By: Stuart Coetzee, Business Development Manager, TISSL Posted: 25th March 2013 Copyright TISSL © 2013

For the past 2 years, cloud-based computing (the cloud) has been seen as a game-changer and now everyone is hankering for a piece of the action. The benefits being trumpeted appear to make the move to the cloud a 'no-brainer'.  We’re told development costs are cheaper, the need for powerful services is reduced, data can be accessed anywhere at any time and the solution is almost infinitely scalable. There's also something very alluring about being in constant touch with colleagues whilst on a beach in the Caribbean sipping cocktails!

With the advent of 4G downloads and 'superfast' broadband services, earlier limitations on latency (the time taken by data to leave your device, reach the server and get back to you) and on download speeds appear to be behind us. However, despite these advancements, the dangers of running systems in the cloud are not negligible, so any move to cloud-based computing needs to undertaken with caution.

Let’s look first at business interruption. On average, an internet service provider will experience three major business interruption 'events' a year, each on average 4.7 hours, when systems and data may not be available. Other technology providers are likely to fall victim to similar outages. Even 'best in class' suppliers suffer from at least one event per annum; the laggards between four and five.

Imagine the worst case scenario; all your equipment fails during a Saturday evening service, when your ISP is manned only by a skeleton team who can respond to your problem. Suddenly you understand how your cloud-based supplier can keep costs low: support staff and backup service levels are pared down at non-peak times. This can be disastrous for your business.

Resilience is much talked about. This is a critical area to check before you commit to a cloud solution. In the restaurant and hotel trade, it’s imperative to be able to trade at all times, so firstly ensure that there is offline capability and redundancy within the system. This means that your systems and data pass immediately to another server in the case of failure.

Secondly, ensure that both your ISP and your technology provider have suitable disaster recovery arrangements in place. Disasters come in all shapes and sizes. 40% of them can be attributed to human error; others will be natural phenomena such as floods or fires, even electro-magnetic interference. Imagine telling a customer a solar flare was responsible for a delay in processing their order!

When your systems operate in the cloud, you lose a certain amount of control over your data. It no longer sits on a server in your head office or under the table in your office. You need to know precisely what your ISP or technology provider is doing with your data and be convinced there’s a failsafe recovery plan in place to prevent data loss.

Equally, you must be confident in the security of your data. Reassure yourself that the customer details you've painstakingly collected through loyalty schemes and feedback forms aren’t being sold to third-parties without your knowledge or used in advertising campaigns that may benefit competitors. In short, you need to be absolutely certain your data is being handled with complete confidentiality. And always check it’s being backed up!

Take a long hard look at the cost of a cloud-based solution. We recently looked at changing one of our van tracking systems. One company wanted a flat £1,000 per vehicle for an unlimited licence plus a £20 per month support fee for an excellent system. The other, cloud based and less functional, option was an affordable £200 per quarter. Let’s save a few pounds up-front and go with the second offering, we thought. However, after calculating the total cost, we realised the monthly fee would set us back an extra £680 over the lifetime of the vehicle but would offer a much better system. So, when comparing the cost of traditional deployment versus the cloud, calculate the costs over the contract’s lifetime and weigh that against the functionality offered.

That said, where we have been able to confidently opt for a superior system, we have moved a number of systems to the cloud.  We will continue this migration, at each step carefully considering the potential impact of moving a system out of our control. We advise all hospitality business to be similarly cautious and to take the same care when assessing and adopting the system options now available to them.

What are your experiences with moving to the cloud? Leave your comments below and add to the conversation.

By: Laurie McCabe, Partner, SMB Group Posted: 15th March 2013 Copyright SMB Group © 2013

Laurie McCabe: Hi, this is Laurie McCabe, Co-Founder of SMB Group. Today in SMB Spotlight, we’re talking with Jeff Cram, co-founder of ISITE Design, which is a digital agency that focuses on web content management. Jeff and the company also publish a blog series called The CMS or Content Management Myth. Jeff, thank you very much for talking to me today.

Jeff Cram: Hi Laurie. It’s great to be talking with you.

Laurie McCabe: Thanks. Let’s start out with you telling me a little bit about what you define CMS as. It seems to be kind of a blurry topic to a lot of people and it means different things to different people. How does ISITE Design define CMS, first of all?

Jeff Cram: You’re right that it’s blurry. Web content management has really become increasingly quite muddy over the last few years. Its simplest definition is—we typically refer to it as—the platform and technology that manages and delivers your content on the web.

We’ve come to understand there are web content management systems that are technologies or hosted platforms that drive most of what you see and interact with on the web. But, of course it’s not that simple because web content management is a lot more than technology; it’s a whole set of processes and people who go behind making these experiences come to life.

So, when you’re looking at it as a buyer or someone evaluating the marketplace, you have everything ranging from free inexpensive platforms that are open source that we’ve all probably seen like WordPress and Drupal, to very complex enterprise technology solutions that larger companies run. Then you have the spectrum of everything in between.

Organizations, especially on the small to medium size, that are approaching this—when they poke their head up and start to do searches for it—it’s an overwhelming task to sort through all the information out there because the differences between how different types of organizations approach it and where folks are in terms of their exact needs are significant.

Laurie McCabe: What kind of guidance can you give to mid-market companies that are looking to implement or maybe upgrade their CMS system?

Jeff Cram: In our role as both a consultant and somebody that writes a lot about CMS on our blog at The CMS Myth, we get a lot of these calls from organizations that are in the very early stages of thinking about what’s next in terms of how do we approach content management in a better way.

What we typically see is that organizations have kind of outgrown whatever they currently have and there’s something happening in a business that has them re-approaching or rethinking web content management. I think part of what we advise is to take a step back and understand that you’re not just looking for a technology solution. I think that’s where most organizations are going wrong as they rush to frame this project and approach as if they need a new piece of technology. Instead, frame it around the fact that you need to look at web publishing, content strategy, and content management as a discipline first to then figure out what your technology needs are going to be.

In some cases we find that the technology that folks currently have is completely adequate to achieve most of what they need to achieve. They really have just failed to put in a lot of the processes and people behind making it work. In other cases they’ve completely outgrown the existing technology and truly do need to find a new path forward.

So, it’s not a one size fits all equation, but I think because there are so many shiny objects out there and so many exciting things happening with technology, it’s truly been an exciting last few years in terms of the innovation that we’re seeing in the web content management space. There’s that, I think, natural desire to go out and just do demos of a lot of platforms and then you’re quickly into this software-driven sales cycle that’s funneling you down a process that isn’t actually approaching the problem in the right way.

Laurie McCabe: What way would you recommend to approach the problem? Let’s say you’re a mid-market company and you really do feel like you’ve outgrown what you’re using. As you said, it may not be the software but it may be more the way you’re managing it and resourcing it. So, where do you start to get a handle on that?

Jeff Cram: I think a great place to start is just having the discussion internally and figuring out what is the role of content in our business; what is the role of digital on our website in our business? I think a lot of times, as simple as that question sounds, organizations fail to answer that or at least plan for it adequately.

What’s been exciting over the last few years is that there’s been this momentum around the discipline of content strategy. When we talk about content strategy and you think about publishing, it’s completely decoupled from technology or even channels. So, we’re not talking about websites, we’re not talking about mobile; we’re talking about how does the organization plan, manage, and govern content as a strategic asset.

Given how hot content marketing is and given how hot the role of content is in lead acquisition and nurturing and just doing business in general, it’s something that a lot of organizations are indeed taking a step back and saying, “How are we going to approach publishing? What is the role of mobile in our customer experience? How are we going to look at how all this content meets the needs of our prospects and customers across their entire journey,” and that reframes the approach to understand how you should approach the technology. It’s just something that I think a lot of folks don’t do until a little bit later in the process, if at all, when you’ve already made some of the technology decisions that will box you in.

Laurie McCabe: Right. So, given what you just discussed, it also sounds relevant to the blog series you guys publish about the myths of CMS, what do you see as some of the biggest myths maybe particularly that SMBs might have around content management systems?

Jeff Cram: That’s a good question. On The CMS Myth, the whole origin of this blog—I started this five years ago—and when we started it, it wasn’t at all meant to be negative about web content management. We’re incredibly bullish about the opportunity and role of web content management in businesses. But, the overarching myth—what we’ve just been discussing—is that it’s not just the technology consideration and discipline, and there’s a huge expectation gap that happens. I think it happens a lot in enterprise software but it happens a lot specifically in CMS with just the way that it’s positioned and sold.

All the expectations that come from thinking about this new CMS platform, when you actually put that into action and what comes out the other end in terms of when you implement it and when you put it to work, there’s a huge gap that exists. And that gap, that expectation gap, is what we call the CMS myth.

So, a few things come out of this when we start to look at what exactly are the myths. One is that overwhelmingly people are under invested and organizations are under invested in the people that they put behind the platforms. This is increasingly something that we’re seeing as a challenge. We’re talking with a smaller organization over the last few weeks and they were looking for a new CMS and they didn’t even have one single person internally that they had allocated to managing and thinking about content. If you don’t have at least that in place, any CMS you pick is going to be unsuccessful. So, a lot of what we do is making sure organizations have the right commitment to the people that they need to have in place to be managing content.

Laurie McCabe: Right. So, it sounds like a lot of firms and smaller companies are just under-resourced and understaffed and maybe they don’t put enough value on doing content management well and how big an impact maybe it has on their business. Would that be fair to say?

Jeff Cram: Absolutely, and it’s understandable especially for the small to medium-sized business that doesn’t have all the roles required to manage a web or digital team in today’s day and age, and certainly content is one of those that they probably have somebody that’s thinking about content but it’s not someone’s sole job, it’s what they do after they get the rest of their job done.

I think what’s happened is that the world we’re living in now, from a digital and marketing perspective, requires new roles and new skills that didn’t exist two or three years ago and sometimes six months ago. I think it does require more of a people investment than they made in the past. So there’s a need to make a bigger business case for the investment in people than they have in the past. I think it’s an opportunity to do that at the same time that you’re making the case for technology. I think that the missed opportunity a lot of times is that they’ll rush through a technology decision-making process without framing it with the overall picture in mind. They kind of miss an opportunity to sell the business on the change that’s needed or the support in investment that’s needed to make this change that the business knows it needs to make.

Most people know that content is important now. Everybody is talking about content marketing. You have folks like Hubspot that have really created this whole category of inbound marketing and have put platforms out there for people to use and I think it has reached the highest levels of the organization where executives are looking at this and saying, “We need to be successful in this,” and they want to know how they do it.

I think it’s an opportunity for anybody to say, “This is an opportunity to get it right. Here’s how organizations are approaching it, and here’s how we need to be approaching it over the next three to five years.”

Laurie McCabe: Right, and that segues into ISITE_Design—what kind of best practice guidance can you give SMBs and mid-market companies as they think about reevaluating what they’re doing in the CMS space?

Jeff Cram: There are a few things happening that are really interesting. One is that it’s hard to even define what CMS is anymore because there’s been this whole convergence of platforms and tools. It’s no longer just about content management and content delivery. When you think about the role of a content management system, it’s not only responsible for content management but it is also responsible for the delivery of all this content. As marketers more own CMS as a strategic discipline inside organizations, what that means is this is personalization, this is analytics, and this is testing.

So, I think one of the things to recognize is you’re not likely looking at one single platform. In fact, while there are platforms that do a lot of the assumptions, and CMS is adding more bells and whistles to be able to cater to them even for the small to medium size business, they probably have at least four to five—if not more—separate platforms that are all part of this marketing technology ecosystem.

Laurie McCabe: Could you give me an example of what those might be in a typical business?

Jeff Cram: Sure. In addition to content management, often times you’re going to have some kind of an analytics platform in place which, while it isn’t directly tied to management content, it is increasingly tied to understanding how content is delivered. A big trend too is tools to help with testing and personalization. So, there’s a whole range of standalone tools out there. Google has some free ones.

Laurie McCabe: You mean like A/B landing page tests and all that?

Jeff Cram: That’s right. There’s another really kind of inexpensive one that we use for our clients called Optimizely, which allows organizations to A/B test anything. This isn’t a content management system but it layers on top of a content management system.

For the B2B organizations, they’re looking at marketing automation systems, so you’re probably familiar with ones like Marketto or Eloqua.

Laurie McCabe: Yes, and companies like Infusionsoft in the small business space.

Jeff Cram: But these are really interesting because they are also part of the content management picture. They are managing landing pages, they’re managing forums, and they’re managing the email that comes off. So you see two things happening. One is larger content management vendors saying, “We can be all things to all people and we’re actually going to start to build a suite of tools that is integrated and can start to add these different capabilities into one.” And they suddenly don’t like to be called web content management platforms because they’re now customer engagement platforms or marketing suites, right?

So you see a lot of consolidation and a lot of feature expansion in the traditional WCM vendors, but you also see just this explosion of new tools and new companies that are best of breed solutions in these very specific areas.

I met with a company that was a larger enterprise. We met last week and when we added out all the different pieces of their marketing technology they had a couple dozen different individual tools and platforms that were managing part of their customer experience. So, I think for the small to medium size business it’s really important to look at the overall marketing technology ecosystem, understand what the role of content management is and where the organization needs to differentiate and have an impact.

Laurie McCabe: It comes back to that soul-searching every time, right?

Jeff Cram: Yeah, and I think just having a plan for knowing. One of the mistakes we see organizations make is if they’re evaluating a CMS and it has a specific feature, they check that box saying, “Hey, got it, it has marketing automation,” but they haven’t taken the time to say, “This is what marketing automation means for us and this is what we need to accomplish,” and then it turns out they may have been better suited with a standalone marketing automation platform.

Thinking of it as an ecosystem, there’s a great resource out there. There’s a blogger by the name of Scott Brinker who runs a site called The Chief Marketing Technologist and he’s a fantastic resource for helping to explain what this marketing ecosystem is all about and kind of how organizations need to think about it in a different way.

Laurie McCabe: Great. Well, I think you really covered a lot of ground and it’s been really educational for me, and I’m sure a lot of the folks that will tune in or read the blog will also get a lot of benefit from it. Before we go, can you just provide your web address, which we’ll also post up on the podcast and on the blog, but just in case anyone is listening to it.

Jeff Cram: Sure. Our agency is ISITE Design and that’s www.ISITEDesign.com. We’re in Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Oregon. The CMS Myth blog that I mentioned is just at The CMS Myth which is just www.CMSMyth.com.

Laurie McCabe: Jeff, thank you so much. We appreciate your insights and look forward to talking to you again soon.

Jeff Cram: Great, thank you Laurie.

By: Gerry Brown, Analyst - Digital Marketing & CRM, Bloor Research (Moved) Posted: 7th February 2013 Copyright Bloor Research © 2013

Traditional advertising was about placing adverts in mass media channels (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines etc) to influence mass markets. Not any more. The proliferation of 1,000s of media channels has put an end to that, as has the shift for us to consume our preferred news and content on the Internet.

In the futuristic film 'Minority Report', Tom Cruise is propositioned by digital adverts talking to him about his personal needs as he walks past billboards and advertising hoardings. Given the latest technology advances, this might be the future of advertising. Not mass messages for mass markets, not even more focused messages for market segments; but individual personalised messages just for you and you alone, enabled by digital marketing technology.

The broad category for this new kind of advertising is called Programmatic Media Buying (PMB), and the most hyped component in the stable is called Real Time Bidding (RTB). RTB works a bit like Google Search Adwords. The auction price of an online advertising space on a web site is defined by supply and demand. Mostly RTB is used for so-called 'remnant' advertising inventory - the cheaper, less attractive advertising slots, rather than premium inventory (the best slots) which is sold directly to preferred big brand advertisers, especially for corporate advertising campaigns.

Publishers like the Financial Times fear that RTB will cause them to lose control of their premium online inventory. Top publishers don't want 'undesirables' advertising in their precious media, no matter how much advertisers are prepared to pay for the space. Some publishers are piloting RTB in so-called 'private marketplaces' with their preferred advertisers in order to circumvent this problem.

RTB can display a web advert tailored to an individual who is web browsing based on his / her previous purchases, demographic profile, location, device usage, operating system used, search data, web browsing habits etc. RTB includes inbuilt customer scoring and predictive analytics technology so that advertisers can bid a dynamic variable amount (£) for a specific advertising impression based on an individual customer's attractiveness and propensity to buy.

This all sounds great for publishers and advertisers as display advert personalisation has been shown to increase returns by 10X over traditional online banner advertisements. But there are some significant challenges awaiting the advertising industry. In particular, RTB relies on consumers opting into cookies. Many of us are not so keen on being tracked. For example, the Mozilla Firefox browser offers Do Not Track (and Adblock plug-ins) as an option. More worrying for RTB is that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 10 will have Do Not Track as its default setting. In addition, smartphones do not allow for the placement of cookies, thus limiting RTB's effectiveness in this key growth market.

It is still relatively early days for RTB, and new advertising technologies are developing at a furious pace - especially as the industry titans Google, Facebook and Microsoft all have large stakes in the online advertising market. In addition, there is a myriad of other specialist best-of-breed vendors targeting the advertising technology market. This creates a complex and fragmented market landscape and digital supply chain for the media buying industry to navigate. Supplier consolidation will undoubtedly follow quickly as product suites broaden into full advertising technology platforms.

RTB was only introduced in late 2009, and in 2012 accounted for £1Bn (c. 10%) of the UK's online display advertising spend according to the IAB / PWC. ZenithOptimedia reckons the market will be worth £2.5Bn by 2016. UK opinion leaders such as BSkyB, Tesco and TalkTalk are progressively upping their RTB investments. No wonder the publishing and advertising industries are getting so excited.

By: Gerry Brown, Analyst - Digital Marketing & CRM, Bloor Research (Moved) Posted: 16th November 2012 Copyright Bloor Research © 2012

The 'Marketing Cloud' was launched with great fanfare at Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference in September 2012. The Marketing Cloud must have struck fear into the hearts to some marketing apps vendors. The likes of Marketo, Silverpop, Eloqua and ExactTarget have placed big bets on integrating their SaaS Cloud software with Salesforce.com's SaaS Cloud platforms. The startpoint for B2B marketing automation projects is nearly always to access and integrate the client's valuable CRM data, which is most often held within the Salesforce.com Cloud.

All the marketing apps vendors have been growing nicely in double digits annually, largely on the back of Salesforce's open APIs and willingness to partner. However, a cumulative sigh of relief went up when the marketing applications vendors realised that Salesforce's Marketing Cloud was an extension of Salesforce's 'social enterprise' strategic play, rather than the launch of competitive marketing automation products.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud actually represents the integration of its recent social media acquisitions Radian6 and BuddyMedia. Radian6 provides social listening, workflow and automation and measurement. BuddyMedia provides social content, engagement, and display advertisements within the social media environment (targeting the 1 billion Facebook users primarily). BuddyMedia, in particular, provides Salesforce with some great enterprise technology, as it enables segmentation and targeting of social media users by sentiment, age, location, emotion and intention. In addition, there's also another 1,700+ third party social enterprise apps on AppExchange.

The Marketing Cloud is therefore part of Salesforce's strategy to fill out its own social platform product portfolio. Their enterprise social media tool Chatter Communities already has an installed base of 150,000 active Chatter networks and the new beta version extends Chatter externally to partners and the supply chain, for example. Chatterbox (like Dropbox) syncs files for secure viewing across all devices and utilises the Salesforce Touch platform for mobile and multi-device access.

Salesforce is a cloud technology company that happens to do CRM, rather than a CRM apps vendor that operates in the cloud. It is not really an apps company but a platform/infrastructure company and a 'trusted custodian' of customer data. "No Software" is still Salesforce's tag line. What's paid for is function, "clicks, not code". In the old days an IT Director's worth was judged by the size of his data centre. Salesforce plans to put an end to all that, and sees the future of IT Departments as being focused on regulation, control, governance and compliance rather than operational IT management.

However, Salesforce's focus on Social and Mobile mirrors the developments of the marketing applications vendors, which makes for an uneasy truce. The choice of the term 'Marketing Cloud' rather than something 'Social' and Salesforce's claim that it has 'the only unified social marketing suite' will send shivers up their spines. Also Salesforce is now competing in the Call Centre and Customer Service automation and so therefore now offers a triumvirate Sales/Marketing/Service suite of products.

All the vendors are moving in the same direction with not too dissimilar messaging. Market consolidation beckons (note ExactTarget's recent acquisition of Pardot). Salesforce is ramping up its efforts to penetrate enterprise accounts with its 'social enterprise' products and services and has a big drive on to recruit enterprise sales people. Social functionality is now an integral component in all the digital marketing apps vendors' armoury. 'Co-opetition' with the digital marketing apps vendors, at the very least, is clearly inevitable.

This should be good news for customers however. Salesforce's active participation will bring down the price point and provide credibility to Cloud/SaaS offerings in the digital marketing space. This alone should accelerate customer adoption and market growth, which will be no bad thing for all the marketing apps vendors.

By: Bob Tarzey, Service Director, Quocirca Posted: 20th September 2012 Copyright Quocirca © 2012

Innovations in the way information technology is provisioned means business managers should be able to rely on the software applications that support their business being available, scalable, cost effective, secure and compliant. This has not always been easy to achieve, especially for mid-market organisations with limited technical resources. Just like larger organisations, they too need access to such applications to ensure they remain competitive.

The key to achieving this is selecting the right platform for a given application and making sure that choice is flexible, which requires the application to be virtualised. Virtual application workloads can be moved from one platform to another with relative ease, providing access to more reliable infrastructure, ensuring scalability and/or access to relatively low cost back up resources. However, this only works for applications that can be virtualised in the first place.

With many older legacy applications, virtualisation is often hard or impossible. However, that does not mean that the way they are provisioned cannot be improved to help achieve some of the goals outlined above. For example, the hardware such applications run on may be better housed in an enterprise class co-location data centre rather than remaining in a dated in-house facility.

The choices for deploying applications are broader than ever; from dedicated to physical servers, through in-house private clouds to huge scale multi-tenancy public cloud platforms. A given application may be broken down in to a number of individual workloads that can each run in different environments to suit its needs. Such flexibility is welcome; however, the knowledge and skill for making best use of it will not exist in many mid-market organisations.

Fortunately help is at hand. A new breed of provider has emerged that combines the role of a system integrator with that of the managed service provider (MSP); the integrator-MSP. Some integrator-MSPs are focussed primarily on helping mid-market organisations with improved deployment of their applications.

As opposed to specialist-MSPs that offer single specialist service, for example co-location data centres or infrastructure as a service (IaaS), integrator-MSPs focus on application delivery, advising the best way to provision new applications and re-provision old ones. This involves making best use of a mix of existing in-house resources, those of specialist-MSPs and those from the integrator-MSP itself.

Integrator-MSPs are often local organisations focussed on their home market. One such is Niu Solutions, the sponsor of a recent Quocirca report Sourcing and integrating managed services which is freely available here. Niu is a UK-based integrator focussed on helping UK mid-market organisations better provision the application(s) they rely on. There are a number of other such UK-based organisations that combine managed service with system integration for the mid-market including Attenda, Phoenix and the Adapt Group (which has just acquired its smaller rival eLINIA).

More and more businesses are coming to realise that they can better focus their core value proposition if they turn to third parties to ensure that achieving this is underpinned by reliable applications. For those that recognise the benefits, there has never been so much choice of providers and platforms.

By: Ike Ononogbu, Managing Partner, InforData Consulting Posted: 23rd February 2012 Copyright InforData Consulting © 2012

Two weeks ago, I attended Gartner’s Master Data Management Summit in London. What an event it was, both in terms of information and the people.

I took a lot away from the event. What struck me was the oft-mentioned challenges organisations face in their bid to attain a single version of the truth—Data Quality and Data Governance. These challenges were not restricted to organisations intent on implementing an MDM solution, but in general something faced by many.

What is impressive about Gartner events, and this was not an exception, is their ability to collate existent and, for want of a better word, should-be practices into a structured workable framework. This was evident in Gartner’s ‘Seven building blocks for MDM’. Gartner’s seven building blocks for MDM touch on Vision, Strategy, Metrics, Information Governance, Organisation and Roles, Information Life Cycle, Enabling Infrastructure. Gartner's assertion could not have been more accurate. Organisations are aware of these practices, some have already adopted it in one shape or form, but most don't realise its importance in the successful delivery of an MDM or data integration project.

These processes, which practitioners have been preaching for a long time, are a business driven, holistic approach to MDM.

During the course of the event, I spoke to many delegates and they all had one common question—how do we deal with data governance and data quality?

Governance as a concept is not new. In an MDM context, Gartner has defined MDM Governance as ‘the specification of a framework for decision rights and accountability to encourage desirable behaviour in the valuation, creation, storage, use, archiving and deletion of master data.’ Decision making and accountability becomes a thorny issue, considering Master Data is shared across functions and lines of business. Addressing this challenge plays a big role in putting into place an effective Data Governance program.

In a survey by Gartner, 38% of respondents indicated post-implementation that they should have more forcefully managed the analysis and processes pertaining to the initial data quality of the source system master data.

This challenge is illustrated in one delegate's question to me: ''what is the difference between Data Quality and MDM?”. The delegate went further to say they were considering carrying out a data quality initiative, apparently having already implemented an ‘MDM’ solution. The question and statement laid bare the lack of understanding of the importance of Data Quality in an MDM implementation and business processes in general.

It was a well-attended summit and we left the arena with one thing in mind—ensure organisations understand the pivotal roles Data Governance and Data Quality play in MDM and Data Integration, and continue to help them achieve their goal.

By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 27th January 2012 Copyright Bloor Research © 2012

When I first wrote the RFID market overview, one of the key things I identified was that RFID hardware couldn't exist without RFID middleware and applications, and neither could RFID middleware and applications exist without RFID hardware. What has also become clear is that no longer are organisations just looking at passive or active tags, what they want is for their RFID middleware and applications to be able to work with a mix of different tags, both active and passive, and even at different frequencies. It is a case of choosing the right horse for the course!

On January 12th, Zebra announced they have entered into a "cooperative relationship and licensing agreement" with Checkpoint Systems. This relationship brings together Zebra's active location solutions with the passive RFID, auto-ID, Wi-Fi and sensor capabilities of Checkpoint division OATSystems' OATxpress middleware. The objective is to provide increased visibility of assets across an enterprise. The agreement is a non-exclusive contract and provides Zebra with an OEM software license for OATxpress

A reminder for those of you who are not sure about the two organisations involved. Zebra is one of the leading suppliers of bar code, receipt, card, kiosk and RFID printers and supplies, as well as real-time location solutions. Over the last year or so they have also developed a real-time location solution (RTLS), WhereNet ISO/IEC 24730-2. This provides robust location performance both indoors and outdoors with a long tag to sensor range. WhereLAN III RTLS tag delivers 1 meter locating accuracy, lower deployment and ownership costs, lower power consumption, and 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi backhaul.

Checkpoint Systems is a leader in shrink management, merchandise visibility, apparel labeling and asset tracking solutions. Checkpoint has some 40 years of experience of RF technology and shrink management requirements. In 2008, Checkpoint Systems acquired one of the leading RFID middleware companies, OATSystems (see OATSystems acquired by Checkpoint). This strengthened their RF capability and RFID customer base and has allowed OATSystems, as a division of Checkpoint, to further develop supply chain, manufacturing and inventory management applications on top of their RFID middleware for a number of verticals ranging from Apparel to Aerospace.

So what we have with this agreement is that Zebra can now offer Checkpoint's OATxpress device and data management capabilities in conjunction with their WhereNet RTLS solution. This makes it easier for a potential customer to purchase a complete solution from one point. From Checkpoint's viewpoint it gives access to Zebra customers and to the Zebra partner network thus providing further global access. From Zebra's viewpoint it can be summed up by a quote from Phil Gerskovich, senior vice president, new growth platforms at Zebra Technologies, "The addition of OAT's passive RFID and other auto-ID technologies capabilities will enable Zebra to play a larger and more meaningful role in helping organizations to make smarter decisions in managing their operations." Zebra has stated that they will announce details around its first product with the capability to implement applications that combine both active and passive RFID in the coming months, so watch this space!

In my view this relationship makes perfect sense to everyone and, most importantly, to potential and existing customers of Zebra and Checkpoint Systems.

By: Gerry Brown, Analyst - Digital Marketing & CRM, Bloor Research (Moved) Posted: 1st November 2011 Copyright Bloor Research © 2011

Chief Marketing Officers' (CMOs) main role is to serve as 'brand custodians' on behalf of their employers today. They know that what their customers buy today is not so much product features, functions and form; but more 'the brand promise' - the image of the brand, what it stands for, and how the brand makes them feel.

Hence CMOs obsess about keeping the brand's integrity intact and ensuring that creative images and messages they use are globally consistent, and are mutually supportive of the brand promise. This has always been tricky. Local country operations often employ their own agencies to build local language versions of promotional materials, and different and often contradictory logos and messages appear, serving to confuse the customer and dilute carefully woven corporate marketing stories.

What CMOs need is a central brand control system to ensure global discipline of its troops. The solution is Brand Asset Management (BAM) which is a mix of Digital Asset Management (DAM) and its parent category, Marketing Resource Management (MRM), where Aprimo (acquired by Teradata earlier this year) is perhaps the best-known supplier.

Less well-known is the UK-based company VYRE, which is making waves in the Brand Asset Management market. Over 400 brands use VYRE's Unify BAM platform. Its clients include Diageo (owners of drinks brands like Guinness, Smirnoff and Baileys) and Shell.

Typically, brand managers use Unify as a central access point and portal for brand guidelines, creative display pieces, video, pictures, blog content etc. VYRE's larger customers have many thousands of Brand Managers globally accessing up to 100,000 brand assets as part of their daily work. These assets are then combined by local marketers into finished content, brochures, flyers, advertising etc. for their marketing promotional campaigns.

This finished content is then loaded into an Approvals workflow module so that the necessary management authorisation and sign-off can be obtained. This means local language versions can be tightly controlled by Corporate, so that brand integrity can be maintained. In addition, wasteful 're-inventing the wheel' is avoided as content can be created once and re-purposed for many different promotional uses. Such systems make simultaneous global promotional product launches a reality, maximising impact and product availability. Apple and Microsoft do this effectively.

VYRE's Unify is ideal for a large company like Shell or Diageo - it allows for a high degree of flexibility and customisation so that established working practices can be simulated within the software. Now VYRE has launched a midmarket, more packaged solution called On Brand. This is only available as a SaaS version, and starts at £2,500 per month. This means for roughly the cost of a marketing executive, a brand can deploy a fully featured BAM system. This has to be tempting, as the ROI is potentially around 3x to 5x.

The On Brand price will be attractive to marketing and advertising agencies too. The global agency, Lowe + Partners, is already a big VYRE user. Marketing agencies typically provide much of the creative content for the big brands (for example Lowe serves Microsoft, Unilever, and Johnson & Johnson) and can better manage the logistics and workflow between themselves and their clients in an extranet configuration using shared systems such as On Brand.

Traditionally, many brand marketing organisations have used generic IT systems such as OpenText as databases for their brand assets. These multi-level filing systems are not that easy to use, especially for marketing folk not known for their computer-savvy skills. A system like On Brand, designed for use by Brand Managers, is preferable and offers the potential for fast global SaaS deployment (typically 6-8 weeks).

VYRE is an established 20-year industry veteran that has quietly been building clients and competencies around BAM. It has plans to grow its presence in the US and recent contracts there bode well. On Brand may just provide the vehicle to accelerate their growth and provide a stronger global presence as a leader in the BAM market.

By: David Norris, Practice Leader - Analytics, Bloor Research Posted: 23rd August 2011 Copyright Bloor Research © 2011

The discussions about Big Data and the analytics that surround it have tended to be dominated by Hadoop and MapReduce, and for the emphasis to be placed on the 'big' aspect. However, we have been doing big for a long time, in Telco CDR analysis, in Retail Banking transaction analysis, and in Retail ePOS analysis, which are all examples of big by any definition. But when you take Big to really mean diverse then it starts to become really interesting and you start to see things that are truly big changes in paradigm and not just a form of natural progression and realigned economics.

For me the truly disruptive technology advance that has been made is the analysis of text based data, rather than numeric data. Numbers make analysis easy, they have a universally agreed context and their magnitude is understood universally. But words are not like that; context is going to change the meaning that can be derived from a word, for instance just think of what the word "wicked" means to me and to my teenage daughter.

Not so long ago we started to mine text and, at the time, this provided really interesting results straight away. At that time I worked for HP and for a SAS SEUGI we used SAS text mining to look at engineer and customer feedback notes in the call centre, and from the install notes, for a number of newly released products, and were surprised to find that we discovered a number of product issues, before the product engineers became aware of them.

The progress in analysing words has been staggering; the most mind boggling being the IBM Watson project winning a quiz show in the US. This is analysis of speech combined with detection of context and data retrieval in real time, and it was only a few years ago that I was being amazed at technology that merely allowed speech recognition to be conducted at faster than real time.

Of all of the uses of text analysis, one that I believe has the most obvious ability to deliver a real boost to the bottom line is that of social media analysis. Over the last few years I have become increasingly aware that, on many of the projects I have been involved in using customer surveys, it is obvious that the panels are providing answers at odds with the behaviour that they actually display, and that they are providing the answers that they think you want to hear rather than what they really think, and the younger the audience the more sophisticated they appear to be in answering in ways that tell you anything but the truth.

The killer app of big data is the detailed analysis of customer behaviour, and one of the richest sources of information about what people really think is to be found in social media, be that Twitter, Facebook or YouTube etc. When it comes to the analysis of such data, it is not enough to just have clever technology - you also need the skills that come from a deep knowledge and experience of analytics and data handling.

The quality of analytics for social media is going to be fundamentally based upon an ability to collect data effectively, to process data effectively and to present results in ways that suits the needs of the audience, allied to an absolute, that the quality of the analytics is fundamental, simplistic analytics will provide simplistic results. When it comes to doing all of these things well, the market leaders are going to be the established players with the track record of doing these things well over the years and who can provide the technology and the know how to deliver reliable results. Here SAS remain a market leader, not through scale or longevity but through expertise and excellence.

Text analytics requires careful tuning, you have to be able to identify the critical things that you want to look at and separate them from the noise that surrounds them. A taxonomy gives structure to what is seemingly unstructured data, as nouns are hierarchically associated with topics, and then verbs and adjectives associated with those nouns can be analysed for sentiment.

As the high street and the shopping mall is increasingly supplemented by the internet, and a whole ecosystem builds up around the likes of Facebook, with its ability to build self selecting audiences of interested parties and a direct channel to them, such analysis will be the battleground for commercial success. Winners and losers will be determined by a detailed analysis of how the sentiment evolves over time in response to different stimuli. The analysis of that data must be reliable, timely and feed back to the audience in a readily assimilable format, and as that data is the lifeblood of an organisation that means that all functions from marketing to logistics will want to know what is going on, each with their own spin on what and how they want the data to be presented. Whilst there will be many point solutions offered to this growing market there will only be a handful of vendors capable of offering everything that is needed and I, for one, would bet that SAS will be leading that group.

The important thing is to remember that, although I have labelled this as social media analysis, the technology is applicable to all sources of textual data; so that includes call centre note fields, customer emails - all valuable sources of insight and that insight can be used to create market opportunities, save wasted expenditure, improve the customer experience and so forth. This is why Big Data gets people excited and this is why the traditional experts, like SAS, continue to have a compelling argument for inclusion in any work in this arena.

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 22nd August 2011 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2011

Why is it still difficult for businesses to get the information they want in the way they can use? Why has this been a persistent problem for decades?

We recently conducted a panel discussion, held in conjunction with the recent Open Group Conference in Austin, Texas, to explore these questions and examine the state of data and information management strategies. The discussion centers on the latest in the framework approach to information and data, and takes a fresh look at how an information architect can make a big difference.

To help better understand the role and impact of the information architect, and also how to implement a successful data information strategy, please welcome the panel: Robert Weisman, CEO of Build The Vision Inc.; Eugene Imbamba, Information Management Architect in IBM's Software Group, and Mei Selvage, the Lead in the IBM Community of Information Architects. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. [Disclosure: The Open Group is a Sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Here are some excerpts:

Gardner: Tell me, Robert, why it is that it's so hard for IT to deliver information access in the way that businesses really want.

Weisman: It's the general insensitivity to information management concerns within the industry itself, which is very much becoming much more technology and tool-driven with the actual information not being taken into consideration.

As a consequence, a lot of the solutions might work, but they don’t last, and they don’t, generally speaking, get the right information to the right person at the right time. Within The Open Group, we recognized this split about four years ago and that’s one reason that in TOGAF 9 we redefined that information technology as “The lifecycle management of information and related technology within an organization.” We didn’t want to see an IM/IT split in organizations. We wanted to make sure that the architecture addressed the needs of the entire community, especially those requiring information and knowledge.

Gardner: Eugene, do you think if we focus more on the lifecycle management of information and the architecture frameworks like TOGAF, that we'll get more to this requirement that business has that single view of reality?

Imbamba: Definitely, focusing on reference architecture methodologies are a good way to get going in the right direction. I don’t think it's the end of all means to getting there. But, in terms of leveraging what's been done, some of the architectures that have been developed, whether it's TOGAF or some of the other artifacts out there, would help organizations, instead of spinning their wheels and reinventing the wheel, start building some of the foundational capabilities needed to have an enterprise information architecture.

As a result, we’re seeing that each year with information management, projects starting up and projects collapsing for various reasons, whether it's cost or just the process or people in place. Leveraging some of these artifacts, methods, and reference architectures is a way to help get started, and of course employing other areas of the information management disciplines to help get to the finish line.

Gardner: Mei, when it comes to learning from those that have done this well, what do we know about what works when it comes to data and information management?

Selvage: Eugene and I had a long debate over how we know that we've delivered a successful information architecture. Our conclusion comes out three plus one. The first piece is just like any strategy roadmap. You need to have a vision and strategy. To have a successful information architecture vision you really have to understand your business problem and your business vision. Then, you use applicable, proven, referenced architecture and methodology to support that.

Once you have vision, then you come to the execution. How do you leverage your existing IT environments, integrate with them, keep good communication, and use the best practices? Finally, you have to get implemented on time and on schedule within the budget - and the end-user is satisfied.

Those are three parts. Then, the plus part is data governance, not just one time project delivery. You’ll have to make sure that data governance is getting consistently implemented across the projects.

Gardner: How about in the direction of this organizational definition of what works and what doesn’t work?

Weisman: The information architect will soon be called the knowledge architect to start realizing some of the promise that was seen in the 1980s and in the 1990s. The information architect’s role, essentially, is to harmonize all manner of information and make sure it's properly managed and accessible to the people who are authorized to see it.

It's not just the information architect. He has to be a team player, working closely with technology, because more and more information will be not just machine-readable, but machine-processable and interpretable. So he has to work with the people not only in technology, but with those developing applications, and especially those dealing with security because we’re creating more homogenous enterprise information-sharing environments with consolidated information holdings.

The paradigm is going to be changing. It's going to be much more information-centric. The object-oriented paradigm, from a technical perspective, meant the encapsulation of the information. It's happened, but at the process level.

Gardner: How do you see the role of the information architect as important in solidifying people’s thinking about this at that higher level and, as Robert said, being an advocate for the information across these other disciplines?

Imbamba: It's inevitable that this role will definitely emerge and is going to take a higher-level position within organizations. Back to my earlier comment about information really becoming an issue, we have lots of information. We have variety of information and varied velocity of information requirements.

We don’t have enough folks today who are really involved in this discipline and some of the projections we have are within the next 20 years, we’re going to have a lot more information that needs to be managed. We need folks who are engaged in this space, folks who understand the space and really can think outside the box, but also understand what the business users want, what they are trying to drive to, and be able to provide solutions that really not only look at the business problem at hand but also what is the organization trying to do.

The role is definitely emerging, and within the next couple of years, as Robert said, the term might change from information architects to knowledge architects, based on where information is and what information provides to business.

Gardner: Please update us on what took place at the Austin Conference.

Weisman: We had some super presentations, in particular the one that Eugene and Mei gave, that addressed information architecture and various associated processes and different types of sub-architectures/frameworks as well.

The Information Architecture Working Group, which is winding down after two years, has created a series of white papers. The first one addressed the concerns of the data management architecture and maps the data management body of knowledge processes to The Open Group Architecture Framework. That white paper went through final review in the Information Architecture Working Group in Austin.

We have an Information Architecture Vision paper, which is an overall rethinking of how information within an organization is going to be addressed in a holistic manner, incorporating what we’d like to think as all of the modern trends, all types of information, and figure out some sort of holistic way that we can represent that in an architecture.

The vision paper is right now in the final review. Following that, we're preparing a consolidated request for change to the TOGAF 9 specification. The white papers should be ready and available within the next three months for public consultation. This work should address many significant concerns in the domain of information architecture and management. I'm really confident the work that working group has done has been very productive.

Gardner: Now, you mentioned that Mei and Eugene delivered a presentation. I wonder if we can get an overview, a quick summary of the main points?

Selvage: Essentially, we need to understand what it means to have a successful solution information architecture. We need to leverage all those best practices, which come in a form of either a proven reference architecture or methodology, and use that to achieve alignment within the business.

Eugene, do you have anything you want to specifically point out in our presentation?

Imbamba: No, just to add to what you said. The three keys that we brought were the alignment of business and IT, using and leveraging reference architectures to successfully implement information architectures, and last was the adoption of proven methodology.

In our presentation, we defined these constructs, or topics, based on our understanding and to make sure that the audience had a common understanding of what these components meant. Then, we gave examples and actually gave some use cases of where we’ve seen this actually happen in organizations, and where there has been some success in developing successful projects through the implementation of these methods. That's some of what we touched on.

Weisman: Just as a postscript from The Open Group we’re coming with an Information Architecture and Planning Model. We have a comprehensive definition of data and information and knowledge; we've come up with a good generic lifecycle that can be used by all organizations. And, we addressed all the issues associated with them in a holistic way with respect to the information management functions of governance, planning, operations, decision support and business intelligence, records and archiving, and accessibility and privacy.

One of the main contributions that these white papers are going to provide is a good planning basis for the holistic management of all manner of information in the form of a complete model.

Gardner: Why will the data and information management professionalization, this role of the information architect, be more important based on some of the trends that we expect?

Weisman: Right now, it's competitive advantage upon which companies may rise and fall. Harvard Business School Press, Davenport in particular, has produced some excellent books on competitive analytics and the like, with good case studies. For example, a factory halfway through construction is stopped because they didn’t have timely access to the their information indicating the factory didn’t even need to be constructed. This speaks of information quality.

In the new service-based rather than industry-based economic paradigm, information will become absolutely key. With respect to the projected increase of information available, I actually see a decrease in information holdings within the enterprise itself.

This will be achieved through a) information management techniques - you will actually get rid of information; b) you will consolidate information; and c) with paradigms such as cloud, you don’t necessarily have to have information within the organization itself.

So you will be dealing with information holdings that are accessible by the enterprise, and not necessarily just those that are held by the enterprise. There will also be further issues such as knowledge representation and the like, that will become absolutely key, especially with demographics as it stands now. We have to do more with less.

The training and professionalization of information architecture, or knowledge architecture, I anticipate will become key. However, knowledge architects cannot be educated totally in a silo, they also have to have a good understanding of the other architecture domains. A successful enterprise architect must understand all the the other architecture domains.

Gardner: Eugene, how about you, in terms of future trends that impact the increased importance of this role in this perspective on information?

Imbamba: From an IBM perspective, we’ve seen over the last 20 years organizations focusing on what I call an "application agenda," really trying to implement enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, supply chain management systems, and these systems have been very valuable for various reasons, reducing cost, bringing efficiencies within the business.

But, as you know, over the last 20 years, a lot of companies now have these systems in place, so the competitive advantage has been lost. So what we’re seeing right now is companies focusing on an information agenda, and the reason is that each organization has information about its customers, its products, its accounts like no other business would have.

So, what we're seeing today is leveraging that information for competitive advantage, trying to optimize your business, gleaning the information that you have so that you can understand the relationships between your customers, between your partners, your suppliers, and optimize that to deliver the kinds of services and needs, the business wants and the customer’s needs.

It's a focus from application agenda to an information agenda to try and push what’s going on in that space.

Gardner: Mei, last word to you, future trends and why would they increase the need for the information architecture role?

Selvage: I like to see that from two perspectives. One is from the vendor perspective, just taking IBM as an example. The information management brand is the one that has the largest software products, which reflects market needs and the market demands. So there are needs to have information architects who are able to look over all those different software offerings in IBM and other major vendors too.

From the customer perspective, where I see a lot of trends is that many outsource basic database administration, kind of a commodity or activity out to a third-party where they keep the information architects in-house. That’s where we can add in the value. We can talk to the business. We can talk to the other components of IT, and really brings things together. That’s a trend I see more organizations are adopting.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy.

By: Ike Ononogbu, Managing Partner, InforData Consulting Posted: 8th July 2011 Copyright InforData Consulting © 2011

We have just gone past the half way mark of 2011 and several events—conferences, seminars, and webinars—have taken place. A number of them have one common denominator, Data Management. The 20th and 21st century has seen an increase in mergers and acquisitions as organisations pursue growth and wider customer base. Invariably this has led to the explosion of data held within an organisation. This trend seems to have shifted the focus on how best to manage this ubiquitous item.

What is it that makes data so important? The information that comes from data reveals the state of an organisation. Sales figures, financial status, revenue, forecasts are all derived from data. Information at the disposal of organisations, if accurate, can be used to strategize and gain competitive advantage. In reality, data is the engine that moves an organisation.

One way of understanding your data sets and managing it to gain a competitive edge is through Master Data Management (MDM). In recent times there has been a flurry of interest in MDM and recognition of its importance. It has been noted organisations that are interested in implementing MDM solutions often struggle to address the challenges that come with implementation. Gartner, in a published article titled ‘MDM 'Primer': How to Define Master Data and Related Data in Your Organization’, states that “MDM program managers and leaders need to ensure a shared understanding of what defines master data across the organisation. MDM programs will not go very far without this. If your organisation plans to adopt MDM, you need this “primer” to help define master data across business and IT”. The paper goes on to talk about key findings and recommendations.

While there are immense challenges in implementing a Master Data Management (MDM) solution, the benefits are overwhelming. It has been said that by 2013, Master Data Management (MDM) will reduce data redundancy in organizations. As a result will save 80% of the costs associated with managing this redundant data.

By: Philip Howard, Research Director - Data Management, Bloor Research Posted: 3rd March 2011 Copyright Bloor Research © 2011

In my article on identity resolution in January I stated that “I only know one vendor that specialises in this second type of identity resolution and that is IBM.” What I was referring to was the sort of identity resolution that understands criminals who have multiple aliases and, further, can figure out that this suspect lived in the same house as xyz two years ago, who is now engaged to be married to abc, who is the sister of known terrorist lmn, and so on and so forth.

Well, my mistake. It turns out that I was wrong: Infoglide (www.infoglide.com) also provides this sort of software. Truth to tell, I had always put Infoglide into the same camp as Identity Systems (part of Informatica) for conventional identity resolution, which is more closely related to data quality. Indeed, Infoglide does sometimes compete in this market (they do overlap). However, its customer base is primarily in federal and state government and financial services, which tells its own story, although it does have a presence in the retail and healthcare markets also.

Also worth noting is that, while the company has historically been focused primarily on North America, it is now forming partnerships elsewhere. For example, the Westminster Group is a UK-based partner. Infloglide has several existing UK-based customers.

There are a couple of interesting things to be aware of in Infloglide’s solution. The first is that it uses a federated approach. In other words, all data stays in the source system. More particularly, this approach lends itself to addressing external data sources as well as those that are internal to an organisation. For example, you can query Facebook or LexisNexis at the same time as internal databases.

Like IBM, Infoglide supports anonymous resolution. This is used when you want to make enquiries about an individual but data privacy laws get in the way of providing such information, for example between a bank in Switzerland and one in the United States. IBM’s approach is that the data is shipped but anonymised (masked, if you will) whereas Infoglide’s is that the data is not actually shipped at all. Nevertheless, both answer the question.

These approaches are both fine if used within a single banking corporation. You need the software installed at both ends of the connection but that’s fine in a single organisation. However, it isn’t fine if two different banks want to communicate with one another. With both IBM and Infoglide having implementations in this market this will likely mean that banks will have to have both sets of software in order to handle information requests from different sources. No doubt both of these vendors would love this, but it’s not good for the banks, or anyone else wanting to use this software.

The market for anonymous resolution has not yet reached critical mass but it will. At that point we are going to have a problem. IBM and Infoglide need to sit down together sooner rather than later to discuss coming to some sort of agreement about standards for interfacing between the two product sets.

By: Ike Ononogbu, Managing Partner, InforData Consulting Posted: 28th February 2011 Copyright InforData Consulting © 2011

Heading South
Is the cost of data management heading south? Have you had a discussion with a client considering moving away from inefficient data management processes or a client looking to implement a transformation project? If you have, my guess is that pricing must have been a thorny issue. One would then ask why such organisations stick to the 'tried and tested' procedures that are quite expensive.

Step in Open Source
In the past few years we have seen the rising interest in Open Source. This has been fuelled by the popular belief that you can possibly get value for money at a reduced cost. The idea of Open Source in relation to technology has long been in existence but the idea of Open Source in relation to data integration is a new concept. Open Source is not just about giving access to source code, it also involves free redistribution of applications. Some offer both free distribution and a licensing option.

I recently attended a dialogue session focused on Open Source and it is evident organisations are beginning to look at and explore the gains Open Source has to offer. Coming from industry chieftains, who constituted the panel at the session within the private and public sector, it certainly is a good sign for Open Source evangelists.

The Difficulty
So, why has it been difficult for Open Source to really take flight? During the dialogue session, the reasons were not in short supply. They ranged from contractual agreements between System Integrators and clients to risks involved in implementing integration projects using ‘non-mainstream’ applications. Members of the audience, of course, did counter the argument for, citing the government’s cost-saving drive as a big enough incentive. Some, also, did point out the superiority of some Open Source products, in terms of functionality, over closed applications.

Data Integration
Looking at Open Source within the data integration arena, Talend easily comes to mind. Talend, a Paris-based software house, offers an Open Source data integration tool with a free standard edition version and a subscription version. The company publishes the code of its core modules and offers the developer community the ability to improve the product. Nevertheless, Talend R&D drives the road map/strategy.

Talend seems to be succeeding in its awareness drive which has seen it sign-up a number of clients in the private and public sector. It must be added that their data integration tool is effective.

Pros and Cons
As with every evolving concept there are positives, to build on, and negatives, to address.

Negatives

• Intellectual Properties issues: Who owns what?
• Who reaps the financial gains from the sale or use of the product?

Positives

• Costs: The reduction in costs associated with Open Source weighs heavily in its favour.
• Easy access: Free versions are available on-line.

While the evangelists of Open Source proclaim the philosophy according to Open Source we have to remember it has to be judged based on its merits and not just on costs.

By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 10th February 2011 Copyright Bloor Research © 2011

As the realisation comes to the software market that the new generation of workers need user interfaces that fit with the lifestyle of Facebook, Twitter and mobile phones with apps, we are starting to see how various software companies are meeting these changes. For the BPMS market, Appian have always been one of the companies leading the way and with the release of Appian 6.5, which includes a new interface called Appian Tempo, they have produced a release that is geared towards the end user of BPMS-driven solutions in terms of a mobile and social interface with cloud capabilities.

Malcolm Ross, Appian’s Director of Product Management, told me “The release delivers a revolutionary way to extend process visibility and participation through native mobile device access, real-time collaboration, filtered and personalised views of key business events, integration to external systems, and the ability to take direct action in a familiar and intuitive social media interface.” So what does the new Appian interface deliver?

Mobility

Appian Tempo provides native client applications for the Apple iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone as well as RIM BlackBerry devices. Ross explained that mobile BPM allows employees to stay connected, allowing them to monitor, collaborate and take action on important business decisions regardless of where they are. It also extends BPM participation beyond pre-defined process participants to include all levels of the organisation. The iPhone and iPad applications are available for immediate download from the Apple App Store. The BlackBerry application is available now from the Appian Forum community site, and will be available shortly on the BlackBerry App World site. A native application for Google Android devices will be available shortly.

Figure 1: Appian Tempo user interface on BlackBerry, iPad and iPhone. (Source: Appian)

Social

There always seems to be a contradiction about incorporating social media into a business world. Social technologies are powerful communication and collaboration platforms, but they must be harnessed in a business context to have business value. Ross explained, “Appian utilises familiar social tools and interfaces to drive business collaboration across the enterprise through personalised, filtered views that allow easy collaboration with the ability to take action when needed.” Users can filter views by relevant application or process areas and subscribe to customised feeds to monitor the key events and information that is meaningful to them. As well, users can comment, pose questions and collaborate on business events through real-time message posts and ad hoc updates to targeted groups within and outside of pre-planned business processes. The last user capability is to “Take Action”; here a user can generate actions and complete tasks from inside the event feed or from a mobile device, using optimised web and mobile forms to capture data and route tasks.

Customer-Driven

Samir Gulati, Appian’s Vice President of Marketing, described how Appian 6.5, and in particular Appian Tempo, had been driven by their customers’ business needs. One example is Archstone, a leading apartment management company, headquartered in the USA. Archstone have a highly mobile and dispersed workforce which is supported by a system built on Appian. David Carpenter, Director of BPM, Archstone, stated that “Appian Tempo delivers a new level of value to our customer service associates through instant mobile access to our key enterprise processes and forms.”

Comment

I was very impressed with the demonstration of Appian 6.5 and the Appian Tempo interface. From an end user viewpoint it opens up the ability to make real-time decisions where and when they are needed by using collaborative technology. The product is definitely easy-to-use and intuitive. While all events and collaborations can be secured at a granular level, organisations that make use of the new Appian release will need to think about the security implications of the information that can be shared.

In addition to on-premise deployment, Appian has emerged as the BPM-in-the-cloud market leader. When you add the capabilities of Appian Tempo to those already in the Appian BPMS and Appian Anywhere, as well as Appian’s specific knowledge about industries such as government and financial services, you have a very compelling proposition.

By: Ike Ononogbu, Managing Partner, InforData Consulting Posted: 25th January 2011 Copyright InforData Consulting © 2011

We recently signed up to a CRM web-based application and so far it has proven to be a wise investment. Automating and simplifying some tasks previously carried out manually and more importantly we have avoided the drudgery of installing, configuring and subsequently maintaining the software. Our consultants can now log in from anywhere and use or input company-wide data without having to be at our office or logged into our machines. This is a pretty cool service.

Another significant occurrence, for me, that heralded the arrival of SaaS was when I had a need to share a 'live' document with a friend. As I was pondering how we could both access the document without having to save and send via email a former work-mate suggested we use a particular application on the cloud, this application allows for document-sharing on the 'cloud'.  Perfect!!

In The Beginning
Historically companies have been required to buy software, configure and deploy. But it seems there is change in the air. This apparent shift in paradigm from client-server desktop applications to web-based or cloud computing has its merits and, as some sceptics would like to dwell on, its down-side.

If I were a manager in a company would I rather have a client-server installation or opt for the seemingly easier option of SaaS. Some thought-provoking questions need to be answered before an appropriate decision can be made.

Some of the questions would possibly be:

• How safe is my data?
• Am I looking at short-term or long-term costs?
• If long term, will it be cost effective? Same question should be posed if short-term. 

Data Security
Back to what I would assume is the most important question companies looking to go the cloud route would ask, is my data safe? For all its ease-of-use and minimal, if not lack of, maintenance data security is key to making a decision whether to embark on this road. Managers will have at the back of their minds that their data will be stored in a data centre they have no control over and probably haven’t got a clue where it is located. Where does governance lie if your data is stored in a data centre in Alaska? Is the integrity of my data assured in the data centre?

SaaS 'Players'
Every technology shift has its forebears and followers. Salesforce, a CRM firm formed by an ex-Oracle executive and three software developers, leads the way in harnessing web-based capability. Others, notably Informatica (Data Integration software company), SAP (provides Enterprise software applications), Oracle and IBM Cognos, have all followed suit and now offer on-demand services which are all cloud based. Worth mentioning, Microsoft has just launched its CRM application, Dynamic CRM Online. No one wants to be left behind and there is good reason not to.

Conclusion
While awaiting assurance that data held in data centres will be safe, another question pops up. Are the features in on-demand products as 'rich' as client-server editions?

Having said that and posed some questions, earlier on, we must not lose sight of the benefits of SaaS or cloud computing. The positives are all too obvious for one to see and it certainly has a big part to play in the technology arena, now and in future.

By: Natalie Newman, Senior Analyst, Bloor Research Posted: 25th January 2011 Copyright Bloor Research © 2011

I am not referring to Cloud Computing but rather the cloud of confusion prevailing over geographic information amongst the general public. The confusion over this type of information; the confusion over the many terms used for information that can be linked to the earth's surface; and the confusion over maps.

Watching a TV program the other evening called, ‘The Beauty of Maps' highlighted the subjectivity of maps. The map maker has cartographic licence to create a map display which projects his interpretation of the subject; whether it is to visualise the topography correctly and read the labels easily, or to project an image that might not be true. This program described William Morgan's 1682 Map of London. He created a map of a city after it was destroyed by The Great Fire. His map illustrated the city he envisaged London would become. St Paul's Cathedral was well illustrated on the map even though it was totally destroyed and had yet to be rebuilt. Maps project what the creator intends.

There is a book written by Allan and Barbara Pease called ‘Why men don't listen and women can't read maps'.The theory goes that "due to their different roles in evolution, men had to hunt and stalk their prey, so became skilled at navigation, while women foraged for food and so became good at spotting fruits and nuts close by" [The Telegraph website]. I am not sure that explains it and, if one can generalise quite so simply, women should then be the bigger enthusiast about SatNavs. Maybe the ‘don't listen' bit prevents men from asking for or listening to directions :)

Returning to the subject—there is a great lack of understanding amongst laymen about location and geographic information systems (GIS)—as my previous article described the need to increase aWhereness. Location information—or whatever we want to call it—is simply the position on the earth's surface to the accuracy that is possible, and/or the accuracy that is required.

Initially Google Maps and Google Earth provided much needed publicity for geographic information. Google Maps, or similar, is used by most people I know to find their destination and obtain directions to reach it. Google Earth stirred an interest in places we might not visit but can view. So much good has emanated from those two applications to raise the profile of location.

The downside is that there is still not enough understanding or appreciation of the implications of geographic information and the systems. The associated costs are now even harder to sell as ‘Google is free'.

The Google application, Latitude, enables a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location. I assume that these locations include both the longitude and latitude measurement; just the distance from the equator would not really help anyone.

Another term to increase the confusion, or is Google taking latitude with Latitude?

In addition, according to the latest Apollo survey table measuring the media coverage per technology company, Google came 1st in Europe and in USA, and 3rd in UK!  With that much media exposure, we should not underestimate the influence of Google!

We will have to tell a convincing story about the necessary investment to add location to your business systems. We will have to ensure that the longitude accompanies the latitude and makes good sense.

That means we, geographic professionals will have to work that much harder to tell—and sell—our story.

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 6th December 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

Barcelona: Welcome to a special BriefingsDirect podcast series coming to you from the HP SoftwareUniverse 2010 Conference in Barcelona.

We're here in the week of November 29, 2010 to explore some major enterprise software and solutions, trends and innovations making news across HP’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers.

This customer case-study from the conference focuses on Enel Green Power and how this Italian utility business has benefited from improved management of core business processes and gained visibility into new energy projects, also adhering to compliance through better planning and the ability to scope out new projects comprehensively. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

To learn about Enel Green Power’s innovative use of project and portfolio management (PPM), I interviewed Massimo Ferriani, CIO of Enel Green Power in Rome.

Here are some excerpts:

Ferriani: Enel Green Power is one of the leaders in the renewables market ... We're in all the most mature technologies such as hydro, geothermal, wind, and solar.

If you think about a matrix to cross technologies and countries, we have a lot of trouble, because we operate four technologies in 16 countries.

It's difficult because we have more than 300 plants all around the world. So, it's an asset portfolio that we have to operate, and we have to reduce the risks.

When we decided to deploy IT platforms, we didn’t think that it was a good idea to deploy conventional-generation IT platforms, but to build up new platforms more fitted to renewables' needs.

We thought about the main objective in deploying these platforms and said, "Okay, maybe we have to deploy platforms that permit us to minimize the portfolio risk, in order to know exactly what production should be." For us, knowing the production is a condition.

We have to know production, and we have to know exactly the production that we're promising to sell to the market.

The business strategy is to manage centrally and operate locally. IT had to follow the strategy. Our main IT platforms are developed with the objective to be global. Global doesn’t mean managing everything centralized, but to manage the IT platform as centralized, because it's better for synergies and in terms of costs. But, because we have to fit local needs, we have to localize these platforms in 16 countries.

For PPM, as well, we decided to have a global, centralized, unique platform, in order to gather and collect all the data that we get from the field. This is one of the problems that we frequently have because, in effect, the operation is located everywhere. And, it’s not easy to collect information from each field operation.

We have lot of plants in the middle of nowhere—in the middle of the Nevada desert and in the middle of the Mato Grosso in Brazil. We have to gather information from these plants. So, it’s important to have global IT platforms, because one of our main objectives is that all our people have to work in the same way.

It’s also important to set the main goal of the PPM solution. Now, the PPM solution lets Enel Green Power manage its own worldwide portfolio initiatives, both business development side and the plant construction Phase 2, because we have to remember that the business development hands over the construction of the project.

We have to do it through building a unique centralized integrated platform, valuable to all the countries, designed to certify the market value of the pipeline and the potential future production related to that pipeline. For us, it's absolutely important to forecast better, to make budgets, and so on. It had to be designed to support people, our colleagues, in activities like planning, project development, reporting, document management, and so on.

Setting the main goals
So when we decided to deploy this platform, we had a lot of work for a couple of reasons.

First of all, because we wanted to develop an integrated in-house platform in order to map the core processes of the project, and at the same time to implement algorithms to develop a portfolio evaluation.

The second was to investigate adopting a standard solution available on the market that allowed us, with little customization, to fit the need of the business. It's important to underline that, when we started this project, it was the end of May, 2010. We already knew we were going to have an IPO. We didn’t know the time exactly, but we had to be ready for the end of October, the estimated date of the IPO.

We adopted the HP solution, because the HP people convinced us that with a minimal set of customization we would be ready for the end of October—and we did it.

We chose HP because of the strong automation in the collection of the data. As I said before, also important for us were simplicity and flexibility. Also, with reference to our geographical distribution everywhere, the adoption of a solution supported with global support was another constraint and was absolutely important.

We needed a standard technology accessible from a lot of countries and with integration with other applications that we have, for example Microsoft Project. We also required scalability and platform growth—and HP has a strength on this point—because we are adopting a web service architecture. And, we wanted the viability of a unique homogenous view of mandating KPIs.

We're only in the first phase in order to support the IPO and to support the certification of the market value of the pipeline. But, the main benefits of this platform for the business are acquisition and centralization of the data.

For us, the flexibility was maybe one of the three main strengths on this platform and the reasons we chose HP. But, the best one, as I said before, was the minimum customization we needed in order to fit the first phase. It’s not easy to have only three months time to set 64 workflows, because the local business development wants to fit their workflow on these needs.

It’s important for the automation to monitor all the steps of the workflow, of the individual steps of the process, to manage the workflow authorization of the individual steps, and monitor progress of the individual steps. All these data have to support us in order to plan the strategy. So, there are plenty of benefits and maybe more benefits in the future with the evolution of this platform.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy.

By: Gerry Brown, Analyst - Digital Marketing & CRM, Bloor Research (Moved) Posted: 26th November 2010 Copyright Bloor Research © 2010

In November 2010 I attended two separate user conferences, both at the same venue (The Mayfair Hotel in Central London) and hosted by two different enterprise solutions companies with a common heredity.

Both were innovative entrepreneurial start-ups offering disruptive technologies; both have c. 500 employees; both have recently been acquired at an attractive premium price (c. $1.8Bn) by a larger software supplier. The companies? Omniture (acquired by Adobe) and Netezza (acquired by IBM).

Two years ago the Omniture conference in London was electric. Their CEO, Josh James, was buzzing around with great vigour, and preached the gospel of web site analytics to an adoring audience. There wasn’t a dry eye or a free seat in the place. Youthful exuberance, funky beards and hair gel were everywhere. Stand-out presentations included ‘how BT uses web site behavioural targeting’.

Not this time. In Omniture’s recent ‘Clicks to Cliques’ conference there were no customer presentations. Content was thin and presenters relied mostly on jokes to enthuse the audience. At lunch the attendees I talked to felt little had been learned, and there were few action points. “I am not sure why we are all here” said one. Earlier this year Josh James abruptly left Omniture with no explanation and his life-blood, and the drive and innovation that made Omniture so successful seems to be lacking.

At Netezza’s ‘datawarehousing appliance’ conference both the audience and the presenters seemed to be having a jolly good time. An IBM manager articulated the attraction of Netezza to IBM. Netezza’s SVP for Strategy & Marketing presented the Netezza product technology road map providing a clear sense of direction using Netezza’s core values: speed, simplicity, smartness, and trustworthiness.

Three enthusiastic and personable Netezza customers presented why they had bought and how they use Netezza product(s). The man from BSkyB used BSkyB’s own tag line ‘believe in better’ to describe Netezza. “The more I use Netezza, the less I need integration tools” he said. There were lots of questions from the floor. The compere kept everything moving at a brisk pace and no-one had time to get bored. Everyone stayed for drinks afterwards, because they genuinely wanted to.

The bottom line for customers: smaller, high growth innovative vendors that are acquired by bigger beasts can work well if the senior management team is left intact, autonomy and continuity are maintained, and the culture remains relatively untouched. Synergistic co-existence is the desired goal—meaning customers get more of the same, but with more resource backing and global reach. For example, if Netezza can leverage the IBM customer base it might turn its 400 customers into 4,000 customers by 2015.

Paradoxically, those acquirers that try to assimilate innovative company cultures into their larger entities are taking the bigger risk. IBM’s decimation of Tivoli is the stuff of legend, but also other big players have destroyed shareholder value with an insensitive approach to acquisitions. A balanced, emotionally intelligent, approach is required rather than looking for immediate cost savings and ROI. IBM certainly seems to have taken this onboard in its approach towards Netezza and Cognos.

Customers are advised to observe behaviour rather than listen to the rhetoric when evaluating whether to stay with an acquired software vendor. If it becomes clear that a dynamic entrepreneurial culture is being consumed into a larger role-based bureaucratic culture, customers should review their sourcing options.

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 23rd November 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

Three megatrends are shaping the next generation of successful businesses and governments. We're talking about pervasive mobile applications, highly responsive cloud-computing models, and knowledge-adept social collaboration.

Indeed, by the year 2020, The Economist newspaper predicts there will be two trillion devices connected to the Internet. And taking a look at where we are right now, McKinsey Quarterly reported in August that in 2010 some four billion people have cell phones, and 450 million have access to a full web experience.

Moreover, Jupiter Research reports that by 2014 there will be 130 million enterprise users involved with mobile cloud activities. Not only is access pervasive, but the amount of information available is also exploding. The Economist again reports that in 2005 mankind created 150 exabytes of digital data … and in 2010 we will create fully eight times more data.

These changes are at a pace they’ve never seen before as they address them and try to drive these into their business or government environments.

As these trends literally rearrange business ecosystems, a gap will surely emerge between the companies that master change -- and exploit enabling technologies -- and those that fall ever further behind.

For those that do step up to the challenge -- expect a relentless emphasis on rapidly recurring innovation to meet dynamic customer and citizen demands.

Our latest BriefingsDirect podcast therefore focuses on how these trends -- and rapidly evolving customer, citizen, and user expectations -- are newly impacting the enterprise. We also examine how technology advancements are making it possible to drive innovation to meet these new demands for instant gratification.

Please join HP executive Dave Shirk, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at HP Enterprise Business, as we explore how HP is working to make headway, so that the next few years bring about a generational opportunity -- and not a downward complexity spiral. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Shirk: We're seeing a lot of shift going on in the marketplace right now. When we look at where consumers are driving business or where citizens are driving government, it's fundamentally changing the way they operate. We've seen three core things come out.

The business models are all starting to change the way in which people approach markets across the globe. That's having to really rethink the ways in which they've approached them versus traditional methods.

The second thing we see is this whole shift in mobile computing meeting cloud computing and the enterprise trying to figure out exactly how to take best advantage of that to create this competitive advantage. Then, the overall demographic piece weighs into that.

We've seen the rise of the millennials, as they're being referred to. All of these things are forcing business and government to stop and say, "You know what, if we're going to grow or we're going to create a service differentiation, we're really going to need to do things differently and we're going to have to do it way faster than we've ever done it before."

According to the Society for Engineers, you now have over 800,000 graduates in China, over 300,000 graduates in India, 100,000 some in Japan, etc. It's over the last 10 to 12 years that each of those graduation rates has occurred. They are part of the workforce now.

When they went through that process, they were always connected and they always were involved in a social network-based environment. They have a level of their lifestyle that is all tied to this always-connected environment. When you think about the ubiquitous computing that that has brought to them, as they enter the workforce, they are looking at things a lot differently than ever before.

They bring new ideas. They bring new ways to that. They're looking for businesses that will support that kind of methodology and structure. ... So, when we think about that Gen X group that's out there, we see them driving an enormous part of this change.

The last statistic I saw was that they are now over 50 percent of the workforce. The analogy that's always used is that, to them, being connected and always involved in some type of networking-based collaboration or information sharing of some sort is about the same as it is for you and me to pick up our remote controls and turn on our television sets. That's already having a very profound effect on how business and government are changing and the expectations that are out there in the marketplace.

It's this [demand for] immediate or instant gratification: "If I can't get what I want in the following way, I’ll find the business or government environment where I can." While the government piece maybe a bit harder to change, the business piece isn't, and so the competitive pressure to serve this audience, both as the consumer and also as employees, is a big part of that shift.

We see technology as the cornerstone to being able to solve some of these trends and some of these challenges.

We call that the "Now Problem." They want this, they want it done now, and they want it to work a certain way. We see technology as the cornerstone to being able to solve some of these trends and some of these challenges.

These changes are at a pace they’ve never seen before as they address them and try to drive these into their business or government environments.

This is probably best represented in the words of Professor Gary Hamel, who is the foremost business visionary person out there in the marketplace. In his book, Future of Management, he described it as "whiplash change."

That's very much the case when I speak with our clients both on the business side and the government side. That's exactly what they're sitting there and thinking and working through right now.

Role of technology

We look at the technology piece of [the change] and say that you really can't [react] any other way -- the pace of it, the speed of it, and some of the complexity associated with it. For a long time, business has tried to use labor as an arbitrage to try to work their way through this and just throw bodies at it. That's quickly dissipating. The speed and the connectedness that we see, and the confidence level that all of these types of services require make it no longer possible to go through that.

What we see is IT completely embedded in the business. Over the next couple of years, that's going to continue to be the trend and the strategy that will play out in the way in which business and government work this. Ultimately, that's going to be the differentiator that drives an ability not only to serve these constituencies but to out-serve them, and that's going to be the name of the game.

[The solution] starts with a desire to change and to drive innovation in a different way. We sit and we think about the fundamental change in this. We talked for years that the business was focused on business processes and business process reengineering. While that’s still very important, it isn't going to go away any time soon.

It's becoming obvious that the bigger driver and the more significant trend is the information process, understanding the segments of business or government that need to be addressed. What their needs are, what they want, what they want to talk about, the ways in which they want to interact is all part of this change that’s taking place.

Closing the gap

So, as we start to pull back and step back from this, we look at that and we look at this vision that we have for the Instant-On Enterprise and how we’re enabling end-users to become a part of that, how we’re enabling businesses and governments to provide that type of capability. It really is about closing the gap between what IT can provide and what the business needs to be able to serve each of those audiences.

What we’ve launched with this vision is to put the foundations in place to make that possible and take a journey with our clients both from the business side and government side and help them move down that particular path, find ways to navigate these challenges and these trends, and to out-serve and to over-serve all the audiences that they need to meet the needs of.

[This change] is inevitable. Different businesses and governments will have, at different times, one of these four elements be more important or more significant to them at different points. All of them share the innovation requirement. We see that in all things.

Our view is that the innovation has to take place throughout that information process. It doesn’t matter whether it happens back at the data center or at every touch point. Innovation has to take place throughout for the business to meet the needs of those segments I’ve referred to earlier -- how it services it, how it conducts itself, and ultimately how it meets our needs or exceeds the needs of the audiences.

Agility really is about instant expectations, and can we turn things on and off, instead of just setting them up for a rainy day and hoping that they will be used.

Agility, optimization, and risk all vary in and out with innovation in terms of their need and their level of importance.

Agility really is about instant expectations, and can we turn things on and off, instead of just setting them up for a rainy day and hoping that they will be used. A big part of technology’s trouble in the past was that we created all of these things and we never had a plan for ending their lifecycle or turning them down slightly, so that we could turn up other activities or other possibilities in an instant-on environment and an instant-on enterprise. A core part of the vision that we see is being able to drive that agility to meet those changing business needs.

When HP looks at the Instant-On Enterprise, the enablement of that is really a journey, and we’ve got to figure out what pieces make the most sense. There are some things that are much easier to focus on first and then, over time, to gain more and more of an Instant-On nature.

Critical success factors

Flexibility, security, speed, automation, and insight, those absolutely are attributes that we look for. We see them as the critical success factors in the way in which every part of the environment that IT leverages, drives, and embeds in the business has to come forward.

And yet, everybody is stuck in this mode of an enormous legacy that they have to deal with, and that gets in the way of being able to provide some of these new capabilities.

We’ve spent a lot of time and gotten a lot of expertise over the years trying to figure out the best ways to address these albatrosses that are keeping IT from being able to deal with the needs of the business. In the Instant-On Enterprise journey, that's a big part of the set of steps that we have to work through and work with our clients to make sure that they understand where to prioritize.

In the first few months that I have been here, one of the things that I've learned is that HP, as a company, has this incredible breath and depth of portfolio.

Our view is that we work with our clients and figure out ways that they can, as we say, shift that equation. How do you shift from 70 percent of that equation being focused on operational management, and 30 percent, if you are lucky, being spent on new and innovation-based capabilities to help or assist the business and its growth versus shifting it the other way? How do you get to 30 percent operational mode, and move forward with 70 percent focused on the business?

Changing business models

When I spend time with clients and listen to them, a big part of what they're asking for is, "We’ve got these pressures. We're seeing the business models change and we're experimenting with some things. We're seeing the mobile and the cloud computing pieces coming at us like a freight train. At the same time, we're seeing the demographic shift both on the end-user consumer side and on our employee side. We need strategic partners to help us with this. How do we navigate this? What is the way in which we should do that? HP, do you have a point of view?"

We're in a unique position, because we're the only company in the marketplace that has a full suite of consumer products, and yet we stretch all the way back through to the data center. All the capability, all the offerings, that are in between, all the services that are necessary to address each of those pieces, are contained inside the portfolio capability that HP has of hardware, software, and services.

We looked at this and said, "How do we take the best combination of that breadth of portfolio and bring those together in a set of solutions to best address what we are hearing over-and-over from some of the research that we’ve done and listening that we’ve done with our clients?"

They need to figure out how to modernize their applications. We want to make sure that we are there and we’ve got a set of solutions for that. They’ve got huge data-center issues in terms of how they're going to transform their data centers and deal with more virtualization-based techniques and capabilities and bring networking and storage and compute power together in some fashion.

They’ve got this issue of enterprise security. They need to figure out how to secure the enterprise. I don’t mean desktops, but all points, all touch points of the enterprise -- how they build applications, how this information is accessed inside and outside of the organization, and then fundamentally optimizing that information, the ways in which you store it, the way in which you deliver it, the way in which you print it for that matter, all those pieces.

Hybrid delivery for us is our answer to the multiple ways in which a customer or client has to go through the process of building or delivering on these various technology services to their enterprise or their government.

Then, they need to underpin that by the best way to figure out how to deliver it. Do we do it for them? Do they build it themselves with our architecture, and our capability set, and our consulting expertise? What combination of ways makes the most sense to set that up?

... We help our clients work their way through that with a series of workshops that we do to get in and investigate. We ask a series of questions, do a series of exploratory-based activities that help prioritize where we think the quickest return on investment is, because all these require some level of return to feed the next one and then the next one.

Hybrid delivery for us is our answer to the multiple ways in which a customer or client has to go through the process of building or delivering on these various technology services to their enterprise or their government.

There’s an enormous amount of talk about cloud in the marketplace today. HP has been at the forefront of that, but we have a little different position. We think it’s unique and we think we're the only ones out there that are really positioned to do this, which is the concept of hybrid IT, where you’ve got a mix. You’ve got a mix of traditional on-premises-based capabilities, but then you figure out what private cloud or public cloud-based capabilities best serve your business on a global basis.

HP comes in and, unlike other companies that try to force you into a one-size-fits-all structure, we sit down with the client. Our unique IP in this area is that we have an incredible depth of intellectual capital in this particular area, which is helping the clients figure out the best balance or mix of the delivery methods.

We can help them build it. They can host it or we can host it for them. We can provide those services from our public cloud-based capabilities or from our private cloud based capabilities. We really don’t care, if that blend changes over time. That’s the beauty to the journey to this Instant-On Enterprise.

Starting small

Our data says that most customers still start with a small private cloud implementation to really understand the value of the cloud and demystify it. We’ve said that there is going to be something after cloud. We don’t know what that level or that style of computing is going to be, but our architecture is built such that we’ll be ready for that. For our clients, we’ll help navigate them through each of these pieces, and that’s the important thing for us.

We have our new HP Hybrid Delivery Strategy Service, which is a place for a client to start, get a basic orientation, sit down and understand kind of where we think they might consider beginning that journey. So that, along with a number of other capabilities that we have to help them through these various workshops, I think is really the best place for them to start.

There are a whole series of workshops globally that our teams are set up to do, everything from a small couple-of-hour based interaction to a full suite of in-depth analysis and consulting engagements to work with a client. ... We ask a series of questions, do a series of exploratory-based activities that help prioritize where we think the quickest return on investment is, because all these require some level of return to feed the next one and then the next one.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Learn more. Sponsor: HP.

You may also be interested in:

• Shoemaker on how HP CSA Aids Total Visibility in Services Management Lifecycle for Cloud Computing
• HP Business Service Automation portfolio gives IT the tools it needs to compete with clouds
• HP eyes automated apps deployment, 'standardized' private cloud creation with integrated CloudStart package
• HP adds new consulting services to smooth the enterprise path to cloud adoption

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 17th November 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

The rapidly changing and fast-growing opportunity for more businesses to reach their customers and deliver their services via mobile applications is at a crossroads.

Over just the past two years, the demand for mobile applications on more capable classes of devices, such as smartphones and tablets, has skyrocketed. Now businesses need to figure out how they can get into the action.

Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) especially need to reevaluate their application development and end-user access strategies to be able to deliver low-cost yet impactful applications to these newer devices. This goes for reaching employees, as well as partners, users, and customers.

Hopefully, there's a shift in the skills required to put these applications on these devices and distribute them. The emphasis on capabilities is moving from hardcore coders -- with mastery of embedded platforms and tools -- to more mainstream graphical and scripting-skilled workers, more power-users than developers.

This sponsored podcast explores how mobile application development and the market opportunity are shifting, and how more businesses can quickly get into the mobile applications game and build out new revenue, share more data, and provide better direct customer access in the process.

Our panel consists of Roger Entner, Senior Vice President and Head of Research and Insights in the Telecom Practice at the Nielsen Co., and Wayne Parrott, Vice President for Product Development at Genuitec. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Entner: About 50 percent of all devices being sold in the US right now are smartphones. We expect smartphone penetration to be at about 50 percent by the end of next year. Almost 60 percent of smartphone owners are actually using applications. That’s a huge percentage.

We're now at that sweet spot where it makes a lot of sense for businesses to have applications both for their consumers and their employees alike, because there is enough of an addressable base there.

We just launched our second edition of our Mobile Apps Playbook. But to quote numbers from there, year-over-year second quarter '09 to second quarter '10, smartphone penetration in the US went from 16 percent to 25 percent.

Now, we have 3- and 4-inch screens that are actually readable. We're not just merely replicating a desktop experience, but actually tailoring it to the device and working with the strengths of the device rather than with the weaknesses.

The devices that we call now smartphones are little computers that today are as powerful as laptops a few years ago. I always say that this little thing you have in your hands, a smartphone, has far more computing power than was used by NASA to put men safely on the moon and bring them back alive.

Applications becoming easier

And now Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the others, have software development kits (SDKs) out there that make app development a lot easier than it has ever been.

If you have a talented developer or a talented person in your department, he might be able to build that internally. Or, there are now myriad development shops out there that have the capabilities to build applications and charge only a few thousand dollars -- and that's single digit thousand dollars -- to have a capable, usable application.

There are a lot more people who know how to program these things, and have good ideas of applications. There is a really good market out there to put the two together.

Parrott: We’re seeing a big move toward interest in mobile at the development side. What are the factors that’s really led to the explosion of mobile apps? It's not only the smartphones and their capabilities, but we also look at the social changes in terms of behavior.

People more and more have a higher reliance on their smartphone and how they run their lives, whether they are at work or on the move. The idea is that they are always connected. They can always get to the data that they need.

Basically, we're taking their lifestyle away from their desktop and putting it in their pocket as they move around. More and more, we see companies wanting to reach out and provide a mobile presence for their own workforce and for their customers.

The question they ask is, "How do we do that? We already have a web presence. People have learned about our brand, but they can't access this through their smartphones, or the experience is inferior to what they’ve come to expect on the smartphone."

We're seeing a big growth of interest in terms of just getting on to the mobile -- having a mobile presence for the SMBs.

Still a great deal of complexity

If you take a look at the current state of native mobile app development, it's really not much better than it was five years ago. You still see a strong fragmented programming model base, different operating systems, and different hardware capability. It's still a mess. You pretty much have to pick a subset of devices that you want to focus on.

Entner: If we take one little step back, one of the genius things that Apple has done is turn the bookmarks into an application. About 60-70 percent of all applications on the iPhone or an Android are actually glorified HTML ports. So, it's not that difficult or that demanding on the application side.

One new trend is HTML5, which is slowly but surely approaching. There has been no finalized HTML5 standard [from the W3C], but a lot of web browsers, and even mobile web browsers, have now some HTML5 capabilities. And, it will really help in the development cycle for basic applications.

Where HTML5 will not to be able to help us, at least right now, is when we try to take advantage of location-based services because there is no standard yet. They're still arguing about this one, and especially high performance graphics. But, on the standard application, HTML5 will take us miles forward and diminish the difference between the desktop and the mobile environment.

... At the same time, all of the SDKs are getting more powerful and more user-friendly. So, it's moving toward a more harmonized and more rapid development environment.

Parrott: Prior to HTML5 talking about mobile web was pretty much a joke. Mobile web was an afterthought in the phone market. You had these small, dinky displays. Most of them couldn't even render most standard HTML. What's new?

You still see a strong fragmented programming model base, different operating systems, and different hardware capability. It's still a mess. With the advent of the smartphone what you really saw was pretty much the Internet, as you experience it on your desktop, now on to your smartphone, but with even more capability.

Part of it is because HTML5 has stepped back and looked at what the future needed to be for a web programming model. To become more of a common run-time, they had to address some of the key gaps between native hardware, APIs, and web. Much of those have really centered on one of the biggest digs that mobile web had in the old days, when you were doing something, were connected, and then you lost your connectivity.

Out of the box

HTML5, right out of the box, has a specification for how to operate in an online, offline, or disconnected type mode. Another thing was a rendering model, beyond just what you see on your desktop, that actually provides a high-end graphics type capability -- 2D, 3D types of programming. These are things that more advanced programs can take advantage of, but you can build very rich desktop type of experiences on the laptop.

Then, they went beyond what you're used to seeing on your desktop and took advantage of some of the sensors that these phones have now -- accelerometers, location capability, or geolocation. APIs are now emerging as a companion to HTML5, which is a spec that will span across your desktop to the mobile phone. It's a very capable specification.

In addition, there is the movement in terms of the standards body, especially the W3C, to address mobile device API. You will eventually program in a standard way and talk to your contacts list, your cameras, video, recording devices, and things like that. That will soon be available to us in a web programming model.

What used to be exclusively the demand of the hardware API guys to do really low level, high performance bit twiddling is now going to be available to the general web programming masses. That opens up the future for a lot more innovation than what we’ve seen in past.

There is enough HTML5 core already emerging that we could start to program to a subset of that spec and treat it as kind of a common run-time that you would program across pretty much all of the new emerging smartphones as we look forward.

Entner: It's only a matter of when ... HTML5 will come. Apple and Google are at the forefront and are already launching websites and services in it. You can get HTML5 YouTube, HTML5 Google, and even Yahoo mail access. You can have the Apple website in HTML5. It just depends on what is fully supported right now.

Some browsers support it, and some don't yet. On the mobile side, it also fully depends on what is supported. If you have the WebKit engine at the core of the browser that your device is using, HTML5 is pretty widely supported.

Parrott: As we've talked to more-and-more of our SMBs, one thing that stands out is that they don't have a lot of resources. They don't have a huge web department. Their personnel wear a number of hats. Web development is just one of n things that one of the individuals may do in one of these organizations.

At Genuitec, we developed a product called MobiOne Studio. The target user is anyone who has an idea or an vision for a mobile web application or website. MobiOne is geared to provide a whole new intuitive type of experience, in which you just draw what you want. If you can develop PowerPoint presentations, you can create a mobile web application using MobiOne.

You lay out your screens, you pane them all up, and then you wire them together with different types of transitions. From there, you can then immediately generate mobile web code and begin to test it either in the MobiOne test environment, that's an emulated type of HTML5 environment, or you can immediately deploy it through MobiOne to your phone and test it directly on a real device.

If you can develop PowerPoint presentations, you can create a mobile web application using MobiOne.

With MobiOne Studio we recognized that the first thing that most companies want to do is just mobilize, just get a mobile presence, mobilize their websites, and have that capability. As Roger said a while ago, a lot of the apps you see out there are really glorified mobile websites and are packaged up in a binary format.

Second Studio phase

In MobiOne Studio's second phase, once you design and you like what you have, you have a progressive step that you can go from a very portable form to compile it down -- or cross-compile -- from HTML5 to whatever the native requirements are of that particular target app store. So, Google will have their app store, and Apple and RIM each has their own model. They are all fairly different models.

But with HTML5, you can go directly to your customers now. You can market to them directly. It depends on your way of interacting with your customers, but we have seen a number of novel approaches already from some of our customers. When any customer is in your store, you make it very easy for them to access your site, to make them aware of your mobile capabilities, lure them in, and get them connected that way.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Genuitec. Learn more.

You may also be interested in:

• Rise of WebKit Advances Mobile Web's Role, Opens Huge Opportunity for Enterprise Developers on Devices
• Genuitec Marks Progress with Two Milestone Releases of MyEclipse 6.5 Products
• Genuitec Expands Pulse Provisioning System Beyond Tools to Eclipse Distros, Eyes Larger Software Management Role

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 16th November 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

The lives of IT admins in Windows environments should get a little easier with the launch of rPath's rBuilder 5.8 for "push-button" deployment of Windows Server instances.

The Raleigh, N.C. company's rBuilder 5.8 introduces release automation to the world of Windows Server applications. With the new software, rBuilder 5.8 earns bragging rights as a first commercial solution to address deployment automation for Windows instances and apps. [Disclosure: rPath is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

The deployment challenge

For most IT organizations, deploying Windows apps into production is complex, cumbersome, and time-consuming. That complexity can lead to long delays in full deployments that leave a dark cloud hanging over service levels and business agility.

The rise of public cloud services such as Amazon EC2 has further motivated IT to become more responsive to business lines.

With its automation approach, rBuilder 5.8 is wrestling that challenge to the ground with what it calls “push-button deployment” of Windows apps. This software helps to automatically resolve dependencies to virtually eliminate deployment-time failures, automatically generate standard MSI packages that are ready to deploy, apply version control to all packaged elements, and eliminate drift between dev, test, and production release stages, says rPath.

rBuilder 5.8 also generates image output on demand for rapid deployment or retargeting between physical, virtual, and cloud environments, makes way for targeted changes for low-overhead, conflict-free maintenance, and provides a single enterprise solution for automated deployment of any application, running any platform, deployed to any execution environment -- physical, virtual, or cloud, said rPath.

There are some more resources available on the capabilities and new release: Attend a free, live webinar Nov. 16; watch a short video; read a whitepaper, and learn more.

The need for deployment speed

Deployment dysfunction is a primary source of delay in delivering IT services in response to business demand. The rPath solution also works to complement Microsoft development and operating environments, including Team Foundation Server and System Center Configuration Manager.

With some 70 to 80 percent of IT spending due to operating expenses, nearly half is attributable to deployment-related tasks. This is particularly true for Microsoft Windows environments, which constitute 74 percent of the data-center server market. If rBuilder 5.8 lives up to its promises, it could find a home in many Windows-based IT departments. And it lends a hand in migration and hybrid deployments, too.

rPath has also joined the Microsoft System Center Alliance, a partner community in support of the System Center ecosystem. The System Center Alliance provides an online community that aims to help partners collaborate on the creation of solutions for the System Center and deliver an information resource about these new solutions for customers and sales channel partners.

BriefingsDirect contributor Jennifer LeClaire provided editorial assistance and research on this post. She can be reached at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jleclaire and http://www.jenniferleclaire.com.

You may also be interested in:

• rPath brings data center automation to Windows environments
  
• Trio of cloud companies collaborate on new private cloud platform offerings
  
• rPath offers free management tool for applications aspiring to the cloud

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 10th November 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

WSO2 recently announced the debut of WSO2 Carbon Studio, an Eclipse-based integrated developer environment (IDE) for WSO2 Carbon.

The new offering allows users to build service-oriented architecture (SOA) and composite applications based on WSO2 Carbon. [Disclaimer: WSO2 is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

Highlights of WSO2 Carbon Studio include the ability to:

• Organize artifacts that span the multiple runtimes common to composite applications into a single project—a Carbon Application (CApp).
• Develop applications using tools designed for WSO2 Carbon-based products including the WSO2 ESB, WSO2 Web Services Application Server (WSO2 WSAS), WSO2 Business Process Server (BPS), WSO2 Governance Registry, and more.
• Test and debug WSO2 Carbon-based applications directly within the IDE.
• Export Carbon Applications in the new Carbon Archive format.

“We have found that many of our customers are developing sophisticated applications that span the WSO2 Carbon product family, and they are taking advantage of the unique strengths of our platform when used as a whole,” said Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, founder and CEO of WSO2. “We’re now revving up our tooling support with WSO2 Carbon Studio—helping developers to organize, develop, test, and deploy these composite applications with greater ease than ever before.”

Middleware platform
The WSO2 Carbon Studio IDE is designed to take advantage of the open source WSO2 Carbon middleware platform. The Eclipse-based offering includes graphical editors for XML configuration files, an enhanced Eclipse BPEL editor, and easy integration of Carbon-based applications with the WSO2 Governance Registry. Additionally, Carbon Studio offers a rich set of third-party Eclipse plug-ins, including Maven and the OpenSocial Gadget Editor.

Carbon Studio supports SOA projects that often combine multiple application types into a single composite application or service. Developers also have single-click function for testing Java-based applications and services—without leaving the IDE. Debugging tools support Axis2-based services, Apache Synapse mediators, registry handlers, and data validators.

Tools to support SOA development include Apache Axis2 and JAX-WS, Data Service, BPEL, ESB, and ESB Tooling, as well as a gadget editor.

WSO2 Carbon Studio, available now as a set of Eclipse plug-ins, is a fully open-source solution released under Eclipse and Apache Licenses and does not carry any licensing fees. WSO2 offers a range of service and support options for Carbon Studio, including development support and production support.

By: Gerry Brown, Analyst - Digital Marketing & CRM, Bloor Research (Moved) Posted: 9th November 2010 Copyright Bloor Research © 2010

I met with Brian Gentile, CEO of open source BI vendor Jaspersoft. Brian is a self-proclaimed “fan of new generation software”. Here is what he believes constitutes new generation software—and how it differs from traditional enterprise software. This article explores further the tenets of the recent article ‘Is the traditional BI market in decline?’.

First, Jaspersoft has built a club of volunteers who give time and effort to the cause. It’s a bit like the parents’ committee at a well-run primary school where parents want a stake in creating the best learning environment for their kids. Jaspersoft has 175,000 registered programmers in its ‘community’ of fans who have a similar ownership stake in Jaspersoft.

These unpaid end users fix bugs and develop enhancements to Jaspersoft’s open source product, iReport. They champion the product, and provide ‘free’ programming and powerful word-of-mouth recommendations to other potential users. In addition they vote on the new features for the next release—so product development is largely driven by user priorities.

Second, the software architecture is lightweight, web-based, has open APIs, and is easy to install and upgrade. Everything is built on the Java platform and the whole software suite is only 500MB. It requires little installation and professional services consulting support, and is available both for web download and through Jaspersoft’s OEM partners as a SaaS deployment.

Third, it’s low-cost and affordable. The entry level price for the commercial version is $10,000.

Compare this with how the enterprise software vendors tackle these areas:

First, enterprise software vendors have a network of resellers, complementary software vendors, and systems integrators and consultants. These mercenaries add value to the core product only where and when it is in their best commercial interest. Vendor loyalty is typically low—software and services partners often jump ship to where the profit potential is highest. Acts of charity are not high on their agenda.

Product development rests on the needs of a small number of key customers—who may or may not be representative of the market. The vendors control which features are included or excluded from the commercial release.

Second, the traditional enterprise software architecture is heavyweight and leans towards proprietary lock-ins. For example, SAP Business Objects’ BI suite is said to contain c. 30GB of code (ie 60x the size of Jaspersoft’s BI suite). Installation and upgrades are typically long and rely on on-site consulting and services provision over many months.

Third, enterprise software is expensive. Brian reckons Jaspersoft software costs around 1/10 of the cost of comparable commercial enterprise software. The enterprise vendors’ business models demand a premium price in excess of $100K for the most part. Implementation services expenses could double that cost.

So, Jaspersoft has built quite a compelling value proposition. Participative, collaborative, lightweight, fast to implement, transparent and open, and lower cost than its legacy competitors. Granted, it is mainly adopted and used by techie programmers, and it doesn’t offer the sexy front end user experience of SAP Business Object’s Crystal reports, for example. Neither does Jaspersoft offer the comfort of the size and support resources of an SAP or similar. However Jaspersoft is clearly doing something right as iReport downloads are now at the staggering rate of a 250,000 per month.

So what can customers learn from Jaspersoft’s software development techniques?

1) Engage with the hearts and minds of your community (ie ‘The Business’)—not on the basis of “it’s your job to help IT” but rather that “it’s fun to be involved and your contribution will be recognised”. Co-creation and collaboration are the watchwords.

2) Create and choose software that is light, flexible, and easy, and incorporates ‘the wisdom of crowds’. Don’t get dragged down by miles of inflexible code that cannot be re-purposed to reflect the business challenges of tomorrow. SOA is very important here.

3) Experiment with low cost web-based solutions. If they don’t work, junk them, and try something else. Don't put all your eggs in one big enterprise software investment basket with an uncertain outcome.

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 4th November 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

The rapidly evolving landscape for global business—and the consequent need for IT to relate differently to businesses so they together serve their customers in innovative ways—has to mean more than business as usual from technology suppliers.

While a majority of vendors seem to be hunkering down around an entrenched set of core products and aging IT approaches, HP this week shared a different vision, what it calls the “Instant-On Enterprise." [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

The Instant-On Enterprise, as HP defines it, is a data-driven organization that leverages technology for everything—but specifically to better address the ever-evolving needs of end-users. As users' expectations and experience change, so too must the ways enterprises relate to them, are perceived by them.

The next several years will form a culmination of now-clear mega trends that have only just begun to roil conventional business practices. We're talking about pervasive mobile applications use, highly responsive cloud computing models, and knowledge-adept social collaboration. More than just these shifts, there also needs to be an increasingly automated, secure, and harmonizing management capability that combines and reinforces them.

As these trends literally re-arrange business ecosystems and re-established the service delivery order, a gap will surely grow between the companies that master change and exploit enabling technologies—and those that fall ever further behind.

With that in mind, HP has rolled out new solutions that aim to help both business and government create their own Instant-On Enterprise. Not surprisingly, the driver of the Instant-On Enterprise is everything becoming connected and immediate, people expect responses regardless of sourcing and/or partner ecosystems—and within seconds instead of days.

“It takes a special kind of enterprise to close the expectation gap between what customers and citizens expect and what the enterprise can deliver,” says Tom Hogan, executive vice president of Enterprise Sales, Marketing and Strategy at HP. “The Instant-On Enterprise delivers differentiated competitive advantage, serving customers, employees, partners and citizens with whatever they want and need, instantly…"

Embedding Tech
New HP research reveals that the role of IT is shifting from chiefly being the administrator of the enterprise to becoming one and the same with the enterprise. This means enabling rapid, recurring business process improvements to meet dynamic customer demands, as well as gaining near-instant insights into shifting markets.

Coleman Parkes research conducted for HP in October reveals that 86 percent of senior business and government executives believe they must rapidly adapt the enterprise to meet changes in consumer expectations. The research also indicates that 78 percent believe technology is the key to business and government innovation, and 85 percent indicated that in order to be successful, technology needs to be embedded in the business or government service

HP’s new solutions work to help enterprises and government leverage technology in ways that will meet those goals. HP sees it as a reinvention of how technology is used to deliver innovation at every point in the value chain. That covers the services that are delivered, the mobile devices that provide the access, and the global data centers required to power the Instant-On Enterprise.

Instant-On Puzzle Pieces
There are several components to HP’s Instant-On Enterprise: HP Application Transformation, HP Converged Infrastructure, HP Enterprise Security, and HP Information Optimization:

• HP Application Transformation solutions work to help enterprises gain control over aging applications and inflexible processes that challenge innovation and agility by governing their responsiveness and pace of change.
• HP Converged Infrastructure solutions are engineered to drive out costs and provide the foundation for agile service delivery. HP promises this solution delivers the data center of the future.
• HP Enterprise Security solutions secures the IT infrastructure by people, processes, technology and content. These solutions aim to aligns security to meet business and government demands without losing flexibility.
• HP Information Optimization solutions deal with how information is gathered, stored and used. The idea is to harness the power of information and ensure its integrity and protection while delivering it in the context of the enterprise.

Realizing that there is no one single delivery model that meets every end-user need, HP also introduced two new Hybrid Delivery services. HP Hybrid Delivery Strategy Service offers a patent-pending, model-driven framework to introduce hybrid delivery concepts into their existing environments.

HP Hybrid Delivery Workload Analysis Service offers experts that gather service usage and demand profile data, and then develop a set of recommendations on how to best characterize and combine workloads in hybrid environments.

BriefingsDirect contributor Jennifer LeClaire provided editorial assistance and research on this post. She can be reached at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jleclaire and http://www.jenniferleclaire.com.

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 2nd November 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

What if you could buy and sell cloud-computing capacity the same way people book hotel rooms on Priceline or Hotwire? Startup SpotCloud, the brainchild of Toronto-based Enomaly, aims to find out.

Acting as an online clearing house, SpotCloud will allow cloud providers to offer unused capacity to keep servers busy and will allow cloud users to buy spot cloud capacity at bargain prices.

SpotCloud uses the concept of Random Access Compute Capacity, similar to cloud bursting or the dynamic deployment of a software application that runs on internal organizational compute resources to a public cloud to address a spike in demand.

However, unlike cloud bursting, which refers strictly to expanding the application to an external cloud to handle spikes in demand, SpotCloud's cloud spanning includes scenarios in which applications components are continuously distributed across multiple localized cloud providers.

The capacity itself is provided via a global pool of regional cloud providers. SpotCloud treats providers as a nameless, faceless, and possibly unsecured group of providers of raw, localized computing capability. While buyers can purchase capacity based on performance and price and the location of the provider, the name of the provider remains hidden until after the purchase is made. This is to prevent undercutting the provider's retail sales of capacity.

Wasted capacity
According to Reuven Cohen, founder and chief technologist of Enomaly, the idea came about because of numerous cloud providers whose companies—often the first such enterprise in their respective countries—weren't well known and had excess capacity. With no way to make themselves known to potential buyers on a broad scale, they were watching that capacity go to waste.

At the same time, cost-conscious buyers would benefit from being able to make quick purchases of capacity, as well as location, at favorable prices. Selecting a provider becomes easier with the clearing house, because potential buyers don't need to scour the Internet looking for potential providers. Also, buyers can continually monitor the site and determine the best price at which to buy computing resources.

The process becomes easier for both sides because SpotCloud will provide the invoicing and billing. Providers avoid the hassle of trying to bill customers for small spot jobs, and buyers, who may spread their cloud use among several providers, will have to deal with only one payment. SpotCloud will make its money by charging a fee to the seller.

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 28th October 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

Businesses are looking to cloud-computing models to foster agility and improve time-to-market for new services. Yet attaining cloud benefits can founder without higher levels of unified server, data, network, storage, and applications management.

These typically disparate forms of management must now come together in new ways to mutually support a variety of different cloud approaches -- public, private, and hybrid. Without adoption of such Business Service Automation (BSA) capabilities, those deploying applications on private and hybrid clouds will almost certainly encounter increased complexity, higher risk, and stubborn cost structures.

This latest BriefingsDirect discussion therefore focuses on finding low-risk, high-reward paths to cloud computing by using increased automation and proven reference models for cloud management—and by breaking down traditional IT management silos. In doing so, the progression toward cloud benefits will come more quickly, at lower total cost, and with an ability to rapidly scale to even more applications and data.

We're here with two executives from HP Software & Solutions to learn more about what BSA is and why it's proving essential to managed and productive cloud computing adoption: Mark Shoemaker, Executive Program Manager for Cloud Computing in the Software & Solutions Group at HP, and Venkat Devraj, Chief Technology Officer for Application Automation, also in HP’s Software & Solutions Group. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Shoemaker: There is hardly a place we go that we don’t end up talking to our customers about cloud. Most of the enterprise customers we talk to are looking at private cloud, the internal cloud solution that they own, that they then provide to their business partners, whether that’s the development teams or other elements in their business. Most of them are looking to build on the virtualization work that they've already done.

They want to improve their productivity, definitely get better utilization out of what they have already got. They want IT to be your better partner in the business. What that means is to shorten the time that the business has to wait for the services.

Devraj: There is also an interesting micro trend that’s occurring. A lot of the application teams, end-user business teams, are getting increasingly sophisticated. They're learning about private cloud implementations. Consequently, they're demanding levels of service from IT that are difficult to provide without a private cloud.

For example, because of things like agile development methodologies, application teams are doing a lot more application deployments and code releases than ever before. It's not uncommon to see dozens of application releases for different applications happening during the same day.

IT operations are just bombarded with these requirements and requests, and they are just unable to keep up based on yesterday’s processes, which are relatively static. These application teams and business unit teams are quite influential.

They're even willing to fund specific initiatives to allow their teams to work in self-service mode, and IT ops are finding themselves in reactive mode. They have to support them, make their internal processes more fluid and dynamic, and leveraging technology that allows that kind of dynamism.

... The third-party companies, the cloud providers, the pure-play server enablers, have an unfair advantage. Because they were started relatively recently, in the last few years, they have the advantage of standardized platforms and delivery units.

They can say, "Okay, I'm going to deliver only Linux-based platforms, Windows-based platforms, or certain applications." When you look at the typical enterprise today, however, IT has a lot more to deliver.

There is a lot of prevailing heterogeneity in terms of multiple software platforms and versions. There is a lack of standardization. It's very difficult to talk about cloud and delivery within the enterprise in the same breath, when you look at these kinds of technical challenges.

As a result, IT is undergoing a lot of pressure—but they have to deliver given the kind of challenges that they face. That’s going to require a lot of education and access to the right kind of technology, training, and guidance.

Shoemaker: Just to add to Venkat’s comment, we're seeing the business driving IT and demanding that agility and that flexibility. We talk to a lot of our customers, where their own coworkers have taken corporate credit cards and gone out into the public cloud, procured space, and have begun developing outside of them. IT really has to get in front of this. They have to manage all this.

... The one thing that’s different about cloud is that it really is a supply chain. It’s the supply chain of IT technology that the business consumes. If you think about what a supply chain is, it’s something that’s got to be repeatable. It has to be governed, and it provides a baseline or foundation and building blocks to build those services that you can then customize on top of the business.

So, the farther up that you can go with your standard building blocks, the less difficult it is to manage and focus on the custom business-facing functions on the front-end.

To do this, cloud has helped us out in a lot of ways. One of the challenges IT has always had is to get the business to consume standards. Because of a lot of hype in the market, the business absolutely is convinced that they get it, and they want the business benefits that cloud offers.

Even if the business decides to go to a public cloud, they still have to consume those elements in a standard fashion. There's no way out of that.

Devraj: And yet, the software used by these enterprises tends to be disparate, heterogeneous, and requires a lot of domain knowledge to be able to manage, resulting in significant delays and bottlenecks associated with service delivery. Those processes just don’t scale in the cloud.

At Stratavia we had built a patented technology to manage and control varied software stacks, such as databases, web servers, application servers, and even well-known packaged applications, including Microsoft Exchange, Oracle E-Business Suite, and SAP.

The content that I talk about becomes an abstraction layer, where the customer, the end user, the people who consume the services, see a very easy to understand service catalog. They can click on it. They can choose some menu options, some values from a drop-down box, and then specify exactly what they need, and have the response come back in minutes and in hours, rather than days and weeks, as is traditionally the case.

For example, just at the database layer, within the enterprise, it's very common to see four or five different platforms in use, such as DB2, SQL Server, Oracle, and so on. By automating the operations management lifecycle around these layers, Stratavia has made it possible for the enterprise to deliver and manage these assets as a service within the context of the cloud.

As more and more of HP’s and Stratavia’s joint customers started seeing value in that capability, HP brought Stratavia into its BSA/Business Technology Optimization umbrella.

There's a big gap in IT today, which is IT/Ops Engineering or IT/Ops Architecture. That’s a big missing silo within IT/Ops. And a lot of the operators today that rely on scripts, command-line stuff, and point-and-click tools need to evolve themselves to more of an architect approach. They need more of taking stock of the big picture, and taking the tribal knowledge that they have in their heads and looking at the out-of-the-box content that HP provides and selecting the right content that corresponds to their tribal knowledge.

When they go into the cloud, the underlying management, things like compliance and governance, are not out of whack. They're able to successfully take that knowledge, put it in there, and then, in their new role as architects or engineering folks, they're able to watch, measure, and make modifications as appropriate.

So, the role that people play, that key subject matter experts play, is very crucial as part of walking before running with automation.

Gardner: Now that you have mentioned Stratavia, and for the benefit of our listeners and readers, HP has acquired Stratavia, and there was also quite a bit of related product and service news on Sept. 15 around BSA as the acquisition was unveiled.

Shoemaker: Obviously, the Stratavia acquisition was a huge, huge win for us, and puts us in a great position to help our customers transform their infrastructure. ... And several other things have happened in the last 60 days. We had VMworld, and we presented a cohesive strategy for infrastructure and even PaaS built on the BladeSystem Matrix hardware platform that we have, Converged Infrastructure. We've combined that with two other pieces and a piece of Cloud Service Automation (CSA) software.

CloudStart is a consulting and a professional services-led engagement capability where we come in and work with the customer to get that transformation process nailed, so we can quickly get them moving into the cloud benefits.

On the back end of that, there is another piece that we announced called Cloud Maps, which is really more knowledge, but in a different capacity, in that it offers downloadable templates, preconfigured applications, and best practices for sizing.

We see the Stratavia acquisition fueling this fire, because in the end, cloud is a solution, and a solution needs content, and content wins. Content is what the customer is able to consume and use day one, when the solution is in. So it's important. And we've done a lot there.

We now have a best-in-class content provider in Stratavia that’s come on board to help round out the capabilities and add more into what the customer can get out of our solutions in very quick order.

All that sits on a recently refreshed BSA portfolio, with significant enhancements and new capabilities across network, automations, servers, and storage, that really makes all this happen.

... Let's face it, a lot of the CIOs are looking at a data center that’s packed full of applications that they probably don’t feel as if they have got a good handle on. Now, cloud is coming into the picture, and they've got two things to do here.

Number one, they need to start applying those new business methodologies to IT around providing cloud and the things that go with that, but also they have got a transformation piece to go along. And that can be very daunting.

What we've done is looked at the experience of helping previous customers do that work and we have applied that into the CloudStart and Cloud Maps, CloudStart being the planning and the upfront work that you need to get done.

So, we're right there with you. You don’t have to read chapter one of the book.

Then, as we put the infrastructure in with CSA for Matrix in the frame, we're embedding some of the CSA software inside of the Blade Matrix frame. So you have a way to build infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and manage it through the platform throughout the lifecycle.

Then, on the back end of that, we have the preconfigured application templates. If I need a SQL Server image to put into the system, I can pull that from Cloud Maps, build it into a framework and offer that very quickly. I don’t have to go and figure out how to size for this piece or what golden template looks like for this application.

It's really about obtaining a running start into the cloud, and one that’s not going to leave you wanting in a year or two. You have to be careful. Cloud is a great enablement technology and a lot of people are looking at IaaS, but that’s the starting point for it, and then you have to manage everything that you put inside of that as well.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy.

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 26th October 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

The FUSE family of software is now under the FuseSource name and has today gained new autonomy from Progress Software with its own corporate identity.

Part of the IONA Technologies acquisition by Progress Software in 2008, FuseSource has now become its own company, owned by Progress, but now more independent, to aggressively pursue its open source business model and to leverage the community development process strengths.

In anticipation of today's news, our discussion here targets the rapid growth, increased relevance, and new market direction for major open source middleware and integration software under the Apache license.

We'll also look at where FuseSource projects are headed in the near future. [NOTE: Larry Alston also recently joined FuseSource as president.]

Even as the IT mega vendors are consolidating more elements of IT infrastructure, and in some cases, buying up open-source projects and companies, the role and power of open source for enterprise and service providers alike has never been more popular or successful. Virtualization, cloud computing, mobile computing, and services orientation are all supporting more interest and increased mainstream use of open-source infrastructure.

Here now to discuss how FuseSource is therefore evolving we're joined by Debbie Moynihan, Director of Marketing for FuseSource, and Rob Davies, Director of Engineering for FuseSource. The discussion is moderated by BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Here are some excerpts:

Moynihan: Over the past couple of years, there has been a lot of focus on cost reduction, and that resulted in a lot of people looking at open source who maybe wouldn’t have looked at it in the past.

The other thing that’s really happened with open source is that some of the early adopters who started out with a single project have now standardized on FuseSource products across the entire organization. So there are many more proof-points of large global organizations rolling out open source in mission-critical production environments. Those two factors have driven a lot of people to think about open source, and to start adopting open source.

Then, the whole cloud trend came along. When you think about scaling in the cloud, open source is perfect for that. You don’t have to think about the licensing cost as you scale up. So, there are a lot of trends that have been happening and that have really been really helpful. We're very happy about them helping push open source into the mainstream.

From a FuseSource perspective, we've been seeing over 100 percent growth each year in our business, and that’s part of the reason for some of the things we're going to talk about today.

Davies: We've been around in this space for a while, but the earlier adopters who were just trying out in distinct groups are now rolling this out into broader production. Because of that, there is this snowball effect. People see that larger organizations are actually using open source for their infrastructure and their integration. That gives them more confidence to do the same.

I recently spoke to a large customer of ours in the telco space. They had this remit. Any open source that came in, they wouldn’t put into mission-critical situations, until they kicked the tires for a good while — at least a couple of years.

But because there has been this push for more open source projects following open standards, people are now more willing to have a go using open source software.

In fact, if you look at the numbers of some of our larger customers, they are using Apache ServiceMix and Apache ActiveMQ to support many thousands of business transactions, and this is business-critical stuff. That alone is enough to give people more confidence that open source is the right way to go.

When you look at cloud, there are different issues you have to overcome. There is the issue about deploying into the cloud. How do you do that? If you're using a public cloud, there are different mechanisms for deploying stuff. And there are open source projects already in existence to make that easier to do.

This is something we have found internally as well. We deploy a lot of internal software when we are doing our big scale testing. We make choices about which particular vendors we're going to use. So, we have to abstract the way we are doing things. We did that as an open source project, which we have been using internally.

When you get to the point of deploying, it’s how do you actually interface with these things? There is always going to be this continuing trend towards standards for integration. How are you going to integrate? Are you going to use SOAP? Are you going to use RESTful services? Would you like to use messaging, for example, to actually interface into an integration structure?

You have to have choice. You can’t really dictate to use it this way or the other way. You've got to have a whole menu of different options for connecting. This is what we try to provide in our software.

We always try to be agnostic to the technology, as much as how you connect to the infrastructure that we provide. But, we also tend to be as open as we can about the different ways of hooking these disparate systems together. That’s the only way you can really be successful in providing something like integration as a service and a cloud-like environment. You have to be completely open.

Moynihan: Progress is launching a new company called FuseSource that will be completely focused on the open source business model. We're really excited as a team. The FuseSource team has been an independent business unit since IONA was acquired by Progress Software. We have been fairly independent within the company, but separated as our own company we'll be able to be completely independent in terms of how we do our marketing, sales, support, services, and engineering.

When you're part of a large organization, there are certain processes that everyone is supposed to follow. Within Progress, we are doing things slightly differently (or very differently depending on the area) because the needs of the open source market are different. So being our own company we'll have that independence to do everything that makes sense for the open-source users, and I'm pretty excited about that.

From a practical perspective, the business model is very different. In traditional enterprise software sales, there is a license fee which is typically a large upfront license cost relative to the entire cost over the lifetime of that software. Then, you have your annual maintenance charges and your services, training, and things like that.

From an open source perspective, typically upfront, there is no license cost. Our model is that there is no license cost. It’s a subscription support model, where there is a monthly fee, but the way that it is accounted for and the way that it works with the customer is very different. That's one of the reasons we split out our business. The way that we work with the customers and the way they consume the software are very different. It’s a month-to-month subscription support charge, but no license charge.

That’s also the reason people like cloud. You pay as you go. You scale as you go. And you don’t have that upfront capital expenditure cost. For new projects, it can be really hard to get money right now. All these benefits are why we're seeing so much growth in FuseSource.

While we do have some level of product management for open source, a lot of it is based around packaging, delivery, licensing, and these types of things, because our engineers are hearing directly from customers on a moment-by-moment basis. They're seeing the feedback in the community, getting out there, and partnering with our customers. So, from an economic perspective, the model is different.

Now, being backed by Progress Software provides us the benefit that customers can have that assurance that we're backed by a large organization. But, having FuseSource as standalone company, as you said, gives us that independence around decision making and really being like a startup.

We'll be able to have our own processes in any functional area that we need to best meet the needs of the open source users.

Davies: From a technical perspective, it’s really good for us. The shackles are off. There’s a lot of sudden reinvigorating that seems to move forward. We've got a lot of really good ideas that we want to push out and roll out over the coming year, particularly enhancing of the products we already have, but also moving onto new areas.

There's a big excitement, like you would expect when you have got a startup. It just feels like a startup mentality. People are very passionate about what they're doing inside FuseSource.

It's even more so, now that we have become autonomous of Progress. Not that working inside Progress was a bad thing, but we were constrained by some of the rigors and procedures that you have to go through when you are part of a larger organization. Because those shackles have been taken away, it means that we can actually start innovating more in the direction we really want to drive our software too. It’s really good.

Moynihan: From a customer perspective, this change will have a small but significant impact. We are continuing to do everything that we have been doing, but we will be able to have even more independence in the way that we do things. So it will all be beneficial to customers.

We have also launched a new community site at FuseSource.com, which we're pretty excited about. We were planning to do that and we've been working on that for several months. That just provides some additional usability and ability to find things on the site.

Overall, it will be really good for our customers. We've talked with them, and they're pretty excited about it.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod. Read a full transcript or download a copy.

By: Simon Holloway, Practice Leader - Process Management & RFID, Bloor Research Posted: 15th October 2010 Copyright Bloor Research © 2010

At the end of September 2010, TIBCO unveiled their strategy to support “Enterprise 3.0” at TIBCO NOW. To understand the strategy, you first need to understand what Enterprise 3.0 is all about.

The term was coined by Sramana Mitra who is an an entrepreneur and has been a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994. Mitra defines Enterprise 3.0 as an organisation, being a confederation of customers, partners, suppliers, outsourcers, distributors, resellers, and other kinds of entities, rather than one monolithic organisation. “Collaboration” and “sharing” become the key words in making this all work. However, TIBCO have a simpler view of Enterprise 3.0 as the evolution of the traditional transaction-based enterprise into one where real-time event-based information is taking an ever more important role.

Stefan Farestam, TIBCO’s EMEA Director of Product Marketing defined the difference between Enterprise 2.0 and 3.0 as:

• Information has moved from being static to dynamic in nature
• Processing has moved from transaction-based to event-based
• Processing of data has moved from database to Enterprise Service Bus
  
• Applications have moved from ERP to BPMS based sitting on top of legacy applications
• Business intelligence has moved to real time business rules
• From a 2 dimensional world to a 3 dimensional one.

Farestam went on to explain how TIBCO were going to help organisations achieve what he called “The Two Second Advantage”—using a quote from Vivek Ranadive “A little bit of the right information, just a little before hand—whether it is a couple of seconds, minutes or hours—is more valuable than all of the information in the world weeks or months later.” Farestam and other presenters illustrated this concept by talking about a number of TIBCO customer scenarios showing how business is event-based, whereas IT systems are transaction-based:

• Citibank, in Hong Kong, where they track all financial events that preceded the withdrawal of cash at the ATM and intelligently guesses that the person withdrawing cash is, for example, at the hospital with his pregnant wife and thus interested in a promotion for baby store.
• Southwest Airlines, who are able to notify customers when a flight is delayed or cancelled (and rebook automatically) and reroute flights.
• Bank of America, who have 145 million customers and 10–20 thousand events per second, which adds up to 1 billion events (not processes) per second.

Alan Harrington, Worldwide Director of Business Optimization, added to this theme by saying, “Organisations have massive amounts of data and more events but with little time to understand them. The pace of business is not going to change so this situation will only be exasperated.” Harrington went to suggest that there were 4 critical requirements to providing a solution to this issue:

• The ability to handle events on a massive scale;
• Universal development tools that allow an organisation freedom to innovate;
• The ability to integrate people naturally; and
• The ability to deploy software where and when you needed it.

Harrington and then Thierry Schang, Vice-President Engineering, then described how TIBCO’s new universal platform would support Enterprise 3.0 and the 2-Second Advantage. Figure 1 shows the high-level architecture diagram that was used.

Figure 1:TIBCO ActiveMatrix Universal Application Platform (Source: TIBCO)

This product architecture shows how TIBCO have, over the last few years, been pulling together their various acquisitions and home grown products into a single cohesive whole that is able to work together as one, whilst, at the same time, being open to work with competitor products. However this still doesn’t cover the whole portfolio, such as Spotfire for business intelligence and the new Silver suite, which is part of the part of the Deploy message providing build-scale environment to develop for clouds. It consists of:

• Silver Fabric: construct self-service clouds
• Silver Grid: local and external cloud scalable deployments
• Silver CAP: develop solutions for clouds
• Silver BPM: run BPM solutions in the cloud
• Plus applications built on the platform such as Silver Formline, tibbr, and Silver Spotfire.

To support the need for an application development environment which supplies the ability to innovate freely, TIBCO have what is now branded ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks; their model-driven approach to application integration and process orchestration that requires no coding. As part of this environment, there is a free download TIBCO Business Studio Developer.

TIBCO now have some 130 adapters that form their ActiveMatrix Adapters product to support the needs of businesses to integrate naturally. The engine driving integration is ActiveMatrix Enterprise Service Bus. This is a key component in TIBCO’s support for SOA. An underlying grid-based architecture makes it possible to scale up and out dynamically at runtime. To support the building of composite applications, TIBCO have ActiveMatrix Service Grid, which is built on open standards, thus being complete application neutral with support for both Java and .NET.

Governance, from TIBCO’s viewpoint, includes Management. I am not sure that I fully agree with this. There is often confusion between monitoring and management; I see the former as the passive ability to see what is happening while management is about active control. TIBCO have an impressive portfolio of products, including ActiveMatrix Service Performance Manager, which provides active management of SLAs, and Hawk. The other 2 components on offer to support Governance is TIBCO ActiveMatrix Lifecycle Governance Framework, which provides an SOA registry and repository foundation, and ActiveMatrix Policy Manager, which defines policies across services hosted on heterogeneous SOA environments, mediated by the ActiveMatrix Service Bus and through TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Bus for authentication and authorisation, encryption, logging, auditing, and service versioning.

That leaves Process in their diagram. TIBCO, through ActiveMatrix, are providing solutions for in-house and cloud as well as for complex event processing. What wasn’t clear to me was if or how ActiveMatrix BPM and Silver BPM are connected to TIBCO’s CEP product BusinessEvents.

Figure 2: TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM Architecture (Source: TIBCO)

Justin Blunt, Senior Product Manager for BPM, presented TIBCO’s solutions as 3rd Generation BPM. Interesting; have we already reached that number?! If we forget which generation, TIBCO, since the Staffware acquisition, have always been able to place them at the top of the pile in BPM, and many analyst reviews have it placed in the top area. TIBCO understand how critical to business processes are in terms of supporting customers, delivering goods and services and managing operations. They also recognise that business processes involve not just applications/systems but also people, both inside and outside organisation boundaries. Our business processes don’t exist on their own. The critical mission, as TIBCO sees it, is to manage business processes as a managed service within an organisation. To aid the speed of development, TIBCO have developed the concept of “workflow patterns”. These provide built-in, model-driven support for control, resource, and data patterns (an initiative based on the work of a joint effort of Eindhoven University of Technology and Queensland University of Technology), eliminating the need for complex code or rules.

This was the first time that I have started to understand how the TIBCO portfolio fits together. Yes there are some still some holes, but that is more due to time-constraints of trying to cram into a set time, information on the complete portfolio. Bloor applaud TIBCO for developing a strategy that both pulls together all their product portfolio into a seamless whole whilst at the same time being able to offer the ability to switch parts of the portfolio out because of the big use of open standards. Well done TIBCO. More please.

By: Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst, Interarbor Solutions Posted: 6th October 2010 Copyright Interarbor Solutions © 2010

The trend toward converged infrastructure—a whole greater than sum of the traditional IT hardware, software, networking and storage parts—is going both downstream and upstream.

HP today announced how combining and simplifying the parts of IT infrastructure makes the solution value far higher on either end of the applications distribution equation: At branch offices and the next-generation of compact and mobile all-in-one data center containers.

Called the HP Branch Office Networking Solution, the idea is that engineering the fuller IT and communications infrastructure solution, rather then leaving the IT staff and—even worse—the branch office managers to do the integrating, not only saves money, it allows the business to focus just on the applications and processes. This focus, by the way, on applications and processes—not the systems integration, VOIP, updates and maintenance—is driving the broad interest in cloud computing, SaaS and outsourcing. [Disclosure: HP is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]

HP's announcements today in Barcelona are also marked by an emphasis on an ecosystem of partners approach, especially the branch office solution, which packages 14 brand-name apps, appliances and networking elements to make smaller sub-organizations an integrated part of the larger enterprise IT effort. The partner applications include WAN acceleration, security, unified communications and service delivery management.

Appliances need integration too
You could think of it as a kitchen counter approach to appliances, which work well alone but don't exactly bake the whole cake. Organizing, attaching and managing the appliances—with an emphasis on security and centralized control for the whole set-up—has clearly been missing in branch offices. The E5400 series switch accomplishes the convergence of the discrete network appliances. The HP E5400 switch with new HP Advanced Services ZL module is available worldwide today with pricing starting at $8,294.

Today's HP news also follows a slew of product announcements last month that targeted the SMB market, and the "parts is parts" side of building out IT solutions.

To automate the branch office IT needs, HP is bringing together elements of the branch IT equation from the likes of Citrix, Avaya, Microsoft, and Riverbed. They match these up with routers, switches and management of the appliances into a solution. Security and access control across the branches and the integrated systems are being addressed via HP TippingPoint security services. These provide granular control of application access, with the ability to block access to entire websites—or features—across the enterprise and its branches.

Worried about too much Twitter usage at those branches? The new HP Application Digital Vaccine (AppDV) service delivers specifically-designed filters to the HP TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), which easily control access to, or dictate usage of, non-business applications.

The branch automation approach also support a variety of network types, which opens the branch offices to be able to exploit more types of applications delivery: from terminal serving apps, to desktop virtualization, to wireless and mobile. The all-WiFi office might soon only need a single, remotely and centrally managed locked-down rack in a lights-out closet, with untethered smartphones, tablets and notebooks as the worker nodes. Neat.

When you think of it, the new optimized branch office (say 25 seats and up) should be the leader in cloud adoption, not a laggard. The HP Branch Office Networking Solution—with these market-leading technology partners—might just allow the branches to demonstrate a few productivity tricks to the rest of the enterprise.

Indeed, we might just think of many more "branch offices" as myriad nodes within and across the global enterprises, where geography becomes essentially irrelevant. Moreover, the branch office is the SMB, supported by any number and types of service providers, internal and external, public and private, SaaS and cloud.

Data centers get legs
Which brings us to the other end of the HP spectrum for today's news. The same "service providers" that must support these automated branch offices—in all their flavors and across the org chart vagaries and far-flung global locations—must also re-engineer their data centers for the new kinds of workloads, wavy demand curves, and energy- and cost-stingy operational requirements.

So HP has built a sprawling complex in Houston—the POD Works—to build an adaptable family of modular data centers—the HP Performance Optimized Datacenter (POD)—in the shape of 20- and 40-foot tractor-trailer-like containers. As we've seen from some other vendors, these mobile data centers in a box demand only that you drive the things up, lock the brake and hook up electricity, water and a high-speed network. I suppose you also drop them on the roof with a helicopter, but you get the point.

But in today's economy, the efficiency data rules the roost. The HP PODs deliver 37 percent more efficiency and cost 45 percent less than a traditional brick-and-mortar data centers, says HP.

Inside, the custom-designed container is stuffed with highly engineered racks and the cooling, optimized networks and storage, as well as the server horsepower—in this case HP ProLiant SL6500 Scalable Systems, from 1 to 1,000 nodes. While HP is targeting these at the high performance computing and service provider needs—those that are delivering high-scale and/or high transactional power—the adaptability and data center-level design may well become more the norm than the exception.

The PODs are flexible at supporting the converged infrastructure engines for energy efficiency, flexibility and serviceability, said HP. And the management is converged too, via Integrated Lights-Out Advanced (ILO 3), part of HP Insight Control.

The POD parts to be managed are essentially as many as eight servers, or up to four servers with 12 graphic processing units (GPU), in single four-rack unit enclosures. The solution further includes the HP ProLiant s6500 chassis, the HP ProLiant SL390s G7 server and the HP ProLiant SL170s G6 servers. These guts can be flexibly upped to accommodate flexible POD designs, for a wide variety and scale of data-center-level performance and applications support requirements.

Built-in energy consciousness
You may not want to paint the containers green, but you might as well. The first release features optimized energy efficiency with HP ProLiant SL Advanced Power Manager and HP Intelligent Power Discovery to improve power management, as well as power supplies designed with 94 percent greater energy efficiently, said HP.

Start saving energy with delivering more than a teraFLOP per unit of rack space to increase compute power for scientific rendering and modeling applications. Other uses may well make themselves apparent.

Have data center POD, will travel? At least the wait for a POD is more reasonable. With HP POD-Works, PODs can be assembled, tested and shipped in as little as six weeks, compared with one year or longer, to build a traditional brick-and-mortar data center, said HP.

Hey, come to think of it, for those not blocking it with the TippingPoint IPS, I wish Twitter had a few of these on those PODs on the bird strings instead of that fail whale. Twitter should also know that multiple PODs or a POD farm can support large hosting operations and web-based or compute-intensive applications, in case they want to buy Google or Facebook.

Indeed, as cloud computing grains traction, data centers may be located (and co-located) based on more than whale tails. Compliance to local laws, for business continuity and to best serve all those thousands of automated branch offices might also spur demand for flexible and efficient mobile data centers.

Converged infrastructure may have found a converged IT market, even one that spans the globe.

By: Louella Fernandes, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 4th October 2010 Copyright Quocirca © 2010

Xerox is on a mission: to reinvent itself as a leading business process and document management company, disrupting the legacy perception of a brand which is synonymous with photocopiers. Its acquisition of the services company ACS in 2009 for $6.4 billion was a bold move in this transformation aiming to combine the Xerox brand, global reach and innovation with ACS's established IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) business. 

Indeed, ACS's heritage in business process management and information technology services means Xerox is already processing 37 billion public transport fares annually, processing 900 million healthcare claims annually and handling 1.5 million phone calls daily in 150 call centres. Consequently, thanks to the ACS acquisition, Xerox services revenue has climbed to 50% of its total sales in 2010, from 23% in 2009. The market opportunity is real. According to figures quoted by Xerox, it has now moved from focusing on a $132 billion global market, which included office and production hardware and document outsourcing, to a $500+ billion market, which now also includes the thriving BPO and ITO segments.

Ready for real business
The ACS acquisition has signalled a new era for Xerox, and catalysed significant investment in the Xerox brand. Its global "Ready for real business" campaign demonstrates how businesses can outsource areas such as document management, business process management or IT services to Xerox, enabling them to focus on their core business. Its microsite http://www.realbusiness.com/ highlights its work with companies such as Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Target, Procter & Gamble, The New York Mets, Ducati and the University of Notre Dame. These case studies highlight Xerox's capabilities beyond the printed page, demonstrating its credentials across IT outsourcing, customer care, finance and accounting and human resource support, as well as its breadth of reach across many verticals—all areas where many do not realise Xerox is participating in.

Traditional equipment sales not forgotten
With a business rooted in the printed page, Xerox is not giving up on its traditional printing, copying and document management businesses which now accounts for 44% of annual revenue. However, the highest revenue opportunities are in colour print, where adoption is still low, representing only 30% of its installed base. For all vendors in this market, the key to broadening the reach of colour products is to drive down the cost of colour printing. Xerox is banking on its latest ColorQube printer, which uses solid ink rather than ink cartridges, to achieve this. Xerox claims ColorQube printers can reduce the cost of colour printing by 62% and produce 90% less waste than comparable color laser devices.

With SMB customers accounting for approximately 60% of revenues from its mid-range business, Xerox must continue to capture further sales through the IT sales channel. One way it is aiming to differentiate here is through its partner led managed print service, Xerox Partner Print Services (XPPS). With over 150 partners engaged, this service, which also supports multivendor products, promises to help garner Xerox more services revenue through the channel. Nevertheless the IT-centric reseller channel is a hard nut to crack when it comes to print services due to the need to incorporate cost per page printing, break/fix and supplies replenishment. In response to the need for simple service packages in this area, other vendors, such as HP, are also coming to market with value print services, which aim to increase service revenue for channel partners.

Leadership in enterprise managed print services (MPS)
For some time now, the burgeoning managed print services market has helped printer and copier companies to move from a mature, low margin hardware business to one which offers long term customer relationships and recurring revenue opportunities. With contracts 5 years long, MPS enables vendors to manage the complete print environment of a customer, and gain predictable revenue streams from printed pages, often across a heterogeneous printer fleet.

According to Xerox it has retained 100% of its enterprise MPS clients who have signed a contract since 2001, it manages around 1.5 million devices through its MPS contracts, over 50% of which are manufactured by competitors. Its most recent addition to its MPS suite—mobile print—was a result of the Xerox and P&G Innovation Council, enabling employees to print directly from smart phones.

Due to its long established heritage in delivering managed print services (now part of its Global Document Outsourcing division) and its broad service portfolio, which encompasses the office environment to the print room, Quocirca considers Xerox a leader in the MPS market. However its closest rival HP is performing well, boosted by is dominance in the office print environment, its acquisition of EDS and its strategic alliance with Canon.

Expanding market reach
The ACS acquisition means that the combined company can now pursue opportunities across the document outsourcing, ITO and BPO segments, exploiting the respective customer bases of Xerox and ACS. Xerox already has signed managed print services (MPS) deals for companies that were existing ACS customers, such as Ingersoll Rand. According to Xerox, such cross selling initiatives are taking place in more than one hundred accounts across all regions, which have generated over 10 ACS signings to date and a $2.5 billion pipeline.

With only 8 months having passed since the ACS acquisition closed, Xerox still has some way to go to before it can offer an integrated Xerox/ACS offering. This is likely to be more challenging in Europe where the profile of ACS is lower than North America—currently 90% of ACS revenue comes from the US. Nevertheless, Xerox recognises that a global company still needs localised presence and offerings, especially in a diverse region such as Europe, and is working to develop a consistent global approach which is complimented by local and regional delivery capabilities.

Conclusion
The ACS acquisition certainly promises to set Xerox apart from its competitors, and success in Europe will require Xerox to truly integrate its offerings, build out a European service organisation and demonstrate the pedigree of ACS in Europe. Particularly in the document outsourcing market, Xerox should remain watchful of companies such as Canon and Ricoh who are expanding their capabilities. Meanwhile HP's IT and networking heritage positions it well for companies looking to outsource both the desktop and print infrastructure.

Certainly ITO and BPO bring added value to the Xerox Enterprise Print Service portfolio, but Xerox will face challenges developing an integrated sales strategy given the different stakeholders across MPS, ITO and BPO engagements. As with any acquisition, success will rely on the investment in staff and training but probably most fundamental is whether Xerox will retain ACS as a separate brand.

Quocirca believes that although the European market presence of Xerox may do well to push the ACS brand, ultimately the best approach would to be recast ACS as Xerox Enterprise Services or similar, to avoid confusion and support a cohesive go to market approach. For now, Quocirca expects that the majority of synergistic opportunities will reside in the US region. Mindful of this, Quocirca will be watching closely how Xerox approaches and executes on its promises to the European market.