Large organizations are spending millions to monitor their plethora of discombobulated systems.  This spend seemed logical pre-Twitter when we didn’t really understand the power of combining a simple 140 character message with an open API. However, now is a great time for IT companies to rethink their enterprise and closed approached to monitoring.

With the advent of social media both on the Internet and internal to many organizations, we are becoming more accustom to sharing information. Twitter is leading the way with “system” like updates for people.  Ever so often a person will send a notification to their followers or stakeholders about their life.  The status is usually as insignificant as, “I’m at Starbucks.”  However, it could be as critical as the need of the person.  While the individual can protect their status updates to approved followers, most Twitter users update in an unprotected state.  However, only the people following them see their notification unless an active search is performed. [...]

Remember the pirate port-town called Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean? Tortuga was out of the jurisdictions of the Royal Navy and the East India Trading Company. The place really lacked order. In Tortuga, pirates got slapped and first-mates where found in less than desirable places. Many IT professionals may think of images similar to Tortuga when they hear the phrase, “open source.” However, the results reveal that open source is not a disorderly software collaboration, so the images of Tortuga don’t apply.

Now think back again with me to Port Royal. Port Royal was the heavily-guarded British Caribbean stronghold. Most of the time, order was maintained, and only a few major problems occurred such as when Lady Elizabeth was abducted by pirates. How could the Governor’s daughter be kidnapped in such a secure place? However, Port Royal maintained the very important image of being under British control regardless of real threats and problems. Now this depiction could accurately portray our more commercial-ware solutions. [...]