News
Issue #2002 - 40 (October 2002)
(Updated Oct. 22, 2002)

OPINIONS

Risks of Being Too Conservative in Wireless & Mobile Computing

In a recent opinion piece, Dennis Drogseth suggested that we should not be too conservative. We thank Dennis for his wisdom and reflect on it in our own context.

In difficult and unsettling economic and geopolitical times, it's tempting to approach just about everything conservatively. It's tempting to hold back from innovation and stick to what at least appear to be tried and true methods and approaches, with little new investment and a maximum of economizing. This attitude is clearly visible today across IT and OSS organizations, and on the surface, it sounds only like common sense.

The problem with taking this approach is that it misses something fundamental: going back to the "tried and true" isn't possible. Too much has changed, and in fact I would argue that conservatism and lack of innovation in adopting more enlightened strategies for infrastructure management were major contributors to the economic downturn - and in particular to the meltdown of potentially high-growth sectors such as telecommunications and e-business.

While no one could argue against being cautious and deliberate in making investments, being conservative in infrastructure management is likely to atrophy competitive advantage and dilute business growth today, just as it did three years ago.

Let's look at what has changed. Even if the NASDAQ has slipped to mid-1990s levels, the business environment hasn't. The Internet today is real, active and still spawning new ways of recreating and doing business. (What, for instance, will instant messaging do to more established, less frenetic methods of e-mail such as Microsoft Exchange?) Though the dot-com bubble has burst, e-business is not only here to stay - it's also growing in most sectors and continuing to place new competitive demands and expectations on business. Consumer patience and expectations for e-business shopping hasn't reverted to mid-1990s levels, either, as initial fascination with new technology has turned into a clarion cry for convenience and ever-faster response.

Security has achieved new levels of importance, new levels of innovation, and new levels of confusion. Just what is "security," anyway, and how should it integrate with more mainstream management?
Storage technologies are already beginning to create new performance concerns across mainstream infrastructures - and just watch that space as Fiber Channel meets up with mainstream IP networks with a gnawing demand for secure data access that's suddenly an astronomic increment to the past.
Wireless and voice over IP are still poised for explosive growth once the magic triggers - those catalysts of application value, business need, and economic comfort - are pulled. Gradual processes can trigger sudden and violent results, much like another ice age could be suddenly triggered by glacial melt disrupting the saline balance in oceanic currents.

The need to optimize, plan and manage IT as a more integrated part of the business, with increased sensitivity to business dynamics, is yet another area of innovation worth investing in. 
Back in the mid-1990s, this was talked about, but it existed mostly as philosophy. Organizations such as the IT Infrastructure Library were beginning to document service-oriented "best practices," but the necessary automated management tools just didn't exist. Of course, they don't fully exist yet today, but they're emerging.

With these innovations, the potential to leverage IT as a dynamic business partner is, for the first time since the mainframe, once again a real possibility.

Conservatism when it comes to infrastructure management could just be a recipe for disaster. What's called for are well-considered investments and business-driven exploration of new capabilities, as well as a willingness to examine new organizational structures. Who knows when many of today's management innovations will become fully realized across IT organizations and processes, and across vendors' products? We could easily be looking at five to 10 years out. You might say our inherited problems were created by a gold rush in 1999 that required management strategies from 2010.

Dennis Drogseth is a director with Enterprise Management Associates, He can be reached at drogseth@enterprisemanagement.com

For more information: www.enterprisemanagement.com

MobileInfo Comments and Advisory: With proper acknowledgement and due apologies, we would like to say first that Dennis is right in warning us that conservatism has no place in IT, wireless and mobile computing. In an emerging industry, where Moore's law has not played its term out, we must not accept constancy, give up innovation and delay continuous upgrading of our infrastructure. There are lots of opportunities still. Today, we have reached a temporary stop where we need to update our thinking. Against conservatism, pragmatic management of our resources to maximize value to business and society is a good prescription.

We want to suggest that Dennis overemphasizes infrastructure management of IT. Reality of human progress through scientific inventions and industrialization during the past several hundred years tells us that first comes unstructured progress and then comes discipline and organized management. Quite often, we do not even know what to manage and how to manage till we create the solution for the problem. While we value proactive planning and advanced thinking to forecast management issues, we can not afford to be overly preoccupied with it to the extent that we do not actually get things done. In life and in business, we need to balance various tradeoffs. 

We also find it simplistic for Dennis to suggest that telecom meltdown was due to conservatism in IT infrastructure management. Now, how does all this apply to us in our own sub-industry of wireless and mobile computing?

We advocate pragmatic considerations in planning for deploying wireless infrastructure. We emphasize business case justification whether it is for consumer pleasure or business efficiency. Any solution must add value - personal, social or business.. We recommend designing for unified infrastructure for wireless and wireline. We very much want planners and professionals to consider end-to-end solutions - from the handheld device to the reservoir of information and business applications, traversing wireless networks, wireless gateways, application servers and application connectors. We support good systems engineering approach. 

Note: This news release may contain forward-looking statements. Readers should take appropriate caution in developing plans utilizing these products, services and technology architectures.  All trademarks used in this summary are the property of their respective owners.