|
Blog: James Taylor« April 2008 | Main | June 2008 » May 21, 2008James and Neil presenting at Intalio's user conferenceThe folks at Intalio invited us to speak at their user conference June 17-18. We are presenting on Applying Decision Management to Make Processes Smarter, Simpler and More Agile on the first day. We would love to see you there so drop by and say hello if you are attending. Also we have a discount code if you are interested in attending - drop me a line (james at smartenoughsystems.com) and I’ll hook you up. We should have signed copies of the book for sale too. Related Posts
Why Events Matter To The BusinessLast session of the day (also blogged on paper) was Charles Brett on Why Events Matter To The Business and what this means for application development professionals. I heard Charles talk on a similar subject at the IBM IMPACT event -Live from IMPACT - Business Event Processing. While many more business and IT people are aware of and/or using event processing or Complex Event Processing (CEP) solutions than you would expect, there is still a fair amount of confusion around terms. To try and clarify this, Charles defined a number of different types of event processing:
In general, he said, events are everywhere, there are different styles of event processing and events are integral to integration, architecture and extended processes. Charles shows Events, Process, Services and Information as different aspects of the same problem and thinks they should all be considered, regardless of where you start your thinking. He made a number of specific points:
He had a number of nice examples. Two of my favorites where remote monitoring of multiple ICUs each with multiple pieces of equipment - particularly good as most ICU staff turn off the alarms on machines because they go off too much (they are hooked up to sick people, after all) and so more sophisticated monitoring that includes data about the patient seems like it would work way better - and monitoring a multi-stage service job so that if the first few stages take too long the system can assume delay in completion and start rescheduling. The role of decisions in linking events, processes, services and information is one on which I will write some more soon. Related Posts
The Future of Enterprise ApplicationsI had to blog the last two sessions on paper - there are no power sockets in the hotel (the Palazzo at the Venetian in Las Vegas, conference planners please note) and my battery eventually gave up. So, back in the hotel now, here’s a summary of the notes I took. Sharyn Leaver presented on the the future of Enterprise Applications. Sharyn began by identifying the success imperatives for Business Process and Applications professionals - these are something Forrester has identified for each of the 9 roles they discuss. These are:
Her focus in this session was the third - adopting next generation packages. Forrester’s view is that enterprise application vendors will deliver Dynamic Business Applications (of which more tomorrow) or become obsolete. They also feel that only process-centric organizations will really be able to take advantage of these applications. The last year or two has been full of consolidation in the EA business and upgrades, especially major upgrades, are very much on the mind of Forrester’s customers. Big upgrades are complex decisions and tend to cause customers to re-evaluate their whole application strategy. The EA business continues to be impacted by what Forrester jokingly calls the Four Horsemen:
and while the impact of Open Source and Offshore has been limited on EA vendors, SOA and SaaS have caused significant disruption and will continue to do so. However, people still want to buy packaged applications - templates and best practices - and this is not going to change any time soon. That said, customers do find packaged applications too inflexible, too hard to match to requirements, lacking in visibility and inadequate when it comes to supporting cross-functional processes. This leads to the Dynamic Business Applications approach Forrester proposes where applications are Designed for People and Built for Change. Forrester feels that application vendors will make some progress on these but that their business models will make it impossible for them to get all the way there.
Oracle, she feels, has an edge in building for change thanks to its platform products while SAP has an edge in being more process-centric (though it’s build for change platform is a weakness). The changing market dynamics do leave an opportunity for smaller application vendors outside the “big 4″ if they focus on tangible business results in verticals or even “micro verticals”. In addition, BPM vendors can use frameworks to compete effectively (Pegasystems’ CRM framework for instance) and service providers may be able to compete by offering “last mile” applications. She ended up with some conclusions and a recommendation:
Related Posts
May 20, 2008Internet Phase II: CollaborationJohn Chambers, CEO of Cisco was talking about the next phase of the internet - collaboration. The market is in transition - social networking has changed personal communities and these technologies will also transform the future of work. Cisco’s approach is to focus on transitions - not competitors, but market transitions. In ‘97 they focused on all in one IP-based networks. In 2000 it was networks of networks - any device on any network. In 2006 it was the idea of the network as a platform given the prevalence of computing power. The next wave he says is:
He believes that collaboration will drive productivity at the same kind of rates we saw in the 10 years between 1996 and 2006. He likes to use Cisco as an example - Telepresence to reduce travel while increasing customer contacts, using video to make a more engaging marketing presence online, using collaboration tools to allow a worldwide perspective on legal teams, wikis to bring ideas from all around the company to market etc. The use of blogs, video, shared bookmarks, wiki, social media all come together as employees collaborate. In Cisco’s mind, all of this revolves around video and telepresence because that it is key to getting engagement. Unified communication is not about just sharing hardware, it’s about using lots of different communication vehicles as part of an integrated collaboration environment. John feels that change must start at the top, especially in the IT department. The CIO must align their objectives to those of the CEO and the company. It cannot be just about reducing cost. Instead, IT must help the company change its mindset by providing the infrastructure to support the collaboration. A much larger group is now engaged and collaborating in a number of different areas. John feels that this new approach let’s them tackle very many new projects even though no-one is dealing with very many. He spent some time re-iterating the role of innovation in driving new markets, new business models and the importance of collaborative technology, process and culture in this. Now, does he back video so hard because it means lots more Cisco equipment is needed or will it really become central? Related Posts
The New Enterprise Data Center (IBM)Rich Lechner of IBM came next, talking about the new enterprise and it’s new enterprise data center. Supporting business innovation is impacted, he said, by three things:
At the same time IT has to deliver operations to support the current business and adopt new technologies like cloud computing, web 2.0, SaaS and more. The bottom line remains delivering a great experience with unbounded scale - no upper limit, cloud computing. This is what an IT department must deliver to support innovation - massively scalable, on demand computing - and doing so can allow resources to be moved from operations to innovation. They see three steps:
The world, he says, is fundamentally changing. Enterprises don’t have borders, unbounded infrastructure and data that is real time and bi-directional. Collaboration is key and IT can (and should) enable this. Related Posts
Live from Forrester - Don't Wait to InnovateBobby Cameron came up next and begun by highlighting how little IT sometimes matters to business innovation - even innovative companies and CEOs don’t think of their IT in this way. So why is this a problem? Executives say one thing but do another:
IT adds to this problem by:
He argues that IT can become an innovation leader and help firms find, fund and deliver innovation. However there are some issues. Given the definition they use, inventions aren’t innovations unless they generate business impact and adapting existing things to new uses can be. People often think that, between the regular ongoing investments and game-changing ideas is a break point where they move from “business as usual” to “innovation”. Yet innovation can come at any point in the continuum. However, the middle ground is hard to do a business case for - it’s not running the business nor is it dramatic. Finally there is a question of where to look - what is the innovation network from which ideas can come. Companies like P&G don’t just invent things and transform ideas they are also brokering and financing ideas inside and outside the company. For an IT department this innovation network consists of other parts of the organization as well as suppliers and partners. IT can be an inventor, but this is rare and it cannot really do financing either. IT is better at being a transformer - taking ideas and convert them into business value - and at being a broker to link the parties needed for innovation to work. It is not enough, though, to find the right innovations you must also be able to fund them. To do this you must understand the context for innovation in your company, the innovation network, and have a defined and measured process with funding ownership (money and team separate from business as usual). He ended by discussing how, if there is too much resistance to having IT lead innovation, then IT departments can try some tactical steps:
Related Posts
Live from Forrester - Your Role in Business InnovationEric Browne and Mike Gilpin kicked it off and introduced the theme of the conference - Innovation. 80% of GDP growth comes from new products and more innovative companies have higher profit margin growth and stock returns. Innovation remains in the top 3 list of concerns for executives. They showed an interesting collection of definitions for “innovation” and these included
Business transformation is defined by Forrester as
Related Posts
Blogging Live from the Forrester IT Forum 2008I am at the Forrester IT Forum and I will be blogging live from as many sessions as I can. I am participating in some (so the post may be delayed) and there is no power in the keynote room so I may be reduced to writing notes and typing it up later! There is wireless but it’s so slow I am using my trusty Verizon wireless modem instead. There’s a wide range of topics here but I am going to be focused on the application development, information management and business process tracks. If there are readers attending, seek me out and say hi! Related Posts
May 19, 2008The Page 123 LinkfestI discovered over the weekend that there is a game called “What’s On Page 123″ that involves bloggers tagging each other. As Ken Molay, an old friend who writes the Webinar blog tagged me I now have to post to keep it going. The deal is that you have to write about the book you are currently reading, citing the 6th through 8th sentences on page 123. It turns out that I am reading The Best Service is No Service: How to Liberate Your Customers from Customer Service, Keep Them Happy, and Control Costs
Now, out of context, this may not be very helpful. If you check up on the book (and you should) you will see that it is about improving customer satisfaction not by improving customer service but by eliminating it - eliminating the need for it. Page 123 comes from the “Be Proactive” section and this, in turn, is one of the three ways to “challenge customer demand for service” with the others being “eliminate dumb contacts” and “create engaging self-service”. The book is a good read and makes a great overall point - customers don’t want a relationship with most of the companies from whom they purchase things, they want to be able to buy stuff and have it just work. For many transactions, a need for a “relationship” is a mark of failure - a product that does not work, a billing system that has problems, poor communication etc. I will write a review of the book when I finish it but I am certain that enterprise decision management - EDM - is a great way to deliver some of the systems that would be required for this mindset. while you wait for the blog post on the book, check out this series on using EDM to improve customer service. My last step in this is supposed to be to tag someone else so here goes - Sandy Kemsley (Column 2) - what’s on page 123 of the book you are reading? Related Posts
May 13, 2008Guest post over on the deal architectI have read Vinnie Mirchandani’s blog “the deal architect” for a while now and thoroughly enjoyed many of his posts. When he asked me to write a guest post I jumped at the chance and today you can find “The Real Deal: James Taylor on Raising Your Enterprise Application IQ” on his blog. Vinnie’s blog is one of the ones I look forward to reading and I highly recommend it. I have commented on quite a few of Vinnie’s posts since I started blogging, here are some I found:
Related Posts
|
and the relevant sentences are:
Comprehensive resources for business intelligence and data warehousing professionals.
NETWORK WEBSITES: BeyeNETWORK |
BeyeRESEARCH |
BeyeBLOGS |
BeyeSEARCH |
BeyeSURVEY
PARTNER SITES:
TDAN.com |
DSSResources.com |
DataGovernance.com |
DataGovernanceSoftware.com |
Decideo.fr
Press Releases | About Us | Contact Us | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Media Kit
Copyright 2004 — 2008. Powell Media, LLC. All rights reserved.
BeyeNETWORK™ is a trademark of Powell Media, LLC