Data on 15m benefits claims ‘lost by Customs’ – Telegraph
Data on 15m benefits claims ‘lost by Customs’ – Telegraph
Wow … I think this will change the view on security, or at least I hope so … Im sure that the solution to prevent things like this is not the most expensive to implement. The solution would definitly not just be an IT solution, but it should also be a business process change.
I guess that the security consultants just became more expensive :-) it also shows that even if you have full control in some places if you dont have the full picture it is hard to find the week links in the chain.
One can wonder what the value of this information is on the market … … a very quick search with Google finds information from among others, NY Times, that stolen credit card information is "worth" between $50 USD and $100 USD. Perhaps this is then 15 000 000 times $100 USD …
Even if we cant set a price on information, I think that this shows how important it is to protect the information that holds the business value. Security is and should always be part of architecture, spanning from Enterpise Architecture to Infrastructure Architecture.
Tech summary (November 2007)
Some unstructured thoughts of what has happened in the IT business/technology lately …
iPhone hits the market in germany and great britain. The iPhone from Apple was released in Europe, and in the same manner as teen agers queue to rock concerts, the religious Apple people queue to get the final solution to global starvation, global environment improvement, and a world without any kind of conflicts ;-) Serious … Yes the iPhone is really great, I got to play with it for 5 minutes last week, and I must say; I am impressed! Apple shows that they understand what the intended market segment wants! But it would not be usefull for many business people at the moment, and I think they have forgot that the European cellular system differs from the US … in Europe we use 3G network for high speed data … I read on the internet some rumors about when Apple shall release a iPhone with 3G, but I could not find anything official … that is a bit worrying! and as soon the applications/add ons starts to hit the web, the Apple iPhone will be very intersting … but Im sure that the intended segment will buy it now anyway :-)
As always these days, the telecom operators are limiting the availability of the phones by locking them for use in only their network! … In UK I think that it is O2 that got the pleasure of indroducing the iPhone … This can be explained to a non technical person as; If a bridge was build, only certain car brands would be allowed to drive on them … Think about the Golden Gate Bridge … if you was forced to use a certain car brand when driving on it … would that be acceptable?
Speaking of phones, Google announced that they will release a phone … It will be based on a Linux kernel, and that must mean that it will be more or less open source. Is that bad or good? It is hard to say at the moment, it will probably mean that it will be "easy" to make custom application, and remem bering that it is Google that is behind the phone, I am sure that "user friendly" will be part of the description of the phone.
That is probably the secret behind both the presumed success of iPhone, and why many think that it is so interesting that Google will release a phone … "user friendly"
Google is doing other more classic Google things also … they are looking into have ads in games. This is something that Microsoft already have this possibility in its xbox live environment. (Microsoft baought a company a while back that was specialised in this area) Im not sure if Microsoft is using the ads in the xbox live environmanet, but it will be quite intersting to see how and what kind of ads Google will push into the gaming arena.
IBM is acquiring Cognos … probably responding to last month news when SAP acquired Business Objects. IBM is to pay $5 Billion according to the article I read. It seems to be some serious consolidation trends in the market at the moment, we have four large ISVs left; Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Oracle, and maybe CA
Ok, so what BI players do we still have on the market? at least we still have Microsoft, and their news release of performancepoint server 2007 wich is/will be a very good competitor to the other BI vendors. Microsoft is continuing their integration with sharepoint server and that will of course help you with the delivery and access to the information. They have also focused on self service, meaning that users that have the access rights will be allowed to create own reports and analysis. I found an interesting report on the web that I think you should read if you are interesting in what happens in the BI area. [link]
BI is of course interesting but as usually it will be just as good as the input information and the ability to use it is; Quality = Input information * Usability * Functionality. The functionality is mature enough today I would dare to say, yes each vendor will have thier top functionality to show, and claim that this is the key to success, but if we ask us if that is the main issue we will find when implementing true BI in the organisation … it will probably not be the answer.
So the focus should be data quality, and usability … Data quality is probably easiest to get from your ERP system, and not from all the sources. Since the ERP system usually is a well defined consolidation point most of the information needed will be in the system already. Looking at for example Microsoft Dynamics AX that holds a lot of the transactions that occur in a normal business you would have a perfect place to hunt for data. Combine it with some external sources that is connected through a userfriendly interface that allows the managers that are working, organisationally, further away from the central information to create their own reports and analysis
For you out there that loves hardware, I am sure that you have read Toms Hardware pages for many years, and now when the Christmas is coming Tom have started a wonderful serie of articles! Holiday Buyer’s Guid 2007. I have no clue what he is recomending, but he really can make a motherboard look appealing ;-)
SaaS and the need for scalability
What requirement does the SaaS (Software + Service) put on your systems scalability? In theory it will require you to have IT systems that can scale more or less unlimited. This is if the context is that you are providing a SaaS system for others to use. If you are a provider of services to use or you are a company that are using services from someone else, you are still depending on the fact that it can scale. You could argue that when you are consuming the service (using) you can solve the issue by having a service level agreement (SLA), and yes some kind of contract is always needed when two parties are providing services to each other. But a SLA will not be very useful when your company shall merge with the newly bought company and you suddenly need twice the number of users that run the SaaS application, and the service provider just can not scale. It might be a question of time, the service provider needs to buy more hardware, and is "just" waiting to get it delivered, but depending on the service plattform in the back it might be that it just is not possible to scale. SaaS is about using a service from some source, and the source can be modern and it can be of more or less legacy type. When it is a modern type of back end systems, and
content sources there is a good chance of it being scalable, but what about when the backend system is old, and maybe not that scalable? will the Service provider have the possibility to scale as you as consumer want? It can also be the case that your SaaS provider is using some other SaaS provider and relays the result … then your provider is not in control of the scalability!
How can you then be sure that your provider can scale, or even … how can you be sure that you can scale when the demand of your services becomes huge!?
It is very much a question about communication and also to have total control of your environment. To communicate with the CxOs that takes the final decision if you shall buy/sell the service it is important to be able to show them what they are interested in knowing, and formatted in a way that they get the level of details that they want to have. It is equal important then to have control on much more detailed or fine granular level. Example of techniques is UML for system architecture, and powerpoint to describe the high level. The glue that makes this possible is to use an Enterprise Architecture framework that can contain both high level views and fine granular views. Examples of frameworks to use is Togaf, Zachman, or Capgeminis IAF
What is the content of the next hype curve and why? Lets be interactive !!!
We have all seen the Gartner technology hypecurve, and also used it for doing market planning . I found a version on the net that I have inserted here … I thought that I should try to use the power of internet and web 2.0 … and also to see if there is someone that reads my blog :-)
My hope is that you out there adds a comment to my blog and adds one or more "technologies" that you think belongs somewhere on the curve. Below I created a template. What I want is a comment with a maturity between 1 and 15. To be able to follow this up and get some legimity to the figures I think that it is important that when you post your coordinates it is also important to write a couple of sentences that explains why you think that the technology belongs at the coordinate! Together with the number a letter (S, M, or F) to indicate if the technology is moving with Slow (S), Medium (M) or with Fast speed over the hype curve.
I want the hype curve to show where we are on new years evening 2008/2009!
It would be very nice to get the contributors name, title, and organisation/company also … That is not to discreminate anyone, but to help other persons that wants to use this "blog" created information.
Depending on the traffic and volume of information, I will update the hypecurve, and summarise the discussions … and try to do some analysis of the information once a week.
It could also be the fact that some of your opinions is regional, and that you are aware of that. If so please then also write that and the reason. It will probably help the discussions.
My first contributions (could change after some discussions) are;
- 11S – SOA – I think that SOA is mature, but not mature enough that everyone understands it
It will become more mature when the abreviation is demystified … We need to understand that SOA is not all about technology, it is also very much about SOE or Service Oriented Enterprise. And the real boost that will kick off SOA is when we get a more mature Enterprise Architects community in the IT industry - 7F – SaaS – Because it is becoming more common in the market place I think that this is a fast mover from the top of the curve into the slope, but it will get up of the valley quite fast and into the area of maturity
- 13S – BPO – The companies with the business strategy dares to take the step, and they are becoming quite common. The technology behind the offering has become mature, and so have also the delivery model
- 4F – Agile BPO – Agile BPO is a new approach that will be very attractive to a lot of customers, that is why I think it is very fast moving and I also think that by 2008/2009 it will have reached the top of the hype, and fast slide down and into the maturity area
- 8S – Demand Driven Supply Chains – This is one of the challanges in the supply chain to go from push to pull, it will incorporate collaboration in all the steps of the supply chain to get it to work. And when noramally complex supply chain it will involve advanced planning solutions to be effective. It will also put new demands on supplier relationship management.
- 12F – APS – The first generation advanced planning systems has been around for a while, and is working very well, but will soon be replaced by newer technology. But there is still a lot of companies that will make their first generation installation with these systems.
- 4F – APS 2.0 – The second generation of Advanced Planning Systems will be recognizde during this comming year, and the companies that realise the benefit of parallell planning of both resources and capacity at a speed that allows for making "what if" scenarios will get to ROI very fast.
Do not forget that there could be other fun/interesting/valuble technologies that belong in the curve, please help out to find them!
Speed of change or Architecture and the need for planning …
I got this thought from a friend! and I really like it! Lets see if I can explain it …
How much planning do we need to do when starting a new project? Is the need for planning a result of how good we are to handle change? Do we really need to take everything into consideration upfront or can we adapt while we work?
Change management to requirements are today a natural part of software development methods like RUP (Rational Unified Process) and of more lightweight methods from the agile community. This is the foundation of iterations … we dont have all the facts, so lets do what we can do at the moment and figure out the rest later on …
I think everyone in the IT business agrees that this is a good way of working, but what does this mean when you are talking about architecture for your IT solution or enterprise?
Assume that difference over time is the same as difference in space (two different dimensions). If you walk outside the requirements on your shoes slowly change, maybe from walking on grass to walking on sand. This change in requirements could also be achived by just standing still and wait for the grass to grow … another example is to sit in a room, and then change room to the room next door, just to find out that there is two degrees colder in the new room. Or you can just sit in the room and wait for it to get colder … time and space (location) both changes the requirements…
We have agreed that it is possible to handle the requirements when they change over time … it should then also be possible to handle requirement that change in space. But can we handle any kind of change in requirements? No that is much harder, the same in our examples … A small change in temperature in a room will lead to putting a blanket over the shoulders. A large change in temperature would require a totaly different approach … The same when we create an architecture! Small chages can be handeled, but major chages calls for bigger changes in the architecture.
This is what often is called an agaile approach … and as always nothing is perfect, you will need to set it into a context, and the better you can make a guess about the future (time or space) the easier your architecture will be to do.
What is truly needed when doing an architecture, is a framework that gives you best practices, preferably some architectural patterns to reuse and a way to structure the deliverables and make sure that no needed parts of the architecture is missing. If you have that, and some experience that makes it possible to accelerate the architecture, and avoid having to make to big changes. Another nice thing is some reference architectures like SCOR or eTOM that is specific for you line of business, and will accelerate and assure that the differences in time and space is small.
p.s. for you out there that knows me, and my friends, can you guess who came up with this idea about the two dimensions that affect requirements in the same or results in the same thing?
Tech summary (October 2007)
Some unstructured thoughts of what has happened in the IT business/technology lately …
SAP just left their normal way of growing, and aquired the french company Business Objects, it will be really interesting to see what will happen in the future! I think this opens up for Cognos to be the alone "independant" BI software vendor. It will also be interesting to see how the two cultures will work together, German and French business culture is not always alike. SAP also promotes their new version … new codebase? ok … a question to ask yourself, … is that then a new system or is it the same? What about the risks? I hope for everyones sake that it is a tested new system, and that there exists a state of the art transition tool … and Im sure that there do exist a tool like that but what is the quality, and how many consultant hours will be needed to support it? We can also notice that SAP had a good Q3, and still makes a lot of money, so they are doing something right :-)
Another giant that is working hard with business integration must be Oracle, I have lost track of how many companies they have bought, but I know its a lot … and even being extremly optimistic, that must take very long time to integrate into both the company and into the software. I read somewhere that Oracle and HP are offering joint solutions … and that this is targeting the mid sized market, because it simplifes the offering!? Is that really the problem in the mid sized market?
Microsoft Dynamics AX will be shown in Copenhagen next week at the Microsoft EMEA Convergence, as well as the other products in the Microsoft Dynamics suite. It will be very fun to see glimps of the future from Microsoft … My company Kineticsware will be there and I will be there, hope to see someone that reads my blog. With AX comes the jungle of different solutions … yes it is a jungle to find a solution, hence I think that the market is open for solution providers that wants and have the ability to put together complete solutions to meet a need in the market. One of theese small but very useful solutions that just hit the market is "Kineticsware Inbound Logistics Management Solution". Microsoft keeps adding new applications to the stack, and becomes even better in the enterprise solution range, they very recently added Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007, a platform for delivering unified communications to users of its Office productivity suite that will be a productivity enhancer for many companies that need to improve their ability to work in different sites. Microsofts CEO Steve Ballmer said something about acqusitions … and it might been that statement that kicked of the rumors about Facebook … will Microsoft buy Facebook, or will Google buy Facebook? … it is possible to make bets on whom will buy Facebook … I read in the paper that you can even place a bet that IKEA, the Swedish furniture company would buy Facebook, but that sounds like a very high odds to me :-) Microsoft also launched Halo 3 … I have not even played Halo 1 …
The Supply Chain Managment business has some very interesting players like Manhattan Associates that is one of the leading WMS (Werehouse Management Systems) vendors in the market today. My company, Kineticsware, as well as other companies are using the ILS .Net solution to integrate with MS Dynamics AX and then lifting the AX solution to a first class and extremly competitive solution. Manhattan Associates continues to enhance their products with new functionality at the same time as they are expanding rapidly in Europe, and specificly in Russia!
Gizmodo, the gadget site shows the smallest radio so far … and wisley point sout that it still need a AAA battery … I think that shows that someone should explain that we need more battery time in our devices, some of us are actually outside of the lab, and occasionally meets some people ;-)
I will try to write more about some stuff that I have in mind after Convergence in Copenhagen
(more to follow …)
Agile BPO?
What is Agile BPO? who want Agile BPO? Who delivers agile BPO?
I think that Agile BPO is the BPO that targets medium sized companies, it is a cost effective way to outsource sertain business processes even if the outsourced part of the business is not huge or even large. It is also useful for larger companies and also smaller companies … when you need/want to be more cost effective in some business areas. It is the art to be able to handle more than one task per resource in the BPO center or the art to be able to switch extremly fast between companies in the BPO center. We have already seen this in the call center business, where even small companies can use switchboard functionality with excelent quality and price.
As we can see in the picture to the right, medium sized companies spend proportionally much more on typically BPO processes. This shows that there are very good oportunities for the companies in this segment as well as for the enterprises that still have not used BPO to create value in their business.
So what business processes could be possible to use an "Agile BPO" approach on?
Example; Customer Care / Call center (Switch board, Fist line of accounting departement), Logistics, Accounting (Invoice handling), Procurement, Human Resource (HR) and more … As you see this is the same list as normal BPO … What is then different with Agile BPO?
Agile BPO will cover the needs of cutting cost in smaller business! Up till now you have in the western countries been able to use
Who can deliver BPO today? We have all the regular palyers like; InfoSys, TCS , Wipro, Satyam, HCL, Cognizant, IBM India, Accenture India, Capgemini India and all of these players are natural choise of the bigger companies, but there are new players coming in to the market!
(more to follow …)
CTO Blog | Enterprise Architects versus Business Architects
Origin; CTO Blog | Enterprise Architects versus Business Architects (Capgemini CTO blog)
The normal talk about aligning Business with IT, and can the Enterprise Architects do the business architecture? I think that most of us agree that one big challange of today is to align the business with the IT. We can then of course also add SaaS or BPO to the discussion, and go down to details like business processes and business services, but is that the starting point? I am convinced that we have to start one step before that in most of the cases and ask if we really have a willingness to align the business strategy with the IT strategy, and how do we think that this will be done?
Shall we ask the IT guys that has no idea about business issues to do the alignment? Shall we ask the business people to tell the IT how things should be done? Hmm … hard question? ;-) No, I thin it is not a hard question … the alignment of the two "classically" parted camps is probably the hardest thing to do, not to descide if it should be done … Who should do it?
Should the business architects do it? Or should the SOA (IT architects) do it? or do we have a group that is specialised in doing this? To be an Enterprise Architect is also to be able to know when to use an expert … a business architect or an infrastructure architect …
As everyone … even the Enterprise Architect has a legacy, and has developed himself/herself over the years, and become more skilled in some part of the architecture spectrum … If the horizontal axis is business to infrastructure (covering also information and systems in between) not all Enterprise Architects will be experts in the business architecture, and neither will all be experts in information architecture … the curve will probably follow some kind of normal distribution as the most in our world. The same kind of distribution will apply when you look at the "depth" of the architects, some will work with concepts, and strategies, and some will work with more physical issues …
My point is that yes we have new challanges, both in technology (SOA, SaaS) and in business (BPO …) but the biggest thing we are facing is to accept that IT is a essential enabler in the modern business, and thus it has to enable the business strategy … Nothing new, but take a look around you and be honest, is this really the case in your company?
The fact is often that we find great IT systems but they can not fullfill the business strategy … and we also have no clear picture of how to do the alignment, and what kind of alignment we need.
I think that this is the space where the Enterprise architects fit, a role that is expert in connecting the different areas in the enterprise, and fulfilling the strategies to the best possible degree, by using expert architects in the different aspecs … like Business Architects and Infrastructure Architects or SOA Architects.
SAP buys Business Objects
SAP, Oracle, Microsoft the three large ERP vendors in the market today … (sorry if someone else feels that they should be mentioned, but then you have the oportunity to make a comment.) Some days ago SAP bought the french company Business Objects that are specialized in Business Intelligence. By doing that they left the normal organic growth strategy … This is very interesting from a business strategy point, and I think it will be very interesting to follow SAP and what they will do in the market.
What BI (Business Intelligence) tool providers are still out there?
- Business Objects – aquired by SAP
- Cognos
- Hyperion Solutions – aquired by Oracle
- MicroStrategy
- Microsoft
What is the value of buying a BI tool? Well, I usually say that it is perfect to have a tool, at least when you have so much controll over your information (data) so that you know what to measure, and what information to use when measuring … Will you know that when you buy a tool? Probably not! How will you know that? The easiest and probably the only way is to structure your business/enterprise. The most effective way to get to result is to use an Enterprise Architecture method, and focus on finding the correct performance indicators (KPI). Without control and connected business and IT it will be very hard to know what to put into the tools … and yes the ERP vendors have some insight of what is usually used, but I think it needs business expertise to really nail the correct information.
What about Microsoft Dynamics AX and BI? Yes, MS Dynamics AX has for a long time been prepared for using techniques like OLAP cubes for analysing the information, and furthermore with the usage of the latest Microsoft SQL server the integration to the Microsoft office suite has become excelent, reducing the cost of learning and maintainig new applications. Some might say that you have to do more yourself with the Microsoft tool set, but my strong belief is that the fun (hard) work is to structure your company and find out what you want to measure …
It is still also very important to remember that even though you have a ERP system installed and running it will probably not contain everything that you want to measure, there will be other sources in your business that are important … and here the use of some ETL tool becomes very important. I usually talk of best of breed in companies, but that is an approach to use when it can really give a business advantage.
It is very valuble to have control of what happens and can happen in your company, and that information will help you to make the right descisions, but without modern IT support that enables the users to work effectivly you will bot get the correct information into the systems, and with the wrong information you will get wrong answers ;-)
Upgrade cost of the ERP system (part 1)
You are running your ERP system … yes it has been around for some years, and you have built in unique functionality that is essential for your company, or you have ideas about what should be built.
Do you operate a legacy ERP system? and does your ERP vendor tell you that now you should upgrade to the new version of the system?
This is a very common scenario, and very often does the company forget to ask themself a very important question; Why should you upgrade? Should we look at new solutions?
There are some questions that everyone should ask themself;
- Is the cost of upgrading the ERP system as high as implement a new?
- What is the cost of implementing a modern ERP system?
- Is the new version that my current vendor suggests really a new ERP system?
(based on new technology? rewritten?) - What benefits can I get when chosing a new system?
- Is my business the same as it was when I chose my current, legacy, ERP system?
- How is the new modern ERP systems organised to make my own additions easy to upgrade? will I have to make changes in each screen?
- What is the cost of training the employees in the new version? compare to training cost of a new modern system that looks and works as normal MS Windows applications
- What is the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of the new version compared to a best in class ERP system
My knowledge is best in Microsoft Dynamics AX, and I have some insight in SAP, Oracle and Movex (Lawson M3). In AX the coding is blasting fast, the upgrading is made extreamly easy by the layer approach; As you can see in the picture Dynamics AX has the code in different layers, where the custom code created for your company is in the outmost layers and that makes upgrading as efficient as possible. The tools makes it possible to fast and efficient determine if some code need to be changed after the upgrade or if it is still working as intended.
Another neet thing is the modern and well structured codebase that for example makes it possible to add a field in one place, and then that field shows on all other screens … I have not heard of this anywhere else … have we not all seen ERP consultants sitting and doing time consuming changes to all screens where a field should be? … What is the cost of next upgrade … should that be taken into consideration? Yes!!! it is the responsibility of each CIO to inform the management team of both initial and future costs!
Does Microsoft Dynamics AX compete with SAP, Oracle and other mid-sized to large scale ERP systems? Yes! with version 4.0 of MS Dynamics AX, it became scalable! together with the unique functionality created with maximum effectivness it is an alternative to seriously consider!
(more to follow …)
random work related stuff, and more 
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