The television shows that I watched, growing up in Australia, were dominated by American westerns. Televised mostly in black and white, which was meaningful the more I look back at those times and with little variation of plots, the endings always showed someone pulling off last-minute heroics. When it comes to the TV programming in Australia none was more exciting than the Lone Ranger who somehow managed to have access to a limitless supply of silver bullets. When a program needed heroics then why not a silver bullet? And with this much-loved western, the idiomatic term, silver bullet, entered our vocabulary.
When Margo and I began taking cars onto race tracks
more than a decade ago, much of the paddock talk centered on the benefits of
one product over another. Just pour in this additive and you will realize
immediate benefits. Swap out your tires and replace with these new compounds and
you will find additional grip. Install this new wing and you will watch your
lap times come down.
It wasn’t just westerns where silver bullets flew but
when cars compete on track, there is an ongoing search for the cost-effective
and simple upgrade that will prove to be your winning silver bullet. Margo’s
favorite ideas were those on how to reduce the unsprung weight of the car (as
that supposed to help the most). Instead of spending money on hollowing things,
removing things and so forth she muttered under her breath: just go on a diet!
What is meant by references to a silver bullet is that
with the finding of that silver bullet it will give you a solution to any
problem no matter how long you have experienced it. The solution that you come
across will immediately address that problem even as it proves both easy and
simple in nature. As for the opposite of
a silver bullet, well that takes you down a different path. As yet another
commentator suggested, “Something that needs to be
resolved: Problem. Hindrance. Dilemma. Issue.” Or as I have
so often been told, think more in terms of hard work! “Use your brains,” as my
father would remind me.
Through all the years I have been in IT there has
seemed to be salvation lying just over the horizon. IT is hard and requires the
use of our brains and in saying that I make no excuses. If Enterprise Hybrid IT
was a simple matter of pushing a button we would be way more advanced than we
find ourselves today. And yet, every decade or so there it comes, yet one more
silver bullet to which with the passage of time, I simply respond with one
word, duck!
During a planning session with budgetary implications,
my colleagues in product management inside Tandem Computers would wrestle over
priorities of development programs. It may be hard to imagine that we had a
team of product managers overseeing communications and networking hardware and
software. The most important of all was the SNAX development team made up of
multiple disciplines with several levels of management. This was a very serious
endeavor and one where Tandem excelled being the only company ever to develop
from scratch an IBM compatible front-end processor capability otherwise known
as PU4.
However, the pride of development was being examined in
the light of days that were becoming increasingly brighter – SNA per se was
just too hard for most folks and whereas Tandem cracked the code, so as to
speak, in being so hard meant that a simpler solution was about to appear, that
being TCP/IP. The funding for SNAX was reduced even as that of TCP/IP was
increased. Wasn’t hard to do as so few were working on TCP/IP at the time and
for context, this was 1994 or thereabouts.
But was TCP/IP truly a silver bullet? Not exactly! As
much as those in the know evangelized TCP/IP as a simple way to solve the
myriad complexities of comms of the day it just replaced one technology with
another and where over time, new complexities were layered one atop another. It
also led to hybrids where many enterprise users elected to continue running SNA
protocols – APIs and Services – over IP. In time, I have to admit, something
new will come along and replace TCP/IP. That’s how it has always been and
that’s how it will continue well into the future.
Embracing SQL with its underlying relational database
management system was likewise hailed as a breakthrough silver bullet. To the
average Enscribe user however it meant a huge investment in training and
considerable effort expended in trial and error deployments. What became
NonStop SQL and marketed as truly the first solution addressing SQL that could
operate 24 x 7 with no downtime necessary for administrative tasks was initially
considered an impediment standing in the way of high performance transaction
processing. But in time, it’ value was recognized for the productivity benefits
it provided even as the underlying processor performance climbed almost
exponentially.
However this isn’t the end of the silver bullet story
as they continue to appear and this time, it’s all about Ops. Bracket if you
like all of them – DevOps, DataOps, MLOps, ModelOps and many more “that seek to
add speed, reliability and collaboration to the delivery of software and data
across the enterprise channels.” That they can do this isn’t so much the
question as some very serious folks have invested considerable time into
ensuring that they do but rather, don’t expect dramatic change overnight. Not
for the faint of heart is taking on board the challenge of mastering all of
these Ops.
This was the major point made in the April 21, 2022,
ZDNet article, The
‘Ops’ concept takes hold in enterprise technology shops, but so do new
headaches. Written by contributor, Joe McKendrick the mere
sighting of this title caught my attention immediately:
However,
none of this stuff is going to happen overnight. Or even within a few months.
As with any promising technology overhaul, a rethinking of processes and
culture is essential.
Having read this it was a reference that followed that
raised my eyebrows considerably:
"Addressing these challenges is often an afterthought and eventually falls on DevOps and IT teams," says Rahul Pradhan, VP of product and strategy for cloud platforms for Couchbase. Emerging priorities such as continuous integration and continuous delivery, automation and real-time monitoring are putting a strain on these teams, he adds.
"Not only are these teams being asked to do more,
they are also being asked to be broader and full-stack. This highlights the
need to eliminate operational low-value tasks like managing infrastructure and
databases."
Oops! So much for the silver bullet and here I was
thinking that we could streamline staffing, dumb-down the skills required and
possibly be left to press a button and a new app would be created right before our
eyes. Surely the need for skilled personnel is proving a hindrance to being
able to pivot to a more customer-driven, market-responsive enterprise?:
Contrary
to popular belief, having a successful xOps effort doesn't mean enterprises can
reduce their IT staffing levels - if anything, it means they need to step up
their recruiting and retention games”
Even as I thought that my colleagues had me partially
convinced in the breakthrough methodologies of today that silver bullet flew so
close to my head that it may have shaved a few hairs from my skull. Did I duck?
Reluctantly, or so it would appear, I may have done so just a little too late.
In closing I don’t want you to think that I am ducking back into my luddite
shell but rather, reflecting on all the times that I have heard and read about,
salvation just over the horizon I have become cautious.
Agile? DevOps? Micro Services? Cloud? Apps and Data?
When you total it up it leaves you with an overwhelming sense that the
possibility of a future that was simple and easy if there was ever such a
future being predicted isn’t likely in our lifetimes. Substituting for such
dare I say fantasies is the reality that with each new breakdown and with the
appearance of even more evangelists, there will never be any substitute for the
skilled technician that has that combination of experience and knowledge that
for so long we have tried to do without.
Another silver bullet on the way then? Surely not, but
again, if that’s what you see headed your way all I can add is that, yes, duck!
Otherwise you too might end up being scorched.
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