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Friday, February 17, 2023

The Handler: A Nick Reagan Thriller

A little break from technology - here's a review of an entertaining read:

The Handler introduced me to Jeffrey Stephens as an author. Decades of reading about terrorist plots, bad guys, and evildoers and the agents, officers, heroes, as well as anti-heroes attempting to frustrate their plans and bring them to justice, tends to make one a bit leery of new entries.

Could the adventures of agent Nick Reagan hold my interest. Or, would it lapse into cliched crudities, obvious plot-lines stitched onto the latest fashionably/culturally-correct evils that too many authors can't seem to avoid?<

Mr. Stephens provides a very well-written and entertaining story of agent Reagan's adventures. He balances intense action, reflection, problem-solving analysis, and romance in a way that holds your attention and keeps you turning pages. 

Mr. Stephens poses believable challenges to his characters along with reasonable solutions that (generally) work as intended. He establishes believable settings and interaction among his characters. The action takes place internationally and realistically. He is adept at establishing a genuine feeling for each location with an economy of detail. Having been to both Washington and Paris, I believe he does them justice. I look forward to visiting the Mall of America. 

To summarize, I'm hooked. I look forward to reading more about agent Reagan assuming Mr. Stephens continues to tell the stories. If you want believable, straight forward characters, and an honestly, entertaining read; you will find it in these pages.



Thursday, November 10, 2022

 Can Artificial Intelligence technology satisfactorily tell us “What Makes Us Human?”

What Makes Us Human?”  attempts to answer that question has kept humans busy for thousands of years. It has occupied artists, musicians, authors, theologians, philosophers including the brightest, best, and worst of humanity. Now, AI (Artificial Intelligence) has entered the effort. The results are interesting and really not all that surprising.

Bestselling author/poet, Ian S. Thomas with technologist/philosopher/researcher, Jasmine Wang worked with GPT-3, an artificial intelligence technology to get the answer. Working from GPT-3’s responses to a dynamic list of over 200 questions, the author/editors provide a lightly edited collection of GPT-3 answers.

GPT-3 was pre-trained with some 570 GB of digitized data consisting of a sampling of the contents of books, scrolls, and texts representative of humanity’s wisdom and knowledge articulated over thousands of years. The responses ranged from a single word to multi-paragraph text, some comic, some profound. GPT-3 at times embraces a self-centered hedonism over self-disciplined morality. Or, conflates the soul with spirituality.

The author/editors’ goal was to identify the essence of the human spirit from a source (GPT-3) with no prejudices, instilled beliefs, or preconceived loyalties. GPT-3 has no emotion, guilt, nor fixed moral framework. The team compares GPT-3 to Christianity’s Adam and Eve as they were before they took a bite of the Apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. An interesting viewpoint. Especially since GPT’s answers seem to be imbued with all of these

This is not Aristotle, St. Augustine, Buddha, Peter Jordan, nor has it any base rock theology, psychiatry, or moral philosophy. Neither is it a consistent polemic. It doesn’t engage in deep analysis or pose a coda for living.

GPT-3 responses can be occasionally evasive, even contradictory. Its statements can be puzzling at times, lyrical at others. It does provide interesting observations and commentary.  The overall effect is surprisingly reflective of humanity’s own uncertainty about the answer. How do you maintain a true sense of self, while adhering to broad social values or moral principles that challenge personal preferences but are necessary for a cohesive society?

As the authors point out, one can read straight through the Q&A in the order presented. However, they suggest a potentially more satisfying approach is to search out and focus on questions immediately relevant to the reader. Some of the responses require significant reflection, especially when addressing fundamental life questions.

I took a combined approach. Reading selectively at first, eventually reading straight through. Both proved interesting and thought provoking. GPT-3 conclusions appear as an amalgamation of sometimes discordant ideals, even ideas. Again, not all that inconsistent what happens in human life. There are parts of the text that sound like the lyrics and themes used by artists and musicians in every age and generation. Other responses are direct quotes from one or more of the multiple sacred texts that make up GPT-3’s data base.

In the end, I found it an interesting read. It didn’t reveal any shockingly new concepts. It provides very good, sometimes excellent advice. Just as frequently it offers a smorgasbord of overlapping semi-conclusions; forcing the reader to reflect more deeply to draw their own conclusions.  All in all, reading and re-reading was time well spent. It provides no earth-shattering revelation. Not surprisingly, the conclusions and advice culled from all that data actually validates in a very fundamental manner what we should all have learned a long time ago.

It seems that The Beatles (among a host of others) in one (and actually more) of their songs provided a very excellent opinion. The answer is…well, I’ll leave that for you to find out from the book.

For those who can’t wait, go here for a hint (https://tinyurl.com/28nenh7a).



Monday, November 8, 2021

Will it be acquisition fever, staff turnover, or in-house e-Mail update issues that trip up IBM?

 By Bill Moran, Rich Ptak

 Recently, much ado was made over IBM’s problems in integrating its internal email system. As we understand it, the project involved returning IBM’s email services in-house after they had been outsourced to an India-based company. Things did not go well.

 First, a little background on email systems. During an early 2000’s acquisition binge, a major Palo Alto-based IT company set about integrating three separate email systems. After multiple years of problems, frustration, confusion, and communications issues, the project was successfully completed. The results were not that surprising to us. A not-so-long ago survey had enterprise executives identify the most critical in-house task that IT departments weren’t addressing. Fixing corporate email problems was at the top of the list! Apparently, that continues today.  All our information is current as of November 8, 2021.  

 Back to IBM, several  questions came to mind: why would a leading sophisticated technology, product, and service provider be motivated to outsource a critical task like email to another company? Did no one consider the downside risks of such a move? One can imagine IBM encountering and dealing with numerous email system challenges while managing customer systems. Why not use this experience to fix their own problem?

 Any of these or a number of other issues might trip up the company that was once the undisputed industry giant and leader. The challenges confronting an enterprise attempting to successfully complete very large, complicated IT projects are neither unique nor unknown. (See our Appendix – On the Failure of Large Projects.) Current IBM challenges include identifying (and implementing) the best strategy to enter a fiercely competitive market dominated by large players. Or integrating a series of acquisitions, multiplying lawsuits, employee retention, etc. Each must be viewed in proper perspective if it is to be resolved. Isn’t there enough on IBM’s plate already? We believe further examination is merited.

 Our goal is to provide commentary and observations, not solutions. Limiting the number of issues examined allowed us to keep to a reasonable length. While not exhaustive, this list provides insight into the range, timeliness, and variety of challenges facing IBM.

Potential Tripwires

 Of the large and variety number of problems IBM faces, we chose nine for our commentary. Not in priority order, these are:

    1. Completing the Red Hat integration. 
    2. Increasing profitable growth. 
    3. Lawsuits involving GlobalFoundries, age discrimination, etc.
    4. Integrating numerous recently acquired small companies  
    5. Completing Kyndryl creation and launch.
    6. Preparing for and winning serious competitive battles in cloud, AI, and Quantum
    7.  Rationalization of the management team.
    8. Internal IT issues.Other internal morale issues, etc.

What could possibly go wrong?

Item 1 – Completing the Red Hat integration. Obviously, integrating Red Hat (13,000 employees, market value over $26 billion) into IBM was going to be tricky. Many Red Hat customers are direct IBM competitors e.g., Microsoft. A great deal of Red Hat’s value depends on its preserving “Swiss-like neutrality[1]” in the marketplace. This makes integration of the IBM and Red Hat sales forces very difficult, perhaps impossible. We suspect there exist additional integration dilemmas for other functions. In some sense integration is necessary, but operational independence must be preserved.

 Notably, IBM’s (then) President Jim Whitehurst’s reply to a query about where he spent most of his time said it was on “Red Hat issues”. This speaks volumes about the need for full-time executive focus on the issue. It also implies integration is far from complete. Given Red Hat’s size, number of people involved and the radical difference in cultures, this is no surprise. Add-in the neutrality issues that restrict IBM’s options, the complexity of the task is clear. We believe “neutrality” is not a short-term threat but has the significant potential to become a long-term threat. Failure to maintain absolute Red Hat neutrality (by favoring IBM products) would hurt IBM badly in the marketplace.

 Whitehurst’s resignation was a surprise. His past success along with Red Hat open-source credibility could have provided a much-needed boost to IBM’s operating culture. IBM customers have been very positive about Red Hat sales and support staff.

  Whitehurst will continue as an “advisor” (no further details available). Our hope (and advice) is that IBM move quickly to assign an experienced executive to focus on the integration while maintaining as much Whitehurst involvement as possible.

 Item 2Increasing profitable growth. This is a serious long-term issue totally belonging to IBM CEO Arvind Krishna. He must build and drive the infrastructure to accomplish this. IBM Storage has been a bright spot (not so much in the latest results), but it can’t do it alone. For instance, IBM’s Cloud-based business continues to grow, but at a slower rate from a smaller base than competitors, AWS, Microsoft, and Google. More on this later.

Item 3 – Addressing Lawsuits involving GlobalFoundries, age discrimination, etc. Lawyers have day-to-day responsibility for legal issues. Serious issues may require Board-level decisions and significant CEO involvement. Without case details, we simply identify the broad risks for IBM. Any litigation can potentially lead to a problem negatively impacting success. Close monitoring by an executive will help to avoid surprises.

 Item 4Integrating numerous recently acquired small companies. Companies important enough to buy typically need exceptional staff to achieve maximum benefit. IBM’s track record of both successes and failures at integration raises concerns. Today’s stream of small acquisitions (BoxBoat Technologies, Bluetab Solutions Group, etc.) magnifies the issue. To us, an ongoing flow of acquisitions appears risky and unnecessary. Not simply because failure is costly in itself; but because it means missed opportunities. It consumes resources (time, funds) that could have been invested/utilized more profitably. An issue although not typically an existential threat,

 Item 5Completing Kyndryl creation and launch. CEO involvement should continue until the Kyndryl spin-off is complete and fully functioning independent of IBM. We believe  the risk to IBM is minor. Of more concern are inflated expectations of large benefits to IBM from an independent Kyndryl. Time will tell whether Kyndryl’s board and management will see their best interest lies in supporting IBM’s cooperative vision. Similar ideas of a bright future with GlobalFoundries fell flat. In addition to lawsuits, there is GlobalFoundries’ potential links with an IBM competitor. (See the Quantum market discussion.)

Item 6Preparing for serious competitive battles in Cloud, AI, and Quantum. Very fierce competitive battles will be fought for each of these markets. Every major vendor, as well as many emerging ones are engaged here. CEO Krishna cited statistics asserting that the company “providing the platform” will get 90% of the value. AWS, Microsoft, and Google agree. All are competing to claim that position. All have significantly larger market penetration, and annual growth rates surpassing IBM. Red Hat’s open-source positioning and technology are key IBM advantages. But Swiss-like neutrality may very well prove a double-edged sword in this competition.

 CEO Arvind Krishna further seeks to avoid “useless” competition through partnerships and alliances. That strategy may initially deliver successes. However, historically, particularly when involving large competitors, the payoff is usually disappointing. Initial willingness to share succumbs to pressures of converging products and services as technology advances. As these overlap, conflicts increase and margins shrink. The fiercest battle for market share is and will be fought at the point-of-sales. Especially as rapidly evolving user interfaces make the underlying technology increasingly opaque.

 To illustrate this point, let’s take a deeper look at Quantum. IBM provides an impressive technology and popular development platform to a wide variety, quality, and number of quantum computing users. They dominate the absolute volume and variety of circuits run on quantum platforms. They offer a sophisticated, open implementation environment with Qiskit. They have made numerous contributions and advances to quantum computing. However, some competitors have a track record of success at gaining market share even without the best technology. Quantum is evolving more rapidly than expected, with surprising results as the parameters change. Error correction/rate reduction provides us an example.

Inherently large error rates remain a major challenge for quantum hardware driving furious competition among competing architectures. IBM and Google both forecast a million-qubit error-corrected system by the end of the decade. On the other hand, M12[2]-funded PsiQuantum (in partnership with GlobalFoundries) projects mid-decade delivery of a fully error-corrected quantum computer. PsiQuantum has sufficient Wall Street/Investor credibility for a recent cash infusion to boost total funding to $665M and a valuation exceeding $3.1B. But market success requires more than impressive technology and massive funding. It requires strong marketing to attract customers, and sales expertise to persuade customers to buy. China’s delivery of quantum supremacy with an optically based quantum device adds pressures.   

Time and again it’s been proven that the BEST technology can, and frequently will lose to a BETTER sales/marketing team. IBM will have to avoid repeating go-to-market and sales missteps that squandered past advantages of best in-class, and first-to-market products. Remember Microsoft’s Windows was (and for many remains) a kludgy, inelegant, not-so-wonderful user interface. But it permits non-IT, non-programming staff to leverage the power of the computer with relative ease. Smart sales and marketing facilitated its market domination until Apple computers and eventually the iPhone[3] arrived on the scene.

 We think IBM’s competitiveness in the cloud, quantum and, and AI marketplace is a very serious risk for the company. Efforts attempting to finesse marketplace competition does not appear a particularly wise long-term strategy.

Item 7Rationalizing the management team IBM has multiple areas in need of exceptional leadership. Today, apparently overlapping, and confusing role definition makes it difficult to determine where responsibility for success resides. Cloud and Sales roles appear especially impacted. IBM must win significant sales contracts. Once IBM had the sales and marketing talent[4] that was world-class, the envy of competitors. We’ve had IBM customers bemoan the lack of talented sales reps. To succeed, world-class sales and marketing expertise and field experience is mandatory. It is not there today.

 As smart and experienced as the current CEO is, he has no experience in direct sales or marketing. We could not identify any field sales rep experience for any of the 21[5] members of IBM’s executive team. Some have sales management experience. Unfortunately, such management is no substitute for real in-field experience[6].

 As mentioned, Red Hat requires senior management attention. This need extends to the integration of acquired companies. Also, IBM’s culture is very strong. Mainframers live in their own world; managing it would be a significant challenge for any newcomers to that world. Good judgement is needed when assigning new hires to senior executive roles.

 Item 8Internal IT issues. Clearly the email fiasco requires a response; it is neither the greatest nor least of IBM’s current IT challenges. CEO Krishna can go hands-on or initiate a major internal IT overhaul with a trusted CIO. We recommend the CIO route.

 Item 9Other internal morale issues, etc. Finally, our instincts, experience, and research hint at troubling undercurrents in IBM today. Employees are concerned about past mismanagement and poor decisions. Trust in the company has weakened; morale needs attention. Industry surveys indicate many employees are looking to change jobs/employers as pandemic lock-downs ease. Combined with low morale, the situation can become critical. Managers need to recognize the signs, and act quickly to resolve underlying issues.

Final Observations and Comments

We started by asking which challenge facing IBM would trip them up. We examined a subset of possible issues. All are significant to some degree, most are confronted and dealt with in any significantly large company. Some are recurring; as such they will require continuing consistent managerial time and attention. A few are self-inflicted and are relatively straightforward to resolve. The chart below summarizes our thoughts. Further elaboration of our conclusions resumes after the chart.

Potential IBM tripwires

Issue

  LT   Int Term  Short Term

Comments

1  Red Hat Integration

   ##        ---         #      

A manageable problem with short term spikes. Long term risk.

2  Profitable Growth

  ##         ##        # 

Major issue both intermediate & long term, not as critical in short term.

3  Legal Issues

   ?            ?           ?

Potentially large problem. IBM lawyers handle and keep executive management informed.

4  Integrate acquisitions

   ---         ---       ---              

Careful management needed to realize the expected benefits and avoid loss of opportunistic benefits.

5  Kyndryl Launch

   #         ---        ---                

Long term could be troublesome, may not match IBM expectations.

6  Competitive battles

   ##            ##           #

Very difficult to resolve, requiring long term solution.

7  Rationalize Mgmt. Team

   ---             ---          #

Short term that CEO must solve e.g., who is in overall charge of Cloud activities?

8   Internal IT issues

   ---             ---          #

An able, empowered CIO can solve the problems.

9  Staff morale, turnover

    #              #        #

An ongoing problem but should be manageable.

       Definitions:        

·         Long term is more than 5 years.

·         Intermediate is 18 months to 5 years.

·         Short term is now (Sept 2021) to the next 18 months.

·         # - a significant issue that is bad, troublesome, and difficult to handle.

·         ## - a major issue with potential to do real damage to the corporation.

·         --- a real but not fatal issue that should be dealt with by management with minimal fuss.

       Assumptions:

·         Issues of serious interest to the financial community may impact ratings. See Motley Fool discussion[7] of IBM positives and risks from an investor’s viewpoint.

·         Economic recovery will be allowed to continue without another massive lockdown.

·         Also, in any discussion of the future are Nassim Taleb’s “black swans[8], i.e., Events (good or bad) unpredicted and/or even unpredictable which may necessitate radical alterations in strategy, tactics, plans, etc.  

 To us, the competitive market battles and the need for profitable growth loom large. The most unsettling issue is the lack of field sales expertise on the management team. IBM’s anemic market share poses a serious problem, compounded by sales force weaknesses as relayed to us by customers.   IBM market growth needs to exceed that of well-positioned, sales and market powerhouse rivals in AI and Cloud markets. The emerging Quantum market will require exceptional marketing plans and sales effort. IBM cannot repeat earlier new technology product market entry missteps. We see no evidence that IBM recognizes the problem’s size or seriousness today.

  Acquiring Red Hat was a wise move and very helpful to IBM. However, we believe that the “Swiss Neutrality” policy severely limits IBM’s ability to leverage Red Hat technology to directly benefit sales of other IBM products. Overt attempts to do so would seriously damage both companies’ reputations and business. So far, IBM and Red Hat both appear to be successfully avoiding any such attempts. The risk and temptation remain. A serious potential tripwire. 

 IBM CEO Krishna’s proven background, intelligence, and expertise in technology demonstrate he has the strengths and experience for managerial success. As CEO, he must choose where to focus his efforts, what to delegate and to whom. So far, except as noted above, his decisions have been encouraging.  

 Some believe IBM is irrelevant in today’s technology world. Our opinion is that with insightful, proactive management it can be a very serious contender and contributor. Success requires correctly choosing where to focus efforts along with clearly assigned responsibility and accountability. We think CEO Krishna can succeed. We wish he and IBM the best in their efforts.

 


Appendix - On the Failure of Large Projects

When large IT projects fail, it normally involves one or more of these results:

              The project is extremely late.

              The project is vastly over budget.

              Key functions do not work, and/or they do not deliver expected benefits.

              The project never completes and is abandoned.

Numerous examples can be found in government, e.g., in the US there is the Obamacare website rollout fiasco. The UK Postal IT experienced a system foul-up which led to prosecution of some 700 innocent people. Poul-Henning Kamp’s discussion of that event appeared in the Communications of the ACM, November 2021 entitled: “What went wrong? “ (public access to the article is available here: https://tinyurl.com/ydtvwty3). In the private sector, failures can be and often are discretely concealed, thus avoiding negative publicity and potential legal liabilities.

For a multi-level service vendor like IBM, another factor comes into play. IBM does not use its best talent for internal projects. The best will be assigned to revenue-producing customer projects. No vendor can afford to do otherwise.

That said, it is important to not overrate the importance of internal project failure. While such events are embarrassing, any customer survey would reveal most, if not all prefer to have the best of the vendor’s talent working on their problems, not the vendor’s.

 


[1] “Swiss-like neutrality” means that Red Hat needs to treat all its partners the same way. No favorites. No special advantages to IBM. We believe that Red Hat’s other partners, who are IBM competitors, have launched projects to evaluate their options if IBM compromises Red Hat’s neutrality.

[2] M12 is Microsoft’s venture capital arm, thus Microsoft is a potential PsiQuantum partner

[3] IBM’s OS/2, an arguably technically superior product, lost out.

[4] IBM’s legendary Francis “Buck” Rogers was such an executive. His specialty was rescuing sales situations where IBM was losing. His memoir The IBM Way is well worth reading. See https://tinyurl.com/yfwp6p5m

[5] The website does list 21 people. Almost all have VP titles. Only one is clearly identified as reporting to the CEO. Do all the rest report to the CEO or do some report to others? Frankly, we are confused.

[6] Not to belabor the point but both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had extensive sales experience when they ran their respective companies. Ross Perot started his own company only after a (very successful) career as an IBM salesrep. Virtually all entrepreneurs must learn this lesson. To complete the picture, the current IBM CEO, Krishna is a long time IBMer, spent years in IBM research before he went into management. He has a PHD in electrical engineering. He has no sales experience.

[7] The Motley Fool article is at: https://tinyurl.com/ygansxmf.

[8] Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “The Black Swan”. We  recommend it.

Thursday, July 8, 2021

Runaway Technology: Can Law Keep Up?


This is a short review of "Runaway Technology, Can Law keep up? by Joshua A. T. Fairfield and published by Cambridge University Press. I found it interesting, and thought I would share by comments on it.

 Joshua A. T. Fairfield clearly has a broad-background of interest and knowledge. He calls on all of it as he analyzes the challenge of keeping the law relevant as technology-driven and dominated world. This can be intimidating for some not used to crossing across disciplines for problem solving. If one is willing to make the effort, the results can be quite satisfying.  As I found with this book.

Mr. Fairfield honestly admits to his own biases (which he generally manages to minimize in his commentary/analysis).  He does mention the need for other points of view. He should look into Ludwig Von Mises economic theory of praxeology to get a view of economics based on an understanding of humans make their decisions and chose their actions. It's much more interesting than simple selfish interest.

Mr. Fairfield provides an interesting description and critique of the "Law" as a human "superpower", i.e. a social technology that allows them to create and apply "cooperative fictions" that enable an ordered, complex social environment. He believes that the Law has failed to keep abreast of the rapid, continuing pace of technology-driven change that disrupts the process. Partially because of the inertia of the legal community, and its failure to recognize Law as the adaptable, flexible superpower that it is. He proposes the "language" of the Law be redefined to deal with the evolving threats posed by new technologies in the hands of technical oligarchs (my term not his). 

His analysis and proposal to "fix" the Law is interestingly creative and insightful. Mr. Fairfield deserves credit for his efforts. The work is definitely worth careful consideration, and potentially pursuing. But...and it is a big BUT

Mr. Fairfield's indictment of high-tech entrepreneur/business oligarchs (again, my term) ignores a far more insidious and blatant defect in the Law today. One that must be dealt with if this "reinvention" is to be effective. That is, today's multi-tier Justice System permeating the entire judicial, legal and enforcement, whereby procedure, enforcement, and punishment vary according to wealth, social class, political affiliation, fame, and race. Certainly, such corruption is neither new nor unique. However, the breadth and degree of publicly admitted corruption and discrimination threatens the "cooperative communication" necessary for our complex society.

By all means read this book. It covers a fair range of topics and the author clearly has a lot to say and eventually manages to pull his thoughts together. As you approach the end, do keep in mind that without a shared ethic based on recognition of shared communal dependency, mutual respect and honest integrity, any attempt at productive dialogue is doomed to failure.