The French writer, mathematician, and philosopher Rene Descartes said “To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.” Today, the underlying theme of the hottest technological advancements is geared towards two things: Understanding behavior and shaping behavior. The importance of this phenomena cannot be overlooked. Information…
I’m willing to bet that in the future Facebook will be nothing compared to a social network platform that is dedicated to Things. Internet of Things (IoT) has been a buzz in the IT industry and the manufacturing community for some time. The struggle with IoT is that it is trying to find a great…
The parallels between manufacturing supply chain best practices and IT service delivery are clear. But what hasn’t been clear is the nature and construct of a working system to provide automation of IT service delivery. The goal is to have a commerce engine for IT service consumption, where the business user is in charge of…
Joseph Campbell (Mythologist, Scholar and inspiration for Star Wars) described disruption as, forces that will break your ego. At first the forced change can feel like hell. Its hell because everything we have perceived to be the understanding of our existence and our value within it, is getting destroyed. These changes only feel like hell…
The move from Plan, Build, Run IT operations to a Demand Supply IT organization, is not a strategic move; it represents the complete commoditization and consumerization of IT. Beyond instituting an ERP system specific to running IT, there exists one more solution which will prove to disrupt the IT industry and in the process give…
The Enterprise IT organization is about to transform, into a services organization. Not by its choice, but because the business is forcing its hand. Business units are engaging cloud services with or without IT’s involvement. The decision making power has shifted from IT to the business. IT organizations will have to evolve their operations to…
For the last two years a colleague of mine Scott Skellenger (Sr. Director of IT for Illumina) has been professing that the next generation business suite won’t be a traditional suite at all. He has been carefully watching the integration-as-a-service market and believed that the new world of business applications will be where business units…
In a reversal of direction, SAP cloud strategies are ripping pages out of the Informatica cloud strategy handbook. The two camps of thought within SAP finally emerge in the public eye. ByD versus HANA cloud app approach have been a hotly contested subject within SAP. Selecting Lars to run their cloud practice is an acknowledgement…
The goal of this three part series is to describe the strategy and framework for constructing an ecosystem from cloud services to best serve your enterprise. It’s also a discussion about the future role of cloud service providers and how the end user will become ultimately empowered. Why pursue a cloud ecosystem? The reason for…
Well by now you have heard about HANA from SAP. In-memory technology is a significant revolution in database and real-time analytic technology. The rest of the industry appears to be playing catch up because the relevance of this technology is significant and can’t be ignored. The HANA database resides in memory in a columnar architecture. …
The goal of this three part series is to describe the strategy and framework for constructing an ecosystem from cloud services to best serve your enterprise. It’s also a discussion about the future role of cloud service providers and how the end user will become ultimately empowered. Public Cloud Ecosystem In the first part of…
The goal of this three part series is to describe the strategy and framework for constructing an ecosystem from cloud services to best serve your enterprise. It’s also a discussion about the future role of cloud service providers and how the end user will become ultimately empowered. Let’s start with defining what is meant by…
It is not the task of the customer to convince themselves that a provider’s public cloud solution is right for them; it’s the provider’s job to present options of cloud delivery. The attraction of SaaS and PaaS cloud computing is that you can secure a service that your business needs and is managed as a…
I was having a discussion with a colleague of mine about the significance of Apple’s Siri. This is the voice activated digital assistant application that is now part of the iPhone 4S. Basically you make verbal requests of your phone and it, in turn uses different Internet based services to retrieve that data for you. …
The goal of this write up is simple; I want potential customers of SaaS ERP to be aware of some common hazards with implementations and to serve as a guide for successful engagements. The thoughts here are not really new as they can apply to on-premise ERP as well, but in the face of SaaS…
It was interesting to see at last year’s SAP Sapphire conference such a focus around mobility. To be honest my first impression was, haven’t we had mobility for a long time. The discussion began with the in-memory computing and touting the capability of generating analytics based on real-time transactional data. So I thought about this…
Cloud computing has done one very significant thing with the relationship between the provider and its customers. Their goals have become aligned. Cloud providers do not have any meaningful revenue unless their relationship with their customer is successful and long term. If you sign on for short period of time and then leave, there is…
