SOA filling the Gaps

When HP intended to acquire EDS  in 2008, I wrote a post titled: Vendors Survival: Will HP Survive Until 2018? - HP's EDS First Take .  The prefix implies that the post was not the only post about Vendors Survival. Other posts discuss future survival of other vendors such as Microsoft , Apple , Google , SUN and EMC .  The optimistic view was that HP will become a co-leader of the Outsourcing market together with IBM (The market leader). The idea was to get more revenues from the profitable Service market, because Hardware commoditization reduced Hardware profitability.    However, my opinion was, that the optimistic view was less realistic than other scenarios.  It looks like my prediction was not far from reality. HP Layoffs in 2012 On May, 23 2012, HP announced that it is cutting 27,000 jobs after posting a profit decline of 31%in the second quarter of 2012.  Many of the jobs cut where former EDS employees .  The Case of General M...

In a  previous post I discussed Business Process Management (BPM) evolution as reflected by an Ovum report.  Recently I read new Gartner BPM Magic Quadrant . The Magic Quadrant is titled IBPMS Magic Quadrant. If you compare it to previous Gartner BPMS Magic Quadrants (you should not compare them), you will find a totally different picture.  Only three Leaders in the IBPMS Magic Quadrant, namely: IBM , PegaSystems and Appian . No Challengers and a lot of Visionaries I know ( Oracle , Software AG , Tibco , Vitria ) and two Visionaries I never heard of ( Bosch Software Innovations , Whitestein ).  Previous BPMS Magic Quadrant includes many Leaders, many Challengers as well as many Visionaries. The pattern of few Leaders, No Challengers and many Visionaries is typical to immature markets. Gartner explains it as a new generation of BPMS tools. What differentiate IBPMS from BPMS? IBPMS tools try to address a new Use Case : Intelligent  Business Operati...

Why SOA is implemented by more enterprises than BPM ?  SOA is an Architecture, so an enterprise may use an Architecture or not.  Many Enterprises without any architecture, begin their SOA initiative, when SOA was only Hype and buzzword. Other Enterprises followed when it matured. Some realized measurable SOA benefits.  Unfortunately, many of them executed it wrongly, and therefore their SOA benefits were limited or even non-existent.  Managing Business Processes is not an option it is a must . Therefore Enterprises managed their Processes manually or by usage of  code  embedded in Systems' Business Logic Layer. It is difficult to convince them to change their Process Management practices by implementing BPM. The company's management team may use the slogan: If it is not broken do not fix it.   The significant value of BPM is not Business Process Automation. It is Business Process Change or Improvement or Flexibility. In order to change a Bus...

Recently, I was interviewed by  Pcon   (unfortunately the link points to an Hebrew only site) as part of debriefing on Legacy Systems.  Pcon is an Israeli company investigating IT topics by quoting professional articles and interviewing experts. They publish the results of the investigations including practical recommendations. This post is mainly about topics raised by me during the interview, but not included in the debriefing, which will be published.    What are Legacy Systems? The term Legacy Systems refers to old application systems and/or veteran technologies still in use.  Usually, the term Legacy Systems is associated with: 1. Mainframe Hardware e.g. IBM System z and its Operating Systems or Proprietary Servers and Operating Systems such as HP Alpha and OpenVMS Operating System, IBM AS/400 and OS/400   Operating System. 2. Development and Production Environments, e.g. COBOL , Natural and DBMS systems such as Adabas  ...

A year ago I publishes a post titled: Will Microsoft Survive Until 2021? . According to the post, the probability in 2011, that Microsoft will survive until 2021, was lower than the probability assigned in previous post written in 2008 , for its survival  for ten years, i.e. until 2018. Some problems mentioned in the 2011 post were its position in the Smart Phone market and it Windows Operating System .  Recently, Microsoft reported Loss after a Write-Down .  The Loss was attributed to its ill-fated acquisition of an Online Advertising company. However, Microsoft's Windows business revenues f ell 13% in the fourth fiscal quarter ended June 30th.   The Bottom Line: Although the propability that Microsoft will survive for 10 years is still high, this probability in 2012 is lower than it was in 2011. 

Picture Source: Matt Yohe, orginal loaded to the English Wikipedia Picture Author:    Matt Yohe In previous post titled:  Vendors Survival: Will Apple Survive until 2021?  I  argued that "t hat the probability that it will not survive is higher than the probability that the other vendors (not including Software AG and obviously not including SUN ) I discussed will not survive." According to my post, the reasons for assigning lower probability to Apple 's existence for 10 years or more included: 1. Apple is a Mountain Train. Its history is full of ups and downs. 2. If it will not continue to innovate, it will not be a leader and even stop surviving.  3. Dependence on the late  Steve Jobs (When the post was written Jobs was still alive) 4. Binding to its Smartphone Platform, may result in Google's Android dominance.      A Bloomberg article titled:   Apple’s Patent War Seen Leading To Retaliatory Strikes ,  ...

Ten years ago, many enterprises declare that they moved from Product Centric Enterprise to Customer Centric Enterprise. However, many of them remain Product Centric or transformed themselves to other Enterprise type. The new enterprise could be anything, but surely not Customer Centric. One of the main obstacles towards Customer Centric was lack of understanding of the dependency of Customer Centric approach on Multi-Channel Architecture. Multi-Channel and the Customer If you are Customer Centric, than a customer should be free to choose his/her preferred Channel. The conclusion above is obvious to say, but not always easy to execute.  Less obvious, is the conclusions you can derive from the customer's choice. For example, a Bank customer preferring the  Internet   channel provided more  value than a customer who preffers the Branch Channel.  This conclusion is supported by internal data of successful banks in Europe and USA dated about 10 years a...

I recently  read a TechCrunch article titled: The Rise of Big Data Apps and the Fall of SaaS written by Raj De Datta. I do agree with the prefix. As far as the suffix is concerned, I can only explain why  Raj De Datta's opinion is wrong.  I usually tend not to agree with statements about premature End of Life of technologies or architectures or trends. In most cases, it easier to kill a concept in writing, than to persuade a large number of users to change their habits. The root of the opinion that Business Logic Centered Applications are in conflict with Data Centered Applications, derived from specialization of IT experts. The approach of experts specialized in Data is different from the approach experts specialized in Applications. I also read an interesting related  Gartner Research Note titled: Overlaps in Data Integration and Application Integration Represent Significant Opportunities . This Research Note written by Gartner's Analysts Ted F...

On March 19th I participated in STKI Summit . participating in this Israeli Market analysis conference is  an habit. I aprticpated in 2011 , 2010  and 2008 . My consist particiaption indicates that, at  least in my opinion, it is a valuable event.  This year theme was IT Revolution Consumer Power . The Consumer centirc IT revolution is not totally new, it was discussed in previous year Summit Presentations, as one of the driving forces. I am attaching links to the presentations: Jimmy Schwarzkopf - IT Market in Israel 2012 Pini  Cohen - Trends in Infrastructure: Paradigm Shift Shahar Geiger Maor - Networking Trends , EndPoints Trends Einat Shimoni - Trends in Enterprise Applications, Web & Analytics Galit Fein - Office of the CIO Office of the CMO market Trends 2012 I did not find a link to the new analyst and Research Assistant  Liza Bodogin 's presentation on ECM, Talent Training and Social Applications. Probably it is included in Ein...

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...