Financial Services in Germany Lead in BPM and SOA

This latest post on eBizQ discusses how financial services are ahead of many different industries in terms of SOA and BPM adoption. Since banks and other insurers are using SOA and BPM to achieve flexibility, agility, and transparency to drive overall business growth, the financial services industry will bounce back quicker than most.

The results come from an AG-sponsored survey of German operations which 64% of the financial companies surveyed viewed IT as a strategic resource. These results are monumental in the case of BPM, but what are similar results here in the US?

Quick Guide to Enterprise Architecture

Here’s a presentation I came across from Colin White on a quick guide to what is enterprise architecture. Take a moment to flip through the slides and view the concepts discussed.

60 Second Guide To Enterprise Architecture

View more presentations from Colin White. (tags: enterprise architecture)

Human Interactivity is a Huge Problem for BPM

I came across this post on the Action Blog that discusses how the human factor and human interaction is a big problem for business process management. Ayal Steiner explains how human work is:

• Dynamic
• Tacit
• Ad hoc
• Crossins boundaries and silos
• Saturated with peer to peer interaction

Workflow that involves a human element does not fit into this rigid process. Does anyone have an examples of how they have gotten around this?

Latitute: The Ultimate Mobile Social Networking

Yesterday, Google announced the release Latitude, which is deemed the next step in mobile social networking. Read Write Web is a way to track where your friends are using your mobile phone. Read Write Web then goes on to question if users are going to feel like Google is too much a part of their life, and they already use other social networking sites like Facebook on their phone. What do you think?

Dell may enter SmartPhone market

In a recent release at eWeek, they anticipate Dell to release a new SmartPhone they've been working on. They saw their computer shipping business fall 16% in the last quarter, and hope to bring a new customer into their portfolio with these products. For more on the story, read this article at eWeek.

Where's your budget for your enterprise networks?

I found this podcast at eWEEK, they talk with 3com about how to address cost of ownership solutions within the enterprise space. Some great information, take a few minutes to listen to it.

In this eWEEK podcast hosted by Mike Vizard, 3Com President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Sege talks about how to reconcile increasing application dependency on network bandwidth with the need to contain costs in these challenging times.

Mindjet Connect Gives Enterprise 2.0 a Boost

A good indicator that the web 2.0 phenomenon has gone mainstream is when you see enterprise articles being published in BusinessWeek. This article written by Steve Hamm reviews Mindjet’s online version of Mind Connect, which is desktop product that allows users to collaborative create diagrams, share ideas, and map out processes. With 1.5 million users up to date including companies like HP, Boeing, and BearingPoint, the application seems to be catching on to the enterprise rather quickly.

This is exactly what the business realm needs to give web 2.0 a good name. I expect a lot of companies to start using this application in 2009.

FriendFeed testing enterprise friendly function

At ZD Net, they talk about the new beta project FriendFeed started using this week. This new feature will allow new notes to be updated in real time.

The real-time feature is continually connected to FriendFeed’s servers, so that when a person posts an update in main stream or room it updates automatically in, well, real-time. It’s a bit like a chat room except it still aggregates some interesting content such as likes and comments, but it does omit the much-loved threaded conversations.

Read more here. Do you think you could use this in your quest to adapt Enterprise 2.0?

Enterprise Search Merged with Business Intelligence

Enterprise search and business intelligence are two enterprise concepts that people still do not quite fully understand. I came across this podcast on eWeek in which Mike Vizard talks to Sid Probstein, the CTO of Attivio, about the importance of harnessing search technology within the context of a business intelligence application. Take about 15 minutes to listen to this informative podcast.

Listen here.

Enterprise 2.0: Is it about Groups or the Individual?

Michael Idinopulos’s latest post on Transparent Office compares two different responses about Enterprise 2.0 adoption.

One of the statements being compared is from Stowe Boyd’s post:

I disagree with the notion that Enterprise 2.0 is about groups not the individual. On the contrary: Web 2.0 is based on the person and personal relationships in networks, not group membership.

The 2nd post compared is from Michael Idinopulos himself:

Enterprise 2.0 posits the group as the primary unit of activity; email posits the individual

What’s your take on it? Is enterprise 2.0 about the group or the individual?

BlackBerry Goes Touch-Screen

Larry Dignan gives us several reasons why the release of RIM’s Storm, a rival to the iPhone 3G, is so important to the market in his latest post on ZDNet. Here they are:

Why is the Storm important?

• RIM can use the Storm to rally telecom carrier support–especially among those left out of the iPhone launch.
• The Storm will define how RIM is viewed among consumers.
• The Storm may be able to thwart any enterprise momentum gained by Apple’s iPhone.

Will the release of the touch-screen Storm stop executives from asking IT for iPhone support on the corporate network? Only time will tell what effect the RIM Storm will have on enterprise practices.

Google Chrome: Enterprise Browser?

There’s been a buzz recently about Google Chrome, the web-browser Google is launching. Larry Dignan poses the question ‘should businesses pay attention to this move’ in this latest post on ZDNet.

It is still unsure how Google Chrome will fit in the enterprise since it is in its early beta stages. Companies will have to keep a close watch in this web browser though, as with all other Google Apps it winds up sneaking into your enterprise somehow. We all readily await the features and perks that Google’s new browser will bring to the table. I’ll be keeping a close watch on its arrival, analyzing whether the browser makes business sense.

5 Issues IT Want to Address about Enterprise 2.0

The addition of web 2.0 tools and applications in the enterprise has put immense pressure on IT depts that require knowledge of COBOL, C, and other modern technologies. Jeremy Chone lists 5 issues that IT managers and CIO’s should let their staff be aware of before starting a modernization process in this post on ZDNet.

1. There is no history of the code: Since applications have evolved over the years through upgrades and new features, it makes the underlying code behind web 2.0 technologies a bit challenging to fully understand.
2. We don’t know exactly how many applications we have or how they all work together: Applications are being installed, updated, and ran throughout the company without notification of IT. A lot of time is spent maintaining existing codes.
3. We’re actively seeking a new job: IT turnover rate is at an average of 22%. Two factors contribute to a lapse in progress. The younger generation might not be as interested to work on older technologies and 30 percent of the legacy application experts will be eligible for retirement in three years.
4. You can’t prove the ROI: You can not talk in terms such as faster, stronger, and cheaper. You must instead prove that project skills will be enhanced and that the company will save on costs and time by employing before and after metrics.
5. You need to share your vision: IT has front-line knowledge and so being kept in the loop of future plans 5, 7, 10 years down the line can weigh in on strategy.

What other challenges and issues do IT depts face in regards to enterprise 2.0?

Why does Zoho Compete with Google?

The question of why and how Zoho competes with Google has been asked many times across this industry. Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu details why Zoho competes with Google in his latest post at the Zoho Blog.

Sridhar includes an excel sheet in his post that lists revenue per employee and profit per employee between companies like Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Adobe, Google, Yahoo, and eBay to name a few. What this sheet helps show is that all companies fall short of Google’s revenue/profit per employee metrics. Sridhar believes that even though Google has a huge market in the technologies sector, there’s no rational business incentive for Google to actively pursue the business/IT software category. Zoho already has an array of software applications like Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho CRM , Zoho People , and Zoho Mail just to name a few, it will be interesting to see what steps Google might take in the future to involve itself more heavily in the business software market.

What’s your take on it?

Yahoo’s Zimbra Desktop Could be Google’s Top Competitor

I came across this post earlier today on TriAdeptDotCom which pointed out a couple of highlights from Zimbra’s new Collaboration Suite. Zimbra Desktop now offers a way to manage and search through email, even when offline and it also expands on services and mashups which it previously did not offer. It has the capability of showing one’s schedule when hovering over a date, and it even shows flight statuses when hovering over flight numbers. The Zimbra Desktop is downloadable and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users with access to the Zimbra Collaboration Suite.

Yahoo is seriously looking to take some of the spotlight away from Mircosoft and Google as it enters this space. Will the Yahoo Zimbra Collaboration Suite overtake these two giants?

Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise

The McKinsey Quarterly recently surveyed executives on the business use of web 2.0 technology within the enterprise in their second annual survey Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise. An interesting notion that this survey brings up is the fact that use of web 2.0 technology is changing. The survey details that users are stepping away from web services and mashups from the previous year, and they are instead focusing on social networks, podcasts, blogs, RSS, and wikis altogether. Another important finding the survey brings is that the majority of employees are satisfied with the way companies are adopting web 2.0 technologies, whether it be to develop new products and services, internal recruiting, enhancing company culture, training, or managing knowledge. Browse through this revealing article, and see how your compare how your company stands with the results given in this latest enterprise survey.

Sequioa looks to the clouds for the enterprise

Sequioa Capital recently made a $5.6 million series of investments in Appirio, a SAAS distributor, as detailed here at ZD Net. Sequioa is already known for its early moving ways, as they have already previously invested in Google, Yahoo!, and YouTube. Now, they’re proving to be an early mover on the cloud computing in the enterprise.

Their new investment in Appirio will add the following to their arsenal of advanced computer practices:

• A strong focus on Google Apps projects alongside Salesforce.com
• Specialization in ’serverless’ (ie cloud-to-cloud) projects (more on that below, plus a controversial prediction on Exchange)
• Its combination of ‘trusted advisor’ professional services with productized on-demand services

Appirio also brings along over 60 enterprise customers and an additional 1,100 already using their enterprise products.

IT Department role in Enterprise 2.0

Many organizations have implemented web 2.0 technologies, and while for some companies the idea is new, industry wide these concepts are starting to become a necessity instead of simply a competitive advantage. A new research study from Forrester announced that IT departments have increased their role in implementing these initiatives. As Oliver Young, writer of the Forrester research study, mentioned, in the past marketing as well as communication departments were mostly responsible for the use of Web 2.0 in the workplace since many of the web 2.0 initiatives dealt with communication, however, IT departments are now becoming the leaders of this change in corporations. As the executive summary states

“our recent Web 2.0 survey shows IT departments taking a more active role in the acquisition and deployment of Web 2.0 technologies. Budgetary controls, the need for integration and technical skills, and the growing importance of Web 2.0 tools are all putting IT departments in the driver's seat.”

It will be interesting to see how this change in leadership will affect industry wide practices. Do you agree with IT playing a lead role for the future?

Embrace Social Media in the Enterprise

According to article on Computing, a study conducted by Gartner has found that businesses should make more use of social media and web 2.0 applications within the enterprise to better communication with their employees.

Nikos Drakos, a research director at Gartner and a supporter of social media in the enterprise, mentions:

"With websites such as Facebook and other web 2.0 technologies such as blogging and forums, businesses have an open opportunity to promote themselves amongst their employees, and more importantly to customers. For example, if there was a Facebook group about a certain company or a product, they could intervene against negative postings or use the positive postings as a marketing asset."

Companies are slow to adapt to this trend though, and most organizations are still very skeptical about adopting social media practices within the enterprise. We’ve discussed how blocking access to social media sites like Facebook could actually decrease worker productivity. The premise is that by balancing job and life responsibilities at work, employees can focus more on job tasks at hand. The question still lingers, is there true business value? Only time will tell.

Enterprise Information Flow

Oscar Berg from The Content Economy recently uploaded this presentation in which he makes a comparison to knowledge flow within an organization and the flow of water through a metropolis. His point…It’s the same. Employees will have to easily access and trust information sources just like how people who come across the metropolis will readily expect that water is consistent and of the highest quality. Make sure to take a minute or two to flip through these 18 slides.

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