Learning 21st century computing from 18th century banking

The course of introducing utility computing into the marketplace is almost more of an exercise in social anthropology than in the creation of technology. Consider the data center and its practices, in many organizations the operations are clear descendants of an era in which the computer was a rare corporate resource, attended by priests and servants, both needing protection and demanding worship.

Many of these practices persist well beyond the conditions which may have required them, and the institutionalized habits are more resistant to change than the rapidly obsolescing technologies around which they were formed. They even pervade relatively enlightened organizations, for example, those which have lines of business that are organized around offerings that are fundamentally based in information. (Is “iTunes” a record store, or an information source? Yeah, I know, what’s a “record”?)

One way in which this is visible is in the phenomenon of “rack hugging”: a line of business having dedicated computing capacity and purpose, often in a shared physical center. Once perhaps a necessity for assuring service, (or the outcome of unbridled purchasing enthusiasm) these racks symbolize one portion of the CIO’s expense nightmare that flies in the face of an often palpable organizational need to be able to point and say “those are mine” (and to ignore the concurrent truth that “and only those are mine”.)

Yet, none of those organizations, nor even any of the individuals who populate them, act the same with respect to another vital asset: their money. You can not walk into a bank and ask to see “your” money in the form of currency. You often can’t even walk in and ask to see a pile of currency equivalent to all of “your money”, because it’s usually not even there — it’s off working on behalf of someone else and in return you get interest upon it.

It is hard to imagine the emergence of modern economies and living standards without such a means to pool resources into instruments that build financial capacity. Yet, many operations still operate with a habit akin to keeping their computers in their mattresses, a place they would never store their money. Partly this is the outcome of not seeming to have alternatives (though, we think we’re changing that here at Cassatt), but a lot of it is habit-limited behavior.

It’s incongruous to observe a 21st century technology managed with less sophistication than is evidenced in 18th century banking, but that’s where we are it seems. The much greater sophistication of financial dealings was found in demands for efficiency in trading and exchange, resulting in the creation of instruments of trust and the leverage obtained through pooling, and measured through the projection of service levels in the form of early stock and shipping charts in the major ports of Europe.

Now, in the characteristics found in (and needed by) the environments offered by service-oriented architecture (SOA), the flexibility and efficiency needed to thrive with more information-related offerings, the hints of social change are in evidence. They’ve appeared before, nascent component-based software initiatives which flare and fade. But, they keep returning, each time more and more insistent, looking for the technical spark to enable them, and the social will and drive to follow-through and pull the technology forward. Is this the wave? Maybe, or maybe it’s a resurgence or two further on (kind of like me and this blog!) But seems like soon.