Stardust Global Ventures

For some readers, this post will feel like scraping the asphalt, then rubbing rock salt in the wound. If it feels that way, you might want to get used to the feeling. It’s here to stay.

I’ve written about communications technologies for many years, from every angle. But that isn’t all I do. While I’ve worked in small startups, unlike many of my colleagues, I’m deeply entrenched in enterprise architecture at the Fortune 100 mindset too. I see things from more than one angle. Working as the advising technical architect to a very forward-thinking CTO of one such company, my views of the enterprise embrace new technologies like cloud computing, mobility, netbooks and the iPad in different ways. Hanging with my enterprise architecture colleagues sometimes heightens the chasm I see between emerging technologies and reality. Hence, this rant.

Enterprise 2.0 is bandied about far too often these days and I want to debunk it. Enterprise 2.0 is the Johnny come lately, gotta get on Web 2.0, geez we’re so current mantra that’s overly popular in some circles today. So let’s be clear. Web 2.0 is dead. It’s last decade. It was nothing but fantasy to begin with. Web 2.0 is PR spin for keeping current with technology. Keeping current with technology isn’t forward thinking. It won’t future proof your business. Keeping current is not rocking the boat while you’re motionless in calm water.

The real next generation enterprise never uses the phrase Enterprise 2.0. They’re too busy building the next generation. They’re impatient. They’re agile. They’re looking to run major project initiatives with a lean team of a handful of people, re-architecting global networks in shortened time frames. And they’re succeeding. They’re doing more, more quickly with a team of 6-8 people than they used to do with project work teams of 40 or 50. And they’re improving the bottom line while they do it.

This isn’t the enterprise where your daddy worked for 30 years. And neither will you.

This next generation enterprise is a lean and mean behemoth. Sounds like a contradiction, but it isn’t. It’s made up of a hundred thousand people. Not employees. Contractors. Oh sure, there are maybe a thousand core employees, but the new enterprise doesn’t lease or own office space. They contract with cottage workers around the world. They know timeshifting and placeshifting work to where the talent is leads to lower CapEx, lower OpEx, higher margins, and more profitable business. They know the best and brightest aren’t interested in moving to BFE to work on some boring account-focused project. These people want 12 projects at once. They are nimble, intelligent, proactive and aggressive.

This new enterprise understands cloud computing for what it really is – yet another buzz phrase that means something or nothing different to everyone, but has some key values at its core.

• The data center can be anywhere or everywhere. It doesn’t even have to exist. The data center can be web services connected to a server here with a database there. Anywhere.
• People can be anywhere and everywhere. And they are. They don’t have to work for you permanently. They just need to give you the right slices of their time and talent.
• The cloud can be anywhere. It is. It isn’t a cloud. It’s a network of clouds. It’s the Internet – a network of networks. It’s the same story we’ve been selling for 30 years, but it’s real.

Cloud computing is not about putting data centers in the cloud really. It’s not about putting services in the cloud either. It’s about the ubiquitous access of the cloud. I can get to the cloud from any device, any time, wherever I choose to work. That, my friend is cloud computing. Access to anything and everything. And that’s the real power behind openness. Not risking your data, but enabling the people who need access to have access. Cloud computing isn’t about the core of the cloud, but the access to the ends, wherever they may be.

Often the ends will and do exist inside the cloud. That’s what makes them most accessible.

In this new enterprise, things like this will happen:

That’s what Lotus Notes replication might look like on an iPad. Say what? Yeah Notes on the iPad. Or iPhone. Or netbook. Or anything that you use to access the cloud. From anywhere. Any time.

How? The cloud baby. It’s in the cloud. It’s called desktop virtualization and it’s spreading across those old enterprises in prototypes, beta tests and early implementations right now. Sure you hear about server virtualization, and it’s a big deal. A really big deal. It’s the green initiative those enterprises are talking about. But you know what? They don’t care about green, they care about money. And for a big enterprise with multiple data centers that green is the color of money. They’re reducing electricity costs by millions with server virtualization.

Desktop virtualization is green money colored too. No longer will the enterprise sign a master agreement to buy new laptops every 3 years from Dell, HP or anyone else. Why? They don’t need to. They won’t have to. Businesses hate that relationship and this is a profitable way out. It’s as green as a thousand dollar bill. A shipping container full of them.

There’s another green effect in play. Employees require real estate. In the old enterprise, they have to have a place to go. It’s where check boxes get checked. Attendance. Tardiness. Vacation. The old enterprise, The dying enterprise. The model that’s quietly starting to fade.

The new enterprise employees are mostly teleworkers, but even that term holds less meaning. Mobile solutions deliver cloud connectivity to the resources. Today’s teleworker may spend several hours a day at a coffee shop. IM, SMS, VoIP telephony, online video provide more than just alternatives to cubicles and travel for meetings. Today’s worker is either a digital immigrant or digital native. For us it’s the preferred method of work. It’s incentive. It makes a job more appealing. It’s so very now.

For the aging worker, it’s not an invitation to leave. It’s an invitation and incentive to keep working. Companies are finding this truism every day. They call it retention of institutional knowledge. It’s a powerful, valuable tool in hanging on to the older workers who know the business details because they helped build it from the ground up over the past 30 years.

Where do these virtual workers go if they don’t have a cubicle to call their very own? Home. Starbuck’s. Portugal. Ireland. The beach. An island. Any place they like. Where they are doesn’t matter. Place shifting lets them be wherever they like. I say virtual workers because teleworkers don’t need to be employees. They can be contractors. Many are. Many more than you probably think. Pick a number. Think higher. Higher. You’re close. But it’s a growing number and the pace of adoption for this approach is accelerating.

Desktop virtualization will lead to the desktop being whatever the enterprise chooses for tools. The workstation? Whatever that contracted employee chooses to use, or within some supported set anyway.

Enterprise 2.0 as a Web 2.0 carryover? It’s not dead. It was never born. It’s just spin doctor hype from enterprises trying to gain some attention and hang on to relevance. There are many of these. BUT, there are many enterprises that are well into the migration toward the real future. In The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler laid out the vision of the electronic cottage back in 1980. Toffler looked at early personal computers and saw into the future. That future is here, and our electronic cottage today may be as small as a Blackberry or iPhone. The choice of personal computing tool is filled with options.

As for employer, who do you work for really? Your father’s company? Your employer? Do you go report in every day to your cubicle just so they can verify you’re still alive? I work for me. For my family. I work to make our life better. That might mean long hours, many projects, bureaucracy and BS. But it doesn’t have to mean imprisonment in an 8×8 cell so a supervisor can watch me to make sure I’m still breathing.

More and more, the power of business, from very small companies to the biggest global enterprise is the value of human resources. The staff. The talent. The brains. The engineers, sales pros, writers, designers, relationship managers who really fuel the stream of money. Not employees, but people who receive value in pay for providing value. The value proposition of permanent staff employees is changing. The equation is changing. The balance of power is changing.

It’s happening right now. Every day. In more major enterprises than you probably think. Why do I think this? I live there, and I’m helping make it happen. I’m changing the world of work for me, and by extension for you. Get ready.