I received an interesting email the other day.  The link was to a Microsoft article announcing an upcoming release of a ‘Cloud Appliance’.  I spoke about how great this would be for the world of computing in a blog post back in February 2009.  I forwarded the article to the folks I work with in Server/Network and they lost their minds.  A system fully capable of abstracting hardware and software!

As someone who works in a heavily regulated industry, and rightfully so in my opinion, this is the best thing to come along since virtualization.  There is no one in my industry that doesn’t recognize the benefits of a cloud based architecture, but new regulations in Healthcare now dictate jail time for certain violations.  I’m less willing to take advantage of the architectural benefits and cost savings if I know there is a real risk of visiting a federal institution of time outs.  Long story short, I’m excited to see Microsoft enter this space. 

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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 think the recent comments by Steve Jobs have been well documented.  I don’t discount his evaluation of Flash.  It’s his opinion and it’s his company.  He should be able to do what he wants.  However, Job’s is putting a lot of money on one factor he has no control over.  Developers.  Dare I say that Steve Ballmer was right?  It’s Developer, Developers, Developers!

As a technologist I think it’s absolutely absurd to say that the adoption rate of HTML will be non-existent.  I wrote a Blog post back in January 2009 arguing that Silverlight would be adopted in spite of Flash.  I still feel the same holds true for HTML 5.  If you make an application ‘cool’ enough they will come.  I think that HTML 5 has real promise. 

The problem will be the adoption rate by developers.  Apple does not have enough market share to convince me to convert to HTML 5.  That doesn’t mean that it will not.  It just means that in the foreseeable future I have no plans to replace my Silverlight or Flash plugins by implementing HTML 5.  Completing an asp.net site will pretty much cost me as much as doing a Silverlight based site.  In fact, my UX guys will probably use Adobe Photoshop to do most of the images so including Flash probably won’t be that much either!

Secondly, I would argue that Apple is approaching a new phase in its life as a product company.  For the longest time Apple has enjoyed a dedicated following, otherwise known as ‘Fanboys’.  Remember your old art teacher in grade school with the Mac?  I bet he/she is still a rabid Mac fan.   Unfortunately Apple is beginning to appeal to the masses.  They are no longer a niche player in the world of computing.  I know countless Apple converts who until recently could only brag about the sleekness of Apple products.   Now  they complain about compatibility, battery life and gasp!, crashes and viruses. 

The point is that Apple will eventually need to cater to these new expectations and user base.  Even if only some of them.  They have a taste of success and they are going to want to keep it, if not for the sake of their shareholders.  At some point they may have to, and should, listen to their customer needs.  Including the support for Flash and Silverlight might be one of the many things they need to do.  It will be the converts that lead the growth for Apple not the current base of dedicated art teachers!

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.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of working with Microsoft’s 2008 BI stack. I say pleasure because Microsoft has really pulled out the stops.  The architecture is sound, the performance is outstanding.  Gartner has ranked Microsoft’s BI offering in the top quartile of providers.  This puts them in the same league as Cognos (Oracle), Business Objects (SAP) and usual players in the space.  I have used Cognos and Business Objects in the past and have had the opportunity to use or see most of the other vendor offerings.   Each Vendor offers tradeoffs.  Below is my experience with Microsoft’s BI solution up to this point.

Microsoft’s BI offering is centered around SQL Server.  In this case my team and I used Microsoft server 2008 and SQL Server Enterprise 2008.  I wish I could tell you it was because we wanted to take advantage of the performance improvements, However our logic was simpler.  If you’re going to build a new stack just use the latest and greatest.  The most important thing to the team was to use SQL Server 2008 so that we could take advantage of what R2 was going to provide.

The first thing that really struck us was the modular nature of Microsoft’s strategy.  SQL Server is the core, but in terms of delivery Microsoft relies heavily on the fact that most business users utilize Microsoft Office as their main office productivity suite.  It’s a safe bet considering that Microsoft has an incredible penetration rate in this space.  However, external facing customers might prove to be challenging in terms of delivery.  We chose to put a proxy between our Reporting Services implementation and the outside world.  This allowed us to implement URL rewriting and offer another level of security.  Unlike Cognos, which offers an easy to implement portlet we had to custom make a solution for implementation into our ALUI portal engine.  Of course all of this can be solved if you just use Microsoft Share Point.  This was not an option for us.

Typically I’d view this module nature as being a hindrance, or even a lack of integration features.  What we ended up finding is this is actually a strength of the Microsoft BI stack.  Microsoft has a great API/services to access all the functionality.   Building out a custom solution for integration was not that bad compared to the limited options for customization that other vendors offer.  For example, Users can natively access cubes and analysis right from Excel 2007.  However, because the API was so rich, we chose to write our own ‘Excel tab’ to make accessing and running analysis functions as brain dead as possible.  A solution that users appreciate.

So far, as a strategic play, Microsoft’s BI offering is proving to be a good investment.