Showing posts with label IT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT. Show all posts
Friday, July 24, 2009
Microsoft, installs and quality control
Some lessons in working with Microsoft - and in software installation - are over at my professional blog. Although there may be a familiar ring to the experience, I also have some thoughts on why it happens.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Web: easy as 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
I have a memory of a W3 Consortium seminar in Sydney several years back. It discussed their efforts to put meaning into web content via The Semantic Web, using a concept/relationship mapping language called OWL, which uses RDF (a metadata descriptor) and XML syntax.
They intended to arrive at a structure that was universally navigable mechanistically (by computer), yet retain for each specialty area its own language/concepts. Yes, it was developed by academics, for academic applications.
This was before the concept of Web 2.0 was sufficiently popularised to gain a solid meaning. At the time, I believe they used the term Web 2.0 to describe their endeavour.
Times change, meanings change. The term Web 2.0 has been usurped for another purpose, and it looks like the W3 Consortium is now using Web 3.0 instead. At the current state of play, the simplest description I have seen of the evolution of the web (from Jean-Michel Texier via Peter Thomas) is as follows:
* Web 1.0 was for authors [ - to be read]
* Web 2.0 is for users [ - fosters interaction
* Web 3.0 is also for machines [ - fosters automation]
In effect, Web 3.0 should enable more rigorous discovery and collation of information from the far corners of the web. Something like what Google should be, if it had the full smarts. However, it would only work where web content authors added the background tags and capabilities - so it's more likely to be taken up for knowledge/information-building purposes, such as research, reference materials and databases. But this is a deceptively powerful paradigm, and the sky's the limit for assembling useful meaning. The current Google would look like a paper telephone directory... but by then, Google would have evolved to make full use of it. A fully referenced assembler of knowledge, rather than isolated lumps of unverified information.
PS If interested in Data Quality in a technical, database sense, see my latest tech post. (This one was intended for a generalised audience!)
They intended to arrive at a structure that was universally navigable mechanistically (by computer), yet retain for each specialty area its own language/concepts. Yes, it was developed by academics, for academic applications.
This was before the concept of Web 2.0 was sufficiently popularised to gain a solid meaning. At the time, I believe they used the term Web 2.0 to describe their endeavour.
Times change, meanings change. The term Web 2.0 has been usurped for another purpose, and it looks like the W3 Consortium is now using Web 3.0 instead. At the current state of play, the simplest description I have seen of the evolution of the web (from Jean-Michel Texier via Peter Thomas) is as follows:
* Web 1.0 was for authors [ - to be read]
* Web 2.0 is for users [ - fosters interaction
* Web 3.0 is also for machines [ - fosters automation]
In effect, Web 3.0 should enable more rigorous discovery and collation of information from the far corners of the web. Something like what Google should be, if it had the full smarts. However, it would only work where web content authors added the background tags and capabilities - so it's more likely to be taken up for knowledge/information-building purposes, such as research, reference materials and databases. But this is a deceptively powerful paradigm, and the sky's the limit for assembling useful meaning. The current Google would look like a paper telephone directory... but by then, Google would have evolved to make full use of it. A fully referenced assembler of knowledge, rather than isolated lumps of unverified information.
PS If interested in Data Quality in a technical, database sense, see my latest tech post. (This one was intended for a generalised audience!)
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Business Intelligence trends: HP's take
Buried amidst the consolidation of business intelligence (software) vendors, HP appears to base its solution on Knightsbridge, which it purchased in 2007.
It can't be too surprising if HP (and, previously Knightsbridge) aren't familiar names in the BI field. They do not figure regularly in industry reports and forums. HP's profile is quite low - so low, in fact, that they're not even mentioned in Wikipedia's list of BI tools. I expect their marketing strategy is limited to supplementing their provision of whole-of-business solutions to the marketplace: when selling to enterprises, something akin to "Oh, and we also supply business intelligence solutions - and consulting services. No need to go to the market for that". (However, for a counter-view on HP's BI profile, see this blog by Shawn Rogers.)
Notwithstanding, they recently released their take on BI trends for 2009, as follows.
Trend #1: Consumerisation of IT
In effect, business to adopt consumer-level technologies such as facebook and twitter. BI-specific effects in collaboration, visualisations, new data sources.
Trend #2: Post-Western tech economy
"Emerging regions" will transition from being simply "suppliers of low-cost talent" to being developers of best practice and global standard-setting consumers. Benefits to BI in terms of innovation - in analytics, unstructured data, etc.
Trend #3: BI importance increases; data governance and quality to become critical
So says HP - but see BI Survey's comments on less than expected adoption. However, it's to be expected that in hard times businesses would turn to BI for efficiency gains.
Trend #4: BI Buyers more scrutinising
- linking projects to business outcomes.
Trend #5: Market demands lower BI complexity
Commodified BI, standards for data marts. Here, HP contradicts its own earlier comment about SaaS/Cloud issues not yet figuring prominently in BI. They note it under "consideration".
Trend #6: Analytics moves to the front office; business users get greater sophistication
- including data modelling in the hands of business managers - scary!
Trend #7: Data integration increases in importance
Consolidating data from traditionally disparate sources; increasing focus on enterprise-level information management strategies.
Trend #8: A blurring between data warehouses and operations systems/data
A need for realtime operational reporting - enter, data hubs, Enterprise Service Buses, etc.
Trend #9: Convergence of structured/unstructured data
- this is a brave call, as business are only just starting coming to grips with the unstructured data buried in documents, notes, etc. My call is that it will be some time before unstructured data sees much effective use, let alone convergence.
Trend #10: CEP (Complex Event Processing) comes of age
- this seems to be an amalgam of alerting and data mining, nearing real-time.
As they later note: "To make the most of BI, first you need to get the data right". Much as that sounds a truism, it is a point that needs to be hammered at every opportunity, from data modelling to quality/management/governance.
HP's full report here.
It can't be too surprising if HP (and, previously Knightsbridge) aren't familiar names in the BI field. They do not figure regularly in industry reports and forums. HP's profile is quite low - so low, in fact, that they're not even mentioned in Wikipedia's list of BI tools. I expect their marketing strategy is limited to supplementing their provision of whole-of-business solutions to the marketplace: when selling to enterprises, something akin to "Oh, and we also supply business intelligence solutions - and consulting services. No need to go to the market for that". (However, for a counter-view on HP's BI profile, see this blog by Shawn Rogers.)
Notwithstanding, they recently released their take on BI trends for 2009, as follows.
Trend #1: Consumerisation of IT
In effect, business to adopt consumer-level technologies such as facebook and twitter. BI-specific effects in collaboration, visualisations, new data sources.
Trend #2: Post-Western tech economy
"Emerging regions" will transition from being simply "suppliers of low-cost talent" to being developers of best practice and global standard-setting consumers. Benefits to BI in terms of innovation - in analytics, unstructured data, etc.
Trend #3: BI importance increases; data governance and quality to become critical
So says HP - but see BI Survey's comments on less than expected adoption. However, it's to be expected that in hard times businesses would turn to BI for efficiency gains.
Trend #4: BI Buyers more scrutinising
- linking projects to business outcomes.
Trend #5: Market demands lower BI complexity
Commodified BI, standards for data marts. Here, HP contradicts its own earlier comment about SaaS/Cloud issues not yet figuring prominently in BI. They note it under "consideration".
Trend #6: Analytics moves to the front office; business users get greater sophistication
- including data modelling in the hands of business managers - scary!
Trend #7: Data integration increases in importance
Consolidating data from traditionally disparate sources; increasing focus on enterprise-level information management strategies.
Trend #8: A blurring between data warehouses and operations systems/data
A need for realtime operational reporting - enter, data hubs, Enterprise Service Buses, etc.
Trend #9: Convergence of structured/unstructured data
- this is a brave call, as business are only just starting coming to grips with the unstructured data buried in documents, notes, etc. My call is that it will be some time before unstructured data sees much effective use, let alone convergence.
Trend #10: CEP (Complex Event Processing) comes of age
- this seems to be an amalgam of alerting and data mining, nearing real-time.
As they later note: "To make the most of BI, first you need to get the data right". Much as that sounds a truism, it is a point that needs to be hammered at every opportunity, from data modelling to quality/management/governance.
HP's full report here.
Monday, March 16, 2009
BI Survey 8: business intelligence trends
Out now is the new edition of the BI Survey - once known as the OLAP Survey, now up to edition 8, covering 2008.
As a specific term, Business Intelligence is more widely known than Online Analytical Processing, but the Survey found that even on this, the software vendors are over-optimistic. They estimate about 14% of employees (of a "typical" organisation) use BI tools, but the Survey finds a reality closer to 8%.
Other points noted in the preview copy I have:
- BI implementations that follow a competitive evaluation of different vendor toolsets are more successful in every way - however, the Survey shows a slight drop in the number of competitive evaluations. My comment: this is not fully surprising, and I can give a couple of reasons: a) the competitive process is seen as too hard, costly, or lengthy; and b) encumbents with BI skills will inevitably veer towards the toolsets with which they are most familiar;
- the most common issue with BI tools is (query) performance - although vendors have a rosier view than business users. ;
- small software vendors provide better support than large ones.
The spate of vendor amalgamations is somewhat represented in the survey. Gone are explicit listings of tools such as ProClarity and Brio (subsequently Hyperion Intelligence), but still represented are TM1 (as Cognos TM1) and Hyperion (via Essbase - all their other tools were subsumed in the Oracle toolset).
Another blogger, Chris Webb, has seen the full report, and makes some comments here.
One interesting point he notes is about MicroSoft's marketing strategies vis-a-vis different product offering. He strongly suggests that MicroSoft is leveraging their BI tools (SQL Server services SSAS, SSIS and SSRS) to promote greater adoption of the MS Office suite - to the ultimate detriment of its BI tools. In effect, their BI toolset is less than could be in the interests of encouraging greater sales of MS Office. This is of note because MicroSoft are increasingly pushing their BI solutions out to Office products. Client-end tools in Excel were only the start.
The degradation of outcomes for one product in favour of another is certainly plausible for an organisation selling multiple products, especially if their marketing strategies are sufficiently sophisticated. However, I would in turn suggest that greater adoption of BI tools is hampered by specialist knowledge requirements, and that the more users are able to work within a familiar paradigm, the easier they find it to use the tools.
On the other hand, MicroSoft's BI solutions have always been far too heavily geared to the technical environment to the detriment of business-level stakeholders, and I'm not yet convinced their Office-related tools are a good fix.
Webb's other notable reading of BI Survey 8 is that MicroSoft's BI products come squarely in the middle of all rankings (eg usability, scalability, etc etc). This is not surprising. While they are capable of producing competent product, I don't think MS's BI products are stellar in the scheme of things - ubiquity is the word that springs closer to mind, since they come free with all enterprise edition databases. Thus MicroSoft will perpetually remain too big to ignore in the BI marketplace.
As a specific term, Business Intelligence is more widely known than Online Analytical Processing, but the Survey found that even on this, the software vendors are over-optimistic. They estimate about 14% of employees (of a "typical" organisation) use BI tools, but the Survey finds a reality closer to 8%.
Other points noted in the preview copy I have:
- BI implementations that follow a competitive evaluation of different vendor toolsets are more successful in every way - however, the Survey shows a slight drop in the number of competitive evaluations. My comment: this is not fully surprising, and I can give a couple of reasons: a) the competitive process is seen as too hard, costly, or lengthy; and b) encumbents with BI skills will inevitably veer towards the toolsets with which they are most familiar;
- the most common issue with BI tools is (query) performance - although vendors have a rosier view than business users. ;
- small software vendors provide better support than large ones.
The spate of vendor amalgamations is somewhat represented in the survey. Gone are explicit listings of tools such as ProClarity and Brio (subsequently Hyperion Intelligence), but still represented are TM1 (as Cognos TM1) and Hyperion (via Essbase - all their other tools were subsumed in the Oracle toolset).
Another blogger, Chris Webb, has seen the full report, and makes some comments here.
One interesting point he notes is about MicroSoft's marketing strategies vis-a-vis different product offering. He strongly suggests that MicroSoft is leveraging their BI tools (SQL Server services SSAS, SSIS and SSRS) to promote greater adoption of the MS Office suite - to the ultimate detriment of its BI tools. In effect, their BI toolset is less than could be in the interests of encouraging greater sales of MS Office. This is of note because MicroSoft are increasingly pushing their BI solutions out to Office products. Client-end tools in Excel were only the start.
The degradation of outcomes for one product in favour of another is certainly plausible for an organisation selling multiple products, especially if their marketing strategies are sufficiently sophisticated. However, I would in turn suggest that greater adoption of BI tools is hampered by specialist knowledge requirements, and that the more users are able to work within a familiar paradigm, the easier they find it to use the tools.
On the other hand, MicroSoft's BI solutions have always been far too heavily geared to the technical environment to the detriment of business-level stakeholders, and I'm not yet convinced their Office-related tools are a good fix.
Webb's other notable reading of BI Survey 8 is that MicroSoft's BI products come squarely in the middle of all rankings (eg usability, scalability, etc etc). This is not surprising. While they are capable of producing competent product, I don't think MS's BI products are stellar in the scheme of things - ubiquity is the word that springs closer to mind, since they come free with all enterprise edition databases. Thus MicroSoft will perpetually remain too big to ignore in the BI marketplace.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
McCabe I.T. prognoses 1: the cloud
It's hard making intelligent predictions. Science fiction's successes have been notably sporadic, with the odd fax and video player overwhelmed by flying cars and time machines. But everyone was caught on the hop by home computers, mobile phones and the internet, so the would-bes are trying to make it up with high-impact but outlandish speculations.
Bruce McCabe is a researcher and analyst (his company is called S2 Intelligence) who makes his living predicting the future course of technology for corporate clients who want to keep on top of broad trends. In particular, he is wont to point out technological change that will be "disruptive" to business - that is, major developments will bring about changes to business models, negatively impacting those who haven't kept up, and providing advantage to those who are ahead of the game.
That latter must be where he ekes out his niche: competitive advantage is a key issue for corporations, and technology is the biggest vector for change.
Thus to McCabe's latest review, dated January 2009. It covers briefs on 34 aspects of technology; although this is ultimately an admixture of intelligence, knowledge and speculation, credit should be given to McCabe for his length of service in this field. His work must be worthwhile, since he is still consulting and presenting to conferences at least five years after I first saw him.
Yet the first topic - cloud computing - is a fraught topic: its meaning has been somewhat abused, often coming to refer to any outsourced I.T. services, where it more accurately refers to computing services (particularly storage and processor power) that are leased from a third party (via the internet), and abstracted in terms of size (and so very scalable) and physical location. It is chiefly the scalability and on-demand nature of such a service that brings business benefits over locating and managing one's own equipment.
McCabe visited Salesforce.com, whose success in this field may encourage people to overstate the degree of adoption of cloud computing. McCabe: "in the past five years not a single Salesforce.com customer interviewed by S2 has expressed anything other than strong positive outcomes. That outcome is unique."
It is a fair comment that: "this leadership is rapidly moving the goalposts for Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and every other provider of business software." He goes further: "A new world of software development is opening up. It is not a wholesale displacement of the old one... 'In the cloud' software development will, however, be strongly associated with rapid, disruptive, innovation by businesses".
Although this may be the way the world eventually understands cloud computing, McCabe effectively conflates a number of different trends:
- cloud computing - scalable leasing of computing power;
- free and open source software - including, for example, Google's offerings of business software that directly competes with Microsoft;
- outsourcing in general;
- the emergence of software development services, especially from India.
As with all attempts at outsourcing, if one's I.T. capabilities and needs are not managed effectively, it matters not whether they are located in-house or god-knows-where. And it remains that outsourcing in whatever form it takes makes management exponentially harder; the hazards are also far greater. We've all read or experienced these outsourcing efforts: incredible disruption to business when the switch was flicked; equivalent headcounts hired as consultants down the track; and sometimes a complete volte face to bring services back in the fold.
Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that the trends described above (cloud computing plus) are going to figure big and are going to disrupt traditional business models. The greatest business benefit comes where services are inherently commodifiable and scalable in the first place, and thus lend themselves well to such abstraction.
Bruce McCabe is a researcher and analyst (his company is called S2 Intelligence) who makes his living predicting the future course of technology for corporate clients who want to keep on top of broad trends. In particular, he is wont to point out technological change that will be "disruptive" to business - that is, major developments will bring about changes to business models, negatively impacting those who haven't kept up, and providing advantage to those who are ahead of the game.
That latter must be where he ekes out his niche: competitive advantage is a key issue for corporations, and technology is the biggest vector for change.
Thus to McCabe's latest review, dated January 2009. It covers briefs on 34 aspects of technology; although this is ultimately an admixture of intelligence, knowledge and speculation, credit should be given to McCabe for his length of service in this field. His work must be worthwhile, since he is still consulting and presenting to conferences at least five years after I first saw him.
Yet the first topic - cloud computing - is a fraught topic: its meaning has been somewhat abused, often coming to refer to any outsourced I.T. services, where it more accurately refers to computing services (particularly storage and processor power) that are leased from a third party (via the internet), and abstracted in terms of size (and so very scalable) and physical location. It is chiefly the scalability and on-demand nature of such a service that brings business benefits over locating and managing one's own equipment.
McCabe visited Salesforce.com, whose success in this field may encourage people to overstate the degree of adoption of cloud computing. McCabe: "in the past five years not a single Salesforce.com customer interviewed by S2 has expressed anything other than strong positive outcomes. That outcome is unique."
It is a fair comment that: "this leadership is rapidly moving the goalposts for Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and every other provider of business software." He goes further: "A new world of software development is opening up. It is not a wholesale displacement of the old one... 'In the cloud' software development will, however, be strongly associated with rapid, disruptive, innovation by businesses".
Although this may be the way the world eventually understands cloud computing, McCabe effectively conflates a number of different trends:
- cloud computing - scalable leasing of computing power;
- free and open source software - including, for example, Google's offerings of business software that directly competes with Microsoft;
- outsourcing in general;
- the emergence of software development services, especially from India.
As with all attempts at outsourcing, if one's I.T. capabilities and needs are not managed effectively, it matters not whether they are located in-house or god-knows-where. And it remains that outsourcing in whatever form it takes makes management exponentially harder; the hazards are also far greater. We've all read or experienced these outsourcing efforts: incredible disruption to business when the switch was flicked; equivalent headcounts hired as consultants down the track; and sometimes a complete volte face to bring services back in the fold.
Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that the trends described above (cloud computing plus) are going to figure big and are going to disrupt traditional business models. The greatest business benefit comes where services are inherently commodifiable and scalable in the first place, and thus lend themselves well to such abstraction.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
The (temporary) collapse of spam - #7 for 2008
I'm not sure this can be counted as being of equal substance with other issues in this series. But it has been noticeable. The forced closure of a single US spam emitting enterprise has dramatically reduced the amount of email spam circulating - and the effects are still evident months later.
Spam is more than an annoyance, it is also a resource burner at a time we need to conserve resources. It's a surprise that the emission would turn out to be largely generated from one source. Possibility: they passed through the spammer community such an attractive offer of services that 80% of the business came their way. Another possibility: they offered massively bulked services to a relatively small bunch of miscreants. I cannot tell, but there were certainly several quite distinct lines of "service" that dried up. Most comprised offers of (Indian-sourced) pharmaceuticals that were either pirates of real medicines (I presume) or out and out snake oil. There seemed to be several separate variants on this. Another line that largely dried up purported to be Russian women offering themselves in the home of a better life overseas. That could well be a variant on the Nigerian scam though.
I should note that I have two email addresses. I don't know how each got infected - I'd sorely love to know about the second infection, since I was trying to keep it clear. Possibly I registered to a relatively legit website with lax security that allowed itself to be scraped for email addresses.
The first address dates back at least 10 years, and was mainly infected by poorly-grammared Nigerian scam offers. These died over time, replaced by a smattering of miscellaneous "offers". It attracts hardly any spam right now, so erstwhile spammers must have either not onsold my address, or the remnants were hooked to that US server.
On my main, newer email, they're mainly tempting me to click on a link. I don't know where they lead, since I don't know that my security protects me sufficiently from link-clicks. And there's only three a week now, effectively taken care of by SpamFighter, but quite frankly overwhelmed by the number of tech mailouts that I haven't bothered unsubscribing from. But at least I have that choice.
Update 13-Jan-09: The spam is back in volume. It took a matter of months to ramp up again. It's unclear whether it's one source that has finally found a new home, or whether it involves a distinct community of spammers which has collectively found a new home.
Spam is more than an annoyance, it is also a resource burner at a time we need to conserve resources. It's a surprise that the emission would turn out to be largely generated from one source. Possibility: they passed through the spammer community such an attractive offer of services that 80% of the business came their way. Another possibility: they offered massively bulked services to a relatively small bunch of miscreants. I cannot tell, but there were certainly several quite distinct lines of "service" that dried up. Most comprised offers of (Indian-sourced) pharmaceuticals that were either pirates of real medicines (I presume) or out and out snake oil. There seemed to be several separate variants on this. Another line that largely dried up purported to be Russian women offering themselves in the home of a better life overseas. That could well be a variant on the Nigerian scam though.
I should note that I have two email addresses. I don't know how each got infected - I'd sorely love to know about the second infection, since I was trying to keep it clear. Possibly I registered to a relatively legit website with lax security that allowed itself to be scraped for email addresses.
The first address dates back at least 10 years, and was mainly infected by poorly-grammared Nigerian scam offers. These died over time, replaced by a smattering of miscellaneous "offers". It attracts hardly any spam right now, so erstwhile spammers must have either not onsold my address, or the remnants were hooked to that US server.
On my main, newer email, they're mainly tempting me to click on a link. I don't know where they lead, since I don't know that my security protects me sufficiently from link-clicks. And there's only three a week now, effectively taken care of by SpamFighter, but quite frankly overwhelmed by the number of tech mailouts that I haven't bothered unsubscribing from. But at least I have that choice.
Update 13-Jan-09: The spam is back in volume. It took a matter of months to ramp up again. It's unclear whether it's one source that has finally found a new home, or whether it involves a distinct community of spammers which has collectively found a new home.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Future cloud computing Googlified
Google's official blog discussed cloud computing 10 years hence - far more eloquently than I did recently.
In a nutshell, most computing power will come from web-based services (effectively, Everything-as-a-Service), and our own computing resources will be mere devices that hang off the cloud. Not quite like the dumb terminals on mainframes of yore, though. They rightly see continued exponential growth in the three mainstays of power: processors, storage, and networking (the essential plumbing). Our devices will certainly be powerful - but not a shade on cloud resources. (I see the power in local devices being chiefly used to drive our interaction with the cloud, in the long run.)
They see a great plethora of devices hooked up, many of them far smaller and more specialised in application than our typical laptops/desktops.
They also dare to speculate on the smarts - intelligence - built into "the cloud". Read it all here.
In a nutshell, most computing power will come from web-based services (effectively, Everything-as-a-Service), and our own computing resources will be mere devices that hang off the cloud. Not quite like the dumb terminals on mainframes of yore, though. They rightly see continued exponential growth in the three mainstays of power: processors, storage, and networking (the essential plumbing). Our devices will certainly be powerful - but not a shade on cloud resources. (I see the power in local devices being chiefly used to drive our interaction with the cloud, in the long run.)
They see a great plethora of devices hooked up, many of them far smaller and more specialised in application than our typical laptops/desktops.
They also dare to speculate on the smarts - intelligence - built into "the cloud". Read it all here.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Oracle swallows Hyperion
In a poetic mood, perhaps, Oracle Corporation is taking over Hyperion Solutions.
But it's a hard fit to make sense of it in the context of Greek mythology. The Delphic Oracle was a divine presence; Hyperion was a god, father of Helios the sun, and the twain never met.
Oracle is best known as a database company, maker of the eponymous Database Management System. However, it has been on the warpath in recent years, expanding its reach into all areas of database and business software.
Hyperion is a software company, focused on Business Performance Management and Business Intelligence products.
A few short years agon, Hyperion took over the Business Intelligence company Brio Software.
Brio once had a nifty little desktop client (back in version 6) called Explorer. It was particularly good for two reasons.
First, it could actually operate standalone. It didn’t need server-side software to dish up databases or functionality. It could provide querying, analysis and reporting on anything you could configure via ODBC (or import). This could be a database (such as Oracle), but it could also work on an excel file – or even a text file.
Second, you could create a .bqy file that could operate as a standalone application with data behind it. Once the file was refreshed during the day, the sales manager could take it home over the weekend, and query and analyse that data, if necessary via a high-level user interface that duplicated the functionality seen in web browsers (eg listboxes, dropdown menus).
I don’t know if the new version of Brio (now called Hyperion Intelligence) has that functionality. But I know Oracle bought Hyperion for its Business Performance Management capabilities, not Business Intelligent. Oracle already has its BI tools – such as they are – and may not be interested in the Brio tools it acquired in the process of swallowing Hyperion.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Tech: Seeking the future at CeBIT Australia (Part 1 of 3)
Part two of my posts on CeBIT discusses business intelligence misconceptions; part three discusses the future of broadband.
Today I tried to glean the IT future by forging my way through CeBIT Australia 2006. Only somewhat more reliable than reading tea leaves. Still, some useful insights emerged.
Top Tier IT companies had no presence, apart from Telstra. They had a stand as well as a keynote from Randy Lynch, new COO, Telstra Business and Government (to paraphrase: “don’t call them small business, they hate that. Just call them business, and large business, enterprise”). No stands for Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc etc. The ones that were left were hungry enough, but it’s hard to tell whether they’re the future, or whether stands were marketed hard and successfully to particular technologies. If it’s not the latter, the future’s in VOIP, broadband, mobile workforces, and USB-enabled everything. Oh, and Blackberry, for some reason.
Noteworthy was a series of presentations on broadband by Paul Budde, a telecomms industry analyst. He was the highlight for me; I’ll devote an entry to him soon.
Of less interest were a bunch of people forcing on me blurbs that I won’t read, more magazines than I have time for, more CDs than I will ever plug in, and more second-string CRM and ERP vendors than I can absorb. Business Intelligence was mostly represented by those last - not too ably, either.
There were really far too many stands and talks to assess them all in one day. Blackberries and iPods were frequent sweeteners (in prize draws), but cheap lollies were absolutely ubiquitous. Some companies were particularly poor at engaging the punter; I could then choose whether or not to engage. If that’s not desired, I suggest they pay more attention to gimmicks - I saw mini-golf, virtual air hockey, build-a-tower, and wheel spins - or something to make the passer-by's experience more sticky. Points given to the stands offering coffee.
The organisers missed a few marks. The guidebook was quite awkward to navigate, and had omissions and spelling mistales. There could have been more rest points, too, perhaps littered with promos to pay the way. As it was, most of the available seating was in overpriced, low ambience cafeterias.
Specifics:
Blackberries: For all the talk of, I’m still not sold. Although they represent a convergent PDA device that does phone and email, one of the articles I did read was scathing about the crippling price plans available through service providers, particularly Telstra. In Australia, push email is not a standard service, and Blackberries get ahead simply because Blackberry (ie Reseach In Motion) provides its own push service, and the main telcos (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone) use Blackberry. I can see nothing else that couldn’t be done just as well, or better, with normal PDAs. And the screen size of the latest models is still woeful.
Voice Over IP (VOIP): A lot of exhibitors were plugging this, as a service (to business) or a product (eg VOIP handsets). Used to be, the advantage in VOIP was cheap calls via the internet (to other VOIP-enabled parties); the call quality suffered correspondingly. Now, businesses are flocking to it for other reasons such as infrastructure integration. And they're getting better quality out of it.
Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC): Simply put, a new computer format somewhere between PDA and tablet size, with the touch screen of both. Hard to know whether it's just a big hype, or a format that will stay the distance. I stick my neck out and plum for the former. A computer in a pocket is a powerful concept, but if you're going too big, might as well be carting around a cutdown laptop. Or a tablet. Why reduce functionality by making it even smaller?
Credit Card memory: Wallet Flash is USB memory in a credit card size. It's somewhat thicker than a credit card, and a little USB interface pokes out the side. The exhibitor (from Walletex) swore blind it had well proven itself sufficiently robust for the wallet. Prices she quoted me were somewhat comparable to other memory formats, but they were still looking for a distributor, and import costs may be added. I'm happy enough to see yet another format for carrying memory around - with a standard interface.
Today I tried to glean the IT future by forging my way through CeBIT Australia 2006. Only somewhat more reliable than reading tea leaves. Still, some useful insights emerged.
Top Tier IT companies had no presence, apart from Telstra. They had a stand as well as a keynote from Randy Lynch, new COO, Telstra Business and Government (to paraphrase: “don’t call them small business, they hate that. Just call them business, and large business, enterprise”). No stands for Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc etc. The ones that were left were hungry enough, but it’s hard to tell whether they’re the future, or whether stands were marketed hard and successfully to particular technologies. If it’s not the latter, the future’s in VOIP, broadband, mobile workforces, and USB-enabled everything. Oh, and Blackberry, for some reason.
Noteworthy was a series of presentations on broadband by Paul Budde, a telecomms industry analyst. He was the highlight for me; I’ll devote an entry to him soon.
Of less interest were a bunch of people forcing on me blurbs that I won’t read, more magazines than I have time for, more CDs than I will ever plug in, and more second-string CRM and ERP vendors than I can absorb. Business Intelligence was mostly represented by those last - not too ably, either.
There were really far too many stands and talks to assess them all in one day. Blackberries and iPods were frequent sweeteners (in prize draws), but cheap lollies were absolutely ubiquitous. Some companies were particularly poor at engaging the punter; I could then choose whether or not to engage. If that’s not desired, I suggest they pay more attention to gimmicks - I saw mini-golf, virtual air hockey, build-a-tower, and wheel spins - or something to make the passer-by's experience more sticky. Points given to the stands offering coffee.
The organisers missed a few marks. The guidebook was quite awkward to navigate, and had omissions and spelling mistales. There could have been more rest points, too, perhaps littered with promos to pay the way. As it was, most of the available seating was in overpriced, low ambience cafeterias.
Specifics:
Blackberries: For all the talk of, I’m still not sold. Although they represent a convergent PDA device that does phone and email, one of the articles I did read was scathing about the crippling price plans available through service providers, particularly Telstra. In Australia, push email is not a standard service, and Blackberries get ahead simply because Blackberry (ie Reseach In Motion) provides its own push service, and the main telcos (Telstra, Optus, Vodafone) use Blackberry. I can see nothing else that couldn’t be done just as well, or better, with normal PDAs. And the screen size of the latest models is still woeful.
Voice Over IP (VOIP): A lot of exhibitors were plugging this, as a service (to business) or a product (eg VOIP handsets). Used to be, the advantage in VOIP was cheap calls via the internet (to other VOIP-enabled parties); the call quality suffered correspondingly. Now, businesses are flocking to it for other reasons such as infrastructure integration. And they're getting better quality out of it.
Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC): Simply put, a new computer format somewhere between PDA and tablet size, with the touch screen of both. Hard to know whether it's just a big hype, or a format that will stay the distance. I stick my neck out and plum for the former. A computer in a pocket is a powerful concept, but if you're going too big, might as well be carting around a cutdown laptop. Or a tablet. Why reduce functionality by making it even smaller?
Credit Card memory: Wallet Flash is USB memory in a credit card size. It's somewhat thicker than a credit card, and a little USB interface pokes out the side. The exhibitor (from Walletex) swore blind it had well proven itself sufficiently robust for the wallet. Prices she quoted me were somewhat comparable to other memory formats, but they were still looking for a distributor, and import costs may be added. I'm happy enough to see yet another format for carrying memory around - with a standard interface.
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