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.

Good night (to a different) Mr. Wilson...

As happens from time to time, people change jobs and move on to other things. We’ve had the misfortune to have that happen to us, as in the course of what we hope will continue to be a successful career, our Product Marketing head Steve Wilson has departed, joining another of our old friends(whom we’ll refer to simply as Beavis).

Steve leaves his responsibilities in capable hands, but we’ll miss him just the same, as well as appreciate his very professional and classy exit. His new (old) home rudely greeted his return by assigning him the sort of e-mail address that sounds like what your mother would call you if you had a severe punishment coming (think “Harcourt Fenton Mudd”), and we hope that isn’t an omen of future unhappiness.

Good night Mr. Wilson, and good luck!

Good night Mr. Wilson, wherever you are…

A few weeks ago Alcatel announced it was acquiring Lucent. Aside from providing a brief lift to the market indices, it was another in a string of telecommunications consolidations. Another day, another merger. In the U.S., AT&T (”The Phone Company”) has nearly been reassembled from its 1984 divestiture. Well, sort of — the new AT&T may be reassembled but for better or worse it’s a different whole from its pre-1984 status.Less noted in the Alcatel acquisition of Lucent was that Alcatel is now the parent of Bell Laboratories and Western Electric, the intellectual source and supplier of a host of scientific and engineering innovations going back to the late 1800’s. In software specifically, it is daunting to try to describe the impact those organizations have had on many of us, primarily through the decision in the 1970’s to license the UNIX operating system.

If you’re using a computer of almost any kind, whatever name is attached to its operating system, it owes a portion of its heritage and implementation to UNIX and related works.

Back then, our gateway to a UNIX license involved a transaction with Western Electric and a letter from one Otis Wilson conveying the license.

Everyone in the early UNIX community had such a letter, it was as though we were connected by our common relationship to the ubiquitous but unseen Mr. Wilson. Somewhere in some box I have such a letter addressed to me, not seen for decades but retained out of some sense that it was momentous, or at least, a novelty.

Now, seeing Bell Labs and Western Electric take another step in their organizational lives is a reminder both to say “thanks again” and also of the pace and constancy of change. Novel ideas in the 1970’s for how to operate a single computer are today objects of more modest consideration, commoditized by ubiquity and market forces, and yielding to an expanded view of “a system” characterized by the dispersed, often component-based, programs that transcend a single computer or even a network of them.

This space has been created for us to have conversations about networks as systems. Mostly that, anyway. It’s a rich subject, and indeed there has been for at least the last decade intense activity from many quarters emphasizing how to program such a system. At Cassatt, we’re concerned with a more neglected aspect of such systems, the “other half” of an operating environment that does resource allocation and management of the qualities with which a service is delivered. Obviously “how it’s programmed” and “how it runs” are related topics, but we think the world has a more than adequate supply of programming frameworks and a less than adequate supply of addressing the increasing sprawl and disorder infesting IT that derives from their use.

I hope you’ll join us in this from time-to-time, and find the matters discussed interesting and at least sometimes entertaining. Welcome, and until next time (with apologies to Jimmy Durante), “good night Mr. Wilson, wherever you are.”