Entertaining and informative reading, Ethan Zuckerman’s notes on his talk at ETech, “The Cute Cat Theory”.

A couple of excerpts to draw you in, but you should go read it for yourself.

Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers.

Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.

and

Based on my Tripod experience, I’d offer the hypothesis that any sufficiently advanced read/write technology will get used for two purposes: pornography and activism. Porn is a weak test for the success of participatory media - it’s like tapping a mike and asking, “Is it on?” If you’re not getting porn in your system, it doesn’t work. Activism is a stronger test - if activists are using your tools, it’s a pretty good indication that your tools are useful and usable.

When I was working in the online dating space, I assumed the deluge of porn was a function of our being the intersection of people who were single/horny and willing to use their credit card to buy things online. Now I’ll have to re-think that assumption, something I probably should have done long ago based on the presence of porn comments in my spam filter.

I don’t recall any activism in the dating business, but maybe it just never made its way over to me since I was focused on security and fraud.

But I digress…

The real point of the talk is about activism, not porn, and more specifically about how activists effectively use social networking tools to align the interests of people who share pictures of cats, drawing in the cat sharers of the world (who far outnumber the activists) as collateral damage.

That’s not to say this approach is perfect–he explains how the Chinese government has engaged in a game of measure and countermeasure censorship, but in general, it provides an interesting example of how activist signal benefits from cute cat noise and the unintended conseqences of both.

The enterprise need to change how it provides services to the desktop.  What services do the users really need from us and how can we continue to provide them?

Internet/Intranet Web Services

More and more of the services we use are based on the big bad Internet standard W3C.  The enterprise needs to deliver these services with out proprietary tools that limit what computing systems they can be run on.    see: http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/.  Oh and maybe we should start moving some of this out of our costly data centers and on to systems like Amazon EC2.

Email

The Internet community has developed email standards that serve millions of accounts.  IMAP/POP and SMTP deliver email to client computers with lowest cost and in the most effective manner.  The time when an enterprise can afford to supply email from internal system has left us.  Tools such as Gmail/Postini or Zimbra can deliver email without the need for any infrastructure or staff.  Just move the MX record folks.

Calendaring

Calendaring is an interesting problem.  The enterprise seems to think that Notes or Exchange can deliver the goods, yet neither of these can deliver free/busy to the extended family that is our supply chain.  Since standards such as CalDev are not deployed, we have to fall back to something like Salesforce.com and Google Calendar or Zimbra to fix this now.

Instant Messaging

Instant Messaging is both the bane and the boon for end users, we hate it but we have to have it.  What works out in the real world: XMPP / Jabber.  You can put your own in and link out or just use what is out there depending on your needs and fears.

Desktop applications such as word processing, data management, etc..

The desktop software industry would make you think that you have to run Windows so that you can have the applications you need.  While I am a bit of a Mac fan boy mostly due to a bit of ego and the enjoyment of fine hardware the software that Apple supplies fills the needs of many many individuals.  The only issue for Mac in the 2009 enterprise is the fact that we have to run on the existing hardware that we cannot afford.  While there are some who  actually need Microsoft Office as well as some who need Photoshop, the vast majority do not.  Open Office is the great wedge we have to fill this gap.  Open Office is also a big stick and being a large software package it needs significant support.  Systems like Google Docs are now good enough for most work and the collaboration tools they provide go way beyond anything commercially available.

File storage

There are two major needs for file storage: First is for end users to keep stuff around for others and to share.  Second is for backup of local data.  While it is a grand vision to keep all of your data in the Cloud with Google Docs, Dropbox, or Backpack; users will make files and want to manage and keep them.  The enterprise must provide services to manage that data.

Computing to support the above items

As you can see from the above list of services the actual desktop does not really matter that much.  If it supports a standards based browser such as Firefox, an email client like Thunderbird and some sort of networking you are in the the pink.  Today the key is the cost of ownership and what you need to support that desktop are where you get hit!  What do we really need to do in the enterprise, Count-em, Authenticate-em, Update-em. We have to stay away from targeted solutions that limit the OS we are using.  Looking at the existing hardware in the enterprise we are limited to something that is x86 based.  In the final analysis Linux is the right tool for the time.  You need very little to be a Linux shop:  LDAP, SYSLOG, maybe SAMBA, and wine for the needy.  For now, no viruses, no spyware, etc.; how much money and time does that save?

Pull down Ubuntu 8.10 and install it!  Start a project to really save money in your enterprise!  The savings here are real as are the productivity gains, the improved user satisfaction, and complexity reduction.  Overcoming the inertia and thinking differently about your services is hard.  The morass of legislation along with corporate governance rules may scare some off of this but simplifying your environment and freeing up resources to improve the speed of the enterprise is the goal here.

If you do this please help by contributing resources to the community.  It pays you back instantly!

- Bob

The current enterprise infrastructure is expensive, designed and based on the need to preserve the status quo rather than deliver optimal services. Thinking in terms of services we must deliver, the platform becomes less and less relevant. Look at the percentage of services we can get from the Cloud (both external and internal), the platform becomes nearly irrelevant.

We have to “buy” the most cost-effective platform. Microsoft Windows is not cost effective — it requires its own set of services just to provide a minimal platform. No, it will not all go away with Linux, but many of them do, or become a much smaller problem and require a lot less engineering & architecture to provide required services.
Change happens in volatile times.  This is a volatile time…

Bob

As we talk about the shifts in computing from the mainframe to the PC, or from the enterprise data center to the cloud the big question is Trust.

Do you trust your employees?
Do you trust the programmer?
Do you trust your ISP?
Do you trust the system in the cloud?
…..
Do you trust yourself?

Over the last several decades we have changed the way we use computers and our relationships with them have also changed. When we were using the mainframe computer the trust boundaries were a lot different. Punch cards in, Paper out. The boundaries there were pretty clean, oh yes there were disks and tapes, but no network and it was all behind the “firewall” of the viewing window into the computer room and the computer operator. First we added terminals and you could access the mainframe from outside that picture framed room! Next came the remote terminal with a MODEM or a direct wire and all of a sudden you did not have to be in the same building or the same country to access the mainframe. Yet it was still constrained by the lack of inter-networking and the amount of data that you could get into a single computer…. See where we are going here?

Fast forward to today. The keyboard controller on the computer I am typing this on is pretty close to the base model IBM 360 from 1964! We have Google with the biggest set of data centers in the world, well commercial world. Networks span the globe and millions of computers are connected together. You and your closest friends in your favorite country over the pond are a few networks hops away.

You trust the Firefox add-in Foxmarks to keep track of your book marks across multiple computers but do you trust them to keep sync your passwords?

Foxmarks does a nice job of syncing your bookmarks between computers and it will also sync your passwords by encrypting them locally and then syncing them. This changes the attack vector from however you manage your passwords to attacking the tool, attacking your key, and attacking you. The game has changed.

You “trust” your PC to protect the files on your computer, do you trust Google Docs with that same data?

While trusting your PC is dubious at best, moving your data to Google Docs again changes the risks. Is there more risk when your data is on Googles’ servers or on your PC? The risk profile changes, your data is safe in Google from the physical loss issues when it is stored on a single computer. But, that data is only protected by the password you set on Google.

You trust Amazon with your credit card do you trust them with your corporate applications and data?

We trust for different reasons some good and some bad. We trust Amazon with our credit card because they have a reputation of protecting your information and your credit card company protects you from some of the risks of misuse. With Amazon S3 storage or EC2 computing you are now moving your data to the Amazon cloud and you are moving the computing from your local computer to the Amazon computing center.

A am an advocate of moving your data off of local machines and out on to the “cloud”. I believe that computing in the cloud has great advantages. Protecting your data and managing the risks around the data is not something to be taken lightly. Trust is a part of the equation.

—-
The title of this post comes from the soundtrack album from the first Batman movie, the song is Trust by Prince..

Hello,

My name is Bob; Chandler and I have known each other and worked together for several years. He kindly invited me to be a guest author on the Cubicle. I have been spending a lot of my time in IT Security thinking around alternate computing styles and ways to get the cost out. With the modernization of the Internet, broadband access expansion, and high speed wireless data gives us some interesting new ways to run a business. This is the first in a series and I hope a good discussion around new computing models.

If you still have a small amount of credit in this crazy market you can build and mobilize your business without building big buildings, data centers, or buying lots of new computing hardware. So lets build a business! And buy a few new toys.

If you have an office you have to equip it with Internet access and I would make it wireless. Get the best, it fastest Internet service you can afford. Buy a decent router that has at fast wireless For around $500 get a good double sided color ink-jet printer that has wireless, fax, scanner,etc. You will need one real land line and a REAL phone that does not need batteries. Note that you can maybe save some money and hassle if you set what is called e-fax or electronic fax. (more on this later, there are alternates!)

You need email , the world uses email to do business. For $50 per year per user you can get a Google email account with your own custom domain, web hosting, calendaring, document, storage, and on-line editing. Add a few dollars and Google will provide you advanced features in email controls, filtering, and archiving. Good solid enterprise class tools, storage off of your local computer to keep your data safe and a decent environment to work in.

Now how are you going to access all these fine tools and data? I am a big fan of mobility so I would issue laptop computers and cell phones. But lets be smart about this.

In keeping with the lower cost model (the machine has to have WIFI) lets get a bit lower tier laptop and here is the shocker; run Ubuntu Linux on it. Most of your day to day work will be in Firefox as it works very well with Google. When you need offline access Ubuntu has Open Office and make sure you have the 3.0 version so you are more compatible with all the Microsoft stuff out there. For almost all of your needs you will not need to purchase ANY software! Over time we will talk about applications that will just get the job done for you.

We still need telephones and in today’s world I feel it is important that everyone have a telephone. This is going to cost you a bit of money but the productivity is worth it. With all that nice Google stuff out there you need your email, calendar, and data access on the phone. Well guess what Google got together with some other folks and built a phone operating system called Android and with HTC and T-Mobile made the first Android phone. The phone is good, T-Mobile is getting better all the time so for around $150 for the phone and around $75 per month you have all you need. When you get the phone you sign into your Gmail account and it pulls down your email,contacts, and calendar in just a few seconds.

So now you have the basic end user computing hardware and software you need to operate. No software licensing costs, better performance and best in class communications.

Oh hey maybe a business plan would be cool, but you knew that already. Welcome to Enterprise 2.0 and End User Computing 2.0.