Cloud & DevOps World 2016

Speaking at an industry event isn't something that everyone gets to do in their career. At the moment I'm being approached to appear at a number of events and I'm proud to take part from both a personal and Worldline perspective. 

This week I was part of the Digital Transformation panel at the Cloud & DevOps World @ Olympia. to be more accurate the session title was "Managing the digital transformation : how to affect change and transform culture in big business". As this was a panel we had a great moderator in Alex Hilton (@alexhilton_gb) from Cloud Industry Forum as well as the following co-panelists:

• Aaron Powell, Chief Digital Officer, NHS, Blood & Transplant (@aaron_nhsbt)
• Ameer Badri, Senior Manager, EMEA, Twilio (@ameer8)
• Simon Briggs, EMEA Lead Solutions Architect, SUSE 
• Nuno Job, CEO, YLD (@dscape)

Sometimes at these events you only get a sparse audience but given that the event is in it's 8th year attendance was really good and there were around 150 people listening and asking questions.

From my perspective the topic played very well to the 2 Speed to 3 Speed messages I've been promoting and implementing recently. I do really believe that the choice is no longer Boolean in that you are one speed (Operational) or the other (Digital). In fact I have argued that you can't simply jump from one speed to another overnight, like any change it has to have a transition state (the Bridging Speed).

The panel was asked about the key factors in Digital Transformation, I made the point that its more about the people than the technology. If you don't believe me try giving legacy Operational Speed people new world tools and process without coaching and training and see what happens. Don't worry I'll save you the time, they revert back to what they know and feel comfortable with and change doesn't happen. Just because you are talking about technology it doesn't mean that its not business change, you still have to manage the change start to finish and ensure that there is guidance, knowledge management, champions and people on hand to help when the nerves hit people. It's a journey, you need to make sure that everyone gets on the bus.

The question was pitched around Operation Speed, will it still be around in time to come and should people in Operational Speed be worried or concerned for their future ? My point was that its a Digital world now, it's inhabited naturally by Digital Natives with us Immigrants evolving and adapting as we go. More and more solutions will start out digital by default and those with legacy situations to manage get the choice to:

1. Transform it to Digital
2. Leave it as Operational until the demand dies

So what will happen over time is Operational Speed solutions and organisations will reduce but they won't disappear. I thought 15 years ago when I stopped developing in COBOL that it would die off and be replaced. COBOL is still around today and will be for some time to come (as the cost to refactor is high). So those in Operational spaces still have skills to offer and they may be offered the chance to evolve or stay with what they know but over time the Operational Speed will reduce. Of course roll forward 5 or 10 years and what is deemed Digital today may well be seen as legacy :) So I guess then there will always be something deemed to be Operational/Legacy.

We do though all seek to react to our clients desires, we want the high pace that they want to see and that does involve more Digital thinking. It means Cloud, Agile & DevOps are necessary enablers to meet the demand line (Digital demand) and the organisation has to be able to meet and exceed the demand of clients.

I finished by saying don't be scared of innovation and don't be afraid to get into picking paths based on Informed Decision Making. What I mean by this is you don't have to pick the path to choose and follow based on architectural conjecture and sometime subjective views. Be bold and pit solutions and speeds against each other over a few sprints/weeks to see which appears to be the more viable and then drop the one that doesn't work. You'd be amazed at how a CEO and CFO will be prepared to invest a small amount of money that they know will be written off to approach the resultant solution with a higher level of confidence and a lesser risk.

To summarise my day I tweeted out the following picture:

If you are so inclined though you can also see it through Twitter 

https://twitter.com/WorldlineUK_CTO/status/745364593510342656

Digital Native 2.0

As I mentioned in my post on Rural Broadband I've been doing the rounds internally and externally talking about Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. I'm naturally a person that learns from people around him and through discussion, it's probably why I've built a team of incredibly smart people around me in Worldline, I'm not really an academic so I'm not pre-disposed to reading and absorbing long documents (especially if there is a test to take), if you don't believe me then ask my school teachers that probably could not wait to get me out of the system :)

I've known about the concept of Natives vs Immigrants for some time, I've just never really delved into the low level detail until this year, perhaps there is a budding academic in me after all and it's been suffocating for about 40-years. The most likely scenario though is that I find the topic incredibly interesting, especially if you take it from theory and start to apply into real life (social, work, leisure etc).

I've now given the talk a number of times and recognise that I need new material, there's only so many times you can say the same thing before I get bored never mind the audience. So it got me thinking, what is the evolution from what I've been talking about ?

In my presentations I talk about Digital Natives having a digital DNA, essentially due to the world around them their DNA is imprinted with Digital and it drives how the act, react and how they expect the world to be. If you start to look into DNA via Google you'd find a few things:

1. DNA changes over time (essentially as we age DNA changes, sometimes for better most times for worse sadly)
2. DNA mutates in reaction to the world around it (seen most notably in medicine and the fight against bugs and super bugs)

So I started to investigate a little deeper and I found this text about DNA mutation:

A mutation is a change in DNA, the hereditary material of life. An organism's DNA affects how it looks, how it behaves, and its physiology. So a change in an organism's DNA can cause changes in all aspects of its life. Mutations are essential to evolution; they are the raw material of genetic variation

I'm no scientist but I like to believe I think more scientifically (ie show me method and proof), this text for me supports the Digital world very well.

If we've already accepted that the Digital world has been a challenge for Immigrants (to a greater or lesser degree depending on their desires) as they aren't a natural fit in the Digital Native world then its fair to say that the Digital DNA is born with the Natives and the Immigrants are faced with changing their DNA to adapt to the environment. Most Immigrants will not reach the maturity of their Digital DNA to meet and compete with the Digital Natives but some will (I'm going to claim success in this area of course). So I think the first point above is a good definition for the Immigrant moving into the Native world.

So now to the second point. What I've noted in my presentations is two sets of body language in the room, all my presentations have had a wide range of ages (20-60) so I have a good breadth of Immigrants and Natives.... plus of course the odd Digital Ignorant. What I've observed is:

• The Natives are open and happy to be part of the Digital revolution and feel proud to be deemed a Native. I was going to say smug but that's probably not fair :)
• The Immigrants are a little closed at times and a little defensive but I'd say more over there is a pang of regret that it's a challenge to adapt to this new world. 

Clearly the above is a generalisation but you get what I'm saying. Football analogy time : If you support Real Madrid you are pretty happy as champions of Europe and a little smug I'd say, as Manchester United you realise you were once great but you're not now and you desperately want to be able to compete again but the world is harder and harder to succeed in. Dear Jose, please take note that we want to topple Real Madrid please !

At the end of each of my presentations though I've always left the Natives with a little throw away line. I've said that the Natives of today are the Immigrants of tomorrow but I've not really gone on to define what I really mean. I've known it in my head but only now am I really putting it to "virtual" paper. What I think I mean is that the Digital world won't stay static, it will evolve and the next generation could be seen as Digital Natives 2.0. It will be the evolution of the Digital world and that will be driven by a mutation of the Digital DNA.

Digital Immigrant   >   Digital Native   >   Digital Native 2.0

I think its fair to say that right now there is an evolution in technology around wearables, IoT, AI, robotics and more. Essentially all things we'd term to be leading edge. So things that are at the leading edge today will start out as immature technology, will adapt to the environment and grow to the point where they become a part of your life (same way smart phones & tablets have). This will drive a change in how people interact and will likely once again evolve the Digital world. Those coming to their teens now then are likely to be the Natives 2.0 as they may even bypass some types of social media and technology interaction in favour of the evolving leading edge technology. I'd call it "Tomorrow's World" but then I'd really be showing my age.

So the evolution of leading edge technology drives Digital DNA mutation in the following generations and this will mean today's Digital Natives have to become Immigrants to the 2.0 world. Can they leave behind their attachment to Snapchat, Facebook and their other favoured interactions in the same way todays' Immigrants are doing from paper ? I guess it depends how wide the chasm is to cross and how easy it is to bridge between the two worlds.

So Natives, the challenge is coming, will you freely embrace the challenge of a new generation of Natives that thinks on an evolved and mutated DNA basis or will you claim Ignorance to the Digital Native 2.0 world ?

How Digital Is It ?

I started to tweet recently about Digital experiences, I used the #howdigitialisit tag based on coming into contact with various businesses.

This is a very quick blog today but one I was complelled to issue out of amusement, I wasn't sure if I was Digitally frustrated at the time but the quite retro nature of the incident sort of tickled me.

My wife has been through a rough time recently and will continue to be for another 2-3 months, we take our health for granted until it starts to fail us. So as a consequence we've seen the inside of too many health places recently. We've had ShropDoc on call doctors out to the house, paramedics too. We've been to the GPs numerous times, 2 NHS hospitals and 1 private hospital.

What has been the most digital part of the experiences ? The ANPR system for car park payments, much better than the need to have hard cash on you when you exit the house unplanned at 2am........"where does it hurt darling, yes I've got your medication and some fresh underwear. You haven't got £2 in coins have you ?"

ShropDoc and the Paramedics both did their job with varying degrees of bedside manner....OK sofa side if I'm going to be accurate. What dismayed me was both of them getting out an A3 pad to record stats and information for the visit along with medications prescribed and then handing me a carbon copy at the end. Seems my time machine is working and I have gone back in time or these guys haven't evolved, sad but that wasn't the retro experience I was waiting or wantiat to describe.

No the retro experience came in the Apley building at the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford this week. As Nic and I sat in the waiting room busying ourselves in our natural manners (Nic with a magazine from the table that was probably 12 months old and me on Email and Twitter) my subconscious alerted me to a familiar noise. You have probably had that feeling, you go all squirrel like, you freeze what you are doing look up and slowly look around the room for the noise whilst frantically trying to figure out what the familiar noise is.

After about 5 seconds in squirrel mode it hit me, it was the sound of a 56kbps modem being booted up. Wow, I then tried to figure out when the last time was that I heard one of them. I guess it was nigh on 12 years ago......it's another of those sounds my kids will never know.

I sat back with a grin on my face then I had the natural follow up thought. We're just about to go and talk about a review of the x-ray and MRI scans Nic had and they are booting up a 56kbps modem. "I think we might be in for quite a await darling" 😂

Well we didn't have to wait too long but quite interestingly the consultant didn't offer go talk us through the x-rays or MRI scans on the screen and he professed to not having seen them. I was going about to offer a mildly sarcastic "no shit Sherlock, you'd need 3 days to download PACS images over that modem" but I decided better of it.

Who says you don't grow up and mature in your 40's 😂

Rural Broadband - Do you feel my pain ?

I've been thinking about writing this opening blog in my new digital space for some time. Over the last few weeks I've come up with some good opening lines to introduce you to the pain of "Rural Broadband". I can recall none of those scintillating openings now so I'll settle for this:

"BT, you lot do my head right in !"

OK, it's not Pulitzer material but for most who live in a rural location I'm pretty sure this is a shared pain normally including expletives. By virtue of the fact we live maybe as little as 1 to 2 miles out of a town we are the vastly poorer broadband relations to the local small towns not to mention the medium sized and large towns and don't get me started on cities.

Whilst major cities enjoy their 7th or 8th major upgrade with 200Mb bandwidth touted, us rural beings have seen nothing by way of upgrade in 9-years. In fact during that time bandwidth has most likely dropped as the odd new building is converted from agricultural and the small POP is now shared with a new connection. What are my stats:

Good Day : 2.5Mb down, 0.49Mb up
Normal Day : 2Mb down, 0.45 up
Bad Day : 1.5Mb down, 0.16Mb up

Not good is it ?

In fact try being a UK&I company CTO whose life is dedicated to Digital on that kind on bandwidth. Members of my team running on 100Mb+ constantly mock my pathetic bandwidth, complain of my often darlec voice and dare me to start a video connection to truly destroy what quality there is on the line......OK there isn't any quality they just want to see me flat line my connection.

I'm schooling 3 children in the Digital world and one wife, the children being the easier adopters naturally :) I teach them educational games, I teach them games to extend their minds and of course they learnt to use Netflix at about 3 years old ! Kids being kids can't agree to share or watch the same programme so they want to all access in parallel......

Child : Dad, my program keeps stopping then starting and its really annoying
Dad : I'm trying to have a voice conference, how about you turn your tablet off so one of us can do something on this crappy bandwidth !
Child : Mum, Daddy's being mean to us
Dad : If we're assigning blame perhaps I could offer up BT as the common enemy ?

I'm currently doing the rounds internally and externally to Worldline UK&I giving a presentation about "Being Digital" and explaining to the audience how Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants see the world. In addition I add an amusing play on Marc Prensky's take of the world with Digital Ignorants that pretend the Digital World isn't happening. Pretty sure you aren't new to this but 1 sentence overviews in case this is new for you:

Digital Native - born into the Digital era surrounded and supported by technology creating a way of living that is normal and relies heavily upon technology. Digital is the norm
Digital Immigrant born before the Digital era (or born in the Digital era but was not exposed to it) but is adapting to it and moving away from lesser capable technology and paper. Isn't naturally inclined to Digital but accepts and adopts it to varying degrees.
Digital Ignorant - still pretends the Digital world hasn't occurred, actively rejects the need for the Digital world and keeps the makers of pencils and paper in business. Is probably not pre-disposed to using technology of any sort. Has both fingers stuffed in their ears and can be found singing to themselves ; "La la la what digital world"

I had the idea to call BT's technical support one day to complain about the incredibly crappy upload bandwidth when I was particularly darlecy (not sure if that's a word but it's my blog so my rules). I think I had 0.16Mb upload, and my outbound voice was inaudible and I had to switch to a mobile perched delicately in the window in an attempt to connect to the mobile network (now there's another post that needs writing). My call with BT went something like this:

Me : Hi, I'm having a real problem with my bandwidth today!
BT agent in India somewhere : Was it working OK yesterday?
Me : Define OK?
BT : Did you have sufficient bandwidth?
Me : Well not really, hard to have sufficient bandwidth on the piece of string excuse you have for a phone line!
BT : pardon Sir?
Me : Never mind, English humour. Yesterday it was running at it's normal speed where I only have to repeat myself twice to be understood
BT : Could you say that again please Sir?
Me : You being funny ?
BT : I don't understand ?
Me : Sorry, thought you were taking the P!ss. OK, listen yesterday it was working as well as can be expected when you hit the heady heights of 0.49Mb upload bandwidth.. Today I've tested the connection @ 0.16Mb, this is barely enough to send a "Hello world" message from java and that's pure text let alone voice and screen sharing.
BT : What have you changed?
Me : Nothing
BT : Are you running wireless or wired?
Me : Wireless like I always do when it always runs at 0.49 top end!
BT : I suggest you run wired, it will improve things.
Me : So you're not interested in the fact this is a test over an established baseline with the same kit on the same network using the same IP using the same, well everything as normal?
BT : It says in my script I have to ask this irrelevant of the fact its a dumb question 99% of the time.
Me : OK, I've plugged in the LAN cable and I've not achieved 0.17Mb. Seems you were right but before you go claiming 6% increase on your advice can I remind you that the normal bandwidth  is 0.49Mb upstream....wired or wireless.
BT : I'm sorry, we don't guarantee upload bandwidth, only download.
Me : Shall we talk download then ? This could get fun :)
BT : I see from your line that you have unlimited broadband and that you can achieve 4Mb
Me : Haha, I knew BT had a sense of humour but that was hilarious
BT : Sorry ?
Me : Don't be sorry, I don't think you installed the cable did you!
Me : Lets short cut this before I die of laughter. When can I get fibre broadband please?
BT : It's already installed in the cabinet Sir.
Me : I've checked my cabinet and it's full of alcohol, are we talking about a different cabinet? I've got a bunch of fibre cables in my garage but I don't think that's going to help things.
BT : I'm confused Sir?
Me : So am I, I've got less than 2Mb downstream and you're claiming fibre is deployed to the cabinet, When can I get it to my house
BT : Can you give me your phone number?
Me : We've only just met, I mean the chat is going well but I'm not sure I'm ready to take this to the next level just yet
BT : Don't worry Sir I've found it on your account.
Me : OK, you choose the restaurant I'll pick up the cheque
BT : Pardon Sir ?
Me : Ignore me, this is the most fun I've had in weeks on my broadband line. You were going to tell me when I could get fibre
BT : There are no plans to roll fibre out to you location
Me : I've changed my mind, I don't think this is going to work out. We're just not right for each other.
BT : Sir?
Me : Thanks, speak to you soon. Bye.

OK it may not of gone exactly like that but you get the drift.

BT have rolled fibre out to the cabinet in local Wem, The cabinet is probably 2 miles from my house as the crow flies (or any other annoyingly noisy bird) and 3 miles via the roads. The fibre though wasn't rolled out to Wem houses for over a year despite everyone connected to the exchange getting a letter stating that we've installed fibre. BT had to meet a KPI and that was to roll out fibre to the exchanges, they did that and sat on it. Only a year later are fibre cables going in.....but not past the boundary of the town. Rural locations have been told to raise a petition to get the broadband as the KPI from the government isn't to roll this out to houses. I guess it's no shock that BT claim its not economically viable to roll it out to the rural areas. they are OK though to make a mint in the cities and large towns. Anyone can manipulate a business case to show its not viable but surely they should be on the hook overall not just area by area.

So in my mind BT in rural areas are Digital Ignorants, they have their fingers firmly stuffed in their ears denying a need and keeping the rural areas on bandwidth that is just unable to support normal families. We can't do video calls to families/friends, I can't video call back to our house and see my children when I'm away.. All because BT claim its not economically viable to roll it out. Interesting when I do video calls to India and they have more than 5Mb to their houses ! I was in Pune in May and the hotel which is in Hinjewadi which is not built up really had over 10Mb up and down per room. Surely if it can be done in rural Pune ir can be done in rural England ?

Anyway, enough BT bashing. I actually get their point even if I see it as a bend of the overall truth to satisfy their lust for profit at the expense of real people!

So I thought, I'll just get a 4G router and put a mast up and I won't need BT anymore. I called EE who are my mobile provider and talked through what I wanted. After being transferred through 3 or 4 different sections due to my confusing request for rural cellular network based broadband I arrived at a man who could help. He told me I can do a router that takes a SIM, it's capped at 50GB per month. We also don't do masts on our routers, you just put the SIM card in and it picks up the cellular network at 4G or 3G.

Not when it's in a rural building that has restrictions on insulation that pretty much create a Faraday cage it doesn't (refer to note above about placing phone in the window to get signal). I fail to see why EE don't offer a master that would connect to the router so I can actually pick up 3G/4G, surely it's in their interest to get the strongest connection possible, especially as they have introduced an arbitrary monthly ceiling of 50GB and over that they will charge you horrendous overage.

Turns out you can get a router with a mast (just not from a cellular data provider) and just take a data card from the cellualr network but the router/mast has to be bought independently. I called EE back and said can I get a data only card and not bother with your equipment ? You can but only @ 32GB per month, no reason for that other than to get right on my nerves.OK, tat probably wasn't their marketting approach but it's how it makes you feel !

So to recap:

• Existing rural broadband is shocking
• BT won't roll out fibre to rural broadband as they claim its not economical for them as a company
• The most viable alternative is 3G/4G broadband for rural people wanting better connections, Surely this is a marketing angle for the data providers ?
• Many rural buildings are on the edge of 3G/4G or have high regulations on energy efficiency meaning mobile signals inside are hard to get so the standard router they offer is pointless
• Cellular data providers don't offer a mast option and what they offer is capped at 50GB per month
• You can use a cellular data providers card in an independent router with an outside mast but its capped at 32Gb per month
• With a family of 3 children and 2 adults who love Netflix, Amazon and work from home I expect to consume between 100GB and 150GB per month

People wonder why rural dwellers get so frustrated with broadband. Well now you know.

As a good CTO though I have a Plan B. I've bought an industrial role of silver foil and I'm working my way through the fields to the town of Wem wrapping the horns of cows with foil tuning the cows into super conductors. All I have to do now is point a laser LAN at the first cow and bounce the signal off the rest to my place.What could possibly go wrong I ask you ?