Sunday, July 25, 2004

[urls] Top 10 Urls of the Week: A Taste of Furl

Sunday, July 25, 2004
Dateline: China
 
The following is a sampling of my "urls" for the past week.  By signing up with Furl (it's free), anyone can subscribe to an e-mail feed of my urls -- and limit by subject AND rating.  It's also possible to receive an RSS feed.  However, if you'd like to receive a daily feed of my urls but do NOT want to sign up with Furl, I can manually add your name to my daily Furl distribution list.  (And if you want off, I'll promptly remove your e-mail address.)
 
Briefly, over the past week I added over 300 urls to my "goldentriange" Furl account.  In the editing process, I whittled down the number to nearly 60 in my first pass and then deleted about 50 more urls to create "Dave's Top Ten (Urls) List" (of the week).  Think about it:  Only one in 30 made the grade.
 
For one thing, I've excluded ALL sites referenced in any of my three blogs.  Also, ALL "dated" items with short shelf-life were cut (such as news stories), although over two-thirds of the "urled" pages over the past week were news-related.  (My assumption is that everyone already has their favorite news sources.)  OTOH, I didn't want to include items which are a bit too research-focused, either.  Truly a delicate balance.
 
Enjoy -- and please zap me your feedback!  And, if you'd like to receive the daily feed (which includes news items), please let me know.
 
 
Examples of urls that didn't make my "Top Ten List":
 
 
and many, many more ...
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China
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Friday, July 23, 2004

[emerging tech] "Web Engineering: The Evolution of New Technologies" & the Ultimate Killer App

Friday, July 23, 2004
Dateline: China
 
Reviews of papers from the current (July/August 2004) issue of Computing in Science & Engineering, special issue on "Web Engineering: The Evolution of New Technologies."  To order articles from this issue, first click on http://tinyurl.com/5ktaw .
 
Earlier this week I posted excerpts from the lead article in the current issue of CiSE.  The article was titled, "Managing XML Data: An Abridged Overview," which is a good, accurate title.  The excerpts contain useful links, too. 
 
I am going to take a variety of approaches for handling four other papers in this special issue.  However, I first want to provide a link to the introduction to this special issue, i.e., http://tinyurl.com/6sbjx .  The intro itself provides a few useful references and links.
 
The second article is titled, "Information Retrieval Techniques for Peer-to-Peer Networks."  Fortunately, a full-text PDF copy of this paper can be accessed at either http://dblab.cs.ucr.edu/ or http://tinyurl.com/6v2ru, although the URL for the former looks a little bit too generic and might change at a moment's notice (also, the two papers are slightly different).  I have 19 bookmarks on my smartphone for this paper, but I guess I can summarize by saying that IR for P2P networks is hard and very different from "traditional" searchThe last statement actually says a lot -- read between the lines.  This paper covers all the usual suspects and also includes Skype. This paper is based upon the lead author's Master's thesis which can be accessed from http://tinyurl.com/696ml .  Other papers by the lead author can be accessed at http://tinyurl.com/43kkh .  This is an important issue which needs to be resolved, especially as collaborative grid computing (CGC) comes to life.
 
Two figures; 20 references (28 references in the preprint).
 
Less luck with the paper titled, "Web Searching and Information Retrieval," i.e., I couldn't find a free copy on the Web.  The author's site is woefully outdated, too.  The author does speak favorably of a particular approach to decentralized P2P web crawling called "Apoidea."   A copy of a paper describing Apoidea can be accessed at http://tinyurl.com/4m2v5 ; accompanying slides can be accessed at http://tinyurl.com/4b4sh .  As described in the CiSE paper, "Apoidea is both self-managing and uses the resource's geographical proximity to its peers for a better and faster crawl."
 
Two figures; 21 references.
 
To request a copy of this article click on: http://tinyurl.com/7yyl2 or http://tinyurl.com/6m6ff (I'm not sure which address works; I already have a copy of this article so I don't need to contact the author!).
 
"Web Mining: Research and Practice" is not available, either, but a lot of excellent info on the senior author's projects related to this paper is available.  First, take a look at the eBiquity research areas at http://tinyurl.com/52p9n .  Next, you may want to take a look at the abstracts for papers published as part of the eBiquity Group at http://tinyurl.com/5om58 (current through December 2004 -- it doesn't get more current!!).  Move on to their "Semantic Web" page at http://tinyurl.com/4a8fr .  I then downloaded a PDF copy of their paper titled, "Mining Domain Specific Texts and Glossaries to Evaluate and Enrich Domain Ontologies" (see http://tinyurl.com/3lg2m ).  It looks like a relatively recent paper, newer than the CiSE paper (different authors and different subject matter, though).  The PDF is part of their Semantic Web research, whereas the CiSE paper is more "generic."  Anyway, the "Web Mining" paper is another call for distributed mining techniques, and covers fuzzy clustering as well as content-based recommender systems -- but doesn't forget good 'ol HITS (Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search), the basis for IBM's Clever and Google (to a certain extent).
 
No figures; 31 references.
 
To request a copy of this article click on: http://tinyurl.com/5xv3p .
 
Finally, "Intelligent Agents on the Web: A Review" was very disappointing.  The lead author has impeccable credentials, but his paper is based on yesterday's news:  Old, outdated, buried stuff (like Firefly).  Matter of fact, the only live link I can recall finding was Recursion Software's "Voyager" home page (see http://tinyurl.com/3wpem ), which states that the "Voyager applications development platform provides the software layer which handles communications across the network for distributed JAVA applications."  (Looks interesting.)
 
I did a little more digging and surfed over to two stand-by sites (both referenced directly or indirectly in the "Intelligent Agents" paper), namely the MIT Media Lab Software Agents page and Oren Etzioni's (oops, I mean the University of Washington, Department of Computer Science) page.  At the MIT projects page (see http://tinyurl.com/4ocss ) is a listing of several "commonsense" projects, e.g., "Using Commonsense Reasoning to Enable the Semantic Web" (see http://tinyurl.com/4deq7 ).  A draft White Paper on this is available at http://tinyurl.com/4e4bv , as is a presentation at http://tinyurl.com/4le2n along with a couple of video demos.  I also downloaded a paper on GOOSE (GOal-Oriented Search Engine) at http://tinyurl.com/4fyeu .  At UWash I went to their XML data management page (see http://tinyurl.com/5x98a ) and then grabbed two papers:  One on "Probabilistic Methods For Querying Global Information Systems" dated 14 July 2004 (see http://tinyurl.com/45uz7 ) and another titled, "Learning Text Patterns for Web Information Extraction and Assessment" dated May 2004 (see http://tinyurl.com/6k5fz ).  (To download other unrestricted reports, go to http://tinyurl.com/5z2x7 .)  Frankly, I need a bit of time to digest the two recently published UWash papers.
 
As the chair of the Internet and Web applications session of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents (1996), I have a soft spot for agent-oriented everything (especially Web apps).  I remember an old saying from IJCAI (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence) in the mid-70's:  Artificial intelligence is better than none.  (I probably still have a button with this saying somewhere.)  I'm keeping the faith, sans the hype and more toward the realities of software agents.  BTW, this CiSE paper isn't bad if you don't have any background in this space.  It covers the basics, such as ACLs, but with an "updated" perspective.
 
No figures; 27 references.
 
To request a copy of this article click on: http://tinyurl.com/6zzqs .
 
 
The Ultimate Killer App
 
BTW, the "Ultimate Killer App" is attached and in some browsers it will automatically download.  (See the bottom of this message.)  You have to admit, this really is the ultimate killer app!!
 
I've never sent an attachment this way simultaneously to both my e-newsletter and blogs (and blog variants).  Just in case the attachment isn't included, I've uploaded it to the "Photos" section of the e-newsletter (see http://tinyurl.com/2r3pa .)
 
>> Note to AlwaysOn readers: You'll need to go to the e-newsletter ( http://tinyurl.com/2r3pa ) in order to see the "Ultimate Killer App."  You can try the blogs, but no guarantees.
 
 
Tidbits on Enterprise Software
 
.NET wins converts.  For the VARBusiness story see http://tinyurl.com/3omd2 .  Evans Data reports that .NET usage showed a sharp YoY increase in adoption with 52% saying they use .NET and 68% saying they plan to deploy .NET apps by 2005.  In May, Forrester reported that 56% of developers consider .NET their primary development environment contrasted with 44% for J2EE.  (It must have been a binary choice!)  VARBusiness found in a May survey that 53% have already deployed a .NET app and 66% plan to do so within the next 12 months.  In the VARBusiness survey, the most important reasons for going with .NET were ease of use and quicker time to market.  A developer goes on to state that .NET development time is to Java what Java is to C++.  (Wow, what a claim!)
 
Python and Perl beat Java?  (See http://tinyurl.com/44m5t for the PDF file.)  Actually, an indirect "attack" against all "mainstream" programming languages, notably Java, C and C++.  The idea is that the "mainstream" languages are ill-suited for many distributed computing and integration apps.  Gives a "thumbs up" to Python, Perl and PHP, with a peek at PEAK -- the Python Enterprise Application Kit.  (Sorry for the pun.)  PEAK's developers claim future superiority over J2EE.  They also knock Java for not being suited to rapid application development.  PEAK's developers believe a Python-based approach to component-based apps will result in systems that are simpler, faster and easier to install, manage and maintain than variants in J2EE.  PEAK, however, is still immature.
 
Grid computing takes off.  Another survey from Evans Data (see http://tinyurl.com/4l2qb ).  37% of database developers are implementing or planning to implement a grid computing architecture.  In related data, 34% of companies are focusing their database development work on BI (business intelligence) platforms.  See also Oracle's spin on this at http://tinyurl.com/4n2kf .
 
The spoils of ROI.  From IDC's Group VP, Solutions Research, there are several issues which must be addressed in order to maximize IT ROI.  (See http://tinyurl.com/228kv .)  Four of the key issues are:
  • Should the IT agenda include investment in outsourcing technologies or services?
  • Does the future of the business include operations in, or electronic trade with, additional countries - China, for example?
  • Are the services of an outside provider being considered to help in managing proliferating applications or complex "interenterprise" business relationships?
  • What role will utility computing play in the future of IT?
(All items in bold are my emphasis.)  The article goes on to discuss various ways of evaluating ROI, including one of my favorite ways, ROA (real options analysis). 
 
TTFN.  Have a GREAT weekend!
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China
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Monday, July 19, 2004

[emerging tech] "Managing XML Data" (Web Engineering: The Evolution of New Technologies)

Monday, July 19, 2004
Dateline: China
 
Excerpts from the current issue of Computing in Science & Engineering, special issue on "Web Engineering: The Evolution of New Technologies."  To order this article, click on http://tinyurl.com/6v3cc .  (Note: Formatting has been changed from the original article; however, ordering is consistent.)
 
XML's flexibility makes it a natural format for both exchanging and integrating data from diverse data sources.  In this survey, the authors give an overview of issues in managing XML data, discuss existing solutions, and outline the current technology's open problems and limitations.

A diverse set of factors has fueled the explosion of interest in XML ( http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml ): XML's self-describing nature makes it more amenable for use in loosely coupled data-exchange systems, and the flexible semistructured data model behind it makes it natural as a format for integrating data from various sources.

But much of its success stems from the existence of standard languages for each aspect of XML processing and the rapid emergence of tools for manipulating XML.  Popular tools include parsers such as Xerces ( http://xml.apache.org/xerces-j ), query processors such as Galax ( http://db.bell-labs.com/galax ), and transformation tools such as Xalan ( http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j ).  The development of this standards framework has made XML dialects powerful vehicles for standardization in communities that exchange data.

In this article, we discuss the main problems involved in managing XML data.  Our objective is to clarify potential issues that must be considered when building XML-based applications---in particular, XML solutions' benefits as well as possible pitfalls.  Our intent is not to give an exhaustive review of XML data-management (XDM) literature, XML standards, or a detailed study of commercial products.  Instead, we aim to provide an overview of a representative subset to illustrate how some XDM problems are addressed. 

Because data typically is stored in non-XML database systems, applications must publish data in XML for exchange purposes.  When a target application receives XML data, it can remap and store it in internal data structures or a target database system.  Applications can also access an XML document either through APIs such as the Document Object Model (DOM; http://www.w3.org/DOM ) or query languages.  The applications can directly access the document in native format or, with conversion, from a network stream or non-XML database format.

In contrast with relational database management systems (RDBMSs) that had a clear initial motivation in supporting online transaction processing (OLTP) scenarios, XML applications' requirements vary widely.  Applications must deal with several different kinds of queries (structured and keyword-based) in different scenarios (with or without transaction support, over stored or streaming data), as well as data with varying characteristics (ordered and unordered, with or without a schema).

Commercial database vendors have also shown significant interest in XDM---support for XML data is present in most RDBMSs.  Examples include IBM's DB2 XML Extender ( http://www4.ibm.com/software/data/db2/extenders/xmlext.html ), Microsoft's support for XML ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/sqlxml/ ), and Oracle's XML DB ( http://otn.oracle.com/tech/xml/xmldb/ ).

In XML, common querying tasks include filtering and selecting values, merging and integrating values from multiple documents, and transforming XML documents.  While XML has enabled the creation of standard data formats within industries and communities, adoption of these standards has led to an enormous and immediate problem of exporting data available in legacy formats to meet newly created standard schemata.  Several publishing languages have been proposed to specify XML views over the legacy data---that is, how to map legacy data (such as tables) into a predefined XML format.

In this section, we discuss limitations of existing solutions as well as some open problems.  Our discussion is biased toward problems we have encountered in trying to create effective and scalable XDM solutions; it is by no means exhaustive.

Parsing and validating a document against an XML Schema or DTD are CPU-intensive tasks that can be a major bottleneck in XML management.  A recent study of XML parsing and validation performance indicates that response times and transaction rates over XML data cannot be achieved without significant improvements in XML parsing technology.  It suggests enhancements such as using parallel processing techniques and preparsed binary XML formats as well as better support for incremental parsing and validation.

By using XML-specific compression techniques, tools such as XMill compare favorably against several generic compressors.  Compression techniques have also been proposed that support direct querying over the compressed data, which besides saving space, also improve query processing times.

The ability to support updates is becoming increasingly important as XML evolves into a universal data representation format.  Although proposals for defining and implementing updates have emerged, a standard has yet to be defined for an update language.

Three figures & sample code; 23 references.

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Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China
 
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[humor] The Mind of an American Programmer (courtesy of Sun Microsystems)

Monday, July 19, 2004
Dateline: China
 
Go to:  http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/insidejack1/start.html .  A wee bit off topic, but a great perspective on the thoughts of an American programmer ... I mean, "developer."  This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while; it accurately captures life in Silicon Valley.  Even better than Dilbert (although yesterday's Dilbert on execs collecting "trophy wives" was pretty good). 
 
There's audio with the animation, so turn on your speakers and turn up the volume.  Watch out for the jab at IBM Global Services ...
 
Next:  As promised, the blog posting on "The Evolution of New Technologies," a review of five emerging technologies.
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China

Saturday, July 17, 2004

[news] "Urling" Instead of "Blogging"

Saturday, July 17, 2004
Dateline: China
 
Note:  To skip the following chatter, simply go to:  http://www.furl.net/members/goldentriangle .  The link is self-explanatory.
 
Next posting:  "The Evolution of New Technologies" (in a couple/few days).
 
I just did a Google search and it looks like I've created a new word:  "urling."  Some may argue that it should be, "URLing," but it doesn't really matter to me.  For now, I'll stick with "urling."  And, as "blogs" are to "blogging," "urls" (again, some may argue that it should be, "URLs") are to "urling."
 
Two sites inspired me to come up with the new term, Furl and Spurl.  (See http://www.furl.net and http://www.spurl.net ; there's a more popular site with somewhat similar features, but I can't stand it.)  So what in the world am I talking about?  The best way to describe what I'm talking about is to paraphrase a bit from the Furl FAQ.  In essence, blogging is about creating (and created) content; urling is about consumed (and consuming) content.  Notice that there is a slight difference in tense, which also notes another difference between blogging and urling.
 
We all know what blogging is, so let me attempt to explain what urling is.  Urling is the sharing of annotated URLs (i.e., "urls").  In practice (and this is what really counts), urling is the process of sharing cool sites by simply saving them via a bookmarklet.
 
So, big deal.  Why should I care?  Well, in practice, Web users bookmark very few items that they actually see.  However, there are often a lot of sites that users visit that might very well be worth sharing with others.  But doing this (i.e., sharing bookmarks, especially if someone regularly goes on a bookmarking rampage) is a rather tedious process.  Using a Furl or Spurl bookmarklet, urling makes it simple to share the cool sites users visit with all others who may be interested.  They can even be shared as XML feeds!!  Furl and Spurl are a generation beyond the bookmark sharing sites circa the bubble.
 
Furl and Spurl also capture "urled" sites, offer recommendations, even provide a pseudo-social networking feature (although I'm a bit skeptical about this feature).
 
Two Days in the Life of Urling: The Practical Differences Between Blogging and Urling ... and a Peek at Urling Futures
 
I try to blog two or three times each week.  But in the process, I review dozens (perhaps hundreds) of articles and sites just to come up with some original content for my blog.  As we all know, blogs often tend to copy from one another.  ("Copy" may be viewed as an inflammatory word to some bloggers.  No harm intended.)  Blogging is kind of strange in that if bloggers trackback to one another, their Google results improve.  Great for catching fads, I guess, but I'm not sure if any of this really matters for serious content.  I'll go so far as to say that many (most) blogs do not have very much serious content.
 
Urling can get equally as ridiculous and people may want to share all sorts of questionable sites.  But it's also possible to find like-minded individuals and subscribe to what they're urling each day.  Also, not everyone likes to write.  (Some love it, some people hate it -- especially since words put to a blog are seemingly immortalized.)  Now, people who don't like to write, but find a lot of cool, useful information can share with others in a way which is not at all intimidating.  No need to think about pithy things to say in a blog; simply share a cool new site you've found or a new article describing whatever by urling.
 
I'm planning to use Spurl for my personal urling and I'm already using Furl for my public urling.  I can't comment on Spurl's bookmarklet feature, but I must say that Furl is rather slow.  Fact is, I can save an item using Bloglines much faster than I can using Furl.  So speed is an issue.  (I hope the folks at Furl read this.)
 
I also wonder why Bloglines can't do something just like Furl (or Spurl).  For my "master edition" of Bloglines, I have 64 feeds, including numerous newsletters I receive through Bloglines (including about two dozen Google News Alerts, Computerworld newsletters -- which to me are easier to read than their XML feeds, and newsletters from Line56 <they don't have XML feeds> plus Network World newsletters, among others).  Frankly, the ability to receive e-newsletters along with my XML news feeds is one of Bloglines' coolest features.  This "master edition" of Bloglines comprises most of my "must read" trade and industry news sources.  So, Bloglines should simply add the same features provided by Furl and Spurl.  Right now I have to save an article I come across through Bloglines twice:  Once as a clip in Bloglines and another via urling.  It would be much, much simpler if I was able to "url" (which rhymes with "Furl") once in Bloglines, and still have the same sharing, recommendation and annotation features provided by Furl.
 
Back to my "two days" perspective.  Over the past two days I tried urling with Furl.  I "urled" 39 articles and sites on Friday and about 20 today (but the day is still young).  Lots of good stuff, but NOTHING that I want to blog about.  Also, yesterday and today were/are light reading days.  My guess is that I would average at least 50 "urls" each day, with a ratio of about 100 "urls" per blog posting.  That's right:  A 100:1 ratio.
 
I'm even testing to see how things get picked up in the "urlosphere."  (Sorry, I just had to say this!  I hope nobody really uses the term "urlosphere.")  I tossed out to fellow "urlers" the links to a few potentially hot sites, including the sites for the iRider and Deepnet browsers, and for BYU's Data Extraction Research Group (focused on Semantic Web apps).  It will be interesting to see what happens to these links in the "urlosphere."
 
Take a look at my entries:  http://www.furl.net/members/goldentriangle .
To receive as a RSS feed, subscribe to:  http://www.furl.net/members/goldentriangle/rss.xml .
 
Bottom line:  Let's see how this goes.  Frankly, I'd rather focus my blog on two subjects:  ITO (from a trade and business perspective) and "hot" technologies (but from a more contemplative and technical perspective, NOT a knee-jerk reaction to jerky press releases).  I'd rather leave the non-ITO tech trade stuff to urling and still have the ability to share noteworthy findings.
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China
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Monday, July 12, 2004

[news] ERP in China

Monday, July 12, 2004
Dateline: China
 
In this posting, I'd like to address something that is seemingly a bit mundane:  ERP in China. 
 
Two articles in the current issue of the Communications of the ACM (CACM) caught my eye.  The first, titled "Why Western Vendors Don't Dominate China's ERP Market" is a good read.  (See http://tinyurl.com/27w9d .)  After reading this article, it's safe to say that Bamboo Networks (especially with their .NET ERP solution, which is something even Microsoft doesn't have), Kingdee, UFSoft and a few other domestic ERP vendors don't have much to fear from the "globals" -- although SAP and Oracle collectively hold about 25% of the market, which isn't bad.  Textbook blunders on the part of (mostly American) software vendors.  To request a copy of this article click on http://tinyurl.com/28eat .
 
The other article is titled, "ERP in China: One Package, Two Profiles."  (See http://tinyurl.com/2r45p .)  According to this paper, more than 1,000 Chinese sites had an ERP system by the end of 2001, costing billions of dollars.  Nearly 300 were on SAP.  (The figures differ slightly from the above cited CACM paper.)  ERP sales in China are projected to triple in five years from a US$1 billion base in 2002.  (Note:  I'm not sure if the author meant through 2007 or 2009.)  A good quote regarding partnering opportunities:  "With China's accession to the World Trade Organization, many multinational enterprises are rushing to establish operations in China and/or interact with Chinese business partners."  (My emphasis.)  For those on this list attempting to attract foreign direct investment, read the part which says, "establish operations in China."
 
The paper noted that although ERP projects in China rarely hit even ECO/ECN-adjusted delivery schedules, they rarely exceed the planned budget.  (In contrast to the States where ERP is almost always late AND over budget.  In the States, taking on an ERP project is akin to playing Russian Roulette.)  The article goes on to mention eight differences between ERP projects in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private ventures.  The findings demonstrate that when it comes to ERP projects, private ventures in China are very similar to private ventures in the States.  SOEs act like, well, SOEs:  Bureaucratic nightmares galore.  To request a copy of this article click on http://tinyurl.com/2eve2 .
 
There is another good article in the July issue of CACM:  "Demystifying Integration," which includes a listing of and brief take on dozens of domain-independent and -dependent standards and specifications for application integration.  Good stuff for a systems integrator.  To request a copy of this article click on http://tinyurl.com/3ysvx .
 
Tidbits on Enterprise Software
 
What does the CEO of a systems integrator dream about?  How about being one of the first companies to partner with a BEA or Siebel?  (When I thought about this, all choices seemed rather awful!!  )
 
Need some help finding the next BEA?  Turn to the AlwaysOn Network 100.  For perspective, see http://tinyurl.com/23p3u .  Last year's winners included several companies that IPO'd (including Salesforce.com, Opera), companies in line to IPO (including Google, RightNow) and several other hot companies.  Frankly, their record so far is the best I've seen (albeit it's still a bit too early to draw any firm conclusions).  For a listing of this year's winners (to be announced this upcoming week at Stanford -- Go Cardinal!), see http://tinyurl.com/25j9s .  If I had the time (which I don't), I'd go through this list with a fine-tooth comb.  IMHO, it's better than the listing of presenters at Enterprise Outlook or DEMO ... although the DEMO companies are a lot more fun!!.
 
Another list worth reviewing is Forrester's selection of the best Web design firms.  (See http://tinyurl.com/3bq5z .)  Critical Mass, AGENCY.COM and SBI.Razorfish take top honors.  Everyone tends to look toward the top 500 systems integrators in the States for partnering opportunities.  However, don't discount the elite among the U.S. Web design firms.  Many compete in an extremely cost conscious environment where much less expensive Java programming from a partner in China could be a win-win for all three parties:  The SI in China, the Web design firm in the States, and the U.S. client.
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China
 
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Friday, July 09, 2004

[news] A Special Report on Business Intelligence

Thursday, July 8, 2004
Dateline: China
 
One of my favorite industry trades, Computerworld, recently published a special report on business intelligence (BI).  (See http://tinyurl.com/2w8j2 .)  As regular readers of this blog know, I'm hot, hot and hotter on BI.  Not only are BI apps booming in their own right, but BI also provides an open door into other structured data apps (e.g., ERP and SCM).  Also, there is a burgeoning number of apps requiring both BI and knowledge management (KM) solutions, providing a host of new opportunities.  (For now, think of BI for structured data and KM for unstructured data.  But the lines between KM and BI are blurring.)
 
The Computerworld report includes an introduction to BI titled, "BI for the Masses," an introduction to Web harvesting, and a superb article on text mining; there are several online exclusives as well.  In this post, I'm going to focus on an article titled, "Predictions for BI's Future," by providing excerpts with commentary.  As usual, items in bold are MY emphasis; items in red are MY commentary.
 
Embedded BI.  "Over the next four to six years, BI systems will become embedded in small, mobile devices, such as manufacturing sensors and PDAs in the field, which in turn will be linked to more centralized systems." -- Erik Thomsen, distinguished scientist, Hyperion Solutions Corp., Sunnyvale, Calif.
 
PB DM (petabyte data mining).  "Within three years, companies and governmental agencies will be able to successfully run analytics within a centralized data warehouse containing 1 petabyte or more of data -- without performance limitations." -- Dave Schrader, technology futurist, Teradata, a division of NCR Corp., El Segundo, Calif.
 
HPC to the rescue!  "Within the next two to three years, high-performance computing technology used by scientific and engineering communities and national R&D labs will make its way into mainstream business for high-performance business analytics. This transition will be driven by the growing volume of complex data and the pressing need for companies to use forecasting and predictive analytics to minimize risk and maximize profit-generating opportunities." -- Phil Fraher, chief operating officer, Visual Numerics Inc., San Ramon, Calif.
 
BI meets AI.  "In the near future, business leaders will manage by exception, and automated systems will handle significant loads of routine tasks." -- Mike Covert, chief operating officer, Infinis Inc., Columbus, Ohio
 
Visualization.  "Over the next two to three years, BI systems will automatically suggest appropriate visualizations, which in turn will dramatically increase the use of visualization and our understanding of complex relationships." -- Erik Thomsen, distinguished scientist, Hyperion Solutions
 
BI + BPM + BAM.  "Businesses need more than a rearview mirror to drive their business forward into the next era. A new category of intelligence tools will emerge over the next two to three years that combines business process management, business activity monitoring (BAM) and business intelligence to enable the "actively managed enterprise." This will combine the scorecards and rearview-analysis capabilities of BI with the real-time, event-driven analysis of BAM and feed that information into automated business processes for on-the-fly steering of the business towards scorecard goals. This will exponentially elevate the speed at which businesses are able to operate, adapt and make critical decisions." -- Tim Wolters, chief architect of business activity monitoring solutions, webMethods Inc., Fairfax, Va.
 
Bottom line:  Go to a BI-related ACM or IEEE CS conference and you'll hear a lot of presentations on all of the apps described above.  It's where the rubber meets the road:  This stuff is real!!  However, it's important to differentiate "real" BI with much more simplistic reporting software (like a good "chunk" of the so-called BI solutions provided by Business Objects, Cognos and even Microsoft -- via their recent acquisition of ActiveViews).
 
A BI Site to Review
 
Last week I came across a paper published in the current issue of the Journal of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems.  In this paper the project called "Data Mining and Decision Support for Business Competitiveness: A European Virtual Enterprise" (SolEuNet) is used as a case study and "the source of lessons learned."  The paper provides a link to the SolEuNet Web site (see http://tinyurl.com/3x5vo ); at the SolEuNet site I found a wealth of case studies with supporting technical documents on leading-edge BI apps (see, for example, Workpackage 7 on "Combining Data Mining and Decision Support with Information Systems" at http://tinyurl.com/yqkqm ).  Remember, strategy consulting isn't merely about comparing product specs (regardless what the IT advisory services may say).
 
The Gartner Conference on BI
 
I got my hands on three i-banking analyst reviews of the Gartner BI conference.  The Morgan Stanley report (dated 27 April) noted that customer activity levels appeared to be strong and "many seem to be taking a more strategic approach to BI, resulting in the emergence of larger transactions."  (My emphasis.)  Corporate performance management (CPM) is driving some of the larger deals, with Cognos and Hyperion taking the lead.  Evidently, systems integrators (SIs) are getting religion and developing collaterals around CPM messaging.  RBC Dominion Securities produced a more in-depth report (dated 29 April) and noted the following:
  • Gartner expects the market to accelerate in 2004.
  • The ETL (extraction, transformation, and load) market will flatten (finally).
  • CPM is hot.  "Hyperion, Cognos, and SAS appeared to be the best positioned non-ERP vendors to capitalize on the CPM market opportunity."  However, "(they) believe that SAP is the best-positioned large enterprise software vendor to execute in both the BI and CPM market ..."
  • Finally, the Gartner BI conference itself was hot, with 973 attendees, an increase in attendance of 70% over last year.
UBS chimed in with their own report (dated 30 April), which in some ways was a bit more technical than the other two reports cited above.  UBS noted that heterogeneous environments require independent tools (e.g., it is very difficult to get heterogeneous data into an ERP data warehouse <DW>).  Gartner's rule of thumb is that an ERP-derived BI/DW solution should be on the short-list only if more than 60% of an organization's BI data resides within that single app vendorUBS also noted that the importance of BI is leading to the formation of BI competency centers.  They also believe that SAP and Microsoft remain significant long-term threats to the independent software vendors such as Cognos and Business Objects.  BTW, all three reports seemed a bit down on Business Objects.
 
Another Computerworld feature on BI
 
Sometimes advertorials can be a good thing.  A case in point is the 26 April issue of Computerworld which provides a link to a new, six page Computerworld White Paper on BI.  The paper is titled, "Charting the Course: A Guide to Evaluating Business Intelligence Products"; it's a good, practical read.  Tactical, product spec advice and guidelines, but still a good read.  The PDF can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2gt3d .
 
Recent Tidbits on BI
 
The New Straits Times (Malaysia) via Asia Africa Intelligence Wire reported on 24 June that SAS "expects the BI market in Asia to register double-digit growth for the next five years.  (Don Cooper Williams, director of marketing and alliances for SAS Asia-Pacific) cites a recent report from research house International Data Corp, which predicts that BI software market in the region (excluding Japan) to grow by 12 per cent this year, up from 7.5 per cent in 2003."  Note to SIs in China:  BI isn't just hot in the States; leverage your skills for serving the U.S. market and the domestic market.
 
From the channel, India Business Insight (also via Asia Africa Intelligence Wire) on 31 May announced that "Business Objects has entered into a long-standing systems integrator agreement with Wipro Infotech (WI) to provide business intelligence (BI) solutions to customers."  Note to SIs in China:  Don't be left without a dance partner.
 
Additional Articles for Review
 
I did a quick scan of trade lit and found a few articles worth reading.  First, the March-April issue of Financial Executive talks about CPM -- Corporate Performance Management -- as it relates to BI.  The May issue of Insurance & Technology takes a vertical look at BI (rather basic apps), as does the April issue of Business Credit.  Always think verticals.
 
A Final Wrap (or Should I Say, "Rap"?)
 
Back to Computerworld.  More specifically, see the 29 March issue of Computerworld.  According to a survey conducted by IBM Business Consulting Services, BI is a high priority on the plate of C-level execs.  In a Computerworld poll, 39% of IT executives listed business intelligence projects as their most critical IT projects.  By 2005, market research firm IDC projects that the worldwide market for business intelligence software will total about $6 billion -- up from $2.5 billion in 2003 -- signaling a major increase in business intelligence projects.  IT executives say the skills they need on business intelligence projects include systems integration, data modeling, database administration, data standardization and project management.
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China
http://www.itestrategies.com (current blog postings optimized for MSIE6.x)
http://tinyurl.com/2r3pa (access to blog content archives in China)
http://tinyurl.com/2azkh (current blog postings for viewing in other browsers and for access to blog content archives in the US & ROW)
http://tinyurl.com/2hg2e (AvantGo channel)
 
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Tuesday, July 06, 2004

[news] IT Spending Trends

Tuesday, July 6, 2004
Dateline: China
 
A quick recap on IT spending trends from three recently published Smith Barney surveys.  The three reports are the May and June editions of their CIO Vendor Preference Survey and the 6 June issue of softwareWEEK.  Tom Berquist, my favorite i-banking analyst, was the lead for all three reports.  I have a backlog of blogs to write, so I'll use as many quotes as possible and add context where necessary.  (I'm mostly extracting from my smartphone bookmarks for these reports.  Warning:  I may have coded the May and June issues incorrectly, but the quotes are correct.)  NOTE:  Highlighted items (e.g., items in bold, like this sentence) are MY emphasis.  Items in red are my commentary.
 
Starting with the Survey editions, "(t)he strongest areas of spending appear to be software (apps, security, storage, and database) and network equipment/apps (Gigabit Ethernet, WLAN, VPNs)" and regarding software, "larger and more well known vendors continue to dominate the list in each category with vendors such as Microsoft, SAP, IBM, Veritas, Symantec and Computer Associates getting significantly more mentions in each of their groups than the remaining vendors did."  However, the report admits that their sample group might be biased.  Yes, vendors matter -- and so do vendor partnering strategies.  However, I'm a bit skeptical about CA and I don't particular care very much for Veritas or Symantec.  Not my part of the universe.
 
"Applications again stand out as a clear area of strength."  "Within applications, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Business Intelligence (BI) all showed extremely well ..."  Well, this is the first sign that a recovery may be in the making for SCM.  However, I'd emphasize BI and ERP, followed by CRM; don't count on a lot happening in the SCM space just yet.  Some other key surveys do NOT validate that SCM is in recovery.  "In terms of specific vendors, Microsoft, Symantec, Veritas, SAP, and Adobe were the top beneficiaries of CIOs intentions to increase spending."  The report continues that only SAP showed statistically significant results, both in ERP and SCM.  "Results were more mixed for best-of-breed vendors in this area, suggesting that horizontal applications vendors are having a tough time competing with the large ERP vendors even as vertically-focused vendors continue to have some measure of success on this front."  For the more adventurous SIs in China, SAP presents a lot of opportunities.  Tread carefully, though.  And "Adobe's enterprise strategy appears to be gaining momentum.  Adobe was a clear standout in content management ..."  "Survey results were also positive (though somewhat less so) for other leading content management players, notably Microsoft and IBM."  Another "win" for Microsoft.  Funny that none of the traditionally leading content management players were mentioned.  A take on Linux:  "Linux continues to garner mind share, but large enterprises remain the main adopter.  Interestingly, nearly 83% of our respondents stated that they were not currently moving any applications to Linux.  Of the 17% that said they were moving applications to Linux, only one company under $1.0 billion in revenue was making the transition to Linux confirming our views that Linux is primarily being used by large companies to shift Unix applications to Linux on Intel."
 
"Among CIOs who indicated a higher level of consulting spend, IBM was the clear winner, followed by Accenture as a distant second.  Unisys was also mentioned as a vendor being considered, but it was a distant third.  However, we note that Unisys being mentioned ahead of a pure-play consultant like BearingPoint (a low number of mentions, which included mentions of decreased spending) or EDS is positive, given that Unisys chooses to focus in 2 specific verticals, including one-public sector-that was not in the survey."  "Over two-thirds of CIOs indicated that they do not use IT outsourcers.  Most of the rest said they were unlikely to change the level of outsourcing spend.  IBM, ACS and CSC were the only vendors explicitly mentioned as likely to get more outsourcing business."  The "two-thirds" figure will likely change in favor of outsourcing.  This trend is fairly clear.  See a BCG report at http://tinyurl.com/2muy8 , although the report takes a relatively broad perspective.
 
From softwareWEEK, "(t)he CIOs were also very focused on rapid 'time to market' with purchases.  None were interested in starting projects that would take greater than 2 quarters to complete."  "This requirement was not a 'payback' requirement, but rather an implementation time frame requirement.  The CIOs did recognize that payback times could be longer, though the payback times on IT utility spending were much shorter than on applications or emerging area spending."
 
"In terms of spending, the CIOs all used a similar methodology for making decisions that essentially divides their IT spending into one of three categories: 1) sustained spending on their 'IT utility' (i.e., infrastructure such as network equipment, servers, storage, databases, etc.); 2) new project spending on applications (business intelligence, portals, CRM, etc.); and 3) investment spending on select emerging areas (grid/utility computing, identity management, collaboration, etc.)  It was pretty obvious that the CIOs recognized that business unit managers were more interested in spending on new applications/emerging areas than on the IT utility ..."  "(S)ome of the CIOs were experimenting with grid/utility computing initiatives to try to increase their utilization of storage/servers and reduce the amount of new equipment to be purchased.  In one example, a CIO showed their storage/server utilization around the world and many regions were in the 50% or worse bucket for average utilization.  Their goal was to use grid computing architectures and storage area networks (along with faster communication links) to better share the pool of resources."  Yes, this is it!!  Take this to heart!!  If you think grid and utility computing are Star Trek stuff, think again.
 
"In terms of new projects, the CIOs mentioned they were spending on business intelligence, portal/self-service applications, CRM, and collaboration.  Collaboration was a heated discussion, with all CIOs commenting that this was a big problem for them and there was no clear solution on the market.  While it wasn't completely clear to the audience what the CIOs were looking for in a collaboration solution, the elements that were described included: more intelligent email, corporate instant messaging, web conferencing, integrated voice over IP with instant messaging (so that a conversation could quickly shift from typing to talking), and collaborative document editing (spreadsheets, presentations, publications, etc.).  Within the business intelligence arena, business activity monitoring was discussed as was building of enterprise data warehouses/data marts.  The portal/self-service applications being built or deployed were primarily for customer and employee self-service (remote access to email, applications, and files was a big deal for all of the companies).  On the CRM front, the discussion from one CIO was around their need to increase revenues and manage channel conflict better."  [I'll be posting to this blog a bit more about collaboration opportunities over the next week.]
 
"While vendors were not discussed in any detail during the panel, the CIOs did say that they remain open to working with smaller vendors (public and private) as long as they have plenty of relevant references (in their industry, particularly with close competitors) and they offer a compelling value proposition versus larger vendors.  One CIO stated that they get called by 20 startups a week to sell products to them, but most of them cannot articulate the value proposition of their product.  Nonetheless, the CIO does take 5 meetings a month from startups because some of them are working on things that are interesting to the business."
 
Whew ...  Lots of good materials.  To reiterate, all highlighted items are my emphasis.  Bottom line:  The market is heating up.  Get your ISV relationships in place.  Pick your verticals (see the "Tidbit on Microsoft" which follows).  Pick your apps -- and the apps I like the best are content management and BI, although ERP is looking good, too.  Collaboration can be a major source of revenue if the SI can provide a truly effective solution.
 
Tidbits on Microsoft
 
A quick update on some happenings in the Redmond universe.  (See http://tinyurl.com/36xgu ; the article is titled, "Microsoft focuses on its enterprise-applications business".)  First, app areas that are of particular interest to MS include those for manufacturing and life sciences.  So, how about a MS build-to-their-stack strategy focused on either of these two verticals?  Second, MS is moving beyond purely horizontal offerings to very specific functionality.  Their Encore acquisition is an example of MS moving in this direction.  Finally, new releases of all four of Microsoft's ERP product lines are due for this year.  Not surprisingly, MBS marketing is up 20% from FY04.  Hmmm ... ERP spending intentions are strong and MS is a key player in this space -- with several updated offerings scheduled for release this year.  Another opportunity?
 
Tidbits on Infosys
 
Infosys formally enters the IT strategy consulting biz.  (See http://tinyurl.com/2xxlo .)  Yes, it was inevitable.  In April Infosys Consulting, Inc. was formed and, "(i)t's no secret that the winning model will be high-end business consulting combined with high-quality, low-cost technology delivery done offshore," according to Stephen Pratt, the head of Infosys' consulting unit.  The Infosys Consulting unit now has 150 employees in the States and plans to expand to 500 within three years.  Note to SIs in China:  You need more -- a lot more -- IT strategy types  And you need people in the States (at least on an "as needed" basis) in order to capture -- and serve -- new accounts.
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China
http://www.itestrategies.com (current blog postings optimized for MSIE6.x)
http://tinyurl.com/2r3pa (access to blog content archives in China)
http://tinyurl.com/2azkh (current blog postings for viewing in other browsers and for access to blog content archives in the US & ROW)
http://tinyurl.com/2hg2e (AvantGo channel)
 
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Friday, July 02, 2004

[news] JavaMania

Friday, July 2, 2004
Dateline: China
 
I'd like to report on what happened at JavaOne, but there are two problems:  First, I was in China, not at J1.  Second, there are a flood of reports in the press.  To get a recap, the best bet is to visit one of my favorite XML "news" feeds:  "TheServerSide.com: Your Enterprise Java Community".  However, I will highlight several newsworthy items:
  • Project Looking Glass -- kind of a 3D windows interface (but doesn't run under Windows (capital "W"); shown a year ago, but seems to be ready for prime time.
  • J2SE Version 5 (J2SE 5) -- yes, their numbering scheme has changed; Sun is trying to make client-side Java a ... ah, possibility. 
  • Java for your BMW -- true!!  The ultimate geek toy!!  "Hey, baby, want to ride in my Java-powered B'mer?"  I can see it now ...
  • Java-enabled phones (350 million) and Java-enabled smart cards (600 million) -- hmmm ... I don't have either (I feel like a Luddite!).
  • Project Kitty Hawk -- "includes professional services for designing an SOA" (service-oriented architecture); sounds enticing.
  • NetBeans 4.0 Integrated Development Environment (IDE ) -- Sun's "big" J2EE-related news, and ...
  • ... more mobile stuff (see http://tinyurl.com/2jexc ).
Tidbit:  There are four million Java developers, up one million over the past year.  Not sure if I believe this, but the trend sounds good.
 
In addition to TheServerSide.com, see http://tinyurl.com/2oegn , http://tinyurl.com/2v95w for further background info.
 
Bottom line:  Yes, I am touting Java.
 
Cheers,
 
David Scott Lewis
President & Principal Analyst
IT E-Strategies, Inc.
Menlo Park, CA & Qingdao, China