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.

According to Thomas Siebel, a man who certainly knows a thing or ten about enterprise software, Information Technology simply isn’t where it’s at, both growth-wise and career-wise:

No new technological advances, he believes, would impel I.T. customers to replace the computer technology they already had: “I would suggest to you that most of what’s going on today is not very exciting.”

(Read the article in the New York Times.)

I am sure almost all IT practitioners will heartily - and quickly - disagree.

Some very basic (anecdotal) fact-checking. In our business, we *are* seeing customers questioning the wisdom of software upgrades. Developing the business case for moving from one release of CRM to another is a longer cycle than it would have been in, say, 1999 or even 2006.

So in that, Mr. Siebel is indeed right. Naturally, such data points tempt us all to compare IT with mature businesses like electric utilities. When did you last comparison-shop or voluntarily replace your electricity provider?

But like all most generalizations, that sort of straight-line extrapolation is wrong. Only because the straight-line assumes a static, unchanging business environment, one in which all existing IT investments will soldier on bravely, never complaining about increasing transaction volumes, new markets, mergers, acquisitions, new regulations etc.

Let’s forget the enterprise for a second and look at ourselves, the private consumers of technology. Have *we* stopped bringing more technology into our lives? Television manufacturers want us to splurge on their latest offerings but a website wants me to stop viewing TV on my TV. Another website wants me never to buy another CD download another MP3 and simply stream what, when and where I like.

My point simply being, technological advances *are* continuing, they are changing us and they are changing our buying behavior. Just because everyone has a cellphone or an iPod or a laptop is no reason at all to discount and dismiss the future. Who could have predicted the (re-)emergence of the Netbook in 2009?

Similarly, just because all large companies already run ERP, CRM, data warehouses and portals is no reason to believe this is the end-state.

Even today, every new conversation with a customer or a prospect leaves me a little surprised at how much there is still left to be done in enterprise IT. And how can it not be? After all, the business environment is not standing still. It is morphing and evolving all the time. Is there a CIO on this planet who truly believes he or she has achieved a blissful state of equilibrium with the business?

Could it be that the current model of IT - not just the infrastructure but everything - is reaching it’s logical conclusion and will be replaced by something better? Contrast, for example, the Internet and web-based applications to the mainframe software applications from the 1960s, the so-called Golden Period of IT. That is exactly the stuff of entrepreneurship and innovation.

Well, I am still optimistic and I say Thomas Siebel is wrong. Companies are and will be motivated to replace and upgrade and to solve familiar problems with new ideas and approaches.

How all of this gets packaged and delivered to the user might be far more simplified in 2015, but this business of packaging and delivering will go on for a long, long time.

In case you’ve been marooned on a desert island, a certain four-letter word starting with the letter F has got everyone in a tizzy these days. I mean “free”, of course.

Recently, Chris “Long Tail” Anderson’s book about “Free” (read it for free here) was reviewed by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, in which he wondered why the idea of selling for free was “being elevated to a philosophical principle”. Good point. Maybe “free” is simply a pricing strategy.

My company plays in the SAP world and naturally, it’s hard to imagine anything being sold for free here.

Like any other business application, our solutions and services are are evaluated by individuals from business (Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain Management), IT (ERP, CRM, BI), Security, Governance and of course, Finance.

The reason for that is partly functional (”does it meet everyone’s needs?”) and partly for impact reasons (”does your solution introduce yet another layer of complexity for my database administrator?”).

So even if we gave some things away for free, the customer would still have to worry about details like interfaces and if those interfaces would break when SAP introduced the next enhancement pack and so on.

Just because they don’t have to pay for the software doesn’t mean it will run for free. What CIO would like to explain a possible CRM system crash to the Sales VP by saying “well, it all began when we downloaded this free software….”? Not in a million years.

The problem isn’t one of enterprise vendors not being creative enough to “sell” things for free. It’s that companies won’t buy free. A contract and a price tag are a promise of accountability. That’s the way it has been and that’s the way it will be.

I quite liked this analogy of fixing a roof, when talking about “maintenance/upkeep” type of IT projects.

Companies don’t like to spend money on fixing the roof and as we all know, changing the foundation is rarely an option. So what’s left? The walls, of course. But pulling those down means you are going to hit some water pipes somewhere.

Now I think I’ve gone too far with the construction metaphor.

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….

A short but thought-provoking article on Harvard Business Publishing about the importance of measuring IT costs not in conventional business terms but in terms of “demand-side metrics”:

“Most IT shops are good project economics — but they don’t create, nor are they asked, to estimate the ongoing operational costs denominated in demand-side measures like cost per car.”

It seems like a terrific concept but I also wonder about its feasibility. Many companies lack a good handle on what their product or service really costs. Approximations (and political maneuverings) abound. But imagine if the cost of on-going maintenance of  a CRM software or an ERP system could be communicated to the stakeholders in terms of transactional costs. The challenge of IT prioritization could be addressed so much more clearly and effectively.

Read the article here.

From the Effective CIO blog, a post on quarter-end discounts on enterprise software:

“…the last thing any of us should be doing is running to the CFO’s office on June 30th, looking for a signature to close a deal before 5 PM. Rushing a deal to save a buck is unprofessional, and any other C-level executive should question our abilities if we behave like that.”

Sometimes, just sometimes, it feels as though our high-tech (and high-touch) industry shares ZERO empathy with the buyer.

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?