The deep end

DPI, or deep packet inspection, is a hot topic right now. Here in the Netherlands there's a raging debate about everything from net neutrality to privacy issues.

It started with Dutch mobile service providers publicly admitting that they are, and have been for a while, doing deep packet inspection on their customers' traffic¹.

DPI is a technology for looking inside internet protocol packets to find out what kind of data is actually being transmitted. DPI can tell the difference between an e-mail and a tweet and a WhatsApp message, for example.

The mobile providers do this to find out if us sneaky mobile internet users are using services like voice-over-IP and online texting instead of paid-for regular phone calls and text messages.

As I've written before, I'm fairly square when it comes to property rights and fairly pessimistic where it concerns privacy. Deep packet inspection, and post-paying for bandwidth used on skype and WhatsApp troubles me deeply. I buy bandwidth for market prices do use as I see fit, and that's how the provider used to sell it.

The service providers are scared of loosing revenue and would rather conservatively repress free use of the bandwidth they are selling than go with the times and re-focus their business on what the consumer is asking for: freely useable bandwidth. History, it seems, has not elucidated obsoleteness enough, but the providers are generous in giving it ample opportunity time and again.

Now politicians have smelled controversy and votes, and several have taken side with the users to guarantee free use of bandwidth. Count on Dutch politicians to side with the little guy :).

Concurrently, four hours drive south of The Hague the G8 summit has been, by and large, advocating the direct opposite: monitor, inspect, regulate, police internet users and bill the bleep out of those nasty little consumers². If they need privacy they are up to no good. If they share content they are stealing. If they use cheaper service is is a dangerous abuse of market self-regulation and everything should be done to protect obsolete revenue models. Guess how this is to be achieved? Right, DPI again.

So the guardians of intellectual property and the guardians of obsolete revenue models are united in a common goal: to inspect, log, and give consequence to the content of each internet protocol package going in and out of your computer, laptop and mobile, ever.

Interesting.

According to Cisco³, last year an average 237 petabytes was transmitted by mobile users per month. Good luck monitoring all that. That's a lot of packets to inspect. Will consumers be asked to field the price tag of their own repression? Higher prices, less functionality. Great business model.

Meanwhile Dutch minister Verhagen is industriously campaigning against the (ab)use of deep packet inspection by Dutch providers, citing privacy concerns. In his scenario regulation would be used for, rather than against the consumer's interests. Although I agree with his motivation (more votes privacy), I dislike the idea that the providers should be slapped with yet another regulation. My wallet can vote much louder than my ballot.

I'd like to think a daring provider will do the same thing to mobile bandwidth that Apple did to digital music: put a fair price on extensive usage rights, and re-invent the market. I'm not holding my breath though. Who'd dare go down the deep end?


1: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/12/dutch-telco-kpn-using-deep-packet-inspection-to-monitor-mobile-c/

2: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13553943

3: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/
white_paper_c11-520862.html

IT matters

The central assumption of IT service management is that IT matters, that if it's worth running your business on computers it's worth doing it properly. 
Computers become really useless, really fast without maintenance, support, life cycle management and many other processes indispensable to a modern business.
All too often, the IT department is part of the facilities department, or seen as a necessary evil, a cost center populated by informally dressed nerds.

As information and communication have become indispensable to a modern organization, proper IT service management has become a must have and a significant competitive advantage. An IT department, ideally, is a true enabler. An enabler of productivity, of change, of control and optimalisation. An equal to and partner of every other part of the organization.

Proper IT service management enables companies to run their IT department as tightly and effectively as they run their central process and their HR and finance departments. 

The field is not fully developed, academically speaking, and continues to balance precariously between demand and neglect by large enterprises. Compared to the volume of academic work on HR management and finance management it is barely developed at all. There are great developments, however.

The most thorough approach to IT service management is the ITIL framework, which is has as many detractors as fans. The ITIL framework is commonly used as a set of best practices and followed loosely by many IT organizations. True ITIL experts or masters are few and far in between, customers usually demand practitioner (mid-level) certification and working experience. 

IT governance is the top of the ITSM pyramid and the hardest part for organizations to master. Great CIO's are even harder to find than other great executives, and it will be a while before seasoned IT executives are common. Because ICT is such a rapidly changing sector, it's hard to acquire the seniority necessary for an executive position while staying on top of the field. Fresh graduates lack the experience and power, and veterans can easily get out of touch with the latest developments such as cloud services and social media.

It is a great time to be an interdisciplinary IT and business expert, however, as companies make do with the expertise offered by the market. Universities like the TU Delft are turning out experts in business informatics, and large IT service companies like Cognizant are rapidly expanding their ability to be a partner in IT service management. 

In a few short years business science and business practice will have caught up completely with computer science and IT practice, and companies will look back and wonder how they ever got by with improvised IT service management and most of all IT governance.

IT matters too much for any other development.

Rickrolling the revolution

Modern dictators fear three things: Eagles in the white house, the muslim brotherhood on the streets and twitter. Social media have undoubtedly had a strong impact as a catalyst of change. 

What they didn't do is start a revolution by themselves, guarantee success or warrant a lasting change. We can't say that revolution is the new meme or that the recent events in North Africa and the Middle East would not have happened without social media.

What Twitter e.a. did do was make journalism a lot more personal. A nice politically correct editorial is to a tweet from the streets what a gentle tickle is to a punch in the face. Retweeted messages from people fighting and dying have made a very strong impression on me these past few weeks.

It will be interesting to watch special interest groups jump on the bandwagon and say, "Hey, what the Libians do to Ghadaffi we can do to fur!", trying to rickroll themselves a revolution by spamming PETA fursnufftubes. However, I don't think that is very effective. I feel engaged by a people's cries for freedom, but not necessarily by a hippie with an iPhone (oh the irony) spamming me for the cause.

In short, social media are a great conduit for personal and powerful messages. However, this is an emergent effect determined by the sympathy of the audience. Social media by themselves are not a panacea for instigating change, and trying to force their effect will most likely trigger a mass unfollow.