Why the long face?

As I sit here on another flight, dashing through the clouds I wonder to myself what is happening are we double dipping or bounding back, are we out of natural resources, is the UK coalition going to survive and who is going to be evicted from big brother?

Has the fickle nature of the news media at our finger tips become a monster of negativity and fear ? I watched a programme the other night (the fairy job mother) in which a young man a boxer and a hard man who was afraid, he was afraid of debt, afraid of an interview, afraid of changing the status quo, But not afraid of being hit in the head repeatedly !

Which does lead me to a point in our jobs from the top to the bottom we are architects of change. We must face the fear on a daily basis, no we must embrace it because if don't we will falter when we encounter the resistance to change that we will see as we execute against the change that we begin.

But we must be mindful of the fact that fear of change is something that affects most people, everyone (I do hate all generalisations!) in their life will have faced and resisted a change for the good. So remember that change is a journey and sometimes you will need to take them with you, because the end of the journey is seen as to far off. I remember reading an article about a guy who ran 1000 miles (I forget his name) when he was asked how he could even conceive of such a distance he replied '1 mile at a time'.

Why the long face?

As I sit here on another flight, dashing through the clouds I wonder to myself what is happening are we double dipping or bounding back, are we out of natural resources, is the UK coalition going to survive and who is going to be evicted from big brother?

Has the fickle nature of the news media at our finger tips become a monster of negativity and fear ? I watched a programme the other night (the fairy job mother) in which a young man a boxer and a hard man who was afraid, he was afraid of debt, afraid of an interview, afraid of changing the status quo. But not afraid of being hit in the head repeatedly !

Which does lead me to a point in our jobs from the top to the bottom we are architects of change. We must face the fear on a daily basis, no we must embrace it! because if don't we will falter when we encounter the resistance to change that we will see, as we execute against any change that we begin.

But we must be mindful of the fact that fear of change is something that affects most people, everyone (I do hate all generalisations!) in their life will have faced and resisted a change for the good. So remember that change is a journey and sometimes you will need to take 'them' with you, because the end of the journey is seen as to far off.

I remember reading an article about a guy who ran 1000 miles (I forget his name) when he was asked how he could even conceive of such a distance he replied '1 mile at a time'.

Is it cloudy overhead

So where is next? We have the evolution of the cloud or for those of us who have been around a while the cycle of compute power returning to the centre. The advent of an old idea becoming a new one. I know that I am oversimplifying things cloud is so much more than that. As a personal consumer of multiple cloud services I am a huge fan (mainly because they are free). I have apps on the google app engine, docs in google docs, mail in MobileMe and notes in Evernote (that is where this blog started by the way), friends on facebook and I even communicate with my wife over skype. My daughter (aged 8) plays on club penguin (a disney creation) with her online friends (big brother (or in my case big daddy) is watching!) My life revolves around my digital existence. I have not deleted any email since 2000 and I can search it in an instant (I dug out a presentation someone sent me in 2003 the other day). I have 10+ unique email addresses and I monitor them all everyday. All for free, I realise that I might sign up to some flexible privacy agreements, but is my little voice going to be heard among the millions of others (a risk assessed basis). I am sure that if I didn't want my digital conversations to be heard they wouldn't. To be honest I don't think that I am alone, I think that many of the people who read this blog will be able to list 101 other cloud services (as I write this sentence 101 other services I use come to mind, and another blog comes to mind). So to the imbalance of my work life........

Is everyone's head in the clouds?

Are our heads really in the clouds? I realise that this is a term that comes up again and again and to be honest I think I agree with it. Don’t get me wrong I am a massive advocate of cloud computing, it is a real game changer and was the next level of innovation that the IT industry needed. Anyway back to the challenge, cloud computing is a great, great idea for vendors with massive compute power already on the web and providing internet services (Google, Amazon and Microsoft as examples). I could image someone in one of these enterprises at a senior level saying in response to a request for more hardware ‘what capacity are my servers running?’ when the answer came back that exact same exec shouting ‘how on earth has that happened? Oh hang on, how can I sell my spare capacity’?

And so cloud computing is born? There might even be a Dilbert on this. Which leads to the problem, if I do not have a compute infrastructure ready and willing to go how do I create my own cloud? I realise that for many organisations I can buy it in. But for some with paranoia around security (like government agencies, banks and financial institutions) this is not an option.

I know that the internal investment case is pretty hard for any organisation not willing to embrace the concept of ‘my data is in the cloud’ the cloud seems like a great idea, but at this moment in time a long way off.. Or is it.. I do think that the challenge is being risen to by the hardware vendors who are offering pay per click services which is helping.. From my experience it is the software vendors who are slow to catchup.. Without these two entities coming together it is difficult as the risk for lack of adoption falls with SI / outsourcing partners (like us)...