Thursday, April 29, 2010

ERP Implementation is Still Problematic

A decade after a rash of high profile stories about disastrous ERP implementations, including the legendary Hershey debacle, ERP implementation is still a problem. A recent study released by Panorama Consulting Group reveals that  "More than 35 per cent of respondents overall said their projects took longer than expected; just 21.5 per cent reported shorter-than-anticipated project times. Forty-three per cent said the projects were completed on schedule.

"Thirty percent of Tier I (the big players like SAP and Oracle) projects had time overruns, compared to 18 per cent for Tier II and 5 per cent for Tier III.

"51.4 per cent of projects overall ended up going over budget, with 40 per cent meeting expected costs. Only 8.6 percent came in at a lower price tag than planned."

These being ERP projects, we're talking big numbers in many cases.

One strategy that has gained some traction in the past few years has been the use of SAAS solutions. They effectively avoid the new for full scale internal implementation. Some of the same problems will remain, such a need to retrain staff, but without a complete implementation to worry about, more time can be devoted to these sensitive areas. A report on the Panorama Study can be found on IT World.


Monday, April 26, 2010

Television in the New World

Hulu, purveyor of online television, has been reconsidering its business model. So far, it has offered up content free, and obtained its revenue from advertising. A time honoured business model and a popular one on the Web.

The world keeps changing, however, and there are signs that this business model will need to change. The concept of online TV and movies and other videos has been catching on lately. Many people like to watch TV and videos on their computers, and more are now watching them on their smart phones and "Blackberry's. With the high resoluton possible on premium mobile devices, TV and movies become very watchable.

The problem for the advertising model when people want to watch on their handhelds is, of course, airtime and data cost. Nobody wants to spend money to watch commercials. So Hulu is considering going to a subscription model.

A subscription model would work well, provided it is carefully thought out. Hulu will have several options, They can run a subscription model along with an advertising model, and let customers decide which they want to use. Those with Blackberry's will be able to watch TV and movies without enduring ads, while students with limited funds will be able to choose the advertising option. Hulu could also offer those who pay for the subscription route some premium content to make their investment worthwhile. There's more in this article.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Publishing - an Industry Undergoing Monumental Change

Traditional publishing is a broken model. From a business point of view, most of the money from books gets sucked up by the publishers, agents, publicists and others. The authors are left with very little and unless they sell like John Grisham, can only make a pittance on their books even if they sell thousands of copies.

From the customer perspective, many books are overpriced. The classic example is textbooks, which still follow a traditional format, and students get charged between 1 and 2 hundred dollars for a beautifully bound book that in many disciplines is doomed to obsolesence within a year or two. The beauty of the binding does not necessarily bear a relationship to the quality of the content.

The growing phenomenon of e-books is not the answer, although they can provide a part of the solution. What we have creeping into the scene is a new type of publishing, often based on self-publishing, which channels publications to all the eBook technologies out there, like Kindle, Kobo, Mobo, even PDF. They also use print on demand techniques, which avoid the need to carry inventories.

The new types of publishers, like Createspace and Fastpencil (these two examples are quite different from each other) also pay the authors a lot better, more like 80% of the proceeds rather than 5 - 10% in royalties. Also, they can produce books much faster, a matter of a month or so, rather than the traditional year or two required by traditional publishers. Indeed, with traditional publishers many books are obsolete before they hit the street.

Public acceptance of this trend is lagging, but will undoubtedly catch up over the next year or so. People are looking for new ways to consume their books, and they want to pay less and have more flexibility. The new wave of publishers will meet those needs. In the process, the business models of the traditional publishing industry will be shaken to its very core. An interesting interview with Steve Wilson, CEO of Fastpencil, is featured in Knowledge @Wharton this week.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Public Transit Goes Live

Waiting for the bus or train is about to take on a technological flair and may be a little more bearable and less frustrating. That's because people will be able to track the train or bus they are waiting for with their smartphone or blackberry. At least it should remove some of the suspense. Where is that bus? And how long will it be until it gets here?

New York and Philadelphia are both testing new real time tracking systems. Swiss railroads already have a real time tracking system in place. Applications for various hand-helds are being offered and developed. It should be a help to public transit. And it should make public transit a bit more efficient for those harried commuters. For a write up on this and also for some links to the test sites, check here.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Real Time Search - The New Wave?

We've gotten used to using the web for searching. Have a question? Just google it. Its amazing how quickly one can learn about something with a couple of nicely worded searches.

But that may become obsolete. Both Google and Microsoft are working on new search tools that will draw upon data streams in social media, like Facebook and Twitter.

Your first thought might well be - But there is so much garbage in those sites. How can you find information that is useful and relevant - and perhaps more importantly, reliable?

The answer comes from looking at information identification in a whole new way. Social media can quickly identify what is on people's minds. It can almost instantly reveal the views of a wide swath of people on a particular topic. It can lead a researcher into avenues of enquiry that might not have been pursued using conventional techniques. It won't replace the solid, detailed knowledge on a topic that can only be obtained by going to established and original sources. But it can provide a pathway to consider, and give a profile on a development. Many people, for example, are using Twitter in particular to track the effects of the ash cloud currently enveloping Europe. It gives them a perspective that the normal news media provides only with more difficulty.

But you need to be patient using this method because at present it requires you to read through a lot of irrelevant and questionable chatter. Here's where the real time search tool comes in. It uses algorithms to sort out the chatter and enable the users to more quickly get to the root of a matter. It can lead to a new way of finding information.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Privacy Concerns are not Going Away

A recent research report by a group of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania points to an amazing similarity in attitudes between younger generations and those older folk. The survey drew responses from several age groups, ranging in age from under 19 to over 65. Many of the responses showed similar levels of concern about sharing private information on the internet, with refusals to show certain kinds of information almost exactly the same across the different age groups. This flies in the face of common assumptions about the attitudes of young people towards internet privacy and points to the prospect of a continuing concern in the populace about privacy as that generation ages. In fact, the survey shows that the younger generation has more faith in the government to protect them. As they grow older and realize that the government offers little protection, perhaps there will also be widespread calls for more government action in this area. Here's a summary of the report.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Cloud Computing - Is it Real?

Much hype has been directed to cloud computing over the last year or two. But there are still people who dispute it's reality and others who think it's the only way to the future. One thing can be said about the cloud - it is the Internet. That's the reaction of Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. He refers to the cloud as water vapour. Says we should get a grip.

Microsoft, on the other hand, with a huge vested interest in packaged software, has decided to embrace the cloud, recognizing that while there may be hype involved, something real is happening.

It's true that the cloud is the internet, but is it just the internet. There seems little question that the idea of cloud computing represents a new and different method of managing IS architecture, indeed a new architecture in itself. True, running applications from an offsite server is nothing new, but running them from internet based servers on a large scale and renting the time to do so is something relatively new, and could have major implications for business and for software vendors. Microsoft recognizes this and is responding. Oracle is in denial and runs the risk of being left out of the rush to the cloud. Here's a take on the strategies of the two companies.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Twitter Adopts a Business Model

When it leaped to popularity in the last couple of years, Twitter joined a long list of popular internet ventures without a business model. They have some elite company. Amazon spent years thrashing around for a business model that would work. So did Google. So people have been waiting with bated breath for Twitter to act.

Yesterday, Twitter announced its model. As expected, it is an advertising model, centering around the concept of "promoted tweets." "Users will start seeing paid messages, which will be labeled "promoted," at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. "Initially, as many as 10% of users will see the promoted messages. Twitter will work with Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America to roll out the first ads," he said.

Whether Twitter's new plan will work is an open question for the present. It depends on how Twits react as well as how much value advertisers see in the program. It has a decent chance for success though, given the immense coverage of Twitter. There's more about this in Computerworld.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Business Intelligence (BI) for the Masses

Business Intelligence has been a major driving factor in the development of electronic business. Through the use of BI, companies have been able to leverage the vast repositories of data in their systems to help in achieving corporate goals and objectives. Traditionally, BI has been driven by large, complex applications often requiring installations on the scale of ERP systems and calling for sophisticated users and support functions.

Now Microsoft is moving to broaden the scope of BI adoption in business by expanding the functionality of its popular Excel spreadsheet, combined with its collaborative platform, Sharepoint. The large user base for Excel along with the fact of its widely known and understood interface will provide a solid launching point for the new initiative.

The result could be greater usage of BI and considerable improvements in efficiency and productivity among companies who need to make better use of their data. A summary of Microsoft's initiative can be found in Informationweek.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Data is Not Free

While data continues its trek towards a global world of availability, companies moving to the cloud are observing a curious quirk of the legal framework. It seems the geography that data is related to is important in determining compliance with such laws as privacy, because of course the laws are geographically based. The move to the cloud is more difficult that many originally thought. Eventually this issue as outlined in this article will have to be tackled head-on.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

E-Buyers Still Have Security Concerns

When e-commerce began, there was a great deal of concern about security on the internet. For good reason, people just did not trust it and were hesitant to put their credit card information on a site. Since that time of about 15 years ago, there has been a vast amount of money invested in better security for online shoppers. Most people are aware of this effort. On the other hand, the media has reported numerous cases almost on a daily basis of instances of fraud, phishing and hackings. Some of those stories are scary, involving situations in which people lost substantial sums of money and experienced difficulty in getting it back, if they ever did. So consumers are still fearful of e-commerce, and more than careful about which sites they buy from.

To some extent this fear is healthy, but it may be that it is now being overdone. Security has indeed improved, and the volume of e-commerce activity has continued to increase, albeit not as at great a rate as it would have if the concerns about security weren't there. Sites attempting to sell online need to include as much calming material as possible, to try to assuage the fears of the skittish consumer, as indicated in this article.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

This blog has moved


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Babbage - A New Blog

The Economist Magazine has launched a new blog called Babbage.

"Named after Charles Babbage, the father of the computer, our new blog aims to understand the world through the technology that now impacts our lives and reveals so much about us. Recent posts investigate the role of geeks (they are now officially cool, running companies and making millions), mourn the demise of the analog car, and ask just who Apple's iPad is for. Answer: no one knows, not even Apple."

The blog is at this URL. It's worth bookmarking, as the Economist is always on point.