Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change (33 page)

Therefore, the infrastructure itself—from end to end—will have to be reengineered to have the ability to perform many tasks that require human intervention today. What is coming is a kind of computing that will take its cue from the human autonomic nervous system.

IBM’s research scientists draw many parallels between the way the human body manages itself—everything from heartbeat to the immune system—and what is needed in computing systems. Think of it as a kind of self-awareness that will allow systems to defeat viruses, protect themselves from attack, isolate and repair failed components, see a breakdown coming and head it off, and reconfig-ure themselves on the fly to take full advantage of all of their component parts.

Autonomic computing won’t be invented or created by one company alone. That’s why IBM’s technical community proposed in 2001

that this new realm would become the next great technical challenge for the entire IT industry.

Joining the Grid

So far the Internet and its communications protocols have enabled computing systems that were once self-standing—whether WHO SAYS ELEPHANTS CAN’T DANCE? / 269

you’re talking about PCs or data centers—to share information and conduct transactions. In effect, the first stage of the Internet revolution allowed computers to
talk
to one another. What’s going to happen next (based on yet another set of gorpy protocols) will allow networks of computers actually to
work
with one another—to combine their processing power, storage capacities, and other resources to solve common problems.

This kind of massive, secure infrastructure of shared resources goes by the name “grid computing.” Like many of the mainstream commercial aspects of information technology, such as the Internet itself, grids are taking off first in the scientific, engineering, and aca-demic communities in areas such as high-energy physics, life sciences, and engineering design.

One of IBM’s first grid projects was done with the University of Pennsylvania. It’s designed to allow breast cancer researchers all over the world to collaborate on applications that will compare mammograms of the same woman over many years, leading to much more reliable detection and diagnosis.

The Next Utility

Put all of this together—the emergence of large-scale computing grids, the development of autonomic technologies that will allow these systems to be more self-managing, and the proliferation of computing devices into the very fabric of life and business—and it suggests one more major development in the history of the IT industry. This one will change the way IT companies take their products to market. It will change who they sell to and who the customer considers its “supplier.” This development is what some have called “utility” computing.

The essential idea is that very soon enterprises will get their information technology in much the same way they get water or electric

270 / LOUIS V. GERSTNER, JR.

power. They don’t now own a waterworks or power plant, and soon they’ll no longer have to buy, house, and maintain any aspect of a traditional computing environment: The processing, the storage, the applications, the systems management, and the security will all be provided over the Net as a service—
on demand
.

The value proposition to customers is compelling: fewer assets; converting fixed costs to variable costs; access to unlimited computing resources on an as-needed basis; and the chance to shed the headaches of technology cycles, upgrades, maintenance, integration, and management.

Also, in a post-September 11, 2001, world in which there’s much greater urgency about the security of information and systems, on-demand computing would provide access to an ultra-secure infrastructure and the ability to draw on systems that are dispersed—creating a new level of immunity from a natural disaster or an event that could wipe out a traditional, centralized data center.

Where will this take hold first? I think we’re going to see something very similar to what we saw when customers started to embrace the Net. Many of the first implementations were for internal, or intranet, applications. In the case of on-demand computing, the ability to draw on a lot of existing resources plays directly to customers’ questions about how to utilize fully all of their existing IT investments. Rather than rolling in another piece of hardware, buying a bigger database or more storage, customers could have a new way to leverage their existing resources.

The Outer Limits

It’s almost always the case that any particular generation of people will be forced to deal with at least one game-changing technology—to understand it, apply it, and regulate it responsibly. In the middle of the last century, nuclear energy was the best example. The WHO SAYS ELEPHANTS CAN’T DANCE? / 271

current generation, on the other hand, will deal with not one but two game-changing scientific developments. Everything I’ve described so far relates to the first—the implications for institutions and individuals associated with networking technologies. The second is what is happening around the marriage of information technologies with molecular biology.

The watershed event was the mapping of the human genome.

That project created a data set equal to 10 million pages of information. Yet the really hard work is ahead of us. One researcher described it as having a book but not understanding the language in which it’s written. Deciphering it is expected to require analysis of data sets at least 1,000 times larger than the mapping project itself—another 10 billion pages of information.

It will be worth the effort. What we’ll learn will lead us to better, more effective, more personalized drugs, new protocols and treat-ments (and possibly cures) for the most intractable diseases, and new generations of more resilient, higher-yielding seeds and crops.

The point is, there is huge potential here to limit human suffering and do with scourges like heart disease or AIDS what we’ve already done with polio and smallpox.

Eighty years ago, antibiotics ushered in the last great advance in the human life span—about twenty additional years over normal life expectancies in 1920. We’re on the brink of discoveries that could deliver another twenty-year expansion, so younger readers of this book just might be looking at having a lot more time on planet Earth than their parents have had. And who wouldn’t want it, since we’re not talking about prolonging an existence already diminished by what we know today as “old age.” We’re talking about twenty more productive, healthy years.

272 / LOUIS V. GERSTNER, JR.

The Real Issues Are Not Technical

Before we get carried away by what the technologies are making possible—at the networked level or at the cellular level—let’s not forget that the potential societal good is always counterbalanced by an equally important list of societal concerns. And now that we have created the potential for both, it is my fervent hope that industry, customers, governments, and policy makers think through the implications of what is ahead.

It’s already clear that a networked world raises many issues, such as the confidentiality of medical or financial records, or the freedom of expression v. protections of personal privacy. Think about the privacy implications of what’s coming. What happens to personal privacy in a world of Internet-enabled cars that monitor our move-ments at all times; cell phones that continuously report their location; or Net-connected pacemakers and other medical devices that are gathering real-time data on our heartbeat or blood pressure, choles-terol level or blood-alcohol content? Who’s going to have access to that most personal profile of you—your physician alone? Law enforcement agencies? An insurance provider? Your employer or a potential employer?

Earlier I mentioned the very real chasm that exists between the information haves and have-nots, and I expressed my hope that we might actually apply ourselves and these technologies to bridge that digital divide. As we do that work, however, I wonder if we’re not in the process of creating a new, potentially unbridgeable genetic divide, where some people can afford the cost of preventing a birth defect or avoiding prolonged suffering, and some can’t.

When advances in diagnosis and treatment converge to deliver on the promise of a longer, healthier life, have we merely created the priceless luxury of more time for the people and things we love?

Or is there more to the equation? When that’s possible—or well before it’s

WHO SAYS ELEPHANTS CAN’T DANCE? / 273

possible—shouldn’t we be thinking about the effect on social structures, the medical establishment, pension systems, and the environmental implications of having to produce more food and create more shelter?

Finally, after the events of September 11, 2001, we’ve all been forced to think about the greatest threats to our way of life, wherever we live in the world. Is it traditional military aggression? A rogue or state-sponsored terrorist attack? The danger of internal attack from a disenfranchised fringe element? There’s no longer any need to say a lot about state-sponsored terrorism. We all view the world through a different lens now. One by-product of this new world view is a basic rethinking of the nature of the threats we face—in all their forms.

Even after September 11 law enforcement and security agencies remained convinced that the greatest threat to people and societies was still posed not by weapons of mass destruction but by broad-based information warfare and what they call weapons of mass
effect
.

No one equates the loss of human life with the loss of some computer equipment. At issue is the ability of cyber terrorists to cripple increasingly IT-intensive military infrastructures, national power grids, water supplies, or telecommunications systems.

The Leadership Challenge

This book has made the point repeatedly that leaders in both commercial endeavors and the public sector face a closely related set of strategic decisions about their exploitation of these technologies, their willingness to break with the status quo, their investment policies, and the readiness of their own leadership teams to embrace new ways of thinking and working.

That’s front and center. Those choices are being made today. To-morrow the agenda is going to shift to a set of considerations that 274 / LOUIS V. GERSTNER, JR.

revolve around what this networked world means for our existing geopolitical structures and all their underlying economic assumptions.

A networked world doesn’t respect the fact that we’ve organized the world into nation-states and have adapted nearly every convention of life and society to that model. The course and development of a networked world is not governed by our concepts of national borders, regional alliances, or political structure. It’s already dissolving many of the barriers that have historically separated peoples, nations, and cultures. And I believe it will drive a concomitant set of challenges to the ability of political institutions to control the most important thing they have always controlled—their citizens’ access to information, education, and knowledge. In the process, we may see a shift in the way democracies behave.

How will governments arrive at workable policy frameworks in this globally, politically, and culturally connected world? On the issue of personal privacy, the European Union has a policy framework that’s different from that of the United States, and both are markedly different from the Chinese approach.

Now take a step down from that level of global governance, to the way any individual anywhere in the world might express his or her political preferences. Not that long ago the thought of buying a book from your home or the office would have been considered revolutionary. So what happens if there comes a day when we can vote from the comfort of our den or the convenience of our workplace? Set aside what this might do to boost citizen participation in a representative form of government. Why not envision global ref-erenda that are representative of a global populace voting without regard for political affiliations or national allegiances. What might it mean for individual governments when a world community expresses an opinion on issues like global warming or an agreement like GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)?

I think that very soon, if we’re not there already, there’s going to WHO SAYS ELEPHANTS CAN’T DANCE? / 275

be increasing conflict between what we would define as national interests and global interests. So we’re going to be in a situation in which reaching agreement will require a new level of international cooperation and global public policy. But how?

Once again, our institutions are running well behind the rate of technological advancement. Some universities are starting to build e-business into their business management curricula. But what about political sciences, ethics, or the law schools? The United States Congress is one of the most powerful law-making bodies on the planet. To its credit there are a few committees and a handful of task forces examining issues like cyber-security, export controls, and intellectual property rights. But, for the most part, there’s a fundamental lack of understanding about what it’s going to take to build a workable policy framework for things like an appropriate tax regime for e-commerce.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the nations of the world came together to create multilateral institutions designed to foster economic growth, raise living standards, and forestall armed conflict. The United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank are examples. I addressed the OECD in 1998.

Much of my talk focused on the following questions: What is the global parallel of those organizations for the challenges of the Information Age? What global institutions do we need to create in order to play a similar stabilizing and enabling role in the twenty-first century?

All this leads me to consider whether we’re looking at the requirement for what we might view as a new kind of leadership competency. It won’t render obsolete the traits of successful leaders in the physical world. The Net is going to change many things, but not everything. Passion, confidence, and intelligence will always matter.