Category: Upside updates

SOA and IT/Business Alignment

Posted on by DavidKelly

One potential benefit of creating an SOA solution can be a focus on greater governance and serve to facilitate a more effective bridge between business and IT. By combining SOA with BPM and business rules, an IT organization can create a solution that allows business analysts to use model processes and use business rules and policies to ensure that what IT delivers in line with the business strategy and that it meets that service level agreements required. Doing so probably requires more governance than traditional solutions, but the benefits can help create more efficient IT organization, a reduction of duplicate functionality in IT projects.

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Metastorm Seeks to Grow European Presence with Acquisition

Posted on by DavidKelly

Metastorm Corp. announced its second acquisition of the year on Wednesday, revealing its intention to purchase a European services organization. The acquisition of Process Competence, a European consulting firm specializing in helping organizations design and optimize customer-oriented business processes, follows Metastorm’s acquisition this past summer of Proforma Corporation, a vendor of enterprise modeling and business process analysis solutions. No financial details were released for this latest acquisition, but Metastorm stated it would be completed November 19th. Process Competence was already a certified Metastorm partner and a licensed distributor for the Metastorm ProVision modeling suite, one of the products that Metastorm acquired through Provision.

In a message sent to the media and analyst community, Metastorm identified a number of reasons behind its acquisition of Process Competence, including the fact that it provides an extension of Metastorm’s presence in Europe, adds best practice expertise in process modeling and optimization, and brings many leading European companies into the Metastorm customer portfolio. The company will retain all Process Competence employees as well as two of the three European offices.

The Upside Uptake
This acquisition adds several important aspects to Metastorm’s position. It provides instant expert knowledge of the Proforma products that Metastorm has been folding into its BPM ecosphere, enabling Metastorm to more easily transition into a company that espouses enterprise architectures and process models alongside business process management. The acquisition also provides Metastorm a stronger entry into some of the leading European companies that are already using process modeling tools and may be interested in expanding into a business process management platform. And, the acquisition of Process Competence also immediately builds Metastorm’s footprint in Europe, a market that the company has identified as a strategic geography.

As we mentioned in a previous Upside Update, the Proforma acquisition enables Metastorm to differentiate itself from some of the other original, pure-play BPM vendors. While other BPM vendors have developed partnerships with enterprise architecture and modeling solutions, Metastorm’s acquisition of Proforma is a solid statement of their vision of the breadth of solution required for real, strategic business process management. The acquisition helps move Metastorm closer to competing against some of the infrastructure-oriented enterprise software vendors (i.e. IBM, Oracle, and EMC) that have made BPM their focus over the past year or two.

In our previous article, we also mentioned how Metastorm was facing a challenge with its purchase of Proforma, because it challenges Metastorm to re-align its sales force to make the enterprise sale that is required for enterprise architecture. The combination of enterprise architecture, business process analysis, and BPM is not necessarily an intuitive one, and therefore Metastorm faces a certain level of education in the market to convince its installed base and prospects that the three go hand in hand. The acquisition of Process Competence makes this task easier in the European market, because the seasoned sales and services staff at Process Competence can easily hold the conversations at the highest levels within the enterprises they service. This enables Metastorm to more quickly gain a foothold into these European enterprises and bring the entire EA – BPA – BPM combination to fruition.

We believe that this acquisition by Metastorm is yet another indication of the need for BPM vendors to be thinking of the broader picture when crafting their BPM product strategies. At the same time, it’s also an indication to organizations that their BPM strategies should extend beyond simply automating, managing and optimizing individual processes. When done right, BPM can provide strategic value to organizations across the entire enterprise.

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2008 Trend for SMBs – Round the Clock Support

Posted on by DavidKelly

I believe that independent 24-hour tech support is a growing market segment for small and medium businesses, as well as individual consumers.

Even with significant investments in ease of use, our computers, networks, home entertainment options and digital devices are getting more complex. Also, it’s still harder to connect and network all the devices, computers, and hard drives found in a typical home or small business—especially while trying to ensure the security and reliability of the your data and information.

From our research, we’ve seen a significant trend toward small and medium businesses using “outsourced??? technical support services—for everything from security or virus management to handling routine technical support calls or network configuration issues.

However, there are still many cases when it’s still a good idea to have in-person technical support available. For example, network configuration and network security issues are two areas where personalized, on-site technical support can be more efficient and effective than remote support.

For example, in my own organization, I’ve had a networking problem with one of my Windows XP Pro laptops, where it can’t see the other computers on the network, even though they can see each other. I’ve tried two remote support organizations and neither one was able to diagnose or solve what should be a relatively easy problem.

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2008 Notebook Trends

Posted on by DavidKelly

We’re going to see more notebooks with displays that are optimized and sized for high definition viewing. For example, wide aspect notebook displays typically have a 16:10 width to height ratio, while we’ll see a crop of newer notebooks coming out with 16:9 ratios (for example 1366*768) that are optimized for viewing HD movies, TV shows or videos on your notebook.

– Of course, standard hard drive sizes will continue to increase

– We’ll also see more laptops optimized for entertainment uses, such as gaming, watching widescreen HD movies, and connecting with stereo systems.

– Although it’s still happening slowly, we’ll see more notebook PCs bundled with integrated mobile internet access offered by wireless phone providers. Wi-Fi is great for many users, but some users want built-in wireless roaming connectivity and now with the cell phone providers building out their 3G networks, it’s more feasible than ever before.

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How to Save a Wet Cell Phone

Posted on by DavidKelly

Okay, it hasn’t happened to me lately, but I know it will happen. It’s probably happened to you. When you do dunk your cell phone in the water, what should you do? Here’s the rescue plan:

– It’s important to get the phone out of the water as fast as possible. You’ve got a much better chance of having a working cell phone if it’s only been in the water a few seconds.

– You have to remove the battery as soon as possible. It should go without saying that you do not want to turn the phone on after its been dunked in the water. The best chance for keeping your cell phone working comes from having it turned off when you drop it in the water, or being able to remove the battery quickly.

– Once you’ve got the batter out, take out your SIM card. That’s a small electronic chip/card that slides in the back of the phone (usually under or near the battery) and stores all your personal information and the telephone’s phone number.

– It’s critical that you give the phone time to dry—a long time. It’s best to wait up to three days for the entire phone and its insides to dry before trying to turn it back on.

– There are alternative ways to dry the phone out, including some that involve dunking the phone in alcohol (but not a beer!—denatured alcohol) or shoving into a can of dry, uncooked rice. Check out the internet for more details.

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Better Battery Life

Posted on by DavidKelly

I travel constantly for business and maintaining optimal battery life from my laptop and cell phones is important to me. Like many business people, my life is digital now. If my laptop’s not powered up or my cell phone is out of juice, I’m stuck reading a novel or watching the movie. That’s why I believe it’s important for business travelers to make sure they optimize the battery potential for their digital devices.

The basics of optimizing battery longevity are fairly standard—turn down the display brightness, turn off unused devices (such as your wireless connection), and reduce the hard drive activity. Those will all help users get more life from a battery charge

To get maximum life from your battery over the long haul, you want to make sure your condition the battery. When you first buy a PC, charge the battery fully, then run the laptop on the battery until it’s discharged completely, and then recharge it to 100%. That initial power cycling will help condition the battery.

It’s generally not necessary to completely discharge batteries on a regular basis, though I do it about once a month with my laptops. However, it’s a good idea to make sure you do charge your batteries to 100% when you are charging.

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Content Delivery Networks Q&A

Posted on by DavidKelly

How would you define a content delivery network ? What types of content are generally seen on websites these days ?

A content delivery network is a collection (or network) of computers (or servers) on the Internet that are designed to work together to deliver content (files, videos, music, etc.) in the most efficient way to the end user.

Content delivery networks essentially pre-package and keep content (such as frequently accessed videos or data files) close to potential users, so that when a user tries to access a certain file, it will be delivered much more quickly than if it had to be retrieved from a centralized server located far off on the Internet.
Servers in a CDN deliver content based on the proximity to the end user. In many cases, 80-90% of the end-user response time is spent downloading Web page components such as images, videos, graphics, etc. CDNs can deliver these important page components efficiently and fast by selecting the server with the fewest hops or with the quickest response time.

2) Are there particular vertical markets that would require a CDN or could
this be found in a wide variety of companies ?
CDNs can be found across a wide variety of companies–basically any company that has a significant amount of data (whether it’s large files or a large number of files) that a broad number of users need to access in a time efficient manner. Of course CDNs are particularly effective for organizations delivering large, media-intensive applications or Websites, such as news sites, online video sites, etc.

3) Does it ever make sense for a large enterprise to set up and maintain
its own CDN ? Does it ever make sense for a small to medium sized company
to set up and maintain its own CDN ?
In many cases it’s most efficient for organizations to outsource the creation and management of CDNs. The cost of creating an efficient infrastructure and managing it for a CDN can be significant.

What technical and business resources are required to set up and
maintain a CDN ?
You need a sophisticated understanding of the Internet, Web servers, and complex enterprise server technologies. It will also require significant hardware and software investment, as well as technical resources to provision, deploy and manage.

5) What are the benefits of building and maintaining your own CDN ? What
are the drawbacks of building and maintaining your own CDN ?

The benefits of building and maintaining your own CDN come down to greater control and optimization over the network itself–you can turn it specifically for your needs and modify it as those needs change, as well as complete control over the security and management of it.

The drawbacks to building and maintaining your own CDN revolve around costs (it’s expensive), time (it can take time), distraction (unless it’s core to your business, you should not be building a CDN)

6) When should a business seek the services of an outside CDN provider ?
Most organizations should look for an outside CDN provider when they’re getting started. It’s best to start creating a CDN by leveraging expert resources and networks that are already highly tuned and effective.

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Linux PCs as a Gift–Why it’s a Bad Idea

Posted on by DavidKelly

For many general consumers, a PC loaded with Linux is not a great idea. Unless the consumer is technology savvy, I do not recommend that they purchase a Linux-based PC—unless they’re using it for a very specific reason or have someone handy that will be willing to support them. Even though both Microsoft and Apple operating systems are far from perfect, they’re a much better bet for general PC usage. For example, it’s typically more difficult to install and configure options such as peripherals or software drivers when using a Linux operating system.
PCs with Linux preloaded are a great idea for some small businesses and technology-savvy shoppers who want to save some money.

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Protecting Your Data on the Road

Posted on by DavidKelly

It’s critical for even small companies to make sure they’re protecting personal and business data on the road. While large companies typically have security specialists and IT policies to manage potential data security risks, most small businesses are on their own when it comes to figuring out how to ensure the security of data when employees are on the road. At Upside Research, we have a few key recommendations to help small businesses secure their data, including:
– Start with the basics. Make sure you’re using passwords (and reasonably secure ones that mix numbers and letters) for any laptop logins.
– Another alternative is to put all your data on a small, USB memory drive for both portability and security. That way, it doesn’t matter if your laptop is stolen or damaged, you data will be fine as long as you have the USB memory device. Many of these devices also allow users to encrypt the data, providing good security.
– Users of Microsoft’s Windows Vista also have great options when it comes to security, such as BitLocker. BitLocker is drive-level encryption, which allows a user to encrypt (or secure) all the data on their hard drive, so that even if it’s lost or hacked, other people will not be able to read any of the files or data.
– Another good alternative for security data on laptops is to use a program like TrueCrypt, which can easily encrypt files or folders. TrueCrypt is free and works on Windows XP, Vista and other operating systems.

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Software as a Service

Posted on by DavidKelly

Over the past several years, we have seen an uptick in the number and variety of services-based software solutions across enterprise computing.
Saas can be especially appealing for small and mid-sized companies that don’t want to invest in servers and centralized IT resources. Saas approaches can help companies reduce capital expenditures while expanding their capabilities.Consider the other following points about Saas:
– Another key point about Saas solutions is that they’re typically kept up to date with the current release of software, so that organizations using Saas know that they’re getting the latest and greatest versions of applications, supported by experts who know and understand the software.
– For traditional software vendors, Saas approaches are turning into another marketing and sales avenue, as well as a potentially lucrative new market.
– One of the main selling points is budgetary, with a sole department being able to sign off on using the service under the IT radar. Among the services that Upside Research has reviewed in the past year, the average monthly fees range from $500 to $2000 per month depending on the number of users.
– Another selling point is speed of deployment, because many business-focused applications can get bogged down in implementation cycles within the enterprise. With services-based software, many customers can get up and running literally in hours, once they have signed the papers and worked out billing arrangements.
– In most cases, the solution is hosted at a central location by the solution provider, and for a monthly fee (based on transaction rates or number of end users) the customer has use of the software, and access to any upgrades or improvements that occur, all with minimal or no interruption in service. This is extremely appealing for efficiency-driven organizations that want to feel the business benefits of a software solution as quickly as possible without the IT burden of having to configure, manage, support, maintain, and upgrade a software application.
– In many cases, the total cost of ownership with a services-based solution is five to ten times less than traditional installed software.
– With companies focused on ROI more than ever, a services-based approach enables a project to become profitable more quickly.

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