You can’t always connect to a network. Some have done better with that reality than others.
Microsoft desktop software assumes the user is connected to the network. I’ve been on a 100% travel schedule for years at a time, so the assumption of full-time network connection seems outlandishly wishful. I’ve found Outlook particularly offensive in this regard. After years of trying to get used to it, I still want to return to Lotus Notes Mail, which was designed with a traveler like me in mind.
Verizon’s VZAccess Manager and AT&T’s Communication Manager have provided good data network connections for the significant amounts of time between hotel rooms and offices. Airlines such as AirTran now offer connections while in flight. The only problem is that the assumptions about connectivity require more bandwidth than these services generally deliver.
I don’t hold it against developers who build assumptions into their software based on a future expectation of infrastructure. I understand that as much as I do travel, many others do most of their work from an office with a lot of reliable bandwidth. At the same time, there is a large and growing community of mobile people like me who have been forced to improvise and scramble to use software designed with us as an afterthought.
There is new hope that the tyranny of false network connectivity assumptions may come to an end. It comes from “desktop” and social networking applications accessed via mobile devices such as Blackberry and iPhone.
I wanted to see Matt Coblentz’s presentation of CenterStage Mobile Client at EMC World last week, but schedule conflicts prevented it. I saw Matt in the corridor later and he showed me something more convincing. He demonstrated on the spot that he is already using CenterStage Mobile Client with his Blackberry Bold. I am not a bleeding edge technology adapter. Relative to others in the industry, I am a laggard, but not this time. I’ve seen CenterStage Mobile Client in action. It’s a real productivity enhancer. It will work with my existing Blackberry, and I want it.
That answers one of the questions posed in last week’s post, and here are the others:
Q: Does CenterStage provide the end user functionality that users and businesses will readily adopt?
A: This is highly addictive functionality. Once users get their hands on it, they won’t want to let it go.
Q: Does CenterStage fully deliver the back end capabilities of Documentum Content Server?
A: In theory yes, CenterStage delivers the backend functionality. It’s a good bet that this theory will be proven in fact, because all CenterStage content is being stored in CenterStage.
Q: Does CenterStage have the flexibility to allow enterprises to centralize or decentralize administrative responsibilities? To the extent administrative responsibilities are decentralized, does CenterStage allow safeguards to keep departmental administrators within bounds of enterprise policies?
A: CenterStage is looking good in this regard. Initial deployments will prove it out, but this seems like another low risk bet.
Q: Does CenterStage have an advantage in accelerating mobile computing applications?
A: This is the real surprise behind CenterStage. I didn’t think this question was going to have the most exciting answer, but it does. If you’re a mobile professional you can see an end to the tyranny of false assumptions about connectivity.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Dawn of New Age of Collaboration?
Ever since there have been departmental systems, Collaboration has been departmentally focused. eRoom, Lotus Notes, and SharePoint owe their success to end user functionality on the one hand, but also to departmental deployment and control models that support viral adoption across the enterprise on the other hand. Given the trends of enterprise consolidation and cloud computing, the time may have come for the pendulum to swing back to a centralized model for collaboration software. (Remember collaboration before Lotus Notes?)
The pendulum should not swing to complete centralization of responsibility and costs. Rather there should be a shift that lets responsibility and cost lie where it is most effective. In such a shift, enterprise policies would be controlled centrally. Work structures would be defined and implemented in decentralized fashion, for greatest responsiveness to the demands of work on the front lines. Each business would fine tune the balance of what is centralized and what is decentralized according to its own needs.
Consolidation within enterprises and cloud computing are driving the infrastructure for centralized computing, but what about application software for centrally deployed collaboration? EMC Documentum CenterStage targets this space. More will be revealed about CenterStage this week at EMC World 2009 and we’ll all be better able to gauge the alignment of the trends toward centralized infrastructure with the centralized control model of CenterStage.
Here are a few things to look for:
The pendulum should not swing to complete centralization of responsibility and costs. Rather there should be a shift that lets responsibility and cost lie where it is most effective. In such a shift, enterprise policies would be controlled centrally. Work structures would be defined and implemented in decentralized fashion, for greatest responsiveness to the demands of work on the front lines. Each business would fine tune the balance of what is centralized and what is decentralized according to its own needs.
Consolidation within enterprises and cloud computing are driving the infrastructure for centralized computing, but what about application software for centrally deployed collaboration? EMC Documentum CenterStage targets this space. More will be revealed about CenterStage this week at EMC World 2009 and we’ll all be better able to gauge the alignment of the trends toward centralized infrastructure with the centralized control model of CenterStage.
Here are a few things to look for:
- Does CenterStage provide the end user functionality that users and businesses will readily adopt?
- Does CenterStage fully deliver the back end capabilities of Documentum Content Server?
- Does CenterStage have the flexibility to allow enterprises to centralize or decentralize administrative responsibilities?
- To the extent administrative responsibilities are decentralized, does CenterStage allow safeguards to keep departmental administrators within bounds of enterprise policies?
- Does CenterStage have an advantage in accelerating mobile computing applications?
Sunday, May 10, 2009
They are both Right about Web 2.0. Now Get a Backbone in Place.
“Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform”, says Tim O’Reilly. “I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means.”, says Tim Berners-Lee, “It’s dookie.” They are both right, but it doesn’t matter.
Whether you agree with O’Reilly or Berners-Lee, information technology organizations must deal with the adoption of social-networking, video-sharing, wikis, blogs, and user tagging. Because people use them and businesses demand them, the infrastructure has to control and support Web 2.0 applications.
Public Web 2.0 facilities can achieve inter-company benefits, but those public facilities don’t meet the large organization’s need for control or support in the areas of retention, access, security, availability, and cost. In those large organizations, rogue Web 2.0 islands have likely sprung up internally and increasing adoption has caused unplanned cost and risk. Public facilities and rogue islands were fine when Web 2.0 applications were an experiment, but for many companies, enterprise-caliber infrastructure is now required.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technology is a promising backbone for Web 2.0 applications. The appeal of ECM is first in the fit and maturity of the technology. ECM is designed to manage unstructured information such as addressed by Web 2.0 applications and has been proven at enterprise scale for over a decade. The appeal of ECM is also in the potential to leverage existing investments. Most large companies have existing ECM platform investments that can provide needed support and control to Web 2.0 applications.
EMC Documentum Content Server (Documentum) is playing the role of backbone for Web 2.0 applications via two different approaches. First, Documentum has traditionally played a repository role for custom-built or niche front-end applications. Documentum plays a similar back end role when used in conjunction with Web 2.0 solutions built using Crown SiteBuilder and Crown Web Gear products. In the second approach, EMC has built on it’s eRoom heritage of providing application front-ends, and EMC is now extending eRoom solidly into the Web 2.0 era with its CenterStage product.
If you have enterprise-scale Web 2.0 needs, Crown can help you evaluate your options and put the appropriate infrastructure in place. Ask us about our SiteBuilder and Web Gear products and about our experience with EMC CenterStage.
Whether you agree with O’Reilly or Berners-Lee, information technology organizations must deal with the adoption of social-networking, video-sharing, wikis, blogs, and user tagging. Because people use them and businesses demand them, the infrastructure has to control and support Web 2.0 applications.
Public Web 2.0 facilities can achieve inter-company benefits, but those public facilities don’t meet the large organization’s need for control or support in the areas of retention, access, security, availability, and cost. In those large organizations, rogue Web 2.0 islands have likely sprung up internally and increasing adoption has caused unplanned cost and risk. Public facilities and rogue islands were fine when Web 2.0 applications were an experiment, but for many companies, enterprise-caliber infrastructure is now required.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technology is a promising backbone for Web 2.0 applications. The appeal of ECM is first in the fit and maturity of the technology. ECM is designed to manage unstructured information such as addressed by Web 2.0 applications and has been proven at enterprise scale for over a decade. The appeal of ECM is also in the potential to leverage existing investments. Most large companies have existing ECM platform investments that can provide needed support and control to Web 2.0 applications.
EMC Documentum Content Server (Documentum) is playing the role of backbone for Web 2.0 applications via two different approaches. First, Documentum has traditionally played a repository role for custom-built or niche front-end applications. Documentum plays a similar back end role when used in conjunction with Web 2.0 solutions built using Crown SiteBuilder and Crown Web Gear products. In the second approach, EMC has built on it’s eRoom heritage of providing application front-ends, and EMC is now extending eRoom solidly into the Web 2.0 era with its CenterStage product.
If you have enterprise-scale Web 2.0 needs, Crown can help you evaluate your options and put the appropriate infrastructure in place. Ask us about our SiteBuilder and Web Gear products and about our experience with EMC CenterStage.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Heterogeneous ETL Platform Capability as a Content Consolidation Enabler
Extract Transform and Load (ETL) operations can be homogeneous or heterogeneous. Homogeneous operations involve extract from a repository and load into a repository of the same technology. As an example, one can synchronize the content in a North American Documentum repository with the content in a European Documentum repository via a homogeneous extract and load (i.e., from Documentum and to Documentum). Two or more technologies are involved in a heterogeneous operation. As an example, one can migrate from FileNet to Documentum, by extracting from FileNet and loading into Documentum.
The challenge with content consolidation is that there are several, if not numerous, repository technologies to be addressed. For example, if content in SharePoint, FileNet, Lotus Notes, and ApplicationXtender are content sources to be consolidated into a Documentum target infrastructure, then extract must be performed on four different technologies and load into one technology. Each of the technologies involved implies a need for knowledge of the technology, technical infrastructure (e.g., test environment), and existing functionality to connect to each repository technology. A heterogeneous ETL platform capability addresses each of these needs:
The challenge with content consolidation is that there are several, if not numerous, repository technologies to be addressed. For example, if content in SharePoint, FileNet, Lotus Notes, and ApplicationXtender are content sources to be consolidated into a Documentum target infrastructure, then extract must be performed on four different technologies and load into one technology. Each of the technologies involved implies a need for knowledge of the technology, technical infrastructure (e.g., test environment), and existing functionality to connect to each repository technology. A heterogeneous ETL platform capability addresses each of these needs:
- Knowledge of each technology is required to inform consolidation strategy from an enterprise taxonomy point of view. Knowing each source technology is required to understand how the content in each source will map to a taxonomy for the enterprise. Knowledge of each source technology is also important for consolidation efficiency. Consolidation efficiency can be improved by best leveraging technical capabilities in the source, such as indexes and application programming interfaces.
- Technical infrastructure (for the several or numerous technologies involved) to test and execute consolidations can be costly and time consuming to establish, but is required for an effective consolidation program. In most consolidation programs, the technical infrastructure is required for a finite period of time, and obtaining required infrastructure via outsourcing is an economically attractive idea. Aside from traditional outsourcing or hosting, large consolidation programs can also leverage infrastructure of solution providers or software vendors.
- Constructing extract connections to each source repository technology is the most technically risky portion of a consolidation effort. Using pre-existing extract connections for the source repositories or proven models for constructing them greatly reduces the risk.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
The Silo-Investment and De-silo Cycle
When people refer to silos, or stovepipes, they mean it in a critical way. Silos refer to something inefficient because it is insulated, disconnected, uncoordinated. There are organizational silos. There are information silos. There are communication silos.
In some cases, silos successfully fulfill a business case. Successful silos provide promised cost or revenue, but all businesses evolve over time and to evolve with the business, silos that succeeded need to shed their insulated, disconnected, uncoordinated characteristics -- the organization, information, and communications need to be de-siloed.
In other cases silos never achieve their planned business case. In case of failure, the need for integration and coordination may never have been understood or articulated. Like the successful silos adapting to a changing business, the failed silos also need to be de-siloed.
Silos are created and dismantled in cycles driven by business and technology trends. Silos crop up the “Silo-investment” portion of the cycle. They are folded back into the enterprise during the de-silo portion of the cycle.
Portals were envisioned as a way to foster cross organizational communication and many portal initiatives delivered on this promise successfully. The late 1990s and the early years of the 21st century saw much investment in portals. Technologies from Plumtree, Epicentric, and Vignette flourished in the silo-investment phase. The business continues to change and continues to embrace the portal concept, so those portal technologies have begun to be folded back into the enterprise during the de-siloing phase. Portals continue, but they continue in a way that is connected with the rest of the enterprise.
Consider that we are now in the silo-investment phase of web 2.0 social networking technology. There is investment in technologies such as Jive’s Clearspace and Atlassian’s Confluence to realize the value in web 2.0 functionality. This is the silo-investment phase of web 2.0. As before, there will also come a time for de-siloing.
In some cases, silos successfully fulfill a business case. Successful silos provide promised cost or revenue, but all businesses evolve over time and to evolve with the business, silos that succeeded need to shed their insulated, disconnected, uncoordinated characteristics -- the organization, information, and communications need to be de-siloed.
In other cases silos never achieve their planned business case. In case of failure, the need for integration and coordination may never have been understood or articulated. Like the successful silos adapting to a changing business, the failed silos also need to be de-siloed.
Silos are created and dismantled in cycles driven by business and technology trends. Silos crop up the “Silo-investment” portion of the cycle. They are folded back into the enterprise during the de-silo portion of the cycle.
Portals were envisioned as a way to foster cross organizational communication and many portal initiatives delivered on this promise successfully. The late 1990s and the early years of the 21st century saw much investment in portals. Technologies from Plumtree, Epicentric, and Vignette flourished in the silo-investment phase. The business continues to change and continues to embrace the portal concept, so those portal technologies have begun to be folded back into the enterprise during the de-siloing phase. Portals continue, but they continue in a way that is connected with the rest of the enterprise.
Consider that we are now in the silo-investment phase of web 2.0 social networking technology. There is investment in technologies such as Jive’s Clearspace and Atlassian’s Confluence to realize the value in web 2.0 functionality. This is the silo-investment phase of web 2.0. As before, there will also come a time for de-siloing.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Content Consolidation to Become Increasingly Common
In a 2008 Gartner survey of nearly 400 respondents, 69% of enterprises indicated they had more than six repository technologies in production use. These enterprises can benefit from a consolidation program (http://blog.crownpartners.com/?Tag=consolidation) using content Extract Transform and Load (ETL) (http://blog.crownpartners.com/bid/17240/Enabling-Consolidation-with-Universal-ETL), and will increasingly initiate strategic action to realize those benefits.
Two factors are especially important in driving the acceleration of consolidation initiatives. First, cost of consolidation is borne once, but the cost-saving, service-level, and “content de-siloing” benefits are perpetual. In times of revenue uncertainty, the guaranteed return of these perpetual benefits becomes increasingly attractive. Second, consider that increasingly sophisticated automation of content ETL reduces the cost of consolidation efforts. Prior to the development of content ETL, custom programming and manual effort made consolidation error-prone and costly.
Consolidation programs are typically made up of a “hub” and “spokes”. The hub portion of the program ensures the readiness of the strategic content management platform and coordinates one or more spokes. Each of the spokes addresses one of the non-strategic content management technologies, by folding it into the strategic content management platform. Whether the spokes are pursued serially or in parallel, the start-to-finish time required for the consolidation should be minimized to accelerate the returns.
Consolidation at user firms will continue to drive shake-out among content management technology providers. Vignette, Plumbtree, and Fatwire are among likely losers in the continuing shakeout. Weakening among providers such as these will accelerate consolidation efforts as user organizations move to the better-funded, more-rapidly-evolving, better-maintained products from the apparent-survivor providers.
Crown’s Buldoser technology and related professional services capabilities can enable and accelerate your consolidation. Ask us about a consolidation assessment to help you understand and realize the benefits of consolidation.
Two factors are especially important in driving the acceleration of consolidation initiatives. First, cost of consolidation is borne once, but the cost-saving, service-level, and “content de-siloing” benefits are perpetual. In times of revenue uncertainty, the guaranteed return of these perpetual benefits becomes increasingly attractive. Second, consider that increasingly sophisticated automation of content ETL reduces the cost of consolidation efforts. Prior to the development of content ETL, custom programming and manual effort made consolidation error-prone and costly.
Consolidation programs are typically made up of a “hub” and “spokes”. The hub portion of the program ensures the readiness of the strategic content management platform and coordinates one or more spokes. Each of the spokes addresses one of the non-strategic content management technologies, by folding it into the strategic content management platform. Whether the spokes are pursued serially or in parallel, the start-to-finish time required for the consolidation should be minimized to accelerate the returns.
Consolidation at user firms will continue to drive shake-out among content management technology providers. Vignette, Plumbtree, and Fatwire are among likely losers in the continuing shakeout. Weakening among providers such as these will accelerate consolidation efforts as user organizations move to the better-funded, more-rapidly-evolving, better-maintained products from the apparent-survivor providers.
Crown’s Buldoser technology and related professional services capabilities can enable and accelerate your consolidation. Ask us about a consolidation assessment to help you understand and realize the benefits of consolidation.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Crown’s Value Proposition: The Software First “Hybrid” Advantage
Unlike its competitors, Crown is not a typical firm. Rather, Crown’s value is demonstrated through its software offerings. Crown frequently uses engagements in order to leverage and grow their technology solutions.
Traditional IT consulting firms follow a prescriptive approach to client engagements. The process involves a detailed assessment of a particular client need and the creation of a customized solution to meet that need. The consulting firm will follow a series of steps in its process: conduct a strategy analysis, identify an appropriate technology solution, and implement that solution to meet the client’s need. This process is repeated over and over for each new client with little modification to the overall process or project timeline. The value of a traditional consulting firm is based on their understanding and application of “best practices”, or lessons learned from previous engagements, to solve a current client need; not necessarily in the process utilized.
By following this process, a traditional consulting firm is able to expand its knowledge base of best practices and create unique solutions for its clients. The consulting firm leaves the project with additional knowledge on how to solve a problem, but often leaves behind the customized technology solution that made the project a success. Because a traditional consulting firm is compensated on a time and materials basis, the firm is incented to create longer project timelines with customized solutions for each client.
For traditional firms, this model meets their financial goals:
· Keep billable hours as high as possible
· Avoid software that will eliminate the need for human capital
· Grow bigger, but not more efficient
Crown’s model rejects the traditional prescriptive methodology. Rather than only provide the next client the benefits of learned strategies, Crown also provides the customer with enhanced software solutions from each previous, and future, engagement. In this way, Crown can deliver the same technology solution adopted at one client site to another client without having to repeat the entire project timeline.
For Crown, this model meets their goals:
· Create a highly utilized, knowledgeable staff that can streamline the project
· Provide customized software solutions built on best practices
· Capture more market share and grow
· Establish reputation as the low-cost provider due to lower price and higher efficiency
Further, the client is able to own and maintain those best practices, and software, after the project has ended. Crown will continue to update its software solutions through future client engagements, providing updates to previous clients who own earlier versions of the same or similar software. Crown, in that respect, is able to continually service clients long after the engagement is over.
Crown’s Software First model provides several benefits to its customers:
· Rapid, skilled implementation of customized solutions
· An in-house software solution with ownership rights
· Benefit of previous product enhancements based on best practices
· Benefit of future product enhancements based on best practices
· Half the cost of the competition and twice the value
In addition to benefiting its customer base, Crown’s software model differentiates it from its competitors in the following ways:
· Continuously growing intellectual property
· Research & development is funded by the clients since it is developed on a case-by-case basis on the client site
· Software updates have created a new channel of recurring maintenance revenue year over year
· Crown’s software replaces manual processes
· Ability to take on more engagements and grow to include more software offerings
· Brand development and increasing ability to serve repeat customers
· Overall lower cost of ownership
By the efficient nature of this model, Crown continues to thrive despite the current economic downturn. When IT professionals are encouraged to seek low cost alternatives, they rely on an organization able to consolidate software solutions and provide the highest ROI possible.
Note: Thanks to Crown Managing Partner, Richard Hearn, for the text in this post.
Traditional IT consulting firms follow a prescriptive approach to client engagements. The process involves a detailed assessment of a particular client need and the creation of a customized solution to meet that need. The consulting firm will follow a series of steps in its process: conduct a strategy analysis, identify an appropriate technology solution, and implement that solution to meet the client’s need. This process is repeated over and over for each new client with little modification to the overall process or project timeline. The value of a traditional consulting firm is based on their understanding and application of “best practices”, or lessons learned from previous engagements, to solve a current client need; not necessarily in the process utilized.
By following this process, a traditional consulting firm is able to expand its knowledge base of best practices and create unique solutions for its clients. The consulting firm leaves the project with additional knowledge on how to solve a problem, but often leaves behind the customized technology solution that made the project a success. Because a traditional consulting firm is compensated on a time and materials basis, the firm is incented to create longer project timelines with customized solutions for each client.
For traditional firms, this model meets their financial goals:
· Keep billable hours as high as possible
· Avoid software that will eliminate the need for human capital
· Grow bigger, but not more efficient
Crown’s model rejects the traditional prescriptive methodology. Rather than only provide the next client the benefits of learned strategies, Crown also provides the customer with enhanced software solutions from each previous, and future, engagement. In this way, Crown can deliver the same technology solution adopted at one client site to another client without having to repeat the entire project timeline.
For Crown, this model meets their goals:
· Create a highly utilized, knowledgeable staff that can streamline the project
· Provide customized software solutions built on best practices
· Capture more market share and grow
· Establish reputation as the low-cost provider due to lower price and higher efficiency
Further, the client is able to own and maintain those best practices, and software, after the project has ended. Crown will continue to update its software solutions through future client engagements, providing updates to previous clients who own earlier versions of the same or similar software. Crown, in that respect, is able to continually service clients long after the engagement is over.
Crown’s Software First model provides several benefits to its customers:
· Rapid, skilled implementation of customized solutions
· An in-house software solution with ownership rights
· Benefit of previous product enhancements based on best practices
· Benefit of future product enhancements based on best practices
· Half the cost of the competition and twice the value
In addition to benefiting its customer base, Crown’s software model differentiates it from its competitors in the following ways:
· Continuously growing intellectual property
· Research & development is funded by the clients since it is developed on a case-by-case basis on the client site
· Software updates have created a new channel of recurring maintenance revenue year over year
· Crown’s software replaces manual processes
· Ability to take on more engagements and grow to include more software offerings
· Brand development and increasing ability to serve repeat customers
· Overall lower cost of ownership
By the efficient nature of this model, Crown continues to thrive despite the current economic downturn. When IT professionals are encouraged to seek low cost alternatives, they rely on an organization able to consolidate software solutions and provide the highest ROI possible.
Note: Thanks to Crown Managing Partner, Richard Hearn, for the text in this post.
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