I am going out on a limb here.  Technologist are not traditionally people persons.  Please insert your own Office Space quote [here].  Technology is a profession I love.  Make no mistake.  But, we have our issues.  The issues have nothing about capability or effectiveness.  We are very good at that providing solutions to problems.  Our problem is self promotion!

When thinking of traditional Technical Evangelists I believe most people picture someone that promotes a platform or a proprietary service such as the ones Microsoft and SUN have employed.  Currently, I believe that Steve Jobs is the best known evangelist given Apple’s recent product home runs.  However, I do believe there is an opportunity for smaller shops, or even your own company, to employ the same strategies to maximize technology value to customers.

I think at face value this makes sense, but just for fun let’s examine some everyday scenarios that support an evangelist position:

• The pace of innovation is increasing.  You need to be agile in your evaluation of new technologies and how your business can leverage them to deliver a step change competitive advantage.
  
• Your leadership team probably interacts less with technology less than your IT team does.  You need to continually bring new opportunities to the forefront at every chance.  Perhaps an evangelist should even be present during board meetings?  Can you imagine; IT being a strategic business partner???  I kid of course.  It’s what we should be!!!
  
• Your customers are becoming more tech savvy.  There are no more secrets in Technology.  They have access to the same vendors and solutions that everyone else does.  You need to put someone in front of them that can inspire them.  Leave the sales transaction up to the sales team, build interest and excitement for the product up to the evangelist.
  
• Building a product and selling it is just 30% of a launch (my take on it).  You need someone to continually look for ways to promote the product on a micro-interaction level.  Be it whitepapers, speaking at local groups or even through blogging and social network sites.
  
• Customers need to be ‘connected’ to the product to build loyalty and honest feedback.  Nothing makes your IT product more replaceable than a customer feeling like they have no feedback loop or someone they can identify with.  Did you notice the recent Microsoft commercials about ‘Windows being my idea’?

So how do you position the need for a product evangelist?  Moreover, how do you convince the ‘brass’ that one is needed?  My current employer does not formally recognize the role, however I believe that each leader in the IT organization informally plays the role.  I think a large part of that is due to the fact that our IT department is viewed as a strategic partner in business decisions and efforts.  For many organizations that’s a tough road to pave.  I’m admittedly lucky.

Those of you seeking to build a case for implementing an evangelist culture I would work to tie the five points above with specific plans or actions to address them.  Building legitimacy is key.  Challenge your current status quo by continuously providing competitive analysis and how you can overcome those challenges by bringing forth new technological advancements.  It’s a small step and the culture will not change overnight.  However, it’s a step in the right direction.  Remember, overnight success usually takes 3-7 years.  Even for Google!

I would be happy to read and repost any stories on how you successfully implemented an evangelist role or culture.  I think this is an important component of IT’s growth and I’m happy to share.

I’ve recently been reading a few articles about the future of application development and IT infrastructure management.  I believe that one of the main issues that face most IT pros is that we get caught up in the buzz word factory.  Today’s latest: Cloud computing, Web 3.0, etc.  What we fail to realize when we speak about the future of our architecture is the changing dynamic of our end users.

We, as a profession, need to realize that the end user is really what keeps us working.  It used to be that the goal of any application was to cater to the least common denominator, the weakest user.  If we could get that person to be productive and make less mistakes while using the software we wrote, then it was a success.  I believe that the paradigm has shifted.

I attend meetings every day where a user has created an application using Excel or Access.  Typically these applications have a degree of sophistication that amazes me given the lack of formal training and IT processes.  I’ve come to realize that most of the folks that work on these have ‘grown up’ in a technology enabled life.  I’m not just talking about 20 something's here.  The level of sophistication spans all generations.  For example, my father called me the other day to inform me that he updated his weather station so that it automatically FTP’s data to his website.  We are talking about a guy who no less than five years ago would ask me how to configure his email account. 

As a technologists we need to start thinking about embracing this trend.  We need to stop thinking about the lowest common denominator and begin thinking about how to enable users to ‘mash up’ or create their own technology solutions.  We can see this trend in BI trends. Analytic capabilities are being pushed to the end user.  No longer is a static report acceptable.  Users need and want the ability to drill through data, create their own reports and share with their peers.

Perhaps we, as technologists, need to re-explore the promise of SOA.  Not as core architecture, but a way for end users to plug-in, utilize the centralized logic and resources so they can leverage tools to make applications that work for them.

My advice for IT pros and lowest common denominator of users is the same: Adapt, or become obsolete.

The last few weeks I’ve used two new technology offerings that I thought were just fantastic.  Here are my reviews:

Google Voice 

I received an invitation to beta test the new Google Voice feature about a week ago.  Basically Google voice provides you with a phone number, a local one at that, that you use to hook all your phones up to.  When someone calls this number you can configure your settings to ring your cell, work and home phone.  Setup was a breeze!

Additional features include VM notifications via text message, gmail, etc.  They also let you call out using the phone number.  You select a contact, click call.  The service first calls your cell, then calls the other party.  Very cool.  However, my favorite feature is the voice to text.  I’m not sure about you but I hate listening to VM’s.  I can scan an email a lot faster than I can listen to a complete VM.

There is some room for improvement.  The voice to text is sketchy at best.  I found that during some limited testing  the VM to text missed more than it got correct.  The other thing I didn’t like was the fact that when someone first calls you (read the first time) from a number the service asks for the callers name.  A few people I had test the service found this annoying at best.

I’m looking forward to more testing…

Verizon Fios

The other offering is from Verizon Fios.  Verizon just release a new set of ‘widgets’ available via its Fios TV service.  They added widgets for Twitter and Facebook along with a few others.  I was a bit skeptical at first.  I mean how easy could surfing your Facebook be using a remote?  To my surprise Verizon’s developers made it easy and intuitive. 

Now for the really cool thing.  Verizon is taking applications to develop widgets for its service.  I’ve signed up and will post again when I get the SDK!

I’ve recently found a site named dzone.com.  Dzone is a lot like Digg.com where you can vote articles up or down based on its merits.  What makes Dzone.com different is that it’s Technologist centric but not biased towards any one technology.  There are articles from Enterprise Architects, UX Designers, Developers, and IT Management (links are sprinkled with all kinds of views).  I have found more interesting articles here than anywhere else. 

It’s a great community and I would highly recommend that any serious technologist book mark this site, read it often, and participate in the voting and discussions.  Not to mention it’s a well designed site.  The Ajax scrolling feature is hot!

Today I was speaking with some co-workers about the various Cloud players out there.  Specifically we were talking about Microsoft's Azure service vs. other offerings like Amazon.  Amazon will actually give you full control over a virtual OS like Microsoft Server 2008 or Linux.  Essentially a VM.  Where as Microsoft’s offering requires you to code against an API to take advantage of its architecture.   The initial gut reaction to Microsoft’s implementation is why in the world would someone spend the time to specifically build an application to fit Microsoft’s Cloud?   You could just as easily make a VM and upload it to Amazon’s service?  Microsoft could easily implement the same with their Hyper-V virtualization technology.

Let’s assume for a second that Microsoft is looking beyond the public cloud.  Now this starts to make sense.  At the enterprise level there has to be some reservations about opening up applications to the public cloud.  I work in Healthcare and there is no way I could go to the CIO with a straight face and say that it’s a good idea to put all of our applications and data in the public cloud.  I imagine it’s much the same for banking, government, etc, etc. 

So let’s now look at what could be Microsoft’s strategy in terms of a private cloud.  Setup a cluster of Windows Servers, SQL Servers, and some cloud management servers and now you have a private cloud.  To deploy additional application resources you don’t need to spin up a new VM or physical box that needs to be named, patched, copied, assigned an IP or managed.  Your Production Support staff or automated system simply scales the application.  Additionally, license management for these resources is already taken care of at the cluster level.  How about licensing around CPU usage?  Now when your web apps run heavy between 9am and 8 pm they automatically scale out.  At night they are reduced.  SQL processes that run at night then scale up.  Disaster planning becomes a breeze.  Your large machines with tons of memory and cores should be fully utilized, not sitting idle eating up electricity and cooling resources.  It’s a great scenario, the OS and infrastructure are completely abstracted from the applications.  Now building applications that use the API make complete sense.

Microsoft swears that this will never happen.  Their current position is that Azure should be another ‘choice’ and should never be implemented at the clients site.  I would argue that there might be a high demand for it.  Enterprise application providers will eventually demand it.  I think Microsoft has an opportunity to introduce a real game changer in Enterprise Architecture because if they don’t, someone else will.

As an Enterprise Architect, would you ever be interested in a private cloud, or would you always use the public cloud?