Dealing with Information means providing proper Treatment andCommunication. Nowadays, the “Information Age” is facing a major change also about IT Operations:
- from craftworks (each company hosts it IT, it is involved in quality, it has to care about performance and security)
- to factory (company IT hosted by provider, also involved in quality, caring about performance and security).
For the sake of completeness, we have to say that IT Strategy and IT Tactic have been get outsourced, already (IT Consulting companies providing advisories to IT holders). That is, IT Consulting companies have to change their ITapproach and offer for getting long-lasting useful to customers.
Brief IT Historical Excursus
Let’s fastly analyze historic steps, classified on the basis of:
- provisioning a Type (Treatment or Communication)
- assigning a proper Maturity Value (Theoric, Laboratory, pre-Craft, Craft, Factory).
|
Year |
Type |
Maturity |
Description |
|
1840 |
Treatment |
Theoric |
Ada Lovelace wrote the first known algorithm for generation of Bernoulli numbers running on the “Analytics Machine” from Charles Babbage |
|
1940 |
Treatment |
Laboratory |
During Bletchley Park years (Second World War, UK), working at Colossus to counterfeiting Enigma communications (see http://www.amazon.it/Enigma-Battle-Code-Hugh-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/0471490350), the “Information Age” has begun (thank to Alan M. Turing). Providing information elaboration tools has started, in a pre-craftwork fashion |
|
1946 |
Treatment |
pre-Craft |
Suddenly, after the war ended up, the ‘Craft Information Treatment Period’ arose having ENIAC (1946) and EDVAC (1947) for private use, in USA. Those were good means for organizing and treating information for rich companies (i.e. Financial ones), although Mainframe, SuperComputeroffered capabilities such as VMS, those were extremely expensive |
|
1948 |
Communication |
Theoric |
Claude Shannon published the article “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~math474/shannon1948.pdf) The essential concept of “Communication Entropy” was born |
|
1969 |
Communication |
Laboratory |
On August 31st, computers sent data between two California universities, for the first time. ARPAnet was born |
|
1974 |
Treatment |
Craft |
Intel was starting the production of 8080 CPU, used into the Altair 8800. Micro-Computers were out, accessible to normal companies (and rich people) |
|
1983 |
Communication |
pre-Craft |
ARPAnet project was closed, letting Internet to capability of growing up from its premises. Connection capabilities are available for civil aims |
|
1994 |
Communication |
Craft |
The first protocol of xDSL protocol family was standardized, allowing for high bandwidth connection from fixed palces (houses, companies, etc) |
|
1999 |
Treatment |
Factory |
VMware has introduced the first solution for virtualization over x86 technology: “VMware Virtual Platform”. TheCheap Virtualization was here (not so expensive as VMS). |
|
2003 |
Communication |
Factory |
Commercialization of 3G Network was starting all over the world, allowing for high bandwidth connection from however |
That is, it's the time to put out Factory (issuing commoditization sthrough standardization) and foster Efficiency (through Economies of Scale)
Implication of reaching out “Factory” Maturity Level
Having IT reaching the Factory Maturity Level for both Treatment and Communication has allowed to reach the following for Elaboration premises:
- Centrality of Production (Cloud Elaboration, xaaS Provider): easiness for reaching out information over new communication channel made possible the delocalization of information stores and elaboration centers
- Industrialization Process (Virtualization): scale economy made technology cheaper, allowing for huge adoption, providing a “de facto” standardization of operations, coming from commoditization (architectures, infrastructures and applications)
Information Treatment Evolution
Thus, the evolution of “production” of information is strongly similar to other factory processes, like cloths. It is expected to see analogous transformations in the next years (seehttp://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/anthropology/social-and-cultural-anthropology/craft-industry-ethnography-proto-industrial-cloth-production#contentsTabAnchor)
Performing the same kind of study is quite straightforward:
|
Aspect |
Description |
|
Raw Material |
The cheaper the better Archtecture: x86 compatible O.S. : Windows, Linux App: OpenSource (preferable), the best 3-4 for each common topic (i.e. CMS) |
|
Market |
from the Cloud to the Cloud: reaching customer using e-Economy |
|
Relation of Production |
Commoditization means Standardization |
|
Capital Investment |
Customers: save up to 600% of Craft-style IT Providers: improve time-by-time, using dynamic allocation |
|
Reproduction of the System |
Just duplicate, paying attention to legislations |
Answering fenomenon questions is not as simple as before:
|
Question |
Description |
|
Role of IT |
Externalization: xaaS Provider |
|
Economic Policies |
OpEx: no more CapEx. Money saving |
|
Legislation |
As globalization goes further Standardization (e.g. EU regulations instead of directives) |
|
Modification of Traditional Technologies |
Customers: save up to 600% of Craft-style IT Providers: improve time-by-time, using dynamic allocation |
|
Quality Control |
Build and Interface between Cloud Customers and Cloud Providers to be regulated in contracts for effective measurements (KPI, KGI, SLA, KSI) |