Information Technology

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Information Technology

• Then, Now and Into the Future

Topher White Senior Manger, Systems
Engineering Walt Disney Internet Group
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About Me

• Education
• B.S. in Computer Science
• M.B.A. in Technology Management
• Experience
• 13 Years in Wireless with ATT Wireless Services
• 7 years Information Technology
• 1 year Marketing
• 5 yeas Product Development
• 2 Years at Walt Disney Internet Group
• Accomplishments
• 3 Patents Granted, 12 Patents Pending, 1 Emmy
• Lots of products, sites, and events

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About Disney (2006)

• 1 Movie
• 1 Television Show (18-49)
• 1 Television Network (18-49)
• 1 Sports Network
• 1 Theme Park Business
• 1 Broadway Production Business
• 1 Album
• 1 Internet Destination for Families
• First Company to introduce Full TV Episodes on
  the web for free (won an Emmy)
• 1 Entertainment Internet Site (2007)

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Agenda

• What is Information Technology?
• Driving Force of Technology
• Essential Tension of Information Technology
• New Technology Adoption and Barriers
• Where Weve Been, Where Were Going
• QA

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Define

• Technology
• How We Do Things
• Information Technology
• How We Communicate

There is Nothing New Under the Sun.
Ecclesiastes
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Whats New?

• YouTube
• Amazon
• iTunes
• Other?

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What are we Trying to Communicate?

• Activity Model
• Learn
• Buy
• Get
• Use (consume)
• Pay
• Service

Highly Integrated with Modern Information
Technology
May Be Integrated with Modern Information
Technology
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What Drives Technology?
Scale
The Fundamental Driving Force for Technology
Development is the Need to Scale.
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Examples of Scale

• Distance
• Telephone
• Audience
• Radio
• Consistency
• Recording
• Mother of all Modern Information Technology?

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Sales Best Friend

• Ubiquity
• Goes Hand in Hand with Scale
• Achieved through
• Adoption
• Standardization
• Public Sector Programs
• Examples of Modern Ubiquity Issues?

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The Counterpoint to Scale

• Control
• The essential counterpoint in Information
  Technology is an issue of control from
  information owners, consumers, providers and
  other interested parties.
• Everyone wants control, no one wants to give up
  control.
• This true everywhere, but nowhere is this more
  true than in the field of Entertainment.

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Examples of Control

• Mainframes v. Desktops v. Laptops
• Connected v. Disconnected
• Data Integrity
• Reachable / Updateable
• Security
• Lost / Stolen
• Data Compromise
• Virus / Malware
• Personalization
• Productivity

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Examples of Control
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Scale vs. ControlThe Essential Tension

• Scale and Control exist in a constantly
  fluctuating orthogonal tension
• Both drive innovation
• Together they combine to create an irregular,
  circuitous, but inexorable march to expand
  capability, reduce price, drive adoption, and
  feed the market.

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Tensions Not New
1938 Coach Built Peugeot
You can have any color you want as long as its
Black. Henry Ford
Ford Model T
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Tension in IT

• Buy versus Build
• A buy decision can cede not only control of
  software implementation, but in the end dictate
  business process
• Insource v. Outsource v. Offshore
• Causes critical examination of the organizations
  core competencies and, from that, a question of
  what business theyre in.
• Control Issues are the number 1 inhibitor to
  successful off-shoring

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Tension in Consumer Mkt.

• Portability v. Quality
• Video iPods v. HDTV
• Portable Quality has largely been achieved in
  Audio but it took 50 years!
• I want my video Glasses!
• Price v. Span of Control
• Strong desire to move from physical product model
  to a revocable license model
• Ownership models imply
• Transferability / Resale
• In perpetuity licensing
• Time Displacement methods have eroded commercial
  sponsorship effectiveness, giving rise to pay for
  play methods and alternative delivery methods
  that do not allow time displacement.

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New Technology

• New (especially disruptive) technologies will
  succeed not because they can exceed current
  technologies in traditional benchmarks, but
  because they can exceed market expectation in
  those benchmarks as well as introducing new
  functionality or benefit

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Product Attribute Progression
Impact of Traditional Metrics on New Entrants
Customer Needs / Expectations
Scale of Traditional Metric
Incumbent Technology
New Entrant
Time
Source Clayton Christensen, Innovation and the
General Manager
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Examples
Customer C Needs
Customer B Needs
Customer A Needs
Cost to Accomplish Office Tasks
PDA
Mainframe
PC
Laptop
Time
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WinTel PC versus Apple
Clone Wars yields steeper slope for Price /
Power ratio in MS based architecture.
Apple
Price per Computing Power (fully loaded)
Apple comes into play, advantages of apple now
considered because threshold of expectation has
been crossed.
MS based PC
Mainframe / Mini
Threshold of Expectation
Mainframe still exceeds on traditional metrics,
but new metrics come into place to provide
additional advantage to the new technology.
Period of sustained competitive advantage for MS
based architecture.
Time
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Great Moments in Prognostication

• The Internet Changes Everything
• Bill Gates 2000
• The Internet is a passing fad and unimportant
• Bill Gates 1995
• 640K should be enough for anyone
• Bill Gates 1981 (unsubstantiated, but widely
  circulated)

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The Unchanged Business Model

• Business is fundamentally built around 2
  principles
• Scarcity
• Specialization
• The overriding principle is to use what is
  plentiful to make up for what is scarce
• Technology re-orders the relative scarcity of
  resources
• Land vs. Intelligence
• People vs. Bandwidth
• Skilled labor vs. unskilled labor vs. customer
  provided labor

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Predicting the Future

• The operative questions to ask when predicting
  the future of technology are
• What needs to scale?
• Who wants control of what?
• Especially at the intersection of these two
  questions will technology advance.

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Key Themes for the Future

• Portable Quality
• Full Experience Everywhere
• Ubiquity of network, access, rights
• Surrendering Control
• in a controlled way
• Leaving the Device
• Display Everywhere
• Interact However
• Correlation, Immersion
• Pay for Play methods

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What Doesnt Change

• Content is King
• Its all about WHAT you communicate, not how
• Editorial Filtering is Necessary
• However, diversity of editors will rise
• Internal editors are key personnel
• Where will the talent come from?