Saturday, 19 February 2011

The long slow death of IT as we know it. Why we need the Zucherberg and where is Michael Arrington when you need him?

Lets be clear. IT is dead. I have killed it. It was desperately in need of killing and I was fed up as to why no one has. So I have today stepped up to the plate and done it. It's ok no thanks required, you are very welcome. But don't worry I have a new set of initials ( ZT ) that will help. Its called Zucherberg Tech. Or just "Zucherberg" for short .

All will become clear.

I visited one of the world's leading charities just 72 hours ago. Global name and reputation. £56 million turn over . Unbelievable mess IT wise. Spaghetti junction in the server room. Outages, email in box restrictions, moans and groans from staff , inability to find anything. You name it. IT's response.? Give me more money and more staff please so we can fix it. So since I was being paid to advise I advised. Why not lose the lot? Excuse me? Yup. Look what do you need to do ? Share. Collaborate . Send some email. Archive things, find things?

Surprise me I said. Just tell me what you need to do now.

So I ran a demo live. There and then .We did email. File sharing. Collaborative documentation production. Spread sheets and a presentation. Video.IM/chat.Shared calendar. CRM service. Task management. Contacts. Discussions. Project management.

No spam. No viruses.

Also no up grades, no down time. No access problems, always on, easy migration . Oh and a foot print calculation of £200k saving PA. Recurring. In fact everything they needed to do now I could show them . From a browser,on a lap top. And the icing on the cake ? My iPhone too.

I am a genius? No, I wish. The solution? Google Apps and the 37 Signals suite. Oh yes and Twitter.

Result?

No. Instead literally petrified IT lead. Shaking in her heels. Her CIO role? Protect the machine from assault. Internally and externally. " where's the business case for this she asked? My reply? where is the business case for what you are doing now? All the waste and the productivity problem?

It was not personal. I am a nice guy. I threaten no one.

Fact is that the trip and that scenario could readily play out virtually anyway in the private or public sector. Anywhere in the world.

I am a Google user? Yup. I am selling Google ? No. There are other examples I could just as well have used but since Google Apps just works as does 37 Signals why not use them?

What does all this mean?

The fact is that in the real world, people are fed up with IT and traditional systems and thinking.

For many IT sucks. IT is a passion killer and a stealer of souls, of lives, of money and time. IT has given us email, a pale imitation of a piece of paper, Office, a pale imitation of productivity and Dell, a pale imitation of a technology company. It has also given us IT departments , enterprise architecture, anti virus paranoia, and vested interest's ( heh I am Windows guy. heh I am Lotus Notes guy ). It has also given us the Blackberry a device for enterprise serfdom that masquerades as innovation. All pale simulacra of real life and real work

It is IT that is now the problem . A curse on the enterprise, a productivity destroyer, an electronic set of manacles for staff and customers alike. IT creates fear in the work place. You can smell it on peoples clothes. Don't do this it is dangerous .Don't do that it will cause us a problem.

IT has created a veneer of innovation , a techno smear on the face of the work place. Email is a case in point. For most email is a problem now. Overload, irrelevance, data loss.

IT is mostly unchallenged. IT has colonised the mind ,virus like , created a IT meme that propagates .Truck up to your Board , your CIO slaved to the server room Matrix style and say (" I need £1 Million for virtualization tech or we are stuffed ) and the Board will write the cheque there and then. This just happened in real life not so far from me.

Should I have waited for the silicon valley uber blog Techcrunch to kill it? Perhaps. Michael Arrington might do it for me. After all Search Sucks.See this. He is right . It does. Techcrunch has called death on so many issues too. Just search for death on there web site to see .So I must be on the right path yes? But no, Techcrunch has not called death on IT, so I must do it for them. Some one has too.

5 Short points and examples.

1. Mention IT in any typical office( I mean real offices not hard charging tech start up's ) and you get moans and groans from everyone lumbered with yet another Dell Box and an outdated copy of Office and IE 6.No really IE6 is still very much being handed out . Everywhere. Even the IT department moans although for different reasons- normally along the lines of why won't people simply do what we want? Why are they ( sic) not grateful for all the hard work we do? Why do they still keep on about downloading Chrome or Firefox? What's wrong with IE 6 anyway? We have lot's of IT policies you know just read them. Look at our virtualization tech. Whippee....

2. I just got emailed a job thing. I quote...

"And with previous design authority experience on large-scale network transformation projects, you'll be no stranger to mapping business needs on a global scale. You'll certainly know all about network technologies and techniques, such as OSPF, QoS, VoIP IPSec,IP Multicast and MPLS. And as well as your SSL and VPN's know-how, we'll expect you to have an excellent understanding of LAN and WAN. Not to mention a thorough knowledge network zoning principles and their relevance to security, IT management tools and a proven ability to develop policies, procedures and guidelines"

I am not making this up. This is a real role . No mention what so ever of the needs of staff to work together to collaborate, to create , to share ,to get things done, the joy of good work .You know real work needs, like project management and task management and searching and saving and storing and finding and tagging and sharing . No mention of the real biggy..the customer? Where are they? Gosh I know lets send them a WORD document...

3. IT productivity? A joke. Here is Office. Waste lots of time typing that up, email that around, CC sixteen others, lose that version, corrupt that file, what do you mean you have the old version of WORD?

4 IT creates it's own space and alleged business requirement . It has corrupted ROI for its own ends and has hijacked a proper review of risk. 37 people in your IT department all arguing for 10 more is not an objective business case. Its vested interest . Spending large amounts on enterprise IT only feels safe if no one gets fired spending large amounts of money. Which is the norm. Suggest spending nothing , using the cloud , doing more with less, getting stuff done and you will be drowned out.

5. Why? Are IT people unpleasant? Nope not especially, no more than any one else. No its because IT has its own imperative you cannot see the wood for the trees. You cannot see that work is social and that people just want to get stuff done. Bizarrely IT people know it too! When they step out and go home, the world changes then. They are off twittering, buzzing, being social, getting stuff done using the social web,the phone,the app, the device.

Why does the enterprise differ then?

Its called Institutionalisation .Its the same mad process and imperative that allows the NHS to allow old people to die of neglect on the hospital ward. In front of nice people. They are not evil. It results simply by being unable to see after a while. No one is immune.

Except children of course. Who ask " why? " so much it hurts sometimes. That's what we must do. Why ? Why? Why? that and do something better. The CEO must ask it . The CIO must ask it. After all if she or he does not no one else will. Its the chief role. To ask why you must step out. You cannot ask why from within- you cannot question yourself or your IT or anything else from within, from the boundary cast around you. Look up and look out. Get the vaccination that treats the meme.The world is not flat.

What next?

Apart from recognising we have problem that people want fixed? More soon on the pathway.

Meanwhile lets change the initials.That might help. No more IT . How about ET ( enabling tech ) No? Too resonant with an old film? How about LT ( liberating tech ) hmmm better..who can argue with liberation eh? Ask an Egyptian why not? How about business technology ( BT ) A few years back the then Forrester Research CEO George Colony, made the case that the term "business technology" would help. Nope. Dull Dull Dull.

So I have it- - let's call it Zucherberg Tech ( ZT ) from here on in. Or zucherberg for short ...

Zucherberg tech is deeply impressive. Social and sociable - just as we are. Cool eh? bloody obvious eh? In T shirt and jeans. Universal too, global, encompassing, everyone gets it. Even Obama gets it.

We have more zucherberg then ever. It works.No training work shop required. Lets just get stuff done.

Zucherberg is like a vaccination. It can liberate us from the IT disease. Just say No to IT

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