Barry Briggs' Weblog

Tough Times

Barry Briggs — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:10:03 GMT

Our ace finance guy Venkat showed this chart of the market volatility index -- note that market volatility is greater today than at any time in history, including post-9/11.

Source: MarketWatch

CIO Thoughts

Barry Briggs — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:34:11 GMT

Good interview with our CIO (my boss) Tony Scott:

Our role in Microsoft is really unique. Leadership jobs have three aspects: Down the middle we have the core IT things that probably would look familiar to any CIO anywhere in the world. It's applications, it's desktops, it's networks, it's data centers, it's all of the classic things. But in Microsoft we also have the opportunity to work very closely with our product development organizations, and so we test all of our products. Internally we call it dog-fooding our products. I'd actually like to call it ice-creaming. I'm trying to change the branding there a little bit. And then on the other side we work closely with our customers, and so I'm the executive sponsor for a number of large enterprises in customers around the globe.

The Role of Enterprise Architecture in Challenging Times

Barry Briggs — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:20:45 GMT

Times are tough; belts are tightening - and signs are it could be a long haul.

Smart IT executives are now turning to their Enterprise Architecture teams to advise them on how to make their IT operations more cost-effective and nimble in the face of likely, indeed probable, budget challenges and a serious economic downturn. They understand that EA focuses on the holistic nature of IT: how all of its applications, systems, and data centers work together to achieve business goals.

Some would say that EA primarily focuses on technical IT governance, but this is far from the case. Governance is a vehicle, a necessary means by which strategy is expressed and implemented -- but it is not an end in itself. The end, the goal, of course, is the business strategy.

And today that strategy is to be as cost-effective as possible -- without sacrificing gains made in agility, and while remaining able to respond quickly to new business challenges and opportunities.

Having a holistic, "umbrella" view of IT, and through strong partnerships clearly understanding the business objectives, EA teams can help drive IT organizations in ways that silo'd business unit teams cannot.

How? To begin with, EA must

Clearly understand, document, and be able to articulate the existing technical and business capabilities currently available -- and where there are weaknesses and gaps;
Suggest 80% solutions where significant cost savings can be realized -- often the "perfect" or most elegant solution is many times more expensive than one which is fiscally more prudent, and which will in these times suffice;
Participate at all levels of the fiscal, business and planning process -- EA provides the sanity check on proposed technology investments, and suggests alternatives so that the decisions when made are intentional, that is, fully informed ones;
And EA must itself remain pragmatic in the extreme: any ivory towers must be demolished!

There's lots more along these lines: hopefully you get the idea. In my view, in such times (and arguably all times) EA returns, or should return, 10x ROI per head that other teams do, because of their ecosystem-as-a-whole focus.

TDWI World Conference - New Orleans

Barry Briggs — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:11:13 GMT

Well we're here in the Big Easy for The Data Warehouse Institute's World Conference. A great conference with lots of interest in MDM, the topic on which I spoke. I was heartened to see that many attendees thought of technology as a long term cure for the present financial crisis, and of course I couldn't agree more.

Afterwards, I went on a walking tour of the downtown area, and spent a few hours at the National World War II Museum, just down the street. It's a terrific, and moving, experience -- and I was glad to see that the museum did not glorify the war -- just the heroic men and women on both sides that fought it.

Then I walked to the Riverwalk, where I came across a museum that warmed my heart -- only in New Orleans:

That's right, the Museum of the American Cocktail! Outstanding!

Election Day in the US

Barry Briggs — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:57:00 GMT

It is obviously an exciting and historic day here in the US.

On the recommendation of my pal Satish I have been following the election on the FiveThirtyEight.com site for some time now -- it will be fascinating to see how close this sports statistician actually comes to the real number!

Final Projection from fivethirtyeight.com

New UK eCrime Unit

Barry Briggs — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:28:37 GMT

Our pal Ed Gibson (who I met in South Africa a few months back) is quoted:

The Police Central e-Crime Unit has been hailed as a "giant step forward" by Microsoft's UK security adviser, Ed Gibson.
Show related articlesSpeaking at a press event at the RSA Conference Europe 2008 on Tuesday, Gibson said businesses had perceived that there had been nowhere to go to report "low-level" computer crime, after the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) was amalgamated into the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) in 2006.
"Soca's remit is serious and organised crime, and the perception was that there was a lack of reporting mechanism," Gibson said. "A big slice of [e-crime] is routine. There is now a reporting mechanism for those crimes."

Lots o Data

Barry Briggs — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:56:55 GMT

CIO Today:

With a compound annual growth rate of almost 60 percent, the digital universe is growing faster and is projected to be nearly 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 exabytes) in 2011, a 10-fold increase over the next five years.

Taken from a new IDC report.

Emerging Markets

Barry Briggs — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:16:31 GMT

Very cool article about Microsoft's efforts in emerging markets:

Some of Microsoft‚s top researchers spend their time thinking about complex software, algorithms and security systems. Others contemplate azolla ˜ an aquatic fern fed to cattle in the hopes of increasing milk production.
The azolla experts are part of a nine-person team at Microsoft Research India that approaches the technology of emerging markets in unconventional ways. These computer scientists say they have the freedom to forget about PCs and software altogether as they tackle problems. Most often, they rely on a mix of sociology and empirical testing to see whether quirky ideas can make technology useful to those who have heretofore lived without it.

Windows Azure

Barry Briggs — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:45:06 GMT

The cloud computing platform launches -- congrats to the Red Dog team!

Primarily a platform for developers, Windows Azure plays host to the .Net framework, SQL Server, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, and an offering called Live Services which, according to Ozzie, will extend Azure services "outward" to connect with locally running Microsoft software. Using this rich environment, developers will be able to build and deploy Web applications and services running on Microsoft's worldwide infrastructure of datacenters.

The home page for Azure is here: check it out.

IT Spending is Forecast to Slow

Barry Briggs — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:26:41 GMT

No real surprise, I suppose:

At its 2008 Symposium/ITxpo, Gartner analysts released a report that trimmed the research firm‚s IT spending forecasts for 2009. Instead of the 5.8 percent growth that Gartner originally expected, the downturn in the economy now means that IT spending will only grow 2.3 percent next year. Since most IT budgets for 2008 have already been set, Gartner did not see a significant impact in spending for the fourth quarter...
In the Forrester report, Andrew Bartels, an analyst, wrote that many companies were already cutting back on purchases of hardware, such as desktops, notebooks, servers and storage equipment. Earlier this week, IDC and Gartner released their third-quarter reports on the worldwide PC market and while both firms found that desktops and notebook shipments grew by 15 percent, there were signs that consumers and commercial spending were slowing down.

(eWeek)