Monday, December 31, 2007

Not Doing SOA can invite Lawsuites?

Very interesting perspective!

Why would someone do SOA?...Two reasons:

1. To make your IT environment simplified
2. To fuel growth initiatives using the Agile IT enabled by SOA

Now, what if the corporates who have implemented SOA are more profitable than the corporates who have not implemented?. The farmer will be able to deliver more value to stakeholders than later...

David Linthicum of Zapthink group has this very interesting insight into SOA Vs Shareholder Value in the InfoWorld.

I couldn't agree more to his point. The Days are not far where the corporates are audited not just for their financial controls and security procedures, but also for effective IT systems & enterprise architecture. And if the audit reports that a company's IT is ineffective, will the stakeholders keep quiet?

So, its time for corporates to question themselves...Whether SOA makes sense for them?

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Innovation Sourcing

IT outsourcing companies are talking two things as of today.

1. If your business thinks IT is non-core to you, outsource it to us. We will manage better. We have the expertise.

2. If your business thinks IT is core for your business, then partner with us. We have the experise. We can innovate for you.

The two claims are extremely simple to understand. But poles apart. It requires totally different set of competencies to offer these two claims.

The trouble will come only when the outsourcing company has to make both the claims to the same client over a period of time. The companies's relationship with the client, branding, competency and cost would be scrutinized by the client to accept the transition.

So, the best approach would be to find a middle ground between the two, which would seamlessly, but incrementally take the service provider from stage 1 to stage 2 without much turbulance.

Enterprise Mobility - A Myth?

There is lot of buzz around Mobility these days - iPhone, Skype, WiMax and Smart Phones.

But, Are we really ready for power applications on the mobile?. Not yet.

There are two key reasons that are inhibiting the surge of mobile apps:

1. The platform is inherently limited in features. Beyond, J2ME, if one has to develop powerful applications, they have to adapt the native platforms that are specific to the devices. This limits the developer community and the portability of apps.

2. The technology is maturing. Rich Internet Apps/Flash support are still awaited on popular platforms such as BlackBerry.

3. Expensive. If one has to write a 'connected' app on mobile, it has to go thru carriers and utilize the bandwidth. This is not so easy and the bandwidth is not so cheap to consume. So, the spread of connected applications is still limited.

4. Most of the mobility apps consumers are field workers or senior management teams. The senior management people are not 'power' users, in the sense, they dont use anything beyond email. The field workers, except, white collar, are still waiting to get access to those devices in work.

Having many such limitations, we dont know what we are missing today in the mobility world.

However, things are changing and maturing slowly....

With Google working on Android platform with Open Handset alliance, there may be a new 'killer' application waiting to explode. If Google can crack it, that could be the tipping point for Enterprise Mobility....

So, Enterprises....keep watching Android...