The Power of the Network
With power, comes responsibility. You’ve heard this before, but it is even more critical when we’re all armed with the tools that can influence or impact others. Most recently, this came to a head with Twittering about Swine Flu. With the unfiltered nature of the ‘tweet’, fact and rumor, the correct and incorrect, are immediately available to ‘followers.’ It is almost like mob rule for news. Twitter is just the latest example of our sometime misplaced demand for the latest information … a nation developing an acute case of ADD and grabbing disparate pieces of information on the fly …. without any centralized analysis based on vetted data.
Imagine if you managed your IT infrastructure that way. Reacting to individual situations as isolated problems; troubleshooting based on rumors or hearsay; operating in a vacuum, without analysis and without the bird’s eye view. Not the most strategic or efficient way to manage your business. And certainly not an approach you can sustain over the longer term. Caveat emptor, magnified a thousand-fold.
In this day and age, when stocks can soar or crash with the suggestion that the health of a certain technology CEO is not optimal, we owe it to ourselves to use power wisely. Yes, we need to be able to turn on a dime and seize opportunities. But action without measure or knowledge is simply reaction and that never gets you very far.
One of the industry’s biggest technology conferences is coming up soon—Interop. I’m looking forward to it this year because I think now, more than ever, we’re all searching for ways to use information and the network more wisely. We’ve been given the gift of Prometheus. Let’s be smart about it and learn how we can use this powerful tool to reignite the business without burning down the house.
Cisco will be at booth 1719. Stop by and say hello if you’re there.
Posted by Marie Hattar at 05:25PM PST
hugo Jul 30, 2009
have never thought about it like that before. Thanks so much for the depth and understanding at which you covered the topic. it’s a useful piece of information not only for me but for many others. have read a lot on the topic at different blogs and books (download mainly from http://www.picktorrent.com but this piece really gives food for thought