Monday, May 19, 2008

Wolfgang on SAP BPM

Another of our old pals is in the news. Wolfgang Hilpert at SAP was interviewed about their forthcoming BPM offering: As I suspected, and wrote in my earlier post, SAP is not looking to compete in the general BPMS market for non-SAP customers; rather, they see SAP's tools becoming those of choice for SAP customers. More than just an appendage to SAP, their BPM will allow for orchestration of Web services within heterogeneous environments (as do all other BPMS), plus provide the services repository and UDDI registry. Hilpert also sees them as eventually being able to identify SAP business objects directly as part of the orchestration, allowing for easy passing of the object from one step to another; another tight coupling with SAP applications that will win them an advantage. Some other interesting tidbits include features around role abstraction and customization (very cool); and use of the (acquired) rules engine in Eclipse (hey Wolfgang when is it going in Visual Studio?). Comment (0) #

Peter's New Job

Our good pal Peter O'Kelly has a new role at Burton Group: Burton Group has introduced a new research offering, its Data Management Strategies (DMS) service. As with the other Burton Group services, DMS is focused primarily on enterprise information technology domains (commercial, government, and higher education), and includes a mix of published research content and customer interaction in the forms of telebriefings (web conference presentations with Q&A) and dialogues (on-demand discussions with analysts). You can find more details about the new DMS service on this page. I'm the Research Director for the DMS service, and I've been focused on bootstrapping the DMS team for the last few months. I'm psyched about the DMS team and the opportunity to focus full-time on data-related topics, as I've been something of a data zealot for most of the last 25 years. Congrats, Peter. I look forward to a continued partnership. Comment (0) #

Friday, May 16, 2008

Not Only Are There Bugs in the System, They're Eating It

This is wild: It sounds like the plot of a farfetched science fiction movie. Unfortunately for the residents of Texas, it is very much a reality: billions of tiny reddish-brown ants have arrived onshore from a cargo ship and are hell-bent on eating anything electronic. Computers, burglar alarm systems, gas and electricity meters, iPods, telephone exchanges - all are considered food by the flea-sized ants, for reasons that have left scientists baffled. Maybe there's an opportunity here: put a couple billion of these guys in a big chamber and feed 'em old PC's: no more recycling problems! (Yeah, I know.) (Thanks to Paulken for this one.) Comment (0) #

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Microsoft's Chicago Data Center

Interesting info on the new data center being constructed in Chicago: Microsoft will be able to pack up to 300,000 servers into the data center "container farm" it is building on the first floor of its new Chicago data center. By packing the 40-foot shipping containers with data center equipment, Microsoft will be able to manage extraordinarily dense server environments. "We'll move from about 400 to 450 watts per square foot to 1,200 watts a square foot," said Debra Chrapaty, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services. "Containers are really, really cool." And for some contrarian views see here. Comment (0) #

CBS Buys C|Net

Wall Street Journal: CBS Corp. agreed to acquire CNET Networks Inc. for about $1.8 billion, just as the technology-focused online news provider's battle with dissident shareholders was heating up. Incidentally I am no relation to the Barry Briggs who used to be COO of C|Net (although we are Facebook friends, which I imagine confuses the heck out of people looking at my profile). Comment (0) #

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Hyper-Connected

Yeah I guess I qualify: Almost two in 10 workers in 17 industrialized countries use a minimum of seven devices for work and personal access to communication networks, a study released Tuesday found. The survey of 2,400 people across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America also found that the so-called "hyperconnected" worker also use at least nine applications, such as instant messaging, text messaging, Web conferencing, and social networks, said IDC, the market research firm that conducted the study sponsored by network-equipment maker Nortel Networks. Comment (0) #

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

World Wide Telescope

The World Wide Telescope launches today. I have been playing with a prerelease over the last few weeks and I can honestly say this may be one of the most beautiful software programs ever created: The WorldWide Telescope draws on more than 12 terabytes of imagery - bigger than the print collection of the Library of Congress - from several orbiting and land-based telescopes.The desktop application downloads the images on demand and stitches them together to form an interactive, browsable universe supplemented with information from top astronomical databases and guided tours that put it all into context. And it's free! Comment (0) #

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Health Care Solutions

Self-service continues to be the (as yet unrealized) mantra: Steve Aylward, Microsoft Health & Life Sciences Industry general manager, told attendees at Microsoft's Health & Life Sciences Developer and Solutions Conference held here April 22 to 24 that the health care industry has been mainly focused on meeting the needs of health care payors and providers, to the detriment of individual consumers of health information and services, who have very different needs. Aylward said health care consumers demanded the type of self-service, any-time access to resources and information that they were used to from other consumer-driven industries like banking, financial services and even retail, he said, including the ability to view and modify health information online and to communicate with physicians and clinical caregivers via e-mail, text messaging and instant messaging. Comment (0) #

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Tesla

I can't help but wonder if this isn't a really, really big, transformative deal in its very early stages: the introduction of a mainstream (with mainstream performance) all-electric car: The car goes from 0 to 60 mph in just under four seconds and tops out at 125 mph. It goes 225 miles on one charge and can be fully recharged in 3.5 hours, which Tesla officials say should allow most people to drive it to work and back and recharge it at night like a cellphone. For the moment of course the Tesla with a $100,000+ price tag is completely out of reach except to a select few myself not among them. Imagine however such a car could be produced for the masses. Plug it in every night for 3 or 4 hours and you're ready for work tomorrow. Now the fun begins (isn't connecting the dots fun?). Say you had at your house some of the new solar technology that is emerging. Now there's some upfront investment in the panels, and the batteries: but the return is: transportation is (gulp) free! Comment (0) #

Thursday, May 1, 2008

The New Old Thing

Fascinating article about the resurgence of Kodak: Steven J. Sasson, an electrical engineer who invented the first digital camera at Eastman Kodak in the 1970s, remembers well management's dismay at his feat. Allan Camp, a technician at Kodak's inkjet development center in Rochester, works on the development of print heads for printers. "My prototype was big as a toaster, but the technical people loved it," Mr. Sasson said. "But it was filmless photography, so management's reaction was, 'that's cute -- but don't tell anyone about it.'" Since then, of course, Kodak, which once considered itself the Bell Labs of chemistry, has embraced the digital world and the researchers who understand it. Timely reminder of how hard a paradigm shift can be. Comment (0) #