ZDNet’s legendary Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley reported on an intriguing possibility for the rumored forthcoming Windows Blue update to Windows 8: That Microsoft could bring back the Start Button for desktop mode and/or allow users to boot directly to the desktop.

These are features that Microsoft should indeed provide to its customers in the next release.

Some analysts and designers might argue against these moves. To truly reimagine Windows, the argument might go, users must be taught a completely new way to navigate. Key to the Windows 8/RT user interface (UI) are charms, which take the place of the Start Button and which provide a simplified navigation system that’s particularly suited to touch screens. Users should segue to charms full time, even when they are in Desktop Mode, if they are to build a bridge to the modern UI.

Those claims might hold some truth. Yet Microsoft should reinstitute the Start Button anyway, because:

Wisdom from the Past

In his 1956 dystopian sci-fi novel “The City and the Stars”, Arthur C. Clarke puts forth the fundamental design tenet for making eternal machines, “A machine shall have no moving parts”. To someone from the 1950s current computers would appear to come close to that ideal – the CPUs and memory perform silent magic and can, with some ingenuity, be passively cooled, and invisible electronic signals carry information in and out of them to networks and … oops, to rotating disks, still with us after more than five decades[i]. But, as we all know, salvation has appeared on the horizon in the form of solid-state storage, so called flash storage (actually an idea of several decades standing as well, just not affordable until recently).

The initial substitution of flash for conventional storage yields immediate gratification in the form of lower power, maybe lower cost if used effectively, and higher performance, but the ripple effect benefits of flash can be even more pervasive. However, the implementation of the major architectural changes engendered across the whole IT stack by the use of flash is a difficult conceptual challenge for users and largely addressed only piecemeal by most vendors. Enter IBM and its Flashahead initiative.

What is Happening?

On Friday, April 11, IBM announced a major initiative, to the tune of a spending commitment of $1B, to accelerate the use of flash technology by means of three major programs:

·        Fundamental flash R&D

·        New storage products built on flash-only memory technology

Do you remember your “Current Events” class? It was the one where there was always a pop quiz on what’s happening in the news. Think if you were in that class today and there was a segment on business and technology: Where would you turn? 

While we like to believe that www.Forrester.com and this blog are your only two sources of information (wink, wink), we recognize that there are other valuable publications to help you stay on top of business and technology happenings. The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New York Times, Associated Press, La Tribune, Forbes, Wired, CIO, InformationWeek, and ZDNet to name a few. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are also great resources.

To help IT Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) leaders stay current, I've handpicked media from this week that features quotes and data from Forrester’s I&O analysts and a few others. Some articles are very relevant to I&O leaders (ex. stories on BYOD, tablets, Microsoft), while others offer important marketing and strategy insights for I&O leaders to be aware of (ex. business trends in retail and banking, big data, voice of the customer strategies).

Is this useful? If so, I'm happy to do this weekly or every other week. Let me know in the comment field below.

Thanks and enjoy your weekend,

Doug

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Very Relevant Business Technology News For I&O Leaders:

The Wall Street Journal 
Featured Forrester Analyst: Christian Kane
No contract phones could complicate BYOD 
April 8, 2013

Recently, I interviewed a half dozen top service design agencies to better understand how they work with enterprise architects and business architects inside the client firms they serve. All of the agencies I interviewed focus on helping their clients transform customer experience and introduce new products and services.  I wanted to interview these agencies because they represent the tip of the spear when it comes to introducing new innovation inside of companies looking to take advantage of disruptive drivers - both competitive and digital – and rethink their business models. 

I asked each agency for examples of how they worked with their clients’ enterprise architects and business architects when introducing new innovation.  When I posed this question to each agency, I could hear crickets chirping in the background.  In short, they all indicated – in as nice terms as possible – that they try to avoid the IT organization in general, and had no contact with specific enterprise architects or business architects. 

For me these interviews painted a picture of a school yard where team captains are picking players for kickball, and a small group of kids were being left on the sidelines, not picked for the team.  Using this analogy, the business – in many cases the CMO and CXO leaders – are the team captains.  And enterprise architecture, including business architects and process architects, are the kids being left on the sidelines.