Virtual IT: The End Of "Place" For IT Users

We're in the midst of a whirlwind tour of future-state IT five short years from now.

We took a quick look at context here and here.  Talked a bit about the deconstruction of physical IT infrastructure thanks to our friend virtualization, and the re-construction of services using a model paradigm.

For this post, we're going to take a look at the people at the proverbial "end of the wire" -- the business users of IT services.

Concepts Of Place And Computing

For so much of our computing history, the concept of computing was strongly linked to a specific location.  We tended to think about the "office" or "lab" or "home".  We also tended to think about the specific device delivering the computing experience, e.g. "terminal", "workstation", "desktop", "laptop".

Both will most likely be quaint anachronisms before too long.

The combination of pervasive wireless networks and reasonably powerful handheld devices is setting the stage for a complete re-thinking about how IT delivers computing to its end users.

Part of the "end of place" for end-user computing has to do with delivering a reasonably rich user experience coupled with a mobile network that's fast enough (and pervasive enough) that we tend to think about it the same way we'd think about a desktop or laptop.

My first bite at this apple was my BlackBerry.  Prior to owning one, I tended to think of email as something that required a full-blown PC experience and fast network.  After owning one for a few days, my perspective completely shifted around -- email was something I could do almost anywhere, at anytime, without waiting for a boot up, login, access-the-network sequence.  It was always there, and always convenient.

Sure, it took me a few months to learn to turn the damn thing off occasionally, but it fundamentally changed my view of "email" as it did for millions of others.  It ended up being my personal information store as well, much to the dismay of our corporate IT folks, but that's another story.

My second bite at this apple came from Apple, of course. 

I had used Nokia mobile browsers before, but once I started poking around Safari on an iPhone, I was hooked.  I still can't count on the 3G network where I live to be 100% available and 100% performant, but I'm sure that will come in time.

I can already see the day where I look at my smartphone as my primary IT delivery device.  Maybe you can see the same thing as well.

I guess I'm not the only one.  I now have met over a dozen progressive IT shops that are now thinking in terms of something like an iPhone browser as being their "target delivery device" instead of the traditional desktop or laptop.

Maybe Steve Jobs will conquer Corporate IT in a totally unexpected -- yet predictable -- manner: by delivering a superior user experience.

BTW, we're not talking a bit of email, calendaring and web browsing here.  We're talking full support for corporate productivity apps like word processing, spreadsheet and the ubiquitous presentation software.  Not only that, a retrofitting of core corporate applications so they are usable from a smaller and presumably mobile browser.  Not to mention bulletproof security and information risk management.

I can see it already.

If I happen to need more screen real-estate, I'll find myself a device with the suitable pixels for my weakening eyes.  And if I happen to need a full-speed keyboard and mouse, I'll use those only when and if circumstances dictate.  And, occasionally, some of us will gather together and smirk that it feels awfully similar to the dumb-tube-and mainframe world we all remember from decades ago.

Concepts Of Place and Information

But for this world to really work, we'll have to also break the association between place and information. 

What do I mean? 

The files on my laptop aren't the same as my files on my home computer aren't the same as what's on my blackberry which aren't exactly the same files that are sloshing around the upmteen memory sticks I'm now carrying around. 

Every time I fire up a new browser, I find myself wishing for the 400 bookmarks and auto-login accounts I seem to be carrying around with me.

Yuch.

I need personal information management.  I need to be able to log in from any device, and it's all just there -- all of my personal information: searchable, findable, backed up, secured -- wherever I go.  We're talking more than push/pull syncronization; I'm thinking about my personal information lockbox that's mine and only mine.

I've used a few of these services as they get to market, including (now EMC's) PiWorx.  Just like the iPhone experience, it makes you think about your personal information very differently.

And I can't see future-state IT without something like it.

The End Of The Office, Meeting Room, Etc.

Well, not really, but I think a whole lot less importance for these physical constructs going forward.

This has been happening gradually for many years, but I see it accelerating as of late.

I've mentioned before that I'm pretty involved in social media proficiency here at EMC: blogs, wikis, forums, communities, etc.  One of the big observations is that this sort of stuff is a half-decent replacement for co-location, especially when you're talking about 40,000+ people around the globe.  Not only that, but the quality of interaction can be far better than we often see in the real world.

Add in some concalls, perhaps some telepresence -- and we're going to need a whole lot less office space in the future.  And, if we ever get the hang of environments like SecondLife without feeling like we're in the middle of a group hallucination, so much the better.

Not All Your IT Users Will Be Employees

Very close to the concept of "place" is the concept of "role": what relationship does someone have with the company?

If you run serious external portals for your customers, your notion of "IT user" has already expanded.  Especially if there's reasonably important information there, like the status of an order, or perhaps my financial records.  Taking the external portal down is no different than shutting down email for awhile: you'll get a few calls.

But as we turn to expanded collaboration, it's very clear that more and more people who "work" for an organization aren't your typical badged employees: they're contractors, consultants, suppliers, vendors, partners and other external entities that we build our businesses on.

And, going forward, the closer we can work with these entities with confidence, the better our businesses will be.  This doesn't mean only network and application access, it means information access as well.

What Does This Mean For Corporate IT?

It's going to be hard, but we're going to have to start thinking about things a little differently.  Terms such as "office worker", or "mobile user" or "international user" will become obsolete very soon, or need to.  We'll all be mobile workers, period. 

Occasionally, we'll land in a situation where we want a bit more screen real-estate and a full-sized keyboard, but that won't be the dominant use case.  We'll have to target the lowest common denominator, and go from there. 

That also implies that perhaps we'll all be using web-based corporate productivity apps.  Goodbye Word, Excel and PowerPoint?

We'll also need to think more in terms of "virtual meeting places" where we can all communicate and collaborate.  We're not talking document-centric or email-centric environments here: we're talking about a wide portfolio of synchronous (e.g. concall, telepresence, virtual worlds) as well as asynchronous (e.g. blogs, wikis, forums, IM, etc.) places.  There won't be one "right answer"; there will be lots of different tools that work well for different groups and different requirements.

Just like we invest in physical conference rooms today.

Information categorization, classification and policy enforcement will become more important in this new world, especially if we see our businesses working more with outside entities.  Simply emailing stuff around has its limitations, no?

More problematic is "my information" vs. "corporate information". 

Most corporate security types would have a conniption if I pointed something like Pi or any other personal information management cloud at my corporate laptop disk drive. 

Imagine those gigabytes of juicy corporate information flowing outside the firewall ...

Simply banning the practice will be about as effective as all other stern mandates from corporate IT, e.g. not very effective at all. 

The answer -- ultimately -- will be "corporate information clouds" that give users transparent access to the information you need to get your job done, but -- like their personal information cloud counterparts -- keep a tight lid on corporate information leaking out.  No need to put it on your local PC or smartphone -- it's always there when it's needed.

I can't wait to see what happens ...

Courteous comments welcome as always!

Comments

[Rob]

"But for this world to really work [portable as delivery device of choice],
we'll have to also break the association between place and information."

Actually, you hit on to why it won't really work or is quite limited, from above:

"And if I happen to need a full-speed keyboard and mouse,
I'll use those only when and if circumstances dictate."

Right - like when you want to do something other than twitter a few
responses? This debate is an old one, you read about uber-geeks
10 years ago with this portable, walk-around computing method. I've
pointed out, you can't type - other than peck-peck-peck -. Others have
offered up the solution of voice activated. I've then steered them to
disappointing studies that show modest amounts of talk all day and you
lose your voice. Fact of the matter is, keyboard is the input mechanism
and all this talk about portables keeps coming back when a new whiz-bang
device shows up. But they are limited in input, and always will be.
They have their niches.

[Chuck Hollis]

I agree with some of your points. It's not really a computing experience for me unless there's some serious screen real estate, a full keyboard, and occasionally a pointing device.

But, when I travel, it's amazing how much I can get done without any of those three, and I think this will only increase over time.

And when I look at my teenage kids, it's a whole 'nother story indeed.

Thanks for writing!

[jacob]

Hi all,
this is not end of the place in my opinion Recently, i am thinking about the feasibility of keeping a virtual assistant on the job, if the economy decides to slow down a bit. If you see concept of marketraise you may hired a Virtual Assistant.(www.marketraise.com)i have hired virtual assistance from marketraise in January of 2008. It has now been a few months since then. I want to share some thoughts I have
about having a Virtual Personal Assistant during a slower economy.