SOA filling the Gaps

Bob Dylan 's song  in is about The Times They Are A-Changin'. Information Technology Leading Vendors are also changing. If a company does not adapt to changes it may not Survive or it may Survive but no longer as The Market Leader.  The first three sections of the post are about Computers Industry Revolutions. The fourth is about, the current revolution. The sections following these sections, are a discussion of Microsoft's Survival probability. You can't compete with NCR Thomas Watson Jr. Source: Wikipedia When Thomas Watson Jr. replaced his father as IBM's president in 1956, he was told that he will not be able to compete with the Computers Industry Leader NCR .  In 1956 I was in a kinder garden. In the beginning of the decade starting on 1970, I was working as a junior Computers Programmer: IBM was the  Computers Industry Leader.   NCR is now a player in the Automatic Teller Machines, Retail Store Automation and Self-Service Kiosks mar...

Shadow IT is growing and growing. In this post I explain what Shadow IT is and how it is related to the Business-IT Gap.  What is Shadow IT? Shadow IT is Information Technology   Applications , Systems and Infrastructure, which are developed and/or used without decisions and without approval of the Enterprise Management Team and the CIO .  Sometimes the Enterprise Management don't even know that these "Shadows" are executed as part of the Enterprise Information Technology. Shadow IT Trends and Directions Shadow IT is almost as old as Information Technology. When I worked on Y2K Bug , IT assets mapping was a necessary step.  We discovered Shadow IT applications such as Microsoft Excel applications, Reports using orphan tools (The company which built the tool was out of Business), Microsoft Access Applications and Data (The End User who developed them was no longer an employee of that Enterprise) etc.  If you read Alex Salazar's article: A little L...

Microsoft and Skype announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype , the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake . The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype . There are mixed opinions concerning the expected acquisition.  I see the warning signs ahead .  I do think that analyzing important factors such as the number of months Microsoft's profit's sum to 8.5 billion USDs or tax reduction due to acquisition of a Luxemburg based company are irrelevant or at best secondary. Even if a company profits are high, the company could find better investment alternatives, e.g. spending more on R&D , buying other companies or investing in companies without acquiring them. The last option was chosen by Microsoft in order to invest in Facebook . The significant factors are: What Strategy is used for increasing...

On June, 17 th I participated in an interesting oracle event: Oracle Day. The event took place near Tel-Aviv airport and its theme was: Building the Future. Oracle's president Mrs. Safra Catz presented the company's vision. . Two other senior Oracle managers presented Oracle G11 database and the company's CRM Software Strategy, (presented by a Senior Vice President who was a Siebel employee prior to its acquisition by Oracle). Afterwards concurrent tracks on various technological and applicative topics took place. I participated in the Fusion Middleware track. Oracle's Vision Mrs. Safra Catz used an analogy of buying a car vs. buying car parts and building it. As most of car consumers will not be able to build the cars the roads will be almost empty. Oracle's view is that building and integrating IT systems is similar to building a car by a consumer. It takes a lot of time and resources. The weakest link is integration. The Oracle alternative i...

A new killer in town: Wolfram Alpha is the Google Killer. Is it really a Google Killer as dubbed by some people? Although, my knowledge of Wolfram Alpha is less than limited, I am sure it is not. Some arguments supporting my view: 1. Wolfram Alpha is not available yet for public use even as a Beta. People impressions are based on previous achievements of Stephen   Wolfram , Demos, an empty Web site and a blog. As far as marketing is concerned, it is a huge success: so many references in the Web before it was released. 2. Is it a Search Engine? A Knowledge Base? An encyclopedia? If it is not a search engine it is not competing directly with Google. 3. Frequently IT application Killers or Infrastructure Killers were doomed to death before their competitors they tried to kill. For examples, IBM's 9370 computers described in the nineties as VAX killers fade away about 10 or 15 years before VAX computers end of life. An article I read many years ago was titles: R...