THE SILVER BULLET RESIDUAL

THE SILVER BULLET RESIDUE

By W H Inmon

The IT profession is famous for falling for the silver bullets that are sold by the vendors. Every few years the vendors and the venture capitalists come up with a new silver bullet for IT to fall for. The silver bullet is presented as –

?? “if you just buy (fill in the blanks) your IT and technology problems will be over with”

And IT management faithfully (like a Pavlovian dog) jumps in and falls for the latest fad once again, spending time and corporate money and human resources on the latest scheme invented by the vendors and venture capitalists.

And – as sure as clockwork – three years later the corporation has experienced great disappointment in the silver bullet that they have bought off on. Just in time to buy the next silver bullet invented by the vendors and venture capitalists.

There is a long list of silver bullets that have appeared in the history of the computer industry. Some of the many silver bullets were –

?? Don’t use goto statements and your code will be greatly improved

?? Use CASE technology and your development process will be easy and fast

?? The Internet has all the data you will need. Just create your own .com and sell like never before.

?? Tame your data problems with Big Data. Buy Big Data and opportunities just drop at your doorstep.

?? Data science will find secret and important data for you. You have important secrets hiding in your data that only the data scientist can find.

And the list of silver bullets goes on. This list is just the tip of the iceberg.

In every case, the silver bullets fell short (usually far short) of the expectations set by the vendor and the venture capitalist.

But does that mean that the silver bullet was a failure and a bad idea? Ironically the answer is no. In almost every case the silver bullet added in a positive fashion to the discipline that is computer technology. Even though the silver bullet did not achieve the promises made by the vendor, the silver bullet almost always contributed something positive to computer technology. In some cases, the silver bullet contributed a little. In other cases, the silver bullet contributed a lot to the world of technology.

The aftermath of what the silver bullet contributed can be called the “silver bullet residue” or the “silver bullet residual”. The silver bullet residue for the silver bullets that have been mentioned might look like –

Some of the residues of the different silver bullets include –

??? Do not use goto statements – the quality of code affects the overall quality of the system resulting from the code. But not using goto statements was the tip of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to achieving coding quality.

?? Use CASE technology – very few people do software development on a large scale. Vendors do the vast majority of the software development today, not corporations. CASE technology just isn’t applicable to most shops today.

?? The Internet/.com has everything you need – the Internet certainly has external data. But internal corporate data is not found in large amounts on the Internet. The Internet doesn’t do much to improve the availability or the veracity of accounts receivable or inventory control.

?? With Big Data you don’t need a data warehouse – Big Data did add to the volumes of data that the world can handle. But Big Data did not solve the need for a data warehouse and many other needs.

?? Data science will solve your problems – indeed data science did solve some problems. But data science did not solve problems to the extent that was promised.

So how did all of this silver bullet residue come about? The answer is that the residue of silver bullets appeared as a result of the achievement of genuine business value.

Consider the following diagram –

In this diagram it is seen that the first upward thrust of the Gartner hype diagram is created by the vendor. The initial impetus by the vendor of the Gartner hype curve does not even require the existence of a new technology. (Ask Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos about this subject.)

The second push upward on the Gartner hype curve is caused by the genuine business value that the new technology brings.

Is there such a thing as a technology that has left a residue that was not hyped by the vendor? Yes there is. Consider the discipline of a data warehouse. Data warehouse had only the tiniest of hype created by a single small company in Sunnyvale, California a quarter of a century ago. Data warehouse had only very small support from the VC community and no support at all from the large vendors. Indeed, the leading technology vendor at the time – IBM – went out of its way to minimize the acceptance of data warehouse.

But the residue left by data warehouse far surpasses nearly all of the technologies that were so heavily hyped.

Sic transit gloria.

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Bill Inmon lives in Denver with his wife and his two Scotty dogs – Jeb and Lena - today. It is the first of fall and it is a cool, overcast day. ?Lena and Jeb went for a walk and Lena saw a squirrel. Lena gets all excited when she sees a squirrel. She is told she goes on “squirrel patrol” when she sees one. ??

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