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August 15, 2002
Chasm Bridge Web Services Summit
I'll be speaking at the Chasm Bridge Summit on web services on October 15th.
08:20 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Of All the Stupid...
Yesterday I wrote about IM Bots. A pretty cool idea. Today I see in this Internet World article that ActiveBuddy has won a patent on the idea. I'm not a rabid anti-patent kind of guy, but this one seems pretty wimpy. There's plenty of prior art (like this Eliza IRC bot from June 1999). But whats more, small companies rarely win by having a patent. That's for IBM and other large companies who can employ hundreds of corporate attorneys. Even there most of them primarily use their patents defensively rather than offensively. The best way for a company like ActiveBuddy to win in the market is to spend their time and money on innovation, not in the courtroom.
I once had business dealings with a company called CoolSavings. They have a patent on online coupons. They spent so much time trying to convince us that we had to do business with them or they were going to come after us in court that we never did get to a business deal. I don't think its a smart way to do business.
04:56 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Smoke Jumping
Business 2.0 has an article about Tech's Most Valuable Temp. The article is about the Feld Group, an enterprise computing consulting firm started by Charlie Feld. They're responsible for the tech turn around at Delta Airlines. For over a year now, I've marveled at how I could go to the Delta web site and change my seat assignment, call into the customer service line right away, and have them be able to see the change I just made. That's how its supposed to work. According to this article, the integration goes deeper than that.
I find myself agreeing with Feld a lot. For example:
Governance is another issue. Most of the time, Feld thinks, a decentralized IT operation is another form of abdication, like outsourcing. "You've got to stop letting everybody buy their own stuff," he insists. Otherwise, functional heads will overspend in fat years and underbuy in lean. Costs spin out of control; any long-range plan disappears. A big company needs just five or six major suppliers. One of the first things Feld did was put Delta's entire desktop business -- 46,000 computers -- out to bid. Every three years, when the boxes have depreciated, Delta puts the contract up for bid again. Until then, it's one less headache.
I've found this to be right on. Bucking conventional wisdom, not only is decentralization of basic services expensive, it also leads to worse service and less flexibility. People can't understand why I'm interested in desktops when the Governor's talking about eGovernment. To me, they're very related. Until we stop worrying about desktops and spending so much of our effort making them work, we'll never have the mental freedom to make the changes necessary to do eGovernment right. We have to clear away the distractions and concentrate on adding value. We can't do that when most our time is spent on basic services.
04:02 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Why this is Fun
One of the things that never ceases to amaze me about being the CIO for a state government is the sheer breadth of what a government does. As an example, I just found out we have a program (and web site) devoted to wind power in Utah by reading Dave Fletcher's blog.