SOA filling the Gaps

Customers Typology: The Paralized Analyzer

2013-05-07T19:19:00.000+03:00

The Paralyzed Customer is not like the Customer who Knows Everything. He is very different from The Captive. The Paralyzed Customer is engaged in Analysis, so the process is: Analyze-Paralyze.

The Paralyzed Customer reacts to the Consultant's papers and recommendations, with no biases. The main problem is the endless loop of analysis in order to ensure no error included in the Consultant's product. No error is 100% error free product (not even the slightest error).

For example, if the product is a Request For Proposals (RFP), the Paralyzed Customer will initiate an endless evaluation process, even if the Consultant built the RFP together with the best customer's employees.

In a large number of long meetings, he will investigate the RFP. The following questions are only examples:

Do the requirements conform to the Business Strategy?

Are the requirements in accord with the IT Strategy, Policy etc.?

What are the expected costs for the implementation in one year?

What are the expected costs for the implementation in 5 years, ten years, twenty years?

You can be sure that he will ask any question, you never think of and ask for detailed answers.

After completing this tedious process he will give the corrected RFP to the enterprise's lawyers and administrator. They should confirm the RFP or ask for additional corrections.

The RFP is submitted 2 or 3 years after it was written. Sometimes it is too late because of major changes and sometimes the RFP is less adequate than it was when it was released by the Consultant.

Considerations
The description in the RFP example, depict the problem of the Paralyzed Analyzer: If a Short Term or immediate action is required it will not be taken. In extreme Paralyzed Analyzer cases, no action will be taken at all after a long analysis process.

I will demonstrate the problem by using a technology illustration located in the beginning of this post.

At the time of defining the selection criteria the Leading Products developed Capability A. This Capability has significant Business Value for the customer. Other products lack this capability. Probably the difference is because vendors developing Leading products invest more than others in R&D.

Vendors learn from their competitors, so after a year, they also developed Capability A. Meanwhile, the Leading Vendors developed another significant capability: Capability B.

The damage caused by Paralyzed-Analysis is multi fold:

1. For two years he did not select and implement a product, so he did not utilize Capability A and for one year he did not utilize Capability B (in case of selecting Leading Product) or he did not utilize Capability A for one year (if he would select non-leading product, which may be cheaper to purchase).

2. After two years he will not be able to distinguish between Leading products and other products, because his criteria will focus on Capability A and Ignore Capability B. After two years Capability A will be included in all candidate products. The result will be selection process assigning higher than planned weight to Cost and lower weight than planned to Quality.

3. The long analysis is costly.

Conclusions
The Consultant will face a problem if a quick decision and implementation is required.

His challenges are identifying states requiring quick decisions and actions and leading the Paralyzed Customer towards a shorter process than he used to.

SOA is Dead again?

2013-04-27T14:22:00.000+03:00

Winchester Mystery House Picture source: Wikipedia

On January 05, 2009 Burton Group's Analyst Ann Thomas Manes, published a controversial blog post titled: SOA is Dead; Long Live Services.

Few days ago I answered an ebizQ Forum's question:

How important is SOA to a company's mobile strategy? Only two experts (including me) answered the question.

SOA Questions asked in the same ebizQ Forum two or three years ago where frequently answered by 10 or 15 experts.

Is the lack of interest in SOA (despite the Mobile context included in the question) an indication of SOA's final death? I do not think so.

I have to agree with Mark Twain's saying: "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated".

As far as SOA is concerned, Mark Twain's saying could be paraphrased as: The reports of SOA's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Whinchester Mystery House is a well-known mansion in Northern California. According to Wikipedia: "It was continuously under construction for 38 years and is reported to be haunted".

If you would like to know, why it was continuously under construction for 38 years, you could read the article in Wikipedia.

About ten years ago, I worked as a freelance Consultant, for Giga Information Group (which was acquired afterwards by Forrester Research).

Giga Information's analyst Phil Murphy, used

Whinchester Mystery House continuous construction, as an analogy to Information Technology strategy:

Every few years we (Information Technology community) invent new technology, new architecture or new concepts and renounce older concepts, technologies, architectures etc.

However, the term renounce, in this context, could be defined as something we frequently use but seldom talking about.

For example, The Mainframe which was "dead" more than twenty years ago is still alive and kicking.

More than ten years ago, I asked for Service Based implementation references sites.

The reference sites requested were Mainframe sites, because a client considered Core Systems development initiative, based on Mainframe infrastructure and Service based approach.

As usual with Leading Age Technology, many reference were too small or in early development stages or irrelevant.

Only one reference site was impressive. It was a Finish site.
The site success could be partially explained by, their previous successful implementation of Component Based systems.

My Take
Phil Murphy's Whinchester Mystery House analogy is today as relevant as it was 10 years ago.

We talked ten years about SOA and now we are talking about Mobile Computing, Cloud Computing etc.
In ten years IT workers will stop talking about Mobile Computing and talk about other concept or technology.

Although, nobody is talking about SOA, it is a frequently used Mainstream concept,architecture and technologies.

The trouble is that successful and relevant reference sites numbers are still too small.

Those who successfully implemented yesterday's concepts and technologies, will usually succeed in implementing the new concepts and technologies.

Those who fail to realize yesterday's technologies Value Proposition, will usually miss tomorrow's technologies Value as well.

As far as SOA is concerned, many of the failing enterprises need urgently Consulting services in order to succeed.

Customers typology: The Captive

2013-04-21T08:43:00.000+03:00

picture source: Wikipedia

The word Captive in this context, is not about someone caught by enemy's forces. It is about a customer, whose conception about the Consultant's topic are dictated by an expert or someone pretending to be an expert.

In a previous post you can find an example. The post titled: Vendor Survival Guide: Supermarket, Grocery and Kiosk.

An example depicted in that post was Data Sorting Software product selection process. The Captive Customer selected a product of Servers and Operating Systems vendor (The vendor is an analogy to a Supermarket). I recommended, a superior product of a small company. Sorting Software was the only product the company developed and marketed (Kiosk).

The "Supermarket" does not care, if you buy chewing gum, as long as you buy meat, fish, bread and milk (Servers, Storage, Operating Systems etc.).
The kiosk's existence depends on chewing gum (Sorting Software). The "kiosk" will try harder, by selling better and cheaper Software.

The supermarket has to sell chewing gum, in order to be a one stop shop. However, its profits on chewing gum are negligible. Therefore it does not care much about selling chewing gum.

Supermarket, kiosk and the Captive Customer
A rational buyer, who is buying only chewing gum, should prefer buying it at the Kiosk and not at the Supermarket.

Similarly, a rational buyer should prefer buying cheaper and superior Sorting software product, from a vendor focused on this product. To my surprise, the customer rejected my recommendation and chose an inferior and more expensive product, developed by a vendor selling a variety of software and hardware products.
It should be noted that the same customer's decisions were often rational decisions.

Why does the customer decided irrationally?
The Customer was a Captive Customer. The Vendor's Representatives told him that their product is a lot better than the dedicated vendor's product. It was a good enough reason for choosing the inferior product.

Remember, the vendor's employees do not care much about selling Sorting Utility program. Therefore, they did not try to convince him to chose their product.

Main Characteristics of the Captive Customer
The Captive Customer's opinion is that someone else (not the customer) is the oracle. He will do whatever the oracle will say.
The oracle could be a Software and/or Hardware vendor such as: Oracle Corporation, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, HP, SAP, Google etc.

He could be a Software House, an Information Technology Research company or even a mythological former manager, who worked for the Customer's organization twenty years ago.

How can the Consultant influence a Captive Customer?
changing a Captive Customer's viewpoint is a difficult and complicated process. Success is not guaranteed. You should utilize different method's and different approaches to change viewpoints of different Captive customers.

The following bullets describe potential approaches and ideas based on my vast experience:

Avoid of confrontation with the Captor

Explain to the Captive Customer what and why you prefer the solution you recommend. Do not criticize the Captor and do not describe his motives and benefits, in case the customer accepts his recommendations (Usually Captors are selling Software and/or Hardware and/or additional Services).

Refrain from explaining previous mistakes based on the Captor's recommendations

The Captive Customer could have Patricia Hearst's Syndrome. She identified with her kidnappers' ideas. He may be identified with his Captor's views. If he developed Patty Hearst's Syndrome, confrontation with the Captor could operate like a boomerang.

Present Research, Viewpoints, Case Studies of others supporting your viewpoint

The data should be with clear cut views and the source should be a person or a company or academic authority, which the customer respects.

For example, many Captive IT Customers respect, research firms such as Gartner, Forrester Research and IDC. In that case, present answers to specific queries issued by you or the customer, relating to the current issue.

You can also present Research Notes, verbal Analyst's opinions etc.

Others could respect a former co-worker or former manager agreeing with your views or even evangelizing these viewpoints. Let them know what she or he thinks (directly by talking to him or her).

According to my experience, sometime Not Invented Here(NIH) supporting evidence in other language may help you more than local evidence in your own language.

Customers Typology: The Self -deprecating Customer

2013-04-15T19:45:00.002+03:00

image source: Wikipedia

The Self -deprecating Customer is exactly the opposite type of The Customer who Knows Everything. He automatically accepts the Consultant advice, without any questions or hesitations.

Probably, you will not believe that the first example of a Self -deprecating Customer I think of, is the CIA. It is about a project named Triangle. Triangle was an Information Technology project of Legacy Modernization and systems expansion after September 11 attacks.

After completing the Development phase, the CIA begun the Implementation phase. However, someone who was a Senior Manager, thought that it will be a good idea to rethink if the project fulfills its goals. A committee of 100 leading academic and IT industry experts, investigated the project.

The main recommendation in the committee's detailed report was: stop implementation and fix the errors in the systems. Afterwards the systems could be implemented again.

It should be noted, that stopping implementation at such advanced stage of the Development Cycle, is very expansive. However, after reading the report in the Web, I understand why the experts recommended to stop and rethink.

The CIA made almost every mistake I could think of. As far as this post is concerned, the self -deprecating mistake was decisions taken by consultancy vendors instead of CIA Managers.

Is not he the ideal customer a Consultant could think of?
It looks like ideal circumstances for consultancy: The consultant's long term employment is ensured, his vision and recommendations are accepted, as well as the deployment methods he recommended.
However, the scenario could be not as good as the consultant could imagine. The following are main drawbacks:

1. The customer takes no Responsibility
In case of failure, regardless if it is due to the consultant's mistakes or unrelated factors, the consultant will be responsible for it.
The customer would argue that he done exactly what the consultant recommended.

2. Following blindly is not limited to following the consultant
The customer may easily follow someone else's advices without any doubt. It could be a vendor or another consultant. The result could be lack of consistency and no systematic approach.
For example, another consultant contradicting recommendations in related topics, could be executed along with the consultant's recommendations.

3. The Customer is not learning
In the long run this could be the most severe problem. For example, one of the goals of SOA consultancy is to create a Reuse Culture.
Most of SOA initiatives without Reuse Culture fail. The Self-deprecating Customer could easily preserve the old non-Reuse Culture.

Usually I prefer to give to my customers fishing rods and not fish.
The Self-deprecating Customer usually prefers fish.

Customers Typology: The Cusomer who Knows Everything

2013-04-14T02:29:00.000+03:00

I worked as an Information Technology Consultant, for many Customers. Customers are different in their Self-Perception, in their view of the Consultant and the Consultancy Process. They also differ in the Enterprise size (Large, Very Large, SMB) and their Vertical Industry (e.g. Telco, Banking, Insurance, Utilities, Public Sector).

Customers Typology could effect the interaction between them and the Consultant, as well as the probability of successful consultancy.
This post is about a particular customer type: The Customer who Knows Everything.

The Customer Who Knows Everything
This Customer type is sure that he knows more than anyone else. He is also sure that his understanding is better than any body's understanding.

His point of view is manifested in the Decision-making process:

1. There is no correlation between the Consultant's recommendations and the decision.

2. There is no correlation between the consultancy quality and the decision taken.

3. The decisions may not be related to information collected and analyzed during the Consultancy process.

The consultant may be a knowledgeable and experienced expert in a topic. For the Customer it could be the first time he and his enterprise are exposed to this topic.

The consultant's work could be excellent: assembling data from variety of sources e.g. Analysts' Research Notes, Case Studies, similar enterprises 's strategies, approaches' solutions and conclusions etc.

The conclusions based on this excellent work could be that strategy A or Software/Hardware product A's implementations usually fail, while strategy B or product B's implementations usually succeed.

The Consultant's recommendation could be: select Strategy B implemented by Product B.

The Customer who Knows Everything, will chose Strategy A implemented by Product A. He could argue: "I know that everybody in the world selecting Strategy A implemented by Product A failed. I know better and understand more than them, so I will be the first to succeed". Needless to say, that he fails like all the others (sometimes even more sever failures than others).

According to Aberdeen Group's SOA survey, Best in Class (BIC) Enterprises (those whose implementations succeed and provide real Value) used more Consultancy Services than others. Laggards (those who fail to provide Business Value), refrain from using Consultancy Services or purchased less Consultancy Services than others.

I would guess that, the Laggards group includes, at least, few Customers Who Know everything.

How to Consult a Customer who Knows Everything?
The question in this paragraph's heading contains the answer: If someone knows everything it is impossible or at least very difficult to consult.

Effective consulting requires conceptual change. Information, data and brilliant analysis would not change the customer's approach.
A Psychologist may change the concept, but we are only IT Consultants not Psychologists.

He will learn only after painful failures. To help him, the consultant should repeat and emphasize his conclusions contradicting the customer's decision, so the customer could blame only himself in case of failure.

However, sometimes even repetitions of the recommendations contradicting the customer's approach, could be in vain: The customer will know who to blame.
The Consultant opposing the wrong conclusions and actions taken by the customer, is to be blamed.

To Think Differently or When Wisdom of the Crowd is not Wisdom

2013-03-26T23:13:00.001+02:00

An Example of a card from Ash experiment

Image Source: Wikipedia

In a post in my other blog (written in Hebrew), I wrote that sometimes my opinion differed from the majority opinion. Sometimes it also differed, from leading experts opinions in the field or the topic. In those cases, I acted according to my opinion and not according to the Majority view.

Wisdom of the Crowd is a method used more frequently than before. The essence of Wisdom of the Crowd, is assembling many non-expert opinions as information supporting Decision making.

The classic usage of Wisdom of the Crowd is for estimation of quantified problem, e.g. a Taurus weight. However, usage of Wisdom of the Crowd could be misleading.

In this post I discuss two factors, which oppose usage of Wisdom of the Crowd, including few examples.

Factor 1: Conformity and Social Behaviour

The illustration in the heading of this post, depicts an easy task of distinguishing between lines length. It was included in Solomon Asch's Conformity Experiment. All but one of the participants were "confederates" (i.e. actors).

The "confederated" answers to some of the line similarity tasks were wrong and identical. 75% of the participants conformed with wrong "confederated" answers.

We should expect higher conformity in case of more difficult questions.
As far as Wisdom of the Crowd is concerned, expect identical answers in similar situations, i.e. Social Interactions between people answering the question.

Factor 1: Information Technology example
More than a decade ago, an Insurance Company's CIO presented in a local IT conference. The CIO was brave: He publicly admitted a colossal failure of selecting and implementing a strategic Software product.

He admitted a waste of hundred thousands of USDs and few years due to this mistake.
He was not the only one to commit this mistake: many others made the same mistake and get similar results. The only difference was that other CIOs did not admit their failure.

About half of Israeli Enterprises chose this software product. The CIO said: "We failed same as everybody in the Israeli IT".

A thought flashed in my mind: Should I scream not everybody? My clients, who followed my recommendations, did not fail. They did not chose that software product.

The Software Product was an excellent product for small systems, but not applicable to Large complicated CRUD systems with hundreds or thousands users.
By design, it was not Scalable.

The process of the product assimilation is a long process: studying, building a Pilot, experimenting and building simple applications. Only afterwards CRUD type applications were developed.
Usage of these CRUD applications was gradual i.e. in the beginning the application was implemented with limited number of users.

Only those who deployed CRUD applications with hundreds of users experienced the consequences of the Scalability limitations.

Those who failed used a kind of Wisdom of the Crowd. They asked for their colleagues opinion. They received positive feedback because their colleages' implementations were still in early stages therefore they chose this Strategic Product.

My approach was different: I read Analyst's Research Notes and discovered the inherent Scalability limitations. I also looked for feedback from USA Early Adopters.
As expected, all early Adopters failed in implementing large scale applications.
It was easy to recommend to consider other alternatives.

Factor 2: Unique Characteristics

When a problem includes unique characteristics, many people will ignore them and try to solve it using the same approach they would use for standard similar problems.

Wisdom of the Crowd approach data, will support a wrong intuitive solution pointed by most people surveyed.

Factor 2: The Monty Hall Dilemma

The Monty Hall problem in the Let's Make a Deal TV game is a classic example.

The Monty Hall Problem. Source: Wikipedia

A participant choses one door. Goats are behind two doors and a new car behind the third. He gets what he had chosen. However, before checking the door he had chosen, the game host opens another door discovering a goat behind it.

The participant can change is mind and pick the third door instead of the door which had been chosen.

Intuitively, people conclude, that the probability that the car is behind the original door chosen is 0.5. Many participants do not bother to change the door had been chosen. Wrong conclusion: It is a Bayes's theorem probability, therefore the probability of a car behind the third door is approximately 0.67.

most of the votes, using Wisdom of the Crowd, will assign equal probabilities to a car behind the first and a car behind the third door. These votes support wrong decision.

Factor 2: Information Technology example
This example is also old one: more than a decade ago.

A client (An Enterprise) asked me to help him in choosing an Operating System, for migrating or developing his most crucial application.

I have to recommend UNIX or proprietary Operating System.

As in most cases, there were constraints.
The following constraints were applicable to this task:

1. Short Time for implementing the application -Completing the System development beyond the schedule was impossible.

2. The vendor which should provide the Server and Operating System was predefined.

3. I had to finish the task in two days.

During this time frame I had to find data, read data, meet the local distributor's experts and the IT department people responsible for the application.

In addition, an ongoing process of choosing the Strategic Operating system was not completed. I was the leading advocate of UNIX. Others support proprietary Operating Systems.

Factor 2: Information Technology example Recommendation
When I discussed the issue with the vendor's experts and read the vendor's papers, I discovered that most (not to say all), users world wide facing the same decision selected UNIX.

There were hundreds of Enterprises which preferred UNIX. No evidence of enterprises choosing the proprietary Operating System was available.

It was easy for me to conform to the Wisdom of the Crowd and chose UNIX. Choosing UNIX, would also support the UNIX agenda, I advocated for the enterprise.

I recommended usage of the proprietary Operating System.
My paper included the evidence that most of the other Enterprises selected UNIX.

It also describe the uniqueness of my client's enterprise supporting selection of the proprietary Operating System.

Factor 2: Information Technology example unique characteristics
The unique characteristics were limited UNIX knowledge and experience, as well as a lot of knowledge and experience in the proprietary environment. Coupling the knowledge (propriety) and the lack of knowledge (UNIX) with the System importance and schedule constraint, will result in high Risk UNIX implementation.

The risk of deploying the application after schedule, in a relatively good scenario, and of failing to deploy it appropriately, in a less optimistic scenario, supported non-UNIX implementation recommendation.

Summary
It is easy to find other examples in Information Technology, as well as in other fields (as I did in my Hebrew post) in which usage of Wisdom of the Crowd could cause wrong decisions.

You can not count on the crowd, when there is strong Social Conformity.
If their are Unique characteristics, the crowd may ignore them and will recommend a wrong decision.

Even if you ask many people and few of them will perceive the uniqueness and recommend the right solution, the Wisdom of the Crowd data gatherer could reach a wrong conclusion, by preferring the majority opinion.

Will Business and IT Aligned?

2013-01-25T18:47:00.000+02:00

For decades we are talking about closing the gap between business and IT, but the gap is still as wide as it was.
In the beginning of the ERP era, we focused on aligning Business Processes and Core Systems, but in most enterprises we failed.

SOA was the next alignment promise: defining the SOA Services in Business boundaries instead of Technical boundaries, should narrow the gap. However, despite of SOA Business Value (Agility and Reuse) in most enterprises, the large Business-IT Gap remained as large as it was.

The IT Community aimed at the next alignment attempt: SOA is technical and BPM is its Business related complement.

Will the current BPM based alignment attempt succeed? I do not know, but Nick Heath's article titled: Stop doing what the vendors tell you, CIOs told, published in Tech Republic, suggests that the root of the problem is not Technological.

Stop Doing What the vendors Tell You
Nick Heath's article is based on Gartner's CIOs survey. Gartner surveyed more than 2,000 CIOs about their plans for the coming year.Heath's summary of the survey result is: "The problem with CIOs is they don't appear to share the singular focus of their organization. In general, Corporate IT strategies are largely unchangeable and loaded with generic statements about cost and service levels."

In other words:
1. IT priorities are not in accordance with Strategic Business priorities.
2. IT Strategies are inflexible and static. The CIOs do not change strategies when the Business is adapting to changes.

My Take
It is not because of SOA or BPM or ERP that Business and IT Alignment is not improving.
The reasons are closely related to perception:
How IT professionals evalute their department's contribution to their Corporate Business (They think that they contribute a lot) vs. the way Business professionals perceived their Enterprise IT (You can not do Business with them and you can not do Business without them, Inflexible, not aligned with Corporate Goals and Missions).

The Gap could be narrowed, if and only if, IT professionals and Business people views of the other team DNA and Role will be changed.

The Risk of Consumerization and Could Computing
Consumerization may reduce IT and CIOs responsibilities and budgets, because users could bring their Own Devices and Software.

Cloud Computing could also narrow IT scope, because non-IT managers can buy IT services and systems directly from Cloud Vendors.

The risk is Chaos or loosing Control of IT Systems.

IT Vendors and CIOs
Gartner's recommendation to CIOs, as described by Nick Heath, is not new: IT Vendors could shift IT goals away from the Corporate goals and strategies.

Few years ago I wrote few posts on possible Vendors conflict of interests e.g.
SOA VDS – AmberPoint Example, ESB for an Orphan.

CIOs not stop always from doing what the vendors tell them, but they should understand when it is proper to act according to a vendor recommendation and when it is not.

Vendors Survival: Apple no longer a shining star?

2013-01-03T17:49:00.001+02:00

On July, 2011 I wrote a post titled:

Vendors Survival: Will Apple Survive until 2021?.

Many people thought that the question I asked is irrelevant: Apple was never more successful. Not everyone of them is so sure today.

Apple's position was changed. The graph above derived from Yahoo! Finance page depicts the change: Apple's stock is going down in the last 6 months.

I could use a three months graph instead of a 6 months graph, which could show more dramatic change, but I thought that it is not correct to use so short term graph.

The red line compares Google's stock to Apple's stock. No similar trend is depicted in Google's stock.

What was changed since 2011?

Apple is less successful than before. It looks like the company lost Mind Share: it is not so cool and is no longer perceived as the innovative company.

"Sic transit gloria mundi" is a Latin proverb saying that glory will not last for ever.

One of the Risks mentioned in my 2011 post, was less Innovation ("Who can guarantee that Apple will not become less innovative company in the future?" ).

Apple of today is less Innovative, or at list perceived as less Innovative company than it was.

Bottom Line

Extrapolation of the current negative trend as indicator of Apple's future could be wrong. As I already mentioned in my 2011 post, Apple is a Mountains Train: it may resolve its current challenges and grow or it may not.

Vendors Survival: Will HP Survive Until 2018? - Revisited

2012-11-11T09:02:00.001+02:00

When HP intended to acquire EDS in 2008, I wrote a post titled: Vendors Survival: Will HP Survive Until 2018? - HP's EDS First Take.
The prefix implies that the post was not the only post about Vendors Survival. Other posts discuss future survival of other vendors such as Microsoft, Apple, Google, SUN and EMC.

The optimistic view was that HP will become a co-leader of the Outsourcing market together with IBM (The market leader). The idea was to get more revenues from the profitable Service market, because Hardware commoditization reduced Hardware profitability.

However, my opinion was, that the optimistic view was less realistic than other scenarios.
It looks like my prediction was not far from reality.

HP Layoffs in 2012
On May, 23 2012, HP announced that it is cutting 27,000 jobs after posting a profit decline of 31%in the second quarter of 2012. Many of the jobs cut where former EDS employees.

The Case of General Motors (GM)
On November 2012, HP agreed to transfer 3,000 of its employees to GM. GM is moving its IT services in house instead of Outsourcing to EDS, which is Outsourcing to HP after EDS acquisition by HP.
Outsourcing was EDS main Line of Business.

GM was a unique EDS Outsourcing client.
It is one of the largest clients, but the EDS tight relations with GM were not based on size only.

The company which was founded by Ross Perot, was acquired on 1984 by one of its clients. The client was GM. In 1996 it was spunned off as an independent company.

I worked together with EDS in a large project they executed for one of my clients.
many of their examples and Best Practices were based on GM projects.

My conclusion is that loosing GM Outsourcing is a stamp of the failure of EDS acquisition by HP.

Final Notes
1. It is impossible to separate the EDS acquisition from HP management practices. For example, If it would not profit less on the second quarter of 2012, it may cut less jobs or not cut jobs at all.

2. Changes in Outsourcing market trends also influence the EDS deal consequences. Cloud Computing influences Outsourcing negatively.
The giant Indian Outsources prices are lower than HP's prices.

3. Outsourcing deals face new challenges due to the frequent Business and Technological changes. Adaptation of the Service-level Agreements to changes, including pricing adaptation, could be a barrier to Win-Win Outsourcing deals.

4. Will HP survive until 2021? The probability that it survive is still high, but I am less optimistic than I was on 2008.

BPMS Next Generation: IBPMS

2012-10-04T14:17:00.000+02:00

In a previous post I discussed Business Process Management (BPM) evolution as reflected by an Ovum report.
Recently I read new Gartner BPM Magic Quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is titled IBPMS Magic Quadrant.
If you compare it to previous Gartner BPMS Magic Quadrants (you should not compare them), you will find a totally different picture.

Only three Leaders in the IBPMS Magic Quadrant, namely: IBM, PegaSystems and Appian. No Challengers and a lot of Visionaries I know (Oracle, Software AG, Tibco, Vitria) and two Visionaries I never heard of (Bosch Software Innovations, Whitestein).

Previous BPMS Magic Quadrant includes many Leaders, many Challengers as well as many Visionaries.

The pattern of few Leaders, No Challengers and many Visionaries is typical to immature markets.
Gartner explains it as a new generation of BPMS tools.

What differentiate IBPMS from BPMS?
IBPMS tools try to address a new Use Case: Intelligent Business Operations(IBO). IBO is required for better and faster decisions in a dynamic ever changing enterprise.

The implication of the IBO Scenario is convergence (or at list tighter binding) of BPM with other paradigms and technologies. The word Intelligent included in the IBO acronym implies that Business Intelligence (BI) is one of the related technologies. SOA which was already coupled with BPM is more connected to BPM in the context of IBPMS. Complex Event Processing, Service Orchestration, ESBs and Registries are SOA and EDA concepts and technologies, which are closely related to IBPMS implementation.

MY Take

I already read and wrote about IBO. Few months ago I wrote a new Business Intelligence Kit to be included in the next version of MethodA. I met this concept while drilling down BI. Gartner's Magic Quadrant starting point was BPMS.

Gartner's view of a new generation of BPMS is different from Ovum's gradual evolution approach. However, you can find the same Vendors as Leaders (Gartner) or Shortlist (Ovum): Appian, PegaSystems and IBM. Ovum's Shortlist also includes Oracle. Probably PegaSystems's, Appian's and IBM's products are currently better products than other products.

Product selection is specific to an Enterprise. Enterprises differ in Size, Use Cases, Technological Infrastructure, Applications Technologies etc. Sometimes a Niche product or Visionary product and not a leading product is the best fit for an Enterprise.

Expect changes in an Immature markets like IBPMS. Today Leaders will not necessarily be tomorrow (2013 or 2014) leaders.

Not all BPMS products are created equal. Gartner divides them to two major categories: Pure BPMS Products (e.g. Appian, PegaSystems and Bosch Software Innovations) and Infrastructure Products including BPMS (e.g. IBM, Oracle, Software AG and Tibco).

IBPMS and Case Management There are similarities between IBPMS and Case Management but they address different Use Cases. Case Management and IBPMS converge between BPM and other concepts and technologies. However, Case Management is for Knowledge Workers and IBPMS is usually for Managers tasks (sometimes it is also for Knowledge Workers). Some of the technologies included in Case Management such as Knowledge Management and Enterprise Content Management are not integral part of IBPMS.

BPM market Growing Rapidly but still Maturing and changing

2012-08-30T10:31:00.000+03:00

Why SOA is implemented by more enterprises than BPM?
SOA is an Architecture, so an enterprise may use an Architecture or not.
Many Enterprises without any architecture, begin their SOA initiative, when SOA was only Hype and buzzword. Other Enterprises followed when it matured. Some realized measurable SOA benefits.
Unfortunately, many of them executed it wrongly, and therefore their SOA benefits were limited or even non-existent.

Managing Business Processes is not an option it is a must. Therefore Enterprises managed their Processes manually or by usage of code embedded in Systems' Business Logic Layer.

It is difficult to convince them to change their Process Management practices by implementing BPM.
The company's management team may use the slogan: If it is not broken do not fix it.

The significant value of BPM is not Business Process Automation. It is Business Process Change or Improvement or Flexibility.
In order to change a Business Process, usually you need to automate it before changing it. Therefore BPM benefits are Long Term benefits.

It is more difficult to convince managers to spend resources when the predicted Return on Investment and the predicted benefits are Long Term.

SOA is already a Mainstream architecture, while BPM is still a rapidly growing and evolving market in 2011 and 2012.
According to Ovum's Research Note, published in December 2011 "BPM is a rapidly growing market and high double digit revenues growth figures are very common among leading vendors profiled in this report".

I recommend reading the full report written by Somak Roy and titled:Decision matrix: Selecting a Business Process Management Vendor.

In this post, I will discuss a limited number of topics appearing in that report.

The Vendors
Ovum view is that there are twelve leading vendors. Ovum divides them to the following categories:

1. Shortlist: Appian, IBM, Oracle and Pegasystems

2. Consider: Tibco,Cordys, Active Endpoints, Newgen, AuraPortal

3. Explore: SAP, EMC, Bonitasoft

There are new vendors in the list, replacing vendors appearing in previous similar Research Note. The change of the leaders list could be a sign of limited maturity of the BPM market.

Case Management
According to Ovum, Case Management is a major Focus area for most vendors.
It is not surprising. Vendors solutions, as well as BPM implementations, begin with handling automated Processes (SOA Processes). The next phase is adressing Human Processes and finally the less structured Processes, i.e. Case Management Processes, are the focus area.

SaaS
BPM is not the best fit for SaaS. BPM Engine infrastructure requirements are limited. Usually, BPM implementations invoke Systems and/or Services and the amount of code and data in them is minimal.
The main issue is Business Alignment, which has nothing to do with Cloud Computing.
Ovum believes that Cloud Computing will not be the dominant delivery model.

Social Software Concepts
Social is trendy, so it is possible to find Social concepts in most of the BPM products. However, currently they are important mainly in Case Management context.

Open Source
Bonitasoft is the only Open Source vendor included in Ovum list. Intalio, the Open Source BPM traditional leader is not included. According to Ovum, most vendors did not mentioned it as a competitor.
If Ovum's view will be verified by other sources, then the emergence of a new Open Source BPM leader could be an indication of BPM immaturity.

MY Take

The question: Which BPMS Vendors were not included in Ovum's analysis? is as interesting as listing and comparing the twelve vendors included. I was surprised that Software AG was not included. I usually find it among the Leaders in Gartner's Magic Quadrant and in Forrester's BPMS Wave.

I was not surprised at all that Microsoft was not included. Traditionally, Microsft's BPM products are limited. However, Ovum did not include any of Microsoft's major BPMs partners, namely OpenText (acquired Metastorm and Global 360), K2 and Agile Point.

Cloud based BPM could be a major deleivery model

I agree with Ovum view that SaaS delivery model is more adequate to CRM or HR applications than to BPM. However, SaaS Delivery model is a natural choice for Enterprises which use the SaaS delivery model for the majority of their systems (SMBs for the following years 5 years).

Not all BPMs products were created equal

Some of the BPMs products included by Ovum and some of the BPMs products not included are Niche products.

For some use cases they will be better fit than the Leaders or Shortlist vendors in Ovum terminology.

For example, Active Endpoints's ActiveVOS suite is excellent solution for Straight-through Processes.

Fujitsu's Interstage could be a good fit for large enterprises especially in the Japanese market.

Even SAP's BPM suite is mostly used in Enterprises deploying SAP's ERP.

The mainframe: still alive and kicking

2012-08-09T23:26:00.000+03:00

Recently, I was interviewed by Pcon (unfortunately the link points to an Hebrew only site) as part of debriefing on Legacy Systems.

Pcon is an Israeli company investigating IT topics by quoting professional articles and interviewing experts.
They publish the results of the investigations including practical recommendations.
This post is mainly about topics raised by me during the interview, but not included in the debriefing, which will be published.

What are Legacy Systems?
The term Legacy Systems refers to old application systems and/or veteran technologies still in use.
Usually, the term Legacy Systems is associated with:

1. Mainframe Hardware e.g. IBM System z and its Operating Systems or Proprietary Servers and Operating Systems such as HP Alpha and OpenVMS Operating System, IBM AS/400 and OS/400 Operating System.

2. Development and Production Environments, e.g. COBOL, Natural and DBMS systems such as Adabas and IDMS executing on Mainframes or Proprietary Servers infrastructure with proprietary Development and Production Environments.

3. Applications Systems developed more than ten years ago executing in the infrastructure environments cited above using the IDEs and DBMS Systems cited above.

It is true that often Infrastructure and Applications, cited above are Legacy Systems, however there are also Legacy Systems using other technologies such as Visual Basic version 6 or older, old Java technologies and old Windows Operating Systems or extincted UNIX Operating Systems.
In this post i limit the term Legacy Systems to IBM Mainframe systems.

Why investigating Legacy Systems?
The main reason is that these systems are used by many enterprises.
The systems are not only frequently used, they are used for Business critical Processes and Transactions and store and manipulate critical Data.

The second reason is that these systems are no longer Mainstream, as far as new systems buying or building is concerned.

Young people knowledge of theses systems technologies, architectures and concepts is usually limited.
The young generation is not ready to learn about these systems and prefer newer concepts and technologies.
This is the third reason to investigate: limited availability of Legacy Systems skilled professional, which raise the question: why not migrating to other environments before lack of skilled professionals availability will be a crucial problem?

So why not migrating to other environments?
For some enterprises, the question above is a good question and the answer is positive they should migrate from Mainframes to other platform.

Other enterprises have good arguments for avoiding migration.
The following list depict some reasons for not migrating:

1. If it is not broken do not fix it.

2. Replacing Legacy Systems by other systems is expensive and will take long time.

3. Probably, some of the team members should be replaced because they will not make the transition to a new system, new infrastructure and new methods.
The down side is losing their experience and their knowledge (especially non-technical knowledge of the Business, the Organizational Culture and the practices.).

Is it possible to identify those who should migrate and those who should not?
Yes it is. Size Matters. Usually Small Enterprises are better migration candidates than Large Enterprises.

Small Enterprises will not face Scalability issues and Performance issues.
They also pay more relatively to their size, because Mainframe Hardware and Software prices are skewed in favour of Large Enterprises.
They will not have to hire a large number of people to support large number of Servers as Large Enterprises will have to.

Large Enterprises usually operates more Application Systems and their Application Systems are more complex, so the migration will be prone to more errors and failures and will cost more.

Another discriminating factor is the Operating System.
Large Enterprises use IBM's Mainframe flagship Operating System z/OS. Some Small Enterprises use the declining z/VSE Operating System.
Some of the Independent Software Vendors stop support or new versions development of VSE software products. Other minimized their development efforts and current versions support.
The future seems even gloomier because the deteriorating VSE installation base.

Is IaaS a Game Changing Technology?
IaaS looks like a game changing. Users of Operating Systems such as Windows and Linux can lower their TCO by moving part of the Data Center or the whole Data Center to the Public Cloud. Mainframe users can not.

Most Large Enterprise will not move their Core Systems to a Public Cloud in the following two or three years, but SMBs are candidates for moving soon their systems to the Public Cloud.

This trend could be another catalyst for Small Mainframe sites to migrate to Windows, Linux or UNIX.
However, IaaS also change another prevailed concept of running Infrastructure and Systems within the Enterprise boundaries, i.e. its Data Center or Data Centers.

The Public Cloud age, change this concept: You no longer need to own and maintain the physical infrastructure (very similar to the concept of not placing Electricity Generators in every house).

Lower TCO based on getting rid from Data Center Servers is a challenge for Small Mainframe installations, but it is also an opportunity to save the migration efforts, by moving their Application Systems
to a larger Mainframe user premises and lowering the TCO as well. Larger Enterprises can assign Virtual Mainframe Servers to Smaller Enterprises.

Related Posts in my Blog
Mainframe and the Dinosauraus Myth Revisited
IBM z/Enterprise First Take: Data Center in a Box or Cloud Computing
Vendors Survival: Will Software AG Survive until 2019?

Will Microsoft Survive until 2021? - Revisited

2012-07-20T17:25:00.002+03:00

A year ago I publishes a post titled: Will Microsoft Survive Until 2021?. According to the post, the probability in 2011, that Microsoft will survive until 2021, was lower than the probability assigned in previous post written in 2008, for its survival for ten years, i.e. until 2018. Some problems mentioned in the 2011 post were its position in the Smart Phone market and it Windows Operating System.

Recently, Microsoft reported Loss after a Write-Down.
The Loss was attributed to its ill-fated acquisition of an Online Advertising company. However, Microsoft's Windows business revenues fell 13% in the fourth fiscal quarter ended June 30th.

The Bottom Line: Although the propability that Microsoft will survive for 10 years is still high, this probability in 2012 is lower than it was in 2011.

Apple: You can't beat them all

2012-06-03T22:15:00.000+03:00

Picture Source: Matt Yohe, orginal loaded to the English Wikipedia
Picture Author: Matt Yohe

In previous post titled: Vendors Survival: Will Apple Survive until 2021? I argued that "that the probability that it will not survive is higher than the probability that the other vendors (not including Software AG and obviously not including SUN) I discussed will not survive."

According to my post, the reasons for assigning lower probability to Apple's existence for 10 years or more included:

1. Apple is a Mountain Train. Its history is full of ups and downs.

2. If it will not continue to innovate, it will not be a leader and even stop surviving.

3. Dependence on the late Steve Jobs (When the post was written Jobs was still alive)

4. Binding to its Smartphone Platform, may result in Google's Android dominance.

A Bloomberg article titled: Apple’s Patent War Seen Leading To Retaliatory Strikes, dwell upon current Apple's Patent Wars. However, interpreting it could support my Long Term analysis.

The additional aspects, discussed in Bloomberg's article and interpreted by me are:

1. Apple is paying 7 or 8 billion USDs a year to

Samsung for components made by Samsung

Electronic co.

Apple depends on its rival Samsung. Without Samsung it is not able to supply Smart phones as well as other devices.

2. Suing another company for patent infrigement could result in suing the the suing company for patent infringement of the suied company.

Apple risk being sued by companies like Samsung, HTC and especially Google.

As already described in a previous post titled: Did you find Apple?, Apple is not a leader as far as the number of patents is considered. Samsung is in the second place in the Top Ten 2011 patents Leaders in USA.

Motorola Mobility, acquired by Google, is the Smartphone market Patent leader, i.e. owns the largest number of patents. Apple sued it and HTC in addition to Samsung.

One of the reasons for acquiring Motorola Mobility by Google was the large number of Smart phones patents it owns. As a veteran company, its patents are basic patents. If and when, it will prosecute Apple , the result could be stoppage of sales of Apple's Smartphone , at least for a limited period.

3. Apple's two core products (iPhone and iPad) strategy, is a marketing advantage in comparison to Nokia (as already cited in a previous post) and Samsung, which presents 134 phones in its Web site.

As far as Patent Wars are concerned, it is disadvantage.

If you lose, you will have to stop marketing a product.

If you have 134 phones you can still sale 133.

If you have only two your survival is questionable.

4. Is the Smartphone Operating Systems competition scenario similar to the PC competition scenario few decades ago?

If it is, then the threat of Binding or closed System is a serious one.

Microsoft vs. Apple

It is strange to think of Microsoft's Desktop Operating System as Open, but if you compare it to Apple's Desktop Operating System it is.

Microsoft binding was limited to its Infrastructure Products e.g. Windows Operating System and its Applications e.g. Office.

AS long as you used them, you could use any hardware vendor's products e.g. HP, Dell, IBM, Toshiba etc and any processor supporting Windows.

You could also complement Microsoft's products, with third party or ISVs products.

Apple's binding includes its Hardware and the number and variety of ISVs products was limited.

The result was standardization on Windows and Apple's Desktop Operating systems and Hardware are only Niche Player.

Google vs. Apple

The two leading Smartphone Operating Systems are Iphone OS and Google's Android.
Any Smartphone vendor can use Android freely.
Google business model is based on Advertisement, so many of its products, including Android, are free of charge as long as Google can add Ads.

The result is Android usage by many Smartphone Vendors.
Apple is, as closed as it was, in the Desktop: Only Iphones can use Iphone OS.

If and when, the Smartphone applications market will be standardized on the open Android Operating System Apple's Iphone will be a Niche Player.

The Marriage of Custmer Centric and Multi-Channel

2012-05-17T17:24:00.001+03:00

Ten years ago, many enterprises declare that they moved from Product Centric Enterprise to Customer Centric Enterprise. However, many of them remain Product Centric or transformed themselves to other Enterprise type. The new enterprise could be anything, but surely not Customer Centric.

One of the main obstacles towards Customer Centric was lack of understanding of the dependency of Customer Centric approach on Multi-Channel Architecture.

Multi-Channel and the Customer
If you are Customer Centric, than a customer should be free to choose his/her preferred Channel.
The conclusion above is obvious to say, but not always easy to execute.

Less obvious, is the conclusions you can derive from the customer's choice.
For example, a Bank customer preferring the Internet channel provided more value than a customer who preffers the Branch Channel.

This conclusion is supported by internal data of successful banks in Europe and USA dated about 10 years ago.

Although, I do not have access to updated data, the hypothesis that this conclusion is still valid, is plausible.
Internet Channel users could use this channel because they are busy working and therefore earn more money. They also may use this channel because they are Internet Natives, i.e. young people.

Young people e.g. students may not be preferred bank customers now, but probably will have higher income and financial resources in the future.

Multi-Channels Architecture
The illustration in the beginning of the post depicts Multi-Channel Architecture in an Enterprise SOA.
All channels share the same Business Services. However, there are also Channel Dependent Services, due to regulations, capabilities and limitations.

The most limited channel, ten years ago, was the Mobile phone.
Its limitations included: low bandwidth, small screen and less than optimal availability.

Some of the channels are used via communication with an employee (e.g. a Bank Branch Channel) and others are Self Service Channels.

As already noted about Internet Channel Bank Customers, Self Service Channel could be attractive to some customers. However, it is also attractive to Companies due to lower costs.

There are many Success Stories of SOA implementations enabling usage of Self Service Channels in addition to traditional Channels.

For example, Sprint-Nextel average Call cost in Self Service Channel was 43 cent instead of 12 USD in other Channels.

Another impressive SOA implementation is Verizon Wireless. The implementation is based upon BEA (now part of Oracle) SOA products. Usage of Self-Service Cellular Phone Channel by millions customers saved multi millions USDs, due to elimination of printing and sending reports by mail.

What was changed in Multi-Channel Architecture?
In my opinion, no fundamental change occurred in Multi-Channel Architecture in the last decade.

The major change was a change in the Mobile devices Channel: opportunities instead of limitation.

Smartphones and other devices applications are able to provide Location Dependent Services and other advanced services.

I guess that a study of Bank Customers Value according to their preferred channel will reveal that Customers preferring Mobile Devices Channel provide more value than other Channels users.

Another change is the possibility to execute parts of Customer - Company interaction from different Channels: For example, the Customer may start the interaction from his home Internet and will receive information and complete the transaction from his Mobile device.

CRM and Multi-Channels
Customer Relationship Management is not only usage of a CRM software.
It is also the way Channels and CRM implementation are integrated.
Unification of Channels is not restricted to the Technological level.

A coherency between Channels is a must.
Sometimes even very basic data such as operations hours is not identical across Channels.

My experience as a Customer
My recent interactions with some companies in my country reveals that these companies do not understand yet what Customer Centric is.
I am referring specifically to TV services providers, ISPs and Mobile Phones services providers.

These markets are dynamic, e.g. ISPs Data Transfer rate is growing quickly.
These vendors products are very complex and different products are available in different Channels.

Customer Centric Multi-Channel approach requires that, the Customer will have access to the same products from all Channels and will not have to compare different products offered in different Channels (most of the Customers are not even capable of comparing the products due to their complelxity).

A Customer Centric Company cannot convince Customers to use Self Service Channels instead of other services by confusing the customers, i.e. offering different products. It may convince them to do so by paying less for the same product.

Fall is a season not the future of SaaS

2012-05-06T18:29:00.003+03:00

I recently read a TechCrunch article titled: The Rise of Big Data Apps and the Fall of SaaS written by Raj De Datta.

I do agree with the prefix. As far as the suffix is concerned, I can only explain why Raj De Datta's opinion is wrong.

I usually tend not to agree with statements about premature End of Life of technologies or architectures or trends.

In most cases, it easier to kill a concept in writing, than to persuade a large number of users to change their habits.

The root of the opinion that Business Logic Centered Applications are in conflict with Data Centered Applications, derived from specialization of IT experts. The approach of experts specialized in Data is different from the approach experts specialized in Applications.

I also read an interesting related Gartner Research Note titled: Overlaps in Data Integration and Application Integration Represent Significant Opportunities. This Research Note written by Gartner's Analysts Ted Friedman and Jess Thompson, was published in November 2011.

According to Friedman and Thompson, Data Integration and Application Integration deploy different approaches but there is a lot of synergy between these Integration types.

Each of these approaches deploy different features (e.g. Modeling Metadata for the Data centric approach and Message based Transformation for the Application Centric approach), but they share many common features such as Communication or Security.

Each of them is related to different Problem Types or Use Cases (e.g. Composite Applications in the Application Centric approach and Data preparation in BI/Analytics for the Data centric approach), but they share common Problem Types and Use Cases such as MDM or SOA Support.

Friedman and Thompson conclude that leveraging the communalities could provide Business Value.

My Take

As you can see in the illustration in the beginning of this post, Big Data and SaaS are not competing technologies. It is possible to use any variety of data kinds in SaaS services, including Big Data. Big Data Apps, i.e. applications using large amounts of data, could reside in a Public Cloud.

It may be useful to extend Gartner's analysts, Friedman and Thompson analysis, beyond Integration issues. Combining Raj De Datta's Big Data, Data Centered approach with SaaS (Applications Centric approach) could provide Business Value.

According to Analyst's Research Notes and predictions, the SaaS market is growing and will continue to grow. You can also read my posts How Hot is Cloud Computing? and Cloud Computing: Hype, Vision or Reality.

It should be noticed that the boarders between Big Data and other Data are blurred. The boarders between Data Centric applications (Including Big Data Applications) and Business Logic Centric Applications are also blurred

STKI Summit 2012

2012-03-23T11:03:00.001+02:00

On March 19th I participated in STKI Summit.
participating in this Israeli Market analysis conference is an habit. I aprticpated in 2011, 2010 and 2008. My consist particiaption indicates that, at least in my opinion, it is a valuable event.
This year theme was IT Revolution Consumer Power.
The Consumer centirc IT revolution is not totally new, it was discussed in previous year Summit Presentations, as one of the driving forces.

I am attaching links to the presentations:

Jimmy Schwarzkopf - IT Market in Israel 2012
Pini Cohen - Trends in Infrastructure: Paradigm Shift

Shahar Geiger Maor - Networking Trends, EndPoints Trends

Einat Shimoni - Trends in Enterprise Applications, Web & Analytics

Galit Fein - Office of the CIO Office of the CMO market Trends 2012

I did not find a link to the new analyst and Research Assistant Liza Bodogin's presentation on ECM, Talent Training and Social Applications. Probably it is included in Einat Shimoni's presentation.

My Take

Expect Recession in the Israeli market in 2012
I agree with Jimmy Schwarzkopf's coclusion. This conclusion is applicable to the Global market and the Israeli market is part of it. However, Jimmy's Recession Indicator is interesting: every year (including 2012) in which the Public sector market is greater than the Banking sector market is a Recession year in Israel.

The Consumer Revolution is an interesting trend

I would add to what was presented the concept of Personal Cloud used by Gartner and others.
Few years ago I had to carry a Mobile Computer for my presentations. Afterwards I carried Disk Onkey. Now I am sending the presentation to myself in gmail and upload it.

Apple is going to lead nendors pack?
I disagree with Forrester's George Colony cited by Jimmy, as far as Long Term prediction. See my posts:

Did you find Apple? , Vendors Survival: Will Apple survive until 2021? and A Quarter is not a Long Term Indicator

Very limited Cloud Computing and SaaS market in Israel

This evidence was discussed by Pini Cohen (Infrastructure) and Einat Shimoni (Applications).

It is a pitty that Israeli Enterprises especially SMBs are not using SaaS and other Public Cloud Services more than they do. Some of the benefits were discussed in my posts ERP as SaaS Maturity indicator, SaaS is going Mainstream, Future applications: SaaS or traditional?

ERP as SaaS Maturity indicator

2012-03-17T10:37:00.000+02:00

I recently read Tien Tzue's post titled The End of ERP. As usual, I suspect the validity of statements beginning with the End of ... without a question mark in the end. Tien Tzue's statement is not an exception.

According to Tien Tzue there is a shift from 20th century products based economy to 21th century Service subscription economy, therefore ERP is doomed. He refers to the acquisitions of Cloud ERP solutions companies, Successful Factors by SAP and Taleo by Oracle, as an End Of Life signs of traditional ERP.

No ERP company can afford to ignore Cloud based ERP, but that does not mean that SAP, Oracle and other traditional vendor, are going to kill the goose who lays golden eggs i.e. their traditional On-Premise ERP suits.

SaaS based ERP is a better fit for some enterprises and Traditional ERP fits better for other enterprises.

Three years ago I already discussed the issue of Future Applications: SaaS or Traditional.
Basically it is a tradeoff between Maturity and Robust Functionality (Traditional On-Premise ERP suits) and Agility (SaaS based ERP suits).

What was changed since 2009?

Many SaaS ERP vendors instead of few

Three years ago SaaS ERP suits vendors list includes NetSuite and SalesForce.com and few other vendors offering single or few components e.g. Workday HR and many CRM only vendors.

Today SalesForce.com and Netsuite are still the dominant vendors, but there are many other full SaaS ERP suits vendors.
Workday is no longer an HR only vendor. The SaaS ERP Suits vendors list includes: Infor, Intacct, Epicor (Architecturally, it is my favorite due to its innovative approach and full SOA support) etc.

SalesForce.com and Netsuite are the "SAP" and "Oracle" of the SaaS based ERP market.

The approaches to ERP of these relatively giant rivals are different.
Netsuite nickname is "Little Oracle". The nickname is dew to Netsuite's investor Larry Ellison, the similar Corporate Cultures and a lot of past Oracle's employees employed by Netsuite.
Netsuite is building a full SaaS ERP suite.

Saleforce.com, the leading SaaS CRM vendor, is building an ERP PaaS environment named Force.com Development Environment. SaaS ERP vendors such as Infor use it for developing their products and are Salesforce.com's Value Added Resellers (VARs).
I will not be surprised if SalesForce.com will acquire one of these resellers.

Growing SaaS ERP market share

SaaS Continues to get Traction. According to Panorama Consulting Solutions, 6% of organizations implementing ERP in 2009 were deploying SaaS options. This number was nearly tripled (17%) in 2010.

SaaS ERP is not adequate yet for Large and Complex Enterprises.

The result is that most of the SaaS ERP implementations are in the SMB market. On-Premise ERP is still dominating Large Enterprises.

My Take
The patterns of SaaS ERP adoption are a major indicator of SaaS Maturity Level.
If and when, most large and complex enterprises will deploy SaaS ERP then it will reach high Maturity Level.

The future deployment by Large Enterprises cited above, should include all, or at least, most Core ERP components. Currently, Large Enterprises implement SaaS CRM and SaaS HR, but most frequently use On-Premise Traditional ERP for core components implementations.

Only when SaaS Maturity will reach this high level, we can start dwelling upon The End of Traditional ERP.
In my opinion it will take a long time.

Bug 2000 (Y2K) is back in Microsoft's Azure

2012-03-01T11:07:00.000+02:00

In my Vendor's Survival posts I wrote about many leading vendors. Few posts were on Microsoft:

Will Microsoft survive until 2021? - revisited

Will Microsoft survive until 2021?

Vendors Survival: Will Microsoft Survive until 2018?

I also posted about Vendors technologies, strategies and acquisitions related to their Long Term survival. The post

Microsoft's Skype acquisition: Warning Signs ahead

is an example.

Yesterday, there was a long Microsoft Azure Service Outage.

The reason for the outage was a time miscalculation for a leap year.

A long Service Outage is not unique to Windows Azure's PaaS platform. There were long Service Outage in services provided by other Cloud Computing vendors such as Amazon and Google.

The outage has nothing to do with Microsoft's Long Term Survival probability.

The reason for the outage is related to Microsoft's Survival: It is an indication of a very poor Software Quality Assurance.

Yesterday Microsoft proved that it learned nothing from Year 2000 Bug (Y2K), which was a major issue more than a decade ago.

We may discover tomorrow or in a year or two years or four years, what else Microsoft did not learn lesson from.

Y2K IT and Business

My blog's name is SOA Filling the Gaps because of gaps between IT and Business, which SOA is about addressing them (as well as BPM and Business Oriented Architecture).

Y2K was a major cause for widening these gaps: IT mangers promised to the Business Managers that if they will spend a lot of money and resources, the organization's computerized systems will not collapse.

The IT managers did not promise any functional extensions or software improvements.

Y2K FUDS and Facts

Y2K is about systems failures, due to usage of two digits year presentation in a date field. The result is that both 1900 and 2000 are represented by 00 and therefore calculations will use 1900 instead of 2000 by mistake.

Y2K projects were actually Risk Management projects. However, they were justified by a lot of FUDS and few real risk evidence.

The so called risks range span from sending to 105 years woman invitation to join kindergarten (Low severity risk) up to Nuclear Reactors explosions (High severity Risk).

The only real evidences were Case Studies of few installations failed to address the leap year of 1996.

Y2k is a higher severity risk than leap year miscalculation.

Addressing Y2K is a lot more complex issue than addressing leap year miscalculation.

The conclusion was that Y2K damage potential, can be quantified as hundreds or thousands multiples of measured 1996 leap year miscalculation measured damages.

If I remember correctly, the most cited example of 1996 leap year problem was The Brussels Stock Exchange. This risk event occurrence could be quantified to actual sums of money lost due to treating February 29th as if it was March 1st.

I am sure that Windows Azure Outage due to Leap Year miscalculation costs a lot more than the Brussels Stock Exchange same miscalculation in 1996.

Google's New Privacy Policy: Nothing to write home about

2012-02-22T18:13:00.000+02:00

What was changed fundamentally when Google switched to its new Privacy Policy instead of multiple Policies, each policy related to a different product?

Many people think that this change is the End of Google as You Know it.
Some of them think that the slogan Don't be Evil should no longer be associated with the company.

As you can easily guess from this post's title my opinion is different.

The Problem
Google is gathering a lot of information about its users. Usage of this information could threaten these users Privacy.

The information is used by Google mainly for advertising, because its Business Model is based on optimizing the advertising to each user profile or characteristics.

User Privacy could be violated not only for undesired advertisement but for other purposes.

Is Google unique?
Gathering user information and analyzing it by Business Intelligence tools is a common practice. Many Web based companies like Amazon or eBay gather and analyze information. Smaller companies and traditional software vendors are using similar methods as well.

The only differentiator is Google dominance in some Web related markets, especially Search Engine.

The Risks
1. Google will use private information for other purposes than matching advertisements to user profile.
The probability for risk events of this kind is low. Google has too much to lose.

2. People will receive advertisement they do not want to receive, as well as Spam advertisement messages.
What is new? They are already receiving plenty of advertisements. Receiving advertisements in Search based on information gathered in YouTube is not a significant change.

3. A Google employee who has permissions to access the information or acquire such access authority will use it and violate your Privacy (for example, by selling your private information).
This is a higher probability risk than the previous risks. It should be mitigated. The employee could be a gambler that lost a lot of money or someone who is going to be fired from Google.
It is not a new risk. 60% of misusing your private baking details are attributed to internal threats(i.e. a bank's employee).

4. External unauthorized Web user will access or copy your private data kept in Google's Systems.
The probability of this threat is lower than the probability of the previous threat (Insider i.e. Google's employee). Google probably will take the required actions to protect the data, but a data breach could occur.
I am not sure that your Private data is better protected on your Smart Phone, Desktop or Mobile Computer.

What you should know and do?

Once your private data is in the Web it is unforgettable. The data will not be cleaned or erased for ever unless you do it.

Implications:
1. Do not feed private data to the Web if you do not need to.
2. Clean it if you do not need it anymore.

Companies as well as other less honest organizations and people will track your activity in the Web in order to get information about you and your activity patterns. They may use sophisticated software.

Implication:
Protect yourself. There are a lot of software products you may use. Some of them are even free for a consumer. Do not Track Plus is an example of software protecting you from tracking for free.

Some of them will do more than tracking and gathering information: They will aim at controlling your computer and using your identity, inserting Malware in your computer, Phishing or other methods.

Implication:
Protect yourself. There are a lot of software products you may use. Some of them are even free for a consumer. I can recommend Advanced SystemCare Spybot and Avira. All of them has free consumer edition. It is up to you to decide if the free edition is good enough or you want the full edition, which is not for free.

What else could be done to protect Privacy?

Do not post sensitive private data if it is not necessary.

Do not use services in the Web using your Private data in non-Secure methods.

My Take
It is reasonable to replace multi-Privacy Policies by a single privacy Policy.
Do not forget that most users, do not read these policies before ticking the "I agree box".
No significant change to the Privacy policy was added by Google, so there is nothing to write home about.

The World Wide Web is a World Wild Web. Expect all types of deception, Privacy and Security violations and prepare to mitigate them.

The main problem is not companies like Google gathering and analyzing your data and using it for their purposes the main problem is you.

If you are not aware of the risks and do nothing to protect yourself sooner or later, you will be harmed.

As far as Privacy is concerned, it is more a Users Awareness issue than any other issue.
The same conclusion is applicable to Security. Penetration Tests I have done in the past, usually revealed, that The Chain is as strong as the weakest link in the chain.

Human behavior is the weakest link in Security as well as in Privacy.

How hot is cloud Computing?

2012-02-15T11:32:00.000+02:00

In previous posts such as Cloud Computing: Hype, Vision or Reality?, Hyped Cloud Technologies, PAAS is not Mainstream yet, SaaS is going Mainstream, Future applications: SaaS or traditional? I discussed Cloud Computing.

Recently I read Joe McKendrick's interesting article titled:Cloud Computing Market Hot, But How Hot? Estimates are All Over the Map

Joe's views and predictions are similar to mine. However, he base his opinions on actual survey done by him, as part of his work with Unisphere Research/Information Today Inc and on leading Analyst firms predictions.

I recommend reading Joe's article.
The following bullets quote few highlights:

Market Research Media,cited in the Bloomberg report, says the cloud market will reach $270 billion in 2020.

Forrester is a tad less optimistic, predicting last year that the market will hit $241 billion by that time.

Research firm IDC says the market will hit about $55 billion by 2014.

The larger companies in the survey are most inclined to be supporting their own private internal clouds. Close to half of the companies with workforces of greater than 10,000 employees (45%) have private clouds in production or in limited use. By contrast, only 11% of the mid-size companies in the survey have such efforts underway.

Public cloud adoption, on the other hand, is most pronounced among the smaller companies in the survey. One-third of companies with 1,000 or fewer employees use public cloud services, versus 19% of the largest companies in the survey.

A Quarter is not a Long term indicator

2012-02-04T06:36:00.000+02:00

Apple's December 2011, quarter was described by SplatF as a Monster i.e. as a very successful quarter with high revenues growth. You can see the charts in the article Apple's Monster Quarter in Charts.

Is this a positive Long Term indicator?
I am not sure. A company whose revenues are based on two products: iphone 53% and ipad 20% depends on these products.

Success of competing products or a major decrease of
shipments of Smartphones and Tablets could be a catastrophe for Apple, if it will not be Innovative and develop new types of products.

Did you find Apple?

2012-01-26T08:41:00.000+02:00

You can see The Top Ten 2011 Patent Leadres in Flicker.
Have you succeeded to find Apple in that image?

If not, you have a good reason to read my post:
Vendors Survival: Will Apple Survive until 2021?

Thoughts on smilarity to Iran

2012-01-11T16:23:00.004+02:00

I am an Israeli. I am an Information Technology professional not a Politician.

Mrs. Hillary Clinton USA Secretary of State was recently quoted saying Israel is becoming more similar to Iran.

As far as I understand the three foundations of the current Iranian regime are:
1. Censorship of what people do, say and wear
2. No free and independent Legal System
3. No free and independent Media (TV, Radio, newspapers etc.)

Unfortunately, I agree with Mrs. Clinton.
Groups of extreme Orthodox religious people (Not all Orthodox religious people), are trying to bring us ten or fifteen hundred years back, as far as what we are doing or wearing (The first Iranian regime foundation).

Israeli Parliament members (not all of them) are trying to limit the Israeli Court and the Israeli Media and to reduce their independence on the political system.
They are trying to impose these limitations by new laws. Most of these laws were not improved yet by the parliament. (The second and third Iranian regime foundations)

I do not know how many years back these Israeli parliament members would like to take us back.
I guess that the 1950es is a good guess, because one of them was quoted saying that he agrees with Senator Joe McCarthy's opinions.

I recently read about the American Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) Law which was not yet approved by the American House of Representatives.
SOPA is actually Internet Censorship (The first Iranian Foundation).

After reading on SOPA I have a simple question to ask Mrs. Clinton:
Is Israel the only country which is becoming more similar to Iran?

Disclaimer: I am a blogger and I also write articles in the Hebrew Wikipedia. Blogging Services and Wikipedia Services are free unpaid services, which may be replaced by electronic or non-electronic paid services if and when SOPA will be approved.

SOA and Social Business

2011-12-26T00:36:00.000+02:00

Electronic Social Networking Services like Facebook are very popular.The distinction between Social Networks services and similar Business services like Linkedin are not clear. Businesses use Facebook for commercial purposes and sometimes Linkedin users use it for social purposes. The identity of services such as Twitter is not clear as well: it is used for commercial and for social purposes.

Usage of Social Networking Services in an Enterprise context is not as simple as using it in a Consumer context. Google's Steve Yege's post published incidentally to an external Google+ circle instead of internal circle (including only Google's employees), is an illustration of issues facing an Enterprise using a Social Networking Service.

The differences between Enterprise Social Networking Services are similar to the differences between SOA Services (Enterprise context) and Mashups (Consumer context): Management and Security are essential in the Enterprise context. However, usage of Electronic Networking Services could be beneficial for enterprises.

IDC believes that curiosity in Social networking Services is turned into a business opportunity as the lines between Consumer and Enterprise continue to blur.

In an interesting Research Note titled: Becoming a Social Business: The IBM Story, IDC's analysts Erin Traudt and Richard Vancil analyze one of the pioneers Social Businesses: IBM.

According to IDC's Social Business survey, Social Software usage moved beyond the Early Adopters stage. 41% of the participants in the survey conducts in September 2010 indicated that they already implemented Social Software.

According to the IDC report, the major benefits of becoming a Social Business are:
1. Deeper relationships with customers, employees, partners and suppliers
2. Agility and Transparency
3. Higher employees' productivity and satisfaction
4. Increased engagement and feedback from customers
5. Accelerated Innovation and better intellectual capital reuse

Social Networking Software is only an Enabler. An Organizational Culture transformation and Process changes are required in order to become a Social Business. According to IDC it is a long Journey.

Social Businesses and SOA
Usage of Web technologies as well as usage of SOA in Social Networking Software is not the important part connecting SOA and Social Networking Services.

The important links between them are the following Organizational and Cultural constituents:

Sharing

SOA is about sharing Services or Service Reuse. Social Networks essence is sharing information. Sharing information by usage of Enterprise Social Networking Software can be used for analyzing and defining new SOA Services as well as for delivering information about existing Services to IT experts and Business users.

Cultural and Organizational Changes

SOA initiative failure or success depends on Organizational, Cultural and Methodological factors. Adequate Maturity Level is a prerequisite.
A previous post is a link to my presentation titled: Methodological and Organizational aspects of SOA and BPM . The presentation explains why Methodological and Organizational aspects are more crucial for successful SOA implementation than pure technological aspects. Unfortunately, the presentation, presented in the Israeli Systems Analysts conference, is a Hebrew presentation. However, High Maturity Level and Reuse Culture are required for transforming a Business to Social Business, as well.
IDC's opinion is: "A Social Business centers on "People as a Platform ...". This approach is very different from current approaches in most companies.

A Long Journey

Both SOA and Cultural Business are paradigmatic shift, requiring a long time and a lot of efforts and commitment.

Process Changes

Expect Process changes as part of deployment of these paradigms.

Agility

Research results show that Agility is SOA's most important Value Proposition. Social Business is an Agile Business which is capable to change and adapt.

Innovation

Innovation is another Value Proposition of SOA.
Flexible Architecture Agile Enterprise as well as looking for similarities and commonalities between systems encourages Innovation.

Open Social interactions in a Social Business also enhance Innovation. Receiving feedback from employees, customers and partners could drive Innovation.

Summary
Although SOA is very different from Enterprise Social Networks, they share some basic principles and.
Both are driving more Agile and Innovative Business