BPM in Action

Well, well, well. That would be one “well” each for Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Yahoo!, all three of which announced today plans to build a test bed for cloud computing that will span six data centers in three countries.

The goals are simple, yet profoundly broad – to provide a real-life test bed for all things cloud-related, including hardware, software, and data center management, and to encourage collaboration among academia, government, and industry.

Better yet, HP, Intel, and Yahoo! say that they plan to provide application programming interfaces (APIs) that expose the guts of all levels of “their” cloud, from low-level physical infrastructure to high-level software and services. Published reports indicate that this is a prime differentiator of this effort from one announced previously by Google and IBM. THAT initiative apparently only supports openness to developers and tire-kickers at the application/service level.

HP, Intel, and Yahoo! plan to have all six data centers operating in concert before year’s end. I, for one, can barely wait. If The Big Mash-Up is in fact coming – and it is – the interested segments of the world at large will need a readily available, open, and flexible environment within which to build and test solutions. Solutions ranging from variations on traditional applications to cloud-based fill-in-the-blank(s)-as-a-service. And, ultimately, those building and testing such solutions will also need a robust environment within which to deploy the successful ones. And I doubt that many will care whether that turns out to be the HP-Intel-Yahoo! cloud, the Google-IBM cloud, the Sun Microsystems cloud/grid, or something else. Choice and competition are good.

Software as a service (SaaS) and its evolving descendents are critical to the success and broad adoption of The Big Mash-Up, which promises/threatens to integrate almost everything that matters to business users and business and IT decision-makers. Including and especially elements related to business process management and optimization. Some variation of cloud computing seems to be emerging as the “go-to” platform for software-and-everything-else-business-related-as-a-service, joining and perhaps supplanting current service-oriented architecture (SOA) efforts. This latest cloud, perhaps paradoxically, brightens the whole picture for cloud computing, SaaS, and The Big Mash-Up. I can barely wait for the first slew of solutions we can explore – and I don’t expect to have to wait for very long.

Shameless Self-Promotion, Again/Still: I’m fielding another Aberdeen Group survey on information architecture agility. If you have investments and/or interests in Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Master Data Management (MDM), or reducing “time to information” – the time it takes to turn raw data into information business applications and users can use – please go to http://www.aberdeen.com/survey/agil-ebizq/ and take the brief survey. You’ll get a free copy of the resulting report when it’s published, AND a free copy of my recent Aberdeen report on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and IT infrastructures immediately after you complete the survey. (Yes, you SHOULD care about RFID!) That’s nearly $800 of free research, and my undying thanks, all for taking a survey. Such a deal – take the survey, and tell your friends!

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Current Events • IT Infrastructure Management • Information Lifecycle Management • Process Visibility • SOA • Software as a Service • The Big Mash-Up  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Why are American Apparel, South America's Falabella, BGN, a major book retailer in the Netherlands, Staples superstores in Canada, and other retailers around the world attaching Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to every item in many of its stores? Especially since retailers tend to be risk- and cost-averse, sometimes especially where technology is concerned? Why, to improve customer service, inventory accuracy, and employee productivity. (The fewer customers who can't find what they want, the more happy customers. The fewer employees and hours needed to count items manually, the more time and people available to help those customers.)

What is a business? Well, basically, by my lights, every business is a constantly shifting mix of two primary resources: information and process. (Every person at every business I've ever seen plays a role that is a combination of these resources as well, so people are included within this admittedly nearly absurdist reduction.)

So what is one of IT's primary reasons for existing, and spending/costing so much of the business' money? Why, to make available information that drives continual improvement of business processes, of course.

Which leads to my current take on RFID, something I've been writing about a lot since joining Aberdeen Group last September. My surveys and interviews of many, many users and discussions with a bunch of vendors have led to some basic beliefs I think you'll find directly relevant to your considerations of business process management, business knowledge management, and perhaps many other related areas.

When a discussion of RFID focuses on “radio frequency identification” and its many, many technological variants, that discussion, many if not most times, is already off course. Because unless they work for RFID companies, most business executives I've met couldn't possibly care any less about RFID's technological minutiae and their respective strengths and weaknesses.

So why is RFID important, to retailers and a bunch of other businesses, including many that don't know it yet? Because of what it can mean to the business – real-time, fully integrated data. The more you can know about what's going on at the edge of your network the closer to when it's actually going on, the more opportunities you have to inform, refine and optimize business processes.

RFID and other sensor-based and data-generating network edge technologies can feed the operational applications at the core of just about any business – if the IT infrastructure supporting that business is ready, that is. This means that infrastructure must be designed, deployed, and managed in ways that minimize “time to information.” This is the time and effort required to convert data, whatever its source, into information business applications and users can actually use.

There are several free pieces of research available at the Aberdeen Group Web site about RFID, many of which were actually written by me, including one that discusses American Apparel and Falabella specifically. But you also have a chance to help to shape research I'm planning to publish at the end of this month, specifically about RFID and IT infrastructure management and integration. Spend 10 minutes or so taking my survey, at www.aberdeen.com/survey/rfid-im-ebizq. You'll get a free copy of the resulting study, AND a free copy of my recent “Winning Master Data Management Strategies for 2008-2009” study as well. Because mastering data is yet another important component of The Big Mash-Up – even and especially when that data can help to improve business processes, increase usable information, and delight customers.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Collaboration • Enterprise Information Integration • Information Lifecycle Management • Process Visibility • RFID • SOA • The Big Mash-Up  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

If you had complete visibility into everything that happened across your enterprise and its networks and IT resources, how would your business processes change?

This is not just a philosophical exercise, at least not anymore. If it’s true that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure,” it’s at least equally true that “you can’t manage or measure what you can’t see or know.” And so, both vendors and users are seeking a new quasi-Holy Grail: visibility. Visibility into every process, and every element of IT and business infrastructures. Some examples:

In April, Fujitsu Computer Systems announced an Automated Business Process Discovery service. It promises to do exactly what the name implies – to help companies discover, map, and refine and improve their business processes, faster and more economically than they can do it manually. And how better to achieve process visibility than by starting with a comprehensive, accurate map? (Fujitsu said in its announcement that select companies could qualify for a free trial of the new solution – seems like a price worth paying to me.)

At the 2008 JavaOne Conference in May, one of the biggest buzzes of the show surrounded Sentilla. Sentilla is the latest iteration of a company previously known as Moteiv (as in “motive,” as in “mote,” as in The Mote in God’s Eye,” a great science-fiction novel, and the mote in the Gospel of Luke (6:14) from which the title of said novel comes). Sentilla aims to make the long-forestalled promises of “pervasive computing” real, by putting a Java-based application support platform on teeny-tiny computers, each about the size of a quarter currently. If RFID technology generates useful data from the edge of the corporate network, how much more visibility can you get from full-blown Java-enabled devices chattering away at each other and at your IT infrastructure?

And near the end of May, Cisco Systems unveiled its Cisco Motion initiative. A key element is the Cisco 3300 Series Mobility Services Engine. This is an appliance intended to ease and speed the integration and management of a variety of wireless technologies, including but not limited to RFID. It’s also intended to enable “context-aware mobility,” and to let developers build and users use applications that span a wide variety of fixed and mobile communications alternatives. All while providing – wait for it – complete visibility of who’s using what, where and when.

There’s more coming. Lots more. Watch for more on this subject, here and in my Aberdeen Group research. Meanwhile, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to ensure NOW that your IT and business infrastructures are ready.

To help you, here’s a link to an Aberdeen Group survey I’m conducting on RFID and IT infrastructure management: www.aberdeen.com/survey/rfid-im-ebizq. Take the survey, and you’ll get a free copy of the resulting report when it’s published – AND a free copy of my study on “Winning Master Data Management Strategies for 2008 – 2009” as soon as you complete the survey. Such a deal!

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Current Events • Enterprise Information Integration • IT Infrastructure Management • Process Visibility • The Big Mash-Up  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)