Dave Caruso: Cool new technology and all that jazz
David Caruso -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 5/1/2007
I want to talk about jazz music this month. Don’t worry: I’ll tie it all back to manufacturing.Jazz is about innovation and improvisation. One of the great pleasures is watching the art morph and grow. Every now and then someone will come along—a Charlie Parker, a John Coltrane, an Ornette Coleman—and break all the rules. They can take a classic popular song, turn it inside out, and deliver a breathtaking interpretation that no one had ever considered. And in doing so, they’ve created an entirely new interpretation of the music.
This brings me to the Microsoft Convergence event, which the vendor used to roll out its new round of products. What struck me is what these products could mean to the manufacturing user. Turning data into information may have moved into the realm of the user—and out of IT.
Microsoft Windows and Office are by far the most visible pieces of corporate business technology. Many believe Windows 3.0 fueled not only the client/server revolution, but the mass adoption of the World Wide Web, and computing in general. Think about what Microsoft did for the ubiquity of the PC, and the costs of computing. And the new Microsoft technology has one absolutely key element going for it: a mass of “regular folks” who actually use and praise it.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time studying what makes a technology or a philosophy take hold on a mass basis, and become the de facto standard. It takes a lot of things, but as Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point fame would have it, it’s the mass appeal—the coolness, if you will—that takes something new over the top.
Some believe service-oriented architecture (SOA) models may change the applications industry, and I agree that SOA will have a big impact on IT strategies at the high end of the market, and on the big global companies that wrestle with integrating specialty apps and complex topologies. But I’m convinced Microsoft’s new versions will ultimately have broader appeal and impact. It’s a breakthrough that may make business computing finally show up in productivity statistics.
At the end of the day, Microsoft’s new software demos raised some powerful questions about the architecture of ERP systems. Where will the boundaries lie? Office as presentation; ERP as database and process definition?
Like the great jazz innovators, maybe some new visionaries in the software industry will combine new metaphors with Web 2.0 and the Microsoft tools to reinterpret the classic computing models and create a whole new computing paradigm. These new tools, coupled with new insight, could spur a whole new round of manufacturing software innovation.
I’m not going to argue whether or not everything done was done right, or whether it will perform. The demos I saw stimulated my imagination for the next generation of applications. That’s something that’s happened too infrequently in recent years.
Are there new voices that need to be heard? Many in this industry believe the consolidation of vendors—and power—is stifling the creativity and innovation that makes our industry so much fun. The great Jazz innovators shot high and thrilled us. I hope this is the springboard for a new round of creativity.
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