Paused waiting for the start

Very soon now we will see the official launch of Microsoft's Windows 8 product.  Many observers like myself can see that this will be a significant milestone in computing and a critical juncture for Microsoft and also for Intel, both have a lot riding on this.

The new OS is an attempted balance between a tablet OS and a desktop OS.  It has schizophrenic qualities however with neither being quite as pure as they should be.  The real challenge for Microsoft is that their RT version, that runs on non Intel processors like the ARM will also not run traditional Windows programs.  This means that there are really two versions of Windows, it is quite possible that people will buy a Windows tablet and it will not run the program that they wish to run.

This has happened before with Netbooks.  People would buy a Linux Netbook because of the low price and then find it would not run the software they wanted.  There was an extremely high proportion of these returned and I believe that many of the cheap Windows 8 devices will suffer the same fate as people buy it because it is windows only to find it cannot run their current software.  This will help to thoroughly disenchant the buying public.  This confusion will not happen in the corporate market because IT professionals understand the distinction and will specify the correct devices.  In addition businesses are used to paying the right money for the right tool.

Windows 8 then attempts to graft an iPad style tablet into your everyday workhorse so that you can both carry out your day job and have a media consumption device.  This though has problems, the first being the type of application that you run on a personal tablet is often the type of application businesses prefer you not to use e.g. facebook.  The second is the availability of the Windows 8 Apps.

Windows 8 Apps are different from Windows 8 programs and will need to be developed.  The challenge here is that this is a third ecosystem that developers would need to support.  Despite the number of deployed Android devices being huge, probably bigger than the number of deployed Windows 8 devices will ever be, I still have to wait for Android versions of most applications.  Inevitably an iPad version is released first, and exists for a considerable amount of time before the equivalent Android app, if an Android app ever arrives.  I suspect that a Windows 8 version will naturally queue up behind the Android version, especially if you take into account the immaturity of the Windows 8 market place etc.

If Windows 8 does not find traction quickly it could fail, in a similar way to how Vista failed.  The world is very different now though to when Vista was released and recovery from this would be much more difficult.

There are a lot of good things going on in Microsoft at the moment though and there are the signs of a really comprehensive overall solution.  If the integration between the new OS, the cloud, the mobile and the entertainment console is combined just right this could be a significant change to our world.  It is a tough one to pull off though and it requires a simplicity of use that Microsoft have not often demonstrated.  I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with bated breath...

Most people, driven by the news and Apple themselves, believe that the iPad was the first ever tablet, but the start of the tablet revolution was much earlier than that.  Though I used and enjoyed the HP tablet shown below even I was not aware of the Fidler Tablet until I saw this picture.  What this shows though is that it is not only the idea that needs to be right, the market needs to be ready for the idea.  This has showed up many times in the technology market (Remember the Apple Newton?) because of the speed of technology development. 

In 2003/4 when I started talking about people having a allowance to buy their own computer for work it is clear that though people liked the idea and thought it to be the right way to go. They really were not bought in to making it work though.  Nowadays this concept has been labelled BYOD and everyone is talking about it, but are they any more ready for the idea?

I work in an environment where it is probably more important to embrace this concept than any other yet it is clear to me we are far from ready to truly make it work.  This is not because we are not willing, or because we do not have the skills.  It is simply that the products and the environment do not yet make this work easily.  

Take for example licensing, if I am using my own tablet for the companies work who should own and pay for the software?  If the software I am using is not properly licensed who should be responsible, me because I own the computer or my company because they need me to use it?  I would argue if I am given an allowance to equip myself I should use this to buy the right things and be compliant and thus I am responsible.  From a software companies point of view though recovering costs for stolen software from an individual is much more difficult.  

I believe this is what will drive software more and more towards the cloud making it less dependant on the hardware.  That way the company will pay for the access to the on-line software and the employee can use it for as long as they work for the company.  Many software companies have already started to go this way and with browsers becoming more and more in touch with the hardware on the local machine it will not be too long before the majority of software is delivered this way.  Those companies that cannot deliver their software through web techniques will provide gateways to arrays of instances running their software.  To most users this will be indistinguishable from using the web techniques.  

This is really just as well as in the last couple of weeks Microsoft, Google and Amazon have unveiled new tablet devices that will inevitably replace the PC for the majority of users.

Internet snooping

Many people have become concerned about the privacy effects of the governments proposed new "snooping" laws that will allow the day to day tracking of all our communications.  Ignoring this implication what this repository will also do is highlight exactly what all of our employees are doing once they have left the relative safety of the corporate WAN.

That means if an individual is tracked through the information that is recorded to your network someone is going to want you to put a name to the traffic they have been watching.  Most of us do not record this information, or if we do it is not for a long period of time.  How long will it be then until these laws are extended to ensure that companies have to record this information.  This will force all of us to pay for the storage required to keep tabs on the country.

This is of particular concern when you work for an establishment where people entering the site do not always have anything to do with the organisation what so ever.  This though is true of many companies, I read once of a man that spent a day going to meetings of a company he did not work for.  He was never challenged even when one of the meetings he sat in was a team meeting!   Even if people don't come in there is still the possibility of piggy backing on your wifi with stolen/lost/insecure/given credentials.  I suspect that we are looking at investing a lot of the students £9000 a year on this tracking in the not very distant future.

Overall my feeling is that this legislation is not really what they say it is but it is the need of government to know what people are thinking and doing.  Existing powers that let police etc. listen in and track those they have reason to believe are guilty are more than enough.  This legislation assumes we are all guilty and need to be watched, and the truth of it is that we probably are.  We all will have some thoughts that differ from those in power, it only takes for them to decide those thoughts are illegal.   I am in deep trouble when they decide that people who think handbag dogs are an abomination are wrong thinking and should be arrested!

Freedom to think for ourselves is much lauded but it is also the enemy of those that want to control.

BYOD - Why Control and not Cooperation?

On Friday I attended an informative session at the Cisco offices talking about their network products, but I could not help but notice the constant use of the word control.  This same word is often raised in conversations in IT departments and yet it is not something in my 20 years of computing I have truly seen achieved.  Worse I believe that the modern world is developing such that control is less achievable all the time.

A very earnest man sat and told me how I had to buy a lot of products that would allow me full control of my users in a BYOD environment.  When I asked how they were going to do that when the users were connecting to a new 4G network and never used the corporate network he got a bit less confident.  He then resorted to my need to assert management "control" to ensure that they did!

The problem is that people have settled into a pattern where they expect the technology to provide the control when in truth it can only do so much.  If they can make something happen then it must be okay, mustn't it?

I would argue there are two problems with all the strategies that I have seen to date.

1. They are protecting the wrong thing.
2. They are ignoring the human factor.

Cisco as a networking company is protecting at the network level;  Microsoft as an OS operating system company is protecting at a file level and many other companies protect at the level of their particular historic solution.  All of these are the "Answer" to BYOD.   None of these solutions consider the information, the value of the data stored that is understood only by those that are working with it.

They ignore the human factor because they assume that the humans will be compliant, but we are not.  Worse we generally do not like to be controlled and it takes a lot of effort to do so.  As one mechanism for control is put in place a work around will be found to allow us to work in a way that is convenient to us.  The more innovative and dynamic the working environment the more quickly the work arounds will appear.  So far my experience has shown engineers and students alike are great at this!   

So if control will not work, what will?  

I believe that we need to work with users of our systems to help them understand the value of the information they are publishing so that they can protect it accordingly.  I think we need to encourage them to stop giving responsibility for this to us because we store their data and ensure they know it is actually up to them.  Above all they need to understand that we cannot provide a silver bullet to protect them from this.  Part of this means that responsibility for data leakage should fall to them not some lowly technologist that failed to encrypt the PC on which they stored it.  They should be aware their information should be protected and not store it anywhere that the protection cannot be ensured, wherever that may be.    

We for our part need to provide them with the tools they will need to achieve this.  In this way we can avoid the stupidity of essential data stored on an encrypted laptop with the password to the laptop written on the lid!  

The future of Tablet

Today I went to Microsoft's Reading office for a technology update part of which was about Windows 8.  Sadly the 10 year old that they surfaced to talk about Windows 8 had no reasoning ability and little patience for anyone that did not see it as the best thing ever......

This really worried me, it smacks of the old "it must be good because it is Microsoft" attitude.  In fact they put up a slide that showed there were 500 million PCs out there running Windows 7, 250 million running Android of some form and 130 million running IOS.  The conclusion from this is that Windows would have to be a success because there would be more people writing applications because it is such a big platform.  I'm not sure of this logic.  I was also interested to note that he kept referring to windows programs that run on the desktop as legacy programs, implying that they expect them to go away.  Again I am not sure the Metro interface provides the kind of functionality that supports a workhorse as yet.

What I also saw was the thing I had problems with.  He was holding the tablet in a strange way so that he could write with the pen, because otherwise it goes haywire when your palm hits the screen.  This indicates to me they have not yet solved this problem and that this will make use of a pen difficult.  

On the plus side they finally have proper drivers for my tablet so I think it may be worth giving it another try. I will wait a little while though as I believe there will be a CTP version delivered in June (internet rumour not anything they said today).  I keep my fingers crossed that this works out, but I still have some doubts and nothing the Microsoft fanboy did today helped.

Why it's not bad to be like King Canute

Today I attended an interesting session about HP Storage but in one of the positioning presentations the presenter said we should not be like King Canute trying to stop the tide of consumerisation.  As someone that has been championing the BYOD concept since before it was called that way back in 2004 I have actually been exactly like King Canute.

Why is that you may ask?  You have been telling us about this for years and not been trying to resist it!!

The reason I say this is that the legend of King Canute has been slightly turned around.  He did not have his throne placed in front of the sea to prove he could prevent the tide coming in as many think.  He actually had his throne put there so he could prove that he could NOT stop the tide coming in.  In the last 8 or 9 years I too have stood in front of that tide and it is gratifying that final people are starting to recognise that it cannot be stopped.  Even if you build walls in front of it the tide will eventually beat them down and come in anyway.

It is now the consumer that is dictating the tools they wish to use to do their work.  At the beginning of the era of the PC few of us owned them or were exposed to these devices.  Nowadays everyone has a number of computing devices to their fingertips ranging from the Digital TV recorder to the mobile phone.  Few people retain their fear of technology and most just want to use it without the complexity, a wish Apple masterfully played to.  If you think about it this is only natural, a craftsman should pick his own tools and make it his own, because every craftsman uses his own method to achieve his best work.

We are really starting to see the end of the era of IT control of computing diminishing.  Those IT departments that stand in front of this will be swept away, if you want to survive you must embrace it and learn to work with it. Much as small IT groups took the power of choice from the mainframe driven computer departments of old by buying PCs, the end user is now doing the same to us.  Much as the mainframes were driven into the background our role will be to provide the business specific cloud services these end users want to consume.

Once you have admitted this to yourself you can begin to plan how you provide your business with the correct level of service and security within an environment where you don't control.  That is the really interesting challenge we find ourselves pitted against now.

Car parks and Governments

I remember some years ago our local council decided to put charges on the local carparks which were at that time free.  They said it would be just 10p an hour and would always remain that way.   I'm sure people didn't really buy that,  but it happened anyway.  What made me think of this?  The first thing was putting £1.40 into the carpark machine, the second last weeks announcements about internet traffic monitoring.

Initial intentions have a way of changing to be replaced by the needs of the moment.  In this case these requirements are apparently aimed at crime and terrorism, but there is nothing to say this won't change. Sometimes things are added, sometimes definitions are changed.   Many of us are aware of this and the resistance to this new law has demonstrated we are not alone.  

At the same time other notables of the internet such as Tim Burners-Lee and Larry Paige are expressing concerns about the direction the development of the internet is taking  with regard to walled gardens.   By this they mean systems such as Facebooks and  Apple that lock you in to a particular environment.

It is understandable that governments and large companys want to control us, feeding us the information that shows them in the best light.   It is also understandable that even the most up right of citizens will have some things they would prefer others not to know.  These secrets don't have to be world shattering or illegal but they are personal and the thought of someone else knowing them could drive them into different behaviours. For example maybe someone likes to write poetry but knows that what they write is really bad.

These new behaviours could have an effect on cloud services, boosting stand alone computing. After all the best way to keep something personal would be not to put it on a network. This in turn means not putting it in a cloud service.  This means you can't write bad poetry on Google docs as the government may see it. It is  therefore best to use word and save it to an encrypted local storage device, and only share it with close friends via physical media.

What is a computer?

For some reason, in many IT professionals minds, tablets and computers are seen to be different.  This seems to lead to a two tier approach to how these different platforms are treated within an organisation.  All to often this is to support "proper" computers and to discourage the other kinds.

Yet non IT Professionals seem to prefer the alternative computing platforms and the take up of IOS and Android tablets is taking significant sales out of the PC market.  There are many reasons for this some based in fashion and one up man ship, but largely this is because these devices just do what people want them to do.  Finding and installing software is easy and you can pretty much just pick them up and use them.  These devices remove the mystery to computing and, in the spirit of the impossibles, once everyone is a competent computer user nobody is special any more.

This seems to provoke IT professionals to point out why these devices are unsuitable for corporate use.  These points are often reinforced or even created by computer product vendors. Quite often though those same IT professionals and vendors make use of these devices themselves at work finding them convenient for many purposes.  It seems it's not the use of the devices that is not approved of but more a concern about the reduction in the use of "proper" computers.  Understandable when "proper" computers have paid the mortgage for many years.

What is needed is a recognition that IOS and Android devices are computers too.  This truly goes beyond tablets to the mobile phone as well. Most of these devices are as capable as a desktop computer of 5 or six years ago and some of them are considerably more capable. The corporate environment is already incomplete without these devices and we need to recognise this and work to a future where all computing supports user computing needs.  This needs us to stop resisting the inevitable, and embrace the future.  To design mechanisms where everything co-exists in an effective, manageable and governable way.  Above all we have to stop feeling that we must control everything and focus on areas where we enhance and de-risk our business.  This way when the computer of today is replaced with the interactive glasses of tomorrow we will still be relevant and providing a service to our businesses.

For new working your staff need new contracts

Did you know that the design of the Space Shuttle was constrained by the width of two horses?  This sounds completely irrelevant however it is significant in the way that we currently work in the office of today.  The reason for the constraint was that the booster for the ship is transported by rail, and thus its dimensions are influenced by the width of the track.  The width of the tracks heads down a long line that ultimately started with the width of a Roman road being created to allow the passage of two horses.

Legacy decisions have a big influence in IT as a whole and many of us juggle these day to day.  Sometimes these legacies are barriers to new ways of working and yet they are totally outside the influence of the IT department.  One of the key barriers to Mobility, Social networking and ultimately the cloud sits with man management and the HR department.  As with the two horses this barrier is deeply ingrained and difficult to work around, as it is rooted in people and their perception of the world.

I am talking about the view that an individual attending a place of work is working.  All I have to do is attend a place of work for 7.5 hours a day and I am working, even if I sit doing nothing all day.  To counter me doing so I have a manager that drives me to fill my time noting if I am sitting cross legged reading magazines and chasing me up.  Herein lies the first barrier to new ways of working, I have to be under the managers nose so that he can see that I am not working..

Suppose though he can see me sitting on the compute typing away seemingly engrossed.  10 years ago he was happy that I was working, but now he suspects I am on Facebook or Twitter wasting my time so has to come and look closer.  Herein lies another barrier how do you tell "good" Facebook use from bad...better to do without.

So the attendance method of judging working drives us to a place where we must reduce mobility and ban social media. It also slows the adoption of the cloud through non PC devices as productive use cannot be determined from other uses.  It is clear then if we are to reach the mobile and social future in the cloud that we envisage HR has to start thinking of other ways to write employment contracts.

When I first wrote of this four or five years ago it was to highlight a method called ROWE.  Results Only Work Environment envisaged a way of working where you were paid for the results the employer wished for rather than for attendance.  In a clear indication that the import of this need has not yet been understood ROWE has withered away, but it's underlying ethos still applies.  Definition of work through the required result would let us stop worrying about what people are doing and just view the result.  If they choose to stay in bed till 11 in the morning and read Facebook during all the rest of the daylight hours it does not matter if the expected report is competently delivered for the laid down deadline.  This of course includes getting all of the necessary input from others, so to a degree the way of working can also define itself.

Once free of attendance management organisations can begin to fly.  The barrier to getting there though is huge and I for one feel my own concerns about working in that way on a personal level.  It is pretty scary because it forces responsibility for your own output onto you, rather than leaving it with your manager.  This strips away your shield and makes you feel on the spot, yet this is exactly why it could revolutionise our businesses and our lives in a positive mobile and social manner.

Windows 8 thoughts

Having gained some distance from Windows 8 now I am seriously beginning to wonder about what the true purpose of this OS is going to be.  I believe that the Metro App part of the system is probably going to be the make or break, not just for the operating system but possibly also for the company.

I say this because the underlying "desktop" part of the windows 8 system is really just windows as we know it.  We can use the applications that we are currently using on our current windows machines here, in much the same way as we always have with little interference from touch etc.  Metro, however, is touch focused and the real kicker will be if people develop metro applications for corporate functions such as Finance and HR.  Now when you start thinking that through questions appear, for instance: do you want the excel spread sheet you work on every day to have finger fat dimensions?  Or do you want to see as many numbers on the page as possible in a not very finger friendly view?  My suspicion is that you will do business in the "normal" desktop way to maximise information availability and that Metro apps will be reserved for Angry birds and weather applications etc.

If by some quirk of fate finger friendly business applications develop then it will be a race as to whether they are implemented on IOS or Metro first.  The truth here is that IOS is currently a much bigger market and it has a strong business fashion driver too.   Not only that I think that usable windows desktop tablets will be significantly more expensive than even the new iPad3.  In this race I think IOS will win.

We could truly be seeing the last few years of windows PC's, but my I think that actually this is a dual market we actually need a different tool to work on compared to the tool we consume information on.  For my part I am still really enjoying using my windows 7 tablet, and I thank the iPad for driving the convertible tablet to its death.

Windows 8

So I decided that in the Samsung Slate 7 I had the perfect device to test windows 8 out.  I made a system image then went ahead and did the upgrade, really to see what the difference would be.  If I was being honest I expected it to cause me issues and I was not disappointed.

Unlike the touch elements of the iPad the touch elements of Windows 8 were not particularly intuitive.  Initially I struggled to get anything I wanted to do done, but gradually I discovered the gestures that would give me the control I needed.  With a little work I manage to tease the device back to a setup that will nearly let me use it as my day to day computer, but I am still not quite sure if I will use it at work tomorrow or whether I will restore the windows 7 image.

Perversely my problem is the touch!  It does work brilliantly if all I want to do is consume media or browse the web.  Alas where it fails is in making the creation of new documents as easy as the windows 7 pen/touch combination.  The reason for this is that the handwriting input box is now huge, non re sizable and worse the touch stays active while it is in view.  This means if you touch any part of the screen with any part of your hand everything falls apart.  Using this on the train, as I usually do every day, is going to prove quite a challenge.

The Dell tablet I used a while ago had a great solution to this.  There was an option that allowed the touch to be turned off as soon as the pen was detected.  It stayed off until the screen was double tapped with a finger restoring the touch sensitivity.  When I got the Samsung this was missing and I struggled with the tablet so I wrote my own program to allow me to turn touch off.  This made everything work well for me, but alas this program does not work for Windows 8.  Not only does the program not actually do anything if you turn the touch off in the registry then you completely loose the ability to have the keyboard pop up (which could be a Samsung driver issue?).  If Windows 8 had the Dell solution built in by default then just by using Ritepen 4 the computer could become useful again.

So now I am not sure whether the Pen/Touch powered computer of my future vision is ever going to come.  I am however going to keep my hopes up and assume that as Windows 8 moves to release it will mature and become the operating system of my hearts desire.

Cloud services and BYOC

In 2004 I was talking about a new model for client computing, this depended on a change in the security perimeter around the end point computer.  At that point in time companies had got used to hiding behind a firewall with everything outside being a threat.  Everything inside was of course considered to be safe.

I argued that the changing attitudes to technology in the younger generations would mean this could not stay the same.  People wanted more flexible computing, similar to their home computing experience.  Not only that this kind of experience was becoming available to people on mobile devices, windows mobile was showing that computing could be done independently of the office machinery.  I could see that this would spill onto a new computing paradigm and I highlighted the windows tablet as the thing that would make this happen.

Well things did not go as I hoped with the windows tablet, thanks in part to the emergence of the "Convertible" tablet preventing a windows version of the iPad emerging.   However the iPhone did emerge and it was followed by its bigger brother the iPad that spawned a myriad of other devices, even proper windows tablets.  Along with this has come the "new" concept of BYOC, bring your own computer.  Finally the rest of the world has caught up.

Sadly the software that I was looking for nearly 10 years ago has not emerged.  This would have protected any data wherever it was stored from access by anyone that did not have permission to see it.  Instead we have the much more blunt and ineffective tool of whole disk encryption.  This is not nearly good enough to ensure security as it does not focus the user on the value of their data but instead gives them the illusion of protection by technology silver bullet.  It will work well right up to the point that the password is breached at which point it divulges everything.   That means the encrypted device in a bag with a password reminder or worse that has the username and password written on the lid (don't laugh I've seen this!) is as vulnerable as if it was not encrypted at all.

Companies are aware of this but right now it is considered the thing to do, and it gets the data commissioner off of your back.  Is this good enough for the future of computing?  I do not believe so, but I also believe that locked down computing is also a thing of the past and BYOC is inevitable.  Cloud computing can offer some solutions here but without ubiquitous everywhere high speed communications it cannot provide a solution without caching data on the local device.

When it comes down to it though even cloud computing cannot be sure that the person accessing the data is indeed the person that should be.  Before any of this can be truly effective a true, incontrovertible single identity to use for authentication will be necessary.  Achieving this is the real first step into the new world of computing.

Gone slate and saving money

I've talked a number of times about how I wanted a slate computer and I finally have exactly that.  This device is the tablet PC that I have wanted for for many years.  A proper non convertible slate with processing power to spare and yet still Microsoft windows compatible.

This device was twice as expensive as an Apple equivalent however similar devices I have used that attempted to match the Apple price point just did not have enough capability.  Windows computers just need more processing power than the mobile phone OS that is running the Apple device.  This device is not as user friendly as the iPad, however it can do everything that I normally do in the office and is my main computing device.  I do not need to compromise on applications, storage locations or Enterprise policy.

Despite it's initial cost, which is lower than an equivalent convertible tablet, I am still saving money through using it.  A week ago I sat around a meeting table with 12 other people.  Each person had a stack of about 70 pages of colour A4.  I estimate the cost of that at about £20 per person with a modern printer contract.  Now I usually go to at least one meeting like this a week, if not more.  On a personal level then I can easily pay for this device in savings over the year.  In addition I now once more make no paper notes and have not as yet even loaded a printer driver, not only that but everything I do is concentrated in one place.  By providing staff with devices like this, or even an iPad, the organisation as a whole could become a lot more cost efficient.  To do that though would require a significant commitment to change from individuals and the organisation as a whole.

This kind of device coupled with the flexibility of cloud systems really will replace the type of computing that most people are currently used to.  Tower computers and high power workstations will really begin to fade back to the enthusiast user and specialist applications.  Not only that this kind of device will be the reason that IT departments will stop owning and controlling the end point computers within their domain.   Our next enterprise challenge is not how to control the users and their endpoints, it is how to not control these things but still provide the reliable services they need.

Cloud simplicity

Last time I talked about the reduction of complexity within an organisation and how this leads to more reliable and cheaper systems.  Keeping on premise systems simple is essential to achieving this but the cloud plays very well into this environment as well.

Late last year a significant number (over 20000) of our email users were moved from an out hosted email system to a cloud hosted system.  This left around 6000 people relying on the out hosted system for their email services.  Since that occurred we have experienced a number of issues with the out hosted environment, some relating to the systems themselves and some relating to the interaction of those systems with the enterprise as a whole.  In just one of those incidents I had to live with out email for more than a day.

In all that time there has been no issue with the cloud service, users feel their mail is more available and quicker. Not only that the administration of the Cloud email system has been almost zero.  Users are set up using the same ILM process that configures them within Active directory, and after that they just work.

The cloud vendor is absorbing the complexity that would normally be built into our own systems.  This removes another interaction from the chain and frees people to work on systems that are more important to the business.  It is very important though that focus is maintained upon the business need as it is fully possible to add further complexity through a complex interaction between a number of cloud services.

Occam's Razor

Occam's Razor is often used in the scientific process yet I would argue that the principle it represents has a strong place in enterprise architecture.  Complexity is without doubt the biggest issue in enterprise computing yet much of the complexity we see is built in deliberately with little consideration for the long term effects.

Some of this complexity is actually driven into being by the manufacturers of software and the demands on them from the user base.  Every interacting piece of software becomes yet another complication in the underlying machine, a fact most clearly shown in the Microsoft software stack.  Attempting to get everything to work on a myriad of differing computers whilst also offering a significant amount of user choice leads to an astonishing level of complexity.  Far from criticising Microsoft for the failures of devices using it's software we should congratulate them on the fact that it works at all, let alone as well as it generally does.

IT departments though must take the responsibility for some of this complexity.  We have a tendency to try to fix all the problems and to over integrate systems, usually at the instigation of the user.  This often requires custom scripting or esoteric leading edge configurations, a challenge that we techies love.  If the user is not injecting this kind of requirement we often suggest it ourselves to indulge our love for a technical challenge.  We are also pretty good at completely underestimating the amount of time it will take to deliver these complexities, often because we forget one complexities interaction with another.  This underestimation of complexity is what inevitably leads to protracted projects and non delivery, a situation for which our industry is famous.  Not only that when these over complex projects are injected into an enterprise that is also filled with other over complex systems failures often ensue.  Getting to the bottom of why is often difficult and often time consuming as the symptoms rarely directly mirror the problem.

Occams Razor states "simpler explanations are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones.". This is as appropriate for solution choice as it is for explanations, choosing the least complex solution will generally be better than choosing the complex ones.  Not only that encouraging users and technical designers to focus on simple solutions will lead to a more reliable and manageable enterprise.  This means avoiding functionality customisation and using established systems in preference to implementing other similar systems simply because one or two functions do not 100% match the user requirement.  Doing this will require your organisation to support the IT department and give it the strength to drive the reduction of complexity.  A simpler architecture though will lead to a more reliable, faster and crucially cheaper to run environment.

Still waiting for slate computing

Having recently begun a new Job I was asked what type of computer I would like. I asked for a windows tablet, as this has been my way of working since 2004. Obtains one however proved to be more of a challenge than I first anticipated. It seems that the arrival of Apples iPad has caused a change in the perception of What a tablet is.  Though I could find windows tablets they were either expensive or low power in an attempt to compete on price With the more limited finger only devices.

Apples device and the many devices that copy it is are media consumption devices and in this role they are excellent. None of these devices through work well for the creation of information.  I have seen students who type amazingly fast on these things, but even they use a "proper" computer for writing their essays.This would suggest we need two devices one for consumption and one for creation, but I suspect that many people have realised they don't actually Create that much.  Perhaps this is why iPads are so popular with upper management.

I believe that pen computing could make the iPad style tablet the best of both worlds.  I agree with Steve Jobs comments about styluses on mobile phones but I believe they are not valid for tablets, as long as styluses are for used for input and not application control. Judging by the number of awful rubber ended styluses you can buy many iPad users feel this way too. I think Apple may come to recognise this too, after all Apple were also the company that brought the Newton, a PDA that recognised handwriting, to the world. They may also recognise the potential of creating a licensable pen system that could be sold to create a vibrant aftermarket. Mont blanc stylus for your iPad anyone?

I also hope that Microsoft will ensure that Pen support continues in windows 8 rather than simply copying Apples decisions. After all it may well be the only thing that windows 8 has to offer over and above the devices currently in the market.

Tablets of stone were used to hand down commands and information that we needed to consume.  Reusable Slates for writing on though helped us learn and create new ways of working. I am holding my breath waiting for the tablet computing world to turn in to the slate computing world. For me it cannot come too soon and combined with ubiquitous connectivity and the cloud will change our view of computing forever.