PracticalSOA

An absolutely stunning example of hi-tech ingenuity:

“…a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet.”

Think about it - the software allows you to create a montage (i.e. a “visual composite”) by simply tagging the various elements of a freehand sketch!

You can read the abstract and get more details on this amazing piece of technology. (Link via Metafilter)

Now, why isn’t enterprise IT this easy?

Courtesy Vinnie Mirchandani’s blog, a most informative post on ZDnet on the evolution of the packaged software industry:

“….selling software as a continuously updated service, on a pay-as-you-go subscription, seems like an anomaly. But the accepted status quo is in fact merely a quirk of history, brought about by government action.“

(Emphasis mine)

I wasn’t aware of this fact at all. If you work in the packaged software business or in the implementation business, you should read the full post. You should also check out Vinnie’s post on this topic.

In our business, we too are experiencing something similar. It may not yet be as noticeable as in the case of some SaaS providers, but it is undoubtedly felt by all of us.

We develop solutions on top of SAP’s Netweaver platform but we do not implement any of the back-end products from SAP (such as ECC or CRM or SRM). So in that sense, we are not a packaged software provider nor are we - strictly speaking - in the implementation business. But customers expect our solutions to deliver features and functionality, just as they would from a software product vendor.

Interesting times, to be in the enterprise software business right now.

Imagine walking up to a soda dispenser and mixing your own flavor. (Please try and get past the “what about the calories and sugar” argument for a second here ;)) You can experiment with different recipes, go for some outlandish tastes, whatever. The old promise of mass customization, right?

A prototype project at Coca Cola called “Freestyle” allows consumers to do just that. (Link to a press release by Coca Cola.)

What interests me here is not the promise of exotic flavors (though a lime-cherry-orange-grape-vanilla thing would be - theoretically, at least - welcome on a long, hot summer afternoon) but the brainstorming and collaboration that must have gone on behind the scenes.

Then of course, there is the application of technology:

“Ingredients include Windows CE, wireless networks, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager for Mobile Devices, Verizon VPN, Verizon wireless cards, SAP point-of-sale management software, Tibco middleware, SAP Business Warehouse, SAP CRM system/portal, and RFID readers and sensors.”

The big deal here is that this high-tech kiosk allows the marketers at Coca Cola to study consumer preferences in real-time and make faster decisions about “productizing” a flavor before a Jones Soda or a Sobe gets in on the action.

I am sure people in SAP are following this story with great interest. It should make for an excellent case study for how SAP products can truly drive top-line growth.

Bob Evans of Information Week makes many more excellent points in his article about this innovation. Do read the article as well as the original story, also in Information Week.

Now back to my no-flavor, low-tech water….

This is bold (and if you are a data geek, it is CSV manna from heaven:)): a publicly viewable “dashboard” that shows the health of IT projects in the Federal Government.

You can check out the dashboard through this page or go directly to the dashboard and play around with the interactive charts. (Yes, full drill-down capabilities are included.)

Not only that, the website also lets you directly pull data from the sources and analyze it yourself.

Of course, like any other analytical system, the real work probably begins now: ensuring quality of data, timeliness of updates and all the other mundane details that high-paid consultants don’t want to work on

But for this first step, hats off to the administration. The NY Times covered this story, as did ZDNet, which calls it “a great example of how to promote IT”.

This post by a Gartner analyst-blogger left me a bit confused. (Link Via)

Yes, Anthony is right, there is no such thing as a “data mashup”. Good. But a part of me can’t help but wonder why, or to whom, that question is relevant. Anyone other than an industry analyst, that is.

My company builds and delivers composite applications for SAP customers. Not one of them has ever asked us for a definition of a composite application or if what we are building is indeed a true mashup. The question “are you using HTTP/REST/SOAP/RSS/XML/ATOM?” has not been asked even once. What they are asking us are questions like “will your application make our sales operations process better?” and “our account planning cycle takes too long - how can you shorten it?”

No disrespect to Anthony Bradley, but seriously, why should customers care for vendors’ descriptions of their offerings?

Do you know what Derek Jeter’s batting average is? Against Red Sox? In the 9^th inning? When Yankees are trailing by 1? And the count is 1 ball 2 strikes?

Does anyone care? If you ask me today, in March, the answer is no. But wait till Yankees are trailing Red Sox by 1 and Derek Jeter is batting with runners on 2^nd and 3^rd in the 9^th inning of a game in September. At that instant I care.

Sports statistics/analytics are quite frankly meaningless unless you happen to be a very small group of die hard sports nut like me. But put those analytics in context and then suddenly you have a much wider audience who can benefit from the cool analytics and stats. ESPN’s Gamecast (live baseball scorecard) is a perfect example of a really powerful composite application – live scores with situational analytics/stats all in one place. Fantasy games is another great example of composite applications that widen the use of ESPN’s traditional assets – live scores with analytics/stats.

What does this mean to the business world? Just think of all the great BI analytics and reports that SAP customers have invested in. They have spent millions in gathering data and building intelligence over a period of time. The problem? How many users use this intelligence with the fancy pivot tables, drill downs and slice and dice views? Probably 2% who have the training and the knowledge of how to run those fancy reports.

For example you might have a great BI report that gives you the break down of sales by product category for the last 3 years. Yeah, its a cool report. But put that in the hands of the Sales person who is preparing for the visit to a prospect in the Hospitality industry, it is invaluable. Your sales person now suddenly knows what products/solutions to concentrate upon during the sales call. And yes, don’t ask the sales people to go figure out the SIC code of the customer from CRM system, and then run a BW query (if you remember the query name) with the SIC code as the input. They will not do it. I know I wouldn’t.

What you need is the ESPN Gamecast type composite application that delivers this Situational and actionable intelligence to the sales person when he/she is preparing for the sales call.

What makes this possible? Without breaking the bank? SOA and Composite applications – of course. More on that later.

A proud moment for all of us at Bridge-X:

SAP’s SDN carries an interview with one of our founders, Sandeep Nalgundwar. (Note: The link opens up an MP3 file).

The interview was conducted by one of the most respected writers covering the enterprise apps business today.

Even though our team has been working on these composite application ideas for more than 2 years now, it is good so exciting to hear a dedicated follower of technology like Paul Greenberg describe our composite applications as “amazing” in that interview.

Matt Asay, in his “Open Road” column on CNET:

“On Monday, Goldman Sachs released an update to its “IT Spending Survey” report, and now projects a 9 percent decline in global IT spending, and a 12 percent decline in developed economies.”

(You will have to click on the chart accompanying the article to look at the statistics.)

No surprises there - “cost reduction” is the #1 high priority for companies right now and Microsoft Vista upgrades is at the bottom of the list.”SaaS” is also near the bottom, which is surprising given all the (well-deserved) hoopla around it these days. (That directly contradicts the #1 priority. Won’t SaaS help companies reduce cost of IT ownership?)

But what about SOA and composite applications? The latter, in our experience, are not yet showing up on IT budgets even though companies are finding them very useful to solve real business problems.