Randomness

CloudNOW Aims to Amplify the Contribution of Women to Cloud Computing

Lori MacVittie — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:33:37 GMT

That’s Cloud “Network of Women” and it’s a new opportunity to collaborate on cloud and emerging technologies

Many, many years Fritz Nelson (then Vice President, Group Publisher for the Network Computing Enterprise Architecture) answered a question during an interview on the intersection of women and technology – particularly the lack of the former in the latter – essentially saying it was incumbent upon those women who were active and had a voice to use it in ways that encouraged other women to join, participate, and take up the reins of leadership when possible within the world of technology.

The way I see it today, it’s not that women are necessarily reluctant to be in IT – we are out there – it’s that our voice is often lost among the much larger chorus of deep tones in the technology orchestra today. If men are the brass section, women are the oboe – easily drowned out by the “big” sound of a much larger group. And that shouldn’t be read as a condemnation of IT or as anything wrong with technology or with men; it’s a mathematical equation that says if the percentage of women in technology is small, the percentage of those women who are leaders in technology will be even smaller. And when you start parsing up technology into specific concerns, like cloud computing , those numbers and thus percentages decrease even more, to the point of women being, well, an oboe amidst a much larger chorus of trumpets, cornets, and tubas.

Women are capable of contributing a great deal to the modern technologies industry and today's organizations' managements are well aware of that fact. After all, this is something that a number of notable female computer pioneers such as Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, and Anita Borg have proven more than once through the ages since the creation of the first mechanical computing machine by Charles Babbage in 1821.

-- Issue in Focus - Why Are There So Few Women in Computer Science?

So when an opportunity comes along that can amplify that oboe’s sound so that it can be heard as well as the brass section, I fall back on Fritz’s advice: join, participate and encourage other women to be more vocal by adding their voice as well.

With that in mind, I’m quite pleased to help spread the word about a new, women-oriented “network” focusing on Cloud computing, Cloud Network of Women (CloudNOW). Founded recently by Jocelyn DeGance Graham, CloudNOW is a “non-profit consortium of the leading women in cloud computing, focused on using technology for the overall professional development of women from around the world by providing a forum for networking, knowledge sharing, mentoring, and economic growth.”

With membership coming from EMC, HP, Intel, IBM, Salesforce, successful startups, the tech media, and noted analysts, CloudNOW “offers members opportunities to creatively approach the technological challenges of cloud today, working in partnership with the tech industry, cloud visionaries, and global media. Forming a collective, together we are the voice of authority for women in cloud and emerging technologies.” It’s a platform of opportunity to connect with women and bring their insights and solutions regarding cloud computing and emerging technologies to the fore. Through publishing papers, speaking opportunities and research, Jocelyn hopes to build a robust community of women experts and leaders who can actively contribute to and lead conversations around these emerging technologies.

CloudNOW is currently building out its advisory board, and has already recruited some of the most respected names in cloud computing (both men and women) as well as the leadership team and special interest group liaisons to assist in covering topics such as security and convergence as well as offering deep technical forums for digging into the highly complex (and sometimes confusing) world of cloud computing.

If you’re interested in helping out in any way – including support, sponsorship, or underwriting – feel free to get in touch with Jocelyn (@JocelynDG ) and let her know. Men are welcome, too, despite the focus on women – the effort hopes to be a collaborative one with a focus on women’s ideas and solutions, not their gender and thus collaboration with all folk interested in technology is imperative for vetting and solidifying solutions.

And be sure to visit CloudNOW and register to explore the opportunities and join the conversation.

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1024 Words: Only Skin Deep

Lori MacVittie — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:12:29 GMT

VM interoperability promotes inter-environment portability about as well as a wig would fool anyone into believing these two girls are identical twins.

That level of interoperability is like beauty – it’s only skin deep.

Image by Darren Kelly via Flickr.

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HTML5 Going Like Gangbusters But Will Anyone Notice?

Lori MacVittie — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:08:00 GMT

#v11 #HTML5 will certainly have an impact on web applications, but not nearly as much as hoped on the #mobile application market

There’s a war on the horizon. But despite appearances, it’s a war for interactive web application dominance, and not one that’s likely to impact very heavily the war between mobile and web applications.

First we have a report by ABI Research indicating a surge in the support of HTML5 on mobile devices indicating substantially impressive growth over the next five years.

More than 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016, up from just 109 million in 2010, according to a new report by ABI Research. -- The HTML Boom is Coming. Fast. (June 22, 2011)

Impressive, no? But browser support does not mean use, and a report issued the day before by yet another analytics firm indicates that HTML5 usage on mobile applications is actually decreasing.

Mobile applications are commanding more attention on smartphones than the web, highlighting the need for strong app stores on handset platforms. For the first time since Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, has been reporting engagement time of apps and web on smartphones, software is used on average for 81 minutes per day vs 74 minutes of web use. -- Sorry HTML 5, mobile apps are used more than the web (June 21, 2011)

What folks seem to be missing – probably because they lack a background in development – is that the war is not really between HTML5 and mobile applications. The two models are very different – from the way in which they are developed and deployed to the way they are monetized. On the one hand you have HTML5 which, like its HTMLx predecessors, can easily be developed in just about any text editor and deployed on any web server known to man. On the other hand you have operating system and often device-specific development platforms that can only be written in certain languages and deployed on specific, targeted platforms. There’s also a marked difference in the user interface paradigm, with mobile device development heavily leaning toward touch and gesture-based interfaces and all that entails. It might appear shallow on the surface, but from a design perspective there’s a different mindset in the interaction when relying on gestures as opposed to mouse clicks. Consider those gestures that require more than one finger – enlarging or shrinking an image, for example. That’s simply not possible with one mouse – and becomes difficult to replicate in a non gesture-based interface. Similarly there are often very few “key" commands on mobile device applications and games. Accessibility? Not right now, apparently.

That’s to say nothing of the differences in the development frameworks; the ones that require specific environments and languages.

The advantages of HTML5 is that it’s cross-platform, cross-environment, and highly portable. The disadvantage is that you have little or no access to and control over system-level, well, anything. If you want to write an SSL VPN client, for example, you’re going to have to muck around in the network stack. That’s possible in a mobile device development environment and understandably impossible in a web-only world. Applications that are impossible to realistically replicate in a web application world– think graphic-intense games and simulation systems – are possible in a mobile environment.

MOBILE BROADENING ITS USE

The one area in which HTML5 may finally gain some legs and make a race out of applications with mobile apps is in its ability to finally leverage offline storage. The assumption for web applications has been, in the past, always on. Mobile devices have connectivity issues, attenuation and loss of signal interrupts connection-oriented applications and games. And let’s not forget the increasing pressure of data transfer caps on wireless networks (T-Mobile data transfer cap angers smartphone users, Jan 2011; O2 signals the end of unlimited data tariffs for iPhone customers, June 2010) that are also hitting broadband customers, much to their chagrin. But that’s exactly where mobile applications have an advantage over HTML5 and web applications, and why HTML5 with its offline storage capabilities comes in handy.

But that would require rework on the part of application developers to adapt existing applications to fit the new model. Cookies and frequent database updates via AJAX/JSON is not a reliable solution on a sometimes-on device. And if you’re going to rework an application, why not target the platform specifically? Deployment and installation has reached the point of being as simple as opening a web page – maybe more so given the diversity of browsers and add-on security that can effectively prevent a web application requiring scripting or local storage access from executing at all. Better tracking of application reach is also possible with mobile platforms – including, as we’ve seen from the Flurry data, how much time is spent in the application itself.

If you were thinking that mobile is a small segment of the population, think again. Tablets – definitely falling into the mobile device category based on their development model and portability - may be the straw that breaks the laptop’s back.

Our exclusive first look at its latest report on how consumers buy and use tablets reveals an increasing acceptance--even reliance--on tablets for work purposes. Of the 1,000 tablet users surveyed, 57 percent said they are using tablets to replace laptop functions. Compared with a year ago, tablet owners are much less likely to buy a new laptop or Netbook, as well.

Tablets are also cutting into e-reader purchase plans to an ever greater degree.

What's more surprising, given the newness of the tablet market, is that 46 percent of consumers who already have a tablet are planning to buy another one.

-- Report: Multi-tablet households growing fast (June 2011)

This is an important statistic, as it may – combined with other statistics respecting the downloads of applications from various application stores and markets – indicate a growing irrelevance for web-based applications and, subsequently, HTML5. Mobile applications, not HTML5, are the new hotness. The losers to HTML5 will likely be Flash and video-based technologies, both of which can be replaced using HTML5 mechanisms that come without the headaches of plug-ins that may conflict, require upgrades and often are subject to targeted attacks by miscreants.

I argued earlier this year that the increasing focus on mobile platforms and coming-of-age of HTML5 would lead to a client-database model of application development. Recent studies and data indicate that’s likely exactly where we’re headed – toward a client-database model that leverages the same database-as-a-service via a RESTful API and merely mixes up the presentation and application logic tiers on the client – whether through mobile device development kits or HTML5.

As mobile devices – tablets, smartphones and whatever might come next – continue to take more and more mindshare from both the consumer and enterprise markets we’ll see more and more mobile-specific support for applications. You’ll note popular enterprise applications aren’t simply being updated to leverage HTML5 even though there is plenty of uptake in the market of the nascent specification. Users want native mobile platform applications – and they’re getting them.

That doesn’t mean HTML5 won’t be a game-changer for web-applications – it likely will - but it does likely mean it won’t be a game-changer for mobile applications.

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Cloud Computing Goes Back to College

Lori MacVittie — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:15:26 GMT

The University of Washington adds a cloud computing certificate program to its curriculum

It’s not unusual to find cloud computing in a college environment. My oldest son was writing papers on cloud computing years ago in college, before “cloud” was a marketing term thrown about by any and everyone pushing solutions and products hosted on the Internet. But what isn’t often seen is a focus on cloud computing on its own; as its own “area of study” within the larger context of computer science. That could be because when you get down to it, cloud computing is merely an amalgamation of computer science topics and is more about applying processes and technology to modern data center problems than it is a specific technology itself. But it is a topic of interest, and it is a complex subject (from the perspective of someone building out a cloud or even architecting solutions that take advantage of the cloud) so a program of study may in fact be appropriate to provide a firmer foundation in the concepts and technologies underpinning the nebulous “cloud” umbrella.

The University of Washington recently announced the addition of a cloud computing certificate program to its curriculum. This three-course program of study is intended to explore cloud computing across a broad spectrum of concerns, from IaaS to PaaS to SaaS, with what appears to be a focus on IaaS in later courses. The courses and instructors are approved by the UW Department of Computer Science, and are designed for college-level and career professionals. They are non-credit courses that will set you back approximately $859 per course. Those of us not in close proximity may want to explore the online option, if you’re interested in such a certificate to hang upon your wall. This is one of the first certificates available, so it will be interesting to see whether it’s something the market is seeking or whether it’s just a novelty.

In general, the winter course appears to really get into the meat and serves up a filling course. While I’m not dismissing the first course offered in the fall, it does appear light on the computer science and heavy on the market which, in general, seems more appropriate for an MBA-style program than one tied to computer science. The spring selection looks fascinating – but may be crossing too many IT concerns at one time. There’s very few folks who are as comfortable on a switch command line that are also able to deal with the programmatic intricacies of data-related topics like Hadoop, HIVE, MapReduce and NoSQL. My guess is that the network and storage network topics will be a light touch given the requirement for programming experience and the implicit focus on developer-related topics. The focus on databases and lack of a topic specifically addressing scalability models of applications is also interesting, though given the inherent difficulties and limitations on scaling “big data” in general, it may be necessary to focus more on the data tier and less on the application tiers.

Of course I’m also delighted beyond words to see the load testing component in the winter session, as it cannot be stressed enough that load testing is an imperative when building any highly scalable system and it’s rarely a topic discussed in computer science degree programs.

The program is broken down into a trimester style course of study, with offerings in the fall, winter and spring.

Fall: Introduction to Cloud Computing

Overview of cloud (IaaS/PaaS/Saas, major vendors, market overview)
Cloud Misconceptions
Cloud Economics
Fundamentals of distributed systems
Data center design
Cloud at startup
Cloud in the Enterprise
Future Trends

Winter: Cloud Computing in Action

Basic Cloud Application Building
Instances
Flexible persistent storage (aka EBS)
Hosted SQL
Load testing
Operations (Monitoring, version control, deployment, backup)
Small Scaling
Autoscaling
Continued Operations
Advanced Topics ( Query optimization, NoSQL solutions, memory caching, fault tolerance, disaster recovery)

Spring: Scalable and Data-Intensive Computing in the Cloud

Components of scalable computing
Cloud building topics (VLAN, NAS, SAN, Network switches, VMotion)
Consistency models for large-scale distributed systems
MapReduce/Big Data/NoSQL Systems
Programming Big Data (Hadoop, HIVE, Pig, etc)
Database-as-a- Service (SQL Azure, RDS, Database.com)

Apposite to the view that cloud computing is a computer science related topic, not necessarily a business-focused technology, are the requirements for the course: programming experience, a fundamental understanding of protocols and networking, and the ability to remotely connect to Linux instances via SSH are expected to be among the skill set of applicants. The requirement for programming experience is an interesting one, as it seems to assume the intended users are or will be developers, not operators. The question becomes is scripting as is often leveraged by operators and admins to manage infrastructure considered “programming experience?” Looking deeper into the courses it later appears to focus on operations and networking, diving into NAS, SAN, VLAN and switching concerns; a focus in IT which is unusual for developers.

That’s interesting because in general computer science as a field of study tends to be highly focused on system design and programming, with some degree programs across the country offering more tightly focused areas of expertise in security or networking. But primarily “computer science” degrees focus more on programmatic concerns and less on protocols, networking and storage. Cloud computing, however, appears poised to change that – with developers needing more operational and networking fu and vice-versa. A focus of devops has been on adopting programmatic methodologies such as agile and applying them to operations as a means to create repeatable deployment patterns within production environments. Thus, a broad overview of all the relevant technologies required for “cloud computing” seems appropriate, though it remains to be seen whether such an approach will provide the fundamentals really necessary for its attendees to successfully take advantage of cloud computing in the Real World™.

Regardless, it’s a step forward for cloud computing to be recognized as valuable enough to warrant a year of study, let alone a certificate, and it will be interesting to hear what students of the course think of it after earning a certificate.

You can learn more about the certificate program at the University of Washington’s web site.

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WILS: Content (Application) Switching is like VLANs for HTTP

Lori MacVittie — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:36:00 GMT

We focus a lot on encouraging developers to get more “ops” oriented, but seem to have forgotten networking pros also need to get more “apps” oriented.

Most networking professionals know their relevant protocols, the ones they work with day in and day out, that many of them are able to read a live packet capture without requiring a protocol translation to “plain English”. These folks can narrow down a packet as having come from a specific component from its ARP address because they’ve spent a lot of time analyzing and troubleshooting network issues.

And while these same pros understanding load balancing from a traffic routing decision making point of view because in many ways it is similar to trunking and link aggregation (LAG) – teaming and bonding – things get a bit less clear as we move up the stack. Sure, TCP (layer 4) load balancing makes sense, it’s port and IP based and there’s plenty of ways in which networking protocols can be manipulated and routed based on a combination of the two. But let’s move up to HTTP and Layer 7 load balancing, beyond the simple traffic in –> traffic out decision making that’s associated with simple load balancing algorithms like round robin or its cousins least connections and fastest response time.

Content – or application - switching is the use of application protocols or data in making a load balancing (application routing) decision. Instead of letting an algorithm decide which pool of servers will service a request, the decision is made by inspecting the HTTP headers and data in the exchange. The simplest, and most common case, involves using the URI as the basis for a sharding-style scalability domain in which content is sorted out at the load balancing device and directed to appropriate pools of compute resources.

CONTENT SWITCHING = VLANs for HTTP

Examining a simple diagram, it’s a fairly trivial configuration and architecture that requires only that the URIs upon which decisions will be made are known and simplified to a common factor. You wouldn’t want to specify every single possible URI in the configuration, that would be like configuring static routing tables for every IP address in your network. Ugly – and not of the Shrek ugly kind, but the “made for SyFy" horror-flick kind, ugly and painful.

Networking pros would likely never architect a solution that requires that level of routing granularity as it would negatively impact performance as well as make any changes behind the switch horribly disruptive. Instead, they’d likely leverage VLAN and VLAN routing, instead, to provide the kind of separation of traffic necessary to implement the desired network architecture. When packets arrive at the switch in question, it has (may have) a VLAN tag. The switch intercepts the packet, inspects it, and upon finding the VLAN tag routes the packet out the appropriate egress port to the next hop. In this way, traffic and users and applications can be segregated, bandwidth utilization more evenly distributed across a network, and routing tables simplified because they can be based on VLAN ID rather than individual IP addresses, making adds and removals non-disruptive from a network configuration viewpoint.

The use of VLAN tagging enables network virtualization in much the same way server virtualization is used: to divvy up physical resources into discrete, virtual packages that can be constrained and more easily managed. Content switching moves into the realm of application virtualization, in which an application is divvied up and distributed across resources as a means to achieve higher efficiency and better performance.

Content (application or layer 7) switching utilizes the same concepts: an HTTP request arrives, the load balancing service intercepts it, inspects the HTTP header (instead of the IP headers) for the URI “tag”, and then routes the request to the appropriate pool (next hop) of resources. Basically, if you treat content switching as though it were VLANs for HTTP, with the “tag” being the HTTP header URI, you’d be right on the money.

WILS: Write It Like Seth. Seth Godin always gets his point across with brevity and wit. WILS is an ATTEMPT TO BE concise about application delivery TOPICS AND just get straight to the point. NO DILLY DALLYING AROUND.

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1024 Words: Insane Clowd Posse

Lori MacVittie — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:23:10 GMT

Superficial changes are only skin deep.

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About that ‘Unassailable Economic Argument’ for Public Cloud Computing

Lori MacVittie — Wed, 25 May 2011 09:50:05 GMT

Turns out that ‘unassailable’ economic argument for public cloud computing is very assailable

The economic arguments are unassailable. Economies of scale make cloud computing more cost effective than running their own servers for all but the largest organisations. Cloud computing is also a perfect fit for the smart mobile devices that are eating into PC and laptop market. -- Tim Anderson, “Let the Cloud Developer Wars Begin”

Ah, Tim. The arguments are not unassailable and, in fact, it appears you might be guilty of having tunnel vision – seeing only the list price and forgetting to factor in the associated costs that make public cloud computing not so economically attractive under many situations. Yes, on a per hour basis, per CPU cycle, per byte of RAM, public cloud computing is almost certainly cheaper than any other option. But that doesn’t mean that arguments for cloud computing (which is much more than just cheap compute resources) are economically unassailable. Ignoring for a moment that it isn’t as clear cut as basing a deployment strategy purely on costs, the variability in bandwidth and storage costs along with other factors that generate both hard and soft costs associated with applications must be considered .

MACRO versus MICRO ECONOMICS

The economic arguments for cloud computing almost always boil down to the competing views of micro versus macro economics. Those in favor of public cloud computing are micro-economic enthusiasts, narrowing in on the cost per cycle or hour of a given resource. But micro-economics don’t work for an application because an application is not an island of functionality; it’s an integrated, dependent component that is part of a larger, macro-economic environment in which other factors impact total costs.

The lack of control over resources in external environments can be problematic for IT organizations seeking to leverage cheaper, commodity resources in public cloud environments. Failing to impose constraints on auto-scaling – as well as defining processes for de-scaling – and the inability to track and manage developer instances launched and left running are certainly two of the more common causes of “cloud sprawl.” Such scenarios can certainly lead to spiraling costs that, while not technically the fault of cloud computing or providers, may engender enough concern in enterprise IT to keep from pushing the “launch” button.

The touted cost savings associated with cloud services didn't pan out for Ernie Neuman, not because the savings weren't real, but because the use of the service got out of hand.

When he worked in IT for the Cole & Weber advertising firm in Seattle two and a half years ago, Neuman enlisted cloud services from a provider called Tier3, but had to bail because the costs quickly overran the budget, a victim of what he calls cloud sprawl - the uncontrolled growth of virtual servers as developers set them up at will, then abandoned them to work on other servers without shutting down the servers they no longer need.

Whereas he expected the developers to use up to 25 virtual servers, the actual number hit 70 or so. "The bills were out of control compared with what the business planned to spend," he says.

-- Unchecked usage can kill cost benefits of cloud services

But these are not the only causes of cost overruns in public cloud computing environments and, in fact, uncontrolled provisioning whether due to auto-scaling or developers forgetfulness is not peculiar to public cloud but rather can be a problem in private cloud computing implementations as well. Without the proper processes and policies – and the right infrastructure and systems to enforce them – cloud sprawl will certainly impact especially those large enterprises for whom private cloud is becoming so attractive an option.

While it’s vastly more difficult to implement the proper processes and procedures automatically in public as opposed to private cloud computing environments because of the lack of maturity in infrastructure services in the public arena, there are other, hotter issues in public cloud that will just as quickly burn up an IT or business budget if not recognized and addressed before deployment. And it’s this that cloud computing cannot necessarily address even by offering infrastructure services, which makes private cloud all the more attractive.

TRAFFIC SPRAWL

Though not quite technically accurate, we’ll use traffic sprawl to describe increasing amounts of unrelated traffic a cloud-deployed application must process. It’s the extra traffic – the malicious attacks and the leftovers from the last application that occupied an IP address – that the application must field and ultimately reject. This traffic is nothing less than a money pit, burning up CPU cycles and RAM that translate directly into dollars for customers. Every request an application handles – good or bad – costs money.

The traditional answer to preventing the unnecessary consumption of resources on servers due to malicious or unwanted traffic is a web application firewall (WAF) and basic firewalling services. Both do, in fact, prevent that traffic from consuming resources on the server because they reject it, thereby preventing it from ever being seen by the application. So far so good. But in a public cloud computing environment you’re going to have to pay for the resources the services consumed, too. In other words, you’re paying per hour to process illegitimate and unwanted traffic no matter what. Even if IaaS providers were to offer WAF and more firewall services, you’re going to pay for that and all the unwanted, malicious traffic that comes your way will cost you, burning up your budget faster than you can say “technological money pit.”

This is not to say that both types of firewall services are not a good idea in a public cloud environment; they are a valuable resource regardless and should be part and parcel of any dynamic infrastructure. But it is true that in a public cloud environment they address only security issues, and are unlikely to redress cost overruns but instead may help you further along the path to budget burnout.

HYBRID WILL DOMINATE CLOUD COMPUTING

I’ve made the statement before, I’ll make it again: hybrid models will dominate cloud computing in general due primarily to issues around control. Control over processes, over budgets, and over services. The inability to effectively control traffic at the network layer imposes higher processing and server consumption rates in public environments than in private, controlled environments even when public resources are leveraged in the private environment through hybrid architectures enabled by virtual private cloud computing technologies. Traffic sprawl initiated because of shared IP addresses in public cloud computing environments alone is simply not a factor in private and even hybrid style architectures where public resources are never exposed via a publicly accessible IP address. Malicious traffic is never processed by applications and servers in a well-secured and architected private environment because firewalls and application firewalls screen out such traffic and prevent them from unnecessarily increasing compute and network resource consumption, thereby expanding the capacity of existing resources. The costs of such technology and controls are shared across the organization and are fixed, leading to better forecasting in budgeting and planning and eliminating the concern that such essential services are not the cause of a budget overrun.

Control over provisioning of resources in private environments is more easily achieved through existing and emerging technology, while public cloud computing environments still struggle to offer even the most rudimentary of data center infrastructure services. Without the ability to apply enterprise-class controls and limits on public cloud computing resources, organizations are likely to find that the macro-economic costs of cloud end up negating the benefits initially realized by cheap, easy to provision resources. A clear strategy with defined boundaries and processes – both technical and people related – must be defined before making the leap lest sprawl overrun budgets and eliminate the micro-economic benefits that could be realized by public cloud computing.

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1024 Words: Cloudgazing

Lori MacVittie — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 15:49:00 GMT

Like beauty, sometimes it is all about the view from the eye of the beholder.

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Solutions are Strategic. Technology is Tactical.

Lori MacVittie — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:14:15 GMT

And it all begins with the business.

Last week was one of those weeks where my to-do list was growing twice as fast as I was checking things off. And when that happens you know some things end up deprioritized and just don’t get the attention you know they deserve.

Such was the case with a question from eBizQ regarding the relationship between strategy and technology:

Does strategy always trump technology?

As Joe Shepley wonders in this interesting post, Strategy Trumps Technology Every Time, could you have an enterprise content management strategy without ECM technology. So do you think strategy trumps technology every time?

I answered with a short response because, well, it was a very long week:

I wish I had more time to expound on this one today but essentially technology is a tactical means to implement a solution as part of the execution on a strategy designed to address a business need/problem.

That definitely deserves more exploration and explanation.

STRATEGY versus TACTICS

The reason this was my answer is the difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the overarching goal; it’s the purpose to which you are working.

Tactics, on the other hand, are specific details regarding how you’re going to achieve that goal. Let’s apply it to something more mundane. For example:

The focus of the strategy may be very narrow – consuming a sammich – or it may be very broad and vague, as it often is when applied to military or business strategy. Regardless, a strategy is always in response to some challenge and defines the goal, the solution, to addressing the challenge. Business analysts don’t sit around, after all, and posit that the solution to increasing call duration in the call center is to implement software X deployed on a cloud computing framework. The solution is to improve the productivity of the customer service representatives. That may result in the implementation of a new CRM system, i.e. technology, but it just as well may be a more streamlined business process that requires changes in the integration of the relevant IT systems.

The implementation, the technology, is tactical. Tactics are more specific. In military strategy the tactics are often refined as the strategy is imparted down the chain of command. If the challenge is to stop the enemy from crossing a bridge, the tactics will be very dependent on the resources and personnel available to each commander as they receive their orders. A tank battalion, for example, is going to use different tactics than the engineer corps, because they have different resources, equipment and ultimately perspectives on how to go about achieving any stated goal.

The same is true for IT organizations. The question posed was focused on enterprise content management, but you can easily abstract this out to an enterprise architecture strategy or application delivery strategy or cloud computing strategy. Having a strategy does not require a related technology because technology is tactical, solutions are strategic. The challenge for an organization may be too much content or it may be that it’s process-related, e.g. the approval process for content as it moves through the publication cycle is not well-defined, or has a single point of failure in it that causes delays in publication. The solution is the strategy. For the former it may be to implement an enterprise content management solution, for the latter it may be to sit down and hammer out a better process and even to acquire and deploy a workflow or BPM (Business Process Management) solution that is better able to manage fluctuations in people and the process.

The tactics are the technology; it’s the how we’re going to do it as opposed to the what we’re going to do.

CHALLENGE –> SOLUTION –> TECHNOLOGY

This is an important distinction, to separate solutions from technology; strategy from tactics. If the business declares that the risk of a data breach is too high to bear, the enterprise IT strategy is not to implement a specific technology but to discover and plug all the possible “holes” in the strategic lines of defense.

The solution to a vulnerability in an application is “web application security”. The technology may be a web application firewall (WAF) or it may be vulnerability scanning solutions run on pre-deployed code to identify potential vulnerabilities. When we talk about strategic points of control we aren’t necessarily talking about specific technology but rather solutions and those locations within the data center that are best able to be leveraged tactically to a wide variety of strategic solutions. The strategic trifecta is a good example of this model because it’s based on the same concepts: that a strategy is driven by a business challenge or need and executed upon using technology.

The solution is not the implementation; it’s not the tactical response. Technology doesn’t enter into the picture into we get down to the implementation, to specific products and platforms we need to implement a strategy consistent with meeting the defined business goal or challenge.

The question remains whether “strategy trumps technology” or not and what I was trying to impart is what a subsequent response said much eloquently and concisely:

The question isn't which one trumps but how should they be aligned in order to provide value to the customer.

-- Kathy Long

There shouldn’t be a struggle between the two for top billing honors. They are related, after all; a strategy needs to be implemented, to be executed upon, and that requires technology. It’s more a question of which comes first in a process that should be focused on solving a specific problem or meeting some business challenge. Strategy needs to be defined before implementation because if you don’t know what the end-goal is, you really can’t claim victory or admit defeat.

A solution is strategic, technology is tactical. This distinction can help IT by forcing more attention on the business and solutions layer as it is at the strategic layer that IT is able to align itself with the business and provide greater value to the entire organization.

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