It’s a state of mind more than anything else. A CIO’s job today can’t be an easy one, and the Web2.0 we all love to love, isn’t making the Chief a very happy camper. One of the main reasons that an interactive internet is so good is because of the bi-directional ease with which information is allowed to flow. You can already see the nightmare this causes for the average IT department in any vertical.
There are as many ways for information to leak out through the great big WWW as there are for it to channel inwards. Should you restrict access to the Web? Well, that would be the easiest solution, but then you will probably not have very dynamic people working for you. And of course it can just as easily be argued that where you restrict one port, application or access, brute force trial and error will reveal another one.
In the days back when the free proxy applications were so popular with network administrators because they would restrict specific protocols so that the network could, let’s say, browse the web but not be able to chat on MSN. As soon as the apps were introduced to influence or control a user’s online behavior, web solutions such as Meebo came up. As long as you could browse the internet, you could access your chat identity for a number of different clients, and use the meebo interface. Certainly a security hazard because of the protocol you are bypassing, but then if you want to engage in friendly gossip with your friends on company time, security is hardly your concern.
You can restrict access off social networking sites such as Facebook, but then maybe your media department needs to do some trends analysis through specific groups, or your PR department wishes to engage in some online networking opportunities with other users. Perhaps you’ve restricted access to YouTube, but then certain members of your organization need to engage in online trainings that are conducted through video. What kind of conditions or parameters are you going to create so that you secure your network. Doesn’t it take just one byte of corrupt data to make the entire network vulnerable?
You can monitor the traffic all you want, there is just now way you can restrict the flow of information once you have access to the world online. The concept of Cloud Computing, while very powerful, flexible and all those impressive synonyms for ‘great’, you can’t work on a cloud if you’re not providing access to it.
But perhaps we’re paining the wrong picture. Are CIOs hesitant to allow their company access to the virtual world because it is really that dangerous? Or is it because they just don’t know enough? The enemy, after all, is often scarier if you don’t know who he is. Once you figure out the “who”, it becomes a lot easier to focus on the “how”.
What are these versions all about?
Considering the fact that the internet was supposed to be a virtual, interactive medium for the world, why is Web2.0 getting so much hype just now? If you take a close look at the timeline, when the internet was rolled out of the labs and onto the public domain, there were just too many variables that made it fit nicely into its legacy framework.
For one thing, the hardware wasn’t powerful enough to manage the content. The concept of load sharing for its components wasn’t enough around at that time. Wasn’t it Bill Gates who, back in 1981, sad that nobody will ever need more than 64k of RAM? If he couldn’t see this far, than were others really expected to envision the opportunity that the internet opened up for them? The bandwidth wasn’t present to allow this kind of computing to be done.
Web1.0 was the first version of what the Internet was meant to be, hence it is also, at times, referred to as Ready-Only internet. With Web2.0, we are shaping what the web was meant to be, moving on towards Web3.0, which will be a greater integration of a smarter internet.
The Buzzwords
You’ve heard of blogs, podcasting, convergence, mobility, RSS and OpenID. But you should also be aware of XML, Flex, Java, SOAP, UMT, IM, REST, SEO, OpenAPIs, CSS, AJAX, XFN and FOAF. You’ll need to be aware of all of them.
What makes the interaction so scary? Well, as the power of the internet grows and matures, the more, let’s say, intimate, the information exchanged between your browser and the server becomes. Rich internet application techniques help to make the user-experience more complete. These are the applications whose names you hear so frequently. Flash, Java, Silverlight, Ajax, ActiveX are all components that add to the addiction and content exchange online.
Content Management System such as Joomla, WordPress, Drupal or MovableType make it possible for social networking sites to engage you for hours by adding content with the simple click of a button. Adding content means you flirt with the potential of being acknowledged for your contribution, which usually just means you could be a famous internet personality if you get enough people to follow your work. Creating a following usually requires regular contribution, which means that your employee could be moonlighting with a whole different career.
To make the Web2.0 experience more functional, existing web server architecture allows you to build applications on them which have a heavier reliance on backend software. Remember all the pains installing a webserver on a Windows 98 machine used to be just so you could compile PHP and see the result? Web services enable powerful architecture to render files in a much quicker fashion than before. Everything plugs into a database and allows for workflow support. The experience emulates the likes of working on a traditional intranet. It is extremely result-oriented.
In addition to server-side software and reliance on components, Web2.0 also opens up the door on client-side software. This is where Cloud Computing is most beautifully executed. Since you have the ability to work on data that is already stored on servers in a remote location in the cloud, scripting languages which run from your system and communicate with the cloud, enable the client computer to reduce the load on the machine and be more result-oriented.
The XML file and the RSS feed push and pull content through specific protocols that create the concept of syndication and shared content. Protocols that a Network Administrator needs to be aware of include FOAF and XFN, which, according to Wikipedia, “extend the functionality of sites or permit end-users to interact without centralized websites.”
As long as users are traveling on the HTTP protocol, which is what makes the Web2.0 experience such a double-edge sword, various functionalities continue to grow. Web APIs allow for web-enabled access to data and functions such as REST (Representational State Transfer) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).
Another challenge the CIO will inadvertently be faced with is this: if you restrict access on all workstations connected to the network, how are you going to restrict the access from mobile devices? Data traffic through a palm device can just as well be added onto the existing network since if a user downloads it on the palm and transfer it via Bluetooth or Wifi link to the desktop, it hasn’t technically come in through the firewall.
Nobody said mobility came in without the challenges.
Spinning Web2.0 in Pakistan
If you track the number of companies that have opened up shop based on their ability to develop on a flexible and open platform, you can make a fair assessment that Web2.0 and all that it offers, has stuck a very harmonious chord with the developer community here.
More than that, take a look at the kinds of innovation being put into check. High speed bandwidth reduces challenges for online collaboration on projects. More than companies, individual evangelists are working on ways as to how they can reduce barriers to accessing the net.
Open Source and a general collaborative movement is already out there. With the Web becoming such a hot spot, more and more companies want to be able to develop and release their apps online. Content is always a challenge, but the Pakistanis who have worked in the US have been returning to set up their own companies to cater for that dire need.
Bandwidth is no longer such an issue, or at least it won’t be for much longer. With companies rolling out different forms of connectivity (ie: EVDO, EDGE, WiMAX, GPRS) you already have a lot to choose from. The more you increase access to the online, the cheaper the connectivity gets.
Applications that help the creation and facilitation of online communities and Web2.0-enabled trends such as Citizen’s Journalism and Blogging have taken a front seat. All of a sudden, every young startup wants to create the killer app that is going to get them the VC to turn them into overnight millionaires. But in doing so and much to the chagrin of the IT head, these same young Pakistanis have also provided the employed and literate population, a chance to network during daylight hours.
Sarfaraz, a banker of 27 years, commented in to say, “I go to Teabreak.pk or Chowk.com during my lunch time. It just helps me get my mind off work and allows me to catch up on some news and some good reading.” Munezeh, a fresh graduate looking to start up her own copywriting company says, “These local communities really help for someone like me to find work. I can even find people who I might want to employ later on.”
Students at the virtual incubation center that runs at LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences) have already kicked off at least two solutions that take the user experience to another level. Bumpin.com and seenreport (see and report) are both Web2.0-inspired applications that bypass the traditional interactive internet trends the CIO may be used to. “The need to find new ways to use the internet and develop applications that allow people to use it is driven by innovation” comments Saif, a Joomla enthusiast.
So what does a CIO have to do with Web2.0 again?
According to Jed Simmons of Project-Sponsor.com, “The role of the CIO has six dimensions: running operations/keeping the network up; improving IT operations / reducing the costs of IT; supporting applications development; improving IT’s performance – in ways the business can see (eg moving to broadband); improving business operations – together with the business ; and improving business performance – together with the business. However, while the business only really values roles 5 and 6, failure at roles 1 to 3 will bring the CIO down immediately.”
So how do you, as the CIO of your organization, decide how to filter this through to increase productivity in your organization? The answer is, you can’t. You can create the policy but by the time you publish it to your peers, someone will have found a way to beat the system. Rather than running away from it and restricting access to it, a better, more productive way may be to actually spend some time to understand the platform and just embrace it. Do you recall the irony in the situation where the best hackers are also the world’s best security analysts? Same logic applies here. You need to know about everything out there, so if the need arises, you know how to counter it.
Caption:
The British Broadcasting Corporation set up a user generated content team as a pilot in April 2005 with 3 staff. In the wake of the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the Buncefield oil depot fire, the team was made permanent and was expanded, reflecting the arrival in the mainstream of the ‘citizen journalist’. After the Buncefield disaster the BBC received over 5,000 photos from viewers. The BBC does not normally pay for content generated by its viewers. In 2006 CNN launched CNN iReport, a project designed to bring user generated news content to CNN. Its rival Fox News Channel launched its project to bring in user-generated news, similarly titled “uReport”. This was typical of major television news organisations in 2005-2006, who realised, particularly in the wake of the 7th July bombings, that citizen journalism could now become a significant part of broadcast news. Sky News, for example, regularly solicits for photographs and video from its viewers. User generated content was featured in Time magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year, in which the person of the year was “you”, meaning all of the people who contribute to user generated media such as YouTube and Wikipedia. – Wikipedia
