PracticalSOA

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….

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.