I was recently discussing with a Business Objects report designer regarding a customer's requirement for Ad-Hoc Reports. The Ad-Hoc Reports are targeted for Business Users, who are not really IT savvy. That scenario flashed me an interesting thought on the lines of web 2.0.
If the business-users/Operational users are comfortable in composing 'Ad-Hoc Reports' on their own, why not 'Ad-Hoc Solutions'?. 'Ad-HoC solutions'= 'Mashups'.
If the business users are provided a platform for composing their own mashups, I am sure they would love to compose their own solutions. The million dollar question is - How easy the mashup platform would be for the end users to compose their own solutions?
But beyond Technical limitations, I see the cultural factors play a stronger role in rolling-out Mashup platforms
- Need for educating/informing the business users regarding the new 'Empowerment' of composing apps on their own
- The comfort factor of the new empowerment from all quarters including the security department
- Joint Governance of mashups created by both Business IT
Whether a user constructs a data mashup or a business process mashup, the need for a mashup will typically arise from the respective business user's curiosity/ambition and deeper commitment towards his day-to-day operations. One can correlate this scenario to a well- known situation - How can we make the business users interested towards using Business Intelligence solutions? There is no easy way to sell BI solutions. Similarly there is no easy way to sell web 2.0 or Mashups as well.
They are not just IT solutions. These are solutions have deeper impact in a person's motivation, organization structure and culture.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Risks in Composite Applications
Here is my recent experience on Composite Applications. Yes, Composite Applications are cousin brothers of Mashups in Enterprise World! :-). While Mashups are situational apps that are predominantly built using Web Interfaces (SOAP/REST), Composite Applications are custom applications that are defined around existing assets in the enterprise. The assets can belong to any technology and be available in any consumable form, not necessarily in the form of Web Services.
If you google for Composite Applications, You will get different definitions from different vendors each of them woven around their own set of products/technology stack. But, Ultimately they all define the same. These are the applications that are composed to serve the unstructured needs of the customer. For the same reason, you will find Microsoft weaves around Office Business Applications, IBM tells the story around Lotus Notes and SAP has Adobe Forms. And have a look at this Microsoft blog which explains the architectural differences between traditional apps and composite apps.
Of couse, the very idea of 'Composing' apps (and not 'building' apps) looks tempting and interesting!. Of couse, the idea of getting apps to the clients, instead of clients reaching out to apps, looks enriching and rewarding!.
Some of the interesting apps could be - clients accessing a purchase order information from SAP without even leaving his Microsoft Outlook and working through the Order collaboratively with his peers.
But, be warned for the following reasons:
- We are increasing the number of tiers in the application. Two-Tier / Three-tier no longer hold good.
- We are increasing the number of COTS in one vertical slice of the application. Its no longer pure custom app (100% coded). You will have participants from multiple platforms/products/technologies in a single business process.
- Security. The whole game would be easy if all the tiers in the app belong to single vendor/single technology/single OS. The moment where we compose the app out of assets from different participants, the security reconciliation of ID and Roles will be cumbersome!. In my recent experience, I realized that a Security platform, something like TransactionMinder, that would ensure end-to-end security across all tiers will help.
- System Management. If your custom apps have some footprint of desktop elements, then we are going a couple of decades back (unknowingly) in the app architectures. Performance - In Three tier web apps themselves, there is no single product/tool that is available in the market that would give me end-to-end performance of a vertical slice in the app. Imagine the amount of complexity involved in tracking the performance and other SLAs in a multi-tiered composite apps!.
- Last but not the least - the composite apps are pervasive and multi-channel enabled. We need new set of tools and techniques to manage the SLAs across channels for a single business capability that is exposed as composite!.
If you google for Composite Applications, You will get different definitions from different vendors each of them woven around their own set of products/technology stack. But, Ultimately they all define the same. These are the applications that are composed to serve the unstructured needs of the customer. For the same reason, you will find Microsoft weaves around Office Business Applications, IBM tells the story around Lotus Notes and SAP has Adobe Forms. And have a look at this Microsoft blog which explains the architectural differences between traditional apps and composite apps.
Of couse, the very idea of 'Composing' apps (and not 'building' apps) looks tempting and interesting!. Of couse, the idea of getting apps to the clients, instead of clients reaching out to apps, looks enriching and rewarding!.
Some of the interesting apps could be - clients accessing a purchase order information from SAP without even leaving his Microsoft Outlook and working through the Order collaboratively with his peers.
But, be warned for the following reasons:
- We are increasing the number of tiers in the application. Two-Tier / Three-tier no longer hold good.
- We are increasing the number of COTS in one vertical slice of the application. Its no longer pure custom app (100% coded). You will have participants from multiple platforms/products/technologies in a single business process.
- Security. The whole game would be easy if all the tiers in the app belong to single vendor/single technology/single OS. The moment where we compose the app out of assets from different participants, the security reconciliation of ID and Roles will be cumbersome!. In my recent experience, I realized that a Security platform, something like TransactionMinder, that would ensure end-to-end security across all tiers will help.
- System Management. If your custom apps have some footprint of desktop elements, then we are going a couple of decades back (unknowingly) in the app architectures. Performance - In Three tier web apps themselves, there is no single product/tool that is available in the market that would give me end-to-end performance of a vertical slice in the app. Imagine the amount of complexity involved in tracking the performance and other SLAs in a multi-tiered composite apps!.
- Last but not the least - the composite apps are pervasive and multi-channel enabled. We need new set of tools and techniques to manage the SLAs across channels for a single business capability that is exposed as composite!.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Analytics beyond Technology Boundary!
This is another interesting story from Outlook Business. There was an interview with Future Group Chief Kishore Biyani in this month edition. In this interview, Kishore talks about his future plans in retailing & customer experience. Future Group is a large Indian business conglomorate that has its presence in vairous sectors including Retail, Media, Logistics and Finance. The Flagship business of this group is Retail and its one of the pioneers in low-cost large-scale retailing in India.
When we consider Technology and Business Intelligence as key sources of increasing sales in retailing business, Kishore thinks differently. This is what he has to say about his plans...
"We have a chief customer director. We have also appointed mythologists, sociologists, and anthropologists. We monitor everything that is happening in this country, and we try to respond as fast as possible. We’ve been building this team over the last six to eight months.".
I can understand psychologists. But look at the list - he has mythologists, sociologists and anthropologists. And for me who is from a Tech mindset, this perspective was a revelation!.
Yes, Technology, BI and Analytics alone may not be enough for driving business in your stores. While at one end, we are increasingly codifying the user experience using personalization, rule engines, inferencing and recommendation engines, the other end, another set of people are seriously looking for ways that would interact with Humans with Humanity!. And that is unique!.
Am sure, this approach will certainly and significantly improve the customer experience at Retail stores in the days to come...!
My thought is - How to match that unique customer experience in online stores using Technology?
When we consider Technology and Business Intelligence as key sources of increasing sales in retailing business, Kishore thinks differently. This is what he has to say about his plans...
"We have a chief customer director. We have also appointed mythologists, sociologists, and anthropologists. We monitor everything that is happening in this country, and we try to respond as fast as possible. We’ve been building this team over the last six to eight months.".
I can understand psychologists. But look at the list - he has mythologists, sociologists and anthropologists. And for me who is from a Tech mindset, this perspective was a revelation!.
Yes, Technology, BI and Analytics alone may not be enough for driving business in your stores. While at one end, we are increasingly codifying the user experience using personalization, rule engines, inferencing and recommendation engines, the other end, another set of people are seriously looking for ways that would interact with Humans with Humanity!. And that is unique!.
Am sure, this approach will certainly and significantly improve the customer experience at Retail stores in the days to come...!
My thought is - How to match that unique customer experience in online stores using Technology?
Now, SaaS is a Corporate Social Responsibility!
WoW!. It was quite a revelation when I read the column by Arun Maira, Senior Advisor, Boston Consulting Group in Outlook Business titled 'Look beyond Products and Profits'.
In this column, Arun proposes five new dimensions to the next generation of business models. The article is completely technology-agnostic and talks purely about inclusive growth. When I was reading one of the dimension for the new framework of business, he says - "The second is the distinction between having access to a product or service and owning it. The more business models are geared towards providing access rather than insisting that people own the stuff, the less stuff will be put through our production and supply processes, and the less will be the pressure on the earth’s resources".
After reading this, I said to myself 'Wow!', How clearly this dimension correlates with SaaS business model? It makes the end consumers to access the resources without owning it, and that saves not just money, but lot of resources, including earth's resources'.
Now, I would say 'SaaS is a corporate social responsibility'. Like various other social-sensitive initiatives like recycling paper, green IT - SaaS also makes a company unique by consuming less resources.
In this column, Arun proposes five new dimensions to the next generation of business models. The article is completely technology-agnostic and talks purely about inclusive growth. When I was reading one of the dimension for the new framework of business, he says - "The second is the distinction between having access to a product or service and owning it. The more business models are geared towards providing access rather than insisting that people own the stuff, the less stuff will be put through our production and supply processes, and the less will be the pressure on the earth’s resources".
After reading this, I said to myself 'Wow!', How clearly this dimension correlates with SaaS business model? It makes the end consumers to access the resources without owning it, and that saves not just money, but lot of resources, including earth's resources'.
Now, I would say 'SaaS is a corporate social responsibility'. Like various other social-sensitive initiatives like recycling paper, green IT - SaaS also makes a company unique by consuming less resources.
Friday, July 04, 2008
A new language for SOA!
While the end objective of SOA is to achieve enterprise agility, the actual path to achieving the same is 'counter-agile', as Thomas Erl states. The actual process of building and hosting the services in a distributed environment is not simple. And on top of it, if you add the products that promise to implement successful SOA, the complexity will only multiply.
This post is a continuation of my two previous posts - IT industrialization and Product Line Architecture. When I was discussing with my fellow Architect in this regard, we concluded that the need of the hour is 'simplicity'. And I can no way refer any of the existing products in this category.
And there is also lot of discussion going on in the web about the promise of SOA. Someone has asked, if SOA is evolutionary and promising to bring tremendous benefits to the enterprise, how come we are building SOA with same old technologies?. - very thought provoking. You may say - Web services is new technology. But, the fundamentals are still the same.
The only way I see the complexity can be reduced is by bringing a fundamentally new technology or language that would simplify 'building' SOA. And I am not wrong!. Check out this language - Somebody is not only thinking but working on those lines.
Another way of looking at simplicity is use of 'Domain Specific Languages'. I see DSLs are the only thing that is common between Agile Camp and SOA. Both of them agree to gain benefit out of them. While the 'Agile' camp approaches DSL for productivity/Accleration in Development cycle, SOA approaches DSL from 'semantics' perspective. Both stand to gain from it. I believe well designed DSLs would make the 'building' part of SOA lot more 'faster', not necessarily 'simpler'.
But unfortunately, it looks like DSLs are going to become obsolete even before they mature! Yes, Microsoft is planning to adopt UML instead of DSLs for modeling SOA.
This post is a continuation of my two previous posts - IT industrialization and Product Line Architecture. When I was discussing with my fellow Architect in this regard, we concluded that the need of the hour is 'simplicity'. And I can no way refer any of the existing products in this category.
And there is also lot of discussion going on in the web about the promise of SOA. Someone has asked, if SOA is evolutionary and promising to bring tremendous benefits to the enterprise, how come we are building SOA with same old technologies?. - very thought provoking. You may say - Web services is new technology. But, the fundamentals are still the same.
The only way I see the complexity can be reduced is by bringing a fundamentally new technology or language that would simplify 'building' SOA. And I am not wrong!. Check out this language - Somebody is not only thinking but working on those lines.
Another way of looking at simplicity is use of 'Domain Specific Languages'. I see DSLs are the only thing that is common between Agile Camp and SOA. Both of them agree to gain benefit out of them. While the 'Agile' camp approaches DSL for productivity/Accleration in Development cycle, SOA approaches DSL from 'semantics' perspective. Both stand to gain from it. I believe well designed DSLs would make the 'building' part of SOA lot more 'faster', not necessarily 'simpler'.
But unfortunately, it looks like DSLs are going to become obsolete even before they mature! Yes, Microsoft is planning to adopt UML instead of DSLs for modeling SOA.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
IT industrialization is a Mirage?
Gartner has recently identified 'Seven Grand Challenges for IT' during next 25 years. Interestingly one of the challenge that is mentioned is - 'Increase Programmer productivity by 100 fold'. Though I find the number - 100 fold - to be too greedy :-), I have to admit that I see this challenge as the fundamental to the IT industry for the years to come.
IBM endorses this view saying IT industrialization is still in early stages. While recent developments like SOA, SaaS and Utility computing have industrialized the buying and selling side of IT, we have not seen anything that is concrete that will truly industrialize the way we 'build' our software.
There are so many enablers such as Open source frameworks, SOA, sophisticated IDEs, but none of them have seems to have solved the problem to a greater extent. I practically experience in my company where developers are still burdened with mundane activities such as UI issues/Table-to-Object mappings. And we have not achieved significant reduction in the development time as well. Am not talking about rapid application languages such as Ruby, etc. They can help to certain extent, but they have not made inroads to enterprise apps yet.
So, the need of the hour is a magic bullet that would slash the development time spent in mechanics of the actual application.
If MDAs, Software Factories are answers to this problem,we would not have seen this in Gartner Report as a challenge for next 25 years.
I believe one way of improving the developer productivity is to enhace the capabilities of application server platforms. Its the right time to elevate the application server platforms to provide application related capabilities from pure infrastructure capabilities.
IBM endorses this view saying IT industrialization is still in early stages. While recent developments like SOA, SaaS and Utility computing have industrialized the buying and selling side of IT, we have not seen anything that is concrete that will truly industrialize the way we 'build' our software.
There are so many enablers such as Open source frameworks, SOA, sophisticated IDEs, but none of them have seems to have solved the problem to a greater extent. I practically experience in my company where developers are still burdened with mundane activities such as UI issues/Table-to-Object mappings. And we have not achieved significant reduction in the development time as well. Am not talking about rapid application languages such as Ruby, etc. They can help to certain extent, but they have not made inroads to enterprise apps yet.
So, the need of the hour is a magic bullet that would slash the development time spent in mechanics of the actual application.
If MDAs, Software Factories are answers to this problem,we would not have seen this in Gartner Report as a challenge for next 25 years.
I believe one way of improving the developer productivity is to enhace the capabilities of application server platforms. Its the right time to elevate the application server platforms to provide application related capabilities from pure infrastructure capabilities.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
SOA Vs Product Line Architecture
While I was contemplating with an idea of Product-Line Architecture concept to a series of projects in my company, it triggered me the thought of comparing the same with Service-Oriented Architecture. I plunged myself into this comparison of Product-Line Architecture and Service-Oriented Architecture and the journey was quite interesting and insightful.
I also saw that CMU is doing lot of work in bringing the synergies between the two paradigms. The university views that both paradigms can complement each other and each can add value to the other at broader architecture level - Applying Service-Orientation to the Product-Lines and Applying Product-Line approach to Service-Orientation / Composition. While I completely agree with this idea, I believe a greater synergy can be achieved when they are applied at their respective contexts, where they are best at.
To explain a bit more, in one of the scenarios, SOA and Product Line Approach can perfectly co-exist, where SOA addresses the interface part of Services and Product-Line addresses the implementation of components behind the services. The Product Line concepts can be applied to model the service inventory within a specific domain in the enterprise. Applying Product-Line concepts to the implementation portion of SOA will significantly benefit in terms of accelerating the development time of services.
I also saw that CMU is doing lot of work in bringing the synergies between the two paradigms. The university views that both paradigms can complement each other and each can add value to the other at broader architecture level - Applying Service-Orientation to the Product-Lines and Applying Product-Line approach to Service-Orientation / Composition. While I completely agree with this idea, I believe a greater synergy can be achieved when they are applied at their respective contexts, where they are best at.
To explain a bit more, in one of the scenarios, SOA and Product Line Approach can perfectly co-exist, where SOA addresses the interface part of Services and Product-Line addresses the implementation of components behind the services. The Product Line concepts can be applied to model the service inventory within a specific domain in the enterprise. Applying Product-Line concepts to the implementation portion of SOA will significantly benefit in terms of accelerating the development time of services.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Rise of new ERP
Came across this interesting article titled 'The Next Revolution in Productivity' in Harvard Business Review few days ago. The article advocates that - To harvest the maximum benefits out of an SOA initiative, it is required for the companies to revisit the fundamental design of their operations & their organizational structure. If they dont do that, all they will achieve is just IT efficiency, while SOA's true potential can achieve lot more than that.
This perspective generates a lot of thought process. I always tried to understand the value proposition behind the SOA strategy of bigger ERP vendors. The ERP vendors' SOA stack primarily unwraps its huge monolithic bundle in the form of prolific services and encourages the ecosystem to innovate and compose new business processes. However, I would see this model as 'innovation' happening on the 'Edge'. The true innovation in this space would be the one that could be applied at the 'roots' of the business processes.
As mentioned in the above article, using ERP vendors' SOA stack, is it possible to fundamentally redesign a specific business process?. Is it possible hot swap, sell or buy the inner most activities of a business process that is composed around ERP?. If the HBR hypothesis cannot be delivered out of today's ERP ecosystems, then as the article states, one may not leverage the fullest potential of SOA. And the one that supports the complete enterprise transformation with innovative business processes would be the new ERP...
This perspective generates a lot of thought process. I always tried to understand the value proposition behind the SOA strategy of bigger ERP vendors. The ERP vendors' SOA stack primarily unwraps its huge monolithic bundle in the form of prolific services and encourages the ecosystem to innovate and compose new business processes. However, I would see this model as 'innovation' happening on the 'Edge'. The true innovation in this space would be the one that could be applied at the 'roots' of the business processes.
As mentioned in the above article, using ERP vendors' SOA stack, is it possible to fundamentally redesign a specific business process?. Is it possible hot swap, sell or buy the inner most activities of a business process that is composed around ERP?. If the HBR hypothesis cannot be delivered out of today's ERP ecosystems, then as the article states, one may not leverage the fullest potential of SOA. And the one that supports the complete enterprise transformation with innovative business processes would be the new ERP...
Friday, June 13, 2008
Virtualization overtakes SOA?
Am not trying to draw any parallels between Virtualization Technology and SOA Architecture here. Am classifying both of them in the category of emerging trends and trying to see which one is progressing faster.
Though I am an ardent fan of SOA and the potential impact it could create on the IT and Business, I should acknowledge that there are significant complexities involved in implementing SOA. Zapthink partner David Linthicum talks about it persistently in his blog. SOA makes tall promises. However, to realize the promises, it requires skilled SOA architects/designers, business consultants, sponsors and above all patience. :-)
Having said that, I should say Virtualization leads the game in terms of realizing the promises and achieving the benefits. Here is a reference. PC Quest has recently announced the Top IT implementations for the year 2008 and I couldnt find a single SOA focused project. Almost all of them are pointed solutions that are targeted towards solving a specific business problem. Am not saying that pointed solutions are bad. The point here is SOA has not been mentioned as a key stragic enabler in any of those implementations.
However, I could see a virtualization success story. ICICI bank has recently completed the enterprise server virtualization project and this project has been selected as one of the best implementations. More than the project, the metrics made me to say Wow!. Here it is - The bank was able to condense more than 550 servers in about 43 servers using VMWare Virtualization Technology. This is a strong metric that speaks the benefits of Virtualization.
Virtualization as a technology concept is slowly making in-roads into the industry and Even conservative IT shops are bound to invest in this technology for the solid proof statements that can be seen around the industry.
There are plenty of SOA case studies as well. Am not denying that. However, I strongly believe that virtualization has a direct impact on the fundamental economics of an IT shop and hence it succeeds, whereas SOA has an indirect impact via the business solutions and the actual architecture that gets implemented.
Though I am an ardent fan of SOA and the potential impact it could create on the IT and Business, I should acknowledge that there are significant complexities involved in implementing SOA. Zapthink partner David Linthicum talks about it persistently in his blog. SOA makes tall promises. However, to realize the promises, it requires skilled SOA architects/designers, business consultants, sponsors and above all patience. :-)
Having said that, I should say Virtualization leads the game in terms of realizing the promises and achieving the benefits. Here is a reference. PC Quest has recently announced the Top IT implementations for the year 2008 and I couldnt find a single SOA focused project. Almost all of them are pointed solutions that are targeted towards solving a specific business problem. Am not saying that pointed solutions are bad. The point here is SOA has not been mentioned as a key stragic enabler in any of those implementations.
However, I could see a virtualization success story. ICICI bank has recently completed the enterprise server virtualization project and this project has been selected as one of the best implementations. More than the project, the metrics made me to say Wow!. Here it is - The bank was able to condense more than 550 servers in about 43 servers using VMWare Virtualization Technology. This is a strong metric that speaks the benefits of Virtualization.
Virtualization as a technology concept is slowly making in-roads into the industry and Even conservative IT shops are bound to invest in this technology for the solid proof statements that can be seen around the industry.
There are plenty of SOA case studies as well. Am not denying that. However, I strongly believe that virtualization has a direct impact on the fundamental economics of an IT shop and hence it succeeds, whereas SOA has an indirect impact via the business solutions and the actual architecture that gets implemented.
So My suggestion would be - Invest in virtualization today to save money so that You can invest in SOA tomorrow! :-)
Thursday, June 12, 2008
SaaS is rocket science!
Yes...Am not talking about a SaaS consumer here...but the provider.
This is what analysts quote when SAP delays its SaaS offering. I was surprised to see SAP officials saying the SaaS offering will prove to be expensive for SAP itself. This is what SAP co-CEO says...
"We have to work out how expensive it will be for SAP if we run this product in a hosted environment. We have to make sure we make enough money with the product"
The offering is targeted at SME businesses and supposed to be cost-efficient for them. While the offering may prove cost-effective for end customers, it looks like it will prove the other way for the provider.
Having this story, I was trying to understand why is it so complex? What could be the technical barriers in building a platform and rolling-out the services, considering the fact that you have so many appliation platforms in the market?
ButI couldn't agree more that its not going to be a cake walk, because of the following reasons:
1. Multi-tenancy architecture is not easy. If the SaaS vendor wants to host multiple tenants in the same infrastructure and still able to deliver the SLAs which are different for different tennants, thats not a default feature of conventional platforms. You will need a new architecture to address the challenges.
2. Only if the multi-tenancy is in place, it would prove to be profitable for the service provider, where you get to host more tenants on less number of instances.
The same challenges apply to in-house shared service providers as well..who would build and host services that are consumed by different LOBs within the same company.
This is what analysts quote when SAP delays its SaaS offering. I was surprised to see SAP officials saying the SaaS offering will prove to be expensive for SAP itself. This is what SAP co-CEO says...
"We have to work out how expensive it will be for SAP if we run this product in a hosted environment. We have to make sure we make enough money with the product"
The offering is targeted at SME businesses and supposed to be cost-efficient for them. While the offering may prove cost-effective for end customers, it looks like it will prove the other way for the provider.
Having this story, I was trying to understand why is it so complex? What could be the technical barriers in building a platform and rolling-out the services, considering the fact that you have so many appliation platforms in the market?
ButI couldn't agree more that its not going to be a cake walk, because of the following reasons:
1. Multi-tenancy architecture is not easy. If the SaaS vendor wants to host multiple tenants in the same infrastructure and still able to deliver the SLAs which are different for different tennants, thats not a default feature of conventional platforms. You will need a new architecture to address the challenges.
2. Only if the multi-tenancy is in place, it would prove to be profitable for the service provider, where you get to host more tenants on less number of instances.
The same challenges apply to in-house shared service providers as well..who would build and host services that are consumed by different LOBs within the same company.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Enterprise Mobile Wars - iPhone 2.0, BlackBerry and Google Android
I thought blogging about Google Android platform few days ago. But, then I was waiting for iPhone 3G launch to happen...
First and foremost, have you had a chance to view the Google Android application gallery?...If not, I would strongly recommend to checkout...It has an interesting range of applications - personal productivity, social networking, context-aware apps, m-commerce to carbon credit measurements. I also happen to view the Google Android Demo that looked like iPhone's cousin in touch-screen interface.
As some of the bloggers are writing, there must be something cooking behind Google Android and Google is not disclosing the actual plans and potential of the platform. It always says...It is the developers who would come out with a killer application for the platform and not Google. Hard to believe!. Couple of other reasons;
1. In the application gallery that consists of 50 applications, I agree that many of them are innovative and interesting. But, none of them would qualify for a 'killer' application that would give a competetive edge to the platform itself.
2. There are speculations that Google is planning a GPhone in collaboration with Dell, Google is interested in only grabbing a ad space in mobile...But, the actual intent is not known yet.
3. From all of the above, I see Google Android to be only next to BlackBerry and iPhone. While BlackBerry clearly scores in enterprise market and gets into significant partnership with Enterprise technology vendors such as SAP, iPhone is clearly targeted at consumer space (to start with) and leads brilliantly in multimedia space. If the market is segmented that way, Google Android can be positioned for low-cost phones with innovative apps for the common man.
Now, after yesterday's announcement of iPhone 2.0, Apple is readying iPhone slowly into enterprise email market in collaboration with Cisco. And tons of consumer apps with blistering speed!. If Apple continues to invest in enterprise readiness, it could give BlackBerry a run for its money in near future.
Whether its Apple or RIM or Google, I strongly believe its going to make good for mobile customers as it increases competition and it will continue to bring new releases to the market with innovative features!
First and foremost, have you had a chance to view the Google Android application gallery?...If not, I would strongly recommend to checkout...It has an interesting range of applications - personal productivity, social networking, context-aware apps, m-commerce to carbon credit measurements. I also happen to view the Google Android Demo that looked like iPhone's cousin in touch-screen interface.
As some of the bloggers are writing, there must be something cooking behind Google Android and Google is not disclosing the actual plans and potential of the platform. It always says...It is the developers who would come out with a killer application for the platform and not Google. Hard to believe!. Couple of other reasons;
1. In the application gallery that consists of 50 applications, I agree that many of them are innovative and interesting. But, none of them would qualify for a 'killer' application that would give a competetive edge to the platform itself.
2. There are speculations that Google is planning a GPhone in collaboration with Dell, Google is interested in only grabbing a ad space in mobile...But, the actual intent is not known yet.
3. From all of the above, I see Google Android to be only next to BlackBerry and iPhone. While BlackBerry clearly scores in enterprise market and gets into significant partnership with Enterprise technology vendors such as SAP, iPhone is clearly targeted at consumer space (to start with) and leads brilliantly in multimedia space. If the market is segmented that way, Google Android can be positioned for low-cost phones with innovative apps for the common man.
Now, after yesterday's announcement of iPhone 2.0, Apple is readying iPhone slowly into enterprise email market in collaboration with Cisco. And tons of consumer apps with blistering speed!. If Apple continues to invest in enterprise readiness, it could give BlackBerry a run for its money in near future.
Whether its Apple or RIM or Google, I strongly believe its going to make good for mobile customers as it increases competition and it will continue to bring new releases to the market with innovative features!
Monday, June 09, 2008
Next Generation Outsourcing
Few years before, I had read Cognizant CEO sharing his thought process on how would the next generation of outsourcing look like?. His vision was to move from labor-arbitrage to intellectural-arbitrage combined with global sourcing. Ok, that sounds like obvious?. Let me get into details...The service value chain can become atomically global. Each step of the process can be decontructed to set of activities to find out the most appropriate location which is best suited to perform that specific activity at a given point of time.
And yesterday, when I read a IT magazine, I found a company which has just ventured to realize the very same idea what Cognizant CEO talked about. The company name is called 'Anantara Solutions'. The company defines itself as a SGO / Second Generation Outsourcing company. It acts as a master system integrated and works with an ecosystem of partners who build and deliver solutions in specific technology areas. But, Anantara owns the final responsibility of delivering the business solution to the client, combined with its own business consulting skills. Sounds intesting!. The company has only 40 people and already works with an ecosystem of 25 companies that are spread across various geographies. Sounds definitely innovative..and interesting.
Now, I would be interested to know further...
1. The SGO can be more valuable compared to FGO (First Generation Outsourcing :-). But Would it be cost-effective as well on an on-going basis?
2. The SGO certainly creates an edge for the solution provider. It creates a unique value to the provider. But, it requires a lot of intellectual property to sustain it on a longer term. Will it be sustainable?
3. As Cognizant CEO has talked about being an enabler of next generation outsourcing, What would be Company like Anantara's business model, if other big players venture into this model?
4. Some of the analysts being skeptical about a smaller player's success in this market.
All these questions will be answered while we wait and watch Anantara growing...
And yesterday, when I read a IT magazine, I found a company which has just ventured to realize the very same idea what Cognizant CEO talked about. The company name is called 'Anantara Solutions'. The company defines itself as a SGO / Second Generation Outsourcing company. It acts as a master system integrated and works with an ecosystem of partners who build and deliver solutions in specific technology areas. But, Anantara owns the final responsibility of delivering the business solution to the client, combined with its own business consulting skills. Sounds intesting!. The company has only 40 people and already works with an ecosystem of 25 companies that are spread across various geographies. Sounds definitely innovative..and interesting.
Now, I would be interested to know further...
1. The SGO can be more valuable compared to FGO (First Generation Outsourcing :-). But Would it be cost-effective as well on an on-going basis?
2. The SGO certainly creates an edge for the solution provider. It creates a unique value to the provider. But, it requires a lot of intellectual property to sustain it on a longer term. Will it be sustainable?
3. As Cognizant CEO has talked about being an enabler of next generation outsourcing, What would be Company like Anantara's business model, if other big players venture into this model?
4. Some of the analysts being skeptical about a smaller player's success in this market.
All these questions will be answered while we wait and watch Anantara growing...
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Telepresence Wonder
Ever since Cisco announced their Telepresence product, I thought it would be affordable and appicable only in Corporate context.
However, I recently read that Wachovia Bank is planning to deploy the Telepresence solution for a specific customer service segment. That was interesting!.
I wonder the Telepresence channel will compliment / replace Branch Banking in future...
Some of the other contexts where the solution will largely add value are Telemedicine (especially in Rural areas), Offshore-based Consulting. (This is one area where we have not figured out how to improve the effectiveness of consulting without being at onsite).
But, the price points are inhibiting the potential early pilots!. Hope to see more such business solutions in near future!.
However, I recently read that Wachovia Bank is planning to deploy the Telepresence solution for a specific customer service segment. That was interesting!.
I wonder the Telepresence channel will compliment / replace Branch Banking in future...
Some of the other contexts where the solution will largely add value are Telemedicine (especially in Rural areas), Offshore-based Consulting. (This is one area where we have not figured out how to improve the effectiveness of consulting without being at onsite).
But, the price points are inhibiting the potential early pilots!. Hope to see more such business solutions in near future!.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Another disruptor arrived!
Did you check out SpringSource's recent announcement on 'Application Platform' and OSGi compatibility?
If not, you are in for a surprise.
SpringSource's application platform is a new container to host Java applications that is NOT compliant with JEE. And that was the intention.
Check out Rod Johnson's interview on SpringSource application platform. His views about present offering and future platform's interoperability with JEE profiles looks interesting. Certainly, I feel its going to ease out lot of complexities in JEE application development right now.
And, in light of this development, I would be interested to know the future roadmaps of IBM Websphere application server and other vendors app servers. Will they follow the path of SpringSource?. Or will they collaborate?
The good news - The enterprise java development and deployment will be easier. Especially, for SOA development, the platform promises to ease out lots of versioning related issues.
Bad news - the enterprise JEE world is further fragmented.
If not, you are in for a surprise.
SpringSource's application platform is a new container to host Java applications that is NOT compliant with JEE. And that was the intention.
Check out Rod Johnson's interview on SpringSource application platform. His views about present offering and future platform's interoperability with JEE profiles looks interesting. Certainly, I feel its going to ease out lot of complexities in JEE application development right now.
And, in light of this development, I would be interested to know the future roadmaps of IBM Websphere application server and other vendors app servers. Will they follow the path of SpringSource?. Or will they collaborate?
The good news - The enterprise java development and deployment will be easier. Especially, for SOA development, the platform promises to ease out lots of versioning related issues.
Bad news - the enterprise JEE world is further fragmented.
He Who Owns the Information, Has the Power!
Ok, I made that title up!.
This is what I felt when I came across Google Health recently. Google Health is a comprehensive health portal which allows people to maintain their health information in the Google Website and consult with Doctors on the medical conditions/prescriptions.
If you have observed, Microsoft is toying with similar idea in Microsoft HealthVault.
So, what is the business implication for Google:
- Hospitals are already looking at Partnering with Google to service the patients
- Targeted Adwords that are much more specific to patient's context and needs
- Lock-in to Google Health system
- Analytics possibility on Health Information and gaining intelligence on trends
Wow!
Google is also evaluating the options of integrating this app with other Google apps like Calender, Search, etc. which will make Google apps much more pervasive in our lives. This is much more interesting and captivating!.
Check out the same idea in Google's another new offering http://www.rememberthemilk.com. Simple, but Brilliant offering upto BlackBerry.
Now, some of the lessons for our Enterprise apps space:
1. He who owns the data has more control and influence. Address this layer first, before thinking about anything else.
For example, in banking, the group that owns Customer Profile becomes the backbone of the Information systems.
2. Mashup the apps to generate more value / new opportunities as Google does.
3. Enable Multi-channel access...
4. Even if an idea is simple enough, don't hesitate to try and implement it. If you do that, Google may overtake you! :-)
Also, recently evaluated, Google App Engine recently...will reserve the observations for future posts.
This is what I felt when I came across Google Health recently. Google Health is a comprehensive health portal which allows people to maintain their health information in the Google Website and consult with Doctors on the medical conditions/prescriptions.
If you have observed, Microsoft is toying with similar idea in Microsoft HealthVault.
So, what is the business implication for Google:
- Hospitals are already looking at Partnering with Google to service the patients
- Targeted Adwords that are much more specific to patient's context and needs
- Lock-in to Google Health system
- Analytics possibility on Health Information and gaining intelligence on trends
Wow!
Google is also evaluating the options of integrating this app with other Google apps like Calender, Search, etc. which will make Google apps much more pervasive in our lives. This is much more interesting and captivating!.
Check out the same idea in Google's another new offering http://www.rememberthemilk.com. Simple, but Brilliant offering upto BlackBerry.
Now, some of the lessons for our Enterprise apps space:
1. He who owns the data has more control and influence. Address this layer first, before thinking about anything else.
For example, in banking, the group that owns Customer Profile becomes the backbone of the Information systems.
2. Mashup the apps to generate more value / new opportunities as Google does.
3. Enable Multi-channel access...
4. Even if an idea is simple enough, don't hesitate to try and implement it. If you do that, Google may overtake you! :-)
Also, recently evaluated, Google App Engine recently...will reserve the observations for future posts.
Friday, May 09, 2008
RIM and SAP to change the way people work
A recent innovation announced by RIM and SAP inspired me..
Following the footsteps of Duet alliance with Microsoft, SAP has now embarked into a partnership with RIM BlackBerry. The idea of this innovation is to enable anywhere mobile access to SAP enterprise applications through widely adopted BlackBerry Platform. This initiative tears down the walls between mobile connectivity and enterprise applications. At the same time, it brings in lot of assurance to the solutions in terms of communication, security and management.
The first output expected out of this partnership is a "native" BlackBerry client application that will merge the power of SAP CRM application. The wonder doesn't end there. It will also enable merging the SAP CRM applications with the core BlackBerry smartphone applications such as mail, Address Book, and Calender applications. What a "mashup" of applications from two different platforms?
This partnership simply makes the "middleware" layer irrelevant if someone wants to integrate RIM and SAP platforms. And that is a significant benefit to IT shops!
From this instance, I derive if two product vendors can collaborate, they can bring out innovative set of solutions to the end-customers which will make their life easy.
I have seen the 'Duet' demo in SAP TechEd event couple of years ago. And I was impressed.
Am sure this RIM offering will be very useful as well.
I am waiting to see this kind of partnership happening in the middleware/SOA space as well.
Will we see a similar announcement from IBM and SAP where we will be able to host SAP's Enterprise Service repository in IBM middleware and able to seamlessly connect to SAP without adapters?.
Following the footsteps of Duet alliance with Microsoft, SAP has now embarked into a partnership with RIM BlackBerry. The idea of this innovation is to enable anywhere mobile access to SAP enterprise applications through widely adopted BlackBerry Platform. This initiative tears down the walls between mobile connectivity and enterprise applications. At the same time, it brings in lot of assurance to the solutions in terms of communication, security and management.
The first output expected out of this partnership is a "native" BlackBerry client application that will merge the power of SAP CRM application. The wonder doesn't end there. It will also enable merging the SAP CRM applications with the core BlackBerry smartphone applications such as mail, Address Book, and Calender applications. What a "mashup" of applications from two different platforms?
This partnership simply makes the "middleware" layer irrelevant if someone wants to integrate RIM and SAP platforms. And that is a significant benefit to IT shops!
From this instance, I derive if two product vendors can collaborate, they can bring out innovative set of solutions to the end-customers which will make their life easy.
I have seen the 'Duet' demo in SAP TechEd event couple of years ago. And I was impressed.
Am sure this RIM offering will be very useful as well.
I am waiting to see this kind of partnership happening in the middleware/SOA space as well.
Will we see a similar announcement from IBM and SAP where we will be able to host SAP's Enterprise Service repository in IBM middleware and able to seamlessly connect to SAP without adapters?.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Secret of Success
Recently, Apple has been rated as the Most Admired Company, No.1 by Fortune Magazine. GE comes No.2. I was personally surprised by this positioning, for one reason, because it is not the product or its critically earns the reputation of a company. It is the innovative mindset and Passion to excite customers. That has become the new mantra of current generation!. Otherwise, why the whole world would wait for a mobile phone when there were thousands of models already available in the industry from Nokia and others.
The magazine also featured an interview with Steve Jobs. Steve was asked about his competitiveness in the industry. For that question, Steve answered as the the composite chemistry. "We make the hardware, We make the OS and We write the applications on top of it. So, there is a lot of intimacy between Mac Notebooks and OS X. You cannot expect the same level of initmacy between Dell notebooks and Microsoft Windows". Thatz a spectacular answer!.
If you go back to history, you can relate to this principle very well. RIM/BlackBerry had this same combination which led the company to roaring success. Palm pioneered this idea and there are thousands of palm fans around the world,including me! :-)
So As I read in the past, the secret of success lies in the ability to lock-in the customers with best value and cost of change is expensive. And thatz what all Microsoft and SAP are doing...
Whether SaaS/Open Source will break this pattern is yet to be seen...
The magazine also featured an interview with Steve Jobs. Steve was asked about his competitiveness in the industry. For that question, Steve answered as the the composite chemistry. "We make the hardware, We make the OS and We write the applications on top of it. So, there is a lot of intimacy between Mac Notebooks and OS X. You cannot expect the same level of initmacy between Dell notebooks and Microsoft Windows". Thatz a spectacular answer!.
If you go back to history, you can relate to this principle very well. RIM/BlackBerry had this same combination which led the company to roaring success. Palm pioneered this idea and there are thousands of palm fans around the world,including me! :-)
So As I read in the past, the secret of success lies in the ability to lock-in the customers with best value and cost of change is expensive. And thatz what all Microsoft and SAP are doing...
Whether SaaS/Open Source will break this pattern is yet to be seen...
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
The value of EDA
Have not realized the value of EDA (Event-Driven Architecture) so much until recently.
I was always thinking whatz so great about EDA when your J2EE MDBs were supporting just that.
But, We are designing an EDA project right now and I could see the immense potential of the architecture. And there is no wonder people call it SOA 2.0 = SOA + EDA.
Truly, the next gen of business applications need to be designed in SOA 2.0 mode to ensure the business agility and performance.
While SOA relates to business functions, EDA necessarily models the business events and its consequences on business services.
The EDA addresses different levels of complexity right from Simple Event processing to CEP. While the traditional MDBs were designed to support simple event handling mechanisms, EDAs are designed to handle end-to-end event centric architecture and design of business solutions.
I was always thinking whatz so great about EDA when your J2EE MDBs were supporting just that.
But, We are designing an EDA project right now and I could see the immense potential of the architecture. And there is no wonder people call it SOA 2.0 = SOA + EDA.
Truly, the next gen of business applications need to be designed in SOA 2.0 mode to ensure the business agility and performance.
While SOA relates to business functions, EDA necessarily models the business events and its consequences on business services.
The EDA addresses different levels of complexity right from Simple Event processing to CEP. While the traditional MDBs were designed to support simple event handling mechanisms, EDAs are designed to handle end-to-end event centric architecture and design of business solutions.
Space-Based Architecture - End of Tiered Computing
One of my colleagues recently talked to me about Space Based computing in the context of Mule ESB.
I see SBA as the evolution of virtualization. Virtualization is evolving from Harware, OS, Portal Server, Application Server...and finally penetrating into the application itself. SBA basically eliminates the tiered computing model where each tier is physically located / distributed in a different machine altogether.
Each tier that requires the services from another tier is virtualized and your required service may be served from a cloud (that is implemented by spaces runtime environment).
Now you may be wondering - that is exactly the job of ESB is...right?
ESB provides virtualization for services. And when SBA gets integrated with ESB, the service client makes a call to Space which in turn invokes the actual service that is spread across the computing cloud.
While ESB provides virtualization for services, SBA makes virtualization possible for any tiers within any application - be it data access, business tier or messaging tier.
The solution would be more suitable for high-volume / high-performing apps.
Checkout www.gigaspaces.com
I see SBA as the evolution of virtualization. Virtualization is evolving from Harware, OS, Portal Server, Application Server...and finally penetrating into the application itself. SBA basically eliminates the tiered computing model where each tier is physically located / distributed in a different machine altogether.
Each tier that requires the services from another tier is virtualized and your required service may be served from a cloud (that is implemented by spaces runtime environment).
Now you may be wondering - that is exactly the job of ESB is...right?
ESB provides virtualization for services. And when SBA gets integrated with ESB, the service client makes a call to Space which in turn invokes the actual service that is spread across the computing cloud.
While ESB provides virtualization for services, SBA makes virtualization possible for any tiers within any application - be it data access, business tier or messaging tier.
The solution would be more suitable for high-volume / high-performing apps.
Checkout www.gigaspaces.com
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Listening to Zachman
I must tell you this. I had the opportunity to attend Zachman's conference held in Bangalore yesterday. It was a great event that I had a chance to meet one of the enterprise architecture legends of our time and listen to him directly about his framework and viewpoints. At the end of the day, my belief and conviction on the concept of having an architecture was only re-inforced.
First of all, Hats-off to him for driving this concept of EA for the past 2 decades are so. Almost anybody and everybody in IT who is working on EA cannot ignore the work of Zachman. From that perspective, Zachman's effort is a significant contribution towards IT maturity and its truly an effort that is made towards advancing the state of the art (IT).
Some of the quick observations:
1. The framework has in't changed for so many years. There are no significant updates to the framework in the last few years. It means, the framework has stood the test of times.
2. The IT complexity has never reduced, 2 decades back or now. There is lot of stuff happening on Technology evolution. But, what about Engineering maturity?.
3. As I anticipated, Zachman has a different viewpoint about SOA. He said he would like to call it as Service-Oriented Implementation rather tha Service-Oriented Architecture
4. Inspite of his work all these years, he is still not hopeful that EA will mature and be implemented in all corporates proactively. He said it may take another 20 years or so...:-(
5. Another valid point, EA is thought about only when the company is in a Titanic situation. And that would be too late to prepare anything.
First of all, Hats-off to him for driving this concept of EA for the past 2 decades are so. Almost anybody and everybody in IT who is working on EA cannot ignore the work of Zachman. From that perspective, Zachman's effort is a significant contribution towards IT maturity and its truly an effort that is made towards advancing the state of the art (IT).
Some of the quick observations:
1. The framework has in't changed for so many years. There are no significant updates to the framework in the last few years. It means, the framework has stood the test of times.
2. The IT complexity has never reduced, 2 decades back or now. There is lot of stuff happening on Technology evolution. But, what about Engineering maturity?.
3. As I anticipated, Zachman has a different viewpoint about SOA. He said he would like to call it as Service-Oriented Implementation rather tha Service-Oriented Architecture
4. Inspite of his work all these years, he is still not hopeful that EA will mature and be implemented in all corporates proactively. He said it may take another 20 years or so...:-(
5. Another valid point, EA is thought about only when the company is in a Titanic situation. And that would be too late to prepare anything.
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