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) #

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Application Architects and Solution Architects

In a lot of environments, I've noticed, senior, highly skilled individuals called "architects" drive IT technical initiatives. Conflict, or at least misunderstanding, occasionally arises between different types of architects, which I call application architects and solution architects. What's the difference? We all know what an application architect is. This is the person that decides upon the structure of an application: how it is built, how it uses memory, how it accesses a database, what API's it exposes, what the user interface is and what technologies are used (JSP, ASP, etc.) to implement it. I like to think of application architects as creating great buildings. In the 1400's Filippo Brunelleschi created the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and many of the difficulties he faced are the same as are faced by modern software architects: impossible deadlines, lack of tools, no precedent. In fact (for example) Brunelleschi (as chronicled in Ross King's marvelous Brunelleschi's Dome) invented a whole new kind of crane specifically for raising masonry to the top of the 400-foot high dome. So IT applications are like buildings. They require architects to understand, master, and implement all the myriad details required to build great apps. In any IT shop of any size, there are any number of such applications, each, as often as not, having its own architect, or chief programmer, or what have you. But therein lies a question. These applications must work together in some way to serve the business. The web site must pass leads on to the CRM system which must pass revenue on to the finance systems, which must report to executive management and public authorities. That is, the environment must support applications and their customers functioning smoothly and efficiently, enabling data to flow with no loss of information or semantics, interdependent functions must operate as quickly as possible, and to be able to adapt as the environment changes, for example, as the business model evolves to exploit new opportunities. Herein lies the value of solution architects. Where application architects build the buildings, solution architects create the city. Here I analogize to Georges-Eugène Haussmann (left), or perhaps the late Robert Moses. Hausmann revitalized the city of Paris by creating the great avenues and boulevards for which the city is famous today: he made Paris -- and the structures created by its architects -- more accessible to its citizens. Similarly Robert Moses built bridges, highways, and attractions in and around New York City, thus making the city more accessible and more useful to its citizens. Solution architects function much like urban planners, making the entire computing ecosystem more valuable and relevant to the business. For example when a new business initiative is undertaken, how can we know if we have the relevant capabilities (anywhere) among our computing assets? How do we know when we can go live with a new business model, and/or what we have to build, adapt, or buy? The solution architect's toolset is different from that of the application architect. Where the AA uses IDE's and compilers and debuggers, the solution architect uses frameworks and models (such as Zachmann, or Microsoft's Business Architecture methodology) to map processes and capabilities and services. Drilling into these will often reveal the need for a new application -- where the AA comes in, now fully informed and armed with a set of concrete and actionable requirements. This is an incredibly undervalued skill in my view, and critical to the success of a large-scale IT organization. Solution architecture lies at the core of the enterprise architecture function. Comment (0) #

Friday, April 18, 2008

World Wide Telescope

Well the Microsoft World Wide Telescope is only available in beta for MS employees at the moment but I've been playing with it over lunch and it is truly awesome. Comment (0) #

MDM Lessons

Good recap of the MDM Conference held in Savannah a few weeks back by Wayne Eckerson and Jill Dyche, our hosts: MDM Insight 2008 was the first invitation-only event in the MDM industry, and the first topic-specific event hosted by TDWI. The attendees were enthusiastic about the content, which was primarily delivered by practitioners who are early adopters of MDM technology. The event sponsors were MDM thought leaders whose solutions have helped many early adopters deliver reconciled master data to a variety of business applications and organizations. MDM Insight 2008 featured an intimate atmosphere that fostered a rich dialogue among participants and highlighted numerous valuable lessons. Comment (0) #

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Green Data Center in San Antonio

More on the new data center going up in Texas: Microsoft's mammoth building looks like a mirror image of its first built-to-suit data center in Quincy, Wash., but it has a lot of incremental improvements over that facility simply because Microsoft has learned through the process how to design the center more efficiently, Manos said. Those improvements include the ways the servers are laid out in the rooms, the lighting in the building and other materials used for construction. From the outside, though, it looks similar. It resembles a giant warehouse with 600,000-gallon water storage tanks on either side. In addition to the conservation of trees, Microsoft has other green initiatives under way, such as plans to use an estimated 6 million to 8 million gallons a month of gray water or recycled water from the San Antonio Water System. Comment (0) #

Monday, April 14, 2008

Microsoft and HCL Partner

I'm looking forward to continuing to work with our pals at HCL: Microsoft will work with Indian IT company HCL Infosystems to develop system integration frameworks for the deployment of Microsoft's products for vertical industries in India. HCL will set up a dedicated team of 500 staff to target industry verticals such as telecommunications, banking, financial services and insurance, power, defense, retail, e-Governance, media, and entertainment, the companies said Friday. The announcement was made during a visit to India by Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner. Comment (0) #

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Manhattan Project for Cyber Security

C|Net: Risks from cyberattacks are increasing and the consequences are so great that the country needs a "Manhattan Project" for network security, Michael Chertoff, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a keynote on Tuesday at RSA 2008. Comment (0) #

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Zero-Down Internet Startups

Interesting: commoditization has hit the VC space: Internet startups are so cheap to do these days that venture capitalists can't find enough companies to take their money -- it's easier just to self-finance or raise the dough from friends and family (boingboing.net startup costs: $0.00). "Right now, honestly? This time sucks for us," says Paul Kedrosky, a partner with Ventures West. "It's a bad time." Savvy VCs are finding ways to compete. One gambit: doling out perks to entrepreneurs. San Francisco-based Founders Fund, started by ex-PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, lets entrepreneurs trade some of their equity for cash, something they usually can't do until their companies are purchased or go public. Other VCs are competing with angels by investing like them ˘ with small amounts and at early stages. In 2007, the average VC-led seed round was less than $1 million. "Half of the deals we do are either seed or A round," says Roger Lee, a general partner at Battery Ventures. "The companies VCs are putting $500,000 into this year we might have been putting $20 million into in 2000." Comment (0) #