Winds of Change

The computer has been commercially available for around 80 years. For its first 30 years of existence the computer was hidden in ivory towers within large enterprises. Big banks, government, colleges, and the Fortune 500 were the primary customers. These computers were mystical, foreign, and incomprehensible to normal folk. The myths of what their power caused fear and apocryphal predictions, and plenty of science fiction.

These beasts were hard to understand because they worked in an invisible universe. You couldn’t quite see how they worked. When the TV crews came to show it working, they used to focus on the tape drives. They had to show something happening. If it didn’t move, what could it possibly be doing. A little later they had moved on to filming tape robots.

A strange cult attended these mythical beasts. A priesthood whose rules and rituals were impossible to explain to the uninitiated. As a digital convert, then parish priest in the cult, it was (and is) very difficult for me to describe what I did to people. I spoke in a strange tongue. My family had no comprehension of anything I was talking about. It was beyond their experiences.

Then overnight and without warning or forethought the Digital Age was here. The digital age came into existence with the consumerization of IT. That is when IT broke from the ivory tower and landed in the hands of everyone. Prior to this, all IT was delivered or run on private networks tied to large centralized mainframes. It was a tightly held asset of large corporations with only their employees having access and exposure. With the fall of the ivory tower, the digital ages’ four winds of change were released. Seemingly overnight technology was consumable, adaptable, responsive, and everywhere.

These “winds” are ever progressive and perpetual. They are more than trends. They will continue to evolve; the butterfly has flapped its wings. Does anyone think that the world is going to become less connected? Will consumers accept less up to date information and processing? Is technology suddenly going to become harder to use? Will technology stop changing? The answer to every question is no. But how will acknowledgement these trends help make better decisions?

Consumability

The wind of Consumablity. It is the predominant wind of technology. The sustainable value of any technology is its usability. Look at Apple products, the genius of Steve Jobs is grounded in consumer usability. Technology just gets easier and easier. 35 years ago, people couldn’t set their times on their VCRs (ask your parents or grandparents or me) now it magically happens through IoT connectivity.

Consumabiliy continues to evolve. AI chat boxes and agents are just the latest examples.

What has to be taken into account is that understanding the future consumption patterns is critical. Designing for today without future consideration will be delivering an immediate legacy.

Adaptability

Technology changes are just going to keep coming and seem limitless. There will always be higher demand which will require faster delivery. Technological nimbleness is a necessity. No need for a history lesson here. Anyone that can access this website has experienced the change. At the writing of this book, the iPhone is less than 20 years old and there are over 7 Billion smartphones in the world. That is Smartphone for 90% of the population!! Things change so fast, that you may not even remember all the technological changes you’ve seen; if you blinked you missed it. The changes of adaptability take on many forms. We mostly see them in the devices we use. Every highly anticipated new phone has some new features (capabilities) and therefore opportunities. What can be observed is impressive, but technology is changing even faster just under the surface. The cloud allows new capabilities and features to be developed and deployed rapidly. From vendors offering solutions (Salesforce) to very specific capabilities (AI, GeoCoding, Machine learning, integration), to AI, and quantum the cloud offers a seemingly endless, rapidly changing realm of capabilities to leverage.

Responsiveness

The trend for responsiveness is a bit harder to pin point. When I buy something, I get it. All updates happen in real time. I fill out a form and it processes now. Every part of the process, every step along the way is trackable by me. The days of process black holes, batch processing, and throttling transactions are waning. If I need a decision, whether based on information or device data, the quality of my decision needs to be based on having the best, most current information.

Why would anything else be acceptable?

Yet, there may be business reasons (or models) where some data is “batched”. Why does it take 3 days for me to transfer money between banks? Because there is a business advantage in owning the “float”. Yet these artificial business restraints will be pushed by competitors who will develop models that allow for a “quicker float” and better customer experience. Just think about how much a business advantage shaving off milliseconds from a Wall Street transaction would be.

Immediacy will become even more important. With the advent of the IoT (internet of things), robots, autonomous cars, AI agents, and real-time physical interactions, it is critical for technology to be completely immersed and immediate.

Everywhere

Everywhere means you are always connected; every device (channel) is connected to an invisible, omnipresent "platform". The internet (extended) is its highway. Why develop something new? The internet at this point of time is a fact. It is so heavily depended upon that replacing it is unrealistic. The internet changed everything. Many think the PC was the critical event that trigged the digital age. It was the modern network. The first PCs were just a place to work in solitude. They were deserted islands of work. It was not easy to share the work done on an individual PC . Then began the sneaker-net (for those who don’t remember, walking disks around), then came network and file/print shares. Then application sharing and other technologies (databases, etc.) bloomed. What really was demonstrated was not the power of the PC, but the power of collaboration and sharing. Those networks grew into a more general-purpose network (the internet) and the progression of the connected world.

Is connectivity going to decrease? That is why it is a wind. What percentage of access are disconnected? Is it a 1% or 10% problem? To align with the wind of everywhere, it is important to design for availability and to treat outlying situations consistently.

All architectural decisions should be wary of the Four Winds for smooth sailing. Not taking them into account will impede your transformational journey. The consumer focus of the Four Winds is the foundation of The Right Strategy.

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