Return to the Post data scientist era

When I started in the world of computing in the early eighties it was in the hands of the data scientists.  i.e People that had degrees and ran the mainframes typical of the times.  When Personal computing had appeared it had been natural for them to manage this.

Their approach was the same as the approach they had used previously. To control anyone using computers.  To be fair in those days PCs were very expensive and much more fragile than current PCs.  People were actually afraid of them, concerned that one wrong press of a key would bring the death of the computer and their career in one stroke.  This seems strange to people today, however it allowed the computer centres to remain in control.

Into that arena was injected people like myself,   early "digital natives".  Yes I know there is controversy over this term however I maintain it to be better than millennials or any other generation based term.  Digital natives implies people that are comfortable in the digital domain, and though many more sprouted in the late 90s and onward, some of us were already there by then.  We entered this arena along with Gen and Windows and took to it.  We used its flexibility and our wits to make the computers do what the business needed.  We did this while the computing departments insisted we used text based interfaces and software until they were ready for graphical interfaces.  Eventually we could do almost everything we wanted without the computer centres and they became relegated dis-empowered.

Fast forward to the 2000s and we started to deploy windows in a standardised way, largely because it was somewhat unreliable at that point.  Patching then was only done rarely yet the increasing threat landscape forced something better.  We deployed standard PCs with packaged software in an application repository and we locked them down so that people could do only what we let them.  Often this would take quite some time and the business just had to swallow this and wait.  We fell into this as the only way of working to keep costs down and unwittingly became the very computer centre that we had destroyed years before.

Late 00s saw the rise of cloud computing and of Apple and its iPad.  Apple essentially marketed a device already locked down.  They provided the application repository, turning it into a shop.  They provided the regular updates the devices needed and they made the device simple to use.  Essentially they reset computing.  In the 10s Windows 10 appeared, and it has matured rapidly.  A new major version of it is now released every 6 months, a 10 times increase in speed compared to the past.  Along with this Microsoft's Office 365 environment has matured at similar breakneck speed.  With the release of Windows 10s earlier this year and the functionality to server Win32 applications out of the App store Windows too is moving into that more strongly managed environment.

The techies and the IT departments won't like that, the innocent users however will.  No more will they have to wrestle with where to get software.  No more will they need to trust that the download site they found really did make sure the software is safe for them.  Techies know how to do this, frequently though their parents and friends do not.  If I had asked for a Tenner for every piece of advice thus given I would be a rich man.

Where am I going with this?  Well it seems to me that we are again approaching a time where the rigid control of the computer centre can be broken.  Business departments can buy computers from anywhere assured that they are safe.  They can access and pay for software that they need and can sign up to cloud services that can provide a lot of their functionality.  They need to do this because they are working in a world that is changing faster than their IT department is willing to.  Similarly the suppliers are doing the same, making changes so fast that IT departments cannot keep pace.

At this turning point we have to decide what to do.  Do we dig in our heals and fight back?  Or do we turn and face, help the business find the value.  Make sure they are picking secure and appropriate cloud services.  Negotiate the best deals on licensing and work with MS and others to develop company specific stores.  Rewrite internal applications to be deliverable out of the MS store.  Help people get the best value from the cloud services and computers they have.  I know which I think we should do, I suspect many IT departments are picking the same route as the computer scientists though.  Which route will you pick?

Too many names for a cloud

The other day I met with a friend, and it soon became clear that our views on the use of cloud differed considerably.  For me I think the problem is that the market became muddied when multiple levels of cloud got added into the picture.  I don't see levels,  I see cloud and not cloud and they are very different.  Hybrid Cloud, Private cloud and all these other names are a distraction.  These are what had confused my friend who could only see cloud as another name for outsourcing.

It became clear that this would happen in the early days.  Cloud became the thing to do and vendors of file servers started coming to me trying to sell me a "Private Cloud".  Of course this was really just the same file server, sometimes without even any virtualisation on it.  Later, as it became clear that internet connection speeds could not yet support centralisation of everything, the "Hybrid cloud" appeared.  I.e. the best of both worlds, yet actually just a cloud and a non cloud service.

For me the clear difference between a cloud service and a non cloud service is scalability.  With true cloud services you can add and subtract the number of people using it and the costs for using the service also go up or down in proportion.  Nobody ever tells you that you need to wait while new equipment is acquired or that there is not capacity.  The one caveat is you use the cloud as you find it, you cannot have anything they currently do no supply.  It may come later, but it will not be created for you.

This is not true of "Private cloud" and outsourced services once you reach capacity you will need a significant investment to add the one more person.  You can have it customised to any form of functionality that you require, but this is just the hook that will keep you paying and keep you away from true cloud.

Both Cloud and not cloud are valid, there are commodity services that you will use the cloud for and other services that add key business value or USP and you will keep those in house.  These may even be developed yourself.   The truth is it just isn't necessary to give these vital in house services a "cloud" moniker to keep the CEO happy.

With a more binary view perhaps people would be less confused and get the right value out of both ways of providing services.

Ahead of the announcements expected next week I came across this link to day that suggests that Microsoft has rediscovered the importance of the pen at last.  Cross Platform Linking.  This combined with a surface mini / maxi next week could start to put them back on track.

I have to say the cloud strategy seems to be coming together and some of the things coming out of teched last week were spot on.  It starts to feel a bit like the old Microsoft may be coming back.  I suspect the One Microsoft strategy is what is causing this rather than the new CEO but none the less it is welcome.  I've started to look forward to what is coming rather than dreading it.

Windows 8 finally getting cleaner

For those that use a computer with windows 8 the new update just made Windows Store Apps much more integrated.  It looks to me like Microsoft finally realised that people that use computers work differently to those that use a tablet.  For the first 18 months of its life Windows 8 has had a split personality, now that disorder is showing signs of clearing up.

The update added some simple features but these make using it with a mouse much more simple.  For example if you now open a Windows Store App it will still cover the whole of your screen.  If you move your mouse to the top of the screen though a bar appears at the top of it that has the familiar System, Minimise and close buttons.  This acts to make the WSA feel much more a part of the computing experience.  In addition to this you can also pin the windows store apps to the taskbar so they become more integrated in the desktop experience as a whole.

With the ability to run these apps in a window following along shortly and a rumoured start button that allows access to the combined WSA/Legacy portfolio windows is starting to feel a lot more like windows again.  This has strangely meant that I am using more windows store apps.  Undoubtedly what Microsoft has wanted to achieve, a shame that it took this long to get here but this is now starting to work quite well.  Give it a try if you have been avoiding windows 8.

Windows 8.1 adding value by adding Windows.

After some time with Windows 8 it looks like Microsoft has finally realised that the true value in windows IS windows.  Though tomorrows update1 for Windows 8.1 does not contain it, Microsoft has confessed to a returning start button and windowed modern ui.  In short Microsoft will be putting windows back into windows.

This is really important because though the modern ui is okay for consumption it is pretty rubbish at production.  Try dragging and dropping a mail into your onenote, it just cannot be done.  Finally Microsoft have sussed that PC sales are going down because the power of 5 year old computers is still sufficient for most things that most people do.  We replace when they fail rather than every couple of years.  We also tend to supplement our PCs with a tablet or two, because they are cool and convenient.

That does not mean though that we do any real work on these devices though.  They play movies and games really well but even with the advent of office on iPad I doubt many people will write their novel on it.  A few will buy a keyboard and do that but most won't.  In truth I know people that have a windows tablet like my surface pro 2 that they only use for consumption.  They prefer to use a full PC for their work.  I just connect mine to a couple of monitors and a keyboard :-)

Beneath the Mask

Nowadays I don't use an iPhone, although I maintain my first generation iPod touch that gets me too and from the station in the morning.  Even without that November 2007 reminder of the iPhone legacy I am well aware that almost every aspect of my computing experience in 2014 has been influenced by that device.  From the use of touch day to day to the ubiquitous and escalating app stores that appear on computers, tablets, phones and televisions.

Without the iPhone much of this would not be possible and yet there was much about the PC that was good.  To a certain degree Microsoft seem to have forgotten that with their latest OS.  If you doubt that try dragging and dropping from one modern app to another!  Something so simple in the old world becomes difficult in the new.  This full screen treatment may work on a tablet (and even there I think the jury may be out) but on a computer it feels cumbersome.  Of course that may be because I have been using Windowing software for a long while.  I do however feel that it is because someone missed the clue embedded in the operating systems name.  Perhaps Windows 8.1 should be renamed Window.

 I digress.  I would love to know of anyone that uses a Windows 8.1 device solely in modern UI flavour.  My sense is that everyone that uses windows does so using the desktop.  Indeed the fact that a default to desktop option was introduced for 8.1 suggests that my observation is mirrored in fact.  In 2004 I became a confirmed Microsoft tablet user by using pen only and rejecting the keyboard.  In the same vein I have tried to operate in modern UI mode only and found I could not do it.  I found it frustrating and long winded and definitely not conducive to efficient working practices.  Modern UI is great for media consumption but not for use as a day to day workhorse.  This is exactly what I have said about the iPad on numerous occasions.

My hope is that with new leadership at Microsoft the true super hero beneath the handsome but unsophisticated mask will again come to prominence.  Shedding the Apple bonds and stepping once more to its place as the operating system of choice..

Cries into the dark

Now don't get me wrong.  I love my new surface, but I have to say it seems somewhat less stable than the Series 7 Samsung it replaced.  This blog is not about the somewhat more friendly blue screen of an ailing windows 8.1 computer but about the changing world for support organisations.

When this happened I posted the above picture to my twitter feed @tre4b.  This was more to show these things happen to us all than for any other purpose.  About 30 minutes later though I received a reply from Microsoft.

I presume that they had picked up on my use of Windows 8.1 in the tweet and that had rung a bell.  Someone though had followed the picture in order to realise they could not actually make out the error message.  I thanked them for their interest but the message was a general win32k.sys error and not something they were likely to be able to do too much about.

I have long known in my working environment that people do tweet about issues and often appreciate a reply even if that is not actually solving the problem.  Sometimes when things are bad and you want a rant then just being heard is enough.  When I have some time I will be looking a software to pick up words from twitter.  I'd like to be responding to my users cries into the ether too...

Waiting on a Surface Pro 2

In November I finally realised I could not live with a 64 GB hard drive on my work computer any more.  Juggling space on a daily basis is getting me by, but not leading to a stress free working environment.  I plumped for the surface pro 2 even though it is a bit smaller than I would like.  This was because of all the devices out there this was the one with the most acceptable performance and the best support.

Yesterday I chased its arrival to be told I would not see it until March.  Either they are very popular or there is some form of issue or direction change on the cards with the new Microsoft CEO joining soon.  I decided then to look around again and though the market has expanded all of the tablet computers have the same issue, they seem to have been designed as toys.

This is a legacy of the iPad having become the default concept of a tablet.  Tablets today are great for playing games and reading books but not the sort of device you'd want to work on for any amount of time.  Yet the press keep predicting the decline of the PC.   How can this happen?  Tablet PC's and Apps in general do not yet have the ability to deliver what "Windows Legacy applications" can.  I mean can you see yourself forecasting your business spend on the kind of spreadsheet application you see on a tablet?  Do you really think you could work that way?

Someday soon someone is going to combine a proper pen with a decent sized tablet and realise that this would make a good platform to really work on.  I thought I'd found such a thing in the Dell XPS18 but alas they had not included a proper pen and writing with a rubber tipped one is so unsatisfying.   Until then I guess I hang on and wait for my surface pro 2, soon though my eyes are not going to be good enough to cope with such small writing.....

Office 365 is going to be the end of my tablet

 I started using this Samsung series 7 tablet in January of 2012, it was the third tablet that I have every used and the first proper non convertible one.  I love this device and it is still as good performance wise for me as it was when I started using it, but recently I've begun to struggle with the 64GB disk.  

It's not applications that have caused this but our upgrade from the wave 14 to wave 15 version of Office 365.  Along with this upgrade came a much expanded and more efficient SkyDrive Pro and our adoption of online Sharepoint has rocketed.  This in turn has meant that I have many more document libraries that are marked to synchronise with my tablet.  This makes accessing documents shared in Sharepoint possible even when working on the train, which is pretty much the only time I get to work solidly for an hour or so!

The problem for my tablet is that I now struggle to fit the documents I want on it.  I now have to juggle whether to take it to pieces and add a larger mSata hard drive or whether to talk sweetly to my boss and mention how much more efficient I would be with a 512GB Surface Pro 2.

Simplify Unix and dominate the world

Today I began musing on the place of Unix within the computing world.  When I first began working in IT it was clear Unix would be a minority operating system for bigger more powerful systems.  A few years latter I began to use a product called Knopix a Unix variant and in the Mid 90's first encountered Linux, but these were command line programs difficult to install and use.  That is difficult if you were not pretty technically competent.

Linux and the other "free" Unixs have developed immeasurably since those days.  Ubuntu is really easy to deploy and use, but even so they remain fairly tightly focused on the technology savvy users list and it takes patience to learn to do all that you would wish to achieve.  The Unix desktop is clearly not going to replace the PC anytime soon or anytime ever, and yet it now pretty much dominates the computing marketplace.

I don't think this would have been foreseen but both IOS and Android have Unix at their core and overall far more computing is now done on these platforms than is done on PC platforms.  Suddenly the world has turned on its head and this has happened because first Apple and then Google realised these OSs had the potential, if you shielded the user from the complexity.  Shielding the user from complexity should be the first thing we do in the IT world because we are about enabling their ability to work but before the iPhone people just missed this obvious point.  Cloud computing plays to this too and the whole thing begins to assemble into a working way for the future.

Fighting complexity should be the first thought of an IT professional especially if they are architects or solutions designers.  Simple systems will result in better usability, smoother more easily managed services and a reduction in cost.  Think about this next time you review a solution, just ask if you think your Mum or your Grandmum could work it.  If she could you may be on to a winner.

The Kraken wakes

Earlier today I read this article in the Guardian. I found it interesting because it reflected a lot of what I have said and talked to people about over the last few years.  Microsoft for me used to be thought leaders and providers of the coolest tech, but now I barely think about their products.

One of the key drivers for the message from Steve Ballmer is the nearly 1 billion pound write off of the Windows RT tablets.  Everyone that I have talked to in the last year or two was well aware this was yet another knee jerk reaction to Apple and most of us knew this would bomb.  A windows PC that did not run windows software was going to fail, in much the same way as the linux netbooks did.  Even now, almost a year after Windows 8 was launched there is still not a native Facebook application for the platform!

The recent release the new XBox One displayed the same arrogant set of we know better hallmarks Microsoft has been famous for recently.  This was followed by a series of rapid turn arounds as they suddenly realised they had just ditched their "hook" from their customers at the same time as delivering serious upset.

Now I read that Microsoft is ditching product groups to go back to a functional organisation structure.  This will be a significant change for them and perhaps shows they have at last realised that we are no longer in thrall to them.  This is really good news for all of us, this could be the giant reawakening and turning to truly face the threat.  Make no mistake that threat is huge, between the Cloud, Apple and Google the space is getting thinner and thinner.  Microsofts key benefits though are still hanging in there, it's not too late for them to realise the true value of windows and stop copying Apple.

I truly love my 18 month old Samsung Series 7 tablet it was great on Windows 7 and okay on Windows 8 but on either is much more of a tablet than an iPad.  Had they just stayed focused on devices like the first ever windows tablet I used in 2003/4 (above picture) then maybe things would have been different.  I really hope that the lesson has been learned, but I fear that it is just more rhetoric.

The last time I found time to post in my blog it was pre the release of Windows 8.  Jump forward nearly 4 months and things have changed greatly.  Windows 8 has been released and earlier in the week it was pointed out that it's adoption rate for the same period is much lower than the Vista version of Windows.  Vista was disliked by many even though I do not believe it deserved its reputation.   We should note that at this time in its adoption its reputation would not have built so it was still a great white hope, much as Windows 8 is today.

At this point every computer in my house is running Windows 8, and still it receives a mixed reception from the family.  Both of my boys returned home for Christmas from University, and both refused the offer of a free upgrade (paid for prenatally) to windows 8.  Their viewpoint was that they wanted their computers to work.

This is not entirely fair as I have found Windows 8 to be very reliable, quick to start and to use.  It is just extremely quirky to use!  Many face book friends have tried to talk me into using a start button replacement product saying it makes it usable.  I see this in the same way as I saw the users of convertible tablets parading their benefits as a laptop they could use as a tablet later.....and never did.  I and my wife soldier on with the standard windows interface, hoping that one day the Windows 8 apps will actually be useful.  Currently the machines are all but unusable unless you frequently resort to "Legacy applications" and this will ensure that these applications remain.

Truth is that on my Samsung Series 7 Slate updating to windows 8 made me less productive.  The ridiculous non re sizable appleesque on screen keyboard pops up over most of the screen making editing on the move almost impossible.  It is particularly frustrating when you are attempting to right click and the keyboard keeps appearing and clearing the menu I am actually trying to access.  In addition where the pen was once a first class citizen in Windows it is now much more of an afterthought, when it should have been a USP, a casualty of a Microsoft that believes that copying Apple will get its mojo back.

If you can survive the quirky ways of working and the almost non existent "windows 8 apps" (really no facebook app still!!!) then windows 8 is not so bad.  Office 13 though is probably not something you want to get me started on.....

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.