Thursday 20th November 2008 saw the West Midlands ICT Cluster Conference  roll up at the National Motorcycle Museum up by the NEC in Birmingham. The Advantage West Midlands funded ICT cluster is aimed at supporting and developing ICT businesses in the region and so encourage growth in the wider West Midlands economy. This was the third such conference, the second I've attended. Read on for a personal view of the day.

Achieving Success in a Global Marketplace

The morning started with a keynote presentation by Wendy Mars, System Engineering Director at Cisco. Wendy's presentation was entitled "Achieving Success in a Global Marketplace" and looked at how Cisco was using (it's own) technology to transform it's business operations from a traditional hierarchical line of business model, through a flatter command and control model, where all communication is with the centre, through to a collaborative model where everyone communicates as necessary with everyone else. This was illustrated by a pretty animated diagram with communication flying around an ad hoc lattice with no one obviously at the centre. I am sure this wasn't meant to be taken too literally, it's a bit like an orchestra with no conductor, they all know the plan but can they play nicely together? I think I get what she means though.

The Enterprise of the Future

Wendy was followed by David Henderson of IBM looking at the Enterprise of the Future. Based on IBM's Global CEO study the enterprise of the future will be "Hungry for Change", "Innovative beyond Customer Imagination", "Globally Integrated", "Disruptive by Nature" and "Genuine not just Generous". The first four won't come as a surprise to many but I'm struggling to think of globally integrated enterprises that are generous, let alone genuine. Oh, I see, that's the future. I look forward to it. The IBM study sees organisations re-inventing themselves through smaller more local transformation. So no more expensive and risky big bangs then. 

Achieving Business Objectives through Effective Collaboration

After a welcome coffee break we heard about EU funding and had a teaser from Peter Cochrane to encourage us to come back for his closing presentation later in the afternoon,  we then went off to our chosen breakout sessions and I found myself in the company of Andy Brocklehurst, also of Cisco. Andy's theme was "Achieving Business Objectives through Effective Collaboration", and you do this through installing Cisco kit supporting Unified Communications, says Andy. How it works is you Migrate, replace your legacy TDM networks with IP, this achieves cost savings for you (and revenue for Cisco), at the same time the introduction of Unified Communications supported by all the new kit you've bought increases employee productivity". You then Accelerate. Now my notes taken at the time say "e.g. video, extending UC (Unified Communications) across the business", not quite sure now what that meant. Then comes the Business Transformation bit - you Transform - you gain competitive advantage having introduced UC, then Include - extend UC to customer's and partners, then you Transcend to the point where you have boundary free communications. This harks back to the keynote earlier in the day and means the old boundaries of internal department, inside or outside the firewall, geography etc are no more. Now all this is fair enough, I don't have any argument with the technology, but presenting this as the way to go about business transformation is totally wrong. You must do the business transformation part first, on paper (or virtual paper), based on the business objectives and proper thorough analysis, and you set yourself some critical success factors so that you can measure whether the transformation has worked or not. You then go about selecting the technology you need to implement the vision. I have no doubt this will include a lot of Cisco kit, but doing it the Cisco way you could end up re-equipping a company of 500 people, 500 desks and 500 traditional telephones with an IP network supporting 500 users with 500 desks and 500 IP telephones, whereas if you did the business transformation part first you might find that you can do the same business with 300 people and they could hot desk meaning you only need 200 desks with 200 IP telephones - a very simplistic example I know but it makes my point - don't buy strategic consultancy from a hardware or software vendor, they are just out to sell you kit and, more importantly, the support that goes with it.

Innovation: the Secret to Growing your Business.

After a very nice lunch I went to hear Martin Northend, Global Director of SME portfolio marketing at Siemens. Martin presented the dilemma that faces innovators as a conflict between what the business really wants (I think that should be needs), what your people (users) will allow, and what technology can realistically enable. In other words you can have great plans but if the technology isn't up to it or people refuse to use it you've failed. Martin made the thought provoking point that for today's teenagers e-mail is old hat and when they go into the workplace they'll expect to use other forms of communication. I'm not sure I totally agree with that. As new forms of communication are introduced they become an integral part of the mix, there is a place for e-mail in much the same way there is still a place for post-it notes.

Mobilising your Business

Penny Simmonds from Vodafone talked about "Mobilising your Business". Penny gave us some stats about how important it is that people answer the phone promptly (nothing new so far) and so we've all got to have Vodafone mobiles (preferably the new Blackberry Storm) so that we can work any time, any place, any where (remember those Martini ads). The England cricket team were presented as a case study, apparently if the team manager gives them instructions on a piece of paper they don't all read it and the bits of paper get left lying around on the floor. If they've got mobiles he can send them a text or e-mail. He then knows they've read it because presumably there are now no bits of paper left lying around on the floor. I see.

Vodafone themselves have a mobilised workforce with, I think we were told, a seven to one hot desk utilisation. A big advantage of this is that when Vodafone HQ was flooded last year the staff could leave the building and carry on working and communicating. Very good in that scenario. "What happens", I asked, "if you have done away with your desks and your landlines and have a fully mobilised workforce and the cell-phone network goes down. What is your Business Continuity plan in that instance?" After some protestations from the Vodafone people that their network is resilient (I'm sure it is) and can't go down (I'm sure it can) I was told someone from the network dept at Vodafone will contact me. Now don't get me wrong, it's fabulous technology and has many benefits, but don't buy your strategy from a hardware or software vendor.

Innovation - Squaring the Circle 

The day ended with this Keynote presentation from Peter Cochrane who is a technologist turned venture capitalist, although he admitted he despised venture capitalists. Peter wanted to know why Europe didn't have any Google's, Intel's or Microsoft's (actually he didn't mention Microsoft - I've added that). He suggested we are too tied up in health and safety thinking to take any risks. We lack thoroughly rich people who invest just because they think it's a good idea, and we worry too much about market research. Don't ask the customer what they want because "the customer won't know what they want until they see it" says Peter. Our rather rigid approach to education is also a factor. We put boundaries around subjects. Before the Renaissance there were "The Arts" which included art, naturally, but also science and, I would add, philosophy. After the Renaissance Art and Science went their separate ways, and now in schools Science is split into Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. "No" says Peter, "it's all just Science". This brought to mind recent science projects that have been in the news where multi-disciplinary teams have been involved. For what it's worth  I think Peter is absolutely right about this. I also think there is a glass ceiling in our schools which would be unable to cater for a child prodigy or mathematical genius. For one thing the system doesn't have the skills to take children above GCSE or A level. For the most part teachers are trained to teach the syllabus, I suspect there are few real Mathematicians teaching Maths in our secondary schools.

 All in all a very worthwhile conference with thought provoking speakers, good networking opportunities and a nice lunch. What more could you ask for?

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