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Monthly Archives: October 2007
Making the most of our most valuable asset
As others have pointed out, enterprise applications can be annoying beasts to deal with. Most of us are familiar with a time sheet application that seems to require more effort entering the time than it did in accruing it, or the order management application that requires four screens of data but spits out an error and forces you to start again unless all the data is perfectly correct. (Though, as others have pointed out, hard to use procurement applications make it difficult to buy stuff, which might be how they are intended to function.) Enterprise applications, everything from time sheets through to portals and collaboration platforms, seem to put usability last on the list of priorities.
Innovation is hitting the top of the Hype cycle
Meaning most people using the term don’t understand what it means in terms of being relevant to whatever they are doing, but know that right now you have to claim to be using ‘innovation’ in your role, project, business unit, etc. Amazingly I saw an article that reported 75% of people claimed to be ‘innovating’ currently, which if you define innovation as doing something you have not done before is possibly understandable, but is unlikely …
Californian Fire Situation and MashUps
I guess if you wanted to take an example of an area in which extensive investments had been made to get communication of factual information right then the government emergency services would probably be a good case. Yet when an actual emergency occurs then reality is that thousands of people who are involved using Web 2.0 technologies can do a better job of collecting, collating and informing each other than a conventional centralised emergency system. …
Software as a Service – IT for the 21st century?
There are a few fundamental truths about the IT industry one picks up along the way, but which can sometimes become hidden by the rapid innovation in technologies, and the complexities of delivering business outcomes in the real-world. I’m sure you’ve got many to add to the list but the 3 that I seem to keep front of mind are: – The ‘business’ _always_ gets what it wants – Any IT system that doesn’t respect …
Who am I? – A credit card is one possible answer
There is a continual chattering on the topic of identification, with the ability to prove who you are varying slightly with the type of transaction. There are a series of possible solutions in contention for high value transactions at the moment, but the more numerous low value transactions have not been quite so obvious. However, in the offline ‘traditional’ world there seems to be a growing number of simple, but very workable solutions being put …
Radiohead leading, or destroying, the music industry
I have blogged already on the term ‘Innovation’ meaning innovation of your business model, as opposed to trying out a wide range of minor activities around technology that you have not tried before. Well this is a quick topical piece on the innovation of Radiohead this week who broke the accepted mould on how to sell music in form of either CDs or downloads by offering ‘free’ downloads. Rather than describe ‘what’ they have done …
Enterprise Architects versus Business Architects
It’s the Open Group Enterprise Architects Practitioners meeting in Austin, Texas, and it’s notable for the fact that they are the group under fire, both from inside the profession and from others outside, and the cause of the fire? SOA of course! The opening speaker Dave Linthicum set the context with the remark; ‘there seem to be two groups of people out there, the world of enterprise architecture and the world of SOA. The funny …
SAP acquire Business Objects
With the continuing focus on acquisitions and the results reducing the BI market to only one independent player, i asked my colleague Jon Gibbs for his views. Here it is below. Do not hesitate to comment and Jon Gibbs will answer you: With the recent news of SAP acquiring Business Objects after their previous acquisitions of Pilot Software and Outlooksoft, and hot on the heals of the Oracle acquisitions of Hyperion for its planning, budgeting …
MashUp to get the USA election debate you wanted
I can’t believe this site – you just have to go there. What you are looking at is the very first online candidate debate where you get to decide how to match up the issues and the performances. To quote from the site: Welcome to the first online debate. Charlie Rose interviews the candidates, but you get to compare them. Step 1, pick as many candidates as you want; Step 2, pick one issue. Then, …
R is P times I
IT Auditors. I used to have an image of them. Not particularly a romantic image. More like a well-defined image, really. I sort of associated them with IT Security Experts: slightly more serious than average, a bit of the worrying type and with an insistent urge to analyse and structure. All of these are important, crucial capabilities that I sadly do not possess. Nevertheless, in the past few months I was asked several times to …
