The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be (Yogi Berra)

This past spring we attended a talent show at my daughter’s high school. Her dad was confronted with a shocking realization of just how much our society has changed. Do any of you recall, not all that long ago, lifting lighters in support of your favorite band or performer? Lighters are not permitted in the school auditorium for obvious reasons but technology still provides an outlet for the teens. During one performance by the most popular garage band in the school the room was gradually illuminated by the green glow of cell phones raised and swaying in tribute to the band. I found this both humorous and intriguing. First of all, I was amused that the gap between my generation and my daughter’s could be so easily characterized by the technology. Secondly, I was intrigued by the overwhelming proliferation of the technology among the students. It is not that I was surprised that so many students had a cell phone. But seeing all those phones raised at one time in a dark auditorium vividly demonstrated just how deeply technology has permeated our society.

No, I’ve not been living under a rock these past ten years. But physically witnessing the actual pervasiveness of the technology so effectively demonstrated by the eerie glow of the phones was humbling. I was reminded of what Ray Kurzweil describes as the “technology paradigm shift rate” (Kurzweil, “The Singularity Is Near”). While building a case for his thesis of humanity’s ultimate conquering of our biological limitations, Kurzweil points out that the telephone took about fifty years to reach levels of significant usage. In contrast, the cell phone took less than a decade. Such exponential growth and acceptance of technology has profound implications for those of us working in the technology field.

As new technologies gain acceptance at an increasingly accelerating pace, our dependence upon solid process architecture will only increase. You’ve heard it said that automating a broken process only increases the rate at which you break something. We are seeing an incredible acceptance of new and automated technologies driving at the heart of the data center. One such technology is virtualization. A Forrester report cited in Network World (8/21/06) claims that 75% of respondents to a recent survey “are aware of server virtualization technology, with 26% having implemented it and another 8% set to pilot it within the next year.” Vendors see the opportunity and are rapidly stepping up to the plate to offer their solutions in this space with promises of huge savings in hardware and the accompanying management, support and licensing overhead. I do not dispute these results. But I feel compelled to caution our data center managers: With the rate of acceptance of new technologies and the pace of change, you must have a solid understanding of how your processes enable the realization of business goals. You must have control over the variables, measures in place to make certain that the promises of new technologies may be appropriately scaled and personnel trained to make good decisions in the selection and application of these tools. Understanding WHAT is to be automated is a prerequisite to making an informed decision about HOW you design and implement a solution.