This clip, the first of four parts, shows the direction in which they’re heading. I see a Max OS X influence near the bottom of the screen, but there’s a part of me that thinks elements of Aurora would be even better if paired with some of the surface computing concepts Microsoft has hinted at in its sneak peek at Windows 7.

What Dell would have done with its trademark is hard to determine, given that strict enforcement would have dulled the currency of the term among other vendors and users. Since it’s hard to imagine Dell offering a cloud computing service, the best I can come up with is the branding of its infrastructure products as “made for cloud computing,” or something of that ilk.

This is not, however, the only concept or buzzword in the industry that should be free from such shackles. Consider some of the following:

Service oriented architecture: Most people in the IT industry are by now familiar with the idea of loosely coupled applications that transform the way processes are carried out in the enterprise, but there’s still some debate as to what a “real” SOA is. Some companies have offered variations on this theme, such as SAP’s Enterprise Service Architecture, which has only added to the confusion.

Electronic Health Record: Maybe it’s everything about a patient’s history of care and treatment. Maybe it’s more site-specific (in which case electronic patient record might be used instead). It could be basic patient demographics. Possibly (if you’re in the States) it’s a compilation of a patients’ bills. Whatever it is, it’s not ready to be copyrighted.

Virtual Machine: With the mad rush to consolidate server infrastructure, it’s a wonder no one has tried to make a claim for the term we use to talk about those non-physical instances of compute machinery. Note to VMware, Microsoft and Citrix: don’t even think about it.

Smart phone: Some Mac loyalists would probably argue that Apple’s iPhone is the only device worthy of this description, but for the most part we’re still using it to talk about the potential of portable communication devices, not something to which any one vendor could lay claim.

Web 2.0: Should be avoided just for its likely brief shelf life. To do otherwise would be about as wise as trademarking “dot com,” which Sun (“We put the dot in dot-com”) came dangerously close to doing circa 1999.

Software as a service: Would anyone even want it? Salesforce.com might seem to deserve it based on its success with the model, but it still has a better ring to it than application service provider (ASP), which is now largely forgotten.

E-discovery: A piece of jargon that will only gain traction as new regulations come into force over the next year or so, and there are plenty of firms that would be all too quick to pay more attention to a supplier that had cornered the market on the phrase. Enterprise legal departments might even appreciate its value as a piece of intellectual property, but that’s beside the point.

I don’t think many companies are going to follow Dell’s lead, and those that do might opt for terms other than these. My point is that to improve our use of technology for business purposes we need to be able to discuss issues freely. And that means taking an open source approach to language.

Whether it’s Bell, Cisco, or longtime Olympic systems integrator Atos Origin, anyone who’s responsible for the behind-the-scenes technical work for the competition is quick to tout their association with the Games, and no wonder. Even if it’s not spelled out, there’s an easy mental association between the inspiring running, jumping or swimming performed by athletes and the network gymnastics performed by the underlying IT infrastructure. Whether the Olympics face the kind of challenges experienced by a regular enterprise is another matter.

Like most businesses, the Olympics are centered around a core competency: measuring and comparing the performance of human beings engaged in competitive physical activities. Although it’s the host city that may eat up most of the cost (and, if they’re lucky, enjoy the benefits of increased tourism), the real point of the Games is to relay information about who won, who lost, and by how much. Real-time data is seldom as real-time as it will be in Bejing this year.

You can break that down into some core functions and processes, almost all of which are supported by IT: timing and scoring, scheduling, and the broadcasting of information to the media and to various Olympics Web properties. In some ways, it’s not that different from tracking the sales of a company’s products, marketing information about those products, organizing employees and tracking the activities of customers, partners and suppliers.

The major differences are around scope and scale. Scope in the sense that the Games are an enterprise with a fairly short life span. Building (and especially configuring) the IT infrastructure typically takes years of planning and an army of experts, but the mission of the Games is fulfilled (one way or another) within less time than the average company’s sales quarter.
From a scale perspective, it might be worth looking at plans for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, where lead partner Bell Canada is already at work on setting up a network with 15,000 IP-based ports connecting more than 10,000 IP phones, and 5,000 two-way radios. Expectations are for 5,200 laptops, 560 servers and 1,000 printers. The budget? About $343 million, which is probably a tad more than the average Canadian enterprise.
What the Olympic Games don’t do is evolve. If they are to be considered enterprises, they are closed down and rebuilt from scratch each time, often with different partners and players. In this they are more like point projects of the Olympic Committee than a living, breathing corporation faced with peaks and valleys of business demand. When the Games are underway, that’s the peak.
Best to think of the Olympics, either in Bejing or anywhere else, as the industry’s ultimate benchmark test. They may provide useful case studies of technology in action but in ones that push far greater extremes than the reality faced by everyday firms. For them, running IT well enough to get the job done day in, day out is more of a marathon than a sprint. That’s where the Olympian effort really comes in.

In the consulting firm’s latest Technology Forecast (once a book-length publication which has morphed into an online quarterly), the most intriguing comment on the industry’s future is PricewaterhouseCooper’s concept of an “intelligent business performance platform,” or IBPP. Such a system would combine both business intelligence software (the strategic) with business process management and business rules management (the operational), all integrated and running on top of a company’s IT infrastructure. It’s not going out on too much of a limb to suggest disparate enterprise business applications might one day consolidate into something more cohesive, but PwC is drawing the big picture that the rest of us can use as a blueprint.

“Fortunately, BPM and BI technologies can be implemented slowly,” the report adds. “They are not rip-and-replace solutions but approaches that can be added incrementally to an IT infrastructure and serve as targets for the migration of existing business processes at a pace determined by the company’s need for business process efficiency.”

The IBPP could help explain, for starters, where the next wave of software mergers and acquisitions might lead. It makes sense, for example, that the major BI players have all been gobbled up by the companies that are also dipping their toes or own a piece of the BPM and business rules space, like SAP and IBM. For those that remain – companies like Appian, Workpoint, Idiom and Informavores, to name a few – their destiny is probably to follow in the footsteps of business rules firm Ilog, which was bought by Big Blue last week.

IBPPs could also provide the justification for a service-oriented architecture. According to PwC’s Technology Forecast, you could create such a system without one, but it certainly helps. “(It) works best when rigid, proprietary, command-and-control workflows are migrated to flexible, open, standards-based Web services,” the report says.

At the risk of getting a little carried away, PwC goes on to suggest IBPPs may need their own specific operator, which it has chosen to call a chief performance officer (CPO). No, I don’t think the title will catch on, but read the job description: “The CPO is in charge of consolidating, analyzing, and presenting analyses to senior management and to the board regarding the current state of companywide operations and identifying where performance deviates from expectations and from industry benchmarks. In addition, the CPO has responsibility for designing and helping implement key performance indicators for a given business within the context of a specific industry.”

Does this sound like a glorified business analyst, or is it what IT managers and CIOs are supposed to want to be once they grow up? I’m not really in the business of forecasting, but I’d say that if your company ever runs on something that looks like a IBPP, the IT department had better be the one driving it.

But some lies published on Facebook have more serious consequences. This week, Associated Press published a story by Meera Selva about Matthew Firsht, a British man who was awarded 22,000 pounds (more than $45,000) worth of damages after a former colleague, Grant Raphael, allegedly published false allegations on Facebook about Firsht.

Firsht sued Raphael for libel and breach of privacy after someone used Raphael’s computer to publish both personal information, and false allegations, about Firsht.

Raphael had claimed the posts were actually published by miscreants who crashed a party at his place. The court did not believe him.

Regardless of who published the information (and misinformation) about Firsht, this would not be the first time someone has used a social networking site for malicious purposes

AP quoted Firsht’s lawyer as saying the decision “is likely to send shockwaves amongst the social networking community” because there are “similar instances” of libel and breach of privacy that “go unchecked everyday.”

As of Friday, the shockwaves had not hit our offices. If you were skeptical in high school about the claims made by anonymous graffiti scribes on washroom walls, you should probably remain skeptical about personal information (especially juicy gossip) made through social networking forums.

Facebook, of course, is much more sophisticated than a washroom wall. It has 284 groups on ERP alone, while a search for groups about network security yielded more than 500 results. Though it doesn’t depend heavily on any new technologies (unless you consider the Internet, the database and the graphical user interface as new technologies), it’s an innovative method of using existing technologies to build a powerful networking and communication tool. The Firsht case should not surprise anyone. It’s just another indication that the information disseminated through communications media, no matter how sophisticated, is only as reliable as the person from whom the information originates.

I have two confessions to make. First, I have been a luddite, and did not sign up for Facebook until nearly a year ago, when I joined ComputerWorld Canada and made a profile for our group. The second confession is, I lied about my age to join Facebook. When I joined, I got following message: “Facebook requires all users to provide their real date of birth as both a safety precaution and as a means of preserving the integrity of the site.”

Whatever. My first thought was, “Holy cow, how gullible do you think I am?” Instead of entering my real date of birth, I chose a date in history that’s easy for me to remember. Without going into detail, my fake birthday is more than 30 years prior to my real birthday, which is probably why I keep seeing ads for items like dentures and Depends when I log onto Facebook. When friends and family asked why, I said I would never enter my real date of birth on a social networking site, because that information is highly sensitive. Not because I’m embarrassed to be born on such and such a date, but it’s because security experts at financial companies like MasterCard have decided that the best way to verify the identity of a caller is to ask his or her date of birth. Plus I was a little skeptical of Facebook’s claim that “you will be able to hide this information from your profile if you wish.”

Some would say I was paranoid, but as we reported Thursday, Facebook accidentally made its members’ dates of birth public on its beta site.
This ties into the issue of electronic medical records. One major argument against the entry of medical records into electronic form is the risk of a security breach if it’s not properly encrypted. While this is a valid concern, I would argue a person’s date of birth is actually more sensitive than his or her medical information. Given the choice between having my cholesterol count published on the Internet, and having some fraud artist (who already knows my mother’s maiden name and banking information) find out my date of birth, I’d prefer to get the medical information leaked.

Now, as Mark Steyn would say, I have to add the “of course” clauses. Of course some people have medical conditions that they would rather not be made public. Of course privacy is not the only impediment to the digitization of medical records. Of course it’s difficult to rob a person blind simply by obtaining his or her date of birth. This doesn’t change the fact that when a social networking site asks for your date of birth, it’s kind of like asking for your latest medical records. You just have to hope they’re smart enough to keep this information private.

Thanks a lot, Microsoft, for only announcing your subscription-based plan for users of your productivity suite after I just put money down on a brand-new notebook. Office was part of the bundle they offered us at Future Shop, but it still tacked down an extra couple of hundred dollars to the purchase price. Under the Equipt program, Microsoft will charge users for programs like Word, PowerPoint and Excel in much the same way that corporate customers are acquiring new software, and in some cases it could be a lot cheaper.

It will not, however, be free, which is why Equipt is unlikely to stem the tide of free software from Google and other companies. The boxed version of Office was never really in short-term jeopardy anyway. Those downloading OpenOffice and the like are probably more savvy than the average Future Shop customer, and probably not Microsoft fans anyway. For the rest of us, it will take more time before even Google’s productivity tools enjoy the kind of mind share that, for example, Word does. But as long as Equipt costs money, it won’t be able to compete with free, and eventually the features might be even more attractive than the price point. What Google et. al are offering aren’t simply loss leaders; they are market leaders-in-waiting.

IT managers could probably safely ignore Equipt were it not for the fact that home computing software is likely to be used for after-hours work tasks as well. Their choice of productivity tools could have a direct bearing on their acceptance and adoption of the tools that are given to them by their IT department, affecting the level of training required and even the kind of processes that are set up. Google Apps and OpenOffice work a lot like Microsoft Office, but there are some things they do better or worse, and several things they do a little bit differently. That can affect things when you’re working with distributed teams, some of whom are working off-site at home or in the field on their personal laptop.

For companies that have basically standardized on Microsoft, it might make sense to recommend Equipt, giving employees the chance to stay as up-to-date on the home versions of their software as the ones on their office desktops. For others, it might be irrelevant. It all depends on whether these software products remain simple productivity tools, and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest they aren’t. As word processing documents, spreadsheets and similar applications get integrated with enterprise business functionality (including analytics), what users deploy at home should be consistent with their corporate settings unless management decides productivity should be confined to corporate headquarters.

Although we still refer to “professional edition” and “home edition” for a lot of people, Microsoft Office is just “Office.” Equipt will be one of the ways the industry learns whether the distinction still has a lot of meaning for the consumers that get a lot of work done outside of “work.”

First, the good news: Overall, 87 per cent of all technology professionals said they would recommend IT as a career choice. Think about that for a minute. Despite all the budget constraints, the outsourcing, the user griping, the unrealistic deadlines and the manipulative vendors, a lot of people would encourage others to follow in their footsteps. That’s a ringing endorsement of this industry, and a healthy sign that IT presents the kind of variety, challenges and (yes) compensation that provides personal fulfillment.

But when you look a little deeper, the picture becomes a bit murky. For example, 60 per cent of those we spoke to said they are either satisfied or very satisfied with their job. Fourteen percent said they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. But there was another entire quarter of respondents, 25 per cent, who said they were “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied” with their jobs in IT.

You could blame this on the question, of course. What does it really mean to be neither/nor? In fact, it means a lot. It means you’re not sure how to gauge your overall job satisfaction, and that depending on your circumstances, outlook and options, the pendulum could swing either way.

Looked at another way, it’s possible to interpret that 25 per cent as being unable to make up their mind because their job is changing so much. They might have been hired on for their technology expertise but are now being thrown business-related responsibilities for which they are unprepared. Or they are in training mode, trying to adjust to a new reality and simply need more time to make up their mind about how satisfying it is.

Having that many people sitting on the fence is not healthy for the long-term retention prospects of the enterprises that employ them. Making them more satisfied could come down to pay – the average salary this year was nearly $78 – but it will also be about how well companies can define what the role of IT departments will be. If they properly understand what their responsibilities are, and if their efforts are recognized appropriately, they might at least say they’re satisfied. But even to have more IT people dissatisfied or very dissatisfied would be better, because the root causes would likely be easier to identify.

Can you really say it’s a good idea to go into IT when you’re not sure how you actually feel about it yourself? It doesn’t really seem to make a lot of sense. Unless . . . maybe 87 per cent say information technology is a good career choice because, their personal satisfaction notwithstanding, they still see possibilities in it. Buried within all the statistics around what ends up on an IT manager’s paycheque, perhaps we have stumbled on a measurement of hope.

“I realize there’s a temptation to identify with the founder of a company,” I said, “but he’s put a good succession plan in place. Ford Motor Co. managed to survive without Henry Ford, and I think Microsoft will survive without Bill Gates.”

I barely mentioned Steve Ballmer, because I wasn’t sure how well he would be recognized by a mainstream audience. Although he’s a familiar face within corporate IT departments, I’d argue he’s still not a household name. Here are a few of the things he needs to do next, whether he ever becomes one or not.

1. Make user education a corporate mission. We all know there are more features in Word, Excel and Windows itself that customers simply do not understand. As a result, they spend too much time and energy working around problems Microsoft’s products already solve. Ballmer should invest some marketing dollars in a “Did You Know That Windows Can . . .” campaign that highlights the work Microsoft’s developers have done.

2. Don’t leave the technical vision to Ray Ozzie. The former Groove Networks leader is capable of great insight into technology trends and writing extremely long staff memos, but it should be Ballmer who most clearly articulates the kind of computing environments Microsoft wants to help customers build in the next decade. The last thing he should want is to be seen as merely the sales guy. As Steve Jobs proves, you don’t have to write code to offer some inspiring thoughts on the management of information. Even Gates left too much of the heavy lifting to his subordinates during keynotes. Ballmer should try to change that.

3. Open yourself up as a case study. It can’t be easy running one of the world’s largest companies, so Ballmer should be able to provide CIOs and IT managers a unique perspective on how Microsoft uses technology to align itself with business objectives. He should talk about Microsoft walks the walk.

4. Don’t bash the competition. Microsoft is still dominant in nearly every market, so it makes no sense for Ballmer to bash Google, Apple or other rivals as he has in the past. Microsoft should be more focused on improving its products and growing its business, not swatting at what, in a market share sense, are still flies. There’s no need for the Scott McNealy approach here.

5. Start an open source project. Microsoft has stuck to the same business model for years, but what if its dream team of developers actually reached out to independent ISVs and offered them the same kind of ability to tweak future products as Mozilla does with Firefox, or the way Linux evolves? The company doesn’t even need to release the result as a commercial product (call it “Office Sandbox,” for example) but it would help the company start the kind of positive grassroots following it needs. The whole “shared source” strategy has only gone so far. And although it has released thousands of documentation around Windows and Office already, it needs to communicate something about the difference that’s made to the industry.

6. Engineer a smooth transition to Windows 7. After the Vista debacle (and by extension the XP fiasco), it’s hard to imagine things getting much worse, but demonstrate a willingness to let customers upgrade at their own pace. If companies like SAP are able to offer feature packages to customers rather than demand an ERP overall, Microsoft should be able to do the same thing with its operating system.

7. Partner where it counts. Microsoft’s agreement with Novell was supposed to usher in a new era of interoperability. That may have happened for Suse Linux customers (although there’s not a lot of proof yet), but what about more popular distributions like Red Hat? They’ve held out so far, but Ballmer should be working hard to change their minds.

8. Iron out your acquisition approach. Too much attention has been focused on the buyout of Yahoo and not enough on what Microsoft is doing with the firms it actually managed to purchase. This includes Fast Search and Transfer. We should be seeing the beginnings of a new enterprise search strategy from Microsoft by now. Where is it?

9. Get friendly with the social networking crowd. So what if Microsoft invested in Facebook? Microsoft should be developing for Facebook, just like all the other ISVs that want some exposure to an often technically savvy audience. Imagine if Microsoft created something that make social networking easier, safer or easier to integrate with its applications. That would change a lot of people’s perceptions about its laggard approach to the Internet.

10. Don’t give up on spam. Bill Gates predicted the world would be free of the unsolicited e-mail scourge by 2006. Microsoft had the talent to deliver, and still has. Ballmer would make a considerable mark at Microsoft, and within the IT industry in general, if he could marshal he resources to make good on his predecessor’s promise.