By 2019 a $1,000 personal computer will have as much raw power as the human brain. I figure at that price, I'll get two, two brains are better than one and by then I'll be 63. I may need four. This prediction and others are right around the corner, according to Ray Kurzweil, a noted futurist. I love to read Kurzweil. His predictions are both exciting and terrifying. Think you're getting a good deal in 2019, look at what happens in 2045:

$1000 buys a computer a billion times more intelligent than every human combined. This means that average and even low-end computers are vastly smarter than even highly intelligent, unenhanced humans.

Now we're getting personal. Unenhanced humans? Legacy people? I could be legacy in 2045? At the young age of 89?

Kurzweil goes on to imagine a “technological singularity”:

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  The technological singularity occurs as artificial intelligences surpass human beings as the smartest and most capable life forms on the Earth. Technological development is taken over by the machines, who can think, act and communicate so quickly that normal humans cannot even comprehend what is going on. The machines enter into a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, with each new generation of A.I.s appearing faster and faster. From this point onwards, technological advancement is explosive, under the control of the machines, and thus cannot be accurately predicted.

  
  

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  The Singularity is an extremely disruptive, world-altering event that forever changes the course of human history. The extermination of humanity by violent machines is unlikely (though not impossible) because sharp distinctions between man and machine will no longer exist thanks to the existence of cybernetically enhanced humans and uploaded humans.

  
  

Set your singularity clocks now, we only have 35 years before this happens.

I'd love to have Kurzweil's bookshelf, I'm sure he's well read, but he hasn't spent much time telling us what happens to old technology. What about all the legacy applications? Legacy businesses? All those unenhanced humans milling around writing COBOL. Do these businesses survive the singularity? Or is it like a slow extinction? Will legacy businesses become dinosaurs, unable to survive the world-altering singularity?

Maybe this future comes to pass, maybe it doesn't. But one thing is certain: change. Survival of any business is often predicated upon the journey its leaders have mapped out. A journey that isn't always clear, involving technology that is racing toward innovation, accelerating into the future. Want some help comprehending it all? If so, today HP is announcing a major initiative to help you to realize your future and help you to Break the Gridlock.

As part of this initiative, HP is offering a promotion of the Transformation Experience Workshop. This is a highly interactive workshop that helps to understand and map your legacy transformation journey. Please click the link above to find out more. Hope to see you at a workshop, even if your are an unenhanced human being.  http://h10134.www1.hp.com/campaign/applications-workshop/

Simplification is a recurring theme in this blog.  It is a
major goal of modernization.  Simpler has many facets.  I am going to consider
three today.

• Unique mapping of business processes to
  systems


• Elimination of redundancy


• Retirement of unused applications

How do we know we have unique realizations for those of our
business processes supported by automation?  This question is filled with
implications - we can't know the answer without having categorized our business
processes and business objects and mapped these elements to our IT
systems.

This mapping enables two things - we can detect duplicates as
well as identify systems that no longer support our current business model.  In either
case these become candidates for retirement.  Retiring systems can be
expensive.  Consider a case where we use three CRM systems (say as a result of
multiple acquisitions). Turning off two of these will not be a painless flip of a switch.  It will require data migration, process changes to match the retained system and retraining . 

Any time we are retiring a system, a critical consideration
are its archival requirements.  Are we required legally to keep the data?  Is
this data that we should be mining for historical trends that could be of value
to the business?  If we are intending to retain data from retiring systems, do
we need it everything we have in existing archives or is there an opportunity to significantly reduce the volume of data to reflect our needs?

Retirement is both a huge opportunity and surprisingly
difficult. Nothing saves money like eliminating redundant systems, but it
requires confidence to stand up and say it is okay to turn a system off. This
confidence only comes by virtue of applying rigor to an analysis of your
portfolio.  Something provided to you by an HP Application Porfolio
Rationalization.

In the future we will look as some of the other implications
arising from simplification.

• Reduced platform variability


• Homogeneous platform management


• Standard interfaces


• Correct dependence on systems of record