Choosing technology

One of the things that we all know as IT professionals is that our industry has a truly appalling failure rate. It has always been there and over recent years I have seen nothing particularly change. Statistics suggest that failure rates are 40% but I suspect that the truth is much higher. Some of these failures will be through projects simply taking too long to deliver the required benefits in a timely manner. I have seen for example Windows 7 projects started as part of a Microsoft TAP program before the OS was released being overtaken by the imminent (6 months) release of Windows 8.

Why is it that these projects take so long? Well a lot of it is down to complexity the products chosen, their configuration and the method of deployment all become highly complex. This is especially so when they are deployed into a preexisting large environment. There is however another possibility, it is us that is over complicating the delivery of these projects.

A few months ago I bought my Son a new mobile phone, he’s a Maths geek who spends a lot of time on the computer. I selected a smart phone that I believed would give him maximum functionality and reduce the number of gadgets that he needed to carry. A few days ago I asked him how one of the programs on it worked and he told me he had no idea he’d never tried it. This surprised me and on further discussion I realised he had tried pretty much none of the advanced functionality of the phone. “It’s like this Dad” he said “I use it for making phone calls and sending texts”.

My knowledge of technology and the potentials of the device lead me to select something considerably beyond what his use of the device required. The people selecting technology for our businesses are also extremely technical and vulnerable to the same conceits. I have seen outsourced projects fail because in house technical staff have mandated architectural elements of the outsourced service. I have also seen selection of simpler products or services overruled by technical opinion, only for the extra facilities obtained to never be used.

I feel this is an indicator that there is still not enough input from the actual end user in the decisions that are made. Even when an end user is involved, the end user tends to pick an IT aware individual from their organisation as their representative and this person has the same tendency to select technology. This is especially likely when you work in an engineering based organisation! The trick is to choose an individual that knows the business purpose inside and out but professes to be bad with computers. Once selected the temptation to sell them the IT options they need must also be avoided, especially if they appear to want less than you feel you should give them.

One last point nowadays I often hear technical staff telling me how Cloud services will never work; that we will always have in house facilities and that cloud is just the latest buzzword. This time it is different though, always in the past making the new technology work has always required the input of the technical people. With Cloud all a business needs to adopt the services is a computer and an Internet connection. Cloud services give the business the chance to choose technology support that is sufficient for them with out added complication from us. If IS departments want to remain relevant they must get better and choosing technology.

Could we replace Active Directory with Facebook?

Facebook may not be used by us all but it is certainly known to almost everyone.  Many people tell me proudly how they never use it, others how they have thousands of friends.  Like going to the pub or chess club, Facebook is to each what they need it to be.

Leaving aside the social abilities of Facebook there is another quite interesting property of the service.  This property is perhaps counter intuitive and certainly is something that has also been highlighted as a problem with on line services.  The property I am talking about is identity.

Now if you are an ICT security professional you probably just through something at the screen, or more likely clicked the back button.  Those of you that did not, bear with me while I explain why Facebook has properties that could identify you uniquely as an individual on line.

Okay so now assume that I create an account online for a shopping site.  They ask me my name, date of birth and something secret usually my mothers maiden name (like that was not on public record!!).  That’s it off you go, almost anyone can pretend to be me creating an account and doing whatever they wish.

Now take a look at my Facebook account.  In there is a lot of information about me, even though I am careful not to expose too much.  There are photo’s of me, there is a network of friends all of whom know me as I am choosy about who I have as a friend.  There is information about my hobbies and there are lots of examples of the way I think and my humour.  Pretending to be me on this account is much more difficult, indeed a number of times I have spotted times when this has happened to friends via a “frape”.  Of course a “frape” is normally perpetrated to  embarrass the victim so is quite obvious.

The other advantage to Facebook is that as a web destination it becomes something that people regularly use and check.  I can guarantee that a Facebook user will check the site regularly yet I doubt many of them check their online bank account for abuse every day.  This means that if something changes or some information gets posted that they did not do themselves they will most likely notice quickly. A “frape” does not go unnoticed for very long.

Finally consider what would happen if my Facebook account became the basis of my identity and was used to access other services.  My authenticity is reflected by all those facts about me and assuming any such use was reflected in my newsfeed my vigilance is assured.   Even without the authentication a feed of events, say accesses to your bank account, into Facebook as a private newsfeed would provide many users with information they do not otherwise see and potentially make them safer.

There are two further things to consider:

Facebook was not designed to be used in this way and may well have other problems that could lead to compromise.  I am noting here the conceptual benefits of a social network in uniquely identifying you and maintaining your vigilance not suggesting just jumping in and using Facebook instead of Active Directory for authentication.

Although with work it would still would be possible to masquerade as me it is not as easy and would require work and research by the perpetrator.  It is of course easier to become me if I don’t already have a Facebook account, a villain could create one for me and assume my role.  Something for all of those that gleefully tell me they never use Facebook to think about.

Pen based computing.

The tablet PC is a device that is currently receiving a lot of attention and they are undoubtedly changing the way people consume information.  Apple’s iPad device has clearly re-invigorated this market but it has a major weakness that is now showing up in almost all the devices in the class, it’s focus is on consumption of data and not creation.


Steve Jobs is quoted as saying “if you see a stylus you blew it”, the inference being that provision of a stylus destroys the user friendly nature of the system.  He certainly was not wrong when applied to the mobile phone application and it is likely that it was the stylus that kept windows mobile confined to the geek world, your average user saw this as too complicated.


Yet once the device has scaled up to tablet size things could be different, but the current trend for slavishly aping Apples designs seems to have killed off the potential of the stylus.  Even Microsoft, whose tablet technology has formed the mainstay of my computing for more than 5 years, killed off a promising tablet technology called Courier because it felt it would not compete with the iPad and its clones.  Whilst the iPad et al have fairly competent on screen keyboards they do not have the same flexibility as the pen driven tablet for inputting information.  The capacitive touch screens of the iPad allows writing apps but they are hard to use with fingers or rubber tipped pens and are not anywhere near as accurate as using a pen.


I believe that the pen based computer has struggle to make it for a number of reasons.

1. Users did not figure out that there was no need to translate handwriting in to text in the majority of situations.  They believed their sloppy handwriting would never be recognised and thus the tablet would not be of value.  In reality 75% of my use of a tablet is handwritten notes.
2. Whilst the original Microsoft tablet devices were thick versions of the iPad format, Toshiba's introduction of the convertible tablet convinced the market that hedging your bets was the way to go.  People would get one of these and tell me they would learn to use it as a tablet when they had time, but they never found the time making them expensive laptops.
3. There was nothing “sexy” about the devices they were just another kind of windows notebook with a pen for a mouse.  Though people still look at me using a tablet and ask if it’s an iPad, when the tablet is off or not in use it’s just an everyday notebook.

I really hope that Microsoft don’t completely follow Apple with their Windows 8 release and that they retain and improve the pen based computing, combining it with touch.  Alas the recent trend has been that Microsoft plays to the established market.  If they do this then what will happen is that eventually Apple will introduce a pen based tablet ( see this patent application if you don’t believe its a possibility ) on their terms alone.  They will see that if they enable students in lectures and managers in meetings to just write their notes straight onto the tablet they can replace their entire knapsack/briefcase with one tablet PC making this the must have purchase of the new school year.  This was the vision of the courier.


They will have to hurry though if this article on Indiana schools is any guideline as if they take too long people may no longer be equipped to make use of the pen driven tablet.

Corporate tea room XBox 360's

Using information technology to hold together the community of workers will undoubtedly become integral to the way companies work as we move into a less office block centralised world.  For many years video conferencing has been seen as a way to join remote offices and be productive without travelling.  From systems sat on the top of old CRT televisions to the modern high definition telepresence rooms videoconferencing has held the promise of Star Trek style visual communications for all.

Over the entire length of my IT experience though I have yet to see video conferencing that delivers on this promise.  A lot of techies think they do, but as teasing the units into making a connection inevitably requires a techie to be present they often don’t realise that most business people struggle to make these work.  Even with a technologist present it inevitably takes the first ten or fifteen minutes of a meeting to actually achieve a connection to the other party.  I suspect that if investment is made in these systems they would work better, but alas in many companies they are caught in an investment loop because upper management does not want to invest because “video conferencing is useless”.

This all looks to be changing in the consumer world with a number of developments threatening to turn out TV’s into videoconferencing units.  Last year’s Google TV introduced a set top box that could be equipped with a camera and plugged into your TV to deliver Internet television and other services.  One of the potential services here would be videoconferencing delivered using service that are already in place such as Skype etc.  In the last week however Google announced their Google Plus social networking product and this contains a component called Hangouts.  This essentially a video chat room that promises to make connecting and sharing video connections much more interesting.  

Internet TV will inevitably come and form a part of the future however there is another potentially more immediate solution to the videoconferencing television.  Throughout the world over 50 million televisions are equipped with a Microsoft XBox 360 and of  these  a quarter are equipped with a Microsoft Kinnect.  This device is a motion sensitive controller for playing games but it is also equipped with a camera and microphones meaning that there is a network of millions of televisions all waiting to share the Internet.  Add to this Microsofts’ recent $8 billion deal with Skype, the popular consumer based voice and video connectivity service, and you have the seeds of an easy to use global video conferencing network available to all.

Many corporates will look at this and assume this does not matter to them as this sits in the consumer world, however if you can connect your home workers via this network then virtual tea rooms and meeting rooms become practical.  Better still this would be done using a mechanism that people are ordinarily using to stay in touch with family around the world.  It may well be that, initially at least, the price for this will be corporate XBox 360’s in meeting rooms.  Would you be willing to pay that price or would you insist that this games technology remains in teenagers bedrooms where it belongs?