It's hard making intelligent predictions. Science fiction's successes have been notably sporadic, with the odd fax and video player overwhelmed by flying cars and time machines. But everyone was caught on the hop by home computers, mobile phones and the internet, so the would-bes are trying to make it up with high-impact but outlandish speculations.
Bruce McCabe is a researcher and analyst (his company is called S2 Intelligence) who makes his living predicting the future course of technology for corporate clients who want to keep on top of broad trends. In particular, he is wont to point out technological change that will be "disruptive" to business - that is, major developments will bring about changes to business models, negatively impacting those who haven't kept up, and providing advantage to those who are ahead of the game.
That latter must be where he ekes out his niche: competitive advantage is a key issue for corporations, and technology is the biggest vector for change.
Thus to McCabe's latest review, dated January 2009. It covers briefs on 34 aspects of technology; although this is ultimately an admixture of intelligence, knowledge and speculation, credit should be given to McCabe for his length of service in this field. His work must be worthwhile, since he is still consulting and presenting to conferences at least five years after I first saw him.
Yet the first topic - cloud computing - is a fraught topic: its meaning has been somewhat abused, often coming to refer to any outsourced I.T. services, where it more accurately refers to computing services (particularly storage and processor power) that are leased from a third party (via the internet), and abstracted in terms of size (and so very scalable) and physical location. It is chiefly the scalability and on-demand nature of such a service that brings business benefits over locating and managing one's own equipment.
McCabe visited Salesforce.com, whose success in this field may encourage people to overstate the degree of adoption of cloud computing. McCabe: "in the past five years not a single Salesforce.com customer interviewed by S2 has expressed anything other than strong positive outcomes. That outcome is unique."
It is a fair comment that: "this leadership is rapidly moving the goalposts for Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and every other provider of business software." He goes further: "A new world of software development is opening up. It is not a wholesale displacement of the old one... 'In the cloud' software development will, however, be strongly associated with rapid, disruptive, innovation by businesses".
Although this may be the way the world eventually understands cloud computing, McCabe effectively conflates a number of different trends:
- cloud computing - scalable leasing of computing power;
- free and open source software - including, for example, Google's offerings of business software that directly competes with Microsoft;
- outsourcing in general;
- the emergence of software development services, especially from India.
As with all attempts at outsourcing, if one's I.T. capabilities and needs are not managed effectively, it matters not whether they are located in-house or god-knows-where. And it remains that outsourcing in whatever form it takes makes management exponentially harder; the hazards are also far greater. We've all read or experienced these outsourcing efforts: incredible disruption to business when the switch was flicked; equivalent headcounts hired as consultants down the track; and sometimes a complete volte face to bring services back in the fold.
Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that the trends described above (cloud computing plus) are going to figure big and are going to disrupt traditional business models. The greatest business benefit comes where services are inherently commodifiable and scalable in the first place, and thus lend themselves well to such abstraction.
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
Environmental crisis (#3 of 2008)
The eye was off the ball this year, distracted by the global financial crisis.
In the last two decades, habitat destruction has been recognised as the biggest threat to biodiversity - but recognition has not sufficiently translated into action. That very narrative was compounded and magnified by the complete wrenching of the global ecosystem, simply because we vote for leaders who are too lacking vision to grapple with the large-scale industrial revolution needed to counter global warming.
The European Union has been - by and large - a bastion of sensible policy. However, their approach remains far too evolutionary and not revolutionary enough. China and India are slow to respond, but are not helped by lack of leadership from the industrialised nations. In America, we have to wait for George W Bush's pathetic body to be shovelled bit by bit out of the Whitehouse - and then have to wait for Obama's plan to translate vision into action.
Which, as it happens, is where Australia has tripped up in a big way. While espousing mantras on the absolute imperative of combatting global warming, Kevin Rudd's leadership has been characterised by lengthy inaction and delaying investigation - trumped by the release of a policy raft that demeans all Australians in the smallness of its vision - so much so that it has been said to actively encourage dirty carbon emitters to ramp up their destructive practices for some time to come - whereupon they will be handsomely rewarded with government handouts, and have plenty of room to make token improvements.
Kevin Rudd was characterised by a Canberra insider as being especially indecisive. His deputy - and frequent acting Prime Minister - Julia Gillard was in turn described as being particularly intelligent and action-focused. I have heard her performance in parliament several times, and her ability is clear and strong. Waiting for the great leap forwards.
In the last two decades, habitat destruction has been recognised as the biggest threat to biodiversity - but recognition has not sufficiently translated into action. That very narrative was compounded and magnified by the complete wrenching of the global ecosystem, simply because we vote for leaders who are too lacking vision to grapple with the large-scale industrial revolution needed to counter global warming.
The European Union has been - by and large - a bastion of sensible policy. However, their approach remains far too evolutionary and not revolutionary enough. China and India are slow to respond, but are not helped by lack of leadership from the industrialised nations. In America, we have to wait for George W Bush's pathetic body to be shovelled bit by bit out of the Whitehouse - and then have to wait for Obama's plan to translate vision into action.
Which, as it happens, is where Australia has tripped up in a big way. While espousing mantras on the absolute imperative of combatting global warming, Kevin Rudd's leadership has been characterised by lengthy inaction and delaying investigation - trumped by the release of a policy raft that demeans all Australians in the smallness of its vision - so much so that it has been said to actively encourage dirty carbon emitters to ramp up their destructive practices for some time to come - whereupon they will be handsomely rewarded with government handouts, and have plenty of room to make token improvements.
Kevin Rudd was characterised by a Canberra insider as being especially indecisive. His deputy - and frequent acting Prime Minister - Julia Gillard was in turn described as being particularly intelligent and action-focused. I have heard her performance in parliament several times, and her ability is clear and strong. Waiting for the great leap forwards.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Climate change and oil: an ironic confluence
It could be speculated that if the current oil shock had come about fifteen years earlier - say when Bush senior was waging his war - our global environment would not have such a drastically unhealthy prognosis.
Aside from the effects of maintaining war in Iraq the American way, this incredible rise in oil prices has other roots, particularly in the rapid rate of industrialisation in China (and to a lesser extent India). The irony of timing remains: if a few factors in the course of human history - or planetary composition - were tweaked, we might be switching from fossil fuels before the irrevokable global damage that we are busy causing.*
But we're caught unaware. Due to soaring petrol prices, Sydney's seeing a sudden strain to public transport infrastructure, after decades of favouring cars at the expense of rail. In Spain, the government shows signs of bowing to pressure from truck drivers. And despite governments across the world turning around on the issue, the pace of policy change is far too slow to match the urgency of the problem.
Belatedly, this shock has slightly increased the rate at which we are moving away from fossil fuels. But it's not enough, and precious lead time has been lost. Further, despite some arbitrary claims that we have reached a time of "peak oil" (which would deliver its own shocks), in reality the science and the economics is not incontrovertibly there, as it is with climate change. The surge in prices only makes it more lucrative to explore for and extract fossil fuels.
If the stars were in fully fortuitous alignment, we'd experience our current rapid technological spurt first, followed by an oil shock, followed by global warming danger. These factors are strongly intertwining, but the timing is off, and our mettle is being tested so harshly that one might stop to think there were no heavens to guide us. Our leaders are tested, but just as culpably we ourselves, who vote in those leaders and who wait around for others to take action or for governments to legislate to force our hand.
The Iraq-specific factor in the oil shock is temporary. But the galloping industrialisation of China is not.
*When I say our damage to the planet is irrevokable, I mean that the Earth has recovered several times in the past, however recovery doesn't happen on the scale of human history - it's in the millions of years. So this human-caused event is an "in our lifetimes" type situation.
Aside from the effects of maintaining war in Iraq the American way, this incredible rise in oil prices has other roots, particularly in the rapid rate of industrialisation in China (and to a lesser extent India). The irony of timing remains: if a few factors in the course of human history - or planetary composition - were tweaked, we might be switching from fossil fuels before the irrevokable global damage that we are busy causing.*
But we're caught unaware. Due to soaring petrol prices, Sydney's seeing a sudden strain to public transport infrastructure, after decades of favouring cars at the expense of rail. In Spain, the government shows signs of bowing to pressure from truck drivers. And despite governments across the world turning around on the issue, the pace of policy change is far too slow to match the urgency of the problem.
Belatedly, this shock has slightly increased the rate at which we are moving away from fossil fuels. But it's not enough, and precious lead time has been lost. Further, despite some arbitrary claims that we have reached a time of "peak oil" (which would deliver its own shocks), in reality the science and the economics is not incontrovertibly there, as it is with climate change. The surge in prices only makes it more lucrative to explore for and extract fossil fuels.
If the stars were in fully fortuitous alignment, we'd experience our current rapid technological spurt first, followed by an oil shock, followed by global warming danger. These factors are strongly intertwining, but the timing is off, and our mettle is being tested so harshly that one might stop to think there were no heavens to guide us. Our leaders are tested, but just as culpably we ourselves, who vote in those leaders and who wait around for others to take action or for governments to legislate to force our hand.
The Iraq-specific factor in the oil shock is temporary. But the galloping industrialisation of China is not.
*When I say our damage to the planet is irrevokable, I mean that the Earth has recovered several times in the past, however recovery doesn't happen on the scale of human history - it's in the millions of years. So this human-caused event is an "in our lifetimes" type situation.
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