- Read the funny papers on your cell phone
- Walmart to cast a giant shadow
- Microsoft blogger fired over Apple post
- Taking RSS for granted
- Report from Intel Labs
- Longhorn screenshots
- Trend Micro's bent for innovation
- More content management consolidation
- Microsoft PDC: Java developers might want to sit this one out
- Ballmer hints at Web services-related acquisition
October 31, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Read the funny papers on your cell phone
FunMail, out of Livermore, Calif., is signing up both the stalwarts of the newspaper comic strip industry as well as so-called alternative comic strips from independent artists and sending them out to cell phone near you.
Spoke with Andy Baldocchi, vice president of sales and marketing at FunMail [www.mobilecomicsnetwork.com] and he explained how it works.
FunMail sells the service to the carriers who in turn sell it to end users. Typical pricing is $1.99 per comic strip per month. They can be delivered over MMS [Multimeida Messaging Service] in which case no application is required on the handset or by downloading a J2ME, WAP, or BREW application onto your cell phone and having the cartoon pushed out to you on a daily basis. To read the strip, simply scroll, with one panel at a time displayed.
Cartoons include everything from the traditional Dick Tracy, Nancy, and Beetle Bailey to the more current Dilbert, Zits, Los Kitos in Spanish and English, Rose is Rose and Robot Man, over 20 comic strips in all.
Coming soon are "darker" strips from independent artists, according to Baldocchi. Once again digital technologies will give the public access to independent voices who usually have a difficult time getting published by traditional channels.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on October 31, 2003 03:10 PM
October 30, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Walmart to cast a giant shadow
The consumer packaged goods and retail industry are on the edge of their seats. On Tuesday and Wednesday of next week Walmart lays out for its suppliers, in detail, its requirements for RFID [Radio Frequency ID] tags on pallets.
You can't imagine the enormity of the forthcoming announcement and how it will affect suppliers unless I fill you in on the story and add a few statistics. First for the stats. Walmart controls 17% of the worldwide retail volume. Walmart receives 8 billion cases and or pallets per year.
On June 11th, Walmart announced that they are asking their top 100 providers of pallets and cases to RFID-enable those pallets and cases by January 1, 2005. The top 100 suppliers account for one-eighth of Walmarts volume or one billion cases. [By the way, the Department of Defense issued a simlar mandate to their supply chain with the same deadline.]
As we all know by now it is believed that RFID will take the cost out of supply chain by enabling among other things instantaneous, automated scanning with non-line of site RFID readers instead of having a person walk around the pallet and scan the bar codes on the visible boxes on the carton. Of course, those products on the interior of the pallet are not scanned. RFID is labor saving, improves accuracy, and reduces shipping costs by getting the right products to the right store.
On Tuesday Walmart will speak, telling its suppliers exactly what the infrastructure must look like. On Wednesday, the high tech vendors will take the stage to tell the suppliers about their products and how they can comply with the Walmart mandate.
Over time, RFID will dramatically affect IT resources as supply chain applications are required to consume hundreds of thousands if not millions of additional data points picked off by the RFID readers and then sent on to backend ERP systems.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on October 30, 2003 03:41 PM
October 30, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft blogger fired over Apple post
Microsoft has set the precedent that, in the back of our minds, we've been waiting for. Michael Hanscom was fired for posting a shot of new Apple G4's arriving at Microsoft's Redmond campus.
Like it or not, blogs make it very easy for sensitive information to bubble to the surface - quickly. But at the end of the day, people will protect their jobs ahead of getting 15 minutes of fame, as Hanscom writes:
I've seen advertising campaigns in their preplanning stages weeks before they hit the press, I've seen internal documentation on programs that are still in development, and I've seen ideas and technologies that I would love to have available on my Mac at home. None of those have ever been mentioned here in my weblog, and even now, this is the most I intend to say about them.
Related Links: Hanscom on why he made a mistake, Slashdot, Mary Jo , MSNBC, The Reg, and Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, who doesn't address the issue directly, but reports that he's not worried about getting fired for blogging.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 30, 2003 12:50 PM
October 29, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Once you start taking a certain technology for granted, it's a fairly safe bet that that it's reached a level of functional stability. This is certainly true of my experience with RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication - here's our FAQ). To use an Apple-ism, it just works.
But at the same time, I've been reminded that RSS is still not as widely used as other messaging technologies like email and IM. Yesterday I caught up with a friend - and "former enemy" as he so kindly put it - former eWeek labs guy John Taschek. John's crossed over to the vendor side and joined hosted CRM outfit Salesforce.com.
John noted that Salesforce is a voracious consumer of online news. Sure, they read all the mainstream pubs, but they also study a raft of technology and CRM industry publications.
The traditional method most companies use to monitor media coverage is through a combination of expensive press clipping services and masses of corporate-wide email messages. Salesforce is no exception, although John and many staffers there also consume RSS feeds.
The trouble with clipping services is they are a costly, somewhat ad-hoc and difficult process to manage - how accessible are the archives for example?
Of course, RSS-powered news aggregators are a great alternative, allowing you to subscribe to free news feeds or blogs of your choice. Then if you want to post links, manage and distribute a particular article, all it takes is a password protected blog that's made available to staff and partners.
And in many cases you can get news aggregators and blog software all rolled into one - Radio being the obvious example.
The solution to the news overload problem is right under our noses. I agreed with John that it's surprising more companies are not consuming RSS at a corporate level. But like so many new technologies, mainstream acceptance is often achieved long after it's expected by the prognsticating technorati.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 29, 2003 01:31 PM
October 29, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Intel's research arm put on a show for the press and analysts on Tuesday unveiling some of the wireless technologies they're working on for the near term and as far out as five years.
Radio Free Intel is a near term project to integrate RF onto the mobile silicon. Intel calls its CMOS Integrated Radios. Along with the technology is something really nice, reconfigurable CMOS radios.
In other words, one radio serves up WLAN, WAN and PAN, sensing which net-work is available and then through software reconfiguring itself to work on that frequency. This is "several years away" according to the presenter Dan Dahle, senior manager, wireless technology strategy, in the Communications Technology Lab.
The technology problems to do that are easier to overcome than the challenges presented by government regulation. Dahle called for "spectrum policy reform."
Along those lines, Abel Weinrib, the director of the communications technology lab said Intel would like to see access to broadcast bandwidth. The high tech industry could use the broadcast bandwidth on a low power basis and have the system would have the intelligence to get out of the way if the owner of the spectrum is using it.
Next up was Lakshman Krishnamurthy, principal investigator, Ecosense Research project for Intel Research & Development. Krishnamurthy spoke about taking RFID to the next step, not only giving users current location information but telling users where their tagged items have been.
By way of example, Krishnamurthy, said that the location of a blood sample is good, but knowing that the sample was at a certain temperature for a number of hours prior to its current location is even more critical information to have.
The goal here is to merge RFID with sensors to offer real world information about the environment.
A pilot program currently running created a vineyard application to tell growers the temperature at ground level of the vines in the field. This helps vintners manage the vines, handle frost situations by watering, and knowing when to pick the darn grapes.
Pre-emptive maintenance is yet another use for sensors. Sensor can measure the vibration signature of machinery. Every piece of equipment has a unique way of vibrating, don't we all, and so if the signature changes it is an indication that something is about to go wrong.
An afternoon well spent.
Here's a link to Intel's site to learn more.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on October 29, 2003 10:19 AM
October 27, 2003 | Comments: (0)
As the Microsoft buzz soars this week thanks to PDC, I noticed (via slashdot) that slick new Longhorn screen shots (link via slashdot) are already floating around the web.
Check out our PDC Special Report package for regular news updates.
And if you're interested in tracking the PDC show from an insider's perspective, Microsoft's Robert Scoble and Don Box have rolled up their sleeves and are blogging like there's no tomorrow.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 27, 2003 11:23 AM
October 24, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Trend Micro's bent for innovation
How do you differentiate yourself in a crowded anti-virus market? One avenue is to start innovating in new areas. I had a chat with Trend Micro's new North American VP, Lane Bess, today and he signaled that the company is working on developing deep-packet inspection and port-level security technologies.
"Deep packet containment is going to happen, that's going to be the next wave over the next 12 to 18 months," he said. Bess agreed with my assertion that developing more intelligent packet-based security products can help companies like Trend Micro, Symantec and Network Associates rise above the noise. "I'd give up the opportunity to buy a great company to know that we have innovated," he said.
That sounds promising to me because the anti-virus business is a tough place to try and stand out from the crowd. It's not a question of whether you can produce the right patch to the latest worm. It's all about improving the time lag between virus detection and patch distribution. The lower that figure, the happier your customers. Not easy by any stretch, but it's still a technically straight forward problem to solve.
In that context I'd argue building technology that dives deeper into the core problems surrounding network traffic management is a far more interesting proposition, and one we should track more closely. Proactively preventing worms etc from spreading at any point in the network has to be better than distributing a cure after the fact.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 24, 2003 03:43 PM
October 23, 2003 | Comments: (0)
More content management consolidation
ECM (Enterprise Content Management) vendor Open Text this week pocketed European ECM player Ixos. Open Text now claims to be the "world's largest" ECM provider. I don't know about that, but they are a well respected competitor in the space beside companies like Documentum, Interwoven, Vignette, and others. Open Text has put forth a strong push in Europe, recently acquiring Gauss, based in Germany. Open Text plans to combine Ixos' content archiving features with the Open Text collaborative, content and knowledge management platform.
This move follows the surprise step earlier this month by storage vendor EMC to shell out $1.7 billion in stock for Documentum. EMC saw the writing on the wall related to the overlapping functions of storage and document retention, particularly as it relates to compliance. That move will certainly send some ripples throughout the industry. Also, it pulls EMC in a closer race with IBM, which has a solid lineup of content, digital media, and document management technologies.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on October 23, 2003 02:00 PM
October 23, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft PDC: Java developers might want to sit this one out
Microsoft apparently will keep either pretending that Java is nothing to worry about or will keep trying to get developers to drop it altogether.
Looking amongst descriptions of educational sessions planned for next week's Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, I sought out anything resembling an olive branch to the Java developer community.
All I could find was this one session:
"Migrating Java Applications to the .Net Framework"
"Learn to get the most out of your Java applications by converting them to target the .NET Framework! Explore the conversion of Java-language source code to Visual J#, migration of Java-language source code to Visual C# using the improved Java Language Conversion Assistant v2.0 (JLCA), Java applet conversion to Visual J# Browser Controls, and more. Hear about the strategies for identifying and removing dependencies on the retired Microsoft Java Virtual Machine."
What about integrating with Java applications, or, dare I say it, writing Java applications for the Windows platform? Nope. The session on migrating away from Java was the only session I could find that even notes the existence of the popular and pervasive, albeit rival, programming language.
Microsoft's Adam Sohn, product manager with Microsoft's Platform Strategy group, said in an interview Wednesday that the company recognizes heterogeneity is here to stay and wants to accommodate multiple languages. But he said he was unaware of anything specific to Java that would be covered at next week's conference other than the migration session.
Wouldn't it be a good idea for the world's leading PC software vendor to be a little more accommodating to the Java community? Perhaps Microsoft believes its substantial might means it can just treat Java like a 500-pound gorilla in the middle of the living room that everyone knows is there but just doesn't want to talk about?
Yes, Java founder Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have been involved in a nasty lawsuit over Java. But Java is not just Sun. It is backed by many vendors and many developers. Some, in fact, believe that close Microsoft ally IBM is doing more these days with Java than Sun.
Something tells me that accommodation and acceptance of Java may be better for developers than keeping heads in the sand.
Posted by Paul Krill on October 23, 2003 12:27 PM
October 22, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Ballmer hints at Web services-related acquisition
Speaking during a mastermind keynote at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today suggested the company may acquire a company in the Web services management space. However, he offered no details about exactly which company Microsoft was investigating.
Ballmer's remarks came in response to a Gartner analyst pointing out that even though Microsoft has a Web services platform and tools offering, the company is lacking in management software for Web services.
"While I'm not making any specific announcements in this area, I'm saying you should stand by for news," Ballmer told the crowd.
(Posted on behalf of Tom Sullivan, who is attending the show in Orlando this week.)
Posted by Mark Jones on October 22, 2003 03:22 PM
October 15, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Just a short note to say that the dire predictions around the viability of Siebel going forward is off base. I don't see the likes of DHL, KeyCorp, Dun & Bradstreet, Lockheed Martin, HP, Kraft Foods, Nokia, and Siemens to name a few of their marquee customers, dumping Siebel CRM to go to Salesforce.com. Yes, the hosted model has potential in the SMB market. But if that model is doing so well why was Siebel able to pick up a company like UpShot that does basically the same thing as Salesforce.com for a mere pittance, $70 million.
Many of the Fortune 500 have a lot invested in Siebel and in turn from my conversations with the company it seems to me they are investing a great deal in integration and in componentizing applications, and even parts of applications which can be reintegrated into a larger solution when the enterprise sees fit. Time will tell, but that's my two cents worth.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on October 15, 2003 04:46 PM
October 15, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Siebel's earnings call is underway and they've just released some very interesting news. Siebel announced it will buy hosted CRM outfit UpShot (press release), and enterprise incentive management company Motiva (press release).
My first reaction is that CEO Tom Siebel is making good on his promise at User Week that the company is doubling down on CRM. This also furthers Siebel's "hybrid CRM" strategy, as UpShot president and CEO Robert Reid said in the press release.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 15, 2003 02:07 PM
October 14, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Dean exploits the blog business
Presidential candidate Howard Dean is putting to rest any lingering questions about weblog the business model. A great Wall Street Journal article today reveals what weblog publishing technology does for political campaigns:
"Banquet events raise as little as 30 cents per dollar donated, while direct mail can net 75 cents...Internet fund raising is even more efficient, netting at least 95 cents for every dollar given and broadening a campaign's small-donor base. Nearly half of Mr. Dean's six-month take of $10.5 million came from donations of less than $200."
The article coincides with today's posting of my interview with SixApart VP Anil Dash, who said blogs are also a money spinner in the enterprise:
"We're already seeing a strong market for the integration services. I think that our goal is to have a very, very inexpensive tool and people can sell services around it. We're going to be working on developing a pretty robust developer's network and partner network."
The take home message is this: simultaneously reduce the cost and complexity of online publishing and you open the door to all manner of creative commercial opportunities.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 14, 2003 11:34 AM
October 13, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Is the security apocalypse upon us?
A security report out of Symantec reveals that the recent viruses are the most complex known to date. Of course this is bad news for enterprises and end-users, but it is also a great opportunity for security vendors to prove their value to existing and new customers, alike. And they know it, too.
Tomorrow ISS has asked me and many others to "witness the dawn of a new era in Internet security." Sounds scary, huh? And next week Network Associates is hosting an event for customers, partners, and media where they'll discuss the 15 press releases they'll issue related to their 'McAfee Protection-in-Depth' strategy.
I'm interested to see how much of these new strategies is new technology and what is just repackaging of existing services or products in a new box with a pretty little bow. I gather much talk will be centered on the forever-vague term "application security." I'll let you know.
However, these types of events demonstrate that the security vendors are working hard to help, they are confident in their offerings, and understand that the market dynamic is telling them it is now or never to prove their worth as a security vendor. Believe you me, if they don't keep up, there are hundreds of security players out there with lots of venture capital funding waiting to step up and meet customer needs.
Posted by Scott Tyler Shafer on October 13, 2003 05:15 PM
October 13, 2003 | Comments: (0)
James Governor writes (link via Watching Microsoft Like a Hawk) that Microsoft CRM will "fundamentally redefine customer relationship management (CRM) software" primarily on the strength of its ISV and reseller channel.
I seriously question exactly how the channel will radically redefine CRM software. I don't think there is too much new to be discovered when it comes to ISV-led application integration projects.
At the same time it's interesting to note the two schools of thought at play here. In trading e-mails with the CEOs at two large hosted CRM players following my Siebel User Week story last week, it's clear that hosted companies believe the medium is the message. The delivery model is just as significant as the features offered by the software itself.
Siebel, on the other hand, is blending its rich feature set with the corporate backing of IBM's datacenter and also pushing ahead with feature upgrades to its traditional software offering. It's also rolling analytics into the mix.
So now we have a wide range of different CRM delivery models, feature sets, and the onset of Microsoft CRM FUD. Who's got it right?
Posted by Mark Jones on October 13, 2003 04:34 PM
October 13, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Beware Redmondians bearing gifts
News reports out of Geneva this week tell of Microsoft "helping" the Wi-Fi industry with a new spec called Wireless Provisioning Services [WPS]. On the face of it, WPS will standardize the way in which users at a hot spot location and the hot spot provider talk to each other. Thus making getting on line less of a chore.
Sounds good. However, in my interview with Jawad Khaki, corporate vice president for Windows Network and Communications Technologies, I picked up a few of those ominous signals that tell you WPS is a Trojan Horse left at the doorstep of users and hot spot providers.
Here's why I say this. The hot spot purveyor must be running Windows 2003 Server edition on the back end in order to talk to WPA installed by the client on the front end.
In typical Microsoft fashion, when I asked Khaki if WPA was being submitted to any standards body he replied by telling me Microsoft is using industry-standard components. That may well be, but WPA is a Microsoft standard. So, what happens if the provider wants to run Linux, or a flavor of Unix from Sun, IBM, etc?
Do we really want a Microsoft standard for accessing IEEE 802.11x in public networks? I wonder how secure can Microsoft make this? Their track record on security and stopping hackers is abysmal.
Also, look for the hype behind the news. Microsoft says Boingo, Cometa, Gric, iPass, Pronto Networks, and Wayport support this. But does support mean they are deploying it? It ain't necessarily so.
Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on October 13, 2003 04:18 PM
October 08, 2003 | Comments: (0)
One thing has become clear while digesting Siebel's onslaught of news this week. Siebel is practicing what it preaches with its CRM message, and listening to its customers.
Here's some examples:
* Customers are traditionally nervous about moving to a new application platform without clear knowledge of its roadmap. Answer: Siebel Version 7 - in both its CRM and Analytics suits - will be around for the next decade, Tom Siebel said yesterday.
* Customers are sick of long implementation times, and high ongoing costs. Answer: Siebel has swallowed its pride and rolled out OnDemand take its hosted competitors head on. If indeed customers start buying hosted CRM on the basis of feature and not cost and implementation time, Siebel has a very deep set of features its can progressively switch on.
* Customers will no longer tolerate proprietary software. Answer: Siebel Executive Vice President David Schmaier said during his keynote address this morning that the company will continue to support a raft of Web services, and both the J2EE and .Net platforms. "More and more over time you will see that every single product that we ship here at Siebel systems will be build on top of these platforms," he said.
* The Universal Application Network architecture is widely misunderstood and customers have questioned why they need yet another integration platform. Answer: Siebel is working on this one by adding support for BEA WebLogic, IBM's WebSphere and Microsoft's BizTalk. Having big friends come to the party is the first step in reassuring customers there are significant engineering resources on tap. The next job is communicating how this applications-layer platform can comfortably sit above these various platforms and reduce development time by offering pre-packaged, vertical-industry business processes.
* Customers are looking at hosted CRM offerings and looking for more analytics and BI capabilities. Answer: Larry Barbetta, Group VP and GM of Siebel Analytics, officially launched Siebel Analytics 7.7 today, and mentioned in passing the small, but important fact that most of its components are available as part of OnDemand. That's going to be a big competitive weapon to use against Salesforce et al.
Of course, it's is still early days for many of these product offerings, but as the Analytics example shows, Siebel can acquire a company like nQuire, and just two years later turn it into what IDC now reports is the industry's largest analytics business (SAS Institute, look out).
Posted by Mark Jones on October 8, 2003 02:15 PM
October 08, 2003 | Comments: (0)
San Diego Convention Center is completely wired, and it's pure joy. Siebel User Week organizers here have made sure Wi-Fi access is everywhere. I've surfed the web during keynotes to get additional information on the subject at hand; chatted over IM with colleagues to keep the InfoWorld news machine ticking during press conferences; and worked in the press room without needing to search for an Ethernet wire. In fact, I even got connected to someone's Wi-Fi connection while waiting for a friend out the front of San Diego Marriott Marina.
This, my friends, is how it is supposed to be - and I'm one happy multi-tasking chappy.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 8, 2003 12:42 PM
October 07, 2003 | Comments: (0)
After using his Siebel User Week keynote to give a history lesson about the company's first 10 years in the CRM business, Chairman and CEO Tom Siebel finally got to the point. The hosted CRM model is a "nice little business...It's CRM meets Google, if you will."
In other words, On Demand is one component of Siebel's broad range of offerings. Software delivered over the web as a service is an incremental innovation, not a revolution in itself.
In contrast, Siebel's competitors including Salesforce.com, SalesNet, NetLedger, and Upshot have argued ad nauseam that the hosted business is the future of enterprise applications. Customers, they argue, are more interested in reaping immediate returns on software delivered via wire than waiting for lengthy and costly installations. You get the impression that the medium is the message, as it were.
Siebel clearly doesn't support that idea in its entirety. Siebel On Demand is both an on ramp, and compliment to, the company's breadth of offerings (he said they have 400 products now). But it also has limitations. "There is no way you could run a multi-billion corporation on something like this," he said.
Quoting Aberdeen, Siebel said hosted CRM is a $1 billion opportunity within the context of the larger customer analytics market. So he obviously wants a large chunk of that opportunity. But looking ahead, he said Siebel's future is all wrapped up in its still emerging Web services-based Universal Application Network. Siebel's said the company's product roadmap is driven by business process architecture innovations that dovetail with UAN's integration capabilities. "We will collectively spend 90 billion on integration (in the coming years)…talk about an opportunity."
Judging by the mixed reactions in the halls here, I get the impression customers (who didn't want to be identified) don't know which side of the hosting fence has got it right. One customer was really happy, another talked about a "two year nightmare" trying to install Siebel CRM.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 7, 2003 03:45 PM
October 07, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Siebel has arrived at the crossroads. It can embrace and innovate on technologies that deliver software as a service, or it can simply pick up the hosted CRM barrow as a method of reinvigorating its traditional business.
Judging by this morning's keynotes here at Siebel User Week in San Diego, I get the impression company is doing little to project a new, dynamic image to drive home the opportunity afforded by its IBM deal.
Firstly, I entered the keynote hall to hear Huey Lewis and the News' 1980's hit "Hip to be Square." Yeesh, I thought we'd all forgotten that song. Secondly, the message delivered by the opening keynotes was the same big-business theme we've heard for years.
The keynotes delivered by Merrill Lynch Global Private Client Group's CTO Byron Vielehr, and BT Retail's CIO Catherine Doran both served to underscore that Siebel is a vendor they turn to for high-end, scalable CRM. Indeed, Vielehr heads up Merrill's $1 billion outsourcing program, a massive project by any standard. He chose Siebel because: "We didn't actually think anyone else could get it done." And I think that's a fair comment. But the reality today is that there are not too many $1 billion Merrill Lynch-type projects out there.
I struck up a conversation with Raghuram Putcha, Project Manager, at Siebel integration partner Infosys before the show kicked off. He offered a pretty good summary of Siebel's state of affairs: "They have run out of opportunities for big business." Putcha believed Siebel's On Demand hosted initiative is all about targeting the real opportunities in the mid-market. Microsoft's forth-coming CRM product and Salesforce.com were the two dots on Siebel's radar, he speculated.
So naturally I was very interested to hear Jeff Pulver, Siebel's VP of worldwide marketing kick off the show by including comments about Microsoft, a long time partner and co-sponsor of the show. After affirming that Siebel "works very closely" with Microsoft, he transitioned to talking about Windows 2003: "Microsoft continues to show this is a very powerful platform to run your Siebel CRM deployments." Maybe that comment was targeted at the big business audience?
It will be interesting to see how Siebel positions IBM and Microsoft as the show unfolds. Of par-ticular interest to me is how Siebel and IBM's integration story will unfold. Siebel announced to-day the launch of "Siebel Business Integration Applications for the IBM WebSphere Business Integration platform." [As a side note, it appears that site has broken an embargo or something because Siebel PR people in the press room here flipped out when I asked them about the news. The official announcement will be issued at 2pm today, they said.]
Regardless, there's no prizes for guessing what IBM is hoping to get out of its Siebel relationship - WebSphere customers. But that raises questions about Siebel's own integration platform, Universal Application Network. Does anybody actually use Siebel's UAN technology? Not according to Infosys' Putcha. Seventy percent of his CRM business revolves around integrating Siebel and no-one is asking for UAN. "Why would you need it? There are plenty of established tools already out there."
Chairman and CEO Tom Siebel will speak at 1:30pm today, so stay tuned for further coverage. But before I go, I was amused to see that Salesforce.com had paid a couple of people to hold up a Salesforce company banner on the pedestrian approach to the convention center. It was simple guerilla-marketing at its best, and a sign that Siebel will need to do more than just show up with a hosted offering and declare victory.
UPDATE: I just had lunch with Bharath Kadaba, VP and GM of UAN, who said Siebel has only been selling UAN since last November. Siebel as a whole has 3500 customers, and of those 34 customers are in the process of implementing UAN. But of that 34, just 6 are currently "live." Kadaba cited the product's short time in the market and the complicated nature of its integration as the reasons. Also, he does not believe there is any direct competition between IBM's WebSphere and UAN, rather they are complimentary integration technologies. "The integration server market is fragmented, and that's why they need our (UAN) product," he said.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 7, 2003 12:35 PM
October 07, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Telelogic boosts UML for technical apps
Unified Modeling Language (UML) is getting a boost from Telelogic this week.
Telelogic this week is announcing Doors/Analyst, a UML modeling tool that operates within the Doors requirements management tool. The company also is shipping versions 2.2 of Tau/Architect and Tau/Developer, which are UML-based modeling tools.
Doors tools are used in development of applications for industries such consumer packaged goods, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and aerospace. Shipping at the end of the month, Doors/Analyst introduces UML modeling in the requirements management process. Requirements engineers and systems analysts can visualize requirements within the Doors database using UML 2.0 graphical diagrams, according to Telelogic.
Prior to Doors/Analyst, users of Doors had to switch to another tool to place in diagrams or use cases. "Now, you can create those directly within Doors/Analyst," said Bill Shaw, vice president of lifecycle solutions at Telelogic.
Tau/Architect 2.2 and Tau/Developer 2.2 provide development teams with a model-driven architecture approach based on UML 2.0. Tau/Architect enables systems engineers to more effectively model the design of large, complex systems while Tau/Developer generates production-quality code for advanced or real-time applications based on verified models within Tau/Developer or imported from Tau/Architect.
Tau/Developer and Tau/Architect have been used for applications such as aerospace, automotive and defense-related systems.
New features in version 2.2 of the products include user-definable graphical symbols, or bitmaps; a graphical compare and merge feature and a UML 1x import facility, enabling legacy UML intellectual property to be reused.
Posted by Paul Krill on October 7, 2003 11:26 AM
October 06, 2003 | Comments: (0)
IBM continues wait-and-see on Tablet PC
IBM on Monday refreshed its array of ThinkPad notebooks, but one official said the company still has no plans to offer a Tablet PC.
Now, that doesn't mean that Big Blue isn't plotting its approach to the Tablet PC. The company, in fact, admits to contemplating the Tablet form factor.
"Right now we do not offer a Tablet PC," Joe Donia told me last week, during a briefing on the latest ThinkPads announced Monday. And Donia should know, since he is the manager of IBM's ThinkPad product line.
"We're monitoring that space, and looking at the convergence of requirements in that space," Donia explained. "In terms of meeting a market need, we're still looking at what makes sense. We haven't decided what to do yet."
It seems a bit odd to me that the company that boasts of having the best R&D in the industry is effectively letting its competitors research and develop when it comes to what some consider the future of mobile computers.
So, what's the hold up?
Posted by Tom Sullivan on October 6, 2003 07:29 AM
October 03, 2003 | Comments: (0)
It's a conference about blogging, by bloggers, and for bloggers. Naturally enough, it's called BloggerCon, and it kicks off tonight.
The who's who list of blog-thinkers in attendance includes Glenn Reynolds, Patrick Delaney, Kaye Trammell, Joe Jones, Scott Rosenberg, Jim Moore, Adam Curry, Andrew Grumet, Jeff Jarvis, James Taranto, Eugene Volokh, Mathew Gross, Eric Folley, Halley Suitt, Doc Searls, Elizabeth Spiers, Joshua Marshall, Brian Weatherson, Chris Locke, Phil Wolff, Susan Mernit, Scott Heiferman, Cameron Barrett, Len Apcar, Jenny Levine, Dan Gillmor, Jon Udell, A.K.M. Adam.
It's moderated by Lance Knobel, Ed Cone, Christopher Lydon, and hosted by Dave Winer. (A few random links added here to some of the guys I read.)
Why did I list all those names? Because blogging is, above all, a social phenomenon. It's as much about the people and their ideas as it is the enabling technologies. But don't take my word for it, follow the proceedings via BloggerCon's RSS feed and you'll find out for yourself.
Posted by Mark Jones on October 3, 2003 05:08 PM
October 03, 2003 | Comments: (0)
Sun: Will it fall in line again?
It will be interesting to see whether Sun Microsystems rejects all advice offered by a Merrill Lynch analyst this week or ends up abiding by any or all of the analyst's recommendations. Perhaps this might happen in a few years when everyone may have forgotten what the analyst said.
In an open letter, analyst Steven Milunovich suggested, among other things, that Sun faces a crisis and must spin off its prized Java programming language and start de-emphasizing its SPARC hardware architecture.
It would be easy to expect Sun to reject Milunovich's drastic words out of hand as just the ramblings of a single analyst. But history tells us Sun has held out against the tide of the industry before and then begrudgingly fell in line.
Anybody remember the Open Look vs. Motif battle of the early 1990's?
In that classic match-up, it was Sun Microsystems against the rest of the Unix industry, which had gathered together as the Open Software Foundation in a battle of GUI's. Sun remained steadfast in support of its Open Look interface while everybody else adopted OSF Motif.
After years of resistance, though, Sun endorsed Motif. But it did not matter much anyway because while the Unix camps were like two motorists arguing on the side of the road after a fender-bender, Microsoft sped past both of them and captured the desktop with Windows.
More recently, Sun has begun selling Intel systems after flying the SPARC-only hardware flag for years. The company also has begun selling Linux, after holding out as a Solaris Unix-only vendor.
Spinning off Java could become an obvious solution for Sun if its losses continue and money is to be made through such a move. Opting for more Intel boxes in its product line over SPARC would already be evident as a move toward adopting the de facto, industry-standard hardware architecture.
So will Sun ever spin off Java? Move away from SPARC? Time may surprise us.
Posted by Paul Krill on October 3, 2003 08:58 AM
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