Something we call I.T.

Blog Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:16:00 +0000

I have finally taken the time to set up wordpress on my own domain. Please visit http://www.bluethots.com/ from now on. All the posts on this blog have been migrated over and I will update my blog at the new site. If you have any RSS feeds to this site, please click here to update it.

Fear-mongering in IT

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:51:00 +0000

Interesting enough, I have seen a good amount of fear mongering in the IT industry through working with multiple vendors in a large project. From pitching solutions to clients to hiring a potential employee, I believe its a widely used practice around. I have heard this too many a times. Please bear in mind I am NOT referring to a CEO, vice president or directors. I am referring to the senior managers and managers on the ground.

For example, another vendor said something like this "If you do not spend $500,000 on this functionality, you will be outdated and potentially lose alot of customers." In this instance, when you look at the numbers, it doesn't tally up nicely. Half a Million for a functionality that would save approx $20,000 a year and less than 1% of the client base is expected to use it. These people are really good at instilling fear into the management who doesn't understand much about IT. If you do not do this, you will be screwed... and interesting enough many a times they manage to get a useless functionality into the system.

The problem with IT is that alot of the mid - senior people in IT used to be developers / architects but many of them do not have extensive education, training and experience in managing the details of accounting, finance and economics. We do need to understand more in terms of how technology and money can work together for the benefit of the company. At the end of the day its not how fast your system can process a workflow but how much money can you make out of the whole system.

15 golden rules for Web 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:45:00 +0000

VisionaryMarketing wrote an interesting post regarding the 15 golden rules for Web 2.0. I must say the 15 rules are somewhat similar to Andrew Mcafee's Enterprise 2.0 success factors.

The one thing that VisonaryMarketing struck me was "bringing real answers to real questions". I totally agree with this statement. Some of the people I come across in my consulting career are extremely passionate about web2.0 and enterprise 2.0. However, they JUST want to implement a web2.0 idea and not think about the actual impacts, environment and culture of the organisation. As I always say, Enterprise 2.0 is not just a system, its a system that involves major cultural changes for both management and non-management.

Please bear in mind, only implement a system to solve a problem not implement because its cool!

Enterprise 2.0 - Hype or Happening?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:32:00 +0000

This is an interesting perspective from senior management of various organisations on Enterprise 2.0.

Email free days - the enterprise 2.0 way

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:14:00 +0000

Email free days is getting popular in the organisations. Read more about it here and here. Personally, I think its a great idea.

I personally spend too much time on my email and I am a self confessed email checking freak. However, I do not like emails. Its so impersonal and cold. But when I try to be friendly over emails, my boss complains I am not professional enough. What should I do? I just pick up the phone and have a chat. If I need email confirmation of my discussion, I will write a quick overview of the issue and get the other party to confirm it without sending 20 emails before reaching a conclusion (and in the mean time, driving both parties crazy).

With Wikis, Blogs, knowledge management systems and so many other content tools available in this information hungry society, living without emails (for one day of the week) is actually very possible. Without emails, you still have your phone which allows you to establish a real conversation with someone. You can also have a face to face chat and build relationships. Content tools can also provide information without searching for the other party. This would actually force people to use those websites to retrieve information that is already out there and not make someone else retrieve/rewrite that message/information to you!

I do not like the idea of building relationships purely over the internet only. I would like a combination of real world connection enhanced by the ease of communication via the internet. This is what the internet / emails should do and not replace the "human touch".

Making money with Web 2.0 Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:49:00 +0000

Follow up from my previous post. If a Web 2.0 startup is so easy (only requires good idea, good business model and good tech skills), more people would be able to come up with great ideas and sell it. As long as there is one more better, stronger and prettier product out there that wins your product, the startup will not be too successful. This would pose as a risk as replication of web 2.0 technology is easy.

For any business to be successful, competitive advantage is important and the ease of web 2.0 development breaks the economic theory of competition - Barriers to entry. Unless you can stop / prevent others from developing a similar idea and at the same time build up such a large user base that even if the competitor joins the market, it would lose out due to the sheer amount of users on your product, it would be hard to gain any levels of competitive advantage.

Making money with Web 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:27:00 +0000

Jeremy asked recently if anyone is making money on Web2.0. I thought about this question for a while and came out with a short answer. Clearly this is not the full picture but just an aspect of it.

Web2.0 is not a rocket science technology. If you have some good skills in IT, you can almost setup a Web2.0 company individually or with just another person. I have recently learnt Ruby on Rails and I must say its really simple and straight forward. With good tech skills, a solid idea with a good business plan, making money on Web2.0 is easy. You do not need a large user base for your application to make money. With two people on the team, overheads are low, server spaces is getting cheap by the days and making a profit is much easier.

Just my two cents worth

Enterprise 2.0 - A strategic system delivering competitive advantage?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:18:00 +0000

I believe that Enterprise 2.0 can be a strategic system to a certain extent. However this is not purely based on the IT side of enterprise 2.0 only. As I have described here and here, there is much more to E2.0 than just the tech side of things. After all, systems that deal with E2.0 is generally not very complicated.

If an organisation can make all their employees working as one and delivering the information required at the right time with clear transparency across the organisation, decisions made would be of much higher quality. However, releasing information might be seen as a power loss / threat to the senior management. After all, information is power. Personally, I do think that a person's capability is not based on how much information the person holds but more about how the person makes full use of the information on hand.

With a strong flow of information across the organisation, people can better decide on their course of action that would fit into the larger picture of things and as this builds up, the organisation would be constantly making better decisions thus achieving competitive advantage. There would be alot of cultural change in this space that is required but I do believe it is achievable especially if the company is predominantly younger people.

Fear of Enterprise 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:19:00 +0000

Christian Smagg wrote an interesting post about "Enterprise 2.0 fear factor: Overcoming risks, uncertainties and doubts" All his concerns are valid and architects must devise a way to overcome some of these issues. I do feel that a cultural change must be achieved to be able to have a successful enterprise 2.0 implementation.

Personally, I feel that even though there is not much complicated, expensive work flows behind enterprise 2.0 the cultural change part will be quite challenging. One way to slow ease employees into the whole E2.0 idea is to slowly releasing it to them and collect feedback. By using Agile development, you can continuously adapt to the requirements and expectations of the users. This way would also allow users to slowly get used to the E2.0 idea instead of doing a big bang go live and everyone would be taken by surprise and end up feeling they were being thrown into the deep end. In any case if there is a cultural conflict, technologist should devise a way to overcome that issue.

Change management in this way can be a cheaper option as it is done is a slow and iterative and incremental manner.

Why would businesses implement Enterprise 2.0?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:33:00 +0000

One thing that struck me recently was "Why would businesses implement Enterprise 2.0?" From the business perspective, spending money on a system should return one of the following:

1) Make more money
2) Save money
3) Increase efficiency (streamlining business process, reduce redundancy, capture knowledge...)

Depending on what the enterprise 2.0 project is about, it must satisfy some or all of the above, otherwise I do not see value in the project. For example, FaceBook (by itself) within a company is not quite useful. It basically just links people up so that employees have one more communication tool (or bitching channel). However, if Facebook is integrated with, assuming, wiki or KM, then it would potentially capture knowledge and increase efficiency. All these really depends on what the proposed project is all about.

No matter what we as technologist do, we must satisfy the basic premise of business - improve the bottom line (directly or indirectly).

Ruby on Rails

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:17:00 +0000

I have recently started learning and programming a project of mine in Ruby On Rails. If you think programming is a boring thing check out the youtube video below... and funny enough it actually describes ruby quite well.

Enjoy!

Everything is free

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:52:00 +0000

Wired has a extremely good article "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business"

I have read it once and I am still abit confused but I do see alot of value in it at the moment. Have a read...

Secrets of success for Enterprise 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:24:00 +0000

Andrew Mcafee wrote a highly interesting post regarding the success factors for enterprise 2.0.

Below is the list described by Andrew McAfee

Technologies
* Tools are intuitive and easy to use

* Tools are egalitarian and freeform

* Borders seem appropriate to users

* At least some of the tools are explicitly social

* The toolset is quickly standardized

Support for the Initiative
* Incentives exist, and are soft

* Excellent gardeners exist

* Patient and dedicated evangelists exist

* Energy and activity are primarily bottom-up

* Effort has official and unofficial support from the top

* Goals are clear and well-explained

Culture
* People are trusted

* Slack exists in the workweek

* Helpfulness has been the norm

* Top management supports lateralization

* There are lots of young people

* There is pent-up demand for better information sharing

I cannot agree more with Andrew. This was a great post!

Brilliant idea

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:14:00 +0000

I happen to chance upon a website that gives free domain names. Well this is not new for sure. However the idea behind this is absolutely brilliant.

Have you heard of this country called Tokelau ? I surely haven't until a few moment ago. As many would know, every country has it own country domain name extension like .au, .uk and so on and Tokelau has a .tk extension and since its such a small country with a relatively low GDP, the government of Tokelau appointed a company to be the registration entity and is giving away free domain names to anyone so that the world would know about Tokelau. What an efficient way of bringing such a small country of about 1500 residents to the world map. This project has also contributed to 10% of the country's GDP.

The internet is really powerful.

OpenID as your online social security

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:29:00 +0000

Just a wandering thought I had today, the internet would be a much better place if I had one ID, one login for everything I want to do. Can OpenID do this? I doubt so. Also read this.

In the ideal world, I will have one login with access to all services and if I do not want to be tracked where I am going and what I am doing, I will just surf as an anonymous entity. Well easier said than done. It will not happen anytime soon. The logistics would be absolutely crazy.

However, this is absolutely possible within an organisation however, this is not what I am seeing at the moment. We have quite a distance to cover to get there.

Social Graph and Resource Management

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:12:00 +0000

I have heard about this term too many times and know what its about on the surface. On Friday, I had a conversation with Michael and he was explaining to me how social graph and resource management can be implemented hand in hand.

After reading Dion Hinchcliffe post on - The Social Graph: Issues and Strategies in 2008, I am convinced the social graph is a great tool to improve the efficiency of an IT consulting firm. Let me explain.

IT consulting firms relies greatly on good resource management - delivering the correct resource to the right place at the right time. Traditionally, this is done by the senior management and also the HR team where they control staff movement across projects and geographical locations. This is hard work as to the HR team, staff members is just another name, another resume, another head they can stick into a project to earn money. Feedback is seldom received from staff members until the news is broken to them.

For resource management to work well, a collaborative effort must be used. Employee / project managers should actively plan their schedule ahead, look for projects that interest them, use the social graph to get in contact with the relevant project managers or use it to get in contact with other resources on the team to find out more. With this approach, there will be less work for the HR team, less headache for the management team and achieve greater efficiency across the organisation.

I am not saying that the social graph is the answer to great resource management, but I am saying its one of the required tools to create a great resource management process. It helps to link people up and allow people connect to each other and allowing them to search for a project that they are interested in and capable of doing. A excellent resource management tool is a strategic tool and not just a back end process.

Gen Y, Gen X and the Baby Boomers: Workplace Generation Wars - By CIO Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:58:00 +0000

CIO recently published an article Gen Y, Gen X and the Baby Boomers: Workplace Generation Wars. A perfect extension from my previous post.

Web 2.0 and the Gen X / Y

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:46:00 +0000

The internet boom since the mid 90s is more than 10 years now and kids and youth nowadays are more techno savvy than many adults. Just for example, I was in Singapore a month back and a primary school boy was chatting to someone on msn via his mobile phone in a train. There is also an advert on TV in Australia that says by the time a child is eight years old, the child would have taken in more information than their grand parents in a lifetime (not sure if this is true though).

I work in a consultancy firm with alot of young people and for us to learn how to setup and use wikis, blogs and stuff like that is just so simple. However, at my client's project, getting some of the older folks to work on excel spreadsheet can be a nightmare. Adoption of technology is just much slower with the baby boomers - in general.

Therefore I would like to infer that if your organisation is predominantly younger people, Gen X / Y, then then likelihood of enterprise 2.0 to work is higher.

Why people program for free?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:52:00 +0000

I was just thinking about the whole idea of open source and software being free.

Peer production is a great idea. With the whole world pouring in their talents and ideas into a product. However, why would anyone do that? Why would I program something on a Sat afternoon instead of having a beer by the pool/beach?

Everyone does it for a certain reason, I believe. Some might do it to build up their resume, some might be because the company that the person works for support open source and pays people to do it. Some might be due to passion for programming.

However, assuming that everyone on earth needs to make money for a living and would try to maximise their income, then why would open source work? There are a number of websites like odesk and elance which offers paid programming work. I do understand that companies like IBM is pouring money into open source software like linux but what about other software? There are a huge number of projects out there which is smaller and still very successful.

If you have any idea why people contribute to open source, please leave me a comment. Thanks heaps.

Google Apps Team Edition - The power of collaboration

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:38:00 +0000

Google apps team edition was just released and as the name states, it has the power to collaborate! Check out the YouTube Video. I guess for all the Google apps users out there, there isn't any rocket science in what you are about to watch and some of these functionality has been around for a while.

The changing face of consulting firms

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:54:00 +0000

As technology evolves towards SOA, open source, ready made web services and global collaboration, IT consulting firms must evolve as well. Traditionally, IT consulting are after large cash rich clients where they are able to fork out millions and billions of dollars and invest in IT. Consulting firms charge a huge amount as well and earn truck loads of cash from a big client. These projects varies from small functionality implementation to large end to end transformation project. Many of these projects involve customising off the shelf software like Oracle and SAP.

However, with the changes in technology development, delivering value for clients does not come in the form of software anymore but more in the form of strategy, aligning business and IT, change management and good system architecture.

Consulting firms must continue to develop their in house technical expertise but I believe, in future, it will be a small team of highly skilled developers instead of large warehouses of developers.

The future of internet

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:29:00 +0000

There is a highly interesting blog entry posted by David Drummond, Google Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer - Yahoo! and the future of the Internet. He said:

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

I do think that if Microsoft does buy over Yahoo, the competition in the online world would be even more intensive and aggressive. There will be three very big players in the online world - Mircosoft, Google and the open source world. We have seen wonders in the open source community so far with traditional successful examples like linux, apache and mysql being so widely used by web servers nowadays. Online traffic for content is also moving towards user driven sites like Wikipedia and YouTube.

The people in the online world is extremely powerful and Microsoft or Google must appease the internet community as a whole. Internet is a free and open platform - no one can control it fully.

Small companies and global collaboration

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:55:00 +0000

Many years ago, I had a chat with my dad (he runs a small construction firm) and he commented that its difficult to compete with the big construction firms as they have the money to invest in technology which increases their business process, performance and efficiency.

SaaS has solved this problem for small companies. Office 2.0 database has a long list of SaaS providers for small companies to use.

The next step is for small companies to experience the power of global sourcing that large companies enjoy through outsourcing.

Collaboration across nations is just not just about cost savings but having access to a pool of global talent. Global collaboration is about capability. Its about experiencing endless possibilities and growth and innovation. As long as a company has an idea, they can find an expert around the world, get their expert advice, build and implement it. In fact this is something that anyone can enjoy - large or small companies.

I have heard people say, globalise or die but now I believe its "Collaborate or die"

Microsoft and Yahoo - what it means for web 2.0?

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:53:00 +0000

The deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is an interesting one. Why Microsoft is interested in Yahoo? What are the strengths of Yahoo that interest Microsoft?

Yahoo
Yahoo is great for online content and innovation. They have heaps of sites like Y! Sports, Y! Movies that generates alot of online traffic - which is something that live.com doesn't have. Yahoo is absolutely innovative as well. Buying De.li.cious, Flickr previously, displays the fact that they have recognised web 2.0 is a phenomenon. However, even with the amount of online traffic it generates and numerous innovative ideas, Yahoo was not able to turn it into cash.

Microsoft
Even though Microsoft has started on embracing web 2.0 but they are generally slower in adopting such technologies and making it a large scale product/offering. I do believe that microsoft, is serious about innovation (for example, web2.0) but they are lack of a vision and possibly talent as well. Microsoft would be buying yahoo's innovation, people and online traffic (thus advertising revenue / large user base).

If Yahoo is acquired by Microsoft, there will be massive job cuts and I am not sure if Microsoft would be able to fully take advantage of Yahoo's innovation and the Yahoo 'spirit'.

Preventing the buy over
Yahoo isn't good at search and to prevent them from being bought over by Microsoft, Yahoo can cut a quick deal with Google, outsource search to Google, focus on content and innovation and that would prevent the buy over. However, I am quite sure this deal will go through.

Conclusion
This is a good move for technology in general. Microsoft is serious about innovation and improvement. This buy over is not about competing with Google on search but at a higher level - innovation and traffic. In general, this is good for web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0. More innovation, more fun and more improvement. I do hope that this deal is all for the better.

Wikinomics

noreply@blogger.com (Sean) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:49:00 +0000

Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2006.

This is a truly fantastic book if you are interested in enterprise 2.0 / collaboration. This book rocks!

5 out of 5 stars.

Below are two book reviews I picked randomly:
Blogcritics
itmanagersjournal