Bruce Robertson

Yet again, my colleage Lydia Leong has mentioned something that reminded me of something in EA.  In her “A hodgepodge of links” blog entry, she mentioned enjoying Malcolm Gladwell’s “Priced to Sell: Is free the future?” retort in the New Yorker to Chris Anderson’s thesis in his book Free — that information will be free.  Interesting discussion: read it and savor some good pointed critique.  (Me: I do love a good rant.)

My version of this architecting “free” started when I was first introduced many many years ago (1996 maybe) to Enterprise Architecture.  I attended an EA Seminar by Larry Deboever, then at META Group where I worked before it was acquired by Gartner (where obviously I work now). One of his most common challenges to new architects was to get their heads out of the sand and think about very different worlds the future could bring.  A particular exercise he used was to answer this: how would you design applications differently if the network were free and had unlimited capacity.  The answer of course is: you would make VERY different decisions about how to architect systems.  Imagine that!

The Gladwell critique of Anderson’s notion of “Free” brought this all to mind again.  When I heard Larry’s design challenge, I was on the networking analyst team.  I knew perfectly well that this could never happen: networks would not be free and networks would not have unlimited capacity, and certainly not both.  So, I always wondered really how far such thought experiments could go.  Anderton’s book certainly provides some specific examples of how it has worked, but there are others where it has not (as Gladwell points out).  While it is true that networks are much cheaper and much higher bandwidth than ever before (and really, compared to 1996, they might seem free and unlimited — during 1999/2000, I almost thought we’d get there, but CRASH!), still they are not free or unlimited.  As I write this I’m paying to use a network (Verizon FIOS, $39.99 / month for high but still limited bandwidth) and so is Gartner paying for connecting our bogging system to the Internet so I can use it from my home office.

So, I agree with Gladwell: money has to be made somewhere.  Often, the revenue/cost is displaced — as when Google doesn’t charge for its search engine (et. al.) but of course makes money from ads.  We don’t get charged for TV content usually (though we may be charged for distribution of TV signals); that too is paid for by ads.   And those ads cost us money in increased product prices.  Maybe the networks will end up free and unlimited bandwidth but we’ll have to watch ads?  Hmm.

In any case, I don’t really see that most things can be free.  If I understand Anderson correctly, information will be increasingly free — that may be true, but accessing that information won’t be.

However, i do think it’s worth asking big questions like this.  While networks may not be free now, they are a whole lot cheaper — and that HAS changed how we design things.  If you can detect the trends toward lower cost (or greater abundance) — in IT resources like networks, or business resources like staff or product components — you can change your architecture and your enterprise (your enterprise architecture!) to take advantage of those changes in cost, and deliver signficantly new options to the business.  Clearly the Internet — a low cost, high bandwidth network widely available — and Web technology (HTTP/HTML, basically) is a case of where this trend was capitalized on (say by Amazon in becoming a different kind of book store than the bricks and mortar Barnes & Noble). So, the experiment of imagining free or just much lower cost resources that your current business depends on is a good one.  These discontinuities can lead to major business change.

Of course knowing when things will get more expensive (greater scarcity) is ALSO a useful trend to watch and take advantage of.  Free (or just way cheaper) is not the only cost trend to watch.  Moreover, something (like fuel costs) that is widely variable in cost is yet another thing to be aware of (as airlines have learned, but still find it hard to master).

Thus, while architecting “free” is a great idea, it’s not the only magical thinking that will provide value.   Learning about what things actually cost now and what they might cost in the future — close to free, free, or nowhere near free — must guide architecture thinking.

Feel free to use this advice when you architect.

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Category: EA     Tags: EA

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