The Office-less Office

Last week I presented my Microsoft Licensing Team's recommendation to senior IT leadership. We spent countless hours researching and analyzing both Microsoft's offerings and Ministry Health Care's usage patterns and strategic directions. One of our recommendations is to simply walk away from the Microsoft maintenance models (EA and SA) on the vast majority of Microsoft product we use. The three main reasons to do so are:
1- Avoidance of enormous costs- millions of dollars in maintenance payments
2- Lack of business case for newer product functionality
3- The changing model of corporate intelligence respositories

I find Microsoft's document-centric architecture to be out-dated for the enterprise. In Microsoft's document-centric world, expensive content editors (known as Office applications) are required and the complexities and decisions of document design, format and usability are pushed to the desktop. Microsoft tries to pull this into a coherent whole with SharePoint but that strikes me as just a facade. I believe the blog, wiki and records-based repositories of enterprise intelligence and knowledge bases make more sense today.

The new models of knowledge repositories maintain most of the design, format and usability centrally so that added content is consistent. Only modest content editors are required because the "fancy stuff" is already defined by the repository. I think specialized blogs could even take PowerPoint's place.

Admittedly, there are high-intensity users of spreadsheets and desktop databases that need to be addressed but I think we are getting ever closer to the Office-less office. I have nothing against Microsoft and even have a soft spot for some of their products (like Visual Basic), but for Ministry Health Care, the Office upgrade avoidance strategy is worth millions of dollars.

Hot Stock Tip

Check out this really tempting stock tip I got. Note the in-depth analysis and the brilliantly communicated future outlook.

"Me Gilbert. You buy my Stock. Make big Profit!"

These announcements crack me up. Does anybody actually bite on this stuff?

"IT Still Doesn't Matter"

So says Nicolas Carr. Again. But before you get offended, read the article. The article's actual point is less provacative than it's title.

I think Mr. Carr is reacting to the bloated, 90's IT lovefest that resulted in the dot-com Bust. A time when IT marketing scam-artists made all kinds of promises that simply failed to come true (or be true). There are very few magic bullets in management and to assume IT is a panacea is to fool yourself. IT is not about fashion statements and keeping up with the Joneses. It's about appropriate application of technology to solve business problems and capitalize on opportunities.

Carr's article is a good read.

Sustainability

I love this term for what it implies: thinking ahead and making decisions that have accountability to the future viability of the subject at hand. There is a lot of talk regarding sustainable food and energy policy, good stuff. But what about the sustainability of business operations? If all businesses in our communities keep squeezing the payroll and looking for ways to cut the FTE count, who's left with the ability to afford our products and services? If you follow that philosophy through to the end, who's left? Do we simply assume that some other emerging business will pick up the displaced employees in our communities?

The Eau Claire metro area in Wisconsin is known for having low wages in comparison with other Wisconsin metro areas. There are the usual theories bandied about, including the percentage of UW students, etc. The theory that always puzzles me though is the one that says there is an abnormally high percentage of service workers: retail and restaraunt employees. But these are typically low paying positions. So how can an abnormally high number of low paid employees keep an increasing number of service-based businesses in business? That doesn't seem sustainable to me.