Cross posted on my work blog, but I like it. 

This edition of CIO insight contains a very good interview with Nicholas Carr, the guy who wrote the Harvard Business Review article “IT Doesn’t Matter” then book “Does IT Matter – Information Technology and the Corrosion of the Competitive Advantage“. His latest book “The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google” compares the evolution of utility computing (or cloud computing, pick your term of choice) to the growth of the electric utility business and why ultimately utility computing is where corporate IT is heading. 
 

I just finished “The Big Switch” and highly recommend reading the first half of the book. Carr does an excellent job of explaining the case for utility computing and how corporations will not be able to avoid that trend. All you have to do is look at what Google and Microsoft are doing. Microsoft is not after Yahoo for their portal. MS has recognized that utility comuting is the future, and that the desktop OS and software business that has been their bread and butter is beginning to decline. Their up until recently quietly growing Online Services business along with the Yahoo offers is their first tacit admission of that view. More to come on this later.

Avoid the second half of the book, except for entertainment value. That’s a bit drastic, his descriptions of current state data mining capabilities are slightly chilling, but not necessarily new. But Carr goes on to explain his vision of the future, and the dominance and control of everyday life and eventually human intelligence by what he annoyingly calls “the World Wide Computer”. Basically in Carr’s future Google is SkyNet.

But I participated anyway and wanted to note them here.

1) Charlotte CIO Forum 2007 panel discussion on Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing strategies for corporations

2) A panel discussion at the Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2008.

In March of 2008 I participated in a webcast sponsored by CIBER Inc. on Enterprise Information Management. Fair warning – it’s close to an hour long, I think it’s got a lot of good information if you’re into that kind of thing. It also requires registration to access the content. For professionals only.

CIBER Enterprise Information Management Webcast

In the fall of 2007 I attended Microsoft’s Business Intelligence Conference. As part of the proceedings I participated in a short podcast talking about how my employer leverages Microsoft’s BI suite for delivering information to our company.