03.15.11
Skills Lost toTechnology
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How many technical skills can you name that have come with great anticipation and have now almost entirely left the business scene? How many technologies that are the current rave will all but disappear in a few short years? When you are comfortable at explaining these changes in respect to architecture you will have acquired one of the most important continuing skills of an Enterprise Architect.
Visit the technology graveyard. There you will find tombstones for dial-up timesharing systems, SNA (System Network Architecture), early social networking boards, air-cooled mainframes with a gold spike in their heart, and hundreds more.
Anyone that has been in the IT business for more than thirty years can look back on many technologies and standards that seem to be very old concepts today. COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) was intended to standardized business systems across all platforms. FORTRAN was to be the standard development language for engineers.
Thirty years ago, everyone thought that computers would continue to get bigger. The exact opposite has occurred. In the movie, 2001 A Space Odyssey, HAL represented the future of computing. HAL was a large centralized computer that was able to think on its own. It never happened.
No one predicted the internet. No one predicted open source software. How could we foresee the technical changes and thirst that everyone has for socialization, access to information, and free software?
Consulting organizations have been attempting to predict the future of both technologies and standards for years. They sell their predictions to businesses so businesses can gear their products towards the new directions. Sometimes these consulting organizations are correct. Sometimes, their predictions can actually drive the outcomes to their predictions.
Plot out the major changes that have occurred that have shaped the application of technology in the businesses you serve. Explain each of the changes and why they have occurred. Look for patterns. You should see how the customers of the business have changed in their expectations. Now, predict the future. Assume that the customer’s expectations will continue to change in the same direction. Evaluate emerging technologies that may help to meet their expectations.
When you can do this type of analysis with confidence, then your concern is the enterprise. Your expertise is technology with a focus on business. You are exercising one of the most important skills of an Enterprise Architect.
Enterprise Architects are well-aware of the continuing evolution of technology. They creatively look for technology convergence that can provide breakthroughs in thinking. We are at one of those convergent junctions today. What is about to happen will give non-professional information technologists control of their use of automation in their business. No longer will they simply peer through windows and see only what applications let them see. They will be able to go inside, see how things work, and control their automation. – Enterprise Architects Masters of the Unseen City
Closing the Business / IT gap.
