Richard Hall - Digital shadow

A small thought in the midst of a torrent of debate.  While vendors and users argue the merits of Software as a Service (SaaS) and oft mistakenly see this as the sole future of all software delivery (the end of history if you would for the software industry), Microsoft has been patiently promoting Software plus Services (S+S) - stressing the likelihood that smart applications will be the consumer of rich internet services in many cases, offering more interactivity and power to the user than browser based containers alone.

Note this is not to dismiss the rise of Rich Internet Applications serving many needs, but acknowledges that just as the browser grew out of the 'dialup, mostly offline' world, then perversely in a world where users and devices are 'mostly online' we can be freed from the constraints of that interactivity model. 

Gadgets and full blown applications can continuously update themselves, perform tasks, cache data and actions, all without the limits to which even AJAX and REST programming must submit.  They can offer different functional modes when offline - degrading gracefully - while spooling themselves back up to speed when connection is available again.  I refer anyone who thinks this is heresy to consider the great philosophical debate of our time - 'what should the back button do in this instance' - as the final proof that the world needs more than one user interface pattern.

In the midst of the all hyperbole on this subject, I realised that two of my favourite applications from Google are of course fantastic S+S example - namely Google Maps running on many of my mobile devices, and Google Earth on my notebooks.  While I doubt we will see headline thought leadership pieces from Google evangelists to this end, it is nice to see that pragmatic need to deliver a great user experience is providing practical endorsement ;)

At the end of 2007 I noticed an interesting trend - a number of the most respected Chief Information Officers in the UK had recently been appointed Chief Operating Officer.  This was a trend extending across government and private sector.  Now for years the 'business aligned IT' brigade had been lamenting the role of IT and the CIO, despite the evident achievement of many IT leaders in organisations large and small.  While some heads of IT have a harder time reporting to a CFO or COO and only indirectly to the board, many are making their presence felt and contributing to bottom line business value and strategy.

However, the step from CIO to COO is a major endorsement of the business insight and change management skills now held by many in the IT world.  Gartner has already pointed to the evolving character of the CIO role: in particular two flavours, the innovation champion and the process / operational master.  It is to be hoped in many industries - particularly communications, high tech, entertainment and wholesale finance - that IT evolution is driving the business model forward, emphasizing the need for managed innovation.  But it is refreshing to see that the CIO who is also delivering new processes, new products and services by wiring the enterprise and third-parties together in new ways, is now acknowledged as potential owner of all change and efficiency programmes with a key seat on the board.

Nicholas Carr may still make a case that IT in and of itself does not differentiate - in fact he is describing the 'hurdle model' of IT where firms race to keep up with the minimum levels of service and innovation to their mission - but it is clear now that new competitive edge or governmental efficiency almost always depends on effective IT delivery.  And delivery is the remit of the IT team, from inside the company and from a host of specialist suppliers, led by an effective CIO.

Will it be long before we see CIOs who have taken the COO spot finally reach CEO in significant numbers? 

Jonathan Woodward, CTO at Sungard Vivista, recently posed the question on LinkedIn - what does the role of the Chief Technology Officer look like in 2020?  This stimulated a range of response, and I am reposting my answer here.  It is an important question because it goes to the heart of the 'Future of IT' (FIT) debate, how suppliers and consumers of IT interact, and the role of CIO and CTO.

Let us assume that a key responsibility of the CTO role is to answer the 'how and with whom and with what' questions posed by the CIO or the board, who in turn have the 'why and how much' responsibilities.  This is unlikely to be changed by the passage of time irrespective of the particular technology landscape and waves of change, now or in 2020.

A very valid sub-question is then - how many, and what type of organizations will need CTOs - and this may give us more clues to the evolution of the role.

If we believe that utility computing in some form will supply a greater proportion of functionality and multi-sourcing of business processes (not just IT resources) will continue, then the role of CIO will increasingly be to contract and manage a portfolio of suppliers versus internal demand, relying on them to manage how they deliver, and choosing which differentiating areas to invest in bespoke solutions. CTOs will be critical to informing these decisions, but may be working on behalf of supplier rather than full-time at the end-user.

For supplier/ services/ IT utility organizations, they will have an increased need for strong CTOs to shape, deliver and explain their key offerings.

Only those organizations who can extract the maximum business value from a full-time CTO will support this role, and probably similar but fewer posts by 2020 than currently exist.

Hence the CTO may become more process/vertically specialised in a supply side role (e.g. development management, solution architect, functional specialist) or more generalised (enterprise architect, integration, governance etc) in an end-user position.

Likely in either regard that they will be highly valued, and demonstrate more hybrid management/ commercial expertise than in the past and less of the individual contributor career model, but be a smaller population than in 2007.

Business agility and reliability hurdles will probably be even higher than in today's IT landscape, and the challenge to the CTO will be to match or exceed these targets and communicate the art of the possible/ practical to CIO, board and users.  Proposing and delivering new solutions/ processes will be vital, and collaborating with a broader range of peers/ suppliers/ partners to deliver these will become even more important if we assume technical complexity will rise by 2020, while commoditised IT will be increasingly used (where a CTO will add no value).

Microsoft will shortly be commissioning research across European technologists on the Future of IT (FIT) and it will be fascinating early next year when the results are in to see how active practitioners see current trends shaping the IT landscape in the near future and beyond.

I have written before about one particular form of 'beyond the browser' convergence - where a new wave of interactive, appealing, web style user interfaces collide with traditional office applications.  Ultimately I believe we will stop talking about 'going online' or 'on the web' as documents, websites and applications seamlessly blur.

An immediate, 'here and now' manifestation of this prediction was very much in evidence in Denver at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.  One of my key takeways from the event was that with the latest crop of visual interface tools and languages - Silverlight, Expression, WCF - we can now build compelling, fun and genuinely empowering front ends to traditional line of business systems such as CRM and ERP.

Better yet, we can blend or 'mash up' business functionality such as business intelligence for example to create a lean supply chain planning module that can interactively rebalance stock logistics while showing the scorecard impact on customer satisfaction and margin.  This demo reminded me that we have not yet reached the limits on personal productivity while we can also expect endusers to demand much more intuitive and powerful interfaces for applications which have not previously had the glamour of games or consumer marketing projects.

Moreover, these web/CRM/ERP/BI hybrids will be dollar justified in investing effort in the last nine yards to the user as they will unlock much of the hidden value of enterprise solutions.  Systems that are used to the full deliver ROI - applications you only want to touch once a month do not.

Nearly 10,000 Microsoft partners descended on a very sunny Denver for the Worldwide Partner Conference 2007, myself included.  Been three years since I went to WPC (Toronto 2004) and the growth in the enterprise Windows platform is evident in the scale of the event and the range of partners present.  The mainstream use of Windows Mobile particularly evident.

As ever Steve Ballmer energized by the crowd, gave a great keynote.  The sizzle of this opening session was showcased by Brian Hall (no relation) with a demonstration of Silverlight in full glory, from High-Definition 720P quality streaming video in the browser with multiple picture in picture to delivering mashup applications inside a Messenger IM client.

The steak was the functional content available with 'software plus services'  delivering richer user experience and a choice of server platforms - whether installed at the customer, hosted by a partner or run as a Windows Live service by Microsoft. 

In particular, the 'Titan' custom development model for Dynamics CRM will allow rich additions to functionality including workflow to be deployed easily and safely whether on an installed version of CRM or running in 'the cloud'.  With a powerful declarative language as used by the Dynamics CRM product group, system integrators and client developers will be able to tune the product to fit customer processes - not the other way round.

At Avanade are already winning enterprise scale use of Dynamics CRM based on our ability to quickly transform ways of working - in weeks not years.  Windows Live will give customers the freedom to deploy the software where it is most cost effective internally or externally, minimize support burden and allow bursts of added user load without fixed server and storage overhead.  This flexibility will never be delivered by web only application providers.