Leader: The search for simplicity

This week has seen a great deal of talk about one of the downsides of our increasingly prevalent and powerful IT systems: information overload.

A panel of CIOs named over-complexity as the bane of IT departments with one IT boss going so far as to say: "Complexity is the enemy of the CIO."

The CIO pointed to text messaging by teenagers as an effective use of technology because "it's the information they need, at the time they need it".

You'd think Vodafone heard this chatter given that today the company announced its new 'Simply' offering: mobile phones designed to be easy to use and, as such, purposefully limited to making voice calls and sending text messages only.

Even Bill Gates - whose company has received its share of blame for creating 'bloatware' with too many features - said workers are suffering from information overload and lack the software to help them make sense of all the data they're bombarded with.

In these discussions the iPod was mentioned more than once (though not by Gates, as you probably guessed) as a device with the streamlined design and single-purpose functionality that people want. The music player's popularity only underscores this theory.

The lesson to be learned, though, is that the search for simplicity is not just an aesthetic one.

For CIOs, making operations more efficient can save them cold hard cash and allow them to reallocate funds from 'business as usual' to more innovative projects.

For the average worker, easy to use software means a productivity boost - as well as less complaining to the helpdesk and cursing at the computer screen.

And for the vendor, especially in the case of Vodafone and its new mobiles, functional form could mean increased usage and on a metered minute plan that means more revenues.

Now for the real key, of which there has been much less discussion - how do we create this simplified nirvana?