A random blog

This blog is moving.

2006-07-04T11:24:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally got around to setting up my own domain and new blog. So this will be the last post for this blog. The new blog will be located at: www.brandonwhichard.com. Here is the new RSS feed for those of you using feed readers.

As my friend is fond of saying, you could give away bars of gold and people would complain about how heavy they are. So with that in mind, I'd like to say thanks to the Blogger team for all their free service for the last several years.

See you at the new blog.

Identity Management Buzz: Episode 2

2006-06-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

The second episode the Identity Management Buzz is now available. You can subscribe to the podcast RSS Feed here. You may also subscribe using this iTunes link. There is also a link below to the Odeo version for those that wish to listen directly in your browser.

powered by ODEO

Scruming

2006-06-19T23:08:00.000-05:00

I am well on my way to becoming a ScrumMaster. I will be attending this training class this week. Got any good topics or questions I should ask? One topic I am most interested is is "How to avoid wagilefall?" I let you know how it goes.

Burton Catalyst

2006-06-12T19:28:00.000-05:00

I will be attending the Burton Catalyst conference this week. If anyone else is there drop me line.

Should I lend on Prosper

2006-06-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

I love this direct person-to-person lending service from Prosper. I have been thinking about becoming a lender but for some reason, I just can't do it. I was only going to use a small sum to try it but something is holding me back. Why, I have no idea? Has anyone used this? Any opinions? Maybe I should just open another E*Trade CD or make another deposit to ING...

Dress slacks: Flat Front or Pleated?

2006-05-31T20:59:00.000-05:00

A question for my millions of blog readers. Do you prefer flat front or pleated dress slacks? Please post a comment. Thanks.

Lost Finale

2006-05-24T22:23:00.000-05:00

Wow, I am still digesting tonight's Lost Season Finale. I definitely think the guy Sawyer shot was the person who appears in the training videos. If you have Tivo, go back and look at his hair when he is lying down dead at about the 51 minute mark.

I think the "Quartatine Sign" was pulled off the sky which is somekind of Truman Show style roof.

I did call that "Herny Gale" was indeed the leader of "The Others."

Let the long wait for season 3 begin!

My new work podcast

2006-05-22T22:30:00.000-05:00

That's right, the world did need a podcast about Identity Management. Luckily, Nick and I are the ones to bring it to you. Our podcast is titled: "Identity Management Buzz." You can subscribe to the podcast using this RSS feed or if you pefer iTunes use this link.

Intranets Suck

2006-05-11T19:41:00.000-05:00

Cote was talking about Intranets and how they usually "suck." I have always wondered why thousands of people can collectively edit Wikipedia but corporations insist on deploying overly complicated content management solutions? What if anyone in the company could add or change any page on your Intranet wiki? If it works for Wikipedia, why won't it work in the Enterprise?

Access to Analyst Reports

2006-04-27T21:36:00.000-05:00

37 Signals recently released their new book Getting Real online as a ebook. They give away a few chapters that are designed to entice you into buying the whole book. I would like to see the same idea applied to analyst reports. For example, an analyst could put part of the report online for free and then charge a nominal fee to get the full report. Alternatively, an analyst could give away some reports and charge for others. The key though is to reset the price point for analyst reports. 37 Signals charges a very reasonable $19 for one copy of the book and $49 for a site license. When is the last time you purchased an analyst report for under $20?

Google Calendar Thoughts

2006-04-16T11:53:00.000-05:00

Like everyone else, I have been playing with the much anticipated Google Calendar. Overall, I think it's a very well done. It has all the AJAX style stuff you would expect from Google. I like that it is only loosely coupled with Gmail as well. I imported my calendar file from SunBird in just a few minutes and everything worked as expected. It's also great to see Google support the iCal standards and provide RSS feeds. I have no doubt we will see more integration and some cool mashups out of all this.

One use case I hope they work on is: "Schedule a Meeting." It is great I can share and see other people's calendars, which is a step in the right direction. Now, what they need to do is to provide a wizard style interface for scheduling a meeting. This interface would allow me to select the invitees and then show me a graphical schedule of availability and allow me to pick open times for a meeting. Right now, this is a multi-step process where you must first subscribe to everyone's calendar, look at availability, and then schedule the meeting. Some way to automate this would be outstanding. Exchange does this very well today. You can select invitee and schedule a meeting without having to subscribe to their calendars.

There is no doubt Exchange is the definitive market leader when it comes to calendars. There is one key use case that Exchange does not solve: "Schedule meeting across different companies." Google and it's hosted calendar is in the perfect position to solve this. If Google does this, then they may revolutionize how we use calendars. Let's hope the do.

Maps from Lost Blast door

2006-03-31T14:07:00.000-06:00

Here are two links that have the map that was shown on the blast door in the last Lost episode. Map 1 and an Map 2.

Of course, I have no idea what is going on still.

Enterprise Software pays off in decades not years

2006-03-27T23:05:00.000-06:00

Everyone wants immediate ROI for everything they buy. Who doesn't want immediate gratification? I know I do, why shouldn't large corporations want it. Truth be told is Enterprise Software pays off over decades. Take online bill pay. How long did it take to deliver on that promise? I would guess at least 10 years, maybe more. Of course, now large banks enjoy significant savings and consumers have been freed from the misery of check writing. It took awhile but it paid off.

If the customer really wants immediate ROI they should do the following:

1. Immediately stop buying all new software.
2. Keep every process the same.
3. Stop delivering new stuff.

In the short-term they will save, if that is what they really want. Otherwise, except the fact that what is deployed today will payoff down the road. That is the reality.

NCAA tournaments

2006-03-26T17:44:00.000-06:00

Congrats, to George Mason for making the Final Four. It's been fun watching their tournament run. March Madness is simply awesome, so much excitement. I only wish we could have this for college football. Can you imagine filling out an 8-team NCAA Football bracket? Now, that would be madness!

Ridding the Pine

2006-03-25T16:59:00.000-06:00

Assume for the moment you are Marissa Meyer the V.P. of Search Products and User Interface at Google. You have brought the world phenomenal applications such as Gmail and Google Search. What would use as your business email client? Probably Gmail? Maybe Thunderbird? No, you would use the ancient email program Pine:

"I use an e-mail application called Pine, a Linux-based utility I started using in college. It's a very simple text-based mailer in a crunchy little terminal window with Courier fonts. I do marathon e-mail catch-up sessions, sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday. I'll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight."

I know Google believes in minimalist UI design but wow is this extreme!

Bracket Aggregators

2006-03-18T14:43:00.000-06:00

With all these Web 2.0 companies launching, I am surprised no one has created a NCAA Bracket Pool Aggreator. This way I could do my picks once and then enter all the brackets on ESPN, CBS Sportsline, Yahoo, etc... What we really need is somekind of Gartner Magic Quadrant for NCAA Men's Basketball bracket sites. Then we would all just use the one that is in the top right that has both vision and the ability to execute.

No back to watching the games. So far so good, my final four is still alive.

Ranch 616 Restaurant Review

2006-03-12T12:19:00.000-06:00

I tend to eat the same places over and over. I been trying to venture out more and eat some of the smaller local places here in Austin. This weekend I went to dinner with some friends at Ranch 616. It was very good and I would recommend it. It is mostly southwestern style dishes. Some of the choices included: fish tacos, duck, and steaks.

Chip had one of the largest meals I have ever seen served. He had a rib-eye that came with a friend egg and a side of enchalados. He only finished half, which was still impressive. I had steak, mashed patotoes, and some shrimp. It was all very good. Check it out if you get the chance.

Session 3: Postgres

2006-03-11T14:52:00.000-06:00

Next up. Infor about Postgres.

- Missed speakers name... Will post later

- New features in postgres

Native windows support,
point in-time recovery
Tablespaces
Seavepoints
Two-phase commits
Roles

- In 8.1 all you have is roles. When you create a user you give them a role. No more unix style rights and permissions.

- Performance improvements include:

In-memory index bitmap scan
Improved butter management
Autovacuum
Vacuum cost delay
Background writer

- Advanced features:

Roles
Inheritance
Table partitioning
Rules

- Inheritance -- Take a parent table with common information. The child table then extend attributes that are specific to a specify application.

- Partitioning -- In 8.1 you can use subtables for breaking a big table into smaller based on things like date.

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Austin Bar Camp Session 2: Marketing Cluetrain Style

2006-03-11T14:16:00.000-06:00

- Tara Hunt from Riya is giving a presentation on Cluetrain Marketing. She is going over what cluetrain is and how to apply it.

- Dude, Doc Searls is in the house sitting two seats in front of me here at Austin Bar Camp. We are officially cool.

- Don't target the current thing or idea. Understand what needs will be in the community tomorrow.

- Reward your superfans. Gave examples about Apple and the "Spread Firefox" movement. Does not mean money, more about attention.

- Get involved in the community. Hire someone from the community.

- Be your own customer. What you buy it? Would you use it?

- When seeding a community be ready to back off. If your idea doesn't take then stop look at it. Pushing to hard my create enemies.

- Tools to use tagging, blogging, bookmarking, and social networking.

- Don't take yourself too seriously.

- Where to begin:

Who to you server?
What is your core strength?
Wht is your core score? Number of users, number of photos (flickr)
What action can you take today?

- Good prez. It was fun to watch Tara present Cluetrain in front of Doc. She seemed nervous and did a great job.

First session at BarCampAustin -- getting Shit and Getting Shit Done with Blogs

2006-03-11T12:12:00.000-06:00

Presentation by our favorite Redmonk Analyst Michael Cote.

- He is talking about to use blogs, wiki's, search appliance, etc within the Enterprise.

- Cote's requirements for "Enterprise Blogging Systems":

Self registration
Multi-user
Easy to setup and run: you'll do all the work
Multi-platform (for scaling)

- His advice is to do all this yourself as a skunkworks internal project. Don't wait for IT, they won't like it at first...

- The system he used included: Roller, Lyceam, WordPress, and Hosted....

- Other stuff you will want to have behind the firewall: aggregators, search, wiki's, and RSS. You need to create your own blogsphere within the Enterprise. Recommends using Newsgator Outlook plugins for new tech people.

- Best bullet point of presentation: "But I got shit and got shit done."

- There was some discussion about Stock (Wiki's) vs. Flow (blogs).

- Lots of discussion about how to sell blogs in an enterprise.

- Excellent session. Lots of discussion. Could not blog it all since I needed to chime in.

Attending Bar Camp Austin

2006-03-11T12:07:00.000-06:00

I am too cheap to get a pass to SXSW interactive but Bar Camp Austin is just the right price -- free. This is my first bar camp and I hoping it's good. I will try to post about the session throughout the day.

The photo stream is here.

Re: Cote on Enterprise Agile

2006-03-05T17:52:00.000-06:00

Cote has a good post on Enterprise Agile. All too often the consultants and academics of the world punt on providing advice on how to apply an idea to your work environment. It's great to see Cote taking this issue head on. That is how can enterprise software vendors use and apply agile. Here are some of my ideas building from Cote.

Re:Scrums-of-Scrums needs work:
This is all about fighting the fiefdom mentality. If you have multiple teams, then at some point infighting will start. Each team will think the other team is a bunch of idiots. If they are geographically separated, then this divide will start faster and grow deeper over time. To combat this you need to make sure at least some people are rotating amongst the various teams. This helps minimize the amount of animosity. Also, you have to find first-line managers who are willing to reassign resources without making it an emotional endurance test. If employee A has the skills to something on team 1, then let him move and encourage it. The single most important thing though is to make sure the teams understand they are working on one collective product. Instilling a common vision in everyone helps keep everyone on the same page

Re: Sales and Marketing
The truth about enterprise software is it's more like consulting then consumer software. A consultant engaged on a long-term project needs to cultivate a good client relationship. Most enterprise software revenue actually comes from maintenance. So what should the software sales rep be selling? First, he has to sell only the features in the product. Now, in return for towing the line on features, he should be able to sell predictability and reliability. That is the software is going to release on time every time. Everyone knows software releases are late and sometimes moslty lacking. Agile fixes this if nothing else. You should be able to easily predict when your going to release. As far as presenting the road map to customers, limit your discussions to only the story cards done in the first few iterations. This way you have them in the bag by the time customers are hearing about them. Enterprise software is more like a marathon then a sprint. You will never have all the features done for all the customers. However, if you deliver on time, then you are way ahead of the crowd. More importantly, customers will start to appreciate this thus preserving your maintenance revenue.

Re: Support:
Make support its own agile team. This group should be responsible for creating all hot fixes. All hot fixes should be rolled into quarterly service packs. Service packs should only contain bug fixes, no new features. Most importantly, make sure this team is staffed with people who like the firefighting that comes with the job. Support can't be a dumping ground for low performers. Think about it, support is one of the most important parts of the company. They are chartered with working with the customers at the most difficult times. If you don't staff it with good people, say goodbye to the maintenance revenue.

Re: Upgrades
If you are delivering package software then it's impossible to give customer new releases more than a few times a year. Ideally, I think you have one major and one minor release every year with service packs every quarter. The upgrade rarely works and mostly fails because it has been tested in a controlled environment. The best option is to replicate a real customers environment and test the upgrade on that. If that is not possible, then find the largest customer you have. Chances are they were already planning on testing your software before it goes into their production environment. Commit yourself to working with them to test the upgrade. Both sides win here, your largest customer gets preferred treatment and you get to really test the upgrade.

Okay, that's it from me. I think this is a great topic and would be very interested in how others are doing Enterprise Agile.

Health Insurance

2006-02-26T17:38:00.000-06:00

This month Fortune's cover story is about the troubles GM is facing g. One of the reasons cited is the high cost of GM's health benefits. It is with some irony to me at least that the State of Maryland is passing a law to force WalMart to increase it's health care benefits.

Reactive politics at it worse. When are we going to wake up and address the real problems concerning health insurance?

What side is you analyst on?

2006-02-26T16:51:00.000-06:00

I finally bought a new car this weekend bringing to end the long and sometimes painful car buying process. As with any major purchased, I tried to do as much research as possible. Like most, my main concern was determining the actual market price for both my trade-in and the new vehicle. The Internet is great for finding this information with countless web sites offering seemingly "insider information" on what dealers pay for cars.

In the end all these sites have to make money and therefore they all have some kind of motivation. Like many industries, the automotive information web sites fall into one of two broad catergories: buy side and sell side. I have become a devout Consumer Reports online subscriber and I believe they are the truest buy-side analyst. That is they take no money from manufacturers/vendors and don't offer any consulting services. They provide reports and analysis that is written for consumers and ultimately paid for by consumers. Knowing this I took advantage of several of the Consumer Reports buying services. The most important reports were the pricing reports for both my trade-in and new car. With this information in hand, I ventured out to the dealership to start negotiations.

I produced the Consumer Reports information to the dealer and made my offer. In the spirit of Getting to Yes, I felt I had identified an unbiased source of information, shared that information with the dealer, and made what I felt was a fair offer based on this market data. The dealer then counter offered using reports from Kelley Blue Book, which not surprisingly listed the car at a higher price. The difference is the Kelley information is listed for free. From what I can surmise, Kelley makes it's money by selling advertising to among others car manufactures and dealers. To me this makes Kelley a sell-side analyst. The most important customers to Kelley are the dealer and car manufactures and therefore it's only natural the Kelley prices were more "dealer friendly."

There is a need for both the sell-side and buy-side firms, I accept that. I only wish that sell-side firms would become more open about their bias. This doesn't just apply to Kelley Blue Book but all analyst firms across a variety of industries. It would be great if all these analyst firms just posted the percentage of revenue the received from the various manufactures/vendors. No one is saying they shouldn't make money, it would be great if they were more up front about it.

Frameworks vs. Point Products

2006-02-20T10:44:00.000-06:00

There is always a fundamental conflict when developing enterprise software. Enterprise customers want as much out-of-the-box functionality as possible while still having the option to customize everything. Enterprise customers expect your product to be simple yet flexible. These goals are diametrically opposed. If you remove options you make it simple but at the cost of flexibility. This dilemma leads enterprise software vendors to choose one of two paths: the framework or the point product.

Software vendors wishing to “sell high” to CXO’s will usually opt for the framework approach. Here the fundamental assumption is that it is impossible to build the functionality that every customer needs into the software. Instead, these frameworks provide a set of building blocks (SDKs, UI Widgets, etc) that will be used by deployment consultants to actually build the system the customer wants. These products have the ultimate flexibility to do virtually anything the customer desires but come at a high cost in the form of consulting and deployment fees. Applications like Tivoli, Seibel, and SAP all fall into this category. The theory though is the customer gets exactly what they wanted when it finally rolls into production.

In contrast, the world of point products is just the opposite. Instead of selling high, these products are squarely targeted at individual contributors and first line managers. In this world budgets are much smaller and there is no money to pay for long deployments. The point product must include all the necessary functionality needed to solve the problem out-of-the box. This is the domain of products like database backup tools and source control systems. The strength of these products is that they do one thing very well, which is also their inherent weakness. If the customer needs some additional functionality they can not easily build it themselves.

Most enterprise customers usually have a mix of both frameworks and point products, which inevitably leads to internal clashes within the enterprise. The CXO’s want their organizations to use the frameworks so that they can get economies of scale to reduce costs by consolidating vendors. The CIO usually says something like “why do we have 3 different source control systems. It’s a waste of money.” The first-line managers and department heads are driven to get their jobs done faster and don’t want to give up the functionality or productivity gains provided by point products. This internal strife is the state of most large corporations. There is constant ebb and flow between using centralized frameworks and deploying decentralize point products.

So if you are building enterprise software you will have to navigate this minefield of conflicting needs. Many vendors want to try and be both a framework and a point product but these vendors usually end up with products no one wants. A better strategy is to embrace one end of the spectrum and build toward the other. Along the way it is important to identify the right buyer for your products. Engaging CXO’s with point products or selling frameworks to line managers is only going to waste time.

Most people lump all Enterprise Software together and define it as the software used within businesses. The reality is Enterprise Software is a multi-faceted market with various types of customers. To be successful you have to segment these customers and most importantly decide which ones you are not going to be targeting. Once you know that your chances of success just went up.