Industry Commentary – Page 348 – IS Survivor Publishing

Market astrology (first appeared in InfoWorld)

“We have to plan for the future,” a systems executive told me recently. Well yes, that’s probably far more useful than planning for the past or present. It is, however, much harder.

Two weeks ago we explored the subject of worthless statistics and the odd preference so many people have for bad information over unbiased ignorance. (See “Pie charts and bar charts may bring comfort, but wisdom is another matter,” May 5, page 74.)

This week we talk about forecasting, an activity that fulfills the need many people have to know and plan for the future. Throughout history that need has created professions and industries. In the earliest days, the tools of the forecaster’s trade were tea leaves, entrails, the Zodiac, and crystal balls. More recently, tools like Doppler radar and computer simulations have been added to the arsenal.

Forecasting hasn’t improved much, but forecasting tools sure have. (A recent article in the local newspaper compared the performance of the National Weather Service, television meteorologists, and a guy who predicts the weather using a combination of Radio Shack gear and homemade tools. The backyard hobbyist won by a wide margin.)

And that brings us to the most pernicious forecasting tool yet devised: the market survey. How many articles have you read in this and other reputable journals presenting some industry forecast or other in which the future is presented as a fact: “Within five years, the market for bubble memory will grow to over $5 billion”?

Oops. Bubble memory flopped. It must have been personal digital assistants I was thinking of.

The accuracy of both market and weather forecasting begins to plummet beyond about one day into the future for the same reason: The systems we’re trying to predict are chaotic. And although the mathematics of chaos theory are daunting, one of its basic conclusions is pretty straightforward: When systems (actually, nonlinear systems) reach a certain level of complexity you can’t predict their future state very well.

Now what’s involved in predicting a future market? Oh, just the behavior of large numbers of individual humans. If someone would just invent Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory we could get somewhere.

Market surveys seem so scientific. But what are they really asking? “Do you expect to implement Windows NT Advanced Server in your enterprise within the next three years?”

Now who’s going to answer with an unequivocal “no?” We’re talking about a Microsoft product and a three-year planning horizon. And what does “implement” mean? Replace Novell’s NetWare? Or install a test server? Forecasts of NT Advanced Server sales have no value because there are unpredictable factors involved: Will Microsoft ship the next release on time? Will it have any crippling bugs? Will Bill Gates burn out, causing all of Microsoft’s customers to lose confidence? Will the sun turn nova and wipe out my capital-procurement budget?

Not that I want to single out NT Advanced Server. Whether it’s network computers or wireless data communication, any innovative technology just entering the market faces too many imponderables for forecasts to mean much. Why? Because market success depends as much on unanticipated details as on the basic ideas. Is the advertising campaign exceptionally stupid? Has innovation extended the life of a moribund technology? Did the designer misread the market?

So don’t let forecasts paraded as facts serve as a substitute for your own insight. Except, of course, for the enlightened predictions of your friendly IS Survival Guide soothsayer.

Satire alert

A few weeks ago, I expressed some concern about the Software Publishers Association’s and the Business Software Alliance’s admission that they inflate their software piracy estimates. (See “The Romans had some words for it,” April 7.) Some alert InfoWorld readers told me that the admission was a joke, originally published in the San Jose Mercury News and later picked up as fact elsewhere. By the time I read it in Edupage, the humor had been removed and it looked legitimate.

So here’s the situation: The numbers are still suspect for all the reasons expressed in the satire, but the SPA and BSA haven’t admitted it after all.

The mainframe is still dead. Your career doesn’t have to be. (first appeared in InfoWorld)

Back in my electric fish days I helped my French friend “Bullet” Micheloud develop a computer simulation.

Bullet had laboriously collected sex ratio data on two species of fig wasps (if you like Fig Newtons you don’t want to know – trust me). We ran the simulation on a Texas Instruments programmable calculator because I was a weenie, but not enough of a weenie to use a Hewlett Packard. We based our simulation on the theory of sex ratio selection, and predicted his results pretty well.

Back then we knew the difference between mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers: Mainframes had 32 bits, minis had 16 bits, and micros had 8. It was simple, clear, and easy to keep track of.

Now it’s all a matter of opinion, and it’s my opinion that the mainframe is dead, despite the thirty-seven articles you’ve just read declaring “The Big Iron is Back”. It’s IBM that’s back, and you can learn from its strategy … after I put another nail in the mainframe’s coffin.

The mainframe really is dead, and IBM just killed it. It still sells boxes it calls mainframes, but that’s just marketing.

Have you seen these puppies? They’re the size of a big file server. They’re built around a bunch of microprocessors. They include the whole AIX API, according to IBM – in other words, UNIX.

IBM can call this a mainframe if it wants, it can tell me it now runs AIX on its mainframes, and it can repeats its mantra that “the mainframe is just the biggest server on the network”.

Heck, IBM can explain that teenagers from Arcturus get bored on Saturday nights, fly to Earth, make big circles in cornfields, and then laugh hysterically at the stupid Terrans who come to gawk.

It can tell me this all it wants, but that won’t make me believe it.

IBM could have announced that it had ported MVS to its midrange computers instead. It’s all in how you look at it, of course, and if it makes Big Blue happy to call its new superserver a teeny weeny mainframe, well, so be it.

Regardless, we’re all going to wake up one day soon and discover something remarkable. IBM, while we weren’t paying attention but in plain sight, will have transformed its entire product line into a single platform, built around PowerPC technology. All of its boxes will be able to run MVS, AIX, and OS/400, and Windows NT as well.

Who knows? Rhapsody may run on it, too, now that Apple has survived Larry Ellison’s silly takeover idea. (I never could understand why someone who hates the idea of stand-alone PCs as much as Ellison wanted a company that caters to the most rabidly independent PC users on the planet.)

This forecast doesn’t bode well for OS/2, of course, but very little has bade well for OS/2 since IBM took it over from Microsoft.

Now about that career lesson:

Think of the technology marketplace as an employer, and IBM as a corporate executive who took some highly public mis-steps and found his career in the doldrums. It happens in every large company, and it can happen to you.

If you don’t want to find other employment and you do want to resuscitate your career, you can take some lessons from IBM right now. IBM first did everything wrong, announcing semi-annual reorganizations, pricing changes, and a variety of incomprehensible strategies – it was in denial. It has since found the right answer: Great engineering and solid execution. It has started to stick to its knitting so it will have real successes to point to, while the nonsense fades into memory and its rival overplays its hand.

If your career has taken a wrong turn, follow IBM’s current strategy: Stick to your own knitting and amass some clear successes. Ask for a project or problem area to clean up, drop out of sight for awhile, and do a lot of stuff right. Eventually, your own nonsense will fade into memory, and your own rivals will overplay their hands.

There are worse ways to succeed.