Getting a grip on the hype cycle

From President and CEO Sam Palmisano to lead technologist Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM is making revolutionary claims for the future of grid and autonomic computing, but folks at the battlefield level speak in more evolutionary terms.

Miles Barel, program director of autonomic computing at IBM, for example, sounds like a Zen master as he delineates the five stages on the path to the nirvana of autonomic environments. The stages start with simple management of discrete components and move on to managed environments then eventually morph into predictive, adaptive, and finally self-healing autonomic environments.

It is fairly obvious what Big Blue is up to. It is on its own strategic path to capture mindshare now, in order to market future IBM products and IBM Global Services to its customers.

As you read this week’s in-depth coverage from our news and Test Center teams, it is apparent that grid and autonomic computing are for real. This is not a case of the emperor having no clothes. But it is important to understand that we are also witnessing the opening salvos of the IBM game plan, what in less-polite terms Gartner calls the “hype cycle.”

The hype cycle starts at the beginning of any new technology. It is intended to gain awareness and excite technologists and future customers. In essence it is intended to become a “technology trigger,” as Gartner puts it, for other potential partners to begin work in related and supporting areas.

But as hype will, it also inflates expectations. When expectations are inflated and results are not forthcoming, the pendulum eventually swings the other way and we enter the “trough of disillusionment.”

In time, after the excitement has died down and products and services slowly come to market, we enter the “slope of enlightenment.” Finally nirvana, otherwise known as “consumer demand,” is achieved for companies deploying these technologies.

But expectations and hype aside, the truth about timetables for deploying technology should reside in its own corporate dimension and for the most part, giant e-marketplace initiatives aside, it usually does.

Did you know that more than 50 percent of warehouse and field-service wireless solutions still use Microsoft DOS-based handhelds?

So, will 2003 be the year of autonomic computing? Doubtful. Is there value in tracking its progress? Absolutely.

But as is always the case when it comes to technology, telling the difference between the promises and the real-world products is your most valuable asset as an IT executive. If you’re at Comdex Fall 2002 this week in Las Vegas, you will see plenty of both.

Even if you’re not, with the latest hype cycle still on an upward trajectory, you can be sure vendors will soon be knocking on your door trying to leverage your awareness into sales of their various point solutions. And if so, you might tell them that sure, you want to optimize your resources and yes, you believe that an autonomic, grid-based, Web-service-enabled, wireless sensor the size of two atoms and a molecule will do that, but, no thank you. You’ll just wait until you can second-source it.