Web 2.0 and the environment dominated the agenda at Sun Microsystem's annual UK customer conference in London as attendees were advised to make "big bets" on Web 2.0 technologies and redouble efforts to reduce datacentre power consumption.
Speaking to over 700 Sun customers and partners, John Madelin, head of UK practice for business continuity, security and governance at BT, argued that legacy systems at many companies have now got so complicated that there is greater risk in continuing to add new applications than in making a large scale investment in new Web 2.0 infrastructures.
Madelin said that BT had reached this point with its investment in its 21st Century network, and that many other firms were similarly reaching a stage where they had to undertake a "fundamental" shift towards Web 2.0, collaborative platforms that once built would allow a customer and partner "ecosystem to take hold".
"You need to make big bets in new ways of managing information, the richness of the network, better understanding of identities and more vivid data," Madelin said.
Citing Henry Ford's observation that "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses", Madelin argued that firms need to think about a genuine break with legacy architectures if they are to keep pace with increasingly tech-savvy and demanding customers.
However, Madelin added that investing in new systems alone would not result in the collaborative online technologies required to underpin Web 2.0 business models, a change in mindset was also necessary. "[For example] as a security professional, certainty is critical," he said. "But when you move to a more open and collaborative system you need to deal with probabilities rather than certainties – it needs a mindset change."
James Gosling, vice president at Sun and the father of the Java code that underpins many Web 2.0 technologies, agreed that systems capable of creating a community and encouraging customer participation are increasingly important to firms' business models. But he argued that the lack of a clear definition for Web 2.0 is making the term largely meaningless. "If it was up to me, I'd delete the phrase Web 2.0 from the marketing vocabulary of the planet," he said.
Meanwhile, on the day that the government unveiled a draft version of its Climate Change Bill, Sun espoused the virtues of its energy efficient server and thin client technologies. Richard Barrington, head of sustainability at Sun, said that with IT accounting for a billion tonnes of CO2 a year - more than the airline industry - IT chiefs should be at the forefront of moves to tackle climate change.
Speaking in his keynote, Stephen Nunn, head of datacentre technology and operations at Accenture, said that many firms are a long way from running environmentally friendly datacentres, adding that less than 30 percent of organisations have undertaken the initial server consolidation and standardisation projects that drive up utilisation levels, enhance energy efficiency and mark the first phase of any green datacentre strategy.
Nunn also warned that developing a truly green datacentre, featuring high utilisation rates, energy efficient servers, computing power on demand and efficiently managed storage, would require IT chiefs to undertake "a radical transformation journey".
However, Nunn insisted that such transformation projects are now inevitable. "We have a duty to play a role in the green agenda and we do that by transforming our underlying infrastructure," he said. "It will not just deliver cost benefits, but also carbon benefits, which, believe me, you will soon need to report on."
