Innovative Visions

I want to apologize for being out of touch again recently, but there are only so many things I can do at once. As I’ve mentioned before, I am an expert multi-tasking machine, with 10 browsers, four email accounts, three phone lines and three instant messenger accounts all going at once (along with the hyper Mini Schnauzer to keep track of). However, I have been working on a couple of projects lately which have demanded more than their fair share of time. Not that I’m complaining, but I miss communicating to the masses from time to time (i.e. blogging about some useful and some useless subjects which some people might actually care about).

Last night however, I did get the opportunity to attend the bi-monthly Web Innovators Group of Boston. Boston, (2^nd only to Silicon Valley in technology innovation), is a buzz these days (and not only because of the Mooninites which took over the city today), but because of all of the great concepts being shown the light of day (and a healthy side dish of venture capital always present).

Check out the WebInno site for links and great information about the eight featured companies from last night. There were some good ideas with real-world applicability, and there were a few which were marketed towards a smaller, niche market. However, while listening to all of the various presentations about what widget does what and how and with what other services, I realized something else; slightly related, as always.

LinkedIn, the preeminent professional social networking site has just recently received another $13million in funding…. Why? Well, honestly I don’t think they need it (despite the lack of a couple of crucial features), but more importantly, because the word “LinkedIn” was mentioned every five minutes last night. I’m serious when I say that every single presentation, no matter what the product or service being marketed or discussed, LinkedIn was somehow referred to… In certain circles, they have almost reached “verb status” just like Google… That is why they received the extra funding. They now have to campaign and sell their service as if they were a new and exciting word in the English language. Let’s just call it the Webster’s charge.

*EDIT: In case you were wondering who those “terrorists” were who put up Mooninites flipping us off all over Boston yesterday, here is the evidence.

How to really “Get Your Communications Off Life Support”

It seems that in the past couple of years, there has been a noticeable slowdown in innovative thinking within companies as it relates to IT. I realize that this is a strong statement and perhaps not everyone will agree with me. I’m OK with that, because I’m not the only one and I can see this becoming a growing concern in the near future.

Google’s General Manager and Vice President of Enterprise, Dave Girouard knows enterprise software architecture and he knows data management. Girouard heads up Google’s efforts to bring the simplicity and management of consumer software to the enterprise and is so far succeeding (at least in my eyes). His group has so far released the Google Apps “suite” of products and I’m sure there is more innovation on the way. Our team here at IV uses Google for email (at ivforbusiness.com), for shared spreadsheets, calendar and Google Talk for Instant Messaging. Because I don’t have to worry about managing an email server, Office applications and backing up and storing all of this information, I have the ability to concentrate my efforts instead on innovation for IV and more importantly for our clients.

Speaking at yesterday’s keynote address for the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s annual meeting, Girouard voiced his increasing concern with the limited innovation happening within corporations’ technology departments. He stated that “75% to 80% of IT budgets (are spent) simply maintaining the systems they have already,” according to Jon Brodkin at Network World. With such a heavy concentration of time and energy spent on maintaining existing infrastructure and the status quo, what percentage of a CIO’s time, energy and budget are left to create innovative processes and procedures for his or her organization? Has a CIO’s job description become “head fixer-upper” or is there anything left relating to “Information Management?”

Girouard went on to state that IT organizations and companies should, at a strategic level, take another look at the way they manage technology and consider outsourcing its day to day management, even if your internal departments are fully capable of handling the workload. The idea here is that hardware and software break-fix work, installs and the associated ongoing management is a commodity service in itself. Why use the majority of your internal resources to manage a commodity? Why spend all of that time and money on training your staff and keeping them up to date on the latest and greatest, if you can do so more cost-effectively by outsourcing these tasks?

‘“A lot of things that people think of as core IT functions need to disappear into the ether so that the IT organization can properly focus on the value-added [activities],” he said. “Information security, as critical as it is, needs to be taken care of by organizations who live and die by it, who invest the money, time, resources and staff. Why should every company in the world have to build up their own expertise and have to maintain servers and provide security?”’ (Jon Brodkin of Network World)

Instead they could be creating new and improved processes and strategically aligning your technology to your business. So, does innovation still exist within a corporate IT department? I hope so, but let’s help give it a jumpstart by creating the right conditions for this to happen. I guarantee it will pay off. For more on Dave Girouard and Google Apps, here is a pretty good CIO Insight interview with him.