Two years ago Robert Capps, a senior editor at Wiredmagazine, published a seminal article, “The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap andSimple Is Just Fine.” The premise of the piece was that in theconsumer world simple, inexpensive technology was replacing andsurpassing expensive, complex technology.

Single purpose video recorders like Flip were outselling highend digital recorders by huge margins even though the quality ofthe recordings was inferior. The bottom line was that consumers hadlittle need or desire for high end digital video. Low resolutionrecordings were perfect for You Tube and sufficient for viewing ona computer. Likewise MP3 has become an acceptable format for audioplayback. MP3's can't approach the quality of DVD or vinylrecordings yet the marketplace has established them as the formatof choice for the majority of consumers.

Netbooks and tablets are not able to provide nearly thefunctionality available with traditional portable computers, yetthey are being produced and purchased in amazing quantities. We seethis trend continuing today. Smartphones and tablets like the iPad threaten to maketraditional home use computers obsolete.

Capps' premise that “good enough” is driving the future ofconsumer electronics has implications in the world of corporate IT.The IBM Personal Computer was first available in 1981. Ever sincewe have been racing hell bent down a path that mandates thatknowledge workers must have ever more powerful, ever more complexcomputing systems at their fingertips. Even the term “knowledgeworkers” was created to validate the need for office workers tohave the equivalent power of a 1960's mainframe on their desktop orin their lap.

The average corporate computer has become so complex and sopowerful that most “knowledge workers” are only able to manage afraction of their capabilities. Once beyond simple word processing,basic spreadsheets and e-mail, most users are totally powerlessover their machines. Personal computer operating systems andapplications were built by geeks who are perfectly at ease withthings like file formats, database connection, and macros. Endusers aren't. WordPerfect and Lotus 123 provide all the power theyare able or need to use.

What Have We Wrought?

Why has the iPad become the darling of so many businessusers–particularly senior management types? There's a reason and itnot just because Steve Jobs understands marketing better thananybody else. And it's not because it's the best designed product.In fact, it isn't really designed all that well. I use one dailybut it always feels a little awkward in my hands in a typicalbusiness situation. I find it most satisfying to use when I amreclining in an easy chair or lounging in bed. It is even too heavyat a pound and a half to comfortably hold in your hands in anairline seat. The reason it has made serious inroads into thebusiness world is because it does a couple of things relativelywell.

o It provides a relatively easy way to access e-mail–bothcorporate and personal. I say relatively easy because there are alot of things about accessing and replying to e-mail on an iPadthat are not great, but it provides a significant improvement overBlackBerries and other smartphones.

o It provides the ability to view information from a soft copyin a format and size that is similar to what the user wouldexperience with a hard copy.

o It is extremely portable. This is key. The aforementionedbenefits would be meaningless if the device could only be usedwhile physically plugged into the corporate network. Ubiquitouswireless connectivity was a necessary precondition to widespreadacceptance and use of these devices.

Mediocrity is OK

What is interesting is that iPads don't really do these thingsvery well. The e-mail clients provide a limited subset of thefunctionality of a real e-mail client. Editing and replying toe-mail is a pain. Cut and paste is kludgy and “typing” on a virtualkeyboard is less than satisfying. Yet we are willing to overlookthe shortcomings because the convenience outweighs the drawbacks.The second bullet above describes viewing information. Not doinganything with it, I may have the ability to load a spreadsheet froman Internet site or an e-mail attachment but that is about thelimit of functionality on these devices. I know there areapplications available that allow users to create and editspreadsheets and documents. I have used these applications andsuggest that only the hopelessly device-enamored or desperate userwill be willing to do so. And they certainly won't be doing complexwhat-if scenarios or building pivot tables.

Simply Amazing

This is an incredible phenomenon. Corporate users are willing topay a premium (some would say exorbitant) price for a device thatdoes two or three things in a manner that could not becharacterized as excellent. What's going on here? Are we witnessinga rebellion against computer systems that are too complex for theaverage user or are we just learning to use only computing devicesfor those few things that we really need to perform our corporatefunctions. I suspect it is a little of both. Senior level managersrequire immediate and continuous access to information that allowsthem to make proper, informed decisions. I remember watching akeynote at a conference in the late 1990's. The speaker held up hisnew BlackBerry and said, “This will change your life.” I think fewin that audience understood the full implications of thatstatement. Today's 24×7 connectivity has transformed the world ofbusiness. Most of us literally are always at work. iPad-likedevices are just an extension of that continuous access toinformation the BlackBerry and other smartphones provide. In thatrespect they aren't a PC replacement–they are simply tools that doa couple of things adequately and provide continuous access toinformation.

Luddites in the Workplace

I was in a meeting recently. About half of us were carting ourfour-pound laptop computers. The other half were usingiPads–propped at an angle using a nice leather carrying case sothat they could use the virtual keyboard for note taking. Thatgroup eyed those of us with laptops as if we were a bunch of wackoluddites who just arrived in a horse and buggy. It was aninteresting dichotomy. But what made it really interesting was thatthose with the iPads also carried hard copy of the documents wewere to review–printed in color. I was able to examine and edit thedocuments on my laptop. The iPad bunch were using pens (What's apen?) to edit theirs.

?Good Enough? is Good

The point here is that “good enough” technology is just that.There is a place in the business world for devices with limitedabilities. They can be useful for accomplishing those few thingsthey do but should not be considered as a replacement forfull-functional machines. Widespread acceptance and purchase ofMP3's does not foreshadow the demise of high-end digital recordingstudios. Just as lightweight computers will not “kill” thePC–although they will certainly lead to a reduction in PCsales.

Data, Data Everywhere

There is a larger lesson to be learned here. Information systemsdo not need to be complex to be useful. Business suffers frominformation overload. We collect data so efficiently that we areable to track and classify sales or claims trends to the time ofday, to the day of the year, to concise geographic regions. We cando all this in real time. If we wanted to we could create variablepremium automobile insurance policies based on where and when I wasdriving. Presumably I am a higher risk driving at 2 a.m. on January1st in suburban New York City than I am driving at 11 a.m. on June23 in Butte, Mont. It is an entirely valid question as to whetherit is more efficient to base rates on an aggregate of data forlarge groups of individuals or to base them on individual behavior.It is an entirely different discussion as to what is a morallyresponsible way to base rate structures. Certain high-risk behaviorsuch as smoking, excessive weight, or excessive alcohol consumptionmay be considered fair game for modifying health insurancepremiums. But consider the day when a newborn's (or in uterofetus') DNA is examined and is virtually denied health insurancebecause of a genetic predisposition to some disease. That kind ofthinking invalidates the whole concept of a risk pool.

Information overload is not about collecting every possible datapoint. It is about what we do with it. Desktop applications nowplace extremely sophisticated business intelligence (BI) tools inthe hands of knowledgeable workers who have the ability to sliceand dice that information in a myriad of ways. On the surface thisseems like a good thing. But do we really want Melvin in operationscreating reports and scenarios from raw data? Traditionally datamodelers and analysts provided data that was already joined andpresented in such a way that business users requested reportsagainst that data–they were not expected to model it themselves.And that's not such bad idea. There was an incident way back in theearly days of spreadsheets. A firm was responding with a bidproposal that had been built on an early DOS-based spreadsheetsystem. Unfortunately one of the formulas in the spreadsheet wasnot configured correctly. After the firm won that contract, theydiscovered the error and also discovered that they would lose a lotof money if they were forced to fulfill their obligations. So whatdid they do? Naturally they filed a lawsuit against the maker ofthe spreadsheet program–and lost. The moral of the story is thatunderstanding a business process does not necessarily equate tounderstanding how to represent that process in a business system.IT departments do not exist simply to keep the network and desktoplights on. The biggest value that IT brings to the table is totranslate business requirements into systems that provide thebusiness with those requirements. Providing business users withoverly complex systems is not effective. Do we need to usePhotoshop when all we are doing is resizing images–or AutoCad toarrange office furniture?

Lightweight Apps

Google Apps–online versions of applications that provide thebasic functionality of fat-client office suites–provide just aboutall the features any of us really need in our day-to-day work.“Good enough” thinking would provide these or similar products fortraditional knowledgeable workers. Notepad with a spell checkerwould probably keep me happy. (I actually use the “free” WorksOffice suite on a few of my machines.) We have spent the last 15years moving from stand-alone applications to multiple-tierapplications to distributed, service-oriented applications. Ifdistributed applications are a good thing, why are we still usingexpensive (both in terms of money and computing resources)fat-client productivity applications on our desktops? We are stuckin that model because there has been only one player in that gamefor the last 15 years. Maybe it's time we joined the good enoughrevolution and reassessed all of our corporate computing needs.There will always be a need for high-end, sophisticatedapplications. But for most of us we can probably do our jobs moreefficiently with a solution that is good enough. Is that good foryou? TD

Please address comments, complaints, and suggestions to theauthor at [email protected].