Hal Stern's thoughts on the economy, software, services, technology, and snowmen. Hal Stern: The Morning Snowman

I seem to have struck a chord with James Governer, analyst and founder of Red Monk, with my suggestions that there might not be a future in bureaucracy as we know it. By all means, governing bodies in both the public and private sectors will continue -- must continue -- to exist. What I'm suggesting is that non-core functions for any business are likely to end up aggregated where they are performed cheaper, faster and better for most employees.

Visibility, accountability and flexibility are the key features of this new feedback loop. There's still control of the processes, but when the works get gummed up there's no organizational chart behind which to hide. Attempts to create data-based roadblocks are subverted by the road itself -- a.k.a. the network. Invoke process for the sake of exerting power, and you're effecting a form of censorship (all together now: which the Internet treats as a routing failure).

I'm not suggesting, as James intimates, that we should replace our existing backoffices with large outsourcing contracts. Most of the large outsourcing deals I've seen result in networking nothing more than variable lease payments. I would like to see more companies build the necessary identity, entitlement and data access control infrastructure to allow more flexibility in the delivery of non-core services. A few years ago the trade press called this the "virtual corporation"; today one of its monikers is "using salesforce.com."