BYO revisited och Mr Jobs skugga

Som ytterligare inspiration och till min stora förtjusing så har The Economist denna vecka en Special Report med titeln Personal Technology. Den rekommenderas varmt för de med intresse för samtida innovationer och omvälvande förändringar i allas vår omvärld och vardag.

Här behandlas den pågående revolutionen inom konsumentelektronik; att de anställda tar med sig sina egna digitala hjälpmedel till jobbet, att innovationer idag börjar i konsumentledet och först därefter rinner över till militären och företagen. Tills för mindre än ett decennium gällde det motsatta.

The Economist skriver i en ledare: "Many people's homes now have more powerful, and more flexible, devices than their offices do; consumer gizmos and online services are smarter and easier to use than most companies' systems"

Över allt detta vilar en Steve Jobsk aura av magi och verklighetsförvrängning. Consumer electronics var hans forte, tjänster online ett starkt komplement. Man kan inte undgå att fundera på hur mycket av dagens förändringar han satte i rullning. Eller hur många rullande stenar som kommer att stanna nu när att han slutat svinga sin trollstav.

Inte minst Apple saknar honom. BBC skriver beskriver Cook's första keynote som "Tim Cook's dull debut". The Economist konstaterar: "With Mr Jobs gone, Apple is just one of many technology firms trying to invoke his unruly spirit in new products.".

Steve Jobs har lämnat byggnaden

Så har det hänt. Steve Jobs har gått bort. En modern da Vinci har smugit runt hörnet. Inte oväntat, men trist. Världen känns plötsligt gråare.

Tack och lov så efterlämnar han ett enormt digitalt avtryck, en skattkammare att hämta inspiration och råd från. Huffington Post har publicerat sina 11 favoritcitat av denna världens största linchpin. Nedan är en av hans många kristallklara analyser att bära med sig och inspireras av.

"My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other's kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people."

De andra citaten finns här.

BYO och rämnande murar

Det är inspirerande att se hur individernas arbetsglädje bryter igenom den produktivitetshämmande och paranoida kontrollmuren som storföretagen byggt upp kring IT och utrustning inom de egna företagen. Företagens egen variant av Berlinmuren börjar med en rejält strypt brandvägg, går över en föråldrat operativ på en dassig laptop, med begränsade installationsrättigheter och korkad lösenordspolicy, ända till ett smalt utbud av tillåtna mobiltelefoner, i värsta fall från en finsk tillverkare.

Moderna utvecklare, arkitekter, projektledare, säljare, affärsarkitekt, testledare, förändringsledare, behöver en bättre personlig IT-infrastruktur än så för att nå sin fulla potential, för att få utväxling på sin fulla produktivitet. För att göra ett arbete på en nivå som de själva är stolta och nöjda med. Det är därför som allt fler tar med sina egna prylar till arbetet, som CS konstaterar i veckan.

Givetvis blir det panik i kontrolleden. Fabrikerna tar fram sina nallebjörnar och kramar dem ännu hårdare. "Vi har den klassiska policyn att vi vill ha kontroll på allting." säger en chef." Man "bygger på en modell där en IT-avdelning kan styra användandet och inköp", säger en annan. Deras personal struntar blankt i detta och tar med sig allt från smartphones med egen 3G-uppkoppling till pekplattor.

Men varför ställer sig ingen av de tillfrågade cheferna, eller CS för den delen, den centrala frågan? Varför tar företagens personal med sig sina egna prylar? Är det på pin kiv eller bara ett missriktat prylintresse? Varför trivs de inte bakom muren?

Tänk om det är så enkelt att en individanpassad IT-utrustning hjälper dem att göra sitt arbete. Att det ökar värdet i det resultat de presterar? Tänk om det höjer medarbeternas produktivitet och kreativitet?

Ställ en BYO-anställd med sina favoritredskap mot en klon försedd med IT-avdelningens påtvingande rustning. Den ena är unik, den andra utbytbar. Den ene artist, den andre fabriksarbetare.

Vem tror ni leverar mest värde?

WPC 13/7

Todays most interesting event I assumed would be to hear Sir Richard Branson. This what not the case. Perhaps because I already have read his biography and seeing a TV show supporting the same message. But it was interesting to hear Sir Richard's very Swedish approuch when it comes how employees organize how to work.

Becuase I am at the momement reading "How the Mighty Fall" it was interesting to note that one of the advices Sir Richard gave was when it comes to take bet in your business that: dont take bigger risks then you can take i.e. don't to take risks that could destroy the whole company (and not your personal life such as take loans that will risk your house [but he has violated basicly every adviced he have given]!!!).

Todays best presentation was given by Kevin Turner. You can see his presentation and the Q & A with Sir Richard at: http://digitalwpc.com/Videos/VisionKeynoteVideos/3/Showstart#fbid=QUD42TQgc0a.

The way Kevin described Microsoft competetors such as Google is very funny!

The message that most cusomer view Microsoft from a software built 12 years ago is a wke up call. As I clearly mentioned in previous blogs, I am very impressed (as a Software Engineer also) about the Microsoft offer. Not just for the standard applications such as Office adn lync but also when it come to high availble, high performance and low latency transaction and computable intensive applications.

At the end I visited at seminar about the financial area. It is intersting to notice that Oracle is so disturbed about the SQL Server Denali version that they try to spread that there are security risks with SQL Server. Not only can MS prove this is not the case but it were a vendor joining the seminar that has a hardware taking care of the security (whihc of course is much faster). And that an other vendor (I missed the name) joining the seminar has used the Azure plattform to perform Monte Carlo simulation using 40k nodes under a couple of hours and paid a fraction compared if they had built up the data center themself.

I also want to give you this information that Fijitsu and Dynamic Infrastructure devloped a "fast track to Hyper-V". If you put together the knowledge that I know that a bank I know well have outsourced the maintenance of their PC's to Fijitsu one can imagin that there are opportunities out there....

PS! The SAM (Software Asset Management) party at my hotell, the Roosevelt, can't compete when it comes to an good old Front Åre party (and not yesterdays young Beverly Hills party). But average age is not 25 but closer to 50...

WPC 12/7

The weather this morning indicated todays main topic, the cloud.

The Microsoft position (according to MS) is much stronger than the competitors, it covers both local installation, private and public cloud. And together with a partner organisation (the best in the world) that can sell it they will be able to leverage the cloud offer. 

The cross plattform OS (Hyper-V), data storage based on the new SQL Server version (Dinali) combined with Insight, Lync, Dynamics, etc and everything nicely integreated it gives MS a great advantage. They also have realized that you need good tools for administrate and move existing customer to the new plattform. 

I saw an very impressive demo of Lync were the existing video capability raises the question why they bought Skype. Just for the existing customer base or what?

I also liked that MS have their own vision when it comes to productivity: it is not physical format of different terminals that defines how this should manifest itself.

I also like the new possibilities to visualize data (Insight) and that they want to extend the usage of BI so it is availible to everyone in the organization (and accessible to every terminal).

The new Windows Phone is something new(with the new user ingerface Mango)! It is not an IPhone look a like. Instead it brings the web to you.

Not a new functionality but anyway cool is the voice to text translation (Goole already has this) using BING's language translation possibility (not clear if Swedish is supported). Also support text translation (Swedish seems to be supported when I tested this). I noticed that the scanning mechanism seems to be faster then the Google version via IPhone. However BING's way to aggregate information using deep links creates new functionality.

I also saw a lot of new devices. The new hardware which basicly supports a full PC on a chip makes it possible to build slimmer and more compact devices. Azer,  Sony and some more will have a lot of new products in a couple of month.

At the end of the day I visited a presentation about the new SQL Server under working name Denali(which can be downloaded today). Blazing fast, stable (to support mission critical applications) and integrated with the cloud plattform. Included was good maintenance and upgrade tools which should give good TOC helping customer to move from older versions. Important is that the new version includes improved security to handle the security problem between sharing infromation using a private and public cloud.

It still struck me what a huge eco system Microsoft have built up. And that there existing fantastic business possibilities. 

I end the day in the middle of a Hollywood party at my hotel (the Roosevelt) which make it hard to sleep. But the information I been receiving just want me to shout and say "Turn off the music and go home"!