Tech will eat itself

I’ve been covering IT, and its newer acronym, ICT, for nearly ten years. In that time I’ve had the joy of watching the trends go around, and around. I’ve watched hype become reality, usually in a far longer time period than the vendors would like, and I’ve watched marketing fizz become dot–com failure, or Y2K fizzle, or last years’ ‘next big thing’.

Beyond the hype these days is a lot of technology that can do some truly amazing stuff, provided it has been properly implemented. This, not surprisingly, is usually where the problems come in. Technology that looks great on paper isn’t necessarily going to fit into XYZ company’s IT infrastructure as easily as the salesperson’s PowerPoint presentation popped up on the boardroom projector. And it frequently doesn’t.

Beyond problems of hardware incompatibilities, network peculiarities and application conflicts, however, is the data. Data is what lies at the heart of technology. Data is its reason for being. If we did not have data that we need to capture, store, transport, analyse and save, we could probably go back to sending smoke signals or writing on trees. Of course, what we’d be smoking or writing would be data in any event. *wink*

But I digress. The point is that the technology is not it. The Internet is the world’s largest data storage and transport system. Every CRM, BI, ERP and ‘pick another acronym’ application exists solely so that companies can create, store, capture, manage, save and analyse data more efficiently and more effectively.

So what do these companies do? As far as their data is concerned, not much. These tech–consumers spend millions, and billions on tin, applications, consultants, and techies. But they seldom bother to clean up their data. In many cases (and I’m being kind here) they do not know what data they have, or where it is.

Yes, they have storage, and backups, and archives — electronic and paper. And yes, they have transactional systems which house terabytes of the stuff in more structured formats. And they have users with n number of desktops and laptops and PDAs and mobiles and memory sticks, all of which house company data. But no one person or system knows what everything is or where it is.

If you don’t believe me, ponder your bank, and the different bills you get, call centres you deal with, and names you get addressed by. I’m Mrs Perry Gunnion to one of my bank’s divisions, Miss SJ Perry to another and Ms SS Perry to a third. If I am dealing with the call centre about my credit card, I cannot ask questions about my cheque or debit card. The systems do not link, the data is not shared, and my bank thinks I am three different people. If it could link me up via my identity number, it might just grasp the reality of my singularity. But it can’t, because those large, unwieldy systems don’t speak the same language, or it won’t, because doing a data clean–up in a bank that is over a hundred years old would be a mammoth and extremely expensive exercise.

My point? Well, where exactly are we going with all this? Security–wise it is a disaster. My bank has more copies of my ID than it reasonably could ever need, and it does not know where they are. If I had to ask it to produce all of the data and documentation it has on me, which certain legislation will require it to do pretty soon (relatively speaking), it would be in a wee bit of a tight spot. And so, I’ll wager, would any other large institution, and a host of smaller ones too.

Between ourselves, by which I mean the users generating data, the organisations creating and accumulating data, and the other organisations developing applications to manage said data, we’ve created a monster. And now we have to manage it.