It started in the spring of 2003 and has been going on since then. I am referring to the consolidation among the enterprise application vendors.

I remember the good old days of ERP when there were a handful of vendors- BaaN, QAD, SAP, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft.  BaaN was the market leader in the beginning and boasted of clients like Boeing. The technology was client-server, clients belonged mostly to manufacturing, consumer goods sector and were FORTUNE 500 firms.

It’s interesting to see that almost all technology trends, at least in the enterprise app domain, start from the big FORTUNE 500 firms and then everyone else jumps on to the bandwagon.

Anyways, almost all the big 8 (BIG 5 later) audit firms opened an ERP consulting arm and body shopping for developers was rampant. New types of applications were launched by many small vendors- SCM like i2, manugistics; CRM like Siebel; Datawarehousing/BI/BW etc…..

So, all was hunky dory till the market became saturated towards end of the 90’s. Almost all FORTUNE 500 firms had implemented ERP and the days of astronomical billing rates per hour were over. BaaN disappeared without a trace and so did one of the BIG consulting firms. Outsourcing, off-shoring was in demand. SOX came in and audit firms had to divest their consulting arms. The clients were now SMEs and wanted value for money solutions.The left over ERP vendors responded by going on a mad consolidation spree.  Kind of like Megatron chasing the “AllSpark” cube . It started when Oracle made a hostile bid for Peoplesoft,  JD Edwards merged with Peoplesoft and so on…..More than 50 acquisitions happened in a span of half a decade. SAP responded with counter bids in a few cases. And all this did not happen due to an economic recession. Enterprise applications market has been in a recession of its own since 2000.

When the dust settled, only four big vendors were left in the enterprise app space: IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft. And now they sell everything from database to middleware to GUI and even hardware.New licence sales is down and they are surviving on maintenance revenues (part of the reason why JDEdwards, Peoplesoft are still surviving as products). These BIG 4 have a plethora of products some of them meant to do the same thing. Whoa!! their sales force must be a confused lot…One of them sells 3 MDM solutions all meant for PIM , another is targeting SMEs with 3 acquired and one in-house product…. and still clients aren’t happy. Why ?

Is creativity and customer-centricity dead? These BIG 4 do not listen to customers? They are just happy pushing their fancy possessions down the throat of hapless customers? Or is it the other way round: customers have become so cost conscious that they have stopped supporting new and better ideas/products.

I can see a ray of hope. Customers are still willing to reject the solutions put forward by the BIG 4 vendors and buy enterprise software from small niche players. A look at any of the Magic quadrants reveals an interesting story. Even though the big fish gobbled up the smaller ones , new fish are still being born and they are surviving. Hope is alive.

LONG LIVE CHOICE…..

I’m getting desert fever.

Scott Laningham and I got together earlier this week and recorded this podcast to give a heads up to folks about all the good stuff happening at next week’s Information on Demand event in Viva Las Vegas.

As I explained there, what happens in Vegas goes on this blog, and hopefully that’s what you’re counting on.

Though I didn’t get asked to a return engagement with Wayne Newton at the Tropicana, Scott and I will be roaming the halls of the Mandalay Bay…and points beyond…listening, learning, and playing back for all of you what we unearth.

We’ll be your eyes on the ground…you know, the kind that pop out of the glasses and hang down from their springs.

And, if I can find a few spare moments, I may even try to channel my inner Hunter S. Thompson.  Allow me to quote freely from his Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas para uno momento:

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Ah, Hunter S., we miss your crazy and wise words — they’re as fresh in 2009 as they were in 1972.

So, yes, that’s what Scott and me will be in search of, among other things: the information high-water mark.

But mostly, we’ll be trying to get underneath how establishing an information on demand environment can help our customers and IBM build a whole lot smarter planet.

One filled with continually emerging new intelligence, insight, and actionable analytics…and, in the process, one which can also make me a better blackjack player.

Ye ever faithful Twitterers in the audience, please follow hash tag #iod2009, and be sure to hang on tight: it’s gonna be a wild and information overloaded ride!

I had read somewhere that the sperm count of stock-brokers (the Wall Street crowd) fluctuate in line with the Dow or NASDAQ ups and downs . Similarly, if one were to plot the blood pressure of an enterprise consultant who has embarked on an implementation; what would it look like? Or for that matter his/her cholesterol level?

BTW, stress can be measured in 5 quick ways:
http://academic.cuesta.edu/wholehealth/Level2/Lecpages/str07.htm

I suggest a much simpler method: just count the number of cigarettes smoked in a day by the consultant. I am yet to come across a good enterprise consultant who does not smoke. In fact, I have observed that all the “eureka” moments happen while taking a smoke break. Just observe a bunch of enterprise consultants smoking together and u would feel as if all their brains have fused together into a big “brain bank” aka the SUPERMAN planetary council. All inhibitions, prejudices melt away and they all belong to the “huffing-puffing” clan!!

Ok, coming back to the topic, when do you think the stress levels would be the highest and the lowest? Or in which phase of the implementation project would a consultant smoke the highest number of cigarettes?

Would stress be highest towards the start of requirements gathering workshops or just before cut over, go-live??
When would stress be lowest? During the build phase or during blue-printing?

I saw this graph which used a bucket shape to describe the stress levels of a vacationer.

http://wtflabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/phd092809s.gif

Isn’t it quite similar to our enterprise application projects too? We are highly stressed while starting the project (vacation), and then slowly feel as if the project should never end. Finally, the stress level shoots up at the end…..

Thank god for Marlboro……..

PS: I am not promoting smoking and am not a smoker myself  

I came across this interesting piece while browsing. It talks of how an architect designing a house would get his specifications if they were to work like web designers.

If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers (http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/archives/000455.php)

think this is true for SAP or any Enterprise Architect as well. I have conducted many a requirements workshops and have realised at the end, that the customer themselves don’t know what they want…..

Finally its all about delivering what the customer “needs” and not what the customer “wants”. This means we achitects need to sell not only the solution but first the requirement as well…
It might include citing an industry leader’s best practices or quote SAP books/how-to guides to sell the requirement…

Some customers might think of this as just another example of trying to force the vanilla package down their throat especially since SAP MDM still does not have industry specific templates/repository business content.

I was just pondering today… What has been my biggest learning from enterprise application projects over the last ten years….Not all these projects were resounding successes.
Just as in life, as someone said: “all happy families are happy in the same way but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way”. Similarly, in all the projects which were not so successful, there was something new and unique to be learnt.
And “if u don’t fail, u can never become a good leader”. Wait, this is actually a dialogue in one of those Hollywood flicks that start with earth being in danger…
Ok, so coming back to the world of enterprise applications:
Many of these projects were managed and run by project managers who had no clue of what the enterprise application package involved (ERP, CRM, MDM, SCM etc…) does or can do, especially if its a cutting/bleeding edge technology or a niche area. At least at a 30,000 ft level, they should know what the heck is going on… Ok maybe not at 30,000 ft, that’s too high and maybe the CXO zone but at least at 10,000 ft…
But then, in most outsourcing firms, these so called managers are retired consultants who have lingered long enough in the fast paced IT world to be pushed up and up untill they become project/delivery managers or the fancy “lead/principal consultants”… But that’s the subject of another blog…

Something I like about traveling is to be able to spend some time on reading larger documents than a couple of pages. For example publications / articles from The View magazine. This time I had printed out some old skool articles regarding OO development in LotusScript. Good stuff there!

So for another trip I was thinking reading some publications on creating workflow application in Lotus Notes. The results? Hmmm quiet disappointing. You would start to believe Notes is just not build for workflow.

I believe The View sends out a survey every now and then asking what the interest of their audience is but making this more transparent to the outside world via IdeaJam would that not be something for them? Just a thought (could be used also for IBM developerWorks).

In the meantime: If you know a good online source to read some tutorials, hints, tips, examples for creating workflow applications in Lotus Notes don’t hesitate to drop an URL here. Thanks!

Another random selection of MDM related links, this time all turning up in my inbox at about the same time. The first one is from a five part series on SearchSOA.com which reminded me of earlier musings on the relationship between MDM and SOA:

• SOA with MDM prevents messaging confusion

The definition of MDM still seems to me to be quite subjective, with subtle differences depending on who you talk to. (Someone I know rather unkindly suggests it’s just a glorified database!) The next two links both have something to say about what problems MDM is trying to address:

• Is smart DM an alternative to MDM?
• Can you “do” MDM without data quality?

What’s the best definition/example of MDM you’ve seen?

And finally, now seems like a good time to mention the Information on Demand conference. As well as meeting people with real world experience of this kind of thing, there are technical sessions for the MDM Workbench which is what I actually work on.

Unfortunately decorating the bathroom is higher up the to do list than blogging at the moment — I’d rather be blogging as I’ve yet to gas myself typing on a computer! — so I haven’t had a chance to mention some cool and interesting things that have been cluttering up my list of open browser tabs. While I wait for the paint fumes to subside before going to bed, here are a few of them, in no particular order…

First from the Mix and Mash Blog, and giving this post its title, Pic and Mix project from Kent County Council: I wonder if Eastleigh do anything similar.

From John’s Random Musings, Exposing your WebSphere logs as ATOM feeds: definitely want to give this a try with MDM Server.

From knolleary.net, Twitterlogue: wish twitter had been around when I was in New Zealand. Brilliant.

From developerWorks, Leverage DataPower SOA Appliances to extend InfoSphere Master Data Management Server security capabilities: looks interesting but I haven’t had a chance to read it in detail yet.

And finally, also from developerWorks, two new articles for the user interface generator:

• Build a user model with Rational Software Architect and the User Interface Generator
• Connect your user interface to existing back-end services

Néhány jQuery-s sebességmérés és tipp az ibm-es developerworks-ről.

Link

Szintén az IBM DeveloperWorks-ön találtam ezt a jQuery-vel kapcsolatos mélyebb cikket:

link

Egy hasznos cikket találtam az IBM Developer Works-ön a JSF komponens és Event kezelésével kapcsolatosan:

Link

IBM’s developerWorks has an article about how to create a KDE plasmoid

KDE 4 includes many exciting new technologies, including Plasma, a feature that forms the desktop shell of KDE 4. See how to write simple Plasma applets (known as plasmoids) to greatly improve the desktop experience and how to turn a plasmoid into a simple memory monitor.

Source: IBM developerWorks

If you’ve read my Setting up an MDM Server development environment post in the past, there is now a new white paper on the MDM Workbench developerWorks forum which I would definitely recommend taking a look at.

The White paper on using the MDM Workbench has updated information on setting up a development environment, with screen shots of the wizard used. It then takes you through subsequent tasks to create a working extension to the MDM Server, with essential information about working on the code in a team environment.

The information should provide a quick start for anyone new to the MDM Workbench. Please provide any feedback on the white paper in the forum thread.

I spend a lot of my time talking to IBM customers, prospective customers, and, well, anyone who will listen, really, about how social software and social networks have transformed the way I work and connect with others – both in my job, and my daily life. In many ways it’s a disproportionate amount of time – my day job does not strictly focus on social software, and I’m not in our Lotus brand where this kind of thing would be my bread-and-butter. The point is that I’ve gained a lot from my early adopter status, I have compelling examples to share (I hope), and I’ve followed IBM’s trajectory in this space very closely. Best of all, I’m invited to talk about this stuff.

You may be aware that our process around a lot of the social software space has developed from our Technology Adoption Program – after proving that an enterprise blogging platform (BlogCentral), rich user profiles (our Bluepages internal directory), enterprise social bookmarking (Dogear) and other services worked on a large scale inside the company, we released Lotus Connections, an enterprise social software platform built from these innovations.

My two worlds have now come together. I have a lot of interaction with IBM customers and folks who develop using our technology, and I’ve been a long-term advocate of IBM developerWorks, since before I joined the company, in fact. I’m the first to admit that sometimes our product documentation lacks examples or can be a tricky read, but developerWorks consistently delivers great content by developers, for developers, which I always find hugely useful.

Over time we’ve opened up developerWorks to increasing amounts of interaction. There have been forums for a long time. Last year we introduced developerWorks Spaces, which enabled users to form their own interest groups and build customisable portals for sharing data. Last week it was time to put Lotus Connections into developerWorks (or is that the other way around?!), which led to the creation of My developerWorks – now anyone can sign in with their IBM ID, create a profile, make connections with friends or those with similar interests, and track and share their content. ReadWriteWeb describes it as “the world’s geekiest social network”. You know what? I don’t mind if it is…

There’s a great, short podcast on the usability and design experience behind My developerWorks on the developerWorks podcast channel. Oh, and if you’re a member, come and connect with me!

Computer technology major IBM has decided to add vigor into its ‘DeveloperWorks’ site by transforming it as a useful social networking platform. The site, which is currently operated by IBM for IT professionals and software developers, would don a new look with social networking features similar to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

It all started when IBM, through its own surveys, realized that developers are using social media applications like blogs, forums, and online newsletter to communicate with each other. This made the company decide to refurbish the ‘DeveloperWorks’ site into a social networking hub.

According to IBM, the site already has about 8 million users and includes thousands of articles. Hence, by adding the latest social-networking features to it, and naming it ‘MyDeveloperWorks’, IBM plans to transform the world’s greatest knowledge base into a professional network. The company also has its presence on Second Life, a 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect and create using voice and text chat.

As IBM focuses on building a professional networking service, we can say that ‘MyDeveloperWorks’ is more similar to LinkedIn than others such as MySpace. Secondly, just like how you follow a person on Twitter, IBM will allow users find experts in particular programming languages and communicate with them directly or track their actions on the IBM site.

Initially, users are not allowed to access data on other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and import it on the IBM site. However, this will change in the near future, and users will be able to import data from third-party social networks directly onto the site, according to the company. The ‘MyDeveloperWorks’ site is based on Lotus Connections, which provides organizations of all sizes with a Web 2.0 collaborative work environment.

IBM has released new social technology enhancements to developerWorks, its online destination for over 8 million IT professionals worldwide. The aim is to help software developers work together on open standards-based innovations. 

While developers have access to a wide variety of IT resources scattered across the Web, IBM feels many are struggling to maximize their productivity and are faced with filtering through multiple networking sites to get to the technical information they need. 

As a result, there has been no easy way for developers to quickly access and integrate this information to more quickly build their skills around key IT and industry trends while connecting and collaborating with peers.

IBM is responding to these requirements, with My developerWorks, combining the best in social computing technologies and professional networking into developerWorks, the company says.

IBM recently surveyed software development professionals across the globe to find out how they use online resources to build new skills and engage each other professionally. Nearly three-quarters said they use forums, blogs, wikis, and online newsletters to gain skills and communicate with each other. 

Nearly 65% said they want to start using social networking capabilities like those found on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace as a primary way to build new skills and collaborate with peers on one easy-to-use destination.

My developerWorks brings these social networking attributes into a single view for users, enabling them to build online relationships to create new groups, comment on and share content, build skills and grow a worldwide network of peers to drive innovation, IBM says.

Their profile can be customized to include contacts, preferred content, real time feeds from forums, blogs and wikis, and IBM’s developerWorks site. In the coming months, My developerWorks users will also be able to tap their social networking profiles on sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, to expand their professional networks and collaborate on new technologies, says the company.

Based on Lotus Connections, IBM’s enterprise networking and collaboration technology, developerWorks members can now collaborate in a vertical network that connects people around a focused task or goal.

Among the network’s features, users can get real-time access to personalized content while using a central and customizable dashboard view. It also offers easy-to-use tools to showcase expertise and find like-minded peers. Its collaboration technologies will allow users to accelerate development in a 24/7 environment.

IBM launched developerWorks in 1999. For the past 10 years, developerWorks has been instrumental in advancing open standards and emerging technologies and making sure IT companies have the tools to support technology investments such as Java, Linux, XML, and Cloud computing.

Now, developerWorks is available in 243 countries, as well as local language sites are available in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Vietnamese, says IBM.

To have access, you can go to: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks

I recently read Yes, we can twitter while catching up on some E&T reading. Probably the most interesting bit for me was seeing @TheIET is also on twitter, so I tore off the bottom of the page with the link on to check out. Web 0.1 bookmarking then; I still like reading on paper.

The IET twitter account doesn’t look like it’s progressed beyond getting their brand on there; they don’t follow anyone, have a surprisingly small 168 followers and don’t seem to be talking to anyone. Still, hopefully it’s just a small beginning and, amongst the links to their web site, I did spot a press release about the launch of the new IET social networking site! That news somehow passed me by until now, so I’ve been investigating to see what it offers. To start with, I have yet another profile, which is not a big surprise. Earlier today I was scratching my head over a spiced up developerWorks profile. It has a bookmarking service which, for anyone in the IET new to such things is great. While I already use delicious for my own bookmarks, IET Discover combines bookmarks with groups, in what looks quite a similar way to Lotus Connections. There’s already a good selection of groups, although I’ve not found any that appear that active yet. Groups have always been a bit of a mystery to me in things like Facebook, never quite fulfilling their apparent potential, mostly ending up little more than a way to tag yourself as being interested in something.

Talking of tagging, from what I can tell on first look, I can tag my own profile, but other people can’t tag me, which seems like a missed opportunity. I think there’s much more value in tagging other people. In networks where you can tag yourself, I tend to have a poor attempt to start with, and then never return to keep the tags up-to-date.

And finally, I can watch people… except so far I’ve not found anyone to watch. I’m guessing it’s much like adding people to your delicious network.

Overall, it’s an interesting foray into the world of social networking. Like LinkedIn, it has a more professional focus, but it feels more limited by association with a single professional body. With recent homecamp, arduino and related projects in mind, I joined the electronic circuits group, but there are already more established social networks around those topics, whether IET members or not. Having said that, I think there is a place for more focused social networks. For example, I’m a big fan of developerWorks, where I’ve been trying to get some momentum for a community around the MDM Workbench, which is after all a pretty niche topic. So IET Discover looks interesting, and it has the potential to get me more involved in the IET. Time will tell how it turns out… maybe @TheIET will share their view…

I’ve been using UML a fair bit since I started working on the user interface generator but I still sometimes need reminding what the different associations are getting at. I’ve just been checking out the next user modeling demystified that will feature on the MDM Workbench developerWorks space and it has a nice example to help:

Mind you, that’s not the best description of the cats I’ve lived with: none of them have had collars, the word ‘owner’ is a bit suspect, and they all tended to play with mice before letting them escape under the cooker!

I have a slightly bad habit of leaving lots of tabs open in my browser until I get round to looking at them properly. Unfortunately my laptop seems to be getting a tad unreliable and after the last crash Opera failed to restore all the open tabs I had, which included a few MDM sites I was planning to post about. Here’s a very quick run down of the ones I could remember:

Master Data Management: Rapid Deployment Package for MDM draft redbook

I was presenting on a similar theme at the last Information on Demand conference, and we got quite a few questions about the rapid deployment package after it was announced at the same event. Hopefully this Redbook has all the answers!

A beginner’s guide to MDM (Master Data Management)

I discovered this one after a tweet from @dataqualitypro. Reasonable length introduction to MDM without overdoing it, and with some handy links. Now bookmarked ready for the next, ‘What is MDM?’ question.

MDM Community

A Ning community created by Dan Power, and one of the links in the beginners guide. Looks like it’s building up to be an interesting and active community.

Understand IBM InfoSphere MDM Server Security, Part 5: Integrating Master Data Management Server with Tivoli Federated Identity Manager

Latest in a series of developerWorks articles on MDM Server security. I’m about to publish a new developerWorks space for the MDM Workbench so I’ve been on the look out for developerWorks articles on MDM. Good to see recent articles for MDM Server on there.

(Ooops, already back up to 36 tabs! Must start tagging and closing them or something.)

Update: the MDM Workbench developerWorks space is now live- I guess that should be a March link but it almost made it in time! (4 March 2009)

This is just a quick plug for the new MDM Workbench forum on developerWorks, which is worth following if you’ve read any of the MDM Workbench related posts below. I’ll still be writing about my own views of MDM and the workbench here, but for a larger audience of people who know the MDM Workbench, the new forum is the place to go.

• Creating user interfaces another way
• Setting up an MDM Server development environment
• Running MDM transactions in a development environment
• Another way to run MDM transactions in a development environment

And there’s more: for any MDM Server runtime specific discussions there is a well established InfoSphere Master Data Management Server forum, also on developerWorks.