SOA filling the Gaps

More than ten years ago I presented in a local ERP conference in Haifa . I am not an ERP expert. I was invited to present because I worked as a self-employed consultant for GiGa Information Group , which was acquired in February 2003 by Forrester Research .   Instead of presenting non-expert's presentation, I preferred to tell the audience that I am presenting Giga's Analyst's Byron Miller's presentation. Miller's presentation was interesting. He described three ERP states, depicted in the simple image above. I built a simplified image based on his classification. The current state, in 2002, was Suite state. transformation to the other states requires advancements in Technical Integration and in Semantic Standards. The harder task is Semantic Standards, therefore different ERP states are applicable for the same level of Technical Integration. Suite state, in which you have to chose a single ERP vendor solution, is the less desired state. According to...

I recently read Tien Tzue 's post titled The End of ERP . As usual, I suspect the validity of statements beginning with the End of ... without a question mark in the end. Tien Tzue's statement is not an exception. According to Tien Tzue there is a shift from 20th century products based economy to 21th century Service subscription economy, therefore ERP is doomed. He refers to the acquisitions of Cloud ERP solutions companies,  Successful Factors by SAP and Taleo by Oracle , as an End Of Life signs of traditional ERP.   No ERP company can afford to ignore Cloud based ERP, but that does not mean that SAP, Oracle and other traditional vendor, are going to kill the goose who lays golden eggs i.e. their traditional On-Premise ERP suits. SaaS based ERP is a better fit for some enterprises and Traditional ERP fits better for other enterprises. Three years ago I already discussed the issue of Future Applications: SaaS or Traditional .   Basically it i...

There is an old saying: Respect and Suspect. When someone declares, writes or says something, do not decry or ignore him – respect him.  It may turn out that the information he provides is valuable or useful. On the other hand, Suspect and check whether what was manifested is true, half true or false. This attitude is the corn stone of Scientific Research. I am not a Scientist, but during few decades in IT , I found Respect and Suspect as very useful approach as well as in my hobby playing Bridge (respect and suspect your opponents bids and play). The old saying came to my mind, while reading good news: Oracle Fusion Applications was released for use by Early Adopters after five years of development. The article was published by Mark Fontecchio in PeopleSoft Planet site. The following bullets summarize the article: 1. Oracle Fusion Applications is ready but are the customers ready for using it? 2.   Potential users  Those wh...

Probably not. Java is too strong to be killed. I posted the following answer to the question: Will Oracle's lawsuit Against Google Put a Chill on Java Adoption?  asked in ebizQ SOA Forum When Oracle acquired Sun, I thought it was a wrong decision (read my post: Vendors Survival:The Sun is red - Oracle to buy Sun First Take   ). It seems that Oracle's managers reached a similar  conclusion and are trying to minimize the amount of money they lose. The lawsuit against Google is one  of the ways to achieve it. However, this lawsuit  supports the concerns about Java after Oracle  acquired Sun. The delicate balance of the Java community with two  strong players (IBM and BEA), Sun as the owner of  Java and leader of the Java Community Process and  other strong players (Oracle, SAP, RedHat/Jboss etc.)  no longer exists. Oracle swallowed BEA and Sun and is now the owner  of Java. Java w...

On May 14th SAP AG signed a definitive agreement to acquire Sybase Inc. for approximately $5,800 million. The offer price represents a premium of 44% over the three-month average stock price of Sybase and a premium of approximately 56.36% over the closing price of Sybase' common stock of $41.57 on May 11, According to the announcements by the two companies the deal, which follows a partnership for a significant time, is beneficial for both companies. I partially agree: It is very good for Sybase. However, I think that acquiring Sybase looks like a SAP's mistake. What motivated SAP to acquire Sybase? Previous SAP's CEO LEO Apotheker was replaced by Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe due to conservative business approach. One of the significant results of this approach is few acquisitions. SAP's main competitor Oracle, is acquiring many companies in a relatively short time. So far SAP's significant acquisition was Business Objects a Business Intelligence inf...

Few years ago I participated in a strategic CRM consulting. The customer was using  Siebel and SAP ERP . He considered  other alternatives for CRM. My role in the consulting team was to analyze the CRM market and trends. CRM as a SaaS or on Demand was one of the major  trends I mentioned. I wrote on SalesForce.com transforming the CRM market. I wrote on Seibel on Demand as well as on other SaaS style CRM solutions. Sap was an exception. It was the only vendor with no On Demand CRM strategy or solution. According to SAP, CRM should be integrated with ERP components and database, therefore it is not possible to properly implement CRM as a Service, together with Data Center based ERP. I explained to the client, that sooner or later we will find SaaS CRM solutions by SAP. However, about two days before we completed our paper Oracle announced Siebel acquisition. The most important questions were: Is the acquisition is due to Installed Base or product features? ...

I was asked in ebizq SOA forum: What Do You Think of Oracle Buying AmberPoint? My answer in the following lines is my First Take of that acquisition. AmberPoint is a very small vendor who has a remarkable Run Time SOA Governance product. Its offerings includes also SOA Management solutions and lately also Transactions Run Time Governance products. It was a matter of time until one of the mega companies will acquire it. The natural candidate for acquiring it was its closest partner Microsoft . I think that Oracle acquired it in order to fill a gap in its SOA portfolio ( BEA licensed AmberPoint's products prior to being acquired by Oracle), but the main reason for that acquisition is beyond SOA. Executing Oracle strategy requires Network and Systems Management (NSM) solutions even before the Sun acquisition. After the Sun acquisition an NSM solution is a must. Oracle's sales men are talking about management solutions at least four or five years, but unfortunatel...

More than a week ago I wrote a post on Oracle-Sun hardware in the light of Exadata 2 announcement. This announcement did not change my view before the acquisition and right after the Sun acquisition : Oracle is not a hardware vendor. This post is more technical than the previous posts mentioned above. Storage Hierarchy The schematic illustration above depicts schematically Storage Hierarchy. It includes internal memory, as well as external storage. The top of the hierarchy includes small, fast and expensive storage types, so the amount of storage of that types is limited. Sometimes the amount is also limited by technological constraints. As we proceed down the hierarchy the storage is cheaper and the amount of storage of that kind is larger, but the time required for accessing it is longer. The illustration does not show size ratios it shows only size order from smaller to bigger. It also does not differentiate between slow and slower storage included in the bottom ...