(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
Loading ...Tech talk envelops verticals
During an interview with Professor Jim Bookbinder of the University of Waterloo last week, we got to talking about just how effectively technology matters have pushed their way into trade banter within various vertical markets.
Take the logistics market, which Professor Bookbinder devotes much of his research to. Where before the discussion was usually around “trucks and inventories and better deliveries”, today it’s all about new software.
The professor cautioned that the people charged with getting goods from point A to point B shouldn’t lose sight of the core objectives involved with their tasks and should remind themselves that technology is simply a means to that end. From my conversations with folks in other industries, this absorption in technology matters is not limited to the logistics space; a dicey preoccupation with tech tools is occuring in many industries.
Bookbinder believes that eventually things will balance out again and technology will assume a more realistic slice of the discussion. And I have to believe he’s right, for the companies that use IT to thrive will be the ones that already get the concept of tech/core balance. Many of the ones who don’t will either go away or not have enough market share to set industry standards.
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(2 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...The whole kit and the Kindle
It’s an old joke, but I still enjoy it every time I look at one of the free bookmarks given to me by Book City, a small Canadian retail chain with handful of stores in Toronto. A short essay on the bookmark announces the arrival of a new invention which can easily store all kind of information, can keep it secure, will last for years without going obsolete and is affordably priced. The invention, of course, is a book. Whoever came up with Amazon’s Kindle device will have to ensure it doesn’t become an even more hilarious punchline.
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(5 votes, average: 8.2 out of 10) Loading ...Air Canada grounded: Why downtime doesn’t matter
Air Canada’s IT problems are almost as seasonal as Christmas itself.
Typically they’ve happened while I’ve been sleeping, and they’ve been resolved by the time I get into work. This is irritating because such incidents are about the closest we get to truly breaking news in the technology business. More dramatic than a virus outbreak, less opportunistic than a product release, Air Canada’s IT glitches also have a surprisingly limited shelf life. They happen, they’re solved, people grumble and the world moves on. More than almost any other Canadian enterprise, Air Canada challenges conventional IT wisdom. It has proven that downtime doesn’t really matter.
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(3 votes, average: 10 out of 10) Loading ...Cloud control
Try pitching your “cloud” strategy to senior management and watch their eyes glaze over. Then tell them IBM is going to do it for you and watch their ears prick up.
The company’s forthcoming line of “Blue Cloud” products is in some ways easier create a business case around than it would have been a few years ago. There are companies, like Google and Microsoft, which are poster children for how well this kind of thing can work. Soon there will be others, probably appearing at IBM’s next Information on Demand conference, which will offer their own testimonials. After watching the pendulum swing back and forth between mainframes and client-server, IBM admits it is trying to do with cloud computing what it did with Linux: announce to enterprise IT managers that it’s officially smart to at least start considering this approach.
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(5 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...Why Cognos capitulated
“Possibilities are virtually unlimited for bundling BI capabilities with horizontal (e.g. sales automation, human resources) or vertical market applications (e.g. retail, manufacturing). Increasingly modular architectures for Windows products make it easier to tag on to other software solutions.”
The above quote comes from an op-ed piece written by Alan Rottenberg, who was then a senior vice-president of business intelligence at Cognos Inc., which appeared in Computer Dealer News back in 1996. He was right. Those capabilities did end up being bundled, but not simply as loose collections of products from a variety of vendors, but as part of a suite stack controlled by a few vendors who decided to buy everyone else.
IBM has a history of taking successful companies, keeping the brand name and yet making that brand utterly irrelevant to the remaining customer base. This is true of IBM Rational, IBM Tivoli and even IBM Lotus, although productivity tools tend to have a longer shelf-life in user’s memory. In Cognos’ case, there are a lot of other product brands that Canadian clients, particularly in the federal government, have come to trust, including PowerPlay, 4Thought and Impromptu. These were monikers that evoked the kind of dynamic, active decision-making that business intelligence software is supposed to foster. Its Big Blue takeover is being cast as an inevitability by many industry watchers, which may make it worthwhile to review how Cognos became such an attractive target.
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(Rate This Article) Loading ...Skills gap features multiple languages
Vancouver recruiter Minto Roy comments in this blog entry about the different languages both employers and employees use to communicate with one anoter. He points out that if those doing the hiring want to find the talent that’s right for them, and if the job-seekers want to get on the path to a more rewarding and fulfilling career, learning a little bit of each other’s lingo will go a long way to achieving satisfaction in the workplace.
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(3 votes, average: 5.67 out of 10) Loading ...What’s so hot about Oracle AIA?
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
With 45,000 attendees expected at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco (in a few days) and 1,500 conference sessions - speculation is rife about what’s going to be the hottest topics.
There’s little doubt that Oracle’s new Application Integration Architecture (AIA) will be one of them.
What is Oracle AIA technology and why such a huge interest in the subject?
Oracle AIA was unveiled in April by Oracle president Charles Phillips, who devoted a good part of his speech at Oracle’s Collaborate conference to the topic.
Simply defined, AIA is an integration mechanism – it’s a bunch of Oracle products designed to support integration across a wide range of Oracle applications, as well as non-Oracle applications.
So what’s the big deal?
Well right now enterprises are clamouring for technologies that would enable them to deploy cross-functional business processes much more effectively that they’ve been able to do in the past.
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(3 votes, average: 9 out of 10) Loading ...What Microsoft needs from its next CIO
Stuart Scott should have been a role model for IT professionals. Instead he may have just taken the industry’s highest-profile fall from grace.
Microsoft will probably never divulge the reasons it fired Scott (right), its CIO since late 2005, unless he bothers to sue them for wrongful dismissal. Given that he was already on a leave of absence while an investigation was being conducted, that doesn’t seem very likely. The vague allusions to violating corporate policies is meaningless, and hopefully represents an isolated case at Microsoft. Scott’s sudden departure, however, puts a lot of pressure on the company to find a successor whose achievements will eclipse the notoriety it gained by dismissing him.
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