Big Brother? Sits right on your mobile

[The image above has nothing to do with this post, but it seemed to be fitting, given the latest developments. This post is all about trust]

In this age of free(mium), it's common knowledge that you pay with your privacy. Facebook is the best (or should I say worst) example of the dance around your data, yet there are many more tools that you use, which have access to everything that you carry with you: all the data on your phone. Not only can they read that, they can also change it - and even "impersonate" you

Some applications do need this very deep trust level, e.g. virus scanners and applications such as Androidlost. Others absolutely do not do so, like Skype, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Facebook. Interested to see what they can do to the contents of your phone? You'll be in for a surprise, or should I say, shock

What drives IT failure? Ignorance and Greed

It was an interesting question Charles Storm posed the other day: was I saying that solutions are primarily driven by ignorance and greed? I wasn't, but he made me think:

• Every solution is driven by need, or want, and some lack of knowledge.
• Every failure is caused by ignorance and greed

Let's see whether I can find good arguments for that, and where the twain meet

Resource identification is not a REST invention

An article on programmable web - pointed out to me by Fred Verheul (thanks Fred!) - gave me an adrenaline rush.
It was so full of bollox that I almost started to hyperventilate - which is a pun on the abundant use of the word hypermedia in that same post

Let me just quote one part of the post:

This subtle shift in the source of application control information makes it possible for the same client code to recognize and execute new features as they appear over time without the need for patches or downloads

The post contains more nonsense like this. Let me quote yet another brilliant piece, and be done with quoting:

How pubsub works - and always has, and will

[Image by RIA Novosti]

Brenda Michelson triggered me into a small conversation on pubsub - of course I did a quick search and analysis via my Twitter search tools and learned that it's been mentioned 91 times in the past week, the vast majority of which seem to be treating the word sub as in sandwich (colloquial American) - I guess that answers Brenda's question

Yet, I went to check out the state of (Information Technology) pubsub, an extremely well-proven mechanism in our daily world, aka IRL, where we all subscribe to ye olde snail mail (the post office) to retrieve anything that gets published towards us

Oh, is that not it? Maybe, maybe not - but let me explain why pubsub undeservedly is dead on Twitter

Google Drive breaks Google Docs?

Starting yesterday, I've been receiving requests from people to share some of the content I have on Google Docs. Yesterday I also shared a link with a friend of mine, and he couldn't access it. That puzzled me

I checked the last link myself, signed out, and tried again - I got a log-on. What? My publicly shared link wasn't publicly shared anymore?
I checked a few other links that I've been publicly sharing for years without problems - I couldn't access them, period

How CEP will make SaaS the killer app

I got the insight at TIBCO's Transform event I blogged about yesterday - how we can finally solve the Customisation Riddle we've been unsuccessfully combating in IT for decades.
Software as a Service is breathing down our necks and guaranteed to replace quite a few on-premise apps in this decade alone. Starting with your tertiary (cleaning, reception, catering, leasing) applications and also your secondary ones (reporting, payroll, timesheets and maybe even some HR), it is likely to halt at your primary systems that support your core business

Why? Because the need for exceptions increases between the three types. Yes you can customise your SaaS and many will do so in the beginning, but it will only make your SaaS more expensive in the end - someone has to foot that bill.

TIBCO Transform - it says it all

I attended TIBCO's Transform event in London.
Located at the Westminster Bridge Park Plaza hotel, around 600 people were there. Kicked off by Raj Verma, Senior VP of worldwide Marketing, a 2 hour session started that never bored for a minute. Very smoothly Raj led us through a full history of TIBCO, showing impressive figures like a 21% CAGR over the last 15 years, reaching almost a billion dollars in revenue with currently 3,000 employees

Having spent $130 million in R&D last year, the total R&D sum over the years accounted to $1 billion - a huge amount that proves how serious TIBCO is about innovation and fulfilling their goal of "making this world a better place"

No Custom Code, No Customization, No Requirements. And No Integration

The title comes from a conversation between Ron Tolido and me in which we perused the joys and challenges of SaaS. Ron has a very sharp mind and an even sharper tongue, although he somehow magically manages to give people the idea of adressing them in their comfort zone - I never said I was done learning

Ron still works for Capgemini although he's not the lipservice-paying kind of guy, I freely float in space. I'll jot down my thoughts on what SaaS means to the world - read: IT vendors and system integrators - and of course am very interested to see what he has to say about the same

Hybrid mobile apps will conquer the mobile enterprise

[Image by HLundgaard]

There is a difference about how we thinks things will evolve, and how they do. I've been wondering about Mobile and app stores for a while - they seem contradictionairy.
Mobile has taken such a great flight because of lowered cost and increased availability of Internet for mobile, the old-fashioned telephone has turned into a smartphone with the power of a desktop

So, with all this ubiquitous Internet around, what is the next hootest thing for Mobile? App stores, where you can download applications onto your mobile! Isn't that odd; why not browse to an app in the cloud?

Brian Katz wrote a great post on this, and I'll to it here

REST definition and its place within Enterprise Integration

In a previous post I explained why REST is useless when it comes to Enterprise Integration. Even though at the very beginning I explicitly stated that

Roy Fielding wrote his dissertation entirely in the context of Web

and that

REST has absolutely no business benefits whatsoever with regards to Enterprise Integration

I got surprised to say the least by comments in various channels, most from professionals, even vendor representatives. Tech people, but nonetheless

SAP Integration? Not what I had in mind

I couldn't attend nor even follow the stream at Sapphirenow, but I picked up a few tweets on Integration. Well actually, Seb pointed one out to me.
As much as I detest it, I'll have to base this post on the limited info I retrieved - although I did browse the usual placeholders for SAP news of course.
If you read my latest post on SAP and Integration, you might presume I was a little overexcited about what was going to be announced

Well, the excitement wore off. Really off

Why API's suck, and what they lack

The Social Media Movement is slowly moving towards monetisation. Social Business, yes even Social Enterprise, is nigh.
Infographics bite the dust in an ever-increasing frenzy to prove that social is here to stay, to rule, to conquer the world!
And as yet another evidence of that, API's are brought forward - by the hundreds, no the thousands - to prove that the Brave New Open World has finally (yeah, really finally this time, right?) come

Well, I don't think so. API's suck - big time

80-20: the deadly cause of IT project failure

There seems to be a rush of IT failure topics these days, all trying to find the Holy Grail of project failure. While I hold that this is a world of AND and AND, not OR and OR, I do see a major cause for project failure for the last decade: shifting from serial processing (waterfall) to parallel (Agile, Scrum, and so on)

Apart from the fact that Agile is solely focused on delivering a project rather than a product, this is not an Agile-bashing post: it is intended to show a very weak spot of contemporary IT projects

Why SAP will be single-tenant at start

There's an interesting discussion going on about multi-tenancy and SAP.
Let me be clear on one thing: SaaS can't be anything else but multi-tenant and opt-out, meaning that there is a single code base for all customers, with regular upgrades for everyone at the same time

But what is only natural for SaaS "pure players" will be impossible to realise for SAP - a small step for one can be a giant leap for others

Will SaaS kill ERP? No, but it should

It's been a busy few days. First a post on ZDNet by Eric Lai invented a few problems for Cloud, or rather SaaS, and especially multi-tenancy: inflexible, less secure, less powerfull and maybe more costly - is what Eric claims multi-tenancy SaaS to be.
Thomas Wailgum neatly nailed that via a counterpost, as did Frank Scavo, to whose post Eric commented, and back again

The circle of Inspiration? Yes, it evolves hardest and finest on Twitter. And here are my thoughts: we need to grow up

Where will the social developers code? And what?

Dion Hinchcliffe wrote a very interesting piece, and I missed it. But thanks to John Rymer I picked it up.
John shared an interesting question indeed:

Client gives up on enterprise PaaS deal with #Salesforce.com, asks me for options. Focus is "systems of engagement." Interesting question.
— John Rymer (@johnrrymer) February 16, 2012

We had a small conversation on that and I read Dion's post.
While I disagree with some statements like

SAP, Integration and Star Trek: the future is now

I commented ranted on an SDN post yesterday. Submitting it failed, and I lost the +/- 500 words. A bit more miffed after that, I wrote the comment anew in Notepad, and copy/pasted that - it worked.
I got a few reactions, some of which inviting me to post on the topic on SDN via a blog post in stead of just a (lengthy) comment. While I appreciate the invite, I'll just do it here for now

Pervasive's Integration World Europe 2012

I was at Integration World Europe 2012 today, organised by Pervasive at the Cumberland hotel in London.
A nice environment and a party of a hundred plus, today's topics were Big Data, Data Integration, Cloud and Strategic Business Solutions.
Clear divisions were made on Cloud: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, and public, private, community and hybrid

Shawn Rogers from Enterprise Management Associates showed an extensive amount of tips and tricks on how to make sure you get the Cloud solution you need, being honest about the small print. The 50-page report he squeezed into one presentation showed many insights, and I'll certainly study it

tibbr 3.5 turns the world into interactive post-its

Tibbr released version 3.5 to the public today in Palo Alto California, 9 AM Pacific time. I got a solo preview yesterday and I was impressed by it - as usual I'd say.
"In twelve months since launch, tibbr has been deployed to hundreds of thousands of employees across global enterprises, who can now use tibbr to unify people, data and businesses processes to get work done"

A clear message: ...to get work done. In my opinion, tibbr dramatically reduces unnecessary human intervention in the workplace, thereby making work less unpleasant while freeing up resources for the really interesting work.
Not the greatest nor shortest sales pitch - but then I'm not selling anything here

SAP meets Cloud: something needs to vaporise first

[Photo by John Kerstholt]

I have been comfortably following SAP Influencer Summit 2011 from my chair, and reading up on the various posts and vids released throughout the process. It won't surprise anyone that yesterday's keywords were cloud, ByD, business, SAPonDemand and sales - thank you, you 350 participants who produced 1,500 tweets during the last day

Many people ask the question: with such a traditional on-premise company, will these extremes form a perfect match that complements and makes for combined strength, or will it just be a very unhappy marriage?