Ever had one of those conversations where you debate something for a while then it dawns on you that each party has been talking about something different? It has happened to me quite a few times recently.
One example was in relation to Business Process Modelling (BPM), which is something I grew up with and in my mind is about, well, modelling business processes. It’s a discipline that business analysts have been involved with for a years, and while the technology to support it has moved on, and arguably some of the methodologies too, the fundamental principles haven’t changed that much for a long time now. Then someone asked Freeform Dynamics to design a research study to figure out the level to which organisations had adopted BPM. When I argued during an internal project start-up meeting that you couldn’t really ask someone about when and how they were taking something on board that they had been doing for a decade or two, it turned out that the ‘BPM’ we were being asked to investigate was actually 'Business Process Management' and was based on a definition which included the technical side of things – workflow rules engines, SOA orchestration, and so on. Not quite the technology-independent business view of BPM that I was taught earlier in my career, but as soon as the misunderstanding was cleared up, we could design the research accordingly.
Another example was prompted by a report I read the other day claiming that Software as a Service (SaaS) is now a mature and pervasive model. This was reminiscent of claims made during a number of other conversations I have had recently with SaaS advocates, that I have been struggling to reconcile with the findings of our own research. The latter has shown quite conclusively that while larger organisations are starting to make selective use of SaaS for delivering business application functionality, 'pervasive' is certainly not a word that applies in this area. Then I realised that some of the advocates were throwing a whole bunch of stuff into their definition of SaaS (or the related S+S model) that I would never dream of including when discussing the delivery of business application functionality. Internet search, traditional ISP services, and even things like consumer content services, online help and automatic updates associated with desktop software can sometimes be lumped together when referring the 'SaaS market'. Again, once the ambiguity is cleared up, you can see where people are coming from, and make a judgement on the usefulness (or otherwise) of what they are saying.
I guess we at Freeform are particularly sensitive to precision when it comes to discussing market activity, as primary research designed to figure out what’s really going on behind the buzzwords and the hype is so central to what we do. The experiences I have outlined, however, highlight how easily people can be misled by imprecise or ambiguous definitions if they are not on their guard. And with so much vested interest and evangelism driving the market, the temptation for some to spin and exploit our ever changing vocabulary is significant, so we all need to careful about what is behind those stats and definitions.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Cloud Computing and Web 2.0
Don’t you just hate it when another woolly ambiguous term is forced upon us? When I was approached by yet another journalist the other day asking me my thoughts on the impact of cloud computing, I simply sighed and told them it is a bit like Web 2.0. In itself, it is difficult to pin down exactly what is meant by it. The best you can do is say that both of these terms refer to a general direction in which the industry appears to be moving.
In the case of Web 2.0, it is about the Web becoming a generally more interactive medium. This can manifest itself at a technology level through everything from Ajax through mash-ups to SOA, and at a behavioural level through social media and the simple fact that websites are generally now more geared up to a two-way dialogue than they used to be.
In the case of cloud computing, it is about the evolution of dynamic virtualised infrastructure that allows us to think more in terms of resource pools than individual IT components. This in turn opens the door to delivering computing resource on a utility basis, which is equally applicable both internally (i.e. with regard to the way you use your data centre) and externally – which takes you into the realm of utility computing and software as a service.
The point about both Web 2.0 and cloud computing is that they both sprung up arbitrarily on the evolutionary timeline, and seeming embraced anything and everything that could be thrown into the mix. While the very specific phenomenon of social networking is certainly noteworthy, this bears little relationship to evolution of rich user interfaces and composite applications, in fact many social networking sites have appalling UIs by traditional standards. Yet Web 2.0 can mean either of these things, and, confusingly, lots of other concepts too.
Similarly, we have been talking about virtualisation ultimately leading to computing grids and utility computing for years, and giving it a new name doesn’t actually change anything in terms of the underlying trend. In fact, you knew where you stood much better when you could talk about virtualisation and grid technology as the enabling stuff, and utility computing and application services as what it enables. As everyone jumps onto the cloud computing bandwagon, it all gets mixed up and confused, just like Web 2.0.
So, if you are one of those people wondering what cloud computing is really all about after listening the IBM explanation, the Microsoft one, and the evangelical rhetoric we have heard recently from the Google and Salesforce.com camp, don’t worry, you are not alone. The trick is to think of it as a label for a trend at one level, and an industry bandwagon at another, and keep your expectations pretty low in terms of clarity and consistency for the time being. Don’t however, dismiss the underlying trend it itself. While we are not looking at a revolution here, some of the developments in this general area are really quite interesting and valuable – though, you probably knew that already, even before the marketing hype was thrust upon us.
In the case of Web 2.0, it is about the Web becoming a generally more interactive medium. This can manifest itself at a technology level through everything from Ajax through mash-ups to SOA, and at a behavioural level through social media and the simple fact that websites are generally now more geared up to a two-way dialogue than they used to be.
In the case of cloud computing, it is about the evolution of dynamic virtualised infrastructure that allows us to think more in terms of resource pools than individual IT components. This in turn opens the door to delivering computing resource on a utility basis, which is equally applicable both internally (i.e. with regard to the way you use your data centre) and externally – which takes you into the realm of utility computing and software as a service.
The point about both Web 2.0 and cloud computing is that they both sprung up arbitrarily on the evolutionary timeline, and seeming embraced anything and everything that could be thrown into the mix. While the very specific phenomenon of social networking is certainly noteworthy, this bears little relationship to evolution of rich user interfaces and composite applications, in fact many social networking sites have appalling UIs by traditional standards. Yet Web 2.0 can mean either of these things, and, confusingly, lots of other concepts too.
Similarly, we have been talking about virtualisation ultimately leading to computing grids and utility computing for years, and giving it a new name doesn’t actually change anything in terms of the underlying trend. In fact, you knew where you stood much better when you could talk about virtualisation and grid technology as the enabling stuff, and utility computing and application services as what it enables. As everyone jumps onto the cloud computing bandwagon, it all gets mixed up and confused, just like Web 2.0.
So, if you are one of those people wondering what cloud computing is really all about after listening the IBM explanation, the Microsoft one, and the evangelical rhetoric we have heard recently from the Google and Salesforce.com camp, don’t worry, you are not alone. The trick is to think of it as a label for a trend at one level, and an industry bandwagon at another, and keep your expectations pretty low in terms of clarity and consistency for the time being. Don’t however, dismiss the underlying trend it itself. While we are not looking at a revolution here, some of the developments in this general area are really quite interesting and valuable – though, you probably knew that already, even before the marketing hype was thrust upon us.
Monday, 14 April 2008
Oracle and Collaboration
I was interested to read about Angela’s experience trying to secure a briefing from Oracle on its collaboration related offerings and activities. As Angela pointed out, the ‘Big O’ was the only large vendor that ‘should’ have a story in this space that declined to tell her what it was up to.
When I later commented on this (with a link to the above) via Twitter, someone else came back to me to say that they too had been having trouble getting Oracle to open up in this area.
I have to say that this doesn’t surprise me. It must be quite challenging for Oracle at the moment trying to figure out how to position in this space. The Oracle Collaboration Suite was launched a few years ago supposedly to save the world from flaky Microsoft Exchange installations and pretty much fell flat. Oracle believed its own rhetoric about the world hating Microsoft, so looked silly to most people when it aggressively launched an initiative that would only work if customers ditched their existing Microsoft messaging infrastructure, which was never going to happen.
In addition to some of the things Angela mentioned, we have also seen the portal wars in which Oracle has consistently been on the back foot, and lately, the march of Microsoft SharePoint and a range of collaboration and unified communications offerings from IBM under the Lotus and WebSphere brands that are largely messaging system agnostic.
Then most recently, we have seen the BEA collaboration offerings thrown into the mix, which before the acquisition, were beginning to look pretty good. BEA had a very sound grasp of the heterogeneous world in which customers live and was taking a very mature view of social media in the enterprise, for example. And, of course, it wasn’t encumbered by competitive obsession, which, as an aside, is arguably one of the biggest obstacles to Oracle being accepted as a truly strategic partner in many major accounts. Telling CIOs and business executives that they have been stupid over the years to waste their money on SAP, Microsoft and IBM, for example, is not the best way to win friends in high places. While competition is good, destructive messaging generally only appeals to junior level activists. It is a huge turn-off in senior management circles.
Coming back to the original question, we should probably continue to expect Oracle to be tight-lipped on not just collaboration, but middleware strategy in general for a little while yet. I have personally been told on a couple of occasions to refer to the ‘official line on oracle.com' when looking for clarity on open questions that we hear from Oracle’s customers (old or newly acquired). Irritating though this might be, and frustrating though it is to be fobbed off with ‘Mom and Apple Pie’ type feel-good policy statements, the truth is that there is little else Oracle can do until it gets its act together properly.
And to be fair, given some of the confusion than came about as a result of articulating nice sounding stories around work-in-progress plans associated its CRM and ERP acquisitions in the past (that later had to be ‘adjusted’), it is probably better for us to hang on until Oracle really has worked out what it is trying to do in collaboration as it has in the enterprise application space.
Oracle is undoubtedly already aware that needs to be careful that the collaboration and closely related unified communications markets do not slip away from it, and will be doing what it can to make sure it doesn't get left behind again. In the meantime, it goes without saying that customers should challenge the company hard before making major commitments to it in these areas.
When I later commented on this (with a link to the above) via Twitter, someone else came back to me to say that they too had been having trouble getting Oracle to open up in this area.
I have to say that this doesn’t surprise me. It must be quite challenging for Oracle at the moment trying to figure out how to position in this space. The Oracle Collaboration Suite was launched a few years ago supposedly to save the world from flaky Microsoft Exchange installations and pretty much fell flat. Oracle believed its own rhetoric about the world hating Microsoft, so looked silly to most people when it aggressively launched an initiative that would only work if customers ditched their existing Microsoft messaging infrastructure, which was never going to happen.
In addition to some of the things Angela mentioned, we have also seen the portal wars in which Oracle has consistently been on the back foot, and lately, the march of Microsoft SharePoint and a range of collaboration and unified communications offerings from IBM under the Lotus and WebSphere brands that are largely messaging system agnostic.
Then most recently, we have seen the BEA collaboration offerings thrown into the mix, which before the acquisition, were beginning to look pretty good. BEA had a very sound grasp of the heterogeneous world in which customers live and was taking a very mature view of social media in the enterprise, for example. And, of course, it wasn’t encumbered by competitive obsession, which, as an aside, is arguably one of the biggest obstacles to Oracle being accepted as a truly strategic partner in many major accounts. Telling CIOs and business executives that they have been stupid over the years to waste their money on SAP, Microsoft and IBM, for example, is not the best way to win friends in high places. While competition is good, destructive messaging generally only appeals to junior level activists. It is a huge turn-off in senior management circles.
Coming back to the original question, we should probably continue to expect Oracle to be tight-lipped on not just collaboration, but middleware strategy in general for a little while yet. I have personally been told on a couple of occasions to refer to the ‘official line on oracle.com' when looking for clarity on open questions that we hear from Oracle’s customers (old or newly acquired). Irritating though this might be, and frustrating though it is to be fobbed off with ‘Mom and Apple Pie’ type feel-good policy statements, the truth is that there is little else Oracle can do until it gets its act together properly.
And to be fair, given some of the confusion than came about as a result of articulating nice sounding stories around work-in-progress plans associated its CRM and ERP acquisitions in the past (that later had to be ‘adjusted’), it is probably better for us to hang on until Oracle really has worked out what it is trying to do in collaboration as it has in the enterprise application space.
Oracle is undoubtedly already aware that needs to be careful that the collaboration and closely related unified communications markets do not slip away from it, and will be doing what it can to make sure it doesn't get left behind again. In the meantime, it goes without saying that customers should challenge the company hard before making major commitments to it in these areas.
Friday, 28 March 2008
Making chipsets interesting
At the risk of offending all those who love to talk for hours about cores, caches and clock speeds, I have to say that I personally find discussions about the innards of silicon chips and how they are wired together intensely boring. In fact, I’ve probably already used all the wrong words and phrases, even in that first sentence, which is no doubt going to annoy some people further.
So, when Tony, Martin and I were invited to a dinner to meet with some of AMD’s European executives, I was understandably in two minds about attending, especially as I am also not really into all this wining and dining stuff as some other analyst are.
I went along, though, and I’m glad I did. Sure, I found myself sucked into the odd eye glazing conversation that I only partially understood, but something that came across clearly was that AMD is investing quite a bit in ‘reaching through’ relationships with its direct customers (largely the OEMs) to the ultimate customers – Enterprises, SMBs and consumers.
Of course there is nothing new or unique in this, in fact I ran a team at Nortel Networks back in the early 00’s which did exactly the same thing (in that case, reaching through the mobile operators to understand how 3G related to their subscribers). The basic idea is that you can gain insights and tune your R&D based on direct end user/buyer input that would not be possible if you worked second hand through your customer as an intermediary. To do this well, however, you really need people who understand that end user environment and the trends that are taking place within it, and that’s not necessarily the same people that deal with your core product design from an internal perspective.
Anyway, this end-user oriented view of the world shifted discussions to more familiar territory for me during the dinner, and I enjoyed hearing people like Giuseppe Amato, who goes under the title “Director, Value Proposition Team”, explaining how the whole process works in relation to data centre evolution, high performance computing and mobile working. It changed my perception of AMD quite a bit from simply “the alternative to Intel” to that of an independent player that is committed to driving industry development in its own way.
While I am not qualified to comment on the relative merits of AMD technology versus the competition, nor its ability to execute in the cut throat world of OEM deals and supply chains, I now have a much better appreciation of why what AMD does actually matters. It is not just about price/performance or performance per watt of energy consumed, it is about shifting thresholds to make things economically or practically possible in the mainstream market that previously were not. That’s why the “what if you could....?” conversations with end customers as suppliers like AMD reach through to them are so important. And also why, for the first time in my life, I actually had some genuinely interesting conversations about silicon that were directly relevant to the world in which I live.
So, when Tony, Martin and I were invited to a dinner to meet with some of AMD’s European executives, I was understandably in two minds about attending, especially as I am also not really into all this wining and dining stuff as some other analyst are.
I went along, though, and I’m glad I did. Sure, I found myself sucked into the odd eye glazing conversation that I only partially understood, but something that came across clearly was that AMD is investing quite a bit in ‘reaching through’ relationships with its direct customers (largely the OEMs) to the ultimate customers – Enterprises, SMBs and consumers.
Of course there is nothing new or unique in this, in fact I ran a team at Nortel Networks back in the early 00’s which did exactly the same thing (in that case, reaching through the mobile operators to understand how 3G related to their subscribers). The basic idea is that you can gain insights and tune your R&D based on direct end user/buyer input that would not be possible if you worked second hand through your customer as an intermediary. To do this well, however, you really need people who understand that end user environment and the trends that are taking place within it, and that’s not necessarily the same people that deal with your core product design from an internal perspective.
Anyway, this end-user oriented view of the world shifted discussions to more familiar territory for me during the dinner, and I enjoyed hearing people like Giuseppe Amato, who goes under the title “Director, Value Proposition Team”, explaining how the whole process works in relation to data centre evolution, high performance computing and mobile working. It changed my perception of AMD quite a bit from simply “the alternative to Intel” to that of an independent player that is committed to driving industry development in its own way.
While I am not qualified to comment on the relative merits of AMD technology versus the competition, nor its ability to execute in the cut throat world of OEM deals and supply chains, I now have a much better appreciation of why what AMD does actually matters. It is not just about price/performance or performance per watt of energy consumed, it is about shifting thresholds to make things economically or practically possible in the mainstream market that previously were not. That’s why the “what if you could....?” conversations with end customers as suppliers like AMD reach through to them are so important. And also why, for the first time in my life, I actually had some genuinely interesting conversations about silicon that were directly relevant to the world in which I live.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Downgrading from Vista to XP
I blogged a while back on how a Vista upgrade effectively rendered my old desktop machine useless for business purposes (see Retiring Leonardo from last year). I got a lot of feedback at that time as many people out there were obviously trying to get a handle on the viability of upgrading older kit.
While this debate continues, the related question has now arisen of whether even some PCs pre-installed with Vista are capable of running it adequately. Based on my own experience, this is a very pertinent question to ask if you are considering buying anything with less than a 1.8 Ghz Core2 Duo processor with 2Gb of memory - the current minimum spec I work on for serious business use. Yet there are lots of Vista machines out there on the market that are significantly less powerful than this.
Without getting into the rights or wrongs of this state of affairs, if you are unlucky enough to be struggling with Vista on a lower spec machine, you may be interested in a recent experience I had which was a bit of a wakeup call – not just in terms of the physical performance side of things, but also on the broader question of the value of Vista from an end user perspective in a business environment.
A few months ago, I needed to replace my notebook. As a notebook to me is companion to my desktop rather than my main machine, I wasn’t looking for anything very powerful – size, weight and battery life were much more important considerations. So, after a happy couple of hours cruising up and down all of the hi-tech shops in London’s Tottenham Court Road trying all the latest kit, I opted for a Sony TZ Series – about 1.2 kilos in weight, fantastic screen, reduced size but really nice keyboard, embedded cellular modem, and lots of other good stuff.
The machine came with Windows Vista Business Edition pre-installed and when I was playing with it in the shop, it was pretty responsive – the 1.2Gz Core2 Duo processor seemed to be up to the job. When I got the machine back to the ranch and loaded everything onto it, though, I have to admit to being a little disappointed with speed. Nevertheless, it was good enough, so I just got on with using it.
Over the course of the next four months, however, the performance gradually degraded and the user experience became awful. It eventually got to the stage where it was talking 12 minutes to boot and about 6-7 minutes to shut down, with very sluggish performance in between and frequent hangs requiring a forced shutdown (which in itself was probably making matters worse).
When researching the problem on the Web, it was clear that I was not the only one to be experiencing issues with Vista on the TZ Series, and the more I read, the more the answer to my problems became obvious – ‘downgrade’ the machine to Windows XP. A few forum entries mentioned a kit on the Sony website designed to allow you to do this, with all of the relevant drivers and utilities, and a set of instructions to guide you through the process. I duly downloaded this, followed the instructions, and it just worked. The longest part was installing and patching XP itself (which you have to buy separately, by the way – your Vista licence doesn’t cover it ** See clarification below) .
The end result is fantastic. The word ‘downgrade’ seems totally inappropriate – in fact, it feels like the machine has gone through a significant upgrade. It now boots in well under 2 minutes (with all the same applications loaded as before), is highly resilient (has gone through a lot of sleep/wake cycles without crashing once) and, interestingly, many of the Sony utilities work much more naturally (I suspect they were designed for XP in the first place then ported to Vista).
The one thing I was a bit worried about was going back to XP from a usability and functionality perspective having got so used to Vista, but I was surprised to find that the experience was actually quite a positive one. Everything seemed more crisp, immediate and uncluttered and so far, the only thing I have missed is the enhanced application switching mechanism in Vista, i.e. the Alt-Tab and Windows-Tab functionality. That’s a minor sacrifice for the other benefits, though, and it only took me an hour or two to get used to the old mechanism again.
The switch back to XP was such a breath of fresh air that I have also ‘downgraded’ the desktop machine I am using at the moment. On a reasonable spec PC you don’t see the same increase in actual performance, but the XP interface still feels a lot cleaner and snappier (at least to me). Having both machines running the same OS obviously has its advantages too.
Now before everyone goes rushing out to downgrade their Vista machines based on this little story, it would be irresponsible of me not to point out that during my research, I read accounts from many happy Vista users, lots of which seemed to be getting on fine with the TZ and similarly spec’d machines. I would suspect the number and range of applications you work with has a bearing on this - remember I said that the TZ felt fine when I was just playing with OS with no applications installed before buying it. It could also, of course, be that people just accept the out-of-the-box experience as normal and don’t really question whether they are getting the best performance from their hardware. All I can say is that the downgrade was definitely the right thing for me, and is something to consider if you find yourself in a similar situation.
In the meantime, we continue to experiment with various desktop options here at Freeform Dynamics, and those looking at alternatives may be interested a post from my colleague Jon Collins entitled Why I’ve replaced Vista with Linux.
Finally, as I type this, I have a brand new MacBook sitting next to me here on my desk, and over the coming few weeks I am going to be looking at the practicalities of using the Mac in a Windows dominated mainstream business environment, so watch this space for experiences with that.
** Clarification re licensing terms: The right to downgrade Vista depends which edition you have. Vista Ultimate and Business may be downgraded within the terms of the Microsoft EULA at no additional cost, but this right does not apply to other editions of the software.
While this debate continues, the related question has now arisen of whether even some PCs pre-installed with Vista are capable of running it adequately. Based on my own experience, this is a very pertinent question to ask if you are considering buying anything with less than a 1.8 Ghz Core2 Duo processor with 2Gb of memory - the current minimum spec I work on for serious business use. Yet there are lots of Vista machines out there on the market that are significantly less powerful than this.
Without getting into the rights or wrongs of this state of affairs, if you are unlucky enough to be struggling with Vista on a lower spec machine, you may be interested in a recent experience I had which was a bit of a wakeup call – not just in terms of the physical performance side of things, but also on the broader question of the value of Vista from an end user perspective in a business environment.
A few months ago, I needed to replace my notebook. As a notebook to me is companion to my desktop rather than my main machine, I wasn’t looking for anything very powerful – size, weight and battery life were much more important considerations. So, after a happy couple of hours cruising up and down all of the hi-tech shops in London’s Tottenham Court Road trying all the latest kit, I opted for a Sony TZ Series – about 1.2 kilos in weight, fantastic screen, reduced size but really nice keyboard, embedded cellular modem, and lots of other good stuff.
The machine came with Windows Vista Business Edition pre-installed and when I was playing with it in the shop, it was pretty responsive – the 1.2Gz Core2 Duo processor seemed to be up to the job. When I got the machine back to the ranch and loaded everything onto it, though, I have to admit to being a little disappointed with speed. Nevertheless, it was good enough, so I just got on with using it.
Over the course of the next four months, however, the performance gradually degraded and the user experience became awful. It eventually got to the stage where it was talking 12 minutes to boot and about 6-7 minutes to shut down, with very sluggish performance in between and frequent hangs requiring a forced shutdown (which in itself was probably making matters worse).
When researching the problem on the Web, it was clear that I was not the only one to be experiencing issues with Vista on the TZ Series, and the more I read, the more the answer to my problems became obvious – ‘downgrade’ the machine to Windows XP. A few forum entries mentioned a kit on the Sony website designed to allow you to do this, with all of the relevant drivers and utilities, and a set of instructions to guide you through the process. I duly downloaded this, followed the instructions, and it just worked. The longest part was installing and patching XP itself (which you have to buy separately, by the way – your Vista licence doesn’t cover it ** See clarification below) .
The end result is fantastic. The word ‘downgrade’ seems totally inappropriate – in fact, it feels like the machine has gone through a significant upgrade. It now boots in well under 2 minutes (with all the same applications loaded as before), is highly resilient (has gone through a lot of sleep/wake cycles without crashing once) and, interestingly, many of the Sony utilities work much more naturally (I suspect they were designed for XP in the first place then ported to Vista).
The one thing I was a bit worried about was going back to XP from a usability and functionality perspective having got so used to Vista, but I was surprised to find that the experience was actually quite a positive one. Everything seemed more crisp, immediate and uncluttered and so far, the only thing I have missed is the enhanced application switching mechanism in Vista, i.e. the Alt-Tab and Windows-Tab functionality. That’s a minor sacrifice for the other benefits, though, and it only took me an hour or two to get used to the old mechanism again.
The switch back to XP was such a breath of fresh air that I have also ‘downgraded’ the desktop machine I am using at the moment. On a reasonable spec PC you don’t see the same increase in actual performance, but the XP interface still feels a lot cleaner and snappier (at least to me). Having both machines running the same OS obviously has its advantages too.
Now before everyone goes rushing out to downgrade their Vista machines based on this little story, it would be irresponsible of me not to point out that during my research, I read accounts from many happy Vista users, lots of which seemed to be getting on fine with the TZ and similarly spec’d machines. I would suspect the number and range of applications you work with has a bearing on this - remember I said that the TZ felt fine when I was just playing with OS with no applications installed before buying it. It could also, of course, be that people just accept the out-of-the-box experience as normal and don’t really question whether they are getting the best performance from their hardware. All I can say is that the downgrade was definitely the right thing for me, and is something to consider if you find yourself in a similar situation.
In the meantime, we continue to experiment with various desktop options here at Freeform Dynamics, and those looking at alternatives may be interested a post from my colleague Jon Collins entitled Why I’ve replaced Vista with Linux.
Finally, as I type this, I have a brand new MacBook sitting next to me here on my desk, and over the coming few weeks I am going to be looking at the practicalities of using the Mac in a Windows dominated mainstream business environment, so watch this space for experiences with that.
** Clarification re licensing terms: The right to downgrade Vista depends which edition you have. Vista Ultimate and Business may be downgraded within the terms of the Microsoft EULA at no additional cost, but this right does not apply to other editions of the software.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Are your IT staff adequately trained?
An interesting finding emerged from one of our recent studies into IT Service Management (ITSM). It concerns a cause and effect that is pretty obvious once it is highlighted. Put simply, IT departments operate much more smoothly and efficiently if IT staff are adequately trained.
The data, which is derived from over 1,100 responses to an online survey, is difficult to argue with. There is a clear relationship between the attention paid to IT staff training and the perceived level of burden experienced by IT. To put it another way, properly trained staff find it easier to cope with the demands placed on them in areas such as infrastructure optimisation and management to keep service levels up and costs down, effective maintenance of desktops to manage user satisfaction and keep security risks under control, and provision of helpdesk services to meet user expectations with regard to support.
What’s more, the relationship between training and operational efficiency and effectiveness is a linear one. What does that mean? Well, it doesn’t really matter whether training requirements have been neglected, if the organisation already has its act together, or if it’s somewhere in between, indications are that that incremental training will always have a positive impact. To put this into perspective, another finding from the same report was that investment in other areas, such as systems management automation and integration, does not deliver benefits in the same linear fashion. Essentially, you need to get past a threshold of capability before significant improvements are generated.
There are some interesting lessons in here for all organisations, but particularly those that have a tendency to skimp on investment in skills development. If this study is anything to go by, such an approach is clearly false economy. In fact, if you have anything to do with running an IT department that is underperforming on IT service delivery and operational efficiency, then the first port of call when looking for improvements should probably be staff development. While upgrading your systems management tools and technology may also be a necessity, investment in this way will take time to pay back. Meanwhile, a bit of additional training at a fraction of the cost is likely to have a much more immediate impact.
Oh yeah, and study also quite clearly shows that training end users can have a similar impact, reducing the burden placed on IT in areas such as desktop management and help desk delivery. The basic principle here is that adequately trained users encounter (and create) fewer problems, and when problems do occur, users are much better placed to sort themselves out.
There’s a lot more to this research than the stuff we have been talking about above, so if you’d like to learn more, you can download a full copy of the findings from here. And if you’re interested in a companion report looking at the future of IT Service Management (ITSM) in general, you can download that from here.
The data, which is derived from over 1,100 responses to an online survey, is difficult to argue with. There is a clear relationship between the attention paid to IT staff training and the perceived level of burden experienced by IT. To put it another way, properly trained staff find it easier to cope with the demands placed on them in areas such as infrastructure optimisation and management to keep service levels up and costs down, effective maintenance of desktops to manage user satisfaction and keep security risks under control, and provision of helpdesk services to meet user expectations with regard to support.
What’s more, the relationship between training and operational efficiency and effectiveness is a linear one. What does that mean? Well, it doesn’t really matter whether training requirements have been neglected, if the organisation already has its act together, or if it’s somewhere in between, indications are that that incremental training will always have a positive impact. To put this into perspective, another finding from the same report was that investment in other areas, such as systems management automation and integration, does not deliver benefits in the same linear fashion. Essentially, you need to get past a threshold of capability before significant improvements are generated.
There are some interesting lessons in here for all organisations, but particularly those that have a tendency to skimp on investment in skills development. If this study is anything to go by, such an approach is clearly false economy. In fact, if you have anything to do with running an IT department that is underperforming on IT service delivery and operational efficiency, then the first port of call when looking for improvements should probably be staff development. While upgrading your systems management tools and technology may also be a necessity, investment in this way will take time to pay back. Meanwhile, a bit of additional training at a fraction of the cost is likely to have a much more immediate impact.
Oh yeah, and study also quite clearly shows that training end users can have a similar impact, reducing the burden placed on IT in areas such as desktop management and help desk delivery. The basic principle here is that adequately trained users encounter (and create) fewer problems, and when problems do occur, users are much better placed to sort themselves out.
There’s a lot more to this research than the stuff we have been talking about above, so if you’d like to learn more, you can download a full copy of the findings from here. And if you’re interested in a companion report looking at the future of IT Service Management (ITSM) in general, you can download that from here.
Friday, 25 January 2008
The customer view of BEA’s acquisition by Oracle
When the BEA Oracle deal was finally announced last week, my first instinct, like many analysts and journalists I would guess, was to rush to the keyboard and bash something out. But what was there to be said that hadn’t already been covered? After re-reading my previous post on the topic, I didn’t have a great deal more to say at that point.
So, instead of writing a blog post, I composed a little questionnaire and reached out to Oracle and BEA customers through an online survey to capture opinion where the rubber meets the road. In a very short space of time, I gathered nearly 300 responses, including a lot of freeform feedback. I then spent an interesting few hours reading through and categorising people’s views, which is the part of this job I really enjoy. Gathering statistics through tick and bash surveys is one thing, but reading a few hundred comments in which a bunch of smart people tell you what they think in a totally unconstrained manner is a great way to get under the skin of a topic.
In this case, I quickly uncovered a bunch of angles on the BEA acquisition that I hadn’t previously considered. Here is quick summary the themes, both positive and negative, that I managed to pull out (ranked in order of frequency of mention):
Reasons given for why the acquisition is bad news
1. Reduced choice and competition in the market
2. Uncertainties for customers with existing product investments
3. Loss of innovation, Oracle will smother the goodness of BEA
4. Concerns about Oracle as a supplier (style and nature)
5. Increased cost for BEA users (particularly maintenance)
6. Fear of lock-in as Oracle optimises between stack components
Reasons given for why the acquisition is good news
1. A stronger and more mature solution will emerge (eventually)
2. Rescue of good technology from a company that had lost its way
3. Creation of stronger and more credible competition for IBM
4. Better synergy between BEA technology and Oracle RDBMS, tools, etc
5. Reinforcement of distinction between commercial offerings and OSS
6. More integrated approach to customers and account management
Even though a lot of these are pretty obvious, I’m sure most people looking at this list will spot a couple of angles that they hadn’t previously thought of, and if you are a customer trying work out the impact of the acquisition, then this probably isn’t a bad starting point for assessing the balance between risk and opportunity in what is actually quite a complex situation.
Of course we also gathered some stats, and I’ll throw in this chart in here that illustrates the sentiment overall.
So, the initial reaction to the acquisition, while mixed, is definitely net negative.
Anyway, if you’re are interested in a drill down on the above chart broken down by customer type (BEA versus Oracle versus joint customers), along with and fuller discussion of the findings, you can check out the more complete analysis I put together here or here.
So, instead of writing a blog post, I composed a little questionnaire and reached out to Oracle and BEA customers through an online survey to capture opinion where the rubber meets the road. In a very short space of time, I gathered nearly 300 responses, including a lot of freeform feedback. I then spent an interesting few hours reading through and categorising people’s views, which is the part of this job I really enjoy. Gathering statistics through tick and bash surveys is one thing, but reading a few hundred comments in which a bunch of smart people tell you what they think in a totally unconstrained manner is a great way to get under the skin of a topic.
In this case, I quickly uncovered a bunch of angles on the BEA acquisition that I hadn’t previously considered. Here is quick summary the themes, both positive and negative, that I managed to pull out (ranked in order of frequency of mention):
Reasons given for why the acquisition is bad news
1. Reduced choice and competition in the market
2. Uncertainties for customers with existing product investments
3. Loss of innovation, Oracle will smother the goodness of BEA
4. Concerns about Oracle as a supplier (style and nature)
5. Increased cost for BEA users (particularly maintenance)
6. Fear of lock-in as Oracle optimises between stack components
Reasons given for why the acquisition is good news
1. A stronger and more mature solution will emerge (eventually)
2. Rescue of good technology from a company that had lost its way
3. Creation of stronger and more credible competition for IBM
4. Better synergy between BEA technology and Oracle RDBMS, tools, etc
5. Reinforcement of distinction between commercial offerings and OSS
6. More integrated approach to customers and account management
Even though a lot of these are pretty obvious, I’m sure most people looking at this list will spot a couple of angles that they hadn’t previously thought of, and if you are a customer trying work out the impact of the acquisition, then this probably isn’t a bad starting point for assessing the balance between risk and opportunity in what is actually quite a complex situation.
Of course we also gathered some stats, and I’ll throw in this chart in here that illustrates the sentiment overall.
So, the initial reaction to the acquisition, while mixed, is definitely net negative.
Anyway, if you’re are interested in a drill down on the above chart broken down by customer type (BEA versus Oracle versus joint customers), along with and fuller discussion of the findings, you can check out the more complete analysis I put together here or here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
