I remember hearing the story once of a mother who was taking her daughter to the zoo. They were rushing from place to place and the little girl was frustrated by the harried pace and her inability to enjoy the experience. She asked her mom "Why can't we look at everything?" The mother stated "We don't have time for that." The girl's response was "What's time for anyway???"

I was talking with Ed Kettler (another EDS Fellow) about the use of simulation and business decision making. We were talking about the need to take latency out of decision making and the driving force in business to doing things better, faster, cheaper. Both Ed and I expressed some frustration with those who view simulation as too ethereal and a waste of time. It's becoming part of every level of business, particularly for those deploying SOA. We need to plan for it. I mentioned some efforts around workflow simulation the other day in this blog.

Simulation is one technique that can speed time up. For example, changing a business workflow model, then simulate yesterday's production volume on it and see the impact. Simulation can also slow time down and identify bottlenecks or anomalies and focus an individual's efforts on diagnosis and improvement.

There is continuous effort to place finer grained metering and implement sensors in the business environment, and whole new possibilities to use all the computational power available to us.

James Taylor pointed out in Smart (Enough) Systems that many of the systems in production can be made smarter and provide the information needed to facilitate a decision making process. These don't have to be strategic decisions, since operational decisions are important, too. Those who understand how to use time differently will have an advantage.

Thoreau said "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in." and now is the time to learn to fish.

Charlie Bess
EDS' Next Big Thing Blog