CTOVision

A look ahead: Some technology developments to expect in 2009

2008 was a year of rapid changes for Chief Technology Officers.  We should expect 2009 to move even faster.  Where will the biggest trends take us?  I offer some considerations below.  Please look these over and give me your thoughts.   Push back if you have disagreement.

First, my overall advice for CTOs in 2009... Just like the new thin interfaces you will be testing in your lab... be flexible.   Now here are some more thoughts on what's in store for CTO s in 2009:

• Here is a no-brainer: Increasingly CTOs will leverage social media to collaborate.  Things are moving so fast that we all like to network to seek help on big things and to get advanced warning on what is coming next.  More of us will be on Twitter, in Facebook, and writing blogs.  And this is a good thing.

• "Mashups" will still be very important as an enterprise objective in 2009 (and beyond).   And the company that will help accelerate them into the federal enterprise is JackBe.  They do things in a way that enterprise CTO s like.  They build in connections to governance, security, identity management.  And they play well with the entire ecosystem so you don't have to rework all legacy just to use them.  Of course web2.0 will remain a key trend, but mashups takes web2.0 to a new, more mission-oriented level and for enterprise players the mission is what is important.

• An approach we will all learn to love and follow is "context accumulation".   This very important term was coined by Jeff Jonas, and I think Jeff is going to have all of us moving out on that in the next 12 months.   If you agree, visit his blog and by all means help others understand why this is really the only way we humans stand a chance of surviving/thriving in the onslaught of data.

• Federal acquisition of IT will still be criticized for all the reasons it always has been.  But there will also be an acceleration of a dramatic positive change brought about because of open source software and a new appreciation that IT acquisition processes (RFI/RFP/FAR/DFAR based purchases) do not apply to software that is free.  Free software is not being bought, it is being used, for free.  The whole reason the FAR exists is to ensure when the taxpayer's money gets spent it gets spent wisely.  When things are free the FAR has less applicability.  Services for open source are being bought and since that uses government money of course the taxpayers will continued to be served by the same FAR-type processes that are meant to ensure open competition, but that is not for free open source software, that is for services to configure and manage the software.

• Will this be the year of enterprise security?  We have been banking on that for a long long time.  We know the answers on how to make enterprises more secure.  There is a great recap of some of the most important components of security in the CSIS report.  But there are many more things that can be done as well. My goal, as captured here, is to improve security by two orders of magnitude within the next 24 months. 

• Netbooks, Thin Clients and Cloud Computing will accelerate throughout the technology landscape, especially inside the federal government.  These trends in both devices and the cloud components are directly related and are also benefiting from the global, unstoppable trend toward open computing (open software and open standards).  One to watch in this area:  Sun Microsystems.   But also track the dynamics of the netbooks providers.  Dell will get serious about netbooks, but Acer will continue to grow market share.

• A key accelerator of Cloud Computing has been the powerful technologies of virtualization, especially those of VMware.  Open source and other virtualization capabilities are coming fast too.  Trend to watch in 2009 is the arrival of higher order, more elagant capabilities to manage virtualizaiton accross large enterprises.  VMware and Opsware (HP) will continue to evolve to do this, but Appistry, Vizioncore, Xsigo and Sun (and others?) are coming fast.    
  
  
• Increasingly leaders will recognize that concepts of operation that require humans to tag and create metadata are sub-optimized.  When busy people are tasked with burdensome tagging operations they too frequently become tempted to cut corners and rush the process.  Over time, meta data generated this way just becomes meta crap.  This growing recognition in the federal space will sweep in new technologies and new approaches to discovery of content.  One to watch to solve this issue:  Endeca, because of their approach to visualizing information and enabling human to computer iterative examination of data. 
  
  
• Flexible computers will arrive in production this year for early adopters and many CTOs will use them in labs to assess applicability for massive deployment in the coming years.   These flexible computers are the ultimate thin clients.   Backends/servers/architectures developed for the cloud perfectly suit ultra thin, flexible computing devices. For more on this hot topic, start at the site of the Flexible Display Center at ASU.

• Collaboration will increasingly be seen as the means to link human brains together.   Collaboration tools that are stand alone stovepipes will be a thing of the past.  Users will collaborate using the entire technology environment:  voice, video, data, whiteboard, chat, application sharing, info discovery will increasingly be integrated into a single fabric.  Key players here:  Adobe, Microsoft and Cisco.

• In a big change for how money is moved in major enterprises, the CIO will be given responsibility for the energy budget.  This will encourage CIOs to modernize to conserve energy, since money saved from energy costs can be invested back in modern IT.  This will be a very virtuous cycle, that saves money for organizations, saves energy, and modernizes IT.   

• In a stunning turn, IPv6 will be rapidly adopted, not by enterprises, but in homes.  The major home communications provider that delivers full IPv6 to home environments (and to cell phones) will have an incredible advantage over competitors and will dominate.  The many rich features of IPv6 delivered to consumers will finally push enterprises everywhere to move out on IPv6. 

• In 2009, as in every year prior and for most into the future, there will continue to be bad people using technology to do bad things.  Enterprises will move to protect info, but bad guys will keep moving to get the data.   And the use of social networking tools by terrorists will likely grow.  This is not a foregone conclusion, but I'm not personally sure what can be done to mitigate the use of advanced technology by bad people, other than to say that we good people need to work together more to stop them, and my hope is that we can keep 2009 safe and secure.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions?  Please let me know what you think.

What if you could show key Social Media/Web2.0 sites in one graphic?

Overdrive is a company that specializes in helping others leverage the social media landscape.  They produced a great graphic that gives at least a high level overview of the key social media and web2.0 world.  Click on the image here for a larger view download the PDF here: Download social-media-map.pdf (1330.3K)

I really like this graphic for a couple reasons.  One is that like many other people I long for ways that can help me visualize and grasp things in this fast moving space.  I know this does not capture all the social media sites and I know the categories are not as clean as depicted here.  But still it is GREAT context and will be helpful to me in explaining to others some of the fast moving cloud based services out there (note to overdrive: please find room to add a section on cloud services, like cloud based office automation).  

Another key reason I like this is it proves Overdrive's assertion that they are a company that can demystify online tools and help companies leverage these capabilities.  The fact that they are letting any blogger anywhere post this graphic on their site is proof that they understand how these things work.  Companies who want to make it in social spaces should give first then receive later.

How did I find this cool graphic?  Friends at Facebook sent it to me.  I found this cool social media reference through a cool social media site.

The Disruptive Power of Netbooks

The idea of light-weight, low-cost, but very powerful laptops designed for a smaller feature set than traditional laptops has been around for a decade or so.  But all indications are that something has changed in the market place.   Due to a convergence of many factors, netbooks are growing in sales.  These factors include the continual improvement in wireless speeds, the more widespread availability of wifi, the continued drop in cost of hardware, the continued increase in performance of open source operating systems and open source applications, the unstoppable move to more thin-client solutions, and the dramatically increased capabilities of cloud computing services (including the entire web2.0 megatrend and of course the continued innovations of Google in the cloud computing and online applications space). 

I just did a few searches on Amazon and Bestbuy for netbooks devices, and pulled up entries for small notebooks like the Acer Aspire One, an 8.9-inch mini laptop that runs Linux Lite and sells for under $300.00.  It has plenty of capability and is very lightweight.   It comes loaded with applications, including open source office automation packages (I think I would want to download the most recent version of open office if I purchased this).  It also comes with a built in camera and is ready for high end video chat. 

Will I buy one?  There are clearly some of these in my future, I just don't know when.  I have a MacBook and I really like it for everything I need in a laptop.  I use it around the house and on travel.  And, although it is over a year old now, it doesn't need replacement.  When it does, however, I'm going to be asking myself why I would want to pay $1000 more for a Mac instead of a couple hundered for a Netbook.  So much of what I do I do on the cloud anyway, and the many things I do locally can be done using the free Open Office.  

If we assume the same sort of trades are being considered by other buyers, a conclusion starts to emerge.  Netbooks are going to be a very disruptive force in the market.

And what is the market saying so far about this trend?  Acer is reporting huge success with their netbooks approach, their sales have been growing significantly.  They just reported a 78.8 percent growth rate over the same quarter in 2007.  And this is during a huge market downturn.  HP and Dell are reporting unit sales growth of 13.5 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively.   Apple is just about flat.

If you are an enterprise CTO, what should you do with this information?  For one, you should consider how to use laptops/netbooks like these in your organization.  If done right, you can enhance the security of your enterprise by moving more of your data and applications to secure clouds, and you can also add security features to your netbooks and field a significant enhancement to your security posture.  And, since the cost of these devices is far less than traditional laptops you can equip more of your workforce and save money at the same time, which is a very virtuous thing in this economic environment.

Note: I've previously written about several devices that qualify as netbooks, including:

Thin Client Laptops: Functionality, Security, Mobility A review of high end, enterprise quality wireless stateless thin clients using the Sun Microsystems approach;

and

The Future Is Changing Again A review of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.

I also recommend a recent article at Economist.com called Small is Beautiful. 

And, thanks to a friend on Twitter, I just got pointed to a post at GigaOm titled: Why Netbooks are Greener Than Laptops

Tips for the new CTO: How to engineer a miracle

I ran into so many friends at the AFCEA solutions conference this week.  One guy I have not seen in person for years is  Mike “Ziggy” Steinmetz.  Ziggy is a great leader and thinker at Northrop Grumman.  He is also a tremendous collector of wisdom and a teacher who helped prepare me for my position as CTO of DIA.  Seeing him made me think I should share some of these lessons with you.

The lessons come from the true story of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team. The guys that did the impossible by defeating the Soviets.  We all know the story.  And there is a GREAT movie titled “Miracle” that captures it very very well.  From the Amazon description of the movie: "Kurt Russell gives a brilliant performance as the dynamic and determined coach Herb Brooks, who had an impossible dream -- beat the seemingly unbeatable Soviets at their own game. Starting with a handpicked group of 26 undisciplined kids, Brooks coached them to play like they never played before, and turned 20 of them into a team that believed they could achieve the unachievable -- and in the process, united a nation with a new feeling of hope."

Think of the coach of that team, Herb Brooks, and his strategy for winning.  He took players who once played for competing teams with long standing rivalries and forged a new team unlike any team that had ever played before.  The way he did it has direct lessons for many areas of leadership, especially technology leadership. 

Watch the movie and look for these lessons/thoughts:

• Coach Herb Brooks convinced everyone that something different had to occur than had been occurring in the past.   ”Only way to succeed is to change the way we play the game. “  Then he engineered a strategy.
• Herb picked his team, not based on who the best technicians were, but who the best team players were:  "Not looking for the best players I am looking for the right players."   How does this translate to technologists?  CTOs want skilled technical experts, but just as important is getting skilled technical experts who can work as part of a team.
• Cheap shots however self justified, hurt the team "This is not about old rivalries."   As enterprises transition from the old way of doing things to the new way of doing things they must forget about our own old rivalries.
• Orientation early is by region:  "I'm Ralph Cox and I'm from where ever won't get me hit.”   Herb worked them till they realized—they are on a new team now.   Frequently technologists must have the same light bulb go off.   Enterprise technologists sometimes need to be reminded they play for a bigger team than they used to.  
• This is the same point Herb drives home when he says “ The name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back”
• The team’s identity crisis had to be fixed as it was the source of a lot of the early problems. "Think you can win on talent alone...you don't have enough talent to win on talent alone!"  "Name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back”  “Win loose tie...you are going to play like champions" "If you want to make this team you had better start playing at a level that forces me to keep you here".   Herb understood the consequences of the identity crisis the team faced he also understood he could not tell the team what their identity was; they had to figure that out for themselves.
• Herb's unexpected personal comments of concern towards Jimmy Craig..."I've got to know why you are here and where you are coming from"  "I'm here aren't I?"  "Don't forget to bring your game".
• NHL all stars lost because they played as individual all stars and not as a team.
• "All Stars won't change their game” No one has ever worked hard enough to skate with the Soviets for an entire game.... we will!
• Dedication to improvement and personal improvement were key.
• The Carter "Crisis in Confidence speech" is a metaphor for many old, legacy enterprise technology environments.  "More believe they will be less better off in the next 5 years".  “Stop crying start sweating, stop talking start walking".
• 1st face-off in Madison Sq garden.  Mark Johnson looks at the Soviet Captain and it is still evident he is thinking in terms of individual vs. team effort.  "Jimmy Craig's comment "you gotta listen to me" is a metaphor for the communications breakdown that led to the performance on the ice"
• O'Callaghan injury and the decision to keep him.  Herb knew that once the team was set it was less disruptive to go down a man than to introduce a new member of a successful team.
• "Pulling the goalie"  "Jimmy I Know there is more"  "Coach It's my net.” “Jimmy, They just scored 10 goals...right now its anybodies net"
• ”Lets not turn this game into something it is not.”  “I’m not sure we have any control over that”.
• ”You earn opportunity” Through hard work you make it “your time”.
• Face-off to the 3rd period.  Compare Mark Johnson’s face to that 1st face-off in Madison Sq garden.  Finally they meet as mental and physical equals.  The difference…attitude and a string of “small successes.”   I have seen technology teams like this.  I've seen engineering teams who have decided to be world class best and so they are.  I've seen technologists set goals for themselves that have them walking among the giants of computer science and enterprise operations. 

A CTO needs to do more than watch a movie to be a great CTO.  But this movie sure gives you things to think about.  So, a big thumbs up from the CTOvision movie review team.

CTOs, Global Cyberwar and Our Collective Future

If you are a technologist, please take a moment to download the PDF of the report by the U.S. Commission on Cybersecurity.  This report, titled Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency, is the best proclamation of the challenges of cyber I have read.  It is also a roadmap that will help any trying to navigate these very tough issues.

I've been involved in things cyber for a long time.  My deepest involvement began in December 1998, almost 10 years ago to the day.   In all that time I've seen lots of studies and lots of papers and many treatments of the issues.  But I've never seen one that captures the complexities and the need for specific actions as well as this one. 

I'd really recommend you read every word, if you want to be considered literate in this field.   But if it will be a little while till you get to it, here are some key points:

The three major findings are:  1) Cybersecurity is now a major national security problem for the U.S., 2) Decisions and actins must respect privacy and civil liberties, and 3) only a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international  aspects of cybersecurity will make us more secure.

The report makes a few points about the Bush Administration's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI).  In general the give credit to that initiative, and call it good.  I agree, it is a great activity I've previously written about that is led by one of the most effective people in government today and has done great work.  But as the comission points out, the work of the CNCI is good but not sufficient. 

The biggest shock for me in this study:  The amount of funding on R&D for cyber security.  I have been looking into the many activities underway, and maybe that look made me deceive myself into thinking it was a well funded effort.  According to the comission, however, they estimate that the total R&D funding in the federal government for cybersecurity is about $300million.  Less than two-tenths of one percent of the total federal R&D.

The report has a great section on identity manangement. 

I am convinced the organizational approaches outlined in the study are the right ones as well.  There is only one place in our government where we can lead solutions to this challenge.  Where is that?  Hey read the report!

What else do I recommend CTOs do besides read the report?  I think one way we can all help the cybersecurity effort is to think through which standards bodies are the most important to engage with regarding security.   A few are here:

http://www.ctovision.com/2008/05/standards-organizations-ctos-should-track.html