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Is curation the answer for IT
complexity?
Dr. Jimmy Schwarzkopf STKI [email protected]
Introduction to curation
Welcome to the new decade. This new decade will be remembered
for the complex
environments the previous decade left us with and how we dealt
with them.
The interconnected and interdependent economic environment, the
new competitive arena
and the new technologies available have left most of us grasping
to find a way to minimize risk in
what we do and offer to our organizations and clients.
Even our private worlds have been turned upside down with new
emerging cultural
practices.The philosopher Prof. Zygmunt Bauman used the term
Liquid Modernity in order to
explain this new complex and rapidly changing state of
affairs.As a technologist I recognize that
information technology and the digitalization of knowledge have
been at the center of this
revolution.
In order to survive we will have to do several things in order
to reduce complexity or better
still, cope with it. Complexity usually can be handled by
innovation, simplification, management
techniques and standardization.
While flying to visit my new born grandson last month several
important things happened to
me besides the fact of becoming a grandfather.
Coming to a new city I looked for museums to visit and the nice
passenger beside me explained
all about how a museum visit is basically a simplified (in IT
terms: vanilla) tour organized by the
curator. This curator looks at all the artifacts the museum owns
and can get from outside sources
in order to organize the perfect (in his view) experience for
the visitors he thinks will come and enjoy
it. He defines the visitor, the experience and then organizes
the show.
The second was when I read an opinion piece by Forrester analyst
Sarah Rotman Epps where
she talks about how the -iPad ushers in a new era of personal
computing that we call "Curated
Computing"a mode of computing where choice is constrained to
deliver less complex, more
relevant experiences. Let me repeat that, because it's the
essence of the Curated Computing
experience: less choice; more relevance- . Given that I had just
learned about curators this really hit
home.
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The third was that I had to prepare a presentation about IT
innovation to be presented when I
returned. While trying to connect cloud, SaaS, PaaS,
multichannel marketing, mobile technologies,
new hardware industry in a box products, new ERP/vertical
software packages and other new
innovations I realized what is happening and I will use the
following term for it. Curated
Computing.
What I am trying to say is that all the above terms represent
very complex technologies that
the vendors have simplified in order to make our and our
companys life easier. Every vendor has
simplified in a different way, each one has a different way to
do it and we (the users) have to choose
the one that comes closer to the experience we want.
In other words we choose the CURATORthat fits our way of
managing complexity.
How can curation fit into IT history
If we look at the above graph we can see curated computing as
the fifth generation of
computing.
The first generation was very autocratic and we could say
dictatorial. The data center was the
king, programmers served the center and optimized their
applications so that the king computer
could process their command optimally. This was done without
concern for the users, as they were
secondary.
Then the PCs came, woow what a difference. Users could finally
do their own thing without
asking the Data Center for permission. They could even have the
same software in both the office
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and at home. CIOs fought unsuccessfully against the use of PCs
in the firm. At the end it
democratized the end user experience.
The third generation opened up the world of information to
everybody. We didnt need the
companys librarian or information specialist who used to get us
the needed information. We were
free. Again CIOs fought unsuccessfully against free use of
internet in most places. They said we all
were porno junkies and that a securitywould be breached. Most
companies found a way to
democratize information to most employees. At home we were all
free.Next came SOA. The real term means service oriented
architecturesalthough some CIOs will
call it same old applications. What did SOA bring? It allowed
applications in the company and of
outside partners to share data. This revolution came at the same
time that users understood that IT
basically had to provide automation for business processes and
analytics. With SOA data collected
in one part of the company was available to others without much
IT investment. SOA democratized
data bringing finally the dream of one version of the truth
throughout the company.
Now we are entering the curated computing era. I am sure that
many CIOs will fight this but
they will lose again. We will choose vendors by looking at how
they curated a certain IT problem our
IT users want solved. Because this process allows vendors to
sell their solution as is to many clients
,the price is reduced; some of them will charge on demand and so
smaller companies or
departments with few users of a certain application will be able
to afford the product. In other
words, application democratization.
Curated computing everywhere
CURATED computing is here and we will all use it at home, in the
office and wherever we are.
Cloud Computing, SaaS, PaaS and other forms will allow us to use
curated IT products on
demand. This means by user/month. Mostly we wont be able or want
to make changes and will use
it as the vendor/curator designed it.
ERP/vertical software packages: most companies will look and
decide according to the
vendor/curator road map and strategy. Minimum amount of changes
will be done in order to be
able to move easily into the future that the vendor/curator
mapped for us.
Hardware/industryin a box appliances: several vendors like NCR
(Teradata), Oracle (Exadata),
Cisco (Vblock), HP (Matrix) and IBM (CloudBurst) among others
offer an appliance that the
vendor/curator optimized for certain uses. Goodbye to buying
multipurpose hardware and then
integrating it at great cost for database servers, application
servers or other uses.
In the mobile worldwe are all asked to make sort of a decision
that has many consequenses.
We have to decide the curator of our phone/tablet world. We are
deciding between Apple and
Google or maybe between Apple and Microsoft or even between
Blackberry and Nokia. Our decision
will influence our banks, insurance companies, medical and other
service providers. They all have to
provide us service no matter who our vendor/curator is. They
will have to support us on our terms,
exactly as our vendor/curator dictated. No extra complexity for
us, the user, although for IT
complexity might increase.
Welcome to the new simplified and curated world.
