Keystones and Rivets

IT (still) exists for one reason

The Pebble groaned.  “Another big 2.0 conference is coming up...I’ll be reading about it for weeks.” 

My non-tecchie colleague, who freely admits that the average pebble possesses more IT knowledge than he does, spends a few hours each day trawling various media for news and information of interest to our company.

Something he hates is anything ‘2.0’.  “Who comes up with this junk...is the pen the pencil 2.0?”, is a rant I’ve heard on more than one occasion.

The other day he was scanning a few blogs and I could tell he was going he let rip once again.  It was like watching and listening to a volcano in the hours leading up to an eruption. 

“All the usual rubbish”...‘uber’...‘paradigm shift’...‘3.0’...“THREE point oh?!! - you have to be kidding me!”  At this point various items of stationery went into orbit.

After I’d stopped laughing and he’d calmed down he said, “Why don’t we set up a 2.0 Skeptic blog?”

“One blog is enough to be getting on with, thank you very much” I replied.  But I could see his point. 

The name The Pebble chose for his proposed blog was inspired by the blog of the IT Skeptic.

The HP consolidation

Hewlett Packard (HP) has been pursuing an aggressive campaign to reduce the number of applications used internally to operate its business.

The project, which has been gathering momentum since it was kicked off in July 2005, seems to be entering it’s final phases, and there have been quite a few articles written of late about how the project is progressing.

The consolidation majors on reducing the application count from 6,000 to about 1780, and reducing the number of HP data centres from 85 global centres down to just 3 pairs based in the USA.

Cloud Computing

LUNKWILL:  Are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest, most powerful computer in all creation?
DEEP THOUGHT:  I described myself as the second greatest …Deep Thought… and such…
LUNKWILL:  Yes yes but…
DEEP THOUGHT:  …I am.
LUNKWILL:  But, but, but - this is preposterous! Are you not a greater computer than The Milliard Gargantu-Brain at Maximegalon, which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?
DEEP THOUGHT:  The Milliard Gargantu-Brain, a mere abacus. Mention it not.
FOOK:  And are you not a more fiendish disputant than The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler? Which can destroy -
DEEP THOUGHT:  The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler can talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey but only I can persuade it to go for a walk afterwards. Molest me not, with this, pocket calculator stuff!
LUNKWILL:  Then what's the problem?
DEEP THOUGHT:  I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me.

(The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Nick Carr recently commented on IBM's new initiative called Project KittyHawk, which sets out to use their Blue Gene technology.  The project aspires to create a “global-scale shared computer capable of hosting the entire Internet as an application”.

There have been a range of online discussions on the back of the article as, once again, Nick Carr manages to hit more than a couple of raw nerves.

The premise of the article is that IBM Blue Gene technology is creating computers of such power that data centres can offer vast amounts of  computational power that businesses can plug into and use according to need at a particular time.

These supercomputers can emulate many individual smaller servers (virtualisation) so businesses can migrate their IT services to this new model.

Rather than data centres just offering a place to put your own servers, they can start to offer virtual servers or services, enabling new business models to be adopted.

The IBM technology is so fast that Project Kittyhawk can emulate the entire internet. 

Governance and Government

We weren’t sure whose chin hit the floor first.

“He did say 25 million, didn’t he?” asked The Pebble.

“Yip”, I replied.

We had just begun watching a news broadcast about the latest data security breach by a British government department, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

25 million personal records, including the banking information for every family in the UK with a child under the age of 16, had been written with only password protection onto two CDs which were subsequently “lost in transit”.

The UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said that the security breach was down to “Failure in implementing the proper procedures.”

He went on to explain that:

1. “Only authorised staff should have access to protectively marked information”
2. “Information must not be removed without appropriate authorisation”
3. “Encryption should be used whenever information is being sent”

Nuts and bolts and dataflows

“Morning…guess what?  The Bengals won yesterday”.

The Pebble loves American Football.

At this time of year, his mood on a Monday morning isn’t difficult to gauge.

If he starts to talk about his beloved team from Cincinnati, we know they won the night before and he is a happy man.  If he doesn’t say much about anything until lunchtime, then it’s a sure bet that they lost.

Mondays mornings have been a bit quiet lately.

This week, though, he was in high-spirits.  Not only had his team beaten “The Ravens”, he told us, but he had won the grand sum of £5 by betting on the match.

“All the drinks are on me”, he laughed.

We could hardly contain our excitement.

When indulging his gambling vice, The Pebble uses something called a betting exchange.  These exchanges are peer-to-peer websites that act as brokers between people who, instead of trading stocks or commodities, trade odds on the outcomes of sporting events.  The sites earn revenue by taking a commission from each winning bet.

Trying to cross No Man's Land

The Pebble and I work well together.

But he is an Arts graduate, so I have to humour him from time to time.

This entails having to listen every so often to one of his “stories” about history or politics. 

Today, for some reason, he decided to explain why the Red Army initially collapsed during the German invasion of Russia during 1941. 

“Barbarossa”, “Lebensraum”, “OKW”,  “Timoshenko”, “Smolensk”, “Stavka”…

The Pebble often talks about interesting things but occasionally he uses too much terminology.  As is sometimes the case, after a few minutes I felt my eyes glazing over.  My mind started to drift into that strange state where you feel conscious and unconscious at the same time.  The lights were on, but there was definitely nobody home.   

His talk about matters military must have had some impact though.  Through the haze I began asking myself - when did IT last go into battle with a genuine understanding of what the business was trying to do?

When did Business and IT last plan together strategically, agree tactics, and march together with clear objectives?

How about ten years ago...?