A Matter of Perspective: Loek Bakker's weblog

Architecture gem

2008-09-17T14:31:00.000+02:00

After a couple of months of forced inactivity I can now pick up blogging again. What better way to start again by writing about two of my favorite subjects:

Architecture and its practioners, and
Government IT.

Since I studied public administration back in the days, I occasionally read the magazines that are typically read by former public administration students. I came across an issue of "Digitaal Bestuur" (digital administration), of which the theme is "Government and ICT". This issue had an article by a lead architect (!) from a government body, with the illustruous title "IT is difficult. IT within government is extra difficult". Fascinated by this title, I started reading and came across the following excerpt:

"It is getting more and more difficult to control the increasing complexity of IT. Computers have become 1000 to 1500 times more powerful in the past 15 years, as a result the systems have become 1000 to 1500 times more complex, and to make matters worse computers nowadays all communicate with each other through networks."

After I had read the above excerpt 5 times (I really wanted to make sure that I really read what I thought I was reading), I finally understood why governments are struggling so badly with IT and why architects are still having trouble to get accepted or even taken seriously by other IT and enterprise disciplines.

Categories: architecture, government, public+sector, opinion

Modernization 2.0

2007-12-04T14:09:00.000+01:00

When I was stuck in traffic again this morning and listening to the radio, I heard about the news that Belgium is facing tremendous trouble in forming a new government after the most recent elections. The same has been true in the past for The Netherlands, where the results of the elections provided the image of a very divided country, with quite some votes for the more extreme left-wing and right-wing parties. It took quite a while to form a government, and the Dutch voters are now stuck with a government that nobody is really enthousiastic for (except maybe the families of the new ministers and the memebers of the three coalition partners).
But enough about politics, this blog is about perspective on IT. But I think this trend in politics could have something to do with a growing structural differentiation in society due to technology. Let me explain why.

Somehow, I really have the impression that in many aspects in society and our everyday life we are experiencing the consequences of what sociologists call "modernization". This refers to a concept that describes a process in which society goes through industrialization, urbanization and other social changes that completely transforms the lives of individuals. Key elements in modernization are structural differentiation and cultural generalization, or in plain English increasing individualism and mono-culture. Lately, this modernization appears to be happening at warp speed, not in the last place because of the explosive growth of technology usage in Western society. The use of technology and new (IT) concepts, especially those branded as Web 2.0, accelerate the processes of structural differentiation and cultural generalization.

I wrote about culutural generalization before in a reaction to Nick Carr's claim that Web 2.0 is amoral. Former Internet boy wonder Andrew Keen goes as far as saying that today's internet is even killing our culture. Although I have some second thoughts hearing this from somebody who made a fortune on the internet (that's not "eat your own dog food", but "spit in your own dog food"), I have ordered his book for the Christmas holidays that are coming up. It should be an interesting read.

On the other hand, there appears to be some evidence that the explosion of internet usage is also accelerating structural differentiation I mentioned earlier. According to Oxford University Press, societies are seen as moving from the simple to the complex via a process of social change based on structural differentiation. The process may be imagined, in its simplest form, as an amoeba dividing, redividing, then redividing again. Society is evolving from quite simple structures into seperate institutions of education, work, leisure, government, religion and social contacts. Most people do not stay with the same employer their entire working life anymore, some even work at 2 or 3 different employers, churches see a declining number of people, small political parties are attracting voters from the traditional larger parties, mass markets are being replaced by niche markets (Long Tail, anyone?). In fact even identities of single persons are differentiating: John Doe who works as a loyal clerk during day-time, may be SuperVixen666 in his favorite virtual world at night.

Media is already heavily influenced by the 2.0 phenomenon (serious newspapers publishing movies of incidents that were filmed by readers with their cameras on their mobile phones), politics arguably also is facing the consequences of the wisdom of the crowd (some might say the power of the mob) and the collective intelligence. It will be very difficult to predict where this is all leading to, but for sure society is dealing with Modernization 2.0.

Categories: Web2.0, society, opinion, Internet

Oracle makes offer for BEA Systems

2007-10-12T13:33:00.000+02:00

Press release by Oracle:

"Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) today confirmed that it delivered a letter to the Board of Directors of BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAS) on October 9 in which Oracle proposes to acquire BEA for $17.00 per share in cash. The $17.00 per share offer is a 25% premium over yesterday's closing price of $13.62."

If I did not know anything about acquisitions, I would think that this is Larry Ellison's reaction to the Business Objects acquisition by arch rival SAP (don't get mad.... get even). But as these acquisitions and offers usually take quite a long preparation time, I do not think this is a reaction to the SAP activities.

Leaves me wondering though what the rationale is for Oracle to make the offer for BEA. Oracle states in its press release that "the acquisition of BEA by Oracle will enable an increase in engineering resources that will in-turn accelerate the development of our [Oracle's, LB - sic] world-class suite of middleware". Which might mean that Oracle is facing some challenges, maybe even problems with its current Project Fusion program. Putting it all together is one of the key challenges Oracle faces in its Fusion endeavor, and the acquisition of the brightest engineers from BEA could be considered a way to face this challenge. This should not come as a surprise as I have said before that one of the key drivers for Oracle's acquisition wave was "acquiring the people who created the technology".

Also, the potential acquisition of BEA supports my prediction and observation that increasingly pure-play vendors are disappearing, as the functionality of their products is incorporated into enterprise applications, OS and hardware.
Maybe this is the moment to say: integration middleware is now officially commoditized.

Categories: BEA, Oracle, prediction, acquisition, strategy, commoditization, enterprise-applications

Why SaaS will make and why ASP didn't

2007-10-10T16:50:00.000+02:00

I picked up blogging again last week when I wrote that the acronym SaaS does not ring many bells yet with decision makers. Maybe ASP does, but that is something many decision makers do not want to get involved with as that is so 90's.
Still there are many people that think that SaaS is the same as ASP. Take this definition for instance which I found on the web site of the Dutch research firm that concluded that SaaS is not known by many decision makers:
"SaaS (Software as a Service) is software provided as a hosted service which is accessed over the Internet, and which is billed through a subscription structure. This is also called ASP(Application Service Providing)."

Let me explain why I think this makes no sense. To start with, the delivery model is completely different: with ASP, you pay a monthly fee for a fixed period (sometimes even for the duration of 3 to 5 years), while with SaaS you only pay for the usage ("pay as you go"). This may sound trivial, but it has consequences for the customer orientation of the provider: because a subscriber is not tied to a fixed (maybe long) period arranged by a contract, which is the case with ASP, it is easier to make the switch to another provider. This implies that the SaaS provider must do more for client retention, hence deliver great customer service.
The architecture of products is usually also very much different between an ASP and a SaaS provider, mainly because SaaS products have been developed from scratch to be used over the Internet (take Salesforce.com as an example). The ASP versions of products have usually been "web-enabled", but still have a typical client-server architecture. In the past, the ASP model therefore never fully delivered what it promised, because of the lack of bandwidth, or because of a performance degrade resulting from the web-enablement of the application.

In short: both the delivery model and the architecture of SaaS and ASP are different: SaaS solutions are generally speaking better prepared (optimized) for usage over the Internet, and its delivery model is more flexible than the ASP delivery model. So, we are dealing with different animals (that live in the same Zoo though, named Outsourcing). The key advantages of SaaS over ASP make that I believe that SaaS will succeed, as these are exactly the reasons why ASP did not succeed.

Categories: SaaS, ASP, outsourcing, comparison, SaaS+vs+ASP, Software-As-A-Service

Are we dealing with GAF(general acronym fatigue)?

2007-10-06T15:47:00.000+02:00

Two recent news items have made me wondering whether we are dealing with GAF: a General Acronym Fatigue.

The first news item is from a Dutch IT newspaper, which quotes research from a Dutch IT research organization: 73 percent of all IT decision makers do not know spontaneously what SaaS (Software as a Service) is. Only after an explanation of what is meant by SaaS (a formal definition), 69 percent say they know SaaS. Which leads to the conclusion that only 4% of IT decision makers really have no clue what SaaS is about, and 69 percent are just confused by the acronym / terminology. An ASP (Application Service Provider, not Active Server Pages) expert in The Netherlands says this is due to the fact that companies, vendors and end-user organizations all have different names for the phenomenon: "Web 2.o", "internet-accounting" or "online services". Some people have even called it "ASP 2.0", which is really silly as there are substantial differences in the delivery models as far as I am concerned.

The second news item has been not on a single source, but in fact has been heard among many blogs: more and more people are seriously questioning the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) is worth using. I have answered this question already some time ago: it is not! It is just replacing one low viability solution (CORBA or brokers) with another (service buses). I have plead before to use Apache for instance as a service bus (or rather I would name it service intermediary), and obviously more people have come to this conclusion. But then of course, we are talking about the design pattern, and not about the commercial product type some people considered to be the next generation application server. I suggest to drop the name ESB, and instead to name it what it is: a service intermediary.

The future does not look toto bright for people confused with acronyms, in particular because the aaS letters are pasted to any random technology or product category you can imagine: PaaS (Platform as a Service), CaaS (CRM as a Service), AaaS (Accounting as a Service) well, you get the idea... the good thing is that we run out of options at 26 acronyms...

If we (yes, everyone in IT is responsible for this GAF situation) are unable to come up with good names for new concepts, patterns, technologies or products, we should not blame those poor IT decision makers for not understanding our value proposition. In 9 out of 10 times we are not dealing with an ignorant decision maker, but just with someone suffering from GAF.

OK, I am off for now, I am going for a BLT.

Categories: SaaS, ESB, TLA, Software-as-a-Service, Service

The Second Life world is flat

2007-04-21T15:47:00.000+02:00

Some folks have gone really excited about the "news" that Linden Labs is going to open source the back-end of Second Life. The amount of attention this non-news has gained, confirms my observation that Second Life is at the peak of the hype. Why? Because there really is nothing new or spectacular here in the story most bloggers and authors refer to. It comes down to Joe Miller, VP for platform and technology development at Linden Lab stating the following at VW07:

"We’ll be open-sourcing the back end so sims can run anywhere on any machine whether trusted by us or not."

OK. When? Under which conditions? How? Just this statement is not truly shocking if you ask me.

"We’ll be delivering assets in a totally different method that won’t be such a burden on the simulators."

If I understand correctly, the move is primarily driven by the lack of capacity for the back end run by Linden Lab.

"Very soon we’ll be updating simulators to support multiple versions so that we don’t have to update the entire Grid at once."

Again my question: when? When is very soon?

"We’ll be using open protocols."

Which ones? I heard rumors that IBM is having talks with Linden Labs on protocol developnment. With the WS-* disaster in the back of our minds, of which IBM was one of the key creators, we should not expect any added value really here. In fact if I were in a very cynical mood I'd say this is the kiss of death for Second Life, but it's Saturday so I am not :-).

"SL cannot truly succeed as long as one company controls the Grid."

The bottom line, although it should read that SL cannot survive as long as one company controls the Grid (please note the uppercase G here. As if we are talking about the Matrix. Would have been even more striking if also an uppercase T was used).

Dana Blankenhorn wonders out loud if open source can save Second Life. He invites people to share their insights. My 2 cents is that Second Life is nothing more than a finger exercise for really successful 3D virtual communities, which will not be mainstream before 2009-2012. Linden Labs have done some pioneer work in the area, and they and the users of Second Life (I refuse to use the term resident), including the big companies that have jumped on the phenomenon will have learned for their experiences. But they will come (or already have come) to the conclusion that the Second Life world is flat, meaning they can fall off at any moment.

Categories: Second-Life, SecondLife, open-source, OS, prediction, business-model, opinion

WS-* as an April Fool's Day joke

2007-04-02T16:36:00.000+02:00

Well, well... For a second there I thought one of the last of the mohicans prefering WS-* over REST, Mr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, did wake up and smelled the coffee, but it must have been his april fool's day joke (look at the date of his post and the tone of voice)....

Missed opportunity here Sanjiva I am afraid :-)...

Categories: REST, WS-*

Beyond Kathy Sierra

2007-04-02T10:02:00.000+02:00

Quite frankly I never heard of Kathy Sierra before last week. I could say here thatg I have been a loyal reader of her blog for a long long time, but reality is that I first heard about her when all the blog postings came in about the death threats aimed at her. And obviously a lot of people are interested in this subject:

Most reactions throughout the blogosphere vary from supportive, to shocked, and in fact James McGovern was one of the first who had a somewhat skeptical reaction to Kathy's story. I think this was quite brave by James, and although his later postings about the subject were not as good in my opinion (but I suspect James is going quickly for the 1000th blog posting so he can retire as a blogger as he announced), he has brought up some very interesting points, that even go beyond the whole Kathy Sierra case.

I do not know Kathy Sierra so I do not have any opinion on how she has handled this whole situation, although generally I do feel that you should never bend to those that use violence. That was my opinion last year with all the fuss about the cartoons in the Danish newspaper, and that is my opinion now. But maybe it is different if it happens to you, I don't know. Nevertheless, I wonder what the motive is of people threatening a blogger. It wouldn't surprise me if we are "just" dealing with some bored teenagers who just want some attention, kind of the same breed as those people that write computer viruses (still can't think what's so gratifying about that).

The key about the whole discussion goes beyond Kathy Sierra as I said earlier. James pointed in his post to the single largest threat of the Internet in general:

"In cyberspace it is very easy to become someone else and very difficult at times to prove that you aren't really you"

This has proved to be very difficult in the past and present (phishing, threats on discussion boards, electronic voting etc.), and it will become even a bigger issue in the future. With the advancement and expansion of new forms of collaboration, social contacts and transactions that use the Internet, identity is becoming the key issue. Obviously there is a growing number of people that have a need to take on another identity when being on the Internet. How often do you see nick names, avatars or email aliases that reflect exactly the name or appearance of its owner? Even with some very popular blogs, the writers chose to use a nick name, probably because they were writing about quite some confidential information on their company.

Anonymity / namelessness is very valuable to many people on the Internet, but it will become a complicating factor in the evolvement of the Internet. Especially as it appears as though increasingly virtual spaces / worlds and the real world are blending, this becomes increasingly problematic. Particularly because legislation is still in progress and absent in this area. In fact some people will even argue that the Internet should not be subject to legislation from any country (tell that to China...), and should be subject to the self-cleaning capacity of the World Wide Web and its users.

Which leaves us with the very interesting observation that on one hand the current evolvement of the Internet has the promise of providing maximum transparency, but on the other hand it is threatened by the obscurity of its users. Information becomes transparant, users don't. All the ingredients are there for a dialectic process of change.

Categories: kathy+sierra, ethics, Internet, opinion

Making money with Web 2.0

2007-03-22T11:35:00.000+01:00

Loyal readers of my blog will remember that in the past I have written about the possibilities to make money with Web 2.0. Via a Dutch site I ran into a presentation by an Italian consultant who names himself BizMogeek (Business Model geek, real name Luca Grivet).

As I have not found his ideas on some other blogs on Web 2.0, I will give a very short summary of his findings here. Grivet identifies 5 business models for Web 2.0:

Free: the best known and near-classic model, in which revenue is generated by advertising
Free to use, pay for related service: the base product can be used free of charge, for example open source software (MoveableType). However, for additional services you have to pay (TypePad)
Freemium: the base product is free of charge (like with business model 2) to a certain extent. If you exceed a specific usage limit (Flickr), want additional service (LinkedIn) or want to buy extra items (SecondLife), it becomes a charged service
Freedom to pay: it is up to the users to decide whether or not they are willing to pay to use the service, or you can make a donation (Wikipedia)
Nothing free: the service will be charged anyway (iTunes), however you can get a share of the revenue that is generated (eBay, Google AdSense)

This is quite a good effort to describe the possibile Web 2.0 business models in my opinion. Grivet has even created a framework to help position service providers in the Web 2.0 market, as he has added the specific target market (or business area as he calls it) as well in this model: content, application / service or products / software. I find it somewhat questionnable whether or not you should draw a distinction between application / service and products / software, especially as SaaS is blurring the boundaries between those.
Nevertheless, I appreciate Grivet's work, and it is one of the best attempts I have seen so far to describe the different possibilities.

I have one key objection against his list and framework, and that is that there are quite some Web 2.0 startups that appear to have no other business model than attracting the big Web 2.0 players to get acquired by those players. These startups cannot be placed in any category mentioned by Grivet, as their key objective is to get noticed by Yahoo!, Google, MSN and [you name it], hoping that these big guys are willing to buy them out. I would call this business model the Big bucks buy-out (triple B?) model.

Basically, I think Grivet's model should be extended with this business model, but not at the same level as the 5 models he mentions. The framework could be extended with an extra layer, which could be called "Business intention". Here are 2 choices:

being self-supportive through either one of the 5 models mentioned by Grivet, or
going for the Big player buy-out / Triple B model

VC's should assess which type they are dealing with, before committing their capital to Web 2.0 startups.

Categories: Web2.0, Web20, business-model, strategy, VC

Second Life on the hype cycle

2007-03-19T17:25:00.000+01:00

What if you had to place Second Life on a Gartner Hype Cycle? In which Hype Cycle would you place it? Hype Cycle for Virtual Worlds? Hype Cycle for 3D Web UIs? And at which position in that particular hype cycle would you place it? Technology trigger? Peak of inflated expectations?

I would definately say at the peak of inflated expectations, as not a single printed or online chronicle has not written about it yet. If even Dutch grocery stores are opening a complete mall in Second Life, there is no room anymore for denial: Second Life IS a hype.
However, there are already some first signs that the hype may be beyond its peak. Although the State of the Virtual World on the official Second Life blog still show quite some impressive growth figures, there are also some things that indicate that SL hype is nearly beyond its peak:

All media have already written or reported about it, a second wave of attention from the media appears unlikely (people will pretty soon show signs of Second Life fatigue)
Only a fraction of users actually stay. Many people try, only few keep coming to Second Life
Some companies have already announced to close their virtual offices in Second Life after the first forms of child porn were found in Second Life.
And, as my colleague Ray Valdes mentioned: "Do you want to have a virtual press conference in a world where your public event can be disrupted by flying animated body parts?"
Some people claim that Second Life is mainly driven (or should I say: populated) by people looking to gamble or for some erotic pleasure (hey, that does not sound surprising for an Internet platform)

My 2 cents on Second Life and Hype Cycles is that:

Second Life should be placed in a Hype Cycle for Web 2.0, as I consider it a social networking platform / community
Secondly, I think it should be placed just beyond the peak of inflated expectations.
Finally, "Years to mainstream adoption" will be the red circle with the cross in it ("obsolete before plateau"), because I think another contender will take the crown from Second Life and will create a highly successful "virtual world"*

* If I had to place "virtual 3D communities" on the Hype Cycle (instead of its most popular current incarnation, Second Life), I would say it takes another 2 to 5 years before mainstream adoption.

Yes, I do believe that virtual 3D communities have a quite bright future, I just don't think that Second Life will be THE future virtual world of choice. Second Life will suffer from the the 'dialectics of progress', in fact you could even say that it will become a victim of its own success.

Categories: Second-Life, SecondLife, prediction, hype-cycle, opinion, Internet

Pareto applied to pure-play vendors

2007-03-14T10:24:00.000+01:00

Last week's news that Oracle acquired Hyperion has left me wondering whether in future IT there is still a place for pure-play vendors of specific solutions, alongside the vendors of enterprise applications.

Hyperion was one of those pure-play vendors that focused on business intelligence and corporate performance management. The recent acquisition by Oracle has led to quite some speculation on whether BI pure-play vendors such as Cognos and Business Objects will be next. The same goes for other growth markets such as BAM (Business Activity Monitoring), BPM and service registries. Increasingly, the pure-players in these markets are under pressure due to the competition of large enterprise applications vendors such as Oracle, SAP and to some extent Microsoft and IBM. Increasingly, functionality offered by these pure-play solutions are incorporated into enterprise applications. In the past I have argued that this is happening also for ESBs, where functions that can be typically found in ESBs are incorporated either in enterprise applications (SAP and Oracle), in operating systems (Vista, Microsoft WF, and Microsoft WCF) or in hardware (intelligent switches).

So increasingly we see the trend that specific functionality is either placed in enterprise apps, the OS or in hardware. This should not come as a surprise, as generally speaking the Pareto principle can be applied to enterprise IT: capabilities that are needed in 80% of all enterprise environments, are likely to become commoditized. The remaining 20% are likely to be provided by non-commoditized systems.

Does this mean that in future IT there is no space for pure-play solutions and/or vendors? I am not sure about vendors, but I am pretty sure there will be a place for pure-play solutions. Although most pure-play solutions will be dealing with a niche market, the old Pareto 80/20 principle will apply here as well: the functions incorporated in enterprise apps, OS and hardware will satisfy 80% of all requirements, but for the last 20% still specific solutions are needed.

Categories: Pareto, vendor-management, Oracle, enterprise-applications, Hyperion, pure-play, commoditization

Predicting IT acquisitions

2007-03-05T10:58:00.000+01:00

Business Objects can stop holding its breath (at least for a while): it will most probably not be acquired by Oracle, as this weekend the New York Times announced that Oracle had finished their planned acquisition of a BI / performance management player, by acquiring Hyperion.
Yeah that is already 2 days ago (it was announced on Saturday), but I do not blog in the weekend, in fact I am not even on Second Life in the weekends.

Dennis Howlett has already a pretty decent analysis on the gaps that Oracle fills with Hyperion. I would like to add to Dennis' analysis that with this acquisition, Oracle can improve the reporting and dashboard functions of their offering, assuming that these Hyperion functions (which are superior over their Oracle counterparts) will be included in the Oracle offerings. That is why probably Business Objects can safely breath again: the only reason from a functional / product point of view to acquire Business Objects, would be for their reporting capabilities which by far exceed the reporting capablities of Oracle. However, with the Hyperion acquisition the reporting capabilities can be improved already. So the remaining reason for Oracle to acquire Business Objects would be to buy market share in a growing market (predicted 11% growth in the coming years).

Somehow I feel some sort of confirmation in this Oracle acquisition news, as it proves my hypothesis (which I have often shared with my clients) that you can somewhat predict acquisitions by looking at Gartner's Magic Quadrants: very often (and this is the case with the Hyperion acquisition by Oracle), vendors that are in the lower right quadrant (the "visionaries" quadrant: those vendors that have a high "completeness of vision" but a somewhat lower "ability to execute") are acquired by vendors in the upper left quadrant (the "challengers" quadrant: vendors that have a somewhat limited "completeness of vision" coupled with a high "ability to execute"). The visionaries are often the "sitting ducks" for the wealthy and powerful hunters in the challengers quadrant.
Of course there are more factors and elements to it (I would not predict that IBM will get acuired by some other vendor if it ever ends up with a single product in the visionaries quadrant --> although I do not think that it is very likely that IBM will end up in the visionaries qudrant with a product, as its marketing power and client base is enormous), but the ingredients for predictions are:

A sitting duck: a vendor that is dependent on a single or a limited number of products, and that is in the "visionaries" quadrant of a Gartner Magic Quadrant of the previous year
A challenger: a large company with a big wallet, ready to invest in struggling companies that have interesting technology and vision. This vendor is typically either in the "challengers" quadrant, or not present yet in the market
An emerging market with a high predicted growth (it makes not much sense to look at Linear Development Modeling Tools for instance as a growth market)

Let's take an example to illustrate my theory and let's take the metadata repository market for instance. We are dealing with a growth market, as with all this XML going around, it is extremely important to record some form of metadata to keep things maintainable. Unicorn, as small player that was in the visionaries quadrant last year, has been acquired by giant IBM that wants to extend its presence in ths emerging market.

Try for yourself, even if you are not correct, it is still fun to do when there is nothing else to do at the office.

Categories: Oracle, Hyperion, acquisition, prediction, BI, business-intelligence, analysis, Business+Objects

Adobe Photoshop goes SaaS

2007-03-01T11:20:00.000+01:00

The news that Adobe is offering its flagship product Photoshop (or should we call Flash its flagship product after the acquisition of Macromedia?) as an online service has caused quite some speculation on the acceleration of SaaS (Software as a Service).
I find this news interesting for 2 reasons: what is Adobe's product strategy and plan with this move, and what are the consequences of a move to a true SaaS model?

As for Adobe's strategy: I predicted earlier this year that Adobe will be acquired by Oracle. Although there are still some rumours that Oracle's first acquisition priorities are with BI vendor Business Objects, I still believe that an Adobe acquisition by Oracle is very feasible, not in the last place because Oracle might consider Adobe as the doorway to the new, emerging market of rich user interfaces and desktop computing (Acrobat, Flash, Photoshop, video editing stuff). If Adobe manages to leverage its web presence with a Photoshop SaaS offering, it will probably become an even more attractive target for Oracle. This move by Adobe has not and will not go unnoticed, and the exposure Adobe is getting for its SaaS efforts, can create the right momentum for the acquisition by Oracle.

In the second place, I find this news interesting because it is a test case to see whether the open source business model works for software as well. We should not be mistaken about the Adobe plans: it is nothing more than offering only a limited set of Photoshop capabilities on-line, it is not like all the very sophisticated functions from the desktop version are incorporated in the online version. Add that to the fact that Photoshop online is what is called an "ad-supported online service", and it becomes clear that also with Photoshop as most people know it, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
In line with the Web 2.0 business model discussed before, Adobe is giving away something expensive but considered critical, hoping to get something valuable for free that was once expensive. It could be a way of attracting customers and make them want the full, desktop version of Photoshop, or it could be a true step towards "good enough" software offered via the Internet. The question with the latter is: what's in it for Adobe? Will they charge users in the future for using the online Photoshop? Will they gain income through support and services (I wonder if this will work: I predict that online communities will emerge that provide peer-to-peer support for online Photoshop users)? Are they only doing this for brand recognition or to win sympathy?

Many people applaud the SaaS model, because they feel it is important to cut down on physical media, and replace this with online storage. However, the SaaS model requires a much higher bandwidth, and not only that: it requires a reliable connection to the software that is consumed as a service. You do not want to be in the middle of editing your pics from your latest holiday, and all of a sudden find out that your connection is slow, and the HTTP request from your browser times out. Another aspect could be the enormous media exposure that such initiatives could get: are the online services prepared for the huge peak load when influential media have a story about it and all of a sudden everyone wants to check out that cool new service.

According to Adobe's plans, Photoshop should be online in 6 months. Enough time then to think about some of the above issues, and I will follow this with great interest.

Categories: Adobe, Photoshop, SaaS, service, Web2.0, business-model, Oracle

What is Enterprise Architecture about again?

2007-02-23T10:20:00.000+01:00

I was quite confused by a recent post from James McGovern on two camps of enterprise architects, which he based on a blog post by Jeremy Miller. While Jeremy is clearly speaking of two camps of coding philosophies (never knew there was something philosophical about coding. I thought coding was a pretty straightforward thing. At least it was when I was still coding. Besides, Socrates and Aristotle would turn in their graves if they heard that something as down-to-earth as coding was associated with philosophy), James is extending it to the question "what enterprise architect are you?". The two camps Jeremy identifies are:

Camp #1: Coding is too hard, so let's not write code anymore. Model Driven Architecture, Executable UML, Business Rules engines, Rapid Application Development
Camp #2: Coding is too hard, so let's make coding easier and more productive. Refactoring tools, dynamic languages, TDD, Continuous Integration, Ruby on Rails, etc.

If we are really dealing with enterprise architecture as James suggests, we should add a third camp as far as I am concerned:

Camp #3: Coding is only a very small part of the EA picture, so let's focus not only on coding but also on other important stuff which makes that I am different from a senior developer and which justifies that I can call myself an architect. Portfolio management, IT governance, business strategy, IT strategy, etc.

I am definately in the third camp, although I have decided not to call myself an architect anymore. Like I wrote in a recent post on standardization: more and more I feel alienated from this group of professionals, even though a large part of my consulting work concerns architecture.

Too many people are calling themselves enterprise architects, while they are not at all doing architecture in the first place. I do agree that having a background in coding and the real IT work gives some architects an advantage over others, but it takes more than being a great developer or designer to be a good architect. Peter's principle applies here at this level as well. The key to good architecture is that it should provide insight to decide. This means 2 aspects are important for architecture: Insight for your audience, which should always be the business if you are claiming to be doing enterprise architecture. When you are doing software architecture, you are providing insight to your development team.
The other aspect is decide: all your efforts are worthless if you are not somehow preparing a decision that would otherwise be very hard to make. If all of your hard work as an architect is not going to end up as the foundation of decisions in your enterprise (at a level appropriate to the domain of your architecture efforts), it has been useless and a waste of time. If no decisions are taken based on the insight you have provided, you have been doing architecture for the sake of architecture. This is the most important barrier for acceptance of EA as an enterprise IT discipline: too often it fails to deliver the goods. If your audience does not "get" your architecture, it is not their fault, it is yours. It has not provided the required insight. You have not connected with your audience. The same is true for software architectures that are not correctly implemented by your development team: you as an architect are to be blamed. You were unable to provide the insight to developers to make right decisions in their coding.

That, is what I think EA is all about. James, Jeremy and others, I will be glad to hear your opinions.

Categories: architecture, IT, opinion, software-engineering, architect, EA

BPEL / open standard support

2007-02-12T22:20:00.000+01:00

Looks like it's standardization week for me this week...
Today I had a discussion with an architect (I don't say with another architect, as more and more I feel alienated from this group of professionals, even though a large part of my consulting work concerns architecture) on the support of BPEL from IBM WebSphere and Tibco BusinessWorks. His opinion is that IBM provides better support for the "open standard" BPEL than Tibco.

I objected for 3 reasons: first of all, Tibco BusinessWorks is the first ESB that supports the BPEL 2.0 standard. Not IBM WebSphere, not Oracle's ESB, but Tibco BusinessWorks.
Second of all, some might argue that Tibco did not provide support for BPEL 1.1, while IBM did. True. However, in case that's the claim, one may have forgotten that BPEL 1.1 has never been ratified by OASIS (yeah, I know some stuff on standards ;-) ). So basically, we are not dealing with an open standard when dealing with BPEL 1.1.
Third and most importantly in my opinion, I think you cannot provide "better" support for a particular open standard. You either fully support the specifications of the open standard, or you don't. There is nothing in between....

The proof of the pudding is in the eating: the most commonly used open standard is still HTML (in whichever official version). Try the following: create a perfectly, well-formed HTML document, and pull it through the validator from W3C. Woohoo, "valid HTML 4.0" (or whatever version you threw in at the meta tag). Now, add one single teeny-weeny bit in your HTML that is not standard compliant, and validate again. Result: "This page is not valid HTML 4.0" (yeah, NOT in bold). Simple as that.

Open standards compliance is like a boolean: it is true or false (or "not set", if you are very precise). I rest my case.

Categories: standards, W3C, BPEL, Tibco, IBM, open-standards, OASIS

W3C should get back to its core business: the Web

2007-02-09T08:52:00.000+01:00

Nick Gall had a very interesting position paper on the W3C web site on why WS-* services are web services "in name only" (WINO, anyone?). Nick's analysis comes down to the observation that "W3C should leave the work on standardizing the WS-* middleware architecture to the middleware vendors and shift its focus to standardizing aspects of Web architecture that make it easier to apply to "application to application" scenarios".

I do agree with Nick's observation that probably WS-* web services should have been called XML Middleware Services (XMS). His key objection against using "web" in "WS-* web services" is the following:
"WS-* either ignores or violates the most important architectural concept of the Web: the Web is composed of resources identified by URIs[...] Nowhere in the vast multitude of WS-* specifications or the articles or papers describing them is there any imperative or even any emphasis that a Web Service should return an XML document that is populated references to other Web resources, ie URIs. But it is a fundamental principle of the Web that good Web resources don't "dead end" the Web; instead, they return representations filled with URIs that link to other Web resources [...] Just look at some of the XML industry standards like ACCORD or OAGIS: few if any elements contain URIs. It is quite clear both in theory and in practice that WS-*-style Web Services represent a "dead end" for the Web".

I must say that I did not fully grasp the "dead end" part. Nevertheless, probably the people that have been working on WS-* specs did understand this, as services in an SOA are often called.... endpoints.

Overall I do agree with Nick's observations, as I know they are rooted in his perception that REST is a better way for "web" services in the true meaning of the word, a perception which I share.

The bottom line is that I think W3C has entered a dead-end street with the WS-* specs (and they probably know it!), and that they should get back to their core business, from which its name (World Wide Web Consortium) was derived: the Web. Focus on the IFaPs again: Identifier (URIs), Formats (XML) and Protocols (HTTP). Forget about application models such as WS-*. Drop insane ideas like Binary XML, and leave the creation of standards for middleware that happen to (mis)use the Web to vendors that want to make a buck out of it. All of a sudden it will become clear again why there is the W3C, and why there are standardization committees like OASIS, and how they differ.

Categories: W3C, standardization, REST, web-architecture, SOA, web-services, IFaPs

French Linux Revolution?

2007-02-06T21:04:00.000+01:00

Liberté - Egalité - Fraternité are the magic words for any person in France, as they stand for one of the most important events in French history: the French Revolution.

French car manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroen is increasing its desktop environment from 75.000 to 100.000. Approximately 80% of this desktop environment will be Windows Vista, however 20% (that is 20.000) will run Suse Linux. The French have always been a nation that more or less chose their own directions, which is also much the case for Linux adoption. The French parliament is fully supporting a Ubuntu Linux desktop environment. Besides Linux adoption, we all remember Apple's legal struggle with the iTunes stores in France. Like I said: the French have their way of choosing their own directions. If they had not, there would have not been a Revolution more than 200 years ago.

Back to the PSA Peugeot desktop plans. Are we dealing with the long-sought French Linux Revolution? I don't think so. I doubt whether people will find this a demonstration of Liberté (4 out of 5 users are still condemned to Vista as Linux fans would argue) or Egalité (I am pretty positive Suse Linux users will have a completely different user experience than the Vista users). The only revolutionary element is the Fraternité: we have a peaceful coexistence of two rival operating systems, at a scale not seen in many places. Doesn't that make an extremely interesting case?

Categories: Linux, Suse, Vista, market, Peugeot, France

Fool's Gold

2007-02-02T21:53:00.000+01:00

The Cisco lawsuit against Apple over the trademark "iPhone" has gained quite some attention lately on many blogs and websites. I am somewhat surprised by the lack of attention for the similar news (in Dutch! I could not find any trustworthy site in English!) that Google has been forced to drop the name "Gmail" for its mail service in Europe.

A German guy, who already won a lawsuit in Germany against Google (that is why it has been named Google Mail for a couple of years already in Germany), has successfully appealed against Google using the name "Gmail" at the European court, the 'Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market' (OHIM). Unbelievable. Stupid.

Unbelievable from both sides, and stupid from both sides. You would expect from both Apple's and Google's marketeers that they would have done their homework. Apparently, they did not. Or maybe, in Apple's case, was it just a way to draw some extra attention to the product and was it a set-up by the marketing department as some have argued? (this does not sound very likely to me, I don't think Apple needed that for the iPhone).
And of course stupid from Cisco side and from that German guy's (his name is Daniel Gersch) side. Both have been offered some money to share or drop the trademark, both have refused, reportedly because they expected more out of it. Or could it be that also for Cisco and Gersch, the extra attention was more than welcome? I mean, I NEVER heard of the Cisco iPhone before the whole lawsuit thing. And I definately never heard of gmail.de which is hosted by Gersch. It is all about marketing, free publicity (even if it is not positive, it is still publicity!) and thereby we are dealing with fool's gold.

Categories: Google, Apple, iPhone, Cisco, lawsuit, gmail, marketing

Second Life? Get a First Life!

2007-01-26T21:11:00.000+01:00

For a second (no pun intended) I thought I was the only one that is not very enthousiastic about Second Life, but obviously I am not

Categories: second-life, parody, humor

Thoughts on "Thoughts on the iPhone"

2007-01-26T08:21:00.000+01:00

I will try to make this post not sound (or read) like an Apple ad (although I would not mind Apple giving me a free iPhone for this post ;-) ), but I am not as sceptical about the iPhone as analysts appear to be.
A lot has been said already on the Apple iPhone. By now you should have read about its extremely user friendly touchscreen, its built-in sensors that will change the touchscreen layout from landscape to portrait if the device is turned, and its quite high price ($499 for the 4GB flavor). Apple describes the iPhone as a combination of "three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching".

In the past days, on several web logs, in Time magazine and IT magazines I have read some opinions and thoughts on the new iPhone. Most of the critical remarks come down to 3 things:

The price is very high
The iPhone provides too little business functionality to become a factor of importance for the enterprise
The device is very fragile, especially the touchscreen will break easily when dropped on the floor

Although I have never ever had the iPhone in my hands (it will be out in Europe later this year), I think some of the criticism on the iPhone is somewhat "easy" and ignores forces that cannot be explained by rationality.

Take the price for instance: I do agree that 500 bucks for an iPod on steroids is somewhat expensive. Nevertheless, I thought the same thing when the first iPod came out some 5 years ago. At that time, the iPod MP3 player which reanimated the Apple company, far exceeded the prices for alternative MP3 players. The audience however, bought the iPod "en masse", ignoring the high price and the fact that the iPod relied heavily on an ecosystem that benefits Apple exclusively (iTunes, iTunes stores). People were attracted by the iPods design and its user interface, and they were willing to pay a high price for that. Even today, you can get a more than decent MP3 player with the same specs for only a fifth of the price of an iPod, but still most people prefer an iPod.
I recently got my first iPod (yeah, I am a late adaptor for gadgets, in fact it was a gift), and I must agree that I understood the navigation structure immediately, in fact it was very intuitive.

Then there is the issue of business applications running (or should I say: not running) on the iPhone. It is funny, on one hand we have analysts that cannot stress enough that Software as a Service (SaaS) is the future of enterprise computing, and that in the not so far future all business applications will run in the browser. On the other hand, there are people now saying that the iPhone will not make it in the enterprise because it does not come with spreadsheet, word editing or presentation applications installed. First of all: the iPhone will not become mainstream before 2008, and in the period in between we will see a further evolvement of SaaS. Second of all, I would not recommend to REALLY create documents, spreadsheets and especially not presentations on a small device or smart phone. I would only use a BlackBerry, iPhone or anything to quickly (re)view Office or business documents. I would not even consider to create a full client presentation on a BlackBerry, let alone on an iPhone.

The last issue is the fragility of the device. Well, the same goes for the current cell phones that are out on the market. When I got my first cell phone some 8 years ago (once again: I am a late adaptor when it comes to gadgets), some old Nokia model, I was surprised by the quality and robustness of the thing. Sure, it was a bit larger and heavier than my current Nokia cell phone, but you could even put a 800 pound gorilla on it and it would still work. With my current cell phone, I would not even consider to put my 3-year old son on it, as I am pretty positive it would break right away. Let alone the many times I have heard about problems with the buttons (which get stuck) on today's cell phones. So if this is a strong case against the iPhone, the same goes for modern cell phones.

Bottom line: I am not so sure that the key points against the iPhone are very strong. There is a fourth of course, Cisco appealing against Apple's usage of the term iPod, but I can barely take that seriously as it sounds like a shameless attempt to make money out of something that was not worth a penny for Cisco (the term iPhone I am referring to).

Time for a prediction then: I predict that the iPhone will NOT make it only when Zune turns out to be the iPod killer. If the latter is the case, then it is clear evidence for me that Apple has lost its sense of marketing and lost their eye for innovation that resonates well with the majority of consumers.

Categories: Apple, iPhone, iPod, strategy, prediction, opinion, marketing

Marketing power

2007-01-24T10:44:00.000+01:00

Just got back from our offsite in Las Vegas with Research and Sales. Vegas was surreal, but the most striking thing of last week was that once again I have been convinced by the incredible power of marketing. The Tuesday night of the offsite was reserved for the "Battle of the Bands", in which a band from Research, a band from Sales and a band from Consulting played a set of 30 minutes, and at the end the audience would decide who was the best band. It ended up a tie between Research and Consulting. Which was kind of a surprise, as the Research band consists of several extremely talented, semi-professional musicians. While the Consulting band merely had enthousiasm as its key asset, as some musicians in our band never played in a band before, had not played for 20 years, or had never played the instrument before. However, our band decided to rely heavily on the "show" element, and spice up the performance with a flashy outfit and by playing only crowd pleasers that anyone could sing along with (stuff like "Hey Jude" from the Beatles and "I feel good" by the Godfather of Soul). And even though we did not even come close to the skills and talent of the Research band, we managed to match them, simply because the marketing of our band was very good.

A long story, but it comes down to the observation that inferior quality can be compensated by good marketing. And good marketing means meeting the demand from your customers or audience. We have seen numerous examples in the past in IT, where a superior technology was overshadowed by an inferior technology, simply because the latter was more able to appeal the big audience. Examples are Windows versus Mac OS, Java versus C, WS-* versus POX, Ethernet versus Token Ring (you decide for yourself which one is the superior technology, and which one is the technology that has overcome due to marketing).

Clever guys like Steve Jobs from Apple have understood this very well, and have responded by not providing the best technology, but by providing "good enough" technology which comes with a wave of positive press and a reputation of being hip and cool. The same goes for that other company that takes full advantage of good marketing: Google.
In the end what makes a consultant, an IT provider or a vendor successful, is the ability to respond to the demand of customers, and actively managing . That is called marketing, and in the time of consumerization where increasingly power is with the customer, this is becoming a key asset in IT.

Categories: marketing, IT, strategy, Apple, Google

Wag the dog: IT vendor management

2007-01-12T15:17:00.000+01:00

Vinnie Mirchandani, who is one of the best bloggers out there as far as I'm concerned, had a very interesting post on the importance of vendor management. Triggered by Nick Carr's rerun of the good ole "IT doesn't matter" message, Vinnie stressed that indeed, IT does not matter.

Vinnie argues that "if you analyze IT line items [...] of any western company and total the spend on software, services, hardware and telecomm, and internal IT staff costs, the last item only makes up 10 to 20 % of the total". He adds: "Quit beating on the 15% tail and focus on the 85% that is spent on vendors [...] I mentioned this to a sourcing exec recently - and she lit up. So the biggest single skillset IT really needs is vendor management, not architects, not DBAs - she asked."

Let's not focus now on whether or not internal IT staff costs make up for only 10-20% or for approximately 30% (as far as I know). Vinnie is right in pointing out that real cost savings can be achieved by focusing on the large part of the pie that is being eaten by someone else. However I tend to disagree with his observation that the single skillset IT really needs is vendor management. Although I do think that strong vendor management is crucial for any company taking IT seriously (in fact vendor management is I believe one of the core IT functions for any IT organization, regardless size, focus, budget etc.), I do not think it is more important than disciplines such as architecture, IT leadership (CIO, CTO) or service/portfolio management. Any IT organization needs people who can tell what is needed to support and service the business, and who can evaluate the services delivered by vendors. This is something that usually is not supplied by vendor management, as this discipline appears to be more focused on contracts, license cost and terms and conditions, and less on whether or not the right things are delivered to the business. Although I do feel that vendor management is a crucial link in the entire delivery chain of IT to the business, it is not the most important link. It might be the weakest link in many cases, but does that make it the most important one?

The 15% tail as Vinnie calls it still needs attention (in fact a lot!), as still for many organizations the dog sometimes needs to be wagged by its tail, because of the lack of immaturity of the 85% of the rest of the dog. To get the best deal from vendors in an immature industry such as IT, it takes more than strong vendor management. It takes a strong set of core IT functions (IT leadership, architecture, portfolio/service management, technology advancement and vendor management) that enforce each other, to make sure that maximum value can be delivered to the business.

Categories: vendor-management, IT-organization, industry, CIO

Predictions for 2007

2007-01-05T23:17:00.000+01:00

Billy Ray Valentine: Merry New Year!
Clarence Beeks: That's "happy." In this country we say "Happy New Year."
Billy Ray Valentine: Oh, ho, ho, thank you for correcting my English which stinks!

From: Trading Places (1983)

Let's have a good start of this year, and throw in some predictions for 2007, some with a high probability as far as I am concerned, some somewhat speculative, and some just a brain wave. It's up to you to decide which prediction fits in which category.

2007 will see another large Oracle acquisition. This time, it will be either Adobe to conquer the desktop market, or Red Hat to get the full stack (and to finally get JBoss)
Developers will start complaining over the AJAX search API from Google which comes with ads. Google will start to offer an alternative, but will charge users for this API
Microsoft will attempt to hire some of the marketing and PR executives of Apple, to help improve their image in the market. They will succeed, but it will not yet deliver the results in 2007
The growth of the ESB market will slow down in the first half of 2007, and will eventually come to a halt. Increasingly, people get fed up with the complexity and licence cost of these new style brokers
Business intelligence and corporate performance management (CPM) will be booming business in 2007, with Microsoft bringing BI to the masses
The French government will experience some drawbacks with regards to their switch to Ubuntu Linux on their desktops. The central IT department of the French government will not officially allow Windows desktops, but these will be tolerated to be able to run Windows programs
Apple will sue Creative over some patents for MP3 players, and Creative will counter-sue Apple
The service registry will be the next big thing for organizations involved with SOA
IBM and Microsoft will stop the pushing of SOAP, and will silently make a switch to a more RESTful strategy
Yahoo will prepare a bid for LinkedIn, but the offer will be turned down

Categories: predictions, 2007, vision

Blog-tag: 5 things about me

2006-12-29T22:03:00.000+01:00

Earlier this month Jeff Pulver started what he called the Blog-Tag game. My colleague Nick Gall just tagged me. Thanks Nick!
So, here's 5 things most people that read my blog don't know about me (and most people would not care to read but hey, it's a game!):

I studied public administration at the Rotterdam University (with honors, can you believe it!), which may come as a surprise to some as many would have expected something more IT-related. As for myself, I am still surprised I ever chose to study public administration, as I was already programming the Commodore 64 back in the days (yeah, I am not that old, I never worked with punch card automation)
I have a passion for music. I love a wide range of mostly guitar-oriented music, from The Beatles to Pearl Jam, and from System of a Down I play some instruments myself, including piano and guitar (I own a beautiful 1970 Les Paul custom), and recently (about 2 months ago) I picked up playing the bass. I even got myself talked into playing the bass in a band for a 4.000 crowd next January in Las Vegas...
I am not the world's most passionate reader (not much time for that!), but I have always enjoyed reading the short stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe
I am married and I have 3 kids (twin girls and a boy). At one point we had 3 kids under the age of two, and still I do not have a single grey hair!
Ever since going there in March, I completely love the city of Rome. The diversity of the city is just dazzling

As it is still December, it would be nice to continue the game Jeff started. So I tag former colleague Ron Tolido, Joe McKendrick, Geva Perry, Jim Holincheck and James McGovern (will be interesting to see with which pictures James will come up with :-) ).

Categories: blog-tag, blogging

IT stereotypes will nog get e-wasted

2006-12-22T11:40:00.000+01:00

Stereotypes are a great way to picture an image of someone or something. As Wikipedia puts it: "Stereotypes are ideas held by some individuals about members of particular groups, based solely on membership in that group. They are often used in a negative or prejudicial sense and are frequently used to justify certain discriminatory behaviors."

The word "stereotype" was the first word that came to my mind when I read about the Greenpeace. Although I am always somewhat supsicious to undemocratic organizations and institutions with little transparency (which is Greenpeace), I was really surprised to find that Apple topped the e-waste charts as being a company that is not making serious work of "eliminating harmful chemicals and [...] taking on responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers ".
The stereotype of Apple is that of a company which is cool, good and hip. As a matter of fact, like my former colleague Ron Tolido once pointed out (in Dutch), bad guys walk around with crummy Windows XP laptops in movies, while the good guys are using Apples. A couple of years ago, before everyone quit smoking in the US (right?), the bad guys were always seen smoking in the movies, or they had a European accent. Now they just run Windows XP.
Another news item this week: Google has given up on the SOAP search API, and instead is offering an AJAX counterpart. Some people claimed victory for REST over SOAP (or didn't they ;-). I know Stefan did not...), but the reality is that Google has only dropped the SOAP interface so they could stick with their core business model: selling advertisements. With the SOAP API, people could by-pass the advertisments which account for 99% of Google's revenue, however with the AJAX interface, the Google ads come with the search results. I guess that's what people mean when they refer to "push services". Google has taken away this very useful free service, and instead have given the developer community a vehicle for Google's own cash cow. But, they still remain cool according to the mob.

At the same time, Bill and Melissa Gates are some of the big spenders when it comes to charity. Still, Mr. Gates is generally being considered as the bad guy in enterprise computing.
Obviously it is much harder to get rid of a stereotype than to get stereotyped.

Categories: Microsoft, Google, stereotype, Apple, ewaste, opinion

Microsoft will lead BI breakthrough in 2007

2006-12-18T13:12:00.000+01:00

This post might come as a surprise to some, as some people think I like to bash Microsoft based on my recent post on Microsoft's ESB strategy. Well, let's just say it is (nearly) the Christmas season which is full of surprises, and.... predictions!

Last week I predicted that in 2007 we will see a convergence of process improvement, business intelligence and next-generation architecture.
That was before I read about the announcement of the public availabilty Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 CTP. If we forget about the next-generation architecture element for a second (MSFT is not famous for its REST vision and support, to name an example), I think this is a tremendous opportunity for business intelligence to become truly mainstream in 2007. If anyone can bring BI to the end user organization, it is the vendor which still has the monopoly on the desktop market.
Despite the fact that many competitors on the BI market, such as Hyperion, Cognos and BusinessObjects, have really put some effort in an attempt to create an integrated BI platform, MSFT has the key advantage of practically "owning" the desktop. Despite the progress of XI, Cognos 8 and System 9, MSFT still is one step ahead when it comes to penetrating the BI market for the desktop. Add this to the fact that through Duet the BI capailities of SAP's NetWeaver can be leveraged in the Office suite, and it becomes clear that MSFT holds very good cards when it comes to offering BI functionality to the end user community.

A slight drawback for the MSFT BI ambitions, is the news that the developer edition of SQL Server 2005 will not run on Vista (yet). Even though apparantly MSFT still has to sort out some conmaptibility issues of their BI flagship and their desktop flagship, on the whole I can say that the BI stuff coming from Redmond at the moment is promising. A dashboard on every desktop is the new mantra.

Categories: Microsoft, BI, SAP, prediction, business-intelligence

Open-sourcing police investigations

2006-12-06T09:09:00.000+01:00

Never thought there would be a CSI Holland. A very intriguing news item was in the Dutch news yesterday: the regional Police force of the Utrecht province in The Netherlands, has launced a web site (in Dutch) on which the police ask support from civilians to conduct police investigations.
A complete case is described in full detail on the web site, and readers and site visitors are invited to send in suggestions, tips and to help crack the case. The current case on the web site is a cold case from 1995 dealing with the murder of a 18-year old boy. Tips or information that can help solve the case, are rewarded with 15.000 euros (approx. 20.000 $).

This is quite amazing I think, and very innovative. Traditionally, research on e-government and the relationship between government and civilians identify 4 roles that civilians can have in their relationship with the government:

Elector, where the government role is representation
Beneficiary, where the government role is protector (by holding the monopoly on the use of force)
Subject, where the government role is authority
Customer, where the government role is supplier

Now maybe a fifth role can be added for civilians, which fits particularly well with the government role of protector and supplier: the role of co-producer.
This is completely in line with the evolution of IT we have seen in the past 10-15 years, in which the customer or end user, traditionally at the receiving end of the relationship, has moved more towards a position to become more of a co-producer. The open-source movement is the best known example of the evolution, but I think this initiative is also a further proof that consumerization is expanding, in a surprising area of society, just like I predicted a year ago.

Categories: consumerization, open-source, e-government, CSI, public, police

2007: It all comes together

2006-12-04T10:38:00.000+01:00

December is traditionally the time of year to look back at the year (nearly) behind us, and look forward to the coming year. I am not (yet) going to look back, I will leave that until later this month. It's time to look what 2007 will hold in stock as far as I'm concerned.

I think in corporate IT we will see some trends converge in 2007. These will be process improvement, business intelligence and next-generation architecture (I decided to drop the term SOA here for a second, becuase the type of architecture I am talking about goes further than SOA, it also includes event-driven architectures and web architecture).

This threesome of process improvement, BI and next-gen architecture consists of elements that depend on each other, and reinforce each other. The business interest in further process improvement is mostly based on data driven methodologies such as Six Sigma. This exacting, metrics-driven process was introduced 20 years ago at Motorola. The company that introduced this methodology for process improvement still reaps the benefits of their approach, and so are other large enterprises from the Fortune-500.
The fact that Six Sigma is very much data-driven, opens up opportunities to introduce business intelligence tools to support the different phases of Six Sigma: Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control.
Business intelligence tools can help at all phases, below are some examples:

Define - dashboards can help identify areas to improve
Measure - BI tools can support the collection of data to be measured
Analyze - all the usual analysis tools from BI solutions can be used to analyse the processes and the data collected
Improve - although there is no direct contribution from BI here, good reports can help to communicate and share the results and measures with the rest of the organization
Control - BI tools can be used to detect exceptions

Next-gen architecture comes in to support and enhance the possibilities of a BI platform. In my understanding of next-gen architecture, I also include BPM as this is an indispensible part of any sound future architecture.
Joe McKendrick speculates that BI might be the killer app for SOA. As he states: "All these capabilities require the ability to pull information from different and incompatible data silos from across the enterprises, and make the information reusable to existing and new applications".

That is exactly what BI and SOA have in common, so I agree with him on this point (although I am getting somewhat tired of the fact that people keep looking for the "killer app" for SOA. It still seems as if SOA is a solution looking for a problem to solve!). That is of course also where process improvement comes in.
Picture this scenario: For process improvement, it is absolutely necessary to have a good and factual insight in the state of your business processes. BI can deliver this data, supported by a flexible, next-generation architecture that is based on services. BI analysis tools can then be used to analyze current processes, and suggest areas for improvement. With BPM tools, these new, improved processes can be implemented. Once new, improved processes have been implemented, these can be monitored and controlled with a combination of the right BI tools and event-driven mechanisms that can be found in integration middleware.

So far, I have only considered Six Sigma as methodology for process improvement, but other processes such as CMM, CobiT and ITIL also have close relations and converge with BI and next-gen architecture.

So my basic expectation is that BI, process improvement and SOA/EDA/WOA (Web Oriented Architecture) will be a threesome that will rise in 2007, but probably for the Fortune-500 only. As both SOA/EDA/WOA and Six Sigma/CMM require significant effort and investment, for smaller companies this will probably be a less attractive approach to become and stay competitive. However, if the automation of process improvement will become less expensive, it could be a viable option not only for the rich and famous, but also for the medium-sized businesses.

Categories: Six-Sigma, process-improvement, BI, BPM, prediction, SOA, WOA

Axis2 only builds the gun, you fire it?

2006-11-27T12:58:00.000+01:00

Sanjiva Weerawarana, who obviously has worked on the Axis2 project, responds to my recent observation and analysis on the flaws in their REST support. As Sanjiva's blog does not support comments or trackbacks (why is that?), I decided to reply through my own blog.

Sanjiva, it is good to hear that you know what REST is. I am also glad to hear that you are not yet done with the REST/POX support. And I did not mean to diss the Axis2 project or anything, but I am just not too expressed with the REST example given by the Axis2 documentation (for those who missed it: it suggests using the GET HTTP verb for an update on a resource). Stating that "Axis2 only builds the gun, you fire it" is not completely appropriate in this context I think, as it should not be called REST if in fact it has little to nothing to do with REST. It fails the "duck test": what is described in the doc maybe walks somewhat like a duck, but it definately does not quack like a duck so I am pretty sure it is NOT a duck. There is so much confusion already over REST (PUT vs POST, anyone?) so I was a bit disappointed to see that what was described as REST, actually is not REST.

I am looking forward to the 1.2 release you mention, as I would like to restart promoting Apache as the ESB replacement of choice.

Categories: REST, Axis2, HTTP, web-architecture

Apache does not get REST

2006-11-23T16:38:00.000+01:00

Just when I was about to start my "campaign" to promote Apache as the true contender for becoming the ESB killer, I came across this piece of art (via Mark and Stefan) in the new Axis:

Running the Client
==================

- From your browser, If you point to the following URL:
http://localhost:8080/axis2/rest/StockQuoteService/getPrice?symbol=IBM

You will get the following response:42.0

- If you invoke the update method like so:
http://localhost:8080/axis2/rest/StockQuoteService/update?symbol=IBM&price=100

And then execute the first getPrice url. You can see that the price got updated.

I do not believe it: if this is RESTful, then 99% of the poorly designed web sites that invite for some good ole SQL injection, are RESTful.

First MSFT had a blackout and announced to come up with an ESB solution. Now Apache, who would make a great ESB if only more people understood REST and the role of ESBs, makes this crucial mistake. It provides everything you need for an intermediary in a RESTful / Hourglass architecture: the thing does your HTTP/URI routing, rewriting, access control, caching and redirecting. But it will make itself obsolete in a RESTful scenario if it fails to understand and deliver the basics of REST.

That's it then, I will stop my Apache promotion here (before it even has started) and wait for the next solution that is superior over the ESBs as we know them today. Unless of course I am missing the point, and the ESB is the best invention since sliced bread.

Categories: REST, web-architecture, web-services, ESB, SOA, strategy

E-government suffers from a lack of leadership

2006-11-16T22:06:00.000+01:00

The US midterm elections are just past us, and next week the Dutch will vote for a new parliament, which will ultimately result in a new government. One striking observation for both elections is that in neither situation there has been or is a lot of attention for IT in general, and e-government in particular. In an era in which a lot of exciting stuff is happening, a.k.a the Web 2.0 era, the silence from our representatives is deafening. E-government obviously is not hot, and neither is IT. I think in fact there is a global trend that e-government is stagnating due to a lack of political leadership in this area. Let me explain.

A common problem with leadership in private organizations (those companies that are supposed to make money) is that senior management often does not have the stomach to make investments that go beyond problems that affect one or two quarters. Multiyear initiatives that span the entire enterprise, pose a serious risk and can affect the quarterly figures, and thus the career perspective of executives involved.
Why would this practice be any different for government? Sure, the drive for increasing margins and profits may be absent for the majority of public organizations. However, under pressure of the next elections, leadership responsible for e-government planning and strategy could be tempted to take the easy way, and go for the short-term quick wins that will please the voters and the other members of the party.

E-government is not only suffering from a lack of guts from leaders, there is more to the leadership problem: to be successful, IT initiatives require interest and support from senior management in the form of funding, policy decisions or personnel motivation. However in the every day practice, the reality of many administrations is that political leadership does not care about day-to-day operations, does not care about technology, or does not understand technology. An explicit understanding of interest or aptitude for IT must be known among CEOs, CFOs, COOs, legislative officials and other influential people.

It is absolutely necessary to have active involvement and support from top-level political and executive leadership. Change guru John Kotter stated that producing change is about 80 percent leadership - establishing direction, aligning, motivating, and inspiring people - and about 20 percent management - planning, budgeting, organizing, and problem solving. If for some reason there are problems with leadership in e-government change programs, the results of these problems could be disastrous for e-government progress. To me, that is what e-government is suffering from these days. But of course I could be convinced of another view by a good debate.

Categories: e-government, public+sector, Web2.0, change, strategy, leadership

Microsoft's ESB "strategy"

2006-11-10T13:46:00.000+01:00

In the past I have been quite critical towards Microsoft, recently with regards to their browser, their silly idea to charge for betas, and their tendency to spread questionnable "research" (although I must say that it was a joint venture with MSFT participation, and other big players are guilty of this practice as well).

Let me get this straight: I do not dislike MSFT, but I don't blindly follow everything that is coming from Redmond neither. However I must say that one thing I always liked about MSFT was their stance towards ESBs. Or should I say "what used to be MSFT's stance on ESBs"? Via Joe McKendrick's SOA web log I read that "it appears Microsoft is pushing the role of ESBs a little harder as part of its emerging go-to-market SOA strategy. It's even actively using the term 'ESB.' Earlier this month, the software giant announced that it is working with consulting partner Neudesic to promote the deployment of ESBs in customer's software stacks."

I have expressed my view on the ESB on several occasions, in multiple blog postings. May people liked my comparison of the ESB and a one-day fly, and a couple of months ago I did an attempt to explain the future of ESBs as I see it. Bottom line: who needs an ESB when endpoints / applications can communicate and exchange messages through a standardized mechanism, which is based on IFaPs? I recently discussed this with Nick Gall, and he goes as far as saying that in a RESTfull architecture, probably Apache is all you need, as a RESTful ESB would essentially be at the HTTP/URI routing, rewriting, access control, caching, and redirect level.
I also said before that in the (near) future, many of the (other) ESB functions could be included in intelligent switches and/or operating systems. Vista, with the Windows Communication Framework, is an example of the latter.

Right then, back to MSFT's announcement. Before they jumped the ESB bandwagon by teaming with Neudesic for ESB promotion, I though they were well ahead with the vision on ESBs, as they refused to join the ESB hype, by pointing out that many of the ESB functions were either provided by BizTalk, or incorporated in the new operating system Vista. How I perceived the future of BizTalk, was that more and more it would become a BPM tool, while the typical integration capabilities were incorporated in Vista. Smart move. Nevertheless, now the MSFT strategy team decided to provide an ESB solution anyway, probably driven by the massive market hype. MSFT nearly missed the boat before with the Internet, some argue they nearly missed the boat for Web 2.0m so maybe they don't want that to happen for ESBs.

If I look at this from a critical / cynical perspective, I would say that MSFT falls to its knees before the server / enterprise market. I even would go as far as saying that once again this shows that MSFT is not the conmpany it used to be.
If I look at it from a consultant's perspective, I would say this is a tactical move. MSFT sees the market potential of ESBs, decides to offer an ESB solution, but in the meantime will continue to work on its strategy to include ESB functions in an operating system, so in the future we will not need ESBs. Maybe one day they will even promote REST over WS-* (remember the guys from Redmond are a driving force behind WS-* "standardization"), but maybe that is one step too far for MSFT.
If I look at it from the most positive perspective I can (hey, it's Friday), I would say that MSFT is now taking one step back, to be able to make two steps forward.

No matter which way I see it, I think this is not strategic. That's why I put quotes around the word strategy in the title of this blog post, I cannot believe this is MSFT's strategy, as I would not put my money on ESBs as we now see them in the market, but I would rather invest in architectures that are based on the Hourglass model.

Categories: ESB, Microsoft, SOA, REST, strategy, Hourglass

Managing business risk by relying on IT?

2006-11-09T12:45:00.000+01:00

Like I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I have been quite busy lately performing application portfolio assessments. Not only do these type of assessments result in great graphs which directly show what the posture of your application portfolio is, it also helps in creating a risk profile

Some stunning result from my last assessments, is that for the 3 companies I assessed respectively 83%, 46% and 56% of all applications did not have any business disaster recovery plan in place. Which means that if for some reason the application would go down, there are no alternative procedures in place to keep the "shop open". The applications without a business recovery plan were not only for administrative support, some were mission-critical for the organization.
When our clients are confronted with these numbers, they come up with phrase like "we have excellent SLAs with our service provider, they will pay a fine when we are out longer than [timeframe goes here]" or "we have two mirrored data centers, no worries for us!" or "what are the odds that our office environment will be out for more than 2 hours? We have a support staff to put us back online y'know?".

Business disaster recovery planning or business continuity management (BCM) is a typical a thing, that should be done by both the business and IT, preferably in close interaction. BCM is silly without proper measures from the IT, and designing the perfect twin data center with full replication, fail-over and disaster tolerance ("sure, a Boeing 747 can land on our data center and we are still in business") is silly without the right measures at the business side.
Managing business risks by relying on IT which is far from risk-free is sticking your head in the sand. Saying that IT should guarantee the continuity of your business processes, is the same as saying that you refuse to take responsibility for those processes. But that is something I never heard someone say to his boss, so why would you say then that business continuity is something for IT only to arrange?

Categories: application-portfolio, IT-strategy, portfolio-management, risk, management, BCM, portfolio

Keeping the waist of the Hourglass narrow

2006-11-08T09:33:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week I referred to Leonard Richardson' site when introducing my Quote of the Day. Leonard and Sam Ruby's page on their book about REST Web Services starts with a quote that is used quite frequently lately, by John Gall:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked

The Hourglass model for architecture which I discussed last month also helps in explaining why this is still true for many systems and (web) architectures. The key is in the spanning layer of the narrow waist of the hourglass.

With WS-*, we are not dealing with a narrow waist, but in fact with a quite wide waist. With REST, we are dealing with a truly narrow waist. It is XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, WS-Policy, WS-Security, WS-Eventing, WS-Reliability, WS-Coordination, WS-Transaction, WS-Notification, WS-BaseNotification, WS-Topics, WS-Transfer versus HTTP, XML and URIs. With WS-*, we are not dealing with an hourglass, it takes more the shape of a rectangle.
And not only that, WS-* also lacks any kind of generic application model. WS-* service developers must master the complexity of WS-*, and invent their own, non-generic application model. Even though a lot of the WS-* complexity can reduced by clever usage of generators, and some attempts have been made to create generic application models (a.k.a. frameworks), the WS-* way of doing web services stills contrasts heavily with the REST way, which provides a generic application model (e.g. HTTP).

Remember that the Internet has become such a huge success thanks to a very narrow waist: everything on IP, and IP on everything. If we continue to widen the waist of the hourglass, by throwing in more technologies and standards, we are dismissing the lessons we should have learnt from the only true global service-oriented architecture: the WWW.

Categories: web-architecture, hourglass, REST, SOA, WS-*, architecture, IFaPs

Quote of the Day: REST

2006-11-06T14:15:00.000+01:00

I love this one, from the page on the forthcoming O'Reilly book on REST Web Services by Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby:

To design a website you need to know about HTTP, XHTML, and URIs.

To design a web application you need to know about HTTP, XHTML, and URIs.

To design a web service you need to know about XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, WS-Policy, WS-Security, WS-Eventing, WS-Reliability, WS-Coordination, WS-Transaction, WS-Notification, WS-BaseNotification, WS-Topics, WS-Transfer...

We have to wait for 6 more months for the book to come out, but from what I have read on the page, it is promising. The authors bring it down again to three key elements: Identifiers (URIs), Formats (XHTML / XML) and Protocol (HTTP), IFaPs!

Categories: REST, quote, web-architecture, web-services, IFaP

Internet Explorer is Social Software!

2006-11-02T10:02:00.000+01:00

Yes that's right, in a way (especically the new) Internet Explorer is social software. Wikipedia defines social software as enabling "people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities. Common to most definitions [on social software] is the observation that some types of software seem to facilitate "bottom-up" community development, in which membership is voluntary, reputations are earned by winning the trust of other members, and the community's mission and governance are defined by the communities' members themselves.

With the launch of the new IE7 browser recently, all sorts of ad-hoc online communities appear bashing MSFTs new browser. Web logs, columns and message boards are chock full with negative stories on IE7, thereby forming a virtual community of IE7-averse web surfers.
Take this example for instance, comparing IE7 to a virus:

"What do you call a program that gets loaded in surreptitiously and without your approval, has the potential to lock down your computer so you can’t get access to it, takes up significant system resources and promptly crashes upon running. Normally, I’d call it a virus, except for the last part … viruses are usually stable (and well written) once they start. On the other hand, it’s a perfect description of Internet Explorer 7.0."

Dennis Howlett pointed me to a site that lists some major web sites that were not ready for IE7. Surprising and stunning results, although maybe you cannot blame MSFT in all cases.

Or take this example, taken from my own experience with IE7 (priceless: Microsoft Corporation is an unverified publisher, and therefore IE7 blocks Messenger):

And if that all wasn't enough, there now is a site called MSFireFox . I wonder who is behind this site. As it links to the MSFT download site for IE7, I suspect it is the guys from Redmond, as a reaction to the site IE7.com.

Bottom line: the release of IE7 surely has not passed quietly, and it is showing signs of becoming social software, as a growing group of users is forming a virtual community complaining about flaws and bugs. Although MSFT might be delighted that IE7 falls into the social software category (that is so Web 2.0!), I think the reason why IE7 is social software will not please them.
It will be really interesting to see if MSFT / IE7 can bounce back from a rocky start, just as it will be interesting to see the real power of negative airplay for software through blog postings.

Categories: Microsoft, IE7, social-software, Web2.0, update, Windows

The feasibility of Oracle acquiring Adobe

2006-10-28T20:33:00.000+02:00

My post on Oracle and Web 2.0 from last Tuesday provoked the following reaction from Dennis Howlett: "Why would I care about this when SAP already has an Adobe relationship in place that's reaping benefit?".

Fair comment, thanks for that. I will attempt to explain why I think the move is significant, or interesting at least.

Some argue that Oracle is not famous for the user-friendliness of its software. Oracle is still best known for its database product, but is not as renowned for stuff like business intelligence, portals and applications, i.e. stuff with which end users interact directly. Still 74% of all Oracle revenue is through their database offering, growth for Oracle should not come from the database front. That is probably why Oracle is so active on the applications front, as the main challenger for SAP. In fact, Larry Ellison himself recently revealed that he bought PeopleSoft and Siebel to become the world's number 2 for applications (after SAP). From that runner-up position (according to Ellison you are still not a winner when you are number two), Oracle wants to become the applications # 1, through its very ambitious Fusion project (technically it should have been called a program).

So Oracle's only way to get significant growth the coming years is not on the database front, but on other markets. The market where they have managed to get a good position, applications, has been conquered by acquiring a bunch of large (but struggling) players on that market (remember Siebel?). The same will happen I think on the business intelligence market, where Oracle is reported to be quite interested in Cognos, BusinessObjects and Hyperion. Ellison never said that he was finished acquiring more companies to enable further growth or enable entering new markets, despite the 20 billion spent on acquisitions in the last 3 years. Like I wrote in my post last Tuesday, the recently announced partnership of Adobe and Oracle could be a first step to an acquisition of Adobe by Oracle.

Some people will say that Adobe is more likely to be acquired by Apple, but being acquired by Oracle is at least as (un)feasible. Some argue that Apple can exist merely by the grace of Microsoft, and personally I would not be surprised if Oracle decides to go for Adobe, to acquire a good position on the graphics and end-user (consumer) market. They have acquired companies in the past to enter markets they were unable to conquer with their own technology, so they could do it again. It would even be quite interesting from a professional point of view, as they will then compete against MSFT on the market where MSFT is strongest: the consumer market.

Dennis and others, what do you think?

Categories: Oracle, SAP, Adobe, acquisition, Apple, consumerization

Oracle goes Web 2.0!

2006-10-24T20:48:00.000+02:00

I am somewhat surprised that the announcement at Oracle Openworld yesterday that Oracle and Adobe join forces to create Web 2.0 applications for the enterprise has not gotten more coverage than it has gotten so far. As Oracle announces on their web site (to be honest I had to search for it on their web site, I got the news through a Dutch IT news feed): "For the first time, enterprise applications will be able to include animations, charts and graphs in Adobe Flash combined with other AJAX content surfaced in a rich Java-based portal such as Oracle Portal, which is part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family".

The reason why I am surprised is two-fold:

In the first place, we are dealing with two major software vendors here, who have chosen to join hands to attempt to consolidate their market position by leveraging the other parties' strong points (remember that Adobe recently acquired Macromedia) to conceil their own weak points: Adobe is quite weak on the enterprise software front, Oracle is not famous for its super user-friendly interfaces and tools
In the second, but not the last place, it is another sign that Larry Ellison is serious about wanting the full software stack. Maybe it is even the first sign that Oracle could be interested in acquiring Adobe, but that is pure speculation... However, it is a step forward to bring "consumer technology" to the enterprise

So overall it is an interesting partnering, which brings together enterprise computing and Web 2.0. I can't remember who I am quoting here, and I am not sure if the quote is 100% accurate, but the bottom line is: "everything that runs outside the fire-wall today, will run inside the fire-wall tomorrow". That is one aspect of consumerization.

Categories: Oracle, Adobe, partnership, Web2.0, strategy, consumerization, RIA, Ajax

When IT research becomes propaganda

2006-10-23T17:28:00.000+02:00

In the past I have blogged about the fine art of IT research before (here, here and here). Today I have run into two gems on this area again, both from Dutch IT Magazine Computable (but hey, don't shoot the messenger! And blame the game, not the player):

"The low employment of women in IT will change because of Web 2.0"
"The market for custom software is growing at the expense of packaged software"

Let's have a look at the first statement first: researcher Federica Fabbiani predicts that more women will choose a career in IT the coming years: "Web 2.0 makes the Internet more social through videos and chatboxes. That is something women find important".

Wow, that is quite some new insight in just one analysis! Web 2.0 is about videos and chatboxes. Videos and chatboxes make the Internet more social. And women find social "things" important. To me, this sounds like over-simplification, an unclear causal connection, and an over-generalization respectively. Especially as this "knowledge" was shared at a meeting for an expertise bureau for girls/women in technical sectors. And even though the head of marketing from BEA - Marge Breya - confirmed Fabbiani's statement ("Women are often at the head of Web 2.0 companies, look at Flickr.com or Mozilla"), I find it hard to believe a statement that is based on 3 common pitfalls for analysis.

What about the second analysis then? Should the Oracles and SAPs of our world have sleepless nights about custom software having a growing market share at the expense of packaged software? Well, that depends on how reliable you find the source of this analysis. The statement comes from a spokeperson from Avanade, a joint venture of Accenture and... Microsoft. Avanade says that their most popular type of engagement is application development, particularly on the .NET framework (which should not come as a surprise, given the close ties to MSFT). They conclude that companies want custom application development to stand out against their competitors. Nothing wrong with this last statement here, as I always advise my clients to have a package for competitive parity, and custom developed software for competitive advantage. But in a world where the commoditizing of many IT assets is becoming a reality, it is somewhat difficult to believe that custom developed software market share is growing at the expense of packaged software, based only on the observation of one company that is specialized in developing custom software.

The bottom line (in case you missed it) is that IT magazines need to be filled as well, and sometimes they come up with large headlines such as the ones I have discussed here. Most of the time when you look critically at the message, the foundation for the analysis and the messenger itself, it turns out that when put in the right perspective things are not what they seem at first hand. Too often, bold statements are made based on just a single observation, an over-generalization or an over-simplification. If the goal of these statements is to provide IT decision makers with insight to decide (which should be the key goal of IT research in my opinion), then the authors did a poor job. However, if the people that made their statement just wanted attention for their case, I think they did much better. But then we are talking about propaganda, and not research!

Categories: IT-research, Web2.0, research, Avanade, Microsoft, BEA

IE7 is here: prepare for a reboot!

2006-10-19T13:21:00.001+02:00

"Mouse position has changed. Windows will have to be restarted for the changes to take effect".

-- Anonymous

Well, the above quote is somewhat valid for many new installations of Windows components. The new IE7 is one of them. As from today, you can download MSFT's answer to Firefox from Microsoft's site.

I am not completely infected with the disease to try out all new technie stuff right away, but I could not resist from downloading IE7 immediately, to give it a good try. Well, they should have warned that your PC has to be restarted after the installation of IE7. At least MSFT gives you the option to restart later, although they REALLY stress you to restart Windows right after the installation has finished (the word "recommended" is in bold: I'd say that is not a recommendation, it felt more like a direct order).

I have installed new versions of Firefox and Opera in the past months, but I never had to restart Windows all over. Why is it that still you have to restart your entire OS, when all you did was upgrade "just" a single application? I still do not get it. In a time when some people are even thinking about concepts such as interactive programming (where you can write and add code to an already running program), the Master of the Universe... excuse me, Desktop, is still unable to come up with a browser that installs without having to reboot the full system.

[UPDATE]
Now this is priceless: as I am trying to publish this post, IE7 keeps on showing this page (for minutes!):

Which basically means that IE7 is unable to process publications through Blogger. I am surely willing to give IE7 a chance, but let's say that this all does not give me a very good feeling about the thing.

Categories: Microsoft, IE7, interactive-programming, quote

CIOs Unite!

2006-10-18T09:09:00.000+02:00

Intriguing

"In the 1970's when CIO's wanted to know what to buy, they asked IBM.
In the 1980's when CIO's wanted to know what to buy, they asked Andersen Consulting.
In the 1990's when CIO's wanted to know what to buy, they asked Gartner.
In the 2000's when CIO's want to know what to buy, they ask each other."

[Via Vinnie.]

Categories: CIO, advice, quote

The different drivers for Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

2006-10-16T10:24:00.000+02:00

Nearly a year ago I wrote a posting on why the Web 2.0 concept would survive, despite a lot of people saying that Web 2.0 was nothing more that pure hype, and would end up the same as how Web 1.0 blew up at the beginning of this century.
With the recent acquisition of YouTube by Google for a staggering $1.6 billion, a lot of the critical (maybe cynical is a better term) Web 2.0 followers have proclaimed the start of the downfall of Web 2.0. I thought it would be about time to critically (not cynically) review the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 again.

The key differences are I think for factors Access, Connectivity and Network effects. Back in the beginning of this century, the average Joe in the Internet was quite cool when they had ISDN, because it offered quicker access to web sites. Cable and DSL access was only available to "uber-geeks", not to the masses. This is completely different nowadays, as many surveys and research shows. Internet access is ubiquitous, at work through the corporate LAN, at home through the wireless network, and on the road through the Mobile with UMTS card for Internet connectivity.

That brings us to the second aspect: increasingly, the Internet is used within enterprises, also for connecting different locations. The Internet has become an important element in any corporate infrastructure, and there are many mission-ciritical applications that rely on the Internet and Internet connectivity. Increasingly, devices other than computers, laptops and PDAs are connected to the Internet, such as smart phones and automobiles. In 5 years, the Internet has become more than just a medium through which pages with information are delivered. Today, the Internet has become programmable through APIs and even through its key protocol, HTTP (aka REST).

The 3rd aspect is Network effects. The Internet has become a piece of generic infrastructure that has been made available for extension by businesses (such as Amazon, eBay and Google) and consumers, such as Wikipedia and blogs. To a large extent, the success of these extensions depend on the usage of the Internet. A quick look at the success of all named examples show that these network effects appear to be present, and that there is a business case for e-business and e-commerce. Also, the success of Wikipedia, podcasts and blogs show that one of the promises of the Internet that was not fulfilled by Web 1.0, "everyone is a publisher", is now becoming reality. This has all to do with the fact that a whole generation of new Internet users grew up with the Internet, are used to being online all day, and make heavy use of all the facilities and applications offered by the Internet.

So basically it comes down to what I said nearly a year ago: there are technological, organizational and a social factors that fuel the adoption of Web 2.0 ideas and concepts, and that make that Web 2.0 is not just anything without substance. It has become something that should be taken into account for any IT strategy, with the CTO (if present in your company) the person that should be first responsible to spot those elements in Web 2.0 that are relevant for your organization.

Categories: Web2.0, innovation, YouTube, Google, IT-strategy

Misunderstanding RSS

2006-10-13T21:09:00.000+02:00

Okay, I risk that someone will accuse me for suffering from the "they-don't-get-it syndrome", but I'll take the chance.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged before on how RSS was misunderstood by some people, Nick Carr in that case. Now today I read in Dutch magazine Computable (in Dutch) that RSS is something only used by a technology elite. It refers to a study that is performed in The Netherlands that shows that 75% of all interviewed people do not use RSS. 85.5% of this group (64.4% of all interviewees) did not even know what RSS is.
Computable has drawn the conclusion that RSS is a Sleeping Beauty, waiting for a kiss to wake her up. This is all based on the fact that 75% of all interviewed people do not use RSS, and 64.4% do not know what it is. Obviously, the researchers and Computable editors belong to this group of 64.4%, as they fail to understand that RSS is a file format, that is meant to be read by machines, that translate the RSS file format to a format that makes it pleasant for end users to read.

Once again: RSS is NOT consumer technology, it is technology on top of which consumer technology can be offered. I think that if the researchers would have asked some questions on whether or not interviewees use web sites and programs that rely heavily on RSS "under the hood" (like Windows Live, MyYahoo, Outlook or some Google services), the number of people using RSS would be much higher. The amount of people knowing RSS would still be low, but hey, how many consumers do know XML and/or SOAP?

Categories: RSS, syndication, consumerization, Web2.0, research

Ajax: the Web 2.0 anti-pattern?

2006-10-11T08:40:00.000+02:00

I have written before about the Ajax phenomenon with a critical view, and probably I will continue to do so. Although it is generally being considered (one of) the frontrunner(s) of the Web 2.0 movement, I am still surprised by the huge amount of attention it has gained, and the important place it has been given in many Web 2.0 strategies. Why am I surprised? Because to some extent I think Ajax is an anti-pattern for Web 2.0. Let me explain this.

Ajax can be considered as an anti-pattern for Web 2.0, because it takes away the initiative (or should I say freedom?) from the user to decide how a web site is navigated. One of the reasons why the World Wide Web has become an instant success, was because navigating the Web through a browser had become easy right away, and even most browser vendors and producers standardized on one uniform way in which the browser offers navigation capabilities (mind you: I am not talking about how pages are rendered here and to what extent markup standards are supported). Most, if not all, browsers have the "Back" button, the "Refresh" button and the ability to define bookmarks. These key elements for navigating web content to which most users are accustomed, are often taken away by Ajax-centric designs and front-ends. Many Ajax front-ends suffer from the same problem that most Flash web sites suffered from some 6-8 years ago: they create hard to understand, non-standard navigation structures, that most users will not understand the first time they use it. Instead of letting the user decide how the site is best navigated, a fixed navigation structure and path is imposed on the user. This last factor, limits the unintended use of a web site, and therefore somewhat acts as a brake on the participation on user contribution. And remember the meme map on Web 2.0:

One of the elements here is "User behavior not predetermined". This appears to contrast with some Ajax front-ends, even though the meme map also mentions rich user experiences through Ajax. So probably the best advice to prevent Ajax from becoming a Web 2.0 anti-pattern here, is to minimize the predetermination of user behavior. Probably the best way to do so is by limiting the use of Ajax to forms / web applications, and not to use Ajax for presentation of large blocks of content which may require bookmarking and usage of the "Back" button.

Categories: Ajax, Web2.0, anti-pattern, RIA, business, social-media, Internet

The Hourglass model: time's up for the ESB?

2006-10-10T10:17:00.000+02:00

Nick Gall quotes the Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One when referring to the core components of the Web (IFaPs, which stand for Identifiers, Formats and Protocols). This is what the Architecture of the WWW states about it:

In an effort to preserve these properties of the information space as the technologies evolve, this architecture document discusses the core design components of the Web. They are identification of resources, representation of resource state, and the protocols that support the interaction between agents and resources in the space.

In which of course representation of resource state refers to format. These IFaP play a key role in an Hourglass model for (web) architecture that can be derived from the "classic" Internet Hourglass. In this hourglass model, we have the upper part of the hourglass which represents the different types of applications, we have the lower part which represents the different enabling technologies, and the narrow waist of the hourglass, which is also called the spanning layer and which represents a small set of standards forming an abstraction layer designed to provide interoperability between the upper and lower part. The narrow waist should contain standards for IFaPs: Identifiers, Formats and Protocols.
Just like the Internet was created by focusing on a small set of standards that are easy to work with, that interoperate with other technologies and that can be extended, the IFaPs in this architecture model should provide for this narrow waist. For the Internet this was/is URLs, HTML and HTTP, and for next generation architecture this could be URIs, XML and HTTP. If we limit the number of standards and the width of the waist of the hourglass, we can apply lessons learned from the immense success of the Internet, and leverage the model that serves as a basis.
This immediately raises the question (well, at least for me) on why some people are still attempting to position stuff such as ESBs and other middleware as the abstraction layer in an SOA. Focusing on IFaPs as the major way to promote interoperability and to provide an abstraction layer, will lead away from ESBs, middleware and focal points for integration. In fact, embracing the hourglass model will further accelerate REST adoption, as REST exactly delivered what is required for the spanning layer:

URIs: Identifiers
XML: Format
HTTP: Protocol

It is just like Don Box (yeah, the guy who brought us SOAP) once commented on my blog: "Given app/source X, if X has a SOAP head that does everything you need, then you don't need an adapter. If X doesn't have a SOAP head or the SOAP head doesn't give you what you want, then plan to use an adapter". Now read REST instead of SOAP, and you have the basics of interoperability by adhering to a limited set of standards, a.k.a. IFaPs.

I should make clear here that I am not saying that middleware will become obsolete, because it won't. The point I am making is that middleware as we now know it will not be used as a central intermediary between systems anymore (as an ESB or message broker), but instead it will move down in the hourglass model, and will become an enabling technology instead of the central point for integration.

Categories: SOA, REST, web-architecture, IFaPs, ESB, middleware, strategy

Yet another nice Google service: codesearch

2006-10-06T17:02:00.000+02:00

Today I heard about the possibility to search source code with Google, through a service named Google Code Search". This service offers the possibility to search public source code:

If you are a true geek (or are just suffering from that Friday-at-the-office-feeling) you will try to look for the following with this highly entertaining service:

Well, you guys get the point. Feel free to leave some other nice results in the comments section. A good weekend to all.

Categories: Google, codesearch, humor, transparency, technology

The simplicity of REST

2006-10-03T16:24:00.000+02:00

I could also have named this post "Ending the REST PUT vs POST debate". But that would have sounded like a debate from about 2 years ago. And of course I do not wish to sound outdated here ;-).
Nevertheless, having attended the REST / Web 2.0 presentation at last week's EA Summit in London, I had a talk afterwards with some analysts about whether or not the following mapping of REST methods to CRUD actions makes sense:

Create - POST
Retrieve - GET
Update - PUT
Delete - DELETE

Well, Retrieve and Delete are pretty straightforward, so let's not discuss these. However, as some discussions, blog postings (here and here) and questions demonstrate, the difference between PUT and POST, and the mapping to respectively Update and Create is not as obvious and as simple.

And as people tend to want to map "new" concepts to those they already know (remember RPC Web services? --> an XML incarnation of DCOM/Java RPC calls; or WS-* --> an XML incarnation of CORBA some would argue), we risk that we create a mapping (in this case between REST methods and Crud actions) that has been simplified so people understand it better. Which is a bad idea I think, as probably it has created more confusion about REST.

So here is what I understood from the HTTP specs, and a great piece by Mark Baker: PUT is used to set the state of some resource explicitly and it does so to the exclusion of any existing state that might be there. Which means that it cannot be used to do an incremental update of a single resource. POST is used to logically add something to a container. For PUT, you will have to know the URI of the resource you are attempting to replace, and with POST you are sending data to a container and if it's the right type it will create a new resource. Furhermore, Mark states: "When you also factor in that URIs should be opaque, and clients shouldn't typically be constructing them unless they're following orders (like a GET form) or the authority doing the PUT happens to also run the server, a rule of thumb falls out; if you want to create a resource, POST a representation of its state to a container that will assign it a URI."

Given the above explanation of POST and PUT and their differences, the CRUD mapping should look like this:

Create - POST
Retrieve - GET
Update - PUT if the entire state needs to be updated; POST to incrementally add data to a state
Delete - DELETE

Phew, obviously REST is as simple as the HTTP specification. Which I think leaves some room for different interpretation, unless you read it to its full extent and do not just filter out some lines. So to fully understand REST, you should first try to understand the HTTP specification.

Categories: REST, HTTP, specification, PUTvsPOST, architecture, web-architecture

Thoughts on Information Architecture

2006-10-02T08:16:00.000+02:00

One of the presentations at the Gartner EA Summit of last week that had the largest crowd was Anne Lapkin's presentation on information architecture. This should not come as a surprise I think, as information architecture is gaining a lot of attention in the architecture domain lately, not in the last place because many analysts and architecture gurus stress the importance of information architecture for enterprise information management, BPM and SOA.

I have always found information architecture a somewhat difficult domain, as so many people mean different things with it. Often I run into organizations that name everyone as information architect who is in some way involved in architecture, but does not talk about boxes, cables and other hardware. Sometimes it is even unclear for information architects themselves what their tasks are. Some think they are responsible for everything but the technology architecture, sometimes they spend their time creating extremely difficult enterprise data models, some information architects do the logical design for a software solution (including all UML diagramming) and sometimes they act more like business or enterprise architects, than as information architects.
But the worst of all, is that at some organizations the role of the information architect is fulfilled by someone who is hired from an IT service provider. Very often, the information architect is even hired from the same organization as the programmers and software engineers.
Without going into full detail what information architecture is about, I think it is not a wise thing to let your IT service provider fulfill the information architecture role within your organization. The information architect is involved in identifying the flow of information in the organization, assessing the information need and having an overview of available information sources. Basically, information architecture comes down to answering 4 questions:

What information is needed?
Who needs it?
When (how often) is it needed?
Where does it come from?

Information architecture should act as a logical bridge between your business architecture and the technical architecture, it should (help) translate business architecture into technical architecture (including information systems and applications). Ideally, the information architect should not be hindered by any choice of technology or system already made, and should have full indepence in articulating information needs. That is why it is not a good idea to hire an information architect from an IT service provider, as generally speaking there will always be some kind of conflict of interests: on one side we have the required indepence for the information architect to be able to articulate the information need (and need for support from information systems), and at the other side we have the IT service provider whose key interest is to deliver exactly that kind of information system that they have the expertise for. It is kind of like going to your Ford dealer, and ask him to assess and advice on what kind of car you need (10-to-1 that he will not say that you will need a BMW or a Toyota given your needs/requirements).

This also explains why you should not outsource this vital position within your architecture team: only someone from your own organization can have the full overview of relevant enterprise information needs and assets, and can have enough independence to fulfill this role. Unless of course, you manage to find an independent advisor that has no strings with the people responsible for implementing information systems. Still then, it will become increasingly important to keep these skills and this knowledge inside the own company.

Categories: enterprise-architecture, IT-strategy, outsourcing, information-architecture, architecture, SOA

To be or not to be a RESTafarian

2006-09-29T20:56:00.000+02:00

Just came back from the Gartner EA Summit in London, and if it is one thing that has become clear, it is that more and more analysts at Gartner are turning out to be RESTafarians. Personally I think Nick Gall's presentation on Web 2.0 and EA was the best presentation I have seen at the summit, and I suspect Nick of being a RESTafarian, or at least he is becoming one.

I recall a couple of months ago, when Gartner distinguished analyst Daryl Plummer wrote an influential piece in Optimize magazine, in which he identified two camps of web service users: those who were going for SOAs by using the WS-* stack, and those using POX, REST and simple HTTP. This had gained a lot of attention, as people were somewhat surprised to see that Gartner was backing the REST initiative, according to many "for the first time" after they had been defending the WS-* developments for years.

What Nick pointed out very well in his presentation was the need for simplicity in standards for services, something I have stressed a lot of times before. In his presentation he spoke about the notion of IFaPs, which stands for Identifiers, Formats and Protocols. The best open ended systems (be it software or any other system) have simple standards for IFaPs. The web has URLs (I), HTML (F) and HTTP (P). Really simple, really scalable and really extensible.

Although he did not say it with that many words, I suspect that Nick is a RESTafarian. Or at least he is enthoustastic about the basic model of REST. As for myself, I recall that in Stefan Tilkov's REST vs WS-* list originally I was placed in the WS-* support camp. Eventually I was placed at my request in the "supporting both" camp, although I must say that after having discussed the merits of REST, I tend to be slightly more on the REST camp. It is elegant, it is simple (once you get a good grasp of it), but there are still some things I have to be convinced on. A quick look at what is happening now with Ajax security flaws, shows that we should not think too lightly about the "good is good enough" paradigm. Sometimes it is not enough, and more is needed. If someone can convince me that REST can offer that in the same way some WS-* specs can, I will declare myself a RESTafarian (although I still feel a bit uncomfortable with the somewhat silly name). Either way, I welcome the increasing impact REST is making in the world of distributed computing and services: the simplicity of REST will force the SOAP community to continually defend any new standards and complexities that are developed. And with more and more people suffering from WS-* protocol fatigue, that is very very welcome in my opinion.

Categories: REST, SOA, WS-*, architecture, strategy

Application Portfolio Assessments and the EA Summit

2006-09-25T20:05:00.000+02:00

Loyal readers of my blog will (or should I say: must) have noticed that I have not been blogging as frequent lately as I used to. This is because the last month has been loaded with deadlines and deliveries, particularly on the area of application portfolio assessments.

Application portfolio management is often primarily seen as something that should help reduce IT costs. The reason many clients ask us to perform an application portfolio assessment, is because they want to have an overview of the posture of their application portfolio, to see what applications are candidates for functional enhancement, technical enhancement, or even full retirement or replacement. Of course, there is also often a group of applications that are good enough from both a functional and technical perspective. The results of our assessments are very often surprising for clients, especially as it appears that many decisions to phase out applications are based on gut feelings ("that system has not been updated for years, and probably users will hate it"), not on quantitative and qualitative analysis. As soon as this kind of analysis is applied onto the application portfolio, it can show that some applications that have been forwarded for replacement, turn out to be very much appreciated by business users. It works the other way around as well: many clients are convinced that their new SAP module or Oracle applications component makes the business user community happy, while the only one being happy is the account executive for SAP or Oracle (or MSFT, or [fill in any vendor here]). That is one thing that application portfolio assessments bring forward: perhaps what users and maintenance staff perceives as "value", is something different than what IT decision makers perceive as "value". The question then is: who is right? The people that use applications day-in, day-out (either as an end user or while maintaining it)? Or the people making decisions just on financial elements? The ideal situation is somewhere in the middle I guess, and application portfolio management helps to get a debate started on measuring and defining the value of IT assets and systems, and thus ignites a process in which decision makers, end users and maintenance staff work together to improve the business value of IT. Application portfolio management is becoming an increasingly important factor in IT Strategy, and rightly so I think. It is one of the key IT management processes, alongside strategic planning, investment portfolio management, enterprise architecture and IT governance of course.

Anyways, I will attempt to blog more the coming weeks, especially as tomorrow I am flying to London for the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit. I am particularly interested in Nick Gall's presentation "The Impact of Web 2.0 on Enterprise Architecture".
The EA summit should give enough ideas for a couple of postings. Fingers crossed they have wireless at the Hilton Metropolitan.

Categories: application-portfolio, portfolio-management, architecture, strategy, IT-strategy

Outsourcing acts as a brake on innovation

2006-09-13T20:02:00.000+02:00

In the latest issue of a Dutch magazine I am subscribed to, there is a story on the finding that outsourcing and innovation almost never go well together.
Quint Wellington Redwood has investigated that 75% of all outsourcing contracts are driven by cost reduction. However, there is also a group of companies that expect a boost in innovation as a result from an outsourcing contract. Where the first, cost-driven group experiences some great and better than expected results, the second group, those companies expecting innovation from outsourcing, are having a much harder time.

That should not come as a surprise in my opinion. In all the outsourcing programs I have been involved in, one of the first things we tell our clients, is that certain tasks and roles should remain within the own organization. Those typically include IT leadership, architecture, technical advancement and business enhancement. Those last two are often refered to as innovation, driven by IT leadership and driving enterprise architecture. If for some reason a company chooses to outsource these elements or these aspects, it risks that the innovative profile of the company will go down.
Especially when the rationale for outsourcing is cost reduction, a company tends to see IT as a cost center. To me it makes no sense to treat IT like a cost center, but to expect it to behave like a value center. It is like the same as running an IT service organization: you cannot run it like a factory, and expect to develop client intimacy at the same time.

Some approaches or elements in IT management, including outsourcing and innovation, have such intrinsic differences, that they will not go together well in most cases. Running IT as a factory versus developing client intimacy is one, while outsourcing versus innovation is another.

Categories: outsourcing, strategy, IT-strategy, innovation, IT-management

How simple is RSS?

2006-09-04T09:51:00.000+02:00

Nick Carr had a posting on RSS and the lack of simplicity last Thursday. Nick concludes that when a user has to choose from 35 buttons to select their favorite RSS reader, it can hardly be called "really simple" anymore.
I agree with Nick that "Really Simple" should not have been in the name of the XML format, however I do not agree with Nick's overall view on RSS for a couple of reasons:

We should not blame the underlying technology (RSS) for things that are placed on top of it (35 buttons to choose from). It would be like the same to blame satellite transmission protocols because we have 300+ TV channels to choose from.
RSS is and was never meant to be understood by end users, that's why RSS readers were invented and first created. RSS is a format meant to be read by machines.
Users will recognize the button that applies for their RSS reader. They just have to click it, and the underlying technology will do the rest. And as more and more people are visually oriented and want "one-click" service: how simple do you want it?
Users have preferences, and technology providers will attempt to address these preferences. With open standards (such as RSS), tech providers cannot differentiate their products on basic functionality (as this is limited by the open standard), but instead on extended functionality. 35 options could be a lot, but the laws of market demand will quickly shake down some options if 35 turns out to be too many.
How many people will know RSS? According to Nick it is just 9% of all Americans. How many people will understand a button "Add to Google" though? My best bet is more than 9%!

My bottomline: RSS is not consumer technology, it is technology on top of which consumer technology can be offered. Nothing more, nothing less. Is that really simple enough?

Categories: RSS, syndication, standard, Nick+Carr, RSS-Reader, consumerization, technology

How much is that Vista in the Windows?

2006-08-30T09:31:00.000+02:00

Microsoft Canada has accidentally published the prices for Vista on their web site. These prices give some insight in what to expect when Vista finally hits the market, but the prices have been taken offline already. Although Microsoft have already announced that the prices for Vista would be about the same as the prices for Windows XP, it is still interesting to see what this will really mean. They also announced that they will publish the prices after "Release Candidate 1" is released, which is planned for September. For those that cannot wait, here is the highlights of the list that has been taken of the Canadian MSFT site:

Windows Vista Basic Edition, the cheapest basic version of Vista which can be compared with XP Home edition, will cost 259 Canadian dollars, which is 233 US $ and 182 euro.
Side note: Windows XP Home cost 199 US $ in 2001. A difference of 34 US $, or 17%, which is not bad if we take the effects of inflation (approximately 3.5% per year) into consideration.
Vista Home Premium Edition, that combines characteristics of Windows Media Center and the Tablet PC-edition, will have a price raise of 13%, i.e. 299 Canadian $ (269 US $, which is 211 euro).
Vista Business would cost 379 Canadian $ (341 US $, 267 euro). This is 7 % cheaper than Windows XP Professional.
Vista Ultimate (what's in a name) will cost twice as much as the Basic Edition: 499 Canadian $ (449 US $, 352 euro).

Categories: Microsoft, Vista, price, licence

A not so fruitful week for Apple

2006-08-24T14:54:00.000+02:00

The battle between Apple and Creative has come to an end, as both parties have settled for Apple paying Creative 100 million dollar to use Creative's menu interface patent. Creative gets the money, but drops the charges against Apple aimed at imposing a ban on iPod sales. Also, Creative is now allowed to put an "Made for iPod"-logo on their headphones and speakersets. According to Apple, Creative has been "fortunate to have been awarded this very early patent".

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has also announced that he will not deliver the keynote speech at the September Apple Expo in... Paris. Some speculate that Jobs is boycotting France because of the problems over the iTunes stores in France.

So all in all it has not been the most fruitful week for Apple. As for those that have Creative stocks: it is expected gain 85 cents in Q3, due to the money they will get from Apple.

Categories: Apple, iPod, lawsuit, Creative, Steve+Jobs

Everything you always wanted to know about QA and QC but were afraid to ask

2006-08-22T09:21:00.000+02:00

I could have named this post "QA vs QC" but I did not, because it would not be appropriate, as for me there is no opposition between QA and QC.

Anyways, I have been involved a lot lately in assessments and QA activities. One of my clients asked me about the differences between quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC), and it appears as though that for a lot of professionals this is not quite clear. Here's my thoughts on it:

The Quality Assurance (QA) process is a methodology through which the quality of deliverables and management processes is guaranteed and checked throughout a project. It entails the execution of several review techniques to ensure the appropiate level of quality of the deliverables AND the processes. It also entails the implementation of a set of actions to improve the overall quality level of the project.
Typical examples of the QA process are the creation of project checklists, and performing audits.

Quality Control (QC) refers to the quality-related activities that are linked directly to the creation of project deliverables. QC is part of the overall quality management process. QC techniques are applied to verify that deliverables are of sufficient quality, complete and correct. Typical examples include peer reviews and testing in software development.

Key differences: QC focuses on specific deliverables, whereas QA focuses on the process through which the deliverables is produced. For example: with audits (which are part of QA) usually the quality of the deliverable itself is not judged, but only the process used to create the deliverable.
For software development I illustrate the differences between the two by referring to the CMMI process areas: the differences can be compared with the differences between Validation and Verification on one side (= Quality Control), and Product and Process Quality Assurance (= Quality Assurance) on the other side.

Finally, I always recommend not to position the QA function within a project organization, it should be externalized from the project to guarantee independence and objectivity of the QA group. This is in line with the Prince2 prescription for QA, and with the CMMI ideas about Product and Process Quality Assurance (PPQA). Also, I think it does not make sense to have QC activities defined in the project organization, without a formal group responsible for (independent) QA. I often see that within business units, there is someone responsible for QC. However, without a coordinating body responsible for measuring and improving the quality of the processes, these are not as effective as they could be. Therefore, there is no conflict or opposition between QA and QC, rather these are, or should be, complementary. To me it does not make much sense to do the one without doing the other.

Categories: quality, QA, QC, CMMI, Prince2, quality-management

SAP QotD

2006-08-21T19:23:00.000+02:00

Just back from holiday. I am planning on starting blogging again tomorrow, but first I had to work my way through hundreds of emails...
I had to do a workshop today on application portfolio management at one of our larger clients. During the workshop I heard this quote:

SAP is somewhat like a Tamagotchi: if you do not give it attention regularly, it dies.

I'd say that deserves the award of Quote of the Day.

Categories: SAP, humor, Tamagotchi, portfolio, management, QotD

Meritocracy through transparency

2006-08-10T14:25:00.000+02:00

What if your boss came to you one day, and said: "Listen [fill in your name here], I had a meeting with the other guys in the board, and we have decided that from now on you will set your own salary. Yeah that's right, your salary will no longer be set to that mediocre [fill in your salary here], but from now on you can set your salary yourself".

Dennis Howlett pointed me to a blog posting by Alexander Krejulf on why secret salaries are a bad idea. Alexander, who is a self-proclaimed Chief Happiness Officer (...), writes how much he thinks openness with regards to salaries paid within a company is a good thing. He provides the example of Semco:

Semco is a Sao Paulo-based company of 3.000 people who’ve gone one step further: They allow employees to set their own salaries. No really, they do! This works only because all salaries are open. I could demand a high salary and get it but I’d better be showing results because people are sure to be watching those who make a lot of money. That’s a business experiment only for the truly daring enterprise, but Semco has demonstrated for the rest of us that it can work.

Wow. Transparency of ALL information inside the company, not only information used in the primary process. Dennis calls this a true meritocracy. Wikipedia states that "meritocratic organizations stress talent, formal education, and competence, rather than existing differences such as social class or sex (I wonder how much - unwanted - traffic this word will generate ;-) )". In fact, if the current system would work well, we would not need such drastic things as people setting their own salaries. Apparantly the system does not work well, because research shows that our current system favors those that are already priviliged. I am not sure however that this system will really work, I sure wish it could, but I see the following barriers:

If everyone can set their own salary, should you work with salary caps? How do you prevent the company from going bankrupt?
How often can salaries change? Every year? At any given moment? Never?
What guarantees do you have that you will keep the salary that you have once set? I am pretty sure that your bank (or mortgage provider) will be somewhat interested in that.
It is not always easy to give proper credits for accomplishments.
Won't the competition between individuals have impact on team work?
What do you write in job openings? Function: "Program manager" Salary: "it's up to you"?

I do support the idea though, that by setting clear objectives for individuals, and by formulating clear (SMART) criteria for salary raises, the meritocracy is pursued. I am not fully sure however that the Semco model will work in a lot of places. Only in the right context, which goes beyond the company itself, I think this will work. Openness of salaries is a good thing, I am not so sure about letting people set their own salary. What do you think?

Categories: salary, meritocracy, talent-management, company, HR

Comments on Oracle Fusion (and SAP)

2006-08-08T12:29:00.000+02:00

Quite some traffic to my weblog has lately been generated by the Yahoo! Finance message boards. My story on Oracle Fusion from last Month was posted on the SAP message board, and has provoked some interesting reactions I wanted to share with my loyal readers. This person obviously is very enthousiastic with the Fusion thing:

If you look closely at Oracle's strategy it is solid, since customers can stay on their current products and move to Fusion when it makes sense to for them, not when the vendor tells them support is ending and they must migrate. Unlike SAP, Oracle does not have issues around proprietary code (ABAP), immature middlewear (Netweaver) or multiple databases (SRM, CRM, BW, etc.), so it is not a surprise that SAP now has a battle on their hands. Add to that the fact that SAP is spending the majority of their development resources on Netweaver and R/4 (BPP), which are not value add initiatives, while Oracle continues to functional enhance the current products (Oracle EBS, Peoplesoft, Siebel, etc.) while building a go forward super set (Fusion) based on open standards, the best features of all their current products and the world's number one technology stack.SAP has a great customer base and is unbelievable at marketing, two reasons why they are number one today. When it comes to current and future product however it is clear that Oracle is setting the pace and SAP should be moving forward with eyes wide open, the game is on!

Someone responded to this:

Thanks for publishing the latest version of Oracle spin. Sounds good but you need to walk the walk.

Another person is not too impressed neither:

Those poor customers - this doesn't mean upgrade - it means rip and replace for every JDE and PSFT and Sieble customer (Thor, Octetstring, etc. etc. etc.) Thought everyone had enough of that going from 11.0 to 11i. This actually opens the door substantially for SAP and Microsoft.

So many people, so many visions. However, the SAP versus Oracle battle is quite interesting, so it will provide enough stuff to talk about for the next years, especially as Microsoft appears to be taking the arena seriously now.

On a side note: to those interested in the whole Oracle Fusion thing, I can highly recommend Niel Robertson's piece "I pity the fool", it's highly entertaining.

Categories: Oracle, Fusion, SAP, ERP, competition, vision

Tagging issues

2006-08-03T09:52:00.000+02:00

Tagging and folksonomy tools and web sites are the supposed killer app of Web 2.0. I truly believe that this is one of the elements that will make a difference for Web 2.0, in fact that is one of the reasons why I am using tools such as Digg, Technorati and del.icio.us. However, sometimes it makes me wonder if this whole tagging thing will overcome some of the issues it is confronted with. According to Richard MacManus, Jason Calacanis made an offer to pay top social bookmarkers. What he basically did is buying out the top social bookmarkers from other bookmarking sites, to become Netscape Navigators (no, we are not talking about the browser from the Internet stone age, this is how Netscape's paid bookmarkers are called).

This is the first issue with tagging and social bookmarking: it is the individual freedom versus mob rule. People who have studied direct democracy and the political referendum will recognize this dilemma: it will not be the voice of the majority that will be heard, but instead the voice of the people that are most involved or most fanatic and passionate about a certain subject.

Another issue is the fact that for most things there are multiple words. This is a classic dilemma again, as people responsible for classifying objects have been dealing with this a long long time. Another related point is the different spelling for certain things, in fact even the different tags used for pointing to the same. Once I have finished this posting, I will really have to think hard on whether to tag this piece as "Web2.0", Web-20" or "Web20". All these tags are used throughout Technorati, they all mean the same but people searching for posts tagged "Web2.0" will not find the posts tagged "Web-20".

The third issue I observe is network effects: Diggtrends data reveal that of Digg's 445,000 registered users, only 2,287 contributed any stories to the site during the last six weeks. The top 100 users contributed fully 55% of the stories that appeared on the site's front page, and the top 10 users contributed a 30% of the front page stories (that is 3% each!). Let's be honest: do you tag? I know that some companies have tried to introduce tagging to enable faster content retrieval in their knowledge management systems, but a lot of employees refused to use it "because it takes time to tag content". Those companies suffered badly from a what's in it for me attitude. Again we see that only a small group of people tag content, and thus determine whether or not content is found.

The last issue is about cheating search engines, and spamming bookmark sites. In the first case, we are dealing with things such as tagging content with hot or popular (combinations of) tags, so the content will rank higher in search engine results. Social bookmark sites also attract people with not so good intentions. The more people use sites such as del.icio.us and Digg, the more tempting targets those services become for spammers and vandals. Alex Bosworth has written about this:
Services like these [TagExplosion] are bound to multiply and exploit every weakness in social bookmarking's defenses against spam and general social filters such as Digg's front-page promotion mechanism or del.icio.us's popularity or aggregation filters.

As a wrap-up, I think social bookmarking will have to deal with the following issues to become Web 2.0's killer app:

Individual freedom versus mob rule
Words meaning the same thing
Network effects
Cheating and spamming

With regards to paying top social bookmarkers, I really liked this cartoon by Oliver Widder:

Categories: Web2.0, social+bookmarking, tagging, delicious, digg

Charging for betas

2006-08-01T08:51:00.000+02:00

I could not believe it when the headline came in through my RSS reader: "Microsoft to charge for Office Beta". Obviously it has been on the US version of ZDNet for a couple of days, but now the Dutch version of this site also brings this news.

Let me get this straight: a company known for not delivering the most stable products in their first release (some might argue neither in the second release, stability comes only with the third release of a Microsoft product), is charging people who are helping them to make the product more stable?
Downloading the Office beta will cost $1.50 as from Wednesday August 2nd. The official rationale is that since the end of May the Office beta has been downloaded 3 million times, 5 times as much as expected. The download fee should help offset the cost of downloading from the servers.

Let's say for argument's sake that it will be downloaded another 3 million times. This will generate $4.5 million for MSFT. Most recent figures of MSFT show a total revenue $ 44,282 million and a net income of $12,599 million, and a net profit margin of 28.45%. I do not believe that not charging for the download would really make that big a difference.

I think once again MSFT has missed the opportunity to create some goodwill with end users, software developers and other IT professionals. Probably that goodwill will be worth more than the income they will generate from the download fee. That adds up to the question whether it is sane to charge people for helping you improve your product. I always thought that beta testers are doing a favour to the software manufacturer, instead of the other way around.
So MSFT is not doing anyone a favour here, unless of course they are joining the Web 2.0 universe with Office too, and have decided that the new Office will be an eternal beta too.

Categories: Microsoft, Office, beta, download, fee, Web2.0

Perfect fit between form and function?

2006-08-01T08:23:00.000+02:00

In case you were wondering what the controversial Belgian fountain in Maasmechelen that can be found on GoogleEarth looks like when you stand close to it... here it is*:

Sometimes they say about architecture that it should find the perfect fit between form and function. Decide for yourself whether the guy that created this thing did a good job on that.

* For that person commenting "Who cares???" on my previous posting on this phenomenon: if you don't care, then don't read it. No-one is forcing you ;-).

Categories: GoogleEarth, architecture, fountain, maasmechelen

REST vs. WS-* statistics

2006-07-31T13:48:00.000+02:00

Stefan Tilkov has a very interesting list of people that support the WS-* universe, people that support the REST camp, and people "who support both (or don’t show that they care)":

Web Services/WS-* supporters (19):

REST supporters (14)

Supporting both (7)

Funny, Stefan has placed me with the people supporting WS-*. I have to object against this, as generally speaking I am not the kind of black-white thinking person (probably that's why I became a consultant), and especially not when it comes to something as complex an multidimensional as service orientation and web services. I quote from my latest column on SOA-world.com:

"The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a SOAP versus REST antagonism, and in fact even SOAP/WS-* services and REST services are not competing. Rather, both models have their strong and weak points, and to some extent the models are even complementary. In fact, the apparent upcoming of REST even has some positive effects on SOAP: the simplicity of REST will force the SOAP community to continually defend any new standards and complexities that are developed. Which in turn of course can help us cure from any WS-* protocol fatigue, to give us new energy to focus on solving business problems. So in a way REST comes to the rescue. "

So I guess I should be either with the "Supporting both" group, or the name of the first group should be renamed from "Web Services/WS-* supporters" to "Those that dismiss WS-* as 'Enterprisey' without further notice". I guess if we opt for the second, to rename the group, it will be 26 against 14, as the "Supporting both" group will probably be added to the "Those that dismiss WS-* as 'Enterprisey' without further notice"-group.

Categories: SOA, SOAP, REST, WS-*, Enterprisey, supporters

[Update: I copied Stefan's list right after he published it. It has changed since then, so the lists above are th original lists, for the most recent ones please check Stefan's blog.]

The Enterprise Irregulars

2006-07-28T09:40:00.000+02:00

A core group of bloggers from Sapphire (such as Jeff Nolan, Vinnie Mirchandani and Niel Robertson) have stayed together, and started a site named CrispyNews where they comment about lots of happenings around enterprise technology. It resembles a lot other sites such as Digg.com, but it specifically focuses on enterprise software. Have a look at it, it is quite interesting.

While you are examining the site, please feel free to vote for my posting on Oracle Fusion, which has been on the frontpage of the site for a couple of weeks now (thank you Dennis for posting it, glad you liked it).

Categories: Sapphire, CripsyNews, enterprise+software, Digg, Irregulars

The Age of Transparency

2006-07-26T20:55:00.000+02:00

It has been said numerous times about the current era: it is the age of transparency. Heck, even I have written about it before. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and one of the best known examples of the "Web 2.0/Age of transparency" era, GoogleEarth, reveals some secrets about a fountain in the lovely Belgian town named Maasmechelen:

At first I thought it was a hoax, and part of the publicity wave for a new book by Dan Brown ("The Belgian Boggle" or something). But it turned out that for the past 27 years, a swastika-shaped fountain has been in front of the Maasmechelen town hall and nobody noticed. Until of course somebody entered the Age of Transparency, ran GoogleEarth on his computer and found this out.

According to the designer of the fountain, the mayor of the town has known this all the time and was completely comfortable with it. Obviously the designer himself found no harm in designing a swastika fountain, and refered to ancient Greeks and Hindus using the symbol way before that guy did about 70 years ago. However the mayor has denied that he knew, and wants to have the fountain rebuilt when the construction industry holiday is over. Whether the mayor knew about the controversial design or not: the age of transparency has helped to ignite the action to change the shape. It has either revealed it if the mayor really did not know it, or if he did, it created the sense of urgency to do something about it.

Categories: Google, GoogleEarth, transparency, Web2.0,

A Brand named Zune

2006-07-25T08:49:00.000+02:00

Last week Microsoft confirmed the existence of the Zune project. Its Zune concept is the new strategy from MSFT to gain a dominant position on the market of portable music (players).

The brand named "Zune" will soon stand for software for music, and for portable music players. Although MSFT does not have the best of reputations when it comes to hardware (some people only know MSFT hardware from the mouse), they have decided to develop the player themselves. In the past, for their previous initiative PlayForSure, MSFT relied on third party hardware, but their strategy turned out to be unsuccessful.

According to MSFT's plans, the first player should be released before the end of the year. My best bet is that it will be around the Christmas season. Analysts say that Zune resembles the iTunes model very much, and it is believed that it is MSFT's attempt to dethrone Apple as the market leader for portable music.

Arguably the most intriguing part of the story is that MSFT wants to emphasize the community factor, and the sharing of music. The Zune will get wireless network capabilities and is expected to be able to exchange music with other music players. My best bet is that it will exchange only with other Zune players, and not with non-Zune players (given MSFT's track record when it comes to compatibility). However the sharing capabilities are remarkable for a company that is known for clinging on to intellectual property to say the least.

In the coming year we shall see whether "life ain't easy for a brand named 'Zune.'".

Categories: Microsoft, Zune, Apple, iPod, music, market-share

Amazon's Business Model 2.0

2006-07-21T11:09:00.000+02:00

I must say that I was somewhat surprised when I read a very enthousiastic blog posting by Phil Wainewright on the "mashup pact" between Amazon and Microsoft. According to the piece, Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) is now directly supported by Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, formerly known as... nah, most people will know that by now).
Phil writes that "this means that a developer can write an application that runs on a Windows desktop or server and use Amazon SQS as the messaging infrastructure to exchange information with systems and applications located anywhere else in the Web".
He goes on by saying that "I think SQS has the potential to open up some very powerful mashup capabilities, especially tied in with WCF, which embeds native web services support right inside your Windows desktop, making it possible, for example, to connect directly into enterprise applications using SOAP web services. This allows SQS to becomes the Web-based catalyst for some potentially awesome enterprise mashups."
Amazon will charge users for this service, $0.10 per 1000 messages and $0.20 per GB of data, with no minimum fee and no setup cost.

I had to read the post twice, before I understood that it has nothing to do with Amazon's current services, but instead that we are dealing with a completely new service. Amazon is now offering an asynchronous messaging infrastructure to anyone that creates mashups (although some might argue that there is a slight preference for those people that are using WCF for their mashups). There is no need to include Amazon's other services or to create a mashup for Amazon's bookstore, all you need to do is pay for the number of messages, and you're on. We are talking about a web-services based business model here. Obviously Amazon wants to extend their service offerings, and become the Web 2.0 infrastructure provider of choice. Interesting move, although I am really curious to see whether:

They will continue to favor WCF over other implementations
More importantly: whether they will be fully transparant on their charging policy, and not taking advantage of a potential future lock-in

But once again I think Amazon has shown the ingenuity that has made them one of the few dotcom crash survivors, and they are using the Web 2.0 momentum to extend their services.

Categories: Web2.0, Amazon, strategy, business-model, Microsoft, mashup

Mashing-up Skype

2006-07-18T13:02:00.000+02:00

Reportedly the Skype protocol has been cracked by a bunch of Chinese hackers (if they are able to do this, why don't they try to crack the Great Chinese Firewall too? Or is this Skype cracking thing part of the plan?). Although this news has already been denied by Skype (I would really be surprised if they came up with a line like "yeah we know, that's too bad but such things happen, even at the best companies! It just shows that we are in the major league now to have become a hacker target"), the news was announced by a guy named Charlie Paglee, the founder of a VoIP company, focused on... Skype competitor GoogleTalk.

The Skype hack was executed by a Chinese company that will release their own Skype-compatible client in the coming weeks, even though they still have to solve some problems with their current hack software (such as poor sound quality). I have an even better idea for these guys: why not create a full API to this Skype hack, so people all over the world can start exploiting the Skype hack, and thus creating some of the coolest mashups that include VoIP capabilities? Imagine this: a mashup of PizzaHut, Skype and GoogleMaps to lookup the closest PizzaHut on a map, and order right-away through the speaker on your notebook. Or get in touch immediately with that customer you have not spoken to for weeks through a Salesforce.com / Skype mashup.

The reward for these Chinese guys? Well, they could be acquired by, let's say, eBay of Google if the Skype hack API turns out to be a hit. I think that chance will be larger than the chance that they will come up with a Skype-compatible client that will turn out to be the killer app for VoIP. But that's just my perspective ;-).

* As for the title of this post: it is better to get mashed-up than to get messed up.

Categories: Skype, hack, Google, eBay, mashup, API, acquisition, GoogleTalk

Why open standards matter

2006-07-14T21:48:00.000+02:00

For a second I thought of the title "Do open standards matter?" for this blog posting (I wrote before that I am eternally grateful that Nicholas Carr came up with the utterly brilliant title format "Does [put your subject here] matter?" which can be used at any time when you do not have enough inspiration to come up with a catchy title for a posting), but I could resist.

Having said that, today I read a news item in a Dutch IT magazine that confirms my belief that open standards are by far more significant than open source. Although I do like the open source model and the innovation and dynamics by which it is surrounded, I still think that open standards matter more than open source. The news item was about a large Dutch city, that had started an open-source program for its office automation. One of the key elements should have been the replacement of MS Office with OpenOffice. However this week they announced that there were too many Visual Basic applications running in the offices of the local administration, which would not be compatible with OpenOffice. The IT department of the local goverment have now said that replacing those VB applications with OpenOffice compliant applications will be even more expensive than buying MS Office licenses. So they decided to stick with MS Office and abandon the open source plan.

I wrote before that the presence of many proprietary, Windows-only applications is one of the key inhibitors for Linux adoption (on the desktop that is), but now it appears that this factor is also holding back OpenOffice. Major drawback for the Penguin-minded politicians that came up with the open-source programs within Dutch local administrations, but once again a proof that open standards are extremely important. If those VB applications would have been written with interfaces based on open standards, then a migration to OpenOffice would not have been a problem (a migration to Linux would have been though: ever tried running a VB app on Linux?). Also, because the people in the Dutch government (and probably in more countries worldwide) always tend to center open source strategies around the supposed financial benefits (lower TCO, no license cost), they bypass the arguably most important aspect: how to guarantee that your systems will be compatible now, but also in the future. However if those aspects become dominant, we are not talking about open source anymore, but about open standards instead. I think it is about time that decision makers get the message: open standards matter!

Categories: strategy, egovernment, open-source, open-standards, OpenOffice, standards, migration

History lesson for SOA and Web 2.0 practioners

2006-07-14T17:00:00.000+02:00

Remember my elevator pitch to explain SOA to business people?

SOA is about architecting, designing and integrating applications, systems and processes through collections of shared business services. These business services are basically modular pieces of software that perform a well-defined business function. The underlying complexity of the technology has been abstracted from the business processes for maximum agility, and the software services collaborate by using universal standards. SOA moves the primary focus from technology toward process definition and transparency.
An example of an SOA in action is the Internet: DNS, HTTP, SMTP and other standard internet parts work for different business functions, for users with different operating systems. SOA is all this taken to the next level.

In this elevator pitch, I have made an attempt to make one thing very clear: SOA goes beyond software architecture, and is a way to achieve goals such as flexibility and agility. To make the entire concept more tangible, I decided to throw in the analogy with the Internet. Especially this last thing, the analogy, has proven to be something that is well understood by most clients. Which in turn has convinced me that a further analogy with the Internet can provide some very interesting insights than can further help us make our clients understand not only the value proposition of service orientation, but also the pitfalls. A key lesson can be learned from what has happened to the Internet in the last 10 years.

One of the key reasons why the Internet bubble burst at the beginning of this decade was because business was unable to understand opportunities or integrate these into established IT plans. Google, one of the survivors of the dotcom era, saw an opportunity and chose a business model in which 99% of the company’s revenue comes from advertising. They survived because they did not take the technology centric approach. Another survivor, Amazon, made it because they effectively used the web as their single market channel. Their usage of the web went beyond a “simple” integration into established IT plans, as their IT plan was the web. Netscape on the other hand did not survive, even though most people will argue they had superior technology, because they were unable to have their product integrated into established IT plans.

So lesson number one is: Make sure that you will manage to explain the value proposition that goes beyond the technology. If there is anything we can learn from the Internet crash, it is this point. To business people technology itself does not matter, but business value from technology does!
I have applied this rule to SOA, but we can also apply it to Web 2.0 for instance. Also in this area it is crucial to explain the value proposition which goes beyond technology. In a recent post Dion Hinchcliffe states that "Web 2.0 is much less about technology at all than it is about the people it connects together to learn directly from each other ." Well said. Learn from the past when working with SOA and Web 2.0.

Categories: Web2.0, SOA, IT-strategy, strategy, Google, Amazon

Microsoft on the Web 2.0 acquisition path?

2006-07-05T11:23:00.000+02:00

In an earlier post I mentioned TomTom as one of the hot prospects of the Web 2.0 arena. I did not do this out of chauvinist sentiments (TomTom is a Dutch company), but mainly because the supplier of navigation systems was named by Gartner as 'Cool Vendor' for Web 2.0.
Today I read the news on Dutch IT site Computable (careful: in Dutch) that Microsoft is considering the acquisition of TomTom. Even though TomTom's COO said he did not know of any of MSFT's plans, this was a reason for the stock quotes to rise.
I mentioned before that TomTom is not yet really active in the Web 2.0 playing field, but they have some characteristics that make them an attractive, maybe even likely party for MSFT. Its core business, GPS navigation systems is a growth market worldwide, and it has much connections and links with one of the core growth markets of MSFT: SaaS (Software as a Service). MSFT (but also other SaaS oriented companies such as Google) have already shown their interest in this GPS navigation market, particularly because it could fit very well with their map technologies.

Another thing TomTom has been doing very well, is focussing on a user community and developer community. And MSFT is still a company that relies heavily on the support and acceptance of a developer community, and that wants to be intimate with end users, as this has been their core market for nearly two decades now.

From a financial perspective, acquiring TomTom could be interesting too, as TomTom's revenue is estimated to be between 1,1 and 1,3 billion euro, with a profit margin of 20% (even though the market is increasingly under pressure due to the entrance of more competitors, including giants such as Philips and Sony).

So from a MSFT perspective, the acquisition kind of makes sense. From a TomTom perspective this could also be the case, especially as they are facing increasing competition, so monetizing the company at this moment maybe is not a bad idea. From a user perspective, there is one single interesting question. Currently, TomTom software runs both on Linux and the embedded edition of Windows, Pocket PC. What will happen with the Linux version if MSFT acquires TomTom? And what will users notice if the Linux version is abandoned? The future will tell, to throw in a cliche.

Categories: Web20, Web-2.0, Microsoft, TomTom, navigation, GPS, acquisition

French defeat for Apple

2006-07-03T11:09:00.000+02:00

Just when France were in the news positively for a change (thanks to the old maestro Zidane), the news item came in that in the French parliament a law was passed that offers the possibility to force Apple to share its download technology with its rivals. Back in May I wrote that the law was delayed for a while, but now it has passed parliament.

Currently, music bought at an Apple iTunes music store can only be played on an iPod, however the new French law states that it should be possible to play any digital track on any player. Apple said earlier that this law is nothing more than "state-sponsored piracy", and that they would move away from the French market if the law was passed.

There is a way however to ditch this law: if an artist has an exclusive deal with Apple for publishing music, Apple is allowed to copy-protect the track. The new law also states that there should be an independent institution that decides when tracks should be playable on different players. Futhermore, the law contains some anti-piracy measures.

Some questions popped up when I read the news: will Apple really close its French iTunes store? We have a global economy and the French music lovers will probably know how to get to foreign web sites (tip: change the ".fr" to ".com" and you're on!), so will this law really make a difference? What is the value of such a law in the context of globalization? Will other European countries follow, perhaps due to European legislation? How will this affect other, similar debates on IP, lock-in and copyright? Will MSFT be next?

Personally, I think these issues are not something that can be solved by a national government anymore. The reality is that we live in a global economy, and the context in which issues over IP, copyright and lock-in reside, is so complex and has some many dependencies on legislation at other levels (Europe, trade conventions etc.) that it is naive to think that legislation such as this French example will have any effect, other than that it has cost effort and (tax!) money. These issues can only be dealt with at a global level, as it is a global problem.

Categories: Apple, iTunes, iPod, copyright, lawsuit, IP

Listmania!

2006-06-30T11:31:00.000+02:00

Two interesting lists I discovered this week: the Wired 40 and Computerworld's best places to work in IT.

Let's first look at the Wired 40, a list which includes companies that have the 'x-factor', as well as "the basics: strategic vision, global reach, killer technology". The top is:

Google
Apple
Samsung
Genentech
Yahoo
Amazon.com
Toyota
General Electric
News Corp
SAP

Obviously this is not a surprising list when you compare it to last year's list, as most of the companies in the top 10 were in there last year as well. However, the criteria are somewhat fuzzy, and not applicable to all companies in the list (or at least it leaves you with a feeling that other criteria counted as well!). I quote Wired:

"What makes a company wired? We start by looking for the basics: strategic vision, global reach, killer technology. But that’s not enough. To land a spot on our annual Wired 40 list, a business also needs the X-factor – a hunger for new ideas and an impatience to put them into practice."

The X-factor. Are we talking about a serious list, or about something American Idol-like? Of course lists are always arbitrary, but I do not understand how Google can be #1, when a lot of analysts are still wondering what its strategy is (in fact: Wired itself asks this question: "Is it a search engine? A media company? A software provider?"). Also, the first signs have already been found that Google is a company of, well... flesh and blood too. Criticism over censorship and collaboration with oppressive regimes, that kind of stuff. If the list would be published in 2005 I would most definately have put Google on the #1 spot, but somehow I feel that others deserve this spot.

Personally, I think the top 10 is more driven by sentiment, that by objective criteria. I do not at all find it a progressive list, in fact I think it takes the safe road and is rather conservative.

Now over to our second list: this takes another approach to rank companies, as it focuses on stuff like "organizations' average salary and bonus increases, the percentage of IT employees receiving promotions, IT staff turnover rates, training and development opportunities, and the percentage of women and minorities in IT staff and management positions". And last but not least: an important criteria is that the company has a headquarters in the U.S. The top 10:

No company from the Wired top 10 in this top 10. Obviously, having the X-factor does not go together well with being a good employer. What is also interesting to see, is that only very little of the large/famous IT companies are in the top 100. No IBM, no Microsoft, even no Google. Which in turn leaves me wondering what the exact criteria were for this list, as in other lists I have seen recently, these companies scored pretty well. I guess once again that the "truth" is in the eye of the beholder, and those listst are nothing more than a subjective opinion by the person who created the list. It somewhat is like eating at McDonald's: it is kind of nice but barely satisfactory.

Categories: listmania, Google, strategy, Yahoo, Apple, Internet-companies

Acquisition strategies in IT

2006-06-29T10:42:00.000+02:00

In the past I have written a couple of times on my blog that in IT people are still the most important asset. Also I wrote that the business model for mashup creators is not to make money with their mashup (this is impossible, as anyone can steal the idea because most mashups are fully based on public APIs), but instead to attract the large players in IT and demonstrate the genius of the mashup, so they will hire them. I gave the example of Paul Rademacher who created HousingMaps.com and who has been hired by Google.

In an interview I refered to last Tuesday when I wrote about Oracle's Fusion strategy, Larry Ellison, it became obvious that this strategy not only works for small start-ups or the creators of mashups: even a major IT player such as Oracle appears more interested in acquiring the people who created the technology, than acquiring that technology itself. Ellison said in the interview that they were particularly interested in the engineers and their expertise, and less in the products (JDE, PeopleSoft and Siebel).
Is this the new trend for acquisition strategies in IT: to do acquisitions to buy expertise instead of technology / products? It certainly would justify the prediction that some have made in the past, that in IT increasingly (knowledge of) technology becomes less important, and knowing where to apply technology (which requires a very good insight in the market and business) and make the best use of it becomes dominant. I guess old Albert was right when he said "Imagination is more important than knowledge". It sure appears as though increasingly people in IT like to think so.

Categories: acquisition, strategy, IT-strategy, mashup, business-model, Google

Fusion is NOT about Fusion after all...

2006-06-27T13:55:00.000+02:00

Back in February I wrote that Oracle Fusion REALLY is about Fusion. This was based on the seamingly endless series of acquisitions. However, in an interview Larry Ellison did yesterday with a group of European journalists (on his private yacht Rising Star of course!), he revealed that all this time most people did not understand Oracle's project Fusion: it is NOT about Fusion, it is not about the integration of Oracle, Siebel, Peoplesoft and JD Edwards. In fact Fusion is a completely new product, a complete rewrite. Integrating all the products is impossible according to Oracle, so Fusion will be a completely new product.

Some questions arise now, and I will attempt to answer those:

Q: If it is not about integrating the whole bunch, then why did they acquire JDE, Siebel, Peoplesoft etc.?
A: Apparently Oracle was not after the products when acquiring the companies, but they were after their engineers and expertise.

Q: Will Oracle be able to deliver in 2008?
A: Good question. I don't know. If you look at it from the bright side, you can say that people predicted that Oracle would struggle after the take-over of those companies. Nevertheless the figures for Q1 are better than expected. Maybe they can pull this off too for the Fusion planning, which has been deemed optimistic and even unrealistic too. If you take a more pessimistic approach, you can expect that they will deliver later than 2008, unless they are willing to repeat the fiasco of EBS 11i, which was released too early and contained many coding errors and performance problems.

Q: What effects will this have on the Fusion middleware?
A: Ellison announced that not only the EBS suite needs to be rewritten, but also the middleware products. Which makes me feel good because back in March I advised one of my clients not to blindly follow Oracle when it comes to the Fusion middleware they recommended. The roadmap for the middleware is vague and appears pretty much tied to the EBS suite.

Q: If they are not integrating the acquired products, then WHY THE HECK did they call it Fusion?
A: Probably because Larry Ellison is not very spot-on when it comes to inventing great names that fit. I mean: if you own the biggest, probably most luxury yacht in the world, you do not name it Rising Star do you?

Categories: Oracle, Fusion, middleware, ERP, strategy, integration

Stop these architects!

2006-06-27T09:32:00.000+02:00

Former colleague Ron Tolido had a quite entertaining piece about architects recently on his CTO Blog. One of his key objections against architects in general is that they often have the attitude that they "have seen it all". He writes:

"Some architects in the IT profession seem to believe that there’s no point in keeping up to date with new technologies and trends. They will claim that it is really all the same, that they’ve been doing similar things already in the seventies and that too much inside knowledge of new technologies will only corrupt the sheer beauty and well, like total conceptualness of the architectures they design."

I must say that my opinion on architects is somewhat ambivalent. At one side, I acknowledge the necessity of architecture and more importantly the architecture process. On the other side I see so many people doing silly stuff and branding it "architecture", that I sometimes doubt whether architecture in general can really deliver the goods.
Generally speaking I think architects should provide insight to decide. There are some very good architects, who are excellent at doing this. I was lucky enough to be working with these guys now or in the past, but unfortunately the majority of architects I have ever met is more concerned with discussing what architecture is, who should be allowed to call himself architect, and dismissing the real beef of architecture as implementation details to be sorted out by the lower echelons of the IT organization. Architects I have met that went beyond some slides with a high-level conceptual model, were branded techies and were hardly ever taken seriously by their peers from the architect community.

Arguably the group of architects that is worst at spoiling the market for serious architects, is the group that advocates the usage of Oriental Wisdom metaphors, such as Tao, yin yang and feng shui. Probably driven by the conviction to be working on something extremely important, enlightening and difficult, oriental philosophies are used to explain balance, antagonisms (business and IT?) and controlled change. Sure: I think the oriental wisdom metaphor is good at pointing out the need for balance in architecture, and the need to have governed changes in a controlled fashion. However the use of the oriental wisdom however has another side too. Architecture is already blamed for being too high level. As a matter of fact, an often voiced complaint is that architects reside in their ivory tower and never show up on the work floor where the architecture has to be applied.
The oriental wisdom architect fuels to this opinion. When doing architecture, I always feel that the demystification of the architect job is one of the main goals. We are not talking about rocket science or about some kind of magic that relies on ancient wisdom of several centuries. Architecture rather is about reasoning, logic, reduction of complexity and most importantly: about hard work and good communication with the sponsor and other stakeholders.

Even though it is hard to measure the direct value of architecture, there should be a way to measure the effectiveness of architects, to separate the chaff from the corn. Start by not trusting architects that come up with pictures of yin and yang in their presentations, or who start to talk about the emotional value of architecture. Stop these architects! Challenge them, ask questions, and do not accept anecdotes about Chinese fairy tales to explain the value of their architecture or their architecture process. If an architect is unable to explain his architecture in plain English (or your native language) or if you do not understand what he (or she) has designed for you, send the architect back to the drawing table.

Categories: architecture, enterprise-architecture, metaphor, IT-Strategy, technology

Is the Honeymoon over for Web 2.0?

2006-06-23T11:22:00.000+02:00

Web 2.0 services, applications and mashups have dealt the last period with requirements and demands that were somewhat less strict and formal than the average, say, Enterprisey service or application. Security just had to be "good enough", in fact the good enough movement is/was a key characteristic of anything related to Web 2.0.
Phil Wainewright now writes on his blog about what he calls "a fundamental flaw in the Web 2.0 era": a complete disregard for accountability to their users among service providers.

Phil furthermore refers to Amazon.com's Jeff Barr saying about service level guarantees:
"We have not found it necessary to offer any kind of formal guarantee in this regard. What works best is to realize that our interests are aligned with the interests of our developers — if the service is not running then their sites are not running, and no transactions are occurring. Clearly, this is bad, and we do all that we can to make sure that it doesn't happen."

And how about Phil's fellow ZDNet blogger Tom Foremski then: "Gmail is still in beta does that mean Google thinks it can get away with a less-than-reliable email service? Why hasn't it taken the steps and the investments, to make sure this doesn't happen? Does GOOG think that because Gmail is a beta product we will cut the company some slack? Hours of slack for a mission critical component of most people's lives?!"

All of a sudden, it appears as though there is a growing number of persons that will not settle for this "good enough" mantra anymore. Why is that? And does this mean that the honeymoon for Web 2.0 is over?
I think the key to answering this question, is all about the management of expectations. This goes for both the providers of Web 2.0 services and technology, and the consumers and users of Web 2.0 technology. Once the honeymoon is over for something cool and new (we have seen this with the open source movement as well!), it becomes mainstream and part of everyday life and the daily routine. Expectations change, and the novelty and "coolness" of the technology must be replaced with something else. This could either be something new again, or it could be something like reliability, stability and soundness.
The question remains whether someone can expect reliability and stability from something that is still in beta, such as Gmail. On the other hand, vendors and providers can be blamed for taking the easy way out by providing beta software and service to consumers, and not giving any warranties on QoS. Either way, it is all about managing the expectations: the providers should better manage the expectations of their customers, and the consumers should better manage their own expectations. There is no such thing as a free lunch, and you cannot got everything for nothing. On the other side: if you choose to release beta software and thus involve end users in your own development process, you cannot ignore the opinion of these end users about your QoS and quality of software in general.

I think that increasingly Web 2.0 providers and technologies will be put to the test the coming period: how well will they respond to this challenge? The level of success and further evolvement of Web 2.0 will be proportional to the extent in which Web 2.0 providers can meet these challenges.

Categories: Web2.0, Web-20, Technology, Gmail, beta

Creative Commons, Microsoft and the Internet

2006-06-22T11:35:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I read the news that Microsoft now offers the possibility to embed a Creative Commons license to an Office file. The add-in can be downloaded free at charge from both the Microsoft site and the Creative Commons site. Somewhat to my surprise, this has not gained a lot of attention from our industry, or maybe I am just one of the first persons to blog about this.

Although the plugin for Office might not be groundbreaking news, it once again shows that Microsoft displays a somewhat dual approach to copyrights and intellectual property. On one hand they are constantly considering to intensify their fight against piracy, they have a reputation for not following open standards and trying to deploy their own, and they are in several legal battles over lock-in and unfair competition due to closed formats. On the other hand, they now have this Creative Commons license

I am a big fan of the concept of the Creative Commons license, so I applaud the initiative by MSFT. However I am still having trouble to understand Microsoft's position on open licenses. In fact, I don't think they even have a position, which suprises me really. You can say a lot about Microsoft, but not that they are/were one of the driving forces in the last couple of years of the evolvement and the evolution of the Internet to become the application platform it is today. However in some way it appears that Microsoft has only embraced the Internet as the application platform as faaver as technology is concerned. Somehow they appear to have forgotten to formulate a strategy concerning side-effects, such as licensing and intellectual property rights. To me it appears as though from a technical perspective Microsoft is one of the driving forces of the evolution of the Internet, but they are stuck to their licensing and IP policy from the desktop era.

The Information Age which has been predicted by many analysts and future/trend watchers, is all about sharing information, and the Internet is the ultimate vehicle to share information. Whereas other companies that lead the pack appear to have a clear vision and business model for this era that will be centered around sharing, MSFT appears to be having trouble in deciding their strategy. It would not surprise me that the recent leadership shift at Microsoft, where Ray Ozzie replaces Bill Gates as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, was also triggered by the need of the company to make a shift from a desktop-based technology vendor, towards a web-based
service provider. Some have said that Ozzie has been forwarded to "webify" Microsoft. Reportedly Ozzie has been charged with "webifying" everything at Microsoft, making sure a new generation of its Word and Excel office software and the Windows operating system are integrated more closely with the internet. For Microsoft's sake, I hope that this webifying thing does not end with technology and a further enhancement of the .NET platform, but also takes Microsoft's business strategy and IP policy into consideration.

The world has changed, the desktop is not the center of automation and IT anymore, so maybe their strategy needs to be revised. Once again, it would not surprise me if this is the reason why Ozzie has been put forward, and also it would not surprise me if he succeeds in transforming MSFT. What really would surprise me if they decide to open-source the development of Vista, to overcome the reported troubles with their new OS, although from my perspective this could be a brilliant move. There is something very aikido about (i.e. make use of the force of your opponent) which fits perfectly with Web 2.0 business models, and it does not have to mean that MSFT will fully lose control of its OS: Sun has shown that you can open-source an operating system (OpenSolaris) and still keep essential control of it. The coming years we will see to which extent MSFT dares to webify.

Categories: Microsoft, open-source, creative-commons, copyright, IP, Vista, Ozzie

More perspective on Apple versus Creative

2006-06-15T09:14:00.000+02:00

Without claiming that I know anything about legal issues regarding copyrights, I have been following the news about the lawsuit of Apple versus Creative and I would like to give some more perspective on it.

Last week I blogged that Apple appears to be following MSFT's strategy in dealing with competitors. The latest news about this lawsuit is somewhat diverse: one source claims that "the chances of Creative Technology winning an injunction to prevent Apple from selling the iPod domestically are slim, legal experts say". The article also suggests that for a struggling company like Creative, a protracted battle could signal the end.
Another source however reported that the Creative claim against Apple is taken seriously: Creative claims that "the U.S. International Trade Commission plans to launch an investigation into Apple Computer's iPod digital music player for possible patent infringement". The commision reportedly has announced that within 45 days, a final date for the investigation will be announced. Which of course means that for at least the next 2 months, no shocking news should be expected, but we will see both companies trying to influence the public opinion through news items like the ones above, and also through the blogosphere where Apple is very active (if not through their own channels, it will be through a vast amount of Apple fans).

So at one side we have the news that Creative's claim is taken seriously, and at the other side we have the analysis that the chances for legal success for Creative are limited. And of course we have the analysis that a lost lawsuit could mean the end of Creative.

Either way (whether the claim is taken seriously or not) , the battle will be hard and it somewhat reminds me of the battles we have seen in the eigthies and nineties with Windows and IE versus the competition: it appears not to be a matter of beating the competition, but of killing the competition. Eat or be eaten, it looks like a modern version of Darwinism.

Categories: Apple, Creative, lawsuit, iPod, MP3, patent

CTO is the primary target for Web 2.0

2006-06-14T12:56:00.000+02:00

When talking about new technologies and opportunities arising from new technology (how about Web 2.0 for instance?), most of the time the role of CIO is mentioned as a primary target for this. I think this is not correct in many cases, as there are a lot of companies that have created a role that is at least equally suitable to aim at: the Chief Technology Officier (CTO).

I like Mary Ann Maxwell's definition of the CTO role:

The CTO is the person who is seeking out new technologies, evaluating their impact on the business process, and selectively recommending those that can dramatically affect the business.

The CTO role was once created, because at the time CIOs were too busy fighting their way into the boardroom. As CIOs increasingly took a seat at the business management table with their fellow C-level executives, many of them handed off the technical leadership to a CTO. Typically, the CTO role in the corporate IT world is most often a direct report to the CIO. Usually the CTO is responsible for architecture and technology leadership (often supported by a Chief Enterprise Architect for the architceture part) and acquisition, deployment, and support issues. In this case the CIO should be the one responsible for partnering with business unit management and together with business management for creating e-business and e-commerce initiatives for the enterprise. However, I have also come across situations in which CTOs were hired at the same level as CIOs.

In either case, I think the following aspects are very important for a good and effective CTO:

CTO should complement the CIO, both in focus and in skills
CTO and CIO should communicate well
The CTO should be able to serve as strategist, technologist, gatekeeper, coach, visionary and evangelist, as well as playing manager and administrative roles
The CTO should have the skills and knowledge to identify key technologies and vendors that can and will contribute to the strategic direction and competitiveness of the organization
The CTO should be able to independently establish a network of business partners, academics, government officials and technology thought leaders
Generally speaking, the CIO is more internally focused, on business execs and business process, whereas the CTO is more externally focused, on his network of experts and on general technology trends
Both roles should under no circumstances be outsourced!
The CTO has to bridge the worlds of the suits and the ponytails, while the CIO has to bridge the worls of the suits and the blue collars (or white collars if your business is primarily in consulting / professional services).
To some extent, the CTO is more concerned with how IT can drive the business, while the CIO is more concerned with how the business can be enabled by IT. It is a matter of perspective!

The CIO and the CTO are thus complementary, and together they should feature in the success of the deployment of new technology in the organization. As both approach new technology from a different perspective and with a different focus, both are equally important when considering new technologies.

However to get a foot in the door, I think the CTO is the guy (or girl) to go to for Web 2.0 related innovation in an organization. As Web 2.0 is primarily something driven by techology savvy persons in the organization and by consumers (let's be honest: how many business persons subscribe to RSS feeds, have a blog and tag content? How many business persons are involved in wikis and social networks, apart maybe from LinkedIn?), it is something for the CTO to pick up. The CTO should then evaluate Web 2.0 concepts and technology, and assess the value it can bring to the company. To target the CIO would be the long way: the CIO will only pick up Web 2.0, when the business formulates an immediate need or requirement that can be met with Web 2.0 technology and concepts. It is the CTO however who should be the person to have a plan (or not of course) with Web 2.0.

Categories: technology, CTO, CIO, IT-Strategy, strategy, business, Web2.0

The 10 commandments of IT consulting

2006-06-12T13:30:00.000+02:00

I have been a consultant for some time now, but some things for work have become so standard, that you tend not to think about it very often. Gernot Starke had an interesting summary of the Old Dominion University's ethic rules for consulting. These can be characterized as the 10 commandments of (IT) consulting:

First-time customers buy "what you know". Repeating customers buy "who you are".

Agree.

Know your customers: Make sure what you're offering is what they are willing to pay good money for.

Do this and you are halfway there

Give your customers more than they expect.

This one is often a lot more difficult, especially as the expectations are sometimes somewhat unrealistic (especially about SOA ;-) ). However, do not go for the easy way out by trying to manage the expectations of your client to a lower level.

Aim higher than you commit. Work better than you promised.

Same as above.

The high road is a two-way street. There is seldom a need to work for a bad customer.

When I was still in Application Development, 9 out of 10 times when a project was not going so well, the customer was blamed for it. At some point I got the feeling that some people really thought there were no good customers in the world, and all projects failed because of customers. That is not true. Without a customer, there would be no project. If you are 100% sure that you are dealing with a bad customer, put your money where your mouth is and resign from your assignment. Complaining will not make it better.

Learn when to "no bid": When you and your customer are mismatched, don't take the work.

Absolutely! It gives you the opportunity to select those projects to deliver excellence, as generally this is in projects with a good match.Retrain yourself constantly. Learn a "big new thing" every year.

Contributing is marketing (aah, see arc42 for one of my personal examples)

Agree.

Slow times come when you can least handle them. Same is valid for fast times.

I agree also, and I have my family as witnesses ;-).

These are 9 commandments, so I have to come up with a 10th: In my daily practice I have found the following rule to be very fruitful: treat others like you wish to be treated. Ancient wisdom I believe, but it still works in 99% of the situations.

Categories: IT, consulting, IT-strategy, rules, ethics

Do you need an IT update?

2006-06-09T13:40:00.000+02:00

Signs that prove you need an IT update:

You are convinced that the last important event in IT was the announcement of ALGOL68
You have heard of NetWeaver, it’s one of these new, fancy web publishing tools by Macromedia
You think that funny penguin is the Google logo
You pronounce Microsoft’s newest programming language as "C Hash Sign"

[ all the signs above via Ron Tolido ]

You are surprised that the Beatles' record company is selling music players now
You definately want that super-cool "Andy"-based web front-end
You ask your procurement officer to buy SOA 2.0 for the company
You think that a "web log" is a good idea: you have always found it hard to read those damn text files with tracking and tracing info. It is nice to get the info presented through your Netscape browser!
You went to that Biztalk training: you wanted to learn to speak like your C-level executives
You still call yourself information planner while the rest of the world calls himself "architect"

Categories: IT, update, blogging, humor

Apple has learned from Microsoft

2006-06-08T20:49:00.000+02:00

A couple of minutes ago the news from ZDNet came in through my RSS reader, that Apple is suing Creative for violating Apple patents. It is their second countersuit, intensifying its legal battle against the smaller media player rival that sued the iPod maker for patent infringement last month. Creative started the case against Apple because they claimed that Apple was infringing on its patent called the "Zen patent," named after one of its portable media players. Apple used this Creative technology for their own iPod music player.

Apple has filed its case at the court of Texarkana, Texas. Legal experts think this is because juries at this court tend to choose the side of the patent holder. Others claim that Apple did this to take the case out of California (where both Creative and Apple are located), where lawsuits will most likely be combined or at least transferred, giving Apple some more time and delay.
Either way, it shows that Apple is taking this thing seriously, and the countersuit may well be something they learned from Microsoft: play hard ball to floor the competition. Once again this demonstrates that there is no black and white in IT: Apple, very often perceived as a sympathetic company that suffered from extremely agressive competition from Microsoft, now appears to follow the exact same strategy. Don't get mad, get even... and then get really mad.

Categories: Apple, Creative, lawsuit, iPod, MP3, patent

Does IT strategy matter?

2006-06-08T09:07:00.000+02:00

Sorry for borrowing your title format again Nick (this is great: you can reuse this format forever: "Does [fill in your subject] matter?").
In my daily practice as a consultant I get a lot of questions about IT strategy. Some of my clients are struggling to distinguish IT strategy from business strategy and (enterprise) architecture. What is IT strategy then and why does it matter?

An IT strategy articulates clear mission, vision, and objectives, bounds the options for attaining those objectives, and sets the roadmap for attaining them. IT strategies should always be driven by business strategies, whether or not it is well articulated. A good IT strategy balances visionary thinking with pragmatic business realities, and provides an initial statement of direction. It ensures that activities are aligned to pursue a shared goal. An IT strategy should help to better support the business, as the direction for IT is linked directly to the business strategy.

However, there are some figures that will raise questions on whether strategy in general matters. Take these numbers for instance, taken from the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative’s information base:

Only 5% of workforce understand the strategy
Only 25% of managers have personal objectives and incentives linked to strategy
85% of executive team spend less than one hour/month discussing strategy
60% of organizations don’t link budgets to strategy

These numbers emphasize that there are some barriers for successful strategic execution: there is a vision barrier, a people barrier, a management barrier and a resource barrier respectively

To be able to have a valuable strategic direction, people must understand that direction. If only 5% of the workforce understands the strategy, then what value does this bring? Why bother? Also, if the actions of those people are not at all relevant to the strategic plan, then what should you do? Create incentives, abandon the plan, alter the plan?

A lot of the problems I mention above, can be directly linked to two factors: communication, and leadership. It is my firm belief that it is not enough to create an IT strategy and then expect that people will pick it up, and act upon it. The IT strategy must be translated to tactical and operational objectives, to ensure that all activitities performed by the IT staff are relevant for the strategic direction. This requires a lot of communication, and a very good communication plan and execution of that plan.

The CIO should be the owner of the IT strategy, which brings us to my second point of leadership. I recently read in the CIO Wisdom book series that the average life span of a CIO in a company is only 18 months. If we take off the traditional 100 days for grace period, we have 15 months left, in which the CIO should create the IT strategy, and show the first results. It is obvious that this period is way too short to accomplish anything at the strategic level. The executives hiring CIOs (generally this is the CEO or the CFO) should be well aware of this, and a CIO should demonstrate leadership by stressing the importance of an IT strategy. You cannot run an IT department fully incident-driven, even though this is the daily practice of many IT organizations, which perhaps explains why the average CIO lasts only 18 months.

One of the key things the CIO (or any other owner of the IT strategy) should do, is create incentives for his middle management, to link their objectives to the IT strategy. Also, the budgets of the IT organization should be linked to the IT strategy, which closes the loop. The CIO should be aware of the fact that a complete IT strategy should at least hold the following elements: a summary of the business direction, the IT vision and mission, an IT architecture plan (including a migration roadmap), a service delivery model, a governance model and a business case for the IT strategy, which articulates the value of the strategic direction in financial terms.

Finally, organizations should realize that more and more business strategies and IT strategies are converging. This means that the person responsible for the IT function in the organization, should be in the boardroom as well, with the other C-level executives.

Without strengthening the position of IT strategy in the manner I just described, the answer to the question in the title of this post will be: no, only for a very small group of organizations.

Categories: IT-strategy, CIO, strategy, architecture, IT, governance

WS-SUV

2006-06-06T13:54:00.000+02:00

My recent post in which I compared SOAP services to sports utility vehicles (SUVs) has been picked up by Stefan Tilkov, and on his blog a discussion started on whether or not to use a SUV, a bike or a real off-road vehicle for rough surface.

Mike Champion (what a great name if you are in IT!) came up with the term WS-SUV, and I must say that I kind of like it:

It is an excellent fit with existing WS-* specs
It holds a TLA (three-letter-acronym)
It refers to my SUV analogy, which is great I think to explain why SOAP services do not fit with all requirements

The discussion over on Stefan's blog is quite amusing, have a look at it. I tried to Google for "WS-SUV", and Patrick Logan has already posted about it. Patrick: the useless analogy is mine, not Stefan's! Give me proper credit for my work please ;-)!

Categories: SOA, SOAP, web-services, REST, SUV

SOAP/WS-* services are like SUVs

2006-06-04T20:03:00.000+02:00

In a way SOAP services are like sports utility vehicles (SUVs): at first everyone liked them and wanted to have them, and now more and more people are turning their backs at them. That's not all they have in common! Loyal readers of my blog must have noticed that I love analogies, so I will explain my newest analogy a bit further.

Not only is the popularity of both SUVs and SOAP services fading: the power promised by the marketing behind both is impressive as well. However, very often you will find that what at first looked like the perfect fit for you, can turn out to be not so comfortable or even something you do not really want. SUVs are not very practical in every day life: it is hard to find a large enough parking spot, the automobile needs a lot of gas and it is not the most comfortable car in the world. SOAP services on the other hand very often have a payload with a lot of redundancy due to the WSDL spec, they require quite some bandwidth (as a result), and especially with the full WS-* stack they are not comfortable for developers. How does this fit with respectively the sporty business man who likes to be active in the outdoor when he is not working, and the kind of service that will provide a business with true agility? Obviously there is a huge gap between expectations/image and reality.

And now both face a growing group of people that do not like them. In The Netherlands there is one left-wing political party active in a city trying to ban SUVs from the town center, and on the Internet there are several web sites that are somewhat anti-SUV (if you are brave enough to withstand strong language: here, here and here). SOAP services are often accused of being too complex and/or opposed to a less "Enterprisey" way of distributed computing, REST (here and here for instance).

Now the good thing about this analogy is that it holds a very clear lesson for when to use it: if you do not need the off-road capabilities or if you never flick the 4WD switch, probably you do not need an SUV. If you do not need the SOAP extension /WS-* possibilities or if you never make clever use of the SOAP header, probably you do not need SOAP services. The 4WD switch gives you extra power for specific situations, just like the SOAP extensions and header do. If you feel however that you need an SUV / SOAP service anyway, you probably do not want it for the right reason (probably it is for some irrational reason). If you just want to go from A to B via the highway (and don't have to go through puddles of mud and unpaved ways) then you do not need an SUV; if you do not need to comply with strict QoS requirements/demands, then you do not need SOAP services. In that case you can accomplish the same with far less complexity, cost and more comfort. It's really that easy!

Categories: SOA, web-services, SOAP, enterprisey, analogy, metaphor, SUV

Ethics in IT

2006-06-02T16:45:00.000+02:00

Amnesty International has accused large IT companies of cooperating with repressive regimes. I wrote about this before (here and here), and as it now appears Amnesty thinks it is time to act: they have launched a campaign in the UK to create awareness for the fact that some large IT firms (in particular Cisco is criticized) do not hesitate to give user information to questionnable authorities, or to block certain content (we also call this censorship). They voice their concern on a web site that comes with the campaign:

Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information.
The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments – with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are cracking down on freedom of expression.

Now my question is: where should freedom of expression end, and where should censorship begin? I think a lot of us are struggling with that question. This week a story hit the Dutch news, that an Internet provider made the decision to delete the web site of a new political party in The Netherlands. Although the Netherlands have a reputation for being very liberal and open-minded, most people approved with this action, because this political party was propagating... paedophilia and sexual intercourse with minors.

What do you think? Should there be a role for government in this? Or should we allow anything on the Internet? Where's the boundary between protecting people and censorship?

Categories: ethics, internet, amnesty, freedom, politics

Visions on Enterprise 2.0

2006-06-02T10:09:00.000+02:00

A lot of attention has been drawn lately to the whole "2.0" thing. First there was Web 2.0 which gained a lot of critical attention, then in the last weeks there was SOA 2.0, and my best guess is that Enterprise 2.0 will be the next thing discussed around the blogosphere.

Before getting involved in the discussion whether or not it makes sense to version concepts, let's take a look at how some people define Enterprise 2.0. Andrew McAfee, professor at the Harvard Business School, defines Enterprise 2.0 as follows:

Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers. Social software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication and to form online communities. (Wikipedia's definition). Platforms are digital environments in which contributions and interactions are globally visible and persistent over time. Emergent means that the software is freeform, and that it contans mechanisms to let the patterns and structure inherent in people's interactions become visible over time.
Freeform means that the software is most or all of the following:
- Optional
- Free of up-front workflow
- Egalitarian, or indifferent to formal organizational identities
- Accepting of many types of data

Interestingly enough, Gartner defines Enterprise 2.0 as follows:

Enterprise 2.0 is roughly equivalent to what many refer to as (enterprise) SOA.

Maybe it's just me, but I think what McAfee is talking about, is something totally different from what Gartner refers to. Gartner distinguishes Enterprise 2.0 from Web 2.0, stating that in contrast to Web 2.0, enterprise-class computing typically involves a more xenophobic outlook and is associated with more-complex projects, higher availability, more scalable and reliable systems, and larger teams of developers and systems managers. Enterprise-class computing is not changing much as it enters its next generation, which they name Enterprise 2.0.

So there is a clear and striking difference in how Enterprise 2.0 is perceived. According to Gartner Enterprise 2.0 is in fact the equivalent of SOA 2.0 which has been discussed a lot lately, but as far as I am concerned, the term Enterprise 2.0 (and the underlying concepts) make more sense than the term SOA 2.0. McAfee on the other hand perceives Enterprise 2.0 as the incarnation of Web 2.0 concepts within the Enterprise.

What Gartner is doing, is making a distinction between requirements for global-class computing, and requirements for enterprise-class computing. Global-class is consumer-oriented, whereas enterprise-class is more inside-out. Basically the same distinction I made for different requirements for REST and SOAP/WS-*. Again it comes down to the fact that Web Style serves another purpose than SOAP.
McAfee on the other hand perceives Enterprise 2.0 as consumer-centric.

Hmmmm... I feel a lot of new confusion coming up, as we are still unable in IT to pinpoint concepts and come up with terms for evolvements that make sense, and mean the same to all involved.

Categories: Enterprise2.0, SOA, REST, SOAP, Web2.0

Thought on SOA 2.0

2006-06-01T10:07:00.000+02:00

Sandy Kemsley had an interesting comment to my recent post on SOA being hijacked:

"SOA 2.0 is a further travesty. The two Neils have an anti-SOA 2.0 petition here."

As much as I can understand the feeling that SOA 2.0 is maybe not the best of ideas, I think the idea of an anti-SOA 2.0 petition is not the best of ideas neither. Although I am not the biggest fan of the SOA 2.0 thing neither, I think it clearly signals that there is something wrong with SOA 1.0. And there is: it is totally technology-driven.

I must say that I am not a very big fan of adding the "2.0" version number to all new evolvements and evolutions in technology and concepts. Web 2.0 may not be the best of choice for the concept, and neither is SOA 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0. However, the term has been adopted by a large range of people, and clearly the "2.0" thing means something for a lot of people. And do not forget that we have a long history of incorrect names, in the past for instance I write that the terms Ajax and SOA do not make much sense or are not well chosen.

Recently a lot of concerns and objections have been voiced against the SOA/WS-* thing. Rightly so or not, to dismiss these objections and problems by coming up with the 2.0 version of SOA, and making SOA 1.0 obsolete, is not going to help. What is going to help, is to give up the idea that techies will need to introduce SOA in the company. Techies only have a very marginal role in SOA, it is a business thing, so business should be responsible and accountable for SOA success.

Categories: SOA, SOA2.0, Enterprise2.0, REST, business, Web2.0

The bad image of Microsoft

2006-05-30T11:41:00.000+02:00

Microsoft is still not the company with the best image. The company has been the evil empire of IT for some years now, and a lot of people loved to read the critical inside view on MSFT on the Mini-Microsoft blog. However last Sunday the author of the blog, Who da'Punk (I don't think that's his real name... In fact, Microsoft still does not know the real identity of this Microsoft employee!), announced that he would stop blogging for a while. Will that be a relief for Microsoft? Maybe.

However, there is still a lot to do to improve the image of the guys from Redmond. As Ron Tolido (Capgemini CTO for EMEA, who is now blogging with his global counterpart Andy Mulholland) pointed out in a recent post, Microsoft is struggling to become the choice of the winner or the good guy:

"...in the offices of the famous Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) everybody is using trendy Apple equipment, including many 30-inch Studio Displays and even a real Cube, used by hero Jack in person. The opposition however, always uses shabby looking PCs running Windows XP."

Of course MSFT has the possibility to sponsor movies and TV shows and have heroes carrying around notebooks with XP while listening to an MP3 player with Mediaplayer installed on it, but I do not think the audience will buy this: too obvious that it is sponsored! I mean: even at the Microsoft campus the employees prefer the iPod over MP3 players with Mediaplayer installed on it (although reportedly they have to paint their headphones black, to hide that they are listening to an iPod, because the execs at MSFT do not like the idea of MSFT employees using iPods!).

My best advice on how to improve the Microsoft image? Deliver Vista on time and make sure it is solid as a rock, that will create a lot of goodwill...

Categories: Apple, brand, Microsoft, Mini-Microsoft, Vista

Proprietary Web 2.0

2006-05-30T10:27:00.000+02:00

Web 2.0 as we all know is about three things (four if you think that it is all hype):

Architecture - web technology and architecture as a subset of SOA, with characteristics such as Ajax and composite applications / mashups.
Community - the fundamental shift in the ways in which people use technology to interact with each another and with businesses, with emphasis on the participatory character.
Business - business side of Web 2.0 is all about empowering third parties and consumers to repurpose content and services in new and unique ways.

O'Reilly appear to be forgetting about the first, ignoring the second and going only for third for their own purpose: they are claiming to have applied for a trademark for the term "Web 2.0". What they are basically aiming to do, is to forbid organizers of conferences for instance to use the term "Web 2.o" in the conference title. In fact it appears that O'Reilly's business model for Web 2.0, is to make money out of the term.

I cannot believe this. What's next? The manufacturer of the floor-cleaner forcing developers and vendors not to use the term Ajax anymore? The coffee brand sueing Sun for naming the programming language after their product?
The solution to this claim is as simple as elegant: let's just call it Web 2.1 or Web 3.0, as that would make O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 obsolete.

Categories: Web2.0, Ajax, business, model, mashup, social, software

Do more with less: the new IT mantra

2006-05-24T13:39:00.000+02:00

The warning by Gartner's Kevin McGee that IT is now a "non-growth" industry has sure made an impact in our industry. The job of CIO (Career Is Over?) wasn't the easiest already, but it certainly appears that it is rapidly becoming the most difficult job in the (IT) world. Once again, IT budget growth will not be more than 3 percent, which many people believe indicates that this means the end of the growth of our industry. Of course Nick Carr thought this was a reason to get once more some emphasis on his statement that "IT Doesn't Matter".

Not everyone has the same opinion as Nick however. Vinnie Mirchandani for instance came up with a list of 10 things that can help to save IT budget, he names these the top 10 IT spend items with the most "empty calories:

Software Vendor Annual Maintenance contracts
Outsource contracts signed more than 18 months ago
Software “shelfware”
Telecom “shelfware” - unused phone, T1 etc lines
Lack of offshore shared services across client specific development centers
Telecom “fringe” services – WI-FI hotspot charges, international mobile roaming etc
Lack of “hardware as a service”
Everything with cheaper building blocks - x86, open source, global labor - but finished product still pricey
Staff aligned more with Accenture and EDS thinking than with 37Signals and Google

Some interesting points, and I definately think these things can save any CIO a lot of money. BUT, do not be fooled: picking up the challenge and trying to improve either of these points is not something easily done within the typical budgeting cycle of one year. In fact, I think that you will first need to invest in corrective actions associated with these points, before any savings will become visible. Which of course brings us to the highly underestimated and under-emphasized (is that correct US/English?) thing called "The Business Case". All corrective actions associated with Vinnies 10 points need a strong yet realistic business case (preferably with a ROI of less than 1 year, otherwise you will have a very hard time speaking to the CFO) which justifies spending on these actions. And, most importantly: a lot of these emtpy calories would not have been there, if the company in question had a long history of writing good business cases.

Vinnie says that it's not the end of corporate computing, but it's the dawn of a new computing paradigm. If you ask me, I think the new IT mantra is to do more with less. With every (large) IT investment, you should ask yourself the question: "how is this going to help my business?" or "what is the business value of this?". That is something we have not done for too long in our industry. So that should be the new computing paradigm: provide business value for money.

SOA has been hijacked

2006-05-23T15:31:00.000+02:00

In the last 2 years the SOA term and concept has been hijacked by mainly technology-driven vendors and bloggers that purely focused on the technical stuff involved with SOA. This (also) has resulted in SOA reaching the so-called trough of disillusionment, and has left many people wondering what the real business value of SOA is (not in the last place some influential bloggers like Vinnie). Also, for some reason I still can't believe, SOA is often opposed to REST, as the SOA vs REST debate is still going on in the blogosphere. Unbelievable, all this can be brought down to the fact that the SOA concept has been hijacked in my opinion by some guys narrowing it down to a new sort of software architecture. Of course the fact that it has the word "oriented" in it does not help much, as this provokes some kind of Pavlov reaction for a lot of people to think about software architecture. And I have said it before and I will say it again: SOA is more about business strategy, than about software architecture!

SOA has become something of a bubble, and many people are eager to let it pop. It is like I wrote in a column back in April:
"SOA is in a way much like the Internet about 10 years ago: it has a potential value proposition that goes way beyond the technology and it has been over-marketed for a long time as everyone claims to be doing something with it or offering the ultimate solution for it. However, history has taught us that some of the causes of the Internet crash were the inability to make businesses understand the opportunities, and the inability to integrate the new technology into the established IT plans. To prevent history from repeating itself, we should learn from this and approach SOA differently, hence as a business strategy."

Fortunately more and more clever people, such as JP Morgenthal, and the guys from Zapthink who wrote the book "Service Orient or be Doomed!", which I have read recently (after reading the full book I still think the message of the book is good, although long-winded), are evangelizing SOA as a business strategy. Hopefully the fact that the people who originally hijacked the SOA concept are now moving towards REST and Web style, will mean that the right amount of emphasis will be laid on the fact the SOA must be (made) interesting for the business, instead for IT only. Make business understand the possibilities, instead of scaring the heck out of them with senseless sum-ups of acronyms.

SOA too slow? DON'T let the debate begin!

2006-05-19T10:31:00.000+02:00

I have based the title of this post on a blog posting by Joe McKendrick, titled "SOA too slow? Let the debate begin". Joe writes about a CTO quoting the following regarding the perceived slowness of web services:
"Dennis Nadler, chief technology officer for federal integrator Merlin Technical Solutions of Greenwood Village, Colo., told us, 'you don’t want a Web service between you and your rocket launcher.'"

Of course you do not want this! It would be like the same as saying that:
a) For US readers: "Michael Jordan should play in the next Super Bowl as a quarterback".
b) For readers from other parts of the world (for whom football/soccer is the number 1 sport): "Ronaldinho will be elected in the World Team of the Year as goal keeper".

Just like Michael Jordan is not the best choice for quarterback and Ronaldinho is probably not the best goal keeper in the world, web services are not the best choice for high-performance, nano-second transactions. Even though Jordan and Ronaldinho are legends and superior athletes in other aspects, they will not fit. Now the same goes for web services: although not legendary yet, they are a superior technology in some areas and aspects (be it as SOAP service, or be it as REST/Web style service).

The analogy between Jordan/Ronaldinho and web services ends with future prospects: I don't think Jordan will ever be fit for quarterback, and I think Ronaldinho will never be put in goal, but I do think that at one point web services will have sufficient performance and speed to deliver the goods for, say, rocket launchers.
It is just silly now to ignore the analysis which technology or tool fits best with requirements, and just throw in web services for requirements on high speed and performance. That really sounds like the old saying about SOA: "when all you have is a hammer.... etc."

In most of the debate on SOA these days (SOA(P) vs REST, performance/Binary XML etc.) people ignore what the user is asking for, and focuse one-sidedly on technology matters that do not provide any business value. That is why I hope that the debate on SOA being too slow will not begin.

Ajax developer tool kits are coming up

2006-05-18T12:55:00.000+02:00

Google has once again proved to be the front runner for Ajax / Web 2.0 development and evolvement. They have just released the Google Web Toolkit beta (of course it is a beta, what would you expect from a Web 2.0 thing?!), which can translate a Java application to JavaScript and HTML. The widgets included with the tool kit enable users to add standard user interface elements to the application. The tool kit even comes with an example application, named Kitchen Sink.

Microsoft on the other side, are still considering whether or not to join the OpenAjax initiative they have been invited for, which should coexist with their already existing Atlas framework for Ajax.

The fact that the large players are active in creating tool kits for developers means that the technology wil expand rapidly because the compexity of it will be shielded from developers and users, which in turn shows that probably Ajax is here to stay.

A European perspective of mashups: navigation systems

2006-05-18T11:43:00.000+02:00

In December I wrote about mashups and the Right to Remix, and one of the readers of my blog asked some questions about mashups in general and the situation in Europe.

Well, for some things I can be quite short: Web 2.0 and mashups are not really big (yet) in Europe as far as I can tell. However, if we take into account that generally speaking Europe is behind approximately 12-18 months on the US / Silicon Valley regarding emerging technologies, this should not come as a surprise since the term Web 2.0 was first coined in Q4 of 2004. Which however means that the first signs of Web 2.0 / Mashup activity should be visible by now. In fact these are!

Gartner has named Dutch company TomTom as 'Cool Vendor' for Web 2.0. TomTom is famous for creating and selling GPS (Global Positioning Systems) navigation systems for in cars. Quite recently the company has been brought to the Amsterdam stock exchange, is doing quite well in fact. Although currently TomTom does not (yet) do very much with Web 2.0 concepts and mashups, it is in the right lane for establishing a string position worldwide for navigation systems and map technology. It is expected that GPS navigation will grow incredibly as the mashup concept evolves to integrate navigation. It should come as no surprise that companies active on the map / SaaS area, such as Google and Microsoft, are very interested in this emerging market, particularly as the amount of software in cars grows with every new model that comes from the drawing tables and assembly lines.
One thing TomTom is doing very well, is focussing on a user community and developer community, as this enables them to ride the mashup wave once it is coming at its full force to Europe. All over the Internet, there are downloadable add-ons for TomTom's most popular navigation systems, with instructions in specific languages and even regional dialects (I am not sure that there is a Klingon version yet - there is a Klingon Google version - but I am pretty sure that some techie will be working on this).

Also in my day-to-day practice as a consultant I have run into the Web 2.0/mashup concept. I have been doing some research for a client which has a lot of its employees on the road all day, and they were looking for solutions to optimize the planning and navigation of these employees. They got stuck into the complexity of location services and navigation systems, and based on our advice they are now even taking a look at stuff like GoogleMaps and examples of mashups with GoogleMaps such as busmonster.com, to see how this technology can be leveraged in their systems.

So yes, there is an emerging market for Web 2.0 / mashups in Europe, however the players on this market are not at full speed yet, but they are showing a growing awareness.

Web 2.0 makes it to Office 2007

2006-05-15T22:44:00.000+02:00

Joe Friend from Microsoft has announced on his blog that Word 2007 will have a feature that will publish texts from Word automatically on blogs. Apparantly MSFT have discovered the popularity of blogs, particularly because a lot of their employees are blogging too (in fact some of them even have quite interesting blogs, especially when they decide not to use it as some marketing instrument). Who knows, that under pressure from their own employees in the blogosphere, they decided to add this capability to the new Office suite. Or could it be that Office 2007 can use any feature that can convince people to upgrade?

With the increasing competition from open source stuff such as OpenOffice, and SaaS competitors such as Writely and ajaxWrite (I love the use of camel case for the naming ;-) ), MSFT has to do something to attract people to the new Office. Why not use such a feature as described in Joe Friend's post, as apparantly some people are waiting for such a feature. Plus, as an added bonus, MSFT can say that they added some Web 2.0 flavor to the new Office.

Or maybe the true reason why MSFT is adding this feature is because of the large blogging population in their own company: if they make it easier and quicker for employees to publish stuff on their web logs, these guys can then get back to their work and finish a decent and stable Vista in time.

The CEO and techies should hang out together more often..

2006-05-10T19:45:00.000+02:00

Let's throw in a generalization for a second: generally speaking, technical persons dislike anyone with the word "manager" in their job title. However, there is only one kind of other employees in the company (apart from end users maybe) they even dislike more: C-level executives.

Take this story on The Daily WTF for instance (yea it's a geeky name for a geeky site): apart from the fact that this example shows that you should never write an email (and actually send it out too!) when you are very emotional, the reactions from a part of the techy community are not much better... Probably the CEO and techies need to hang out together more often, although I doubt that the Grand Canyon between both cultures can ever be bridged ;-).

The strength of the Apple brand

2006-05-09T08:35:00.000+02:00

Let me start by saying that I am not the traditional Mac-lover or Apple die-hard. Quite frankly, the few times that I had the opportunity to work with an Apple, somehow I always felt that a right mouse button was missing. Also, I am not the kind of guy that has an Apple sticker on an IBM Thinkpad to make people believe that I am working with an Apple (is it just me, or do these people generally only pull out their laptop on an airport to impress other people?).

This week, there was good news for Apple twice: earlier this week a French 'anti-iTunes' law proposal was delayed in the French senate. The 'anti-iTunes' law proposal states that stores that protect music with their own digital rights management system, should also provide access to that protection technology to other companies. Now this is exactly what Apple is doing with their iTunes: their digital rights management system Fairplay is not licensed for 3rd parties, which means that songs purchased at iTunes cannot be played on music players other than the iPod. This is completely in line with Apple's policy that the iTunes store is in the first place meant for promotion of the iPod. Which of course is by far the most popular portable music player, something that Apple's competitors are not too keen on (in fact I even heard that MSFT employees are not allowed to have iPod's, and that some MSFT employees even paint the headphones - which are white typically for iPod - black so their supervisors will not see that they are carrying an iPod). As you all know over here in Europe we are very keen on anti-trust cases against large companies (just ask MSFT), so the French parliament prepared a law against this practice from Apple. Unfortunately for them, the French senate has not accepted this, which means that Apple, which feared that they would have to close their French Music store, is still in business in France. Although this may sound like a minor thing for Apple (it is not like the French market is the largest in the world), the effects could have been much worse, as probably if the law would have passed in the French senate, somebody would also have raised this issue in the European Community.

Then also this week Apple won a court appeal from the record label Apple (world famous for being the record company of the Liverpool legends The Beatles). The record company claimed that in 1991 they signed an agreement that the computer company Apple (let's call them AAPL for now) would not get involved in distributing music. The record company now feels that AAPL has entered their market with the iTunes thing. The judge however decided otherwise, and AAPL can continue their iTunes activities.

What strikes me most about both news facts, is that despite the fact Apple is showing behavior that a lot of people dislike when it comes from another company (namely: lock-in through proprietary standards!), Apple still manages to retain their status of cool company. Even when they compete against one of the icons of the sixties, they still manage to remain on top as far as the public opinion is concerned. Apparantly Apple is a very strong brand, which appeals very much to what people want in the 21st century.

Take this last news fact for instance: Two Australian miners have been rescued from a gold mine after being trapped deep underground for two weeks. The men were given food and water through a small plastic pipe, and rescuers also managed to get iPods to them to help pass the time. So for these guys, the iPod came third in line for primary needs in case of emergency, after water and food.

Social networks in the Real World

2006-05-08T09:52:00.000+02:00

Dennis Howlett, who has 2 very interesting blogs (here and here), has written a good piece on LinkedIn as a social network builder. Social networks are one of the core ideas of the entire Web 2.0 thing, one of the potentially most significant things, but also one of the least tangible I think. But that's maybe just because I am over 18, and apparantly a lot of people under 18 are currently engaging in all kinds of social networks on the Internet, either through dating sites for youngsters, groups for gamers or just networks for people wanting to chat. And these are extremely popular: I don't recall right now where I read it, but recently it was in the Dutch news that about 30% of all interactions with people of the same age, is through these social networks. A whole generation is growing up with these networks, and these are becoming an increasingly important way to socialize and communicate with friends and peers.

I guess LinkedIn is kind of like this for professionals over 18, and Dennis brings up some quite interesting facts in his post on the LinkedIn phenomenom:

Growth in Europe has been spectacular and recently, LinkedIn reported 325,000 new members per month. And, it is proftable so there’s no financial pressure. Good for them.

That is impressive: 325,000 new members per month, and being able to make a profit too. But, numbers do not tell the whole truth, it is quality that counts. I have been on LinkedIn since January 2006, when some colleague told me about it (I guess that makes me a late adopter, not for the first time ;-) ). Every now and then I did a search through the directory, and I was quite surprised about the number of people I was able to find in the directory. Of course there is not a single scientific basis for my apparently random search, but to me it showed that the quality is not that bad either.
Although I have not yet been in the situation that LinkedIn was of any benefit to me (apart from that it is interesting to see how you are connected to other people), it clearly showed me 2 things:

There is such a thing as social networks that have the potential to become a hit as a lot of people believe it can be of any value (critical mass!)
There appears to be a business model for it, as LinkedIn is profitable.

Are we dealing with (one of) the first sign(s) that Web 2.0 is something substantial?

The domino effect of the new Vista delay

2006-05-03T13:17:00.000+02:00

Gartner has predicted that Vista will be even further delayed, and will not hit the market before spring 2007. According to official plans by MSFT, Vista beta 2 will be released at the end of June, the production version for volume-licensing partners (computer manufacturers) will be released in November 2006 and the production version for other users in January 2007.

This latest prediction is not only bad news for MSFT. If indeed Vista will once again be delayed, it is also bad news for the computer manufacturers that will miss out on selling new computers with Vista installed in the 2006 Christmas season. It would also be bad news for AMD and Intel, as with a previous delay of Vista they announced that they would delay the introduction of their new processors too. That is the domino effect of another delay of Vista, and shows very clearly the dependencies between the creator of the dominant desktop OS, processor manufacturers and computer manufacturers. To me this sounds like a not so healthy eco system for desktop computers, with characteristics of a symbiotic relationship between the key stakeholders.