What Happened to Flexibility?

Peter Yared posted a very good article called "What Happened to LAMP?". He identifies the hidden cost of the new infrastructure software as one of the reasons why LAMP is not penetrating the enterprise.

I believe that it is the inability of current enterprise IT to support any change that makes any additions/replacements to infrastructure software so difficult. Last week I visited one of the largest global banks to talk about their plans for the new infrastructure software. And this bank has a policy in place that restricts the number of changes to their IT infrastructure - they can only deploy changes once a quarter and every such release breaks something and sometimes the damage is substantial. They actually showed me a report of emergency IT changes over last one year. It looked like this:



So every time they bring a new system in or change an old one the number of fixes goes dramatically up.

And until we solve the problem of sustainability of the current enterprise IT we can only dream about any new software infrastructure. And in the meantime we will be limited to four changes a year so that we have enough time to fix what broke...

Skype needs you

Let me be more precise: Skype needs you in Prague and only if you are a great software developer... The company plans to hire about 20 percent of the product-engineering workforce in Prague and I've learned about it from a huge Skype job advertisement that is posted next to the HP's sales office.

I am really happy to see companies to open their development centers in Prague. On one hand it creates more competition for the talent but on the other hand it produces more and more experienced people with global skills. So while Skype needs us we need even more companies like Skype...

We love to print

A few weeks ago I had 100 of my Flickr pictures printed by Big MOO, Print Machine. Big MOO works for Moo Prints (more about the company here) and my pictures were printed on MiniCards - small cards approximately half the size of a normal business card. MiniCards are fun to look at, the website is well integrated with Flickr and the print service worked flawlessly. Little MOO, Print Robot did a really good job:

Hello Roman

I'm Little MOO - the bit of software that will be managing your order
with us. It will shortly be sent to Big MOO, our print machine who will
print it for you in the next few days. I'll let you know when it's done
and on its way to you.

In the meantime you can track and manage your order at:
http://www.moo.com/account

Remember, I'm just a bit of software. So, if you have any questions
regarding your order please contact customer services (who are real
people) at:

http://www.moo.com/service

Thanks,

Little MOO, Print Robot

MOO "We love to print"

South Park Mac vs. PC

This is what happens when you combine Get a Mac and the South Park:

The Economics of Abundance

Back in the nineties I worked for Powersoft and from time to time I had to go to Moscow for a business trip. And there you could have bought CDs full of software on a corner for a few bucks. I was very upset to see Borland, Inprise, Borland, CodeGear Delphi and not PowerBuilder on those CDs. It was obvious to me that once you take the price out of the price/performance equation it is only performance that matters. Nobody will copy an inferior product that is free and so the superior product can gain a big piece of a market share very quickly.

What I did not know then is that this one of the aspects of digital goods and it is called the economics of abundance. You can read more about it here and here.

The New Czech National Library

One of my friends once told me that she prefers to stay in the Four Seasons Hotel in Prague. Apparently it is the only place in the city where the view of the castle is not spoiled by - the Four Seasons Hotel. In a few years she will have to read a book in the new library reading room (picture below) to enjoy an unspoiled view of Prague castle.




As you can see on the following pictures the new library building (in case it will be actually built) will be visible from everywhere else...

Does innovation matter?

Older and more experienced Radovan complains about enterprise IT that SUCKS. His point is that years of commoditization and vendor consolidation brought the costs down but it did not increase the business/IT alignment. Solution may come from a completely unexpected direction: startups. Read more about it in this Infoworld article.