Low schema storage for business data

No doubt if you've careered in developing MRP/ERP apps. You've spent huge time trying not to change the data model, orchestrating development processes, and developing new features for customers only to find they won't upgrade because a data conversion is too disruptive.

Nowadays start-ups are using meta-data driven frameworks or MVC model driven entity frameworks to speedup the application development process. But have meta data driven apps become convoluted with data storage?

In the 1960's computers needed to be told what the schema was before data could be stored, there was insufficient processing power to examine the data for schema in real-time. Thus a 50 year period of high-schema business systems started. RDBMS and SQL standardized the data storage.

Business system customers and IT expect SQL storage today, but others like Google have innovated and moved data storeage forward to other practises. Proof is evidenced by all the action in the social internet space, informatics for life-sciences, distributed energy management.

A couple of interesting companies offering new ways of working. AsterData combines SQL with the first-ever In-Database MapReduce programming framework for high-performance mission-critical data warehousing. Cloudera provides the open source Hadoop framework, the basis for data management at many large consumer Internet companies.

Tossing around low schema business systems with peers, I'm generally told forgetaboutit; Transaction systems need highly schemad data to guarantee data consistency. But soonest a majority of business data storage will not be transactional, data will be text, pictures, video, audio, feeds. Meanwhile we keep using predictable schema to store unpredictable data. Gordan Bell and Jim Gemmell cover the shift to huge data in TotalRecall and project video will occupy about 50 percent of data storage.


For different ways of working with data. Marissa Meyer spoke at PARC on Innovation at Google: The physics of data. Brett Taylor on the How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data.

Marrisa Meyer @ PARC: Innovation at Google: The Physics of Data
Brett Tayor @ CBS: How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data

Is it time to dream differently about data storage for business?

Web services have failed SMBs?

Web services on premise requires skilled IT administration. Midsise to large business and of course the new 4 horsemen IT giants.



invlove lost of have many moving



http://www.supplychainstandard.com/liChannelID/25/Articles/2693/Enterprising+Technology.html

What Still Matters About Distance?

Working in a geographically distributed product teams is increasingly common. Real time web technologies help deal with the many challenges. In this video Gary and Judy Olsen of the University of California at Irvine talk about what still matters about distance and prospects for the future.

The video is long. Salient points below:

• No overlap in timezones, means teams members need to meet face to face. Learn about each other socially. Thereafter even phone calls are more productive.
• Work needs bundling into local autonomous development, going back and forth to a head office on decision making ruins productivity.
• Some timezone overlap allows clarification of questions.
• Many vendors sell tools for working in distributed geographies, few vendors provide eduction on how to use the tools for distributed working.

Internal design of Salesforce.com

Todd McKinnon, (ex) SVP for Software Development, Salesforce.com (now http://www.saasure.com/) gave a talk at Palo Alto Research Center. Searching the net my sense is Todd said more at PARC than at other forums. PARC is about sharing research conclusions, salient material is conveyed to get further understanding via Q&A from peers.

It's taken me about a year to grip the significance of the Salesforce.com architecture and the possible impact on social persistent shared business apps. Salesforce solved the problem of building CRM application Entry Forms from collections of private customer data in multi-tennant horizontal partioned web database.

Salesforce architected the fundamental architecture around the 2000 from lesson learned at CommerceOne long before the basis for scaling social web apps commonly became architecture patterns from search: Bigtable / MapReduce / Hadoop / Sharding. Thus Salesforce uses Orcale databases in a very unconventional pattern. Database on a Database and custom indexes (not Oracle indexs).

My conjecture: It may be possible to build multi-tenant business apps without strong schemas for certain shared business data by mining for key value pairs from transactional data written via entry forms in linear time and later mined for associated collections via a search interface.

Hybrid systems could emerge. ERP private business data in tradtional relational storage. (Write once update many times). And socially purposed shared data stored in a Hadoop pattern. (Write once / read many times).

Applications would need to be natural cases for sharing data such as Lot Serial Traceabilty across the Food Supply Chain.

The FDA and Public (why not, the public) could trace peanuts to farms, peanuts to contract mfgs, food products containing peanuts to distribution centers all the way to retail stores and your food snack. The FDA could probably improve traceabilty by sponsoring University/ACM research in this area.

Driving a bus between the details in this conjecture is easy, what I'm looking to find is grounds for innovation from new data patterns.

Compare the Salesforce metadata table schema to a map in HBase/Bigtable.

Force.com Multi-tenancy White Paper - via Todd McKinnon
Understanding HBase and BigTable - Jim R. Wilson
Todd's talk at PARC, excellent write up - Paul O'Rorke

Persistent Social Business Apps

A recap of videos covering the emergence of ubiquitous, persistent online identity, social graph, feeds and open APIs. Fundamentally these are transforming individuals behavior, expectations and experience across the Web.

Clara Shih, HCI graduate Stanford CS, creator of the first business app on Facebook, talks about her app and what the World Wide Web of people means for interaction, relationships and enterprise software design.



Alex Payne of Twitter talks about properly designing open APIs for interaction derived from simplicity, "explorability" and consistency.



The Gillmor Gang discuss social development derivative technologies location based APIs and predict 5-7 years of reckless innovation in Social productivity apps before they all come crashing down (APIs levering, API web services)



Fix Bayonets!

Larry Ellison Live

Larry Ellison.... Live and unscripted in conversation with Ed Zander at The Churchill Club, San Jose Sept 21, 2009.

Ed Zander choose Larry for the tonight’s gig, because he's still in the hunt, he started Oracle on $2000. Hit the wall in 1980's recovered and competed fiercely with Microsoft for leadership on SQL Relational Database performance. After consolidating the ERP applications space (PeopleSoft, Seibel, 30+ more) Oracle is now the 2nd largest software company in the world (an amazing record).

I learned Larry was head of engineering from day one and 32 years later, he’s still head of Engineering at Oracle today. From time to times he’s run other functions, but only until he found the right leaders to head up other functions. Under his leadership Oracle is now the World’s second largest ERP applications company. But as I learned at last week’s SAP World Day 2009 conference in same room in the same Fairmont, ERP has fallen off Moore’s Law.

SAP looked pretty much the same 10 years ago. The biggest innovation seemed to be Timeless Software, the ability of SAP version 7 to accept upgrade packs without ripping out and replacing the complete system. Exact Software’s SMB ERP apps have had Timeless Software for years (Arco van Nieuwland ACM 2005)

Meanwhile Google and the iPhone doing innovation in the consumer space have rapidly brought new innovations in productivity to people doing business bypassing the corp IT police. For example 8 major technology companies including Microsoft, Samsung, and Nokia are in the process of opening up App Stores to entice app development on their platforms. Roger McNamee a prominent Silicon Valley investor helped steer Palm to develop the Palm Pre identified as mega shift to the wearable PC mobility experience, and now business apps are running in the Cloud.

Knowing Larry Ellison’s passion for competitiveness, evidenced in his reputation for driving the top performing relational DB, the Americas Cup and Oracles ferocious reputation. Why does Larry buy SUN at this time in his career?

Yes - I was attending, to get insight into how Larry intends to steer Oracle to the kind of growth Google and Apple have experienced. Must be his goal - right!

Larry made the claim that Oracle regularly beats SAP but mostly admires Tom Watsons IBM. That after beating IBM at Software wants SUN to complete with IBM on hardware. He played both ends of the Cloud calling VC on Sandhill Road nitwits for not gripping that Cloud companies run like Google run on hardware and awesome engineering. That many visions for ERP in the Cloud are vapor; he ribbed Salesforce.com, saying there latest technology invention was Fuchsia. Also that Oracle can provision ERP on demand today – (in the Cloud, if you like).

I gathered than many people at the event also wanted to know why Oracle wants to acquire SUN. Based on the conversation with Larry and people at the dinner table, the reason is clear. To get ERP back on to Moore’s law by quietly making adjusts to the SUN technology stack and Java in particular (many of Oracle’s ERP apps, are Java apps).

For all the megalomaniac bravado and careful posturing, I don’t believe Larry said more than he needed to say. Further Larry announced Oracle just did a 5 year plan, and he will continue to head up engineering. My conjecture Oracle has 30-40 Java ERP apps many routed in Client Server d architecture, how better to move these apps to the next major architrecture more efficiently than by nurturing the Java / SUN technology stack.

I asked Larry an audience question about opening up the ERP BOM in the same way Google has opened up Google docs. He gave a sales marketing answer. That Oracle can server up ERP on demand today. Afterwards, I asked Ed Zander (Larry departed smartly). Ed said Larry was not going to publically answer my question. He needs to sell ERP licenses today. I think Oracle buying SUN starts a 5 year race. Who can transform ERP from flatline growth to Moores Law growth.

My conjecture is before Larry passes then baton, Oracle comes out with a transformational ERP suite in the Cloud.

Check back in 5 years?

Buchheit at Facebook

BLIP.fm DJ Search

O'Reilly Inside Mobile Conference Recap

Aadjemonkeyrock.com re-tweeted Trends: Why Cloud Computing is the Future of Mobile -

Daily I observe these trends playing out in ordinary human computer interactions. Many office buildings emptied out over the past few years, people now working at home, visit customers, or spend time embedded at suppliers (yeah - the economy emptied out some offices). Visit a Starbucks during the day time, popular locations are often full of people meeting on business or working their email inboxes. By empirical observation –the trend is crystal clear. People are now doing more work connected in real-time to their company databases via Mobile Apps. They stay connected to the popular corporate information services like Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, Exact Synergy and emerging apps easily deployed via Cloud Computing, so IT can provision access to People who are Mobile.

Mobile is so simple its convenience over sophistication. Simplicity over complexity.

O’Reilly Inside Mobile Conference Recap

Client Server Wine in Web App Bottles?

Our CEO recently hosted results for the financial analyst community. An answer that customers deployment tastes often change after a major recessionary downturn, struck me to inventory patterns in SMB app deployment patterns. Notice the 10 year period of app innovation seems coincident with the recovery troughs. It seems our industry is synchronised, also we keep coming back to simple after incorporating new technologies.

Typical small-to-midsize biz app suite evolution recap:

1982-1992: New Accounting / MRP apps modules programmed in Basic for DOS on PC
Server is file data storage only. App progs sit in a folder C:\Progs.

1992-2002: New Financial / ERP app suites programmed in C++ / VB for Windows on Pentium
Server is SQL data storage, centralized installer to updates client complex PCs. App programs install in C:\Windows\Progs\Apps and Windows Registry

2002-2012: New point apps CRM/SCM/Doc Mgmt written in ASP.NET for Windows IIS Web Server. Data is SQL storage. Web services added for customizations, web mash ups.

2002-2012: Prior Windows suites move to central deployment, installs move to 'Windows Citrix servers' for central management / hosting. biz logic layer, separated from the user interface, options increase customization via biz layer and potential scalability for app server.

2012-2022: Rich mobile apps capture field functions. Desktop Apps move to Rich Internet Apps. Simple Web Apps move to Rich Apps. Servers move into SaaS hosting centers.

During each 10 year period we've added new client devices through the LAN, the Web, WiFi and Wireless. Is the underlying trend always really a move back to Client Server patterns, the simplest deployment and development solutions to support multiple client devices?

Same wine, more bottles?

Hadoop redundancy mgmt for Web Services

Today I was stumpedby a question, why is there a such focus on developing no FAIL web services, when by definition any highly distributed computing model is inherently unreliable.

Examples of talks on reliability in the Ruby camp How Not To FAIL At Web Services in the Microsoft camp, when services do FAIL how to debug

The issue of reliability seems likely to increase, StikeIron now has 50 webservices StrikeIron Services List We know we can expect many more services to emerge. How will we handle in a scalable simple way like Hadoop?



Consider a conceptual analogy Hadoop provides redundancy for data storage by providing software to manage stripping of data across multiple commodity data servers, known as sharding. The expensive forerunner was a single beefy server equiped with a hardware based raid array.

Now consider the options for redundant Web Services in Microsoft architected solution. The recommended recourse is to use a single instance of SQL Server with the SQL Server Service Broker to manage queues and re-queuing for failed webservices.

But the characteristics of a single instance of SQL server match those of hardware raid. Unplug the power supply and the system FAILS. Whereas Hadoop is designed for server failures. If a PSU a disk drive or complete server goes out, Hadoops software reassigns one of the 2 sharded data stripes as the new primary stripe and automatically handles data replication to at least 3 servers.

What would a software based solution for managing web services failures look like? Lets assume redundancy features similar to Hadoop. 3 message web services queues are maintained. If queue 1 blows, switch to queue 2, and replicate the lost queue. The solution can alos learn the pattern of availability through statistical trail and error, and react by calleing web services at reliable times of day. The management of web services can simply retry, skip, queue, re-queue or email the administrator like Hadoop does.

Microsoft is no sleeper and the .NET Services Bus, part of Azure includes message handing and for sure over time mechanisms for handing failed Webservices via Azure will emerge. But what about business architects who wish to implement independent redundancy of web services now.

Do you know of an Hadoop like mgmt infrastructure project or product for managing queues to external Web Services?

Some brain storm ideas
The .NET Service Bus provides Frictionless connectivity across applications via Azure. “Web services are redundant as we know them - Juval Lowy”

Friendfeed. Adding indexes to a database with more than 10 – 20 million rows completely locks the database for hours at a time. After some deliberation, FriendFeed decided to implement a "schema-less" storage system on top of MySQL rather than use a completely new storage system. how-friendfeed-uses-mysql-to-store-schema-less-data Deploys Memchached

Website login without password tears

As our lives increasingly revolve around web apps, we end up with multiple user-name passwords combinations. Because websites have slightly different password rules, or because I don't trust the site with my 'main' password, I ended up with many sightly different passwords. So many, my head was ready to explode.

I'd signed up for OpenID a couple of years ago. But few sites support OpenID, I wasn't using personally until a fellow researcher started checking out Microsoft Geneva, which looks awesome. But I need a standards based solution I can work with right now, and incorporate into single sign-on systems from SoftieGoogooYahoo in the future.

I've trusted VeriSign with https certificates and visited their HQ in Mt View for the Java Posse meet-up and was awed by the level of security (like entering a military base). Long story short, VeriSigns PIP, personal identity portal works as a secure relay leaving you with just a single 3 way secure OpenID to sign-in to almost any real 'login' web site.

check it out https://pip.verisignlabs.com/ slide show 'inspiration':

sharding

http://highscalability.com/unorthodox-approach-database-design-coming-shard



MDV & BASES presents:



"How to Scale a Startup Successfully: A Discussion with Two Silicon

Valley Startup CTOs"



Date: Wednesday, October 3

Time: 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM

Location: David Packard Electrical Engineering Auditorium,

Stanford University



Food and drinks provided following the talks!



Discussion topics:



1) Scaling to the Masses - How hi5 built an information architecture

to support millions of users



Speaker: Akash Garg, CTO and Co-Founder, hi5 Networks

(http://www.hi5.com)



Come hear about hi5's evolution and the tools and techniques that

have successfully allowed them to support the needs of 70 million

users. Akash will also discuss challenges faced and lessons learned

as hi5 scaled over the past 4 years.



2) Building scalable web services with practical tools



Speaker: Nathan Schmidt, CTO of PBwiki (http://www.pbwiki.com)



PBwiki has exploited Free and Open Source tools to build out a

scalable, performant infrastructure with very small capital

investment. The last few years have seen a dramatic change in core

pieces available to system architects, and we'll talk about some of

the practical approaches to horizontal scalability, availability and

performance for today's nimble web startup.

Windows System/36

Microsoft San Francisco hosted Startup Weekend San Francisco. Tickets for the Sunday Night Demos were $5.99, less than a matinee movie, with a Tandoori dinner included. Turns out, I was in for helluva treat. About 140 people, developers, designers, had ozmosed into 20 teams following un-conference format.

Unconference implies no rules, wrong!

Teams group together based on similarity of interest, merit skills, capability to-do the job and good spirit. The Startup Weekend goal is to develop a working demo (not power-point), and a presentation pitch to catch the interest of venture capital.

The 20 teams leaned young and no team had developed Windows apps, all demos were Web and mobile apps. I feel we are at the inflection point where the new generation app patterns offer a 10x increase in productivity over the prior.

Analogy, IBM System/36 apps were replaced by Microsoft Windows apps. Azure looks likes Microsoft’s next generation, and I expect Startup Weekend like events to evangelize and win mindshare.

Enough yap, the Sunday Night Demos!

Startup Weekend Sunday Night Demos 1-2

Startup Weekend Sunday Night Demos 2-2

Web 2.0 expo hall, takeaway

* Platform connections companies turned out (Facebook, IBM, MSFT, Salesforce)
* Search engines did not (Google, Yahoo)
* Private community platforms, showed up
* Consumer internet communities, did not (MySpace, Friendster)
* Specialist SaaS providiers turned out (Meetup)

Conclusions:
* Laser focused specialists grow, by squeezing out multi-players
* Platforms focus on niche, but generally add value by aggregating others content
* Key to growth focus on disaggregating own content, to aggregate others content

web 2.0 expo hall pics

View more presentations from Clive Boulton.

Microsoft loves Hadoop, do you?

Search Engines, spot the odd man out...

• Google
• Yahoo
• Microsoft
• A9

Increasingly Google dominates search, certainly it works really well and fast. Try Yahoo, it works really well now, they spent millions rewriting their search to use Hadoop.

Corporate search behind the file wall, how does your search perform..?

How many of use corporate search built using Microsoft IT Architecture patterns. What are these architecture patterns, a single 64-bit SQL Server, 4 replicated SQL servers? Really these patterns are stepped in Windows client server technologies, not high performance computing.

Maybe it's all about to change, Microsoft also loves HPC and Hadoop!

Microsoft purchased Powerset in June 2008 for $100 million, to help it catch up with the Hadoop based search engine companies. ZDnet reports Yahoo has over 10,000 Linux servers. Google is rumored to have many more servers. But how can ISVs bennefit from Hadoop?

In a couple of ways, Hadoop technologies are likely to be interwoven in Microsoft Azure services through Powersets natural language search built on Hadoop and Mapreduce. Microsoft even changed the internal policys, to allow the Powerset dev team to continue contibuting back to the Hadoop open source project. If not Hadoop then Microsoft research has their own Dryad approach (pointer c/o David Chappell)














Another way to access Hadoop rleated technlogies, a new company Cloudera staffed by rockstar developers is set to commericalise open source Hadoop.

Marten Mickos, sold MySQL to SUN for $1B, he's now an investor in Cloudera. Seeing another growth story?

Some ISV's will use Cloud services, another set will build out own data centers?

So, how many data servers will you have in 5 years?

destinationCRM.com: Lithium Diagnoses the Community

destinationCRM.com: Lithium Diagnoses the Community

Posted using ShareThis

Windows Azure with David Chappell at Bay.NET

David Chappell, Distingished Speaker spoke (1/28) @ Bay.NET User Group. Foot Hills Technical College, Los Altos, CA.

* Backgrounder
* Azure Services Platform by David Chappell
* Future Direction
* Impact
* Steps to move Apps into AZURE...

Window Azure with David Chappell at Bay.NET

View more presentations from Clive Boulton. (tags: azure windows)

Backgrounder

AZURE is Microsoft's platform entry into Cloud Computing. The name means encompasses; Windows Azure vs Azure (the whole platform) vs Azure Platform Services. More http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Services_Platform

Azure Services Platform by David Chappell

David PPT slides covered Overview, Architecture, Characteristics

Architecture

* VM's are Win 2008 64-bit
* Web Apps supported, any which can invoke IIS7
* Data Access is RESTful (ADO.NET apps not supported)
* Azure service model has an config file - (yay, config)
* SQL Server not supported, all data storage is Tables.
* Tables are supported like schema free. Allowing horizontal sharding over multiple data servers ("MSFT must have hired an architect from Google, or Grid company)

Future Direction

Currently Azure does not host SQL server instances. The current data structure is tables accessed via RESTful services. David Chappell polled the audience of about 100, what they needed (I know many are CTO, Architects or Lead Developers working on business apps). Perhaps predictably out of familiarity, people wanted SQL services (this was not a Google audience). David mentioned he is in Redmond next week meeting the head of Azure, after touring Europe, Brussels, Amsterdam and meeting with big banks and groups like Bay.NET and not to be surprised if Microsoft switches to supporting SQL server, just like Amazon EC2 does (its paid option over the standard SimpleDB). Azure does have access to on premise SQL server data via a service bus....

Impact

* "Some data will never go in the cloud, which goes where is the issue" - David Chappell.
* Data written to Azure storage is saved to 3 physically different data stores.
* Financial data vs CRM - Compliance / Trust. On premise Accounting (Compliance) vs Saas (Trust).
* Apparently Sarbanes Oxley does not allow Financial Data off premise, yet CRM data is allowed off premise, SalesForce.com - David Chappell. (I plan to research Sarbanes, true or not)
* Cloud Computing is heaven for start-ups, 2 guys can lever the Cloud Platform and look like 200.
* 250 guys can look like 2500. No VC funding needed, just a credit card an go
* Integration to other web sites services, like Sales Force.CRM or Google maps is potentially far easier in the Cloud, but may be more expensive depending on how data is metered.

Steps to move Apps into AZURE…

The big conceptual change for developers / CTOs / founders / etc where do you want store the data, at customer premises, like most Client Server Apps. In data center like your ATM account is hosted by a bank, hosted under the lock and key of our your IT team, or hosted in Microsoft data centers around the world. What data goes where, financial on premise, CRM data in Azure, HR data on premise. All of a sudden more questions, without obvious answers.

Final thoughts, many codecamps required before moving forward.

Debate: Salesforce vs SAP

The Churchill Club hosted a debate between Marc Benioff and Hasso Plattner co-founders of respective companies.


My takeway, contrasts

SAP - high margins, low growth
SF - high growth, low margins

SAP - customisation, change within
SF - configuration, build on top

SAP - slow innovation delivery
SF - fast innovation delivery

SAP - distribution by installation
SF - distribution by browser

SAP - sweet spot, thousands of users
SF - sweet spot, small biz

SAP - IT complexity
SF - IT simplicity

SAP - high pct business functionality coverage
SF - low pct business functionality coverage

SAP - certain privicy
SF - trust privicy

Bottom line, choices

After thought...
SAP - Sales person, BMW and Swiss watch
SF - Sales person, Camry and Swatch watch

Glen Murphy who is Google Chrome's designer and an engineer on its front-end team gave a talk at the BayCHI monthly meeting

Backgrounder
Glenn started out stating what we already heard via the press, that Google had no plan to author a Browser or any other desktop ambitions that complete with Microsoft. However (and you may find this hard to believe), Google is the most secretive software company I know in Silicon Valley. The Google culture is absolute secrecy about products and road maps. Even when employees leave Google, they are bound to confidentiality. I have close friends; they cannot even tell their girl friend any of their work. Consequently Glen passed little anecdotal data (only slip ups).

Designing Google Chrome

Design
* Content not Chrome
* OS > Browser > Web App > Content
* Removal of unnecessary features (home button:)
* From the outset, design team shared a common thinking, tabs on top navigation. (Flow down navigation, natural for HCI)

Tab Isolation
* Tabs led naturally to process isolation, which met the main motivation goal for investment; increased speed and reliability for feature rich browser based apps.
* The very first working version had one tab. Striking resemblance to the released Chrome
* Tabs drag and drop, even drag between Chrome instances
* Tabs angels, 1600 generated in Photoshop. Color Blue felt right, angled tabs felt right. (Attention to detail = iteration until just right)

Omni Box
* Search & location bar combination
* Multi word query Cheese.com – URL / Cheese.js – NAV (works like a charm)
* Single work query is the challenge - PIE (British pie or BI pie?)
* Omibox solution - attempt to navigate & search in the background (parallel very fast, versus 5-6 seconds for sequential)

Development process
* Team size (could not say), very large team at Google
* All developers have design experience, all designers have development experience
* Tight loop iterations (back and forth) white board and talk-talk specific meetings with the team, allows subtle edges incorporated into Chrome most efficiently.
* Mock ups as written specs, no one read the specs. No wire frames. Meet and make design objectives clear, get consensus, and full formed simplest working example, test it.
* Chrome Target platform design goal Windows XP (not Vista or MAC). Notice this in the

Slip ups
* Development ethos, work faster than any other company.
* No ETA for Mac. Said Googlers found the XP blue revolting on the MAC. Tester refused to continue unless they can change XP blue.
* Acknowledged the entire Firefox team was present (I saw 6-8 guys tops)
* Reduce Back button navigation by 85pct (remove default back button). Reduce Reload by 50pct (make Reload button less obvious). Reduce Open Book mark (make book marking less obvious). Hence the design of Chrome thumbs nails.
* Look up at your browser, do you see Content or tool bars? (showed a ridiculous browser tool bar, half a page of menu layered plug-ins, slide 55 in presentation)

Takeaway
During my Windows career orchestrating ERP, product marketing always came running with the latest Microsoft Office looks and navigation. They wanted the same Office design in ERP. Now I see product mgmt caught up the same, satisfying customer expectations in Web ERP created by transliterations in web search engines. Where Google has broken the mold with Microsoft is to rethink carefully the user experience for navigation and the technical experience for speed and reliability. Combing the two experiences into Chrome (a brand new product). I feel we do the same on Web ERP and other products where profitable. Producing the best design by thinking and making, by reducing, by getting mad when it's just not right. This is the luxury of creating from brand new. Later on, when customers are familiar using apps, making design changes (even if needed) becomes more difficult (people don’t like change). Making incremental changes (can work).

Possible steps for ERP
* Omibox navigation.
* Removing features from ERP. I know by experience, harder to do than taking a bullet in the head (have to start from scratch).
* Creating new products requires centralized teams, distributed is too much process overhead like specs without sparks and getting mad.

Rethinking boundaries

Conversation Léo Apotheker and Andrew McAfee

Global trade at light speed, Industrial speed inside company
* Fragmented architecture, Fragmented company
* Define everything up front, Try hard not to define

Execute ERP, See what happens Web 2.0
* Cloud computing, On-premise computing
* Google Gmail, Microsoft Office

Working in networks, Working standalone
* Communities, Isolation
* Closed source, Open source

Windows, Linux
* Buy now, Buy never
* Software, Services

new business, SaaS adoption

Financial Times: "Desktop computing becomes a wave of the past, the main engine of the technology world is misfiring" 

Observation 

• Fortunes are shifting from PC to Mobile devices. 
  
• Small biz competes on speed and hugging the customer
• SMB's grow on cash flow profit, and keeping operating costs lowest  
  

Result 

• Easy access to secure back office information becomes critical
• Customer  hugs, at speed of business requires SaaS 
• A colleagues presentation summarizes adoption patterns, notice young accountants adopt 

Software as a Service (SaaS) Adoption

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: saas exact software)

Thinking SaaS-DNA, natural law of evolution, young adopt and thrive, others....!  

20 years in ERP, more door slamming

1988 I joined a UK company expanding in the USA. We were at war with mainframe and mini computer vendors and entrenched programmer administrators. Our 8086 PC fileserver often sat on top of the existing system, with lots of space to spare! 

The applications broadened from point solutions into multi-module systems often named MRP systems. MRP evolved into ERP (where standalone accounting seamlessly joined operations and logistics), CRM came with the Internet. Y2K passed and the dot-com bubble burst. Innovation switched to consolidation, apparently customers were satisfied, like they were when they had mainframe and mini-computers.  

But the cravings for productivity hadn't stopped.  New mutant systems emerged in the Web 2.0 consumer Internet space. The iPhone liberated people from there office and PC. 

This 2.0 wave of innovation started gradually infusing itself into businesses, just like the PC "crept" into business via spreadsheet applications, eventually replacing the mini's.  I remember a pissed of IT administrator slamming a door in my face. We'd just replaced his IBM system 36. Soon, more door-slamming!