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Maurice Perks ….. IBM Fellow
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The Agenda
Some brief thoughts about our industry and CHANGE
A look-back at history and how Industrial Ages have CHANGED us (interesting)
Some of the factors that seem to show that IT progress is slowing down (depressing)
Some bright signs to lift the depression (hopeful)
Questions and Arguments - whenever
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It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change
…. C. Darwin
If things in our IT industry don’t change they go
backwards …. M. Perks
Before the IT Age, during it, and after it, change is inevitable
Except from vending machines
A high rate of change is a fundamental part of our industry
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Change is what it’s all about
CHANGE = innovation = transformation
More precisely it’s the RATE of CHANGE that we have to improve
Commercial and business ‘things’ changed before our IT Age
Commercial and business ‘things’ are changing in our IT Age
Commercial and business ‘things’ will change after our IT Age
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Many thanks to ….
Colin Harrison
– IBM IGS, Zurich, IBM Academy of Technology
Carlota Perez in the book ‘Revolutions and Financial Capital – The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden
Ages’ catalogues the recent Technology Ages that have forged our current technological and commercial landscape as the following
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The basic proposition being made today …
 The proposition is that we are coming to the end of the IT Age and that this is being brought about by some major and hardening factors that will be difficult to soften. Unless we can soften these factors and improve the rate of change our industry will slow down o
I’ll take a business and enterprise view rather than a domestic or personal view.

If we look at former industrial ages that have driven us forward in the last few hundred years then you conclude that each age flourishes and then loses its original momentum with respect to advancement and change. The basic characteristics and artefacts of the old age still remain of course. But they do not drive forward at anything like the rate that they did when they were creating the age in what we can call their ‘golden era’. o Eventually a new age appears that may or may not obsolete the achievements of a previous age.
 The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone. Don’t panic IT is not stopping, far from it. But we will have to work harder to keep it going as the dominant industry.
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Where are we in the Ages of Industrial
Evolution?

Former Ages
 The Industrial Revolution – Britain –
Arkwright - 1771

The Age of Steam and Railways
– Britain
(spreading across Europe and North
America) – Stephenson – 1829 ( 58 years )

The Age of Steel, Electricity and Heavy
Engineering – USA and Germany –
Carnegie/Bessemer
– 1875 (
46 years )
 The Age of Oil, the Automobile and Mass
Production – USA (spreading to Germany across Europe
– Ford – 1908/1913 (
33/38 years )
 The Age of Information and
Telecommunications - USA (spreading to
Europe and Asia) – Noyce/Moore – 1971
( 64/59 years )
 The Next Age?
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What are the signs? ………….
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On the positive side ………..
We seem to have all the base technologies that we want ….
o Plenty of CYCLES o Plenty of STORAGE local or remote o Plenty of BANDWITH fixed or mobile o Plenty of END-USER STATIONS fixed or mobile o Plenty of SKILLS o Plenty of MIDDLEWARE o Plenty of APPLICATIONS o Plenty of MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
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But on the negative side
There are some factors that challenge the continuation of our IT Age as the dominant industry.
 Change is becoming too hard o The IT systems of many businesses are mature and like an old claret they have to be treated with respect o The IT stack has become porous. You can’t replace a layer easily. Especially a software layer.
‾ It’s FREE!!!!!
o Large IT Projects are a risky business.
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Some Factors that challenge the continuation of our IT Age as the dominant industry.
 The benefits are diminishing o Most infrastructure is ‘good enough’ o Moore’s Law is under a lot of pressure.
‾ The effects of low numbers …. 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Bang
‾ Multicore chips …. aka ‘Over to you programmers’
‾ The heat challenge …. Hotter than a vindaloo
‾ The investment challenge … The effects of large numbers billions
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Some Factors that challenge the continuation of our IT Age as the dominant industry.
 The damnation of programming o Business persons still can’t program their costly infrastructure
‾ We’ll return to this later o Programs still have big quality challenges
‾ Its still more of an art than an exact science o Middleware is everywhere
‾ But does it make a programmer’s life easier?
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Some Factors that challenge the continuation of our IT Age as the dominant industry.
 Bubbles have burst (IT pundits have been wrong) o Year 2K.
Never in the history of human commerce has so much effort been focused on so little by so many
The real problem was that we just didn’t know!
o .COM extravagance has left scars.
The fabulous connectivity of the Internet and fibre only opened-up opportunities it did not guarantee them
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Some Factors that challenge the continuation of our IT Age as the dominant industry.
 Is fear becoming a factor? o My competitor could get all my confidential data o You mean if some nutter gets us I lose all of my data and I lose my whole enterprise?
Or simply: Have We Run Out of Ideas? (Has the steam gone out of the industry?) o When was the last big idea/thing? o Can anyone point to a new one?
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What can we conclude?
 It’s getting harder to make the changes that are needed to keep the IT Age running at full steam (TGV speed).

The rate of growth of the engine that has driven the age at full steam, the microprocessor, is beginning to dwindle.
 It’s not getting any easier for ordinary business users to make the technology do what they want.

Some users now see IT as a risk rather than an opportunity.
 The very intellectual heart of the science of computers may be flagging.
 IT is becoming commoditized and ordinary.
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With these sorts of conditions prevailing history tells us that investment by the people, enterprises and institutions whose monies drove the IT Age forward could well fall off. IT will not die but it will not dominate the age. SO ………….
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So what’s next and what should we do?
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1. The Human Computer Interface (not directly in ITDelivery’s domain)
We’ve been very good, as an industry, at using the userinterfaces from allied parts of our industry
 Qwerty keyboard – but should we all be typists?
 Drag and Drop, Point and Click are limited to what is on the screen not to input and output
 Screens – no real replacement for books and newspapers
 Telephones – small and limited
 We’ve never really perfected speech as a universal input and output media – it’s always just around the corner
 A fortune awaits someone!
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2. Business persons can’t program and CHANGE computer systems
The IT business system lifecycle
- The business person cannot see the end product until the end product is produced
- At each interface we re-translate – roughly
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THE NEED: I want to change my business please. Might be a very small change or a really big change.
What’s really involved?
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Our Golden IT Age – Will it continue?
Yes probably because ... It’s not clear what new age will replace us
Yes probably because … Our industry is still highly profitable – big players and entrepreneurs
Yes probably because … Though many business systems are mature the need for business innovation/transformation/CHANGE through the usage of IT is still very popular
Yes probably because no-one knows how much steam is still in the IT boiler
Yes probably because …. Our industry is being joined (users and developers) by the globe’s most populous continent
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Our choice …. Which way up?
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