Tic TAP Toe

With the recent public, launch of my firm, the Breakaway Information Group, I also released a work long in the making. That work is a vision presented as a reference model called TAP, an acronym standing-in for specifically defined information and functionality "zones" as well as a metaphor speaking to an organization's ability to exploit - or tap - all of its information resources deeply and cheaply. The introduction to this framework is available at my firm's site.


The TAP Model, as a vision, is meant to open the door to a dialog based on the "three R's" - and I don't mean readin', 'riting' and 'rithmetic. To me, being a former integrator, the "three R's" are robust, realistic, reachable. So often, discussions of technological solutions blur, too often violently, sci-fi-like functionality and revolutionary but low-impact capability all at a remove from the necessary details that make each instantiation of infrastructure unique. It is understandable that innovation is usually spoken of in great abstraction. If the object of innovation were so specific that it could be discussed by stake-holders of varied interest in deep detail, the likelihood of this innovation having broad appeal would be suspect. Thus, we're left with a conundrum; how to relate the general to the specific while creating descriptive room for variety.

The TAP Model, in the introductory paper, seeks to strike this balance. The goal was to identify the broadest range of challenges facing IT professionals tasked with managing storage and/or information assets and to map these responsibilities to an understanding of information architecture that embraces the truly revolutionary changes at the application layer. By application layer, I do mean both the environment defined as software, being business, consumer, peer-to-peer or other applications. I also mean that nebulous space known as the top of the OSI stack where elements of data are transmitted and assembled in a meaningful way to applications and end-users. As such, the TAP Model seeks to corral all of those elements that are regularly left out of various procedural or "marketese" driven descriptions of infrastructure's value and potential.

I say potential purposefully. As time and IT solution maturity has marched forward, the notion of potentiality has migrated away from what infrastructure can do toward what applications and processes must do. However, like any other infrastructure intensive activity - be it trains, planes or automobiles - the greatest plans for achievement must find themselves rooted in a solid base! That base, in a world fused and propelled by information, is infrastructure. As such, the TAP Model and BIG seek to reinvigorate the discussion of infrastructure by recognizing the very necessary enabling foundation it provides. TAP is the first foray into an investigation of innovation positively adapting existing practices and programs in a way that respects the robust, reliable and reachable goals of IT professionals, business owners, investors and solution vendors.

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