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Lack of Innovation in IT Holding Companies Back?
bednarz writes to mention that Google's Dave Girouard, manager of enterprise business, is blaming a "crisis" in IT and the "insane complexity" of technology, among other things, for the lack of innovation that could allow businesses to grow. "A lot of things that people think of as core IT functions need to disappear into the ether so that the IT organization can properly focus on the value-added [activities]," he said. "Information security, as critical as it is, needs to be taken care of by organizations who live and die by it, who invest the money, time, resources and staff. Why should every company in the world have to build up their own expertise and have to maintain servers and provide security?"
It's a simple task to make things complex, but a complex task to make things simple. - Meyer's Law
---"A lot of things that people think of as core IT functions need to disappear into the ether so that the IT organization can properly focus on the value-added [activities]," he said. "Information security, as critical as it is, needs to be taken care of by organizations who live and die by it, who invest the money, time, resources and staff. Why should every company in the world have to build up their own expertise and have to maintain servers and provide security?"
It comes down to ownership and renting..
Would you rather own your home, or rent it? Would you rather rent a car or own it?
Thats right, we can pay Google Apps to take care of our network architecture because we cant be bothered with it... Until they perceive a "non-payment".. What happens then when the lights go out? Do the DNS servers stop working, do the samba servers get rm'ed? Or does the master-password holders (READ google) just shut down every network appliance you all are using?
Not smart. Not smart at all...
A company buys enormous data centers, the kind one might use to farm out a business' IT infrastructure needs, and then that company promotes... farming out business' IT infrastructure needs! Whaaa?!
stuff |
Try signing up for Google Checkout to sell things on Google Base... It's a disconnected nightmare process.
Google does search & email well. The rest... right up there with everyone else.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
IT organization can properly focus on the value-added [activities]
Yeah, I could see your point - if you define the function of IT that way. Most people out there though, don't. They see IT as the tech problem-solvers in the business. Fix that computer, hook me to such-and-such across VPN, get rid of my spyware.
If you want to have a group of guys doing value added activities, hire some engineers or more IT staff and define their job responsibilities that way. And once you do, don't bug them with other stuff. If they're supposed to be idea guys, let them do that and that only. Don't interrupt them with your secretary's spyware problem.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The Federal Government, which pays for most of the innovation in the US (directly through r&d contracts, or indirectly through grants) has cut back on its tech spending to free up money for the war.
Best Slashdot Co
More like 'lack of budget.'
How can we address 'lack of expanding?' Whenever someone trots out a Vista post we're reminded there's still businesses out there running on a Win 2000 network because 'it just works' and isn't getting replaced.
I'm sure the poor compitent sysadmin of that 2K network has plenty of ideas how to innovate their network, but they can't requisition the funds for it. Then there's training, dealing with the migration... Sure, it can happen, but no one outside IT sees the advantage in it.
Now compare that to the major problems in most everyday corperations...
Note if your company looses all its email data it will not make the news unless you are hosting for people outside your company.
This stuff really happends far more frequently with self run IT shops. Google is a lot better then the average. They are not perfect but better then most.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Another major problem in Not Invented Here (NIH). Why does every organization seem to feel the need to invent their own solutions to standard problems? Why does every small shop seem to write their own inventory or accounting program? The needs are not that different from the "standard" solutions. Some places have seen a good acceptance of standard products, such as work processors and spreadsheet - imagine telling your company CFO that you don't like how Excel/OO-Calc works and you want to create a custom spreadsheet just for you company. Sure, most businesses can make good use of a few custom macros, but a custom spreadsheet for the MBAs? All of the outsourcing brouhaha a few years ago was the first step in this process: 1) Create innovative custom software, 2) other companies make simular programs, 3) outsource net revisions - creating a specialized knowledge base about that type of program, and soon, 4) somebody creates a standard product, 5) profit!
Really, office desktops should be more like the N64 A ROM cartridge with all of your apps that only get the new generation every 5 years. And the server side is even less interesting.
A Google exec telling companies to outsource IT, is like a Microsoft exec telling companies to use Windows.
Given Google's recent missteps; In a few years, suggesting we outsource core IT functions to Google might be as laughable as suggesting we outsource core IT functions to Microsoft.
Or lack of any business sense as well..
Let's see farm out the security and core operation of the company's IT infrastructure to another company. Will you give them key's to the building and the combination to your safes as well? Because they will have access to all your plans, documents, and other information that is secret to your company... These managers never pull their heads out of their ass far enough to see that until you spell it out for them. We had to do that at Comcast once. They wanted to have a 3rd party company take over some critical security, Executives were unwavering until they were told point blank, "do you trust this company with your private info and the contents of your laptop? Under Sarbanes oxley, if they screw up it's YOUR HEAD that rolls not theirs..."
IT is a cost of doing business, just like sales and marketing, why the suits want to farm out everything they do not understand themselves is never understood by those that actually do the work. They never farm out SALES or management to a 3rd party, IT is as critical to the business as sales and management.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You already give your keys and access codes to your "physical" security company.
c++;
But c'mon, I mean I can see what you're saying about getting a Linux tech but the rest of the argument doesn't really hold that much water. Most sane companies shouldn't all be using different types of PCs, in which you buy a random new one and aren't sure it will work. It can also depend on what you're using the computer's for. If it is some sort of obscure hardware interfacing that maybe windows only has a driver for then sure. However, office work and the like should really feel transparent. Throw some desktop icons on there of your office suite of choice and all the basic necessary tools (they exist) and you are good. Now if you're a MS Office poweruser that may be another problem since OpenOffice really isn't ready to replace MS Word in that respect and anyone who says otherwise hasn't really used Office beyond the basics.
Turn based strategy game that runs over XMPP. Phalanx
Not to the server room, saves, or executive offices.
How about one of the causes being me not wanted to get get my ass sued off by a patent squatter whenever I say %quot;Look what I just made".
Be gone from my sight or prepare to feel my flaming wraith!
I think it more of a lack of standardization that holds companies back. So many companies have to design this so that can integrate seamlessly with such and such. Where I work, we've got a few database systems. we have to use a complex activeX control thru windows IE to access these databases (running on linux) just to do our job, when it'd have been far easier to just have all the machines running linux, so you wouldn't need all the extra mess in the way.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Ahem: Privacy.
The problem with using Google tools is that the data that goes into them is no longer "yours" in that it resides soley on your servers, your systems, etc. Google may claim to use this only for special needs, etc but the bottom line is that businesses live and die by their internal info and a combination of good sense and securities laws forces most of them to keep internal documents internally. As such using external storage of docs or google storage is limited by the extent to which they can trade that data away without losing their jobs.
Try telling your boss in a publicly traded (or worse yet private) company that what you should do is put your corporate secrets into someone else's hands, and that someone else specializes in mining and sharing information.
I agree with you. Web services also come to mind. Long before SOAP left the bathtub and entered our computers, people were exchanging XML over HTTP all the time. It generally worked well- what is so hard about it- you agree on a schema, build the document, transmit it, and the other guy parses and uses it. Done. Minimal code, lightweight, functional.
Nowadays, Thou Shalt use Web Services. This means layers of super complex descriptors, marshaling code, etc. It seems as though one is always fighting serialization and interoperability issues. Is it worth it? Is this really "more maintainable" or "more scalable" or "mo betta" in any practical way? What greater value have you really produced beyond the poor man's solution of plain XML over HTTP? Because I know this concept of everyone communicating exclusively over web services discovered via UDDI is a pipe dream.
Having worked in several IT shops it's very clear that, for many businesses, the day-to-day maintenance is dragging down the ability to innovate.
;)
The answer is not outsourcing, it's differentiation and adoption of IT functions in other business areas. Delegate account administration to HR, since they're in charge of adds/moves/changes for staff anyway. Complex security? Script it or document it, and have your sysadmin deal with the exceptions only. HR begins to discover the employees who can't ever remember their passwords, and somehow those people disappear.
PC Issues? Blue Cross had a great solution to cover the 80% of the non-power-users: Re-image your PCs during an acknowledged downtime at least once a month. (I think BCBS was doing it every Sunday night) Push back down all the apps (based on their group membership) that they use to do their jobs, along with the profile/settings transfer wizards if you want to be nice. Keep their files and settings in their home directory, where they need to be for backups anyway. Most Windows stability/speed issues disappear.
User training issues? One person per department or team group is designated as the app admin for that group's apps, and is paid extra for that function. Got an Excel/Access/great plains question, go see the guru in Finance. Got a PowerPoint question, see the Sales guru. Or make a training department who's goal is too serve as power users for each app that's under the corporate umbrella, and attach that department to HR or an Administrative function.
This kind of day to day stuff shouldn't be a protected IT function. More often than not, if you farm it out, the business will get the answers to questions that are holding them back, and IT can focus on the good stuff.
jb
Nick,
You make a great point, but I think it's more systemic than that. It comes from this post-90's view that all a company needs to do to boost its stock price is to close a few locations and fire 15% of their employees. Call it "Profit by the Thousand Cuts".
So IT directors are just taking their cues from the CEOs (because many of them want desperately to become CEO) and measure their job by how far they can cut costs. Forget about how miserable your internal customers are. Just the fact that the people who work in your company are now considered "internal customers" show that they are considered fodder, not humans. When you decide that with enough properly written protocols you can hire total morons and still get the job done, it's only a matter of time. You are finished.
There was a fascinating story last night on The Marketplace on NPR. It was about the fact that the steady growth in productivity we've seen in this country since, well, since the beginning is finally beginning to slow down. It means that we may have reached the limit of what you can expect out of workers, regardless of the income-level. We've squeezed workers to the point that marriages are failing, children are ignored and people have to be miserable if they want to pay their bills. Workers are made "management" so they can't get paid for overtime. The wonderful 7am "working breakfast" meetings become common. A CEO's effectiveness is measured by how many people he can lay off.
I had an uncle, an Italian immigrant, who measured the success of his business by how many people he employed, not how few.
Expect to see a renewed interest in collective bargaining in the coming decade. People are tired of being used. Squeezed. Being asked to give more while getting less. If the US is going to keep from becoming a third world country, we better realize that our people are our most important resource. The people who work downstairs, not the CEOs in the suite pulling down 9-figure incomes, who get 7-figure bonuses for closing factories.
Seriously, I pray we start to turn this around before blood has to be spilled over the division between The Rich and The Rest.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've worked in a few different capacities in IT, from a system admin at a small start up and now a developer role. It seems consistent to me that IT is always made out to be a villain by upper executives whilst their own misguided decisions can be entirely ignored. I had a friend tell me some of the nightmares in Australia's flight company (the one which sounds like Quantums) before they decided to outsource to Indian companies. The consistent theme was an embarrasing mix of stuff ups between middle managers and upper executives which are never analysed. The summary was that due to a failed outsourced IT project (called e-ticket or something like that) it left them with a shortfall of something like $20m AUD. Solution - outsource your remaining IT to make up for it. From the sounds of it, the higher level IT project manager of the failed project then went on to work for the company that they'd outsourced to - and was given a nice hand shake payout as well. It seems that there are decent IT workers and managers out there, but yeah, there's a lot of dummies who don't seek to automate their work. However, as bad as they are, having non-technical upper executives making whimsical decisions seems to be the biggest cost to companies. Every year, IT is getting easier to do more with less, and should reduce the cost - but to want to entirely outsource? Meh, some people never learn. Why can't people (well executives) take a step back, and realise that we're doing a pretty complicated job - but that it's a necessary job, just like their own one. It's funny, but in Australia they've so completely buggered the IT workforce by pushing down salaries, they've now found a skill shortage - and consequently pay very well for good help. Well boo hoo to employers - they pushed many smart people into different professions, and now they try and whinge about skill shortages. Until people start realising that fostering a good skill base is a good long term strategy on a micro and macro level, this cycle is just going to keep repeating...