Daryl Plummer

On the heels of its recent release of the new programming language “Google Go” (See Gartner Analyst Ray Valdes’ take), the Mountainview behemoth has trumped itself with today’s release of “Google Stop”. 

Unlike “Go” which is a high productivity and fast system programming language, “Stop” is actually a low productivity and slow campaign to get people to stop asking for so much freakin innovation. In fact, Google executives have decided that the only way to stop the rampage of innovation and complaints from competitors is to cultivate a culture of sloth.

Said an unnamed Google executive, “I mean, with all these young people running around inventing new stuff all the time, we hardly have any time to figure out what to do with all of it, let alone figure out how to make money from it. So far, we just throw stuff out there and people lap it up like thirsty puppies. We don’t even test the stuff! I mean, that was fun at first but now it’s just a tedious job at an accelerated pace. With “Google Stop”, we hope to slow things down a bit and get back to more traditional growth of software companies…”

In trying to put “Google Stop” in perspective, we decided to talk to the development team that created “Go”. Unfortunately, by the time we got there everyone was so active that all we could see were the blurs of people going about their business at near-light-speed from such great productivity. It was like trying to dodge a colony of bats, and we considered bringing in San Antonio Spurs basketball guard Manu Genobili to swat one out of the air but he declined saying “…as fast as those guys are moving, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all rabid!”

But we did get a sense of why Google executives are so keen on slowing things down. It turns out that such near-light-speed productivity is subject to Einstein’s equations like everything else and all of the developers innovating on “Go” and many other Google projects were actually aging slower than the rest of us. Then the vicious cycle of innovation gets worse and those accustomed to simpler times were just getting tired while the young “turks” doing all the innovation just keep stirring the pot.

So, in comes Google Stop. The initiative centers on five key principles:

 1 – The Principle of “Whiny Competition”: Developers will only be allowed to create something new after it is approved by a competitor. This way, innovation proceeds in a collaborative style, giving others time to catch up and making Google seem much more in step with old times. It also lets competitors begin to figure out how to address new business models that Google innovations invariably expose before those models begin to erode price margins in the competitor’s traditional models.

2 – The Principle of “Closed Source”: It works for Apple and it worked for Microsoft. We could learn something from those guys, don’t you think? Droid does.

3 – The Principle of “Actually Leaving Beta”: All Google products will need to go through a full beta cycle with an actual end date before hitting the street. This is compared to the practice of products never leaving beta even after customers have paid for them for years. Certainly will slow things down a bit.

4 – The Principle of “Hiring Legacy People”: No problem with age discrimination here since elderly in Google means 25 years old. But even hiring those in their seventies now, with the aforementioned near-light-speed deal going on, they will stay sharp and fresh for years to come – or at least until they slow those danged young-uns down.  Besides, they remember history and can help us repeat it! – over, and over again.

5 – The Principle of “CEO Product Naming”: This is the kicker. Like with some other large vendors, the CEO will begin to name products. Not only will this slow down those productive people by making them hold releases until the CEO makes up his mind, but it will also make marketing a nightmare and get customers all tangled up in non-sense naming schemes.

So, Google Stop is set to sweep across the company in a far reaching attempt to turn the clock back to a time when slow and steady actually won the race. We asked a few more executives to comment and one said,

“With this new initiative, we will innovate on how to stop innovation. In fact, the only way we can survive is to stop trying to survive. When we figure that out we will have a real competitive edge because we can finally start figuring out all this cool stuff we have. Google Stop will…”

He actually never got to finish that sentence as a group of blurs moving at near-light-speed scooped him up and disappeared down a hallway. About 10 minutes later, Google announced the release of a new Hadoop based analytics system that will change the world. Man, that was fast!

>>> For those of you who have not figured it out yet, this article is totally fiction -  Child, please! Just Stop.

Recently, my colleague, Elise Olding asked me to draw a cartoon depicting the tension between the emotional side and the analytical side of BPM. She recently published a note about it where we intended to use the cartoons but circumstances prevented them being published together. The note, called “Don’t Let Your Emotions blow Up Your BPM Plans” is a good read and important to anyone who cares about process (see the link below the cartoon). Another colleague, Jim Sinur, expects to blog on this as well so keep an eye out.

But for the moment, here are the original G-Men cartoons where we make it plain – “You run the risk of derailing your BPM effort if you don’t consider the impact of BOTH sides of your BPM psyche.

Click the image for a larger view. Enjoy.

See the Note for the deep dive:

• Don’t Let Emotions Blow Up Your BPM Effort: A Guide to Making Objective Decisions
• View Summary |

Business process management project work is composed of two work streams: analytical and emotional. Your project can be derailed by unanticipated reactions to the changes. If you are launching a BPM project, follow the tips in this research and stay on track.

Save + | Published: 4 September 2009 | 5 pages

Have you noticed the outmoded forms of speech that just litter our modern world? Do you remember your grandparents talking about when their grandparents first got one of those new “horse-less carriages”? Or maybe your parents remember a time when their parents talked about going to a movin’-picture? Still not close enough? How about the people we have all seen who still call CD’s and MP3’s “albums” – or worse yet – “records”?

Well, people tend to hang onto the concepts they grew up with and still use the same words even when confronted with a new reality. Really!  I mean, I had a friend of a friend ask me recently if I still used “record players” when I said I have a collection of 200 gram LPs for my high end stereo system (My not-inexpensive VPI turntable with digital speed control is still insulted at that). But now-a-days (note the outmoded form of “today”), people are starting to just use the words in whatever way comes easiest to mind. And the latest form of this seems to be all the odd uses of the word twitter floating about.

Have you heard these?

“I twittered last night about my son’s graduation.”

Or, “My friend Beth is a big time twitterer”.

Or, how about “My kids are always twitting about nonsense” – thanks, dad.

Well, I have heard them all and more.

So I was all ready to get outraged and then I did a search of the Web. Why outraged, you ask? Well, that’s because I learned early on that the verb form of the word “Twitter” is to “Tweet”, not to “Twitter” and it always annoyed me when people said it wrong. But then, low and behold (outmoded form of “check this out”), my web search showed me a funny thing. The Free dictionary defines twitter and “twittered”, and “twittery”, and “twitters”, and “twittering” – all with not one mention of the social networking site for which “tweeting” is the normal form of communication. Now ain’t that a hoot (wow, two outmoded words in one sentence!).

That was a not so subtle reminder that the word “twitter” (in all its forms) has been around a lot longer that social networking sites; and people have used it without any troubles so far (It was also a not so subtle reminder that dictionaries need to update their definitions more often). And, it does mean that saying “I twittered” is actually grammatically correct, even if it is not socially adept.

So, it seems that we can either accept the real English words defined in the free dictionary and use them as we wish to refer to Twitter (the site), or we can be rigid and insist that all the hip-kids (need I say more about outmoded forms of words?) use “tweet” properly. Now that is either cute, or quaint, or annoying as hell depending on the degree to which some combination of the words “retentive” and “anal” make you giggle like Beavis – or is it Butthead?

So, I am putting my annoyance back in my “waste of time” box and getting back to drawing another cartoon strip – probably about Twitter. Besides, I have come to the realization that, one day, we will all sound as quaint as those people who still say – “I have to get home in time to tape my favorite program.” Never mind that there is no tape involved with a digital video recorder and never mind that we can set the danged things to record from our iPhones without going home anyway.

But I leave you with a warning. Generation gaps can be propagated faster on social networking sites. So, if you should find yourself on twitter, tweeting about how cool you are while using the wrong words (that show how cool you aren’t) – you may find yourself feeling just a little bit like – a “twit”.

Oops. Sorry about that, gosh-darn-it.

For years I have had to interact with IBM as the “Big Dog” or the “Stodgy Legacy Guys” or the “Mainframe guys” or some such appellation that exists somewhere outside the range of any sense of coolness. The last three years have seen a change in the “grand old dame” of IT and I have to wonder if they suddenly – got game.

If you’re wondering, all of this comes from a dream I had last night when I fell asleep with the David Letterman show blaring on my TV. So, then I start dreaming and wind up doing a Letterman routine about IBM in my dream (apparently, a lot of IBM commercials run during letterman – go figure). For those not interested in Letterman or my dreams, just snip on the doted lines below and jump down to the section called “Now here’s the real part”.

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So, in the dream I had delusions of grandeur and decided I was letterman and I would do a “Top 10” list about IBM. I mean, even the real Letterman had done one about the “Top 10 signs you work for IBM“, so I figured I was good to go. Even in the dream, Paul (the venerable sidekick) tried to talk me out of it but I did it anyway. And here is the result. Remember, it was just a dream.

Top Ten Reasons Why IBM couldn’t care less about being “Cool”

10.“Competition? What competition?”

9.“So you bought Java, what do you want me to do about it?”

8.“Would you kvetch about “cool” if YOU owned Hursley Park?”

7.“We ran out of standards committees to lead.”

6.“So what if Gartner coined the term SOA. We turned it into coin.”

5.“When we learned cool vendors don’t always make a lot of revenue, we said, ‘Screw it’”

4.“IBM means business because if you write it backwards, the initials almost spell out MBA!”

3.“Yeah…open source…it’s free…suuuure!”

2.“Talk to us again when we run out of other companies to buy.”

And the number one reason, why IBM couldn’t care less about being cool…

1.“IBM Global Services. Our motto is: ‘Don’t hate the player! Hate the Game!’”

By that time I had to wake up because in the dream several guys in blue pinstriped suits riding Gecko’s while talking on iPhones and screaming “there’s an App for that!” were advancing on me in two by two cover formation. Damned commercials!

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So, here’s the real part.

IBM has started to deliver some interesting solutions. Sure, they are a big company with lots of issues but I found myself this week wondering if we should give them more credit than we do for some of the things they get right. Even our competition has done this recently so I don’t feel alone in suggesting that a number of areas warrant something more than just tacit approval. 

• Business space is a credible and interesting introduction from a company with all the technological pieces to pull off a business operations platform. Sure, it could be less techie-oriented but when you see it, you might want to keep looking.
• BlueWorks is new but even BPM mavens are starting to take a look with an excited sense of hope for something that actually solves problems they have had to deal with for years. Others got there first (Lombardi, Software AG) but IBM is starting to make some really interesting noises around this “BPM platforms in the Cloud” thing. Check out a take by Bruce Silver from BPMS Watch. http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2009/05/06/ibm-takes-bpa-to-the-cloud/
• SOA: IBM made SOA a major marketing theme and it has worked for them. Sure, there are people who question the success of SOA but those people are apparently not actually looking at what is happening out there. SOA has entered the mainstream and IBM has ridden it there.
• LotusLive is just cool. Collaboration, people!
• Smarter Planet is an interesting way to talk about the ecology, business, people, styles of work, and technologies all rolled into one. Usually those kind of big campaigns go nowhere but at least this one starts with real world examples of stuff that the last 40 years of computing has made possible.
• Cloudburst….well….nobody’s perfect. But at least they got in the game. Oracle? SAP? Please say something soon. Please?

Now, I await friends and associates from other major technology companies to comment on this but I want to hear it. Post a comment to tell me whether or not you think IBM got cooler in the last three years or if you think they haven’t changed.

If I get enough responses I just might do a Top 10 list about Microsoft’s Cloud strategy – I think they may have something there.

After a long hiatus from posting I am back with a bit of trivia that should make us all a little nervous about how easy cloud issues can become stuck in the mud.

Ok, so I have a lot of friends who like to depend on me for technical support whenever they want to get some piece of content or media like videos, songs, or made-up ringtones, etc. I usually point them to some site or another where they can download the stuff or point them to where they can buy what ain’t free or I let them download it from me.

What with the recent passing of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, the requests were starting to get a little too frequent.

The reason why is because I have been an MJ fan for a long time and have every song and video he ever put out plus a number of snippets of interviews and odd photos and videos that I have come across over the years like the recent release of the “hair catching on fire” video that’s all over You-Tube. Not sure when I first saw this but it was a loooonngg time ago.

So, what has this got to do with cloud computing, you ask? Bear with me.

I am also a closet Farrah fan. Loved her since the 70s (although Kate Jackson was my real favorite angel) – You can stop laughing now because all my friends have already laughed it out. Got lots of pictures of her from over the years – and no, you cannot have a link to the download site.

So, here is the cloud angle. One day, I get “a bug up my cloud” and decide to host all of my different links and some of my friend’s data and links using my windows Home Server and a few other trinkets like some Seagate RAID storage arrays. Microsoft and Seagate did a good job with these products so I figure, what the heck, I might as well try my hand at becoming a simplistic cloud service provider using it. I decided to let friends upload pictures and video to it and I would just keep it running and expand it as needed. One day, I figured I would move it to goGrid or Amazon or some such cloud-like place and…

…ahh, hell, forget all that. Here is why it failed.

So, I’m humming along with my Home Server ready to go and I check the public web access to it and – nope, won’t work. Can’t access the server from outside my home network. So, I start looking at the setup and checking the cables and checking everything I could think of to figure out where this glitch was. Then it hit me. I had just switched everything over to ATT U-Verse Internet and the router has a different firewall configuration utility than my NetGear routers.

By the way, if the next few sentences mean nothing to you then don’t feel bad. They shouldn’t have to. That’s my whole point.

After about three minutes of searching for the problem I decide I just need to forward the TCP ports 80 (http), 443 (https), and 4125 (remote desk), through my ATT firewall and I’m good to go! Nope! So, I dust off my old hacker genes and use some software that would get me banned from some eastern European countries. And, after about 5 more minutes I discover that ATT (or the 2wire router they gave me) is blocking port 4125 for some reason only the Gods can understand. What that now means is I would have to reconfigure the Home server to redirect port 4125 to another assigned number and set the registry to recognize it and violate the usage agreement with ATT to boot! Can’t do that. What the Alexander Graham Bell is going on here?!?

So, I calls up my friendly neighborhood ATT tech rep (this process took four hours) and I’m told that not only do ATT service reps not support issues like port forwarding (a way to open holes in your firewall so people can get to selected services on your network) but that he would be happy to give me the address of a web site that could teach me about router ports.

I would have slapped him had he been standing in front of me. No help there.

So, in a fit of funk, I decide to take a break and go watch some football but there’s nothing on but baseball. I  figure God hates me at this point.  And, not only that but my friends are all leaving me texts with ROFLMAO and LOLs all over them because they thought I was some Cloud expert and now I can’t get them access to my “Farrah’s best photo-sessions” archive. Not to mention that they can’t get to my MJ discography and all the online stores are swamped with people trying to download everything Michael ever did.

Ok, so here is my point:

Cloud computing is supposed to make things so we can share and deliver service and use other people’s resources and stuff like that. But this rather trivial example of networking glitches could be magnified ten-fold when people try to do things that are not so trivial if the service providers take no responsibility for making sure the path is clear. ATT takes none in this situation, and so I had to figure it out for my self. If we all (individuals and businesses alike) have to engineer our own solutions to problems created by providers who are supposed to be trying to help us, we are not likely to find satisfaction in the cloud easily.

Or, for laughs, I could say it this way. After a thriller of a ride doing some off the wall things it looks like I needed an angel sent by Charlie to help me straighten out the bad problems caused by underestimating how annoying it was to fight this problem and beat it! Where is Billie Jean when you need her, anyway?

In a recent article published at Forbes.com, HP executive Russ Daniels penned an interesting piece called A Cloud In Every Garage. I have to admit that on reading the title, I thought I was in for a train wreck. The article looked to be positioned to follow the same mis-guided notions of “a cloud” as just another piece of infrastructure that is becoming so commonplace with vendors and the customers who listen to them (i.e. the customers who will follow them like lemmings right off the cliff into the next generation of vendor lock-in). I sat back to read it and was ready to write a rebuttal that explained that if cloud computing is just about next generation infrastructure (and buying into vendor “clouds”) then what is the big deal? I mean, advanced Data Centers have done that for quite a while now. And even more, virtualization customers have had this capability for some time as well.

But, I had to put down the pen. Not only does Russ know that cloud computing is not about “clouds” and “virtual server infrastructure”, but he also gets that new ways of opening up innovation and growth are right in front of us. And that is the premise that the article actually lays down. Russ gets at the point that while use of standard virtualized technology underlies the concept of cloud computing, the real value comes from all of us seeking to use shared cloud services on massively shared and standard public cloud infrastructure to gain economic and efficiency advantages while refocusing most of our attention on our core-competencies. He uses the automobile industry as an example of how mass-production, standardization, and entrepreneurship can be used to grow business and to create new capabilities for those who need them. He says it all in the following quote:

“In my view, the ability to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship in this new model is one of the most promising ways to ignite the next wave of economic growth. We can no more see the full impact of the cloud than Henry Ford foresaw the impact of his desire to produce more cars in less time.“

– Russ Daniels

You go, boy.

Now I won’t say the article delivered on the depth of promise that I think Russ is implying but neither does it settle for the standard mis-guided mantras. I have found that out of all the major vendors, HP has one of the best visions of what cloud computing is and can mean to the world out there. Their real problem is in turning that vision into a set of offerings that they can sell to their customer base without compromising the vision. No easy feat.

But then they keep swinging with notions like those in the article. It really sets up a very nice “industrialization of IT” kind of theme and I was turned around – loved where it was going. Even if it did start looking a little like an HP ad in the latter half of the piece, it was still a refreshing take on a subject (cloud computing) that I fear is spiraling towards a mediocre return on a promising investment in a new style of computing.

Those enticed by cloud computing should aspire to something more than just an incremental technology evolution led by IT. Thanks, Russ, for the aspirations.

Ok, so before I write anything else I will remind you that I like my iPhone – so take everything from this line on with a grain of salt. That is a bad thing for an analyst to admit but I didn’t say I like all the arcane and sometimes Faustian agreements that seem to have been made between Apple, developers, and carriers (try upgrading to an iPhone before your ATT contract upgrade period is up and watch the bleeding start). I am also disappointed with some of the design choices apple made and the snobbishness of some iPhone owners (including myself). But, even with all that carnage, I have to say to my great friend and colleague, Nick Jones – I disagree with some of your comments in “Just say no to the fatal iPhone fascination“.

For yuks, lets play this one out for a minute. And if you know Nick and I, then you know he is smarter than me; and, he is a primary mobile and wireless analyst. But I am a developer – was born one – and when I pass through the veil, shake off this mortal coil and all that, I will still be one. And as a developer, I say that Nick, you missed some key issues in your piece.

The iPhone economics, the availability of the iPhone, and even the ability to make money is not why developers develop to that platform. Developers develop for the iPhone because it has some groundbreaking capabilities, it gets them noticed, and because the app store is one of the first widespread successful ways to get developers’ efforts out of the cubicle and into the hands of everyone and anyone who might be interested, and because (deep breath) it’s cool.

How many other developer outlets are advertised widely in multiple forms of media and where a developer can find herself the envy of all her mates? How many other ways can a developer hope to find that high school cheerleader he has a crush on suddenly running his app? How many other places can that cheerleader tell her friends “oh, hotShotdev222 is soooo cool because he gave me a new way to update my lolcats library!”?

The odd thing to me, Nick, is that you too are a developer and you know better than most that ego drives what we do. We are enamored with being the first, or delivering the coolest, or having the brightest flash out there. And, well, if we can make some money off it then that is just gravy.  

But what about those developers who really are trying to make money at this? Well, let’s see. Some will make it. But, making money selling apps at .99 cents to 12.99 a pop is an interesting aspect of this but it pales in comparison to the job opportunities that might come from having delivered an iPhone app that shows up on an Apple commercial. Much like all those college football players who will never make it to the NFL, many iPhone app developers have no hope of becoming rich (or even comfortable) from selling App Store apps. Not only that, there are a heck of a lot more apps out there that Apple would not approve for the App Store than there are being sold through it, so most iPhone developers aren’t even taking a shot at App Store sales (although I admit many want to).

And finally, you mentioned that there will be many more App Stores coming, so developers should not lock themselves into one. Good point, but here is the bet I will make with you, Nick. 9 out of 10 of those other App Stores will fail to capture any widespread use by end-user customers and, while developers will indeed write to them, the harder part is envisioning the app to begin with, not tailoring it to different App Stores and device delivery models. So, I will be able to deliver to multiple “stores” if I am successful at one – assuming nothing Fustian stops me.

The developer who develops an iPhone app is looking to tap into a phenomenon, not just to build and deliver apps. Unless other App stores generate or ride on the coat tails of a phenomenon, they will fall short of the kind of fanatical interest found in the iPhone and its App store. But that is just my opinion.

Anyway, I could keep going but I just wanted to say, good post. Now I have to get back to Objective C.

I just finished the 5^th conversation in a month with clients asking me to do a technical overview of IBM’s Smarter Planet. It is a marketing campaign that basically says we can use technology to inject more “smartness” into everything we do from infrastructure to work to become more effective. The interesting thing about this is that every one of these conversations with the clients was focused on the pieces of technology that could enable a smarter planet and none of them was focused on how people will make the ultimate difference.

There is a growing impact our use of technology is having on the world. We often see this as a “green” issue (too much global warming) or a “lifestyle” issue (never stop working, even on the train), or even a “child-rearing” issue (too many video games). Our response has often been to ask - “what technology can we use to get us out of the trouble technology helped us get into?”  But technology is neither a silver bullet nor an ultimate evil. What we seem to miss more than get is that we have to change behavior.

With Earth Day hovering about, it seemed like the time was right for people to become smarter about the way they work – which is part of IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign. But still, as in oh so many interactions, the focus of these inquiries from clients kept returning to technology implementations with little or no interest in how work is done. We all know that changing ourselves is the hardest thing to do. And, unfortunately, lack of change in ourselves often thwarts any true change we want to make in our approaches. What IBM wants to do with Smarter Planet is to begin a dialog about how technology ultimately must be put to work in different ways, not just how technology should keep changing and growing. Not a new idea, but a worthy one to pursue. I just wish more people would call saying “I get it!”

So, with the not unexpected revelation that IT people often care more for the pieces they can buy than the outcomes they enable, I began to wonder how smart IBM would be about its Smarter Planet campaign in the long run. Will they increase focus on “smarter work” as a percentage of the overall smarter planet campaign? It is, in my mind, the most important piece. Will they begin to de-emphasize how their technology works in favor of emphasizing how it can be embedded in solutions that just work? IBM has a lot of technologies and one can get lost in the weeds. Will they really begin to generate a movement by people instead of IT groups to create a sister to “Earth day” – call it “Smart Day?”

All of these would be things that elevate what people do with Smarter Planet instead of leaving them to stare at the technologies while scratching their heads and mumbling – “huh?”

Today, Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun Microsystems. Gartner is in the process of generating an official position on what this means. You’re going to want to see what we have to say since there will be multiple pieces dissecting this acquisition announcement.

However, in the here and now, it occurred to me, after listening to the initial vague analyst call on this announcement, that an interesting scenario could emerge – the rebirth of “Network Computing.”

Most people today seem to assume that Cloud Computing is just the new name for network computing. But Gartner is building a position on this that takes into account several “what if” factors:

What if: Sun allowed Oracle to create an application strategy that used cloud appliances to be delivered?

What if: Sun’s x86 strategy could be reborn as a network computing client and server set for wrapping Oracle applications?

What if: Larry said “I told you so” about Network Computing and decided that now was the time to modernize the strategy and make cloud computing a core competency?

What if: Sun’s innovative research on usage-based pricing and grid-based systems to go with it were the door through which Oracle could eclipse both IBM and SAP?

What if, indeed. For answers to these and other questions about this acquisition, you gotta go see our First Takes and research on the topic – or just call me.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy used to talk incessantly about the ideas behind network computing. Well, to be honest, Ellison talked more about Network Computers than network computing but still, the point was that small dedicated network machines could be used to access a whole world of online resources and services. Cloud computing is the way that is described today, and Scott and Larry can recapture the glory of past ambitions. If they are smart, that’s a pretty good opportunity for two guys who had been lagging behind in a discussion that they were leading just 12 years ago.

My how things can change.

G-Men #s 6 and 7. Click images to see larger view.