Dortch's Digressions

Two Takes on Modern Technologies and Real Life

Earlier today, at a blog I write about business process management (BPM), I used the example of the French government banning BlackBerry handheld wireless e-mail devices from its ministries and other buildings, fearing U.S. surveillance of those e-mails. Never mind that the system's been approved by security agencies in multiple countries, and that it employs encryption stronger than that used at some online banking sites.

Sigh. We'll see how that goes. Meanwhile, though, I stumbled across another, far more apparently positive example of technology colliding with real life.

My colleague and friend Ron Exler, author of the authoritative blog on everything geospatial, "The Geo Factor," tells me that where he lives in Maryland, Bank of America has deployed ATMs that let depositors insert checks with no envelopes or deposit slips. The ATM scans your check, displays what it thinks the amount of the check is, gives the depositor a chance to correct or verify the amount, and prints out a deposit receipt that includes an image of the check.

To me, this is a prime example of what modern technology is supposed to do -- give us options, while enabling automated systems to duplicate, if not improve upon, things we used to rely upon other human beings to do. If you've ever waited in line in a bank to deposit a check at the beginning, middle, or end of a month -- or especially if you've waited in line to do almost anything else -- this is something you should find it easy to appreciate.

Sometimes, electricity or fire provide light and heat. Sometimes, they can burn down a building. All depends on how they're deployed, and the thinking behind that deployment.

Who Needs Industry Analysts, Continued...

James McGovern, in his "Enterprise Architecture: Thought Leadership" blog, provided some thought-provoking responses to my post on "Who Needs Industry Analysts?" I have cut and pasted from his response below (verbatim), and added my own comments and responses.

James McGovern said:
I would say that analysts have more knowledge than most IT or business decision makers but they don't have more experience! Experience comes from doing. Imagine if me and my work buddies go to the local bar, guzzle two kegs of beer and reminisce over the birth of our children. If we do this every single day, our bellies will be bigger than our wifes when they were pregnant. So, if we have big bellies and have had children, doesn't mean we have experienced pregnancy, we only have outsider looking in knowledge. The same thing comes from being an industry analyst."

I say:
Agreed -- but it turns out that at least where I work, most of the analysts, myself excepted, have actually "done" enterprise IT in high-pressure, production environments. (I have done IT-related marketing and some low-level hands-on stuff, but nothing like what James does or what I infer he means when he differentiates knowledge from experience.) Yes, the two are definitely separate, and both are valuable. However, I maintain that many full-time industry analysts have more experience at garnering and sifting through industry-wide knowledge than many enterprise IT practitioners, and that this makes their differing sets of experience and knowledge complementary in many cases. At least, that's my fervent hope.

James McGovern said:
* Your blog further goes on to compare industry analysts to journalism. Do you think if the CEO of Aetna wanted to get exclusive coverage and a quote from say Tom Brokaw, he pays them for it? Does the Immelt of GE pay ABC an annual fee to provide coverage on news of his company. Please find a better analogy.

I say:
I wasn't trying to compare industry analysts to journalists or journalism, exactly, and apologize if that wasn't clear. The point I was trying to make is that there is potential value in what is provided by both "professional" and "citizen" journalists. I believe there is similarly potential value in what is provided to IT practitioners by analysts -- even if those analysts lack sufficient hands-on experience in enterprise IT to warrant direct comparison to those practitioners.

James McGovern said:
* Your phrase: I love spending the majority of my professional time helping IT users and vendors become more successful also seems suspect. Journalists provide unbiased coverage. To help would introduce bias, unless you can rationalize otherwise. What is your definition of help? Do I like to help my employer or do I like to get paid? Hope you think their is a distinction.

I say:
Make no mistake, I love to get paid -- as do my creditors. On my best days, though, I believe I continue to get paid because what I do is helping someone do what they do better. (And by the way, while it may be true that journalists strive to provide unbiased coverage, I believe strongly, and state strongly wherever possible, that analysts are and should be biased -- in favor of users succeeding with their IT efforts. I'm naive enough to believe that if we analysts help users succeed, then that's good for users, and therefore good for analysts, the media, and vendors, all of which depend directly and indirectly on user investments for survival.)

James McGovern said:
* Since you mentioned helping users and listed them before vendors, could you provide me with help on some things that I would like to see? Help me get large industry analyst firms to start listing non-commercial open source projects right next to closed source proprietary packages. I hope you believe this would be of great help to your users...

I say:
James couldn't possibly be more spot-on here. I have spent more time and energy than I care to recall trying to get open source projects treated as seriously as their closed, proprietary alternatives since I discovered open source. We are making some progress at the company where I work -- we've recently published findings of a survey on enterprise open source database adoption, and are planning a teleconference on the subject. (You can visit my employer's Web site, www.rfgonline.com, for more information.) But I'm old (and experienced?) enough to remember back when Microsoft Windows NT was new, and it was almost impossible to get my employer at the time, now known as CMP Media, to write anything about Unix, even though Unix was the platform supporting most of the most business-critical applications out there. Sometimes, evolution is a maddeningly slow, painful process. But this is an example of precisely why I have avoided working for one of those "large industry analyst firms."

Finally, I would like to thank James publicly for his thoughtful comments, on my blog and on this whole technology-and-real-life thing generally. (I am also incredibly impressed by his choice of photo for his profile, and his musical tastes.) I reiterate -- if you want to keep up with what I think is some of the best thinking out there about this stuff, you've gotta read James McGovern!