Business Intelligence

On Bringing the Good News While Clearing Out Fungus

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:15:00 EDT

I wanted to spend a little time sharing some good news with you. I am going to be Technical Evangelist for a relatively new company called GoodData. As evangelism means "bringing the Good News" to the world, this is truly a match made in Heaven for yours truly, as I will now be bringing the GoodData news to the world. Many of you will have heard about GoodData before of course. Most people in our industry know it was founded by serial entrepreneur Roman Stanek of NetBeans and Systinet fame. Sun acquired NetBeans circa 1999 for $10M and HP grabbed Systinet in 2006 for a mere bag of shells ($100M of them actually).

Cloud Security on Ulitzer: Cloud Computing and Self-Service Security

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EDT

So here’s the rub, if MSSP’s/ISP’s/ASP’s-cum-Cloud operators want to woo mature enterprise customers to use their services, they are leaving money on the table and not fulfilling customer needs by failing to roll out complimentary security capabilities which lessen the compliance and security burdens of their prospective customers. While many provide commoditized solutions such as anti-spam and anti-virus capabilities, more complex (but profoundly important) security services such as DLP (data loss/leakage prevention,) WAF, Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP,) XML Security, Application Delivery Controllers, VPN’s, etc. should also be considered for roadmaps by these suppliers.

Join Me at the 1st Government IT Conference & Expo 6 Oct

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EDT

I hope to see you at the SYS-CON sponsored GovIT Conference and Expo 6 Oct 2009. I’ll also spend time during the day attending the day thinking through everything I’ve ever written and learned about Cloud Computing and Federal IT and hope to bring that to bear in my interactions with Jeremy Geelan, Terry Woloszyn and Barry X Lynn at the end of conference panel on Cloud Computing and Federal IT. Jeremy will focus this panel on the future and I’m sure this action-oriented panel will help bring clarity to this fast moving subject. Related posts:

Announcing: The CTOvision.com Technology Titan List

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:45:00 EDT

I’ve long sought to track disruptive IT on the CTOvision.com site, and have featured several firms on the CTOvision.com Disruptive IT list. A new feature on the site is the CTOvision.com Technology Titan List, where I’ll more closely track the activities of the Information Technology firms with the largest market cap. This is the first entry on this theme. One thing has become very clear through the years. The great powerhouse’s of the Information Technology industry continue to drive innovation- either through their own R&D or through purchasing innovative technologies for integration into their offerings. Those who want to track what is coming next should closely watch the big IT firms.

BI on Ulitzer - Connect with NetSuite's Cloud Computing Platform

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:15:00 EDT

myDIALS, a leading vendor of operational performance optimization solutions, today announced the integration of myDIALS 3.0 with the NetSuite cloud computing platform. myDIALS' Software as a Service (SaaS)-based business intelligence dashboards enable operational users to consistently monitor, analyze and act on data from any operational or business data source in order to optimize business processes. Built using NetSuite's SuiteCloud development platform, the combined solution helps companies gain maximum efficiency for their business processes supported in NetSuite's CRM, Accounting/ERP and Ecommerce applications.

John Ryan Launches "Business Intelligence" Topic on Ulitzer

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:30:00 EDT

John Ryan Launches "Business Intelligence" Topic on Ulitzer. John Ryan launched "Business Intelligence" topic on Ulitzer, a discussion around Business Intelligence and news concerning Business Intelligence. John is an experienced leader with a strong background of defining and executing company strategies. He is especially skilled in channel management, market analysis, brand marketing and selling technology products and services. He has successfully served in a number of executive positions and has been in management for 20 years. John is currently writing a book on increasing revenue generation.

The Art of Software Delivery

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:30:00 EDT

Often, estimates are initially made with an incomplete understanding of requirements. Estimation is done at the beginning of the lifecycle before the requirements are defined and thus the problem understood. How can you accurately estimate unless you know what the problem we intend to solve? At this point, they often represent wishes rather than realistic estimates. As the project progresses and the problem become better understood, estimates should be revisited. For example, NASA advocates re- estimation at defined points in the lifecycle. Often, a Project Manager will know that they should revise their estimates as they get a better understanding of the requirements, but are afraid to; they feel they will be viewed as a failure. A Project manager needs to be honest to themselves, their team and stakeholders.

If Government is a Platform, What Are People Building?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:15:00 EDT

Tim Berners-Lee has been amongst those rallying to the cause, and working with Governments here and overseas to realise the opportunities in — first — simply getting data out and — second — ensuring the structure and linkages required if Government data is to form a useful foundation upon which others really can build.

Service Semiotics and the SOA Illusion

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 08:15:00 EDT

Visual representations of Services, as well as the composition and consumption of those Services, are becoming the key to many SOA success stories. Without a visual component you can show business users, SOA becomes abstruse; furthermore, as organizations leverage Web 2.0 principles to build mashups, the visualization aspect of the Web 2.0 value proposition becomes a driving force for SOA. Understanding how Services look, therefore, is a critical part of understanding how they provide value.

Game Theory and Non Zero Solutions

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:45:00 EDT

Game theory is applied mathematics enabling an evaluation of strategic decisions. Win loose or Win Win: its a choice based on our beliefs and the perceived nature of our relationships. As the networks of interdependence within and beyond communities and nations get more complex, the more enlightened people are forced in their own interests to find non-zero-sum solutions. That is, win-win solutions instead of win-lose solutions. In leadership the measure of success is not so much whether you won at anothers expense, but whether you got what you wanted because you enabled other people to achieve their dreams and to do what they want. Learn more about how the Non Zero solution is key to traversing enormous revolutionary change. If your relationships are not based on Non Zero sums they cannot be productive long term in this day and age. Watch Clinton's brief talk about this reality in todays world.

IT Financial Management Solutions Provide Visibility into Total Operations

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:15:00 EDT

You can't well fix what you can't well measure. And so the true cost -- and benefits -- of complex and often sprawling IT portfolios too often remain a mystery, shrouded by outdated and often manual IT tracking and inventory tasks.

SOA Success Depends on Service Integration

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:30:00 EST

Service integration is crucial to the success of any SOA solutions. Traditional service integration often involve using non-standard and proprietary technologies, resulting in solutions that are expensive to develop, difficult to manage, and stubborn to adapt to the business evolvement. Java Business Integration (JBI) is an effort focused on standardizing the core architecture elements of integration architectures.

How to Deal with Information Overload

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:30:00 EST

The latest trend, which is amplified by recent market events, is the growing need for governance and control over the human work being carried out around business processes and day-to-day operations. From how a loan is granted, to how an oil rig is approved for drilling, there is a concrete need to manage and control human work and make sure it adheres to standards, regulations and best practices.

Software Componentization and Competition

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:00:00 EDT

While manufacturing principles have brought higher-quality products to a wide variety of markets in shorter production times and at reduced costs, the software industry has struggled in applying the lessons of mass assembly to new application development. Manufacturing assembly in the software world requires standard building blocks to work from as the raw materials – in this case, reusable standard software components. That’s no easy task, but achievable in the software world.

Business Agility - The Value Driver for SOA

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:45:00 EDT

SOA is a simple three-letter acronym that causes a lot of confusion. What exactly is SOA and why is it at the forefront of IT initiatives around the world? Interestingly, if you ask your peers what SOA means, you'll get a wide variety of responses. Some people will talk about modular applications or reusable components, while others will describe loose coupling or standards-based integration.

SOA with Document-Centric XML Processing

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:00:00 EDT

This article introduces the concept of document-centric XML processing and a set of emerging document-centric capabilities such as cutting, splitting, and splicing documents at the byte level. It also explains how it solves one of the most fundamental technical issues hampering enterprise SOA and XML application development: the redundant serialization and de-serialization of object-oriented XML processing models such as DOM.

SOA Vendors Focus Too Much on Integration . . .

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:15:00 EDT

We've all experienced the hype: "We're a SOA tool, and we're here to help!" However, most SOA vendors out there don’t understand the value of SOA, or even how to approach SOA. They focus on the tactical and not the strategic. Why? A tactical approach is easier for them to sell, and easier for them to understand. However, this approach means they are selling their customers short.

ParAccel and Pentaho Partner to Deliver End-to-End Analytic Database and BI Solution Set

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:30:00 EDT

ParAccel and Pentaho announced a partnership to deliver a high performance, integrated database platform and BI environment for analytic applications. The integration of the ParAccel Analytic Database and Pentaho's comprehensive BI suite will provide organizations with a cost-effective, end-to-end solution for analyzing and reporting on business-critical information at record-breaking speeds, leading to faster and more optimized decision-making.

TIBCO Spotfire Introduces Real-Time Business Intelligence

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Spotfire, a division of TIBCO, announced TIBCO Spotfire Operations Analytics, which allows customers to deploy real-time process-specific analytics applications and streamline business process control across the organization. The software embeds event processing into Spotfire's next generation business intelligence platform. With this announcement, TIBCO offers event-driven, closed-loop analytics software on the market for achieving actionable, real-time business intelligence (BI).

Bridging the Gap between Business & IT with BPMN & BPEL

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:00:00 EST

Because the role of IT organizations is to enable business managers to run their businesses better, there has been a constant need for aligning IT closer to business. We often hear business managers complain that a software solution isn't what the business needed. We have personal experience with this problem - in a previous life one of us worked for a consulting company that built turnkey applications for large enterprises.

SOA, Web Services and Mass Data Movement via ETL

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 09:15:00 EST

On the one hand, there's extreme pressure on businesses to deliver new customer offerings and innovative business capabilities, match increased competition, and deal with new partners and providers of niche services to offer cheaper service. On the other hand, most of us have legacy systems that prevent us from delivering to the business at the speed of business opportunities. Legacy applications house only parts of the business entity and the data is stored in proprietary structures.

What Is SOA and Service-Oriented Virtualization?

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:30:00 EST

Server virtualization provides an immediate reduction in hardware and configuration cost. But in focusing merely on the hardware side of virtualization, are we leaving money on the table? While organizations can reduce the number of boxes they need, and save the cost of replicating servers for virtual test beds, these servers are becoming commodities.

Building Intelligent Business Processes into SOA

Sat, 12 May 2007 11:30:00 EDT

In our daily personal interactions with businesses of all sizes we all experience sub-optimal business processes. How many times have you tried to buy an item of clothing only to find that the store doesn't have your size? Then when you ask the shop assistant, he responds that a new delivery is expected on Wednesday, but he doesn't know whether that particular item will be included. Check back on Wednesday? Familiar? Of course, we're all so used to these kinds of experiences that we accept them as normal.

SOA World Cover Story — Are You Being Served?

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:30:00 EDT

'A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.' - Groucho Marx. People have begun to understand that a properly implemented SOA has the potential to improve business agility and adaptability to changing business conditions, but we're still suffering from at least one innate prejudice common to IT folks.

SOA & Web Services - Business Rules Café

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 08:30:00 EDT

One of the hardest things for most IT departments is change. Not only do they have to cope with the technology change that is inherent in their business, they have to cope with all sorts of other change - regulatory changes, business changes, competitive changes, requirement changes, process changes, policy changes. All this change creates a maintenance nightmare so that in many IT shops most of the time is spent not in building cool new applications but editing and 'fixing' code in old systems. Business rules, one of the fastest-growing markets in application development technology, offers a way to stop worrying about change and learn to love it.

The Evolution of SOAs

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 15:45:00 EDT

Mainframes were the first computing platform of corporate information technology. As the industry has grown, mainframes have continued to evolve and integrate into the various incarnations of enterprise architecture. In fact, as the first computing system, mainframes enjoy a special role when looking at enterprise architecture, as mainframes have participated in virtually every flavor of architecture, starting with the incarnation of IT, when a mainframe was the architecture.

SOA Web Services Journal: Enterprise Data Integration

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:00:00 EST

A large company found itself handicapped by an ornery snarl of siloed applications that compromised its agility, performance, and profitability. Its IT department was constantly behind schedule and over budget in hand coding point-to-point connectivity among supply chain, financials, CRM, and other packaged and custom-built legacy applications.

Managing Enterprise Data Complexity Using Web Services: Part 2

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 16:00:00 EDT

Enterprises are increasingly feeling the need for shorter lead time for decision making, the need to extract and present KPI (Key Performance Indicators) to management, and the need for enhanced response capability. These business needs are not in sync with the technological challenges such as the presence of heterogeneous technologies and disparate enterprise systems (e.g., ERP, SCM, CRM, etc.). This situation gets complicated with the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions resulting in the various business units within an enterprise having their own data warehouses. Adding to this is the increasing number of users inside and outside the enterprise who need real-time access to information.