Wednesday 25 March 2015
Centerprise International
It may not be quite what you think. Karlee Gould explores the idea that Government buildings will soon be empty by looking at the rate of technology development. The article takes a snapshot of the typical in-house models and the recent move to outsourcing all IT as services instead.
I’ll
start by openly suggesting that Governmental organisations are like all
businesses. They are finding their way. And just like the rest of us, I know
some of them still have relatively ancient technologies busily cranking around
in the background, making the whole operation work.
In
the IT industry, I frequently encounter those who use very old programs and
hardware and simply attempt to modify them to keep up with the ever changing
rate of technology. They might bolt something else on to a system to upgrade it
or replace a few parts and pieces. On occasion they’ll replace an entire piece
of equipment, to make sure they’re not completely embarrassed by them, much to
their expense.
Governmental
bodies have started noticing, what with the snowballing effect of Moore’s Law,
that this type of procurement practice is not at all practical. Without
explaining what Moore’s Law is, I cannot illustrate the greater point so allow
me to explain…
In
basic terms, Moore’s Law starts by looking at when the doubling of transistors
in a CPU occurs and focuses on the trend in which hardware + time has
ultimately seen the devaluation of technology itself. The interesting bit is the
speed at which technology is developing. It applies a metric to this equation which
is ultimately crashing the value of technology very quickly.
The
rate at which transistors double in a CPU is every 18 months according to the
‘Law’ – an unprecedented rate which is predicted will soon have a limit,
however it is envisioned that engineers will find a work around to keep up with
the intense increase in complexity of components for computing hardware.
So,
very simplified: if you take a brand new piece of equipment, apply only 18
months to it, its monetary worth will be half what it was, even if it’s still brand
new. The new version will be double its capacity, and will cost the same or
less as the previous model did at its conception. This is the essence of Moores
Law in a basic nutshell.
Because
technology is progressing at this rate, we see things in our technical age that
those a handful of years ago would have felt were completely impossible, and a
little too ‘Meet the Jetsons’ to stomach. At the current rate, we have seen our
mobile phones overtake the computing power that was essential to put a man on
the moon in just under 60 years. Would you have ever thought back then that
moon-rocket power would fit in your back pocket and cost so little?
We
see this all around us every day - like when we pick up a Blu-ray player for
less than a box of chocolates or install a great home cinema system and spend more
on a chair to sit in and view it.
Now
take all that knowledge and apply it to the in-house technologies Governmental
bodies (up until recently) employed routinely, such as servers and networking,
in-house data farms, dedicated hardware to telephony or video conferencing
infrastructures and other such communicative technologies which require
constant physical maintenance and updates in security, etc, etc - you get the point. Add the data consumption
and processing power and there’s a recipe for needless spend and a never ending
cycle of hardware.
Ultimately
it brings forward the question, ‘if it’s so ludicrous to install and maintain
in-house IT technologies, who would do it?’
Frankly,
everyone was doing it. The difference now is that the benefits of abandoning
this model have been put fully in to focus. It’s been realised that technology installed
today will, in less than three years, be completely obsolete.
When
adding the impending data overload to this as well, you can imagine how quickly
outsourcing these technologies (as cloud-based services) instead would be much
more attractive to everyone, let alone Governmental bodies.
Well,
it has become evident that Government purchasing systems certainly see this
attraction and have sought new ways of purchasing IT in search of something more
sustainable.
The
move in to purchasing IT services not only allows large organisations to deploy
technologies faster, it allows them to quickly upgrade or move on to something
new, when they feel necessary, to accommodate their growing demands and needs without
blowing their budgets.
With
these services readily available, high security mobility can be put to great
use. Soon, I would expect to not only see an absence of technology infrastructure
and hardware within Governmental buildings, I also believe the staff will
barely inhabit them either. This is because once a cloud-based service is
deployed, it can be accessed from any point, encouraging mobility in the
workplace. Essentially, most ‘work’ buildings will be quite unnecessary due to
staff naturally migrating to mobile device use.
The
benefits of going purely cloud-based usually includes high quality maintenance
and support within the service packages, reducing overall employment costs as
well as the equipment itself, so hosting technology in-house becomes even less
attractive.
Put
simply, the bodies deciding not to jump on this band wagon will be left well
behind. Eventually, they will absolutely have to make that move regardless, to
keep up with advancing fellow Governmental bodies who have freed up their
resources and are fulfilling their needs to remain progressive at all times.
Once
Mobility and Services become common place, organisations will feel the freedom
from the constraints that once came with static hardware. My estimate is that Governments
and several pan-Governmental bodies will eventually be totally on the cloud and
will no longer feel the confines of old IT, or the tall physical walls they
were once kept in.
Since
the world is shrinking, it’s probably better we do away with such huge
buildings anyway.
Written By Karlee Gould, Centerprise International
