Post-Modem Modernism
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John Landry, strategic technology consultant for IBM/Lotus, stated at the beginning of the e-commerce revolution that information technology was turning outward. The self-reflective obsession with corporate productivity marked by the first two (back-office then front-office) eras of computing was rapidly being replaced by e-business, customer-facing systems.
With this shift in enterprise architectures, the once religious argument over PCs, Macs, UNIX, and mainframes becomes moot. Each world view is now equally valid. As in any post-modern system, hierarchy flattens and conviction in absolutes disappears.
This month, George Vanecek is full of conviction in his presentation of the AT&T architecture for the next-generation managed network. At first glance, GeoPlex appears as the only cloud in the landscape he paints, but many other companies are busy designing for value-added networks. Interesting questions to ask: If managed networks become the norm, what's happening at these edge networks? What are the protocols for moving among clouds? Will I need a green card or passport to travel among them? Also, will Web contractors need building permits in the next-generation Internet? Should the network remain, as in the eyes of Isenberg (www.isen.com), dumb?
Other questions this month include: Do Enterprise JavaBeans really fulfill the promise of write once and run anywhere, or will they become viewed as the server-side equivalent of applets? And assuming a homogeneous platform, what are the advantages in enterprise deploymentfor instance, how do you design for scalability in a Microsoft-centered world?
Editorially, these questions arose out of a desire to play with extreme views.
