One of the main uses of Encanvas and other enterprise mashup platforms is in custom software development.
Traditionally, business software applications have been purchased as shrink-wrapped products that serve a specific process or functional business area. The fundamental problem of this approach is there are so many processes in a business. Attempting to purchase a shrink-wrapped solution for every one of them is hugely expensive. Another problem is there's no guarantee that each of the shrink-wrapped packages is architected to use the same building block components of technology - so organizations have to contend with supporting a variety of different database engines, workflow engines and reporting tools (that all work differently).
The alternative to buying read-made software solutions of course is to build your own. The problem in doing this is the high cost and risk of project failure. Developing bespoke software applications has traditionally been performed by programmers and IT professionals in back-rooms working on a common plan that's been drafted as the 'best guess' of what the outcome should look like. Programmers find themselves working in parallel on different parts of the same system. No surprise, when the project team tries to bring all of these development strands together and present it to the users and stakeholders, it's not uncommon for lots of re-working to be needed. Primarily for this reason, organizations make do with buying shrink-wrapped software and coping with the high expense of operating a plethora of different software applications that still don't really fit their business need or how they want to work.
Encanvas, and other composite applications design products, overcome these issues by providing IT leaders with a common toolkit of ready-to-use technology components so they can develop applications across the enterprise as the need arises. What makes Encanvas particularly unique is that it doesn't require coding or scripting skills. Its design environment is completely 'point-and-click'. Even its data integration and mashup features and logic building features are created using drag and drop methods. Another feature is that unlike other Enterprise Mashup products, Encanvas is supplied with ready-made design elements for mapping, forms capture, social networking, reporting, file transfer, dashboards etc. - so there's no need to rely on third party components. This is important for developers because they can see developoment projects all the way through to delivery of a robust and scalable system in the knowledge they have full control over design components and can modify every aspect of the user interface design and application functionality.
By removing the time and complexity of coding in development, Encanvas reduces project risk by enabling business analysts to develop their applications in real-time with stakeholders in workshop environments. With everyone on the same page, it's possible to architect right-first-time deployable solutions.
Time to value on Encanvas is greatly reduced by it use of existing data resources (with its ability to mashup data from existing IT systems) and its ready-made building blocks for complex technology components like geo-spatial mapping. It means that IT leaders can embed IT-centric business analysts into process improvement teams and provide these individuals with a single design, deployment and operational environment with the dexterity to cope with all of their enterprise information management challenges.
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Enterprise mashups and de-risking software development projects
Monday, 18 January 2010
Social Operating Systems: The rise of social oriented architecture
As the term suggests, a social operating system is a computing platform that supports the formation, management and use of social relationship ties. In my opinion, social operating systems will have a fundamental impact on both society and business - but my interest is how they change the way people work and are empowered in their roles.
My next business book is due out in October 2010 and studies the growing influence of social operating systems in computing and considers their impact on the business world. I'm hoping to add a few early examples of how early adopter organizations are going about developing their social operating systems, the challenges they're encountering and the benefits they're seeing.
(So, to the big question!!!) Do you have a great example of an organization that has implemented (or is in the process of implementing) a social operating system. If you do, then I'd love to hear from you.
The more I get involved in IT modernization, the more I see a close relationship between the new 'social oriented architectures' on the technology horizon and the 'services oriented computing architectures' now in the throws of adoption by many corporations. In fact, social oriented computing and services oriented computing are two ends of the same subject.
Here's what I'm getting at:
There's a great deal written about Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). This term describes an approach to business information management and computing that opens up the 'information fibers' of tightly matted corporate computing systems so that business people - and cross cutting processes - can serve themselves with applications that access the rich silos of data held within the enterprise (and also from public sites on the Web).
Sounds great doesn't it? Hmmm - but then I'm thinking, for me, when it comes to business value the point of emphasis in this IT architectural vision is on serving data rather than consuming it to bring real value to business people and the organizations they serve.
It is quite easy when working with IT to start with the answer rather than the question. People interested in IT are normallly pro-technology and want to find good reasons to do more with it. Sometimes this means doing 'clever stuff' in advance of any real demand for IT from consumers. But IT projects without strong sponsorship normally topple over at some point. Now, as I understand it, the idea of services-oriented computing is to serve up data from back office systems (and other such sources) in such a way that it can be made useful to lots of people (and processes) for many different reasons. If not properly thought through it's a bit like creating your own library of books without working out who wants to read them and why.
Social operating systems - on the other hand - start with 'what matters most' to the consumers of information, and giving these people the capability to form and support their social relationship ties, develop interest groups, share insights and applications - and one day I'm sure these workspaces will be sufficiently secure and trusted that organizations will run their business processes through them too.
If you're interested in social operating systems or social oriented architecture and have a story to tell, do please get in touch. I'd welcome your perspectives, thoughts, experiences and ideas! I'll even take predictions;-)
My next business book is due out in October 2010 and studies the growing influence of social operating systems in computing and considers their impact on the business world. I'm hoping to add a few early examples of how early adopter organizations are going about developing their social operating systems, the challenges they're encountering and the benefits they're seeing.
(So, to the big question!!!) Do you have a great example of an organization that has implemented (or is in the process of implementing) a social operating system. If you do, then I'd love to hear from you.
The more I get involved in IT modernization, the more I see a close relationship between the new 'social oriented architectures' on the technology horizon and the 'services oriented computing architectures' now in the throws of adoption by many corporations. In fact, social oriented computing and services oriented computing are two ends of the same subject.
Here's what I'm getting at:
There's a great deal written about Services Oriented Architecture (SOA). This term describes an approach to business information management and computing that opens up the 'information fibers' of tightly matted corporate computing systems so that business people - and cross cutting processes - can serve themselves with applications that access the rich silos of data held within the enterprise (and also from public sites on the Web).
Sounds great doesn't it? Hmmm - but then I'm thinking, for me, when it comes to business value the point of emphasis in this IT architectural vision is on serving data rather than consuming it to bring real value to business people and the organizations they serve.
It is quite easy when working with IT to start with the answer rather than the question. People interested in IT are normallly pro-technology and want to find good reasons to do more with it. Sometimes this means doing 'clever stuff' in advance of any real demand for IT from consumers. But IT projects without strong sponsorship normally topple over at some point. Now, as I understand it, the idea of services-oriented computing is to serve up data from back office systems (and other such sources) in such a way that it can be made useful to lots of people (and processes) for many different reasons. If not properly thought through it's a bit like creating your own library of books without working out who wants to read them and why.
Social operating systems - on the other hand - start with 'what matters most' to the consumers of information, and giving these people the capability to form and support their social relationship ties, develop interest groups, share insights and applications - and one day I'm sure these workspaces will be sufficiently secure and trusted that organizations will run their business processes through them too.
If you're interested in social operating systems or social oriented architecture and have a story to tell, do please get in touch. I'd welcome your perspectives, thoughts, experiences and ideas! I'll even take predictions;-)
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Why CRM Systems Drive Sales People Crazy
When they first came on the scene with SIEBEL, Customer Relationship Management systems were supposed to grow your business 'one customer at a time'. Like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems they promised a rosy future for business people of being able to deliver a 'single view' of customers - so that all of the systems in an enterprise could work together to serve up a coherent appreciation of customer conversations, account history - and most importantly, what mattered most to them (to understand 'customer value').
After decades of CRM implementations, most sales and marketing people are left cold by the impact of CRM. It simply hasn't delivered on its promises.
An agile enterprise can only achieve greater customer value - and therefore more potential to grow - if it understands what customers actually want. This insight can not be gathered OFFLINE by market research because it creates a false picture of the real-world. The only way to really understand customers and their needs is to gather insights progressively through day-to-day interactions.
In most businesses, it is the CRM system that is meant to perform this role. And CRM systems are meant to increase revenues through higher sales. That means to get the right CRM solution, the stakeholders you need to convince first of its value are the sales people.
In this document I've summarized the main underperforming feature areas of CRM systems that drive sales people (and sales managers) crazy. Next to each subject I've crudely marked the performance of CRM systems today (out of 10 when 10 is high) to show where in my experience underperformance normally exists.
WHAT SALES PEOPLE WANT
Time. Sales people are short of it and they're keen to maximize it. That means not investing time on sales opportunities unlikely to close, not spending time on unnecessary travel and not keying data into databases without good reason. Sales people want to know how best to prioritize their time to get maximum return. They know that CRM software SHOULD help them to achieve this.
7 Recording contact activities
Sales people speak to a large number of people and they need help to remember and record the detail. They want to know who they spoke to, when and why so they can always find the contacts they've spoken to and they're armed with what was discussed and what outcomes were agreed. It's normally very difficult with CRM systems to obtain a timeline view of activities that brings together all of the actions and activities of the salesperson - which is extremely helpful for the salesperson to audit their personal productivity.
7 Scheduling and coordinating meetings and events
Sales people are normally responsible for managing events and meetings so they are big users of time management and calendaring tools. Having the ability to easily schedule meetings and add custom calendar items like events, tasks, to-dos, conferences etc. is very important to them.
6 Qualifying and grouping contacts
Every contact in a sales contact database is different: Different in terms of their potential as a prospect, their degree of influence on a sales process, the nature of the relationship with the sales person, the strength of the relationship with the salesperson, the reason why the relationship exists in the first place. These nuances of relationship ties means that sales people need to categorize contacts in ways that make sense to them (in addition to the typical demographic and industry sector views that marketing people want). Therefore, tagging systems are a useful vehicle to add richer context to contact records.
[Take a typical example of a salesperson wanting to select a group of contacts with common needs. Perhaps they want to send a quick email to this group - and afterwards, perhaps they want to follow-up the emails to progress discussions. With a typical CRM system that integrates with email, they can create a group of contacts as a category perhaps but all of the contact and progress information of this micro-canvassing activity is held on each of the contact records - so it doesn't provide any 'group' view of activities. Should the salesperson wish to report on these activities to a supervisor, a cut-and-paste activity is required, probably into a spreadsheet or word processor document.]
6 Notifications and alerts
Most CRM systems are good at alerting sales people to contact activities they should perform (this is after-all the main motivator for procuring most CRM systems). The better systems will enable sales people to create customizable hotlists and custom flags. Even so, CRM systems aren't very good at altering sales people to what they don't already know. The notifications you receive as a user are normally those that you've created yourself.
5 Setting the right balance between minimal data entry with maximum productivity
Sales people want fast data entry of 'business card' information on the prospects and contacts they meet. They want a system that enables them to plan next actions and reminders to progress sales. Most CRM systems seem to demand a high level of effort to capture data and then fail to deliver the helpful 'prompts' and productivity enablers that sales people value. So, for a salesperson, the obvious question is "Does this CRM system make me more productive or less productive?" More advanced CRM systems require data about accounts, organizations groups etc. to be entered before contacts can be added to create relationships between the contacts, their organizations, organization groups and accounts - all very sensible, but all of this complexity can make it impossible for sales people to simply add a simple contact with the smallest effort. [Features like auto scanning of business cards are very helpful to minimize data entry overheads. It's also helpful that every salesperson is able to access and use a common database system and have the opportunity to check to see if a contact already exists before they add another one to avoid double-entry of contacts - or worst case two sales people contacting the same contact.]
5 Making the task of working with data easier
When salespeople are at their laptop calling and communicating, desk space comes at a premium. They need a 'cockpit' view of everything they need to see in a single view at any point in time. Very often an editable table view is preferred to lots of forms. Most sales people want a series of views at different stages of a sales engagement process - contact card, editable list view, filtered search views, contact record profile views.
4 Account management
There are different types of sales people. Some are responsible for only a handful of major accounts and need to know everything about the accounts they manage. Today there are some good sales methods for managing accounts but most systems fall short in providing a WORKSPACE that brings together all aspects of account information management into a single cockpit.
4 Pipeline management and forecasting
So many CRM systems are poor at pipeline management and forecasting that results in salespeople and sales managers reverting to spreadsheets to manage their pipeline the way they need to for their business. This is sometimes because the pipeline forecasting requirements of the business demand such a high level of customization that a spreadsheet becomes easier - but as soon as data is entered into a spreadsheet, this insight becomes hidden from the organization.
4 Mobility
Sales people are always on the move and they need to be able to update records and keep in touch no matter where they are. While most CRM solutions will provide the ability to update records locally and then synchronize with server management systems later, online browser based systems afford the possibilities of always on communications.
3 Social networking enablers
The world is moving towards social networking platforms and social operating systems but CRM systems are locked into a world where email is assumed to be the only conduit between salespeople and their contacts. New CRM systems need to harness data insights available from popular social networking systems and aggregate this content in ways that makes it easier for salespeople to harness it. Capturing conversations conducted via online web-chat is also useful in developing richer insights of contact activity without demanding re-keying of conversation content.
3 Access to communications and collaboration enablers
Salespeople are communicators and they want access to the best tools to share their thoughts and ideas from their desktop, to communicate with clients using a mix of communications vehicles - phone, email, SMS, VoIP, web-chat etc. - and all of these communications options need to be available. Sales people also want to make sure that THEY are available to BE contacted should customers or prospects want to make contact.
3 Sales people as 'micro-marketers'
Sales people today have to be micro-marketers. They typically hold the responsibility of organizing their own micro campaigns, managing their own contact lists and follow up their sales leads with sales literature and follow-up correspondence. This means sales people need access to simple campaign list creation, batch label printing, mail merge and email marketing features.
2 Managing tenders and quotation processes
When businesses need to produce tenders and quotations, often this work is done using word processor and spreadsheet systems that are completely offline to the CRM system. The best most CRM systems can offer is to provide a link to a document repository containing this information.
1 Telling sales people things they don't already know about their accounts/territories
Sales people want to know if a major news story breaks on one of their accounts (perhaps a new appointment or the announcement of a merger etc), or when a new company has been created in their designated sales territory. This 'new news' is very helpful for sales people but today most salespeople have to source these insights themselves. Sales people often want to know when contracts are due for renewal or which products any new products are displacing. It's good to know when projects are behind schedule or accounts have a poor credit history or are on stop! Given that much of this content is already known but exists on different systems it's normal for stand-alone CRM systems not to flag this REALLY IMPORTANT information.
In summary, for sales people CRM systems fall short in areas of:
* Time - Giving more sales time than they consume
* Serving up new insights about what customers want or might buy
* Providing the means to always be contactable through mobile connectivity
* Their level of customization and integration (to fit the business/integrate)
* Social networking enablement
* Micro-marketing tools
* Managing the sales lifecycle --> prospect - quote - sell - order process - account manage - new things to sell!
Thursday, 7 January 2010
2010 Tech Forecasts
2010 tech forecasts: What the accurate analysts predict ( - Telecommunication - Internet - Software - Hardware Systems - Security - Consumer Electronics - Virtualization )
I came across this blog that outlined the performance of IDC's predictions. Very interesting!. Ian
I came across this blog that outlined the performance of IDC's predictions. Very interesting!. Ian
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
SOA, Security and Enterprise Mashups
I'd like to dispel a myth - that Enterprise Security is more likely to be compromised or weakened through the adoption of situational applications and enterprise data mashup technologies. If IT leaders were to let users roam free on all of their data through a poorly thought through Enterprise Mashup Platform THEN MAYBE, but then, how likely is that to happen?
The logic behind the argument that 'mashups are a security threat' is usually this: that mashups are about empowering information workers to consume web services (sourced from back office systems and via online public sites) and, if you all this to happen, then several new potential threat areas emerge:
- Poor security regimes mean that users usurp identity management and access control systems so either back-doors are created to data or administrative systems become more complicated with multiple user identity directories emerging that could create errors in monitoring user identities.
- Users (knowingly or unknowingly) gain access to data that they shouldn't be seeing (or in the worst case editing) by giving power users the ability to create their own applications
- Enterprise Mashup Architectures may not be as secure as traditional enterprise portal suites and so by adopting them organizations might be letting their guard down.
Firstly, it's important to remember that in most organizations today, the most widely adopted mashup application is Microsoft Excel. Business professionals use spreadsheets to capture data, gather data, analyze data and share data. The popularity of spreadsheets to still discharge all of these roles after 30 years of faithful service is testament to their invention. But spreadsheet systems are a high risk option. They mean that most organizations have hidden pots of business critical data on laptop and PC hard drives that almost nobody is aware of that can disappear at any moment. They also mean that people can inadvertently add the wrong data to the wrong cell or change a formula that can instantly result in high threat compliance issues.
Secondly, the Enterprise Mashup Platforms I've encountered so far integrate seamlessly with incumbent User Identity Management and Access Control systems like Active Directory used by corporations today. This isn't rocket science; most of these systems rely on a table of UserIDs, email addresses and passwords that are easily inherited by third party systems when properly designed.
Thirdly, it would be wrong to assume that incumbent Enterprise Portal Suites are more secure than the Rich Internet 'Enterprise Mashup' platforms displacing them. To my knowledge, none of the leading portal products can trace the movement of enterprise data from every single field of every single silo to every single portal and every single user - but platforms like Encanvas do.
Debates on the future of Enterprise security have moved away from the concept of protecting the enterprise by keeping everyone on the outside of the Firewall except 'trustworthy employees'. Organizations are slowly realizing that data breaches are most commonly the result of employees activities rather than unknown 'baddies'. It's also dawned on IT leaders that people in business expect to collaborate and share data - subcontractors, outsourcers, customers, channel partners all have very reasonable arguments for being able to access enterprise data. So the future of Enterprise security is about protecting the data and the intellectual property rather than the container that houses it.
In 2010 we're going to see a big push towards the virtualization of enterprise systems and cloud computing. We're going to see lots of business social networking tools entering via the backdoor of organizations to serve 'departmental needs'. And security will become all about monitoring the activities of individuals (and the groups they belong to). What better system to do this than the enterprise mashups portal platform that serves them with the data?
Thursday, 31 December 2009
What's in store for Enterprise Mashups in 2010?
Enterprise Mashups are the big topic for 2010 as organizations seek to harness their SOA investments and get their apps on the cloud. A report by Business Insights suggests the Enterprise Mashups software market was worth around $161m in 2008, and is forecast to grow to $1.74bn by 2013. So what can we expect from Enterprise Mashup platforms in 2010?
In 2009, Enterprise Mashup platforms designed for business started to make inroads into corporate IT thinking by providing a coherent way of bringing together web services, RSS, twitters, maps and other sources of data together in secure enterprise portals. they're quickly becoming the preferred consumption layer of information served from business applications in the form of web services and now there are more than enough case stories to show how scalable and robust the technology is. 'Enterprise mashups = software that's ideal for consuming web services. Great. So what's next?' you ask.
Here I've summarized my top 6 list of the key innovations in Enterprise Mashup platforms you can expect to hit the market in 2010. These are the capabilities that are likely to separate the 'men from the boys' in this fast maturing enterprise software market.
1. Advanced Security Architectures (Inclusive + User Activity Monitoring)
2010 is the year of inclusive security as firms move away from protecting data silos to protecting data itself. It's no longer possible for organizations to protect their operations by hiding behind a firewall. In an era of business social networking, mobility and collaboration, security has become a more sophisticated challenge and governing data has to become the responsibility of the line of business managers. Enterprise Mashup Platforms are now being equipped with capabilities to track user behaviors to ensure that the usage of every data item can be traced from its source via the consumption portal to each individual user (See 'Encanvas Ring-of-Steel' for an example).
2. Cloud Deployment
The migration from running in-house servers to operating IT systems on a cloud computing platform is now well underway in most industry sectors. IT analysts IDC suggest that up to 1/3 of new IT spend will be on cloud computing technologies by 2013. Whilst we haven't seen large ERP migrations (yet) the future of computing will be in the cloud before we know it.
3. Advanced Analytics
A year ago when you said the words 'Business Intelligence' people thought about dashboards. Of course, dashboards are a great way to expose a single page view of what;s going on in a business or process to expose insights that would otherwise remain hidden in spreadsheets and databases. A decade before, business intelligence meant you were talking about 'OLAP cubes' and the ability to create views of enterprise data that was held in disparate systems, decision makers needed to frequently refer to. But the advent of Enterprise Mashup Portals means that today it's not difficult to harvest data from disparate systems from across the enterprise and create custom dashboards and reports (although many vendors do continue to ignore the important role that printed output has to play in disseminating information!). As we've been heading towards 2010 I've seen a transition in buyer expectations away from 'static business intelligence' that offers up preset views of data, towards a more fluid and proactive form of business intelligence. This new generation of business intelligence platform is about moving away from spreadsheet systems towards portal deployed applications that give users the ability to serve themselves with the insights they need. That means features that provide users with the tools to create 'what if?' scenarios have to be available and easy to configure, and data visualization tools need to exist that enable users to define their own maps, visualization structures and data plotting grids without needing to be mathematicians, programmers or scripters. MiddleApps like Encanvas VisualPlot due for release in 2010 provide this level of functionality out of the box and I'm sure that we've only just started on a long journey of user empowerment for business intelligence mashups.
4. Collaborative Social Networking
Business social working is becoming better understood but we have yet to see a clear market leader in this space. I expect this is because the mix of features required for business have yet to materialize in the same product or platform. It's going to be interesting in 2010 to see how businesses react to Encanvas Secure&Live's social office technology that provides a white label environment for creating secure live collaborative environments. I expect that most Enterprise mashup platforms will have integrated with (or will have built their own) business social networking tools by the end of 2010.
5. Applications Stores (AppStores)
The reuse of mashup applications has always been a contentious issue but platforms like Google and Apple's iPhone are showing how effective AppStores are to access and reuse applications. In 2010 we're going to see many organizations looking to build their own AppStores powered by Enterprise Mashup applications.
6. Collective Intelligence
The blend of collaborative social networking and Enterprise Mashup technologies starts to build a coherent information management architecture for the enterprise that is by its very make-up agile, scalable, secure and extensible. It means that 'the system' will be able to interpret who speaks to who, what content they share, the groups individuals belong to, the problems they encounter, the opinions they express, the projects they contribute to, what their colleagues think of them, and all of this information will help systems to filter out for individuals the subject matter information and relationships that matter most. I expect we won't see collective intelligence solutions emerge until late in 2010 but the first few early seeds of examples will no doubt be in place by the end of the year.
So there we have it. The list of new capabilities you can expect from Enterprise Mashup platforms in 2010. If the product you're considering doesn't meet these capabilities then it makes sense to examine some more options.
Gartner top 10 predictions for 2010
So Gartner's top 10 predictions are out for 2010 and it's a very different picture to last year. Nevertheless, it's always interesting to see what the world's leading IT analysts think is going to happen next in the year to come.
In this article I've plucked out the bits that have most to do with Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Mashups, Business Social Networking and other such technologies that are making businesses more agile.
No surprise that Cloud Computing is number 1. The feeding frenzy around cloud computing has been growing for some time and now it's almost impossible for IT leaders not to consider cloud computing as a way forward for their future IT infrastructure. For many organizations however, cloud computing is just another form of commercial model for virtualization of servers; the result of a transformation is a gated environment for enterprise applications on a hosted web server instead of using in-house servers. This myopic view of cloud computing is a big undersell on the possibilities that the cloudspace offers to create extensible community-based portals and possibilities of knowledge markets, federated applications and the like that reach beyond the firewall of the enterprise to harness talent and resources from knowledge markets - but it's a start. I expect that the majority of organizations will want to 'practise' deploying non-core applications to the cloud first and then see how well the experiment works before they consider porting their discrete applications and ERP systems to this new platform. We could be talking a lag of 3 to 5 years before larger corporations make this sort of 'can't turn back the clock' step.
Number 2 on Gartner's list is Advanced Analytics. It's interesting that Gartner worked hard not to say Business Intelligence and came up with a new term. But BI is changing. At one time it was about massing data into huge OLAP cubes to impart knowledge organizations already owned but couldn't see. Today though, business intelligence has gone online and forms part of the Enterprise Mashup Portal platform business people use to consume information services. These applications are no longer passive, but provide tools for users to serve themselves with new views of information, let's them paint 'what if?' scenarios and share their content within their secure social networks. The need for agile Business Intelligence tools has been answered by mashups that form part of the social operating systems organizations are in the process of developing. Advanced Analytics is no longer about OLAP cubes that serve only 15% of the user population; it's about letting decision makers at all levels of the enterprise consume information in new ways to find answers to new questions they've only just begun to think about.
Social Computing comes in at number 6 on the list. Trying to make sense of social networking in a business context has been a tough challenge in 2009. In truth, there are so many different technologies and approaches that the subject has proved too overwhelming for IT leaders to make any sense of. I expect that the take-off in business social networking will only happen when 4 things happen (at the same time and probably in the same software service that business people can try before they buy):
1. A security architecture emerges that business people can trust - Business social networking has to sit within a security blanket that corporate buyers can trust. The software applications and services found in consumer land don't come close to managing content and intellectual property the way that businesses need to.
2. Data can be owner-managed - Organizations want to harness their corporate information capital, while individuals want a record of their social relationship activities. Having knowledge of conversations, talent and skills on Facebook or Twitter doesn't give business people the security or control over information assets that they require.
3. A realistic alternative to email emerges - Email today is the peer-to-peer communications vehicle of choice that benefits from the ability to work even when the sender and receiver are not both online. Without a genuine alternative to email, the home page of most business people will still be Outlook.
4. Supporting social behaviors - In the real world business people chat, have more formal conversations and even more formal scheduled meetings. It's not realistic to believe that, in a virtual world, business people will suddenly be satisfied with informal communications for every situation. Business social networking tools will have to mature to support social behaviors that people are accustomed to.
The fact that Security - and specifically activity monitoring - has only reached number 7 on the list is surprising to me. With all of the concerns raised around data security in 2009 I would have singled out Security as being a top 3 issue. The issue of enterprise security has matured over 2009 away from the idea of protecting the silos of data to protecting the data itself. This has fostered more mature discussions around inclusive security models that see users as individuals rather than good guys and bad guys (where anyone who doesn't work for the enterprise is assumed to be bad). In 2010, Encanvas is releasing its RING OF STEEL inclusive security architecture that enables CIOs to push back data governance to line of business managers so that appropriate governance regimes can be implemented at departmental level. This means that the people responsible for data are also made responsible for its security. For IT leaders this has to be good news. Whoever said that IT leaders must be the security watchdogs of the enterprise anyway?
The last notable entry holds up the list at number 10. Mobile applications are still topical it seems but the idea that mobile applications need to be treated as somehow 'special' is slowly ebbing away. Convergence of web and mobile platforms mean that Enterprise mashup platforms like Encanvas can produce applications for mobility as easily as they do for desktop and web. The mobile device has become 'just another portal consumer' in an always connected world. I expect we won't see mobile applications appearing on the next Gartner list for 2011!
All of the above is good news for Integrated Software Platforms like Encanvas that provide 2-step publishing to the cloud with the assurety of a robust inclusive security model. No surprise that the global market for Enterprise Mashups Software is expected to grow ten-fold in 2010.
Looks like it's going to be a busy year!
In this article I've plucked out the bits that have most to do with Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Mashups, Business Social Networking and other such technologies that are making businesses more agile.
No surprise that Cloud Computing is number 1. The feeding frenzy around cloud computing has been growing for some time and now it's almost impossible for IT leaders not to consider cloud computing as a way forward for their future IT infrastructure. For many organizations however, cloud computing is just another form of commercial model for virtualization of servers; the result of a transformation is a gated environment for enterprise applications on a hosted web server instead of using in-house servers. This myopic view of cloud computing is a big undersell on the possibilities that the cloudspace offers to create extensible community-based portals and possibilities of knowledge markets, federated applications and the like that reach beyond the firewall of the enterprise to harness talent and resources from knowledge markets - but it's a start. I expect that the majority of organizations will want to 'practise' deploying non-core applications to the cloud first and then see how well the experiment works before they consider porting their discrete applications and ERP systems to this new platform. We could be talking a lag of 3 to 5 years before larger corporations make this sort of 'can't turn back the clock' step.
Number 2 on Gartner's list is Advanced Analytics. It's interesting that Gartner worked hard not to say Business Intelligence and came up with a new term. But BI is changing. At one time it was about massing data into huge OLAP cubes to impart knowledge organizations already owned but couldn't see. Today though, business intelligence has gone online and forms part of the Enterprise Mashup Portal platform business people use to consume information services. These applications are no longer passive, but provide tools for users to serve themselves with new views of information, let's them paint 'what if?' scenarios and share their content within their secure social networks. The need for agile Business Intelligence tools has been answered by mashups that form part of the social operating systems organizations are in the process of developing. Advanced Analytics is no longer about OLAP cubes that serve only 15% of the user population; it's about letting decision makers at all levels of the enterprise consume information in new ways to find answers to new questions they've only just begun to think about.
Social Computing comes in at number 6 on the list. Trying to make sense of social networking in a business context has been a tough challenge in 2009. In truth, there are so many different technologies and approaches that the subject has proved too overwhelming for IT leaders to make any sense of. I expect that the take-off in business social networking will only happen when 4 things happen (at the same time and probably in the same software service that business people can try before they buy):
1. A security architecture emerges that business people can trust - Business social networking has to sit within a security blanket that corporate buyers can trust. The software applications and services found in consumer land don't come close to managing content and intellectual property the way that businesses need to.
2. Data can be owner-managed - Organizations want to harness their corporate information capital, while individuals want a record of their social relationship activities. Having knowledge of conversations, talent and skills on Facebook or Twitter doesn't give business people the security or control over information assets that they require.
3. A realistic alternative to email emerges - Email today is the peer-to-peer communications vehicle of choice that benefits from the ability to work even when the sender and receiver are not both online. Without a genuine alternative to email, the home page of most business people will still be Outlook.
4. Supporting social behaviors - In the real world business people chat, have more formal conversations and even more formal scheduled meetings. It's not realistic to believe that, in a virtual world, business people will suddenly be satisfied with informal communications for every situation. Business social networking tools will have to mature to support social behaviors that people are accustomed to.
The fact that Security - and specifically activity monitoring - has only reached number 7 on the list is surprising to me. With all of the concerns raised around data security in 2009 I would have singled out Security as being a top 3 issue. The issue of enterprise security has matured over 2009 away from the idea of protecting the silos of data to protecting the data itself. This has fostered more mature discussions around inclusive security models that see users as individuals rather than good guys and bad guys (where anyone who doesn't work for the enterprise is assumed to be bad). In 2010, Encanvas is releasing its RING OF STEEL inclusive security architecture that enables CIOs to push back data governance to line of business managers so that appropriate governance regimes can be implemented at departmental level. This means that the people responsible for data are also made responsible for its security. For IT leaders this has to be good news. Whoever said that IT leaders must be the security watchdogs of the enterprise anyway?
The last notable entry holds up the list at number 10. Mobile applications are still topical it seems but the idea that mobile applications need to be treated as somehow 'special' is slowly ebbing away. Convergence of web and mobile platforms mean that Enterprise mashup platforms like Encanvas can produce applications for mobility as easily as they do for desktop and web. The mobile device has become 'just another portal consumer' in an always connected world. I expect we won't see mobile applications appearing on the next Gartner list for 2011!
All of the above is good news for Integrated Software Platforms like Encanvas that provide 2-step publishing to the cloud with the assurety of a robust inclusive security model. No surprise that the global market for Enterprise Mashups Software is expected to grow ten-fold in 2010.
Looks like it's going to be a busy year!
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