So, my company has announced a complete end-to-end restructure which will result in a large number of job-losses, particularly in central services such as IT that are being merged from their multiple existences in to one. It all makes perfect sense, actually I'm a little surprised it's taken this long to happen but there we go, one of those things.
Why would any company want more than one department doing the same thing for a sub-set of the whole company? It would appear careless to end up in a situation where there are multiple departments doing similar things, but when you consider that my company is made up of a number of seperate companies that have all been acquired and brought together in a very short space of time, it is perhaps less surprising. What may be surprising to some though is that even with all this internal duplication, we still made a decent profit!
Anyway, now that a lot of consolidation has happened with the technology, it is a convenient moment for departments and companies to be merged together in to one company, one set of departments and one culture. Out of all this, by far the culture is going to be the hardest to change, particularly when one part of the company is dominant and has an entrenched culture that does not fit in with the proposed new culture. Sadly, in my opinion, unless it does change the new culture will fail as well and it will cause significant issues for the future of the company.
We will see. What I do know is that it's highly unlikely I'll be inside helping, I think I'll be outside watching. That's because I think I'm going to move on and find something else to do somewhere else. Sometimes it's good to get a prod that enforces a review and a change in direction. I'm hoping I'll have a bit of padding that will help me be a bit more adventurous than I might otherwise be. 2011 is going to be an incredibly interesting year. Watch this space! :)
Friday 28 January 2011
Thursday 20 January 2011
Predictions and Broadband
Are predictions in the IT sector ever worth it? I was at an event the other day where a number of predictions offered. A lot of research had gone in to these and they were all good, nothing extraordinary, nothing too far fetched. However, I was surprised by an omission that I believe is staring us in the face.
In essence, my prediction is that broadband must move to a utility model, customers paying for what they use, pence per Megabit. We pay for electricity, gas and the telephone in that manner, data has to be next, unlimited packages don't have a future. Customers want to download movies, tv, use iPlayer, watch YouTube, listen to internet radio, share pictures, play multiplayer games - it's all taking more and more bandwidth and let's face it the media companies serving up all this fare are highly unlikely to pay for what their customers download or stream. ISPs usually run at 96% to 98% utilisation, why wouldn't they, but now with ever increasing bandwidth requirements, they need to invest in their back-haul and that's very, very expensive. Then there's fibre - more kit, more expense. Someone has to pay and if the companies peddling the content won't pay then the customer has to pay.
ISPs should be making plans to move to a utility based model as soon as possible otherwise we're going to see under investment in the network, mass customer dissastisfaction and a government forever wailing about lack of internet access for all.
I don't understand why people think that delivery of the internet is easy or cheap. It's not, it's massively complex and massively expensive. Just to stand still, continuous investment of many millions of pounds has to be made and ISPs just cannot afford to make the step-change that's needed to deliver the bandwidth that people are buying through all you can eat packages.
Again, all this tells me that ISPs must move to a utility model. At the moment though they're all waiting to see who blinks first because their shareholders and analysts judge them on customer volumes and churn rather than data shifted. Who's going to be the brave one first? Come on, someone.... Please?
In essence, my prediction is that broadband must move to a utility model, customers paying for what they use, pence per Megabit. We pay for electricity, gas and the telephone in that manner, data has to be next, unlimited packages don't have a future. Customers want to download movies, tv, use iPlayer, watch YouTube, listen to internet radio, share pictures, play multiplayer games - it's all taking more and more bandwidth and let's face it the media companies serving up all this fare are highly unlikely to pay for what their customers download or stream. ISPs usually run at 96% to 98% utilisation, why wouldn't they, but now with ever increasing bandwidth requirements, they need to invest in their back-haul and that's very, very expensive. Then there's fibre - more kit, more expense. Someone has to pay and if the companies peddling the content won't pay then the customer has to pay.
ISPs should be making plans to move to a utility based model as soon as possible otherwise we're going to see under investment in the network, mass customer dissastisfaction and a government forever wailing about lack of internet access for all.
I don't understand why people think that delivery of the internet is easy or cheap. It's not, it's massively complex and massively expensive. Just to stand still, continuous investment of many millions of pounds has to be made and ISPs just cannot afford to make the step-change that's needed to deliver the bandwidth that people are buying through all you can eat packages.
Again, all this tells me that ISPs must move to a utility model. At the moment though they're all waiting to see who blinks first because their shareholders and analysts judge them on customer volumes and churn rather than data shifted. Who's going to be the brave one first? Come on, someone.... Please?
Wednesday 19 January 2011
Is Facebook the new corporate website?
The development of the browser provided easy and simple access to websites for anyone/everyone. Before then, whilst the language (Hypertext) existed it was not easy to provide a user-friendly front end to sites that people would easily and quickly adopt. Once that easy access was provided, the world and his dog very quickly hopped on the band-waggon.
As did corporates. they saw their customers going online and knew they had to follow. Today one of the first things most new companies do is get a domain name and set up a web presence. Shops and services sprung up more or less taking over the DIY personal space website that had existed previously, even the government got online!
Now, post browser, we're seeing the next broad spectrum access tool arriving on the internet: Facebook. Almost half of the world's netizens use Facebook everyday already and it reminds me of how the web was at the beginning: lots of individuals creating their own little websites where they talked about themselves and their hobbies with maintained centralised lists of websites worth visiting. Not quite as interactive as Facebook, but not really very different. Already forward thinking companies are getting in on the act and setting up facebook pages that people can visit, like, link to or friend (a somewhat odd idea friending a corporate entity, but there we go). Right now, it's clunky, it subverts what is meant for the individual to the corporate requirement and it lacks an easy way of enabling someone to create the equivalent of a corporate website within Facebook. Establish this capability within Facebook and corporations will I'm sure move their online presence to Facebook and follow their customers. Why would they not, particularly when you consider the wealth of information on their customers that they'd gain access to, it's a salesman's dream!
There's work to do to enable corporates to have the same rich environment they have on a website, but it can't be that hard to achieve. Give it three years and it's quite likely that the idea of having a website for your company separate from Facebook could well be as out dated and old fashioned as the land-line. What this will mean for Facebook infrastructure and the very structure and intent of the internet itself is another massive question, but there's nothing as fickle as a customer and they really don't care about how it all works as long as it works and it gives them what they want.
I wonder which corporation will be the first to close down their website and convert to a Facebook page?
As did corporates. they saw their customers going online and knew they had to follow. Today one of the first things most new companies do is get a domain name and set up a web presence. Shops and services sprung up more or less taking over the DIY personal space website that had existed previously, even the government got online!
Now, post browser, we're seeing the next broad spectrum access tool arriving on the internet: Facebook. Almost half of the world's netizens use Facebook everyday already and it reminds me of how the web was at the beginning: lots of individuals creating their own little websites where they talked about themselves and their hobbies with maintained centralised lists of websites worth visiting. Not quite as interactive as Facebook, but not really very different. Already forward thinking companies are getting in on the act and setting up facebook pages that people can visit, like, link to or friend (a somewhat odd idea friending a corporate entity, but there we go). Right now, it's clunky, it subverts what is meant for the individual to the corporate requirement and it lacks an easy way of enabling someone to create the equivalent of a corporate website within Facebook. Establish this capability within Facebook and corporations will I'm sure move their online presence to Facebook and follow their customers. Why would they not, particularly when you consider the wealth of information on their customers that they'd gain access to, it's a salesman's dream!
There's work to do to enable corporates to have the same rich environment they have on a website, but it can't be that hard to achieve. Give it three years and it's quite likely that the idea of having a website for your company separate from Facebook could well be as out dated and old fashioned as the land-line. What this will mean for Facebook infrastructure and the very structure and intent of the internet itself is another massive question, but there's nothing as fickle as a customer and they really don't care about how it all works as long as it works and it gives them what they want.
I wonder which corporation will be the first to close down their website and convert to a Facebook page?
Friday 7 January 2011
Ashes Retained
I could have blogged about how well the England cricket team were doing down in Australia a few weeks ago, but that would have been tempting fate. The fickle finger of fate has seen to it that an English defeat has been snatched from the jaws of certain victory too many times on previous occasions. And oddly, I'm a very superstitious cricket fan, so silence was the best option. Any crowing ahead of the final result would almost certainly have mucked things up for the Andrew Strauss and team.
But now, with a 3-1 victory in the bag, the Ashes retained, nay won again, I can talk about it. What a result, my goodness, I never thought that I'd see such a result in my lifetime, let alone such a turnaround in 5 or so years. Considering it was 2005 when we received a 5-0 drubbing, this is remarkable.
Some would say that it's due to Australia no longer having the side that it did and there's a grain of truth in that. However, even if Warne, McGrath, Lee, Gilchrist, Hayden & Langer had been in the Australian side this time, England would have prevailed. It would have been a closer series, but England would still have the ashes, no doubt. They are now a unit to be feared - ruthless, determined and focused like no other English test side I've ever seen. As a result this was a drubbing, a white-wash. Australia only had opportunities when England failed and that only happened on maybe two days. Those two days lost England a test, but it was the only opportunity Australia had, we allowed them that through our failure, not their expertise and capability.
It's interesting to note that 6 out of 11 England players were there in the 2006/7 5-0 series defeat. Flintoff, Giles, Harmison, Hoggard & Jones are not in the side in 2010/11, but no-one can say that those players weren't world class in 2006/7. So, what is the difference?
This is where I can justify blogging about cricket on a IT management blog. I believe it's down to the leadership and preparation. In 2006/7, we had a leader who was not really a leader (Flintoff), more a lieutenant. The management team was not as cohesive and the individual players were not well managed - take Harmison, widely reported as suffering homesickness and lacking the desire to play overseas, he never really recovered from that first ball of the first innings of the first test. Careful management and leadership would have helped, but I don't believe Flintoff had the characteristics or tools to enable him to provide that support. As a consequence once things were going wrong, there was no recovery mechanism or understanding of how to recover things. So, the series was lost.
The Flowers/Strauss team has shown how important it is to have a cohesive team driving a strategy that's clear and understood by everyone with everyone pushing hard to deliver that strategy. That's not only the on-field team, but also the back-room team, everyone. Everyone knew what had to be done and drove hard at getting there, working together, supporting each other, individuals stepping up to deliver the goods when someone else couldn't.
Ah, enough of the analysis, what a result. What a brilliant, amazing result. Well done, lads! Thank you!!
But now, with a 3-1 victory in the bag, the Ashes retained, nay won again, I can talk about it. What a result, my goodness, I never thought that I'd see such a result in my lifetime, let alone such a turnaround in 5 or so years. Considering it was 2005 when we received a 5-0 drubbing, this is remarkable.
Some would say that it's due to Australia no longer having the side that it did and there's a grain of truth in that. However, even if Warne, McGrath, Lee, Gilchrist, Hayden & Langer had been in the Australian side this time, England would have prevailed. It would have been a closer series, but England would still have the ashes, no doubt. They are now a unit to be feared - ruthless, determined and focused like no other English test side I've ever seen. As a result this was a drubbing, a white-wash. Australia only had opportunities when England failed and that only happened on maybe two days. Those two days lost England a test, but it was the only opportunity Australia had, we allowed them that through our failure, not their expertise and capability.
It's interesting to note that 6 out of 11 England players were there in the 2006/7 5-0 series defeat. Flintoff, Giles, Harmison, Hoggard & Jones are not in the side in 2010/11, but no-one can say that those players weren't world class in 2006/7. So, what is the difference?
This is where I can justify blogging about cricket on a IT management blog. I believe it's down to the leadership and preparation. In 2006/7, we had a leader who was not really a leader (Flintoff), more a lieutenant. The management team was not as cohesive and the individual players were not well managed - take Harmison, widely reported as suffering homesickness and lacking the desire to play overseas, he never really recovered from that first ball of the first innings of the first test. Careful management and leadership would have helped, but I don't believe Flintoff had the characteristics or tools to enable him to provide that support. As a consequence once things were going wrong, there was no recovery mechanism or understanding of how to recover things. So, the series was lost.
The Flowers/Strauss team has shown how important it is to have a cohesive team driving a strategy that's clear and understood by everyone with everyone pushing hard to deliver that strategy. That's not only the on-field team, but also the back-room team, everyone. Everyone knew what had to be done and drove hard at getting there, working together, supporting each other, individuals stepping up to deliver the goods when someone else couldn't.
Ah, enough of the analysis, what a result. What a brilliant, amazing result. Well done, lads! Thank you!!
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