Incentives to Change!

I have insisted in the past that IT shops being run as a Business with General Management Principles. This approach would not necessarily cultivate creativity and collaboration in the organization. There is tremendous amount of scope for innovation in reforming IT organization structure, incentive mechanisms and roles/responsibilities. Hardly very few companies have experimented with those kinds of ideas.

I wanted to highlight some of other interesting ideas that got my attention in the recent past. US Federal Government has recently announced (and ended) a program called 'Cash for Clunkers'. This program encourages the car owners to trade in their old cars with new/used cars with financial incentives. The objective of the program was to promote energy efficiency and get rid of old cars. This initiative was also aimed to trigger some demand in the automobile industry.

Now, How do we relate this idea to IT?. Here is a perspective from CIO.com. This blog post in the CIO website proposes an idea - Cash for IT Clunkers. Can we promote a program where users can trade-in their legacy hardware/software assets with new/cutting-edge technologies which would result in end-user productivity & efficiency and obviously some financial benefits as well.

My thought process is that these kind of mechanisms need to be experimented in the CIO shops / Internal IT organization itself. These mechanisms will give an opportunity to rejuvanate the IT landscape with creativity and get rid of older and expensive systems.

I also wanted to highlight some of the similar ideas happening in other industries...(especially in India)

1.Levis (Jean Trouser Brand) recently introduced a campaign where people can buy a Jean on EMI (Equated Monthly installments). For example, if a Jean costs Rs. 1500, and an ordinary consumer (who is used to pay only Rs.500 for his Jean) would be able to avail the benefit and pay only Rs.500 for 3 months. Thats creative!. Through this program, Levis tries to capture the market share of middle-class consumers who are not their regular customers, but always aspire to purchase high-value items. Would we see such ideas in procuring new product/tool licenses in IT industry?. We'll have to wait and see.

2. Recently, there is a company called BagSutra floated a business where people can rent expensive/designer bags on daily rents. The benefit to the customer is that they dont need to buy those luxurious bags for themselves. At the same time, they would get to change the bags very ofen by becoming a member of this program. I dont see any direct relationships with IT industry per se. But I think SaaS gives this flexibility.

In summary, creative pricing & marketing ideas would certainly accelerate the adoption of new solutions.

Social Media coming of Age!

Except LinkedIn, I am not an avid user of other social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter. But, it looks like I may have to adopt sooner.

Here is the case - Recently I was planning to go for the new movie release - Disney Pixar's UP in Bangalore [Planning to write about Pixar's Technology Excellence soon]. The movie is Disney's one of the first 3D ventures. And I was trying to check if 3D feature is enabled in Bangalore theatres. To my surprise, I found the same query raised by a viewer in Facebook and one of the Bangalore multiplex theatre chains has promptly responded to the query. Wow!, this was something we have never seen before. Of late, Companies are recognizing the importance of Social Media tools. They not only create an identity for themselves in those tools, but they are also becoming active in interacting with their audience and contributing to the overall experience. That is commendable!.

Second case - I am frequent reader of a personal investment magazine Outlook Money. In their recent issue, I found that the magazine has established an identity in facebook & Twitter to facilitate expert investment advises, theme based discussion forums, Twitter based current advises. I am sure any customer who is financially savvy and active in personal investment planning/execution would greatly benefit from these initatives. And it could also potentially add tremendous amount of new readership to the magazine. I am planning to signup soon!

The takeway is that Social Media is becoming a serious Business!.

Promising Acquisition - II

In the last post, we talked about Dell-Perot - A product company acquiring a Service entity to expand its reach. In this post, I wanted to highlight another interesting combination - An IT Service company investing in a hardware product company. Curious to know more?. Read on..

Accenture invests in a product company called Bug Labs. Yes, the company is teaming up with a tiny hardware product manufacturing company called Bug Labs. It is a move away from Accenture's conventional business model.

In a nutshell, Bug Labs provides a base [open-source] hardware module that can be enhanced to build a whole new device by adding other hardware add-ons such as accelerometer, GPS and GPRS connector and so on. Reminds me of another similar open source hardware company called Chumby, that I read about couple of years ago.

Once you have your own custom built hardware device, you can deploy your own business applications on top of the device in as little as two days. The advantage is that the device can be completely tailor-made for a target company and can be a great value add in rapid prototyping of new products/services.

Accenture is also planning to charge its customers based on pay-per-use of its underlying software services instead of selling the product. Do visit the BugLabs site, you will see a new ecosystems of devices and applications emerging.

Promising Acquisition - I

In the recent past, I have had the opportunities to deal with application rationalizations, replacements/migrations and had the chance to recommend suitable SaaS solutions in replacement for on-premise solutions. What do you think the response might have been?. Well, the customers are definitely interested in the solution, but they are not bold enough to take that first critical step due to various reasons such as requirement of new contracts/agreements, data security, provisioning, user management, switching/transition costs.

My point of view - the ideal & easiest situation for the end customers to adopt SaaS would be - the current application custodians becoming the actual Application owners. Yes, the IT service companies who currently manage the applications, to transform themselves as SaaS provisioning companies in the respective business domains. The Service companies that provide the seamless switch to their end customers from being an owner to consumer will add great amount of value.

If that happens, it could open the door for a brave new world where IT service companies start to create their own SaaS ecosystem to serve each other and their respective clients.

Of late, we are witnessing quite a few acquisitions in the market that could lead the way to the new ecosystem - HP-EDS in the past and Dell acquiring Perot Systems last week. Will Dell-Perot combination give HP-EDS a run for its money?. Not necessarily.

The question to be asked is - what is the new value that could be brought by these acquisitions to the end consumer?.

The IT infrastructure products & services market is clearly being disrupted by various factors such as virtualization, cloud computing/SaaS, etc. And companies are rapidly responding to the disruptions by complimenting their capabilities by suitable acquisitions.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, would these new IT infrastructure + Services combo deliver those new value Options or spend the next couple of years in just restructuring companies to increase more revenues?. We'll have to wait and see!

Beginning of In-Sourcing?

There are several news clips that instigated me to write about this topic.

First, there was an interesting post in HP-EDS blog saying Offshoring is becoming irrelevant!. And Offshoring is typically meant to solve yesterday's problems. Obviously, as anyone would, I was also infected with the curiosity to get into the details and got some information in this blog.

Second, there was a blog post from the reputed sourcing advisory firm TPI. This post claims several emerging trends in the Enterprise IT sourcing units. During heydays, the Enterprise IT sourcing units would hire the consultants from the advisory firms like TPI to enable them to take informed decisions in outsourcing/offshoring. This blog post states that this trend is drastically declining and the days of large deals are almost over.

Couple of other interesting trends..
- Large Deal sizes in the range of several millions spanning across multiple years are clearly declining
- Companies have started to experiment with multisourcing models / sourcing from best-of-the-breed combination of vendors
- Offshore contracts are evaluated like never before for due diligence and continuous improvements
- Companies are expecting the vendors to collaborate to create new/additional value for them- Bespoke / Custom application development projects are declining
- Procurement slowly but surely migrates from services to Online Productized Services (SaaS) & Business Process Oriented vertical solutions that would solve a distinct problem
- Large companies wanting to regain or rebuild a control mechanism over the vendor ecosystem

Now, What does this mean for Enterprise IT units?
- The emerging patterns stress the need for continuous cost savings and service delivery innovation from the vendors
- In-sourcing / In-housing of some of the key IT competencies are clearly emerging
- As stated above, if sourcing needs to be smarter in terms of business processes, new technologies and architecture alignment, it needs to be staffed with cross-functional teams. The teams typically need to have business analyts, sourcing managers, and Technical/Enterprise Architects
- Techniques like Agile also requires more client participation leading to staffing in Internal IT- These newly organized IT teams try to demonstrate IT's value to business by attempting new standards/mechanisms

How does this unfold for Outsourcing / Offshoring companies?
- End-to-End service offerings no longer going to yield interested audience from Enterprise IT- Companies need to find ways in which they can compliment and synergize with a prevailing vendor ecosystem within a company, rather than trying to pitch its own siloed sales story
- Continuous improvements and Innovation in Service Delivery will become order of the day
- As the emerging patterns create the need for 'smarter/leaner' staffing in Enterprise Internal IT, the vendors will also be expected to match with equally smarter staff on their end. No more labor arbitrage!.

Net-Net, Offshore vendors will need to work harder and smarter to retain and grow their existing ADM businesses!.

Strategic Short-Cuts!

Thanks to my friend and fellow Architect, Naren for influencing me to write this blog post. I was so impressed with the concept that I felt I had to write this post.

Are you managing an IT shop that consistenly spends on Operate & Maintain Budget?
How much of your annual IT budget goes to 'sustain' your existing systems?
How much of it goes to 'extend' your existing landscape with new business capabilities?
If your spending is more inclined more towards 'sustain' mode, there are chances that you are carrying quite a lot of debts.

Yes, the subject of this blog post is about 'Technical Debts'. Here is a short article by Martin Fowler on Technical Debts. In this note, Martin defines Technical Debt as something that is accrued over quick and dirty ways of doing things.

In this note, as well as other articles that I read, Technical Debt is defined in the context of Application Development projects, where the Dev team is forced to pay the interest payments in the later phases of the release cycles. When I mention interest payments,it is the additional cost incurred in future development activities due to bad design/technical decisions that were made earlier in the cycle.

It was quite interesting to correlate this debt with Financial Debt! More than defining Technical Debts in a Project context, I was curious to understand how the idea is applicable in enterprise IT context, especially in the legacy application maintenance/support space. In typical IT spending, lions share of the budget goes for maintenance/support/operations and Technical Platform Refresh/Upgrade, etc. The question is - Does the lion's share goes to keep just the lights on? or extend those legacy apps with new capabilities?. Typically it goes for lights on operations and the organization depends largely on Heroes (be it people or IT Service Companies).If the company wants to get an insight on why the maintenance spending just stays flat on legacy apps or every single fix takes a huge amount of time, Its time to assess the Technical Debt that it carries. Once the company becomes aware of the Debt, it acquires the capability to manage it effectively.

The good thing that I liked about this idea is that it makes the bad decisions/short-cuts 'explicit' and 'quantifiable'. It is also an effective mechanism to communicate the risks to business/General management forum in non-technical language. I see a lot of relevance for this concept in the Architecture space, where I can defend the spending on Architecture/Design phase by stating the future costs on 'interest' payments.

In matured companies, you will not only report out how much of Technical Debts that you have created out of a project, You will also track and manage the Debt on a periodic basis. The companies can decide to payoff the debt once for all or pay it in increments, depending on the nature of the risk.

To thrive on this concept and make it actionable, the key pre-requisite that I see is the open culture. In a culture, where people will not get penalized for reporting the problems and there is an open atmosphere for discussing/debating the risks and mitigation options, those would be the places Technical Debts will fly.

Here is a plug-in from Codehaus for Technical Debt. The plug-in gives an indication on effort/cost required to reimburse the debt and the kind of debts detected in the code. (e.g. Code Duplication, Complexity, Violations)

Big Software Plans for Amazon Kindle?

In february 2009, I wrote about Amazon's kindle evolving into an application platform.

Looks like its becoming true. This Businessweek's article confirms my speculation.

Some of the possible directions that the article indicates:
- New applications that run on Amazon's kindle e-Book reader
- An Online App store like iPhone/BlackBerry application store
- Kindle evolving into a delivery channel for content. example - Blog Publishing
Amazon already provisions selected internet blogs thru the device
What else could be delivered to the device directly?
- Email applications/Web Browsing.

Once Amazon provisions an SDK for application development, I am sure there would be interesting possibilities!.

Digitize Your Wallet!

Citibank is introducing mobile based credit card payments in India. It is an integrated solution that Citibank is piloting along with other vendors such as Nokia (Handset provider), Vodafone (Telecom service provider), VivoTech (Technology provider) and Mastercard (Credit Card & Secure Payments Authority) and with selected merchants in the city.

Using this technology, the customers will be able to make contactless payments in the Point-of-Sale locations.

The customer downloads the credit card into the mobile application and protects the same with a password. When the customer makes a purchase in a retail store, he taps the mobile against a special reader device which performs the transaction. As I understand, a Java application installed on the mobile phone communicates with the card reader using Near-Field communications technology (elder brother of Bluetooth?) and communicates with the reader.

The reader & the application are from the technology company Vivotech. From technology perspective, Vivotech empowers the Bank to provision the credit card information securely to the mobile phone over the network provided by the Telecom Vendor. Vivotech also empowers the merchants with contactless readers.

It looks more convinient than pure-play mobile payments, where the mobile application sends an SMS or instructions to the bank directly to make payments. Here the idea looks more of digitizing your wallet and carrying it along the way. And there are no additional costs involved in data services consumption for payments as there is no need to send an SMS or connect to Internet.

The interesting perspective is that Citibank believes that it is not just a technology trial. But, a business model trail. Just imagine, if the mobile application can accept information from the card reader device at the merchant location - the possiblities are many - individualized discounts, gift vouchers/coupons download, personalized marketing. And all of these will result in additional revenue to the companies!.

We will have to wait and see how the technology picks momentum in Bangalore!.

I would be willing to sign-up but the catch is that I need to have a specific NFC-enabled Nokia handset.

Technology in Bathing Soap?

This post is on a lighter note, but definitely has a technology perspective and caught my attention recently.

Hindustan Unilever, a reputed FMCG company recently conducted a market research in a village in India. The intent was to collect the usage patterns of their famous product - Lifebuoy - a bathing soap. As part of the study, a small microchip was planted inside the soap and they were distributed to selective set of participants who signed-up for the research. From technical perspective, the microchip was based on motion-sensor that captures the data when the soap essentially 'moves' when used by the customers. After the study, the chip would be shared with the company to assess the customer usage patterns. It was a brilliant idea!. This idea reminds me lots of interesting opportunities/ideas in Enterprise IT space. (for example - potential in remote infrastructure management?)

Now there ends the tech story. What would happen if the same soap falls into the hands of customers who are totally unaware of the presence of the chip and then they eventually find out the same?. - Panic :-). Yes, thatz what happened. When few customers found the presence of the chip, they mistook it for a hidden camera and that led to confusion. Later the company had to step in to clarify the actual situation. Innovation boomerangs! :-)

Mining Hidden Gems!

Have you ever heard of a non-human receiving a patent?. By Non-human, I mean a robot kind of application. Yes, thats true. HP's auto-innovation achieved the same. HP calls it as 'Genetic-Programming'. The idea is an application could analyze the 'genes' of earlier inventions and point to evolutionary advances. Thats interesting!.

In any organization, there are plenty of creative ideas, suggestions, initiatives always flow thru. only few of them sustain, rest of everything gets abandoned or goes unnoticed. If the organization does not have a formal way of capturing those ideas/suggestions, then there are chances that people are re-inventing the wheel again for persistent problems. The question is, Can the past knowledge help in determing or predicting the future?. Can a software application help mining those ideas and recommend suitable directions?. And HP claims to have an answer.

Am sure there are chances of looking at false positives!. But the brighter side is that it would help analyzing the existing data for useful patterns, relationships and understanding its impact in the future. For me, it looks to me its an application of Predictive analytics in the Innovation space. HP claims that it uses the concept to streamline their supply chain and come out with new ways of predicting future sales.

I believe the concept/idea is applicable across variety of domains within the enterprise, especially in the area of Idea/Innovation Management.

Innovation from Coca-Cola!

This is outstanding!.

When I first time read this newsbit, I was thinking it sounded like a 'Telematics' solution.
The idea is simple. Coke is introducing a 'freestyle' wending machine this summer. Using this machine, the customer will be able to pick and choose the flavor/colories/water of his choice and make a beverage using a touch screen interface.

Ok, so, what is so Techie about it?. Here comes, the vending machine transmits the customer choices using a verizon uplink to Coke's data center and updates the choice information in SAP and Business Warehouse. The vast amount of choice information getting uploaded to the warehouse can give unique insights into Coke's next product of choice. That's innovation!.

The presss release says Coke has been designing this machine for the last four years. And some of the technology used are RFID (for flavor dispensors), Microsoft Windows, and SAP BW with Verizon Data services.

This is an excellent case of work where the company tries to co-create its future product by working along with its own customers, not in isolation. Apart from giving insights to future product design, the data can also lead to other obvious benefits such as stock replenishment, regional preferences. It can also potentially make healthy recommendations and customized offers.

Google - Your Next Enterprise Portal?

I was not a big fan of Google Apps until yesterday. But, this innovative offering from Cordys-Google partnership changed my perception. If you have been thinking Google Apps are a bunch of applications that can just manage unstructured content, think again!. Google Apps is slowly but surely emerging as an office business application platform.

Cordys delivers structured workflow capabilities to Google Apps suite. It provides a Hosted environment for building business process applications in the cloud. Sure! - There are hundreds of vendors providing Cloud-based BPM solutions. But,the Cordys solution has been exclusively designed to support Google Apps.

Don't miss to checkout the process demo!. I am impressed with the demo that shows the way in which workflow solutions can be designed, deployed and accessed from Google Portal. The Workflow solutions have been built around Google Apps tools such as Word, Excel documents.

The demo workflow not only integrates with unstructured content like Google Apps, but also with structured sources like SalesForce.com. The icing on the cake is that - like Google public portal, where users can drag and drop widgets into their personalized portal - the enterprise users would get the same experience as the public Internet Google portal. The Enterprise user can have a personalized dashboard that presents the Inbox [that lists the action items], Google Charts, Google Maps Widgets!.

If a user-friendly business process solution can be designed and deployed in a Portal-like environment at a rate of $50 per user per year, Would you still need those expensive Enterprise Portals?. Atleast, for those least-critical, simple workflows that were built, hosted and supported in expensive data centers?. I strongly believe the time has arrived to re-look at the entire IT landscape within a company and challenge their TCO.

In this offering, the kind of applications that can be built are situational, process-centric mashup applications like Budget Approval, Change Control. With this capability, organizations of any size can mix-and-match existing on-premise services with live services on the web to compose busienss process based solutions.

Would this be a starting point for considering Google Apps as an Enterprise Portal? Would this be the beginning of Google Apps emerging as the tough competitor for Microsoft Office's future vision - the vision of evolving Office as a Business Applications platform?.

Digital Body Language!

This is impressive!. It's a new term that is floating in the Internet for quite sometime. One of my colleagues was recently discussing with me about eCommerce merchandising trends. And When I had to do little bit of research in that context, I came across this book.

Digital Body Language is defined as the art and science that revolves around detecting and understanding prospective buyer's signals and intentions to better communicate with them. Here, we are referring to buyers signals that are made online. But, wait a min - Aren't we used to this idea before?. Is it just an old idea just re-incarnated with new name?. How is it different from clickstream analysis, deep personalization, user profiling and segmentation?.

In the conventional sales cycle, the sales executive meets the prospect and tries to read his body language to derive insights on the need, timing, authority or any concerns. Now, with the DBD, these traditional techniques are not just adequate, for the simple reason being that buyer have become much more smarter. Buyer has access to information, intelligence and fellow customers' network like never before. Before venturing into a purchase, buyer performs a significant research online and forms a opinion about the product. Does the sales executive has enough clues on the prospect's signals?. Digital Body Language is the new set of concepts, tools/techniques to decipher the propspects interests and act accordingly.

For the first time, I am seeing somebody seeking to understand a customer's behavior far more deeper in a specific business context, correlating real-word experiences. The approach itself is so humane! And that's where it impresses!. The conventional techie approach - eCommerce COTS products/tools - typically address the marketing needs by providing pointed solutions. And that usually works only when those prospects visit "your" site, and not when they visit "other" sites.

In this case, the concept has been applied for Sales and Marketing. But, I see this as the beginning of period where the businesses try to understand and carve-out a 'Digital Persona' of a prospect. The very thought of understanding the 'persona'of an Internet user is exciting!. Here, the 'persona' is constructed as a synthesis of prospect's signals and intentions registered across a wide array of channels/websites.

In the case of sales/marketing, I look forward to see sophisticated internet tools that enable capturing and deciphering digital body language. In the long term, I strongly believe DBD has huge potential to be applied across business functions, not just sales/marketing.

Moments of Truth

I was introduced to a new term called 'Moment of Truth' in BPM context. According to IBM, the Customer Service Processes - The business processes that directly interacts with the customer - are typically associated with Moments of Truth. It further defines that the moment of truth is a point during the process where the user is in a position to form an instant opinion about the service or process. These moments of truth are becoming extremely important as they play vital role in building customer loyalty, expanding market share, and remaking entire market places. It also enables the companies to closely watch the interaction points with the customer, generate insights from them, challenge them and innovate to make those interactions cheaper, simpler and better. Hence, Business processes which have moments of truth are becoming valuable assets to the company.

Now, there is another perspective. Yesterday I was introduced to another newstory by one of my colleagues, saying Twitter has launched a Search Engine. Now, using this Twitter search engine, one can do a search on vast amount of Tweet posts. Tweets are no more personal messages. As mentioned in this story, Tweet messages are increasingly becoming a platform to share customers' experiences with a product/services from a company. Some of my close friends are using Twitter in India and I have personally watched those Tweet posts. Handful of those messages will be 'feedback' messages. For example, they may post feedback about a restaurant or Telecom service provider. Now, there is a tremendous opportunity. It is an opportunity for both the consumers and the companies. Consumers can get tremendous insights as to what other people are talking about the products/services they are interested in. Companies can generate insights about new product/service ideas, gaps and feedback. I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter or any of its partners come up with a tailor-made analytics solution on top of its search. In a way, Twitter serves as the feedback point for Moments of Truth.

Now, with the combination of above two concepts - Moments of Truth in BPM and Twitter - You get a closed-loop system that would enable the companies to not only just collect the feedback but also to continuously improve the business process based on the customer's inputs. In fact, it can happen in near real-time. Am certain the concept & technology has got great potential to be deployed in the enterprises who are serious about their customer service, as it would play a significant role in increasing the customer's perceived value on a company's offerings and enable the companies to control, manage, and innovate on those customer-interactive processes.

Oracle-Sun Deal : Threat to SAP NetWeaver?

This perspective from CIO site is interesting. It claims the biggest loser in Oracle-Sun deal is SAP.

I would say - yes and No. Yes, its a threat to SAP. But SAP has got Options to mitigate.

Considering the significant investment SAP is making in Java based NetWeaver suite to promote its eSOA offerings, nobody would have predicted that the future of Java would fall right into the hands of SAP's very own archrival - Oracle.

The CIO article finds that Oracle will have a huge competitive advantage over SAP having the control on shaping the future of Java platform. And consequently, using the Java platform to shape its Oracle Fusion and Business Applications suite in a competitive architecture.

Now, What would SAP do?.

There are two options - First, SAP may mitigate the risk by innovating a java-hybrid technology or a new standard or Intellectual Property in building the eSOA / Netweaver stack.
Second, SAP may mitigate the risk by not investing in Java. Startling?
Yes, Its true. I was doing little bit of research to find out what SAP could possibily do...And following is the observation..

Here is a prediction from another SAP analyst who confirms SAP is going to increase the investments in ABAP language compared to Java. The strategic positioning of the two different languages ABAB and Java would be something like this - ABAP would be used for building Core Business Suite Web Services while Java would be pushed to the 'Edge' where it's primarily leveraged for Mashups/Composite Apps/Front-ending apps. And SAP's new investments in ABAP language confirms the same.

So, ABAP is here to stay for a while...But would that give a competitive advantage to SAP when compared with Oracle?. - We'll have to wait and see.

There are game changing acquisitions happening in the industry.

And I believe there are quite a few consolditions still pending...As I observe in the industry, every other software vendor is becoming increasingly conscious of their strengths and weaknesses, and they are all out to pursue complimentary acquisitions.

Unlike in the past, these upcoming acquisitions are game changers and they are bound to create transformational impact on the Technology industry.

Business leads IT!

This is an impressive story!. The story was featured in Indian daily - Economic Times, 2nd April, Bangalore Edition.

A group of companies in Garment exports industry in India have decided to setup an IT firm. The key objective behind this IT firm is to produce software for their business operations, so that they could save over Rs.1000 crores every year. About 10,000 business units are expected to benefit from this new venture.

This is a perfect example for Co-Opetition. The member companies may be competing in their respective market segments, since they are in the same industry. However, they have come together to solve a common problem. The proposed ERP-class solution will help them track export consignments in a real-time manner through IT solutions as well as mobile phones.

By investing in developing a new ERP software for their own needs, they can dramatically reduce/eliminate their individual investments in IT. Moreover, they also plan to go for a hosted solution where the individual exporter can pay around Rs. 4000 per month [approximately. 100$] apart from one-time license fee.

Currently, this group of companies spend close to Rs.200 crore [around $50 million] on IT every year & they are planning to develop the product with a seed money of around Rs.8 crore [around $2 million].

In addition to the bottomline savings, the association also aims to rise the topline by selling the IT solution to other similar industrial clusters in India. The association is talking to Microsoft and SAP to co-develop the software.

Some of my observations from this story:-
- New business models are emerging in ways and means we aren't familiar.
If a company needs to be competitive, it should not be just asking the question - Are we ready to adopt?. Instead, It should ask - Can We shape such trends?
- Business houses no longer shun themselves away from IT & Cutting edge Technologies. Instead, they are about to Lead others.
- Business Solutions at Compelling Price Tags is the way to go.

If a federated association can drive such inspiring initiatives that can improve bottomline & topline, is there anything Enterprise-IT can learn from those practices?

Disruptor in the Data Center

In the last few years,I have had opportunity to work with with Enterprise Architects in Infrastructure Management Teams during the deployment of new systems/applications. The key observation was that we spent lot of time discussing the application sizing requirements, security requirements and network requirements to arrive at a suitable Solution Architecture [infrastructure] that would evenutally solve the problem at hand.

The actual 'System Integration' between the hardware resources like servers, storage, network/firewall typically needed to be hand-crafted and hence took significant time and effort. The scenario would be much more complicated if we were talking about Internet facing applications or the complexity of the application was high.

Coming from the Application/System Architecture background, I am thinking - Wouldn't be possible to come out with several design/architectural patterns in Solution Architectures [Deployment/Infrastructure architecture] as well. For example, Internet transactional system can have a pre-integrated topology and intranet system can have its own pre-defined / prescriptive topology and based on a standard model and the additional discussions can be had according to the very specific project requirements.

Am yet to talk to my Infra Architect counterparts to understand the viability of such a thought process.

But, It looks like Cisco has observed this very practical problem prevailing in the data center and come out with an 'Architectural approach' to solve this issue. Cisco's new offering 'Unified Computing System' is not centered towards a specific solution architecture. It is positioned as a holistic data center platform where many such 'Solution Architectures' can be crafted and deployed seamlessly.

In this new offering, the Platform is a hardware + software combination that has the 'inherent' capability to orchestrate server, storage and virtualization with high-speed network equipments. Yes, I said 'Inherent' capability with no 'plumbing'.

For the first time, Cisco is entering into the data center market, not as a network gear provider but the 'Server provider'. And Cisco has taken this daring move disrupting its own long-term partners such as IBM and HP.

By providing a 'Pre-integrated/Architected System', Cisco aims to eliminate the manual system integration that typically is the case in data center operations. Am personally excited with the 'Architecture approach' as it attempts to think out-of-the-box. [hardware box :-) ]

Cisco CTO claims that today's data centers are fragmented and innovations like virtualization are not enough. Applying those innovations would only increase the operating expenses, She states. I couldn't agree more!.

To support Enterprise data center requirements, Cisco has roped in several partners such as EMC and VMWare to work in a unified Environment. The UCS System will have the capability to seamlessly orchestrate various data center resources from its partners, thus resulting in a plug-n-play environment. With this approach, Cisco's UCS emerges as the 'Brain' in the Enterprise Nervous system [Infrastructure layer].

When I read the offering in detail, I draw strong similarities between Cisco's Unified Computing System and the SOA principles. The UCS effectively implements the SOA principles to seamlessly orchestrate different heterogenous resources using industry standard protocols.

This is clearly a disruptor to the data center/infrastructure industry. And Cisco actually in the path of realizing Sun Microsystem's Visionary statement - 'Network is the Computer'.

Net Neutrality and SaaS

When Google offered to ‘co-locate’ their edge / cache servers along with ISP locations, there was a big uproar saying Google is trying to violate net neutrality. The doubts raised were - The deal between ISP & Google may potentially lead to provision of ‘faster lane’ to Google Sites compared to Other Web Sites, And the ISP will have the liberty to prioritize Google traffic over others leading to discrimination!

Google then clarified there is no exclusive agreement in place that could lead to discrimination of Internet Traffic. But, with the advent of proprietary and commercial network Services [SaaS], the Net Neutrality would be subject to debate again in the coming future.

Already, Amazon bundling its Wireless services with its Kindle device is receiving enough criticism for providing exclusive network access to its customers.

In case of Enterprise SaaS consumers such as users of Amazon Web Services or SalesForce.com, they would need to share the ‘Internet pipe’ along with other public users when it comes to consuming those services over the Internet. This would significantly impact the Quality-of-Service levels / SLAs of the respective SaaS providers.

Now, When SaaS goes mainstream and the adoption rate increases, the downtime and SLA violation may simply become unacceptable [because people would be paying for the SLAs] and that would force SaaS providers to adopt new strategies including a formal policy change in Net Neutrality and consequently the economics of SaaS consumption [who will pay for those prioritized pipe?. Amazon or Consumer? Will the policy be applicable to Global Customers and Global ISPs?]

WebServices killed EAI. Cloud Computing/SaaS kills what?

Cloud computing/SaaS has the potential to virtually eliminate Internal IT completely from the enterprises. The widespread adoption of Salesforce.com confirms the fact that operational functions - such as HR, Sales/Marketing – today has the ability to bypass Internal IT departments and go ahead to procure the On-Demand applications of their choice. Is it a threat to Internal IT? Ok, that is a different point of discussion altogether.

But, today, I thought I would write about the role of Technologies in the context of Cloud Computing Space. The very fact that applications being pushed out of the firewall to an external service provider literally ‘masks’ or ‘virtualizes’ the complexity in the architecture and technology behind those applications. The simple/direct consumers of SalesForce.com do not need to know the complexities such as its architecture, technology, etc. They all need to know the consumption details of SalesForce.com services.

In fact, Cloud proponents wish that Business users having the ablility to deploy, consume and compose Cloud Services, without needing technical help. And that’s where the real power of Cloud is waiting to be unleashed!

Here is another story from CIO.com. In a recent survey, CEOs perceive that packaged applications are more reliable than Internal IT developed. And they don’t really care what platform/technology the apps are running on. All they need is business performance and SLAs.

In conclusion, Business desires for Solutions isolated from the complexities of Technology and Platforms. That leads to the need for more ‘abstraction’. Just like WebServices came few years ago and provided the much needed abstraction behind heterogenous platforms, Cloud Computing/SaaS is destined to make significant changes in the Technology industry.

In the context of Cloud computing and provisioning business services to end-consumers, Does the end-consumer really care whether it is serviced by Java or .NET platform?. Not really?. Do they care if it runs on Linux or Windows ? May not be. Would they be worried if it runs on Open Source or Commercial platforms?. Again, Not seriously. It’s the SLA and the integrity of Services that matter to the end-consumer.

This trend will influence the procurement/adoption/experimentation trends of Technologies and Open source frameworks within the walls of Enterprise IT. We may not see wide-spread forums / communication across Enterprise IT users in the long run, as it will get influenced and diffused by Service Providers.

It is the Service Providers who will majorly nurture and develop the platforms and Technologies and not necessarily Enterprise IT shops. That’s a significant shift in the ecosystem of Technology. We could expect umpteen number of small and medium service providers providing pointed solutions in niche industry segments. And it is the Service Providers who will contribute and shape the Technology / Infrastructure & Framework landscape. And Enterprise IT will be forced to provide more value towards real business solutions.

And I also foresee significant consolidation in the Platforms / Infrastructure space. Why do we need various kinds of application servers in the Cloud, while the end objective is driven by performance?

A new market is emerging where we will see hybrid tools and technologies that will enable Enterprise IT shops to manage their data centre operations as well as their Public Cloud operations together from a single window. Am sure IBM is working on such a ‘Hybrid Tivoli’ tools and systems. In fact, one of the interesting note that I read was IBM is working on some sort of ‘Cloudburst’ feature where the load from Internal data centre is dynamically distributed to public cloud and seamlessly serviced! Wow!.

As I wrote before, We are going to witness a highly decentralized, but centrally managed ecosystem for Enterprise IT.

Amazon Kindle: Next Application Platform?

Am not going to write about Kindle 2, the recent upgrade from Amazon for its Wireless Reading Device. Of course, there are lots of interesting elements - The new version is unbelievably thin and packs lots of interesting features like Text-to-Speech translation.

But, I am interested in exploring how Kindle could evolve in future?

Couple of interesting directions:
- Kindle application could be made available in range of mobile devices including iPhone. Amazon is already talking about this move.
- Book Reading to go multi-channel. One could start a book in mobile, continue in computer and finish it in Kindle.
- What would happen if Kindle provides an app store like iPhone? What kind of new applications could emerge? It could lead to interesting applications that will make Book Reading experience all the more interactive. [I would like to annotate the book pages with a stylus, like we used to underline sections on paper books J]. Someone said they would even like to sync their enterprise document management system with Kindle!. Innovative!
- Kindle for Schools? There could be possibilities of offering personalized experience for Students to take their text books on Kindle and associated applications.
- The last thing that I would want to see in Kindle is to evolve into a multi-tasking PDA device.

Google tries to enter your House!

Google has announced that it is developing a software utility called PowerMeter to track the energy usage at your home, right from your personalized iGoogle portal. The PowerMeter application can provide real-time, granular data on the energy usage. For example, some of the metrics that can be tracked could be - How much does it cost to leave your TV switched on all day? Which appliance in Home uses more power every month? How does your energy consumption compare to your neighbors?

I read from Wired that similar applications have been attempted in the past. But, the key difference is that Google has enough clout to work with the Hardware manufactures & the Government to make it happen. The Hardware manufacturers produce the ‘SmartMeter’ devices that can interact with Home appliances and wirelessly interact with Google data center. Government can help in standardizing those meter and data formats involved in communication. According to the US Government stimulus plan, 40 million homes are scheduled to get these SmartMeters over the next three years.

I see opportunities for Significant shifts in this initiative:

- This could be the beginning of ‘Internet of Things’ – a beginning where information is extracted from every single real-life object, transmitted and analyzed to produce actionable intelligence.
- This initiative is being implemented from Google.org. So, I am not sure about Google’s business intentions here. But, if they do have, this could be the door-opener for new market altogether – a convergence of Google’s Information Technologies with Automation and Control systems in the Real-world.
- I wish Enterprise IT shops take a lesson from here - If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it – I wish a CIO/IT management dashboard that provides real-time information on budget/value/quality of IT spending!

Future is all about Fusion!

If you think we are not going to see anything innovative in 2009, you will be surprised!

Ford and Microsoft partners to deliver the most compelling In-car infotainment service. In the recent Consumer Electronics Event (CES 2009), Ford has demonstrated its future vision of its In-Car Infotainment Service - ‘SYNC’. Don’t miss to watch the video!

The Sync service has been in the market for quite sometime now and Ford plans to continuously improve the service in the new models coming in 2009 and 2010. The service was initially positioned as a competitor to GM’s OnStar. However, Sync Service has an edge over OnStar in terms of Technology partnership (Microsoft) and Voice-Reconition technology.

Ford-Microsoft partnership attempts to take the Human-Machine Interaction to the next level. One of the most interesting and geeky features which I liked in the vision is the feature of a ‘personal assistant’ avatar called ‘Eva’, who appears in the ‘cockpit’ of the car and converses with the Driver. Eva ‘understands’ your preferences and manages your address book/calendar and helps you to find news clips or restaurant bookings.

Apart from common mobile/media player functions, the service also provides Driver services like Vehicle health report/Diagnostics, Traffic/Directions and 911 Assistance.

Ford also partnering with Best Buy and its service arm Geek Squad to market and service the Sync compatible mobile phones / accessories.

Interestingly, the Sync service perfectly syncs with Microsoft Software+Services vision where an individual can seamlessly move between car, office and Home staying connected without interruptions.

Who is Growing despite Recession?

It’s IBM. In the news article, IBM has found a formula for Growth – Even During Recession, the analyst writes that IBM has emerged as a resilient company with flawless execution and Strong Profits.

While the rival Tech companies such as SAP remain extremely cautious and conservative in their spending for this year, IBM has announced a strong outlook for the year 2009 financials.

Not to deny the fact that IBM also figures in the layoff bandwagon, I believe it’s relatively minimal when compared to its rivals’ numbers.

Some of the salient points that I like to draw from this story:
- IBM has built a Strong, highly diversified and integrated business model over the past years. This brings shared customers, positive impact of one business unit on the other / cross-selling & up-selling opportunities / tremendous amount of credibility built over long years / Continued Investment in Technology / Highest Patent Generator year-after-year.
- Significant investments into Emerging Markets to capture their local markets
- Focus on High-Value Chain Software/Service offerings that maintains huge profit margins
- Well-thought out acquisitions in the past like ILOG, Telelogic, Rational, Webify and the subsequent integration into IBM family of products.
- Fantastic Cash Flow of $7.9 billion, an invaluable defense in the time of recession
- Solid Roadmap for the core products. Interesting to see the outlook for the WAS products including the ‘Rainmaker’ technology.

So, Is it all hunky-dory? Not really. I have observed IBM being very slow in responding to new trends like web 2.0/Mashups / RIA or Cloud Computing. They do have offerings in those segments, but not necessarily leading the market in terms of innovation.

Tech Bits!

Each of the following bits deserve a separate post. So, Pls treat them as preview to my future posts.
- SAP is Timeless Software – SAP’s CTO Vishal Sikka writes that the company believes in incremental innovation and its NetWeaver product suit just follows the same philosophy. It promises its customers a seamless, incremental migration to the new platform without needing a radical transformation of the existing infrastructure.
He also states that SaaS paradigm is suitable only for pointed solutions and not a broader, end-to-end encompassing ecosystem based solutions. Sounds believable?

- I have written about the viability of internal clouds within the company’s own data center. And here is a company doing just that. The company, Cassatt, provides Cloud computing software for Data Centers. The software promises to make the data center efficient, Green and Agile. Sounds very interesting!. Companies which are skeptical about engaging the Internet clouds for security/integrity/SLA reasons have the option to try out and experiment in their own data centers.
You know what – The Company says, it may take another 15 years for companies to fully migrate into a Cloud platform. They believe whatever cloud software that we see in the market is just 1.0 and there is more work to do. As I have written before, the Chief Engineer of Cassatt writes that its all about the Architecture and ilities when it comes to Cloud computing. Couldn’t agree more!

- IBM Smart SOA – Statistics indicate that about 60% of SOA implementations done by IBM are at maturity level 1. And IBM aims to shift the focus of SOA programs to demonstrate business value. This move by IBM clearly indicates the change in the industry’s perspective of SOA programs and the rising demand for demonstrating value.

- I received an email carrying the subject line ‘Future of IT’ and I was curious to find out more. The white paper goes on to say that automation of IT processes is the Future of IT. The perspective is that IT management processes should be automated around ITIL/CMDB practices and the management/resources should be relieved to connect and engage with Business. All this, boils down to the question – ‘Do we need an ERP for IT?’

I strongly believe an ERP for IT will shift the focus of IT from inward to outward and the most important aspect - aligning with business.

- Palm has released its new version of Smartphone 'Pre' and Operating system. As one analyst writes, every other smartphone that gets introduced to the market of late, tries to outdo ‘iPhone’ obviously. And it only adds some more credibility to iPhone, that its is seen as the benchmark to evaluate any new phones coming to the market. Instead of adding features and trying to outdo iPhone, it would be interesting to see if the companies demonstrate the real value brought by the new product. One more phone in the Enterprise Mobility space?. We will have to wait and see.

Don’t Waste the Crisis!

Yes, Don’t Waste the Crisis. WhenI first heard this statement, I said 'Wow! What a perspective?'.

It is a question of whether we choose to participate in the recession or make the most of the recession. The one who sees this downturn as the opportunity will emerge stronger when the market starts to recover.

We had our CIO addressing the company yesterday. And this is the quote, he said, was given by a Wall Street Analyst in the Company’s Senior Leadership Meeting. Every company sees this recession as a litmus test for their management competency. The market is watching industry leaders on:

-How do you respond to this downturn?
-Are you able to sustain your growth rate despite the downturn?
-What is your strategy / approach to manage this recession?
-What are your core values?
-What are your strong competencies?
-How robust is your business model?

Remember, the market will have different set of questions during haydays.

What does it mean to IT?. IT is relieved to certain extent from the pressure of responding to growing market trends at least in medium term. Now, it’s the question of whether IT chooses to wait and watch and respond when the market picks up. Or, IT sees a tremendous opportunity in the period of least business events and makes an attempt to internal transformation.

For the past few weeks, I see lots and lots of people talking about Anne’s (Burton group analyst) comment on ‘SOA is Dead’. As someone said, these statements help to generate conversations and engage in a debate.

It’s like Wall Street Collapse. We went to the extent of calling the failure of Capitalism, forgetting that it’s the Failure of Capitalists. Sameway, I would say, it’s the failure of practitioners / Enterprise IT management folks to recognize the value of SOA and pilot it within the company and not the failure of SOA, the paradigm.

I have been participating in the forums of EA and SOA and people literally spend countless hours and efforts in Semantics and Definitions. What is EA and What is not EA?. Though am an Architect myself, I should admit that EAs are self-centered and more focused on roles/responsibilities and what they should do and What they should not do. I agree it is of paramount importance. It is important because we need to communicate to the stakeholders on what we do. However, I strongly feel we need to move beyond that.
We need to focus on ‘what problems do we solve?. How do we help?. Or more exactly – How can we be of immediate help to the company in these tough times?’ Again, We should be talking more about the practice and its and not just the practitioners.

Gartner finds that in 2009, about 50% of the EA efforts will be stopped due to ineffective results of those programs. David Linthicum, the famous SOA evangelist, once said, if your EA efforts are not effective, Stop it! Don’t do something if you don’t pursue it whole-heartedly.

While many of the pundits want us to believe that recession is the best opportunity to invest in innovative, small projects that would bring long-term benefits, it is hard to implement it. Because, for the simple reason that money is tight!.

Instead, Gartner says, EA office should ‘Stop the Projects’ if they don’t result in near-term business value! It’s a different perspective altogether! One wouldn't get credit for stopping something usually!. But, this is the time! :-)

Cost optimization is the need of the hour! Whoever does that will be Hero in the Company!

Watch out for Yahoo's Net-Enabled TVs!

This is really Cool!.
Its a news that re-affirms my viewpoint that Future of IT is all about Highly Personalized & Innovative User Experiences.
Yahoo and Intel are working together along with a whole list of partners to bring the Internet experience to TV.
Yahoo aims to transform the TV watching experience from a passive mode to much more active activity. It plans to bring its most-popular Widget Technology to the TV, that can be controlled from a remote control. The Widgets can be downloaded at real-time from a Widget Gallery. And Widgets themselves can connect to the Internet in real-time and download data such as Weather, Stock Quotes, etc. And All this experience comes at no cost of compromising the TV experience.
Yahoo has made significant progress in this area. Do check out the wonderful demo and the follow-up update. Yahoo believes that the technology will penetrate the mainstream market in 2009 and will be dominating the Consumer Electronics Market in 2010.
What does this mean to Business Technology/Enterprise IT? - You have got a new channel to deal with. :-) Especially for Media, Publishing and Entertainment verticals, its a revolutionary technology development that will take those industries to new markets.

Biz Development 2.0

I don’t know if any company in the world has opened up its core business data as Open APIs for free consumption. Best Buy has done it recently with the help of Mashery. Mashery, the API management services company calls it as Business Development 2.0. Want to know Why?. Continue to read further.

Best Buy has taken all its product data such as product images, descriptions, user comments, pricing and make it available in the form of APIs. These APIs can potentially be used by bloggers, social applications, or Mobile Application Developers to develop new touch point applications for interacting with Best Buy.

While the results of this move are yet to be seen, the initiative itself is indeed adventurous and ground-breaking from business perspective. Am sure the Open APIs would certainly lead to proliferation of innovative applications/Widgets in innumerable delivery channels.

For example, an end-user can built a wish list out of the Best Buy products and place it as a Widget in iGoogle homepage. An expert blogger who constantly reviews digital cameras can embed a Point-of-Sale widget right next to the same blog post.

What does this all mean to its business? – More Touch-Points lead to Increased Traffic. And Increased Traffic would result in Enhanced Revenue. Another interesting claim that Mashery makes is that, by introducing these Free APIs, the business can acquire new Partners without depending much from IT. Isn't that threatening to Enterprise IT shops?. Its high-time that Enterprise IT wakes up.

Best Buy claims that this could lead to new Business Model Innovations.

I would go to the extent of categorizing this initiative under Open Innovation. It truly demonstrates the Openness characteristic of the Internet and holds the network effect of web 2.0. As mentioned in O’Reilly Technology Blog, these initiatives re-draw the boundaries of the traditional organization. Closed companies are going to find it more and more difficult to survive against Open companies. I couldn’t agree more!

Some of the other companies that follow this Open Path are – MTV Networks, World Bank and Reuters. World Bank has opened its Global data sources in the form of free programmable APIs. According to the bank, the data can be mapped, visualized and mashed in unlimited number of ways that will help develop a better understanding of trends and patterns around key development issues.

It looks like the trend is to essentially translate internal, once-proprietary corporate data into free-flowing rivers of information so that the Internet can consume it instantly & innovatively.

No Excuse for not having Enterprise Architecture

If you are observing clearly in Enterprise IT shops, a new governance practice has gained significant ground over the last few years. And that is ‘Project Management Office’. The mission of the Project Management Office is to establish standard Project Management System of processes and Tools that ensures consistency in Project Management methods practiced across the organization. The key objective behind PMO office is to ensure sustained success in project execution by adhering to best practices.

The need for PMO must have arrived with the increase in the volumes of projects and top management needed new ways to manage the risks and ensure the predictability of those projects in terms of cost/schedule and resource parameters.

Now, take a look at this perspective. The PMO office, however small or large it may be, is a support function to the actual delivery. It performs Governance, Mentors, Audits, Tracks and Reports the Projects/Project Managers. It provides indirect benefits to the IT organization and not contributing to the project directly.

Now look at this, as mentioned in this blog, the value (of PMO) is not always measurable in the company’s financials. But the increase in predictability and control can be related to the bottom-line, with a proper governance structure and controls.

I also had a chat with PMO focal in my company. And He reconfirmed the fact that his office is often challenged / questioned to assert its value.

Now, If you are an architect, Does it sound like a déjà vu?. I see a strong similarity between the PMO functions/challenges with Enterprise Architecture office.

But, my observation is – the CIOs who are not sold on Enterprise Architecture Office and its value have invested significantly on PMO offices. Howz that possible? Do you see a interesting conflict here?

The fact is simple – Enterprise Architecture is not understood. Period.

If CIOs can unquestionably invest in PMO offices and depend on its services to ensure their success, why don’t they invest on EA office?. As a matter of fact, PMO’s value cannot be directly measured.

As my fellow architects, I did have suspicions on the EA practice and its value and read about various new thought processes EA 2.0, etc. But, Am completely convinced that EA can add significantly value to the IT organization irrespective of its position within the company (say cost centre, service centre, or strategic partner). Here, I refer EA as a IT management discipline (not necessarily business architecture)

In fact, as a starting point, for cost starved IT shops, EA elements can be included in the PMO office. Sounds like a Good Idea?

Now, Who has the responsibility to sell ‘Enterprise Architecture’ same way as PMO office?. Who else – We, the People – The Enterprise Architects.

1. We ourselves should be first convinced about EA and its value for the company
2. We should have the ability to communicate the value of EA to the CIO and Leadership in unambiguous terms with lot of conviction. A Lot!
3. We should Deliver Value and Live upto the promises!

The mission statement for EA Office can be as simple as - To enable the IT in implementing consistent, reliable, secure and useful IT solutions that are aligned (to strategic business goals), responsive (to changes in business/Technology) and cost-effective.

Who leads the RIA space?. Adobe or Microsoft?

The battle for RIA market share is clearly intense between Adobe and Microsoft. Existing install base, browser/device support may indicate that Adobe is evidently leading the pack. However, Microsoft has its own advantages. I wouldn’t have thought in favor of Microsoft, had I not seen these wonderful Siverlight demos. It’s exciting and never before seen user experience in RIA space. I would love to see both of these companies to compete in the business applications market in addition to media/entertainment market.

In the recent Adobe MAX 2008 event, it has been announced that Adobe has plans to expand the collaboration with SAP. I see more advantage to SAP compared to Adobe in this deal. The key question to be asked is ‘How does Adobe leverage the experience of working with SAP to evolve its RIA product portfolio? Do they use that experience to nurture and mature the RIA platform, so that it becomes a preferred standard for developing RIA clients for critical business applications?

Apparently, Microsoft doesn’t need such a partnership because Microsoft itself is a provider in the Enterprise Business Applications/Infrastructure/Platform segment. (e.g. BizTalk, Microsoft Dynamics/Commerce Server & .NET framework)

The silver bullet that I see in Silverlight that has the potential to kill Adobe is the support for .NET framework. Building applications in Silverlight means that the developer can take advantage of the languages such as C#, VB, Python or Ruby, whereas Adobe has only one choice ActionScript. In the Silverlight 2, the Windows Presentation Framework has been fully integrated. Hence, the .NET developer base can take advantage of their existing skills to build new, powerful cross-browser Rich Internet applications or Windows applications using Silverlight. And remember, the .NET framework is built and time-tested to develop enterprise-class applications.

Adobe’s ActionScript is clearly evolving over the last few years to achieve the maturity required for building strong Enterprise client applications. I still remember the times in 2002 when I evaluated Macromedia Royale (the code name for Flex then) to transform a product’s user interface from its traditional HTML to RIA. Those days I believed RIA was a radical change. I still do, in the way web applications can be conceived and designed with RIA paradigm. But the difference is – We have more choices now in 2008, in addition to Flex.

Sure, Adobe has been aggressive. BBC has built its iPlayer using Adobe AIR. (AIR being an RIA & offline web app platform). Some of the Silverlight enabled Websites have migrated themselves to Adobe Flex. However, will it be sustainable to compete with Microsoft in the long run?

Live Mesh Possibilities!

Couple of years ago, when I was designing a custom application over BlackBerry sync, I was facing some real technical challenges - like interfacing with Device driver libraries, handling character encoding between PC and BlackBerry device, etc.
Hopefully, Live Mesh would solve most of these issues for Windows based devices once it's released. The prime objective of the Live Mesh, as I understand, is to provide a developer friendly interface to the Mesh Platform so that useful applications can be seamlessly written. So I expect a much more user-friendly, coarse-grained services from Live Mesh platform that will relieve the developer from handling low-level issues.
On seeing NetFlix Taps Microsoft's Silverlight for Streaming movies, Blockbuster working on a Live Mesh app to deliver video on demand and seeing a whole set of Hosted services release from Microsoft, I am starting to believe that Microsoft is steering the industry in the new direction, as it claims 'Software+Services'.
To be specific, I was curious to understand the possibilities of LiveMesh, beyond File and App synchronization. Obviously, File sharing/Device syncrhonization alone cannot be the USP of LiveMesh. And I hoped there must be something more to that...And I was not wrong.
Got some interesting findings about Live Mesh possibilities..
- Live Mesh is not just a point solution for file sharing. It is a 'Platform' in the Cloud that is intended to provide synchronization services across various devices including SmartPhones and PCs.
- The main intention is to provide developer friendly platform & services so that useful applications can be built on top of the platform. Developers can sync not just folders/files. They can design custom objects and sync across devices/apps. Yes, I said 'apps' across devices.
- There are two aspects to Live Mesh. 1. Building Rich applications in the PCs that can synch/transmit data and settings across devices. 2. Ability to extend Websites to a world of devices (The second one is really interesting)
- What are the new capabilities a Live Mesh enabled Website will provide? Here are some scenarios.
- You will be able to export your transactional data from an online banking website into your personal device of choice. And you will be able to do this when you are online and logged into Online Banking website. We can expect to see lot more websites Mesh enabled, as it moves to Production ready status.
- If you are a frequent travel website user, the website can pickup your calender data from the Mesh (Your own personal Mesh, It could be from your PC or a SmartPhone) and recommend travel plans accordingly. Sounds cool! It may also mean that you will be able to perform a Single Sign-On from the Travel website to your Live mesh account?. May be :-)
- Now, add to this Live Mesh technology, some juice of data semantics and custom logic, you get a new range of 'highly personalized' applications that truly implements the software+services hybrid architecture.
But, We will have to wait and see how long its going to take to see these kind of apps in reality!

Fast Track to Enterprise Architecture!

Microsoft may get criticized for their exclusive pro-Windows solutions. However, I have found their contributions in MSDN towards SOA, Design Patterns, Software Factories and Architectural Journal are significant and much more open. I have found some of their SOA literatures are technology-agnostic and architecture-centric.
Continuing on the Enterprise Architecture topic, I would like to bring the recent update from Microsoft on EA to my readers. Microsoft is coming with an Enterprise Architecture Toolkit, essentially a ‘Software Factory’ for Enterprise Architecture. Sounds very interesting!.
The EA toolkit is not released yet, as far as I know. However, in one of the msdn blogs, the toolkit’s offerings are listed. If someone is building a EA for their enterprise by preparing some of the EA artifacts and developing new processes, the good news is – You don’t need to start from scratch. All the templates that you will need, the processes that you will need to define are available in the Toolkit pack. All you need to do is leverage those base templates to customize for your Enterprise specific needs.
Typically, Software Factories are applied for Software Development requirements like Web Services or Smart Clients. For the first time, the concept of Solution Accelerator / Software Factory is applied to the Highest-level of Abstraction.
However, the catch here is that, the toolkit is based on Microsoft product set – Microsoft Visio, Word, etc. Not bad!. Most of the times, architects use those tools anyway to prepare EA artifacts. And the traditional EA tools are expensive!.
Some of the cool things which I liked are – Templates for ARB, Using Portal and Workflow features essentially bringing the collaboration aspects into the architecting process!.

Cloud Computing Consequences!

What is the impact on Enterprise Architecture with the introduction of Cloud Computing and SaaS?
One word – ‘Serious’.
Here is my perspective.
- On the first look, it may seem like Enterprise Architecture is irrelevant in a company if your complete IT is running on Cloud Computing, SaaS and Outsourcing/Offshoring. In fact, I was of the same opinion last year. However, Its not the case. In fact, the complexity is going to get multiplied.
- We have moved from Monolithic systems to Client-Server to Tiered Architectures. With SOA comes the truly Distributed Architecture. And with Cloud Computing and SaaS, We are moving to “Globally Decentralized/Distributed Architecture”.
- With Global distribution, we will be able to compose business processes out of services from SalesForce.com, Services running on Azure/Amazon and host the resulting composite in another cloud platform. Does that sound too Cool and Flexible!. Of course. But, It is also exponentially complex to manage in the long-run!
- Some of the challenges - What are the failure modes in these Global composites? Can we optimize the attributes of those composites? How do we trace/troubleshoot, version control these composites? What are the foreseeable security threats in these Global platforms?
- Integration between these huge Clouds/SaaS platforms? - Welcome to the world of Software-Intensive, Massive System of Systems! :-)
- If the first generation EA guided us in dealing with System of Systems within an Enterprise, the next generation EA should help us in addressing ‘Massive System of Systems’.
- With this new complexity, not only Enterprise Architecture gets necessary, but becomes absolutely critical in the IT ecosystem.

Business Case for Enterprise Architecture

This is my 100th Blog Post!. :-). Thanks to all the readers who frequent to my blog!.

Well, Contrary to this blog post title, am not going to talk about the finer details of preparing a business case for an Enterprise Architecture initiative. Rather, I am going to talk about ‘What makes the client to ask for a Business Case?”.
Here is a little background…
Statistics assert that only 5% of the companies practice Enterprise Architecture. And Most of them are successful leaders in their businesses, not just IT.
When I attended Zachman’s conference last year, I was surprised to see Zachman being cynical about the realization of EA in the industry. He, in fact, went on to add that it may take next 10-20 years to see EA truly alive in the companies.
I am also closely watching some of the Enterprise Architects’ blogs. I don’t see convictions by looking at their blog posts titled – ‘Enterprise is a Joke’. ‘Enterprise Architects do only powerpoint presentations’. ‘There are not enough skilled architects’, etc.
In the recent past, when I was evangelizing EA among the Top IT leadership, I often get questions on ‘short-term quick hits that can be achieved by EA’. That’s a tough one to answer!
Now the question is – ‘Why there is lack of faith in IT?’
And many of us know the answer – Because, the teams often fail to deliver, despite spending lot of cash, effort and energy. The harsh reality is that IT does not believe in itself that it can deliver something significant, valuable and comprehensive.
If IT doesn’t believe in itself, How can we expect Business to believe in us to treat us like partners and not as order takers?
Now, getting to metrics…I happened to read this revealing Datamonitor whitepaper on EDS site. Though the intent of the paper is to analyze the maintenance issues Vs adopting new innovations in existing applications, I found something very relevant and interesting to our topic of discussion here.
Some of the observations are:
- IT departments that are overwhelmed by application maintenance do not see the benefit of planning
- Datamonitor believes that skepticism of these overwhelmed decision makers can be largely attributed to a sense of ‘hopelessness’ or ‘burn out’ over formalized IT strategies. Such decision makers are operating in a state of survival rather than one of enthusiastic Optimism
- IT departments see the value of planning primarily in the ‘build’ phase and not in the ‘run’ phase. They don’t really care too much about the ‘lifecycle’ of those application in the ‘planning’ phase.
- And now, this compounds the maintenance complexity and inhibits the company from embarking into new initiatives – creating a vicious cycle.

What a resounding observation!

As someone said, adopting EA is like a lifestyle change – like following a fitness regime. And that cannot be realized without discipline and commitment to change!. The problem is not with EA. But, the way we look at it!

Software to Change Human Behaviors

The title looks persuasive? Yes. It is!
When I looked at the list of new management gurus by CNN, one of the Gurus who generated curiosity was BJ Fogg, Founder and Director, Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University. As mentioned in CNN site, the Big idea of Fogg is that ‘Mobile technology will be the most powerful way to influence customers in the next 15 years’.
Well, I am not going to talk about Mobile technology in this blog post. And I am not going to talk about web 2.0 either. This topic has relevance but not much significance with Web 2.0.
But, my interest was, How Software applications in general, used in combination with specific media like Web/Mobile, can change the attitude and behaviors of humans. The pitfall in this approach is that it can impact the customers both in the right way and the wrong way!
And for all you know, sites like Amazon are already leveraging these concepts for quite a few years. The amazon’s reputed ‘Recommendation engine’ that suggests books based on the past like-minded buyer’s preferences/behaviors, is actually trying to influence you saying ‘Why don’t you buy that book as well?. It seems to be good (by displaying the rankings)’ Well, this may be called as Marketing, to be precise in the business context. But, It is actually ‘persuasion’ in a larger context. Same with, Amazon reader list application recently added in LinkedIn.
For the first time, I am hearing somebody deeply thinking about how technology can be linked to human attitude, their thoughts and behaviors. This perspective empowers the technology field like never before and I see a ‘Wow!’ factor!. As Software Developers/Designers, we might have done this persuation in the past unconsciously. Now, the same design theory is being approached in more formal and scientific manner.
Now, if Technology and Software applications has so much of power, the question is, what are we doing with that? Are we leveraging those technologies to write powerful applications that generate positive impact among people?.
Stanford is working on an interesting field named as ‘Captology’. Captology is defined as the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products/technologies created for the purpose of changing people's attitudes or behaviors. In fact, Stanford has already published couple of books on the same topic and they are available on Sale in amazon.
I happen to read the excerpt in the book and the author talks about some of the interesting thoughts on how Captology can have a deeper impact to the level of user interface design of graphical applications.
It would be interesting to explore how these concepts and technologies can be applied towards ‘change management’ / ‘Organizational Design’ in the context of Enterprise 2.0.

Beyond Application Virtualization

If one has observed, Microsoft has really been aggressive in terms of venturing into Cloud computing and Hosted Services offerings recently. One of the latest additions to its Hosted Services portfolio is the release of ‘Application Virtualization’ products. With Application virtualization, windows applications can be streamed to the Desktop from the Intranet/Web, cached locally and stored with end-user specific preferences. This solution will eliminate the installation requirements of thick client applications.
Ok. What does this mean to the Enterprises?
For me, it looked like another way of delivering services to the end-users (applications-as-services??). Users who are tired of click-and-walk HTML applications have already migrated to Rich-Internet-Applications. Large product vendors like SAP have embraced RIA significantly in their product roadmap. I am not surprised, given the limited choice available in the RIA technologies and the ‘cool’ effects bought by Adobe Flex/Java Fx. However, these RIAs are predominantly built on top of scripting technology platforms such as JavaScript and ActionScript. These technologies have their own strengths and weaknesses. But, in my view, they don’t come closer to traditional and mature programming platforms such as VC++, especially when considering aspects such as Security. RIA platforms themselves are maturing and they have a long way to go.
My intent is not to say ‘Streaming’ applications will replace ‘RIAs’ or vice versa. They will co-exist. But, I foresee Streaming applications will be much more powerful compared to RIA in terms of bringing enterprise features and rich user experience. Some of the considerations which I can think of when evaluating Streaming applications are:
- Intranet deployments, Native applications, Maximum usage of local processor, Feature/Functionality Rich, Composite applications (Intranet/Web), Binary streaming resulting in improved performance of apps
I also believe ‘Streaming’ applications can be the door-opener for developing ‘Composite applications’ over Services. I have always thought, like Services in SOA world, which are composable, reusable and discovered, we should have a way to find, compose and reuse ‘Service Client applications’. Do you agree? And ‘Application Virtualization’ & RIA together can serve this purpose.
Today, we have marketplaces for Web Services. We have app stores for Smart phones. But, Pls note these apps available for iPhones are tightly integrated to their back-end Services (Service Providers). So, you get to download the entire application as ‘one capsule’. But, Is it possible to download just the client module/service consumer and talk to different service providers?. And ‘app virtualization’ and ‘RIA’ can lead to that possibility.
In future, we may be able to all the following in the ‘Cloud’
- Find services
- Find Aggregators / Composite services
- Find ‘application clients’ of different types (virtualized, web, mobile)
- Find Infrastructure services for clients (security modules, preferences, caching)
- Compose all these diversified services and make a personalized cocktail out of it J
- And finally, install this composite app as a simple Shortcut in our desktop.
- And this combination can be dismantled and remixed based on the end-user preferences and business needs on an ongoing basis.
Read this interesting prediction on ‘Hardware virualization’. I was inspired by this story to think about the possibilities in ‘Software world’.
In this story, I am not just fascinated by the technology/platform’s technical strengths. But I am truly excited about the kind of choices and valuable features these technologies can bring to the end-users.
To start with, I would be interested to see ‘SAP’ client available as a virtualized client app!

Top 10 IT Trends for 2009

While Gartner has published the Top 10 technologies for 2009, I wanted to take a closer look at the trends and identify what would be important from CIO office perspective. I give significant focus to CIO office because the spending from his office is going to have a ripple effect on the whole ecosystem of Enterprise IT – be it hardware vendors or software product vendors or outsourcing/offshoring vendors.
Given the current climate of economic conditions, if one would need to describe today’s state of CIO office, it would be ‘frugal’. Everyone in the industry will know this open secret. However, the dollars spent on these gloomy days are expected to generate more value when compared to spending on cheerful days!. The key challenge for the CIO would be ‘How to act creatively when being stingy? & How do I generate more value for the money?’.
I have always believed technologies that bring real&tangible economic value will outshine the technologies that are darlings of soft benefits/tall promises. I believe the following 10 Trends will help the CIO to find the answers:
1. Data Center Rationalization
Like the fragmented spaces in the computer memory gets compressed and made available for applications, the under-utilized data centers across regions will be rationalized / consolidated
2. Virtualization
Within the Data center, the under-utilized servers will again be consolidated and virtualized to save cost and space.
3. Open-Source Migration
The companies that have always endorsed licensed products will embark on the iniatives to evaluate everything from Open –source community – right from OS to application frameworks. Every COTS product in the company will be evaluated for their necessity and alternatives.
4. Custom applications rationalization
The application portfolio will be under manifying glass to see the alignment and value. Poor performing apps will be evaluated for layoff!
5. SaaS Adoption
The high-expensive on-premise software apps will be questioned and SaaS offerings will be tried out in pilot mode. This will be a perfect opportunity for SaaS vendors to prove and get their new clients!
6. IT Security
As the IT ecosystem welcomes new entrants like Virtualization, Open-Source and SaaS, there will be re-newed focus on existing IT security practices. However, this activity will not be a choice, but a mandatory activity!. If any enterprise chooses to skip this step are putting themselves into danger!. We may see new set of enterprise IT security products emerging in this area!.
In fact, these factors will also lead to re-look of licensing models of products within the enterprise!.
7. Innovation in Offshoring/Outsourcing contracts
OK, How do we get money to do all this?. Who is going to pay for it?. That’s where the innovation lies. No vendor will do it for free. Neither the CIO would wish to pay for it. Here comes the testing time for the relationship maturity of CIO office and IT outsourcing/offshoring vendors. There will be a call for new contracting models where the vendors will be required to innovate and come out with options for rolling out these cost-conserving initiatives in a multi-year roadmap. Whichever vendor gives a helping hand to the CIO will go a long way!.
8. Metrics based IT Management
CIO would question his own management on the way the IT is being managed for efficiency and effectiveness. New way of demonstrating the business value of IT needs to be in place to get funding for new development projects. Which means, get ready to be number-savvy!. This will have implications on PMO-centric organizations as well as Enterprise architecture centric organizations.
9. License negotiations
Product license newels/upgrades will be challenged and asked for alternatives. If a cost-effective alternative is feasible and can be developed, the IT will not hesitate to say good bye to those products!
10. Enterprise Architecture
Really smart CIOs will do serious introspection on their IT strategy and they may realize the need for an Enterprise Architecture! And certainly they will not implement all the above 9 steps in bits and piences but within the framework of their rejuvenated IT strategy!.

Beginning of the End of ATM cards?

Can you draw money from ATM without using ATM card? Sounds innovative?. Our conventional thinking says thats not possible!. And thats where lies the potential for innovation. Business case - In US, there are 106 million people who do not have bank accounts. If there is no bank account, there is no card. But how do they transact?. Can banks ignore that customer segment?. In fact, the banks have to help them to transact.
And here is the solution - A new vendor - Privier has comeup with an innovative solution where an existing account holder can transfer funds to another person, who is in immediate need of cash and does not have a bank account. The fund transfer can happen from ATM to ATM, Web to ATM or Mobile to ATM. Note, the fund transfer doesnot happen from one account holder to another. Instead, it happens from one person to the bank. Along with the transfer, a 10 digit code is sent to the recipient. The recipient can then walk-in to an ATM, key-in the 10 digit code and withdraw the money.
Are we seeing the beginning of the end of Cards in Banking?

'IT matters' for Google

I would recommend you to check out what Google.org does. In short, Google.org aims to use the power of IT to address the global challenges of our age. First, I should say, the aim itslef is so high, that it positions Google as a special company that cares for the world.

Today, I came across an interesting initiative by Google.org - To track Flu Trends in United States. It could look like Google Trends, that projects the patterns and trends in search of specific keywords. However, the key distinguishing factor in Google.Org initiative is that Google is trying to accurately model real-world phenomena using patterns in search queries. In simpler terms, if there are more searches for Flu symptoms, there is a possibility that there is a flu breakout in that specific state/region. It gives a state-wise graphical representation of Flu Trends in US based on the aggregation of related search queries.

Now, if the tool can help predict the outbreak, it would certainly help a lot in preventing too. And early detection of the outbreak can reduce the number of actual people who get affected. Instead of constanly debating whether IT matters or not, I think we should appreciate companies like Google that really does something about and makes us believe that IT can help in solving real-world problems

High Performance Computing - Return of Mainframes?

On this Monday, I attended a conference on High Performance Computing sponsored by Microsoft. The keynote was delivered by Microsoft HPC Division General Manager. It was good to see that HPC is slowing transitioning from Research use to commercial use. Of late, there has been lot of interest in Manufacturing companies to explore HPC capabilities for Engineering and Simulation. I see lot of possibilities in Global Datawarehousing and Fraud Detection in Financial services too.

But, we have miles to go before we those apps in mainstream. As we have witenessed in the industry for quite sometime, the progress in Hardware space always outperforms the progress in software product industry. Today, we are capable of talking about HPC, Grid and Large scale computing. However, we dont have intelligent software products or applications that can leverage the full power of those powerful systems. There are couple of reasons - 1. The fundamental way of programming software applications has so far been single threaded. We dont have an out-of-the-box programming model or a product infrastructure that would seamlessly enable today's developers to write applications that can execute in parallel within themselves. Of course, Intel and Microsoft are working hard in bringing advancements in those areas. 2. Only when the foundational infrastructure software becomes available, the toppings or so-called end-user applications will start to emerge (for example, engineering applications or animation applications) including Developer tools.

On the same conference, I asked the Microsoft GM about the possibilities of running MS SQL Server on Windows 2008 HPC server and the answer was 'Not Yet'. Of course, the SQL Server product has to be re-architected to run on the HPC platform. The same applies to rest of the commercial products like analytics services or integration services.

It sounded to me that we are returning to Mainframes era with Open standards! :-). Here too, Windows HPC has the concept of Job Schedulers which the old mainframes used to have. But this time, You can execute WCF compliant services too as part of Job. So, the HPC platform is 'Service-Oriented'.

Doing Business with Social Applications

Sometime back, I was discussing with my fellow architect – ‘I am reading a lot of books on the topics of my interest & am also part of lot of special interest groups online. It would be interesting to know what the revered members of those groups are reading and if I find them too valuable, I may eventually buy those books as well’. Sounds very natural. Isn’t it?
Last week, I see LinkedIn launching a social application platform with 10 different applications. And one of them is Amazon Reader, which enables sharing the reading list with one’s network. On seeing the application snippet in LinkedIn home page, I said to myself ‘Wow!!’. There are two reasons behind the Wow factor – One, my idea was kind of realized J and another on the true platform potential of LinkedIn that can open up whole new set of opportunities. But I do feel LinkedIn is slow in innovating and it could have rolled-out these applications much faster to the market earlier.
The surprise does not end there. There is much more exciting partnership announced between SalesForce.com and Facebook. Now, people can develop ‘business’ applications using Force.com platform and host it on Force.com site. However, they can integrate those apps with Facebook using Facebook provided toolkit.
Yes, I said ‘Business applications’. They are not just ‘Social applications’. If you want to just develop ‘Social Applications’, you can just go ahead and use Facebook’s F8 platform. However, the intent here is to merge the business/Enterprise world with Social world. And I see this partnership as the first step towards that trend.
The business applications developed using Force.com can easily leverage the social graph and network of Facebook. It really meshes the two different worlds. As an example, can I mesh the Sales leads with Social Graph or Recruitment Ads with my network? The possibilities are endless.
When the Big product vendors are taking years of time to deliver incremental innovation, Here we are Social /Web 2.0 companies showing the way with radical innovation! Kudos!
Am looking forward to see exciting new business apps within the social network!.