A previous era saw the shift to legacy mainframe systems designed, developed, installed and maintained by a then new generation trained or self-educated in these technologies. We are now facing a major skills gap in maintaining these technologies.  The Baby Boomers who are retiring in large numbers are leaving with their knowledge. It is essential that the new generation of IT professionals be cross trained… new, younger people in the legacy technologies hand in hand with Web 2.0 (see Mainframe computing jobs vacant as the Baby Boomers who set up systems begin retiring with few educated to fill the spots http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sat-tech-jobs-ibmapr05,0,2110029.story).
 

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. We are seeing the same thing today with the rise of Web 2.0.  There is a new generation of  people who understand and have been trained in Web 2.0 in all its facets – wikis, Facebook, blogs, RSS feeds, online communities, crowd sourcing and more are going to conceive, install and build the new Web 2.0 environments that will change the way the world works. 

It is inevitable that Web 2.0 environments will support or displace the legacy mainframe systems.  I’d like to highlight some of the issues that will be important in that transition.

I remember ‘back in the day’ when business started to move from paper-based accounting systems to computerized systems running first on mainframes and later on smaller computer systems.  The migration path from one system to another involved keeping both going in parallel until the new environments proved stable and the organization adapted around it.  I would suggest that conceptually both environments can be maintained in parallel during the move from legacy systems to Web 2.0 environments, as was done in the past, yet at a far faster rate now.  Also it is important to understand that Web 2.0 requires organic growth that can take time in order to build the requisite communities.  So the task is to plant seeds, nurture them and allow time to see them grow.

Citizens will increasingly expect more personalization, as well as a more responsive and agile government. Web 2.0 will create healthy competitive tension in government capable of democratizing a sector, meaning giving it back to the citizens, including them in its various processes.  As citizens are experiencing major shifts in personalization, data control and accessibility through use of Web 2.0 technologies, businesses will also demand the same from government. 

The recent earthquake in China and the use of social networking tools by citizens and their government during the crisis demonstrates the potential for change (see: http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_THE_QUAKE_ONLINE?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-05-18-13-00-37). 

Watch for security issues.  Web 2.0 sites are vulnerable to attack by ‘enemies of the state’ and other malicious interests

The move from legacy to Web 2.0-based systems will minimize, rationalize and make things more transparent, which will enable everyone to see the inefficient work of the public sector.  e-government is capable of democratizing a sector, meaning giving it back to the citizens and including them in various processes

Governments, like every other employer, are desperate to attract and retain quality staff and ensure that employees work in an environment that is socially and technologically similar to their existing experience of the world.  Therefore, instant messaging (IM) and wikis are must-haves for these new workers.

Public servants will increasingly expect a work environment that reflects their interests, networks and ways of communicating with their colleagues and peers.  Web 2.0 technologies will influence the internal processes and cultures of agencies as much as interactions with citizens.

Engage stakeholders – citizens, internal users, and IT staff – with standardized Web 2.0 environments using well-founded change management tools to guide the transition out of legacy systems.

The ultimate destination of this transition will support the public interest by preparing citizens for a world of plentiful (and sometimes unreliable) information, and help excluded groups to take advantage of this information.

Envision government agencies with a high level of confidence regarding the identity of the online user.  They will be able to place people in control of the transaction and protect their privacy.  This is the online approximation of a person presenting a passport or other proof of identity document in-person to an agency.
(http://psnetwork.org.nz/blog/2007/04/29/5-principles-govt20/)

Several ideas were advanced from http://blog.executivebiz.com/government-web20-trends-for-2008/:

Due to the application of Web 2.0 in government, there will be increased interactions among users internal to the government and with citizens. Every interaction is an opportunity to learn of an unmet need, which is an opportunity to fuel innovation.

Enterprise mashups based on enterprise data are already an expectation among the workforce, but the deployment of this capability in government has been slow to take effect.  As government organizations see how others do it, the deployment of secure enterprise mashup capabilities should accelerate.

Knowledge workers need ad-hoc and situational data, which is dynamically integrated in small amounts. As more government enterprises deliver secure mashup capabilities, the ability of the government workforce to efficiently and effectively accomplish their mission should increase, which should have a positive impact on retention, fueling additional benefits to the government’s mission.

It is well known that John Kennedy’s vision of getting to the moon was accomplished through the mobilization of thousands of engineers in a huge program using large mainframes.  This can be done through the massive increases in computing power woven together with Web 2.0 collaborative tools.  Imagine what could be achieved?  Tackle something big to harness the power of Web 2.0, such as reinventing provincial health care delivery systems. 

This article was written with the assistance of Howard Oliver, CEO of What If What Next™, he is an expert in Web 2.0.

Originally posted on ITWorid Enterprise Insights May 30, 2008 by Paul E. Rummell

http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/insights/2008/05/30/legacy-modernization-in-government/

Cisco has come forward with a new vision for the data center. This may really be what I have maintained for the last 15+ years. The future will happen when the “computer is really in the network.”

This is Cisco’s first big shot in a war to control the data center of the future. This strategy, Cisco’s Data Center 3.0, envisions switches at the heart of the architecture with service regulated commodity status for the underlying technology. Essentially, the switches become the epicentre for running and controlling all IT decision-making. Cisco envisions the orchestration of infrastructure services from pools of servers, storage, and network resources over Gigabit Ethernet networks.

Cisco’s comments about the data center can be found in “Transforming Your Data Center One Project at a Time.” The following is a direct quote: “The emergence of the human network is raising individuals’ and organizations’ expectations about how technology, and their IT organizations, can support their objectives and evolving work styles. The data center IP network, as the platform that integrates, protects, and scales other IT resources, is central to the fulfillment of the human network’s promise. A process evolution from transactions to interactions is leading to the emergence of data centers built on network-based service-oriented infrastructures (SOI). SOI softens traditional server, storage, and network operation silos and allows well-integrated IT departments to treat their data centers as single functional units composed of interdependent, virtualized pools of storage, network, server, and application resources to better support applications and meet the challenges introduced by a more distributed interaction model across and between organizations.”

”Why is the network so integral to service-oriented infrastructure? According to IDC (Abner Germanow, “Why Is Networking Growing Faster Than the Rest of IT?” June 4, 2007), “Server virtualization, storage virtualization, and the federation of software applications, to name three examples, are all enabled by the network… As trends in computing evolve from consolidation back to scaling out and scaling up, the potential for the network to participate in the security, reliability, and management of that scale will rise.

”It’s not a bad vision, say industry analysts, and it is shared by server and storage manufacturers. Thanks to virtualization, the server’s role in the data center is increasingly being diminished. Virtual storage, virtual processors, and virtual memory, and maybe even virtual networks, are coming. The major server makers acknowledge that this is the future.  

Cisco is saying that because everything converges on the network, network architecture will make the overarching decisions on resource allocation. In other words, the control plane is collapsed onto the network.  

Here are some reference points. This announcement can be found at Data Center - Cisco Systems: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns708/networking_solutions_solution_segment_home.html

This announcement shows that Cisco is committed to a full virtualization strategy, which I wrote about in my blog post “Does Virtualization Equal ‘Bullet Proof’?”: http://blogs.itworldcanada.com/insights/2008/01/

Essentially, we are moving away from the era of computing just being an amalgamation of devices in the network. This has been a big break from the status quo for the last 50 years. Cisco’s move is a clever attempt to avoid being displaced and relegated to commodity status.

Other major vendors are following suit. For example, today Nortel released the announcement “Nortel Virtualization Solution Simplifies Network for Instant, Secure Launch of Unified Communications”: http://www2.nortel.com/go/news_detail.jsp?cat_id=-8055&oid=100239954&locale=en-US Nortel is trying to capture control of the virtual data center. Here is a quote from that release: “Nortel’s network virtualization solution enables enterprises and service providers to simplify their communications infrastructure by allowing resources to be made available in a collective manner and to be allocated as needed,” said Cindy Borovick, Research Vice President, Data Center Networks, IDC. “This maximizes the capabilities of their network, decreasing wasted resources. It also limits the equipment that needs to be deployed, delivering savings over the life of the solution. The integration with a server virtualization solution gives new options for end-to-end virtualization deployments.”

It will be interesting to see how all these initiatives play out.  In later posts, I’ll cover how Microsoft, IBM, SUN, HP and others want to play in this space.

I have to apologize for not posting in the last few weeks, as I have been commuting back and forth from India. It is a very exciting place to work. My experiences there will be the focus for some Enterprise Insights in the future. Once I’m back from my next trip and recovered from another round of jet lag.

Posted on April 30th, 2008 by Paul E. Rummell - ITWorld Canada