SAP - German SMEs' Recipe for Success
Globalization has brought great benefits for many German SMEs. In an interview with SAP INFO online, Professor Bernd Venohr from the Institute of Management at the Berlin School of Economics describes the strategies, management structures and processes that pave the way for global success.
Grozzies
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Computable.nl | Nieuws | Strategie | SAP A1S: 'Gemak dient het mkb'
Computable.nl | Nieuws | Strategie | SAP A1S: 'Gemak dient het mkb'
SAP biedt on-demand bedrijfsprocessen in hoop op expansie in mkb-markt. Begin volgend jaar komt het nieuwe product A1S voor het midden- en kleinbedrijf van SAP op de markt. "We liggen op schema, dus we gaan de lancering in het eerste kwartaal gewoon halen", beloofde ceo Henning Kagerman de aanwezigen op de persconferentie van Sapphire in Wenen.
SAP biedt on-demand bedrijfsprocessen in hoop op expansie in mkb-markt. Begin volgend jaar komt het nieuwe product A1S voor het midden- en kleinbedrijf van SAP op de markt. "We liggen op schema, dus we gaan de lancering in het eerste kwartaal gewoon halen", beloofde ceo Henning Kagerman de aanwezigen op de persconferentie van Sapphire in Wenen.
Monday, May 14, 2007
SAP - Focus On "Do-It-for-Me" Web Services: Small Companies Point and Click on E-Commerce
SAP - Focus On "Do-It-for-Me" Web Services: Small Companies Point and Click on E-Commerce
Small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) have big buying power when it comes to Web services and tools. While many large enterprises bought into the Web in the 1990s and early 2000s, growing numbers of SMEs are just now turning to e-commerce and other online tasks.
Small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) have big buying power when it comes to Web services and tools. While many large enterprises bought into the Web in the 1990s and early 2000s, growing numbers of SMEs are just now turning to e-commerce and other online tasks.
FT.com / Companies / IT - PC and software makers race to woo small businesses
FT.com / Companies / IT - PC and software makers race to woo small businesses
PC and software makers race to woo small businesses
By Kevin Allison in San Francisco
Published: May 14 2007 22:44 | Last updated: May 14 2007 22:44
Computer makers are launching products and overhauling their sales strategies in an attempt to woo small business customers, as companies with 100 employees or less come into their own as sophisticated consumers of information technology.
The moves come as falling prices make technologies previously available only to the world’s biggest companies affordable to small businesses. “The technology is more affordable, cutting across all product categories,” said Ray Boggs, an analyst at IDC, the market research company. “Small firms today are looking like mid-sized firms did five years ago.”
At the same time, smaller companies have become increasingly computer-savvy, with business owners spending more on IT to increase productivity and boost sales.
“Even small businesses with a few employees are a lot more computer literate than they were in the past,” said Satjiv Chahil, a vice-president of marketing at Hewlett-Packard’s personal computer division. Earlier this year, HP rolled out a dozen products, including servers, PCs and storage devices designed for small businesses.
Dell, IBM and Cisco Systems have also launched products intended for small businesses in recent months. On the software side, Microsoft and SAP have been stepping up efforts to win small business accounts.
Technologies of interest to small businesses include wireless networking, servers, and business applications such as e-mail or customer relationship management software, Mr Boggs said.
Mark Shearer, general manager of IBM’s small business server line, said: “Small businesses essentially need the same kinds of infrastructure and capabilities that larger businesses need. They’re competing in a global economy and their customer needs are intense.”
HP and IBM have been overhauling sales strategies while Cisco Systems last month announced plans to double to 10,000 the number of sales partners trained to work with small businesses.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
PC and software makers race to woo small businesses
By Kevin Allison in San Francisco
Published: May 14 2007 22:44 | Last updated: May 14 2007 22:44
Computer makers are launching products and overhauling their sales strategies in an attempt to woo small business customers, as companies with 100 employees or less come into their own as sophisticated consumers of information technology.
The moves come as falling prices make technologies previously available only to the world’s biggest companies affordable to small businesses. “The technology is more affordable, cutting across all product categories,” said Ray Boggs, an analyst at IDC, the market research company. “Small firms today are looking like mid-sized firms did five years ago.”
At the same time, smaller companies have become increasingly computer-savvy, with business owners spending more on IT to increase productivity and boost sales.
“Even small businesses with a few employees are a lot more computer literate than they were in the past,” said Satjiv Chahil, a vice-president of marketing at Hewlett-Packard’s personal computer division. Earlier this year, HP rolled out a dozen products, including servers, PCs and storage devices designed for small businesses.
Dell, IBM and Cisco Systems have also launched products intended for small businesses in recent months. On the software side, Microsoft and SAP have been stepping up efforts to win small business accounts.
Technologies of interest to small businesses include wireless networking, servers, and business applications such as e-mail or customer relationship management software, Mr Boggs said.
Mark Shearer, general manager of IBM’s small business server line, said: “Small businesses essentially need the same kinds of infrastructure and capabilities that larger businesses need. They’re competing in a global economy and their customer needs are intense.”
HP and IBM have been overhauling sales strategies while Cisco Systems last month announced plans to double to 10,000 the number of sales partners trained to work with small businesses.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
FT.com / Technology - TECHNOLOGY LITE: The shrinking IT department
FT.com / Technology - TECHNOLOGY LITE: The shrinking IT department
TECHNOLOGY LITE: The shrinking IT department
By Dan Ilett
Published: May 9 2007 11:36 | Last updated: May 9 2007 11:36
Business leaders are learning a few lessons about IT. After spending small fortunes on equipment and technical specialists over the last decade or so, many have started to realise that a lack of cost savings and profit avenues from these investments means a shake-up is required.
In a bid to reset the IT profit model, larger businesses are now starting to mimic smaller ones by contracting specialist IT companies to service their technology while they focus on selling their product.
TECHNOLOGY LITE: The shrinking IT department
By Dan Ilett
Published: May 9 2007 11:36 | Last updated: May 9 2007 11:36
Business leaders are learning a few lessons about IT. After spending small fortunes on equipment and technical specialists over the last decade or so, many have started to realise that a lack of cost savings and profit avenues from these investments means a shake-up is required.
In a bid to reset the IT profit model, larger businesses are now starting to mimic smaller ones by contracting specialist IT companies to service their technology while they focus on selling their product.
Monday, April 23, 2007
FT.com / Technology - SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES: Profit from picking the right IT partner
FT.com / Technology - SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES: Profit from picking the right IT partner
SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES: Profit from picking the right IT partner
By Stephen Pritchard
Published: April 18 2007 10:08 | Last updated: April 18 2007 10:08
Over the past decade, smaller enterprises have faced a paradox: the price of computer equipment appears to fall each year, yet smaller companies are devoting a growing percentage of their turnover to IT.
An office PC with a decent specification is now widely available for less than $500. Yet Gartner, the industry analyst firm, predicts that small and mid-sized companies in Europe alone will increase their spending on technology by 10 per cent this year – a higher percentage increase than for larger enterprises.
The discrepancy, however, is easily explained. Smaller companies are becoming more dependent on technology, and are using it in more areas of their business. This is especially true both of small companies that want to grow, and of mid-sized businesses that are looking to technology for efficiency gains.
In turn, this is putting pressure on the traditional relationship between small companies and their IT suppliers.
A few years ago, a business would be satisfied if its local computer dealership could supply a few PCs, some printers and perhaps install a network. But commoditisation of much computing hardware, along with SMEs’ increasing reliance on business applications such as CRM and ERP, is changing that relationship.
“SMEs often no longer have a supplier as such for computer hardware, printers or broadband services. They buy the cheapest,” suggests Andy Kyte, a vice-president and fellow at Gartner. “But if companies want to grow, they need to acquire [business] software, and at that point, they need a value-added reseller.”
Finding the right reseller should be a priority for company directors. As Mr Kyte points out, SMEs are often reluctant to change resellers once they have established a relationship, not least because of the time and costs involved in selecting a new supplier.
Selecting the right partner becomes all the more important if that company is also going to customise or adapt an application for the business, because it will be even harder to find a company prepared to work with someone else’s custom code.
It is not an easy task. The IT consultancy and reseller markets have undergone considerable changes since the end of the technology boom, and by no means all changes favour the smaller business that needs to invest in IT.
According to Jim Shepherd, senior vice-president at AMR Research, the number of hardware resellers is falling, particularly in North America. Market conditions favour a smaller number of larger resellers and distributors and software companies are encouraging their resellers to focus on volume sales.
Businesses have, of course, benefited from the lower cost of IT hardware and to some extent, software licences. But the “added value” integration and consulting that SMEs rely on so heavily to make technology work is often squeezed, as the larger resellers go after volume.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mr Shepherd identifies smaller, more localised IT companies whose owners all too often lack the ambition shown by their customers.
“These are ‘lifestyle’ companies: the owners’ motivation is to make enough money to fund their lifestyles but they are not aggressively trying to grow their businesses,” he says. Such resellers are often reluctant to invest in building expertise in particular vertical industries, yet such expertise is what their customers need to expand their own companies. “But SMEs cannot get the efficiencies they need in order to make money, without IT.”
The outlook for small and mid-sized companies is not universally bleak. Mr Shepherd says mid-sized businesses, in particular, stand to benefit from a trend for highly skilled IT specialists at large IT and systems integration groups to form their own, boutique consultancies.
These often focus around a particular vertical industry or enterprise software platform, and will charge rather less than the large international groups but offer a much greater level of expertise than local IT suppliers can offer.
Such consultancies – as well as individual, freelance IT experts – also give SMEs the option of sourcing the commodity parts of their IT systems, such as PCs, directly or through an online outlet at the lowest cost and spending the money saved on integration or customisation expertise.
The moves by software and hardware vendors such as Microsoft, SAP and IBM to support consultancies is also helping SMEs buy services in this way with greater confidence.
“We are making more of our services available for our partners to deliver, whether it is a security solution or a technology such as RFID,” says Rich Michos, vice-president of sales for small and mid-sized business at IBM.
Industry analysts agree that SMEs are more likely to trust their IT consultant or reseller to deliver a new or complex technology if they know their supplier is backed by a large, global vendor.
But this, Mr Michos says, is only one factor to bear in mind when picking an IT partner. It should also look for a company that can call on other resources, including external specialists, to help with projects; for a company that can integrate the technology and one that understands its business. Above all, however, it needs to be a company they can rely on.
“It is important that a technology reseller can be a one-stop shop, if necessary by collaborating with other people,” says Mr Michos. “But above all it is about working with someone you trust.
“Businesses are putting more thought into how they source their IT. They might not be able to afford the bills of the large consultancies, but with the right research they can still find a trusted partner with the skills to support them as their business grows.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED COMPANIES: Profit from picking the right IT partner
By Stephen Pritchard
Published: April 18 2007 10:08 | Last updated: April 18 2007 10:08
Over the past decade, smaller enterprises have faced a paradox: the price of computer equipment appears to fall each year, yet smaller companies are devoting a growing percentage of their turnover to IT.
An office PC with a decent specification is now widely available for less than $500. Yet Gartner, the industry analyst firm, predicts that small and mid-sized companies in Europe alone will increase their spending on technology by 10 per cent this year – a higher percentage increase than for larger enterprises.
The discrepancy, however, is easily explained. Smaller companies are becoming more dependent on technology, and are using it in more areas of their business. This is especially true both of small companies that want to grow, and of mid-sized businesses that are looking to technology for efficiency gains.
In turn, this is putting pressure on the traditional relationship between small companies and their IT suppliers.
A few years ago, a business would be satisfied if its local computer dealership could supply a few PCs, some printers and perhaps install a network. But commoditisation of much computing hardware, along with SMEs’ increasing reliance on business applications such as CRM and ERP, is changing that relationship.
“SMEs often no longer have a supplier as such for computer hardware, printers or broadband services. They buy the cheapest,” suggests Andy Kyte, a vice-president and fellow at Gartner. “But if companies want to grow, they need to acquire [business] software, and at that point, they need a value-added reseller.”
Finding the right reseller should be a priority for company directors. As Mr Kyte points out, SMEs are often reluctant to change resellers once they have established a relationship, not least because of the time and costs involved in selecting a new supplier.
Selecting the right partner becomes all the more important if that company is also going to customise or adapt an application for the business, because it will be even harder to find a company prepared to work with someone else’s custom code.
It is not an easy task. The IT consultancy and reseller markets have undergone considerable changes since the end of the technology boom, and by no means all changes favour the smaller business that needs to invest in IT.
According to Jim Shepherd, senior vice-president at AMR Research, the number of hardware resellers is falling, particularly in North America. Market conditions favour a smaller number of larger resellers and distributors and software companies are encouraging their resellers to focus on volume sales.
Businesses have, of course, benefited from the lower cost of IT hardware and to some extent, software licences. But the “added value” integration and consulting that SMEs rely on so heavily to make technology work is often squeezed, as the larger resellers go after volume.
At the other end of the spectrum, Mr Shepherd identifies smaller, more localised IT companies whose owners all too often lack the ambition shown by their customers.
“These are ‘lifestyle’ companies: the owners’ motivation is to make enough money to fund their lifestyles but they are not aggressively trying to grow their businesses,” he says. Such resellers are often reluctant to invest in building expertise in particular vertical industries, yet such expertise is what their customers need to expand their own companies. “But SMEs cannot get the efficiencies they need in order to make money, without IT.”
The outlook for small and mid-sized companies is not universally bleak. Mr Shepherd says mid-sized businesses, in particular, stand to benefit from a trend for highly skilled IT specialists at large IT and systems integration groups to form their own, boutique consultancies.
These often focus around a particular vertical industry or enterprise software platform, and will charge rather less than the large international groups but offer a much greater level of expertise than local IT suppliers can offer.
Such consultancies – as well as individual, freelance IT experts – also give SMEs the option of sourcing the commodity parts of their IT systems, such as PCs, directly or through an online outlet at the lowest cost and spending the money saved on integration or customisation expertise.
The moves by software and hardware vendors such as Microsoft, SAP and IBM to support consultancies is also helping SMEs buy services in this way with greater confidence.
“We are making more of our services available for our partners to deliver, whether it is a security solution or a technology such as RFID,” says Rich Michos, vice-president of sales for small and mid-sized business at IBM.
Industry analysts agree that SMEs are more likely to trust their IT consultant or reseller to deliver a new or complex technology if they know their supplier is backed by a large, global vendor.
But this, Mr Michos says, is only one factor to bear in mind when picking an IT partner. It should also look for a company that can call on other resources, including external specialists, to help with projects; for a company that can integrate the technology and one that understands its business. Above all, however, it needs to be a company they can rely on.
“It is important that a technology reseller can be a one-stop shop, if necessary by collaborating with other people,” says Mr Michos. “But above all it is about working with someone you trust.
“Businesses are putting more thought into how they source their IT. They might not be able to afford the bills of the large consultancies, but with the right research they can still find a trusted partner with the skills to support them as their business grows.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
FT.com / Technology - DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Plan to stay calm in a crisis
FT.com / Technology - DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Plan to stay calm in a crisis
DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Plan to stay calm in a crisis
By Alan Cane
Published: April 18 2007 10:10 | Last updated: April 18 2007 10:10
It’s the bombs and the Buncefields that make the news, but most threats to a business’s survival are of a more humdrum nature.
The statistic is well known but no less shocking for that: 80 per cent of businesses that suffer a major disruption fail within 18 months, as their customers go elsewhere.
Legislation and regulation, however – Sarbanes Oxley in the US, the Civil Contingencies Act in the UK and so on – are the principal drivers behind a new awareness of the importance of disaster recovery and business continuity that is manifesting itself in an unprecedented wave of interest in the ways and means by which a business can protect itself against the unexpected.
And the unexpected is just that. Nicki Dennis, head of market development for the British Standards Institute, says: “It could be a fire or a flood or a terrorist attack, but most of the things that upset continuity are more mundane – drilling through an outside power cable, for example, or failure of the air conditioning. If you have a plan in place to cope with emergencies, it helps create a degree of calm.”
So what is disaster recovery? What do we mean by business continuity? A useful handbook published by IT Governance* says disaster recovery is the “methodical preparation and execution of all the steps that will be needed speedily to recover from a disaster, usually one caused by technology”. Business continuity is designed to ensure that: “certain business functions continue to operate in spite of disasters striking an organisation”.
Disaster recovery has historically focused on ways to recover from IT failures, but has morphed into business continuity, as the importance of people and an emphasis on speed of recovery has become evident.
“Do we have incidents? Absolutely. Have they affected our business? No,” says Karen Dye who has global responsibility for Sun Microsystems’ crisis management programmes.
She points to the importance for a multinational of observing continuity guidelines in each of the territories in which the group operates, but says the way the group is distributed worldwide is a strength. She points to the most important elements of the Sun plan.
First, that it is championed by a senior executive at headquarters – who reports directly to the chief executive – and by a champion in each of the business units.
Second, the plan is “owned” by the business units that take responsibility for implementing it.
Third, that with limited resources, there is an emphasis on what is most critical to the business.
Peter Power, managing director of London-based Visor Consultants, which specialises in advising companies on contingency planning, likes to describe the dangers as “bombs, bird flu and banana skins” – the latter frequently leading to the loss of a company’s reputation – a situation from which it can be difficult to recover.
Mr Power says that contingency planning has splintered into silos – enterprise risk management, corporate social responsibility, operational risk management, business continuity and data security.
He advocates a holistic approach, that could be labelled “corporate resilience”, which should attract lower insurance premiums. “It can give you competitive advantage” he argues. “Take it out of the box labelled ‘grudge purchase’ and cut your insurance bills.”
Michael Faber, vice-chairman of another recently formed organisation, the Institute of Operational Risk, agrees that business continuity and operational risk are two sides of the same coin. “There has to be greater integration,” he says. “That is the way forward.
“After all, our job is to provide the right information to the board so it can appreciate the true level of risk and take appropriate decisions.
“There is a danger that all these pockets of risk that are not talking to one another or sharing information will present a disjointed view to the board. The different disciplines need to co-ordinate and co-operate more.”
It is an approach that would be welcomed by the rapidly growing business continuity industry. Keith Tilley, who is vice-president, Europe, for SunGard Availability Services, the Philadelphia-based pioneer in disaster recovery centres, says customers are demanding a sharp reduction in the time between the onset of an incident and full data availability. “When we started in 1979, it was 24-48 hours. Now for priority applications, people are asking for 100 per cent availability.
“In the business, we talk about the ‘recovery time objective’ – how quickly does something need to be recovered – and ‘recovery point objective’ – what should it look like on recovery.
“A City trader would not want to lose a single transaction but might be able to survive for 10 to 15 minutes. An airline such as Ryanair needs its online booking system available at all times, otherwise potential customers would simply switch to competitors.”
A point made time and again by business continuity experts is that the development of an effective plan starts with a careful examination of the basics of the business. Edward Wilding, chief technical officer at Data Genetics International notes: “The fundamental question which businesses must keep in sight when preparing their business continuity programme is: ‘Why are we doing this?’.
“There is a world of different between appearing to comply with a given standard and creating and implementing a strategy that both works and is practical. Too many businesses try to adopt best practice or benchmark their procedures against competitors without thinking: ‘Will this work in the event of a catastrophe?’”
And David Porter, senior risk and fraud expert at Detica, emphasises simplicity. “Most business continuity plans are too complex and confusing for people to follow when they are in the heat of a crisis,” he says.
Once you have written your plan – and before consigning it to the shelf – you must carry out a table-top simulation in which all the key actors in the plan are around the table. You’ll be amazed at the number of holes and glitches that come out of this dress rehearsal.”
* Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity by Thejendra BS, IT Governance Publishing 2007. www.itgovernance.co.uk
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY: Plan to stay calm in a crisis
By Alan Cane
Published: April 18 2007 10:10 | Last updated: April 18 2007 10:10
It’s the bombs and the Buncefields that make the news, but most threats to a business’s survival are of a more humdrum nature.
The statistic is well known but no less shocking for that: 80 per cent of businesses that suffer a major disruption fail within 18 months, as their customers go elsewhere.
Legislation and regulation, however – Sarbanes Oxley in the US, the Civil Contingencies Act in the UK and so on – are the principal drivers behind a new awareness of the importance of disaster recovery and business continuity that is manifesting itself in an unprecedented wave of interest in the ways and means by which a business can protect itself against the unexpected.
And the unexpected is just that. Nicki Dennis, head of market development for the British Standards Institute, says: “It could be a fire or a flood or a terrorist attack, but most of the things that upset continuity are more mundane – drilling through an outside power cable, for example, or failure of the air conditioning. If you have a plan in place to cope with emergencies, it helps create a degree of calm.”
So what is disaster recovery? What do we mean by business continuity? A useful handbook published by IT Governance* says disaster recovery is the “methodical preparation and execution of all the steps that will be needed speedily to recover from a disaster, usually one caused by technology”. Business continuity is designed to ensure that: “certain business functions continue to operate in spite of disasters striking an organisation”.
Disaster recovery has historically focused on ways to recover from IT failures, but has morphed into business continuity, as the importance of people and an emphasis on speed of recovery has become evident.
“Do we have incidents? Absolutely. Have they affected our business? No,” says Karen Dye who has global responsibility for Sun Microsystems’ crisis management programmes.
She points to the importance for a multinational of observing continuity guidelines in each of the territories in which the group operates, but says the way the group is distributed worldwide is a strength. She points to the most important elements of the Sun plan.
First, that it is championed by a senior executive at headquarters – who reports directly to the chief executive – and by a champion in each of the business units.
Second, the plan is “owned” by the business units that take responsibility for implementing it.
Third, that with limited resources, there is an emphasis on what is most critical to the business.
Peter Power, managing director of London-based Visor Consultants, which specialises in advising companies on contingency planning, likes to describe the dangers as “bombs, bird flu and banana skins” – the latter frequently leading to the loss of a company’s reputation – a situation from which it can be difficult to recover.
Mr Power says that contingency planning has splintered into silos – enterprise risk management, corporate social responsibility, operational risk management, business continuity and data security.
He advocates a holistic approach, that could be labelled “corporate resilience”, which should attract lower insurance premiums. “It can give you competitive advantage” he argues. “Take it out of the box labelled ‘grudge purchase’ and cut your insurance bills.”
Michael Faber, vice-chairman of another recently formed organisation, the Institute of Operational Risk, agrees that business continuity and operational risk are two sides of the same coin. “There has to be greater integration,” he says. “That is the way forward.
“After all, our job is to provide the right information to the board so it can appreciate the true level of risk and take appropriate decisions.
“There is a danger that all these pockets of risk that are not talking to one another or sharing information will present a disjointed view to the board. The different disciplines need to co-ordinate and co-operate more.”
It is an approach that would be welcomed by the rapidly growing business continuity industry. Keith Tilley, who is vice-president, Europe, for SunGard Availability Services, the Philadelphia-based pioneer in disaster recovery centres, says customers are demanding a sharp reduction in the time between the onset of an incident and full data availability. “When we started in 1979, it was 24-48 hours. Now for priority applications, people are asking for 100 per cent availability.
“In the business, we talk about the ‘recovery time objective’ – how quickly does something need to be recovered – and ‘recovery point objective’ – what should it look like on recovery.
“A City trader would not want to lose a single transaction but might be able to survive for 10 to 15 minutes. An airline such as Ryanair needs its online booking system available at all times, otherwise potential customers would simply switch to competitors.”
A point made time and again by business continuity experts is that the development of an effective plan starts with a careful examination of the basics of the business. Edward Wilding, chief technical officer at Data Genetics International notes: “The fundamental question which businesses must keep in sight when preparing their business continuity programme is: ‘Why are we doing this?’.
“There is a world of different between appearing to comply with a given standard and creating and implementing a strategy that both works and is practical. Too many businesses try to adopt best practice or benchmark their procedures against competitors without thinking: ‘Will this work in the event of a catastrophe?’”
And David Porter, senior risk and fraud expert at Detica, emphasises simplicity. “Most business continuity plans are too complex and confusing for people to follow when they are in the heat of a crisis,” he says.
Once you have written your plan – and before consigning it to the shelf – you must carry out a table-top simulation in which all the key actors in the plan are around the table. You’ll be amazed at the number of holes and glitches that come out of this dress rehearsal.”
* Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity by Thejendra BS, IT Governance Publishing 2007. www.itgovernance.co.uk
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Automatisering Gids, Cisco verbreedt aanbod voor MKB
Automatisering Gids, Cisco verbreedt aanbod voor MKB
Het vlaggenschip in de nieuwe reeks is de Unified Communications 500 Serie, die is bedoeld voor bedrijven met 8 tot 48 gebruikers. Alle vormen van communicatie zijn via één gebruikersinterface toegankelijk, waarbij de keuze van apparatuur (pc, laptop, PDA) vrij is. Het platform werkt met Unified IP-telefoons van Cisco zelf, inclusief de 'softphone' IP Communicator.
Tot de overige onderdelen van het systeem behoort de Catalyst Express 520, een switch die zijn stroomvoorziening via het netwerk krijgt (Power over Ethernet). Ook de Cisco Mobility Expres Solution, inclusief een draadloos basisstation, is in het MKB-systeem opgenomen. Verder zijn diverse beheer- en monitoring-tools ontwikkeld. Een compleet systeem inclusief één IP-telefoontoestel gaat in de VS circa 700 dollar per werkplek kosten. De producten komen in juni op de markt.
Daarnaast heeft Cisco een nieuw certificatieprogramma voor partners in het MKB opgezet. SMB Select Certification moet partners die zich specifiek op kleine en middelgrote bedrijven richten de juiste instrumenten aanreiken. Onderdeel van SMB Select Certification is onder meer een speciaal trainingsprogramma waarmee medewerkers zich in technisch en verkoopopzicht kunnen bekwamen. (Geert Kelfkens)
Zie ook:
Cisco wil het MKB veroveren met communicatieoplossingen - Automatisering Gids, nr. 40 2005
Het vlaggenschip in de nieuwe reeks is de Unified Communications 500 Serie, die is bedoeld voor bedrijven met 8 tot 48 gebruikers. Alle vormen van communicatie zijn via één gebruikersinterface toegankelijk, waarbij de keuze van apparatuur (pc, laptop, PDA) vrij is. Het platform werkt met Unified IP-telefoons van Cisco zelf, inclusief de 'softphone' IP Communicator.
Tot de overige onderdelen van het systeem behoort de Catalyst Express 520, een switch die zijn stroomvoorziening via het netwerk krijgt (Power over Ethernet). Ook de Cisco Mobility Expres Solution, inclusief een draadloos basisstation, is in het MKB-systeem opgenomen. Verder zijn diverse beheer- en monitoring-tools ontwikkeld. Een compleet systeem inclusief één IP-telefoontoestel gaat in de VS circa 700 dollar per werkplek kosten. De producten komen in juni op de markt.
Daarnaast heeft Cisco een nieuw certificatieprogramma voor partners in het MKB opgezet. SMB Select Certification moet partners die zich specifiek op kleine en middelgrote bedrijven richten de juiste instrumenten aanreiken. Onderdeel van SMB Select Certification is onder meer een speciaal trainingsprogramma waarmee medewerkers zich in technisch en verkoopopzicht kunnen bekwamen. (Geert Kelfkens)
Zie ook:
Cisco wil het MKB veroveren met communicatieoplossingen - Automatisering Gids, nr. 40 2005
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
FT.com / Technology - Small and medium-sized companies: Free software and services packed with value
FT.com / Technology - Small and medium-sized companies: Free software and services packed with value
Small and medium-sized companies: Free software and services packed with value
Stephen Pritchard
Published: March 28 2007 10:14 | Last updated: March 28 2007 10:14
Technology trends are challenging the notion that anything free is likely to be of little value. Some of the largest technology companies, including Microsoft, Skype and Google, are focusing on new business models.
Skype, one of the pioneers of internet telephony, bases a large part of its business on the idea of providing some free services, in its case calls to other Skype users, and more recently, to some landlines.
Skype, of course, hopes to make money by selling other features, such as calls to fixed or mobile users, voicemail and numbers that link Skype to the fixed-line network for incoming calls. In some ways the business model is not far from that of the mobile phone business, where in many markets operators subsidise the phones, in order to sell airtime and other services.
None the less, the mobile business model is a way for small companies to acquire sophisticated equipment without paying an upfront fee: unsubsidised, a smart phone from the likes of Nokia, Motorola or HTC can cost almost as much as an entry-level laptop.
A number of mobile operators are understood to be looking at a similar model for laptops themselves, where the purchase cost of the machine is offset by a monthly charge for downloading data.
Even more interesting, perhaps, are some of the ideas coming from the software and internet services field. Small businesses and the self-employed have long used free e-mail services such as Hotmail and Googlemail. Often, small organisations only move to a more sophisticated e-mail system when the need to promote a corporate identity prompts them to register their domain name. And for many sole traders – from knowledge workers to builders – the brand is their name, and what comes after the @ symbol matters rather less.
But some small businesses do want more from their e-mail, and Microsoft and Google have both responded by offering a number of more flexible, hosted services. Microsoft, through its Live programme, allows companies to register their own domain names but still have up to 25 free e-mail accounts each with 2GB storage – more than many larger companies with their own mail infrastructure provide to employees.
A charged-for service supports 50 e-mail accounts and online contact management, while a premium service offers a greater range of internet applications, including basic document management and even customer relationship management systems.
Google is less specific than Microsoft in aiming its free services at small businesses, but the fact is that many small and even some larger companies already make use of offerings as diverse as Google Maps and e-mail.
But it is day-to-day software applications, including spreadsheets and word processing, that could do most to cut small businesses’ IT spending. Rather than pay for an office suite upfront, applications such as Writely give a good degree of functionality to a business user with a broadband connection and a browser. Google covers the cost of running the free version of Google Apps with advertising; businesses can opt for an ad-free version for $50 a month. And competition between companies offering “office 2.0” services should ensure costs stay low or even fall further.
“There are quite a few start-ups in the ‘office 2.0’ market,” says Nicholas Carr, author of Does IT Matter?. “There are two models for suppliers: build your own massive data centres, a la Google and Microsoft, or just create the software and then use other companies’ data centres to run the service. The latter model reduces the entry costs significantly.”
This could mean that companies with even quite specialist software needs might be able to find a free, or low- cost service, online. Online software service Salesforce.com, for example, extended its AppExchange service last year to allow third-party software developers to use it as a way to distribute their applications without first building infrastructure.
According to Peter Critchley, strategy director at IT consultancy Morse, the suitability of free or low-cost applications depends largely on how critical they are to the business that uses them.
“There is a trend for core technology to reduce in price and commoditise to the point where it is free or pseudo-free, or paid for in a different way,” he says. “The limits come down to the business criticality of the application. You might be happy running free web serving or free e-mail, if it would not hurt your business too much if the services are not available.”
Being able to turn to a competitor for a similar service will be vital if small and medium-sized enterprises, rather than consumers, are to accept the free software model.
Few if any businesses now question the fact that web browser software is free, even though it is critical to so many business processes; a company dissatisfied with Explorer can switch to Netscape or more recent alternatives, such as Firefox.
But companies do need to know they can transfer their data; the fact that web browsers are all based on standards is a key factor in making a switch feasible.
“Google and other companies are adopting standard, open data formats for many of the online applications,” says Nicholas Carr. “So it’s generally not difficult to extract your data in a usable format. But data transfers are always problematic, as different applications have different features and protocols. Companies should carefully consider the risk of lock-in, just as they should for bought hardware and software.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Small and medium-sized companies: Free software and services packed with value
Stephen Pritchard
Published: March 28 2007 10:14 | Last updated: March 28 2007 10:14
Technology trends are challenging the notion that anything free is likely to be of little value. Some of the largest technology companies, including Microsoft, Skype and Google, are focusing on new business models.
Skype, one of the pioneers of internet telephony, bases a large part of its business on the idea of providing some free services, in its case calls to other Skype users, and more recently, to some landlines.
Skype, of course, hopes to make money by selling other features, such as calls to fixed or mobile users, voicemail and numbers that link Skype to the fixed-line network for incoming calls. In some ways the business model is not far from that of the mobile phone business, where in many markets operators subsidise the phones, in order to sell airtime and other services.
None the less, the mobile business model is a way for small companies to acquire sophisticated equipment without paying an upfront fee: unsubsidised, a smart phone from the likes of Nokia, Motorola or HTC can cost almost as much as an entry-level laptop.
A number of mobile operators are understood to be looking at a similar model for laptops themselves, where the purchase cost of the machine is offset by a monthly charge for downloading data.
Even more interesting, perhaps, are some of the ideas coming from the software and internet services field. Small businesses and the self-employed have long used free e-mail services such as Hotmail and Googlemail. Often, small organisations only move to a more sophisticated e-mail system when the need to promote a corporate identity prompts them to register their domain name. And for many sole traders – from knowledge workers to builders – the brand is their name, and what comes after the @ symbol matters rather less.
But some small businesses do want more from their e-mail, and Microsoft and Google have both responded by offering a number of more flexible, hosted services. Microsoft, through its Live programme, allows companies to register their own domain names but still have up to 25 free e-mail accounts each with 2GB storage – more than many larger companies with their own mail infrastructure provide to employees.
A charged-for service supports 50 e-mail accounts and online contact management, while a premium service offers a greater range of internet applications, including basic document management and even customer relationship management systems.
Google is less specific than Microsoft in aiming its free services at small businesses, but the fact is that many small and even some larger companies already make use of offerings as diverse as Google Maps and e-mail.
But it is day-to-day software applications, including spreadsheets and word processing, that could do most to cut small businesses’ IT spending. Rather than pay for an office suite upfront, applications such as Writely give a good degree of functionality to a business user with a broadband connection and a browser. Google covers the cost of running the free version of Google Apps with advertising; businesses can opt for an ad-free version for $50 a month. And competition between companies offering “office 2.0” services should ensure costs stay low or even fall further.
“There are quite a few start-ups in the ‘office 2.0’ market,” says Nicholas Carr, author of Does IT Matter?. “There are two models for suppliers: build your own massive data centres, a la Google and Microsoft, or just create the software and then use other companies’ data centres to run the service. The latter model reduces the entry costs significantly.”
This could mean that companies with even quite specialist software needs might be able to find a free, or low- cost service, online. Online software service Salesforce.com, for example, extended its AppExchange service last year to allow third-party software developers to use it as a way to distribute their applications without first building infrastructure.
According to Peter Critchley, strategy director at IT consultancy Morse, the suitability of free or low-cost applications depends largely on how critical they are to the business that uses them.
“There is a trend for core technology to reduce in price and commoditise to the point where it is free or pseudo-free, or paid for in a different way,” he says. “The limits come down to the business criticality of the application. You might be happy running free web serving or free e-mail, if it would not hurt your business too much if the services are not available.”
Being able to turn to a competitor for a similar service will be vital if small and medium-sized enterprises, rather than consumers, are to accept the free software model.
Few if any businesses now question the fact that web browser software is free, even though it is critical to so many business processes; a company dissatisfied with Explorer can switch to Netscape or more recent alternatives, such as Firefox.
But companies do need to know they can transfer their data; the fact that web browsers are all based on standards is a key factor in making a switch feasible.
“Google and other companies are adopting standard, open data formats for many of the online applications,” says Nicholas Carr. “So it’s generally not difficult to extract your data in a usable format. But data transfers are always problematic, as different applications have different features and protocols. Companies should carefully consider the risk of lock-in, just as they should for bought hardware and software.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
FTD.de - IT+Telekommunikation - Nachrichten - SAP startet Tests der Mittelstandssoftware
FTD.de - IT+Telekommunikation - Nachrichten - SAP startet Tests der Mittelstandssoftware
Der deutsche Softwarekonzern SAP plant, seine mit Spannung erwartete neue Mittelstandssoftware bis zum Jahreswechsel zur Marktreife zu bringen. Dann falle die Entscheidung, ob das Produkt einer breiten Masse potenzieller Kunden angeboten werde, sagte Konzernchef Henning Kagermann der FTD.
Bis dahin soll das Paket, das mit neuen Vertriebs- und Servicemodellen verbunden ist, von einzelnen Anwendern erprobt werden. "Hier auf der Cebit zeigen wir ausgewählten Kunden und Partnern das Produkt", sagte Kagermann.
Das neue Angebot ist ein wichtiger Baustein für SAPs künftiges Geschäft. Der weltgrößte Hersteller von Programmen zur Unternehmenssteuerung will in den kommenden Jahren im Mittelstand besonders stark wachsen. Um mehr Kunden in diesem Marktsegment gewinnen zu können, hat das Unternehmen Anfang des Jahres ein neues Produkt angekündigt. In die Mittelstandssoftware mit dem Codenamen A1S will SAP rund 300 bis 400 Mio. Euro investieren.
Mittelstand gilt als besonders attraktiv
Der Mittelstand gilt als besonders attraktiv für Firmensoftwarehersteller, weil hier die Nachfrage stark wächst. Von der neuen Software verspricht sich SAP ab 2010 rund 760 Mio. Euro zusätzlichen Jahresumsatz und 10.000 neue Kunden pro Jahr. Das Produkt soll als Software zur Miete im Internet angeboten werden - ein Geschäftsmodell, mit dem andere Anbieter in den vergangenen Jahren hohe Wachstumsraten erzielt haben. Die SAP-Software soll vor allem über Internet und Telefon verkauft werden. Sie ist auf Unternehmen zugeschnitten, die sich mit einer Standardlösung zufriedengeben und auf eine firmenspezifische Anpassung verzichten können.
Das ist ein neues Geschäftsmodell, und das bringen sie nicht an einem Tag heraus", sagte Hans-Peter Klaey, bei SAP weltweit für das Mittelstandsgeschäft verantwortlich, der FTD. Im laufenden Jahr soll es mehrere Schritte geben, um das Produkt, aber auch Service und Marktzugangsstrategien zu prüfen.
Laut Kagermann wird das neue Angebot im zweiten und dritten Quartal ausgewählten Kunden vorgestellt. Im zweiten Halbjahr können erste Unternehmen mit dem Programm arbeiten. Dann soll das Geschäftsmodell auf den Masseneinsatz ausgerichtet werden. Weil SAP nicht nur die Software fertigstellen, sondern auch die nötige Infrastruktur und den Service aufbauen muss, ist der Zeitplan nicht in Stein gemeißelt. "All die Dinge sind Risikofaktoren, die natürlich zu anderen Einschätzungen führen können", sagte Kagermann.
Vertrauen der Anleger soll zurückgewonnen werden
Der SAP-Chef hofft, während der Phase der Einführung des neuen Produkts das Vertrauen der Investoren wiederzugewinnen. Das Unternehmen hatte zuletzt enttäuscht: Sowohl die Ankündigung der zusätzlichen Investitionen als auch eine unter den Erwartungen gebliebene Geschäftsentwicklung im vergangenen Jahr ließen den Aktienkurs fallen.
Kagermann schloss nicht aus, dass SAP weiteren Kundengruppen künftig Software zur Miete anbietet. "Wenn das funktioniert, will ich nicht ausschließen, dass wir mit dem Ansatz auch in andere Schichten hineingehen", sagte er. Allerdings ist er sich sicher, dass das neue standardisierte Produkt für den Mittelstand nicht von Großkunden eingesetzt werden wird. Der SAP-Chef sieht auch keine Gefahr für die bereits etablierten Produkte seines Konzerns. "Wir wollen nicht ein bestehendes Geschäft ablösen, sondern ein Zusatzgeschäft eröffnen", sagte Kagermann.
Der weltgrößte Hersteller von Unternehmenssoftware ist für sein Wachstum auf den Mittelstand angewiesen: Bis 2010 soll der Anteil, den diese Kunden zum konzernweiten Umsatz beisteuern, von heute 30 Prozent auf 40 bis 45 Prozent wachsen. Bis 2010 will der Anbieter den Kundenstamm von 38.000 auf 100.000 ausbauen. Als mittelständisch gelten Firmen mit bis zu 2500 Mitarbeitern.
Der deutsche Softwarekonzern SAP plant, seine mit Spannung erwartete neue Mittelstandssoftware bis zum Jahreswechsel zur Marktreife zu bringen. Dann falle die Entscheidung, ob das Produkt einer breiten Masse potenzieller Kunden angeboten werde, sagte Konzernchef Henning Kagermann der FTD.
Bis dahin soll das Paket, das mit neuen Vertriebs- und Servicemodellen verbunden ist, von einzelnen Anwendern erprobt werden. "Hier auf der Cebit zeigen wir ausgewählten Kunden und Partnern das Produkt", sagte Kagermann.
Das neue Angebot ist ein wichtiger Baustein für SAPs künftiges Geschäft. Der weltgrößte Hersteller von Programmen zur Unternehmenssteuerung will in den kommenden Jahren im Mittelstand besonders stark wachsen. Um mehr Kunden in diesem Marktsegment gewinnen zu können, hat das Unternehmen Anfang des Jahres ein neues Produkt angekündigt. In die Mittelstandssoftware mit dem Codenamen A1S will SAP rund 300 bis 400 Mio. Euro investieren.
Mittelstand gilt als besonders attraktiv
Der Mittelstand gilt als besonders attraktiv für Firmensoftwarehersteller, weil hier die Nachfrage stark wächst. Von der neuen Software verspricht sich SAP ab 2010 rund 760 Mio. Euro zusätzlichen Jahresumsatz und 10.000 neue Kunden pro Jahr. Das Produkt soll als Software zur Miete im Internet angeboten werden - ein Geschäftsmodell, mit dem andere Anbieter in den vergangenen Jahren hohe Wachstumsraten erzielt haben. Die SAP-Software soll vor allem über Internet und Telefon verkauft werden. Sie ist auf Unternehmen zugeschnitten, die sich mit einer Standardlösung zufriedengeben und auf eine firmenspezifische Anpassung verzichten können.
Das ist ein neues Geschäftsmodell, und das bringen sie nicht an einem Tag heraus", sagte Hans-Peter Klaey, bei SAP weltweit für das Mittelstandsgeschäft verantwortlich, der FTD. Im laufenden Jahr soll es mehrere Schritte geben, um das Produkt, aber auch Service und Marktzugangsstrategien zu prüfen.
Laut Kagermann wird das neue Angebot im zweiten und dritten Quartal ausgewählten Kunden vorgestellt. Im zweiten Halbjahr können erste Unternehmen mit dem Programm arbeiten. Dann soll das Geschäftsmodell auf den Masseneinsatz ausgerichtet werden. Weil SAP nicht nur die Software fertigstellen, sondern auch die nötige Infrastruktur und den Service aufbauen muss, ist der Zeitplan nicht in Stein gemeißelt. "All die Dinge sind Risikofaktoren, die natürlich zu anderen Einschätzungen führen können", sagte Kagermann.
Vertrauen der Anleger soll zurückgewonnen werden
Der SAP-Chef hofft, während der Phase der Einführung des neuen Produkts das Vertrauen der Investoren wiederzugewinnen. Das Unternehmen hatte zuletzt enttäuscht: Sowohl die Ankündigung der zusätzlichen Investitionen als auch eine unter den Erwartungen gebliebene Geschäftsentwicklung im vergangenen Jahr ließen den Aktienkurs fallen.
Kagermann schloss nicht aus, dass SAP weiteren Kundengruppen künftig Software zur Miete anbietet. "Wenn das funktioniert, will ich nicht ausschließen, dass wir mit dem Ansatz auch in andere Schichten hineingehen", sagte er. Allerdings ist er sich sicher, dass das neue standardisierte Produkt für den Mittelstand nicht von Großkunden eingesetzt werden wird. Der SAP-Chef sieht auch keine Gefahr für die bereits etablierten Produkte seines Konzerns. "Wir wollen nicht ein bestehendes Geschäft ablösen, sondern ein Zusatzgeschäft eröffnen", sagte Kagermann.
Der weltgrößte Hersteller von Unternehmenssoftware ist für sein Wachstum auf den Mittelstand angewiesen: Bis 2010 soll der Anteil, den diese Kunden zum konzernweiten Umsatz beisteuern, von heute 30 Prozent auf 40 bis 45 Prozent wachsen. Bis 2010 will der Anbieter den Kundenstamm von 38.000 auf 100.000 ausbauen. Als mittelständisch gelten Firmen mit bis zu 2500 Mitarbeitern.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Facing the hurdles of start-up
The Herald : Business: MAIN BUSINESS
Facing the hurdles of start-up DOUGLAS HAMILTON February 21 2007
Times have never been tougher for Scots who want to set up their own business, according to a leading entrepreneur who runs a chain of outdoor equipment shops.
Chris Tiso, who took over the independent outdoor clothing and equipment retailer Graham Tiso Ltd after his father died in 1992, told the second of four mentoring events organised by The Herald and Sunday Herald that a raft of government legislation has done little to foster start-ups in the country.
"It's never been harder to start a new business," he told invited guests at the Audi conference centre in Braehead, Glasgow, last week.
Facing the hurdles of start-up DOUGLAS HAMILTON February 21 2007
Times have never been tougher for Scots who want to set up their own business, according to a leading entrepreneur who runs a chain of outdoor equipment shops.
Chris Tiso, who took over the independent outdoor clothing and equipment retailer Graham Tiso Ltd after his father died in 1992, told the second of four mentoring events organised by The Herald and Sunday Herald that a raft of government legislation has done little to foster start-ups in the country.
"It's never been harder to start a new business," he told invited guests at the Audi conference centre in Braehead, Glasgow, last week.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
FT.com / Technology - WEB 2.0: Can mash-ups match up to business needs?
FT.com / Technology - WEB 2.0: Can mash-ups match up to business needs?
WEB 2.0: Can mash-ups match up to business needs?
By Richard Waters
Published: January 24 2007 10:40 Last updated: January 24 2007 10:40
Coming soon to an office near you: wikis for workers, mash-ups that make creative use of the different pools of data at your fingertips, and a host of other flexible new internet-based tools to make working life more productive.
At least, that is if you believe the latest hype coming out of the technology industry.
The “Web 2.0” movement, first apparent in a wave of consumer applications that grew up on the internet, has now spread, inevitably, to the world of corporate computing. This technology wave is all about creating low-cost applications on the fly to make communication and collaboration easier – but it also comes with some heavy marketing overkill.
“There’s no limit to the technology industry’s ability to hype new technologies,” warns Russ Daniels, chief technology officer of Hewlett-Packard’s software division. He adds, though: “Enterprises are all about getting people to collaborate to do things they couldn’t do on their own,” so the potential benefits from this new technology certainly sound compelling.
Notoriously difficult to pin down, the “Web 2.0” label is generally applied to three things. One is a family of “social” software – the blogs, wikis (web pages that are open to a group of people to write on or edit) and other tools that have made it easier and cheaper to self-publish and collaborate on the internet. This promises an escape from e-mail hell: rather than circulate endless e-mail attachments to groups of co-workers, why not co-operate on web-based applications?
A second use of the term is to describe a low-cost, rapid approach to software development. The most visible results are mash-ups, services created by combining data from different sources to create composite applications. Thanks to new standards-based technology (Web 2.0 draws heavily on the so-called web services standards), it is now easier to create these ad hoc.
Third, the phrase is used to describe new browser-based technologies, such as Ajax, that make internet applications behave more like desktop-based software, creating a richer experience.
To a certain extent, these three ideas are linked. A better user experience for web-based applications makes it more likely they will be adopted as alternatives to PC-based software. With more information stored online, it becomes easier to combine applications and services and merge data for ad hoc mash-ups. This points to the broader force at work behind Web 2.0.
“We are past the point where the internet has become the platform,” says Tim O’Reilly, the technology commentator and publisher who is generally credited with coining the term “Web 2.0”.
Software applications, he says, behave differently when they are born and live on the internet.
Interaction by the people who use these online applications creates network effects that add to the value of the software. “Fundamentally, you write applications that get better the more people use them,” he says.
Mr O’Reilly sums this up as: “‘Live’ applications driven by databases that are self-improving.” Applied to the corporate world, the idea is starting to be felt in two distinct ways.
One is a new generation of communication and collaboration tools that could enhance and, in some cases, replace the familiar instant messaging and e-mail that are now a standard part of office workers’ lives.
Together with things such as RSS (a method of syndication that automatically “pushes” newly published content to people who have expressed an interest in seeing it) and internet search, this family of technologies could create an “entirely different kind of information system” in the corporate world, says Ross Mayfield, founder of Socialtext, an early exponent of the idea of applying wikis to the workplace.
These tools also promise “high-engagement marketing” and other new forms of communication that stretch beyond corporate walls, adds Kim Polese, chief executive of SpikeSource, which recently announced an initiative with Intel to sell appliances to companies that let them add the tools to their intranets.
The second impact of Web 2.0 inside companies is a broader one, and points to a more open, rapid-fire approach to software development that raises deeper questions about how companies adapt technology to their business needs.
For instance, creating composite applications by combining data from different sources on the fly could smooth the workings of complex supply chains, says Mr O’Reilly. If factories published data about their output levels, other companies could combine it with data of their own to present a clearer view of supply and demand.
If this sounds a lot like the vision of “web services” that was first advanced in the late-1990s, that’s because it is. The banner of web services for corporate use has been taken up most recently by proponents of “service- oriented architecture,” or SOA – systems that draw on re-usable software components, or services, from different sources to create composite applications to solve particular business needs.
The products of these heavy-duty corporate systems sound very much like the mash-ups promoted by the Web 2.0 crowd. The difference, says Mr Daniels at HP, is that mash-ups and other lightweight Web 2.0 tools are available to the average office “power users”, the sort of workers who in the past have proved adept at stretching Excel spreadsheets for wider departmental uses.
While these are the claims made for Web 2.0, there are some significant forces weighing against it that seem likely at least to delay its progress, if not stop it in its tracks.
As with the adoption of the PC, it is a technology that has crept into corporations through the back door: the IT department may not know it is happening, but small teams of workers have already started to turn to web-based applications to supplement the applications on their corporate intranets.
“The challenge for enterprises is that a lot of this has crept in through the ether,” says Ms Polese. “As with [the adoption of] open source, the CIO is often finding out about it after the fact.”
Given the nature of many of these tools, this piecemeal adoption should sound alarm bells. Security is one concern: how safe is corporate data submitted to a Web 2.0 internet site? What is the risk that important corporate information will be lost completely? At a time when compliance looms large for CIOs, this user-driven approach to technology adoption cuts across the grain.
Also, the ideas of some of the Web 2.0 evangelists look likely to produce a culture clash for both IT departments and corporate managers. The nature of the technology – dynamic applications that are always in the process of adaptation – runs counter to the way most IT departments operate.
“It is never finished, it is an ongoing process,” says Mr O’Reilly – not the sort of message that will sit well with risk-averse CIOs more accustomed to testing new applications exhaustively before adoption.
To be effective, the sort of new technologies that go under the “Web 2.0” banner also rely on a willingness to share data that in the past has sat in isolated silos. “Understanding what data you can abstract and share among users is the fundamental Web 2.0 exercise,” says Mr O’Reilly.
How much data are most managers prepared to share, even with colleagues in their own companies, and under what circumstances? The answer to that question will play a big part in determining whether Web 2.0 mania can come anywhere near to living up to the hype.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
WEB 2.0: Can mash-ups match up to business needs?
By Richard Waters
Published: January 24 2007 10:40 Last updated: January 24 2007 10:40
Coming soon to an office near you: wikis for workers, mash-ups that make creative use of the different pools of data at your fingertips, and a host of other flexible new internet-based tools to make working life more productive.
At least, that is if you believe the latest hype coming out of the technology industry.
The “Web 2.0” movement, first apparent in a wave of consumer applications that grew up on the internet, has now spread, inevitably, to the world of corporate computing. This technology wave is all about creating low-cost applications on the fly to make communication and collaboration easier – but it also comes with some heavy marketing overkill.
“There’s no limit to the technology industry’s ability to hype new technologies,” warns Russ Daniels, chief technology officer of Hewlett-Packard’s software division. He adds, though: “Enterprises are all about getting people to collaborate to do things they couldn’t do on their own,” so the potential benefits from this new technology certainly sound compelling.
Notoriously difficult to pin down, the “Web 2.0” label is generally applied to three things. One is a family of “social” software – the blogs, wikis (web pages that are open to a group of people to write on or edit) and other tools that have made it easier and cheaper to self-publish and collaborate on the internet. This promises an escape from e-mail hell: rather than circulate endless e-mail attachments to groups of co-workers, why not co-operate on web-based applications?
A second use of the term is to describe a low-cost, rapid approach to software development. The most visible results are mash-ups, services created by combining data from different sources to create composite applications. Thanks to new standards-based technology (Web 2.0 draws heavily on the so-called web services standards), it is now easier to create these ad hoc.
Third, the phrase is used to describe new browser-based technologies, such as Ajax, that make internet applications behave more like desktop-based software, creating a richer experience.
To a certain extent, these three ideas are linked. A better user experience for web-based applications makes it more likely they will be adopted as alternatives to PC-based software. With more information stored online, it becomes easier to combine applications and services and merge data for ad hoc mash-ups. This points to the broader force at work behind Web 2.0.
“We are past the point where the internet has become the platform,” says Tim O’Reilly, the technology commentator and publisher who is generally credited with coining the term “Web 2.0”.
Software applications, he says, behave differently when they are born and live on the internet.
Interaction by the people who use these online applications creates network effects that add to the value of the software. “Fundamentally, you write applications that get better the more people use them,” he says.
Mr O’Reilly sums this up as: “‘Live’ applications driven by databases that are self-improving.” Applied to the corporate world, the idea is starting to be felt in two distinct ways.
One is a new generation of communication and collaboration tools that could enhance and, in some cases, replace the familiar instant messaging and e-mail that are now a standard part of office workers’ lives.
Together with things such as RSS (a method of syndication that automatically “pushes” newly published content to people who have expressed an interest in seeing it) and internet search, this family of technologies could create an “entirely different kind of information system” in the corporate world, says Ross Mayfield, founder of Socialtext, an early exponent of the idea of applying wikis to the workplace.
These tools also promise “high-engagement marketing” and other new forms of communication that stretch beyond corporate walls, adds Kim Polese, chief executive of SpikeSource, which recently announced an initiative with Intel to sell appliances to companies that let them add the tools to their intranets.
The second impact of Web 2.0 inside companies is a broader one, and points to a more open, rapid-fire approach to software development that raises deeper questions about how companies adapt technology to their business needs.
For instance, creating composite applications by combining data from different sources on the fly could smooth the workings of complex supply chains, says Mr O’Reilly. If factories published data about their output levels, other companies could combine it with data of their own to present a clearer view of supply and demand.
If this sounds a lot like the vision of “web services” that was first advanced in the late-1990s, that’s because it is. The banner of web services for corporate use has been taken up most recently by proponents of “service- oriented architecture,” or SOA – systems that draw on re-usable software components, or services, from different sources to create composite applications to solve particular business needs.
The products of these heavy-duty corporate systems sound very much like the mash-ups promoted by the Web 2.0 crowd. The difference, says Mr Daniels at HP, is that mash-ups and other lightweight Web 2.0 tools are available to the average office “power users”, the sort of workers who in the past have proved adept at stretching Excel spreadsheets for wider departmental uses.
While these are the claims made for Web 2.0, there are some significant forces weighing against it that seem likely at least to delay its progress, if not stop it in its tracks.
As with the adoption of the PC, it is a technology that has crept into corporations through the back door: the IT department may not know it is happening, but small teams of workers have already started to turn to web-based applications to supplement the applications on their corporate intranets.
“The challenge for enterprises is that a lot of this has crept in through the ether,” says Ms Polese. “As with [the adoption of] open source, the CIO is often finding out about it after the fact.”
Given the nature of many of these tools, this piecemeal adoption should sound alarm bells. Security is one concern: how safe is corporate data submitted to a Web 2.0 internet site? What is the risk that important corporate information will be lost completely? At a time when compliance looms large for CIOs, this user-driven approach to technology adoption cuts across the grain.
Also, the ideas of some of the Web 2.0 evangelists look likely to produce a culture clash for both IT departments and corporate managers. The nature of the technology – dynamic applications that are always in the process of adaptation – runs counter to the way most IT departments operate.
“It is never finished, it is an ongoing process,” says Mr O’Reilly – not the sort of message that will sit well with risk-averse CIOs more accustomed to testing new applications exhaustively before adoption.
To be effective, the sort of new technologies that go under the “Web 2.0” banner also rely on a willingness to share data that in the past has sat in isolated silos. “Understanding what data you can abstract and share among users is the fundamental Web 2.0 exercise,” says Mr O’Reilly.
How much data are most managers prepared to share, even with colleagues in their own companies, and under what circumstances? The answer to that question will play a big part in determining whether Web 2.0 mania can come anywhere near to living up to the hype.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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About Me
- Albert van Grondelle
- Lelystad, Flevoland, Netherlands
- Informatieprofessional gespecialiseerd in het organiseren van content, kennis en samenwerking(collaboration) in de onderneming.