Facebook in the office

Last night I had a conversation with some old friends which once again touched on Facebook within a company.  Their company like many has banned Facebook because they believe that people will waste time on Facebook rather than doing their job.  This is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

Banning Facebook because you are worried about malware delivered by it causing the company issues of password leakage etc. is a valid reason, but fears of time wasting is not.  Managing time wasting is a job that should be done by managers, it is what they are paid for.  Unfortunately they often feel if part of their job can be done by banning electronically then they can save themselves effort.  This may be because they do not truly understand computing or through force of habit but it cannot serve in the long run.

I first started having these conversations about web browsing in general, and later about instant messaging and it is clear people still do not get it.  If you are relying on corporate computer systems to stop employees wasting their time then you are going to fail.  Nowadays they can just as happily do Facebook and a lot else from their nice new android mobile phone on an unlimited contract.  Of course you could bring in rules to make them turn those in at the door but you’d also need to go through their bags looking for any magazines or books they may read as well.  That’s also ignoring the plethora of other technology they may carry from iPads to gameboys.

Worse in order to save your company money on office space you are also thinking about asking people to work from home more often.  Granted you can still control what is done on their corporate laptop via VPN services, but what are you going to do about the other distractions in the house?

The answer is for managers to man up and manage.  Know what an employee should be able to deliver in a certain time period and if he/she consistently fails then find out why and manage it through HR processes designed for the task.  I know it’s easier to just blame IT for letting them “play” but in our modern world of connectedness and distractions this is the only real way for companies to operate.  If you are looking for some ideas put ROWE in your search box and see where it leads you.  

Honesty in the face of the cloud

Over the last few days there have been some interesting things going on with Twitter and a certain footballer.  Essentially this footballer has requested information from Twitter about a twitter user that has posted personal information about him.  This may have been done to try and circumvent a “super injunction” and thus prompted the action.

It isn’t the rights or wrongs of the story that I find interesting it is the reaction of Twitter users who promptly on a large scale tweeted the name of the footballer, or at least of the footballer they thought was responsible.  This kind of action happens on a regular basis but this one was in direct response to their feelings about a legal approach to twitter.  It was in their eyes are defense of their freedom of speech.

It seems to me that this footballer underestimated the power of twitter and its ilk to have significant effect on the way people think.  What the he sought to do by bringing this action to Twitter was to prevent the twitter rumours from becoming mud that sticks.  What he actually achieved was ensuring that the mud did indeed stick, whilst at the same time his action brings suspicion that he was actually trying to cover up a guilty act.  The thing is that if he was indeed trying to unearth a news paper that was seeking to use twitter to get around a “super injunction” he would almost certainly have failed.  It is highly unlikely that they would have planted such a tweet from their own account and would have done it from an internet cafe because they would have known they were breaking the law.  This would have made them untraceable.  

The concern people have here is that the masses on twitter et al can be manipulated by a few individuals for their own purposes.   It is a danger well understood by the more controlling governments of this world and by the newspaper moguls that have become accustomed to functioning in that role.  I suspect it will not be long before all governments seek to act against this is some way.  The most likely will be that laws will be passed that ensure that your genuine identity is attached to all such comment.  This will mean that any such postings could accurately be tracked and that posters would be responsible for their comments.  This will reduce the number of law abiding citizens from contributing as they will fear the repercussions.  The less law abiding, however, will continue do this through fake or hijacked identities.  This will gain them more believability in doing so as they will be assumed to be genuine people, but the amplification of the subject by enraged law abiding citizens will be reduced.   Funny thing is the only way to effectively implement this kind of control will  be through some kind of active identity card system...  

For the meantime if your company becomes the target of something like this on twitter, think really carefully about whether should attempt to stifle the issue using legal action.  If you are truly not guilty you would be better advised to ride out the storm.  If you are guilty then you are going to have to be honest and hope a full apology will be accepted.

At the speed of a glance

As a young man I remember going through a number of wrist watches on my way to becoming "Grown up" but I recently read an article about the younger generations that matched with my personal observations.  Young people are much less likely to wear a watch than the older generations.  My sons certainly don't, nor do their friends when they come around.  Indeed the one time my eldest son wore a watch it was because it was given to him as a gift, the youngest didn't even bow to this pressure.  They don't have the greatest role model in this though as their father also does not wear a watch!

Watch wearers cannot understand how non wearers get by but the difference is quite often reflected in the users approach to the world.  A watch is in general a single purpose object that deals with time, and not a lot else but the style and design helps them to define how they want to be seen, witness how many expensive watches you see in upper management meetings.

For my sons, their friends and indeed me there is less purpose to the watch because we all carry mobile phones and prefer to glance at them regularly.  As well as an update on the actual time this also tells us if we have messages and whether or not our battery will last!  In a sense we have returned to the days of pocket watches, but these watches do much more than just tell the time.  I would not even think of spending the sums of money that some people spend on a watch when for much less I could buy a dual core mobile phone that can do the job of that watch, a camera, a video camera, a sat nav, a gameboy, a portable DVD and even a computer.

So why is this important?  It means every time they glance at the device they can take in much more information than the older generations that stare at three hands sweeping around.  Currently I have not seen this really taken advantage of but just think about how you could improve efficiency if alongside the battery indicator and clock was a countdown for submission of a bid document or maybe a sales target flag etc.  I'm sure you can think of more creative things you could do but you get my point.

Of course for all those watch wearers that currently do both, some where along the line an effective and affordable wrist phone will come into being.  Several have tried but so far none have stuck but they will, and they will do a pretty good impression of sweeping hands while they too publish other information at the speed of a glance.

Why knowing about your information can get you an iPad

On Tuesday I had my first encounter with a blackberry playbook, and although I think the name is a problem in the UK the device itself  seemed to function pretty well.   Compared to the iPad 2 a different colleague was showing me it was smaller and, I felt, somewhat  less stylish.  Both were happily connected to both corporate and consumer email systems;  both allowed viewing of business documents and taking of notes and both were smaller and more convenient than a corporate laptop.

At the same time I have been  looking at a replacement mobile phone both for my sons and for myself.   The top end android mobile phones  now have 2 core 1.2 Ghz processors  with 1Gb of ram,  this is pretty similar in specification to my current corporate PC!   Not only that but many of these devices have both Bluetooth and HDMI out.   Without too much effort a phone plugged into a TV or HDMI compatible monitor with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard  becomes a reasonably competent computer.   Indeed an option for the Motorolla Atrix phone is a shell into which you plug the phone to convert it into an always connected netbook computer.

So consumer equipment is both stylish and powerful,  not only that users enjoy using them and often feel more productive when they use them.   So why do we not use them in a business context more often?  Quite often just because the  IS group says no because that is not how IT is done.   I've even sat in a meeting talking about this with someone who while using an iPad was arguing the business should not have them.  When asked about this he explained that he had IT skills and thus understood the rights and wrongs of using the device thus making it safe.

This then is the worry that IS people have when they are not in full control of the equipment, but they are not worrying about the equipment.  They are actually worried about the data and their responsibility towards keeping it safe.  I believe this is a problem with the way that the modern business world has evolved, business computer users assume that IS groups are solely in charge of data. That may be true however data has little value, it is information that has value and business users can often not see a difference between the two and often do not take responsibility for it.  Information stored on a USB stick and lost by an executive causes embarrassment to the company because IS did not encrypt it?  No wonder IS groups are sensitive to these things.

The truth is that companies have to trust our people with information all the time and always have, whilst USB sticks and computers found in taxis have recently appeared in the news it wasn't so long ago that this was files and reports.  Granted the former can potentially carry much more information than the latter, but the damage is still done.  I do not remember anyone talking about not using briefcases in case they get left in a taxi. Equally well until recently a very old red case was used for the budget probably because understanding the value of the information inside made it's carriers look after it appropriately.

As my colleague above was unconsciously saying it is not the consumer devices in and of themselves that are the problem.  Instead it is the training we give our users in the value of information and how to treat it. I believe this is not just a failing in our companies but also in our education system.  Our children are brought up to use information technology but are not schooled in the importance of the information itself and how it should be looked after. They do however understand it instinctively on a different level, I recently asked a room full of university students if their parents were Facebook friends with them.  The answer was about 30/70 in favour of no but when I asked why they realised it was because making sure some information did not get to the wrong eyes was important to them!  In addition many did not realise that if they downloaded just the wrong app that information could be exposed by malicious software without them even knowing.

If everyone understood these things, and IS groups trusted that, then there would be no barrier to the use of any technology in the business.  In this ideal world the workplace could become more effective, bring your own computing would free us to use our favourite computing tools and the move to the cloud would be simpler. Sadly there are other things to worry about too but raising awareness of the value of information will help people decide whether they really want to put the information at risk. If you haven't already done so add some information value awareness training to your induction programs for all staff not just the ones working in secure environments, that way you may get your hands on that iPad you've been wanting sooner.

Head of power generation

In corporate computing there is one issue that still invokes a lot of strong feeling and that is the topic of user computer lockdown.  Many IT professionals see this as the only way to control a computing environment and ensure it is reliable; however some business users see this as keeping them from what they need to be able to do.

Until the advent of the iPhone and the Xbox this sort of model was largely missing from consumer computing however both these platforms are locked down and both are undoubtedly successful.  Both also have communities dedicated to opening up these proprietary platforms that bang heads with the vendors on a regular basis but most of the users would not even think of doing this, mostly because they are not technical enough to know the option even exists.  This in turn means that there is much less resistance to an established service that you want to use being locked down than there is to the locking down of something that you already use but that has never had restrictions before.

Now I want to consider what would happen if Microsoft delivered a service based computing platform tied to their cloud services.  It is not unlikely that this will occur, especially if the rumours of Google preparing a similar service for ChromeOS are true. The platform would be locked down in that it would only allow products from its “App” store to be installed and would only allow storage within the Microsoft cloud.    

What we are effectively talking about is computing moving to a similar purchasing model to mobile phones.  All of your computing is on tap including the computing device and connectivity for a monthly fee.  At the end of the contract term your computer is upgraded.  Corporate business units will create cloud services for the unique computing requirements of their company that would be delivered through the contract devices.  It’s most likely these corporately created cloud services would also be hosted in storage and processing farms also located in the cloud rather than server rooms.  Suddenly almost all of the things a corporate IT group does are no longer necessary.

In the initial days of electricity many companies had a “Head of Electricity generation” on their board.  This was because it was new; complicated and vital to the business.  This is not unlike IT of today but how many people have this title now outside of the power companies?  There may be electricians, tuners of the end point for the electricity service, but otherwise companies trust others to supply them with electricity.  Many CIO’s today will feel computing is more complex and thus less likely to disappear from the board, but I suspect those heads of power generation felt the same.

Remember computing is a tool that a corporation uses to make money and IT groups are a necessary evil to making that tool available.  If that tool can be obtained in another cheaper way then the company will use that method quite happily.  All that has stopped this in the past has been the complexity but the cloud services lowers the complexity making business unit lead computing more available.  

Communications technology hopes

There is no doubt that the computing world is getting more and more mobile.  Recent smartphones are now equipped with dual core 1Ghz plus processors, a similar specification to laptops of four or five years ago.  Nvidias Tegra 3 quad core processor will undoubtedly find its way into at least one phone by the end of the year and a number of tablets too.   These devices are significant because they use native connectivity and in most cases have reduced functionality if they cannot find a connection. They have evolved from the mobile phone market rather than from the computing market, yet they provide access to simple powerful computing.

On a worldwide basis 20% of people access the internet via a traditional computing device, the other 80% use a mobile device.  Indeed in some countries mobile is pretty much the only way that you can get access to the internet.  A mobile handset, often second hand indirectly received from a westerner that perceives it to be no longer the in thing, becomes an affordable eye on the world.

There is a shadow on this bright new horizon of anywhere connection and that is the communication medium itself.  Anybody that has travelled even within their own town will realise that the current mobile communication system is flawed.  No matter how many pretty coloured maps the mobile providers give us we all know areas where there is simply no signal.  Though this is sometimes useful when the dead spot covers a pub, it undermines our ability to use centralised computing reliably.  This leads to a requirement for caching technologies to ensure that data is still available if connectivity is not.

4G Technologies such as WiMax and LTE (Long Term Evolution) are evolutions of the current technology.  Though they do provide a next step up in bandwidth they still have similar restrictions to the existing cell technology and will doubtless maintain the same dead spots and short battery life devices that we have today with UMTS technologies.  To truly enable us to become mobile we need something else, something that truly allows connection from anywhere any time.

There is some possibility of something being done in the whitespace that will result from next years digital TV switch over, but these wavebands will be hotly contested.  These frequencies travel well meaning that fewer cells could cover a larger area.  It is likely though that these frequencies will be filled with yet more television channels as governments auction them to those that will pay the most money.  Logically using them for an all pervasive IP network would provide space for Television, Communication and much more, but who said logic will be involved in the allocations?

Even this white space cannot give us what we really need which is something more akin to Star Treks sub-space communications, the ability to communicate instantly anywhere in the universe.  There is however a possibility of something that may be able to do just that nestling in the quantum plane, an effect achieved through quantum entanglement.  Now this is pretty mysterious to all but quantum specialists however the gist of it is that two particles are linked together such that an occurrence to one is reflected in the other, in theory wherever the two particles may be.  Extrapolate from this and you have the possibility for a virtual cable that links a device with a hub where ever it may be.  The longest distance I have heard of this technique being used is 144km, but that is a start and beats normal cell tower communication by a long way.  There is a long way to go yet and unlike the fictional sub-space it's still subject to speed of light issues, but there is hope. 


There would, of course, be massive military value to this technology so even if it worked now we may not know of it for some years, however this remains my only candidate so far for a truly mobile future and worry free cloud computing.  

The demise of the corporate computing experience?

In the year 2000 I was recruited onto a bold new project within my company.  The idea was to replace the entire fleet of computers both end user computers and back officer servers.  This would provide a computing service that would give consistent, supportable computing to the company.  This would provide all the computing and support necessary for a modern company with a centralised service desk and all the facilities normally expected. This included computer software available from a central store of applications without so much as a CD ever touching the computer.  All this would be available for only £180 per month, with regular updates of equipment every three years.

To many of you this will sound familiar as it has become quite a common model for a number of large corporations.  There is evidence to show that this is indeed the cheapest and most effective way in which to deploy IT to a reasonably sized corporation, however the resulting spiked spending pattern every three or so years is not often popular with accountants!

In the year 2000 though consumer computing was very different to the world of today.  Consumer computing devices tended to be lower power than corporate computers. Likewise links to the internet tended to be much slower, even at the edge of technology for the time my home ISDN link could not really be considered to be fast!  In the last 10 years this has flipped completely, my computer at home is an order of magnitude more powerful than the machine I use at work.  Though my broadband is limited by distance from the exchange it still delivers acceptable service, though not the 40mb and upward that many are used to on a daily basis.

This flipping leads people to experience a more acceptable computing environment in their home than at their place of work.  This in turn leads them to question why they can’t use their consumer technology to do their work.  In their minds the only thing that is stopping them is the IS Group that is telling them they are not allowed to do this. 

With the release of the iPhone appstore an easily accessible consumer service began to operate in a similar fashion to corporate IT.  Not only that but users loved these devices and completely forgave the lockdown on them in a way that the corporate IT user never had!  The advent of the iPad brought the use of consumer equipment in the business environment solidly into the boardroom of many companies as its size made it appear a valid computer replacement.  The question “Why can we not use this in business?” was met by many IS groups with FUD about security and understanding of where the data is being stored etc.

This approach is consistent with the we know best attitude I remember so well from the early 90’s when I was asking the central computing mainframe department about when we would be able to use Microsoft Windows.  I would get answers like “We’re looking at it” but in truth they knew they were already doing the right thing and so did not spare valuable business as usual resources to investigate Windows more deeply.  By the time they did, we had already exploited the new way of working and moved so far beyond them that attempts to regain control were useless.

Does this sound familiar to you?  If so you should ask yourself where are the mainframe computing departments today?  A few survive but in most corporations they were an evolutionary dead end replaced by an IS Group that evolved out of those early windows users.  Looking back I can see that a lot of the knowledge those centralised groups had built up was lost. Now we have through experience regained it are we really willing to lose it all again by following the same flawed strategy of our ancestors?

Before you answer that question follow this link and then consider my first paragraph above.  If at the time the company could have had the service we were suggesting for a mere £14ish a week simply by using a cloud service would we ever have been asked to implement the in house system we did?