Next Gen Enterprise

Marc Andreessen and Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader: Separated at Birth?

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 14:04:00 +0000

Marc Andreessen and Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader: separated at birth? You be the judge ...

The second picture is Sebastian Shaw, the actor who played Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) in the first three Star Wars movies (Episodes 4-6, otherwise known as "the Star Wars movies that didn't suck").

Firefox MASSIVE FAIL - frequent, incompatible upgrades and instability

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 23:05:00 +0000

For years, I have been a dedicated Firefox user. Before Chrome, Firefox was a browser that really

met my needs. Firefox was faster and more flexible than Internet Explorer. Firefox was innovative, supporting tabs, add-ons, standards, and multiple platforms. Over the years, I customized my Firefox environment to meet my needs, with add-ons that made my many tabs manageable, that enabled my news curation on Twitter, that remembered my many user names and passwords.

I've retained Internet Explorer, since many corporate apps I use are supported only on IE or otherwise don't work well on Firefox. But my main browser use has been with Firefox until recently.

I'm sad to say that this post marks my final use of Firefox. I'm switching to Chrome finally, with IE for some corporate apps. This is not a sudden decision of mine; rather, this is a decision I've been putting off for a while in the hopes that things would get better with Firefox, but things just keep getting worse and worse. What are my complaints?

I rely on Firefox add-ons to achieve productivity and for their many innovations. Yet, the good folks at Mozilla have decided to frequently update Firefox and to do so in ways that are not upwardly compatible. Firefox updates unpredictably break add-ons on which I rely. With each update, and updates now seem to come about once per month, some add-on is broken. You might argue that the add-ons I need are not likely to be available on Chrome, but more and more of the Firefox add-ons I need are not maintained with the same cadence as Firefox. I think the add-on makers are demoralized and are giving up. You might also argue that I could find other add-ons to replace my favorites, but who has the time? And, anyway, you just know that no add-ons will keep up with the Mozilla cadence. If you are going to that update cadence, you need many things to be upwardly compatible. :( At the same time, Google has found a way to do frequent Chrome updates while keeping updates compatible enough to keep Chrome add-ons working.
Firefox has become a slow, buggy, bloated product with little apparent innovation. With all these releases, you'd think you'd see tremendous changes from release to release. Instead, other than breaking the add-ons, I can't see any improvements in user experience or functionality from Firefox 20 to Firefox 23. These days, it seems like most of the innovation is in the Chrome ecosystem. In the past, the innovation seemed to be partly in the Mozilla team, and partly in the add-on ecosystem, but that add-on ecosystem has all but ground to a halt.
Back to Firefox being slow and buggy. At least once per day, Firefox becomes unresponsive; sometimes it recovers after a few minutes, but more often it just hangs and must be forced to shut down. Firefox has become very unstable.
But Firefox is also slow. I know that some recent projects focus on Firefox performance and some recent benchmarks show Firefox performance improving, but that is not my experience. In fact, the more tabs you have open, and the longer the pages you view in Firefox, the noticeably slower it gets. And then it crashes. And takes a VERY long time to restart.

In the end, though, the killer for me is Firefox's constant upgrades blowing away its crowning jewel - the add-on ecosystem. Without add-ons, Firefox is just another browser. Stacked up against Chrome, Firefox lacks adequate support for Android, lacks stability, drags slowly on start-up (especially on restarting after crashing), and shows little or no innovation. Mozilla needs to slow down the upgrade cadence, attempt some bigger and more innovative projects, support the add-on ecosystem to be ready with updates whenever the browser gets updated, and find a new reason to exist beyond fighting the bygone bogeyman of Microsoft hegemony.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with me? Let me know by leaving comments below ...

Database Billboards: Times and Cars and Oracle Competitors Gone By

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 17:13:00 +0000

Database Billboards: Times and Cars and Oracle Competitors Gone By

Driving up or down 101 these days, you can't avoid the new SiliconView billboard - it's a double-sided electronic billboard, so you can see it whether you are going north- or south-bound, and most of us on 101 are driving slowly enough that we get to see several iterations of the billboard content as we sit in traffic.

A few weeks ago, the billboard started displaying ads with that distinctive SAP orange/amber/mustard/whatever color, drawing my eye to something that normally just existed in the background. Yes - it was an SAP ad! That's odd, I thought - very few business decision makers for large SAP-style prospects drive up and down 101. Wouldn't it be better to put something up in San Francisco airport, like Oracle does, or in San Francisco?

Then I realized - this billboard was advertising SAP HANA. Could it be? Could SAP be making the same silly mistake made by so many other database competitors over the years? Could SAP be falling into the same trap sprung on IBM, Ingres, and Informix?

Yes, it appeared that SAP was getting into the chest-thumping, one-upsmanship game played by Oracle's database competitors so wastefully in the past. Those companies started focusing on Oracle, rather than on Oracle's customers' needs. It was more important to Informix to try to tweak Larry's buttons than it was for them to properly account for their software in the channel, or to do a better job meeting customers' needs.

As I was thinking about writing this blog, I looked for images of those older billboards. If you have any images (especially IBM or Ingres billboards), please post a link in the comments below. I was able to find online only Informix billboards.

That last billboard was the one Informix displayed as the company was in tatters, falling apart from its latest scandal. After that, no more billboards (from Informix).

Did these billboards help Informix beat Oracle? Did these billboards focus Informix's employees on the goal (better serving customers)? Did these billboards help recruit and/or demoralize the best developers and others at Oracle?

No.

SAP HANA is a product that has a great deal of potential, as I and other Enterprise Irregulars have written in the past. However, in conversations with SAP HANA customers and experts, there are still significant issues to be overcome before this becomes a worthy competitor to Oracle - issues in cost, stability, scalability, standards support, openness to a third party ecosystem, availability of complementary solutions, and availability of reasonably priced expert resources. Hopefully, SAP is focusing its R&D investments on this issues, and on being a platform for a new kind and new generation of in-memory applications rather than the RDBMS-focused applications of the 1990's, even while SAP marketing participates in what is perhaps just harmless competition and good-natured rivalry.

However, I hope SAP will remember that Highway 101 is littered with the burned out wreckage of SAP HANA's predecessors who took Oracle on directly in the marketing arena, rather than delivering more value to customers. In fact, SAP even owns one of those defunct database companies itself ...

Essential Android Apps for Business

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:16:00 +0000

I have been an Android user ever since the first day the first Motorola Droid was available for Verizon back in 2009. Over the years, I've accumulated some experience using Android on phones and tablets, and certain apps have made this experience better for me at work. Here's my list of essential Android apps for business - let me know in the comments below if you have any other suggestions. By the way - these are all FREE apps.

This list reflects the way I work, and your style of working may require different apps. I have a lot of meetings (including conference calls and WebEx sessions), travel a lot (locally, domestically, and internationally), and need to view and edit a lot of documents. I spend a lot of time with customers, have a quota, and need access to the corporate intranet. I write a lot of Microsoft Office documents, and read and write hundreds of e-mails per day.

Google built-in apps

Let's start with the standard Google apps, most or all of which come pre-installed on most devices. Not all Google apps are equally useful for business, but these are all quite helpful.

Calendar Widget: My most useful business app. This widget comes built in with your Android device. My home page on my phone is pretty much a nearly fully-screen calendar, plus Google Voice search, a folder for mail apps, a folder for navigation destinations I use a lot (like home and work), a folder for phone numbers I use a lot, and a link to a flashlight app. By the way, you can also edit which apps show up at the bottom of each Android screen - I like phone, Chrome, Settings, and the Camera, since I use those frequently. I hardly ever use any other page on my phone.
Chrome: Many older Android devices come with a browser that predated Chrome. Chrome is now the default browser on Android devices. It is stable, fast, and has some nice features (see Chrome to Phone).
Chrome to Phone: Chrome to Phone allows you to send web pages from Chrome on your PC or Mac to your phone. Let's say you're looking at a hotel web site on your laptop and want to send it to your phone to have the address (for giving directions in the cab) or the phone (for checking to confirm your reservation) - Chrome to Phone to the rescue. Since I often use just my phone in meetings, I often use Chrome to Phone to send reference web pages to my phone in advance.
Drive: Drive replaced Google Docs. You can use Google Drive to edit word processing documents and spreadsheets, as well as to view and share presentation documents and files across devices or with other people. As long as you have a network connection, Google Drive is a useful tool.
Gmail: Sometimes you need to send yourself information - or deal with personal business while in a meeting. Manage your Gmail accounts with this app.

Goggles: Google Goggles may be the Google app that has the most unrealized potential of any Google app. Goggles works well for QR and bar code scans, searching for information on a company by photographing its logo, and a few other applications. Where it falls down, however, is in its most potentially useful area for business - business card scanning. I've never successfully scanned a business card with Google Goggles. Worst of all, it doesn't even work with Google business cards.
Mail: Android devices come with a second e-mail app that connects with Exchange servers to send and receive corporate e-mail, set and receive calendar appointments and meetings, and access the corporate directory. If your company, like most, uses Exchange Server for mail and calendar, this app is indispensable.
Maps (and Navigation): When heading to a meeting, this app is a great way to get directions, check traffic, and save places ("star" them) for future reference. If I'm going to some exotic foreign location, I often scope out sights and places to see, save them as favorites, and then use Google Maps to walk from one to another. You can get driving, walking, and public transportation directions with the navigation mode, which does turn-by-turn directions.

MyTracks: MyTracks is an app that tracks your travels on GPS. You can use MyTracks to trace the route you walked from a parking space to a meeting, so you can find your way back later. You can save any pathway with MyTracks, really useful for retracing your steps particularly when in a strange city.

Search (and Google Now, and Voice Search): Google Search is an essential app (and home screen widget). Google Search not only surpasses Siri in voice search, but also includes Google Now, one of the most innovative mobile apps available. Google Now checks your calendar to see what you have coming up, and tells you when it is time to leave based on traffic. It tells you about any delays to upcoming flights, whether in cities you are in or will be in soon, sports teams you care about, and much more.
Translate: Helpful for translating web pages, e-mail messages, and phrases. If you want to add a thank you phrase to a message, read an article written in a foreign trade journal, or figure out if you're at the right restaurant, Google Translate is a must have app.
Voice: Google Voice is a great app for staying in touch, as well as for making cheap international calls. You can retrieve messages using a web interface while on the road - most are even transcribed for you automatically, allowing you to get your voice mail via text message, e-mail, or web browser. While not traveling, Google Voice can ring your cell phone and work phone (multiple phones at your choice) for in-bound phone calls. Very handy.

Other useful Android apps:

Adobe Reader: Open and read PDF files with the authentic app from Adobe.
AK Notepad: Simple way to take notes during meetings.
Alarm Clock Plus: In my opinion, the best alarm clock to use, particularly when traveling. Very flexible way to set multiple alarms, including in advance.
Amazon Kindle: Another good way to read PDF files. Also useful for reading other kinds of documents sent wirelessly to your Android device.
AnyConnect: Cisco VPN access to corporate intranet from the road.
ASTRO File Manager: Astro is like Windows Explorer for your Android device. You can see, open, and manage all your files. Especially useful for finding that attachment you just downloaded.

Concur: If your company, like mine, uses Concur for expense reporting, this mobile app allows you to take note of any expense while traveling by taking a photo of the receipt and uploading the image. Very helpful for getting those expense reports in in a timely manner.
Dictionary: Sometimes you run into a word you don't really know - this is a handy app for looking up the definition of a word.
DroidRecord: There are lots of times when you need to record a meeting - in compliance with all laws and ethics. DroidRecord is the app to record these meetings for future reference.Evernote: Some meetings require more sophisticated notetaking, including words, drawings, and photos (screen shots of PowerPoints is a lot more efficient than trying to type it all in or take notes on a presentation you won't get until later). Evernote is a cross-platform app that works on many devices (not just Android devices), and allows you to sync notes across them for future reference.

GasBuddy: GasBuddy helps you find gas stations when you're driving around. Plus, you can find the best price when you need it, and it connects to Google Navigate to get you turn-by-turn directions to the gas station of your choice.
Kingston Office: I prefer Kingston Office to other Microsoft Office-compatible document editors. It's free and works well.
Magnificient Magnifier HD: Great little app for magnifying anything small you can't easily read, including magnifying, lighting up the item, and taking a picture. Very handy for things like serial numbers, which are maddeningly small for folks my age.
Okta: If your company uses Okta for single sign-on, this app can be set up by your IT folks to give you convenient access to everything from everywhere.
PDANet: A lot of carriers charge a monthly fee for using your phone as a hotspot or for tethering. With PDANet, you can use your cell phone's data plan over a Bluetooth or micro-USB cable to get network connectivity on your laptop if you don't have a cellular modem for your computer. The free version of PDANetcan be used to access any non-secure web site (http) or Internet connection (this works for Outlook for most companies!). For a small, one-time fee ($20), you can also access secure connections (https).

RealCalc: Great scientific calculator. Good for most business calculations. For you financial geek types, there are calculators compatible with your HP-41C if you need one.
Salesforce Mobile: Just about everyone uses Salesforce.com for CRM these days, and Salesforce Mobile gives you a great way to use it from anywhere.
Skype: So many people use Skype to stay in touch, that this app is indispensable. If you use Verizon, you'll need this version of Skype instead. Skype may be the best Microsoft app ever!
Stopwatch & Timer: Ever need to time a presentation, to make sure you don't run out of time during a speaking slot? Good for timing demos, presentations, or anything else.

Swype: Not available on the Google Play store. Google Swype revolutionized text input on mobile devices. If you have trouble typing on the small, on-screen keyboards, or if you think you can't give up your Blackberry, you'll love Swype. Seriously, I was a HUGE Blackberry user, and Swype allowed me to type two or three times faster and more accurately than I ever could on a Blackberry keypad. However, if you get Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, there is a built-in keyboard replacement that uses the same approach as Swype, so Swype's days may be numbered.
TeslaLED: You just need a flashlight sometimes, and this one works on just about every device I've ever tried.
TripIt: Organize all your travel info, if you fly a lot.
WebEx: I do a lot of web and teleconferences, most of them on WebEx. This app allows me to join in on any WebEx conference from anywhere. I can't present using this app, but I can view the web conference. I've used this in airports, my car, and many other places where I just couldn't conveniently use my laptop.
Where's My Droid: Some Droid devices come with a "find my phone" app - this app is for the rest of us. Easily locate your device when you've mislaid it. Keep your phone secure with a password, regardless, for those rare times when you may have actually lost your phone. Ask your IT shop if they can remotely wipe and disable your phone if it is really lost.
Wifi Analyzer: Find the best WiFi signal when you have a choice. Of course, also useful for setting up your WiFi at home or in the office.
Wikipedia: Sometimes, you just have to look things up. Of course, you can always do this just using your browser if you prefer.

Missing:

I still haven't found two free apps I'd love to have - a great business card scanner and a document scanner (including optical character recognition - OCR).

Summary

Some folks love their iOS devices, and some won't give up their Blackberries, but I love Android. Android has great voice input, Swype, widgets on the home screen, great integration with Google Apps, and all these great free apps. Let me know if you have other favorites or your thoughts on this list in the comments area below. Enjoy!

Steve Ballmer and Uncle Fester: Separated at Birth?

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 19:41:00 +0000

Steve Ballmer and Uncle Fester: separated at birth? You be the judge ...

That's Steve Ballmer on the left, in case you were wondering, and then both the original Uncle Fester (as played by Jackie Coogan) and the more modern Uncle Fester as played by Christopher Lloyd ...

Dave Duffield and Bob Barker: Separated at birth?

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:39:00 +0000

The great Bob Barker and the great Dave Duffield: separated at birth? You be the judge ...

What I did this weekend instead of Twitter and Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:57:00 +0000

I have been thinking about what to say in this toast ever since Adriana and Jasen told us they were engaged. How do you capture all your hopes and advice, all your memories and dreams, in just a few words?

Every father has fears and hopes. Will my child grow up to be happy? Will I be a better father than mine? Will my daughter love me? Will she do well in school? Will she meet a good man someday? Will she want to have children? Will she enjoy life and pass on a good background to the next generation?

As I look around this room, and see all the love and happiness, all my fears melt away. Jasen and Adriana are such a good match. I've seen them together so in love and so in tune with each other. I'd like to thank Jasen's parents and his family for doing such a good job raising such a wonderful man. Thank you to all the family and friends who came from out of town or even out of the country. Thank you to my mother for showing me how to be a good parent. And to my lovely wife, the most beautiful mother of the bride in history, thank you for all your love, all your trust, and all the wonderful years we've had and will have together.

On a day like this, you also remember all the things that led to this moment. I remember the first time I saw Adriana, the first gift I gave her, the first word she taught me in Korean, the first time I dropped her off at school, the first time I moved her into her own place, her first soccer game, her first flute lesson, the first time I met Jasen, and the first time Emma came to stay at our house. I also remember the first time I saw your mother, how much you helped us when mommy was in the hospital to give birth to Joshua, and whenever we needed anything. You and Jasen are so helpful, open, smart, and positive.

To Adriana and Jasen, I'd like to share the lessons of two decades of a successful marriage. Be slow to anger and quick to forgiveness. Take out the wedding video on your anniversary each year to remember how beautifully you started your official life together. Come visit your old parents often, and feel free to drop off the kids every once in a while when they need to be spoiled a little.

We love you so much, and look forward to many more wonderful memories together. Please, everyone, raise your glasses in a toast to the bride and groom. May you live to one hundred and twenty years in love, peace, and happiness. Mazel tov!

Can SAP be the #2 database vendor by 2015? [Guest Post]

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:26:00 +0000

Note: This is a guest post by John Appleby (@applebyj) of BlueFin Solutions. Opinions are his (but I value his opinions!).

Last week 150 people travelled to Boston to listen to SAP talk about their future focus. There was a lot of talk about cloud, muted by the fact that SAP have just acquired HCM cloud vendor SuccessFactors and therefore are unable to talk about the acquisition until it is completed. But their in-memory technology, HANA, was also in centre frame.

And during the conference, SAP senior executive Steve Lucas announced that he intends SAP to be the #2 database vendor by 2015. It wasn't a throwaway comment and hyperbole is not Steve's way. He was clear on who this meant overtaking and clear on this difficulty of this journey. But is this realistic, or just pie in the sky?

For those who don't completely understand: SAP HANA is a next-generation database. At a 30,000ft level it can do anything that Oracle, IBM or Microsoft can do, but hundreds or thousands of times faster, because it runs in the main memory of a computer system rather than on slow spinning disks. I've used it and it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Why doesn't SAP HANA have deeper market penetration?

Put simply it is because SAP wanted it this way. Whilst HANA truly is a general-purpose database, SAP first announced it as an analystics appliance for the 1.0 release. They also priced it really high and didn’t' offer a discount – list pricing can be as high as €180,000 for a 64GB HANA "unit", depending on which version you require.

And what's more, SAP sells solutions and HANA is a platform, so the global salesforce doesn't quite know how to sell it in volume - yet. They didn't want to sell it in volume in any case because they wanted to introduce it slowly to market – building stability, references along the way and avoiding expensive and embarrassing global escalations.

So by the end of 2011 we should expect $100-150m of HANA sales, which is 3-5% of SAP's total revenue. Not particularly significant, right? Well in September they released HANA as being supported for SAP's Business Warehouse software, which allows large-scale data warehouses. And this is where it gets interesting: there are 17,000 existing BW customers, and HANA would provide business benefit to all of them.

What is the wider market opportunity for SAP HANA?

It starts with the SAP BW product, which has 17,000 customers. HANA can replace the database that BW runs on – which is typically from Oracle, IBM or Microsoft. The benefits of this are huge – much faster reporting, data loads, far better agility and a better business experience overall. HANA literally transforms SAP BW.

But that is just the start because the fact that BW runs on HANA means that SAP can allow any of its software to run with HANA – replacing the existing database. And how quickly it chooses to allow this is a factor of how quickly it decides that HANA is mature enough to do this. Larry Ellison from Oracle claimed that there is no in-memory database anywhere near to being able to run as the database for a transactional system at the beginning of 2011. HANA has not yet proven that it is ready yet, but this is exactly what SAP intends.

And even that is just the tip of the iceberg. Because let's be clear: HANA can be used for anything. It supports industry standard connections like ODBC and JDBC and anything that runs a database can be run on HANA – just much faster than ever before. Other vendors have in-memory technologies but the way HANA is designed means it is much more general-purpose than what Oracle and IBM have to offer.

So what is possible by 2015?

Well this is the billion dollar question. From a personal perspective I am deeply impressed with what SAP have done with HANA in 2011. It has gone from being vapourware (January) to being a real product on the price list (July) - albeit immature. And by September a second – much more mature – release was released to market that supports BW. That's an enormous amount of progress in 12 short months.

And I already have projects underway that use HANA as a general purpose database for things like the Sybase Unwired Platform – enabling real-time enterprises with iPads, providing decision making on the move based on events that happened seconds before. There's no doubt that the technology has huge potential. The question is – what happens next, and how fast?

It also depends what you mean by #2 database vendor. For example Oracle say they are the #1 SAP database vendor. Yes – they have the most large systems. Microsoft claim the same, because they have the most customers (a lot of smaller customers run Microsoft). And guess what, IBM claim the same – because IBM have the biggest SAP databases. SAP are going to have to be clear when they explain what they mean by #2.

But based on what I've seen – expect early ERPs to be supported by SAP in 2012 – including the BusinessOne ERP suite – ERP lite, if you like, designed for organisations with 1-100 employees. Expect SAP's SME (10-1000 employee) ByDesign cloud suite to run on HANA and also expect HANA to support standards: because today whilst HANA supports ODBC and JDBC, it does not support 3rd party systems to connect directly into this.

In 2012 we should also expect to see proper support for larger (>1TB databases). HANA compresses around 10:1 to 5:1 compared to other databases so 1TB is 5-10TB of standard database, but it hasn't really been proven to scale properly yet. Expect to see this happen in 2012, as well as scenarios that require disaster recovery and other technical stuff like integration with enterprise monitoring suites like Tivoli.

Why is SAP taking its sweet time?

It seems to be that the answer is pretty simple. The last major database to go to market was Microsoft in the mid-90s with SQL Server. They made an acquisition and it was still awful until the release in 2000. SAP doesn't want this stigma and is therefore phasing the rollout, making the software expensive and thereby limiting the number of customers.

For example there was no shortage of customers out of the 17,000 to join the NetWeaver BW early adoption program that SAP calls Ramp-Up. But there were 50 slots and those were easily filled with customers who had realistic projects that would go live. Little by little they build references, quality software and trust within the customer base – but not growing so fast that there are major project failures. There have been a few instances where HANA was oversold in the early days and those projects were managed carefully – directly by the SAP leadership team.

Projects that use HANA as an ERP database have been deliberately avoided, as SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka told me. He described how if Porsche's BW data warehouse were to stop working, they would raise a priority support call and SAP would sort it out. However if their ERP system stopped working and production of cars ceased, he would get a personal phone call from a board member.

So in 2013 expect support for the ERP suite to start to come. And by then, HANA will be sold for every conceivable scenario through 2014 and 2015. And the interesting thing is I don't believe that a killer scenario exists for HANA yet, because all the scenarios right now are really about doing what you do today, but faster. Let's start thinking about what you can't do today – and might give you a huge competitive advantage.

And can SAP be the #2 database vendor by 2015? Really?

Honestly I'm not sure, but it is definitely the right goal. HANA isn't about high-performance analytics – it's about changing the way that customers do business, with a technology enabler. For this reason, SAP have to be looking at going after the database market – and helping customers get a huge competitive advantage along the way.

I honestly suspect that the biggest challenge that SAP have along this way is enabling the salesforce to educate customers on how beneficial it would be – because the SAP salesforce is aligned around industry verticals and Lines of Business. A global reorganisation is underway to change this, and the way that HANA is explained and sold is at the core of this, but HANA is a platform and will need to be sold as such. That is a serious piece of organisational change for SAP and shouldn't be underestimated.

Regardless of whether Steve's goal is met or not, SAP HANA is perhaps one of the most interesting technologies I have seen in my 14 years of working in Enterprise IT, and well worth serious consideration, whatever business you run. If you are a SAP customer I would go a step further and say that you should look at building your HANA roadmap, based on your business imperatives compared to the product maturity and availability roadmap.

Disclosure: SAP paid for John's travel and expenses to the Influencer Summit in Boston. Mine, too, btw, and SAP is a client of mine (Dennis).

My favorite SAP HANA blogs

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:05:00 +0000

Here are the "must read" blogs for those who wish to understand SAP HANA.

Jon Reed:

Podcast - Debating the Value of SAP HANA - http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/43986/podcast-debating-the-value-of-sap-hana/

Vitaliy Rudnytskiy:
Is SAP HANA about the “in-memory database”? - http://vitalbi.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/is-sap-hana-in-memory-db/
SAP HANA: Opening New Frontiers - http://www.sapvirtualevents.com/teched/sessiondetails.aspx?sId=651

John Appleby:

Updated: The SAP HANA FAQ - answering key SAP In-Memory questions - http://www.bluefinsolutions.com/insights/blog/the_sap_hana_faq_answering_key_sap_in_memory_questions/
First Impressions on SAP NetWeaver BW 7.3, powered by SAP HANA - amazing - http://www.bluefinsolutions.com/insights/blog/first_impressions_on_sap_netweaver_bw7.3_powered_by_sap_hana_amazing/
Why SAP HANA 1.0 SP03 - Project Orange - will be a runaway success - http://www.bluefinsolutions.com/insights/blog/why_sap_hana_1.0_sp03_project_orange_will_be_a_runway_success/

Vijay Vijayasankar:

Redbull migrates BW to HANA – I am suitably impressed - http://andvijaysays.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/redbull-migrates-bw-to-hana-i-am-suitably-impressed/

Moi:

What Are the Killer Apps for SAP HANA and Other In-Memory Computing Systems? - http://www.bluefinsolutions.com/insights/guest_blog/what_are_the_killer_apps_for_sap_hana_and_other_in-memory_computing/ and http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/44086/what-are-the-killer-apps-for-sap-hana-and-other-in-memory-computing-systems/
The Real (Potential) Impact of SAP HANA - http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/39209/the-real-potential-impact-of-sap-hana/
Is SAP HANA Right For You (Now) - http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/43547/is-sap-hana-right-for-you-now/
SAP HANA - The Strategic Context - http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/43491/sap-hana-%E2%80%93-the-strategic-context/

Enjoy!

What Are the Killer Apps for SAP HANA and Other In-Memory Computing Systems?

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:53:00 +0000

In a previous blog, I argued that SAP HANA (and in-memory computing) had the potential to bring a number of benefits to enterprises in the short term, including:

elimination of lag time between data capture in the operational system and its availability in analytical systems,
greatly increased query performance, and
simplification of the IT landscape.

A second blog discussed scenarios in which HANA could be transformative to customers today. In summary, customers running SAP BW may find substantial benefits to moving to SAP HANA in the short term - read the blog for more details. It's my opinion that SAP BW is the "killer app" for HANA. However, this is only a part of the answer, since BW is a platform on which customers run many different apps.

"Timeful" software

Why is HANA so interesting? In a sense, what the HANA team did is to look at all the assumptions underlying applications today. Given the enormous changes in the price of high-speed memory, it is now possible and economical to handle essentially all of our typical transactional applications - and a very large fraction of our analytical applications - on a data set in fast RAM, rather than on a slow disk.

As I was discussing SAP HANA with Vishal Sikka (SAP Chief Technology Officer and Executive Board member) and his team over the past months, I came to the conclusion that the software architecture embodied in HANA is a radical re-thinking of the assumptions underlying the enterprise software industry - and this could be transformative for the enterprise software industry and every industry it supports. Disruptive changes in speed and cost have always held the potential for transformations of industries, whether in transportation (from sailboats to airplanes), farming (from ox-driven plows to today's automated equipment), or mining (workers with pick axes to earthmovers and dynamite). As these industries transformed, they also led to transformations in the industries around them, and society as a whole. For example, fast, cheap, reliable transportation led to transformations of every industry from agriculture to energy to trade to government and even to war.

Vishal recently discussed a concept he calls "Timeless Software" (blog, video). Timeless Software embodies the notion that software must evolve as customer needs - and technologies available to satisfy them - change. Business processes and data need to survive even as the technologies around them get invented, flourish, and eventually passed by with new and (usually!) better successors. But what about the situation where the business needs change extremely rapidly, and the business can flourish or perish based on its ability to respond in real-time?

You could think of this scenario, where time is of the essence, as "timeful software" - scenarios in which you could transform an industry by eliminating latency - or lack - of information. HANA's speed allows batch processes to be performed more frequently, continuously, or transmuted into continuous processes. Can such speed - delivering information and insight into the hands of those who need it instantly when it is needed, or re-planning on an "as needed" basis rather than periodically - can such speed really transform an industry? Can moving information and deriving information in real-time make such a difference?

In many business processes, the answer is already, resoundingly "yes." Hotels check availability before confirming your reservation. Banks check for sufficient funds before cashing a check at the teller. Airplanes get rerouted and rescheduled when a volcano erupts in Iceland. But there are many other business processes which are executed periodically, in batches, today due to the cost and disruption to production systems. If the cost (performance) and disruption (latency, system unavailability windows) could be eliminated - as they can be with in-memory computing systems like SAP HANA - then the economics of businesses and industries could be substantially improved.

These "timeful" scenarios listed below are illustrative of those which I think will be enabled by SAP HANA, and which will lead to dramatic efficiencies, competitive shifts, and improved service, creating value for customers in such a way as to transform an industry.

[For the scenarios, please see the original blog at this link.]

Killer App

A killer app is a typically thought of as an application that is so beneficial that it drives widespread adoption of a new type of platform. This term was invented for the computer industry, with VisiCalc (driving the adoption of personal computers) being a canonical example. Once individuals, and businesses, adopted personal computers to run VisiCalc (or Lotus 1-2-3 for MS-DOS, or Excel and Word on Windows), users started using those same computers for many other applications, ranging from word processing to e-mail to web browsing. The impact of these second set of applications is more profound than was the impact of the spreadsheet, but it was the spreadsheet that paved the way for these applications by bringing PCs into mainstream adoption.

VisiCalc, Lotus, and Excel were really just containers that held data and applications ("macros"), and it was those applications that made the tools into killer apps, used for everything from budgeting to tax preparation to production planning to homework. In many ways, SAP BW is exactly analogous to a spreadsheet like VisiCalc or Lotus. BW is a container that can hold data and applications - applications including the lists of processes above. BW, with scenarios like the long lists above, will drive widespread adoption of in-memory computing (and SAP HANA, more specifically). Once HANA is in place as the database under SAP BW, customers will find many more ways to use HANA to transform their enterprises to much higher levels of performance, much as word processors, e-mail, and browsers are transforming business and society.

Will SAP HANA have the same impact as the PC? Will HANA be VisiCalc or Excel in my analogy? Time will tell, but time is exactly what SAP HANA gives you. And, perhaps in the end, time is the real "killer app."

Do you have additional scenarios to suggest for "timeful" transformations? Share them here!

Note: SAP is a former employer, and current client, of the author.

Is SAP HANA Right for You (Now)?

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:19:00 +0000

As mentioned in my previous post, SAP HANA has been the focus of much of SAP's technical and marketing communications of late, and has been of great interest to the influencer community (see these excellent posts by John Appleby (@applebyj) and Vijay Vijayasankar (@vijayasankarv) for example). Many SAP customers with whom I spoke recently are also interested in HANA for a number of reasons. Strategically, HANA is very important to SAP – it can deliver a substantial new revenue opportunity for SAP and its ecosystem, provide customers with game-changing benefits, and at the same time change the competitive market dynamics relative to Oracle in SAP's favor. Still, it is very early days for SAP HANA, and SAP's customers are not always willing to jump on a new technology until it has been proven to provide a real business benefit. How can you determine if SAP HANA is right for you (now)?

SAP HANA Benefits

Let’s start by taking a look at the benefits of SAP HANA. HANA can provide significant improvements in query performance, low latency between operational and analytical data stores, reduced administrative overhead, and both better TCO and price/performance ratios as compared to traditional data warehouses. Each of these bears some explanation; however, my explanation has run into several thousand words, so I will cover the details in my next blog.

Recently, SAP announced that SAP BW now runs on SAP HANA as a supported configuration, and the product is in a controlled release. SAP also announced an intention to deliver pre-built applications on SAP HANA, but these are not available yet. While I believe that BW on HANA is a "killer app" for HANA, others have urged SAP to focus on applications. According to Michael Krigsman, CEO of Asuret and an expert in achieving successful enterprise projects, "SAP's challenge is to humanize HANA, focusing on line of business use cases while de-emphasizing the underlying technology, at least from a marketing perspective. If line of business customers see huge value, they will demand that their IT departments purchase HANA."

Given the lack of availability of other packaged apps on HANA, I think the only real appeal of HANA can be – at this point – to SAP BW customers. Fortunately, given the benefits mentioned above (wicked fast query performance, reduced loading and preparation time, no latency between operational and analytical systems, and reduced complexity and cost), BW appears to be the perfect killer app for HANA – this will bring HANA in the door at many customer accounts, and then customers will find other uses for it.

Customers: Is SAP HANA Right for You (Now)

If you are a customer of SAP, chances are you will adopt HANA – maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for … oh, wait, this is not that movie, and I don’t think you'll regret leaving your expensive and slow databases behind for HANA. Seriously, more than 13,000 SAP customers use BW today, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 customers use SAP Business Suite. In time, HANA will become so integrated with the Business Suite that customers will likely move to HANA, though this migration is some years out.

So, if you're planning on continuing to use SAP Business Suite, chances are you will adopt HANA. This means that the question for SAP customers is more "should I begin my adoption of SAP HANA now, or should I wait?" And the answer is quite simple: you should begin your adoption of HANA if there is a good business case for this adoption in your organization. After all, the price of a HANA appliance (assuming you already own your BW license but not the HANA software) is going to run you up to a couple of hundred thousand dollars. If you are not currently (or planning to start) using BW, then this might not be the right time for your enterprise to use HANA. However, a number of HANA-native applications are in the works from SAP, such as the famous CO-PA accelerator; as these applications come out, you may find a good business case for their use in your organization.

You should strongly consider using BW on HANA if your organization has:

... some reports or analytic applications that simply run too slowly to provide optimal business benefit, and a 5x to 1000x performance improvement would be material to your business,

... unacceptable downtimes, where your data warehouse is not available due to the need to load data,

... a need to see current, up-to-the-moment data, and/or

... a frequent need to create new reports or analytical applications, but IT struggles to maintain BW and keep it performing under changing user demands.

Note: even Business Warehouse Accelerator (BWA) customers may find that they have some reports or analyses that cannot be made to perform well in BWA, or there are long loading times, and users cannot see near-real-time data.

Many BW customers with whom I’ve spoken are happy with BW, but most have a few reports that run in hours instead of seconds, or IT can’t respond quickly enough to user requests, or the system is offline during the business day in one of their regions, or the data in the warehouse is "stale." If any of those issues sound like I’m describing your BW data warehouse, you might have a strong business case to move BW off Oracle (or whatever database you are using) and deploy it on HANA instead.

Even if you don’t think you need HANA (now), you could still benefit from HANA. Just go to your Oracle (or IBM, or Microsoft) sales rep and say that you are thinking about moving to HANA, and see if you can use that for leverage to get a better price on licenses and maintenance for your current database!

Systems Integrators: Is SAP HANA Right for You (Now)

SAP Systems Integrators range from IT mega-vendors like IBM and HP, to "pure play" consulting and integration companies like Wipro and Accenture, to boutique consultants like Bluefin Solutions and Jon Reed (@jonerp). The question these shops are all asking themselves right now is whether now is the right time to invest in developing SAP HANA skills. I can think of a single question that should help clarify the answer: does your firm do a lot of BW engagements?

If you answered "No" to this question, then this is a good time to keep an eye on HANA, but not a good time to invest in it. On the other hand, if you answered "Yes," then ask two more questions:

Is SAP going to invest to make HANA important to my customers in the next twelve months?

Can I develop HANA skills in-house or do I have to look outside?

Judging from the response HANA has been getting from SAP customers, and from the emphasis SAP senior management is placing on this technology, it is clear that SAP is going to invest to make HANA work, to develop more and more applications on the technology, and to drive the technology deep into the Business Suite. The marketing effort around HANA, combined with a working solution, is sure to drive a lot of customer interest in this technology.

A quick glance at the job boards shows that several consulting firms and integrators, SAP included, are looking outside for HANA skills. There are about 50 job posts for HANA skills on Dice.com and Monster.com, posted by firms like SAP, IBM, Fujitsu America, and PwC. The good news is that – if you already have BW (or even better, BWA) skills in-house, you can easily upgrade these skills to HANA. SAP is making it easier and easier to learn HANA, from the information and test software available on http://ExperienceSAPHANA.com/ to new and simple utilities like the Information Composer in HANA SPS3.

In fact, if you have an in-house data warehouse built on SAP BW, it should be a matter of days to migrate it to HANA, assuming you have the budget for a system (which could run between $50,000 and $300,000). Think about trying hard to get a test system from IBM, Cisco, Dell, HP, Fujitsu, or Lenovo. Also, think about splitting the cost of this system with your marketing department, because nothing should help you close your first HANA client faster than saying "we've done the migration for our own data warehouse, and let me share our experiences with you."

Independent Consultants: Is SAP HANA Right for You (Now)

Do you consult on data warehousing and/or BW? If so, you really should get started on HANA right now. The benefits of HANA are so compelling for BW customers, that you can really increase your business by demonstrating HANA to your clients.

Alternatively, if you are consulting in another area of SAP, and are looking to learn a little about HANA, you don’t have to go to the expense of buying your own HANA system. SAP has a HANA system running in the cloud, which you can access at http://ExperienceSAPHANA.com/, where you can study HANA and even implement your own systems to test out the software and develop your skills. Also check out this blog for information about another program SAP has created to get you hands-on with HANA.

ISVs: Is SAP HANA Right for You (Now)

Sadly, I don't think this is the right time for ISVs to think about developing custom applications on HANA. The tools are not really there, and the HANA platform team has other priorities right now. If your product uses BW, then by all means get some HANA experience, and think about how your application could evolve for a world of high performance analytics. If your solution includes BW content, then definitely begin testing HANA with your solution, so you can support your customers. But, unless you’re an SAP Demo Jam master, this may be too soon for you to adopt HANA for new, HANA-native applications.

Summary

Given the substantial performance improvements, up-to-the-moment data in the warehouse, reduced operating costs and complexity, and other significant benefits HANA offers to SAP BW customers, it seems likely that SAP HANA will have substantial appeal – and uptake – in the SAP customer base by the end of 2012. SAP BW customers should look at SAP HANA as the optimized database appliance for HANA, and most SAP BW customers should begin planning or piloting an adoption of HANA soon. SAP consultants and integrators should expect a great deal of demand for SAP HANA skills both in the short- and long-term, and should begin preparing now. It may be too early for ISV's to benefit from HANA, other than as it improves any BW components in the ISVs' solutions.

Note: SAP is a client, and former employer, of mine.

SAP HANA – the strategic context

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:38:00 +0000

This is part one of a three part series on SAP HANA.

Many years ago, SAP’s founders had the dream of implementing accounting and finances in real-time. They believed this could revolutionize business, making it possible for enterprises to have a clear picture of their financial positions at all time, enabling companies to make better decisions. Ultimately, this vision grew to include business processes across the enterprise, supporting real-time integration across all business processes in the enterprise. Over the years, SAP and other vendors have not always accomplished this level of real-time integration, but the days of batch processing of invoices, receipts, inventory updates, and other crucial enterprise information are largely behind us.

Except in business intelligence. Most enterprises today extract data periodically from their operational systems, transform that data into unified units and schema, cleanse the data of errors and gaps, aggregate the data to support faster queries, and then deploy that data into the enterprise data warehouse for reporting and analytics use. This process generally introduces a lag between when data are entered into the operational system, and when that same data are available in the data warehouse. This lag can be as short as a few minutes, or as long as a month, but is rarely less than an hour. Many enterprises “refresh” their data warehouse nightly (although when is “nightly” in a global enterprise?) or even weekly. One CRM system I used recently had a caveat on its reports, stating that “the data in this report may be 24 hours out of date.” In other words, on the last day of the quarter, a sales manager could not use the system’s reporting capabilities to determine if she had made her quota or still needed to make some more calls. For some applications, this lag time is unavoidable, but eliminating this gap between action and insight should be a goal of every IT organization.

For many enterprise topics, new ideas come from the consumer world – this trend is known as “the consumerization of IT” (or #CoIT, to insiders on Twitter). Consumer-facing companies (like Apple and Facebook) hear more clearly from their users and customers than Enterprise Software and Solutions companies (#EnSW on Twitter), and so they are often the source of innovation in the IT space. CoIT gives us many ideas about user experience (iPad!), social capabilities (Facebook!), mobility (iPad!), and scaling to massive data volumes (Facebook!). However, the consumer world does not offer us many good examples of real-time integration of operational and analytical data.

Into this critical need – powerful analytics on current data with real-time response – stepped SAP recently with SAP HANA. SAP aimed to bring the same real-time advantages to analytics that they brought to transactions. HANA is an extremely ambitious undertaking for SAP, which is not known for its leadership in the worlds of databases or analytics.

Over the years, SAP has offered its own database (SAP DB), which did not have a great deal of success in the market despite the obvious pricing advantages in comparison to commercial database products. Most notably, Oracle has been adopted by most large SAP customers, both for their operational databases and their data warehouses; Oracle has focused on the needs of large customers, and has achieved scalability, stability, and operational reliability not generally available from other commercial databases. Open Source databases have lagged far behind in these areas.

Additionally, SAP has offered first reporting and then generalized business intelligence solutions of its own (e.g., SAP BW), but these products have achieved only limited success, and that only in the SAP installed base. SAP BW has about 13,000 customers, but many of these customers use other analytical products alongside their SAP BW environments.

Recent years have seen SAP begin to make some serious moves to improve their position in the database and business intelligence spaces, specifically through the acquisition of Business Objects and Sybase. SAP has vaulted to a real leadership position in the BI world with the combination of its BW and “BOBJ” products, although it is still a distant #5 in the database market according to IDC.

IDC 2010 Database Market Share, Top 5 Vendors

Vendor	2010 Database Market Share
Oracle	45.2%
IBM	20.7
Microsoft	20.4
Teradata	3.3
SAP	3.0

If SAP could offer a discontinuous breakthrough, a game-changing technology, it might be able to capture a much larger share of this lucrative market, bringing some real benefits to the SAP shareholders and employees. Further, with Oracle's large share of the databases in SAP environments, a large increase in SAP’s share of this market would likely most hurt Oracle, SAP’s largest competitor in the applications business, reducing Oracle’s ability to fund its competing applications products through database profits, while simultaneously reducing Oracle’s insight into applications customers’ needs. Finally, if SAP could come up with a technology that provided real, new benefits to its customers, such as dramatic reductions in TCO, dramatic improvements in performance, or unification of the operational and analytical data stores for real-time data analysis, then SAP would be providing its customers with the kinds of benefits that could bring new levels of performance to their enterprises. This is precisely what SAP has set out to do with SAP HANA.

SAP HANA has no entered ramp-up, where SAP will take it from the first handful (or, technically, two handfuls) of customers up to several dozen, and then on to hundreds and thousands. Notably, SAP is using HANA internally, to speed insight for top management. At this point, HANA is primarily being used as a high-performance data store for BW, but stand-alone applications (such as “CO-PA Accelerator”) are not far behind, and eventually SAP plans to run their full suite of applications on HANA. Yes, that would mean a great potential savings for customers, and a significant reduction in business for Oracle, but this is years away from reality. In the meantime, SAP HANA looms as a potential boon to SAP shareholders, employees, customers, and partners.

The next blog in this series will discuss how to tell if SAP HANA is right for your organization – or for you.

Thanks to Mike Fauscette and IDC for providing market share data for this blog.

Please note: as of the time this blog was written, SAP is a current client of the author's.

SAP HANA Makes Progress and Threatens Oracle

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:08:00 +0000

SAP HANA has garnered a great deal of attention in recent weeks and months. For an overview of the technology and its potential, please check my recent blog on the subject, "The real (potential) impact of SAP HANA."

Since that blog was written, there has been a great deal of news in the SAP HANA world, and the surrounding cosmos as well. Rather than write another long blog on this topic, here is a list of some highlights:

The pricing of SAP HANA is getting clearer. A low end (128GB to 256GB RAM) SAP HANA appliance could start at around $80K-$100K for the hardware. A few sources inside and outside the company (not under NDA) also indicated to me that the price of SAP HANA software is around $120K at the low end, stretching up to $1M to $2M at the high end. SAP says the pricing is not discountable, but early customers have told me that (at least for them), everything is negotiable. This puts the entry-level SAP HANA pricing at around $250K plus services. A pilot project could be done for less than $300K, with potential for very large business benefits. How hard is it to find a business analytics problem that is worth $300K if it can be completed 10x faster? For many businesses, there is no shortage of such analytics problems, and in some cases SAP HANA will actually perform 100x faster - or even better.
Pricing for higher end SAP HANA boxes is not as clear. If your data can fit into 1TB of RAM, then these single-system boxes should be OK for you. But how will you know if your data can fit into that memory size? It seems (and I would welcome a knowledgeable person's correction on this if inaccurate) that SAP HANA can't be used when data can't fit entirely into one system's memory, which currently tops out at 2TB (and at much higher pricing - an additional $250K or so, from those few vendors offering that high-end configuration).
How much data can fit on any SAP HANA configuration? From discussions with a number of current SAP HANA users, this is not always clear, and SAP has some work to do to deliver good sizing tools. On average, users I spoke with report compression ratios of between 4 and 10 times for data - that is, if the data would take up 400GB in an ASCII file, the same data with HANA's columnar compression would take between 40GB and 100GB in SAP HANA (your mileage may vary). Of course, the operating system and other software needs some memory to run, but this size of data should fit fine onto the smallest SAP HANA appliances. In a disk-resident database, you might need dramatically more disk space for such a data warehouse, since space will not be used efficiently (sparse data) and since the indices may take a significant amount of space - even more than the data sometimes!
How about this for a sizing tool - load all your data on a removable hard drive (ENCRYPTED!!!), and bring it to IBM, HP, Cisco, Fujitsu, Dell, and anyone else offering a SAP HANA appliance. Have them load it up for you on their hardware, and test out your queries. If everything is as simple as some customers and integrators have been telling me (which is pretty close to how simple SAP has been saying it will be), then the hardware partners should be willing to do a pilot like this for free. You'll know exactly how much hardware you'll need, and you'll have a very good idea of its performance!
As a killer new application, SAP HANA will be certified in November for running SAP BW. All BW reports, extractors, etc., should all run without changes (except MUCH FASTER) on SAP HANA after this release. Let's face it - the overwhelming majority of SAP BW data warehouses are running on Oracle databases. If you have an Oracle database license priced in the range of $800K (and many medium-sized data warehouses are on such licenses), with a 25% annual maintenance fee, you are talking about $200K per year just for the database maintenance. If you could migrate that database over to SAP HANA, you might find that you paid for it in the first year by dropping your Oracle maintenance, and at the same time you may be delivering ten times more users or ten times faster results on reports and analyses. It wouldn't be hard to imagine many Oracle databases being converted over to SAP HANA in the coming year - especially those running under SAP BW (and Business Objects soon too!).
SAP recently also discussed several analytical applications that will be made available on SAP HANA. These are interesting, but not where the short-term value will be for most customers - this will be SAP BW or Business Objects running on SAP HANA, and ultimately the rest of the SAP Business Suite running on SAP HANA. Or Sybase, for that matter.
Oracle may be feeling some heat from SAP HANA - Oracle just introduced a low end database appliance offering, with hardware and software bundled for between $100K and $300K. While it is unlikely that this appliance would be able to deliver comparable performance to SAP HANA for those applications most suited to HANA's current capabilities, this appliance would have broader application - for example, being currently suited to running production transactional applications such as SAP.
At the high end, a SAP HANA appliance might cost on the order of $1M for hardware and $1M for software. An Oracle Exalogic data warehouse solution might cost 10x that number, delivering slower performance, consuming a lot more energy, and taking a lot more space.
SAP has expanded the mechanisms for loading SAP HANA. You can now use log-based replication (replaying the logs on another database to copy it), and trigger-based replication (having a system notify SAP HANA when data is changed), as well as the previously available ETL-based replication (using BW extractors or other technology to copy data out in bulk/batch). The trigger-based replication mechanism is particularly interesting, because it updates the "data warehouse" (can you even call it that anymore with technology like this?!?) continuously, in near real-time. In addition, the trigger-based replication approach allows for consolidating data from several databases quickly and easily into a single data warehouse. If you have one database for your CRM system and another for your financials, both databases can propagate their updates into a single SAP HANA system for consolidated reporting and analytics. Trigger-based replication supports many-sources-to-many-targets replication.

Business Objects metadata integration with SAP HANA metadata was not announced at SAP TechEd in Las Vegas, but perhaps will be available soon. Business Objects Explorer can run today on top of SAP HANA, which gives some level of integration that will benefit many SAP customers running SAP Business Objects. The more integration at the metadata level, however, the more appealing SAP HANA will become to Business Objects customers not running SAP systems.

Conclusions:

SAP HANA is getting to the point where any customer running SAP analytics (especially SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse aka BW) should be starting or at least planning an evaluation.
SAP HANA will make its biggest impact - for customers - initially as an "accelerator" for SAP BW.
SAP HANA may pay for itself in reduced database maintenance payments ...
... thus its biggest impact - for vendors - in creating pricing pressure on Oracle RDBMS for data warehouse instances.
We may be still a long way from seeing SAP HANA replace Oracle, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server as the transactional data manager for SAP Business Suite.

For more on the strategic impact of SAP HANA, please see http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/39209/the-real-potential-impact-of-sap-hana/.

Disclosures:

I worked for SAP for six years, including the period when SAP originally acquired the technology at the heart of HANA. SAP is a client as of the time of this writing.

Salesforce.com Dreamforce 2011: Some insights from The Greatest (Cloud Computing) Show on Earth!

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:37:00 +0000

Ringling Brothers bills itself as "The Greatest Show on Earth," but Salesforce.com's Dreamforce 2011 could easily claim the title of "The Greatest Cloud Computing Show on Earth." With over 40,000 attendees, dozens of exhibitors, great concerts and parties, and presentations galore, the event was an unqualified success for Salesforce.com, but it also heralded a real coming of age of enterprise Cloud computing. Why?

1. The show was jam-packed with insight, guidance, case studies, education - and energy! Not only did this show demonstrate conclusively that Salesforce.com has vision (as usual), it also showed that Salesforce.com's ecosystem is moving ahead decisively into the Cloud, across many areas of their businesses. Sure, the keynotes were educational and entertaining, but the proof was elsewhere at the show ...

2. Salesforce.com knows how to throw a party, but they also know how to create a movement. The speakers across the board (from partners and customers) accurately and compellingly presented the Salesforce.com themes of the show - Cloud, mobile, and social. The Developer Zone was hopping with highly effective and productive sessions teaching developers how to become part of the Cloud, mobile, and social revolution - and what developer doesn't want that?

3. The Cloud Expo was hopping with businesses doing business. I visited several dozen ISV booths (like Kenandy, Google, Progress, Jitterbit, BMC Remedy, Informatica, Infor, LinkedIn, Workday, SnapLogic, Appirio, and Persistent Systems), and it was all I could do to get to a company representative. There was so much traffic, interest, business card exchanging, and follow-up meeting scheduling going on that I thought I was at an Oracle or SAP conference in 1993. Here are some photos from different attendees on Flickr that I found showing the mob scene on the show floor - but it wasn't just a mob, it was a mob determined to move their businesses into the Cloud:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriarichards/5241913777/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/islandgal/5247181522/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mantala/6104550977/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuckschaeffer/6113830912/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/enzo6034/5250333129/

The vendors I spoke to said that they were very happy with their Salesforce.com relationship, that a very large fraction of their leads came from salespeople at Salesforce.com, and that the show was very much worth the money spent on the booth and related expenses. This is an ecosystem that has the Cloud, mobile, and social religion - because customers are leading the way.

Oh, and Salesforce.com didn't let this event go by without using it to maximize its impact on their top line. Deals were being struck, and you can expect to see the results in Salesforce.com's next quarter numbers.

4. The Salesforce.com team did a great job on the logistics for the show, despite its monumental size and enormous growth over previous shows. Keynotes were delivered well, camera angles were picked intelligently and for maximum visibility, schedules and meals were arranged to maximize traffic in the Cloud Expo, and thousands (seemingly) of developers were given the requisite skills to build their first Cloud, mobile, and social apps.

5. Salesforce.com has so much momentum in Cloud, mobile, and social, that several partners and even competitors arranged events around this show. Of course, there was the predictable Oracle attempts to do some guerilla marketing around the event - not Oracle's greatest and most successful marketing moments. One other competitor hosted an analyst gathering right after Dreamforce, and several partners had similar events before and after the conference.

6. Perhaps lost in all the hoopla were some impressive product announcements, demonstrating that Salesforce.com continues its ambition to lead by example, and to continue innovating to create customer value: Data.com, Chatter Connect, Chatter Approval, Database.com availability, social profiles, touch.salesforce.com, and much more.

Once again, Salesforce.com has put on a great show, but Dreamforce 2011 was much more than that - it may have marked the beginning of an industry-wide movement to the Cloud.

How vendors think about licenses: marginal price

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:56:00 +0000

CRN recently ran a story summarizing a Forrester Research study (sorry, I don't have the link - hopefully, someone will provide it in the comments) which revealed certain vendor practices which are stirring up resentment among CIOs. There is a lot within this report that our industry needs to take to heart, but there are a few items in there in which CIOs appear to want to have their cake and eat it too.

One item is based on a significant difference between how vendors view license fees for marginal users, versus customers viewing those fees (years after the contract is written) based on average price. Let's eavesdrop on a typical enterprise software sale to see the roots of this later dispute.

"So, I think I will need about 1000 users licensed for your CRM product this year, and then the population will grow by about 500 users next year, 1200 call center agents the year after, and then all international users in year four, which would be around 2500 additional users," said Carol Cio.

"I don't know if I'll still be on this account next year, let alone in four years," thought Sam Salesguy to himself. "Let's see if I can move this deal into this quarter."

"I'll tell you what," said Sam Salesguy, this time out loud. "How about if we do all 5200 licenses this year. If you can move that through procurement, I think can get you an additional 40% discount overall, and we'll phase in the maintenance on those licenses according to your schedule."

"I don't know if I'll still be in this job next year, let alone in four years," thought Carol Cio to herself, "but getting such a great concession from this vendor will improve my chances, make the CFO happier, make budgeting for the next few years easier, and will leave a little money on the side for us to bring that tablet roll-out for executives into this budget year."

"Let's do it," said Carol to Sam. "I'll push this through the CFO and procurement, as soon as you get approval from your sales management on the discount."

Later, Vince Veep said to Sam, "If we can pull in the deal this year, we can do the increased discount because we'll have reduced costs of administering contracts, we'll be sharing the risk with the customer, and because you and I will both be getting paid more for the deal." Vince thought to himself, "Of course this is what the company wants, because that's how they write our comp plans. If they wanted something else, they would compensate us differently. And it totally makes sense to share the risk with the customer, taking less money overall in exchange for a contractual commitment now by the customer. If the customer only wanted 1200 licenses now, they would pay more now for those licenses per user, and they would also pay more later for the other 4000 users. I would never offer this discount if the customer wanted an "out" clause, because then there is no shared risk. In fact, my friend Ed Economist would point out that the marginal price for the last 4000 users is lower than the unit price for the first 1200, so of course the maintenance price for those 4000 users is also lower. If the customer ever wanted to negotiate a cancellation of those last 4000 users, we'd have to go back to the higher price, plus we'd have to somehow be compensated for the commissions we already gave out and can't get back, plus also get compensated for the extra costs we have in contract administration and perhaps other areas of the company."

Perhaps I'm exaggerating what is going through Vince Veep's mind, but you get the point. To the customer, in economic terms, the marginal utility of a license in the future is about the same as the marginal utility of a license in the present, so that customer feels like she is getting a real bargain by getting that future license at a greatly reduced price, and often doesn't stop to think that there is a contract - that must be honored - underneath that price.

To the sales rep, the marginal utility of a deal in the future, when he may not have this account any more, is close to zero, so he would like to pull the largest check possible into this quarter, regardless of the interest of the vendor. The vendor's interest is enforced by a contracts and discount policies process, ensuring that the sales rep doesn't give away the farm, and that the customer gets a reasonable discount for taking on the risk of acquiring additional licenses.

If the customer needs to return those licenses in the future, the customer may be thinking about the average price of those licenses, but most likely the vendor is thinking about the marginal price of those licenses, plus a "restocking fee."

Obviously, in this short blog post, I'm oversimplifying a lot of things, and I'm not trying to fully represent the buyer's point of view, since that is widely covered elsewhere (e.g. at Constellation Research Group). I just want to communicate why it might be worthwhile to think about the marginal, rather than the average, price when thinking about license returns or exchanges. After all, understanding how your vendor is thinking might help you to better negotiate the best possible outcome for you and your enterprise.

The real (potential) impact of SAP HANA

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Much has been written about SAP HANA. The technology has been variously described as "transformative" and "wacko." Well, which is it?

Disclosures
I have a few disclosures to make before I continue my analysis and comments on Hana:

I worked at SAP for six years, as well as eight years at Oracle (plus also at Ingres before that).
I was at SAP when the technology underlying HANA was acquired, though I am referring to and using no trade secrets or proprietary information in preparing this analysis.
I attended this year's SAPPHIRE conference in Orlando, and SAP paid for my airfare and hotel.

Relational Databases
Relational databases have dominated the commercial information processing world for twenty years or more. There are many good reasons for this success.

Relational databases are suitable for a broad range of applications.
Relational databases can enable access to data relatively efficiently even if the query was not initially envisioned when the database was designed.
Today's relational databases are economical, available on a broad range of hardware and operating systems, generally compatible across vendors, performant for many queries, scalable to fairly large data volumes without resorting to partitioning, suitable for partitioning when larger scale is required, based on open standards, mature, and stable.
There are a large number of developers, administrators, designers, and an ecosystem of service providers who are very knowledgeable about today's popular relational databases, and who are available at economic rates of pay.

NoSQL, Columnar, and In-Memeory Trend
There is an emerging trend towards databases that are designed to solve specific problems. While relational databases are good for solving many problems, it is easy to conceive of specific problems that are not well-solved by general-purpose databases. Relational databases are well-suited to handling structured data where the schema does not change, where text processing is not an important requirement, where data is measured in gigabytes rather than petabytes, where geographical or time-series (e.g., stream) processing is not required, and where the server does not need to support transactional and decision-support queries simultaneously.

Some problems do not fit those criteria. The data set is such that the schema varies from record to record, or over time. Text, image, "blob," or geographical data may be a dominant data type. More and more frequently, applications manage "big data," or huge volumes of data from millions of users or sensors. Some applications require simultaneous access to data for transactional updates as well as for aggregation in decision-support queries. For all of these cases, advanced architects and developers are looking at specialized data stores and data processing systems such as Hadoop, Cassandra, MongoDB, and others. These domain-specific data stores are known as "NoSQL" databases.

There is some controversy over whether NoSQL means "no SQL" or "Not Only SQL." Regardless, those non-relational stores such as Hadoop, are growing in popularity, but are not really a replacement for relational data stores. A key property of most commercial relational databases is their compliance with a principle called "ACID," which essentially guarantees that database transactions occur in a reliable way. Many NoSQL databases use techniques like "eventual consistency" to improve performance at the cost of inconsistent data - a sacrifice that is unsuitable for most business applications. After all, if you deposit money in a bank account, you want it to be available for withdrawal right away, not "eventually."

Another trend in the database world is towards new methods of storing data, without eliminating the ACID properties that business applications need, and without sacrificing the SQL language that is so well-known and widely supported. Two specific approaches are quite popular these days - columnar storage and in-memory databases.

Column stores, such as HP's Vertica or SAP Sybase IQ, store data by column. By contrast, traditional SQL databases store data as rows. The benefit of storing data as rows is that it is often the fastest way to look up a single value, such as salary, given a key value like the employee ID.

Columnar databases group data by column. Within a column, generally speaking, all the data is of the same type. A columnar store, therefore, stores data of a single type all together, which can give advantages such as the possibility for significant compression. Good compression can lead to reduced disk space requirements, memory requirements, and access times.

In-memory databases take advantage of two hardware trends: a significant reduction in the cost of RAM, and a significant increase in the amount of addressable memory in today's computers. It is possible, and economically feasible, to put an entire database in memory, for fast data management and query. Using columnar or other compression approaches, even larger data sets can be loaded entirely into main memory. With high-speed access to memory-resident data, more users can be supported on a single machine. Also, with an in-memory database, both transactional and decision-support queries can be supported on a single machine, meaning that there can be zero latency between data appearing in the system, and that data being available to decision-support applications; in a traditional set-up where data resides in the operational store, and then is extracted into a data warehouse for reporting and analysis, there is always a lag between data capture and its availability for data analysis.

SAP HANA
Several years ago, SAP acquired Transactions In Memory, a company that had developed an in-memory database. Over the years since, at virtually each annual SAPPHIRE conference, SAP has discussed how this in-memory technology would revolutionize business computing, but I personally found the explanations to be somewhat short on convincing details.

Even the name, HANA, has changed in meaning over the years. Initially, the name stood for "Hasso's New Architecture" (and a beautiful vacation spot in Maui, Hawaii) and referred only to the software. Today, HANA stands for High-Performance Analytical Appliance, and refers to the software and the hardware appliance on which it is shipped. In addition, HANA has evolved from a data warehousing database into a more general purpose platform.

SAP HANA does manage data in memory, for nearly incredible performance in some applications, but it also manages to persist that data on disk, making it suitable for analytical applications and transactional applications - simultaneously. But HANA's capabilities do not end there, and that may be the key to HANA's long-term value.

In the short-term, it seems that SAP still struggles to generate references for HANA, other than in a narrow set of custom data-warehouse-type analytics. That may obscure where HANA can really deliver its first market successes.

When HANA is generally available, it is expected to include both SQL and MDX interfaces, meaning that it can be easily dropped into Business Objects environments to dramatically improve performance. Some Business Objects analyses, whether in the Business Objects client or in Excel, can achieve orders of magnitude of performance improvement, with very little effort. Imagine reports that used to take a minute to run now running instantaneously. Imagine the satisfaction of your BOBJ user community if all or most of their reports and analysis ran instantaneously. Line-of-business users will pay for this capability, and that will open the door for SAP HANA in Business Objects accounts. After HANA gets in the door, I'm sure the CIO will find tons of additional uses for it. This is huge, and will generate truckloads of money for SAP, while also making customers super-satisfied.

And think of what SAP HANA means for competitive comparisons with Oracle, SAP's maximum enemy. Larry wants to sell you Exalogic and Exadata machines, costing millions; Hasso wants to sell you a simple, low-end, commodity device delivering the same benefits. If I were SAP, I'd have sales reps with HANA software installed on their laptops, demonstrating it at every customer interaction, and comparing it (favorably) with Oracle Exadata, and suggesting that customers demand that Oracle sales reps bring in an Exadata box on their next sales call - and not to bother showing up without one. Larry wants to sell you a cloud in a box; SAP will sell you apps on the cloud, or analytics in a box for hundreds or a thousand times lower cost than Oracle's solution.

The longer term benefits of HANA will require new software to be written - software that takes advantage of objects managed in main memory, and with logic pushed down into the HANA layer. I'll post more on this potential in the future, but just think of what instantaneous processing of enormous data sets will mean to business - continuous supply chain optimization, real-time pricing, automated and excellent customer service, and much more.

Summary
In the long run, SAP HANA may indeed revolutionize enterprise business applications, but that remains to be seen. Right now, SAP HANA should be capable of creating substantial customer benefits - and generating a very large revenue stream to SAP.

IT Jobs Recovery Continues, Picks Up Steam

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:05:00 +0000

There have been a spate of news stories in the IT press covering the state of IT hiring. Once a quarter or so, I look at the job posts in Dice.com across many different keywords - a useful proxy for the IT hiring market at least for the U. S.

Three months ago, IT hiring was definitely picking up across the board. Fast-growing skills included iPad, HTML5, Amazon, Android, Twitter, and Facebook; categories with the greatest number of jobs posted included SQL, Oracle, Java, Windows, Unix, and Linux. Versus last summer, there was about an increase of about 30% in the number of jobs posted. How have things changed in the past three months?

Generally, the jobs picture is very similar to three months ago, with an overall increase in the number of jobs posted of around 6.1% (46.2% vs last April). If these jobs are being filled, this shows a sustained and strong increase in demand for IT skills. Within the overall IT category, this analysis does not cover some areas separately (e.g., desktop support, systems administration, network administration or really many network skills, and database administration), although many of these categories get covered through the occurrence of the relevant keywords. Perhaps I'll add these topics for future analyses.

Overall

This analysis looks at four general areas skills for which IT hires: Database, Applications, Languages, and Platforms.

Database

The skills keywords I look at in the Database category include SQL, Oracle, SQL Server, PL/SQL, MySQL, DB2, Sybase, Hadoop, Informix, NoSQL, and many variants on these terms.

Across the board, there is significant increased demand for all these database skills versus three months ago (+5.1%), and versus a year ago (+34.5). Hadoop and NoSQL were not being tracked in the analyses from a year ago, but the fastest growth in other categories since last year and three months ago has been for MySQL (+52% vs last year, +9% vs 3 months ago). Hadoop and NoSQL demand has grown by 12% and 69% vs 3 months ago.

The weakest demand in this category has been for Informix (-12% vs 3 months ago, +10% since last year) and Sybase (+0.9% vs 3 months ago, -5% since last year).

Although there is rapid growth in demand for skills like Hadoop and NoSQL, the largest demand by far is for more standard skills like SQL, Oracle, and SQL Server.

Skill	Jobs	Growth over 3 months	Growth over 12 months
SQL	23453	5.6%	33.8%
Oracle	16684	4.7%	33.1%
SQL Server	9692	4.6%	34.7%
PL/SQL	3587	4.5%	35.1%
MySQL	3123	9.3%	51.5%
DB2	2564	4.8%	28.5%
Sybase	1314	0.9%	-4.7%
Hadoop	363	12.0%	New comparison
Other NoSQL	245	69.0%	New comparison
Informix	168	-12.0%	9.8%

Applications

The skills I look for in the Applications category include SAP, BASIS, ABAP, Dynamics, Peoplesoft, Siebel, eBusiness Suite, Salesforce.com, and related terms.

Three months ago, this was the category with the strongest recovery versus a year ago. Demand is still strong for applications skills, with the category growing by 4.5% over the past three months, and up 47.4% versus a year ago. The fastest growth in this category is clearly for SAP-related skills. Job posts mentioning SAP are up 8.3% vs three months ago and up 59% over the past year; ABAP and BASIS also had very strong growth, with job posts up around 70% for each skill over the past year. Salesforce.com job posts went up compared with last year (+37%), but were down over the past three months (-3.8%). Oracle's application suites (not including Fusion, for which I have no data) show much more modest growth or shrinkage, with Peoplesoft the lone bright spot (+54% over the past year). Microsoft Dynamics has also shown growth over the past year (+31%), but has declined vs three months ago (-2.9%).

The weakest demand in this category is for Oracle eBusiness Suite, for which demand has declined by 36% over the past three months.

The skills to know in this category, if you want to be employable, are SAP and Microsoft Dynamics, but the latter covers many different applications - SAP is where the job security lies. Of course, job security and overall compensation are not always aligned, but given the rapid growth in the SAP category we can expect very strong salaries there.

Skill	Jobs	Growth over 3 months	Growth over 12 months
SAP	7475	8.3%	58.6%
Dynamics	6653	-2.9%	31.3%
BASIS	3858	18.3%	67.3%
Peoplesoft	2475	6.7%	54.4%
Siebel	1305	-5.0%	13.2%
ABAP	815	1.5%	70.1%
Salesforce.com	714	-3.8%	37.0%
eBusiness	48	-36.0%	New comparison

Languages

The skills included in this category include Java, JavaScript, HTML, XML, C#, C++, Perl, AJAX, PHP, Python, Ruby, COBOL, Flash, Silverlight, HTML5, Assembler, PowerBuilder, and Fortran.

Demand for programming language skills surged, growing 58.5% vs a year ago and 7.4% over the past three months.

In particular, HTML5 demand really took off, growing 45.2% over the past three months and well over 1000% over the past year (from a very small base). There was such strong demand growth for all skills, that it is more useful in this category to speak about the area of weakest growth - Adobe Flash. Demand for Adobe Flash skills has grown by only 7% vs a year ago. Comparable skills - HTML5 and Microsoft Silverlight - have grown much faster.

Given the large number of jobs requiring Java skills, the growth in demand for Java by more than 33% over the past year is encouraging, and should indicate a recovery in compensation as well.

Skill	Jobs	Growth over 3 months	Growth over 12 months
Java	16152	5.5%	33.4%
HTML	9736	7.3%	57.1%
XML	9651	9.0%	27.0%
JavaScript	9618	5.4%	New comparison
C#	7940	9.7%	37.5%
C++	5987	4.0%	21.3%
Perl	4948	4.0%	25.5%
AJAX	4440	7.1%	36.9%
PHP	3022	10.6%	44.9%
Python	2601	15.8%	59.7%
Ruby	1540	15.8%	95.9%
Silverlight	982	12.6%	New comparison
COBOL	735	6.1%	36.9%
Flash	646	2.2%	7.0%
HTML5	540	45.2%	1488.2%
Assembler	212	12.2%	11.0%
PowerBuilder	155	26.0%	39.6%
FORTRAN	68	1.5%	30.8%

Platforms

Platform skills analyzed in this category include Windows, Unix, Linux, IBM, VMware, Open Source (new), Embedded, Mainframe, Android, Blackberry, Palm, iPhone, iOS, iPad, Azure, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Twitter, Facebook, Mac, and Widget. I had an error in the way I was querying Mac jobs, so that has influenced some of the results.

Platform skills are also in great demand, with job posts up 5.8% vs three months ago and up 43.5% over last year. Again, there was very strong growth in demand across nearly all platform skills, with the fastest growth in iPad (-3.7% vs three months ago but up more than 3000% over the past year), Amazon (+12.8% over the past three months and +332% over the past year), and Android (+19.8% vs three months ago, and +270% vs last year).

Over the past year, demand has declined for only one skill (Widgets, -14%), but demand has softened over the past three months for Embedded Systems (-4.6%), iPad (surprisingly -3.5%), Palm (-6.9%), Widgets (-14.9%), and eBay (-3.3%).

Although all platforms are doing well, the top three (Windows, Unix, and Linux) are all showing strong demand and growth; it appears that Linux demand may surpass Unix demand very soon.

Skill	Jobs	Growth over 3 months	Growth over 12 months
Windows	12641	2.3%	28%
Unix	10692	3.9%	21%
Linux	10185	2.1%	32%
IBM	5850	7.4%	77%
VMWare	2609	2.8%	47%
Open Source	1955	New comparison	New comparison
Mainframe	1776	5.8%	32%
Embedded	1652	-4.6%	13%
Android	1170	19.8%	270%
Google	1132	27.0%	35%
Blackberry	1027	7.7%	77%
Amazon	1019	12.8%	332%
iPhone	1013	7.1%	162%
Mac	856	New comparison	New comparison
iOS	832	24.9%	New comparison
Twitter	683	7.4%	141%
Facebook	582	17.6%	135%
iPad	413	-3.5%	3077%
Yahoo	192	14.3%	16%
Palm	162	-6.9%	22%
Widget	149	-14.9%	-14%
Azure	103	80.7%	94%
eBay	88	-3.3%	42%

Surprising Findings

Big declines in demand for Oracle eBusiness Suite and Oracle Siebel skills.
Huge increases in demand for Microsoft Azure, SAP Sybase PowerBuilder, and SAP BASIS skills.
Demand for Microsoft Silverlight developers surpasses demand for Adobe Flash developers!

If you have any skills you'd like to see tracked in these posts, please post a comment and I'll see about including them next time. Thanks!

Eric Schmidt and Ronald Lacey: Separated at Birth?

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 05:25:00 +0000

Ronald Lacey is the actor who played the sinister Nazi interrogator Major Arnold Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Eric Schmidt and Ronald Lacey: separated at birth? You be the judge ... ;-)

IT Jobs Recovery

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:56:00 +0000

Every so often, I check in on the IT jobs market to see what skills are in demand. Job posts are a leading indicator of long term market shifts - gains and losses.

Last summer, the hot job skills were Java, SAP, Oracle, SQL, and C#/C++. Big jumps (from small bases) were posted in demand for Android, Google, Facebook, iPhone, Salesforce.com, and AJAX. As a category, big gains were primarily in job posts for programming languages and applications. What's changed since last summer?

Summary:

Across all IT job skill categories, there was significant growth in jobs posted, with 30% more jobs posted since last summer across all tracked categories.
The "Applications" category experienced the fastest growth, with an increase in job posts in that category of over 40%. "Platform" job posts are up about 34%; "Language" posts are up about 28%; and "Database" posts are up about 27%.
The largest category is still "Language," with almost 65,000 jobs posted. The "Database" category is next with almost 58,000 jobs, followed by "Platform" with around 51,000 jobs, and "Applications" with around 22,000 jobs.
The hottest IT job skills, based on the number of open jobs on Dice.com, are SQL, Oracle, Java, Windows, Unix, and Linux. See the table below a more complete list.
The fastest growth (across all skills in last summer's analysis) is in demand for iPad, HTML5, Amazon, Android, Twitter, and Facebook. See the second table below a more complete list.
New skills being tracked include Hadoop, NoSQL, Oracle eBusiness Suite, JavaScript, and Apple iOS.

Top 20 skills in demand:

Skill	Overall Rank
SQL	1
Oracle	2
Java	3
Windows	4
Unix	5
Linux	6
SQL Server	7
JavaScript	8
HTML	9
XML	10
C#	11
SAP	12
Dynamics	13
C++	14
IBM	15
Perl	16
AJAX	17
PL/SQL	18
BASIS	19
MySQL	20

Top 20 growth categories:

Skill	Growth Rank
iPad	1
HTML5	2
Amazon	3
Android	4
iPhone	5
Twitter	6
Facebook	7
Ruby	8
ABAP	9
IBM	10
Blackberry	11
eBay	12
SAP	13
HTML	14
Peoplesoft	15
VMWare	16
Salesforce.com	17
BASIS	18
MySQL	19
Python	20

Additional findings:

Database: More jobs are open for the Oracle DBMS than all the other major databases combined (Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle MySQL, IBM DB2, and Sybase SQL Server). Oracle MySQL jobs are growing faster than any other major database, and Microsoft SQL Server shows a slight share increase in relative job posts compared to Oracle, but Oracle is still by far the category leader in the database space. Hadoop and NoSQL jobs are being tracked for the first time, and both have respectable showings, with hundreds of jobs posted for these skills.
Applications: SAP has taken the lead in this category. Surprisingly, Microsoft Dynamics was the category leader last summer, with about 7% more job posts than SAP despite SAP's significant lead in the market. However, since then, SAP jobs have grown by a whopping 46%, while Dynamics jobs have grown a respectable 35%. As a result, SAP jobs now exceed Dynamics jobs by a slim margin of less than 1%. Across the major Oracle application lines (Peoplesoft, Siebel, e-Business Suite), Peoplesoft shows rapid growth, but there is far more demand for SAP and Microsoft jobs than there is for Oracle applications. Salesforce.com also shows rapid growth, but from a much smaller base.
Languages: Java is still the language king, dominating the languages category with over 15,000 jobs and strong growth of 27% versus last summer. JavaScript (not previously tracked) and HTML are next most in demand, with over 9,000 jobs each; HTML skills grew in demand by nearly 50%! HTML5, incidentally, grew by almost 1,000%, though from a small base. Ruby demand also grew sharply, up by nearly 70%, with over 1,300 jobs posted. In fact, all programming languages showed growth except assembly language, which showed a minor decline. Adobe Flex/Flash seems to be losing momentum, with just 5% growth since last summer.
Platforms: The biggest shifts in the industry can be seen in the changes in the platform jobs picture. Microsoft Windows still dominates the platform category, with healthy growth of 25% to over 12,300 jobs. I was surprised to note that Unix was second, with over 10,200 jobs, but its growth is slowing showing an increase of 16% since the last review. Linux was third, with nearly 10,000 jobs and growth of 29%. The biggest growth was seen in areas that probably won't come as a surprise: iPad jobs grew over 30 times (from a small base), and Android jobs tripled to nearly 1,000 jobs available. Other platforms showed huge growth as well: Amazon, iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook all showed huge growth (>= 100% growth); iOS is being tracked for the first time in this survey. Mainframe job growth is healthy, with nearly 1,700 jobs and 25% growth. Surprisingly, Microsoft Azure seems to be stalling out as a platform, with just 57 jobs and just 8% growth rate! Mac/MacOS showed a significant decline (-42%), also a big surprise!
Skills showing surprising growth: SAP, ABAP, Peoplesoft, Ruby, COBOL (29%!), Fortran (29%!), Unix, IBM (65%), VMware (43%), Mainframe, Blackberry (64%), Palm (31%), Twitter, Facebook, and eBay (47%).
Skills showing surprising loss of momentum: Sybase (-6%), Siebel (19%), XML (17%), C++ (17%, compared to C# at 25%), Flash/Flex (5%), Assembler, Embedded Systems (18%), Google (6%), Mac, Widget/Gadget, Yahoo, and Azure.
Overall, IT job posts on Dice.com have increased significantly from last year, up about 30% across all tracked categories.

If you have any skills you'd like to see tracked in these posts, please post a comment and I'll see about including them next time. Thanks!

Oracle Applications customers reveal their future plans

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 17:12:00 +0000

I'm a huge fan of primary research, especially when it is paired up with great analysis. Some Enterprise Software and Solutions (#EnSW on twitter) analysts base too much of their commentary and advice on what they read in the news, see at user conferences, and hear from other analysts.

Computer Economics is an #EnSW analysis firm with a difference. Frank Scavo and the folks at Computer Economics do great research - quantitative and qualitative - on the #EnSW world. If you are an IT executive, or an #EnSW vendor, you owe it to yourself and your enterprise to check out their research.

The latest published research from Computer Economics is a study called "Go-Forward Strategies for Oracle Application Customers." In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention the following, and you should bear these facts in mind as you consider my comments:

I have been in the #EnSW world for around 25 years now, including long stints in executive product roles at Oracle and SAP.
My company, C3, may someday be competing with Oracle (and other #EnSW vendors).
Computer Economics provided me with a copy of this $995 report at no cost for my review.

Here are some key findings from the report, followed by some of my thoughts about the results:

Finding: Dissatisfaction with the cost and benefits of support runs high across the Oracle Applications customer base, with 42% of respondents reporting dissatisfaction with the quality of Oracle support, and 58% reporting dissatisfaction with the cost of Oracle support.
My thoughts: That is a very surprising result, showing an astonishingly high level of dissatisfaction!

Finding: Customers generally expect Oracle to grow as a share of their IT spending, despite their level of satisfaction.
My thoughts: There are a number of obvious reasons for this result, including vendor consolidation, customer expectations of growth in their business coming out of this continued weak economy, and the difficulty of moving from one application product set to another.

Finding: Third party maintenance and support is attractive to a substantial fraction of Oracle Applications customers.
My thoughts: A far smaller percentage of Oracle Applications customers are considering third party maintenance and support as compared to the fraction who are dissatisfied with support quality and price. It is not clear to me that any third party can really deliver bug fixes, patches, and legislative and regulatory updates. Nonetheless, #EnSW vendors are increasingly dependent on maintenance and support revenue, and thus they are increasingly vulnerable to customers using third parties, or going off maintenance and support entirely.

Finding: Despite - of perhaps because of - their dissatisfaction with the current applications support, Oracle Applications customers are not planning a rapid migration to Oracle Fusion Applications, with 5% planning to migrate away from Oracle, 24% researching or planning to migrate to Fusion, and the remainder with no plans to migrate to Fusion. e-Business Suite has the largest percentage of customers considering Fusion Applications, and JD Edwards has the largest percentage of customers considering moving away from Oracle.
My thoughts: Oracle is just beginning to roll out information about Fusion Applications, with the first big "reveal" coming at this year's Oracle Open World. Many Oracle Applications customers have only a limited understanding of the benefits and features, and limitations, of Fusion Applications. Over time, you can expect this result to change dramatically.

Finding: The report includes information about the staff required to run various Oracle Applications products, including e-Business Suite, JD Edwards, Peoplesoft, and Siebel. JD Edwards requires the smallest number of support staff, with e-Bueinss Suite and Peoplesoft at the other end of the spectrum to operate.
My thoughts: There is significant value in this section, and in the report recommendations, for Oracle Applications customers.

Computer Research has done the industry another mitzvah in sponsoring and executing this research and analysis project. Oracle Applications customers, and #EnSW vendors, would benefit from reading this insightful report.

Links:

Primary Research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_research
#EnSW: http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23EnSW
Computer Economics: http://www.computereconomics.com/
Frank Scavo: http://twitter.com/#!/fscavo
Go-Forward Strategies for Oracle Application Customers: http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1595
C3, my employer: http://www.c3-e.com/

Technical Debt: Your Vendor Owes You

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 16:44:00 +0000

Gartner recently set off a new industry debate when it released its piece Measure and Manage Your IT Debt.

Vinnie Mirchandani (@dealarchitect) has a typically pointed, incisive, insightful response, called Gartner's "IT Debt" Scare (I guess you can tell from the title where this piece is going ;-) ).

Both Gartner and Vinnie make excellent points, but I have a somewhat different point of view.

First, Gartner was very creative to once again bring a new perspective to an emerging problem. However, there can be more than one perspective on this issue, as Vinnie's piece points out.

What is Technical Debt?

Technical debt is a term apparently coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992 to describe the shortcuts, compromises, and mistakes made in developing software. For example, many times a software project is on a deadline, and a "good" approach would take too much time or cost too much in resources, so project members take note of the problem and use a quick hack to just get by for now. The quick hack introduces costs later in the project that build up over time if the "technical debt" is not paid off. For some great overviews of technical debt, see here and here, plus the infographic here.

Technical debt is commonly used to describe architectural shortcuts made in software product development in start-ups, but can be applied as a concept (as Gartner has done) to many other related areas - for example, IT lapsed maintenance, deferred maintenance on a home or public utilities, or failure to invest in areas that give a long-term payoff.

Technical debt - TO or BY the software vendors?

Some technical debt has little or nothing to do with enterprise software vendors; it's the same kind of technical debt accrued by large and small software vendors where shortcuts are taken during IT projects.

However, as Gartner positioned this problem (according to other reporters such as Vinnie and Larry Dignan, as I have not read Gartner's article on this topic), at least part of this debt is a debt to enterprise software vendors - forgone upgrades, or even going off maintenance. The theory is that firms will skip an upgrade from time to time (or, worse, a patch), or go off maintenance on enterprise software, creating some amount of technical debt; after all, upgrades get progressively harder to apply as more upgrades are skipped over, and going off maintenance can lead to missed security patches as well as costly "relicensing" fees in the future. One way to look at this technical debt is that it is a technical debt owed to enterprise software vendors.

However, another way to look at this is as technical debt owed BY enterprise software vendors to their customers. After all, if these updates, upgrades, and patches had enough value in them, and cost little enough to apply, then the ROI (benefit/cost ratio) would be sufficient to justify keeping up with the vendor's software releases. The gap between the ROI needed and the actual ROI for each release is a form of technical debt - but its a debt owed by software vendors to their customers.

There are two ways vendors can increase the ROI of these releases - by increasing the numerator (return or benefit) or decreasing the denominator (investment or cost). Simple, right? Increasing the benefit can be accomplished by planning periodic usability or functional updates that can go along with emergency fixes when needed, or by reducing the frequency of patch releases. The cost can be reduced by reducing the frequency of patch releases, creating tools that determine whether a particular release is needed by the customer, by handling the updates on the customer's behalf, by avoiding schema changes, and thoroughly testing every upgrade.

SaaS versus on-premise

Any enterprise software discussion these days has to include a discussion of SaaS (or cloud) versus on-premise deployments. What does the cloud have to with this topic? SaaS-delivered applications change the economics of software in many ways, and technology debt is yet another case of this. SaaS-based applications may not automatically result in greater benefits related to new releases, but they do offer the opportunity to reduce the costs of upgrades - because most of the infrastructure upgrade costs are borne by the vendor, so SaaS vendors have developed techniques and a body of knowledge that minimizes those costs.

Often, this is not the case with on-premise software. Customers have a very diverse landscape of systems, integration points, operating system versions, and set of applied patches; as a result, it just isn't possible for vendors to sufficiently test upgrades for all these permutations. Of course, customers are also responsible for the costs and efforts of each upgrade, not benefiting from the economies of scale when many customers are on identical environments simultaneously upgraded - as in a SaaS deployment.

On-premise software vendors generally do not optimize for low cost of upgrades, at least not to the same extent as SaaS vendors. By definition, on-premise software vendors cannot test every customer's upgrade with every release; in the SaaS world, such testing is standard operating procedure. These days, SaaS vendors even give customers some time to test upgrades before switching over to a new release, allowing customers time to test any custom extensions or integration points, as well as to test new features and develop new work processes to benefit from the new functionality of each release.

Many times, software upgrades go along with infrastructure upgrades - the new version may not be available for a particular brand of previously-supported hardware, a previously-supported operating system, or perhaps an outdated database. When this is the case with on-premise software, the customer has to bear the cost of upgrading to new infrastructure, testing other related systems on the new infrastructure, and training employees who manage the infrastructure and the new software. These costs are, again, not borne by the customer in a SaaS environment; the SaaS vendor takes on this burden. Incidentally, this burden is lower for the vendor in the SaaS world, since only one (or two, when multiple versions of applications are supported simultaneously for customers) configuration needs to be supported and tested, and because the SaaS vendor controls the upgrade cycle to minimize costs and disruption.

Do SaaS applications completely eliminate technical debt?

No. But SaaS applications significantly reduce technical debt, primarily by eliminating a backlog of unapplied patches and upgrades, eliminating costly infrastructure upgrades, and eliminating the "death matrix" of supported platforms and infrastructure.

Maybe I'll cover virtualization in a future blog, as virtualization holds some promise as a way for on-premise software vendors to come to grips with some of these problems and alter the economics of upgrades once again. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Links:

Measure and Manage Your IT Debt - http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=clientFriendlyUrl&id=1419325
Gartner's "IT Debt" Scare - http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2010/09/gartners-it-debt-scare.html
@dealarchitect - http://twitter.com/dealarchitect
Ward Cunningham on the term "technical debt" - http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ComplexityAsDebt
Technical debt overview 1 - http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html
Technical debt overview 2 - http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/11/01/technical-debt-2.aspx
Technical debt infographic - http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/techDebtQuadrant.png
Larry Dignan on technical debt - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/is-there-really-a-global-it-debt-of-500-billion/39580

Bill McDermott and Tom Bergeron: Separated at Birth?

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 14:18:00 +0000

This struck me last night while watching re-runs of "America's Funniest Home Videos" - the host, Tom Bergeron, looks an awful lot like SAP's co-CEO Bill McDermott.

McDermott and Bergeron: separated at birth? You be the judge ... ;-)

Who will Oracle acquire next? (The answers)

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 03:38:00 +0000

After about a week of voting, readers of this blog have identified the companies they believe Oracle will acquire next. I'll leave the survey open for a while longer, but about 250 people have voted and the results are pretty clear.

Informatica

Overwhelmingly, respondents to this survey believe that Informatica is the company Oracle is most likely to acquire soon. Informatica describes itself this way:

Informatica enables organizations to gain a competitive advantage in today’s global information economy by empowering them to access, integrate and trust all their information assets.

That is to say, Informatica helps companies consolidate and make sense of their data. Informatica is well-known for its Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL) tools, but they've expanded their product portfolio and grown their business over the past several years under the remarkable leadership of Oracle alum Sohaib Abbasi. Plenty of Informatica's senior executives and employees have worked at Oracle in the past, and the company's headquarters are even located very close to Oracle in Redwood City.

An acquisition of Informatica could fill a very important hole in Oracle's product line, enabling Oracle to consolidate its position in data warehousing and analytics, one of the hottest growth areas in the database market today. Of course, such a deal would have to pass regulatory approval, and there could certainly be antitrust concerns, but I suspect this deal would get some scrutiny before a quick approval.

Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com, the leading independent CRM company and a leading Cloud platform, is our respondents' second choice for a company Oracle is likely to acquire soon. Salesforce.com is also led by an Oracle alum with a great track record: the inimitable and charismatic Marc Benioff. Marc and his team have played a key role in promoting a major architectural shift, and business model shift, in the IT industry, from "on prem" to SaaS and Cloud. Marc, and many of his team are also Oracle alums, which could help with the integration in a merger with Oracle.

Unfortunately, I think this acquisition is not likely to occur. Salesforce.com is currently valued at about $15 billion, and an acquisition would likely drive this price up to at least $18 billion. It's hard to see how Oracle could make the financials of this deal work. This deal would also likely generate more regulatory scrutiny than an deal for Informatica, but I think this would also get approved under the same theory that led to approval of the acquisitions of Siebel and Peoplesoft.

The Top 10

Of the companies our survey respondents think Oracle will acquire next, most are platform technology companies:

Company	Responses
Informatica	66
Salesforce.com	36
VMware	30
TIBCO	27
Red Hat	26
Teradata	26
NetSuite	25
SuccessFactors	19
Taleo	19
Computer Associates	17

Salesforce.com, NetSuite, SuccessFactors, and Taleo are the applications companies that made the "Top 10" list. What do they have in common? Each is a SaaS application. Salesforce.com is a SaaS CRM company (with a growing Cloud platform (PaaS) business); NetSuite is a SaaS ERP suite (with a growing PaaS business); SuccessFactors and Taleo are SaaS human resources businesses. Acquiring any of these companies is likely to help accelerate Oracle's entry into the SaaS business.

The Write-Ins

In addition to the votes for companies named in the survey, respondents were given the option to write in a choice of their own. 18 responses were written in, a fairly high rate (almost 10% of respondents wrote in another choice).

5 of the write-in "ballots" were for Cloudera, the Hadoop company. Hadoop is a leading technology in the area of "Big Data," a topic that has to be on Oracle's mind as it considers opportunities and threats in the future.

There were a couple of write-in votes each for Vertica and Jive Software. Vertica is the latest start-up from database legend Michael Stonebraker, creator of Ingres, Postgres, and other technically interesting database companies. Vertica's main product is its columnar database, a technology that could be interesting for certain data management problems (like data warehousing). Jive Software is social software for the enterprise, which could help Oracle build next-generation applications.

Best Answer

The best write-in answer was provided by an anonymous survey respondent whose answer to "Who will Oracle acquire next?" was both funny and prescient. The response, given the day before the official announcement: Mark Hurd.

Oracle Alums

I ran the same survey among a group of relative insiders, the OracAlumni Network. This is a group of 500o+ former Oracle employees, many of whom remain in close contact with Oracle and its market, and who believe that Oracle will acquire next:

Informatica
Salesforce.com
VMware
NetSuite
Red Hat
TIBCO
SuccessFactors
EMC
Symantec
Teradata

Very similar list, particularly at the top end.

Summary

If our survey respondents are any indication, Oracle will continue acquiring companies, and Informatica should be at the top of its shopping list. If you'd like to chime in with your thoughts, visit our continuing survey at http://polldaddy.com/poll/3714778/.

Links

Who will Oracle acquire next?

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 22:06:00 +0000

Oracle has been very acquisitive in past years. In a recent analysis of Oracle's acquisitions, Stephen Jannise of http://www.softwareadvice.com/ prepared this excellent infographic of Oracle's acquisitions timeline, categories, and size:

I would have put Industry Solutions at the left, to show a real spectrum from industry to application to middleware to database to hardware, but this graphic reveals real insight into Oracle's strategy and focus on acquisitions over the past 5 years. The article also points out some interesting analysis of what characterizes a good deal for Oracle. According to Stephen:

At the highest level, the motivations behind Oracle’s largest acquisitions appear to be the following:

Grow market share leadership in key enterprise markets;
Expand profitability by consolidating high-margin support revenue; and,
Increase strategic relevance by offering a complete technology stack.

This last bullet is something that has played a larger role in really only two of Oracle's acquisitions, both recent, but does two points define a trend? It certainly makes sense and is consistent with speaking points from the company's senior executives.

So, who do you think Oracle will acquire next? Vote in this poll to share your opinion.

After the poll closes, I'll post an analysis of the results here.

Links:

Oracle Mergers & Acquisitions: Who’s Next? http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/enterprise/oracle-mergers-acquisitions-whos-next-1080310/
Poll: Who will Oracle acquire soon/next? http://polldaddy.com/poll/3714778/

What can we learn from software development job posts? (Java, SAP, Oracle, SQL, and C#/C++ will get you a job!)

noreply@blogger.com (dbmoore) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:45:00 +0000

Several months ago, I posted some analysis of IT-related jobs listed on Dice and Monster. At the time, the hot job skills were SQL, Java, and XML. Things haven't changed much since April - although some specific skills have moved down or up on the list.

In summary, here are some conclusions we can draw from this data:

In almost all job skills, there are more jobs posted now than there were in April or last year in June.
The most popular skills are Java, SAP, Oracle, SQL, and C#/C++.
Job posts mentioning specific programming languages and popular applications have experienced the largest increase in jobs posted over this period.
The biggest jumps (by percentage, sometimes from a small base) were in job posts mentioning Android, Google, Facebook, iPhone, Salesforce.com, and AJAX.
The biggest drops (by percentage) were in job posts mentioning Fortran, PowerBuilder, and Informix.

Here are the top 20 skills listed in job titles on Dice.com and Monster.com:

Rank	Skill	Total Jobs	Previous rank
1	Java	6316	3
2	SAP	4357	13
3	Oracle	3561	2
4	SQL	2461	1
5	C#	1778	10
6	C++	1319	12
7	Unix	1189	5
8	Linux	1092	6
9	Peoplesoft	955	-
10	Windows	947	4
11	SQL Server	817	8
12	PHP	657	19
13	Embedded	489	-
14	Siebel	405	-
15	PL/SQL	367	17
16	JavaScript	337	-
17	Mainframe	306	-
18	Perl	265	14
19	Salesforce.com	253	-
20	Ruby	240	-

The methodology in the analysis continues to evolve, so the results aren't perfectly comparable.

Some additional findings:

Language skills showed the largest increase in demand as a category, up 78%. Applicatoins grew 45%, platforms grew 36%, and databases grew 33%.
Database: Given the large base, there was a surprisingly large jump in posts for Oracle jobs (up 34%). SQL Server and MySQL also had large jumps, but from substantially lower bases. If you're going to invest in learning a database, at this point, Oracle is the clear leading choice.
Applications: Salesforce.com had the largest jump by percentage (up 113%), but from a relatively small base (118). SAP (and related skills of ABAP and BASIS) had a large jump from a large base (up 50%). Siebel also had a big jump in mentions (up 36%).
Languages: There was a huge increase in job posts for Java skills (up 92% from a large base). Other languages that showed large increases from large bases include C# (up 47%), PHP (up 57%), and C++ (up 28%).
Platforms: Only in the platforms category was there a lot of change other than just growth. Unix was still the largest platform skill by mention, but Linux passed Windows with 34% growth. There was substantial growth in mentions for Google, Android, iPhone, and AJAX. There was healthy growth for most platforms, with the notable exception of Blackberry-related jobs.
Skills that are not in high demand or growing: Informix, Sybase, PowerBuilder, Fortran, Blackberry, Palm WebOS, Yahoo, Widgets/Gadgets.
Skills that are surprisingly low in demand: HTML5, Azure, Facebook.
Overall, there was an increase of 50% in job posts on these two sites.

If you have any skills you'd like to see tracked in these posts, please post a comment and I'll see about including them next time. Thanks!