, how wrong he was. For according to the "golden rule" of mechanics, the mechanical advantage derived will always be accompanied by a loss in displacement, or, in other words, in time. Even if Archimedes had been able to push the lever with a speed of 0.34 km/sec the speed of sound, he would have lifted the earth by one centimeter only after 93,264,094,069,895.84265 years. [More details can be found here.]

The question is of 'scale' and complexity introduced because of scale. One cannot project consumer IT experience onto enterprise IT on a linear scale. The non-architected approach that works in consumer IT scenario will not give same results. Moreover home networks and applications never grow beyond a certain threshold, they are changed more often without any worries of backward compatibility, ground up rebuild of whole application set is possible and indeed practiced. The enterprise IT behaves differently on these counts on account of scale, complexity and requirements from users. 

Archemedes anecdote tells us follies of projecting experiences from small scale to large scale. So, please, don't ever say "I can do it myself, with stuff from 'PC World'." 

Two computers per employee

There is an initiative to provide children in developing world with a laptop each. Which is very laudable. What will you think if I were to tell you that enterprises too have similar initiative. They are spending money, even in these turbulent times, to put an extra desktop computer on each employee's desk?

Well that's what you do when you put a specialised VoIP phone on each desktop. A VoIP phone is nothing but a computer which runs only one application, viz. a telephone. Of course there are applications, which can run on your existing desktop PC and provide same functionality - popularly known as Soft Phones.

In fact providing soft phones to every employee, especially those on move, will make more sense. Then they can use those soft phones to connect to the world while on move, while spending only on ISP connection.

So why does not this happen? Why we keep seeing those ubiquitous VoIP phones on each desk? 

I would attribute this to ineffective enterprise architecture governance. If you know how decision to introduce VoIP is made, you would understand my point. VoIP is typically introduced as upgrade to existing telephony infrastructure. Fact is,  it is NOT an upgrade to existing infrastructure. If you were to replace twisted copper cable network with optical network, that would have been an upgrade to existing infrastructure.  Introducing VoIP phones is same as introducing a new application in your enterprise, and hence should be subjected to same level of governance rigour to make sure it is consistent with your enterprise architecture and you understand full implications of your decision. 

When you decide to use a specialised VoIP phone over soft phone, you are implicitly stating an architecture principle, 'Appliance over application'. If you chose this principle, then adding extra capability (say ability to send faxes) may require a new appliance. Whereas if you chose 'application over appliance', it might be a simple feature update to existing application. See, what I mean?

I would rather have this principle established out of an enterprise IT oracle function rather than through sales pitch of a vendor.

Cloud or SaaS?

In response to my earlier post Apoorv  has pointed that there are questions on viability of SaaS model. My take is that SaaS is a commercial model whereas Cloud computing is an architectural approach. One can deploy cloud computing in an enterprise need not be as SaaS. In the same vein one can deploy SaaS with traditional tools, over proprietary infrastructure without cloud computing.

I feel Chrome has hastened the cloud up-take in enterprise. SOA has been found useful for integration of apps and sharing of services. SOA also promotes a vision of composite apps, where ultimate control of composing apps is put in end user's hand. SOA has not realised that vision yet. In my opinion cloud computing is a required enabler for this composite apps vision propagated by SOA. Without Cloud computing combined with SOA,  realising the composite application vision is very difficult - if not impossible. 

I also believe cloud may have positive impact on SaaS as a model. SaaS as commercial model may have viability issues. Again, I dont have enough data points, but my gut feel is a pure commodity applications can be successfully deployed in SaaS model. Trick is to make many users to accept it as commodity without any customisation. Does such pieces of commodity applications exists within enterprise application space? I believe so. But carving them out and putting them in SaaS mode is a challenge more in terms of organisational  inertia than a technology challenge. Without sufficient scale SaaS model is indeed doomed. The question is who buckles first, orgnisational intertia to change or the surviving capacity of SaaS providers.

So does cloud computing has future? Definitely. Does SaaS model have a future? May be, if SaaS providers can build the required scale by somehow overcoming orgnisational inertia. 

Google Chrome: Beginning of a new future?

The new browser released by Google is first nail in the coffin of desktop OS in enterprise computing. Chrome has taken over process management. It needs OS services only for hardware access. Wait for a Google VM directly accessing a hardware abstraction layer. Next step would be, to make it available on BIOS, enabling a full fledged diskless desktop.

Now most desktop applications are available over Cloud. They are interoperating with existing apps. So this is highly desired by many large organisations fatigued by desktop OS upgrades.
The future would be applications accessed by a Chrome like browser in Cloud (or for those who still prefer on-premise applications, there still may be appliances) from a diskless desktop.

Looks like this is beginning of a new future and end to enterprise computing as we know it. Well not really, we had exactly this situation earlier when 3270 terminals accessed big mainframe apps. Difference this time is

• The new diskless desktop will be more powerful than 3270 terminals and more multi-media capable.
• Network and protocols would be open standards based than proprietary.
• Software ownership model will be replaced by software tenancy or pay per use model

I am accepting bets on how fast this is likely to happen!Three, Five, Ten, Fifteen years?

Enterprise architecture: The missing link of business IT alignment

Business IT alignment is an issue most large enterprises grapple with. Normally there are separate organisational units for strategy and operations in enterprises. The business strategy unit formulates business strategy as a response to business drivers. Business leaders know, how to translate their business strategy into actionable items for business operations. That insured alignment of business operations with business strategy. IT strategy organisational unit formulates IT strategy, which needs to react to IT drivers in the market. IT organisations too are quite adept at translating IT strategy into actionable items for IT operations.

The problem arises when business strategy needs to cross over into world of IT operations for implementation. Or when IT strategy needs to cross into business operations for implementation. And more often than not, this is the case. This has been quite nicely described in an article [“Strategic Alignment: A model for organisational transformation through information technology,” in T. Kochan & M. Unseem, eds,Transforming Organisations, Oxford University Press, NY, 1992] by Henderson and Venkatraman, quite a few years back.

And each time the cross over happened, translation is required to and fro between these organisational units.Enterprise architecture function is on the cross-roads of these four arms of business, carrying out that translation. Since EA function is at the boundary of strategy and operations, it has to deal with both 'Micro' and 'Macro' at the same time. For the same reason it also has to deal with 'What' and 'How' at the same time. The key is to understand, that while EA is accountable for 'What' and 'Macro' part, it is responsible for 'How' and 'Micro' parts.

In lay persons terms, at strategic level the EAs are influencers. Their advise is accepted in making decisions. This role is bestowed upon them because they are thought to be capable of making things happen on the ground. The decision makers listen to EA about 'What' part because they expect EAs to take responsibility for the 'How' part.

Following this logic clarifies the duality of EA role.

• Strategizing and architecting at Macro level
• Consultancy and Governance at Micro level
  

While EAs want to spend more time on former than later, their wish may or may not be granted based on maturity of the IT organisation. And I am afraid, that is a sad fact of life in enterprise IT.

Does IT matter?

It has been more than five years since Nick Carr made his prediction about IT becoming inconsequential. His argument was that IT will become so standardized that it would cease to have competitive advantage. IT would roughly follow a utility provider type of evolutionary path. Since then we have had great strides made in Cloud/Grid computing and it appears IT infrastructure is on its way to become standardised. Though I have made points about capacity issues here and here, except for one major incidence there is no other slip up yet. Many of components (the Intellectual Property of IT), sitting on top of IT infrastructure such as ERP, CRM, BPM too, are standardised to great degree. So are we really going to have a standardized IT environment and hence IT would not matter strategically?

IT was necessary and sufficient for competitive advantage till some time back. But with the standardisation and proliferation of IT, it has become necessary but no longer sufficient for competitive advantage. What that means is just investing in IT will not give companies the strategic advantages. It however does not mean that IT investments can be simply cut back. So enterprises are going for the more bang for the buck thru outsourcing of infrastructure and business as usual activities, and the utilising the savings for transformational initiatives.

The next focus area for competitive advantage will be driving out risk in implementing these standardised capabilities. The enterprise who could implement these capabilities faster and reliably, will get the advantage. In my opinion we are in middle of this phase. This is when enterprise architecture and project management practices are being defined and utilised to its fullest. Over a period, these implementation practices too will be common place.

Then there still may be opportunities to gain competitive advantages thru IT. Unless you believe there are limits to human mind and how much it can innovate - this is a distinct possibility. But the investments needed for such endeavours will be so high that, only outsourcers will invest in innovation and then charge enterprises differently thru differentiated offerings. Once that happens, the utility model will break down and enterprises will start moving to a non-utility model. It does not happen to utilities, because what utility companies distribute is indeed a commodity (well you cannot give more pure water to some of your consumers and charge more, can you?).

We are back to square one, aren't we?

That to me appears to be future of enterprise IT. So IT would continue to be of importance to enterprises, but enterprise would squeeze more value out of IT by using IT as shared utility rather than a captive resource. And this in the end it may result in IT becoming a captive resource again. Well this has happened in past. I wasn't born then, but I have heard stories about IBM Service Bureau and their shared services model.

SOA Fable: Can you handle the pressure???

One of my friends had this experience in recent past, which relates to SOA.
He had his storage boiler system replaced with a combination boiler. A storage boiler system, heats the water and stores in a container to be distributed on demand. Whereas the combi boiler does not need a storage tank for hot water. It directly connects mains to all taps, heating the water while its flowing thru the boiler. So it supplies hot water at mains pressure. The combi boiler is very energy efficient because it heats water only when needed and does not waste heat while hot water is stored. There was an unintended consequence of this introduction of efficiency. Till now all showers were shielded from mains pressure by a storage tank, but now all they were exposed to mains pressure. Within short span of time, all his showers broke down because they were not rated to work with mains pressure. He had to replace all his showers to work on mains pressure.

What is the relevance of this tory to SOA? In SOA, services are introduced in an evolutionary manner. We cannot design the entire enterprise in one go for services usage. We keep on introducing the services as and when we can. Service consumers too come on board, as and when they can. It means that overall configuration of system in terms of service suppliers and consumers is very dynamic. So you are not sure what non-functional change you will be exposed to, as a service consumer. If a upstream service were to become more efficient it might mean additional workload for downstream services. How do you handle such an upserge in demand?
The key is to be prepare to accept unprecedented demand. SOA is desirable but not EASY....

EA Governance

It has been a while since I posted on this blog. This discussion initiated by Todd is of some interest to me and got me motivated to post this entry.

I had spoken at Open Group Conference, about the same. My presentation can be seen here (subscription required).

My concise picture of EA governance is as below.


The governance function of EA can roughly be divided into three broad categories, viz. legislating, ensuring compliance to legislation during execution and adjudicating the non-compliance.

When people talk about governance they mainly talk about compliance and adjudication, as pointed out by Todd. But for me the most important piece of governance is legislation . That is - when principles, policies, standards and references, which defines the compliance framework, are set. A broader community participation at this stage and a feeling of belonging, improves the compliance and lessens need for adjudication. Otherwise it appears that EA group is pushing its own agenda on practitioner community and practitioners actively resist such a push. Which leads to a lot of adjudication, requiring lot of management attention.

I am not saying EA legislation needs to be a totally democratic process and must follow democratic norms. But at the same time, it should not appear to be totally autocratic top-down process, thrusting legislations down practitioner's throat. In large IT organisation critical projects get caught in adjudication cycle and EA gets bad press precisely because legislation has not taken on board various points of views.

That reminds me of the role of free press. If we compare EA governance to civic governance, the piece that is missing is 'Free Press' or a communications function. It is a bi-directional communication channel which informs practioners of strategist's intent and allows practitioner's to report back their experiences from trenches to strategists, so that strategies can be suitably altered.

The social media is a good candidate for fulfilling all these functions. It can be utilised to empower the practitioner community to participate in legislation process and can also function as 'Free Press' so that bi-diretional communicaiton can take place between strategists and practitioners.

BPM or Workflow ?

This post referred in Todd's post has resurrected an old debate. What exactly is the value provided by BPM over traditional workflow solutions?

Those who have worked with traditional workflow solutions know, how there is no concept of end to end process in workflow solutions. The workflow solutions were mainly ground-up automation tools to complete various process steps executed in back-end systems. Even if you put in the metric collection framework (which I dont believe is a trivial task) on top of it and gained an end to end process visibility, you could not do much with it. Changing the processes in those ground up tools was not as easy as in the modern BPM tools.

Again all BPM tools are not the same and may have issues in implementation. But thats no reason not to move to correct technology option. Ofcourse there may be reasons not to move to BPM technology. (e.g. you have limited budget and BPM is not your highest priority pain point). But the argument that, workflow solution with metric collection framework on top of it is equivalent or better than BPM tool, in my opinion is not valid.

BPM tools are closed loop solutions. You can define processes, operationalise them, analyse them while in operation and take corrective actions. Moreover BPM tools are open standards based. The process steps to underlying services integration, is thru SOA and that too is becoming part of standards. It would be better to hitch your ride on open standards based closed loop solution which integrates well with underlying services, than go for complex solutions involving multiple proprietary tools.