The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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Well looky here, things one has scanned in eh. (ignore the photo, that's some guy that made some accounting software, not sure what became of him ;) MIKE RIVERSDALE is fuming. The expensive headphones he bought in Sydney three weeks ago have just died. His first reaction is not to randomly spill expletives into his coffee, but to use his iPhone to vent his frustration to his Twitter con- tacts, under the moniker Miramar Mike. "I will also put, 'What should I do?' It's a conversation. I'm reaching out to the people following me." The council predicts hand-held digital devices such as smartphones will rule the world in 2040. They already rule the life of Mr Riversdale, whose company WaveAdept helps businesses adapt - their computing sys- tems to allow staff to work from anywhere - and with anyone. In order of fre- equency, he uses his iPhone to tweet (1136 followers; 8363 tweets since joining), e-mail, make phone calls and use online services, such as checki
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IT Departments - they're gone but not

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This'll be my last posting for a while regarding the future of IT Departments as I think I've said all I need to say - they're history!

Wellll, not really. Having spoken to a friend who has a healthy scepticism for all this "new cloud computing" within organisations I do agree with his view that IT Departments are more than just people looking after the networks to store Word documents.

The key split is between the "knowledge worker" and their needs - store, find and use information (at it's simplest) which is my area of speciality and the bespoke, business differentiator software that some organisations have.

For instance, within a bank they will have a lot of generic office type applications and requirements that I believe can be met much more efficiently, cost effectively and with agility through an Enterprise 2.0 approach.

Also in the bank they have their own banking systems. These systems are probably not (yet) ready for life in the cloud. They have a horde of worker ants (IT Department + business users) caressing them lovingly as they squeeze the most competitive advantage they can out of them. These are the systems that no-one else has (in that particular form).

And to the question of, "What will IT staff do once the users are doing it for themselves?" the answer is focus entirely* upon these core business differentiator systems and make them fly.

When you read the reports outlining the death of the IT Department keep in mind that they are only talking about "knowledge worker" arena where Enterprise 2.0 is focussed ... as I write this, that is.

Recent "death of IT" articles:


* not entirely, electricity still has to flow, laptops still need a WiFi to connect to and that pipe connecting the cloud needs to be lovingly cared for (no baddies let in and all the goodies out).

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The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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