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Employees Are Not Consumers – They are Comrades January 13, 2012

Posted by Lee Dallas in cloud, Content Management, Social Media, Technology.
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Thought leaders (hate that term) are all abuzz with the consumerisation of IT. What they mean is that the modern workforce now has the expectation that their technology will be as good as the stuff they use at home. At this point that fact is fairly obvious. We must be careful though not to fall into the trap of thinking of employees as consumers in the general sense that economics defines the term.

Employees may consume things and may have some other traits in common with market consumers but their behavior is not governed by capitalistic motives. They are in fact much more communist in nature. Basically – employees may consume goods and services required to execute their responsibilities at work. They may demand the choice over what those services are. They will however never believe they should have to pay for it in the long run.

Corporations may be active participants in capitalism but in their day to day internal activities they execute more or less like a collective oligarchy. The larger the organization, the more pronounced this behavior becomes. I don’t pretend to be a political theorist but I do know that the basic difference between socialism and communism in the economic sense is the control over the means of production.

Socialism is not necessarily in conflict with capitalism. It allows for private ownership but with centralized regulation. Communism demands that all control be centralized.  IT organizations have long acted as if it was their responsibility to quash independent technology “for the good of the state”  with security or compliance used as justification.  As such it becomes ever more difficult to deliver even the most basic changes as more and more effort is required to maintain the bureaucracy.

In many authoritarian regimes, shortages develop as the organization is disincented to expand services and a black market  develops. In this scenario operational business units seek to circumvent the centralized control and satisfy their technology desires on their own. Once frowned on, it is these shadow IT departments that are dragging companies into using external cloud services one department at a time.

I mentioned earlier this week when I challenged you to listen to your own plumbers, there is a realignment of IT skill sets and job classifications coming. The opening up of the internal IT marketplace to free enterprise IT brought about by mobility and cloud offerings is exciting. It is also very scary to those highly invested in the status quo.

Technology intraprenuers outside of traditional IT organizations will rise and fall creating risk and reward alike.  Like the nouveau riche of the former Eastern Block, there will be individuals, departments and corporations who figure out early how to leverage the unprecedented access to technology and create competitive advantage over others mired in the bureaucratic past. The truly successful companies will be those best able to manage rather than restrict the change.

There is tremendous opportunity for us to benefit financially and organizationally in these new business models but be warned there will be failures. You should be prepared for those and not allow the old guard to use the cliche “I told you this would never work.” Every slip by one of these off-book initiatives will be used as ammunition to slow down the change.

There is a battle over budgets being fought all over and IT has to work harder than ever to justify maintaining their aging war machine. Yet it is a system doomed to crumble under its own weight. The realignment of skill sets in individuals is enormous but it is the budget battles that will change the character of the enterprise. A rougue may be able to establish a beach head with a managed service paid for with a credit card but eventually the attitude that they shouldn’t have to pay for technology themselves will return and they will look for the state to step in and pick up the check (and all the headaches that go along with dealing with the vendor.)

This new state run relationship though will be different. IT will no longer own the means of production – only the power to regulate. Time will tell where the balance of power settles and whether or not managing the mosaic of external providers delivering cloud services will be as dysfunctional as the system we have today.

Listen to Your Own Plumbers January 11, 2012

Posted by Lee Dallas in cloud, Consulting, Content Management, Technology.
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Ron Miller’s piece on Changing the IT Plumber’s Image yesterday was excellent. Most businesses do not see the business value their own IT organizations can and SHOULD be providing. Instead of being seen as the experts who can expand the business through new technology, IT is just somebody you call when your virtual toilet backs up. The analogy of the IT as a plumber has one flaw though. Usually when a plumber leaves things are better than when he got there. (more…)

Responding to Jeroen’s 2012 Surprises December 30, 2011

Posted by Lee Dallas in Technology.
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EMC IIG Chief Architect Jeroen VanRotterdam suggests five things that may surprise us in 2012. It was a very thought provoking post and you should check it out. I had a few ideas in response but it was a little long for the comments so I thought I would post them here.

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2012 Predictions and Presuppositions December 14, 2011

Posted by Lee Dallas in Acquisitions, box.net, Content Management, ECM.
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I have decided to take a slightly different approach to my predictions post this year. Rather than write a well thought out and reasoned positions I’ll spew out the list of ideas I have been collecting. My goal for this post is less about proving myself right next year than to do a list that gives everybody something to think about. Hopefully we will expand on the themes as the year progresses.

The list in no particular order:

  • We will all change careers – if you are doing the same thing today you were three years ago you are doing it wrong. If technology hasn’t changed what you thought your career was by now the economy has. Get ready because next year will be just as unsettling.
  • Election year technology brings more annoying augmented reality – I thought Wolf Blitzer standing in front of virtual graphics was cool for about ten minutes but now it just gets on my nerves and the presidential election cycle will take this annoyance to a new level.
  • App markets collapse under their own weight – we passed the million app mark and it will now become the focus of the market to get noticed. Sadly two guys in a garage will fade as marketing budgets begin to overwhelm the clever.
  • Cloud content data loss litigation – This has probably already happened but now that everyone has at least heard the term cloud in a technology context we are due a high profile data loss story in the media that involves multimillion dollar consequences.
  • Angry Birds Mayan Apocalypse 2012 – do I really need to explain this?
  • Open Text market cap will surpass Research In Motion making it Waterloo’s biggest tech resident – who would have ever dreamed that as I write this RIM is worth several billion less than what Autonomy sold for. If RIM doesn’t make a dramatic turn around soon I will have reverse the names in my RIM Should Buy Open Text post from earlier this year.
  • The Jive IPO initiates acquisition frenzy in social platforms – Up until now enterprise software players have been dabbling at creating their own social platforms but the Jive IPO will convince some they need to go faster and kick off acquisitions. Look for products like Broadvision‘s Clearvale to be early targets.
  • Dropbox goes shopping – We have already seen Dropbox reacting to Box with their team product. Clearly they see the smaller contender encroaching on their value proposition and will want to expand their feature set, possibly through acquisition. If they don’t then it Box may well beat them to the IPO party.
  • Someone who prefers Bing meets someone that prefers Google+ and time ends.

I will add more thoughts as they come to mind and I promise before January to evaluate my 2011 Predictions.

Quantum Shopping November 26, 2011

Posted by Lee Dallas in Humor, Personal Life.
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I just got in from Black Friday shopping. To be honest – what I really mean is I just back from Black Friday driving. That’s my job. I am the wheel man. My wife is the shopper. Professionally she teaches kindergarten but unknown to most of the world she is in fact some kind of a savings savant. She can calculate discounts in her head faster than a quantum computer can crank out places of pie. For years she has been telling me that she is saving me money by spending it. I used to think this was just some kind of expression of the infamous female logic.  Now I think I have discovered the secret. (more…)

Random Thought – I Will Miss the Word Occupy November 21, 2011

Posted by Lee Dallas in Uncategorized.
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Words are powerful, multidimensional things. A small collection of symbols that can represent a years long conflict, a philosophy that governs a nation or an emotion that binds us together for a lifetime. Forget the politics for a minute and think about how our language is affected by recent events. I will miss the word occupy. It has a new meaning that overshadows all others. No one can use the word today without an image coming to mind that probably has little to do with what might have come to mind last year.

Depending on your bias, if someone uses “occupy” even in casual conversation we will either think of spoiled Americans in desperate need of a shave whining about student loans nobody made them take out or we imagine  a young girl fighting injustice being dosed in the face with pepper spray by riot gear clad paramilitary police. This is what occupy now means on the surface of our collective bipolar mind.

I can’t use it to talk about moving into a new place. Can’t even use it to talk about the Germans in France during WWII. The word is now owned by more recent history. Purchased not by the movement itself but by the images surrounding it.

Other words are owned to greater or lesser degrees by history. Holocaust for example. Not to suggest there is any equivalency, moral or otherwise but the effect on the language is the same. You just can not use that word to refer to anything else without evoking the historical reference and images that go with it. Technology has ruined it’s share of words too. For instance I can not just “like” anything anymore without that insipid thumbs up icon popping into my brain.

I wonder just how many hits thesaurus.com is getting for occupy these days. Surely every journalist and  copy writer is being bludgeoned by their editors to avoid it for the time being. I can’t find things to occupy my time and no concern will be allowed to occupy my thoughts. I will have to fill, attend or monopolize but I will not occupy. Unless I want an argument.

There is so much conversation today about the explosion of data. But for all the zetabytes of storage filled with cell phone pictures, videos and blog posts we forget just how powerful a single word can be. The range of emotions, thoughts and experiences that can be evoked. We try in our own pitiful way to describe this depth using terms like context, semantics and ontology. All complex ideas in and of themselves that try to describe the acts of understanding, recognition and application.

When a word like occupy is isolated into a single historical interpretation we clearly see what is best described by a very unscientific idea – words are pure magic. The magic word occupy now conjures up an illusory fog in anyone that hears it. Otherwise rational people lose the ability to have a reasonable, logical discussion about what is really wrong and what can be done about it in the physical realm. We step out of the real world and lob generalizations and demonizing simplicities at each other like it is the end of a Harry Potter movie.

One day it will be safe to use the “o” word again but I am afraid that may be a very long time.

Random Thought – Virtual Juries November 14, 2011

Posted by Lee Dallas in Social Media, Technology.
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So I am stuck – uh I mean – happily serving on jury duty this week. The judges and clerk of the court are lightheartedly apologetic about the time we have to spend waiting around but at least they have provided free WIFI to take up the time. Good use of my tax dollars but I wondered what else could we do to improve this experience. For those of us who work from home most of the time the answer is obvious. Virtual Juries. Given the glacial pace that judicial technology changes my grandchildren may see it but it seems a far more efficient use of everyone’s time. You could even use social media mechanisms to locate AWOL jurors. The deputy coming to pick you up for skipping would just have to check foursquare. I know all of the fraud and potential problems with the concept but I would personally be much more enthusiastic about serving my constitutionally established responsibility if I could use telepresence.

What the Cloud Means to Real People November 8, 2011

Posted by Lee Dallas in cloud, Content Management.
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I hate Microsoft’s “To The Cloud” ad campaign. Mainly because it is stupid but also because my kids now run around yelling it just to annoy me. I equally dislike just about every other attempt to explain to real people what cloud computing means. (more…)

Oracle Is Buying Endeca – Because It Wants To October 19, 2011

Posted by Lee Dallas in Acquisitions, Autonomy, Content Analytics, Oracle, SAP.
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Another acquisition in the search space generating noise as Oracle snaps up Endeca. As far back as 2008 I had written about Endeca and the potential for acquisition.  What amuses me most about this event is how quickly people assume this must be in response to the HP/Autonomy deal. After all – big search vendor gets acquired by bigger company with a broader portfolio. The problem is that these deals typically take longer than that to put together so assuming a direct cause and effect is a bit of a leap. (more…)

Thoughts on the Ethics of Retention Policies October 10, 2011

Posted by Lee Dallas in Content Management, ECM, Records Management.
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Several weeks ago Ron Miller wrote a piece about a potential smoking gun email in the Google/Oracle Java patent suit where he cites Cyrus Mistry’s 2010 AIIM keynote. As Ron recalls, Mistry declared “Everyone gets access to all data and keep it forever.”  I was at the same event and my reaction at the time was similar to Miller’s. I found the position quaint and condescendingly naive. While I don’t recall a specific conversation I am sure that at some point I said – “eventually this will come back to bite them” and it appears that is  what has happened.

There are several ordinary reasons why we implement records management and retention policies. Compliance with global privacy regulations for example. But in all cases we are trained in ECM that every piece of electronic data is potentially electronic evidence and you should purge it at the earliest opportunity. This is how I have advised customers for years and in the industry we build whole programs around it. The problem is this approach ignores one simple thing that is lost in the process. The truth. (more…)

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