Computer Systems Today

Open Source for Business?

2012-01-12T09:10:00.000-08:00

"Open Source" has been the buzzword for the past several years in the computer software industry and has generally been associated with highly technical software such as web and application software and development tools. Today proprietary software like IBM's WebSphere and Oracle's Weblogic which are incredibly expensive software packages have been displaced by free open source software such as ApacheTomcat, JBOSS, Jetty, and GlassFish.

You may have heard of languages such as PHP or Frameworks like Hibernate, Spring, or Ruby on Rails, again very popular technical offerings.

Have you however seen the hundreds of open source business software such as OpenERP, SugarCRM, and thousands of ERP, CRM, Financial, HR, and special purpose open source packages that are freely available today?

I don't want free, you get what you pay for...

That couldn't be farther from the truth today! Successful Open Source projects and software are the result of coalitions of companies with needs similar to yours open source is free but funded by contributions from the companies using the software. You may freely download, install and use most open source software packages with absolutely no cost to you. You may also have your developers modify and customize the software.

You are encouraged to contribute customizations to the open source organization who maintains the software. You may also wish to contribute money to help fund ongoing projects that enhance and improve the products. Note: these projects are customer driven and tend to be exactly on target in meeting current business requirements experienced by many of the companies using the software.

Choose carefully!

There are many remnants of open source projects out on the web that continue to hang on by a thread but are no longer active or viable products. Here are some steps to help evaluate open source software:

Try to determine how many companies use the software and who they are. Avoid narrow focus limited use products.
Look at the blogs and forums that are present on the products web site. Who is commenting? Are the comments constructive or negative? Are problems being resolved? Are people helping each other use the product?
Look at the "project" list to see what is being worked on. Check the project start dates, status, and estimated completion. Are the projects stagnant or active and moving forward? Who are the people working on the projects? Are they employees of the underlying organization that sponsors the project or volunteers. Are projects adequately funded?
How good is the documentation? Is it readily available and written for people or programmers? Is the documentation comprehensive and complete or are major sections missing with notes like "to be written soon..."?
Check YouTube and see if their are videos demonstrating or training people in the use of the product. Popular products have a relatively large number of videos.
Do a Google search on the product and look for both positive and negative articles on the product.
Finally, contact some of the people you find on the forums who are using the products and get some personal references and opinions.
Check out the underlying organization that sponsor's the product. If the organization is a US based 501 C non-profit organization you can get financial reports from the IRS and companies that track non-profits such as GuideStar.
Read the "About Us" links on the web site which usually lists key member companies, board members and their corporate affiliations. This information will tell you who is sponsoring this initiative and give you a good indication of the depths of its funding. Sometimes you can find lists of key contributors in this area also.

Note that many of the companies developing open source software are for profit companies who develop and give away an open source license for their software and sell an "Enterprise Version" with additional features and support that are not available in the free version. If you are interested in software from this type of company be sure to understand the differences between their free software and their fee based software. In some cases you get everything except for professional services and support. In other cases the free software is limited in function with the majority of enhancements and advanced features going into the commercial version.

The process of selecting open source software is not much different than buying commercial software. A couple of key issues to look at is who is going to support the software after you acquire it? Many open source software products have communities of consultants or service providers that make their living supporting open source software. Many of the development organizations provide support for a fee, and of course you can hire or outsource support.

My personal preference are non-profit organizations organized by user companies with common interests.

Managing IT Today

2011-11-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

I just finished a manuscript of a new book tentatively titled "Managing Computer Systems in the 21st Century". This will be published by MC Press soon. I am also building a consulting practice based on the principles set forth in this book.

What I am finding is that most companies do not take firm control over their computer systems or IT organization. I do not like the term IT (Information Technology) because I do not like the word "technology" which implies a focus on technology. Interestingly enough the term Information Technology and its subsequent abbreviation to "IT" can be traced back to a 1958 Harvard Business Review article by Leavitt and Whisler taking about the future of computer based technology and claiming that the new technology needed a name. It wasn't until the late 1980's or 1990's when the term became popular.

Your computer systems organization should be a service organization and not have its own initiatives. It only needs resources including hardware, software, networks, etc. to support the business objectives of the business enterprise it supports.

We have lost track of the reason that computer systems exist over the years and we have focused on "technology".

Enterprises who have control over their computer systems (and the department that supports them) have a strong governance program starting with the board of directors and moving into steering committees headed by the senior most executives in the company.

All projects should originate from key business units of the company and be under the responsibility of a business unit executive. The value and justification for a project should be that of the business unit. It is your computer systems department's responsibility to provide the resources required to implement projects. They must provide high quality services in a cost effective manner and deliver the services in the time frame agreed to prior to project initiation.

The IT or computer systems organization must provide services at competitive costs with external vendors or even offshore contract service providers. Attitudes about the value of in-house programming or development (or even in-house equipment and technology) need to change.

All that is relevant is that the company's computer systems and new systems projects are meeting business objectives.

Throughout my career a goal was to build computer systems that were stable, durable, and could last for years. With today's constantly changing business environment, we are now looking at disposable systems. Today you can build a system for a specific customer, problem, or business opportunity that may cease to exist within a relatively short time. It is up to the business to determine if their is an adequate ROI to justify the development of the system with the idea that it will be discarded when the business requirement no longer exists.

That is quite a concept. Many of the systems that currently exist in many major corporations no longer have a business reason to exist. They simply exist because they always have existed and no one has the knowledge to know where the system "might be used". It is deemed safer to just keep them around.

Modern computer systems management positions IT or the computer systems organization as a service to the business units and positions business unit executives with full responsibility for all system projects. A structured approach makes most sense where key business unit executives have discretionary authority to approve projects below a certain cost that only affects their area of responsibility. Projects that exceed the cost limit, or affect multiple areas of the company must be approved by the corporate steering committee consisting of the CEO and senior executives and must have a single executive responsible for the project.

Programming, Languages, and Tools of the 21st Century

2011-10-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

I just got dragged into a discussion on LinkedIn's EGL Group discussion called "What is the future of EGL?". For those that don't know EGL (or Enterprise Generation Language) is a 4th generation language that generates Java and/or COBOL code. It is an IBM proprietary product that supports advanced web development.

EGL is one tiny example of dozens of web or other application development tools available in the marketplace today. In addition to dozens of proprietary products from various vendors (from IBM to virtually unknown little software houses operating out of the owner's garage) is open source. In terms of web development the leader is clearly PHP.

PHP is this nasty little programming language (I really don't care for it very much), with millions of users and over a million companies building incredibly sophisticated web sites with PHP!

Why is PHP successful? It is free and open source, but more importantly, there are thousands of free applications ranging from sophisticated e-commerce web stores to just about anything else you can imagine free for the download. You can download and customize these applications and have sophisticated web applications up and running in days (often in less than a day).

If you don't have the expertise to customize or implement your own PHP applications you can rent the expertise.

You may still need more speed, power, or sophistication than PHP can offer, so you should use Java or C++. Again, don't hire programmers, rent them from India. You get superbly skilled people at a fraction of the price. You also get a business dynamic that is easy to manage and costs that can easily be contained and controlled.

For years many developers and IT people or even business users frustrated with IT people have looked at products and tools like EGL, or many others to rapidly build new systems or solutions not coming out of the IT department.

Some of these tools are excellent, the question becomes how long will they last, will they be bought up by some major company and then what happens to them? Computer Associates or CA has become the biggest dumping ground for old software companies. IBM is close behind snatching up just about everyone it can. Oracle has jointed the buying frenzy and Microsoft is there too.

Interestingly C++ was a language that was used to create compilers and operating systems and seemed to be way too complex to ever serve as a business language. Java was a good alternative. With Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. the future of Java is questionable. Java despite its popularity was never an "open source" product. It was always a proprietary product owned by Sun and now by Oracle. Oracle can modify Java, or change its licensing at their whim. Will they? Who knows? Oracle has risen from a small database company to a major computer systems giant. They are causing IBM and other major companies major headaches.

Today, I would strongly recommend outsourcing all programming and development to offshore companies. I say India but there are some great and inexpensive folks in other countries too. Be sure they have good communication skills.

Avoid specialty or development tools unless you do so with the idea that you will throw them away when your situation changes. Do not invest in some tools that require extensive staff training or hiring new people. If you can buy a tool and use it with a minimal learning curve, especially if it is used by business people and not IT programmers then go for it.

Sadly, the corporate staff programmer is a dinosaur and expense that you probably should not be investing in.

IBM Stock Drop an Indicator of the future?

2011-10-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

Investors are extremely concerned about IBM's current quarter results. See the Rueters article titled: "IBM's Q3 disappoints, stock drops".

IMHO this is a signal of IBM's decline. Unless some radical changes to refocus the computer and software giant on real solutions to real business problems and abandonment of its absurd and failed technological solutions in search of a problem will be its down fall.

IMHO IBM's decline began with Lou Gerstner who reinvented IBM in the image of Nabisco. Sam Palmisano is a Gerstner clone with a heavy focus on technical consulting. Under the leadership of these two, IBM dumped its printer business, its printer business and ripped the guts out of its storage business. It has basically eliminated its AS/400 aka iSeries aka System i business is moving its formerly profitable zOS business to Linux and refocused its power systems group on Linux.

Under Steve Mills "leadership" [???????] WebSphere and IBM's SOA initiatives, application servers, commerce server, and many other products have been virtually driven out of the market place by free open source software.

The biggest issue for IBM today is Oracle after its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle now has a complete and total turn key suite of solutions including all required hardware, middleware, and application software for virtually every business requirement you can imagine. The Sun acquisition rounded out a total package of its own software, Peoplesoft, and JD Edwards.

Oracle was a major IBM partner who helped sustain IBM Power Systems revenue. Now Oracle will be selling its own hardware with extremely attractive package pricing.

IBM's own strategic manuevers like the move to LINUX away from proprietary operating systems will hurt IBM significantly.

While IBM remains a huge player in the computer systems market, continued drop in stock prices will open up the opportunity for a hostile take over. Perhaps Steve Ballmer will realize his dreams, or perhaps Oracle's Larry Ellison will make a bid for IBM.

Gerstner's gutting of IBM's field organization and virtual elimination of IBM's industry specialty groups who used to drive software and hardware development will ultimately weaken IBM severely.

IBM has loads of wonderfully brilliant computer scientists, but unfortunately, these guys as brilliant as they are have no clue what modern business wants or more importantly needs. You have research scientists going wild with some great ideas that are totally unnecessary for modern business.

Note that all of IBM's SOA (service oriented architecture) support software has virtually tanked and for the most part been withdrawn. IBM's initiatives in Java J2EE has been virtually abandoned along with many other "strategic initiatives" that were technically based.

In addition to Oracle as a huge competitor, Microsoft remains an aggressive competitor as does HP. In addition to commercial competitors, open source is making a huge impact on IBM revenue.

Open Source now covers a broad range of solutions from operating systems (LINUX) to middleware (the Apache Software Foundation's Tomcat and Apache web server), and now a huge portfolio of application software from accounting to ERP and everything else. Open source has basically driven IBM's WebSphere division out of the market.

I think IBM has a long ways to go, but if this is a trend, they won't last forever. Watch the competitors. Treat IBM just like any other vendor and do not give them any special consideration. IBM has little or no software or hardware you cannot buy from competitors. Go for best of breed hardware and software and get rid of any brand based allegiance.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

I see many articles and blog posts about the death of Steve Jobs and I see praises for the many innovative inventions he created.

What inspires me about the memory of Steve Jobs was his focus on people and how they used the machines he designed and built. From his earliest Apple Computers to the iPhone and iPAD what you see are tools that anyone with no technical knowledge or training could pick up and use!

How many computer systems (hardware or software) can make the claim that you can buy it, turn it on, and begin to use it? Have you noticed older people in their 80's or even 90's using iPAD's? I have! How about kids as young as 3 or 4 years old using certain iPAD applications. If you have a five to ten year old stand back they can do anything and everything plus a whole lot of things you never knew existed.

Non-technical adults who hate computers use Apple products because they can. What could be simpler than pointing and touching a screen? Or dragging your finger around on the screen? This was Steve's true genius.

It is something that many of us have inside us but we put away and ignore. Steve capitalized on his desire to create usable technology and did exactly that.

I don't want to hear about the billions of dollars that he generated for Apple or this technology or that. I want to remember a man that did what no one else had done: brought technology to everyone!

Which Potential Customers Are you Willing to Ignore?

2011-09-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

History repeats itself! Back in 1996 when the Internet first was opened for commercial applications there was the Netscape Browser soon followed by Microsoft Internet Explorer. The two browsers and several versions of each with varying degrees of incompatible support were all there was. The techies thought it was too much work to provide versions of their web pages and web based applications for each.

When my developers told me this was too much work I simply responded by asking which of the thousands of users of each browser we should ignore.

Today the situation has repeated itself with divergent technologies from Apple, Microsoft, RIM (Blackberry), and Google (Android). Today the stakes are much greater than they were back in the 90's! Today if you choose to ignore a technology you can be eliminating millions of potential customers.

Just today I signed up for a new free Webinar (desktop sharing) tool and found much to my chagrin that they mandated the use of Adobe Flash and therefore ignore all of the Apple iPAD and iPhone users (over 40 million people).

This is not an isolated case.

All too many web sites are driven by people who have failed to comprehend the necessity of supporting tablets and smart phones. There are still a relatively small number of web sites compared to the total population that have SmartPhone or Tablet specific applications or web pages that provide a good fit for the device.

Once again its time to shake up your IT organization or if you use consultants maybe its time for a new more modern web service!

Just remember: Which potential customers are you willing to ignore?

Tablets and Smart Phones -- Bigotry Has Been Modernized

2011-08-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

Mainframe and midrange system developers claim that the IBM 3270 or 5250 terminal is still the best way to deliver on-line systems.

Now we have folks trying to protect the laptop PC. Check out this Channel Insider article by Don Reisinger titled "10 Reasons to Leave the Tablet Home and Bring the PC on the Next Trip". Don presents 10 bogus arguments with little or no truth in any of his statements. His arguments about screen size and the keyboard are personal preferences and not reality (I use my tablet quite effectively). He raises one valid issue which is that many commercial business applications will be fully supported on a tablet or smart phone today, but that IMHO is a short coming of the corporate IT department responsible for delivering the apps.

The tablet and smart phone are a part of our day to day reality and are rapidly replacing the PC. When coupled with cloud computing and virtual servers that can store terabytes of data or even media for an incredibly low cost (or in some cases free) these 10 arguments are absurd.

You can load a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation onto their free SkyDrive cloud storage and then use their broadcast tool to deliver the presentation anywhere you can connect to the Internet. With 4G Android Phones that is virtually anywhere. You can even connect most Android or iPhones to HD TV monitors or projectors via an HDMI cable.

While the screens on tablets or smart phones are small, they are incredibly high resolution and have features that make them easy to use.

The only truth in Mr. Reisinger's article is the fact that some corporate systems will not support smart phones or tablets. Those applications need to be addressed and upgraded.

I wonder if Mr. Reisinger would argue that mainframes, midrange computers and the RPG programming language are the future of computer system technology?

I would go so far as to say that the days of the PC are numbered. Not today, not tomorrow but definitely within the next decade. I think you will find cloud providers in the near future (we are close today from both Apple and Microsoft cloud offerings) that will provide you with web, email, data storage, and access to applications.

BTW my $75 Bluetooth Keyboard for my iPAD which works with my Android is available today and totally deals with Mr. Reisinger's keyboard issues.

Beware of folks telling you that old technology is better than new technology. When folks in your IT department tell you things like this it is most often job protection. People who have taken the Microsoft training and certification tests look at PC's as the holy grail. Funny, we still have the mainframe and midrange folks clinging to an even more archaic past.

Ask an IBM i (AS/400) RPG programmer what the best user interface is and they will tell you in a heart beat that the 5250 green screen is the best. They will argue that it is faster and cleaner. Ask a user who has to use one and they will scream in horror and dream of a modern web based UI.

The world is changing. Change with it.

In Search of the Ideal IT Organization Structure

2011-06-30T10:21:00.000-07:00

Gartner Group and many others have recently been posting articles about the changing role and organization of IT within the modern business enterprise. Gartner of course promotes their "Enterprise Architecture" but is pointing out that most enterprises are not embracing the concept.

There are countless articles on the web about changing the structure of IT. It move research, strategy, planning, and technology groups around but it appears to be a game of musical boxes on the org chart. In most of the articles that I read, the fundamental assumption is that IT should continue to have the same basic functionality that it has for the past 20 plus years. The fundamental issue is protecting the CIO's assets so to speak and his or her kingdom and multi-million dollar budget.

There is a lot of lip service to corporate IT governance, but few organizations are stepping up to the plate.

In this old guys mind there is only one way to truly manage and control IT today and that is to move control out of IT to a team that reports directly to the CEO with dotted lines tot he board's IT Governance committee. You can call this group Enterprise Architecture, Systems Planning, or even Corporate planning. The bottom line is that it should be staffed with business analysts and project managers who have only the interest of the enterprise as their sole driving force.

This new group should have no bias about building systems or maintaining them in-house, buying them from a third party, or outsourcing to a low cost but professional development firm.

The key to this organization is to always look at business problems and opportunities that can benefit from improved computer systems support, but has no historical bias towards any particular solution, hardware platform, or technology.

I mentioned two key roles in this group: business analyst, and project manager.

The business analyst's role should be to work with business unit leaders to define specific business requirements in such a manner that solutions can be crafted that address the specific needs of the business regardless of what technologies the solution might entail.

Project managers are required to manage computer systems projects as well as relationships with 3rd party vendors. When people criticize the use of outsourcing vendors it is most often due to a failure to properly manage the vendor and insure that proper procedures are handled. Professional project management is a key success factor in dealing with external vendors.

Note that in this scenario, an internal IT organization would be considered to be a vendor and treated the same as any other vendor. This group would create a buffer between the IT organization and the business.

Note that a big part of the role of this group would be the ongoing assessment of existing systems with recommendations to replace or eliminate old system that are too expensive to maintain or no longer meet business requirements.

The people staffing this group should have excellent business and analytical skills. Knowledge of current IT technology is desirable but should not be a factor in hiring or staffing positions in this group.

Enterprise architecture should be a big part of the function of this group but not necessarily designing systems that are integrated enterprise systems, but rather insuring that there is sufficient integration between the various systems used within the enterprise.

Note: I have developed large scale systems for very large insurance companies and an insurance software house over the years and consider myself an expert and one of maybe 50 people who have built true enterprise systems over the years. I still think the principles of enterprise architecture are commendable, but simply not practical in today's world of rapid change and globalization.

The key issue today IMHO is reducing the time from the identification of a requirement to delivery of a system to facilitate the requirement. In my past I tried to design systems that would last "forever". Today, if a system lasts 30 days and meets its business objective producing a return on its investment, then it is a success. 30 days might be a bit over the top, but a system that last a year would be reasonable.

The key of this article is to get rid of traditional thinking about IT, refocus on business objectives and remove the dependency on multi-million dollar bureaucracies.

Enterprise Architecture

2011-05-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Are you familiar with the term "Enterprise Architecture"? It is a name for an enterprise analysis methodology that first cropped up in 1987 in an article written by J. A. Zachman for the IBM Systems Journal entitled: "A Framework for Information Systems Architecture".

Today there are four major Enterprise Architecture "Frameworks" or methodologies:

While all of these are called "Frameworks" they are not actually a framework by modern definition, but rather methodologies for collecting and analyzing meta data about an organization, its processes, organization, and infrastructure. The overall objective is to provide a means or framework for analyzing a large enterprise to make it more efficient, insure that computer systems and technology are meeting its business objectives and that the organization is meeting market pressures and demand as efficiently as possible.

I was unaware of this body of work as were most of my contemporaries while I was pursuing a parallel initiative that I had never labelled, but follows the same general line of thought presented in these frameworks.

Over my 40 year career, I have had the amazing good fortune to have the privilege of being able to lead the architecture and development of not one, but four separate enterprise level systems development projects three for for fortune 100 insurance companies and one for an insurance software house.

In the upcoming weeks, I will publish a series of articles on my view of Enterprise Architecture and will follow up with a book on the subject.

While none of the afore mentioned works are true frameworks, it is my contention that an enterprise framework can be (and SHOULD be) built as an open source initiative to form the basis of all enterprise systems for the future.

IMHO the major ERP vendors have outlived their usefulness and need to be replaced by a new modern collection of entrepreneurs producing small specialized software components and a new open market place to help consumers of systems acquire exactly what they need.

The framework defines the enterprise, its functions, processes, workflows, and organization. There are specific points where process oriented computer programs or even interfaces to machines or manual tasks can integrate into the framework. This means that if an enterprise were to utilize the framework and define themselves to the framework then they could buy or build components and plug them into the framework.

This means that enterprises would pay a fair market price for specific functionality that they may require instead of artificially inflated prices for 25 year old ERP packages.

Much more detail very soon.

Open Source -- MySQL & MySQL Workbench

2011-05-17T07:07:00.000-07:00

I have no idea what the future of MySQL might be under Oracle's ownership, but as long as it lasts this is the most incredible development tool and for that matter a pretty good low volume production database.

Even more impressive than the MySQL database itself is the MySQL Workbench which can also be freely downloaded from MySQL.Org. I have been using data modeling tools since 1980. Many of these tools cost as much as $20,000 per workstation. Others were in the $1500 to $2000 range. ADW from Knowledgeware was the most expensive and consisted of four separate components priced at $20k per workstation each.

MySQL Workbench does all of the data modeling that these old expensive tools did and includes both forward and reverse engineering tools. You can quite simply point the MySQL Workbench at an existing MySQL database and it will reverse engineer the database into an ER Diagram. You can modify the model and forward engineer it back to your physical environment.

It took me about 5 minutes to download XAMPP (for my MAC) which isa complete MySQL test environment, then MySQL Workbench, install them and have a complete database development environment running on my MacBook with PHP.

This is absolutely amazing and provides all of the benefits of much more expensive modeling tools.

Just one more example of Open Source providing leadership in todays world.

Cloud Computing

2011-04-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

Cloud Computing IMHO is a key part of the next generation of modern computer systems today. There are many definitions of “Cloud Computing” depending on who you are talking to, but in the purest sense it is one or more servers operated by an independent hosting company where you host Web 2.0 based applications.

You pay a monthly fee that varies from vendor to vendor but includes the use of dedicated or virtual servers (processor and memory). You most likely pay a fee for data storage and bandwidth to access the server. The most reputable vendors provide capacity on demand configuration options where you can use an on-line configuration tool to add resources as needed, and some will even dynamically increase your resources based on your workload.

In the purest form of Cloud Computing, you rent raw computer resources from a hosting vendor such as LiquidWeb or Rackspace. These vendors provide all of the hardware, operating systems (usually Linux or Microsoft Windows with SQL Server and other resources) as well as all of the disk storage and bandwidth you need to run web based applications. Many of these vendors also provide the LAMP stack with PHP, MySQL or Tomcat and Java along with other open source middleware such as web content management systems like Joomla or Drupal. In other words they provide a completely configured environment upon which you can install application software that you create or that you buy, or obtain from the open source community.

Some people have commented that Cloud sites are vulnerable to attack and you lose control. A reputable vendor will have highly skilled security specialists protecting not only your site but the entire complex 24/7. These specialists are generally of a much higher calibre than any you could afford to hire for a typical enterprise. Additionally, it is unlikely you would be able to afford 24 x 7 protection.

The bottom line for cloud based hosting is that you rent the capacity you need as you need it. You have no worries about hardware or software upgrades, no worry about disaster recovery or high availability. You can be assured that backups are taken and sent off site.

The second level of Cloud is Software as a Service (SaaS) hosted on a cloud server. The reason this is all called cloud is the fact that you have no idea where the servers are, what servers you are running on and simply don’t care. All you know is that your applications are running in a LINUX based environment or Windows. You can run any application that runs on either platform.

Some vendors like Salesforce.com run a private proprietary application on their servers which you access via the web. It is a form of cloud, but not as flexible as using a hosting company with your own software, open source, or third party software in the cloud.

IBM and other vendors are offering hardware software combinations that claim to be providing cloud services. The combination of hardware and software tends to be extremely costly with no measurable advantage over other commercial cloud hosting companies.

Here is a list of 90 cloud computing companies: http://raydepena.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/90-cloud-computing-companies-to-watch-in-2011/

When you combine cloud with open source you have infinite possibilities to replace old legacy systems with state of the art software at an extremely low cost. This model applies to the largest of enterprises as well as extremely small businesses.

Do you need computer equipment, networks, and people to support them?

2011-04-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

IMHO, we have reached a point in time where today's business enterprises need to carefully evaluate the money they are spending on computer systems or "IT" and the ROI that they are getting from traditional business as usual IT.

In today's world you must ask yourself if you are really getting your money's worth from your IT organization at all and begin to look at the alternatives.

I suggest you create a clean slate as if you had never had any internal computer systems. Then carefully evaluate what you need, what kind of people you need, and how to proceed to develop a Computer systems support structure that makes sense for your organization.

One of the first questions I ask you to consider is whether you need those expensive mainframe, mid-range, or server farms of Windows or Linux based computers that you have at various locations throughout your organization.

To analyze hardware costs and effectiveness, what is the total annual cost of your hardware including your amortization or depreciation if you purchase the equipment? What is the annual hardware support costs for theses systems?

What is the software cost of the Operating Systems and/or utility software for backup, software management, and many other internal tasks that have no direct business return?

How many people do you have on staff dedicated to maintaining, operating, or supporting the machines and their operating software that provide no direct benefit to the business?

For a large organization this number can exceed $50 Million per year. In mid-size organization it can easily reach $1 million.

Add to this mix the cost of your internal computer networks, leased telephone lines, connections by an Internet Service Provider to the Internet, and the people required to support your networks?

Thus far, we haven't talked about a single penny that has a direct ROI to the business. This often huge expense is related to providing a computing environment upon which to run 3rd party software or your own internally developed software.

So you say, what is the alternative?

Simple, cloud based hosting with reputable cloud based hosting company.

You can get all the benefits of in-house computer systems and actually much more by outsourcing your computer hardware to a third party cloud based hosting company. Please note that I do not recommend any particular vendor, but here is what I would look for:

Ability to run PHP & LAMP stack based applications
Ability to run Java applications and support common XML based communication protocols such as SOAP.
Ability to support and host Microsoft Windows applications in a virtual hosting environment, [eliminate the need for Windows servers and support staff], enable support for mobile devices like the iPAD, Blackberry, iPhone, Android devices, etc.
All User interfaces should be via the Internet. Note: internally all you need to do is establish wireless networks to enable your business users and their computers or devices to connect to.

Your Vendor should provide:

Daily backups of various types.

Server backup optimized for rapid restore.
Your data back up with the ability to down load to your location daily.

Replication to a physically separate data center (in a geologically safe location -- two centers in Los Angeles would be vulnerable to earthquake, two in close proximity in Florida may be subject to hurricane, two in St. Louis, Missouri would be subject to flood, etc.
Highspeed maximum capacity bandwidth on their internet connections.
Dynamic configuration so you can increase computing capacity, memory, bandwidth, etc. both on an as needed basis as well as a fixed allocation basis.
24 x 7 x 365 help desk and support

Hardware, software, and operational issue support
Internet support such as spam protection, assistance with avoiding spam blacklists.
Domain names and services

You will find that a good reputable hosting company (there are several very large and reliable companies) can provide all of the services that your own people and systems provided, usually at a fraction of the cost. Additionally, there are no huge budgetary battles when you need additional capacity as these vendors sell you what you need and enable you to easily add more capacity on demand.

I'm going to stop here in this post, but in my next post we will talk about your systems development organization, programmers, and all of the technology that vendors want to sell you to support your business applications.

Open Source Project Management Software - Endeavor

2011-02-27T09:19:00.000-08:00

As you know I have become a huge advocate of open source software. In my new roll as COO for a company that assists non-profit organizations implement systems, I have been looking for a good open source project management system.

I was very excited when I saw Endeavor, but had my hopes forever dashed when I looked at their video located at: http://www.youtube.com/user/endeavourmgmt.

This is a case of the world gone mad. A true example of total cyber crap! The product lets you record Use Cases, People, Iterations (whatever that might be) and tasks (low priority). There is no ability to establish dependencies between tasks. There is no PERT or CPM calculations. There is no resource leveling, or any other feature you would expect in a real project management system.

In fact to add insult to injury and clearly demonstrate the stupidity of the developers, they let a developer input a percentage of completion. Obviously these idiots have never taken a project management class or managed a project. Asking a developer for a percentage completion is like predicting the future with a crystal ball (I think the fortune teller is more likely to be accurate than a programmer).

Why on earth a USELESS case (UML/Rational Use Case) would get into the tool at all is beyond my wildest imagination.

Heaven help us and project us from the geeks!

The End is Near for IBM

2011-01-29T10:43:00.000-08:00

I was one of IBM's biggest fans. IBM helped me develop my career, provided education, and helped me for years with support and advice. Sadly, IBM today is a dinosaur who promotes dated legacy technology and sends a message to its customers that it is too risky to change and move to new technologies.

The reality is that IBM is focused on systems like its multi-million dollar zSeries line of computers, its midrange Power Systems where it continues to drag alone obsolete systems like IBM i.

Sadly IBM under Lou Gerstner's leadership and the subsequently under Sam Palmisano's has focused on selling technology to IT executives and technologists. Lou Gerstner decided that IBM did not need to work with the CEO or Chairman of Business Enterprises and virtually eliminated the field support staff consisting of System Engineers, Business Consultants and business industry specialists. He dismantled specialty organizations that studied various industries identifying business requirements.

Today IBM sells raw hardware and system software to people with a PhD, MS or BS in Computer Science. They no longer care about business executives or what the requirements, problems, or challenges of your business may be. All they care about is keeping you on the technology you currently use and buying multi-million dollar upgrades as they become available.

Well, I'm here to tell you that the world has changed. That IBM is no longer relevant and that there are much better and much more cost effective solution available today, many in a cloud computing based environment where you may not even have to buy any hardware or expensive systems software.

Today's enterprise must look within and at its IT leadership. Do you need a technologist running your IT organization? Is it time to reinvent the organization that manages computer systems? Do you need any programmers on staff?

Should you outsource? Should you use Cloud computing? Should you switch to open source or Linux or Microsoft based systems?

Should you be paying COBOL or RPG Programmers $80k to $100k or can you rent much less expensive programmers from off shore vendors as you need them (if you need them)?

The world is changing. I am now working with a major company who provides cloud based solutions. No hassles for the clients, total reliability, high availability, and a total cost that is pennies on the dollar compared to in-house IT.

Its time to make a change. Its time to dump your dinosaur and move into the 21st Century. I don't know what the "color" of 21st century computing is, but it isn't blue.

More on IBM's Sam Palmisano

2010-09-16T05:17:00.000-07:00

Lest someone think I am just being an ex-IBM'r saying sour grapes, the experts are also beginning to weigh in on Sam's comments. Please see Kenneth Hackel's post entitled: "IBM CEO Palmisano Should Look at Facts First"

It seems Mr. Hackel can support his position much better than my personal observations.

My key point in posting is the fact that you can no longer trust IBM to advise you on what direction you should be taking with your IT strategy, hardware, or software selection. IBM is no longer an industry leader and trusted adviser. It is just another company trying to sell products and services. It is also a company that grows via acquisition and no longer innovates via internal product research and development.

Who Can you Trust?

2010-09-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

I was just read a Wall Street Journal article by Spenser Ante titled "IBM's Chief Thumps H-P" describing how Sam Palmisano recently criticized HP and Mark Hurd. In this WSJ interview, Sam had the unmitigated gall to criticize HP for cutting its investment in development and growing through acquisition.

Well, Sam, when was the last time IBM introduced a new product into the market that they developed in house? Seems to me that IBM is the number one company in terms of gobbling up anything that looks like a good target for acquisition. IBM under Sam's leadership of course fumbles, hesitates, and loses the big valuable acquisitions like losing Sun to Oracle and shooting itself in the foot.

IBM software group hasn't developed anything unique or earth shattering in years. IBM is quick to buy up companies who reach market saturation and hope that their software maintenance revenue will pay the acquisition cost.

IBM sold off the PC division primarily because they could not figure out how to make it profitable. Lenvo in China doesn't seem to have a problem with that. Could it have been a management problem? How about selling the Printer division to Hitachi because Sam couldn't make any money with it? The Japanese could!

Even in Services, Sam could not grow his own company profitably but had to grow via acquisition.

IMHO IBM under Sam's and Lou Gerstner's leadership has declined from market leader to market follower and a company dedicated to preserving existing markets at all costs.

In the hardware arena, it has the Power Systems group which was the leader in Unix based machines (a declining market). With Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, IBM will lose a huge market share of its Power Systems market to Oracle who will bundle its ERP, HR, and CRM software on Sun machines that used to be IBM machines. Oracle was IBM's biggest business partner and is now its biggest competitor. Mark Hurd will most definitely have the last laugh.

While Sam continues to invest in R&D he has his head in a cloud and IBM Research hasn't produced a viable money making product in years!

Under Sam's and his predecessor, Lou Gerstner's leadership they have successfully turned a customer centric business solutions focused company into just another manufacturing company with services. IBM no longer provides solutions, it just sells products. Hmmm? Sounds like Nabisco...

I'm also curious about why the media hasn't picked up on the outsourcing of over 85,000 jobs to China and India from the US alone, not to mention jobs lost in Canada and Europe.

While Sam in his WSJ interview tells WSJ that he has no plans to retire, I sure hope for IBM's sake that his board of directors has other plans! This man is a total and complete disaster! Oh yeah, he does deliver short term golden ages each quarter, but he is most definitely killing the golden goose.

I often wondered if Sam P was a real person or just an avatar put out in public while some computer in Armonk actually ran the company. I know that when I went to work for IBM, I interacted with a personal computer. I was paid by computer, I got all my reviews by computer, in fact virtually every aspect of my job involved interacting with IBM management computer systems.

Is Sam real?

Other than being an interesting story, the real issue is who can a business executive trust when it comes to IT products and strategy today? I think it is perfectly clear that you can no longer trust your vendors.

There was a time not that long ago where your IBM account team (sales executive, systems engineers, and a raft of specialists for your industry) could hep you chart a path through technology and technical mumbo jumbo.

NO LONGER! Today, IBM Customers: BUYER BEWARE!

Today IBM customers are on their own! IBM will sell you anything you want to buy and can pay for. Your sales reps are only concerned about making their numbers for the quarter and keeping their jobs for one more quarter.

They will sell you anything they can whether you need it or not.

I would suggest that IBM is in a very precarious position today. With Oracle's acquisition of Sun, IBM will lose a huge percentage of its Unix market share (Power Systems). Companies are looking at the cost of the zSeries and many are moving to Intel Windows or Unix/Linux based systems and using products like MicroFocus COBOL to move legacy mainframe applications to less expensive platforms.

Companies today need to become platform neutral and vendor agnostic when it comes to computer technology. You cannot and should not depend on any vendor today.

Back to the Future

2010-09-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

IMHO its time to go Back to the Future!

When I started out in this business some 40 years ago, I worked for the Systems Department not the Data Processing Department. The Data Processing Department was the department that managed and operated the computers and employed the programmers.

The Systems Department (sometimes called methods and procedures) defined and wrote the policies and procedures that everyone followed to do their jobs. This included forms, computer systems forms and reports, work flow, etc. We would write the specifications which were sent to Data Processing where a programmer would be assigned to write a program. The programmer dealt with folks in the Systems department, not the end user community.

In an effort to save money, many organizations tried to combine the programmer and the analyst (much like cross breeding and elephant and a giraffe) and produced an ineffective monster that has been failing to support their business enterprises since the late 1970's.

Its time to go back to business oriented Systems Analysts. With the broad mix of software available to buy or even to rent and use remotely on the web and with the vast pool of highly skilled professionals in India and China it no longer makes sense to employ programmers or many other positions traditionally associated with IT.

It is questionable whether an enterprise should own is own computers any more. I think we will see a trend towards cloud based computing where a utility rents you computing resources.

After spending 5 years with IBM, I see that many major companies are in a downward spiral and have lost touch with the customers. Technology is rapidly evolving, but we now have folks with advanced degrees in computer science who focus on technology and not business. We need a new breed of business professional to manage computer systems for their enterprise and leverage the professionals in other companies.

I was once very much opposed to the idea of outsourcing IT jobs to India and China. I have changed my view and see this as a major step towards a major paradigm shift back to business focused systems.

Organizing Your IT Department for Success

2010-04-17T20:28:00.001-07:00

Is your IT Department organized to serve you or itself? Is your CIO the right person for the job?

When asked why I needed funding for various IT activities by business unit executives, I would respond that I did not need any funding nor did the IT department. I told them that if they felt the projects that I was asking to fund was important to them then they should fund it.

I dealt with hardware issues from buying disk drives to bigger and faster computers in the same manner. The IT organization did not need these machines, but the end user organization most likely did.

It is imperative for a successful IT organization to turn all costs and activities back to the business community for funding. This short article summarizes some key methods of putting the business community firmly in control and eliminating many of the negative issues regarding budgeting, project selection and control over all IT activities.

The starting point is implementing an IT steering committee that consists of your CEO, CIO and most senior corporate executives who are responsible for each of the key functional areas of your business. In a typical retail organization this might be the VP Sales, VP Marketing, VP Finance (CFO), VP Operations, VP Administration and any other senior executive that I may have missed.

I define functional areas of a company as those operational subdivisions that focus on a particular area of the business (i.e. Sales, Marketing, Finance, Research & Development, Manufacturing, Administration, Operations, etc.). A senior executive whose responsibility spans political and geographic boundaries within the organization runs a functional area. Generally the senior executive responsible for a functional area is responsible for setting policy, procedures, standards, and operational guidelines for specific operating units in their area within the company. There is usually a dotted line relationship between the functional area executive and a line executive responsible for a specific department in a geographical or political organization.

In the insurance industry, a senior vice president of underwriting would be responsible for underwriting policy and procedures across the entire company. The Sr. VP might also be responsible for approving exceptional situations for large accounts that met specific criteria.

So how does all of this affect IT?
The heads of these functional areas should be members of a very real corporate IT steering committee that meets at least once per month and is responsible for approving all IT requests from business units or IT itself along with IT expenditures and budgets.

A policy should be established that creates a discretionary development budget that allows the head of each functional area to review and approve IT initiative requests as long as they do not cross functional areas and fall within predefined spending limits.

So if a project request crosses functional area boundaries or exceeds a specific pre-agreed funding limit, the executive of the area that initiated the request must present the request to the steering committee. Note IT should not be presenting these requests but rather supporting the business with time and cost estimates.

This process places key IT initiatives firmly under the control of the business unit. Financial and functional responsibility for all IT projects should remain with the business units and functional area executive. The IT organization should be viewed as a service organization that provides specific skills and services to the business unit but does not own systems or budget.

In my next post to this blog I will drill deeper into the actual organization of the IT department and key roles they need to be successful.

I hope that in this article I have demonstrated the need for a corporate IT steering committee consisting of the top executives of the company that meets no less than monthly for 30 minutes to 1 hour and controls the IT function throughout the enterprise.

Having senior executives take control over IT projects with responsibility for their funding and success will insure a vastly more responsive IT organization. This is a key first step to a modern and effective IT organization.

Cloud Computing

2010-03-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

In my last point I took a big of a nasty pot shot at the vendors of "Cloud Computing".

IMHO Cloud is a huge and valuable technology but a long way from reality. In my view of cloud a user develops or modifies systems using sophisticated software development tools. I do not see new development tools as programming tools but rather business oriented tools that allow users to define rules, graphically view analyze and alter workflows. The tools should let the user add features to their systems, modify existing features, integrate 3rd party components and test what they have done. There would be screen drawing tools to let non-technical people layout and implement the user interface. Included would be tools to test what the user has implemented as well as run simulations to test the business effectiveness of the solution. When they are done, they simply press a deploy button.

"Deploy" sends data, program code, meta data, etc. to the "Cloud". Rules in the cloud manager understand how to deploy the system artifacts. No one on the consumer company's staff need know anything about the cloud.

The cloud's operational manager software should manage performance and response time of all applications. It must insure that applications are replicated across at least two if not more machines at a minimum of two physical locations to eliminate the need for disaster recovery planning. The system in real time may move application artifacts from one location to another as well as replicate artifacts in real time to improve performance and insure that the system is insulated from disaster. The cloud should have disaster managers that can handle anything from taking a machine off line for routine maintenance to the loss of a facility or data center do to catastrophic disaster.

We are a long way from Cloud meeting what I have described above.

Today security, privacy, and administration are perhaps the biggest inhibitor to any vendor's implementation of Cloud computing.

IBM sells both public and private cloud software and services to implement cloud computing. Sam Palmasano saw a vision of a "public" cloud run on IBM owned and operated computers where computers and the cloud operated as a giant utility company.

Security is complex in Cloud. Ownership rights are "cloudy" as are the implementation and granting of rights to system artifacts. If the cloud is operating as I have described above, it is constantly changing thus complicating auditability and making security even more challenging.

Going hand in hand with security is privacy and data protection. Who can access data? How do you audit and prove who can access data? Are the 40 year old database products of the past (i.e DB2, Oracle, Sybase, others) up to the task of managing data in a cloud environment with data replicated in many locations including systems that you may not own?

Can vendors convince their customers that it is ok to put their data or their customer data in a cloud where they have little control over the data and its access as well as auditability? IMHO even if a vendor has tremendous technical tools it will be next to impossible to convince the key decision makers in a customer organization that their data is protected.

Administration of a cloud based system today is a nightmare with people requiring a great deal of special training to the specifics of vendor software. In several vendor scenarios there are multiple layers of software that must be implemented and managed. The tools to manage a cloud simply do not exist. You would envision a control console that displays a world map with all of the notes of the network represented as colored LED's that flash red, yellow, green, and other colors to visually represent the status of the network. These would be connected by lines also color coded to represent status. Administrators in the control center would be able to adjust the system add or remove components around the world with ease. This is far from today's reality.

This command and control center would of course be replicated to handle emergencies. In fact cloud management may become a business of its own for some enterprising vendor with creative management software. The ideal solution would be incredible software and average people.

Until you can deploy artifacts to a cloud (private or public) and know that resources have been properly secured, know exactly who can and has accessed artifacts at any point in time, and insure that data is protected not only from intruders and unauthorized people but from those people who administer and operate the cloud we will not be seeing cloud reach its potential.

As many of you know, I am a key advocate of a modern version of CASE and enterprise modeling that we embraced in the 1980's. CASE and OO which followed (along with UML) never reached its potential and has left business corporations with no path into the future.

The need for enterprise modeling and implementation of the meta data to describe and manage the enterprise is more important today than ever before. Security and privacy as well as simple data protection have been implemented by crude software that requires an administrator grant authority to various people at a physical level. In other words an administrator must define who may add, change, or delete records in files on a computer system.

Security and data ownership should be transparent and implemented via a system of rules and ownership that are a byproduct of defining your enterprise and its organization to a system. I've done this three times in my career in large enterprise systems and it is the only solution to today's out of control technology. What I am talking about integrates security and data access into the rules that govern the business. Managers are responsible for defining jobs which have rights to data and processes that operate on data. People are assigned jobs and can only do or see what their job requires or enables them to see and do. There is built in auditing of everything that happens in the system with comprehensive logs and real time reporting of security incidents (based on violations of business rules).

It is this type of logical meta data description of the business enterprise that is required before a technical implementation like "Cloud" can be implemented. If security and data protection are a part of the application then It is quite simply a part of the cloud and requires no special software or hardware. Note that sophisticated encryption can be invoked via rules in the business application.

What is Happening to the Computer Systems Industry

2010-03-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

I've been remiss in posting to this blog and probably lost most of my followers, but in hope that someone is left I want to share some observations that I find sad and disheartening.

If you look at the year end results for most major software companies this past year you will see dismal results or at best lack luster results. If you look around the web you will find that the world has become static and we are not seeing break through technology that positively impacts businesses.

In fact we are seeing software companies as well as commercial business outsource their IT organization and software development to India, China, the former Soviet bloc countries, some south east Asian countries and other 3rd world low cost labor markets.

Many companies like IBM have given up on innovation and grow their software portfolios via acquisition instead of innovative development.

Emerging technologies are exactly that technologies. One of the biggest boon doggles is Cloud computing. The only cloud that truly exists are the those around the heads of the executives of the companies claiming to offer software solutions based on the cloud model.

Don't get me wrong, the concept of "cloud" computing, namely loading software into a virtually managed machine environment where the developer knows nothing of the underlying hardware is the direction I believe we should be going in and may someday achieve, but not today and not for a while. The key issue is security or the perception of privacy and data protection that does not exist today.

I grew up in IT during the 1970's, 80's, and 90's when the world was trying to figure out how to represent and implement maintainable business systems that addressed the problems and needs of business.

Today we should have graphical software that reflects our businesses and allows business users to define business rules that govern the systems in real time. Systems that analyze workflows and make changes that improve the word in real time.

Instead, we have moved from business languages like COBOL or RPG or the dozens of failed 4GL's to Java and C++ which are roughly akin to programming in Assembly language taking us back to the 1960's.

Where are the application development and management systems of today? Are the ERP vendors meeting corporate needs? Have business executives simply given up on IT?

Where is modern innovation in business systems? Do modern corporations no longer need computer systems beyond the 20 year old ERP systems that run their companies today?

I happen to believe that we need a new revolution in computer systems architecture and technology.

I believe we must break the backs of the handful of ERP vendors that are choking modern enterprise and holding back technology.

The very concept of SOA should be a model that allows corporate enterprises to buy the best possible components from the best provider for their needs. Corporate systems people should become integrators instead of programmers. Their role should be integrating software purchased or rented from many software vendors and using innovative software to build modern UI's and workflows that manage the modern corporation.

To achieve this we must get back to a focus on representing the enterprise and its operations in the modern computer system and not on some wiz bang technology.

Some please tell me, where is innovation today? I'm not seeing it. Not from IBM, not Microsoft, most certainly not from Oracle or HP. I don't even see it in the open source community.

We must begin to move forward.

What Happened to systems for the Enterprise?

2010-01-17T07:37:00.000-08:00

I've been away from this blog for a long time. I have had a lot of change in my life but after watching developments in computer systems I have come back to this and feel the need to share some thoughts.

As we see the globalization of the modern enterprise the need for well designed enterprise systems becomes increasingly importnat as a critical success factor.

We see a great deal of activity in terms of technological innovation, but what about the systems themselves? Today as I have said before management has lost faith in their own IT staff. In all too many cases from the CIO to the computer operator they are viewed as geeks and not as part of the business community. Quite often if asked, the CEO Will tell you that the IT people know nothing about the business and just provide technical services that they need.

The solution? Buy 3rd party ERP systems and squeeze the corporation into the system with a shoe horn.

In the following series of articles, I'm going to start breaking business systems down into manageable components and discuss how an enterprise can and more importantly SHOULD move away from off the shelf ERP systems and develop in-house to meet today's needs.

I will start at a high level and drill into sub topics from time to time that while never getting into detailed technology may argue the merits of many commonly accepted approaches to systems development and I will challenge many well accepted industry pundits in their views.

What you will not see in this blog is any discussion of hardware. In today's world I think that hardware has become a commodity separated from developers and users by many layers of software. The machine, the operating system, and many things that in the past were critical are simply irrelevant today. Price and capacity are all that really matter in terms of computing hardware today.

While we are still a long way away from "Cloud computing" or computing as utility I do believe it is the probable direction of the future.

A key thread of this series of discussions will be security and protecting an enterprises key data oriented assets while leveraging a distributed world of technology.

Modernization and Your Enterprise

2009-09-27T07:35:00.000-07:00

I have been a systems manager and executive responsible for building enterprise systems for over 38 years. I worked through the 1970’s when we made a transition for batch to on-line systems. I was intimately involved in the enterprise systems software engineering activities of the 1980’s with Finkelstein, Martin, Bachman and others. I have designed and built not one but three fully integrated enterprise systems for three separate insurance companies.

I am extremely concerned over the state of the computer software industry today. On one hand I love the incredible tools we have. I use a piece of software on my Blackberry that tracks every detail of my travel itinerary giving me updates on my flights including schedule changes or even gate changes. I am using Twitter, blogs, MySpace, YouTube, along with several Google applications daily. Many of these systems like the travel system are service based reaching out and accessing dozens if not hundreds of computers and consolidating data from presentation on my Blackberry.

I look at my clients and former customers as well as my previous employers and the huge inventory of legacy code that they developed in-house or purchased from various third party vendors, many of which are no longer in business or have been acquired by some holding company that is milking the annual support and subscription but no longer enhancing the products.

I look at the “new” software and architectures that are emerging from major software vendors including former leaders in the field like IBM Corporation, HP, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, etc. and am very dismayed at what I see.

Where companies like IBM once had System Engineers that had offices at their customers place of business and worked full time at the customer site for large customers or split their time between smaller customers spending one to two days at smaller customer sites and serving as an liaison between the customer and IBM often driving new business based requirements to the development labs. This all changed in IBM with Lou Gerstner in the early 1990’s!

IBM and many other companies like IBM were transformed from a customer centric sales and marketing company to a manufacturing company where engineers in the research labs would invent products that would be produced and attempted to be sold based on what these “brilliant computer scientists” thought the world needed.

Often companies like IBM, Oracle, Computer Associates, and many others are driven by their marketing executives who are looking at competitors and the open source community and see products emerging that they do not have or sell that seem to be impacting the market. The large companies respond by buying companies that have the technology their competitors are offering. Sadly, more software is purchased today than is built by most companies.

The fundamental driver is quarterly corporate results and the stock price. Today the CEO’s of the major hardware and software companies are driven by a need to sustain growth and increased profitability. Companies can no longer just “do the right thing” for their customers, they must increase revenue, market share, and that all important earnings per share.

What happened to Software Engineering?

During the 1980’s Clive Finklestein came out with papers on Information Engineering (IE). This was picked up and marketed by James Martin. In addition Dr. E.F. Codd had introduced his papers on relational data modeling which was core to Information Engineering and Bachman, Constantine, Gane, Sarson, Yourdon, and others all got on the bandwagon.

We saw the emergence of “C.A.S.E” (Computer Aided Systems Engineering) tools that would in theory allow you to model your business and ultimately generate program code based on rigorous analysis and modeling.

Today this is all gone. Today we have UML and its suite of diagramming tools, which IMHO are nothing but an integrated suite of drawing, tools for programmers. There have been books and attempts to claim that UML is a tool for architects to design systems, but if you look closely there is no discipline in the tooling to enforce any design integrity. A developer may draw anything and represent anything any way they choose. There is no tooling to determine the accuracy of the model that is being represented because what you are really diagramming is detailed program logic and not the business enterprise. Don’t get me wrong, the UML language is awesome with its ability to capture and represent both graphics as well as an immense amount of information about a system, but the diagrams and methodologies that implement UML like Ivor Jacobson’s USELESS case models are just well, useless. The USE CASE diagram is nothing more than a graphical version of a program specification. It does not help a company arrive at or analyze requirements, it just communicates requirements to a programmer.

Today we have what were are calling “architects” who are in reality some bright computer science guys who don’t want to be called programmers and prefer to draw UML models than write code. These folks are technical and focus on the technical design of your computer systems. It is rare that they understand the business and the requirements of the business.

Where we spent two decades trying to define relational database architecture and design’s that represented your enterprise, the modern computer scientists ignore data and have taken databases back to being treated like file systems with CRUD (create, read, update delete) which was proven to be a horrible construct in the 1980’s but is something a programmer can deal with while knowing absolutely nothing about the application they are building.

The GEEKS are driving the boat
AND
There is an iceberg ahead!

Yep, the GEEKS see the iceberg but they are analyzing what to do about it. They are measuring it, calculating how long before we hit it, and doing all sorts of theoretical analysis.

What should be happening and can it happen?

My vision of the future is a world where companies can build, buy, and integrate software from many sources into a custom system that fits their needs. There should no longer be a build versus buy decision required. You buy if you find something that works for you and performs a specific task.

I think we must break our dependency on third party ERP systems that filled a gap in systems development expertise in the 1980’s and 1990’s but are now selling old proprietary systems that lock their customers in to the “system” and limit the customers flexibility and growth.

I think that business users and not IT people should be driving systems development. I think that IT should be a service organization that provides services on competitive basis to the business units.

I see a world where a department manager can look at a real time diagram of the workflows in his or her department with analysis of bottlenecks and flow of work through the department and can make real time changes to the workflow or the programs used by people at various positions within the workflow.

I see metrics on human productivity being made available to the manager with comparisons to mathematically computed standards workers that identify problems with people and problems with the system or the need for additional or yes a reduction in resources.

I see a new breed of software vendor emerge that takes us back to the early days of computer software where an individual with a great idea and a computer programmer can create a product and sell it to customers who need it.

We need to change the industry to make this happen.

The open source model is a good one for technology today. It has not been good for business systems. To understand Open Source you must look at its membership and management of the “not for profit” organizations that manage an open source initiative.

If you look at the membership of Eclipse.org, the Apache Foundation, the W3C, OMG, and many others, you will find people working for the major hardware and software giants of the industry. You will find that these corporations provide funding via a membership fee paid to the organization that enables the organization to hire a small management team. More importantly, these companies provide people whose entire job function is to work on Open Source projects, standards, and specifications.

In many cases the objective of the member is to slow or stop development that seems to be going in a direction that is counter to their best financial interests. In many of these organizations their dialog and arguments for a new project are public in forums where you can see what people are saying and doing.

From its inception with Apache.org took over the maintenance of the NCSA HTTP server when funding for the project was dropped. It was a technology initiative and the Apache foundations subsequent work has been technical. So has the work of many others.

We need new business oriented foundations!

The key to the plug and play type system that is controlled by its business users is a framework that can represent the “infrastructure” of a modern business enterprise. My research clearly indicates that there are distinct commonalities between all enterprises (BTW, I include governmental organizations in the term enterprise).

Figure 1: Enterprise Framework

Figure 1 illustrates a small example of what enterprise architecture might look like. It is the normalization of core components of an enterprise to handle the structure of an organization and the flow of work through its processes. The framework is dynamic and allows users to define their organization to it.

I can and probably will write a book on the subtleties of this framework but its fundamental purpose is to represent your enterprise in a stable manner that can be easily changed to reflect your organization as it grows and adapts to its environment. The framework can easily handle mergers and acquisitions as well as new ventures or divestment of legacy operations.

You will notice that the diagram does not have traditional business objects like orders, inventory, insurance applications, policies, claims, etc. represented. Our goal for this frame work is use an object oriented approach to implementing business objects and route documents and objects through processes and workflows that transform them to accomplish work.

Not only can the framework manage the flow of work and documents through your enterprise and all of the transformations required to process orders, produce products, deliver them and collect money for the products but it simplifies application development and can provide the basis for independent vendors to write program code that will plug in to your systems and be immediately usable.

The framework does exist as a relational database and must have programs to manage the infrastructure itself, but it is not technology or hardware dependent and can run anywhere and should be implemented in such a fashion as to be distributed across multiple machines and environments.

The framework provides security. There are many levels of security and responsibility built into the framework that separate the definition of jobs and what a job can do, the assignment of people to jobs and the set up of people within the system to different organizations. There is a provision for extensive audit trails and tracking of historical data.

The framework can handle complex matrix management structures where people have many organizations in which they participate. IBM gave customers a free directory tool to its WebSphere customers that emulated its internal “Blue Pages” directory system. This system provided a search facility to locate people in the organization and could draw an organization chart showing who that person reported to and that persons boss all the way to the president of the company. While this seemed like a great idea, its designers locked the organization chart into the legal structure of the company so a worker in Germany reported up to the president of IBM Germany through a German chain of command. It did not reflect that German employee was in reality part of an international organization and his real manager was in Raleigh, North Carolina and not in Germany.

The framework I am talking about must be flexible and handle the many permanent and temporary organizations that exist in an enterprise.

The framework must be easy to maintain with the ability to make what would in many existing systems be catastrophic changes like inserting or removing levels of organizational units.

If we have a framework to facilitate development of modular business system components, the next step would be to form software publishing companies to handle the packaging, marketing, and sale of the work of small entrepreneurial developers that might be found in numerous colleges, universities, or businesses today.

The key to this framework is the idea that an enterprise can implement it and define itself to the framework and then drop in components written to use the components of the framework that define workflow and the organization itself to facilitate reporting, accounting, audit trails, and analysis.

The framework may easily be extended to specific industries with template components to handle the core business objects implemented within a bank, insurance company, manufacturing company, retailer, etc. This further simplifies the work to be done by third party developers who may focus on specific areas of expertise.

How can this work?

The framework must be built by a coalition of companies like yours! That mirrors the work done by the computer software vendors to day in the open source community.

The framework would be available to its members and any other company at no charge. There would be limitations on non-member participation and most likely only members would participate on the design committees and review boards.

The bottom line is it is time to take back computing from the geeks and put the business back into business systems.

I will be describing the Enterprise Framework more in comping posts. Stay tuned.

Bob Cancilla, Principal
RJ Cancilla & Associates

Office:     916-226-4951
Mobile:    562-290-2849
Fax:           916-690-8453
eMail:        rcancill@mac.com
Skype:    bob_cancilla

Enterprise Modernization – The Modern Corporate System

2009-09-19T09:33:00.001-07:00

What a mouthful of words. Perhaps the biggest buzzword (or phrase) in the market today is “Enterprise Modernization”.

Many vendors are selling you software to convert existing systems written in old “legacy” languages like COBOL or RPG (on the iSeries) to a “modern” platform neutral language.

You are being told you need to adopt Web 2.0 and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). Get rid of those 3270 and 5250 screens and replace them with modern web based UI’s. You need this product or that product, and you most certainly need an army of consultants to help you get there (do they actually tell you where there is?).

Throw some new buzzwords into the mix like Cloud Computing or SaaS (Software as a Service) and it becomes even more challenging to digest.

This blog is about corporate enterprise level systems. I may establish myself as a dinosaur and the last of a breed of folks who had the audacity to believe that we could (and did) create integrated enterprise systems (now called ERP by certain vendors). Today you and your C-Level executives are being told that your IT organization cannot build large scale ERP systems or that it is a redundant and unnecessary activity and you should just buy one.

In this blog over the coming days and weeks, I want to examine the current state of modern business computing and try and separate hype and reality. I also want to focus on key development initiatives including building a solid “business infrastructure” that can help guide any modern business (large or small) through the future of constantly changing computer technology.

The Software Industry Today

There are two fundamental directions being taken by major software companies today.

Some like IBM, Sun, HP, and others have made a deliberate decision to stay out of the business of application systems and leave business systems to their partners. These companies focus on tools and middleware that they hope other business partners and customers will use in the development of their business systems.
The ERP vendors who have now been dominating the market place with their end-to-end turn key systems for many years try and keep corporations captive within their systems maintaining extremely large annual maintenance or subscription revenue streams. They want you to stay within the confines of the system they provide. If ever there was a need for modernization it is with most of the software sold by these vendors. Today many major ERP systems are over 20 years old, often without rewrites to stay current with modern technology.

Many software vendors today will tell C-Level management at your company that internal IT is no longer capable of addressing the needs of the modern corporation or responding in a timely manner with high quality business systems.

The Reality of Corporate Systems Today

The reality of today’s systems depends a great deal on where your corporation is headquartered. Europeans and South Americans tend to focus on the needs of the corporation or business as an entity. U.S. based companies tend to delegate computer systems to their business units and treat computer systems as a tool for a business unit executive to use and control. In Europe and South America, executives remain in place for long periods of time. In the U.S. people are very mobile and change jobs frequently often creating a lack of continuity in corporate leadership.

In the typical large U.S. Corporation you have mix of virtually every hardware platform known to man and software from many vendors. Frequently there is no such thing as “enterprise systems” and the corporate accounting office demanding input from local systems to build a corporate ledger provides their only corporate level integration.

A few years ago IBM gave away an employee directory product for use on its web servers that was based on its internal “Blue Pages” software. You could search for and look up any employee in your enterprise. You could see an organization chart showing whom that person reported to and see the chain of command from the person all the way up to the president of the company. You could also see whom a manager managed. It was a great tool as far as it went.

The limitation was that tools designers decided that the legal boundaries of a country should be reflected within the system. You could see whom a person worked for within their country. Unfortunately, this was often not the true organization structure of the enterprise. While a person had a physical reporting relationship to a manager in their country, they might take operational direction from a manager in another country. The reality was that the true organization spanned countries but the system did not. The bottom line is a great idea for a software product failed to deliver what was really needed.

This point illustrates that there are many views of a company’s organization that are valid and necessary. All too frequently technologists do not see or address these views.

Build versus Buy

At one time I would have vehemently argued in favor of in-house development in order to provide your company with the best possible systems giving your company a competitive advantage over others. Today I see a combination of build and buy as the best solution.

Today I would advocate buy, build, and integrate.

In subsequent postings, I will explore how you can manage buying best of breed 3rd party software from multiple vendors, building internal applications, and integrating systems across diverse hardware platforms into a corporate system that meets the needs of your business.

In the early days of modern computing, many small entrepreneurs with expertise in a certain area of business would create a software application and sell it. Today it is virtually impossible for this type of person to participate in the modern corporate world of software with its legal issues and cost of bringing products to market. We need to bring back channels for wonderfully brilliant people with specific skills and knowledge in a specific area to collaborate with technical people and bring their ideas to the market place in a manner that makes it viable for larger enterprise to adopt their software and integrate it into their systems.

Studying the Modern Enterprise

After leaving the corporate world and working for IBM where I got to see many other companies, I found that over the years while building large scale fully integrated corporate systems that I had become a student of modern corporations. In this blog I will share what I have learned about enterprises large and small and what needs to be done to address provide a path to the future. I think you will find my approach different and hopefully refreshing.

There are commonalities in business enterprises that can be represented in computer systems that allow computer systems developers to build very specialized components to handle specific business problems and still integrate into the whole of the modern enterprise.

To achieve what I am going to talk about requires that a corporation be willing to address its systems from a corporate perspective and allow management of systems from a corporate viewpoint.

If you are looking for detail technical discussions, this is probably not the place. I will not be able to avoid some technical issues, but the focus is on what to build and how to represent a business enterprise and not how to build it.

The Future

IMHO the future is dependent upon a corporate systems infrastructure that allows vendors to write to standards that allow them plug their systems into a customers system and allow the customer virtually instantaneous advantage of their new system functionality.

Interestingly enough, I see that we may need organizations similar to the open source organizations to make the vision that I see materialize. There are major challenges in what I am going to discuss and present along with the development of software vendors willing to create applications that conform to the architecture that I will describe. The concepts I describe are diametrically opposed to the business objectives of some major ERP vendors. I do think it is time for a change.

Stay tuned for the building blocks of the future…

Bob Cancilla, Principal
RJ Cancilla & Associates
Office:     916-226-4951
Mobil:    562-290-2849
eMail:    rcancill@mac.com
Skype:    bob_cancilla