Simple Service Enterprise - part 2

Yesterday's post was about Simple Service Enterprise, and showed the basics: to keep up with the growing diversity inside and outside your enterprise for getting the same functionality on different devices and platforms, you need an Integration layer (the red in the middle). Can't argue with that, point-to-point integration is a neat quick and dirty solution for very small IT landscapes and doesn't scale cost effectively

SOA attempted to do so via ESB, but there a few reasons why that failed:

Simple Service Enterprise - part 1

I plead for a Simple Service Enterprise.
One that is ruled by Business, not IT.
One that is interoperable with any other business, customer or consumer, regardless of the platforms they operate on.
Regardless of the vendors that dominate those platforms.
Regardless of the programming languages used on those platforms.
Regardless of the devices used.
Regardless of the operating systems running on those devices.
Regardless of the programming languages used on those devices

I wanna have it all, for free - or almost free. I want a fuss-free, cost-efficient, business that scales horizontally, vertically, diagonally even if that's what I need; because either my customers demand it, or it allows me to gain market share - be it regaining lost share, cannibalising existing services that will be cannibalised by others if I don't do it myself, or simply gain market share in new markets

And I need IT to follow me where ever I go, sustain me all the way, not in the future, not in the near future, not when ever their partners decide to, I want it now. NOW!

I sympathise with you - and offer the solution right here

Oh Google, why did you stop being sexy?

[Image by Exey Panteleev]

Born out of a tweet from Tom Raftery, who pointed me to Google's Terms of Services concerning their latest love child: Google Drive

I waved at Google Wave, Buzz didn't thrill me other than enabling the opt-out in Google Mail, and I jumped onto Google+ as soon as I could but the effort I put into it (and the goodies I got from it) went downhill fairly soon after.
I skipped Google Drive. I have a fully mirrored NAS meaning I don't care if a disk breaks, I can access it from anywhere in the world and the fast-moving docs I have on my laptop and phone as well, as I have to be able to work offline anywhere, for any duration

So, I didn't read their Terms of Service - but someone else did, and it looks awful

Why management rocks, and leadership sucks

[Image by _MG_5503]

The past 24 hours I had a fierce conversation on leadership and management, and I love how just everyone joined in on Twitter; especially those that disagree with me because they teach me most in the shortest amount of time

I started it with

Every one wants to be a leader, but no one wants to be led #leadership
- Martijn Linssen (@MartijnLinssen) April 22, 2012

By the way, that picture of the Redskins cheerleaders is just there to spice up my blog and the post. Might lead your eyes astray for a moment, but no pun intended. I had a very hard time to select photographs that weren't shot at some battlefield or military institution, seems like the US army keeps their men happy that way. Now that is what I call management par example...

SAP gets the Future of Integration

OK, I'll admit it: this title is heavily (heavenly?) influenced by the previous Easter weekend - yet has no relation to it whatsoever. Or has it?

Let's skip the usual introduction, here is the message from Vishal Sikka that absolutely thrilled me

@MartijnLinssen @steinermatt we do.The Gateway. It will simply be services in HANA.Also PI, NW rules engine, MDM, EP, all in or on HANA
— Vishal Sikka (@vsikka) april 12, 2012

I have never been a big fan of SAP. I presented my Enterprise Integration 101 at Sap Inside Tech NL last year, and the Borg picture of poor old Jean-Luc Picard is some representation of my feelings regarding any (ERP) monolith

Yet, after this tweet, I have been turned. Into a Borg? Maybe - I just couldn't care less at the moment

How Dachis failed the Social Business test

[Image by Pablo X]

My post the other day on Dachis deleting blog posts of employees who left has led to quite a bit of Twitter conversations - not all of them equally pleasant nor a true example of Social (Business). I feel that this extra post is needed to bring some closure, and achieve some lessons learned. I'll show how the story has unfolded, and also

I wrote Is Dachis rewriting its own history because at that point I had found that certain blog posts were no longer present, and Dachis (Dave Gray, informed by Peter Kim) ensured me that no blog posts had been removed.
In the light of those contradicting facts, writing the post was inevitable

Is Dachis rewriting its own history?

David Terrar and I were discussing his post on Social Business in which he takes a trip down memory lane back to even before the coming of E2.0 as we knew it, and I was pointing him to my Redefining the meaning and goal of Social .
I clicked the link to David Armano's post Tweeting at the speed of scale on Dachis' Collaboraty, to find out it was a dead link. Odd

2004-2011 financial analysis: Non-traditional SI (Indian players and IBM)

Yesterday I published my financial analysis of 4 traditional system integrators: Accenture, Atos Origin, Capgemini and Logica.
In a conversation I got asked why IBM wasn't on the list, and my answer was somewhere along the line of "it's not a pure player". Also, I hadn't published my Indian friends yet, so here are another 3 "service providers" if you may: IBM, Tata and Wipro. Different worlds? Try universes

Avoid dashes and fancy quotes in blog titles

John Reed pointed me to a post by Jeremiah Owyang, which I failed to retrieve on my phone:

Coping With Twitter’s Unfollow Bug bit.ly/H6rUUz - by @jowyang (via @jonerp) #ensw
— Jon Reed (@jonerpnewsfeed) maart 31, 2012

Ironic as it may seem, this is due to another bug which doesn't have clear ownership: let's call it the character translation bug (sorry non-IT folks)