Managing carbon and energy data with spreadsheets is risky, resulting in costly mistakes and missed opportunities. Optimal data management is achieved through integrated software systems, a tool pulling data from across an organization while managing vital KPIs, saving money, and gaining actionable data to make smarter decisions.

“This is a great example of how Cyber Groups Smart Computing (Web + Device) capabilities could help build cutting edge solutions. We at Cyber Group believe that we are living in a world where things are getting connected to web to stretch the possibilities of what we can measure, analyze and make informed decision on real time basis ”  Saurajit Kanungo, Executive VP at Cyber Group.

Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure is a flexible cloud–computing platform that lets you focus on solving business problems and addressing customer needs. No need to invest upfront on expensive infrastructure. Pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity and pull it back when you don’t. Microsoft will handle all the patches and maintenance — all in a secure environment with over 99.9% uptime.

“Both cost and business drivers were extremely compelling for us to take a close look at Microsoft Azure as a development platform.  Significant part of our effort goes towards building software products for our customers and Azure platforms gives a very compelling business case to recommend to our ISV and other customers”  Saurajit Kanungo, Executive VP at Cyber Group.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-muglia-reconfirms-html-is-microsofts-cross-platform-play/7854

Now I’ll just chime in with my 2 cents on Silverlight, and this change in direction.

• Platforms such as Silverlight and Flash are not cross platform. My definition of cross platform is across a multitude of devices; this would include desktops, smart devices such as smartphones and iPads, and even GoogleTV. Even if you could port Silverlight and Flash to a mobile platform, the performance of the site is diminished as most smart devices are not adequately equipped to handle Flash or Silverlight. Secondly, even if you could get Flash and Silverlight to work on a mobile platform, you still would have to make coding changes in order to make it mobile compatible.
• HTML5 has proven to be capable of delivering rich content faster than the other platforms, and has also allowed mobile sites to take on the look and feel of native applications. For example, if you go on your iPhone to Yahoo, ESPN, CNN, or YouTube itself, they are all powered by HTML5 (this is even more evident if you have an iPad when looking at full sites).
• Microsoft is not investing as much in Silverlight as it has in the past, for example if you take a look at IE9; they have invested heavily in making it one of the best HTML5 browser out there. In fact, W3C has crowned IE9 as the best HTML5 browser.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Silverlight will go away, it seems the focus will be more on windows 7 mobile and embedded devices (such as kiosks) in using Silverlight to provide rich content, but the limited usage for Silverlight and change in direction by Microsoft is just a further shift towards HTML5. I am just curious as to what Adobe will do next to combat potential revenue loss from less Flash enabled sites.

In order to succeed, SOA requires more organizational discipline than previous developmental models. It may seem counterintuitive that flexibility in an enterprise would require fewer rules, but that’s not the case within the framework of a SOA enterprise. Below are some guidelines that if followed will allow an enterprise to see the ROI on an SOA solution.

• Develop Standards: There is this preconceived notion that the S in SOA stands for web services, and in reality this is not the case. Instead, the S should stand for standards that allow an IT enterprise to become a services organization.  How do standards help?  Standards are the foundation in which to build a SOA solution, without them, developers will develop code the way they see fit. For example in a Java shop, you may have several frameworks that are used to develop web services. If you simplify the number of frameworks down to say two; you allow yourself to simplify your development effort and most importantly simplify the maintenance of your custom solutions.
• Develop a Governance Model: Now that standards have been created, we next need to create policies that will enforce these standards. One critical piece to the governance model is building out a board that will oversee the policies and standards.  You will want policies to not only enforce the standards, but that have some bite to them. In other words, the developers should know that there are consequences to not following the policies outlined. However, when building out these policies you don’t want to become rigid to where creativity is restricted. Finally communicating the policies and standards early and often will help guarantee the success of the implementation but most importantly the adoption of this culture shift within the organization.
• Have a well defined Enterprise Data Model: Enterprise data is always an after thought when it comes to designing a solution, but in fact it needs to be in the forefront. Typically, SOA solutions are designed with a service decomposition of business processes or business models. What’s overlooked is if the enterprise data model can support the service/business process. In a typical organization you may have the following regarding the data that the underlying service is exposing or using: data access across multiple applications and/or multiple owners of the data. Data access across multiple applications may cause integrity issues with data itself and possible performance issues dependent on the solution. Multiple owners of the data cause another problem, as they may restrict what data can be accessed or exposed in order to control their fiefdom without taking into consideration the business process.  Without addressing these  concerns, the SOA solution will not meet long term needs as the capability of re-usability will be hampered by the data model. One possible solution to this quandary is to align your enterprise data across your business processes. This is easier said then done, but the point here is take account for the data model otherwise the solution will not work in the long run.

As long as an enterprise focuses on developing standards, governing over those standards, and taking into consideration the enterprise data model when developing a solution; then the success of an SOA implementation will be increased. Keep in mind that there are other hurdles outside of the ones mentioned here that can hinder the adherence of the changes described above. The two critical hurdles that I can think of are:

• Aligning IT and the Business in strategy and operations
• Culture shift within the organization to accept new methodologies and mindset in developing solutions

Those two hurdles are difficult to resolve because they essentially deal with people’s ability to adapt to the environment. In order for that adoption to occur executive leadership is needed. I’ll discuss this more in a future post, but would love to hear what other success factors enabled your SOA solution to be successful.

I have been in the consulting industry for a little over 10 years and it never seems to amaze me in the difficulty in gathering requirements from business users. The above Dilbert cartoon captures it best when business analysts or someone from the development team struggles in capturing requirements from the business or end users. My current client is running into this issue as the C level executive suite wants to simplify their business process and adapt to best practices established in an ERP system, unfortunately the management level right below that level is wanting to hold on to their territory and refuse to simplify…so what is happening is that the team is replicating their custom home grown application. In addition, there is a belief that using Agile or Scrum methodology would help in driving new functionality or improved functionality quicker to market, but the realization of using this development methodology has yet to materialize, and I doubt it will since their is a refusal on the business side to simplify their processes. That’s why they are now decided to approach development as a hybrid of waterfall/Agile.

So what’s my point in all this? Well, whether you’re implementing a SOA solution or using Agile methodology, none of that matters if the business is not aligned with IT. Without an alignment between Business and IT, and a willingness by Business to streamline their processes; you’re stuck with rewriting the  same functionality, hindrance to growing your organization; and essentially back to square one.

As technologists, sometimes I think how rational we are in making technology investments.  It is fairly common occurrence for me to be a part of a project or read on the news about hundreds of millions of dollar investments an organization is making in an ERP system, CRM system or in an enterprise data warehouse.   I would like to invite your attention some of the key research results to highlight my point.

1. More than 95% of this information is unstructured, meaning it is not easily described or catalogued automatically – IDC
2. Digital information is growing at 67%   year over year.  By 2011 the digital universe will be 10 times the size it was in 2006 – IDC
3. 92%of the CIOs indicate their information strategy involves classic, structured data – A 2007 Accenture survey of North American and European CIOs

Forms, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, emails, Wikis, and blogs are few examples of what unstructured information comprises of.  The whole explosion around Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are just adding more fuel to the fire.  Sheer nature of unstructured data produces various risks and opportunities.  An organization’s information stores can contain regulatory violations, evidence for future court cases, and trade secrets—all of which introduce risk at a time when economic conditions, political change, and high profile corporate scandals have investors, employees, and customers skittish about the companies with whom they do business.

As the caretaker of digital information, we have an obligation to stop and question ourselves on our thinking process.

1. Why do we continue to invest most of our technology dollars to store 5% of the business intelligence?
2. What kind of ROI will investment in unstructured data may generate for an organization?
3. With ever increasing regulatory tentacles (insider trading, PCI, PII, SOX, eDiscovery, etc…) what scale of risks organizations are exposing themselves to?
4. What can we do to define a integrated technology investment strategy which includes both structured and unstructured data?

Keeping in mind the overarching risks involved in unstructured data, maintaining status quo will be disastrous to any organization.  I am also convinced that leveraging such wealth of information could provide several competitive advantages we may not comprehend yet.

I would love to get your thoughts on this very important yet ignore topic.  I am planning to write few more blogs in this area so your active participation will help me steer it the right direction.

Here is a quote from Gartner that hopefully drives the point across

“Effective information management will be critical in the next decade, differentiating those enterprises that will implode under the infoglut from those that will use it to dominate the global economy.” -  Gartner; June 2006; Spotlight on Enterprise Information Management