deal architect

MIT Technology Review - 2006 Emerging Technologies

The MIT Technology Review lists its top 10 emerging technologies. The May 2005 list was here.

Epigenetics -detecting cancer early by monitoring subtle changes in DNA
Cognitive Radio - exploiting unused radio spectrum
Nuclear Reprogramming - a more ethical way to derive stem cells
Diffusion Tensor Imaging - for brain imaging
Universal Authentication - for a safer Internet
Nanobiomechanics - measuring tiny forces acting on cells
Comparative Interactomics - maps of body's molecular interactions
Nanomedicine -to guide drugs directly into cancer cells
Pervasive Wireless - making all wireless gadgets get along
Stretchable Silicon - teaching silicon new tricks

6 in 10 = Yuckier

Inspired by Tom Peters' travel, and the fact that I am much younger (though do not feel it) I have signed up for 6 flights of over 2.500 miles in the next 10 days.

If you are going to Software 2006. please wake me up if I fall asleep during my presentation.

Blog postings will be limited over the next couple of weeks. And at strange hours.

Busyness = Bad Business

Annie Fisher at Fortune recommends we "slack off" more. We are multi-tasking too much and "the "time cost" of refocusing your attention may be only a few seconds with each switch, but the researchers found that, over time, it reduced people's total efficiency by 20% to 40%."

Cancel as many meetings as possible. Throw away that Blackberry. Free up time for creative, innovative thinking.

Of course she has to include mandatory mention of innovations at Google

"We want to take as much hurry and worry out of people's lives as we can, because a relaxed state of mind unleashes creativity," says Stacy Sullivan, the company's HR director. "And everybody's on flextime here, so we don't reward face time or working super-long hours. We just measure results."

But overall a good read...

Speed Demons

BusinessWeek talks about the speed of new product introduction. In industries like publishing. And with neat little tech companies like 37signals.

In tech in general though, we like to think we are agile and innovative. Not by some of the new benchmarks that are emerging.  Let's look at enterprise SOA as currently being defined against this lens. And what we are getting for the $ 90+ billion we spend with IBM. And Oracle, and EDS and...

Un-consolidation!

In keeping with the un-conference and un-computer meme, time for another un-modest "I told you so" about software market consolidation.

Bill Gates, according to this InfoWorld article, has sent out another urgent once-a-decade internal email - this time about software as a service.

While Bill may be particularly thinking of Google, it is staggering how many "services" have been spawned in the last year or so, as these 2 posts by Bob Stumpel here and here show. I quit counting at 400. I had previously written about growing SaaS ecosystems being formed around salesforce.com, Netsuite and others.

Next, The Economist talks about Open Source. Also, Tom Berquist who recently left Wall Street to join Ingres, writes about the Open Source opportunity in this sandhill column.

In his recent earnings press release Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is quoted as saying "Over the last several weeks we announced our internally developed Secure Enterprise Search technology, and the completion of the Siebel acquisition. As a result, Oracle now has strong product offerings in both Search and Software as a Service. These two markets are red hot and will be engines for growth for Oracle and the entire software industry for years to come."

Larry acknowledging " the entire software industry" and not just writing it off as "features"? Sure sign of industry un-consolidation...

Sun and Utility Computing

Jonathan Schwartz writes about Sun's Grid - its next iteration of utility computing. One of my 2006 predictions was they (or Dell) would, but several folks felt like their experience and lack of customer uptake in the first go-around would discourage them.

Jonathan is pretty excited - as he says  "experience for yourself what it's like to use one of the world's largest supercomputers. Without having to house it, manage it, power it, administer it, provision it... or buy it." Hardware as a service ...

The "Microsoft Triangle"

Microsoft announced a delay in its shipment of Vista.  It screws up Christmas plans for the consumer PC market. From an enterprise perspective, though, if indeed the delay is due to quality reasons, it is a reason to celebrate, given the software industry's poor quality track record. The term "bleeding edge" was not created without reason.

I have written before of the need to melt the software "iron triangle". But we are seeing a version of the Bernuda Triangle here. Lots of things vanish there. In Microsoft's case. it has been $ 20 billion in R&D in the last 3 years and mostly delays and problems in output. Microsoft looks particularly bloated compared to cycles of 37Signals, Google and others. That worries CIOs more than not been able to make sure their kids get Vista for Christmas.

Patriot Buchanan

I have always liked Pat Buchanan. He is a fighter, not tied to either party - more to his political principles. Speaks his mind on TV and on the stump. One area where I have consistently disagreed with him is free trade. Pat would shut the borders down. I am not sure he has thought through the consequences of the rest of the world similarly quitting purchases from GE, Microsoft, Boeing, Coke, Oracle etc. They would shrink to half their size. That would be good for the economy?

It's like Lou Dobbs. His list of companies who supposedly "export US jobs" due to offshoring - that list also is the same list of top US exporters. It only proves one thing. They are doing global business. To be global you have to import and a portion of your employee and contractor base has to be non-American.

Rich Karlgaard of Forbes takes on "Paleo Pat" on his blog..

Upgrades: Refueling in Mid-air

was the title of a Gartner note I wrote in the 90s about enterprise application upgrades.

"Because the software is now in production, little downtime can be tolerated. Thus, our analogy to refueling a plane in mid-air - it cannot be landed, just slowed down. Similar to that deceptively simple procedure, the upgrade cutover process must be frequently rehearsed and flawlessly executed. Upgrades carry an additional risk - typically, few vendor or systems integrator resources are really up to speed with the new release."

Now read this post by Tom Foydel about upgrades in the SaaS world. Sounds like planes which run on hydrogen cells, solar power and other quantum improvements in fuel efficiency.  Also, a good sign that Tom, who makes a living implementing SaaS is not lamenting the reduced upgrade services he would have enjoyed in the licensed software world.

Technology Innovation and Smart Highways

Technology Review talks about wireless highways and related communication technologies on cars.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research describes its research around weather impact on roads.

What I want to know is why we cannot improve speeds of road construction and maintenance. Why not three construction shifts? More efficiencies? From that perspective, this caution about Smart Highways from the Whole Earth Review is also worth reading.