Of sausages and technology

Rob Carter,  CIO at Fedex, is an executive I have long respected. Every event I have seen him present at, it has been in business terms – not geek talk.  He made a comment, though, last year to Chris Murphy at InformationWeek which puzzled me “.. business unit execs must understand even deep concepts such as a services architecture. "The more we kept this stuff behind the scenes, the less real it was to the business,"”

I am a fan of Mark Twain who once said “Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.” I  hold the same opinion about technology – let’s delight the business and the users with applications of technology not mire them in developer and architect talk. Let’s keep that behind the scenes.

So I was pleased to see Rob at a conference couple of months ago.  He spoke about warning a visitor not to stay at the Memphis Airport Hilton while showing on the screen a radar like view of countless Fedex planes descending into or taking off from Memphis airport a bit after midnight. He pulled out the SenseAware sensory device and talked about how it allows healthcare and other Fedex customers to keep near real-time track of sensitive shipments. It was language any executive, actually anyone off the street could understand.

I say this because I read Richard Hirsch’s really nice note about SAP’s SUP this weekend. I also read John Appleby’s note about SAP HANA and BW. Richard and John are both extremely smart consultants who work for SAP partners. But the immediate thought that went through my head was why does SAP itself not have a mountain full of mobile and analytical applications to show after months and years of talking these technologies. Why are we being given a tour of the sausage factory?

Not just picking on SAP. I see many SaaS vendors who will somehow bring multi-tenancy into a conversation even at the wake of someone who never came close to a PC or mobile phone. I know outsourcers who will bring in agile and waterfalls into a conversation on white water rafting. 

Some things are best kept behind the scenes.  I heard a commentator say the Congressional Supercommittee (tasked with finding budget cuts) should have made its hearings public.

Gag me with a spoon, was my reaction!