A piece you're missing: There are three bottom-line benefits to business, not two. The three are increased revenue, decreased cost, and better-managed risk. IT contributes to all three of these.
The business value of most infrastructure updates is risk management, as aging technology carries with it a number of risks (the new printer won't run on the old OS; we rely on an application build on a no-longer-supported-language and won't run on the only desktops we can now buy; to provide just a few tangible examples).
As the author of the article, I'm in a good position to respond.
For those who didn't read the entire article, this was a quote from Adam Hartung, author of "Create Marketplace Disruption."
His point was that IT works better when it recommends superior ways to address the underlying situation, rather than dealing with requests as work orders from customers to which it must respond.
It's simply an example of the difference between "You're my customer and my job is to keep you satisfied" and "We're in this together and there's a better way for the two of us to help the company's customers than the one you envisioned."
- Bob Lewis
So in your model, no laptop user should be able to perform useful work in locations where Internet access is slow, unreliable, or unavailable... for example, in the air or in rural locations?
Your definition of competent and mine apparently differ.
Your objections, along with those of many here who advocate central control, assumes everyone works at a desk using a desktop system. Think about a traveling employee working with a laptop. Now explain how storing everything in TEMP is a really good idea.
Plenty of good solutions exist for backing up local drives, for companies that recognize the value of working this way, such as smaller expenditures for storage, reduced network traffic, and more empowered users.
(BTW: In a way this whole thread is my fault - see "The portal" (Keep the Joint Running,, 2/25/2008 http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=654. Glad to see it generated some interest. - Bob Lewis)
I project-managed a serious attempt at rolling out Newtons. They failed for one reason and one reason only: Unlike Palm, Apple couldn't be bothered to integrate the Newton into existing IT environments. It didn't synchronize.
The result - it was worthless as a PDA.
From what I can make out, the iPhone continues this tradition. The result: Those willing to spend the iPhone's purchase price will buy Treos, Blackberries, and Windows Mobile devices instead, for the simple reason that they fit into daily worklife.
Steve Jobs has many fine qualities. He has never understood the importance of compatibility with the installed base. If you don't believe this, go back and look at the NeXT machine - a fine piece of equipment whose software was carefully crafted to be irrelevant to the corporate computing environments of its day.
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The business value of most infrastructure updates is risk management, as aging technology carries with it a number of risks (the new printer won't run on the old OS; we rely on an application build on a no-longer-supported-language and won't run on the only desktops we can now buy; to provide just a few tangible examples).
As the author of the article, I'm in a good position to respond. For those who didn't read the entire article, this was a quote from Adam Hartung, author of "Create Marketplace Disruption." His point was that IT works better when it recommends superior ways to address the underlying situation, rather than dealing with requests as work orders from customers to which it must respond. It's simply an example of the difference between "You're my customer and my job is to keep you satisfied" and "We're in this together and there's a better way for the two of us to help the company's customers than the one you envisioned." - Bob Lewis
You have to be kidding me. No ifs? No buts?
... for example, in the air or in rural locations?
So in your model, no laptop user should be able to perform useful work in locations where Internet access is slow, unreliable, or unavailable
Your definition of competent and mine apparently differ.
Plenty of good solutions exist for backing up local drives, for companies that recognize the value of working this way, such as smaller expenditures for storage, reduced network traffic, and more empowered users.
(BTW: In a way this whole thread is my fault - see "The portal" (Keep the Joint Running,, 2/25/2008 http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=654. Glad to see it generated some interest. - Bob Lewis)
I project-managed a serious attempt at rolling out Newtons. They failed for one reason and one reason only: Unlike Palm, Apple couldn't be bothered to integrate the Newton into existing IT environments. It didn't synchronize. The result - it was worthless as a PDA. From what I can make out, the iPhone continues this tradition. The result: Those willing to spend the iPhone's purchase price will buy Treos, Blackberries, and Windows Mobile devices instead, for the simple reason that they fit into daily worklife. Steve Jobs has many fine qualities. He has never understood the importance of compatibility with the installed base. If you don't believe this, go back and look at the NeXT machine - a fine piece of equipment whose software was carefully crafted to be irrelevant to the corporate computing environments of its day.