I'm a little odd (that may be no surprise to some). I like change. I like trying new things. I drive different ways to the office. I park in different spots. I move furniture around. And I love to try new technology.
I just wrote the blog posts on an iPad while sitting in a cramped seat on a regional jet. I quickly adapted to the crazy touch keyboard and found myself typing about as fast as I do on a regular keyboard. At night I sit on my chair at home surfing the web from my iPad. In the morning, I read the USA Today on it. My now old netbook is feeling lonely. I'm not sure if my wife is too (I probably should address that one).
Why am I telling you this? Because I think we are on the verge of some very new ways to use technology in business. The old days of buying a server, buying lots of storage, buying software, buying people to support it, and buying big PCs to access it are fading. I think we are going to be using lightweight devices (like the iPad) to access our data anywhere anytime. And we're going to access it on some server space that we rent somewhere else, not own in our building.
Years ago, when I built our first network infrastructure in my firm, I stated the mission of "data anywhere, any time." My partners bought in to that mission and we lived it. The only difference from today is that then it took a lot of hardware and software investment to build it. Today, I can look to any one of a number of "cloud" based services who can do this for a few dollars per user. And I can be up and running in days rather than months.
As you go forward and look at your systems, I challenge you to look at this in a new way. Maybe you don't need a server. Maybe you just need a little device that will access the information you need.
How do you see technology changing in your organization?