iPhone 5 and the era of incremental innovation for mobile devices

The iPhone 5 arrived at last yesterday, with both a bang and a whimper.

There will absolutely be lines of expectant buyers streaming into Apple Stores come September 21.  The Apple fan boys will certainly be there.  As will those with older iPhones that are just barely hanging on.   In fact, I think I heard the phrase “my iPhone is on its last legs, but I’m holding out until the iPhone 5 comes out” freakishly often over the summer (second only to the lyrics of “Call Me Maybe”).

So, Apple’s sales will very likely be huge, even if it might be overstating things to say it will move the U.S. GDP by half a point.

But has the old Apple spoiled us?  Does the newest phone live up to their sky-high expectations?  In some quarters, including here at Framehawk, the answer seems to be no.

The screen is slightly bigger. The phone’s slightly thinner and lighter.  Siri’s smarter.  But there was no “one more thing” to blow the socks off the industry.  The big moves – the initial iPhone, the initial iPad – have been made.

Peter Badger, our CEO here at Framehawk (and author of the comments on the photo posted here), felt the iPhone 5 was a little bit of a let down.  After looking at the screen size change, his first comment was, “That’s it?”

Matt Eastwood, analyst at IDC, tapped into that feeling on Twitter: “I read more than a few live event blogs that were openly bored by today’s Apple announcement. Guess smartphones aren’t new and cool anymore.” Or maybe the problem was what he wrote later: “the bar has been set pretty high.”

Eastwood had an interesting insight in a Twitter conversation with me and Gordon Haff: “The good enough days for smartphones and tablets aren’t too far ahead of where we are now.”

To me, it feels like the iPhone 5 launch is telling us that we’ve left the realm of disruptive innovation for mobile devices.  Now it’s about smaller modifications to the form factors.  It’s about incremental innovation.

That doesn’t mean that these devices won’t continue to have profound effects on the IT market.  Tablets, driven by the iPad, are changing the way laptop makers are thinking about what goes into a laptop.  And, they are changing the way employees and IT are thinking about application access and daily productivity.

So, the iPhone 5 made a splash, but it might only represent a ripple in the grand scheme of things.  Of course, maybe this is what mainstream adoption feels like.

This post also appears on the Framehawk blog.

Framehawk and UBS: my New Thing gets a name...and a big customer

For those who followed my chair-building exploits and my new unnamed stealthy cloud and mobility software start-up, sorry this has taken so long. I’ve been a bit busy. Mainly, it's because there's some pretty interesting stuff we’re working on at my New Thing.

We’re still officially in stealth mode, but today UBS Wealth Management Americas announced they are jumping into mobility with both feet. And we were named as a part of that effort. So I guess that means we’re in sort of “visible” stealth mode, given that we’re not talking about the details of what we’re doing or how we’re doing it. Yet.

But we do have a name now: Framehawk. (And, of course, a Twitter feed: @Framehawk). We’re working with a hand-picked set of name customers to bring existing applications to mobile devices like the iPad in a way that’s fast, secure, and doesn’t require you to rewrite those applications.

Framehawk is part of the UBS FA Mobile project

The mobility project at UBS is a big deal for their 6,000 Financial Advisors. As a start, they are bringing their proprietary wealth-management research and client materials to the iPad. “As our FAs engage with clients in an environments that compels 24/7 connectivity, we are thrilled to launch an innovative platform that gets us in front of this market change and gives us an edge,” said Anita Sands, chief operating officer for UBS Wealth Management Americas in the UBS press release about the efforts today.

In the release, UBS announced they’ve launched a 3-month pilot for a project called UBS FA Mobile in which groups of their Financial Advisors will be able to use their iPads to improve how they work with their wealth management customers.

And Framehawk is a key partner in this project. As UBS said in their press release, “This pilot phase follows a development process led by UBS's Technology group that included engaging with WMA’s FAs to provide feedback and input to the tool’s design, as well as technical development assistance, counsel, and mobility software from Silicon Valley-based Framehawk, Inc.”

How important is this project for UBS? In an interview with Registered Rep, Anita said, "We are going to consider mobile the platform of the future and place our strategic bets in that space. In the future, mobile will come first [at UBS], then the desktop second."

"UBS WMA has broken new ground," writes John Byrne of Registered Rep. He quoted Alois Pirker of Aite saying that he wasn't aware of any other firms who have a similar mobile offering like UBS. "I haven't heard of anything like the UBS application," said Pirker.

And for Framehawk: a different way to appear on the scene

This is probably the first most folks are hearing of Framehawk. And I think that's good. Usually, software start-ups make big, splashy announcements about how they’re going to change the world, then announce their product, and finally get around to talking about customers.

I like that we’re doing this all the other way around. It seems much more logical, if you think about it, to talk about customer value first. We intend to keep that up.

There’s a bit of information about Framehawk at our website, but not much detail yet. The company was bootstrapped for a few years by the founders, Peter Badger and Stephen Vilke (both with deep roots in the financial services industry), until they took an A Round of VC funding in 2010 from Alsop Louie Partners, Correlation Ventures, and Triangle Peak Partners.

I’ve previously worked with a number of the Framehawk folks on the sales and services side while at BEA and Cassatt, and the Framehawk team has an incredible technical pedigree, including some folks from NASA. Hey, if you can communicate with spacecraft, using an iPad to work with critical enterprise applications should be a breeze, right?

I also think the time is right for enterprises to tackle mobility. I’m noticing some similar themes from my recent cloud-filled past: we're talking to folks about an innovative, new capability with great promise that large organizations are trying to figure out how to make the most of. There are a lot of lessons (related both to specific technology and adoption) that we’ve learned from cloud computing that we are applying to what we’re doing at Framehawk. And best of all (from my point of view, anyway), all these things are a great fit for me personally.

More details to come on all of this. But for right now, UBS is focused on putting their pilot through its paces. And Framehawk is going to be pretty quiet and focused on working with UBS and our other early customers.

If you want to stay up to date, follow @Framehawk on Twitter for the latest and greatest. Feel free to drop me a line (jay.fry@framehawk.com) if you want more information under NDA.

File under 'inspiration': a collection of Steve Jobs stories

Sure, I spent some time mulling over my own resignation letter over the past few weeks, but someone else had one around the same time that was much more impactful and far-reaching (and, honestly, was much better written). Timing is about the only thing that connects my workplace good-bye with the one that had the most impact on high tech in 2011: the resignation of Steve Jobs.

In the days following Steve Jobs’ departure as CEO of Apple, many folks in the industry who had felt his influence – as a manager, a visionary, or news maker – took pen to paper. Actually, many took fingers to backlit keyboard or glass touchscreen, thanks to Steve. And they wrote some interesting stories.

As these stories flew by on Twitter, I found that they were speaking not only about Steve Jobs, but about a whole lot more. I started grabbing links and stashing them to digest later. (Hey, I was busy.) I really didn’t have time and breathing room to process what they meant until now, a few weeks later.

Today’s Chronicle story about the new proposed Apple HQ in Cupertino (the big, donut-like “iCon” that the urban design critic called “refreshing” and “a sci-fi fantasy best viewed from a helicopter”) reminded me about all the stories I’d been collecting. I decided I should post a bunch that had relevance (and were even a bit poignant) here.

I figure that they are good for reference and useful for a little reflection on what kind of impact Steve Jobs had on cynical and/or fanboy journalists, employees, competitors, and the industry in general. They talk about an amazing figure in our industry in particular, but also get to important points about how to be a leader, how to build a company, how to be an entrepreneur, and the impact all those can have on individuals and even on Silicon Valley as a whole. I’m filing them under “inspiration.” Perfect timing for me, actually.

What folks learned spending time with Steve Jobs

Many stories were essentially quirky anecdotes from many of the people that had worked with or crossed paths with Jobs. And what they learned. For example: “CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.” Read Google’s Vic Gundotra’s story about his phone call from Steve for details. Steve’s interest in design and attention to detail resonated in Glenn Rossman’s story about his day pitching the media about NeXT and IBM with Steve Jobs as well.

Robert Scoble gives a good account of the impact of Steve and Apple had through nearly his entire life, ending with his decision to watch Steve’s iPad 2 announcement up close (and without his camera). “It’s one of the few times when I was forced to just soak in a performance, and not try to capture the event I was viewing,” Scoble writes. And in the age of Twitter and Facebook, that’s a rarity. “Jobs didn’t disappoint.”

What was Jobs like? I’ve never met him, though was in a presentation he gave with Larry Ellison to some of us then-Oracle employees way-back-when showing off the NeXT machine. I know some folks from the NeXT era who all have great stories.

Om Malik likens him to Howard Hughes. Saul Hansell at Tech Crunch called him the patron saint of perfectionists: “Steve Jobs was an impresario, in the tradition, more than anything, of a classic Hollywood studio boss (which he also was in his spare time).”

This impresario approach, of course, didn’t (and still doesn’t) make Apple a “pleasant company to deal with or work at,” noted Hansell. “Everyone at Apple worked with the anxiety that they must meet the impossible demands of Jobs or endure his anger.” Hansell compared Apple to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory: “no one went in and no one ever came out.”

The bigger picture: what Steve Jobs meant to innovation and Silicon Valley

Those negatives quickly melt away when talking about all Steve has accomplished, however.

Om Malik wrote a wistful piece that outlined some of the best things to be learned from watching Steve Jobs in action. “If you want to change something, you have to be patient and take the long view. …When you are right and the world doesn’t see it that way, you just have to be patient and wait for the world to change its mind.” Plus, Om highlighted one incredibly difficult piece of advice, especially for big companies: cannibalize yourself.

Chris O’Brien from the Merc noted 3 things that Steve Jobs meant to Silicon Valley as a whole: inspiration, innovation, and revolution. “It wasn’t just the way he bootstrapped an idea from nothing, but the anti-establishment flair with which he pursued his singular vision,” said O’Brien. He believes Jobs showed that even though it is the “harder, riskier road,” innovation can be the key for a company to reinvent itself.

O’Brien also noted that Jobs “saved his best for last” – the iPhone. It and the iPad are helping to end the era of the PC, a comment Paul Maritz underscored onstage in his keynote at VMworld last week.

Intersection of technology & liberal arts

Mark Sigal (@netgarden) talked about Jobs finding a way to be the point where technology and liberal arts intersect. “The realization that one man sits at the junction of cataclysmic disruptions in personal computing, music, mobile computing, movies and post-PC computing is breathtaking in its majesty. A legacy with no equal.”

Sigal notes that Jobs has been about “bringing humanity back to the center of the ring,” not speeds and feeds. He was willing to “think different” and make it look “ridiculously, deceptively simple.”

As someone who was late to the party on iPads (though my family and I have had our fair share of iPods and iPhones), I have to agree. My iPad is easy, elegant, and really useful. My expectations were exceeded so completely, it’s almost embarrassing. Our challenge now is to fit that simplicity into the way the rest of the world (and IT) works.

What do people see for the future of Steve and Apple?

So what does the future hold? As David Pogue’s New York Times article mentioned, most of the reactions to Job’s resignation “read like obituaries – for Steve Jobs, if not for Apple.” It’s one of the reasons I was always leery about investing in Apple stock (though I thankfully gave in). Once Steve left, for whatever reason, would there be any possible way to keep things going, while living up to the standards he had set?

“There’s one heck of a huge elephant in the room,” writes Pogue, “one unavoidable reason why it’s hard to imagine Apple without Mr. Jobs steering the ship: personality.” Pogue thinks Apple will do well for now, but will have a hard time knowing “where the puck will come to rest” once the Jobs-influenced “pipeline is no longer full, and when his difficult, brilliant, charismatic, future-shaping personality is no longer the face of Apple.”

However, Harvard Business School fellows James Allworth, Max Wessel, and Rob Wheeler point out that the “Steve-infused culture” that he is leaving behind is, in fact, the point. When Jobs returned to Apple for his 2nd stint, “he wasn’t just interested in building great products himself. He was interested in making sure everyone else within Apple was able to build great products, too – to be able to think like he did.”

These guys are so confident, they created a Twitter hashtag to follow the mantra they believe Apple will continue to leverage to success for a long time to come: #wwsd. As in: “What would Steve do?”

How would you like to remember Steve’s departure?

Before any of this had come to a head, Fritz Nelson of Information Week had been creating his own script for what a Steve Jobs departure would – or in his view, should – look like. It has a geeky element of fantasy to it, but is an interesting read about how Steve Jobs could have ended his tenure. Cool ideas, though the white turtle neck is a bit over the top.

The one thing I liked best, I think, is the Stanford commencement speech that Jobs did in 2005 (thanks to John Millea of CA Technologies and Jean Bozman of IDC for pointing it my direction again recently). As a Bay Area local, I remember being tempted to go. I wish I had, but the magic of YouTube at least ensures that I didn’t miss what he said. The graduates aren’t quite in sync with Jobs at the start, laughing at weird times, assuming that his speech is about, well, them. They eventually figure out that it’s not about them. At least, not only about them.

The speech has some great insights about how doing what you have a passion for is the most important thing. He talked about serendipity: how a calligraphy class he took (because he loved it) saved the world from ugly PC fonts. He talked about getting fired. He talked about being diagnosed with cancer.

If you can find a way to wrap all those things into one life and build great things from them, you’re liable to make a huge difference for yourself. And for a whole lot of other people, too.

So, I’ll hereby submit my comments to the mix of everything that’s already been said and end with something pretty simple.

Thanks, Steve.

Looking forward or backward? Cloud makes you decide what IT wants to be known for

Cloud computing is all about choice. I’ve heard that a lot. What most people mean when they say this is that there are suddenly a whole bunch of places to run your IT workloads. At Amazon using EC2 or at Rackspace? At ScaleMatrix or Layered Tech? Or inside your own data center on a private cloud you’ve created yourself?

But there are some more fundamental choices that cloud seems to present as well. These choices are about what IT is going to be when it grows up. Or at least what it’s going to morph into next.

Here are 3 big decisions that I see that cloud computing forces IT to make, all of which add up to one, big, fundamental question: will IT define itself as an organization that looks toward the future or back into the past? Before you scoff, read on: the answer, even for those eagerly embracing the cloud, may not be as clear as you think.

The business folks’ litmus test for IT: Cloud v. No Clouds

First off, the business people in big organizations are using the rise of cloud computing, even after setbacks like the recent Amazon outage, to test whether IT departments are about looking forward or backward. When the business folks come to IT and describe what they are looking for, they now expect cloud-type reaction times, flexibility, infinite options, and pay-as-you-go approaches. At that point, IT is forced to pick sides. Will they acknowledge that cloud is an option? Will IT help make that option possible, if that’s the right choice for the business? Or will they desperately hold onto the past?

Embracing cloud options in some way, shape, or form puts IT on the path to being known as the forward-looking masters of the latest and greatest way of delivering on what the business needs. Rejecting consideration of the cloud paints IT as a cabal of stodgy naysayers who are trying their darnedest to keep from having to do anything differently.

John Treadway tweeted a great quote from Cloud Connect guru Alistair Croll on this same topic: "The cloud genie is out of the bottle. Stop looking for the cork and start thinking [about] what to wish for."

The business folks know this. They will use IT’s initial reaction to these options as a guide for future interactions. Pick incorrectly, and the business isn’t likely to ask again. They’ll do their own thing. That path leads to less and less of IT work being run by IT.

OK. Say IT decides to embrace the cloud as an option. The hard choices don’t stop there.

A decision about the IT role: Factory Manager v. Supply Chain Orchestrator

Starting to make use of cloud computing in real, live situations puts IT on a path to evaluate what the role of IT actually evolves into. Existing IT is about running the “IT factory,” making the technology work, doing what one CIO I heard recently called “making sure the lights don’t flicker.” This is IT’s current comfort zone.

However, as you start using software, platforms, and infrastructure as-a-service, IT finds itself doing less of the day-to-day techie work. IT becomes more of an overseer and less of the people on the ground wiring things together.

I’ve talked about this role before as a supply chain orchestrator, directing and composing how the business receives its IT service, and not necessarily providing all that service from a company’s own data centers. You can make a good case that this evolution of IT will give it a more strategic seat at the table with the business users.

But, even if you decide you want to consider cloud-based options and you’re all in favor of changing the role of IT itself, there’s still another question that will have a big effect on the perception – and eventual responsibilities – of IT.

The problem with sending the new stuff cloud: Building IT expertise in Legacy v. Cutting Edge

Everyone who has made the choice to use cloud computing is next faced with the logical follow-on question: so, what do I move to the cloud? And, then, what do I keep in-house to run myself?
And that’s where I think things get tricky. In many cases, the easiest thing to do is to consider using the cloud for new applications – the latest and greatest. This lets you keep the legacy systems that are already working as they are – running undisturbed as the Golden Rules of IT and a certain 110-year-old light bulb suggest (“if it’s working, don’t touch it!”).

But that choice might have the unintended effect of pigeonholing your IT staff as the caretakers of creaky technology that is not at the forefront of innovation. You push the new, more interesting apps off elsewhere – into the cloud. In trying to make a smart move and leverage the cloud, IT misses its chance to show itself as a team that is at (and can handle) the leading edge.

Maybe I’m painting this too black and white, especially in IT shops where they are working to build up a private cloud internally. And maybe I’m glossing over situations where IT actually does choose to embrace change in its own role. In those situations, there will be a “factory” role, alongside an “orchestrator” role. But that “factory” manager role will be trimmed back to crucial, core applications – and though they are important, they are also the ones least in need of modernization.

Either way, isn’t the result still this?: IT’s innovation skills get lost over time if they don’t take a more fundamental look at how they are running all of their IT systems, environment, and how they look at their own roles.

The problem I see is that big enterprises aren’t going to suddenly reassess everything they have on the first day they begin to venture into the cloud. However, maybe they should. For the good of the skills and capability and success of their IT teams, a broader view should be on the table.

Short-term and long-term answers

So, as you approach each of these questions, be sure to look not only at the immediate answer, but also at the message you’re sending to those doing the asking. Your answers today will have a big impact on all future questions.

All of this, I think, points out how much of a serious, fundamental shift cloud computing brings. The cloud is going to affect who IT is and how it’s viewed from now on. Take the opportunity to be the one proactively making that decision in your organization. And if you send things outside your four walls, or in a private cloud internally, make sure you know why – and the impact these decisions will have on IT’s perception with your users.

Since cloud computing is all about choice, it’s probably a smart idea to make sure you’re the one doing the choosing.

The 110-year-old light bulb is a little too much like today’s IT

Last weekend the San Francisco Chronicle had a big write-up on a crazy fluke of technology: a light bulb that has been working for over a century without burning out.

The celebrity bulb hangs from a ceiling, high above a Livermore, Calif., fire department, and has baffled anyone trying to figure out why it is still functioning after 110 years. It obviously does not have the same manufacturer as the light bulbs in my upstairs hallway – it seems that at least one of those needs replacing every month.

The curious part about the “centennial bulb” – and the part that strikes me as having some relevance to the IT systems we know and interact with on a daily basis – is that no one knows why it’s still working.

And, given that it is still working, no one is going to interrupt its operation to find out why.

That sounds a lot like how IT has traditionally been run. There’s a bunch of hard work and complicated technological details that go into getting a certain system or application up and running. The good news is: getting it up and running in the first place is often the hardest part.

The more successful applications are the ones that then keep running with a minimum of effort, the fewest upgrades, and least changes required. In fact, once something is doing its job, the ROI for an upgrade of an underlying hardware or software infrastructure component is, frankly, really low in the eyes of the users (vendors will often beg to differ, of course). You really don’t want to touch it, lest you break something.

The Golden Rules of IT, starting with “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”

Amusingly, that same topic came up in a conversation I was having with analyst and ZDNet blogger Dan Kusnetzky. He tied our conversation back to the “Golden Rules of IT,” which I first saw when Dan published them (for a second time, apparently) back in 2007. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” was merely the beginning of his list.

Dan included inarguable IT wisdom like “Don’t touch it, you’ll break it” and “If you touched it and it broke, it will take longer to fix and, in all likelihood, cost more than you think to fix.” Which, of course, leads to “Don’t make major changes unless people are screaming!” And, finally, that means settling for “good enough is good enough.”

But, as pithy as they are, those “Golden Rules” lead to really bad IT choices, I would argue.

When Golden Rules become bad advice

Thinking back to the long-lived Livermore light bulb, I can’t argue with the fact that it’s still working. But is it doing anything useful for the fire station other than attracting curious tourists from China, Germany, and Fresno?

Nope. In fact, it’s barely accomplishing its intended purpose – giving off light. It began life as a 60-watt bulb, but is only producing 4 watts at this point – about the same as a night light. Not so good if you’re trying to find the keys to the fire truck.

If you’re running an IT shop that’s supporting a rapidly changing business, this kind of technology nostalgia and tolerance for something that doesn’t seem to be making the grade seems quaint at best. More likely, it’s exactly the kind of thing that, in the end, is going to put your IT systems -- and your business – in jeopardy.

In IT, you would rather have “new idea” light bulbs turning on

In my post about how cloud computing lets organizations focus on “good enough” IT – being able to try out things quickly and effectively, without having to worry about every bell and every whistle – I’m essentially arguing for the opposite of the centennial light bulb. (Sorry, Livermore.)

Just because the old thing hasn’t broken doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try out something new. Tolerating a creaky, old system just because it hasn’t come crashing down yet is not pointing you in the right direction. “Good enough” is not something you settle for, but in fact an approach that gives you the freedom to try things, and to do so quickly. I can’t really speak for the light bulb industry, but the pace of IT technology change is so fast that you really have to be paying attention to what else is possible. And even if you aren’t, you can probably bet your competition is.

In fact, I’m arguing, cloud computing is perfect for this sort of experimentation. Cloud lets you dip your toe in and see how it goes. Cloud lets you try a new way of resourcing (or architecting) a given application. Cloud also means you only have to pay for what you use, when you use it. Experimentation like this is how innovation starts – and how new light bulbs go on in peoples’ heads in the first place. I’m betting it will lead to something better.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a bit of quirky history along the way. Those looking for a thrill-a-minute can check out the 24-hour-a-day webcam pictures of the centennial bulb doing its thing at http://www.centennialbulb.org/.

Too big to innovate? Can big vendors make big technology leaps?

In the past few months, as I’ve been helping with CA’s recent set of M&A activity around cloud computing and beyond (Cassatt, Oblicore, 3Tera, and Nimsoft), I’ve come face-to-face with an assumption about innovation that I’ve held onto for a while: large IT vendors are lethargic laggards that aren’t very good at coming up with technological leaps on their own. IT innovation in cloud computing and other cutting-edge areas, I’ve thought, is the realm of start-ups and entrepreneurs out there doing there own thing.

I’m not alone in these assumptions, especially among those watching cloud computing these days. Krishnan Subrmanian wrote on the Cloud Avenue blog after we announced the 3Tera acquisition that “we cannot consider CA to be an innovator like other cloud startups in the market.” The only way for a “titan from the old world to get into the mix of the new generation is by acquiring a hot company like 3Tera,” he said.

However, I’m starting to see how I (and the others) might be wrong. Or at least need to consider that there are some other options.

Too Big to Innovate?

When I joined CA last summer as part of the Cassatt acquisition, I was skeptical that I’d stick around the organization very long. I didn’t know much about CA except its checkered past that included jail time for their CEO and a history of being the industry’s bottom-feeders – looking for revenue streams to milk, not markets to build.

Added to that, I’m a start-up guy at heart. I had just come off three start-up experiences that made me believe that technology change is pushed by the small guys.

· It started with EcoSystems Software, a client/server systems management innovator the competed head-to-head with pre-BMC Patrol. Datamation (remember them?) put us on their cover in 1992, saying “Client/Server Systems Management Arrives.” We were snapped up by Compuware in ’93 to add these new capabilities.

· Then, I was in very early at BEA, and rode that company’s “Better Engineering through Acquisition” wave for 10 years, from zero to a billion dollars in annual revenue. OK, that wasn’t *really* what the letters in the logo stood for, but much of the industry thought so. The success we had following the acquisition of WebLogic changed the way middleware (and even our older TUXEDO product) was thought of; application servers went from interesting to must-haves as the Web and e-commerce took off.

· Finally, I helped Cassatt push the boundaries of how data centers themselves should be run, taking a proto-cloud computing idea to the cover of Forbes and as far as the VC money would allow.

In all cases, it was the small, nimble company that came up with the ideas, was able to get the attention of customers and industry watchers, and suggest a new way to do things. The big companies with the cash were the ones that found things that looked interesting – things that someone else had spent time creating.

Since joining CA, however, I think I’m seeing another way this story can unfold.

After participating in a thorough strategy process last summer to find ways to shift CA from a value company to a growth company, I heard rumblings that the strategic suggestions were actually getting an enthusiastic reception from the board and senior management. I thought that was pretty surprising, considering the aggressive suggestions that I knew were being made.

You’ve seen the early results already: Bill McCracken’s first quotes after becoming CEO were to talk about the war chest CA had to make moves in the cloud computing space. Not surprisingly, we followed that up with a series of acquisitions, taking CA into areas it hadn’t entered before.

Good things about being large

Having been on both sides of the fence (start-up and large vendor), I’ve gotten a good view of the pros/cons of each. On the plus side, a company the size of CA has the resources to do a patient, thoughtful analysis of what customers want now, what customers will likely want in the future, and to sketch out a map to get from here to there.

In other words...
· Big companies have good sources to discover customer needs/wants.
· They have resources and assets to build upon
· They have the resources to invest
· They have revenue streams to support new ideas. Even ideas that will take a while. (And many of the cloud computing ideas, I might add, have been a long time in the making.)

Of course, big can be bad

Downsides? Oh, there are plenty. Some that I’ve run across in my career include:

· The market research treasure trove I mentioned above (a large supplier’s customer base) comes with a downside: big companies’ customers skew the information they provide by looking at everything through the lens of what they already have done with that vendor
· The new ideas may undercut or threaten some of the internal, existing ideas. Including ones that are pretty important from a revenue standpoint to the large vendor
· A truly new idea is hard to come by. While the big companies have the resources to be patient and analyze the market, they may lack expertise & vision in the space that matters. They may not know what they are looking for
· The sense of urgency to deliver may not be there
· When you do bring a new asset/company into the organization, integrating that to make it useful can be pretty tricky.

From CA, I’m seeing an interesting model for a hybrid: an innovative/big vendor (if all goes well)

My main point of this post is not what my current company is up to, but rather its implications for how the market evolves. Having said that, though, many of the points above are valid pros & cons to CA’s current approach.

The difference that has been interesting to me is the rate and pace of CA’s moves – and the magnitude of those moves. Start-ups certainly couldn’t do it. From my own past, BEA pulled off some similar things, but was a much smaller company and the magnitude of acquisition and investments – and the effort needed to turn the ship – were much narrower.

It's even difficult for larger companies, too. VMware/EMC may have shown itself to be an exception, both in the original VMware purchase and in some of VMware/SpringSource’s recent buys. They are certainly looking forward. Cisco, IBM, HP, Oracle, and others have all done their share of acquisitions, including several this year. Rarely, however, are they focused exclusively on the cutting edge of the market, in an attempt to deliver innovation.

Now, I certainly won't deny that start-ups remain a primary source of IT innovation -- maybe even the primary source. In fact, I still get surprised almost daily by the raft of interesting ideas and approaches that people build companies around, especially in the cloud computing space. I mention them here and on Twitter quite a lot.

Nor am I going to guarantee that CA is going to be successful in all that we’re trying to do. We’ve found some intriguing technologies and businesses to bring into the CA fold over the past year, and we’re building some pretty cool stuff in-house. We’ve built a start-up-inspired organization inside the company called the Cloud Products and Solutions Business Line. But lots of work remains in order for us to deliver on everything we’re hoping to do. Of course, that’s part of the fun in my book. Watch the news coming out of next week's CA World for more details on all of this.

The dilemma of innovators

Back when Oracle received approval to acquire Sun, they spent a full day going through their plans. James Watters of VMware (@wattersjames) wondered via Twitter if their move now turned Oracle from a cloud computing skeptic to a cloud computing innovator. Some pundits fired back that Oracle was now too big to innovate. But when asked, Larry handled the question like this, according to tweets from Chris Preimesberger (@editingwhiz from eWeek): "AT&T was supposedly too big to innovate. They came up with the transistor. Not bad."

So what is an entrepreneur to do, then? I’m not sure AT&T is the model I’m looking for, but it makes the point that there’s more than one way to innovate; there is more than one way to move technology forward. Start-ups are one, but certainly aren’t the only. Big companies trying to fit new technology and businesses into existing approaches is another, but this approach is faced with difficult hurdles, often of its own making.

But, if you can split the difference, marrying a start-up-style approach with the resources of a big company, you open up some cool, new opportunities.

For CA, we'll all have to wait and see what we can pull off. I'll keep you posted. Of course, the results will always speak for themselves.

Cloud Expo: Some big ideas, big investments, and even a customer or two

Cloud computing events are happening fast and furiously now. SYS-CON’s Cloud Expo was last week in New York. Interop has a cloud computing track running in Las Vegas this week with a similar set of content to the recent Cloud Connect Santa Clara show. You really could spend all your time at cloud computing events these days.

I’ve been picking and choosing which events to sample to get a good feel for what’s going on in the market (a little bit of a science in and of itself). I won’t be at Interop but will be interested to hear how different the discussion is from what went on at Cloud Connect Santa Clara. However, I did hit the Cloud Expo show, and thought I’d share a few thoughts:

· I wasn’t shocked by the preponderance of vendor pitches. Why? First, the way SYS-CON is able to run the show is by offering speaking slots to its sponsors. The content logically follows suit. Think of it as a good way to sample what (some of) the players are saying and what they are focusing their investments on. If you know what you’re getting on your way into the door, you can evaluate the show for what it is, rather than for what you hope it could be. One note of caution, though: several big players (like Cisco) weren’t represented. Others -- like Oracle, shifting from cloud skepticism to full-on cloud cheerleader, and even smaller players -- took full advantage of that.

· Investment in cloud computing continues to grow, with signs of actual customers. These were two important data points that I took away from the event: the level of investment by the many players represented is strong. And, if you hold a cloud event in New York, some actual customers will show up. The general consensus seemed to be that the end users made up no more than 20% of the attendees based upon the number of folks raising hands in the various sessions. That’s certainly an uptick from the Santa Clara version of this same event. On the show floor, the 3Tera team thought it started slowly, but liked the customer traffic; the Nimsoft folks also had good things to say (they looked pretty busy from what I saw – a good sign).

· SYS-CON got a lot of flak for their fall Santa Clara show – and listened to some of it. I was one of the folks that had a pretty negative view of the previous conference. It may just be that the market is maturing, but I was pleasantly surprised that Jeremy Geelan and crew helped pushed the conversations in New York forward, as opposed to getting stuck on the “So how do you define cloud computing?” question repeatedly. That’s good to see. The next real improvement, though, will come when SYS-CON can convince the speakers to focus more on customer issues and less on sales pitches (see first bullet). There were certainly a few that did that, but not nearly enough. Hence, more grumbling about sales pitches.

· Big visions, modest means. One of telltale signs that we’ve got an interesting market developing – and aggressive innovation underway – around cloud computing is the healthy number of start-ups. One of those start-ups, Abiquo, decided to use a bit of its VC money to fund a stealth-until-the-day-of-the-show platinum sponsorship, giving them a big stage for their equally big vision. Their CEO painted a pretty interesting description of a “resource cloud” and a “top-down,” “high-level view of the future of cloud management.” They also talked about being focused on tactics for helping customers. Having been with vision-heavy Cassatt, I’m probably hypersensitive to the challenges I expect Abiquo to have trying to be simultaneously strategic & tactical (oh, and both open source & commercial, too). You can like their story, but remain skeptical that they can pull it off. Same with interesting ideas from folks like AppZero and CloudSwitch. But this wouldn’t be Silicon Valley if you didn’t try, right? Success doesn’t necessarily mean a huge customer base and an IPO anymore, after all.

· When your data center gets hung up in customs… If you thought Abiquo’s sponsorship was a last-minute thing, you should have seen Microsoft trying to get their containerized data center demo onto the show floor – and then get it working. Maybe it was intended to show off Tradeshow Booth as a Service (on-demand, you see) to add to the Microsoft as a Service mantra they were talking about. It’s actually pretty impressive: no one else but Microsoft gets to create a *aaS acronym from their own name and not get major grief. Something for us all to aspire to, I guess.

· A volcano puts the spotlight on the impact of Europe on the cloud computing market. The eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano and the resulting disruption of air travel across Europe made it very hard for many of the presenters scheduled for Cloud Expo to make it across the Atlantic to speak. But it also made another point: there are a bunch of European companies and personalities playing key roles in the cloud market. (See my earlier "scientists v. cowboys" post on cloud computing in Europe for some thoughts on this.) SYS-CON had pre-conference sessions with missing European presenters do some presentations using Skype. Others, like Mark Rivington from Nimsoft, sent U.S.-based replacements. Only a handful, however, showed true commitment: the aforementioned Abiquo folks were some of those. As I heard it, CEO Pete Malcom’s trip to New York started with a ferry from London to France and involved a VERY long drive to Madrid, before finally finding a plane able to head to the States. “I asked how he planned to get back,” noted Carl Brooks of SearchCloudComputing on Twitter. “He just laughed.” Diego Parrilla (known as @nubeblog on Twitter, specializing in Spanish-language cloud tweets) figures their true-to-life travel saga is worthy of a book. Describing the volcanic cloud of ash causing everyone’s troubles, he tied it to one of the hot topics of the day: “Now that was really cloud vendor lock-in!”

· The benefits of passion and a singular vision about cloud computing. I talked about the excitement that some of the start-ups showed for their ideas. That same excitement was obvious from Amazon, but for different reasons. I’ve heard folks discuss Amazon’s culture of secrecy from George Reese (@georgereese, CTO of enStratus) and others, but that didn’t come through. Instead I heard a very singular focus and world view. This was the first time I’d heard Steve Riley (@steveriley) of Amazon and he didn’t actually dismiss private clouds, but at the Cloud Camp session did a pretty good job of making it obvious he didn’t see a lot of use for them when there are public cloud alternatives (like, say, theirs). But the way I figure it, when your business plan is very precise, you can afford to be very passionate. And he is. And entertaining. Who else finishes up his of discussion of why private clouds aren’t really clouds by saying, “I can put a goat on my front lawn, but that doesn’t make it a lawnmower”?

· And, yes, the private cloud debate goes on… The Cloud Club Unpanel was debating that topic (including Steve Riley, as just mentioned), but most of the rest of the presentations took the private cloud as a given and moved on. As they should, at this point.

· For CA, a place for the new team begin to come together. For us, this event was also a good opportunity to bring the newest members of the CA Cloud Business Line team together in one place. The recent acquisitions of 3Tera and Nimsoft were the ones on display, and it was an excellent opportunity to get to know each other, talk about our different areas of focus and expertise, and make connections that are always best made face-to-face. We’ll be talking more about our latest and greatest (cloud and otherwise) at CA World in a few weeks, but there are obviously some great ways to build on the existing efforts of 3Tera and Nimsoft under the CA umbrella, especially for the benefit of MSPs and other cloud service providers. Stay tuned.

So, all in all, a useful event. Perfect? No.

I was glad to connect with a more East Coast-focused set of folks working on cloud computing. One of those people, Scott Sanchez at Unisys, did a write-up of his own that’s also worth a read.

At the very least, it was a good look around the industry as I help our various teams prepare for the big happenings at CA World. Hope to see you there.

BusinessWeek's Hamm: Recession harms Silicon Valley's ability to contribute, but helps cloud computing

Believe it or not, there are still people who get paid to watch and report on the ins and outs of Silicon Valley. They see a lot of what's going on and probably think that those of us in the business are alternately drivers of a pretty interesting part of the global economy -- and in need of therapy. (Example? How about Larry Ellison's most recent anti-cloud computing rant and the flurry of commentary that followed.) But such dynamics come with the territory.

Steve Hamm of BusinessWeek is one of the guys who has been on the case for years. I met him through my work with Cassatt and have followed his work about the goings-ons in the Valley closely. With the economy still struggling to find its footing (certainly on the job front) but the buzz still at full volume about cloud computing, I thought some of his thoughts would be a useful contribution to the dialog here. He's been in the middle of some heated discussions on these topics. Plus, I find it's always interesting to interview the interviewers now and again.

If you don't know Hamm, he has been writing about the tech industry for 20 years, first in Silicon Valley and now in New York City. At BusinessWeek, he covers innovation, globalization, and leadership. He's also the author of two books, The Race for Perfect, about innovation in portable computing, and Bangalore Tiger, about the rise of the Indian tech industry.

Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: You've been watching Silicon Valley and its cast of characters quite closely for a while. You've also had a chance to watch the economic downturn's impact on the Valley. What do you think will be of lasting importance in the way this recession is playing out compared with previous ones -- or even compared with early predictions about how this one would proceed?

Steve Hamm, BusinessWeek: Because it's so cheap to create Web 2.0 companies, and because most of the services they create are free to the consumer, this recession has had no discernible impact on creativity and use growth in social networking and social media. However, I believe that the funding squeeze, paucity of IPOs, and risk-aversion among venture capitalists has caused a slowdown in innovation in other areas that need attention -- green technologies, for instance. So while this recession hasn't had a devastating effect on the Valley and innovation, like the dot-com bust and '02 recession, it has harmed the Valley's ability to contribute as much as it could to solving the world's systemic problems.

DCD: Your BusinessWeek cover story back in December featured some big names (like Andy Grove) questioning whether Silicon Valley has the big, long-term thinking these days to deliver major, technological breakthroughs, rather than just incremental improvements. Do you think 2009 has provided evidence one way or the other?

Steve Hamm: I don't think much has changed. While IBM continues to invest aggressively in fundamental science-oriented breakthroughs, HP has narrowed its scope. Start-ups seeking money to do deep, long-term, transformative work continue to have difficulty getting funding.

DCD: Last month you blogged about the effect that consolidation is having on the IT industry and Silicon Valley entrepreneurship in general. In your interviews for the article (with senior Valley execs Bill Coleman and Craig Conway), you heard opposing views: that consolidation will be very tough for vendors -- or that the possibility of acquisition will still inspire start-ups to invent, despite a mostly dry IPO market. "I'm looking for some smart and brave CIOs to begin to experiment with start-up technologies again," you said, "--and get the innovation stream flowing again." Have you seen these brave CIOs yet? What do you think the increasing consolidation in hardware, software, and IT service providers means?

Steve Hamm: I found a few brave CIOs this year. They include the people who were aggressively embracing the combination of cloud computing and mobility, whom I wrote about in my story, "How Cloud Computing Will Change Business." They include: Donagh Herlihy, chief information officer of Avon Products, and Todd Pierce, vice-president for information technology, at Genentech North America. These guys aren't taking big risks on unproven technology. They see ready-for-primetime technology that's really useful for them and deploy it widely and quickly.

I think the continued consolidation of enterprise technology providers gives IT purchasers fewer choices, less negotiating power, and less innovation.

DCD: Have you seen any truly innovative business concepts or technologies appear on the scene despite (or because of) the downturn?

Steve Hamm: I think one of the potentially most powerful technologies that has advanced in spite of the downturn is using mobile phones for banking in emerging nations. There are a lot of pilot programs underway. Once this stuff gets widespread, it has the potential to transform the economies of poor nations.

DCD: What was the thing that caused you to think that cloud computing was worthy of BusinessWeek coverage?

Steve Hamm: It's the newest iteration of Internet computing, and will make it easier and cheaper to put the full power of computing in everybody's hands.

DCD: In June's special report about cloud computing, you mentioned that this "may be the largest growth opportunity since the Internet boom," but that it's going to take a while. Some have speculated that cloud computing might be the innovation that comes out of this downturn. From what you've learned covering the topic, what's your view on the evolution of cloud computing and what its impact might be? Has it lived up to its billing so far?

Steve Hamm: I think it has lived up to its billing so far, through there still is a long way to go. Adoption of SaaS by businesses has accelerated during the downturn, as companies look for ways to do more things with technology while avoiding capital spending as much as possible.

One of the most important things to get done by the industry is to assure that individuals and companies can easily shift from one cloud service provider to another without undue stress. No lock-in! Efforts are starting along these lines, but they could get bogged down by the desire of companies to gain profit advantages through using proprietary technologies.

DCD: How difficult is it to pick up a relatively technical topic and write something for the BusinessWeek audience? After that June special report on cloud computing, for example, I saw criticism from industry insiders that some of the examples you used were not actually examples of what cloud computing actually does. How do you approach complicated, nuanced, or -- like cloud computing -- ill-defined technical issues?

Steve Hamm: I don't write about the plumbing of technology, so it's not hard to make something accessible to our smart and aware BusinessWeek readers. The critiques of my story were silly. My critics didn't seem to be able to register the fact that the story was about the melding of cloud computing and mobility. Also, they were hung up on narrow technical definitions while I was writing about broad shifts in the computing landscape. My advice: Get a life.

DCD: What's the relationship you generally have with the technical press and industry analysts? How much do you rely on them to vet technologies or trends before they get your attention?

Steve Hamm: I don't read trade publications very often, though I respect the best of them. I do talk to industry analysts frequently and respect many of them. Important technology shifts usually come to my attention through meetings with the innovators themselves. They (actually, their PR people) know what I'm interested in and e-mail me asking for meetings.

DCD: When I was last at your offices, the outlook for BusinessWeek (and journalism's current business model) seemed pretty bleak to me. How are things looking for BusinessWeek at the moment? Do you think there's a solution to "reset" the business of journalism that can work financially? How do you think you and your peers will come through this all?

Steve Hamm: BusinessWeek is being sold by McGraw-Hill and its future is very uncertain. The business model for serious business journalism, especially in print, is under assault. The search for truth by professionals is very expensive, and isn't supported by current print or even online revenue trends. I think that eventually new business models will emerge that support serious journalism, but I don't see them yet. If you think of something that will save journalism, please send me a note.
…

Thanks to Steve for spending the time to do this interview. Many of the issues discussed here will obviously continue to have a big impact on businesses -- and the IT and data centers supporting them. One of the more interesting angles to think about is that decisions being made now, under the duress of a deep recession, could play out over a vastly different backdrop as economic conditions change. Cloud computing has the chance to help shrink the time it takes a business to respond as the economic climate shifts, but only if an organization's IT department has made significant progress toward adopting this new operational model. And, of course, cloud computing needs to do what it has promised for each individual customer.

In any case, I'm pretty sure that all of this will continue to give Steve and BusinessWeek plenty of things to cover for as long as they can navigate these same rough waters themselves.

You can find Steve Hamm's Globespotting blog here.

Bill Coleman: Cloud is still v1.0, but he has an idea or two for entrepreneurs

Silicon Valley seems to breed serial entrepreneurs. My former boss, Bill Coleman, is one of those people. He has put many years into high-tech ventures, including Sun, BEA, and now Cassatt, and has made a huge impression on the industry.

One of the questions I kept getting asked after CA picked up the Cassatt people and assets earlier this summer was "what's Bill Coleman going to do next?" So, I figured, why not ask him to do an interview for Data Center Dialog, and get him to answer that question directly. Bill, always generous with his time, agreed.

I didn't limit my questions to his current activities, though. Bill has run a billion-dollar company, been president of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, is currently on the Palm and Symantec boards, and has shown up on the cover of Forbes. So there's a wealth of big-company experience there. He has also repeatedly put his reputation on the line in start-up ventures chasing big ideas, so I wanted to get his take on the economy as a whole and his advice for other entrepreneurs right now. And, while I was at it, I couldn't help but ask him a few things about what he might have done differently with Cassatt and where the cloud computing market is in general.

Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: I saw the recent announcement about your joining the advisory board for 3Tera. What can you say about your work with 3Tera and your thoughts on their market and approach?

Bill Coleman: As you know, I believe that cloud computing will disintermediate all current models of computing over the next decade or so. A key element of this is to be able to migrate existing three-tier applications from their current model to a cloud model. 3Tera has developed a simple solution that can easily address a significant part of these environments. It is a natural complement and starting point to what we were doing with dynamic, policy-based cloud computing at Cassatt.

DCD: What else are you working on that you can talk about now?

Bill Coleman: I continue to explore new options in cloud computing with start-ups such as 3Tera and Replicus. I think the Replicus Cloudplane technology has the potential to re-invent storage by replacing our complex and expensive model with a simple model that uses replication, bandwidth, and commodity storage to replace all the technologies we use today. I am also spending a lot of time delving into the emerging dislocation that will take place as the smart energy grid is built out. Finally, I am trying to help the Committee to Establish the National Institute of Finance gain traction in Washington, DC.

DCD: Given how rapidly the cloud computing market is changing these days (recent examples: the Cassatt acquisition by CA, DataSynapse being acquired by TIBCO, and Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud announcement for starters), where do you think we are at the moment? How does the technology map to what customers need and want now?

Bill Coleman: Unfortunately, I think that we are still in the "1.0" version of simple, public cloud implementations. These will evolve to support more general applications with more sophisticated data models and interoperability with enterprises over the next five years. Where we are just beginning to see something real is in private clouds for the enterprise. Today, it is mostly a lot of market hype to sell low-end virtualization capabilities and "bulldoze and replace" sales. However, that will change. I do think that companies such as CA have the opportunity to catalyze that part of the market, which will ultimately commoditize the economics of enterprise IT.

DCD: So, you've been "retired" three times now: once after you left Sun, once after BEA, and now after Cassatt. Why is it so hard for you to stay retired?

Bill Coleman: Good question. The answer is that after trying to retire a couple of times before I know what makes me tick a little better than I used to. I am a self-admitted Type-A personality and an extrovert. What that means is that I get energy from stress and I lose energy when I don't have it. So, I am hooked on the adrenalin that comes with passionately pursuing a cause to "change the world" in some small way. For me that has always been in business, so I will be back in the saddle pretty soon.

DCD: I've heard you talk over the years about the "epiphanies" you've had that led to the founding of BEA and then Cassatt. Have you had any epiphanies about what to focus on next?

Bill Coleman: Well, mostly they look like epiphanies in the rear view mirror, but I have a couple of ideas that seem to be coming together. Stay tuned!

DCD: How do you judge whether a market is worth the time, effort, and resources necessary to build a company around and to go after?

Bill Coleman: For me, it is about identifying a market dislocation that is about to begin that can be catalyzed with a technical solution. It has to be something that will present the opportunity for a new entrant (large or small) to undermine the incumbents with a value proposition that brings customers enough value to justify their switching costs. Finally, it has to be something that I can build passion about.

DCD: What do you think Cassatt got right – and what do you think it got wrong?

Bill Coleman: We really got the product right. The "Skynet" version that would have shipped this year was the version 3.0 implementation of cloud -- totally general, global, and a true utility supporting any policy in any heterogeneous environment and spanning clouds arbitrarily. We had two problems: (1) timing. We were too early. Enterprises are not ready for the full cloud model yet. They are still playing with the first baby steps (e.g. virtualization and cloud 1.0 -- Infrastructure- and Platform-as-a-Service); and (2) the way enterprises run their IT infrastructure. The market has become conservative when it comes to taking risk on start-ups with their mission-critical systems. They are still having difficulties even moving VMware into their mission-critical applications.

DCD: What would you do differently if you were starting Cassatt over right now?

Bill Coleman: Well, enterprise infrastructure software is a large-company game now, except for incremental capabilities designed to get enough traction to be bought by the big guys. These companies are the big guys' innovation laboratory. Today I would focus on vertical market dislocations like clean tech or health care. Or I would focus on Web 3.0 capabilities that bring monetization to social networking. Or on a big-play, leveraged buyout of assets to attack the cloud services market for enterprise-scale private-to-public cloud migrations.

DCD: We're starting to hear some positive signs on the general economy. Where do you think the U.S. economy is right now? Is Silicon Valley poised to play a leading role in the recovery or not -- and has that changed since the beginning of the year?

Bill Coleman: I am not an economist, but my gut is that we are at or near the bottom. That said, I think jobs will continue to be lost for another year or two and the economy will take at least five years to climb back to the levels we were at in 2007. I think Silicon Valley will be part of the new economic growth particularly in clean tech, bio and nanotech, and cloud computing. However, I am very concerned that the U.S. is rapidly becoming less and less competitive internationally because of the continued deterioration in education. And I'm worried about the regulatory drift making it harder to attract the best and brightest from the rest of the world and making it harder for a start-up to succeed. Finally, I fear that the negative drift in our tax structure and our trade policies are discouraging new business growth in this country relative to our competitors in Europe and Asia.

DCD: Based upon your experiences and your view of how the economy is faring right now, what advice do you have for the management teams and investors that are working on start-ups right now?

Bill Coleman: Focus on dislocations. Find and build great teams who have a maniacal focus on customer value. This has not changed. What has changed are areas of focus and the ability to monetize their investments. I don't think that the opportunities in traditional computer or communications software and hardware will be as productive going forward, we are now moving toward commoditization of those technologies. The investments there will be mostly incremental capabilities that will end in acquisition, if successful. The areas I see of most interest in technology are what this commoditization will enable: the Web 3.0 "pull" economy, commoditization and consolidation of all ICT services, biotech, nanotech, and the application of IT to transform service delivery in areas such as energy, health care, and -- ultimately -- education.
...

Thanks for the chat, Bill. I, along with many others, will indeed be staying tuned.

U.S. CTO Chopra: 'What can we deliver in 90 days?'

For the United States' Chief Technology Officer, the first visit to Silicon Valley is probably a bit like a new Secretary of State's first visit to Russia, China, or the E.U. All eyes are on you (is he a partner? adversary?), sizing you up, wondering who you really are and what change you can possibly bring.

For Aneesh Chopra, who took on the role of U.S. CTO in May, the challenge is even bigger: he's the first-ever U.S. CTO in history, with the opportunity to make or break the role. I attended the Churchill Club event Aug. 4 that was part of his first Bay Area trip to get a sense for what he intends to do.

If this quick snapshot is an indication, he’s a refreshingly charismatic personality, with little interest in waiting for the wheels of government to gradually spin through their normal machinations to deliver some eventual results (maybe). He talked innovation. He talked action. He talked about using quick, simple approaches to gnarly topics like visibility into what the government actually does with its $74 billion IT budget.

And, most appealing to many in the audience: he talked about doing it soon. Repeatedly during the presentation he highlighted not only an interest in doing things right for the long term, but in making tangible progress now. He kept coming back to this directive: "What can we deliver in 90 days to show progress? What can we do in the here and now?"

In fact, I think there's a broader lesson in his remarks for anyone (IT ops folks, especially) who has to manage major infrastructure and technology changes in pretty conservative, slow-moving environments. His approach is a good one: have big goals, but make sure you can show short-term progress. And, then, of course, be a phenomenal communicator and sell that vision, baby.

IT is a driver in this White House

The goals he outlined were no big revelation. He talked about infrastructure (like broadband), R&D collaboration, and educating a 21st Century workforce. He talked health IT, smart grid & energy independence, and education technology. He talked government transparency and consistent federal IT platforms. “In public policy, we eat our own proverbial dog food,” Chopra noted. All fine, but it's his more dynamic approach that's really the thing worth noting.

One of the amusing slides Chopra showed was of President Obama clicking around on a Web page, checking out one of his administration's first IT deliverables -- a site about where IT spend goes. "That’s my boss," Chopra noted with understated amusement. It was good for a chuckle, but there are two good things about that picture: the hands-on approach that Obama himself and his administration are taking in pushing technology to fill a role in government it has really never been very successful at: transparency & access. Second, because technology seems to be at the center of a lot of Obama's management approach, it's no longer a siloed discipline inside the government, but instead is being used to drive everything else.

This is obviously trickling down in many of the other remarks Chopra made:

It needs to be easy

Our personal embrace of the "digital life," said Chopra, "has not translated to global competitiveness and our public policy. It should be just as easy to get things going in government as in your personal life with things like Facebook or Twitter," said Chopra.

Of course, he admitted, it's "not the easiest thing to bring those innovations to the federal government." So the question is how.

There's simple stuff we can do

In answering questions about how to help use technology to enable higher education, Chopra emphasized a practical, get-something-out-the-door approach he underscored a number of times. "There's some simple stuff we can do," he said, with no extra money, no new laws required. Chopra told a couple stories of his time working as CTO for Virginia, including one in which technology approaches like a wiki (and asking for free contributed content from experts) helped new physics textbook content go from idea, to creation, to school district availability in less than a year -- 3 years faster than business as usual. (Thanks to @herrod for the link.)

"We need to harvest this same spirit," said Chopra.

Entrepreneurs, Chopra said, can help lower costs for public services with innovative ideas, but not alone. And also not by getting some huge government grants. Instead Chopra talked up collaboration. We may develop innovative ideas "though government contracts, but more often than not, you'll do it with each other." (He called this the "spirit of the commonwealth," being from Virginia and all.)

Listen, listen, listen

Chopra repeated the often-lamented fact that IT and business are often on completely different pages. It's like "IT people speak French and business people speak English," he said. Why? "In large part [this is] because we don't listen very well. We must listen, listen, listen for customer needs."

When taking action, talk about verbs, not nouns

After listening, and then trying to make fixes, Chopra showed a bias toward rethinking what should get done, rather than just making a list of what to buy. In figuring out how to make progress on using IT to assist with education, Chopra said, "there are lots of debates about the nouns -- what we should be buying for education." But, he said, "in the short term, the focus needs to be on the verbs" -- what actions are actually being taken.

A Silicon Valley honeymoon?

Chopra seemed to get a pretty good reception from the audience at the event and in comments from people using Twitter to report on his presentation (I saw good tweets from @timoreilly, @Jakewk, @DavidHurwitz, @mmasnick and others at #churchillclub and #aneeshchopra for starters). Backlash, of course, is probably already underway, but I think most of this should play well with the IT industry and IT folks in general. Aneesh Chopra has a big battleship to turn. If he can show the short-term, entrepreneurial progress he advocates, though, he's going to have a lot of folks clamoring to help turn it.

More background on Aneesh Chopra

TechCrunch did a good summary of the August 4 Churchill event here. Also, take a look at Tim O’Reilly's glowing assessment of Chopra just after his appointment was announced. The Wall Street Journal also included industry reaction to his appointment in this piece, also from April.

Update: "My very dear friend" Ashlee Vance ran a good overview of the event in his New York Times blog. Chris Preimesberger of eWeek also wrote up the event.

Will cloud computing be the innovation from this downturn?

Entrepreneur Magazine recently ran a list of significant innovations that appeared during previous times of economic duress.

From the Great Depression came Scotch tape. Miracle Whip. Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup. The fluorescent light bulb. From the stagflation/oil crisis/Vietnam era, the scanable supermarket bar code. From the dot-com bust and 9/11, the iPod and the Blackberry.

It's a cool list that provides you exactly that warm, fuzzy glimmer of hope that watching the stock ticker and the news certainly does not right now. Hey, it says, even if things look pretty grim at the moment, someone somewhere has just had his or her aha! moment. Don't worry, he or she is frantically working on something that we won't be able to live without in a decade or so. Hopefully, they can get financing. (Note to financing types: say yes, it'll be worth it.)

So what will be the great contribution to society during this particularly nasty downturn? More specifically, will cloud computing be one of the great innovations that comes out of the Great Recession?

I discussed that possibility in a post a few weeks back, just prior to a Churchill Club event about how Silicon Valley itself can survive this recession. In addition to the reasons I posted about why cloud computing may (or may not) be what comes out of this mess, I thought I'd add a few more points on the topic.

Jason Clarke and James Walker of Bitemarks quoted Cassatt CEO Bill Coleman at the Churchill Club event with some advice for start-ups (cloud or otherwise). "Startups need to learn to monetize their offerings quickly or risk going out of business. ...Coleman states we are at the next major inflection point in the evolution of the technology market." The invent-boom-bust-build-out cycle that Bill has seen over his career in high tech certainly points the way to a lot of opportunity atop the cloud computing wave. (If, of course, clouds have waves. Well, you understand.) But, your business has to deliver value to your customers while building a coherent business model for yourself.

Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher, formerly with the Financial Times, covered several intriguing, related topics with Bill Coleman recently. The first part of that interview is available here.

One of the other tidbits the Bitemarks guys pulled out of Bill's Churchill Club comments was this: "As for those of us who are working through our first recession, it's worth remembering -- as Coleman stated -- you learn far more during a downturn that you do at any other time."

Entrepreneur Magazine's columnist Brad Sugars agrees. Not only is there a lot to be learned now, he gives 10 good reasons to start your business now, because of the downturn. He lists a bunch of reasons why, from the fact that everything is cheaper now, to better availability of good people, to the fact that the media coverage is a lot easier -- the media loves things that buck the trend, you see.

In any case, no matter if you subscribe to any of these beliefs or not, it'll be interesting to watch this cycle and even more interesting to participate in it. That's certainly why I and my other industry colleagues are here putting the effort into cloud computing and the big changes in IT operations it enables.

And, let's hope that in terms of innovations that come in down economic cycles, cloud computing is more like the transistor radio. Or the pace maker. (Both from the Eisenhower recessions.)

But, please, let it be nothing like the hula hoop.