In the late 1990s, I had taken an interest in 3D printing. It was one of the main reasons I joined Fotango (a small but failing online photo startup) because of my interest in the distribution of images.
In 2001, I was the CIO of Fotango and we were acquired by Canon.
By 2002, we became an open source and agile (XP) development shop. We extensively used and provided web services. We lived online. We started to get involved more directly in open source projects particularly Perl. We built a centre of gravity to attract talent to the barren technological wasteland that was Old Street.
By 2003, I was the CEO. We operated an environment which had started to use mixed methods (i.e. we learned that Agile wasn't appropriate everywhere). We had introduced paper prototyping for design and worth based development techniques (known as outcome based techniques today). We focused on the user need. We had BYOD, a wireless office, remote working. We had replaced the company intranet with a wiki and had started to explore alternative mechanisms of communication (core parts of what is now called Enterprise 2.0). We built multiple systems for others and we were profitable.
By 2004, we had started developing our own private IaaS (though it wasn't called that back then). The system, which included creation of virtual machines through APIs and configuration management tools (based upon CFEngine) was known as Borg. We had developed continuous deployment mechanisms, extensive monitoring and started mapping our own environment to determine new game plays and opportunities. We had started running mini conferences. We had introduced conference funding, started to promote our open source work and started working on the idea of providing public API services.
By 2005, we had simplified internal procedures such as HR (removed timesheets, holiday forms etc) and looked towards using commodity services where possible. We had launched the first iteration of a public Platform as a Service (this become known as Zimki the following year). We focused on industrialisation of key aspects of building a platform. We understood how to play an open source game, create a competitive market and exploit an ecosystem and their network effects. We had converted most projects to outcome based metrics, we had started to introduce a new organisational structure based on evolution, we had common web services running through dozens of large public facing systems.
So why do I mention this? 3D printing, continuous deployment, agile, mixed development methods, open source, building centres of gravity, cloud, building and stitching together small discrete web services (microservices), ecosystems, IaaS, PaaS, BYOD, Enterprise 2.0, Hack days (we introduced in 2006), focus on user needs, outcome based approaches ... these are all 'hot' words in the Enterprise today.
But these "words" weren't born out of ideas but practice from a decade ago. Oh, if you think we were first - you must be kidding. We thought we were slow compared to our compatriots and competitors.
That is I'm afraid the point. I hear these words often spoken as something new within the Enterprise. Well, it maybe new to an Enterprise and it maybe new to some of your competitors but don't kid yourself that you're doing anything other than trying to catch up with where the edge of the market was a long time ago. The cutting edge of the Enterprise market is about a decade behind the edge of the market. An early adopter in the Enterprise world is still a laggard.
But why? Competition.
You don't need to be near the edge unless your competitors are there as well. Which is probably why some traditional enterprise companies do so badly when companies like Amazon or Google move into their space. They're not prepared for the level of competition needed.
But that's why we need to adopt "3D printing, continuous deployment, agile, mixed development methods, open source, building centres of gravity, cloud, building and stitching together small discrete web services (microservices), ecosystems, IaaS, PaaS, BYOD, Enterprise 2.0, Hack days, focus on user needs, outcome based approaches" I hear some cry or more importantly their anointed consultants cry.
It won't help you. Instead you need to think of the above list as stuff you've been doing for a decade (where the puck was) and work out what new things you'd have built on top of this during that time (where the puck is). Then you need to look forward five years (where the puck will be). That's where you need to be heading.
