Web Services and the Mobile Convergence Revolution

Is The Future of Web Services in Question?
A recent post on www.networkworld.com referring to net Guru Carl Zittrain’s recent book predicts the death of the Net by tethering it to locked-down devices such as the iPhone.  The security fears and hassles of spam are quoted as pushing the regular user towards heavily protected devices and workstations, and Zittrain argues that this movement will stifle the innovation and entrepreneurship that has made the web what it is.

 While this is likely true, I believe that we’re also likely to see business consolidation online which will lead to greater consistency of web services for business users.

While much of the innovation and creativity of the internet has come from it’s unregulated and ad-hoc nature, the strength of a business paying for the development of a functional and useful piece of technology can’t be ignored, and as the iPhone itself has proven, you can’t underestimate the power of the hacker community in effecting real change on a new piece of technology.  At the end of the day, competitive advantage does and will always come to some extent from innovation, and whether that innovation originates from inside or outside the firm is irrelevant.

While there is and will continue to be strong tension between the drive for flexibility and the drive for consistency and safety in our information technologies, I don’t believe that this is a threat to the innovative and creative nature of the business.  Creative and innovative people will continue to work through and around boundaries, and when there is value to be found in their frontier work the powers that be, always on the lookout for an edge over their competitors, will pick up the ideas and bring to them the stability necessary for the masses.  In essence, there will still be a balance, and it will be expanded to include the web services that go along with integrated mobile devices.

The proliferation of the new wave of integrated mobile devices is creating a huge number of ‘normal’ users who will drive the market for consistent and stable utilities on mobile devices.  This is good news for businesses, who typically require a higher level of dependability and protection in their information systems.  Businesses will be able to integrate these new devices into their systems with a much higher degree of safety than has been present in the past.

In summary, the proliferation of integrated mobile devices will serve to increase the reliability of the web services that complement them, which business will be able to harness.  Despite the locked-down nature of these devices, the innovation and creativity of the online world will not be comprimised.  The new world of work must and will embrace this revolution.

 

Why do we Search, again?

In this knowledge and information intense new world of work, a huge challenge is finding the information you need when you need it.  So we search.  Gone are the days of navigating linearly or alphabetically through a file system.  We use powerful search engines to hit any web-page (or internal document) with our key-words.  But why do we have to search at all?  Why can’t we just go directly to where the information we need is?  The answer is ambiguity and context.  When I say I need to find ‘oil well’, I’m not interested in “…add the vinegar to the oil and stir well…”.  I know this, but my search engine doesn’t, and that strikes me as inefficient.

Clustering search algorighms are currently a hot topic on the Web.  Clusty says they’re working on a context and language-sensitive search algorithm that will allow you to dis-ambiguate a topic right up front, and then search for it.  The real test of it, however, would be if it could be used within the context of an individual user, or even within an organizational culture.  There is already a dearth of data on my computer, even just within my browsing history, giving a high level of context to the searches I’m doing.  This needs to be properly harnessed.  Taking this a step higher, every organization has its own unique culture, vernacular, and context.  When I search for contact info for Dave at the Ministry of Health, I’m likely looking for the same Dave that my company has dealt with in the past (otherwise how would I know it is Dave I’m looking for?).  I shouldn’t have to wade through the list of Daves in alphabetical / divisional order at the Ministry!

Of course, there are limits to this.  After I’ve spent a few minutes searching for a birthday present for my niece, I don’t want my search engine to be forever sending me to Pony Tales sites when I’m looking for “low horsepower engines”…

At the end of the day, many of us bloggers rely on ambiguous searching to drive people to our sites who may have no good reason for being here, so I’m not trying to rush the future.  On the other hand, I’m tired hitting innapropriate marital-aid websites when I’m actually trying to find out why a newly drilled well found no oil and was a “dry hole”…

Web Services: Commodified Computing and Value Adding

With Google’s recent release of Google Apps, suggestions that web services are a move towards the idea of the ‘comoditization of computing’ are flying.  Nick Carr elucidates this idea well with a strong comparison to the historical centralization of the generating of electricy and Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb tries it on for size as well.  The question is, however, what does the commoditization of computing through web services really mean for Information Systems Management?

A commodity is a thing of value which has lost it’s price differential across the entirety of a market.  Functionally, a commodity bought from any supplier is effectively identical to that from any other supplier, and the price commanded will also be identical.  In the physical world, a buyer simply buys from whoever is closest, and a seller can only increase profit by driving down costs.  In the virtual world, the internet provides a relatively homogeneous environment for delivery, (for the westernized and plugged-in business environments, at least), so it would seem as though web services for basic computing is ripe for a move towards commodotization. 

If Information Systems Management follows this trend, it means that everyone will be able to do the same basic computing at the same price.  As develloppers jump on, identical engines will be embedded in even the most specialized software.  The ability to handle the basics of computing will be taken for granted, but only as long as you want your business to do exactly the same as everyone else.  For those who are quirky enough to do something different, the relative cost of doing business will rise.  This view of the new world of work worries some, who say that this opens the door to monopolization of a business necessity (by Google, of course…), and additionally will have the effect of stifling creativity and innovation in digital technology.

Remember that an Information System is still just a model of the business.  The basic computing tasks we speak of are a small part of the model, just as is a recruiting system, the fax machine, or even the supply closet.  In the early days of business, and I mean the very early days, a firm’s ability to acquire, distribute, and use writing paper, quills, and ink could be a distinctive advantage.  Nowadays, paper and pens are a commodity.  Every business has them and scarce thought is given to them.  Having them is no longer a source of advantage, and they are simply part of ‘the cost of doing business’.  And of course, very few would argue that having pens and paper in the business world has led to anything but general benefit.

In summary, web services are moving towards commoditization, which will add value to the new world of work as a whole by decreasing the cost of doing the basics.  The Boogiemen worry that creativity and innovation will be stifled, but metaphors of the past have provided little evidence for this.