Summary-Making the Summaries

For new readers, welcome to the Summary-Makers’ Insight!  I hope you have enjoyed and/or found useful some of our previous posts.  Seeing as we have had quite a bit to say already, I figured it was about time for a summary-making of our summary-making (a little recursive summarizing, if you will).  But before I do that, I’ll give you a quick dramatic summary of what summary-making is all about:

I’m sure all of us are aware of many of the players in this complex drama we call Infomation Systems Management.  There are the Boogiemen - villains and naysayers who often nitpick the technical details and question the value of ISM, but who still bring very valid light to real problems.  There are the Question Keepers, who make sure we ask the right questions (though seem to rarely give us the answers we crave).  There are the Champions, the evangelists of the new technologies and systems ISM brings us, who can promise the world, and every so often deliver it.  We have The Keepers of the Treasure, who keep what we’ve got running, but can get a bit snippy if there’s too much change.  And we can’t forget the Script Writers, who rarely get their hands dirty from their thrones, but at least keep everyone going the same direction.  All of these actors (and more) play their ongoing roles, and fight thier battles.

We, the Summary-Makers, try to step out of the fray and see the whole picture.  We understand the value and strength of each perspective, and we take it upon ourselves to represent a broad and balanced view by using our most cherished tool: the summary.

So, without further ado, here are some summaries:

- Web services (such as Google Apps) are commoditizing basic computing for business, which will add value to the business world as a whole by decreasing the costs of ISM.

- 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 value of Information Systems Management is in the connections between those three concepts.

We as summary makers summarise the need to forsee, invest and understand ISM and look through the cultural perspective how its connecting people and how ISM technologies have created convinience for living beings and how as normal people we could evaluate it.

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.