Written by Dan Hoffman

There is no question that the Harry Truman was built using some of the most sophisticated technology on the planet. You feel it the second you step into the Command Center. So what do they use for the phone system on-board?

Funny.
I’ve never seen more old-school analog handsets on one wall in my life.
There’s a different color handset for every process: landing planes,
steering the boat, talking to shore, talking to weapons, ordering food
(just kidding, I made that up).

Everyone
in the corporate world is on a mission to unify communications yet
these guys seem to be moving in the opposite direction. I
asked the captain why they don’t utilize the latest communications
technologies? He said: “oh, we email and text and chat a lot now. But
when it matters, in a mission-critical, emergent situation, it has to
be voice.” And I thought, what a great validation of M5 Networks’
strategy!

Afterwards
I had the opportunity to spend about an hour talking to the CSO, the
ship’s CTO. As it turns out, on the back-end they are in fact using
state-of-the-art communications tools. They use high-end Cisco, mostly.
(well, not quite “state-of-the-art” - he’d just been involved with an
R&D project for the Navy that concluded Google’s email operation
was ten times more efficient and much more secure than anything the
armed forces was running…). They also have complete radio backup for
all communications, which is run on a separate network entirely. That said, the phone handsets are the hardest thing to change. Said the CSO, “It is about process. When
you change work processes, you risk second and third-order consequences
that can take ten years to iron out. We can’t afford for that to happen
with our communications in a battle situation. When the captain grabs the red phone, it kicks off a mission-critical workflow.”

I
felt this was particularly thought-provoking when you earn a living
applying communications technologies to produce real business impact,
don’t you think?