By: Philip Howard, Director of Research - Technology, Bloor Research Posted: 13th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Vertica has just announced that it is offering its data warehousing technology via the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud. This is quite a departure. While there are other data warehousing vendors offering hosted warehousing services, Vertica is the first to offer its facilities via cloud computing.

When I first heard about this I have to admit that I was dubious about how much take-up there might be but, having considered it, there are clearly a number of opportunities. The first is for companies offering analytics via a SaaS (software as a service) model: using a cloud-based approach means that they can extend their services without getting involved in building or extending their own data centre.

Secondly, there are small and medium sized companies who do not have the desire or the ability to build and manage a data warehouse of their own; and thirdly, there is a significant market within large enterprises that want a temporary data mart. Normally, you would load one of these up, query the hell out of it for a few weeks or months, and then close it down. But why go to the expense of having that kit hanging around, and the software licenses to go with it?

Finally, while it isn't a target market per se, a cloud offering gives Vertica a significant advantage when it comes to proofs of concept: implementation is more or less immediate and costs are minimal.

So, how does it all work? Well, actually it's trivial. There's no software to install or download; once you're signed up you start loading your data and once that's complete you can run your queries, analyses and whatever. You can opt for one, three or multiple processing nodes, as required. Provided you have three or more nodes then you get automated failover. Backup (which is highly compressed, to save on storage) comes as standard and, because Amazon is hosting the software you get Amazon level SLAs and support. Capacity starts at 500 Gb with a monthly fee of $2,000. Discounts apply once you get into the multi-terabyte range.

This is really quite appealing if you are in the right prospective user bracket. What is more, it is difficult to see some of Vertica's competitors offering the same sorts of capabilities as Vertica, as it requires an architecture predicated on the sort of grid technology used in cloud computing, which Vertica has but many others do not. Incidentally, there is no reason in principle why Vertica could not be implemented on other supplier's clouds.

I have to admit to not paying much attention to cloud computing prior to this so I am surprising myself by thinking that this looks like it has legs: I can easily envisage Vertica picking up significant numbers of implementations in a market that it effectively has to itself.

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By: Bob Tarzey, Service Director, Quocirca Posted: 13th May 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

Spam has been with us, in name at least, for some 15 years. According to the watchdog Spamhaus, 90 per cent of all email now sent is spam. Fortunately that does not mean 90 per cent of our inboxes are filled with the stuff.

The problem has been contained through the widespread deployment of anti-spam products and services in the highly competitive market of the past decade.

Before spam became a big problem, there were still specialist email security vendors like Clearswift and Marshal Software that checked outgoing email to ensure it complied with internal rules on content distribution and decency.

But that was the mid-1990s, when sending email externally was a relatively new concept and volumes were low. The vendors' software was installed on email servers themselves—at the heart of the IT department, which was the last place spam with its sometimes viral payloads was welcome.

Then came a rapid evolution of products that kept spam at arm's length—either appliances at the network edge or in-the-cloud services that ensured an almost clean incoming email stream. These specialist solutions identified and eliminated spam but also targeted its sources and cut them off.

Many of the biggest names to have emerged in email security have now been acquired by the big IT infrastructure vendors. We now have such pairings as Google and Postini, Microsoft and FrontBridge, and Cisco and IronPort. Others have become, or remain part of, some of the major IT security companies, such as Trend Micro, Symantec, Websense and Secure Computing. A few, like MessageLabs and Mimecast, still retain their independence.

The interesting thing is that the market has now come full circle. With most business users having spam controls in place, the email security vendors have found new business harder to acquire and have been limited to attracting competitors' customers rather than finding green-field opportunities.

This difficulty has meant they have started to target broader content security issues, such as content accessed and uploaded via web browsers and email archiving.

The aim is to expand the range of products and services sold to existing customers and to be more attractive to those of competitors who may be tempted to jump ship.

This broadening of focus has also allowed a number of small vendors that might otherwise have died to diversify and stay in the market. Both Marshal and Clearswift now see themselves as content policy engines.

Regardless of the content's origin or destination, they aim to ensure people only distribute content they are authorised to. Others like Tumbleweed and Proofpoint, having failed to establish a strong presence in Europe first time around, reckon they can make more of a mark with a renewed focus.

The choice can seem mind-boggling if you take all these vendors and review them alongside other content security specialists such as ScanSafe, which specialises in managed services for web security; Bloxx with appliances for web security; and anti-spyware vendor Webroot, which recently acquired spam-filtering firm Email Systems.

The whole market has converged on content security for a good reason—and one that is sometimes lost sight of. One of the main functions of IT is to allow the secure sharing of content, within organisations and externally.

For this to occur within employers' and regulators' guidelines requires policies to be in place and implemented. This has led to much talk about data leak prevention (DLP), a term that has come into general use in the past few years.

DLP is all about stopping the wrong stuff going to the wrong people. Most vendors will have the term somewhere on their marketing materials.

But there is no silver bullet for DLP. For any organisation this is a broad discipline that requires integrating multiple products from different vendors.

First there are people—who they are, what groups they belong to. For most organisations this information is already defined in existing directories, generally Microsoft's Active Directory or an LDAP-based product. Any content-filtering products need to integrate with this and build on it, and not require redefinition.

Then there is content. Nearly all the products from content-filtering companies deal with data moving across networks—apart from some email archiving services.

But content spends most of its life at rest sitting quietly on a disk somewhere until someone disturbs it. Content security must start here, ensuring that such data is secure, whether on a storage array in a data centre, on an employee's desktop or on some mobile device out in the field. Content filtering companies do not address this.

Only when content is on the move—or when it has been created on the fly, as are many emails—can policy engines really decide what content is and if the person doing something with it should be authorised to do so.

Before investing in a new product from a content-filtering vendor, perhaps based on some lively marketing relating to the hazards of data leaks, IT departments should take a good look at what is already in place and what gaps need filling.

They may well find they have many of the components already. Where they do not, existing suppliers may already have evolved their offerings to plug those gaps.

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By: Peter Williams, Senior Analyst, Bloor Research Posted: 12th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

De-duplication (de-dupe) specialist DataDomain today [12th May] launched its fastest—and the industry's fastest—de-dupe appliance, the DD690.

The stand-alone unit, which has an Intel quad core CPU, can achieve up to 1.4TB/hour throughput, or up to 170MB/sec in a single-stream for a large database. Its addressable physical capacity is 35.3TB. However, up to 16 DD690 arrays can be installed in the DDX cabinet, to provide a maximum capacity of 28PB and an aggregate throughput of 22.4TB/hour.

What DataDomain describes as "the fastest single-stream de-dupe engine in the world" uses its own operating system with an architecture to maximise processing and indexing within the CPU while minimising disk access. DataDomain's VP of product management Brian Biles told me that this approach would be difficult to match. "We expect a 50% de-dupe speed-up every time Intel doubles the number of CPUs."

The big positive in de-dupe is that it drastically reduces nearline and/or offline storage. (Primary storage is never de-duped.) In simple terms, all the data is examined as it is backed up and duplicate files and/or blocks (or even smaller segments) are replaced by a pointer tag to where the single instance of the data is held.

This picture becomes even more attractive—at least using the DataDomain architecture—if data is coming from a number of remote locations. A further announcement is the extension of its processing capability to allow up to 60 separate data streams to be de-duped before transmission over a WAN to, for instance a single large receiving DDX. Clearly, the less physical data that needs to travel over the wire, the faster this is completed. Moreover, bringing separate data silos together in this way means a greater space saving—since, otherwise, identical data will remain replicated in the different silos—and is easier to manage centrally.

Competitive approaches are, in general, not as efficient in space-saving; but DataDomain expects its de-dupe to achieve a 10x reduction and, combined with data compression, will achieve a 20x output space reduction—with a 95–99% reduction in cross-site transmission bandwidth. Then comes the question: "In that case why wouldn't everyone do this?"

There are several answers to this, and most of them revolve around where it is applied. DataDomain's phenomenal growth—doubling turnover in three quarters since it IPO'd last year and adding nearly 300 new customers in the past quarter alone—is a testament to the fact that most large organisations are now taking the plunge. (The company is now the de-dupe market leader in the US and a recent survey suggests it will soon overtake Symantec and EMC in Europe too.)

A second deterrent is that de-dupe performance can be a dog. That is why throughput figures are key, and why a stand-alone de-dupe appliance tends to be the best option; this is also part of why some vendors only provide de-duping on already backed-up data (as a background task that still slows down other processing and saves less space). In some systems performance can be improved but only at the expense of output disk space, to some extent defeating de-dupe's whole purpose.

Perhaps most of all it is considerations about recovery from backup—and especially disaster recovery (DR). The data is not a mirror of the live system and, if recovery is needed, it has to be ‘reconstituted' to its original form. So, if an immediate switchover to a remote DR site is needed, forget de-dupe—at least for the critical on-line data. But in all other cases, it comes down to how efficiently and reliably the recovery can be performed.

The output file will be the same in either case. Retrieving blocks using existing pointers will be faster than when they had to be created; but, of necessity, it will be slower than contiguous reading—unless segments are placed in optimum sequence and sometimes memory-held so no disk access is needed at all. DataDomain does try to arrange its stored segments optimally for retrieval performance.

Potentially, then, recovery can be as quick as would be the case without de-dupe—largely removing that objection. Likewise, if some de-duped data goes to off-line archive on tape, and has to be reconstituted first. However, this performance level will not be achieved by all solutions, so performance testing vis-à-vis likely SLA requirements should be considered in all major evaluations.

The reliability and integrity of the data, and protection against hardware faults, is covered by such things as on-the-fly error detection and correction and continuous disk ‘scrubbing' to remove errors before they become a problem. So, short of a DR regime where up-to-the-minute mirroring is crucial, I ask again: "why wouldn't you include de-dupe?" It is, anyway, very green (greatly reducing disk space and network bandwidth), so energy and heat saving—which provides an obvious ROI.

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By: Andy Hayler, Associate Analyst, Bloor Research Posted: 11th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

A new entrant to the data integration space is expressor software. Although there is no shortage of integration technology out there, in practice large scale integration projects involve a large amount of manual scripts which deal with what transformation to apply to a certain column in a source system before sending it on to a target system. This approach often results in business rules being embedded within this code, and hence not re-used in other projects. Moreover current technologies map physical columns to others, and so if (as inevitably happens) changes occur to these structures, then these scripts need to be updated. Consequently, high maintenance costs are a frequent issue for data integration applications. Another issue for many enterprises is the limited batch window, which means that performance of such integration jobs can be a bottleneck, enabling Ab Initio, in particular, to carve out a high-performance niche in the market against players such as Informatica and IBM (who acquired Ascential).

The expressor technology tackles both these real problems head-on. It uses a higher level semantic abstraction model to derive business rules and store these in a metadata repository, maintaining a layer between business terms such as "Full customer name and address" and its physical representation(s). In this way it is easier to re-use business rules across projects, and the abstraction layer means that physical structure changes in the underlying data sources are quicker to adapt to. It has built a series of connectors to common data sources, such as databases, XML and even Cobol copybooks.

The speed issue is dealt with by designing the expressor engine with MPP processing (which is also the approach used by Ab Initio), enabling customers to throw standard hardware at the problem. The company's principals have long experience in embedded software, and have written a platform neutral engine that they claim shows very high performance in tests relative to other vendors. These claims will need to be validated by independent studies and real-life customer experience; claiming your product is ten times faster than the leading product on the market is something that will require careful testing, though it is intriguing.

The company has been formed by a couple of industry veterans who have been programming in this environment for years and have in-depth experience of the main vendor technologies in the market (and hence know their limitations). The company has received USD 7.5 million dollar funding primarily from two reputable VCs, and has brought in experienced management. Its product hits general availability in June 2008, though it has been conducting trials at a number of customers in spring 2008.

The problems expressor addresses are very real. Although it will be attacking large, entrenched competitors, the success of Netezza in the data warehouse market has shown that such heights can be scaled. The company will need to back up its bold claims on performance with independent (preferably customer) case studies, but even if its performance claims are partly true, then the big boys may have something to worry about soon.

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By: Andy Hayler, CEO, The Information Difference Posted: 9th May 2008 Copyright The Information Difference © 2008

IBM recently introduced version 8 of its master data management (MDM) technologies, now known as Infosphere MDM Server. IBM's has built up a suite of MDM offerings based around the acquired technologies of DWL (customer hub), Trigo (product information management) and Ascential. There are two important aspects to V8, the first technical, the second commercial.

On the technology side, MDM Server is an important step in positioning IBM's MDM offerings as genuinely multi-domain, i.e. being able to handle all master data types, rather than having separate approaches to customer and product data. This is sensible for many reasons. While the operational characteristics of customer data and product data may differ, enterprises increasingly want to see a coherent, unified approach to dealing with master data of whatever type. Moreover there are many other types of master data beyond customer and product, and enterprise architects wish to avoid a profusion of hubs based on un-integrated technologies. At this stage it is important to understand that there are still two distinct IBM product lines, but V8 is the first step along the path to unifying these into a true multi-domain MDM technology, a multi-year roadmap. Over time I would expect to see, for example, unified data governance functionality across both product lines e.g. common data stewardship and security applications. Amongst the improvements V8 offers are enhancements to the underlying product domain, allowing support for hierarchies, types, sub-types, categories and terms and conditions associated with a product. There is also a new "account" domain, an account being an agreement between two parties with terms and conditions that can be enforced through the MDM Server.

With Version 8 comes a more flexible pricing structure. IBM's MDM offering has traditionally been perceived as a big ticket item, with software licence costs upwards of USD 1 million for a typical deal. With its recent version 8 release (February 2008) came a new "entry level" pricing model. This pricing is based on a mixture of the data domains to be covered and record volumes to be held; allowing customers to get started at a significantly lower price point than previously, and scale up as needed. This makes good sense, since very few MDM projects are big-bang affairs where customers immediately switch on an enterprise hub covering multiple data domains. It is more usual for customers to begin with a particular data domain (maybe customer, product, location or asset) and deploy a hub in a particular division or subsidiary, gradually increasing the scope of the hub coverage over time. By being more flexible in its pricing IBM is widening its potential market, and giving the potential for up-sell opportunities later.

Recently IBM has seen an increase in customers outside its traditionally strong base in financial services (no bad thing given the current issues in the financial markets), with recent customer wins in retail, automotive, and in Asia Pacific e.g. the Vietnamese tax department. Interestingly Q4 2007 and Q1 2008 were the most successful quarters ever for the company in terms of MDM customer shipments, which is surprising given the meltdown in financial services. Its roadmap towards a unified multi-domain approach is a positive and important step in appealing to MDM customers beyond the financial services vertical.

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By: Simon Holloway, Senior Analyst, Bloor Research Posted: 9th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Warehouse management is viewed by all involved in Logistics as a key to being successful in this fast moving industry. But the price of IT systems with the right mix of functionality for the SME market has been a major issue in the reticence of these organisations moving away from the use of Excel spreadsheets. 3M Supply Chain Solutions has been a major player in the warehouse management system (WMS) market with its HighJump product since their foundation in April 1983. They have over 1,300 customers worldwide; these include such well-known names as Duracell, Sony, Yamaha, Pepsi, Toyota, Bridgestone and of course parent company 3M. At the end of 2007, 3M Supply Chain Solutions released a version of their WMS—HighJumpWarehouse Advantage-45—specifically for the SME market. Bloor was given a briefing on the capabilities of this new venture by Chris Goldsmith (Director, Product Strategy), Hugh Murphy (EMEA Marketing Manager) and Chad Eckes (Director, Product Strategy).

Goldsmith stated that "Globalisation continues to increase competitive pressure even for smaller companies, which result in several challenges for these companies. They are being forced to innovate while, at the same time, they need to cut costs to remain viable. SMEs have fewer resources but must interact with larger, more advanced companies in the global supply chain. On top of this, goods movement and logistics are riddled with inefficiencies due to lack of investment in technology." In the past SMEs may have needed new systems, but were unable to afford a long and expensive implementation cycle. Additionally, they have wanted a simple system without the full complex support for warehouse management, but this system has to be able to grow with them. Because of their size, SMEs also need a system with fast employee adoption. What an SME would really like is a WMS vendor who will provide them with best of breed functionality and architecture without best of breed pricing and, most importantly, who will be there in the future.

Eckes explained further: "3M Supply Chain Solutions has built HighJump Warehouse Advantage-45 to address the pains of SMEs. It is a rapidly configured WMS that is designed to be fully implemented within 45 business days. The solution contains all the key warehouse management features an SME needs, and is built upon the same technology as our enterprise-class WMS—HighJump Warehouse Advantage." WA-45 provides the following WMS features:

• Tracking and visibility of inbound orders
• Receiving: automatically validates receipts against orders
• Directed put-away: ensuring the right materials are put away in the right location. Materials can be put away using a variety of algorithm choices, including FIFO and LIFO.
• Picking: support for by order, batch or label.
• Coordinate packing and shipping processes to increase fill rates and cut preparation time for shipping documents and ship confirmations.
• Replenish materials automatically so associates have sufficient inventory to fill orders, and short-shipped orders are minimised.
• Inventory control: 3M Supply Chain Solutions claims that the solution can achieve up to 99+ percent inventory accuracy, visibility and traceability.
• The system captures every transaction in the warehouse and presents operational information through a web interface.
• A web page development tool, WebWise, that allows the user to edit and create pages, so users see information in the terminology and format to which they are accustomed.

To achieve the 45 day implementation, 3M Supply Chain Solutions has provided a number of aids to make implementation easier and faster. These include:

• Playbook: the analogy Goldsmith and Eckes gave Bloor that it was like a sports playbook
• User guide: this provides specific direction by Job Category; namely the warehouse leader and the system administrator
• HighJump University: this is a set of online courses, involving about 30 hours of class time. The courses are aimed at the SMEs' key users with the goal of making them productive from day one
• Warehouse Wizard: this wizard provides an easy to use means of converting the Logical Warehouse definitions to the actual Physical Warehouse environment.

Murphy described the flexible pricing of WA-45, "For some users, we realise that they want to make an outright purchase so WA-45 is available on license covering a maximum of 20 concurrent users. Other users prefer a subscription-based manner. So WA-45 is also available in this way. The conditions are the same as for the perpetual license, and clients sign for at least a one-year license, which is renewable annually. WA-45 also has an la carte functionality, allowing a user to only buy the functionality they need."

With the current pressure of SME logistics companies, WA-45 is a welcome addition to the software available to run effective warehouse operations. Bloor are particular impressed with the way 3M Supply Chain Solutions has gone about the engineering of a version of their Tier 1 product to meet the needs of SMEs, but at the same allowing them to grow into the larger system. The portfolio of tools to support the quick implementation is very impressive. 3M Supply Chain Solutions is consolidating their position as a serious player in the WMS market.

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By: Simon Parums, Managing Director, Themis Posted: 8th May 2008 Copyright Themis © 2008

Although IT department employees are covered by the same Health and Safety laws as other workers, there are many issues specific to the industry. Staff working in IT are required to spend much of their time sitting at a computer so the most common complaints are limb disorders such as repetitive strain injury and eye strain from long spells working at a computer screen.

Computer screens are wrongly blamed for a wide range of health problems. In fact, only a small proportion of computer users actually suffer ill health as a result of working at a screen. Where problems do occur, they are generally caused by the way in which they are being used, rather than the computers themselves.

Employers can avoid claims from staff for these issues by ensuring a good working environment and examining the ways computers are used. All employers should also have a Risk Assessment. This will help them identify the risks so they can take the relevant steps to reduce them.

IT employers should have:

• A full written Health & Safety Policy in place;
• A Fire Risk Assessment carried out on their premises;
• Adequate First Aid cover;
• Training in Display Screen Equipment (DSE); and should
• Look into obtaining separate Risk Assessments for groups of employers including young workers, pregnant workers, noise, stress etc.

All of the above should be carried out on a regular basis and not just as a one off.

Here are some other common complaints from IT workers and tips on how employers can combat them:

Aches and pains
Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) has become the common term for all manner of aches, pains and disorders, but it's not always correct and can mean different things to different people. A better medical name for the whole group of conditions is ‘upper limb disorders'. Usually these disorders do not last, but in a few cases they may become persistent or even disabling.

Employers can avoid problems by good workplace design, to make sure staff can work comfortably, and that they take regular breaks from the workstation. Short and frequent breaks are thought to be more beneficial than longer, less frequent ones. Preventing upper limb disorders is easier than ever.

Limb complaints can arise from employees who use laptops and portable computers. Make sure are compact and easy to carry. Design features such as small keyboards can make prolonged use uncomfortable so consider advising staff to use a docking station.

If full-sized equipment is available advise staff to use it. Like other computer users, people who habitually use a portable should be trained how to minimise the risks. This includes sitting comfortably, angling the screen so it can be seen clearly with minimal reflections, and taking frequent breaks if work is prolonged. Wherever possible, portables should be placed on a solid surface—importantly this should be at the right height for the user to prevent back injuries

Damage to eyesight
Extensive research has found no evidence that working at a computer can cause disease or permanent damage to eyes. However, long spells of screen work can lead to tired eyes and discomfort. Also, by giving eyes more demanding tasks, it might make users aware of an eyesight problem they have not noticed before. To prevent problems employers can help ensure screens are well positioned and properly adjusted, and that the workplace lighting is suitable.

The heat generated by computers and other equipment can make the air seem drier and some contact lens wearers find this uncomfortable. Where the air is dry, employers should increase the humidity.

Employees covered by Health and Safety regulations can ask their employer to provide and pay for an eye test from an optometrist or doctor. Employers only have to pay for spectacles if special ones (for example, prescribed for the distance at which the screen is viewed) are needed and normal ones cannot be used.

Headaches
Headaches are a common complaint in the workplace and it's often assumed they are caused by working at a computer screen, but this isn't always the case. Headaches may result from several factors, such as:

• Screen glare
• Poor image quality
• A need for different spectacles
• Stress and anxiety
• Reading the screen for long periods without a break
• Poor posture

Try to identify the reason for any headache complaint as it can usually be put right quite easily. It could be something as simple as adjusting the employees chair, changing the monitor or providing further training on how to use the computer. This is something that will be identified if you have a full Risk Assessment carried out.

It's extremely important to remember that, no matter what size of the business, all employers have Health and Safety obligations to ensure staff have a safe working environment. If you are confused about any of the information given in this article it's essential you speak to an expert. A small cost to seek advice could save you thousands in the long run from claims brought against the company. Good Health and Safety practice also increases productivity which will have an impact on bottom line profitability.

If you require further information please visit http://www.themissupport.co.uk/

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By: Gerry Brown, Senior Analyst, Bloor Research Posted: 8th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

There is a plethora of white papers, webcasts, newsletters, conferences, and general advice emanating from the technology industry today. But why are many messages from the most dynamic and innovative industry on earth so similar? For example, this is the latest advice, paraphrased from one leading analyst organization, on how to implement BI:

• Ensure business vision and sponsorship
• Ensure data lineage, governance and quality
• Combine planning, reporting and analysis
• Enable forecasting and simulating (modeling) scenarios
• Account for cultural change
• Make applications more intuitive, making them easier for business users

Granted these are all sound management principles, but are they ground-breaking? A similar set of 'to do' actions could be applied to virtually any enterprise software including ERP, CRM, and SCM. How many times have you heard "set goals and milestones, implement in bit-size chunks, and measure results"? In recent times the IT industry has been mesmerised by investment appraisal techniques such as ROI and TCO.

Much of what we read in the technology industry media today follows good data governance and general management practices. This is all well and good. Now this might be because, as Larry Ellison believes, real innovation is now largely dead in a fast-maturing software industry, and we no longer have enough ‘new' new stuff to talk about. I prefer to believe this is not the case. The IT industry is as vibrant and as energetic as it ever was.

However, times have moved on and the technology is now the easy bit. User interfaces are now much easier to navigate. Implementations can be completed in weeks in many cases. The depth and breadth of software functionality is awesome. Software mostly works.

We now understand that failed CRM and BI implementations (for example) are not mostly the fault of the software, but rather overall project management. Typically problems have centred on available project management and technical expertise, lack of executive sponsorship, and lack of buy-in from end users. No wonder business management advice is in vogue.

In addition, many IT project management techniques such as ITIL and PRINCE have proved unwieldy and frustratingly slow from an end-users' point of view. Empowered business managers with BlackBerrys in their pockets, laptops in their knapsacks, and PCs in their homes want their say. IT is becoming inseparable from the business and deeply embedded in our everyday lives. Who can say where technology ends and life begins? Data (or IT) management and general management principles are becoming blurred.

Vendors and industry commentators have an obligation to help customers navigate through the complexity of the technology industry so they can make well-informed superior purchasing decisions. This will help the industry to continue its high levels of growth despite the world economy slowing down.

Increasingly technology consumers will value knowledge that combines elements of both technology know-how and best business management practices. This knowledge needs to be at an appropriate granular level to enable effective project management and implementation of a specific technology. More focus on helping and guiding customers and to listening to their specific information needs will help to provide the compelling and rich hybrid ‘business and IT' content that customers need and want.

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By: Philip Howard, Director of Research - Technology, Bloor Research Posted: 8th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Leading data integration vendors like Informatica and Business Objects (SAP) have recently (over the last year or so) been making much of the fact that they can support unstructured data. That is, that you can use these tools to move (say) Word documents around. This is absolutely true and it is useful enough in its way.

But there's a big difference between a Word document and content. Why do you think that all the ECM (enterprise content management) vendors all have their own tools for migrating data from competitor's platforms? And why does everybody use these (or an independent product such as EntropySoft's, about which I wrote here recently) rather than an ETL (extract, transform and load) tool?

The answer is that ETL vendors extract Word documents at the database level whereas EntropySoft and companies in the ECM space interface at the application level, thereby having an understanding of the context within which that content is stored, and the metadata surrounding it.

Now, all the major players in the data integration space, and even some of the smaller ones, make much of the fact that they have connectors that have a deep understanding of a variety of application environments such as SAP, Oracle and so on, because it is a clear advantage to understand the context within which your data runs or will run when it comes to moving that data. So why don't these suppliers apply the same principle to content? It's not even as if they would have to develop their own connectors in the various ECM systems: they could license them from third parties if they preferred.

Actually, I think the ETL vendors are simply unaware that there is an issue with moving content. They think that content is just another word for unstructured data and that they know all about moving data. It hasn't occurred to them that there are major auditing and validation issues that arise whenever regulatory control is applicable, such as whenever the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) or the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) is involved, for example.

The problem here is that the big data integration players are pitching their products as platforms that will serve all your data requirements. The truth is that right now they are very far from offering such capability. Content is one major element that is missing. With a few exceptions, so are replication and synchronisation. Data integration has a long way to go yet.

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By: Simon Holloway, Senior Analyst, Bloor Research Posted: 7th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Last month, I had the pleasure of having a briefing from Martijn Iseger, Product Marketing Manager of QPR Software Plc, on their QPR Business Process Management Suite. QPR Software has a different approach to providing BPMS solutions, which allows a phased approach for BPM adoption. The major benefit of this approach is that the customer does not have to commit a large amount of resources to a "make or break" BPM project. Instead, this flexible BPM adoption approach allows customers to bring BPM in-house at a pace that suits them best.

Have you heard of QPR Software before? They were founded in 1991 and their headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland. They went public in 2002 and are quoted on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. They have 60 employees with a subsidiary in South Africa. Their go-to-market strategy is based on a large partner network with 72 VARs in 58 countries, and 184 partners in total. This extensive partner network has resulted in QPR Software having an impressive worldwide penetration for a company of their size. The key markets for QPR Software are Nordic, UK, USA, South Africa, and Japan. They target organisations in the process of transition and who, from a technology viewpoint, are Microsoft .NET Platform based. This sales and go-to-market strategy has been very successful as they have over 1,500 customers, which include Bosch/Siemens Domestic Appliances, TTSL/Tata Indicom, Canon, Emirates Identity Agency, Petrobras, Copel, City of Oulu and Swiss Post.

With 75 % of the Swiss market share, PostParcels, the parcel division of Swiss Post, is the leader in parcel distribution. About 4,000 employees are responsible for transporting around 105 million parcels a year and an average of about 500,000 per day. Krystian Lasek, Head of Strategy at PostParcels stated that the QPR BPM solution significantly improved the quality of their services to customers, something their customer surveys clearly identified.

So what is different about QPR Software's approach to BPMs? QPR Software has put together a well integrated suite of best of breed products to provide support for organisations implementing Business Process Management from strategy formulation, process design to live running with Performance Management, an important driver for continuous process improvement. Some of these products are engineered by themselves, whilst others are OEM'd from organisations QPR consider to be the pick of vendors in these niches. The QPR BPM Suite consists of the following products, all of which are based on the Microsoft platform:

• QPR ScoreCard - is a Performance Management tool. It provides both support during the formulation of business strategies for the capture of objectives and measures, as well as the automatic collection and consolidation of data from business processes. The information is provided in the form of scorecards, digital dashboards and strategy maps.
• QPR ProcessGuide - provides support for analysis and design of business processes for business users. It provides support for BPMN, with the ability to convert the BPMN models into BPEL specifications for making process designs executable with workflow execution engines.
• QPR FactView - is a Business Analysis add-on to QPR ScoreCard. It provides support for dashboards and alerts, multi-dimensional analyses, slice and dice of data. QPR FactView is a tailored version of QlickView from QlikTech. This technology provides in-memory analysis and data association so that data is loaded, prepared and presented on the fly.
• QPR Workflow - is the Business Process Automation add-on to QPR ProcessGuide. It is an OEM version of PNMsoft Sequence. It works in Microsoft Internet Explorer environment to provide automation of human-centric business processes.
• QPR Portal - provides the portal glue both at runtime and during development for pulling together the product suite through a single user interface.

QPR have put together an impressive set of products to provide an environment for the development and management of business processes. By using standards for their interfaces they have also allowed their potential customers to purchase only those pieces of the suite that they require. This provides greater flexibility as well as the ability to start small and expand to the full capabilities as required. All the products work on a client server approach.

QPR Software has cleverly chosen the portal medium, in the form of QPR Portal, to pull the different products together into a single suite, which is able to be customised to include other products depending on clients needs. There is a key business user focus to the whole suite with all the tools being easy to use. The BAM environment provided by QPR ScoreCard and QPR FactView is very powerful being based on tools originally developed for Business Analysis and Performance Management

The QPR BPMS Suite provides an impressive portfolio with an innovative approach based around flexibility, whilst at the same time providing the necessary IT controls and business user ease of use requirements that are needed. Bloor would recommend that potential BPMS users take a closer look at this flexible solution.

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By: Bob Tarzey, Service Director, Quocirca Posted: 7th May 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

Most networks deliver a range of services—voice, video and IM, for example—as well as traditional IT applications. A business's dependence on its network is linked to how distributed its working practices have become.

But to get an objective measure of how distributed a business is can be tricky and requires looking at branch networks, remote-mobile enablement and external interaction. To this end Quocirca has designed a distributed business index (DBI) that encapsulates all three types of working.

The DBI has a minimum of one—for a business with the single premises and no external or mobile workers—to a maximum of 30 for a business that has many buildings and lots of external and mobile workers.

In general terms, financial services organisations turn out to be the most distributed and public sector ones the least. But generalisations can be misleading. While one German regional government body had a DBI of two, another one from the UK scored 30. The lowest score for a bank, 11, was also from Germany.

The index allows the trials and tribulations of distributed working to be compared. Businesses enable remote working because they expect it to improve efficiency, increase customer and employee satisfaction and keep down costs. But there is, of course, a downside if it all goes wrong when the network fails for some reason.

The impact this has on highly distributed businesses is palpable. All businesses care about the experience their users receive when working at their PCs.

But those with a high DBI are far more concerned about the experience of remote workers than those with a low score. And for those with the highest DBI, network downtime has much more impact on external and mobile workers than it does on office-bound ones.

Most businesses still operate with a single HQ and branch offices but today the quality of communications between different buildings, however widely distributed, is expected to be good for video and web conferencing, centralised content management and emails with huge attachments. The need for enriched communications extends to those workers who spend some or all their time outside the office.

Again, businesses have always had field service engineers, sales people and truck drivers who work remotely, but today many of these workers are linked to business processes through mobile devices.

These demands on external access have also led to a big increase in remote working by employees who, in the past, would have spent nearly all their time in the office.

Home-working provides flexibility to those with families and also lets employees communicate with each other and customers around the clock.

In other cases it is home working that enables staff to work in the first place—for example, agents of virtual call centres permanently based at home. But if an employee can link into a business process from outside the office, so too can customers, suppliers and partners.

This is the fastest growing driver of distributed working—outsourcing of tasks. Some of this is traditional outsourcing. For example, a mid-market company can use an external IT management company to work from afar or give external accountants access to internal records.

But in the past decade more customers and suppliers have been encouraged to do some of their own leg work. This ranges from individuals managing bank accounts online and tracking the progress of goods ordered online, to whole groups of businesses sharing centralised supply-chain management systems.

The degree to which businesses are distributed varies from one industry to another. Retailers have the most branches—on the whole most goods are still bought from shops and there are some very large retailers.

Utility companies have the most mobile workers—lots of field service engineers rushing round repairing faults—and finance organisations have the most external workers—all those inter-company financial transactions.

The worry is that the most highly distributed businesses are, in some cases, struggling to support their distributed workforce. They are pushing the boundaries of distributed working and sometimes failing to meet their own expectations.

Yet these businesses will be the ones to reap the benefits first if they can overcome some of their problems, which are often—at least in part—down to an overworked data network.

There is plenty that can be done: better broadband connections for small branches and home workers, more efficient use of network connections through use of network acceleration products and services, keeping employees focused on their work by limiting their activities and access to content.

Getting these things right and making sure the underlying platform—the network—can perform, will allow distributed working to be pushed to new limits.

Quocirca's report, The Distributed Business Index is free to readers for download.

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By: Philip Howard, Director of Research - Technology, Bloor Research Posted: 6th May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Fresh from the debacle at Terminal 5, which is a good example of why big bang approaches to migrations (and other implementations) can be dangerous, I have a number of disparate observations to make.

The first is that I recently spoke at a conference at which Informatica was also presenting. Listening to what they had to say I noted a slide presenting results of a survey into migration projects and the very high rates of project failures and overruns that characterise this market. The results were (within a percentage point) identical to those published in the Bloor Research paper on this topic last year but they were credited to the Standish Group. When I queried this, assuming that this attribution was in error, the company responded that this was in fact correct but the Standish Group's survey had been carried out in 1999. In other words, we have got no better as an industry in managing data migration in seven years: which is a pretty damning statement, which only underlines my call for more migration specialists.

And on that point, you might like to check out www.datamigrationpro.com, which is a web site representing an informal special interest group for exactly this purpose.

On to products and vendors: of which a couple have attracted my attention recently.

The first is IBM Optim, which is the product that IBM gained when it acquired Princeton Softech recently. There are two interesting points here. The first is that Optim is targeting big bang migrations. Now, Optim is primarily an archiving product so what does it have to do with migration? Well, the contention is that in many (though not all) migrations, much of the data that you are migrating is not actually required, or not required immediately, so you can archive it off the source system prior to the migration. This cuts down the amount of data that needs to be migrated during the cutover process, thereby reducing the downtime window that is required. Subsequently, you can migrate the archived data separately and add it back into the new system, if that is required. Or you can just leave it as an archive, if that is appropriate. In either case this seems a sensible idea that will be useful in some instances.

Secondly, Optim allows you to define business entities so that you archive a customer (say) with all of his orders rather than just working on tabular basis, which is a good way to approach data migration as well. This is exactly what Celona does, for example. While not yet integrated with DataStage, this is certainly a potential capability that IBM could develop that would enhance its offering in this area.

The other vendor that I want to mention is Valiance Partners. This company has a product called TruCompare, which provides a test environment for comparing source and target (or source and expected target) data that is based on 100% testing of records rather than sampling. It is not dissimilar to GoldenGate's Veridata although at this time I am not in a position to compare the two since I have not a detailed briefing on TruCompare yet (when I have I will report back). In any case, the value of either of these tools in helping to ensure accurate migrations is not to be exaggerated.

Thus we have a mixed bag but it is encouraging that more vendors are paying more attention (and I have not even mentioned Business Objects' focus on SAP R/3 migrations) to data migration as a market in its own right.

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By: Rob Bamforth, Principal Analyst, Quocirca Posted: 6th May 2008 Copyright Quocirca © 2008

In economically challenging times it is no surprise to see the knee-jerk reactions of many organisations to ‘cut costs'. Overall solvency (profitability), and the monthly demands of liquidity (cashflow) are vital for the health of any company—most businesses cannot rely on government rescue like that extended to some now infamous banks—so it sometimes seems that cutting costs is the best thing to do.

However cutting equally across all cost centres in a blind panic is rarely effective in the long term and should be taken as a last, rather than first, resort. There are often many avenues that can be addressed before wielding an indiscriminate axe. This is particularly important in those areas where direct expense is most visible, but the true business value is opaque or diffuse.

Take mobile telephony as an example. Those responsible for telecommunications in most organisations have a pretty good idea of how large their total phone bills are and can see how much certain elements, for example mobile calls, are growing by. This makes it an easy target area for swingeing budget cuts. According to recent Quocirca research, around a half of companies are not seeing mobile spending falling in line with tariff reductions. Telecoms managers can also see who the worst offenders are, as over two thirds believe they have sufficient accuracy and detail to know ‘how much' and ‘who spends what' from itemised charges on a mobile phone bill—what they don't know is ‘why?'.

This piece of information is critical, because not only does it provide an indication of what value might be being gained, it also offers some intelligence that could be used to decide if it is possible to find an alternative, so that the value can be retained while the cost reduced.

Businesses obtain significant value from voice communication, and the mobile phone has become a primary tool for delivering this, ensuring that people can be reached when away from their desk. Decisions can be made faster, avoiding costly delays, and improving responsiveness. Individuals are able to make use of previously dead time, hopefully either improving their personal productivity and taking control of their work/life balance, or perhaps just as likely staying in touch friends or relatives.

Making mobile calls while in an office with perhaps a lower cost fixed phone nearby is of more questionable value, but something that many employees will do. Why? Because it is more convenient and generally the desired contact numbers are already in the phone and just a click away. There's also the flexibility of being able to start a call while sat at a desk but not having to hang up and call back when other demands make it necessary to get up and move, say to head off to a meeting, or to go home.

If the call is important, mobile flexibility means it does not need to be curtailed, promoting value over cost. What is the value of a lost opportunity when a salesperson is unable to make a mobile call because of penny pinching, or the loss of loyalty when a rapid response to a customer can not be made because the person needing to call is out of the country? The reason for the call is more relevant than its length or distance.

However not all calls are that instantly vital. They may simply be being made because it is all too easy to call a contact out of the address book or click to return a missed call. Employees are so familiar with using a mobile phone as consumers that they would rarely think twice about the cost of making calls from a business supplied mobile phone. Other alternatives—an email, instant message or text message—may be seen by the employee as too awkward to use, are not encouraged by their employer or are not available because of the devices or services currently being supplied.

These alternatives can only be pursued with appropriate knowledge of ‘why', and this requires an appraisal of the impact of current usage by line managers and the individual affected employees. This awareness encourages personal responsibility among employees, perhaps making them think twice about too many personal or unnecessary calls, and allows managers to make business oriented decisions balancing value with cost.

There is also a need to understand outside influences, such as the viability of other services, a comparison of current tariff options and best practices in place elsewhere. This is where a good telecoms manager, either on their own or with external specialised help, can provide more effective support to users than simply an itemised bill and a budget squeeze.

The business value of mobile telephony stems from the importance and timeliness of making contact there and then, coupled with the convenience of how contact is made. If companies take too simplistic a view to cutting costs of mobile telecoms that means cutting usage or users. They may of course be able to negotiate a better deal with a supplier, but according to the same research, even with falling tariffs, for most companies mobile bills are still rising. Convenience, timeliness and perhaps over familiarity are driving up the demands for usage and the number of users.

Companies have to be more effective to continue to get good value out of advanced communications, and use other tools to help manage telecoms budgets than just an axe. To look in more detail at obtaining value from telecoms, download this free report from the Quocirca website, "Total telecoms expense management".

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By: Simon Holloway, Senior Analyst, Bloor Research Posted: 2nd May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Business Community Management (BCM)—there's a new name for you. It certainly was to me when I met the EMEA management team of Inovis, John Redfern - MD, Paul Tatam - Sales & Marketing Director and Stephen Jefferies - Director of Retail. Redfern described BCM as "BCM creates a comprehensive view of an organisation's supply chain by integrating the technology, business processes and communication of the entire business community. By unifying the technology and business community communication, a company can optimise its supply chain and create sustainable value through three key avenues: increasing end-to-end visibility, reducing B2B complexity and automating the entire trading community." Now that seems to be quite a mouthful and you may still not quite get what is involved.

Let's go back to look at a typical supply chain. There you are, a manufacturer of widgets—of course, the best in the market. You have a number of partners who provide services and component parts that help you make your widgets. The first requirement to operate in today's fast changing world is that you have all the necessary systems that allow you to manage your own operations. This is normally provided by an Enterprise Resource Planning package. This helps you manage your sales and purchase orders and their links into your production orders and, importantly, your finance systems. You can manage your own inventory in your own warehouses and WIP on the shop floor. Now all manufacturers have heard of Lean Manufacturing or one of its many derivatives such as TQM, Six Sigma and so on. All these are ways to help the manufacturer reduce their costs through managing their inventory through a just-in-time principal. There is a fundamental key to this—you have to collaborate with your partners. This means you need to share information, make compromises and work for the benefit of all concerned—that, of course, includes the customer. Now come the problems:

• They don't have the same meaning for the data terms that you use
• They don't use the same ERP system as you do
• They have other customers who are your rivals so there is a need to secure sensitive information on both sides
• In a number of scenarios, it is not just 2 companies involved but a plethora—for instance component manufacturer, logistics company and you
• All your current ERPs are not very flexible and business users have developed lots of Microsoft Office based application front-ends
• A high proportion of your orders are in error with a large number resulting in deductions and overpayments
• You have a high number of stock-out situations occurring
• It is costing you between £20–40 a time to resolve data and invoice errors.

So what you need to be able to work this complex environment is something that simplifies it all by taking the complexity away, improving the visibility across the whole supply chain with better security and that provides agile integration between all partners. So what services do you need in place to achieve this?

The first piece is a communications layer that allows all members of the supply chain to exchange content with a gateway/portal that controls the access to the content dependent on role. The content exchanged needs to be both validated as well as synchronised. As content is added there is a need for an event driven process to be triggered. This will need to integrate with a number of transactions and processes in different organisations to support the business process. Therefore there is a need for transaction and services management as well as facilities to make interoperability between the diverse systems easier. To overcome disparities in data meaning, there is a need for a Master Data Management solution for the community and data that is shared between business partners. In order to manage the environment, provide business intelligence and support alerts around governance and compliance issues, the solution has to have a layer for management and reporting. This is what Business Community Management is all about. Does this sound too good to be true?

So how do Inovis tackle this? Inovis provide a suite of modular applications, all of which are built upon their Multienteprise Expert Services Hub (MESH) platform—this is designed on a distributed architecture around a J2EE clustered environment. The BCM suite comprises five key modules that support the BCM model I have described. Jefferies said, "The modular nature of BCM applications enable companies to add value incrementally, allowing quick adoption as business needs require and the ability to scale for future growth".

The Visibility module provides a "single pane of glass" view presented on a dashboard that enables the community to track and act upon the business intelligence in real time. The Transact module translates data from an array of protocols, standards and applications. The translation applications support VAN, Direct Connect, ebXML, Web Services, AS/1 (SMTP), AS/2 (HTTP/s) and AS/3 (FTP) and other network-based protocols and formats including EDI, EDI-INT, RosettaNet, and has specific adapters and support for enterprise integration to systems such as Oracle and SAP. The Collaboration module features out-of-the-box notification, events and alert capabilities. It allows the user to define the performance parameters and responses to meet specific community needs. The Communication module supports over 47 protocols and standards, including direct connect, AS1, AS2, AS3 and Value-Added Networks (VANs). The Optimize module is built around a centralised master data repository that standardises B2B documents, supply chain documents and catalogue items from the community. It features a tracking portal that provides visibility into every transaction in addition to tracking of data against pre-defined business rules. When errors are identified, transactions are quarantined and resolved before they can create downstream problems in the supply chain or other business process. These applications are provided as services run on the Inovisworks™ Value-Added Network hosted at Inovis's Tier Four Data Centre, which Inovis claim has 99.995% availability with automated failover. The service is supported by professional and educational services to enable the customer to make the most of the solutions provided.

So we have a new acronym—BCM—and a new outsource service from a well-known experienced provider of outsourced services. If you want to improve your supply chain and you have been nodding your head as I have described the scenario, you should certainly look seriously at Inovis's BCM solution.

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By: Philip Howard, Director of Research - Technology, Bloor Research Posted: 1st May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Teradata has finally released what it calls "a family of platforms" for its Teradata 12 database. I say "finally" because the buzz around the industry was that this announcement, or at least that of the company's "appliance", was to be have been made some time ago.

The actual models announced consist of the Teradata 550, which is an entry-level SMP (symmetric multi-processing) based system that scales up to 6 Terabytes; the Teradata 2500, which is shipped as an appliance; and the Teradata 5550, which is the company's active data warehouse. Prices for these systems start at $67,000 per terabyte for the 550, $125,000 per terabyte for the 2500 and $200,000 for the 5550. You can't have more than one 550 within a single configuration but you can have multiple 2500s: up to a total of 146Tb. In addition, the company has also announced Teradata Express, which is a free developer version of Teradata 12 (the company's database) that can be used on Windows servers and laptops.

So, how competitive is this? Well, the 550 runs on a pair of dual-core Xeon processors, which is sort of surprising when you consider that people like DATAllegro have been running quad-core for some time now. But, hey, DATAllegro doesn't compete much at this end of the market. If you want performance for large amounts of data then you really need an MPP (massively parallel processing) engine and not an SMP one, though the 550 could well be useful for development and testing. On the other hand, if performance is important and this is all the money you have to spend then you would be better off looking at someone like ParAccel or a low-end Netezza system. On the other hand, if you can get away with an SMP system in performance terms then why not stick with SQL Server?

As far as most appliance vendors are concerned it is the 2500 that they will be looking at. This is similarly based on dual-core processors so the likes of DATAllegro will still look down their noses at it. Some people will also argue that the 2500 uses proprietary technology in the form of Bynet which, however well proven, is still proprietary—as it happens I don't rate this argument much but I know some people do. However, most particularly, it is the price point that seems surprising: $1m for an 8Tb system is a lot of money in today's market.

Of course the 5550 is even more costly. And the interesting question will be how Teradata persuades its customers that they need a 5550 as opposed to a 2500? After all, it wouldn't want anyone downgrading from their existing system. Teradata has a fine line to tread between competing with upstarts like Netezza and DATAllegro on the one hand, and not cannibalising its existing business on the other. I wish Teradata luck but I am not sure, in this case, that such a line even exists.

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By: David Norfolk, Senior Analyst, Development, Bloor Research Posted: 1st May 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Our recent heads-up on Accurev prompted an email response from David Richards (CEO of WANdisco, Inc.), to the effect that we'd somewhat understated the level of adoption of Subversion. Well, perhaps we rather assumed that everyone knows that Subversion is almost everywhere, adopted bottom up because programmers like using it.

That said, success with software configuration management (SCM) is as much or more to do with people and process as it is to do with technology. We hear of Subversion shops where adoption has grown like a virus, perhaps subverting the good process associated with "Der Management's" choice of high-ceremony tools and others where Subversion has catalysed the hands-on adoption of an effective Agile process in places which previously only paid lip-service to process. And, how many people are aware of the difference between just downloading Subversion "for free" and buying a proper support contract from, say, Collabnet (see our article here)? Often it isn't the tools but the people using them (and their processes) that deliver success.

So, your evaluation of SCM tools needs to go a lot deeper than just the features list in the vendor brochure. Is a tool compatible with your established process? And, if you don't have a process (or don't like what you have), will your chosen tool help catalyse the adoption of a "good practice" process?

In the interests of helping you to answer these questions for yourselves, can we be permitted to place a small plug for an upcoming conference "The CMDB and CMS - the Powerhouse Of Service Management" being held at Olympia on 8 & 9 July 2008? As a matter of interest, David Richards will be speaking there, but two other things will also help to make this an essential outing for people contemplating an investment in Configuration Management.

Firstly, although vendors are involved, it is run by two independent bodies—the Configuration Management Specialist Group of the BCS (BCS CMSG) and the IT Service Management Form, itSMF International. This is the first time these bodies have presented a joint conference; although the itSMF is the "user group" for ITIL and Shirley Lacy (Vice Chair of the CMSG) is an ITIL author, so there has been a lot of past cross-fertilisation.

Secondly, the conference is presenting an innovative "Interactive Track", which will split up into interactive groups for hands-on investigation of practical configuration management issues such as, what is a configuration management database and/or configuration management system for; how do we judge its value; how can we improve the process behind it; what is the vision we're working towards and how can we bring it to fruition? And, last, but by no means least, how do we choose our tools and actually implement a real configuration management system (or, as Shirley Lacy puts it, "what works and what doesn't").

However, the real point we want to make here is that configuration management brings huge benefits—if you are prepared to put some effort into it. You need independent advice—not just from vendors—and you need to think about your requirements and the people/process implications of satisfying them. It isn't simply a question of buying a tool and telling people to get on with it. Some of Subversion's customers (and Perforce's too, for that matter) are developers adopting an SCM tool that they feel comfortable with, almost in defiance of the tools imposed on them by management. And perhaps management's choice isn't so bad in the greater scheme of things—but no-one wants tools imposed on them (and it is very hard to make a programmer use something he or she doesn't like, if it can be plausibly made to cause them to miss deadlines or become unproductive).

Nevertheless, if you do pay attention to people and process and pay attention to training the people that will use and interact with your configuration management system (so that you achieve grass-roots "buy in" to the process), good configuration governance enables business agility. We were talking with John Metcalfe of Mentor IT (also speaking at the conference, by the way) after a CMSG committee meeting recently, about some of the mashup governance issues we raised here. "Well, that one won't really be a problem in practice," Metcalfe said, "It's just a configuration management issue".

Absolutely right—but how many organisations (or, perhaps, agile departments within bigger organisations) are going to use the new mashup composer tools to jump into business mashups without benefit of a strong configuration management process underneath?

[David Norfolk is on the committee of the BCS CMSG]

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By: Simon Holloway, Senior Analyst, Bloor Research Posted: 30th April 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Oracle announced on April 29th 2008 that it had received approval of the European Commission and subsequently completed its acquisition of BEA Systems, Inc.

Oracle President, Charles Phillips, said, "The addition of BEA will accelerate innovation by bringing together two companies with a common vision of a modern service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure. Together, Oracle and BEA will provide a series of complementary and well-engineered middleware products, allowing customers to more easily build, deploy, and manage applications in a secure environment."

So passes one of developers and exploiters of Java and web services. Much is owed to BEA in this world. I wonder what the new era will bring?

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By: Philip Howard, Director of Research - Technology, Bloor Research Posted: 30th April 2008 Copyright Bloor Research © 2008

Within the data warehousing community there has been a lot of talk over the last few months (not to mention relevant announcements from Teradata, Dataupia, IBM and others) about mixed query workloads. In this