Friday, February 27, 2009

Downturn could be Microsoft's bonding moment

It takes a lot to get different parts of Microsoft to really work together. But the current economic turmoil might just be the thing to do it.

At least that's the working theory for Stephen Elop, the former Macromedia CEO who joined Microsoft a year ago to take Jeff Raikes' place running the software maker's business unit, which includes Office.

"It's remarkable how some of those hairiest issues or those longstanding sacred cows, in tough economic times all of a sudden you look at them and say, you know what, we've got to deal with these things," Elop said in an interview this week with CNET News.

On Friday, Elop is traveling to Pennsylvania to speak at the Wharton School of Business. He'll be talking plenty about the downturn to be sure. But he'll also be pitching business students and others to prepare for what comes after the downturn. Elop pointed to the way Sears used the Great Depression to shift its business from catalogs to retail stores.

Elop finds himself in the middle of a similar shift as Microsoft finds itself trying to shift from being a business that makes money by selling businesses software every couple of years to one that, in many cases, gets paid to develop software that it will then run in its own data centers on behalf of customers.

As part of his presentation, Elop will also show a concept video that shows a number of technologies, many of which were on display at this week's TechFest, all working together.

In his interview, Elop talked about the economy, what has surprised him in the year since he joined Microsoft, and about the company's vision for the future. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Q: As far as the video, it's really easy to imagine that looking several years out, the hardware gets there. It's fairly easy to imagine that the software that powers it. What struck me is the most ambitious part of the plan is that five, six, seven years from now, all the parts of Microsoft are going to be talking to each other that well.
Elop: So, what I would say to that is I can understand where that skepticism comes from, having come into this company, but I think what you could place more value on is the impact of touch economic times, and the impact that that has on any company.

When I was at Macromedia, we made our most difficult decisions, our most focused decisions around alignment, the big bets during the worst times. And, of course, in the years that followed it turned out we made some good bets, and the company was taken to levels that it had never before seen.

And it's remarkable how some of those hairiest issues or those longstanding sacred cows, in tough economic times all of a sudden you look at them and say, you know what, we've got to deal with these things. An example of that that popped out into the public domain as we went through some of the changes here in January was Office Live, Windows Live. And fundamentally when you look at it from a customer perspective, and what does a consumer expect of Microsoft in terms of an experience, fundamentally they don't want to see divisional lines, they want to see a well integrated, well considered experience that meets their needs.

So, apply a few constraints, like there's fewer resources tomorrow than there were yesterday, stir in like what's really like in terms of how we place our bets, and...all of a sudden it starts to make sense, and you can make those decisions, where maybe some number of months or years earlier you couldn't.

I am personally a big believer and advocate for taking advantage of tough times to go after those things that quite frankly there just wasn't the reason to or the stomach or the constraint necessary.

I'd refer you to President Obama's speech (this week).One of the things that resonated in his speech for me was him saying, you know what, when you boil it all down, we have to solve the health care problem, we have to solve the Iraq problem, like we don't have a choice anymore. I mean, well, maybe before we could have printed more money and somehow we got -- we can't do that anymore. We're having to do that to rescue the economy and make up for the over-indulgence of all of us over the last 25 years. That's what we have to unwind.

So, in that environment fundamentally if we're not going to pass on this huge burden to the future, now is the time we can make those hard decisions.

And my hope is in the political context that the politicians can actually get to that space where they say, you know what, Republican, Democrat, whatever, we've got to solve this, we just fundamentally have to solve it.

Q: So, which is easier, getting Democrats and Republicans to work together in Washington or getting different units in Microsoft to work together?
Elop: It's absolutely easier to get people at Microsoft working together than it is solving the problems in Washington. And the reason for that is because politicians necessarily in a democratic society have to differentiate from one another, have to prove that they're somehow better or different than the other in order to be viewed as successful and get re-elected and get their paycheck.

Q: If that's the case, if that's really what's going on, why has it been historically so tough for the company to bring to market visions that cross these broad product lines?
Elop: You know, increase the pressure, increase the constraints, take away largely unlimited resources, and all of a sudden you're in a position where you say, you know what, how are we going to get the most bang for the buck.

And that's what Steve (Ballmer) has us focused on, you know, what are the bets. A lot of the focus, for example, in the strategy review work that we did within our division was on areas where you know quite frankly I want to spend more money, I absolutely have to spend more money, but that means necessarily I have to spend less money in other areas, and placing those fewer, bigger bets, making those decisions. I think you'll see more and more of that.

Q: So, the bad economy, the best thing that ever happened to Microsoft?
Elop: While the theory of your statement is true, regrettably the thing we can't erase this from or erase from the whole process is the fact that, for example, on January 22, 1,400 people lost their jobs. So, I'll never say, "oh, this is the best thing that ever happened," because there are people in my community whose kids have come into my kids' school and said, my parents lost their job or whatever. So, from a personal perspective, that's not true.

But anything that increases the likelihood of groups working together and that spirit of collaboration coming together is a positive force, so it does help.

Q: In your area what are some of the things that you are saying, you know what, we can't invest as much in?
Elop: I'll give you a couple examples. We said, for example, when we look at our business intelligence strategy, we have a great opportunity to democratize business intelligence, to take advantage of people's knowledge of Excel, to take advantage of the strength of SharePoint. However, having a vertical play in the planning space, monitoring and analytics is good, but in the planning space that goes directly at Business Objects, Cognos and so forth, is an area where ultimately we could be successful but relative to those other bets we need to scale back on.

We also made decisions as it relates to ERP (enterprise resource planning) where we made very clear what our strategy was some months earlier in terms of how we were investing in products, but we had to take a hard look and say, you know what, there are some areas where we've got to manage our investment here...and so pulled back on certain areas.

In unified communications it was an increase in certain areas, but there were some peripheral elements and things we were working on. We said, you know what (we have to go after) voice, Cisco.

Q: One of the things that came out of Steve Ballmer's comments to analysts this week is he said that Office 14 is coming next year. Some people said, oh, they're pushing it out because of the economy. Is that the case?
Elop: It's not at all related to the economy or anything like that. It's the natural rhythm of how we're executing on that release. So, there was no, "Hey, delay the release because of the economy." Not at all.

Q: You came in certainly vowing to look both at what's really working well at the company and what isn't. What are some of the things that surprised you in both directions?
Elop: On the things that have continued to impress me, this is a great week to answer that question, because you can't help but walk through TechFest and see the degree of innovation here, pure and applied research both, coming into the company, seeing how that translates into product development. I mean, walk around that room as you did, meet the people, and just realize the raw intelligence and capability, all of that raw horsepower that exists at this company is remarkable.

It's also remarkable the absolute scope and breadth of this company. That sometimes leads to the confusion you talk about. It might be months into a program where you didn't even realize something was going on five divisions over and three buildings across; I mean, you just don't know. But the surface area of the company offers so many interesting opportunities.

For example, some of the research you saw or other things that are going on where, for example, some of what informed the video and some of our future productivity and how people will interact with technology for productivity reasons is derived from learning from the game space and what people are thinking about for the future of Xbox and things like that. They're a long ways apart but in many ways it's about human interaction, and all of a sudden you get the benefit of that. If we were just an e-mail company or a word processor company, we would never get the benefit of that insight. So, all of that really brings it home.

I think on the so what's challenging and so forth, I think what you referenced earlier, with that breadth of the company, could we be making tougher decisions sooner? That's why going into this period of constraint and everything, I'm definitely a champion of alignment. Hey, we can't keep doing A, B, and C, let's pick one, let's go, let's get aligned, let's get the teams working together.

I mean, there's obviously some major battles and struggles and all of that that you see in the company, the competition with Google in the search marketplace, there's a lot of examples of that, and yet server market, 10 years ago, I would never have thought about Microsoft as providing mission critical server products, but look at that business now, it's a beautiful thing.

Q:How does Microsoft adjust to the fact that a lot of these new businesses are funded in different ways than Microsoft's traditional software businesses?
Elop: I think--I mean, it depends business to business. I think the most important thing is to go in with your eyes open about what you're doing. You're right, you know, there are very few businesses on the planet like the Windows business or the Office business or even the server business for that matter. Yet at the same time there are new business models emerging that could be stronger or more interesting, and you just have to go in with your eyes open.

What you can't do is you can't say because those business models are different we won't do them. You have to fully embrace new opportunities and lead in that space. If you don't, and someone gets in ahead of you and it turns out to be something new and interesting and exciting, all of a sudden they could be miles ahead of you. I can think of one example here in particular where someone saw something that we didn't see, I guess, and away they went, that being Google.

So, you have to go in with some intelligence about it, some foresight, and you've got to be willing to learn, and you've got to be willing to fail fast, and you discover, hey, we thought this whole thing was interesting, turns out it's a dog, back off and try something different.

I think the company, certainly in my experience now over the last year, is very willing to experiment with and adapt to new and changing business models. The whole concept of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, for example, in my division, clearly the economics are different. There's a larger revenue opportunity because instead of just getting a certain amount of software revenue, we get software and services revenue for providing that service, but we have to deal with the whole issue of, hey, but we're running a datacenter, and there's (a cost of goods) and gross margins are different and what have you.

But at the end of the day, if we said we're just going to stick with our original business model, well, someone else is going to do that. So, you have to embrace it and you have to be the very best at it, ultimately being interested in ensuring your customers are taking advantage of as much Microsoft stuff as you can possibly help them do.

Q: Why does it matter to have Office in the browser? We've heard for so long from Microsoft about why the best experience for productivity apps probably isn't in the browser. Why is it important to have them?

Elop: Let me tell you where I think the best productivity experience is. The best productivity experience will be one that successfully integrates in a beautiful and elegant way the benefits that you can achieve in a rich client environment, whether it's a PC or refrigerator or whatever, but it's where you have local processing and graphical power to give you the richest experience, marries that with what you can do randomly when you're in a browser on someone else's PC as well as the mobile environment.

It's not about rich client is better than the browser or browser is better than the phone. It's also not about, hey, we're going to have a Web application so we can go and compete with Google and see who can add bolding and underling. That is not the point. The point is that that organization that can deliver on that broad scenario most effectively will continue to be successful.

The way we compete with Google is with the all up Office System. And by the way, you don't just stop at the client, you know, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote and so forth; it's also about the degree of interoperability with unified communications, with the SharePoint Server, with the CRM Server, all of that. So, now let's talk about competition between that experience for our customers, bolding, underlining, italics in a browser. It's a very different conversation.

So, I will not let you define the competition as our little Web app against their little Web app. That's not the story.

Source:CNET News

Monday, February 23, 2009

How MOSS Can Help Improve Business Processes

As one of the most widely used document collaboration tools, it is no wonder organizations want to understand how to build better business processes in SharePoint. Of course, not all documents are electronic. Organizations still deal with a vast amount of paper-based information. So you look for document imaging software to help you get those documents into SharePoint easily. But once they are there, how can you leverage the SharePoint environment to improve your business processes?

Business and IT professionals are increasingly looking at how to leverage their existing investment and knowledgebase in Microsoft SharePoint to achieve success with business process management (BPM) initiatives.

Mauro Cardarelli, director of Portals and Collaboration at Vitale Caturano, took the time to address questions on strategies for linking document scanning with SharePoint to eliminate business process bottlenecks.

Given Microsoft SharePoint's prevalence in the marketplace, often there are differing expectations and understandings of its capabilities. How do you define SharePoint to your customers?

Mauro Cardarelli said: "First and foremost, SharePoint needs to be viewed less as a solution and more as a framework that can be used to augment new or existing ECM initiatives. An empty SharePoint repository brings no value to a business worker. The value an organization will achieve with SharePoint is a direct result not only of the content stored in SharePoint repositories, but also how the SharePoint implementation is structured. Companies need a SharePoint strategy that says we will put corporate knowledge into the repository so that others can use and repurpose this knowledge. Basically, anything that can help you do your job better – hyperlinks to Web pages to unstructured information that is currently paper-based – should become part of SharePoint."

In your view, how does SharePoint fit into the enterprise content management (ECM) world?

Cardarelli said: "SharePoint is a platform that can augment ECM solutions. Users can build both external and internal facing applications with SharePoint and need to be thinking about the content management aspects of those applications – putting both structured and unstructured (including paper-based) content into SharePoint. A successful SharePoint implementation involves empowering and entrusting business users who are most intimately involved with the content being managed."

For companies already utilizing document management technology, what is the value of integrating SharePoint into their infrastructure?

Cardarelli said: "Adding SharePoint does not mean an organization should kick out the DM technology they have already invested in. SharePoint plays well with others. Companies should utilize SharePoint to fill in the holes they may have in document management, workflow and security. For example, you can leverage the ease of use of SharePoint to expand the reach of DM in your enterprise. Also, SharePoint has excellent capabilities for posting to content, tagging to content and applying security to content – as well as strong version control features."

What is the value of automating paper-based processes within SharePoint? Any tips on how best to do this?

Cardarelli said: "SharePoint allows you to set up well-defined workflows and paper-based information is still a necessary part of most business processes. Adding document scanning capabilities to SharePoint lets you place document capture activities at the points most appropriate in the workflow. A product like the eCopy Connector for Microsoft SharePoint plugs in nicely with SharePoint because it makes scanning easy and has document imaging capabilities like OCR to create searchable text – a feature not native to SharePoint. Doing so allows users to more effectively leverage SharePoint's search capabilities to find and retrieve required information.

"Regarding tips, here are a few essentials when getting started. First, look for document scanning software with tight integration with SharePoint. Second, the application should have zero footprint on the SharePoint server to avoid impacting SharePoint performance. Third, as you add scanned documents, don't just put them into a big bucket online. Invest in an information architecture to manage the meta data from scanned images at the point of capture. Finally, remember the 'crawl-walk-run' adage; start small and layer in increasingly complex solutions as users throughout the organization become more familiar and comfortable with the integration."

How does SharePoint integrated with document scanning help an organization advance business process management?

Cardarelli said: "The people involved in a specific business process are the ones best able to determine at what step in that process paper should be added to a workflow. Companies don't want to hire administrators to add paper into applications. The faster and more reliably business process participants can add paper into SharePoint, the more quickly the entire organization can leverage that data out of SharePoint."

In making recommendations on how to manage SharePoint, you have said organizations should move away from version management and more toward continual, collaborative content collection. Could you elaborate upon this?

Cardarelli said: "With a typical business application, an organization deploys a particular version of the software and it just sits on the server until the next release becomes available. Companies should not limit the growth of their SharePoint application to particular software versions. They need to think of SharePoint as a framework – that will be constantly evolving as users find more and different ways to use it. Great SharePoint applications grow organically and no one can predict the directions it will go. IT needs to give people freedom to take the tool where they want to go with it."

Source:cmswire.com

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

10 must-have apps for your BlackBerry

Not long ago, the words "BlackBerry" and "software" didn't belong in the same sentence. Sure, your BlackBerry smartphone was capable of running software; it even came with a few applications installed. But if you were looking for a wide selection of third-party productivity apps, you were out of luck.

Fortunately, things have changed. Today, people want more out of their smartphones, and phone manufacturers -- and third-party software developers -- are meeting those needs. Most new BlackBerry phones include more software than past versions have -- you'll even find the Documents to Go office suite installed on most new models. And thousands of applications are available for download and purchase. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is finally getting in on the act, too, as the company prepares to launch the BlackBerry Application Storefront, its answer to the iPhone's App Store, next month.

But you don't have to wait for the Storefront if you're looking for BlackBerry software. Plenty of great apps are around now -- you just have to know where to find them. We've rounded up 10 tools that can make your BlackBerry even better. This list is by no means comprehensive; the hardest part was whittling it down to only ten titles. So if your favorite BlackBerry app isn't on here, let us know in the comments section below.

Documents to Go, Premium Edition
DataViz
$70; BlackBerry OS 4.5 or higher
I know, I just said that most new BlackBerry phones come with a version of Documents to Go already installed. And they do -- but it's the Standard Edition. That app will let you view and edit existing Microsoft Office files, but it won't let you create new ones; for those capabilities, you need the Premium Edition. Both versions let you open existing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and Adobe PDF files natively, so you don't need to convert them to view them properly. They even let you view tracked changes and allow you to insert comments in spreadsheets.

PeeKaWho
SmrtGuard
$10; BlackBerry OS 4.1.0 or higher
It may not sound like a terrible hassle to open your BlackBerry's e-mail client every time you get a message. But why not make things easy on yourself? PeeKaWho pops up an alert when you have an incoming e-mail message, showing you who sent it, the subject, and a snippet of the text. That way you'll know whether the message is important enough to read right away, or whether it can wait until you've finished your current task. The alerts are especially handy if you're composing another e-mail -- they allow you to see new messages without losing the one you're working on. You can also create blacklists or whitelists to control how many pop-ups you get.

Maximizer CRM 10.5 Freedom for BlackBerry
Maximizer Software
$229 (single user); BlackBerry OS 4.6 or higher
Leave your laptop at home -- or, at least, that's what this CRM application promises to help you do. Maximizer CRM for the BlackBerry offers many of the features of the company's popular desktop CRM app in a version that takes advantage of your smartphone's features; for example, you can initiate a call or begin drafting an e-mail to one of your contacts from within the Freedom app. New in this version is support for the recently released Bold and Storm smartphones, as well as wireless deployment capabilities that will make life easier for your IT folks. It can work as a stand-alone CRM program, or in tandem with the company's desktop- and browser-based products.

PocketMac for BlackBerry
PocketMac
Free; Mac OS 10.4/10.5 and any BlackBerry phone
Some people may think that Macs and BlackBerrys don't mix, but that's not the case. PocketMac is a free utility that will let you sync your BlackBerry phone with your Mac computer, just as RIM's BlackBerry Desktop app does for PCs. Once your phone is connected to your Mac via a USB cable, PocketMac will sync your information, including calendars, contacts, tasks, e-mail, and notes, from a variety of applications such as iCal, Entourage, Mail.app, and Daylite. You can even sync music from iTunes.

TwitterBerry
Orangatame Software
Free; BlackBerry OS 4.1.0 or higher
Twitter, the social networking service that allows you to post brief updates on your daily activities and peruse the same kind of info from your friends, is wildly popular. Many people can't stand to be without Twitter when they're away from their PCs. Enter TwitterBerry: This free application lets you post your own tweets, or view other people's, using your BlackBerry. The interface is, well, basic, but it gets the job done. If you're having Twitter withdrawals, TwitterBerry could provide the fix you need.

Opera Mini
Opera Software
Free; BlackBerry OS 4.0.0 or higher
If you want to start a debate among BlackBerry users, just ask them which mobile browser they prefer. Some folks are thrilled with the latest BlackBerry Browser, while others call it rubbish and insist on a third-party alternative. Me? I'm somewhere in the middle. The new BlackBerry Browser, which you'll find on phones like the Bold, the Storm, and the new Curve 8900, is light years ahead of past versions, but I still find that it occasionally chokes on a page or doesn't display a site as it should. That's why I like to have another option, such as Opera Mini; it's designed to run quickly and help you browse Web sites as they're meant to be seen. And, hey, you can't beat the price.

YouMail
YouMail
Free; dependent on carrier, works with most AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless phones
Anyone who has used an iPhone knows that its visual voicemail is one of its best -- if often overlooked -- features. But other companies, like YouMail, are taking note, launching similar services for other smartphones. YouMail visual voicemail displays a list of your incoming messages, so you can see who they're from and when they arrived before listening to them. It also can transcribe the voice messages into text so that you can read them in places where you can't make calls, and it lets you create various outgoing messages for different callers.

Viigo
Viigo
Free; BlackBerry OS 4.1 or higher, BlackBerry hardware series 7100 or higher
Viigo started out as an RSS reader -- and it was an excellent one, allowing you to add newsfeeds easily and browse the results. Nowadays this free application remains an outstanding RSS reader, but it also does much more, tracking weather, flight status, sports scores, stock quotes, and even restaurant reviews.

iSkoot for Skype
iSkoot
Free; BlackBerry hardware series 7100 or higher
You don't have to leave your Skype account behind when you're away from your PC. iSkoot lets you access many of Skype's features right from your smart phone. You can chat with other Skype users, and you can save your monthly allotment of voice minutes by using Skype for voice calls. Make and receive calls to and from other Skype users, or use SkypeOut to call regular phone numbers.

Google Mobile Updater for BlackBerry
Google
Free; works with all BlackBerry phones
Google offers a great collection of mobile applications, including Google Maps, Gmail, Docs, and Sync. Deciding which one to include here was a tough call -- until I realized just how useful Google Mobile Updater can be. This tool allows you to install a variety of Google apps -- including all the ones I just mentioned -- to your phone, and notifies you when new products or updates to your existing apps are available.

Source:InfoWorld

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Record January sales point to value of business intelligence in tough times

Leading business intelligence and analysis software company QlikView signed 15 new South African clients in January, its best month since entering the local market in 2004. The new clients include one of South Africa's biggest retailers.

“January is typically a slow month, so we're enormously pleased by the number of new clients who have come on board,” says QlikView South Africa MD Davide Hanan.

advertisement
Click here
Hanan attributes QlikView's recent success to a combination of the global economic crisis and the software's ability to deliver the right solutions fast. “With recession looming, it's more important than ever for companies to make their decisions based on accurate, up-to-date, well-understood information,” he says. “We're seeing a lot of clients investing in their capacity to analyse all their data and make it meaningful for quick decision-making. When you have to decide where to cut expenses or how to increase your sales, there is no room for error.”

In this context, Hanan believes QlikView's speed of implementation and quality of delivery are key factors driving new clients. “Nobody can afford to wait months or years for a BI implementation anymore,” he says. “With QlikView, we deliver a working solution before the customer gets their first invoice – and it's a solution that is quick and easy for managers and operational staff to use.”

Hanan adds that QlikView South Africa's growing roster of blue-chip clients is a clear indication that QlikView's value is now clearly recognised in the country. “A lot of large corporates with existing heavy investments in BI are reassessing those investments now that they're a few years old,” he says. “Most of them at least want to explore the benefit QlikView might offer and several are seriously considering replacing their existing systems. There is increasing recognition that QlikView can offer a full alternative to conventional BI systems, with great cost-effectiveness and ease of use.”

QlikView is the world's fastest-growing BI software, as recognised by IDC, for four years in a row. This week the Aberdeen Group, releasing its 2009 Aberdeen Axis for BI/Performance Management report, announced that QlikView is the only “Champion” in the stable it analysed, which included global leaders such as Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion and Microsoft. A champion is defined as a vendor that has demonstrated superior proficiency in delivering both real value as well as the ability to serve and support its installed user base.

“Performance management is the cornerstone of successful business analysis,” says Aberdeen Group Vice-President and Principal Analyst David Hatch. “The fact that so many QlikView customers could demonstrate results so quickly made their performance in this area exceptional."

Source:itweb.co.za

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Bill Gates for Commerce Secretary

So we tried a Democrat, we tried a Republican, how about we try a businessman to run the Commerce Department and see what he can do with an $8 billion+ budget to help turn around the business of America.

I nominate Bill Gates to be the next Secretary of Commerce and I base my nomination on three things.

First, he is a rags to riches, start-up businessman who clearly has an understanding of not only big business but small business and most importantly, modern business. He is best in class and it's been since JFK's time that we took the best in American business and brought them to Washington. In fact, I was looking at the Department of Commerce's web site (needs help Bill) and found these three goals for the Department.

1. Build for the future and promote U.S. competitiveness in the global marketplace, by strengthening and safeguarding the nation's economic infrastructure;


2. Keep America competitive with cutting-edge science and technology and an unrivaled information base; and,

3. Provide effective management and stewardship of our nation's resources and assets to ensure sustainable economic opportunities.


Now I know and like Bill Richardson (I worked as the new media consultant to his Presidential Campaign) and I've met Judd Gregg, but I can't see how either man could really know much at all about #1 or #2 and only Richardson was solid on #3.

Bill Gates working on US competitiveness? Sounds good to me. Cutting-edge science and technology? I mean, this is right up his alley and having lived in Seattle all those years and with his work through the Gates Foundation, I'd say he's pretty solid on all three parts of the Department's mission.

The second reason I nominate Gates is that he clearly understands the power of building a solid team, holding them accountable and letting them shine. He understands job creation, business creation and wealth creation, because he has actually done it. One of the great under-reported stories, in my opinion, in American business has been the smooth transition of power at Microsoft from the Gates era to the Ballmer era. That's smart, strategic and no ego involved (compare with the question of who will lead Apple next? your guess is as good as mine.)

Finally I nominate Bill Gates because of how who he is as a person. He understands the greater role that business and those who succeed must play in world. He has spoken for the power of creative capitalism and, of course, he funded the Gates Foundation with his wife Melinda. A Gates Commerce Department would lead a revitalization of American business, and at the same time, it would forever change American business for the better.

One other thought.

On one hand we have the geniuses on the Hill. Men and women who have no idea what happened to all of those $2,000 checks for their campaign coffers but are willing to do anything to get them back. They are going to spend $700 billion in an effort to do so.

On the other, I got Bill Gates at the Commerce Department, with some intelligence and $8 billion. I can tell you exactly who I'll bet will do more to turn around this country.

Source:huffingtonpost.com/james-boyce

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Microsoft to extend enterprise search to the masses

Microsoft has finally laid out its plans for the search technology acquired with the $1.3bn (£906m) purchase of enterprise search vendor Fast last year, announcing that it will integrate the Fast ESP platform with its highly popular SharePoint offering.

The software giant unveiled Fast Search for SharePoint at the annual Fastforward event in Las Vegas. The new search server will add the high-end search capabilities of Fast ESP into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server as a part of the next release of Microsoft Office, codenamed Office 14, scheduled for 2010.

The formal integration of Fast technology into the content management, collaboration and portal capabilities of SharePoint could boost user productivity and improve business efficiency, according to Microsoft.

In the meantime, the company said that customers can license another product - ESP for SharePoint - which is also built on Fast technology and will offer "a defined licensing path" to Fast Search for SharePoint once it is released.

Charlie Hull, chief executive at search engine development company Lemur Consulting, explained that the announcement came as no great surprise.

"The search facilities currently available in SharePoint do not have a great reputation for speed or scalability, and the purchase of Fast was one potential way to solve this," he said.

Mike Davies, an analyst at Ovum, suggested that the coupling of Office SharePoint Server with Fast ESP would create a highly disruptive influence in the industry, potentially forcing rival high-end search vendors to re-evaluate how they package and price their products.

"It will play for the masses in the same way that Microsoft made business intelligence for the masses," he said. "It's a really good move for them, and will be a good shake up for the market, making Autonomy, Endeca, Recommind [and others] think very hard."

Whit Andrew, an analyst with Gartner, agreed that "naturalising search" into SharePoint was a sensible move for Microsoft to make.

"The Microsoft search story has not met enterprise expectations up until now, so, having spent $1bn plus on Fast, this makes very good sense," he added.

Microsoft also announced Fast for Internet Business, a product designed solely to provide search on firms' external-facing web sites. The product will be available in beta in the second half of this year.

Source:vnunet.com

Friday, February 6, 2009

Where Much Business Intelligence is Stored

By Michael Dortch

A single warehouse can be a monstrously massive management challenge, on multiple levels simultaneously. Goods, vehicles, conveyor belts, people, hardware, software - a massive juggling act on a good day.

Therefore a great crucible and proving ground for business processes, and a great source of "real-life" business intelligence (BI). Which I'm defining as "knowledge that helps to improve business operations in credibly demonstrable and measurable ways."

In this context, a single warehouse can be a treasure trove of actionable intelligence focused on getting orders fulfilled and goods in and out the door, metaphorically and otherwise. So imagine what one could learn - and what one really needs to know - to manage East and West coast US facilities. Or to ship more than 3 million unique orders containing more than 40 million items , many with localized and personalized messaging, to thousands of locations worldwide. Then, imagine managing all of this effectively with manual, human-driven tools and processes.

Welcome to Synq Solutions, a provider of marketing, merchandising, and training solutions from literature fulfillment and campaign measurement to on-demand production and delivery of regulatory compliance documents for financial services providers. And the company that, when faced with the above challenges, decided to take a more technology-enabled approach.

Synq implemented a warehouse management system (WMS), Latitude from PathGuide Technologies. Latitude basically automates warehousing and distribution operations, from receiving and order picking to generation of manifests and management of routes and stops for delivery trucks. Latitude also provides real-time, online information about inventory and order status.

These features let Synq's warehouse managers and staff do more work more efficiently, with far fewer human-introduced mistakes and inconsistencies. The company could handle significantly more order volume almost immediately after implementing Latitude. And greater visibility into accurate, timely inventory and order information lets the company deliver better customer service, by delivering more orders on time and answering questions about orders more accurately and rapidly.

When Synq needed to improve handling of so-called promotional orders, a key element of the company's business, PathGuide worked with Synq to develop a hybrid manual-automated approach using Latitude. The combination of manual picking with automated fulfillment and inventory management let Synq improve operations related to promotional orders, without imposing onerous training requirements or costs.

Overall, since 2004, Synq executives reckon that PathGuide and Latitude have helped Synq to improve on-time order completion to 99.99%, while expanding capacity as much as five times over previous all-manual systems. Oh, and the company has improved customer satisfaction and employee productivity, while enjoying estimated cost savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. And because Latitude integrates seamlessly with Synq's enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution of choice, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Synq's getting more value out of both solutions, while positioning itself well for future growth and new BI initiatives.

What have we learned? The more you spend on making current things work and interoperate, the less you can spend on things like business intelligence. The more productivity you can inculcate throughout your value chain, from the factory, retail, and/or warehouse floor to the executive suite, the more you can take business advantage of the information generated by your business.

Also, most good systems generate and support metrics that have immediate business value, before they get integrated with larger systems. For example, a good warehouse management system tells you a lot about in-the-warehouse performance, providing ample opportunities to improve in-the-warehouse efficiencies. Anything that increases visibility of any critical element of your business value chain is a potentially significant contributor to your BI efforts.

Now, your company may not own, operate, or even interact with any warehouses. But there are still some valuable lessons at Synq for you, too. Perhaps the most important is to recognize that whether they're formally documented and enforced or now, your business and its BI efforts run on processes - and processes can always be improved. The first steps toward improvement, though, include visibility, documentation, acknowledgment, and consensus among key stakeholders. Listening to what those stakeholders and incumbent processes and results tell you, learning from that listening, and leveraging that knowledge to improve processes and supporting solutions is a pretty sure path toward a more intelligent business. As I may have said previously.

If you've got a BI success story, or even/especially a less positive experience with BI, let me know. If I can extract value from or add value to said story, I'd love to share it with those of you reading my ramblings. Thanks in advance!

Microsoft retreats to familiar BI ground

Microsoft surprised the market by announcing its intention to stop selling PerformancePoint Server (PPS) as a standalone product, just 17 months after its original launch. The fallout from the announcement is immense, marking a withdrawal from the enterprise performance management (EPM) software market and a retreat back to developing business intelligence and analytic tools (rather than solutions) for the mid-market. We believe this was a tough, but necessary, move for Microsoft. However, we question whether SPS is the best home for a lightweight version of PPS's capabilities.

While the scorecard, dashboarding and analytics functionality of PPS gets folded into SharePoint Server (SPS), its core planning, budgeting and forecasting components will cease to be developed as a standalone product, though this functionality will be offered through a mish-mash of products included in Microsoft's Dynamics enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management applications suite.

EPM is now off Microsoft's à la carte menu, but offered as a snack
This is a tough decision for Microsoft. Pulling PPS so soon after its launch is an embarrassing U-turn for the company - although it was sensible. To be successful in EPM, you need to command a degree of respect in the office of finance, from which most EPM initiatives are seeded and driven. This is something Microsoft never managed to accomplish, despite the prevalent use of Excel in finance departments.

From a commercial perspective PPS, compared to other parts of Microsoft's successful BI business, was hardly selling like hot cakes. When it was launched PPS had big designs on commoditising the EPM market, much in the same way that Microsoft has tried (and done) with the OLAP and enterprise reporting market. However, EPM proved to be a different kettle of fish, requiring a more complex, advanced development capability that differed from the familiarity of building generic BI tools. Microsoft also over-simplified the effort that was needed to target EPM customers. Having a broad-ranging partner ecosystem and setting up a dedicated sales team was not enough. The company lacked domain expertise and an effective consulting organisation to implement EPM solutions. Moreover, Microsoft never had a great track record for nurturing and trailblazing new products in new markets. Microsoft's recently reported weak second-quarter earnings and layoffs might also have contributed to the axe falling on unprofitable product lines.

By withdrawing PPS from the EPM market, Microsoft is effectively retreating to familiar turf by relying on its partner network to develop performance management (PM) application logic and apply industry knowledge on top of its BI stack - that is, SQL Server, Sharepoint and Excel. While Microsoft is leaving the PM application business, it is not leaving the PM market altogether; it is simply choosing to provide PM as a side dish rather than a main course.

SharePoint is probably not a viable home for PPS functionality
The monitoring (scorecard and dashboard) and analytics (ProClarity) capabilities of PPS will be rebranded as “Performance Services” and included as part of Microsoft's SPS platform.

Microsoft justifies the move in the context of its 'BI for the masses' strategy. SPS is currently one of Microsoft's hottest-selling products, and is experiencing rapid adoption among Microsoft's own customer base. Recognising the intertwined benefits of using SPS as a delivery platform for performance-related scorecards and dashboards, Microsoft had also built integration between the two environments with the former Business Scorecard Manager product before this announcement.

This might justify SPS being a natural home for PPS dashboards and scorecards. However, it also leaves the question of what environment customers will be provided with to build the scorecards and dashboards in the first place. An even more confusing addition is the inclusion of an analytics component in SPS, since Microsoft's other analytic components are aligned with SQL Server and Office. Hence, will the move to bundle lightweight performance management capabilities into SPS really help to simplify Microsoft's broad portfolio of BI and analytic assets, which now seem to be spread across three environments (SQL Server, Office and SharePoint)? Probably not, given that SQL Server is the most obvious home for all things BI and analytical. This begs the question of why Microsoft did not simply push PPS as another 'free' add-on for SQL Server. Nevertheless, tapping into a hot-selling product such as SPS is a good way to seed the market with lightweight functionality that customers might or might not need or use - a strategy that Microsoft has historically excelled at.

Source:ovum.com

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Why Windows Must Go Open Source

To maintain its developer ecosystem and protect its apps business, Microsoft has no choice but to loosen its grip on the Windows source code and drive down costs.

Suggest that Microsoft's Windows operating system will one day become open source, and knowledgeable observers will give you a baleful look--maybe even laugh in your face. "I had to chuckle," says Forrester Research analyst John Rymer, in response to my query on the subject. "No, I don't think Windows will ever become open source code." OK, so Windows will never become an open source project in the same vein as Linux, with 2,000 developers worldwide submitting code. Microsoft has enough trouble with its own developers submitting code, never mind all those outsiders. And I'll concede that some Windows source code probably will never see the light of day.

But people are wrong when they assume that Microsoft will never move Windows down the open source path. To neutralize the advantages of Linux and other open source competitors, Microsoft will have to make Windows more like them. If it doesn't, it risks losing the 6-million-plus developer base that's made the Windows platform great. Microsoft may not want to open up Windows to the world, but it will. Indeed, it must.

Microsoft cares about two things: Its lucrative software line, and the outside programmers who add value to its core platform with their own innovations. It's done a masterful job of cultivating that crowd, giving them tools, early code releases, and information on upcoming features to keep them engaged. It can't afford to lose them.

Yet Microsoft is in a quandary over its product line. The company's Windows client revenue, including that from Windows Vista, declined 8% in the quarter ended Dec. 31, and Vista has become a marketing albatross, with a reputation as an intrusive, underperforming OS. The answer, however, isn't Windows 7, which is more a Vista service pack than new platform. Microsoft's challenges run deeper than that, and maintaining its Windows revenue stream isn't the win-at-all-cost endgame.

Windows XP reportedly brings in about $34 each time it's loaded on a new PC shipped by a manufacturer, the way most people get a new copy. Microsoft Office, on the other hand, brings in four to 12 times as much, depending on which version of the suite comes bundled with a PC.

Not only do Office and related applications, like Publisher and Office Mobile, generate a torrent of license revenue, they tie into Microsoft's server applications. SharePoint starts at $4,350, when discounted, according to NexTag, the online service that seeks the lowest software prices available.

In other words, Windows may be what established Microsoft, but Windows can't sustain the company. Applications are what give it a competitive edge--and what generate billions of dollars in pure profit.

Microsoft's applications are vulnerable, as well. The proprietary file formats that have protected Microsoft apps have been offset by Office Open XML, the default format for Office 2007 and now an international standard.

So for the first time there are no real technical barriers preventing other vendors from playing in the end-user applications market, and competitors are nipping away. Office alternatives include IBM Lotus Symphony, Sun Microsystems Star Office and the related Open Office open source code project, Google Docs, Yahoo's Zimbra open source apps, and Zoho.

Will enterprises take those offerings seriously? For the first time, the Burton Group is advising clients who ask how to save money in a recession to "envision a split scenario" in which they deploy Office on Windows for power users and Google Apps for others. "Such a split could significantly reduce licensing costs without seriously impacting productivity," says Burton analyst Guy Creese.

Both startups and major manufacturers are beginning to offer Linux PCs with open source application suites. They include Hewlett-Packard's HP Linux dc 5850 and Dell's Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux. Eventually, somebody is going get the functionality and the price point right.

To stay competitive and encourage the continued growth of its application ecosystem, Microsoft will have to make Windows a near-zero cost equivalent. Not that Microsoft will come to this decision easily. It will be a last-ditch, deprive-the-enemy-of-his-major-weapon adjustment. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who once railed against open source as being a form of "cancer," would probably swear that he won't ever do it. Perhaps his successor will. (I reached out to Microsoft to talk about open source Windows, but it seems this is a subject it would rather avoid.)

Remember that Sun's Scott McNealy swore on Wall Street he would never allow Solaris to become open source, and we know the end to that story.

Microsoft will be spurred to do so by more and more defections of both its application customers and the third-party developers who surround Windows with much of its added value. In the long run, developer defections pose a greater strategic risk to Microsoft than the loss of revenue posed by a free Windows. Developers prefer open source because it gives them independence, flexibility, and lower cost.

Virtualization is also a driver. Windows used to go out the door on every x86 instruction set computer that shipped, and it still does on most. But Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, IBM, and NEC all ship servers with x86 virtualization, often VMware's ESX, built in. A hypervisor talks directly to the hardware in lieu of the operating system. It lifts the OS up a layer and assigns it the task of communicating with the application. Windows used to talk directly to the hardware; in virtualized environments, it just hands off requests for hardware services to the hypervisor.

This doesn't sound like a big change, but the stranglehold Windows once held on the hardware layer has been loosened. The hypervisor doesn't care what operating system is running above it. It could be Windows, NetWare, Solaris 10, BeOS, or whatever. Now a business user can run applications written for Windows, Linux, Apple Mac OS, or Solaris on the same machine. As virtualization spreads, users are likely to become less Windows-centric.

User Mindshare
in the next round of computing, independent developers will punish closed systems and reward open ones. The only way to remain closed will be to command high-end consumer mindshare, the way Apple does with its iPhone, a consummate consumer device backed up by cool advertising and the distinctive Apple store buying experience. Research In Motion's BlackBerry also does it with a superior text device combined with strong network access.

Microsoft tried to do it with Windows Mobile, Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates ads, and its "I'm a PC" marketing campaign, but those efforts have been flops. The Windows brand doesn't command consumer mindshare the way it used to. Windows is being managed by Microsoft senior VP Bill Veghte, who actually worked on Windows 95 development. But it's just not 1995 anymore, and Microsoft's proprietary OS is in many ways a relic. The next wave isn't about bigger and fatter desktop PCs, the place where Microsoft has excelled. Laptops now outsell desktops. Future computing devices are lighter, smaller, sometimes connected, sometimes not. They follow the end user around, like cell phones. The desktop is migrating toward the mobile device.

Microsoft is well aware of this evolution. In a December TV interview with Charlie Rose, chairman Bill Gates said that "mobile phones are the PC of the future." And he called Microsoft "the underdog in that space."

"That market is going through an incredible shift" away from hardware-specific devices toward software-differentiated devices, Gates said. "Software will be at the center of it. We're in the game. The only question is, how much market share will we end up with?"

In one format, the computer of the future will be the shrunken laptop known as a netbook, with flash drive instead of hard drive, Internet connectivity, and long battery life. If Windows doesn't dominate this new form factor, it will slip further off its perch. Already, there are signs of trouble. Dell's low- end $349 netbook runs with consumer-friendly Ubuntu Linux.

Most early netbooks tended to run Linux, but as they gained acceptance in 2008, more and more manufacturers offered them with Windows, and now Windows runs on 70% of netbooks sold. That may seem like a lot, but Microsoft is used to market share of greater than 90% on PCs, and its margins on netbooks are lower.

Microsoft's Veghte, speaking at a Credit Suisse technology conference in December, conceded that netbooks represented an unexpectedly large share of the 10% to 12% growth Microsoft expected in PC sales last year. Microsoft's return on a netbook sale "is significantly lower than what you might take as a midrange or high-end PC," he said, indicating that netbooks, particularly those running Linux, were "cannibalizing" what would have been a regular PC sale.

Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation, points out that even some Windows laptops and netbooks come equipped with Linux for quick startup and Internet connectivity. Netbooks are the first new x86 computing device that Windows hasn't completely dominated from birth. And the version of Windows that runs on netbooks is Windows XP, not Vista, another sign of Windows' vulnerability at the low end.

Likewise, Microsoft is struggling to keep up in the market for cellular devices with mobile Web browsing, despite its keen focus on Windows Mobile. Microsoft's already up against popular devices like the BlackBerry and Apple's iPhone. An open source version of Nokia's Symbian mobile operating system, long dominant overseas, is due to hit the United States next year, and AT&T plans to produce a Symbian-based cell phone.

Google's open source Android, essentially a mobile version of Linux, has already won widespread adherents. Operator T-Mobile and device makers Ericsson, Garmin, Lenovo Mobile, Motorola, and Samsung are flocking around Android. Even if Android doesn't have everything they want in its first iteration, those manufacturers see Google as a company with both online applications and the staying power to get the OS right.

The new mobile device on the block, the iPhone, running Mac OS X, has already passed Windows Mobile with 12.9% of the market, compared with Microsoft's 11.1%, according to Gartner.

Android is just beginning to build steam. Even Palm, in decline with five losing quarters in a row, just collected $100 million from Elevation Partners because its backers have confidence Palm can compete--probably not with the iPhone or BlackBerry, but with Windows Mobile.

It's clear that Microsoft senses that mobile application writers are shifting away from Windows Mobile, and in Redmond's culture, that's a precursor to decisive action. On Dec. 15, Microsoft revealed it's bringing out its own iPhone image browsing application, called Seagarden. The move is a concession that Windows Mobile will never roll back the gains that Apple has made.

Microsoft can still compete for the mass market with Windows Mobile, but how will it do so when the competition is both technically strong and open source? Microsoft will grit its teeth and try to neutralize the advantages of open source code. My candidate for the first Windows system that will become open source code is Windows Mobile.

So what does Forrester analyst Rymer say to that? He says Microsoft has the inherent advantage over open source of owning the user's existing desktop space, and theoretically it can extend Windows developers' skills into its mobile environment. But that alone, so far, hasn't been enough, he concedes. "To compete effectively, Microsoft will have to give developers the flexibility that they have with other mobile systems," he says.

I couldn't have said it better myself. Windows will have to become freely available to developers, one way or another.

Even the full-form-factor PCs are no longer sacrosanct. Low-end PCs were once Windows' exclusive domain. Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo have started making Linux PCs for business--loaded with open source applications. They represent a miniscule share of the market, but it's the first time that this crack in Windows' front has appeared. Apple is growing its desktop OS share (now more than 9%, up two points from 2007) with $1,000 to $3,000 Macs. Smartphones, netbooks, and Linux PCs are undercutting Windows PCs at the bottom. "For the first time, Microsoft is being squeezed on the high and low end," says Zemlin of the Linux Foundation.

HP is offering a $729 business PC based on Novell's SUSE Linux and open source applications. The standard HP Vista PC with Office 2007 Pro is $1,399, or $670 more.

Past attempts to offer a Linux PC consisted of selling a plain vanilla box and telling the customer to download Linux, network connectivity, and applications. "There were no professional transition services available," says Kirk Godkin, HP's North America business PC manager. This time, customers can introduce low-cost desktops with help from HP's services organization. Drivers and utilities for a wide variety of devices are available online, as they are with Windows, Godkin says.

Zemlin argues that most consumers are defining their computing experience in terms of the Web, not a desktop machine. "That's a major problem for Microsoft," he says.

Cloud Computing Looms
Linux, open source apps, and virtualization threaten to loosen Windows' grip in another place: the cloud.

Cloud computing's hourly fees seem unreal compared with the daily costs of running an enterprise data center. With services such as Terremark or Amazon EC2 available at the swipe of a credit card, they'll be tapped and tested in a down economy.

"The cloud today is almost entirely run by Linux and other open source," notes Andi Gutmans, CTO of Zend Technologies, supplier of the PHP dynamic language and the Zend Framework. Microsoft's cloud OS, Windows Azure, is still in development.

Clouds scale up by generating more Linux virtual machines. The Linux open source license allows any number of servers to be activated with no increase in cost. Microsoft hasn't been able to rationalize its pay-per-copy business with the cloud.

"Why would I want to buy a license to use something perpetually when I only want to run it for 20 minutes?" asks Billy Marshall, CEO of rPath, provider of a virtual appliance service for packaging Amazon Machine Images.

To compete in the cloud, Microsoft will have to find a way to shed the Windows price-per-copy model--that is, make Windows freely downloadable to developers accompanied by many open APIs--or concede cloud computing operations to Linux. The cleanest way to do so, and the way most persuasive to developers, is to make Windows open source.

Many would say Microsoft is culturally and ideologically incapable of doing such a thing, but empathy for open source projects runs deep in Microsoft's own programming ranks.

Even Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, has struck a conciliatory tone. "We at Microsoft respect and appreciate the important role that open source software plays in our industry. We respect and appreciate the passion and great contribution that open source developers make in our industry. ... That is not what you have always heard from us," Smith said last March at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

Indeed, Microsoft has been experimenting with the open source model for years. Its "shared source" concept was a first, weak step. And last year it won approval for two open source licenses, the Microsoft Public License and the Microsoft Reciprocal License, from the Open Source Initiative.

If Microsoft were to move in the direction of making Windows open source, how would the company do it? It could go several routes. The most radical would be to invoke an open source license (most likely not the General Public License), make Windows freely downloadable, and publish information on its interfaces, APIs, and file formats.

Microsoft could then mimic companies like Red Hat by issuing a freebie version of Windows to the teeming masses, while offering a commercial version to businesses with enterprise features and support.

But Microsoft's approach most likely will be more subtle than that, embracing the open source model in part, if not in whole, and perhaps not even calling it open source. But the effect will be the same: Microsoft will gradually open up more of the Windows source code to developers, while driving the price down for users.


Already you can see evidence of that with Windows 7. As it made the beta release available, Microsoft lifted previous restrictions on the number of downloads, following an open source practice of getting the code into the hands of as many users as possible for testing and feedback.

Microsoft will push this process further to keep developers committed to Windows. It will push it until the difference between Windows and open source becomes negligible. At some point, it will take the plunge and declare Windows open source.