The Complexity Engine

Just to re-iterate the simple equation that is driving the IT industry:

Flexibility ≡ Complexity   

This flexibility means that any problem that arises, either business or technical, can be solved in a myriad of ways. There are no best practice methodologies in the IT industry, a problem faced is solved by a combination of whoever is asked and whatever is available. The ultimate outcome is that every, and I mean every, IT installation is an assembly of bespoke solutions built up over as many years as the company has existed.

This was clear to be seen during my time working for a large integrator. Being part of a team of very clever technical consultants we were constantly coming up with innovative solutions to solve complex infrastructure problems. We tried endlessly to package these solutions up in order to streamline the delivery to our various clients. But it never worked – and the reason why? Because when you walked in the door of a customer’s computer room you had no idea how they had done things in the past. Every installation was different. More worryingly most customers really had no idea how their things were configured.

 “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” is a philosophy that has been adopted by most data centre managers nowadays, although it could easily be translated into “Don’t try and fix it ‘cos you’ll break it!”. This problem is endemic across the entire industry, small businesses are as much a victim of this flexibility as the large ones but unfortunately they are unable to put the blame on an IT manager/department – they just have to keep paying the bills.

So where is this flexibility/complexity engine that is causing all this heartache?

Well it’s quite simple. In the absence of any independent global standards or best practice models that guide the delivery of technology into businesses we have relinquished control to the suppliers of our technology. The suppliers are in a mammoth arms race to sell more products and this has become the de-facto controller for the delivery of technology into businesses.

The world of IT product sales is unrivalled in its delivery of tactical solutions – if you don’t nail those weekly/monthly/annual targets you are toast – when I tried it I was toast! This pressure to shift product is now the driving force in IT delivery, and is exacerbated by “The Dick Smith Syndrome” which is the driving force behind most business users IT decision making . 

One of the best examples of this is the “cascading marketing initiative” which I saw while working for the PC vendors. Firstly a new message would be delivered from the silicon manufacturers in order to promote the features of their new chips. A couple of months later the PC manufacturers would bundle those same messages up into their product launches to the channel. These channel partners would then set out on their regional road-shows selling the new features to their excited audiences. Finally the techies would return to work and walk the corridors of their IT departments socialising these new features and getting excited about their impending delivery. Of course through all this the problems of implementation and integration were lost in the technology frenzy associated with the new products.

A good example is the recent hype in the media about “unified communications”. The ability to deliver this solution has been around for years but the current brouhaha is generated exclusively on the back of a new product released by “our friends in Redmond”. The initiative has nothing to do with solving customers problems, it is more to do with taking part in a targeted sales promotion. Not sure that message ever gets through to the guy signing off the business case?

The delivery of IT to an organisation needs to be part of a well planned strategic plan but too often it is a loose assembly of tactical tools that are layered onto the previous years solutions. If we rely on the messages from our suppliers we will never get out of the complexity hole we have created for ourselves, and they are voraciously digging for us!