This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

RIM, a company closely tied to businesses is in free-fall. Take a look at their 5-year plan, and based on their migration to QNX (their execution to plan over the last 12–18 months), you can’t trust a thing they’re saying. The Playbook was a disaster, and now their new operating system is pushed until late next year.

How are companies reacting? Are they reacting? I’ve not heard anything, though I wouldn’t necessarily be in the know.

How good has RIM’s 5 year plan served IT at large corporations?

How are companies mitigating the risk that RIM won’t be around in 5 years, which is certainly in the real of possibility at this point?

So, basically IT gets their collective panties in a bunch, making it a requirement to have a 5-year plan, and do all sort of internal planning around it. When the 5-year plan is totally off the rails (I mean, RIM’s not even in sight of the freaking rail-yard at this point!), what? No collective corporate response? What was the purpose of the 5-year plan in the first place? All that planning? Were you just bored? Killing time? Vendor bashing? What?

Where’s the accountability?

Oh yeah, I labeled this “part I” because I’ve got a few observations about IT idiocy (that I hear from friends and others, not necessarily based on my personal/current experience) in my head that I’m trying to figure out how to share constructively.

Was looking at Google News to see what’s going on up in Massachusetts for the special election, and I noticed that a section on Israel and the Palestinian Authority had a weird side photo:

I’m pretty sure they didn’t want that picture of the tennis player in there!

OK, curious, but not really interesting… until I saw the article section on the election. Now, that’s a funny photo!

A little sexist, no?

So, what’s the deal? Now, I’m wondering how Google comes up with the photos that show up, and if someone’s having a good time at their expense.

The exhibition can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a flyer with more details is here.

I’ve been with a new Blackberry Curve 8900 since Tuesday the 2nd. And, while I’d like to write about my perception of the pros and cons, right now I’d like to focus on one thing as it relates to enterprise software.

Often things that seem ridiculously simple, are quite hard. In fact, these are the sorts of things you don’t even think about until it’s too late. And, then you learn to live with it, chalking it up to “technology being too complex”.

In this case, one of the things I miss most about the iPhone are the consistent fonts. My god! I can hardly read the blackberry. I’ve set the font, only all my apps are laughing at me. They’re saying… “how cute, he’s set the font in preferences thinking we’re going to listen”.

Even in RIM’s own applications, font consistency is horrible. Even in their core app, the messaging application. I’m quite sure it has to do with the “new” HTML email capability… but to me that’s no excuse. And, I can’t zoom in. It’s frustrating as hell and I don’t understand it.

And, their browser. Oh my! It has this tiny little mouse (great screen resolution by the way), but clicking on it is sure to move the mouse away from the link you’re trying to click on! I’ve already hidden the browser from view. No plans to use it unless another app launches it (several do that, including Evernote and Facebook — so sad).

How does this relate to enterprise software? Well… I see the iPhone as having done some things really right at the expense of others that most people would call “basic requirements”. Cut-and-paste being one example. I’m sure they could have figured that out sooner, but had it come at the expense of the beautiful experience that is the iPhone interface, I know they made the right decision.

I think you would be hard to find a single enterprise application development team that is willing to make that sort of hard decision — postponing “critical” features in deference to creating the perfect software experience first. Just look at any sort of retail terminal experience (airlines, Kinko’s, restaurants, etc.). Ask the people that use these terminals what their experience is. I do. the most common response is a pair of eyes rolled back in their head.

This is definitely a short-term vs long-term viewpoint problem. Apparently, Apple has taken a long-term view of the market, and is patiently shaping the future. RIM is going to run out of steam. In fact, I’d argue they have. They’ve pushed their current architecture as far as it will go, and they’re in need of something more. Last time that happened, Palm was decimated by RIM themselves.

Which makes for an interesting final point back to my “day job.”

Our Actional product has the “right” architecture. It scales to enterprise scale. It performs in line with some of the highest performing environments out there. We are an order of magnitude or more better than our most popular competitor in metrics like CPU utilization, latency, and message throughput measurements, as well as time-to-implementation. Over the years, perhaps we’ve been caught behind the UI curve. A typical good architecture experience softened by a UI that hasn’t always incorporated the latest technology. When we first launched the product in early ’03, we had to use a heavy .NET client because the browser couldn’t do what we wanted. It took us a while to get off that, though we’ve been off it for 4 years if my recollection is solid. Now, our competitors actually hit us on collecting “too much information” saying we’re hard to use. There is some truth to that. Though of course who wants to build a crappy product that doesn’t perform or scale well just so that there’s less information on the console to confuse administrators? It reminds me of the key-layout on typewriters. You know why it’s so convoluted? It’s because early typists would type so fast on a common-sense key layout that the mechanics would jam. To slow typists down, they mixed the keys up… and that’s what we’re stuck with now! I’d rather they’d just fixed the mechanics.

Other products just don’t scale. They may have bells and whistles on the UI, but fundamentally are flawed. These fundamental flaws may not show up at first, on small projects. But, try to scale them to the enterprise, or run them in production without expecting an impact on application performance, and they simply won’t work.

Just like my blackberry font preference.

PS The short of my T-Mobile selection had to do with 3 key things. Using UMA, I can be assured of a signal in my apartment, negating any compelling benefit in favor of Verizon. Therefore, my ability to choose any phone I want with T-Mobile made the difference (I’m a phone geek, and often import the latest in phone fashion from Europe to play). That along with cost made it a very quick decision. (I guess I have written it up)

I can relate to this craftsmanship, because I experience it in my daily life through my iaido practice. And, this feeling is what I want to share. The sense of reward and accomplishment that has nothing to do with materialism. It’s in the pride they take in making a “perfect” sake. It’s the pride that I have each time I leave practice with all 10 fingers (still attached).

Craftsmanship is not just for hobbies and esoteric arts. Yesterday, I was using a voice conferencing system I thought a five year old could have designed better. A simple voice conferencing system… you’d think we (as humans) have solved that problem! Nope. Clearly, someone has missed an opportunity to shine.

For sure, materialism has its place in our world. I don’t think these sake guys would make very good sake after dying of hunger or disease! But, there is a definite fulfillment that comes when pursuing a craft. I believe all the economic uncertainty we’re facing right now will demand that we find fulfillment elsewhere.

I came across an ebook today. It took me all of 15 minutes to read. It’s funny, but serious at the same time. It’s chock-full of advice, and contrary to the title applies to freelancers and anyone underemployed by their own company. In particular, I really liked a lot of what Charlie said, but three bits of advice to hopefully entice you to read his book are:

1. Treat everyone as if they were your friend.
2. Stop reading the newspapers.
3. From page 28, be helpful, be that type of person he’s talking about on this page!

Some personal advice on that last point… it’s amazing how many people want to help when you ask. This internet thing is great for just that. But more importantly, helping others excel at their craft just feels really freaking good.

Go ahead, read it and see if you can be successful enough to “sail your yacht into your boss’ beach house.”

I love my iPhone, or rather, what my iPhone could be. Apple owns the end-to-end experience and has turned the mobile phone into a piece of art, that is, when it’s doing what Steve thought it should. If I want something even a little bit different, no way. I’d love my iPhone on Verizon’s network. Can’t do it. I’d love a new-email count to display on the lock-screen. Nope. I’d love to build a library of short-cuts so I can type faster. Not gonna happen. I don’t want the complexity of unlocking the phone, and don’t want to lose the features I gain by locking myself into a proprietary system (visual voicemail). And, for these missing features, as well as the pleasure of a 2-year lock in, I pay a premium for the service. Approximately 20% more cost with less functionality between AT&T and my former carrier, T-Mobile.

Why did I move to the iPhone? A few simple reasons:

1. Visual voicemail
2. Better end-to-end integration experience (less stuff I need to figure out to get everything working right by using a carrier-supported phone)
3. One-device to carry for music, PDA, and phone
4. Single place to find 3rd party apps
5. Reasonable browsing

Let’s switch from db-the-geek to db-the-enterprise-architect, examine and reword that list:

1. Features specific to my current needs (visual voicemail, reasonable browsing)
2. Lower complexity (better integration, single device)
3. Lower cost of ownership, easier to maximize my investment (single app exchange, one device, end-to-end experience has less moving parts)

What if Larry is taking a page from Steve’s playbook with the acquisition of Sun?

What if Larry delivers an enterprise appliance that adds some creative (though proprietary) features while lowering complexity? What if is significantly lowers my overall cost of ownership in exchange for a deeper commitment and lock-in to Oracle?

How would that change the software market? Forget the software market, how would that change the business of technology? Who would be positioned to follow? IBM, yep. HP, maybe? Microsoft… they haven’t started yet, though they can certainly make a run for it.

I don’t think I’m crazy for thinking this. TIBCO have recently put their middleware on an appliance, and IBM acquired DataPower over 3 years ago and put them in the WebSphere software division when they did. There is a big difference between IBM and TIBCO’s moves compared to what a true iPhone-like push into the integration space would entail. But, think of this over the weekend…

What if Oracle did to the enterprise integration space what Apple did to the mobile phone space?

Postscript: I’m not sure I’ve written this so well, so want to explain… while I’m paying a premium to AT&T and Apple to join the iPhone club, my overall costs (if I were took at myself as a business) are lower… it’s easier to integrate the phone with my computer, I don’t need multiple devices or chargers, my learning curve is less, and there’re less electronics around as I move to the future that will need to be integrated. This doesn’t make so much sense when thinking about my personal life, but these points do make sense when thinking about enterprise integration, and having an enterprise device intead of a personal mobile phone. You might say the analogy doesn’t carry as well as it might when looking at these issues, and for that I apologize for any confusion. I do believe overall costs to an enterprise if Oracle did do this would drop, in exchange for being locked into Oracle. However, some of the costs savings would be off-set by a premium I’d pay Oracle, and that might make me feel like I’m getting less for more when I forget about other costs I’m saving. For me, personally, my mobile bill is higher, but in theory, I’ve sold off my other ipod, cleaned my apartment of all the excess chargers, and I expect the shelf-life of my iPhone to be 2-years, compared to my previous history of replacing phones very 9 months. But, I certainly don’t think of those things everytime I get my AT&T bill and remember how many calls were dropped that month, and realize that I’m paying more to AT&T than I did to T-Mobile, and my service is worse. I hope that helps to explain things.

Here’s one, where I had to turn my head into a really uncomfortable angle to type…

And, then this one… Not even sure what to say, except perhaps it was written by Progress IT?

And, finally, a skill I wish I had. I’ll have to corner my friend Rick Kuzyk and find out how he travels in time…

I put a couple of, IMHO, insightful tweets today about cloud computing. Things that popped into my head as I was preparing for the Cloud Computing Expo at which I’ll be speaking.

One tweet in particular caught some people’s attention.

“Moving to the cloud will force IT to be about integration and application delivery, instead of ‘infrastructure babysitting,’ as it is today”

To which Brenda Michelson responded “How about integration & “business capability delivery”?

Exactly! In fact, I was speaking from a technical perspective, and Brenda clarified elevating the message to a more meaningful level. One that non-bitheads could understand.

As I was jumping through my iPhone to respond to her, Jack’s “shareholder value is not a strategy” statement came into my head. And, I can’t help but relate to it. Cloud computing is not a strategy, it’s an input. The strategy is to more closely tie IT results to align with “Business Capability Delivery.”

Thank you Brenda.

I had dinner with one of the best SE’s I know last Thursday. He’s a guy that takes no prisoners. His customers love him. In fact, one of his current customers called the president of his company to tell them on no uncertain terms was my friend to be removed from their account.

We were chatting about our jobs, and he said “I don’t use slides.”

“You don’t use slides?!?!”

“Nope, I walk in and ask one question…

What am I doing here?

That gets the prospect talking, and enables me to build a relationship based on my subject matter expertise.”

Brilliant, yet simple.

I think it’s so simple, people don’t trust it as a strategy. Probably because so many SE’s are like the guy I worked with this morning, only comfortable when talking about the bits-and-bytes of the product. And thoroughly out of their league when talking about the customer’s solutions.

And, by the way, if “What am I doing here?” isn’t enough of a conversation starter… followup with “What keeps you up at night?” That’s sure to get any technologist talking.