This blog entry was originally posted on: The Imperative Blog

What I’d like to touch on in this blog entry is sort of the underlying reason for a CMDB/CMS. I’ve commented on it over the years while working on CMDB/CMS efforts but this weekend, I came across two separate things that prompted me to do this blog entry. The idea or notion that has been rattling around in my mind for year is that of convergence, similarity, connectivity and simplification. I’ve argued for years that many of us have designed & built CMSs many times over but never actually called them that. Most, if not all of us have been required at some point to aggregate data from disparate areas and make sense of it, and ultimately, that is what the CMS helps us do.  It helps make sense of the data.

The two things that happened were first, I noticed a book that has been on my night stand for over 4 months which is called The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. I really had no desire to read anything while working on the book to be honest so it sat there until now. The second was an episode on The Science Channel I watched last night called “Connected: The Power of Six Degrees”. Yes I know, what else would you expect from someone who has an Electrical Engineering degree to be watching but this station.

Both of these things reminded me that regardless of our professional or personal aspirations, we are all seeking to simplify our lives and make sense of the confusion. Interestingly enough, we reference this topic in the summary of  Chapter 9 when we quoted the founder of Kayanta. “We’re inspired by the plethora of opportunities offered through the Internet but bewildered by the amount of personal effort required to extract even the modest benefit” ( Click here to read full text )

So, why have we not been able to simplify our business processes? Why haven’t we found a way to consistently, across industries and/or companies deliver value in a more streamlined and efficient manner? Is technology doing more harm than good in this area?  Will Software as a Service (SaaS) help? Virtualization promises to simplify life for some, but won’t it complicate it for others?  Maybe that’s the balance, maybe it’s the Yin and Yang of the equation where some take on the complexity in order to deliver simplicity to others.  Maybe only time will tell.That’s it for now…….I’m sure I’ll have more on the topic as I get deeper into the book and do more research on Simple Networks…… Carlos