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IT Project Failures
Failing with online backup

Michael Krigsman

30 Jun 2009 | 4:03 pm

Seeking to back up 350GB in safe, reliable, off-site storage, I tried Carbonite and Mozy, two of the most respected names in the online backup market. Both products failed miserably to achieve my goals, each one in a perversely different way. Carbonite offers a simple, set-and-forget solution that should make life easy. In my case, something bad happened along the way because I can no longer restore files reliably. This screen capture shows what happens when I try to restore files using the company’s remote access feature: As you can see, Carbonite can’t find my selected file.
Enterprise 2.0: The Kumbaya irony

Michael Krigsman

29 Jun 2009 | 4:11 pm

Last week I attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. It’s one of my favorite events, primarily because so many online friends attend from around the world and I enjoy their company. Despite overwhelming good will among participants, the conference exposed gaps between expectations and reality that continue to plague the Enterprise 2.0 world. Enterprise 2.0 aspirations. Enterprise 2.0 suggests a network of organizational activities involving collaboration, cooperation, and engagement as part of a broader ethos of social interaction in business. Professor Andrew McAfee, formerly…
Computer errors in public places

Michael Krigsman

24 Jun 2009 | 7:14 am

Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent much time in airports and hotels to bring you, dear reader, strange and fascinating tales from the world of IT. During my travels, I keep an ever-watchful eye for interesting and bloggable tidbits. Fortunately, I hit pay dirt twice and have photos to prove it. First, here’s a photo of the session announcement board at HP’s Software Universe 2009 conference, held at the Sands in Las Vegas. Note, this is a Sands issue and has nothing to do with HP: …and a cropped, rotated version showing the error: Looks to me like hardware failure…
HP connects IT investment, value, and transparency

Michael Krigsman

22 Jun 2009 | 3:39 pm

Last week, I attended HP’s Software Universe 2009 conference to participate on a panel discussion around success strategies for deploying project portfolio management (PPM). I used the opportunity to speak with HP executives about their vision for the future of PPM and its relationship to enterprise value creation. To understand the company’s PPM product direction, I spoke with four folks representing HP’s views on features, strategy, and customer implementation: Paul Muller, VP for Strategic Marketing Ken Cheney, Director of Products, IT Financial Management Bruce Randall,…
Pentagon kills $6.3 billion missile technology project

Michael Krigsman

15 Jun 2009 | 6:06 pm

The Pentagon canceled Northrop Grumman’s Kinetic Energy Interceptor program amid accusations by Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, that the system’s design would not accomplish key military objectives. It’s not an IT failure, per se, but certainly a great example of poor fit-to-purpose between technology and business requirements, leading to project abandonment and failure. Northrop Grumman had completed approximately $1.2 billion of work at the time of cancellation. The Pentagon said it terminated the project for the “convenience of the government” and not because…

Informationweek: Software News
Canonical, Eucalyptus Offer Private Cloud Consulting

2 Jul 2009 | 1:20 pm

Consulting service would encourage the concept of hybrid clouds -- open source private clouds that align with Amazon's EC2 public cloud.
Global IT Spending To Drop 10.6%: Forrester

1 Jul 2009 | 11:56 am

The good news: IT spending growth will resume in the US in the fourth quarter, and in the first half of 2010 in other markets, according to Forrester Research.
Red Hat To Certify Linux Apps For Amazon's EC2

1 Jul 2009 | 6:30 am

Move will guarantee that Enterprise Linux packaged with third-party apps are ready to run in Amazon's EC2 cloud.
Windows 7 Beta Kill Switch Activated

1 Jul 2009 | 5:12 am

The trial version of Microsoft's next operating system has entered its expiration phase.
Ericsson Rolling Out App Store

30 Jun 2009 | 1:10 pm

The company is trying to one-up Apple's App Store by offering carriers a hosted virtual store that can reach a broad variety of devices.

Informationweek: Infrastructure
WiMax Ready To Surge Again

2 Jul 2009 | 2:00 pm

Growth of the wide-area technology slowed in the economic meltdown, but analysts predict the deployment of WiMax equipment will take off again by year end.
Canonical, Eucalyptus Offer Private Cloud Consulting

2 Jul 2009 | 1:20 pm

Consulting service would encourage the concept of hybrid clouds -- open source private clouds that align with Amazon's EC2 public cloud.
Mobile Payments Startup Raises $8 Million

2 Jul 2009 | 12:27 pm

Bling Nation is entering the highly competitive space filled with deep-pocketed rivals such as Visa and MasterCard.
Global IT Spending To Drop 10.6%: Forrester

1 Jul 2009 | 11:56 am

The good news: IT spending growth will resume in the US in the fourth quarter, and in the first half of 2010 in other markets, according to Forrester Research.
Nokia Siemens' Acquisition Of Nortel's LTE Unit Contested

29 Jun 2009 | 2:20 pm

In the face of objections from creditors and suppliers, Nortel wants a judge to approve the proposed $650 million sale.

Informationweek: Business Intelligence
Ellison: Oracle Plans To Be No. 1 In On-Demand Software

24 Jun 2009 | 12:30 pm

It may take 10 years, the CEO acknowledges, noting that Oracle is currently only "a little bit" involved in cloud computing.
RightScale Offers Hyperic HQ For Cloud Management

24 Jun 2009 | 6:40 am

Hyperic HQ monitors an application's performance as it runs in the Amazon EC2 cloud or in Google's App Engine cloud.
Oracle Profit Beats Forecast

24 Jun 2009 | 5:05 am

The company reported a smaller-than-expected drop in new software sales and said it grabbed market share from SAP in certain segments.
Enterprise 2.0: SAP, Jive Combining BI With Wikis

23 Jun 2009 | 2:34 pm

IT departments won't have to arrange for separate licenses or subscriptions for business intelligence tools that people want to use in their companies' Jive-based wikis.
Database Servers: Candy For Hackers

19 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Sensitive information and poor security administration make tempting targets.

CIO: News
Google Updates Some Apps Functions

1 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm

Google made a few updates to various Apps services this week, including one that lets users within an organization share templates with each other.
Judge Temporarily Dismisses MySpace Cyberbully Case

1 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm

A U.S. judge on Friday overruled a jury verdict and dismissed a case against a Missouri woman convicted last November in a cyberbullying case that led to a teenager's death.
Green IT to Be an Antidote for CIOs

1 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm

The ongoing economic recession can help drive adoption of green IT within the data centre, according to a report from Datamonitor.
Judge Temporarily Dismisses MySpace Cyberbully Case

1 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm

A U.S. judge on Friday overruled a jury verdict and dismissed a case against a Missouri woman convicted last November in a cyberbullying case that led to a teenager's death, according to published reports.
Ex-Bay Networks CEO: Nortel's Enterprise Group Could Do Well on Its Own

1 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm

Former Bay Networks CEO Dave House says he likes the idea of Nortel's enterprise data division -- built around Bay technology -- breaking free and picking up its old name.

CIO: Blogs and Discussion
The SAP Help Ecosystem: A Paradigm in Crisis

mkalsi

2 Jul 2009 | 1:02 pm

From cumulusIQ Blog earlier in the week. read more
9 Ways to Boost Productivity with MS Word

Jen Darr

2 Jul 2009 | 12:10 pm

Desktop application consultants rarely come across a question that hasn't been asked before. Experience and stats prove that most users have problems with the same general areas of an application. read more
Counterfeiters, Pirates and Organized Crime

2 Jul 2009 | 8:33 am

There is a threat difficult to quantify or even detect, one that has not yet grabbed the headlines or captured the imagination, and yet is relentlessly and efficiently looting, pillaging and plunderin read more
The Federal Govt Big Benchmark

chris minich

2 Jul 2009 | 5:16 am

Does anyone have a contact office or individual for the GSA requirement for the IOI Report submitted by Gartner Group. The story was written by Stephanie Overby on July 11,2007
Importance of PCI Compliance within the Home-Based Customer Care Industry

Jim Walker

1 Jul 2009 | 2:45 pm

By Jim Walker, Chief Technology Officer at Arise Virtual Solutions read more

CIO: How-to
Three Tips for Hearing about Jobs from Recruiters

25 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Mark Polansky breaks down the dos and don'ts when working with recruiters.
How Mt. Sinai's IT Team Made Virtualization Easier

25 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Adding automatic response and recovery to tools that monitor physical and virtual servers improves the outlook for Mt. Sinai Hospital data centers. One secret to success : process automation.
What Your IT Budget Says About Your Organization's Value

24 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Can anyone tell what IT contributes to your business just by looking at your budget? If they can't, you're less effective than you could be.
Global Work Experience As A Career Boost

24 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Time spent working abroad can often provide critical experience and lead to great career opportunities. But making the transition isn't as easy as you think. CIOs share their experiences.
How to Save Your Strategic Rights

23 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

The CIO of Santander Consumer USA convinced the business to keep him on the strategic team.

CIO: Careers
The Evolution of the Network Engineer

1 Jul 2009 | 9:00 pm

As new technologies emerge, there's plenty of network engineering--and architecting, design and implementation--left to do. The trick lies in understanding the distinctions between technologies that have become commodities (and can therefore be outsourced) and those that are emerging as strategic differentiators.
Why CIOs and IT Need a Vacation

25 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

When the economy finally recovers, workplace stress will only rise. CIOs should set a good example for their staff and rest up with a week off, now.
Hot Jobs: Capacity Manager

24 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Helps to ensure sufficient IT resources to support the business.
Job Seekers: Get Ready for the "Character" Interview

24 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

In an employer's job market, hiring managers take their time getting to know a job seeker's character, personality and values. Personal questions and even table manners are fair game.
Sarah Palin's CIO on Hunting for Bear and IT Staff

21 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

What's it like to be Sarah Palin's CIO? In this latest Hiring Manager interview, Alaska CIO Annette Kreitzer talks about IT culture change, working for a high-profile boss and making time for the bear necessities.

Software as Services
WebEx augurs ill for Cisco's cloud ambitions

Phil Wainewright

1 Jul 2009 | 1:04 pm

Color me skeptical, but I feel the detail behind yesterday and today’s Cisco Live event hasn’t matched the aspirations set out in executive keynotes. I like the vision set out by CEO John Chambers of providing a technology infrastructure that (as Oliver Marks puts it) does a better job of connecting people. I’m highly supportive when CTO Padmasree Warrior looks ahead to a future fabric of ‘intercloud’ interoperability standards — ending lock-in by individual cloud providers — and talks about ‘federation’ between cloud and on-premise. But when I…
LucidEra's demise is about money, not SaaS

Phil Wainewright

24 Jun 2009 | 2:27 pm

I’ve been struck by the contrasting reactions to two separate company shutdowns that have taken place this week. It emerged on Monday that SaaS business intelligence vendor LucidEra emailed customers late last week to inform them the company will cease operations at the end of this month. Immediately there was a flurry of blog posts debating what this meant for the future of SaaS and of SaaS BI in particular. Tech journalist Christina Torode even wrote that LucidEra’s demise harkens to ASP downfalls. Monday also brought the news that Clear, a subscription service that operates…
Cheap jibe sullies SAP's SaaS strategy

Phil Wainewright

18 Jun 2009 | 5:54 am

My jaw dropped as I read this just-published CIO.com interview with SAP’s CTO Vishal Sikka. Last week, John Wookey, executive vice-president of large enterprise on-demand, set out SAP’s commitment to on-demand in a widely-reported speech in Amsterdam (SAP this week reiterated the commitment in a corporate press release). This week, the company’s CTO had this to say about leading SaaS vendor Salesforce.com: “When [vendors] call their little salesforce-automation application a ‘platform’, that does actually bother me, as a technologist, to be honest with…
Adobe morphs the online spreadsheet

Phil Wainewright

17 Jun 2009 | 7:51 am

One thing I found especially interesting about Adobe’s new Acrobat.com announcements this week (Techmeme coverage here) is its hybrid spreadsheet/database application called Tables. I already discussed Adobe’s subscription model in another post earlier this month, What your bank can teach you about freemium, so I won’t elaborate on that aspect of the announcement beyond mentioning that we can now start to make a judgement whether Adobe has followed my fourth guideline, “Price for value.” Here’s the verdict from CloudAve’s Krishnan Subramanian:…
Netviewer aims to outshine WebEx in Europe

Phil Wainewright

16 Jun 2009 | 6:55 am

With more than 15,000 customers in 55 countries, one of Europe’s largest indigenous SaaS players is Germany’s Netviewer. Its online meeting platform is a rival to well-known US names such as WebEx (part of Cisco) and the GoToMyPC/GoToMeeting products from Citrix OnLine. Already the number two web meetings player in Europe in 2007 (according to market researcher Frost & Sullivan), the company added venture backing last year from Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Online Venture Fund and European Founders Fund, the investment vehicle of Internet luminaries the Samwer brothers. I had…

thingamy
Increase profits by working less

sig

2 Jul 2009 | 3:25 am

What's taking up most of your working day?Add up the time spent on the following: Receiving tasks from superiors Distributing tasks to subordinates Discussing these tasks to get more knowledge and clarify Emailing Phone and Skype calls Searching for information Shuffling paper or looking for paper, documents and forms Meetings (non-single task meetings) Budgeting Fretting over deadlines Planning work Updating plans Reporting Keeping to-do lists up to date How many percent of your daily time would that be? 30%? 40%? 50%? 60%?All of the above have no other purpose than…
Solutions creates problems

sig

25 Jun 2009 | 4:48 am

Thingamy's first business task is to create problems. Worse, Thingamy's business is to create problems for the daily work of most people! Sounds like a rather bad business purpose or what? Not so, it's more to it:Solving problems is the foremost driver of new products, services and economic growth. That we're taught.What nobody teaches you is that you need a solution before a state becomes a problem.Do you wake up every day thinking "ouch, ouch, I'm going to die one day, must fix that problem!"?You don't. That you eventually will die from old age has…
Stop managing

sig

16 Jun 2009 | 5:30 am

If you like the occasional blinding flash of the obvious there's a book out - Management rewired: Why feedback doesn't work and other surprising lessons from the latest brain science by Charles S. Jacobs. Basically takeaway is that the annual performance review is for the birds, and boss pressure is of dubious value. When I was involved in running companies I always found employees telling about their latest work successes and solutions like new algorithms or graphical UIs at lunch. Not bragging to a boss but discussing and getting much ahhs and ooohs from their peers. Peer strokes…
Go to market by Extreme Business Planning

sig

11 Jun 2009 | 2:23 am

Don't know if this is an effort to make own behaviour plausible, but so what...When entering a market the GAMP (Generally Accepted Marketing Practices) has to be right, as in getting certain stuff right: Target market Price Packaging Channel Story And the rest of it But one forgets, there are two ways to enter a market:A. By GAMP Spend days and weeks in the boardroom trying to outguess your potential customers as to who, how, what and when they will use your product. Set the choices in stone, get the channel onboard, set the message and story, price it and colour your product. Go.
The conceptual failure of business software and why nobody bothers

sig

9 Jun 2009 | 5:10 am

If you're in business you'll soon find the need for some business software...When you forget to follow up potential clients that's when you find a need to "manage" your leads and call the CRM vendor.When you need to know when and by whom to fill up your warehouse with bits, parts or whatever you invest in SCM and SRM. And so forth ad infinitum.Now, imagine you're running a shipping company; your purpose is to deliver goods from Europe to the US, the economy is in shambles and you need to get better and earn more money.There are two things you can do: Make your…

deal architect
Cloud: Seven Clear Business Models

2 Jul 2009 | 3:51 am

“It seemed silly for a software company to own a data center but after six months on the job I realized this was really a fundamental shift in the economics of software” What do you say about a guy who...
More New Florence

1 Jul 2009 | 1:43 am

On the innovation blog “Wicked Problems of a New Global World” Technology at Wimbledon Sheraton: Putting Social Back in Networking PC less web printing 3-D “Augmented Web” Magazine cover
Heart of the Matter

30 Jun 2009 | 2:24 pm

Don Henley starts his hit on YouTube with the comment "it took 42 years to write, 4 minutes to sing" As Oracle kicks off its "100 days of innovation", I hope they like Don have spent the last few years...
Why so difficult to declare victory?

29 Jun 2009 | 3:18 am

The one advantage you have with a category with Enterprise in the moniker is you get a wide berth. You can claim successes in customer centric areas, product development or human resources areas or generally around team collaboration. So, it...
Inhibitors to outsourcing

29 Jun 2009 | 1:32 am

Phil Fersht shared with me results of a survey AMR did with Global Services Media. In the section where they asked respondents about inhibitors to outsourcing, the answers were somewhat surprising. “While companies are tackling severe economic conditions, priorities clearly...

SandHill.com Blogs
On-Demand/SaaS Reality: SaaS: It and #039;s the Business Model, Stupid

Anders Trolle-Schultz

26 Jun 2009 | 11:43 am

There seems to be a near universal consensus that Software as a Service (SaaS) is going to have a major impact on the business world in the next few years. In spite of this, virtually all of the discussion around SaaS to date has focused on technology-and that SaaS is merely a different technology delivery model.
The Evolution of Open Source: Desktop Drift

Guy Smith

18 Jun 2009 | 11:17 am
Software in the Cloud: Data Warehousing in the Cloud

Evangelos Simoudis

12 Jun 2009 | 11:03 am
Best Practices: Software Sales: Sales 2.0: Why it is Imperative To Change the Way We Sell

Anneke Seley

9 Jun 2009 | 11:11 am

Many companies are realizing that the traditional way they used to sell to their customers just isn't working any more. In addition to the economy, which is forcing us to re-think our sales strategies to reduce cost and increase productivity, there are other factors that are making it urgent for organizations to shift gears. Customers' communications preferences are changing - our buyers are reaching for the phone and their computers when they want information rather than requesting face-to-face meetings. Sales reps don't have the power they used to have in a pre-Internet age, when they were…
Best Practices: Operations: The and quot;3Rs and quot; of Anti-Piracy Strategy: Reaction, Realization and Revenue Recovery

Tim Bridge

5 Jun 2009 | 11:53 am

Software piracy is one of those business problems we all know costs billions of dollars but we don't talk about very much, the strategies and opinions on how to combat the issue can be very different depending on market segment and business maturity. How a software vendor combats piracy is directly related to how well it understands the piracy scene's motivations and its own piracy activity trends. The "3Rs" of anti-piracy strategy take a vendor from Reaction to Realization and finally to Revenue Recovery.

Hu Yoshida
AMS - Not Your Mother’s Modular Storage!

Hu Yoshida

29 Jun 2009 | 5:08 am

Note: This post was updated on 6/30/09. This morning Hitachi Data Systems announced some new enhancements to the AMS 2000 modular storage platform. These new enhancements include Dynamic Provisioning, Dense Expansion Trays, AMS 2500DC for NEBS compliance, 8Gbs FC storage ports, and security enhancements. Since we began shipping the AMS 2000 platform in October of last year we have shipped over 60PB on this platform, making this one of our more successful storage products in the modular storage market. To understand why this product is has garnered such acceptance we must first understand the…
How do you thin provision and who needs to know?

Hu Yoshida

23 Jun 2009 | 8:23 am

USP V users are finding it easy to free up 30% to 40 % of existing storage capacity with Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning. The best part is that they can convert their current “fat”, over allocated, volumes to thin provisioned volumes with, no down time to do migration, no rezoning of the SAN, and little or no impact to applications. While the applications are running, we can create a Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning (HDP) pool of storage by using spare capacity or by adding internal or external storage to the USP V/VM. Once the HDP pool is created, we can use the Hitachi Tiered Storage…
Free Assessment, Free Capacity License, Risk Free Services

Hu Yoshida

17 Jun 2009 | 5:44 am

Today, Hitachi Data Systems announced a new service offering called Storage Reclamation Services to help users reclaim allocated but unused space. This service uses a feature of our Dynamic Provisioning product called, Zero Page Reclaim. Zero Page Reclaim is used after a migration or restore of a normal volume into a Dynamic Provisioning pool where the volume is mapped into 42 MB page stripes. The microcode examines the pages, and when pages are found to be full of formatting zeros, that page is released back into the pool, leaving behind the pages in the volume that actually contain data.
Selling less storage is not bad

Hu Yoshida

11 Jun 2009 | 10:30 am

Beth Pariseau posted a comment about IDC’s recent report on the drop off in external storage revenue in the 1st quarter of 2009. IDC reported that 1st quarter revenues for external storage declined by $5.6 B, or 18.2 %. It was noted by Beth that all but two of the top five major vendors, Dell and Hitachi, reported double digit declines. While Hitachi did report a loss, HDS realized a 1% gain year over year when measured in constant currency.The drop in revenues was contrasted with a 14.8% growth in capacity. “These contrasting results are due to a combination of currency implications,…
President Obama and digital data

Hu Yoshida

3 Jun 2009 | 9:07 pm

Last night I watched the NBC special ” Inside the Obama White House” . If you didn’t see it click on the link above and checkout some of the videos from that program. The first segment introduces you to the staff, with young twenty type staffers, and everyone on Blackberrys. When I see that I think of the presidential archives that President Bush transferred to the National Archives on January 20th when he left office. There was reported to be about 100 TB which was 50 times more that the amount of digital data that was archived for the Clinton presidency. President Bush…

Andrew McAfee's Blog
How Beautiful it is, and How Easily it can be Broken

amcafee

29 Jun 2009 | 6:25 am

The Enterprise 2.0 conference took place last week in Boston, and was by all accounts a large success (I am on its advisory board). If you couldn’t make it, a good way to get an idea of what happened is to do twitter searches on #e2conf (the hashtag for the conference as a whole) and on #e2conf1 through #e2conf49 (I think), which correspond to individual sessions. Many attendees were tweeting diligently throughout the event using the above hashtags, and have also used them to point to their blog posts and other related writings. Also valuable are the conference posts by Oliver Marks,…
Chapter 1 of Enterprise 2

amcafee

16 Jun 2009 | 5:55 pm

Harvard Business Press has made the first chapter of my book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges available for download (after you give them a name and email address). I hope it whets your appetite and leads to massive volumes of preorders. More seriously, I hope it piques your interest in the book’s ideas and contents. If you have any questions or comments after reading the chapter, please leave a comment here. Attendees at next week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference will also get a copy of this chapter. If you have any interest in…
Toward a Pattern Language for Enterprise 2.0

amcafee

10 Jun 2009 | 9:12 am

A Pattern Language, published in 1979 by Christopher Alexander and his colleagues, was a landmark book in architecture that also became a landmark in other fields like computer science; one review called it “The decade’s best candidate for a permanently important book.” It identifies architectural patterns at three levels - towns, buildings, and construction - that seem to work: to be both useful and livable, and to please and welcome people instead of alienating them. Alexander and his team came up with them inductively, by looking at architecture all around the world that…
The Diminishment of Don Draper

amcafee

29 May 2009 | 10:47 am

I am a huge fan of the TV series “Mad Men,” which has aired for two seasons on AMC. The show revolves around the employees of Sterling Cooper, a fictional Madison Avenue ad agency in the early 1960s. It’s written and filmed with the intelligence and attention to detail that we’ve come to expect from the best television since “The Sopranos” showed us just how good the small screen can be. The third season of “Mad Men” will start in August; my withdrawal symptoms are becoming acute, but I think I’ll be able to make it that long. The…
The Fellowship of the Net

amcafee

26 May 2009 | 9:25 am

Even though I’m heading down the river to a sweet gig at MIT, my affiliation with Harvard will continue. I’ve been named a fellow at the University’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, starting in July. This is a real honor, and I’m very grateful. The Berkman Center, which started at the Law School, is a legendary gathering place for sharp people who are interested in the the Internet’s impact. I look down the list of current and past fellows, see people like Jimmy Wales, Karim Lakhani, David Weinberger, and Doc Searls, and know that I’ll learn a…

The Enterprise System Spectator
Infor juices up its maintenance program value with Infor Flex

Frank Scavo

22 Jun 2009 | 9:11 am

Infor announced enhancements to its software maintenance offerings today. The program, dubbed Infor Flex, allows customers at little or no license costs to upgrade to the latest, SOA-enabled versions of their Infor products or to exchange those products for other, newer products in Infor's portfolio.I won't spend more time describing the program, as Infor has a good blog post on Infor Flex with
Infor buying SoftBrands, owner of Fourth Shift

Frank Scavo

12 Jun 2009 | 6:25 am

Looks like the vendor consolidation trend in ERP is not yet over. Infor announced this morning that it is buying SoftBrands, for $80 million. Softbrands adds two new products to the 50+ ERP systems in Infor's wide-reaching portfolio of enterprise software.SoftBrands may not be a well-known name, but one of the two products in its portfolio is better know: Fourth Shift, a Tier III ERP system that
Gartner Mid-Market ERP Magic Quadrant: Should Have Stayed in Retirement

Frank Scavo

11 Jun 2009 | 10:03 am

Back in 2007, I noted that Gartner had retired its mid-market ERP Magic Quadrant (MQ). As my source said at the time, the reason was that as a result of consolidation there were not enough vendors left in midmarket ERP to populate the quadrant.Well, apparently Gartner found some more vendors and has now brought the mid-market ERP MQ back from retirement.As soon as Gartner had issued its latest
Oracle layoffs, June 2009

Frank Scavo

5 Jun 2009 | 9:56 am

Based on the large number of search engine referrals to the Spectator this morning, it appears that another layoff is underway at Oracle. As it turns out, a surge in such hits in the past has been an early indicator of layoffs, as news spreads within the organization and people search for more information.If you have information or more details on what functions are affected, and numbers of
The downside of vendor consolidation

Frank Scavo

3 Jun 2009 | 10:19 am

Consolidation is generally an excellent strategy for reducing the cost of IT while maintaining or even improving service levels. Server consolidation, storage consolidation, data center consolidation, and applications consolidation are all examples of strategies that organizations use to accomplish these objectives. Our research at Computer Economics on consolidation consistently points to strong

Digital Landfill
8 Things to Consider When Starting a WCM Project

jmancini

2 Jul 2009 | 2:29 am

Simon Smith is the UK Sales Manager for GOSS, a UK based WCM vendor. GOSS is a leading supplier of local government solutions in the UK. Their customers also include the UK Society Of IT Managers, SOCITM, the UK ferry company Brittany Ferries and Breakfast Television broadcaster, GMTV.This post is part of an ongoing guest blog series around the overall theme of "8 things." The idea is to tap into the collective experience of members/readers on topics that they are passionate about. (But hey -- related to information, documents, content, or records!).
E-mail Still a Huge Time Drain for Most Organizations

jmancini

1 Jul 2009 | 11:24 am

AIIM Industry Watch - E-mail Management 2009The latest AIIM survey on e-mail management highlights the enormous resources that are being applied in most organizations simply to keep up with the e-mail torrent. 50% of responses spend at least 1.5 hours per day processing e-mail.In addition, AIIM found that a third of organizations have no policy to deal with legal discovery and 40% might need to search back-up tapes to find emails that could be relevant to litigation. The AIIM survey also found that 84% would have no way to justify why emails of a certain age or type had been deleted.
SharePoint Governance site launched

jmancini

1 Jul 2009 | 7:24 am

We're working with Corridor Consulting, Doculabs and some other folks on a new web site focused on understanding and sharing information about SharePoint governance issues. The new site is launching today - check it out at http://www.sharepointgovernance.org. While you're thinking about this site, you might also check out the AIIM microsite focused on SharePoint questions. You can find this at THIS LINK. If you are interested in vendor-neutral SharePoint training, there are a few courses in the AIIM Essentials series covering this topic that were developed…
Have a Document Passion? - 8 Things - You Too Can Be Published!

jmancini

1 Jul 2009 | 6:41 am

Have a passion about some aspect of document, content, records, or business process management? Interested in being a guest blogger in my "8 things" series? Click HERE for details.
8 Steps of the ISO/TR 15489 Records Management Methodology

jmancini

1 Jul 2009 | 2:59 am

Carl Weise (CRM, ERM-Master, ECM-Master, EMM-Master, BPM-Specialist, IOA-Specialist) has over twenty-five years of senior level records management experience in both Canada and the United States. Carl is a Certified Records Manager (CRM) and has given presentations at AIIM and ARMA chapter meetings and annual conferences. He has written many articles on records management that have been published. He teaches the ERM, ECM and EMM courses for AIIM.Managing electronic records is not simply a matter of procuring computer applications or systems. Solutions for managing content must…

Schneier on Security
Information Leakage from Keypads

schneier

2 Jul 2009 | 10:09 am

Can anyone guess the entry codes for these door locks? There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234.
More Security Countermeasures from the Natural World

schneier

2 Jul 2009 | 4:11 am

The plant caladium steudneriifolium pretends to be ill so mining moths won't eat it. She believes that the plant essentially fakes being ill, producing variegated leaves that mimic those that have already been damaged by mining moth larvae. That deters the moths from laying any further larvae on the leaves, as the insects assume the previous caterpillars have already eaten most of the leaves' nutrients. Cabbage aphids arm themselves with chemical bombs: Its body carries two reactive chemicals that only mix when a predator attacks it. The injured aphid dies. But in the process, the chemicals…
MD6 Withdrawn from SHA-3 Competition

schneier

1 Jul 2009 | 12:27 pm

In other SHA-3 news, Ron Rivest seems to have withdrawn MD6 from the SHA-3 competition. From an e-mail to a NIST mailing list: We suggest that MD6 is not yet ready for the next SHA-3 round, and we also provide some suggestions for NIST as the contest moves forward. Basically, the issue is that in order for MD6 to be fast enough to be competitive, the designers have to reduce the number of rounds down to 30-40, and at those rounds, the algorithm loses its proofs of resistance to differential attacks. Thus, while MD6 appears to be a robust and secure cryptographic hash algorithm, and has much…
New Attack on AES

schneier

1 Jul 2009 | 9:49 am

There's a new cryptanalytic attack on AES that is better than brute force: Abstract. In this paper we present two related-key attacks on the full AES. For AES-256 we show the first key recovery attack that works for all the keys and has complexity 2119, while the recent attack by Biryukov-Khovratovich-Nikolic works for a weak key class and has higher complexity. The second attack is the first cryptanalysis of the full AES-192. Both our attacks are boomerang attacks, which are based on the recent idea of finding local collisions in block ciphers and enhanced with the boomerang switching…
Security, Group Size, and the Human Brain

schneier

1 Jul 2009 | 4:51 am

If the size of your company grows past 150 people, it's time to get name badges. It's not that larger groups are somehow less secure, it's just that 150 is the cognitive limit to the number of people a human brain can maintain a coherent social relationship with. Primatologist Robin Dunbar derived this number by comparing neocortex -- the "thinking" part of the mammalian brain -- volume with the size of primate social groups. By analyzing data from 38 primate genera and extrapolating to the human neocortex size, he predicted a human "mean group size" of roughly 150. This number appears…

Content Management Connection
The Wild World of SIGMOD

2 Jul 2009 | 2:52 pm

I’m on my way home from SIGMOD 2009, my first experience attending a conference on databases. Actually, it was a my first experience attending two conferences on databases, since SIGMOD was held in Providence concurrently with PODS. Ed Chi, Jeff Heer, and I were invited to SIGMOD for a session in which we shared our perspectives with the database community on Human-Computer Interaction with Information. Yes, database people care about HCIR...
Affino Update July 09

2 Jul 2009 | 12:55 pm

You wait ages for a bus and then three come along at the same time. It’s a bit similar with Affino at the moment. We’re preparing the next release which we expect to release today or tomorrow. We’re also working on the follow-up release which we expect will be out next week. The next release is primarily a stability release which resolves all the key issues which have arisen from the major Affino 5.5.5 release....
Faris Yakob Dissects Social Media From The Agency Point Of View

2 Jul 2009 | 12:49 pm

I like Yakob’s slide set below and some of the points he makes in his blog post on the hype and chatter surrounding social media, particularly this one aimed at brands. So, looking at a short term ROI when assessing the value of social media is antithetical to the emerging reputation and gift economy that operates [...]
Go With the (Enterprise 2.0 Adoption) Flow

2 Jul 2009 | 11:50 am

People may be generally characterized as one of the following: optimists, realists, or pessimists. We all know the standard scenario used to illustrate these stereotypes. Optimists look at the glass and say that it is partially full. Pessimists remark that the glass is mostly empty. Realists note that there is liquid in the glass and make [...]
Why Businesses Don’t Collaborate: #3 Chaotic Group Input

2 Jul 2009 | 8:45 am

This is the third in a twelve-part series exploring Why Businesses Don’t Collaborate. The full research report is available for Download. Question How many of the emails you receive require your direct input or feedback on the contents of an attachment? Survey Comments Almost all require my input. I am the editor for all the member and provider communications [...]

Confessions of an eBiz Junkie
Are You Encouraging Innovation?

Len Devanna

25 Jun 2009 | 4:49 pm

I don't think it matters if you have 10 people in your company or 10k. Your employees are your most valuable asset.We've talked at length on this blog about the power of harnessing the social computer... The power of connecting people who otherwise wouldn't be, the power of enabling everyone to have a voice, and encouraging open-sharing of ideas for global collaboration on scales like we've never seen before.It's powerful stuff, and we're watching it transform our company first hand.So I get a nice reminder yesterday that it's again time for our annual Innovation Conference. Don't read that…
Welcome New EMC Bloggers

Len Devanna

11 Jun 2009 | 3:39 pm

But a little housekeeping first. Friends, May was a tough month. If I could only monetize the frequent flyer miles and hotel award points, I'd be blogging from my own private island in the Pacific.With all of the activity last month, I'm taking a much needed week off next week and will be completely unplugged... Assuming I can actually handle being disconnected for any period of time. Let's see if I can do it.On to more important topics...I'm thrilled to introduce to you the latest additions to our EMC Blogging Corps. You can find the whole lot of us over at the Community Section on…
EMC World 2009 - Recap & Thank you

Len Devanna

28 May 2009 | 1:58 pm

I'm delayed in getting this post up... Last week was an absolute whirlwind. I returned home and slept for about three days straight, and have since been paying the price for a week out of the office.This was my first EMC World event. To say I was blown away would be the understatement of the year. What a great show! Despite a tough economy and tougher travel budgets, about 7k passionate folks showed up and made it one heck of an event. The energy and the passion from this crowd was simply amazing. I also got a behind the scenes look at what makes these events happen. A HUGE shout out to the…
Please, Help Save Nick

Len Devanna

22 May 2009 | 11:12 am

Nick Glasglow is an EMC employee from our Pleasanton, CA. office. In March, he learned that he has leukemia and is in desperate need of a bone marrow donor to help save his life. Such stories are always tragic, but Nick's is especially so as he's a mere 28 years old.We need your help. Please consider being added to the National Bone Marrow Registry. I did so myself this past week, and it took a matter of minutes. Too often we don't take the time to act on such things until they hit close to home. I think we can all be a bit more proactive by signing up for such registries, donating blood.
Friends of EMC World - Peter Ross and Studio E

Len Devanna

21 May 2009 | 4:44 am

More cool information to share from EMC World Orlando... I sat down with Peter Ross to learn more about Studio E - EMC's exclusive customer reference community where customers connect with other customers from across the globe. Check it out...

Network Security Blog
The Network Security Podcast, Episode 156

netsecpodcast@mckeay.net (Martin McKeay)

30 Jun 2009 | 5:18 pm

Martin is off in Japan this week, so I’m joined by our good friend Amrit Williams from BigFix and the Techbuddha blog. Amrit and I start off by talking about the rolling blackouts in California and disaster preparedness, before jumping into the week’s security news. <Martin> I’m off in Japan, but not forgotten. I’m almost afraid to listen to my podcast! You’d think that by now I’d have gotten comfortable handing off the podcast while I’m away by now</Martin> Network Security Podcast, Episode 156Time: 41:28 Show…
FIRST 2009: Dr. Suguru Yamaguchi

netsecpodcast@mckeay.net (Martin McKeay)

29 Jun 2009 | 7:32 pm

I had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Suguru Yamaguchi, Professor of the Graduate School of Information at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, member of the JPCERT and advisor on Information Security for the National Information Security Center, Cabinet Office Japan. Dr. Yamaguchi presented the opening keynote for the FIRST 2009 Conference here in Kyoto, Japan and talked about Information Security Management and Economic Crisis. And at least as interesting for me was having my questions translated into Japanese and asked to Dr. Yamaguchi again to answer in his…
Heading to Kyoto: Who do you want to hear from?

netsecpodcast@mckeay.net (Martin McKeay)

25 Jun 2009 | 6:10 am

The wife and I are all packed, the house sitter has been briefed (”Just don’t burn down the house while we’re gone”) and we’re heading off to the airport in a few minutes to fly to Kyoto, Japan to attend the 21st annual FIRST Conference. The folks at FIRST have tapped me to be the media sponsor for the event this year and I’ll be blogging, tweeting and conducting interviews live on the floor of the conference. There is a very interesting group of international speakers who all work in the incident response field, some (like me) less than…
10 Things Dave wants you to know about auditors

netsecpodcast@mckeay.net (Martin McKeay)

25 Jun 2009 | 5:47 am

I really wish I could disagree more with Dave Shackleford and his post, 10 Things Your Auditor Isn’t Telling You, but I think he’s really hit it on the head with this one. And hit it hard. He starts the post by saying he’s not trying to be mean, but as a PCI QSA, there are a couple of times I had cringe, because it really hits close to home. It’s tough, because some of the points he makes are almost unavoidable in an audit process while others are signs of an industry that needs more skilled practitioners than are currently available. And his…
The Network Security Podcast, Episode 155

netsecpodcast@mckeay.net (Martin McKeay)

23 Jun 2009 | 4:57 pm

We start the show off by wishing Martin luck with his presentation at the FIRST conference in Kyoto, foolishly trusting Rich with the keys to the podcast. Then Rich fawns over his iPhone 3GS a little too much, but he does manage to talk about some cool new security features. Rich also rants a little on one of our PCI stories, and Martin updates us on his XBox wireless situation. Finally, we geek out a bit on Adam Savage appearing at DefCon. Network Security Podcast, Episode 155Time: 35:28 Show Notes: The Clear Card finally dies. What a scam. Mozilla reveals some new ways of combating…

Martin Fowler's Bliki
RequestStreamMap

Martin Fowler

Hang around my colleagues at ThoughtWorks and you soon get the impression that the only good Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a dead ESB. Jim Webber refers to them as Egregious Spaghetti Boxes. So it's not uncommon to hear tales of attempts to get them out of systems that don't need them.Battle was joined at one client and it brought to mind my younger days playing D&D. Webber swings but misses as the ESB is AC 2, Evan gets a hit and rolls 2d8 for 6 damage. Erik finally kills it by casting "Summon Request Stream Map".So what was Erik's decisive spell? Essentially the idea was to take a…
IllustrativeProgramming

Martin Fowler

What's the most common programming language in the world?I'm not sure how you could go about measuring this, but one thing you'd need to do is consider what we mean by programming. My candidate answer considers that the most popular programming language is one used widely by people who do not consider themselves as programmers. This language is Excel, or more generally spreadsheets.Spreadsheets are easily used for small tasks, but are also used for surprisingly complex and important things. Often I've seen professional programmers gulp when they realize that some vital business function is…
Revitalizing Enterprise Software

Martin Fowler

web site news: AMP, an Australian financial services company, ran an internal conference called Amplify. They asked me to talk about agile software development. I thought about how to make this best fit into the overall flow of the conference, particularly since I expected a significant part of the audience to not be part of IT. I settled on talking about how IT projects can be infrastructural or strategic. This classification alters how you approach the projects, in particular on the way IT and business people should collaborate.
Agilists and Architects: Allies not Adversaries

Martin Fowler

web site news: At QCon San Francisco 2008 Rebecca Parsons and I gave a talk about how agile approaches work with enterprise architecture groups. At the moment there's a lot of distrust and conflict between agile project teams and architecture groups. We dig into why this is so, and explore ways that these groups can work together.
Ruby at ThoughtWorks

Martin Fowler

web site news: ThoughtWorks started using Ruby for production projects in 2006, from then till the end of 2008 we had done 41 ruby projects. In preparation for a talk at QCon I surveyed these projects to examine what lessons we can draw from the experience. I describe our thoughts so far on common questions about Ruby's productivity, speed and maintainability. So far our conclusions are that Ruby is a viable platform that should be seriously considered for many forms of applications - in particular web applications using Ruby on Rails. I also go through some technical lessons, including some…

CRM Blogs
A note about content, silence, and career information

25 Jun 2009 | 2:22 am

Today I drive a truck of belongings to California – heading home as it were – although, home is an interesting and somewhat subjective topic. Suffice to say, the preparation for that led me to refrain from posting. Give me a few days and we will be b...
I Said Adults People! (Clapping My Hands in Emphasis)

23 Jun 2009 | 9:41 am

I keep running into people who act like juveniles every day. I find how people behave a little ridiculous sometimes. Here we are, we are supposed to be intelligent business people and we’re acting like a four year old on the playground. Here are things to work on so that you are mature in your dealings. It’s Not Personal It’s Business I’m not sure who said this first but
Top 5 Mistakes When Handling Stakeholders

18 Jun 2009 | 10:01 am

Whether you've got one or more stakeholders on your project, they can be a handful. Whether yours are demanding or patient remember it's their money that you are spending to get their project done. Here are 5 common mistakes that happen: Mistake 1- Failing to Set Common Ground. Mistake one can happen when you have multiple stakeholders. It can be especially dangerous when stakeholder #1 is
I Don't Like The Smiley Face

12 Jun 2009 | 9:42 am

Just got a new photo ID at work. My face had worn off the old photo a year ago and that was fine with me but then the email went out that if your ID was worn out I might be caught with it and then the "escalation" would occur - Being a non-conformist but not wanting to be hassled by the powers that be since the project I'm dealing with is once again the epic struggle of the lame leading the lame
Tour Recap/Tool Recap – songwriting and social media

10 Jun 2009 | 3:25 am

I got back to Arizona this weekend after a week of playing in New Mexico. It was fun and educational. Check out the videos from the road here: Video 1 – Phoenix to Silver City Video 2 – Silver City to Las Cruces Video 3 – Las Cruces to Ruidos...

PGreenblog
Radian6: Heading to Rock Stardom Themselves

Paul Greenberg

27 Jun 2009 | 8:14 am

On June 24, we par-tayed - for me until 2:30am. But this wasn't the "hey lets get wasted on um, substances" kind of par-tay. This was another new form of party - a content driven party. Before you... The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. The industry, the concepts, the news from CRM at the Speed of Light author Paul Greenberg
Enterprise 2.0: An Idea Whose Time and Annual Conference Have Come: Guest Post from Steve Wylie

Paul Greenberg

11 Jun 2009 | 6:49 am

I'm heading over to the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston on June 22. If you're interested in the social customer and how businesses should respond to them - and how workplace performance can be... The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. The industry, the concepts, the news from CRM at the Speed of Light author Paul Greenberg
Guest Post: A Most Unusual Area: CRM for the VC, Not Invested in by the VC

Paul Greenberg

4 Jun 2009 | 7:07 am

A little while ago, I was contacted by David Teten, CEO ofTeten Advisors. He told me about a survey that he had done that had uncovered the best practices for private equity and venture capital deal... The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. The industry, the concepts, the news from CRM at the Speed of Light author Paul Greenberg
What Should I Do? A CRM at the Speed of Light Dilemma

Paul Greenberg

23 May 2009 | 10:57 am

Help!!! HEEEEEELLLPPP! Whew. Okay. That's out of my system. A Publishing Dilemma I have a dilemma and I really need people to weigh in and let me know what you think I could do. You're literally my... The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. The industry, the concepts, the news from CRM at the Speed of Light author Paul Greenberg
Live from Orlando: Sapphire 2009

Paul Greenberg

13 May 2009 | 3:55 am

(Because I think this is important and I have no time, I'm producing this same entry on both this blog and ZDNET) SAP is always a bit of a conundrum to me. They have extraordinarily talented people,... The award winning, edgiest CRM blog on the planet. The industry, the concepts, the news from CRM at the Speed of Light author Paul Greenberg

The Database Column
The Truth About MPP & Data Warehousing

Michael Stonebraker

23 Jun 2009 | 7:07 pm

The purpose of this post is to explore alternative data warehouse architectures and understand the advantages MPP column store databases offer. It also debunks some of the myths of MPP data warehousing and suggests some evaluation criteria when comparing different MPP implementations. Shared Memory, Shared-Disk and MPP Database ArchitecturesStudents of database technology learn early on that there are three hardware architectures on which DBMSs can run:Shared-memory: Here, a collection of CPUs share a common main memory and disk system. This architecture was the dominant one in…
Securing Your Data in the Cloud

Omer Trajman

30 Mar 2009 | 10:48 am

The information technology world is buzzing about cloud computing, and in my circles specifically, cloud-based data management. The questions I'm asked most frequently (aside from what exactly cloud computing is) are about cloud security. In my presentation at Sys-Con, I outlined four different aspects to cloud security: VPNs, firewalls, encryption, and intelligent data management (click here for a PDF of the slide deck). In this blog post I will highlight the first few and expand on the last item.When you connect to a cloud computing provider, such as Amazon EC2, AppNexus, GoGrid,…
The Innovator's Dilemma for Analytic Database Systems

Jerry Held

9 Mar 2009 | 2:40 pm

Could the tidal wave of virtualization and cloud computing sweeping today's data centers trigger in the analytic database arena a repeat of the historic demises suffered by 14" and 8" disc manufacturers decades earlier? I think so.In his classic book The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen describes the trap that many companies have fallen into by continuing to optimize their products around customer-driven priorities while failing to see a fundamental change in market economics. Christensen delineates between "disruptive innovations" and "sustaining innovations." Disruptive innovations…
Debunking Yet Another Myth: Column-Stores As A Storage-Layer Only Optimization

Daniel Abadi

10 Dec 2008 | 12:04 pm

Editors note: This post was co-authored by Daniel Abadi and Samuel MaddenOur goal in this myth-debunking series has been to shed some light on common misconceptions about column-store databases that we have come across in our conversations with people in the database community. For example, many people think a column in a column store and an index in a row store are similar data structures. We debunked this two posts ago. Other people think that you can simulate a column-store by vertically partitioning a row-store. We debunked this previously, though the difference between these two is more…
Field Fodder -- Compression in Real World Datasets

Omer Trajman

23 Sep 2008 | 6:15 am

With database volumes growing exponentially (see this previous post) and CPUs far out performing disks (see this previous post), compression has become a hot topic among database management solutions. Just don't believe everything you hear about compression. Product marketing is ripe with claims of anywhere from 2:1 to 30:1 compression (Note: A ratio of 2:1 is equivalent to 50% compression while 30:1 is equivalent to 96.6% compression). While these ratios may be true for data cooked up in the lab, real world compression rates will vary dramatically depending on the data in your warehouse and…

The Enterprise Content Management Blog
links for 2009-07-01

George Dearing

1 Jul 2009 | 9:02 pm

TI's Web 2.0 Success Story: Better Customer Service - CIO.com "TI built the platform on technology from Telligent, a company that makes Web 2.0 technologies for the enterprise (often called Enterprise 2.0 apps). The Telligent platform allows customers to interact with the company hosting the forum, and each other, to solve problems." (tags: telligent Texas+Instruments online+communities web2.0 online+forums enterprise2.0)
Links for 2009-06-30 [del.icio.us]

TI's Web 2.0 Success Story: Better Customer Service - CIO.com "TI built the platform on technology from Telligent, a company that makes Web 2.0 technologies for the enterprise (often called Enterprise 2.0 apps). The Telligent platform allows customers to interact with the company hosting the forum, and each other, to solve problems."
Links for 2009-06-29 [del.icio.us]

AOL Cracks Web Publishing -- Sans Time Warner - AdAge "The notion of thin-staffed online publications is sweeping the industry." {AOL's view on web publishing} How Many Facebook Users Will Go Public? - BusinessWeek "..when "everyone" is chosen, third-party companies are working on software that can analyze the information to see what products or services Facebook members might be interested in. And Facebook is modifying its search engine to look for these real-time feeds as well.." Cisco Touts $277M In Savings Due To Telecommuting "Cisco has revealed it…
links for 2009-06-29

George Dearing

29 Jun 2009 | 9:03 pm

Cisco Touts $277M In Savings Due To Telecommuting "Cisco has revealed it has garnered more than $277 million in productivity savings by letting employees work from home using the company's own virtual office technology." (tags: productivity internet telecommuting technology work cisco green collaboration) How Many Facebook Users Will Go Public? - BusinessWeek "..when "everyone" is chosen, third-party companies are working on software that can analyze the information to see what products or services Facebook members might be interested in. And Facebook is modifying its search engine to look…
Links for 2009-06-27 [del.icio.us]

How to Kick Off an Innovation Project - BusinessWeek Hands-on look at how OfficeMax researched women's buying patterns. MinnPost - Introducing MinnPost.com Real-Time Ads "They (publishers) can automatically feed us the messages they’re already creating on Twitter or their own blogs. If you are publishing content frequently and pushing it out through an RSS feed, you can be up and running on MinnPost.com Real-Time Ads in minutes."

BizTechTalk
BizTechTalk Briefs 06/11/2009

Dan Keldsen

11 Jun 2009 | 6:28 am

Army Orders Bases to Stop Blocking Twitter, Facebook, Flickr | Danger Room | Wired.comIf Intelligence agencies, and now The Army can loosen up and allow viewing/participation in 2.0 - what's YOUR company's excuse for blocking? Hearing real stories from real soldiers is pretty radical transparency - yet with guidelines (not a bad idea). "The Army has ordered its network managers to give soldiers access to social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, Danger Room has learned. That move reverses a years-long trend of blocking the web 2.0 locales on military networks."tags: transparency,…
BizTechTalk Briefs 06/05/2009

Dan Keldsen

5 Jun 2009 | 6:28 am

Disruption: The Risks of Business Innovation - CIO.com - Business Technology LeadershipReminds me that I need to circle back with Michael Schrage - his work on prototyping is even more important than ever. Doesn't matter what you're looking at, whether software, cars, houses, business models, etc., building prototypes of some kind as quickly as possible, and TESTING to improve quickly as well, is the only way to survive. Destroy and improve in some sort of lab/experimental area (blog, wiki, twitter, collaborative space for virtual experiments) and you actually a stand of delivering something…
Where Have the Podcasts Gone? Psst... Over Here...

Dan Keldsen

22 May 2009 | 9:34 am

Out with the OldFor those readers and participants in the grand experiment of BizTechTalk over the last 3 years or so, you may recall I had launch a podcast series, titled, oddly enough, BizTechTalk. Greatly enjoyed the experience, and have had the pleasure of discussing a wide variety of topics in over 50 podcasts.In with the NewAs part of the ongoing investigations into what is happening in the business and technology world, I've re-launched the podcast series in my new (December 2008) company, Information Architected.The series is "IAM Talking" - and is an interview-based…
6 Months Into Business - Update

Dan Keldsen

22 May 2009 | 9:13 am

Gone Dark? Not Exactly... Shifting ChannelsFor those who haven't been following me in the world of Twitter in recently (@dankeldsen), while I have not been nearly as active here on BizTechTalk, I've busy with client work, and most recently having the wonderful experience of being with some of the smartest minds I've had the pleasure of interacting with at this week's Front End of Innovation (#feiboston or #fei09) just a 10 minute walk from my office.I was talking (as you can see in the YouTube clip above) on the topic of Enterprise 2.0 and Innovation, and had a great audience,…
BizTechTalk Briefs 05/16/2009

Dan Keldsen

16 May 2009 | 6:28 am

Wireless/Mobile Accelerating Past Landlines - End in Sight?Disruptive innovation in the communications world - we've reached a tipping point... "Preliminary results from the July-December 2008 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) indicate that the number of American homes with only wireless telephones continues to grow. More than one of every five American homes (20.2%) had only wireless telephones (also known as cellular telephones, cell phones, or mobile phones) during the second half of 2008, an increase of 2.7 percentage points since the first half of 2008. This is the largest 6-month…

The Data Center Journal
Data Center Pulse Rapid Growth Reaches 1,000 Member Milestone

30 Jun 2009 | 3:57 am

Late last year I was working on an article and while conducting interviews I was made aware of a new...
Department of Energy & ASHRAE launch Data Center Energy Efficiency Training Program

30 Jun 2009 | 3:49 am

Saving energy in data centers is critical in the face of rapidly growing information technology demands and the need to...

LANs / WANs
Wow, House, bitter much?

2 Jul 2009 | 12:16 pm

EOM
Boondogle Gift to the IT execs who supported Obama

2 Jul 2009 | 7:00 am

Since they stripped out the provision that the money be spent on stimulating AMERICAN JOBS, not foriegn equipment manufacturing, I see this as nothing but a giveaway to the Silicon Valley execs who bankrolled Obama's campaign.
Asterisk

2 Jul 2009 | 6:09 am

In response to the concern of continued support for open source PBX software like Asterisk, I would just like to point out that beyond Academia is a company like www.fonality.com that has grown by leaps and bounds as a partner with DELL now www.dell.com/voip and has built their Hybrid call center pay for support model similar to Red Hat with Linux. They also support the community edition fomerly called asterisk@home which is now trixbox which is still free to the community for self support.
Form recovery is not new

2 Jul 2009 | 5:46 am

My recollection is that form recovery began with either Firefox 2 or Firefox 3. Can't remember any more, but it's definitely not new in Firefox 3.5. My other Firefox feature that I can't live without is 'recently closed tabs' to bring back a tab I closed, and then I want to go back to that site but don't remember the name or how I got there.
Enterasys NAC sales triple

Brad Reese

2 Jul 2009 | 2:53 am

Last month, Network World reported that Cisco lost market share across the board. Meanwhile earlier this week, network security vendor Enterasys, issued a press release revealing that its NAC sales revenue grew 317% in 2009 compared to the same consecutive quarter in 2008. This growth rate contradicts many security industry analysts and pundits, who say that NAC will never get off the ground...

EMC Blogs
Hou-chan One Million

2 Jul 2009 | 12:16 pm

I'm a big believer in if you throw enough money at a problem you can make it go away. Now usually that's not the case, but in this case I'm right. Looky. Dear Fellow APJ Employees, I am writing to make you aware of a support group that has been established to help raise funds for the life-saving surgery of Houku Katagiri (Hou-chan), the 2-year old son of Katagiri-san, a fellow EMC employee in Japan. Late last year, Hou-chan was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy which is an incurable heart disease that takes the lives of 50 percent of those afflicted within one year. Heart…
How do you do your home backups?

1 Jul 2009 | 3:13 pm

Me? I use Mozy (Of course) but for those ridiculously large files I'm not going to wait for my ADSL connection to upload I use SyncToy 2.0 for Windows. SyncToy makes the copy to an external drive, Mozy scoops it up and moves it offline. I now have a fast local restore as well as an offsite copy. For any of you Macheads I'm sure there's an Automator Action somewhere which will do the same thing. And if you use Linux you're using rsync anyway so nothing to see here. Move along.
Winds Of Change

1 Jul 2009 | 11:05 am

I really enjoy meeting customers. However, not every customer interaction is sunshine and lollipops. Sometimes, the interactions can be tense at the beginning, but result in an extremely productive discussion. I had one of those today, and -- as I thought about it -- I realized I'm starting to see this particular situation more often. It's a harbinger of things to come. It Started Out Rough During a typical briefing, I'm usually asked to lead off the big technology strategy discussion. It's usually 45 minutes of private cloud / VCE material, with plenty of time for…
Are you smart if you ask the question or if you have the answer?

30 Jun 2009 | 9:16 pm

I've just spent close to an hour and a half quickly reviewing the entries to this year's EMC Innovation Showcase. All in all not bad but I haven't seen the one yet. Every year there's one I want to see win as I think it's a dynamite idea, I just haven't seen this year's one yet.There's three weeks to go and twenty pages of ideas so far, I expect an avalanche of submissions in the final week as people give up their unique little snowflakes for final review.Of course it's easy for me to log into the system and leave people feedback on their ideas. Have you thought about this, what's the effect…
2.013: a dr. who blast from the past

30 Jun 2009 | 2:18 pm

For those of you who remember Prime Computer, I'm proud to acknowledge that cut my teeth on high tech pre-sales support, performance engineering, and product marketing there in the late 70's and early 80's. Back in those days the "Route 128 High-Tech Beltway" was the east-coast precursor of Silly-Con Valley, where the long-haired preppies hippies cut their hair, donned suits and ties, and collectively laid the foundation for the technology transition from the monolithic mainframe to the departmental computer and eventually to the desktop PC. Back then I had as customers likes of Polaroid…

NetApp - Analyst Reports
Analyst Reports Full Library

2 Jul 2009 | 6:42 am

View the entire NetApp Analyst Reports Library
Gartner Research Highlights

19 Jun 2009 | 12:00 pm

NetApp is a world leader in unified storage solutions for today's data-intensive enterprise. NetApp revolutionized information storage by pioneering storage appliances: simple, scalable systems focused on storing and serving information. The elegance and simplicity of NetApp solutions will optimize your business and technical applications, increasing productivity throughout your enterprise. In an effort to continue to simplify the IT environment, we are happy to provide you with this digest containing recent Gartner Research. We hope that you find this resource of value in your on-going…
NetApp Snaplock Compliance Volume and NetApp Deduplication Storage Capabilities

5 May 2009 | 8:36 am

NetApp snaplock compliance volume and NetApp deduplication storage capabilities.
ESG White Paper: Making Unified Scale-Out Storage Data Center Ready

21 Apr 2009 | 8:05 am

Facing the stark reality of a prolonged economic slowdown, users are looking for a number of things from their storage vendors. They want vendors they can trust, market proven solutions, and products that offer real cost savings. New rich media content is being created for everything from training to marketing and becoming a mandatory component of everyday business. Whether it’s blogs or video, content is easier than ever to create—and management will become harder than ever without significant changes. Keeping up with data growth driven by the ubiquity of content capture devices (i.e.,…
ESG White Paper: Optimizing the Virtualized Data Center loaded in our Analyst Report Library

17 Apr 2009 | 12:00 pm

Sun Bloggers
JavaFX 1.2 and input methods

naotoj

2 Jul 2009 | 7:37 pm

One of the Features and Enhancements in JavaFX 1.2 is the API for dealing with input methods. Prior to the JavaFX 1.2 release, Nodes in a scene graph can only receive the result of the input method composition as a series of KeyEvents. With the new API introduced in JavaFX 1.2, Nodes can directly receive the input method composition information and do whatever they want with it. The overall design of how the input methods work in JavaFX is pretty much analogous to the Input Method Framework in Java itself. By default, Nodes receive only the result of the input method composition through…
Firefox 3.5 is Super Awesome!

anewcomb

2 Jul 2009 | 7:26 pm

Firefox 3.5 now supports native playing of ogg theora video files. This means you don't need to install any plugins to view them. Just click and enjoy! read more »
GlassFish ESB v2.1, MySQL v5.1 - Make HL7 v2.3.1 Delimited Messages from Custom Delimited Records with HL7 Encoder and HL7 BC

Michael Czapski

2 Jul 2009 | 7:18 pm

“Progress” notwithstanding, Healthcare environments still extensively use the HL7 v2.x Delimited messages for conveyance of patient and patient-related information between applications. The GlassFish ESB provides support for HL7 v2.x messaging in the form of the HL7 Encoder, which allows conversion between HL7 v2 Delimited and HL7 v2 XML message formats, and in the form of the HL7 Binding Component, which allow connectivity between the GlassFish ESB-based healthcare solutions and healthcare applications that support HL7 over TCP connectivity. In this document I will walk through the…
Gar Skull

katysblog

2 Jul 2009 | 7:17 pm

A year ago, my brother-in-law Marty accidently ran over a surprising and large toothy gar with a speedboat on Loon Lake in Wisconsin. Gars are big non-native predators which we don't want in our little lake killing the game fish, so no one was sad that it died. It is also not edible, so Marty threw it up onto the hill behind the cottage once I had taken a photo. This summer, the kids found the skeleton of the gar on the hill and had fun checking it out. All of those sharp little teeth in the long jaw are creepy but very interesting. Marty and the Gar, 2008 Gar Skull, 2009 Images Copyright…
Hudson 伸びる - プラグイン, 求人数, Eclipse

ogino

2 Jul 2009 | 7:14 pm

Hudson は引き続きとても良い成長を示しています。今回は、3 つの指標についてお知らせです。 Seiji Sogabe さんによる、新規 Hudson プラグインの分析を見ると、追加のペースは加速しています。 2008 年には 55 だった新規プラグインの数ですが、今年は、まだ半分しか経っていないにもかかわらず、既に 44 あります。 Sogabe さんはその様子を示すグラフ、左にあるものですが、を作ってくれました。 Sogabe さんの記事の英語バージョンとして、…

Oracle Blogs
製造業の課題、グローバル生産拠点を如何に統治するか！　　後編　ＭＯＣ

kiyoshi.nira

2 Jul 2009 | 4:30 pm

・Ａ社は、日系の家電メーカー・アジア地域の１０工場で家電製品を造っている。内８工場は自社、残り２は外部製造委託先・一年後、景気回復による需要増を見越し、出荷能力を１．５倍に増やす計画があるしかしＡ社は、各工場の生産能力に差があり、全体の効率は必ずしも良くない。…
There's Still Time to Vote for Your Favorite Sessions

stephen.fox

2 Jul 2009 | 2:32 pm

Vote-a-Session Deadline Extended to July 10 Response to the Oracle OpenWorld Vote-a-Session has been so enthusiastic, the deadline has been extended a week to Friday, July 10. If you haven’t voted, go to Oracle Mix now. Here's a quick recap of some top-rated sessions so far: • Blistering Web Applications with Oracle 11g RAC and In-Memory Database Cache • Oracle Projects Costing 11i10 for Seamless Capital Costs Accounting • Provisioning of Clusterware - ASM - RAC with Enterprise Manager • Transportation Security Agency Advances Shared Services With Oracle Insight…
Mix maintenance this Friday night

tim.bonnemann

2 Jul 2009 | 1:25 pm

We're getting our storage systems for Oracle Mix upgraded tomorrow night. Mix will go offline around 10pm Pacific Time on Friday, July 3, and should be back up around 10am Pacific Time on Saturday, July 4. Thank you for your patience! Enjoy your holiday weekend.
mds sharing and common tools - part 2

clemens.utschig

2 Jul 2009 | 1:15 pm

I figured I would start sharing stuff I built for fusion order demo - in this case - the common tasks to help you bootstrapping your soa 11g productivity. Download the mds-binaries jar here. Once extracted it contains a bunch of useful items a) seeding of adf-configs.xml based on settings in main build.properties b) seeding of the demo community for bpm c) import / deletion of artifacts into remote mds (configured through adf-config.xml) Before you run - set the environment, e.g. (and 1.7 and java 1.6) @echo off @set JAVA_HOME=c:\java\j2se_6_10 echo setting JAVA_HOME to %JAVA_HOME% @set…
O que � Oracle VM ?

fernando.galdino

2 Jul 2009 | 1:13 pm

Estava devendo falar um pouco mais sobre o Oracle VM. Então deixe-me comentar mais detalhes sobre ele. O Oracle VM é composto por dois componentes: o Oracle VM Server e o Oracle VM Manager. Oracle VM Server – é um servidor que tem como sistema operacional o Oracle Enterprise Linux e que será utilizado para a execução de máquinas virtuais. Essas máquinas virtuais podem rodar aplicações certificadas pela Oracle, tais como banco de dados, Fusion Middleware e aplicações Oracle (como Siebel). Bem como aplicações não-Oracle e aplicações em ambiente Windows. O ambiente de…

JT on EDM
The election in Iran and some real data analysis

James Taylor

2 Jul 2009 | 8:09 am

Copyright © 2009 James Taylor. Visit the original article at The election in Iran and some real data analysis.Syndicated from BeyeNetwork In 2005, Mr Ahmadinejad got 17 million votes and in 2009 he got 24 million. The question is, where did all those extra votes come from? The answer, according to this study, is not at all clear. I don’t write political or personal posts and, despite first appearances, this is not one either. When I saw the BBC News post from which the quote above is taken (Iran: Where did all the votes come from?) I was inspired to blog not so much by the specifics of…
First Look – Visual Rules 4.5

James Taylor

1 Jul 2009 | 3:01 pm

Copyright © 2009 James Taylor. Visit the original article at First Look – Visual Rules 4.5.Yesterday Innovations Software Technology announced the latest release of Visual Rules – 4.5. This is the third in a series of related release and the enterprise components of Visual Rules (Team Server, Execution Server) have been the focus of the last few releases (4.3, 4.4 and now 4.5). I talked about 4.3/4.4 previously and got an update on 4.5 just recently. First changes to Team Server, which now supports any relational database not just the one it ships with. Team Server – with a…
Making complex policies visual for the web

James Taylor

1 Jul 2009 | 2:51 pm

Copyright © 2009 James Taylor. Visit the original article at Making complex policies visual for the web.Another session at Brainstorm, this time a case study from Genentech. Genentech has many policy documents that are interrelated, complex and lengthy and yet essential to operations – employees must understand them and follow them. As Genentech has made progress on its process management initiative it has found that getting the participants in the process to follow the policies is really hard. With this in mind they have looked for new ways to help people understand the policies. The…
Using Business Rules to Make Processes Smarter, Simpler and More Agile

James Taylor

1 Jul 2009 | 2:16 pm

Copyright © 2009 James Taylor. Visit the original article at Using Business Rules to Make Processes Smarter, Simpler and More Agile.I presented on Using Business Rules to Make Processes Smarter, Simpler and More Agile at the Brainstorm conference. Here are my slides. I am going to record this one I think and post a recording soon also. Smarter Simpler More Agile Processes View more documents from James Taylor. Previous Next
Accelerating BPM Adoption

James Taylor

1 Jul 2009 | 10:20 am

Copyright © 2009 James Taylor. Visit the original article at Accelerating BPM Adoption.I am speaking at the Brainstorm conference in San Francisco and blogging a couple of sesssions. First up today is Michael Melenovsky (formerly of Gartner) on Accelerating BPM Adoption – creating a vision and establishing a roadmap. Michael made the great point that companies sometimes get started with BPM to try it out and then bog down because they don’t have a plan for getting to some defined future state – they don’t have a roadmap. Any roadmap requires an understanding of where…

Development & Integration Blogs
Customer/Competitor Pricing Matrix Template

1 Jul 2009 | 5:11 pm

CUSTOMER/COMPETITOR PRICING MATRIX TEMPLATE Customer Project Id/Code ...
Pricing Competitiveness Checklist

1 Jul 2009 | 3:05 pm

PRICING COMPETITIVENESS CHECKLIST Customer Name: Project Name/Code: ...
Pricing Approach Checklist

1 Jul 2009 | 11:12 am

PRICING APPROACH CHECKLIST Customer Name: Project Name/Code: ...
Developing a High-Level Management Approach for Proposals

1 Jul 2009 | 5:04 am

The purpose of this task is to create a high-level approach for the management and delivery of the technical solution, which will support the decision to bid and guide the proposal development effort. Developing a Management Approach Prepare for th...
How to resize size of the virtual disk of you VMWare Worsktation based virtual machine

30 Jun 2009 | 10:00 pm

You may have noticed that VMWare Workstation UI does not offer resizing of the disk for the previously created virtual machine. Good news! There is a command line tool called vmware-vdiskmanager that comes with VMWare Workstation that allows resizing of the virtual disks. On, windows such tool is commonly located at: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation>vmware-vdiskmanager Syntax

Speaking of Security
Security When Things Go 'Boom' Part III - Returning to Normal

30 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pm

OK, we're in the home stretch - this is the final entry in my 'Security and Disaster Recovery' series. So far we've covered security incidents as disasters, DR for security controls and the security of your DR environment. The last area of consideration is what happens when you need to return to normal operations. The disaster has occurred, you've successfully moved to your DR environment, and things have been humming along. Now the damage to your primary site has been repaired and you're ready to move back - how does this impact security?
The Birth of the Virtual Datacenter Administrator

30 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pm

I recently spoke at a VMware user group conference about securing virtualization. The audience comprised datacenter administrators and managers who are at the center of their organization's virtualization initiatives. I was fortunate to be able to talk with several of them at length about their experiences in virtualizing datacenters. There are several trends to note.
The expanding complexity of 'insiders': what you need to take into account

29 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pm

At the April 2009 RSA Conference, over 500 speakers discussed the most pressing information security issues organizations face today. I was very interested to hear the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI) talking about best practices for mitigating insider threat. (As discussed in my previous blog, this is the aspect of insider risk dealing with insiders who deliberately exploit security vulnerabilities to cause harm or for personal gain.)
ISO-ish

24 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pm

The conversation develops with such consistency and regularity I've begun to wonder why I still ask. But I do. Without fail, at every customer I meet I utter the question "do you use any frameworks to help with your governance, risk, and compliance?"
Insider risk and insider threat: what's the difference and why does it matter?

22 Jun 2009 | 5:00 pm

What does the term 'insider risk' mean to you? Does it make you think about employees sabotaging systems, or stealing confidential information for their own benefit?

TakingAIIM
Enterprise 2.0 – It all came down to CIT

Carl Frappaolo

2 Jul 2009 | 12:41 pm

Last week the annual Enterprise 2.0 Conference was once again held in my home town, Boston. Of course I attended. How could I not; hot topic, personal and professional interest, and the show was within walking distance from Information Architected headquarters. Like thousands of my colleagues, I came, I saw, I commented. So, why has it taken me so long to blog about it? Well, in addition to the usual – “I have been busy” excuses (truthful as they are), I also am learning how to balance microblogging and blogging. My more prolific than usual use of Twitter while at the conference kept…
ECM Writers Summit Looks at Web 2.0, Text Analytics, SharePoint, Cloud Computing and e-Discovery

Carl Frappaolo

9 Jun 2009 | 11:44 am

I have Twittered about it, as have many others in attendance - but now its time for the "beyond the 140 words-at-a-time" input. Last week I had the distinct honor of moderating the 2nd Annual Content Management & Archiving Writers Summit (#ECMWriters), sponsored by EMC Documentum. (I was also the moderator of last year's Summit.)Over 30 industry analysts, consultants and practitioners assembled in New York City to discuss the current state of: Content Management in the Cloud Text Analytics Web 2.0 SharePoint e-Discovery. Those in attendance included Ralph Losey, Ron…
The Power of Search and Information Management (or lack thereof)

Carl Frappaolo

3 Jun 2009 | 5:31 am

I am appalled, indeed outraged by the Chinese government's ongoing use of censorship and suppression of search tools, blogs and microblogging in order to "erase" the Tianamen Square Massacre from the history of China. According to recent articles, there is an entire generation of Chinese who have no idea the event ever happened. But, while I am outraged, I am also encouraged by the very fact that such an action is a very powerful example of the power of search and information management. Unfortunately in this case it is a misuse of that power in reverse. There is a…
ECM Means Business

Carl Frappaolo

1 Jun 2009 | 9:18 am

More than once I have blogged on the emergence of ECM as a specialized obscure practice within techno-geeks into the limelight of critical business applications. In my last blog post ("ECM It was the Best of Times, it Was the Worst of Times) I discussed how according to popular news sources, ECM was responsible for radically redefining entire industries such as newspaper publishing, leaving a wake of unemployed people and extinct businesses, but also at the same time promoting innovation and giving rise to new industries and burgeoning business models. Today, in perusing The New York…
ECM - "It Was The Best of Times, It Was The Worst of Times"

Carl Frappaolo

19 May 2009 | 7:53 am

Those that know me, as well as loyal readers of this blog, know that I am an ECM zealot – some say a nerd. So perhaps this post is just another ranting – but I felt compelled to reiterate myself because of certain current events.I entitle this post with a familiar quote from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, in which he describes the state-of-the-world at the time of the French Revolution: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Turbulent, but ripe with opportunity. That is exactly where we are today in the world of ECM.Over the last few weeks I was struck by…

StorageMojo
Update on advertising

Robin Harris

30 Jun 2009 | 10:44 pm

Close observers might have noticed that StorageMojo hasn’t had an ads for a month or so. I hope that is about to change. For readers who care about such things you can now read the StorageMojo advertising policy and rate card by clicking on Advertising or on the nav bar above. The gist of it: StorageMojo gets requests for advertising, and as a long-time capitalist roader, I’m pleased. But StorageMojo’s relationship with advertising is a bit ticklish. I don’t mind ads and I like the money, but dealing with advertisers is time-consuming and may give readers the feeling…
Cold storage

Robin Harris

29 Jun 2009 | 10:13 am

As the economics of data storage push more and more data onto disks, the energy efficiency of data storage is ever more critical. Storage is anti-entropic, so keeping bits organized requires energy. How can we minimize that energy input? Data cooling is the major reason disk drives have remained a viable storage strategy for 50 years. The IOPS/MB has dropped steadily for decades, yet disks remain the preferred tool outside of very low latency or high-bandwidth applications. Looking forward to massive scale-out storage infrastructures the data will get even cooler. Copan’s MAID…
Not a filesystem, not a database.

Robin Harris

17 Jun 2009 | 10:48 am

Jeff Darcy has a good post on key data stores, like Amazon’s Dynamo, and how they differ from filesystems and databases. He relates his transition from a filesystem purist to a more flexible perspective. The thing that really changed my mind about this was an observation in the Dynamo paper: strong consistency reduces availability. I’ve always thought of data availability in terms of data not being lost or stranded on the other side of a failed network connection. The Dynamo insight is that many applications have to do a lot of work within a small acceptable-response-time window,…
Outrageously cool new hard drive

Robin Harris

15 Jun 2009 | 11:23 am

DataSlide has come out of stealth mode with a very creative SSD replacement technology. They call it a Hard Rectangular Disk or HRD. Here’s their quick overview: DataSlide applies technology in new, patented ways to achieve unprecedented high performance 160,000 IOPS & 500MB/sec and low power
Atmos gets no love from EMC sales

Robin Harris

9 Jun 2009 | 4:39 pm

A couple of reliable informants tell me the same story: EMC’s Atmos is in a fight for its life. Symm and Clariion sales people are treating the new born product as a competitor, not another EMC product. The dozen or so Atmos sales people – yes, they have a tiny dedicated salesforce – are finding the well poisoned almost anywhere they go. Issues such as performance, stability, quality and future support of Atmos are reportedly being raised. Perfectly fair questions for any v.1.0 product – but they’re usually asked by competitors. To be fair to the EMC field, the…

Network Computing Magazine
Network Computing updates RSS service affecting feeds beginning April 12th

Network Computing updates RSS service affecting feeds beginning April 12th. This switch will appear seamless in most RSS readers, however you will need to re-subscribe to the Network Computing blogs of your choice. Some RSS Readers will not have an automatic redirect, so if you do not get your feed, visit http://simplefeed.networkcomputing.com and re-subscribe. With our new feeds you will be able to customize your feed with the news and blogs you need. We apologize for any inconvenience this will cause and look forward to providing you with the ability to customize your feeds.
Rolling Review: Web 2.0 Tools Demand A Cautious Approach

15 Aug 2008 | 9:00 pm

Map out security and answer data ownership questions before you deploy.
Metastorm Upgrades BPM Suite

2 Jun 2008 | 9:50 am

Version 7.6 of the Metastorm BPM strengthens the company's use of Microsoft desktop technologies, including Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office 2007.
TechTracker: Office Open XML

8 Apr 2008 | 9:00 pm

Office Open XML is Microsoft's successor to its proprietary Office document format. But is this a brave new standard or a sneaky bid for lock-in?
Project Management Keeps IT From Being a Victim of Success

1 Apr 2008 | 1:19 pm

Top IT shops have gone from being the No Police to the Frazzled Yes Guys. Project portfolio management can help stem the tide while keeping your hard-won reputation intact

Network & Infrastructure Blogs
Customer/Competitor Pricing Matrix Template

1 Jul 2009 | 5:11 pm

CUSTOMER/COMPETITOR PRICING MATRIX TEMPLATE Customer Project Id/Code ...
Pricing Competitiveness Checklist

1 Jul 2009 | 3:05 pm

PRICING COMPETITIVENESS CHECKLIST Customer Name: Project Name/Code: ...
Pricing Approach Checklist

1 Jul 2009 | 11:12 am

PRICING APPROACH CHECKLIST Customer Name: Project Name/Code: ...
Free book, Free database

1 Jul 2009 | 6:45 am

I know that I have few occasion to post anything about DB2 LUW, it's just not where I spend a lot of my time. However, this is such a deal, I can't pass by the opportunity to tell you about it. What could be better than a free database and a free book to tell you about the database. You can't get pricing much better than FREE.
Contractor Nation

1 Jul 2009 | 6:06 am

The jobs news has been grim, states are starting to offer free or low cost access to courses designed to teach you how to run your own business.

NetApp - Press Releases
NetApp Named Microsoft 2009 Storage Solutions Partner of the Year

24 Jun 2009 | 6:00 am
NetApp Manageability Software and Deduplication Help Healthcare Provider Improve Storage Efficiency

23 Jun 2009 | 5:00 am

Improved Manageability Products and New Software Bundles Enable Easier Storage Efficiency Savings and Utilization
NetApp Ranked #2 Best Place to Work in the D.C. Area by Washington Business Journal

18 Jun 2009 | 5:00 am
Deployment Guide Streamlines Implementation of VMware View for NetApp Infrastructure

17 Jun 2009 | 5:00 am
NetApp Comments on Data Domain's Recommendation that Stockholders Reject EMC's Offer and Vote in Favor of the Merger with NetApp

15 Jun 2009 | 9:00 am

Data Management Blogs
Free book, Free database

1 Jul 2009 | 6:45 am

I know that I have few occasion to post anything about DB2 LUW, it's just not where I spend a lot of my time. However, this is such a deal, I can't pass by the opportunity to tell you about it. What could be better than a free database and a free book to tell you about the database. You can't get pricing much better than FREE.
pg_stat_statements in 8.4

1 Jul 2009 | 5:52 am

Now that PostgreSQL 8.4 is out, I thought I'd write a little about my favorite 8.4 feature. As Mister Performance Whack-a-Mole, what makes me happy about 8.4 is the ability to whack moles faster ... which is why I'm very fond of pg_stat_statements.
Make the Connection

30 Jun 2009 | 7:38 am

It doesn't seem to matter where I go, the challenges seems to revolve around one strikingly similar question: "how do we prioritize our efforts based on the current situation?" Another way to ask this question is this: "how do we allocate our limited resources?" We may be in a steady state mode, where we focus on getting the most out of the business model we are following. We may be in a green
Bryce's Pet Peeve - Absence of Electronics - 6/30/2009

30 Jun 2009 | 1:19 am

My Pet Peeve of the Week is "THE ABSENCE OF ELECTRONICS" - "Imagine no cell phones, it's easy if you try, no PC's or TV's, above us, only sky."
Oracle Fusion 11g Middleware Launch Webcast

29 Jun 2009 | 1:08 am

As I mentioned a while back, Fusion Middleware 11g will be launching, officially, on July 1. You can join the festivities in DC by logging into the webcast, July 1 at 10am EST. I don't know if the breakout sessions will be included but it will be at least the keynote and I would bet a demo, possibly

BACK UP CENTRAL
The Rehydration Myth

21 Jun 2009 | 2:48 am

I think that the concept that deduplication vendors "rehydrate" data is completely wrong and needs to be abandoned. This "rehydration"...
The BD Event: 1, SNW:0

12 Jun 2009 | 9:01 am

Anyone who attended SNW this year knows that it isn't the show it used to be. At the same hotel...
Crazy Pills

3 Jun 2009 | 2:05 pm

See, I told you NetApp wouldn't match EMC's offer! What's that? They matched it? To see what I think about...
What a love triangle!

2 Jun 2009 | 3:37 am

When NetApp made a $1.5B bid for Data Domain, I was shocked. When EMC announced a $1.8B bid to take...
Data Domain now says Post-Process is OK

20 May 2009 | 10:24 am

In a surprise reverse of their longstanding "inline is the ONLY way to go and anyone that does post processing...

An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology
Oracle Fusion 11g Middleware Launch Webcast

29 Jun 2009 | 1:08 am

As I mentioned a while back, Fusion Middleware 11g will be launching, officially, on July 1. You can join the festivities in DC by logging into the webcast, July 1 at 10am EST. I don't know if the breakout sessions will be included but it will be at least the keynote and I would bet a demo, possibly even Fusion Apps (the future of EBusiness). I saw a demo of Fusion Apps at ODTUG Kaleidoscope and
What I did at ODTUG

22 Jun 2009 | 4:02 am

Well, I'm here in not-so-sunny Monterey CA for ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009. Great fun being had by all. AT&T cell reception sucks! I can barely make a call at all. The hotel offers t-mobil hotspot (which is part of our room rate) but when you get th...
Kaleidoscope 2009 and Breakfast?

18 Jun 2009 | 12:43 am

Hi all, I'm at the airport for my trip west right now. I leave in about an hour. I'm always early. Even for meetings and flights. ;-) Tampa is nice for business travelers. Free WiFi, plenty of outlets and even desks and chairs distributed throughout the terminal. I'll be in Monterey for Kaleidoscope 2009 on Friday night and I'll be there until the following Thursday early AM (this Thursday and Friday will be in SF). Just wondering if a
ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2009

11 Jun 2009 | 12:04 am

From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Technology Kaleidoscope 2009 Due to personal and business reasons, even though it was less than 70 miles from my house, I was unable to attend IOUG this year. I missed it. I even had several presentations accepted. Serious bummation! I WILL be at Kaleidoscope 2
The Purpose of IT and Who is your Customer

7 Jun 2009 | 3:08 am

From An Expert's Guide to Oracle Who are we and why are we here? Why does IT exist? By IT, I mean the traditional Information Technology department that supports the computer needs of a business. That can include programmers, desktop support, networ...

Enterprise Back Office Blogs
Customer/Competitor Pricing Matrix Template

1 Jul 2009 | 5:11 pm

CUSTOMER/COMPETITOR PRICING MATRIX TEMPLATE Customer Project Id/Code ...
Pricing Competitiveness Checklist

1 Jul 2009 | 3:05 pm

PRICING COMPETITIVENESS CHECKLIST Customer Name: Project Name/Code: ...
In the cage

1 Jul 2009 | 11:28 am

Ever felt yourself as a victim of the Catch-22?
Pricing Approach Checklist

1 Jul 2009 | 11:12 am

PRICING APPROACH CHECKLIST Customer Name: Project Name/Code: ...
Free book, Free database

1 Jul 2009 | 6:45 am

I know that I have few occasion to post anything about DB2 LUW, it's just not where I spend a lot of my time. However, this is such a deal, I can't pass by the opportunity to tell you about it. What could be better than a free database and a free book to tell you about the database. You can't get pricing much better than FREE.

VMware RSS Feed
Latest Updates

30 Jun 2009 | 6:20 pm

Latest Updates These are the changes or updates made to the Guest Operating System Installation Guide since it was last published: Added support for PBMs on 32-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, using a VMI kernel on ESX 3.5 Update 4. See “SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11” on page 227 and “SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11” on page 234. Added support for 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu 9.0.4 on ESX 3.5 Update 4. See “Ubuntu 9.04” on page 311. VMware Compatibility Guide: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software…
Top 5 Planet V12n blog posts week 26

28 Jun 2009 | 12:10 pm

Top 5 Planet V12n blog posts week 26 It was a good week again. Some awesome blog posts of which the following five were my favorites. It seems like it is getting harder to create a top 5 every week. I picked technical and non-technical articles this week. Enjoy, Maish Saidel-Keesing - ESX 4.0 running a vSphere Lab - part 1 & 2I have a dedicated Blade server for this purpose, and IBM HS21 E542 CPU (Quad) with 2GB of RAM and 150GB HD. Now you might say - and rightfully so - what can you do with only 2gb of RAM?? Well nothing really - that is why I have upped the RAM on the server to 8GB so I…
VMware Studio 2.0 available now!

28 Jun 2009 | 12:50 am

VMware Studio 2.0 available now! Although VMware Studio 2.0 Beta was originally scheduled to be released on Monday the VMware Studio team worked very hard and managed to release it yesterday. We are pleased to announce that the beta version of VMware Studio 2.0 has been released and is available for download. We look forward to receiving your feedback - issues, feature requests, suggestions for improvement - through the Discussions forum in the VMware Studio 2.0 Beta Program Community.If you already have a Store account on VMware.com, register for the beta directly.If you do not have a Store…
VMworld 2009 - Hello Freedom

26 Jun 2009 | 6:04 pm

VMworld 2009 - Hello Freedom VMworld 2009 August 31 - September 3 The Moscone Center, San Francisco Discover how virtualization is revolutionizing the next generation of computing?providing even more efficiency and flexibility at a time when both are critical to the future of IT. VMworld 2009, brought to you by VMware®,is the perfect opportunity for IT Professionals to connect with peers and virtualization thought leaders. Register to attend this unique event where you can: 1) Select from over 300 Breakout Sessions and Hands-on Labs to customize your conference experience and explore topics…
VMworld 2009 Content Catalog

26 Jun 2009 | 6:01 pm

VMworld 2009 Content Catalog The Content Catalog has been released for public viewing, covering VMworld 2009 session and lab titles, abstracts and speaker bios. Whether you are attending VMworld 2009 or are yet to register, please browse the Content Catalog for a full lineup of sessions and labs. Hear from experts and industry analysts about the latest in virtualization. From Virtualization 101 to more Advanced Sessions than ever before, there is something for every level of interest. Note: Content is subject to updates, so please check back often. Schedule Builder, which will allow attendees…

NetApp Studios
Blade Network Technologies: Cloud-Ready Data Center Networks

NetApp, Inc.

10 Jun 2009 | 1:00 am

NetApp and BLADE experts discuss the joint solution commitment to building simplified, converged fabrics to support Ethernet cloud computing.
Silver Peak: Scalable WAN Acceleration for Data Protection

NetApp, Inc.

3 Jun 2009 | 1:00 am

NetApp and Silver Peak experts discuss real-time network optimization techniques that help overcome bandwidth, latency, and loss across the WAN.
NetApp Play-by-Play: Thin Provisioning Part 1

NetApp, Inc.

13 May 2009 | 1:00 am

Learn about NetApp's Thin Provisioning technology from Michael Barrow. This is part 1 of a 2-part series.
NetApp Play-by-Play: Thin Provisioning Part 2

NetApp, Inc.

13 May 2009 | 1:00 am

NetApp's Michael Barrow dives deeper into how NetApp Thin Provisioning works. This is part 2 of a 2-part series.
NetApp Play-by-Play: Storage Efficiency

NetApp, Inc.

12 May 2009 | 1:00 am

Larry Freeman takes you step by step through storage efficiency with NetApp. This is the first in a series of NetApp Play-by-Plays designed as an in depth overview of NetApp products and solutions.

You Had Me At EHLO...
Spotlight on Exchange 2010: Voice Mail Preview - Part 1: Introduction

Exchange

29 Jun 2009 | 11:35 am

Voice Mail Preview will literally transform the way that you look at voice messages in Exchange. Exchange Unified Messaging (UM) makes it easy to manage your voice messages by delivering them in your Inbox. You can then use many types of Exchange mail client software to review your voice mail. Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Web Access (OWA), Outlook Mobile (and other clients connected via Exchange ActiveSync) and, of course Outlook Voice Access (the speech access interface in Exchange UM) are examples of the ways that you can now retrieve voice mail. Figure 1. Exchange UM voice mail in the Inbox…
Spotlight on Exchange 2010: Delivery Reports Part II (for Administrators)

Exchange

25 Jun 2009 | 11:11 pm

In my recent post Spotlight on Exchange 2010: Delivery Reports, I discussed Delivery Reports from an end-user perspective. In this post I'll review the different things administrators can do with message tracking. We'll discuss disclosure and privacy control settings and do a quick review on which roles have access to message tracking and how to grant access to a user or group of users. Disclosure and privacy control There are two settings that can be modified in the organizational configuration to change the level of disclosure of sensitive items in Delivery Reports: Read status reporting…
Upcoming Microsoft Certified Master Dates Announced

Exchange

24 Jun 2009 | 2:47 pm

We've just announced the next 4 dates for the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) Exchange Program over at our web site. There are two more Exchange 2007 deliveries planned, in September and November, and then we kick of the 2010 material in March and May 2010. Exciting times! We are still offering a discount for the 2007 programs so if you want to take advantage of that, I suggest you hurry on over to the site and have a look. You can also take a look at our blog for lots of useful background info, stories from past attendees, advice for potential attendees and more. I'll answer a question that…
Spotlight on Exchange 2010: Call Answering Rules (Part I) - Creating your first Call Answering Rule

Exchange

22 Jun 2009 | 10:04 pm

One of the core functionalities provided by Exchange UM is call answering, i.e., to answer phone calls and record voice mails on your behalf. With the introduction of Call Answering Rules in Exchange UM 2010, you can dictate how incoming phone calls should be handled, thus enriching the call answering experience of your callers. In this article, we walk through the steps of creating a simple "default" call answering rule - one that is applied to all inbound phone calls. I don't have any Call Answering Rule. So what? Out-of-the-box, there are no Call Answering Rules created for you. All your…
White Paper: Comparing the Power Utilization of Native and Virtual Exchange Environments

Exchange

19 Jun 2009 | 7:48 am

Is reducing or controlling the high cost of the power to run and cool computer hardware is a top priority for your organization? Are you considering server virtualization solutions to reduce your server footprint and the associated power and cooling costs? Because the virtualization of Microsoft Exchange servers rarely results in a reduction of physical processors, there is some question as to whether there is significant hardware, power, cooling, or space savings from virtualizing correctly-sized Exchange Server 2007 server roles. The answer to this question can be found in a new White Paper…

The Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC)
Security Bulletin Webcast Video, Questions and Answers – June 2009

MSRCTEAM

12 Jun 2009 | 1:48 pm

During the security bulletin webcast for June 2009, we answered a wide array of questions around the 10 bulletins we released. Of primary interest to customers, based on the number of questions we received on the topic, is the RPC issue addressed by MS09-026. As this issue affects third party products that utilize RPC in Windows, customers wanted to know if there is a way to tell if their third party product was vulnerable. First, we are not aware of any applications that are vulnerable to this issue at this time. Second, we recommend that you consult with your application developer as they…
June 2009 Bulletin Release

MSRCTEAM

9 Jun 2009 | 10:29 am

Summary of Microsoft’s monthly security bulletin release for June 2009. Today we released 10 new security bulletins. 6 of those affect Windows with two rated as critical, three rated as important and one as moderate. The remaining four all have an aggregate rating of critical and affect Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Works Converters. In addition to these new bulletins, we are releasing the remaining updates for MS09-017 which now includes updates for Microsoft Office for Mac (versions 2004 and 2008) and Microsoft Works 8.5 and 9.0. You may…
June 2009 Advance Notification

MSRCTEAM

4 Jun 2009 | 9:59 am

Advance Notification for the June 2009 Security Bulletin Release Today, we published our Advance Notification indicating that next Tuesday, June 9 at 10:00 a.m. PDT (UTC -8), we will be releasing a total of 10 security bulletins consisting of: · Six updates affecting Windows. Two Critical, three Important, and one Moderate. · One Critical update affecting Internet Explorer. · One Critical update affecting Word.
Microsoft Security Advisory 971778 Vulnerability in Microsoft DirectShow Released

MSRCTEAM

28 May 2009 | 12:46 pm

We’ve just released Microsoft Security Advisory 971778 today. This discusses a new vulnerability in Microsoft DirectShow affecting Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 that is under limited attack. The advisory outlines information about the vulnerability and steps customers can take to protect themselves while we’re working on a security update to address the issue. Our investigation has shown that the vulnerable code was removed as part of our work building Windows Vista. This means that Windows Vista and versions of Windows since Windows Vista (Windows Server 2008,…
Microsoft Security Advisory 971492

MSRCTEAM

18 May 2009 | 4:57 pm

I wanted to let you know that we have just posted Microsoft Security Advisory (971492) This advisory contains information regarding public reports of a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) that could allow Elevation of Privilege. Products affected are IIS 5.0, IIS 5.1, and IIS 6.0. The advisory contains guidance and workarounds that customers can use to help protect themselves. We will continue to monitor the situation and post updates to the advisory and the MSRC Blog as we become aware of any important new information. At this time, we are not…

SQLBlog
Fun With Batches - Make Your Query Fail

John Paul Cook

1 Jul 2009 | 6:46 pm

It's a common practice for people who write T-SQL scripts to test each statement one at a time before finally running the entire script. This can lead to unexpected surprises. When each statement in a script is executed one at a time, each is separate batch. If there are no GO statements, the entire script executed as whole is a single batch. Let's look at some code. /* Execute the following three queries as a batch. The third query will fail. The error message says #test exists even though the previous...(read more)
SSIS 2008 and the New Lookup

ejohnson2010

1 Jul 2009 | 2:33 pm

SSIS is a pretty useful tool for designing ETL processes. One of the transformations I was disappointed with in 2005 was the lookup. I found it a little better than the lookup functionality in DTS, but not too much better. Well, Microsoft must have read my mind because SQL Server 2008 has a new shiny Lookup transformation that is, in my opinion, much improved. In 2005, the lookup had cache options, but they were really heavy handed. And you could deal with a lookup not finding a match by using the...(read more)
Why is IntelliSense not working?

AaronBertrand

1 Jul 2009 | 11:05 am

I see people complain that IntelliSense (new in SQL Server 2008's Management Studio) is not working. Most of the time, it is for one of two reasons: The object is not in the local IntelliSense cache, since it was created recently. You can fix this easily by going to Edit > IntelliSense > Refresh Local Cache, or CTRL+SHIFT+R. The query window is connected to a downlevel server (e.g. SQL Server 2005), where IntelliSense does not function (see Connect #341872 from Whitney Weaver for more info...(read more)
Why have we not seen TPC-C and TPC-E benchmarks using SSD storage?

jchang

1 Jul 2009 | 9:48 am

Dell recently published a TPC-H report for the PowerEdge T610, 2 x Xeon 5570, with 4 FusionIO 80GB SSD storage devices at 100GB scale factor. So why have we not seen TPC-C or TPC-E OLTP benchmark results published? Now it is much more feasible to run the TPC-H data warehouse benchmark on SSD because the Scale Factor 100 size is still allowed, for which the Line item table is 100GB for data only, not indexes or other tables. The full SF 100 tpch database is about 170GB for all tables and indexes....(read more)
When CHECK constraints using UDFs fail for multirow updates

Alexander Kuznetsov

1 Jul 2009 | 7:08 am

I have made up a simple example when a CHECK constraint that uses a UDF should succeed but always fails. Suppose you need to move some stuff in your car, and you don't want to load more than 100 pounds into your small car at a time. Here is the DDL: CREATE SCHEMA Data AUTHORIZATION dbo ; GO CREATE SCHEMA Readers AUTHORIZATION dbo ; GO CREATE TABLE Data.ItemsToMove ( TripNumber INT NOT NULL, ItemName VARCHAR ( 50 ), ItemWeightInPounds FLOAT ); GO CREATE FUNCTION Readers.TotalWeightPerTrip ( @TripNumber...(read more)

MySQL Performance Blog
Onsite and Remote - getting best of both worlds

peter

2 Jul 2009 | 7:01 pm

At Percona we provide services both Onsite - visiting the customers and Remote - logging in to their systems or communicating via email,phone,instant messaging. We believe both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks and mixing them right way allows you to get your problems solved most efficient way. Onsite visits are great as they allow consultant to meet your team in person and great for relationship building. It is great for architecture design and review as you can sit down with the team and use drawing board. It also often allows the best focus both for consultant and for…
Scaling w Flash Webinar Recording Available

peter

2 Jul 2009 | 5:59 pm

The Scaling with Flash webinar I’ve mentioned earlier was a success and we got the recording available. It contains Percona presentation, presentation of Schooner appliances and Q&A session. Enjoy. Entry posted by peter | No comment Add to: | | | |
Gathering queries from a server with Maatkit and tcpdump

Baron Schwartz

1 Jul 2009 | 9:10 pm

For the last couple of months, we've been quietly developing a MySQL protocol parser for Maatkit. It isn't an implementation of the protocol: it's an observer of the protocol. This lets us gather queries from servers that don't have a slow query log enabled, at very high time resolution. With this new functionality, it becomes possible for mk-query-digest to stand on the sidelines and watch queries fly by over TCP. It is only an observer on the sidelines: it is NOT a man in the middle like mysql-proxy, so it has basically zero impact on the running server (tcpdump is very efficient) and zero…
xtrabackup-0.8

Aleksandr Kuzminsky

1 Jul 2009 | 8:09 am

Dear community, The release 0.8 of the opensource backup tool for InnoDB and XtraDB is available for download. Key features: New mode of innobackupex --stream=tar4ibd; new command tar4ibd based on libtar-1.2.11 Experimental option --export is added (see Vadim's post "Impossible - possible, moving InnoDB tables between servers"for details) tar4ibd is made to be sure that read of InnoDB page is consistent. Before we had some complains what in stream mode some pages are getting corrupted, and we suspect tar can do read of pages in time when they changed. So we patches libtar to make read…
Few more ideas for InnoDB features

Vadim

29 Jun 2009 | 8:21 pm

As you see MySQL is doing great in InnoDB performance improvements, so we decided to concentrate more on additional InnoDB features, which will make difference. Beside ideas I put before http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2009/03/30/my-hot-list-for-next-innodb-features/ (and one of them - moving InnoDB tables between servers are currently under development), we have few mores: - Stick some InnoDB tables / indexes in buffer pool, or set priority for InnoDB tables. That means tables with bigger priority will be have more chances to stay in buffer pool then tables with lower priority. Link to…

ProjectVRM Blog
Privacy and VRM

Doc Searls

16 Jun 2009 | 1:45 am

In Privacy is Relative my column in May’s Linux Journal, I wrote, there are essentially two forms of privacy. One is the kind where you hide out. You minimize exposure by confining it to yourself. The other is where you trust somebody with your information. In order to trust somebody, you need a relationship with them. You’re their spouse, friend, client or patient. This isn’t so easy if you’re just a customer, or worse, a “consumer”. There the obligation is minimized, usually through call centers and other customer-avoidance mechanisms that get only worse as…
Off base but still kinda relevant

Doc Searls

6 Jun 2009 | 7:15 am

I suppose you’ve succeeded when people start making fun of what you’re up to. That might be what’s going on with The Vendor-Client Relationship, a YouTube video I found via markfonteijn. In this video the clients — diners at a restaurant, a customer at a hairdresser — bargain over costs. I suppose this is to point out the oddities of doing the same kind of thing in a B2B world. It’s not about VRM at all, but it does bring up an occasional misunderstanding about VRM: that it’s about negotiating on price. It’s not. It’s about relationship;…
EmanciPay: A Content Monetization Plan for Newspapers

Doc Searls

28 May 2009 | 10:02 am

Yesterday I reported hearing that the New York Times was thinking about putting its editorial behind a paywall again. Today James Warren gives substance to the rumors: Here’s a story the newspaper industry’s upper echelon apparently kept from its anxious newsrooms: A discreet Thursday meeting in Chicago about their future. “Models to Monetize Content” is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is…
A Declaration of Customer Independence

Doc Searls

22 May 2009 | 4:24 am

Peter Hirshberg tells me that we have a Declaration of Customer Independence already, and it’s called The Cluetrain Manifesto. Could be. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the 10th anniversary edition comes out in June. Peter thinks what we need now is a Constitution. Could be that’s what we’re working toward with ProjectVRM. Meanwhile I just found an old file in which I noodled an adaptation of Jefferson’s original Declaration of Independence. So I thought I’d go ahead and post it here anyway, and see what ya’ll think. Here it is: We hold…
Making surveys unnecessary

Doc Searls

12 May 2009 | 3:16 am

It’s almost going on two years since I wrote Why Surveys Suck. They still do. Case in point: Sirius, the satellite radio company. Last December, Mike Elgen in Computerworld listed satellite radio among 10 Things That Won’t Survive the Recession. Said Mike, I’m sorry, Howard Stern. It’s over. The newly merged Sirius XM Radio simply cannot sustain its losses. The company is already deeply in debt and would need to dramatically increase subscribers over the next six months in order to meet its debt obligations. Unfortunately, new car sales, which account for a huge…

Amy Wohl's Opinions on SaaS
The Seriousness of SaaS in the Enterprise

Amy Wohl

22 Jun 2009 | 9:35 am

I just came across a great column by Phil Wainewright about how SAP's executives seem to be stepping on each others toes, commenting on their SaaS products and their opinions on the value of SaaS (and Salesforce, of course). To be fair, you have to read yourself through the thread and find the Talkback from SAP exec Vishal Sikka and Phil's remarks about that comment.I'd like to make some remarks of my own.SAP is remarkably late to the SaaS market and has chosen a unique path which I don't think will work: they want to keep their customers continuing to invest in…
Pricing SaaS Products

Amy Wohl

16 Jun 2009 | 5:50 am

As the array of SaaS products broadens and more traditional software ISVs (who will continue to offer existing products) enter the market, pricintg SaaS products continues to be a puzzle. There is a tension between the right price from a marketing perspective, one that will attract the optimum number of users, and the right price from a profitability perspective. The right marketing price for SaaS products is often thought, at least initially, to be "free." This is done artificially through extended free betas, free trials, and free "basic" versions of the SaaS…
Head in the Clouds

Amy Wohl

27 May 2009 | 10:01 am

In case you're wondering what I'm up to, I'm reading everything I can find about clouds and interviewing lots of companies (vendors and a few users) about their cloud offerings and their plans.The hype level is beyond amazing. I know that there is a point in any successful technology where it is used to label everything, because it's so good at attracting positive attention, but I think we're close to reaching the saturation level here. I hope so. If everything is a cloud, then it gets very hard to see anything!The confusion level is…
McKinsey got it wrong: Cloud Computing is for Enterprises

Amy Wohl

17 Apr 2009 | 9:57 am

This week I spent several days at the Uptime Institute's Symposium 2009, a conference where facilities management meets IT. The focus for this year's conference was on Green. I spoke several times, moderatig a panel on outsourcing versus cloud computing, and giving a mini-keynote on SaaS and Cloud Computing. At that conference, McKinsey announced a report on Cloud computing, claiming that the economics only made sense for small and medium sized companies but not for enterprises with their own data centers. The analysis then compared the cost of using Amazon's…
Clouds Multiplying, 2

Amy Wohl

27 Mar 2009 | 2:22 pm

NOTE: This post was intended for my SaaS blog but it somehow ended up on my other blog, so we're posting it here, too, with the thought that not everyone reads both blogs. I am in the midst of writing two big articles on Cloud Computing -- too big to post on a blog -- and I can't quite get them finished because every day brings new revelations. Everyone wants to be part of the cloud as a platform provider or a cloud application or a user. Do we know where this will end? We can probably project its reasonable ending. Too many vendors without the right…

confused of calcutta
Rambling about creativity and capital and content and frames

JP

30 Jun 2009 | 3:31 pm

The tragic death of Michael Jackson has dominated much of the news this past week, even overshadowing the Iran situation in some quarters. Strange but true. Jackson’s death has had some unusual consequences, as people try and deal with their own reactions in different and creative ways. While the original story broke, I believe, on TMZ, Twitter was the river that carried the news to the world. And Twitter was overwhelmed. Which meant the arrival of the much-loved Fail Whale: Which led someone to come up with this: This concerned a small number of people, who were worried that the image…
Thinking about complexity in the world we live in today

JP

27 Jun 2009 | 5:01 pm

A few decades ago, I read a book called AI: The Tumultous History of The Search for Artificial Intelligence, by Daniel Crevier. In it, the late and brilliant Donald Michie is quoted as saying something like this: AI is about making machines more fathomable and more under the control of human beings, not less. Conventional technology has indeed been making our environment more complex and more incomprehensible, and if it continues as it is doing now the only conceivable outcome is disaster. More recently, when I wrote about complex adaptive systems, a colleague of mine, Reza Mohsin, pointed me…
Mother of Invention

JP

23 Jun 2009 | 4:57 pm

I met an old colleague, Malcolm Dick, for a cup of tea this morning, and he pointed me towards a story that’s been going around for about five years or so. It’s about Frank Zappa, and about an article he is apparently credited with writing in 1983, headlined A Proposal For a System to Replace Ordinary Record Merchandising. You can see a copy of the article here. Did he write it? I don’t know. I’ve ordered a copy of the book it is meant to be included in, so that I can tell for sure. In the meantime, whether he wrote it or not, it’s worth reading just for the…
There’s an ant on your southeast leg

JP

21 Jun 2009 | 3:21 pm

I’ve just finished reading Lera Boroditsky’s recent Edge essay “How does our language shape the way we think?”. Absolutely riveting. Just the sort of thing I like reading on a Sunday night, get my brain into a different kind of gear altogether before I set off into the normal week. Professor Boroditsky seeks to resolve an age-old question: Does language play any part in the way we view things, analyse things, think about things? Are linguistic differences alone enough to drive a difference in the way we are? As is often the case with such questions, we’ve had…
Ignore Hugh MacLeod

JP

9 Jun 2009 | 3:40 pm

When I was at university, one of the topics that fascinated me was that of long-term business cycles. I was held in thrall by the theories of people like Kitchin, Juglar and Kondratieff. Particularly Kondratieff, whose Halley’s Comet-like long business cycles mystified and haunted me. In turn, that passion for Kondratieff led to my spending some time reading the works of Joseph Schumpeter; I was introduced to the concept of creative destruction and, almost as a corollary, to the essays of Ronald Coase and his views on transaction costs. All of which really formed the foundation of my…

Ross Mayfield's Weblog
Links for 2009-06-30 [del.icio.us]

1 Jul 2009 | 12:00 am

Twitterbursts: It's Not About The Tools; It's All About The Tools | Learn at All Levels | Fast Company Humans have conveyed short messages, rife with meaning, for over thirty thousand years. Smoke signals have traversed the airways. Expressive quips filled Seinfeld’s show. At all stages and ages, we burst forward. Does Twitter Match The Mission? Asking all the right questions about engaging on Twitter, but unfortunately implies the wrong questions about enterprise microblogging The true cost of Microsoft SharePoint - Business Exchange This article explores the true costs of SharePoint-both…
Links for 2009-06-27 [del.icio.us]

28 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

The Economics of Privacy in Social Networks We developed a novel economic explanation for this: sites appear to craft two different messages for two different populations. Most users care about privacy about privacy but don’t think about it in day-to-day life. Sites take care to avoid mentioning privacy to them, because even mentioning privacy positively will cause them to be more cautious about sharing data. This phenomenon is known as “privacy salience” and it makes sites tread very carefully around privacy, because users must be comfortable sharing data for the site to be fun.
Free Social Software & SocialCalc Release

Ross Mayfield

23 Jun 2009 | 4:35 am

Today we announced something I'm pretty proud of. Socialtext is now free for up to 50 users. And we're finally taking SocialCalc out of beta. From the press release:Socialtext, the leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions, today announced the availability of Socialtext Free 50, a new free offering aimed at mainstream use for up to 50 people within an organization to collaborate using Socialtext's social software platform. Employees can join or create their own private collaboration networks by using their work email address at Socialtext.com. In addition to the…
Links for 2009-06-21 [del.icio.us]

22 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

E-mail Traffic Data Casts Doubt on Global-Village Theory Their conclusion is that far from reducing the importance of geographical location, electronic communication appears to have increased it, probably because people swap more messages with those they have personal interaction with. Pogue's Productivity Secrets Revealed - NYTimes.com "Dear David," wrote a reader recently. "When will you share your productivity tips with us? Not everyone can write five books a year, file two columns a week, churn out a daily blog, speak 40 times a year and film a video every Thursday. What…
Links for 2009-06-11 [del.icio.us]

12 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Why you need your own company | Derek Sivers Then I realized why I need to start a new company. Not for the money. Not because I’m “bored”. But because a company is a laboratory to try your ideas. The Social Life of Health Information This Pew Internet/California HealthCare survey finds that technology is not an end, but a means to accelerate the pace of discovery, widen social networks, and sharpen the questions someone might ask when they do get to talk to a health professional. Technology can help to enable the human connection in health care and the internet is turning up the…

The FASTForward Blog
Enterprise 2.0 ‘Changes the Game’ for Business Process Management

Joe McKendrick

2 Jul 2009 | 6:37 pm

No matter how automated a workflow may get, there are always stages in which things need to stop for an exception, an approval or a quality check. The role of human interactions has always been a complicating factor in business processes. Introducing Enterprise 2.0 approaches may help shift the emphasis from business process re-engineering to business process re-energizing. Pete Swabey has documented instances in which major companies started addressing critical business problems with enterprise 2.0 approaches. There is growing evidence that social software is changing the way companies…
The New is not “Self Evident” Nor is it found at the Centre - The Disruptive Media lives in Philadelphia

Rob Paterson

2 Jul 2009 | 5:55 am

One thing I know is true- real innovation - the disruptive idea that declares independence from the old system - can only happen at the edge. So this spring when I got a call from Howard Blumenthal CEO of MiND, in Philadelphia, my instincts told me that this was a very very important call. No TV operation is more unique than MiND (or, properly, MiND: Media Independence). MiND is not a PBS affiliate. It broadcasts a stream of 5-minute programs, many made by MiND’s staff producers, some made by members of the public who attend MiND’s production Boot Camps. MiND is both on air and on the…
Reinventing Silos

Paula Thornton

29 Jun 2009 | 1:07 pm

I’m interrupting a couple of pieces in progress, because this topic is too significant to wait on. It raised its head as I was listening to a great panel discussion from the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, facilitated by Peter Kim, featuring the Social ’stuff’ experiences of Allstate, Jet Blue and Humana. One caveat, as with all 2.0 conversations, it’s important to separate the B2C and C2C-focused examples from other focuses (B2E, E2E etc.). There’s a heavy B2C/C2C slant to the discussion. Ben Foster from Allstate made two great comments: Enterprises and…
Adoption - Tell a good story to help people change

Rob Paterson

29 Jun 2009 | 7:41 am

How can you get more people to use social media? The barrier is cultural not technical. Tell good stories about people using it. Harold Jarche pointed me to this excellent article by Peter Bregman writing for the HBR - Snip: To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things: Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it. Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them. How do you tell a good story? Here is the master Scott Simon…
Adoption - Follow the Leader - Westjet

Rob Paterson

27 Jun 2009 | 10:48 am

In Canada, our Southwest is Westjet. Here is how Westjet plan to use Twitter. I think that this is a first in Canada and others will be forced to follow. The beginnings of a a Tribe! Twitter account will give guests access to great deals CALGARY, June 26 /CNW/ - WestJet today announced the introduction of a new service that leverages the power of Twitter to provide its guests with instant access to great deals. Those Twitter users who sign up to follow "WestJet" on twitter.com will be provided with seat sales, special offers and other uniquely-WestJet opportunities. This Sunday, June 28,…

Enterprise Irregulars
Thomas Global Shuts Down, Closing its Virtual Doors

2 Jul 2009 | 2:06 pm

Thomas Global is closing its virtual doors in 2010 according to the latest news to come out of the supplier directory world. According to a source close to Thomas that I traded notes with this earlier this afternoon, ?the site will be up until 2010 t...
Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success

2 Jul 2009 | 1:52 pm

I’d go with that assessment. Connect has made identity/authentication so much easier for third party app providers and at the same time has struck a serious blow to Google in that these relationships are not transactional and it is a zero sum game. With FB adoption where it is and so much momentum on the [...]
David Dobrin -- An Analyst Worth His Salt Confirms a Rumor

2 Jul 2009 | 1:04 pm

I've been hearing this week through the grapevine that software companies, including Ariba and Emptoris, had a challenging time closing deals at the end of the second quarter, but I haven't wanted to pull the trigger on saying anything about it. J...
Is it finally time to listen?

2 Jul 2009 | 11:03 am

The other week was the Enterprise 2.0 conference, typically highly hyped and loud this year I almost missed it since it seemed a lot more subdued than normal. However, I have to say reading this post by Susan kind of reminds me of the whole “Lightblub going off”. “Yes, the baby was born in ‘06, started crawling in ‘07, and now is running around like a maniac with boundless energy in ‘09. The Enterprise 2.0 movement is now a healthy child, growi...
Activate 09: The Guardian’s Catalyst for UK Open Culture

2 Jul 2009 | 11:02 am

Yesterday I lucky enough to go the inaugural Activate event, organised by the Guardian newspaper. “an exclusive one-day summit providing a unique gathering for leaders working across all sectors to share, debate and create strategies for answering some of the world’s biggest questions.” At the risk of getting carried away Activate felt like a seminal event, perhaps [...]

Andrew McAfee's Blog
How Beautiful it is, and How Easily it can be Broken

amcafee

29 Jun 2009 | 6:25 am

The Enterprise 2.0 conference took place last week in Boston, and was by all accounts a large success (I am on its advisory board). If you couldn’t make it, a good way to get an idea of what happened is to do twitter searches on #e2conf (the hashtag for the conference as a whole) and on #e2conf1 through #e2conf49 (I think), which correspond to individual sessions. Many attendees were tweeting diligently throughout the event using the above hashtags, and have also used them to point to their blog posts and other related writings. Also valuable are the conference posts by Oliver Marks,…
Chapter 1 of Enterprise 2

amcafee

16 Jun 2009 | 5:55 pm

Harvard Business Press has made the first chapter of my book Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges available for download (after you give them a name and email address). I hope it whets your appetite and leads to massive volumes of preorders. More seriously, I hope it piques your interest in the book’s ideas and contents. If you have any questions or comments after reading the chapter, please leave a comment here. Attendees at next week’s Enterprise 2.0 conference will also get a copy of this chapter. If you have any interest in…
Toward a Pattern Language for Enterprise 2.0

amcafee

10 Jun 2009 | 9:12 am

A Pattern Language, published in 1979 by Christopher Alexander and his colleagues, was a landmark book in architecture that also became a landmark in other fields like computer science; one review called it “The decade’s best candidate for a permanently important book.” It identifies architectural patterns at three levels - towns, buildings, and construction - that seem to work: to be both useful and livable, and to please and welcome people instead of alienating them. Alexander and his team came up with them inductively, by looking at architecture all around the world that…
The Diminishment of Don Draper

amcafee

29 May 2009 | 10:47 am

I am a huge fan of the TV series “Mad Men,” which has aired for two seasons on AMC. The show revolves around the employees of Sterling Cooper, a fictional Madison Avenue ad agency in the early 1960s. It’s written and filmed with the intelligence and attention to detail that we’ve come to expect from the best television since “The Sopranos” showed us just how good the small screen can be. The third season of “Mad Men” will start in August; my withdrawal symptoms are becoming acute, but I think I’ll be able to make it that long. The…
The Fellowship of the Net

amcafee

26 May 2009 | 9:25 am

Even though I’m heading down the river to a sweet gig at MIT, my affiliation with Harvard will continue. I’ve been named a fellow at the University’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, starting in July. This is a real honor, and I’m very grateful. The Berkman Center, which started at the Law School, is a legendary gathering place for sharp people who are interested in the the Internet’s impact. I look down the list of current and past fellows, see people like Jimmy Wales, Karim Lakhani, David Weinberger, and Doc Searls, and know that I’ll learn a…

LLiu's Community Zen Master Blog
The Spectrum of Computer Mediated Collective Action and the Collaboration Funnel

Lawrence Liu

11 Jun 2009 | 4:14 pm

“Computer mediated collective action” is a term that was coined in the "Picturing Usenet: Mapping Computer-Mediated Collective Action” research paper, published in 2005 and co-authored by Dr. Marc Smith, Chief Social Scientist of Telligent. Before social networking, before online communities, and before blogs and forums, there was Usenet, which is described in Marc’s paper as follows: Usenet is a conversational social cyberspace in particular and a computer-mediated collective action system in general. I hereby propose that since the dawning of the Web in the early 1990s, a broad…
What exactly is collaboration anyway?

Lawrence Liu

11 Jun 2009 | 12:14 pm

While the modern “social networking” meme (as opposed to the classic “social network” and “online communities” memes) appears to have been caught in a hype cycle, the “collaboration” meme seems to have gone through ebbs, flows, and pendulum swings. Recently, I’ve noticed a sharp increase in both the blogosphere and Twitterverse of mentions and inferences to collaboration centric concepts and connotations as if being the anti-hype against social networking. Personally, I don’t believe that it’s an either/or proposition. To be…
Key success factor for Enterprise 2.0: Finding new roles for middle management

Lawrence Liu

9 Jun 2009 | 11:25 am

Yes, I said it. And here’s why. A couple of days ago, I posted the following tweet: Disintermediation Brought to You by Lance Amstrong http://bit.ly/13umSc (by @jtwinsor) ["Celebrity 2.0" authenticity over fakery/posery!] Then I came across the “What Will Social Networking Displace?” blog entry by @lauriemccabe, which triggered another tweet from me: Social&collaborative media can tear down political/religious/cultural/organizational walls that ppl in power r fighting hard to preserve. I felt so strongly about it that I posted two more tweets: Social media…
Team, Community, and Network connections are more than just "social" and definitely not the same

Lawrence Liu

5 Jun 2009 | 2:13 pm

As I had described in a blog entry a few weeks ago, being “social” is just one aspect of the modern business life cycle. In this post, I highlight several different kinds of connections that people may have within teams, communities, and networks that are more than just social and not the same. These differences in type and strength of connections can have a significant impact on the patterns of interaction and communication between people, one example of which I recently blogged about in terms of “the true value of Enterprise 2.0 tools for CXOs.” The measurement,…
Wordle cloud for my May 2009 tweetstream

Lawrence Liu

2 Jun 2009 | 9:21 am

Well, it appears that I tweeted mostly about “Twitter,” “Socia,l” and “community” during the month of May – no big surprise there. I also mentioned my colleague, George Dearing, quite a bit. And I started using “via” and “by” rather than “RT” to reference someone else’s tweets or blog entries. Wordle cloud link. Wordle clouds for my previous months’ tweetstreams: April, 2009 March, 2009 February, 2009 January, 2009

deal architect
Cloud: Seven Clear Business Models

2 Jul 2009 | 3:51 am

“It seemed silly for a software company to own a data center but after six months on the job I realized this was really a fundamental shift in the economics of software” What do you say about a guy who...
More New Florence

1 Jul 2009 | 1:43 am

On the innovation blog “Wicked Problems of a New Global World” Technology at Wimbledon Sheraton: Putting Social Back in Networking PC less web printing 3-D “Augmented Web” Magazine cover
Heart of the Matter

30 Jun 2009 | 2:24 pm

Don Henley starts his hit on YouTube with the comment "it took 42 years to write, 4 minutes to sing" As Oracle kicks off its "100 days of innovation", I hope they like Don have spent the last few years...
Why so difficult to declare victory?

29 Jun 2009 | 3:18 am

The one advantage you have with a category with Enterprise in the moniker is you get a wide berth. You can claim successes in customer centric areas, product development or human resources areas or generally around team collaboration. So, it...
Inhibitors to outsourcing

29 Jun 2009 | 1:32 am

Phil Fersht shared with me results of a survey AMR did with Global Services Media. In the section where they asked respondents about inhibitors to outsourcing, the answers were somewhat surprising. “While companies are tackling severe economic conditions, priorities clearly...

The Social Organization
Enterprise 2.0 Recap

Rachel Happe

25 Jun 2009 | 8:31 am

Wow - Enterprise 2.0 is not done yet but I am. Despite the potential for more great content this morning, I had to step away from the swirl. I also must confess that in the blur of catching up with old friends and colleagues and meeting both new 'old' Twitter friends and new people, I didn't attend very many of the sessions... which is a shame because I missed some good ones. I did make it to a few panels that I thought were particularly interesting, however, and well worth the time. So for me, the value of Enterprise 2.0 was very skewed toward the people vs. the content. Below…
Building Models And Understanding Reality

Rachel Happe

11 Jun 2009 | 10:18 am

The wonk in me loves models - over the weekend someone asked me for some help with Excel and I was disappointed that they just needed help with some formatting and basic calculations because I love a model that separates out and compares different data sets and uses a variety of measures to create aggregate performance metrics. It's a lot of fun figuring out which numbers have what influence on the whole and there is an analytical purity that you can achieve which is a beautiful thing.Years ago I worked for PRTM collecting huge reams of operational data related to product development and…
Eight Competencies to Socializing Your Organization

Rachel Happe

27 May 2009 | 6:02 pm

The social media and community space is transitioning from a nice thing to do to an operational discipline across teams/groups/the organization. That transition is actually pretty difficult and disruptive because it requires cultural, leadership, strategy, workflow, and operational changes. However, it is critical if organizations don't want to have their social efforts isolated from everything else, which doesn't work very well anyway. The other thing that this transition requires is a common framework for the different competencies involved to give everyone has a common taxonomy…
What I Learned About Social Media from the Streets of India

Rachel Happe

21 May 2009 | 4:19 am

If you are a social media or community manager and have the chance to go to India, GO. I found many lovely things there but what really fascinated and alternatively freaked me out, was the traffic. First there is such a wide range of things in the flow of traffic: cars, people, bullock carts, pedicabs, buses, cows, mopeds, camels... you name it, the sea of humanity is on the streets of India. Secondly, there are no lanes and few traffic lights on the majority of city streets - the sea of humanity moves along like an amoeba. Thirdly, it is a total cacophony of sound - mostly incessant…
Flurry of Events

Rachel Happe

14 May 2009 | 5:14 am

I've been working on a number of events and presentations. The good news? Many are virtual so you can join. The first - a crew of marketing, social media, communications, and community people from Boston are running a series of webinars. Robert Collins, Frank Days, Jeff Cutler, and I will spar on whether this whole community thing is worth it. This won't be your typical presentation but rather a lively conversation (Frank is the skeptic BTW!)The first - The Skeptical CMO and Friends - The Value of Building Your Online Community - will be next Tuesday, May 19th. To sign up, go…

Chuck's Blog
Winds Of Change

Chuck Hollis

1 Jul 2009 | 3:05 pm

I really enjoy meeting customers. However, not every customer interaction is sunshine and lollipops. Sometimes, the interactions can be tense at the beginning, but result in an extremely productive discussion. I had one of those today, and -- as I thought about it -- I realized I'm starting to see this particular situation more often. It's a harbinger of things to come. It Started Out Rough During a typical briefing, I'm usually asked to lead off the big technology strategy discussion. It's usually 45 minutes of private cloud / VCE material, with…
Storage And Cloud

Chuck Hollis

26 Jun 2009 | 5:05 pm

One of the more popular questions that gets directed at me by journalists and others these days is around the above topic.I guess since EMC does storage -- and is very active in things cloud-like -- they expect us to have some nice sound bites.Well, I have my pre-packaged answer that's suitable for the press, but -- if you have the time and the interest -- the deeper answer is much more engaging. Let's Get StartedSince there are so many definitions of cloud floating around in the sky these days, it's probably helpful to frame what I mean when I say "cloud" aggregated and…
The Three Faces Of Cloud

Chuck Hollis

26 Jun 2009 | 4:56 pm

Going out to the GigaOm Structure09 cloud event gave me an opportunity to reflect on "what is cloud" and, more importantly "what is not cloud".While many of the discussions were interesting, I did feel that there were way too many contrived arguments needed to support thinly-veiled product pitches.At the event, a journalist I know stopped me, and begged me for a very short, understandable description of what this cloud stuff was all about so she could better understand what everyone was talking about.Needless to say, I was very sympathetic.I did my best to oversimplify --…
Element Management vs. Service Orchestration

Chuck Hollis

25 Jun 2009 | 3:33 pm

One continual theme that comes up around any strategic discussion of fully virtualized environments and private clouds is management."There aren't any tools!". "There are too many tools!". "The tools don't work the way I do!"So what's going on here? Some BasicsWhen we talk about private clouds, of course everyone is interested in resource efficiency, but the real prize is operational efficiency: doing things better, faster, cheaper and more reliably with less human effort.As we look at other forms of mature infrastructure (power grids…
Getting Comfortable With Oversubscription

Chuck Hollis

25 Jun 2009 | 9:00 am

It's a key concept in getting any sort of shared resource efficiency. We see it everywhere we look in our daily lives.But as we talk about IT strategies, private cloud and fully virtualized environments, one of the biggest stumbling blocks I'm encountering is the idea of intentionally pushing oversubscription of IT infrastructure resources -- servers and storage.And that's going to have to change, I think. Oversubscription EverywhereWe're all familiar with various forms of shared infrastructure where -- by design -- it's assumed that all possible users won't…

Going Social Now
Advice through your social influencers. Is it a suffocating prospect for us?

28 Jun 2009 | 8:38 pm

Today's New York Times has a great story on Aardvark and how it uses your social graph to help you find answers to questions. It works rather simply - you pose a question via email or IM and Aardvark channels the question to people in your social graph (currently that's just your social graph on Facebook) and then brings back the answers to you. Users who don't respond aren't exposed so there's no discomfort created. As a result no social capital is expended either.Currently, Aardvark works only with Facebook and pings your friends and their friends for volunteers to answer the question. So…
Social Influence Marketing for Dummies

25 Jun 2009 | 8:10 pm

If you're wondering why my posts to Going Social Now have been a little infrequent of late here's the reason why. I'm writing a book for the Dummies series tentatively titled, "Social Influence Marketing for Dummies." It is available for pre-order on Amazon already. I'm in the last throes of writing it with barely two or three chapters left go now.Writing a book is a pretty unique experience. Firstly it kills your social life if not your family life. Secondly, you learn to live with a permanent feeling of guilt as you're always a chapter or two behind what you promised your editor. And…
Facebook Vanity URLs and Inequality

12 Jun 2009 | 8:07 am

Ok, so maybe I'm a little miffed that I wasn't one of the chosen few who got to register a Facebook username before everyone else did. I'm not a journalist and nor am I a Facebook employee. Nor am I personally an advertiser on Facebook so maybe I don't deserve to have been given the opportunity to register a username before anyone else. Still I think there's something wrong with this process.Facebook isn't just any old company anymore. Sure it is privately owned and privately run. And yes, it has every right to do what it likes. But what Facebook doesn't realize is that it is its users who…
What am I writing about on Going Social Now?

26 May 2009 | 3:44 pm

Inspired by the what are people thinking about buying word cloud (a must read) at Social CRM, I created this one showing words used in my posts. It is quite telling.
Social Advertising Best Practices. A Good Start

22 May 2009 | 5:29 am

The Interactive Advertising Bureau just published Social Advertising Best Practices. I'm glad the spotlight is being shone on social advertising and I think the best practices are a worthy effort. However, I'd love to see a little more out of these best practices. Here's what I'm looking for:The definition of a social ad could be broader. It shouldn't just be about user interactions but also include social media beyond social graph related information. "Social Data" is defined a little too tightly for my liking. I would like to see the definition allowing for the inclusion of user…

The FASTForward Blog
Enterprise 2.0 ‘Changes the Game’ for Business Process Management

Joe McKendrick

2 Jul 2009 | 6:37 pm

No matter how automated a workflow may get, there are always stages in which things need to stop for an exception, an approval or a quality check. The role of human interactions has always been a complicating factor in business processes. Introducing Enterprise 2.0 approaches may help shift the emphasis from business process re-engineering to business process re-energizing. Pete Swabey has documented instances in which major companies started addressing critical business problems with enterprise 2.0 approaches. There is growing evidence that social software is changing the way companies…
The New is not “Self Evident” Nor is it found at the Centre - The Disruptive Media lives in Philadelphia

Rob Paterson

2 Jul 2009 | 5:55 am

One thing I know is true- real innovation - the disruptive idea that declares independence from the old system - can only happen at the edge. So this spring when I got a call from Howard Blumenthal CEO of MiND, in Philadelphia, my instincts told me that this was a very very important call. No TV operation is more unique than MiND (or, properly, MiND: Media Independence). MiND is not a PBS affiliate. It broadcasts a stream of 5-minute programs, many made by MiND’s staff producers, some made by members of the public who attend MiND’s production Boot Camps. MiND is both on air and on the…
Reinventing Silos

Paula Thornton

29 Jun 2009 | 1:07 pm

I’m interrupting a couple of pieces in progress, because this topic is too significant to wait on. It raised its head as I was listening to a great panel discussion from the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, facilitated by Peter Kim, featuring the Social ’stuff’ experiences of Allstate, Jet Blue and Humana. One caveat, as with all 2.0 conversations, it’s important to separate the B2C and C2C-focused examples from other focuses (B2E, E2E etc.). There’s a heavy B2C/C2C slant to the discussion. Ben Foster from Allstate made two great comments: Enterprises and…
Adoption - Tell a good story to help people change

Rob Paterson

29 Jun 2009 | 7:41 am

How can you get more people to use social media? The barrier is cultural not technical. Tell good stories about people using it. Harold Jarche pointed me to this excellent article by Peter Bregman writing for the HBR - Snip: To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things: Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it. Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them. How do you tell a good story? Here is the master Scott Simon…
Adoption - Follow the Leader - Westjet

Rob Paterson

27 Jun 2009 | 10:48 am

In Canada, our Southwest is Westjet. Here is how Westjet plan to use Twitter. I think that this is a first in Canada and others will be forced to follow. The beginnings of a a Tribe! Twitter account will give guests access to great deals CALGARY, June 26 /CNW/ - WestJet today announced the introduction of a new service that leverages the power of Twitter to provide its guests with instant access to great deals. Those Twitter users who sign up to follow "WestJet" on twitter.com will be provided with seat sales, special offers and other uniquely-WestJet opportunities. This Sunday, June 28,…

Process Cafe
Simplify!

29 Jun 2009 | 7:00 am

Image via WikipediaIf I was to sum up the whole concept of process improvement in one word it would be 'Simplify'.To often today we get lost in the morass of detail and unnecessary detritus which detracts from the key fundamental of process design which is to keep things as straightforward as possible. After all it was the great Albert Einstein who said "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." and by that I think he mean that the ideal approach to almost everything is to ensure that you have got the easiest, quickest, least complex solution to any problem that will actually…
Lessons Learned - Why do we never learn the lessons?

23 Jun 2009 | 7:00 am

Image via WikipediaI've worked in companies in the past who insist on performing "lessons learned' exercises after each of their projects. This is an excellent idea.When each project has finished, the team gets together and dissects what went wrong, what went right and what they would do differently the next time. The points are noted down and documented in a "lessons learned' document.I remember after we had implemented a particular financial system (Which I came in on the back end of, I might add) we sat around the table and came up with the following points:Better communication of…
The philosophy of BPM (Or 'The 3 questions you should ask yourself')

18 Jun 2009 | 7:00 am

Image via WikipediaIn today's modern world of tools, frameworks, standards and vendors it is often easy to forget that at its heart BPM is actually more of a philosophy surrounded by a lot of ancilliary detritus - at least that's my attitude when it comes to deciding what's important from a BPM point of viewAs Dennis Parker from K2 said in a recent interview I did with him: "BPM is a completely overloaded term" and there is no clear definition of the term itself.One of the key way's of ensuring success when it comes to process is to make sure you focus on the correct parts of the puzzle. It's…
A big thank you to you all

16 Jun 2009 | 7:00 am

Image via WikipediaThis is a big thank you to everyone who took advantage of my 'Free Consultancy' offer. As I said in my earlier post I was astonished at the response especially in these times of economic cut-backs.This offer is now closed for the summer. I am anticipating running a similar promotion in August so if you would like to be involved in this please drop me a line and I'll add you to the waiting list.Remember first come, first served.
BPM and Golf part 2

2 Jun 2009 | 7:00 am

Image via WikipediaI while back I wrote a piece that equated golf with BPM (more particularly how identifying a weakness in your golf game and attacking it can reap dividends to your final score) well today I want to give you another golf story. This one is a little closer to home.Both my parents play golf. They started as they approached retirement age and are now very enthusiastic players (My mother is even on the committee at the local golf club). But here's the thing. Even though they are both of an equal level of experience - having started playing around the same time - my father tends…

CIO: Research & Analysis
Outsourcing: The Demise of the Offshore Captive Center

29 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Citi, AXA, AOL and others have shed their wholly-owned Indian IT services subsidiaries. Analysts say sales of offshore captive centers may be more than just a sign of the recessionary times: The concept of owning an offshore services unit may have outlived its value for most companies.
TI's Web 2.0 Success Story: Better Customer Service

29 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Texas Instruments uses Telligent's Enterprise 2.0 apps to create a customer community where TI staffers and engineering industry customers help each other solve problems faster.
Forrester Bucks Conventional Wisdom on Cloud Computing

28 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

According to a new survey on cloud by Forrester, enterprises are much less conservative in their cloud technology plans than you might expect. But what users want and what some big vendors are pushing doesn't quite match up yet.
Obama's Cybersecurity Coordinator Has Broad Agenda

28 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

Review of security needs provides a long list of issues to address.
System Security: 5 Ways to Improve Your Defenses Against Attack

28 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm

A former Air Force CIO highlights practical ways to improve system and network security

Smart SaaS
Will Oracle Really Take Over The SaaS Market?

Kevin Dobbs

30 Jun 2009 | 6:00 am

After working at Oracle for almost five years in the early 90’s, I can tell you that when Larry sets his mind to something he usually gets it. Let’s take a trip down memory lane… It started by just plain beating your competition at sales and marketing. Remember, crush Ingres, destroy Informix, smash Sybase … they were close to dead and Larry let them slip away. He would have obliterated DB2 and SQLServer but IBM and Microsoft were too big. Still he ended up owning the database market. With the database market securely in his grasp, he started looking to other…
Intuit’s Big Move to SaaS

Kevin Dobbs

23 Jun 2009 | 5:39 am

June has been a big SaaS month for Intuit! Over the past few months I had noticed that Intuit had quietly started moving more into the Software-as-a-Service market. These moves became more apparent this month with these announcements: June 2 - Intuit acquires PayCycle, a leading SaaS payroll firm June 4 - Intuit announced their new SaaS partner platform - Intuit Partner Platform, releases their online portal Intuit Workplace and pulls in their Intuit Marketplace. So what does this all mean? Well, for a company that couldn’t seem to spell SaaS and has traditionally sold…
SaaS Business Profile: InsideView

Kevin Dobbs

16 Jun 2009 | 6:57 am

Company: InsideView Started: 2005 Located: San Francisco, California Geography: North America Market: Sales 2.0 Products: SalesView Key Customers: Ariba, Borland, IBM, Omniture, Serena Software, SuccessFactors and Synq Website: InsideView Blog:InsideView Blog Recent News: NETSUITE’S SUITECLOUD ENABLES INTEGRATION OF INSIDEVIEW’S SALESVIEW WITH NETSUITE CONNECTING SALES INTELLIGENCE TO NETSUITE CLOUD INSIDEVIEW NAMED TO JMP SECURITIES’ HOT 100: BEST PRIVATELY HELD…
SaaS Business Profile: Enwisen

Kevin Dobbs

2 Jun 2009 | 6:24 am

Company: Enwisen Started: 1999 Located: Novato, California Geography: Global Market: On-demand Workforce Communications Products:AnswerSource HR Portal/Knowledgebase Onboarding/Offboarding Total Reward Statements HR Shared Services Key Customers: Fox Entertainment, Nissan, Hershey, State of Montana, Yahoo! Website: Enwisen Enwisen Blog Recent News: Enwisen Creates Emergency Notification Center for Customer Twentieth Century Fox – Response to Possibility of Swine…
SaaS Business Profile: MarketBright

Kevin Dobbs

26 May 2009 | 6:00 am

Company: Marketbright Started: March 2005 Located: San Bruno, California Geography: Global Market: On-Demand Marketing Automation Solution Products: Marketing Automation Enterprise Website Management B2B Sales Portal using Social Networking Key Customers: Varonis, Serena Software, SAP Business Objects and Genesys Website: Marketbright Recent News: Marketbright Grows Customer Base by 43% in Q1 2009 Marketbright Expands…

CA on Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC)
Four Steps to Reducing the Cost of Compliance

Mike Hoefgen

1 Jul 2009 | 5:35 am

Want to reduce the cost of compliance? Mike Hoefgen outlines four steps related to controls testing that can help strip out both cost and complexity from your compliance process.
KRIs and KPIs: The Alphabet Soup Approach to Risk Management

Sumner Blount

29 Jun 2009 | 6:15 am

Sumner Blount explains how key risk and performance indicators – also known as KRIs and KPIs – play a key role in effectively measuring and managing risk across the enterprise.
GRC and Grandma’s Advice

Mike Hoefgen

24 Jun 2009 | 6:15 am

Mike Hoefgen suggests listening to some good advice offered up by Grandma – learn from the mistakes of others – in this post recapping the Countrywide scandal.
The Fed’s Focus on Cybersecurity and Financial Controls

Allan Gajadhar

22 Jun 2009 | 6:30 am

Allan Gajadhar shares his thoughts on the US Federal Government’s focus on cybersecurity and financial controls, and why GRC practitioners should be paying attention.
SearchSecurity.com on The Basics of Enterprise GRC Project Management

Sumner Blount

18 Jun 2009 | 6:25 am

In this post, Sumner Blount points to a recent SearchSecurity.com article on the basics of GRC project management by Forrester analyst Chris McClean.

Venture Chronicles
Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success

Jeff

2 Jul 2009 | 12:55 pm

I’d go with that assessment. Connect has made identity/authentication so much easier for third party app providers and at the same time has struck a serious blow to Google in that these relationships are not transactional and it is a zero sum game. With FB adoption where it is and so much momentum on the Connect initiative, there is little incentive for third party service and app providers to go with any alternatives. As much as Beacon was Facebook’s low point, that service’s replacement, Facebook Connect, is vaulting the company to new heights six months after its November…
Protect the Abusers By Punishing the Rule Following Majority

Jeff

2 Jul 2009 | 8:35 am

There’s a lot of this going around this year. An FDA panel’s recommendation to withdraw Vicodin, Percocet, and other opioid-plus-acetaminophen painkillers seems calculated to “sacrifice the interests of consumers who follow instructions for the sake of consumers who don’t”, says Jacob Sullum.[From “”If you keep track of what you’re taking, none of this is an issue for you”] The Federal government has pushed for mortgage bailouts for people who borrowed money they could not afford to pay back, as evidenced by Fannie’s recidivism rate of 70% on their HomeSaver…
Why Did I Unfollow You

Jeff

1 Jul 2009 | 4:18 pm

I’ve been cleaning up my Twitter-roll and unfollowing a bunch of people, here’s why: 1) You don’t tweet. I don’t think anyone really needs to pump out 50 tweets a day to be interesting… but the corollary is true as well, if the only tweet you have posted in the last 2 months is “going for lunch, indian food” don’t be surprised if you get unfollowed. Twitter is a stream, not a feed. 2) You pimp your company, and then do it some more. A lot of people seem to think that Twitter exists solely for them to tweet out press releases about their company,…
Tyrannosaurus Debt

Jeff

1 Jul 2009 | 2:57 pm

via The Corner
What Went Wrong With Joost?

Jeff

1 Jul 2009 | 10:48 am

Om very succinctly yet thoroughly lays out what has led to the demise of Joost. One point that I disagree with my good friend Om on is that a white label strategy is the last refuge of a failed strategy when you don’t set out from the beginning to become a white label business… Brightcove has done well white labeling streaming video services. When I read about all the planned changes at the company earlier today, the first thought that crossed my mind was: Stick a fork in it; Joost is done. After all, this whole white-label video strategy is like a leaky lifeboat in the middle of…

Applied Enterprise Architecture
Modeling the MDM Blueprint – Part VI

James Parnitzke

6 Jun 2009 | 7:28 am

In this series we have discussed developing the MDM blueprint by developing the Common Information (part II), Canonical (part III) , and Operating (part IV) models in our work. In Part V I introduced the Reference Architecture model into the mix to apply the technical infrastructure or patterns we plan on using. The blueprint has now moved from being computation and platform independent to one of expressing intent through the use of more concrete platform specific model. The solution specification is now documented (independent of the functional Business Requirements) to provide shared…
Modeling the MDM Blueprint – Part V

James Parnitzke

16 Apr 2009 | 10:50 am

In this series we have discussed developing the MDM blueprint by creating Common Information (part II), Canonical (part III), and Operating (part IV) models in our work streams. We have introduced the Operating Model into the mix to communicate how the solution will be adopted and used to realize the benefits we expect with the business in a meaningful way. And hopefully set reasonable expectations with our business partners as to what this solution will look like when deployed. Now it is time to model and apply the technical infrastructure or patterns we plan on using. The blueprint now…
Modeling the MDM Blueprint – Part IV

James Parnitzke

26 Mar 2009 | 3:06 pm

In part II and III of this series we discussed the Common Information and Canonical Models. Because MDM is a business project we need to establish of a common set of models that can be referenced independent of the technical infrastructure or patterns we plan on using. Now it is time to introduce the Operating Model into the mix to communicate how the solution will actually be deployed and used to realize the benefits we expect with the business in a meaningful way. This is the most important set of models you will undertake. And sadly not accounted for in practice “in the wild”, meaning…
Modeling the MDM Blueprint – Part III

James Parnitzke

17 Mar 2009 | 4:09 am

In part II of this series we discussed the Common Information Model. Because MDM is a business project we need to establish of a common set of models that can be referenced independent of the technical infrastructure or patterns we plan on using. The essential elements should include: - Common Information Model - Canonical Model - Operating Model, and - Reference Architecture (e.g. 4+1 views, viewpoints and perspectives). We will now turn our attention to the second element, the Canonical Model. The Canonical Model (business rules and format specification) describes how the extraction of…
Modeling the MDM Blueprint – Part II

James Parnitzke

7 Mar 2009 | 6:10 am

In part I of this series we discussed what essential elements should be included in a MDM blueprint. The important thing to remember is the MDM is a business project that requires establishing of a common set of models that can be referenced independent of the technical infrastructure or patterns you plan on using. The blueprint should remain computation and platform independent until the models are completed (and accepted by the business) to support and ensure the business intent. The essential elements should include: - Common Information Model - Canonical Model - Operating Model, and -…

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