IT is full
of buzzwords and hype, however is it right for a CIO to be out there ticking
off each one to show that they are out there at the forefront of these
trends? Are they in fact just trends or
is there some substance behind them? Are
these buzzwords simply the product of IT vendor marketing departments? Are they dangerous because they become
catchphrases thrown around at conferences aimed at executives who know no
better and become cheerleaders for poorly thought out concepts? Do they in fact represent the future of IT
with terms that are useful in selling the IT department to the CEO and business
users?
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| http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-10-21 |
It’s
probably a bit of all of the above, however as an IT technician I hate
buzzwords. Doing something for the sake of ticking a box
is not my idea of fun or smart. Or
perhaps as a network engineer it is a fear of the unknown or a possible lack of
job security that makes me dislike these so much. Below I review some of the more common
buzzwords that are popular at the moment and provide my take on whether they
should be on the CIO’s bingo card.
The Cloud
Nobody
understands the cloud. It's a mystery.
The cloud
(formally known as ‘As A Service’) is probably the buzzword that annoys me the
most. In reality it means a web based
application or outsourced infrastructure.
Web based applications are nothing new.
I remember having my ‘@beer.com’ email address during the mid to late
nineties, and it was simply web-based email.
It wasn’t Software-As-A-Service, nor was it ‘The Cloud’. As for services such as AWS and Azure, this
is simply outsourcing IT infrastructure.
Private cloud? I think you mean a
data center. Hardly a new concept.
An important
soft-skill for IT staff that often comes up is the ability to explain complex
ideas clearly, simply and without jargon.
The term cloud is jargon and does not provide a clear explanation of the
services and how they are delivered.
As far as
implementing ‘cloud’ services, I don’t actually have a problem with it where it
makes sense. If there is a business need
that can be met by these services then it makes sense to implement them. My only advice is to be fully aware of the
risks and costs of these services, which is true for any outsourced
service. As a technician, I’ve seen
first-hand how much time and effort is actually spent by internal resources
managing a so-called fully outsourced solution.
BYOD –
Bring Your Own Device
Mobile
devices that connect to the corporate network need to be managed, and since
users generally treat a work provided mobile device as their own anyway, having
a system that is BYOD capable is not really anything over and above what should
already be in place. Personally I don’t
see a massive push from either end users or business for users to supply their
own device, however I do see users pushing for a choice of device. It makes sense for IT departments to provide
users with a range of options and while there may be some instances where it
makes sense for users to purchase and own their own devices, I’m yet to be
convinced that there is a genuine push for BYOD versus the requirement for more
mobile device management in general.
Big Data
Business
intelligence and analytics are nothing new.
All CIOs should have been striving to provide IT solutions to assist in
the collection of data and analytics before big data was even coined as a
term. Although the amount of data has
grown exponentially and the technology required to process and mine the data
has changed, I question the need for new jargon and the new C-level position of
Chief Data Officer or Chief Data Scientist.
SDN –
Software Defined Networking
SDN
promises scalable and adaptable networks, with simplified network configuration
on cheaper hardware by using commodity switches. This is made possible by separating the
controlling function from the data plane forwarding function by moving the
smarts behind the network out of the switches and into a network controller,
similar to the way that wireless LANs have worked for a number of years. The SDN market is still quite immature, and
at this stage 99 per cent of enterprise organizations will have no need to implement
SDN. None of the reasons provided to me
by vendors, especially around configuration when our infrastructure is highly
virtualized, and QoS when we, like many organizations, are at the mercy of an
ISP managed WAN network. So while SDN is
real, rather than jargon, the hype around it seems overblown for the vast
amount of organizations that have no need to implement it.
Internet of
Things/Internet of Everything
Again I
question the need for a new term for simply connecting nodes to the network, if
not for vendor marketing departments to push for more sales and to push their
credentials as thought-leaders in this newly conceived area. If health industry CIOs weren’t already
preparing their infrastructure to connect monitoring devices to the network,
then they have clearly been asleep at the wheel. If the CIOs of the various utilities haven’t
been working on IT based solutions to improve their service and reduce costs,
then they haven’t been doing their job. Since
these sensors, or ‘things’, will have processors in them, they are essentially
computers. Connecting computers to the
network does not need a buzzword.
I would like to see IT start cutting through the nonsense and jargon that gets thrown up by these marketing departments and start calling out these things for what they really are. It is vitally important for CIOs to make sure that their strategy is based on achieving business goals, rather than simply ticking a box or implementing something because this buzzword was all that was talked about at the latest executive conference.
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