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How to win when you don’t know the rules
June 10th, 2011 Darren Austin Tags: Cloud Computing, Data, iPad, Windows 7
Posted in CIO Agenda |
In 1983 Greg LeMond (an American cyclist) won the UCI Road Race Championship, an individual event, but generally won by a rider in the strongest national team. At the time the Americans struggled to actually field a professional team.
The story goes that Greg turned up at the start of the race in his own car, took his bike off the roof, took off his jeans and rode down to the start; to win. When asked afterwards, how one man had beaten them, the puzzled teams of world superstars replied “How do you beat a man who doesn’t know the rules?”
The very same thing applies to IT Solutions and Services today. How do you win when you don’t know the rules? Cloud has torn-up the established rule book, existing definitions and domains have become blurred, distorted or no longer exist.
A good example is the desktop. As corporations agonised over moving from Windows XP to Vista and/or Windows 7 a revolution took place “an IT spring” Bring Your Own (BYO) took hold, even Barrack Obama “bought his own”. iPads, iPhones and Android tablets invaded corporate IT and the desk top as we know it is dying as the vision and promise of multi-channel, right-time, right place working has started to happen organically from the Cloud.
Even the rarefied heights of Enterprise Architecture are challenged. Reuse is no longer a debate at a code, component or blueprint level. It’s at service level in the Cloud, often outside of the Enterprise. We could even debate that the Cloud IS the enterprise.
So in this new world, where the laws of the IT natural order are changing how do you beat the man who does not know the rules? It’s simple; two things. You need to control your data and you need to own your information. Fail to do either and it’s game over.
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Darren Austin
Darren is the UK Chief Engineer for Atos Origin, reporting directly to the UK CEO Keith Wilman. Darren provides technical leadership and governance across UK Service lines and technology advice and guidance to the UK Board. He is a Fellow of both the British Computer Society and the Institute of Engineering and Technology. Through his career Darren has worked across the telecoms, retail banking and health sectors – he has extensive experience in large scale transformational outsourcing with the main recent focus in the NHS’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT). Darren has experience in building strategies and inspiring his teams to deliver upon them. Darren has been the principal technology leader on two of the most successful projects within the overall NHS IT transformation programme: NCRS Spine, and Choose and Book.
To get more chance to win, be sure you can’t lose! If no rule exists yet, that means you may be the first to define them. Then, you should maximize your chance to win. As a Service Provider, building new offers give you the right to define your own rules. Now, keep in mind the judge is not you… but the market.