There's a whole in your bucket dear Liza, dear Liza,

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:17:00 GMT

Traditionally businesses (especially enterprises) are like containers or buckets of information. But they are not hermetically sealed, despite their CIO’s (Henry’s) belief to the contrary. The average Henry regards leaks in this corporate seal as flaws and immediately dispatches more technology (Straw) to fill them, just like the rhyme.

Well fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, Well fix it, dear Henry, well fix it.

And just like the rhyme Henry soon finds out that straw can be difficult to administer particularly in cases where the problem isn’t the right shape.

With what shall fix it, … With straw, … The straw is too long, … Well cut it, … With what shall I cut it, … With an axe, … The axe is too dull, … Then sharpen it, … With what shall I sharpen it, … With a stone, … . The stone is too dry, … Then wet it, … With what shall I wet it, … With water, … . In what shall I fetch it, … With a bucket, …

Pretty soon Henry is back where he started the problem is recurrent and never ending, because information wants to be free. It’s just like water and it will flow around, over or under any obstacles within it’s path.

Henry is not familiar with the concept of a Permeable membrane, he’s not paid to be, he’s paid to keep the lights on.

Unfortunately for Henry, having failed to plug the email gap last decade (port:25), he has been besieged by the onslaught of the Port:80 leak. Henry’s efforts have of course been futile, the leak grew to a hole, the hole to a chasm big enough to ride a space shuttle through. Not only that but there is a preverbal space highway traversing in both directions through the anomaly these days.

I feel sorry for Henry his task is a difficult one, no one ever told him he would turn from plumber into a policeman, no one told him it could be about people. But the reason I feel most sympathy for Henry is that people inside his organization (people he used to call friends) are planning his demise. Slowly but surely they are taking it onto themselves to introduce there own software as services and under tables with OpenSource code slipped in through port:80. Pretty soon there won’t be room for all of these amateurs and the pro Henry in the organization and what then…

There’s a hole in my bucket, …

Folknologist - business2.0 tag

There's a whole in your bucket dear Liza, dear Liza,