A Utility Model or Innovation in IT?

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Opinion

A Utility Model or Innovation in IT?

10/10/2006

By Scott Menter, University of California, Irvine (CA)

Life in the more affluent regions of Southern California d'es not normally invite comparisons with the bleak existence one might experience in your average refugee camp. There is one event, however, that tends to remind us sophisticated, suburban, “Left Coast” yuppie types that we’re just one errant tree branch or lightning strike away from medieval-style anarchy. I refer, of course, to our unfortunate penchant for power outages.

Normally I never, ever, spend any time thinking about the people at Southern California Edison whose job it is to provide me with limitless, uninterrupted, spike-free power. Never, that is, until the lights go out. Then in the dark, sweltering room, as I’m tripping over the dog while trying to find where I left the flashlight the last time this happened, I suddenly find myself thinking about them a lot.

Fortunately, I cannot actually be arrested for these thoughts. And my desire to act on them rapidly dissolves as the hum of the air conditioners announces the return of the power and, with it, civilization as we know it.

Meanwhile, back at work, I’ve got about 40,000 customers of my own. These are smart, hardworking people who might think of my organization exactly the same way I think of the electric company:

E-mail is fast, reliable, and (relatively) spam-free.
Response: Yawn.

The latest rewrite from our co-author in Kazakhstan took 23 minutes to arrive!
Response: What idiot is in charge of this thing anyway?

For too many of us, that’s the whole story. We focus our efforts on reducing failure and providing a predictable basic service. As long as we’re not getting complaints, we must be doing something right. Right?

Wrong. Dependable performance is great, but it’s the absolute minimum that should be expected of us. Reliable service is noticeable primarily in its absence. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to be noticed more often than just when I fail. These days, though, getting attention for doing something right is harder than ever.

Let’s face it: Over time, the shine has come off the IT apple. Most undergraduates show up on campus with laptops (and they’re usually better than the one I have), the network is omnipresent, wireless is pervasive, and computing services are generally reliable. Even the most technically challenged among us now pay bills online, share photos on Yahoo!, and Google into the wee hours. The dazzle factor of technology has been trampled beneath the heavy spiked boots of unrelentingly dull PowerPoint presentations and wildly expensive printer cartridges that empty faster than a keg on the last day of finals.